COLUMN: Talk radio: it's no myth

From Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb", Fall '96 From Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb", Fall '96Driving cross-country, youFrom Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb", Fall '96Driving cross-country, youlearn a lot about the folksFrom Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb", Fall '96Driving cross-country, youlearn a lot about the folkswho liv in this country'sFrom Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb", Fall '96Driving cross-country, youlearn a lot about the folkswho liv in this country'smissection - and aboutFrom Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb", Fall '96Driving cross-country, youlearn a lot about the folkswho liv in this country'smissection - and abouttheir very different culture. From Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb", Fall '96Driving cross-country, youlearn a lot about the folkswho liv in this country'smissection - and abouttheir very different culture. They call it "flyover country," those bicoastal types for whom the United States falls into three categories: "New York," "Los Angeles," and "other." For those who grew up in, or have driven through, "other" (or as in my case, both), it's quite a different thing. Then there's Big Belt Buckle Country. When you cross the Platte River in Nebraska, all of a sudden you notice everybody wearing belt buckles the approximate size and shape of serving platters, and they seem always on the verge of falling flat on their faces from the sheer weight of these things. But l digress. When you drive across the country -- as l did twice this summer -- you see how "flyover country" is far from a homogeneous mass. You only see this, though, when you actually get out of your car and mingle with the citizenry. During the daytime, though, when you're in the car with no company -- that's when the country, from sea to shining sea, from Philly all the way to Shaky Town (also known as Los Angeles), seems all the same. For it's then that you encounter the Myth of the Liberal Media. Up to that point, I hadn't actually listened to much talk radio, since I either worked or went to school during the day, so my only exposure to G. Gordon Liddy was the reams of articles about him that I coded. Which meant that I thought he was a raving lunatic, since all the reporters ever wrote about were his post-Oklahoma City rantings about ATF agents (the exact quote, Super-Glued forever to my cerebellum, was "Head shots! Head shots! Kill the sons of bitches!"). Naturally, this would keep any sane human from listening to such dreck. But there comes a point every day when you're driving, when the "Song of the Open Road" starts to sound like "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall," when you've listened to your Best of Earth, Wind, and Fire cassette for the zillionth time, that you just have to turn on the radio. Plus, I have to admit to some curiosity about these talk radio guys. So I'd flip on the AM dial, hit the "scan" button, and see what I could hear. I'll tell you what I could hear. Rush Limbaugh. Lots of him. Anywhere. Everywhere. Sure, every once in awhile I'd catch a little Michael Reagan, some Liddy, maybe a local talk show, but if there was reception, there was Rush. The reason I bring this up is because most of these guys, Limbaugh and Liddy especially, drone on and on and on about the "liberal media" and how it's taking over the country. I can't figure it. You've got to work real hard to find seriously liberal radio in this country, whereas most places you could pick up Limbaugh on the fillings in your teeth. (Remember, Rush is the guy Newt Gingrich said "is public radio," an analogy which would be accurate only if National Public Radio had pledge drives every 10 minutes and gave away Daniel Schorr newsletters and "Bob Edwards Collection" neckties as premiums.) How hard is it to find "liberal" radio? Well, every afternoon I'd try to tune in NPR's All Things Considered, as good an example of "liberal media" as I know of. Good luck. You'd have to be Hillary Rodham Marconi herself to lock onto an NPR signal anywhere other than on the East Coast. The only real luck I had in finding it was driving through Ohio, and even then I had to daisy-chain through three different college stations -- Youngstown State to Kent State to Cleveland State -- passing the NPR baton like some kind of insane frequency-modulated relay race. This is part of the problem. NPR is generally broadcast by college-owned FM stations, which are usually down at the far left(!) end of your radio dial. FM is not generally conducive to long-range transmission, and colleges don't buy large transmitters anyway, so your average college FM outfit has about the same range as the Escort Service "A" shuttle. Limbaugh, on the other hand, is usually carried on AM stations, which carry further by virtue of the laws of physics. For instance, he's on WLS in Chicago, a 50,000-watt clear-channel behemoth with a signal so powerful that my cousin once picked it up aboard the U.S.S. Independence while sailing in the Adriatic. Which means that not only are we Americans subjected to old Leatherlungs, but even the Bosnians and the Serbs can pull him in. And we wonder why they're always so cranky. Admittedly, radio is not the whole of "the media," but considering the number of Walkmen, stereos and car radios out there you've got to admit that there are a hell of a lot of receivers for what has largely become an ultraconservative medium. If you consider the media to be a battlefield, we may as well concede that the Rushes and G-Men and other right-wingers have pretty much annexed that portion of the electromagnetic spectrum as lebensraum. Sure, we could fight them, but it could take years and cost millions of lives. At the risk of calling for "peace in our time," I figure that, just this once, maybe we can negotiate some sort of treaty -- they can keep AM and all the FM frequencies above 90 megahertz, if they'll agree never, ever to complain about "liberal media" again. Call Warren Christopher and let's get started on this now.