Pioneer Valley Limbaugh

Rush in the Valley.

 



When going through the material on Fred King yesterday, I came across an old WHYN promotional flyer that listed on it "Rush Limbaugh's Undeniable Truths of Life." It is open to debate how undeniably true his pronouncements are, but there is no question that Rush Limabaugh was one of the great pioneers of talk radio nationally and who also had an impact on talk radio in the Pioneer Valley.

Limbaugh was the first to grasp how to really exploit the repeal of the so-called Fairness Doctrine. This was an FCC regulation that required any radio station that aired a political opinion of any kind to offer equal time to anyone with an opposing view. In theory it was a well meaning regulation, designed to prevent radio station owners from using their stations to promote political candidates through biased coverage.

In reality, it turned radio into a vast wasteland of political blandness. In radio time is money, so any free time that a station had to give out to balance political views meant less time available for regular programming and airing ads. Therefore almost all stations had a strict rule that radio hosts must not express a single political opinion on any subject. Many had the policy that if an announcer accidentally did express an opinion which caused the station to have to give away free air time to opponents, then that announcer would be fired. Therefore the Fairness Doctrine was despised by everyone who worked in radio and anyone who treasured free speech and democracy.

In 1980, a former radio personality named Ronald Reagan was elected to the Presidency of the United States, and delighted every radio worker in America by forcing the FCC to repeal the hated Fairness Doctrine. At last radio announcers enjoyed the freedom that all Americans do of speaking their minds freely in public.

Conservative Rush Limbaugh was convinced that there was a large audience of political conservatives that didn't hear their political opinions on the airwaves much. He decided he would become their spokesperson, and build a radio network that would exploit the new freedom that the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine had created. He therefore went around the country signing up stations to carry his show. One of them was Dan Yorke, who was then the owner of WSPR and a local radio pioneer in his own right. Like Rush, Yorke felt that there was an audience locally that was not getting the political news they needed and wanted, and so if Yorke was offering it on the local level, then Rush offering it on national issues would be a perfect match. 

Dan Yorke, through his own program and by introducing the Valley to Rush, revolutionized local talk radio. Even despite the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, before Yorke it was extremely rare for local politicians to face any critical commentary on the radio. What coverage they received was either fawning or spinelessly neutral in that the politician was allowed to say whatever they wanted on the air without any meaningful challenge from the host. Political coverage also reflected the very strong bias towards the Democrat Party in the Valley, so it was rare to hear conservative or Republican views. When Yorke took over WSPR and began attacking local Democrats while simultaneously bringing in the Rush Limbaugh Show it was like a blast of fresh air blowing away the cobwebs of years of political and ideological stagnation in the local media.

In the late 80's Rush was still new enough so that whenever a new station signed up for his EIB Network, then Rush himself would appear to promote the show locally. So one day Rush and Yorke were down at Baystate West (now called Tower Square) with Rush greeting and signing autographs for the local shoppers. Afterwards, Yorke took Rush to the bar in the Springfield Marriot for some adult beverages. 

Rush's career was almost derailed when it was ultimately discovered that he was secretly a bigtime drug addict. Yet he managed to survive that scandal, and remains an important force in American politics right up to this day.





Buzzboy Greg Saulmon (above) gives good soundbite on all things New Media in a radio interview you can listen to by clicking here. Hotboy Paolo Mastrangelo has a great series on the clumsy attempts the Hampshire Gazette is making online that you can read by clicking here.

I recently had my own minor run-in with Gazette online ineptness when I tried to send an email to the letters section of their sister publication The Amherst Bulletin. Nowhere on their Letters page did it tell you where to send an email! Nor did it tell you anything about their policies for accepting emails, or for that matter, just plain old letters! I wrote a pissy prelude to the email I eventually sent to the highest person on their masthead, accusing them of not actually wanting feedback from their readers.

I don't really believe that, I just wrote it because I was annoyed. But the truth is unfortunately worse than that, because I'll bet the real reason that there was no information was because no one on the staff had ever been to their online letters page to notice that the information was missing. I suspect most of the Gazette staff is in their ivory tower, clinging to their credentials and thinking of themselves purely as "print journalists" and don't really know nor care what their publications are like online. Okay if that's how they feel, but the online financial websites are writing almost daily the obituaries of publications with that attitude.

The worst mistake the Gazette is making is not grasping the essential truth that the business model for newspapers on and off the internet is IDENTICAL. The goal of both newspapers and websites is to attract a large audience and then sell that audience to advertisers. The larger the audience, the more you can charge for your ads. When you put any restrictions on the size of that audience, such as charging a subscription like the Gazette does for its online content, then you are artificially limiting your audience size and thereby lowering the price of what you can sell your ads for. That's not just a bad cyberspace policy, that's a suicidal one. 

Today for lunch I went to Earthfoods at the UMass Student Union. Every day it puts its menu for the day up on a board outside the entrance. It lists yesterday's menu as well, since it is usually still available as leftovers. (click photo to enlarge)

Earthfoods has a militantly organic/healthfood menu, with much of the food purchased just down the road from the farmfields of Hadley.

They say that students love junk food (and they do) but they can also be enticed to enjoy healthier fare, as you can see. 

Even if you're not crazy about healthfood (I'm not) you have to like Earthfood's positive message. 

Check it out next time when you're looking for an extra healthy lunch.

Blogs and Clean Government

The Valley blogosphere takes down Mazza-Moriarty.

 



No one has said so officially, but the controversial nomination of Springfield City Councilor Rosemarie Mazza-Moriarty to a position that she appeared to be the least qualified candidate for seems to be dead. In no small measure she lost the job, which had once seemed a certainty, due to pressure from citizen-based media.

In the past, there were few barriers to placing undeserving hacks in high-paying taxpayer financed jobs. When Francis Keough was made the homeless shelter director, a position for which he had no known qualifications, the cries of outrage from homeless activists were censored. When Gerry Phillips was made director of a city job training center, a position for which he had no known qualifications, the cries of outrage from educators was censored. When Brian Santaniello was made Election Commissioner, a position for which he had no known qualifications, the cries of outrage from good government activists were censored.

In those days, if you didn't own a printing press or a TV or radio broadcasting tower, and the powers that be that controlled those presses and broadcasting towers decided not to report your point of view, then you were just plain out of luck. Oh, you could do like I did and print your own little zine and pass it out on the streets, but then the power players would point at you and say "If he had any credibility, wouldn't he be working for a newspaper or broadcasting station?"

Well guess what? We don't need your fuckin presses or broadcasting towers anymore!

Today every individual with access to the internet is a printing press. And a TV Show. And a Radio Program.

WE ARE ALL MASS MEDIA NOW!

The day of their monopoly control over the dissemination of information is over.

LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE'S MEDIA!

The revolution is already underway and the revolution will be blogged.

When it was announced that Councilor Mazza-Moriarty was being recommended for the 65 to 70 thousand dollar job as administrator of the International Baccalaureate middle years program at Van Sickle Middle School, it was reported at first like a done deal, despite the fact that as reported in the Springfield Republican yesterday these were Mazza-Moriarty's qualifications:

A homemaker, Mazza Moriarty taught algebra from 1998 to 2000 at the High School of Commerce and has a master's degree in business administration from Western New England College.

However, the supposedly less qualified competitors for the job brought these credentials to the table:

Officials said the other two finalists were Catherine Luke, of Chicopee, and Donald A. Lacharite, of Warren.

Luke has a doctorate in education, is a consultant and has experience in the International Baccalaureate Organization programs, officials said.

Lacharite has 15 years of experience as a principal in Leominster and at Brookfield Elementary School and White Brook Middle School in Easthampton, officials said.

No sane person could compare those contenders and conclude that Mazza-Moriarty was the most qualified. But no one could have said so about Keough, or Phillips or Santaniello or so many others who in the past simply waltzed into their positions past far more worthy contenders. So what' the difference?

Citizen's media. No longer can those in political control determine what the public knows. No longer can they control how much coverage critics can receive, if any. Today a sleazy deal can have a public spotlight cast on it by any member of the public that cares to cast it. It doesn't really matter much whether the blogosphere even covers a certain story, the very fact that it exists and could cover it makes it something that political people must take into account before taking any action. No one wanted to have to defend the Mazza-Moriarty appointment to the army of bloggers that would have descended had she been appointed. Rosemarie Mazza-Moriarty was the Valley blogosphere's first scalp.

Trust me, she will not be the last.

Here's the latest on my brave brother:

We are back at the hospital this afternoon -- It is a special room where the air is controlled so that we don't share with the rest of the hospital. Since nobody is sure what the rash is yet, we cannot put other patients at risk. So, this time I not only have to gown up and mask up, I also have to glove up. Have you ever keyboarded with gloves on?

Mr. Tough Guy just about did himself in this time. His temp was spiking last night and we have orders to call at a certain temp, but he didn't want to. I said "I'm calling the hospital" He said,"No!" He was sure it would go back down and be OK. I chose to not call, but just kept monitoring it every half hour. So, when we arrived at the Infusion Center this morning, it was still up and everyone was scurrying around to get antibiotics and antivirals started. The nurse just looked at us and said, "Like was your phone broken last night?" We felt pretty stupid.

It has been a tough day for sure. Lots of temperature fluctuations and chills. They just checked his temp and it was 103.4. So some more meds are on the way. We are set to stay until his white cell count goes back up -- probably 5 days. I am feeling relieved and I think he is too. It is a lot to manage on our own and a lot of important decision making involved. Life and death decisions. That will all be done by the professionals now.

God is good and we know that He is in our corner. We continue to pray for a great outcome from this transplant. Sometimes it seems like the treatment is worse than the disease, though. Thanks for being there for us.

We love you all,
C & J

This morning it was only five degrees out! However, that did not prevent me from catching the dawn express from Northampton to Amherst. 

The mist was rising on the Connecticut River as we crossed the Calvin Coolidge bridge. 

Slowly the sun rose over the farmfields of Hadley.

 



The church next to the Hadley Town Hall was bathed in twilight. 

Finally, here's my new year's resolution. 

A guy goes to the supermarket and notices an attractive woman waving at him. She says hello.

He's rather taken aback because he can't place where he knows her from. So he says, "Do you know me?"

To which she replied, "I think you're the father of one of my kids."

Now his mind travels back as he looks with panic into her eyes, "My God, are you the stripper from my brother's bachelor party that I made love to on the pool table in the basement?"

She looked into his eyes and stated calmly, "No . . . I'm your son's teacher."

IF

Hey gang,

I'm so busy living my life I have little time to write about it! Too bad, because I'm having interesting adventures. I'll try to make amends this week with some long posts. In the meantime, here is that great Rudyard Kipling poem IF for you to contemplate. It is usually read by young people, who certainly can benefit by doing so, but the poem is often dismissed as "impractical" and "naive" by older folks. Those are the sort of things people say after they've sold out their best self. 

 

 IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Jimmy Justice is an obnoxious New Yorker who follows the cops around to catch them doing wrong things. This is citizen watchdog journalism at its funniest.