I had all kinds of potential topics to blog about today: puppies, last night’s season-ending concert of the Kenosha Pops Band, two different thought-provoking books I’ve recently read. . . but it turns out that all I can think of this afternoon is the mind- numblingly awful “discussion” I just got done hearing on WGN 720 AM. . . and I don’t think I’m going to be able to cleanse my mental palette until I’ve written something about it. So pardon me while I vent. . .
First of all, I should say that WGN radio is the station (other than my own) that I have listened to more than any other. It was a place to go when you needed something right down the middle. . . not quite as mentally sophisticated and challenging as public radio nor as ceaselessly strident and repetitive (and ultimately pointless) as your typical talk radio. The hosts they had were people I felt like I would enjoy having in my home for a visit. . . . bright but not too bright (you hate to have a houseguest who makes you feel stupid), positive without being sickeningly sweet, funny but not in an overbearing way, and enjoyable to listen to even if they seemed to espouse an opinion contrary to my own . . . in other words, to quote Goldilocks, Just Right.
But there are those in the radio business who deplore the notion of being Just Right as in “right down the middle” – maybe equating it with Playing it Safe – and the new management of WGN has shed some of the station’s most beloved hosts in favor of newcomers who are much edgier – and at least in one case, much dumber as well. Edgy I can stomach, in modest doses. But Edgy and Dumb I can’t stand.
I’m talking about a host named Jim Laski – and I should hasten to add that I have no way of knowing what Mr. Laski’s I.Q. is – for all I know, he’s smarter than I am. But what he does on the air is DUMB. Another way to say it is that if you’re going to do this kind of radio, you might as well be dumb, because it takes absolutely no intelligence or insight to do what he does over the air. He essentially glances at a story (and in some cases just the headline) … forms a hasty opinion about it … blurts out that opinion over the air in inelegant fashion (although some would more charitably describe it as down-to-earth) …. and then proceeds to restate his opinion over and over again, no matter what counter-arguments or interesting tangents are raised by callers. What is especially maddening is that he tends to restate his position almost verbatim, as though he were drawing from a vocabulary well of thirty words (and none longer than two syllables.) I really don’t mind too much listening to someone with whom I disagree if they at least have a way with words and express themselves well – and are interested in a genuine exchange of ideas. But Jim Laski is basically on the air to spew out his knee-jerk, skim- the-surface reaction to what are often incredibly complex topics. . . with almost no statistics or meaningful data to support his position. This is all about him going with his “gut” – and then just saying that same thing over and over again, ad nauseum.
He spent an hour this afternoon ranting about crime. His starting point was provocative: that the aggressive move to arrest, charge and (perhaps) convict Rod Blagojevich is more about people wanting to appear to be tough on crime and corruption rather than people seeking genuine justice. Interesting point, whether or not you agree with it. But he went from there to rant and rave about two editorials: one which said that one reason for the drop in murder rates is that improved health care is saving the lives of persons who twenty years ago would have died from their injuries. (He found the notion preposterous.) The other editorial suggested that violent crime was not a citywide problem in Chicago but clustered in certain neighborhoods in the south and west sides of the city. But as far as Laski was concerned, violent crime IS a citywide problem (city, suburbs, everywhere) and whoever wrote this editorial or agreed with it was just trying to sanitize the problem and make Chicago look safer than it actually is. His single most egregious error was in being so sloppy in his reading- because he ended up grouping these two editorials together as though they were both examples of the statistical manipulation that seeks to mask the seriousness of our crime problem. But the first editorial in fact is saying that murder IS a serious problem- more serious than the actual murder rate might suggest- so he’s dismissing an editorial because he misunderstood it. And as for the latter, all he could say in response to everyone who called in to disagree with him was that he just couldn’t accept the notion that violent crime isn’t a citywide problem. But the editorial is based on carefully gathered statistical data which points to a reality that’s hard to dispute . . . . hard to dispute unless all you want to do is just restate your gut reaction. . . which is all he did – over and over again.
The next hour tackled the matter of same-sex marriage and California’s Proposition 8 which made any such unions illegal….a measure which was just struck down in court. Mr. Laski’s main point was that in a time when so many marriages are already failing, he hoped that same sex couples wouldn’t come out in droves to get married just to get some attention because it’s suddenly the “in” thing to do. And no matter what various callers had to say on this topic- and several of them were really troubled by his simplistic take on this announcement – all he could do was simply and limply restate that same gut-level reaction, again and again, in word-for-word reiteration that made me want to scream. It’s not that what he was saying was dripping with hatred (one certainly hears far worse when this topic is discussed in certain quarters) but it was a rather unsophisticated take on a complex issue- – – and what was worse was how mentally inert he was willing to be. All I could picture was a big fat guy sitting in a shallow plastic kids’ swimming pool, wallowing in his own juices. It’s as though he has not the slightest interest in learning- in stretching himself – in wrestling with the strands of an intellectual knot. I’m not sure he even know what it feels like to do that. I may be feeling so strongly about this because this happens to be an issue about which my opinion has come to be utterly transformed over the last twenty-five years. . . and while I would never be so presumptuous as to insist that people believe what I believe about this issue, I feel like this is too important an issue around which to form careless and lazy opinions. . . but as far as I can tell, that’s the only kind of opinion Mr. Laski knows how to have.
By the way, Jim Laski is a former Chicago politician who was convicted of corruption charges and actually spent about a year in prison. My dismissiveness of him has nothing to do with that. It is about his appalling laziness and complacency and the way in which he is utterly wasting the amazing opportunity he has been given.
And thus my venting ends.
P.S. – I fear that this rant was a bit repetitive. How ironic is that?!?