I was listening to Marc Maron guest hosting for Mike Malloy having a call in from Randi Rhodes.  This was a little bizarre, because what this represented was three refugees from Air America to NovaM.  (Least so Maron, who has no radio program.)  Marc Maron’s “Morning Sedition” was canned with one of any number of new managements came in with the seeming idea of ridding the network of anything interesting or novel.  Mike Malloy was canned sort of officially unofficially due to his interview of one Webster Tarpley, of 9/11 Truth fame and formerly of the LaDouche cult, but if that was really the reason the new management was going to get rid of him and his conspiracy-friendly act sooner or later anyways.  Ringing as similarly false was the reason behind the controversy that canned Randi Rhodes.

Understand, I think rather poorly of Randi Rhodes and her talk radio show.  To the extent that I hear her it is in small snippets while roaming around the am dial during the dearth-programming hours that her slot represents on the AM dial — which, realistically, is enough to know what she is saying a time or two over, repetitive she be.  That aside, I recognize her as being, from a business stand-point, one of the few real assets the struggling Air America network actually has, and I recognize her so-called “stand up act” (and the bar for the definition of “stand-up act” apparently has rolled rather low) as being a contrived controversy.  Simply put, nobody would have noticed had the network drawn attention to it by putting her off the air for these last two weeks.  The controvery’s contrivancy is such that it lends credibility to Rhodes’s self-serving explanation of a contractual power-play at work.

The up-shot is a sort of worst of both worlds.  620 KPOJ, and any radio station that has been airing her, will pick her back up shortly and hardly miss a beat, so nobody is spared her disappearance.  “Air America”‘s tortured history continues, as it devolves into the syndicate it would probably always eventually have to become — and one with an uncomfortably bland-ish line-up choice.  I suppose Air America leaves the legacy where something called a “Progressive Talk” format can exist, to the extent that that it does, but at this point someone programming such a thing just as well may select programming out of the Jones Radio Network and “Nova M” (pull Sam Sedar in and they can become the network of displaced Air America hosts) as from the perpetually bankrupting fiscally insolvent Air America network…

… which, I hasten to say, does carry Rachel Maddow, so you can give them that.

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