"Some Cynical Guy" No. 55: December 2, 2001

The Cynical Guy Discovers Talk Radio

Driving alone can be an exhilarating way to pass the time, as long as the scenery amuses the eye. It's just you and the road and the shifting shapes of rocks, turf, architecture and vegetation, all hurtling by as your trusty vehicle guzzles its way to a distant destination. But when you commute to the same office every day, along the same route, at the same congested hours, through the same hideous highway landscapes, the mind tends to require additional stimulants. That's why cars have been equipped with radios since the days of Amos 'n' Andy. 

Because radio marketing managers tend to be timorous and abject slaves to demographics, the majority of stations (roughly 78 1/3% by my own Cynical Guy estimate) saturate the airwaves with one form or another of ghastly popular music: grungy latter-day rock, soulless latter-day rhythm 'n' blues, rap, Nashville pop (it ain't country music no more, Lester) or bubble-gum pop. All forms of UNpopular music (i.e., jazz, folk and classical) probably garner less collective airtime than a current hit by Mariah Carey or Britney Spears. (Fifty years from now, will anyone out there remember the words to a single hit by either of them? Call it Beethoven's revenge.) 

Once you've discarded both popular and unpopular music, most of the remaining time on radio is gobbled up by talk. Radio is the ideal medium for nonstop gabbing: you'll see no pretty faces or ugly ones to distract you from the spoken message. Radio is also a fundamentally honest medium: the stars can't depend on make-up or computer-generated dinosaurs to disguise weak dialogue. It's straight from their mouths to our ears, unrehearsed and unvarnished.

Back in the last century, when I still worked an actual paying job, I used to enjoy a speedy eight-minute commute -- no more than thirteen minutes on bad days. I'd keep the car radio tuned to the one available classical station so I could catch a few bars of Mozart or Schubert on my way to the drudge-halls of business and back again. I started listening to talk radio in earnest only when I began courting my wife Anne, who lived a full fifty miles down the pike from my old place in Allentown, Pennsylvania. My station of choice was NPR -- National Public Radio -- partly because the local classical station crackled out of range ten miles into my drive, but also because NPR seemed to be a lonely oasis of intelligence and taste on radio. 

I quickly caught on to the fact that this so-called public radio network wasn't truly representative of the American 'public': it struck me as more of a haven for 'sixties liberals aged and mellowed in fine oak barrels... a bastion of polite, sandal-shod, granola-eating, community-minded recyclers with degrees from Berkeley or the University of Wisconsin... a forum for articulate representatives of politically fashionable special-interest groups: thumbs-up to gays, women and people of color; thumbs-down to gun lobbyists, pro-lifers and Bible-believing fundamentalists. (It's funny how selective liberals can be in extending their warm embrace.) But still I listened and appreciated what I heard. Occasionally I even enjoyed it.

I became a fan of 'A Prairie Home Companion,' the down-home variety show with the downtown sensibility, hosted by that incomparably orotund yarn-spinner Garrison Keillor. There was 'Fresh Air,' the syndicated interview series featuring Terry Gross, whose soothing voice promised intimacy but always remained mysteriously, tantalizingly, frustratingly remote. I enjoyed the periodic on-air essays, the readings of short stories, the quirky game shows. I tolerated the gardening and cooking segments, the sober discussions of current events, the portentous pronouncements of veteran journalista Daniel Schorr. I cackled at 'Car Talk,' starring the rowdy sibling mechanics 'Click' and 'Clack' and their juicy working-class Boston accents. (To hear them laugh at their own jokes is to experience the kind of bliss known mainly by conspiratorial fifth-grade boys who have just placed a Whoopee Cushion on their teacher's chair.) 

Click and Clack appeared to be a refreshing anomaly on NPR; all the other programming struck me as exceedingly polite, educated, relentlessly upper-middle-class -- not Brooks Brothers upper-middle-class so much as brie-and-Birkenstocks upper-middle-class. But Click and Clack seemed to refute my theory. Then I discovered that the boys are -- can you believe it? -- M.I.T. graduates!

What was going on here? A 'public' radio network OF the educated elite, BY the educated elite, FOR the educated elite? Something wasn't computing. Why, with the exception of Click and Clack, was everyone on NPR so confoundedly polite and soft-spoken and impeccably mannered to the point of tedium? Were they afraid to sound too brash, too A.M. radio, too COMMON? (Perish the thought that a liberal should sound like one of the masses.) I longed occasionally for a loud guffaw from one of the appointed pundits, or at least a chortle. Yes, a good throaty chortle would have sufficed. But no, I would hear no chortles on NPR except from those M.I.T.-educated court jesters, Click and Clack. Even the laughter of the audience on 'A Prairie Home Companion' sounded too polite, too restrained, a bit on the self-congratulatory 'I got the joke, therefore I'm clever and refined and socioeconomically upscale' side. 

I needed to hear voices that rang with passion and spontaneity. I needed to hear the blood coursing through their throbbing brains. So one day, just a week or two ago, I gathered my courage, switched to the non-kosher netherworld of A.M. radio and found a talk station for commoners. There was Imus, there was Limbaugh, there were half a dozen loudmouths who yelled at callers, chastised public officials, spewed invective and generally ground out cynical rants like hamburger meat. My eyes lit up; I smiled. I quashed any inclination to snub these honest folks for their gruff and spiteful philosophizing. Here was the true voice of the embattled American public, the underappreciated working stiff, the blunt-spoken neighbor down the street. It was as rude as NPR was polite, but I welcomed the bracing change of climate, at least for now. THIS was fresh air! THIS was talk radio! How long would I be able to stand it?

Cynic's Pick of the Week

Here's a sneer for both sides in the ongoing Enron corporate debacle. A hearty 'boo!' to the giant energy-brokerage company for freezing employee investments in its crumbling stock; a mildly sympathetic but still audible 'boo!' to the employees who are suing the company for letting their stock become worthless. (Hey, nobody was forcing you to invest your entire 401K in Enron! It looked like a sure thing at the time, didn't it?)

© 2001 by Bridget Petrella Media Relations. "Some Cynical Guy" appears here by permission of the publisher. If you'd like this column to appear regularly in  your own site or publication, write to UPBEATmag@aol.com.

Profile of a Cynic...

Bayan, who claims to be a "kinder, gentler cynic," lives with his wife in a 100-year-old former livery stable in Philadelphia. His weekly column, "Some Cynical Guy," is published and syndicated by Upbeat Online.