The Hairy Eyeball: Farewell, Air America, we hardly cared about ye

The feeling I had was oddly similar to what I felt when my parents told me they had put their feeble old Westie terrier to sleep; Indifferent. And then guilty about my indifference.

That’s how I felt when I heard Air America had gone off the air.

That dog was around for a long time—since my early teens. And aside from her disconcertingly blank stare, she was a pretty good dog. I should have loved her. Or at least I should have had some affection for her. But I just never did.

In the same way, I should have loved Air America. It’s been around since my tender years. It was a loud voice crying out my politics in the wilderness of AM talk radio. It was funny. It spawned Rachel Maddow and arguably helped Al Franken get elected to the U.S. Senate. The Senate, for God’s sake.

But I just never did.

Like the dog with her gross eye boogers, I think there was always something about Air America that just kind of creeped me out. I guess I just don’t like my political ideas rammed down my throat. I prefer them eased down, NPR-style. I like to pretend that I came up with those ideas on my own.

And I like, I suppose, to pretend that other commie liberals come up with their political ideas on their own, too. That’s a big part of how I look down on conservatives, really. They get their opinions spoon-fed to them by Bill O’Reilly; I read the New York Times and parse them out as if they were encoded in a crossword puzzle. It’s more subtle that way: You may hear Jason Beaubien weeping from Haiti on NPR, but you certainly won’t hear anyone alleging Haiti made a deal with the Devil.

That’s a true story, by the way.

Air America was intended to be a counterpoint to conservative dominance of talk radio, and that’s a nice idea. But really, I’ve never given a shit about the conservative dominance of talk radio. I’m sure Rush Limbaugh really gets the Republicans hooting and hollering, but if bits like “Barack the Magic Negro” bring any centrists over to the right, somebody please let me know, so I can move to Canada. I think people are smarter than that. Those guys are preaching to the choir.

I, for one, don’t need to be preached to.

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