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Fur Balls of Truth Get a Bigger Audience
For 4 years I've driven one hour each way to Bozeman, Montana to do a weekly liberal labor talk radio show on a Clear Channel AM station. This is what we were all told to do in 2004. We were supposed to take our country back. We were supposed to, as John Edwards asked "step up, not step back". Howard Dean told us to join the party and make a difference. Well, my co hosts and I have been slogging through right wing callers and Ron Paul conspiracy theorists each week in an effort to try and figure out how to talk to each other. How can we get a liberal message out while respecting our neighbors differing opinions? Our station hosts 63 hours of conservative talk and our 3 hours of liberal.
We have had on great national guests like Dean Baker, Glen Ford of blackagendareport.com, Francis Moore Lappe, Melvin Goodman, Stephen Zunes, Charlie Derber, Ari Berman, and many others. But our reach was only one county in Montana. We could podcast, but that was it. This week we add another Montana station so we will reach two counties. And we will begin live streaming on the internet.
The show's name is "Democracy's Edge" named for Francis Moore Lappe's book of hope for democracy at the far reaches of our country. "Democracy is not something you have, it's something you do." We are the Feral Cats of Freedom coughing up fur balls of truth from the baloney that we've digested throughout the week from the Fat Cat News and Bloviators of Blather.
Tomorrow will be the last time that we Border Collies of Sanity will round up the strays that got away from the Fat Cat News. We will round them up and vacinate them for Bushollocis for the last time.
Then in the 2nd hour (at 3PM MST) we will be interviewing Rick Perlstein. Perlstein, as most of you know here, won the LA Times Book Prize for "Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus". And now he has another winner, "Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America".
"Nixonland" is my kind of history book. After reading Howard Zinn's "The People's History of the United States", it is difficult for me to pick up a "great man" biography. I want to know about the people of the era. And this is where Rick really delivers. Stories of the ruptures between hard hats and war protesters break your heart as they scare the heck out of you. The incidents of hippies being shot at random and little children shot on the streets makes you shake your head in disbelief
Rick also has a blog over at ourfuture.org called The Big Con. We should support that site. http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009010316/bushs-legacy-failure-conservatism
Join us and call in every Saturday from 2-5PM Mountain Time. 406-522-TALK
http://new.kmmsam.com/onair_page.php?id=14
We have got to take back the media and get people to start thinking for themselves again.
We have had on great national guests like Dean Baker, Glen Ford of blackagendareport.com, Francis Moore Lappe, Melvin Goodman, Stephen Zunes, Charlie Derber, Ari Berman, and many others. But our reach was only one county in Montana. We could podcast, but that was it. This week we add another Montana station so we will reach two counties. And we will begin live streaming on the internet.
The show's name is "Democracy's Edge" named for Francis Moore Lappe's book of hope for democracy at the far reaches of our country. "Democracy is not something you have, it's something you do." We are the Feral Cats of Freedom coughing up fur balls of truth from the baloney that we've digested throughout the week from the Fat Cat News and Bloviators of Blather.
Tomorrow will be the last time that we Border Collies of Sanity will round up the strays that got away from the Fat Cat News. We will round them up and vacinate them for Bushollocis for the last time.
Then in the 2nd hour (at 3PM MST) we will be interviewing Rick Perlstein. Perlstein, as most of you know here, won the LA Times Book Prize for "Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus". And now he has another winner, "Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America".
"Nixonland" is my kind of history book. After reading Howard Zinn's "The People's History of the United States", it is difficult for me to pick up a "great man" biography. I want to know about the people of the era. And this is where Rick really delivers. Stories of the ruptures between hard hats and war protesters break your heart as they scare the heck out of you. The incidents of hippies being shot at random and little children shot on the streets makes you shake your head in disbelief
Rick also has a blog over at ourfuture.org called The Big Con. We should support that site. http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009010316/bushs-legacy-failure-conservatism
Join us and call in every Saturday from 2-5PM Mountain Time. 406-522-TALK
http://new.kmmsam.com/onair_page.php?id=14
We have got to take back the media and get people to start thinking for themselves again.
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I picked some fur balls of truth and put them on my website. http://montanamaven.com/
They include more info on Rick Warren and his questionable work on AIDS. And others
And check out Matt Taibbi's hilarious, if you don't mind a lot of swearing, take on Tom Friedman's latest book. http://www.nypress.com/article-19271-flat-n-all-that.html
January 16, 2009 7:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
That Taibbi article is hysterical!
January 17, 2009 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Feral, it is great speaking with a celebrity.
This great. Radio to the internet.
I did a couple hours a week on a legal call in show for eight months or so. And it was not an easy thing to do. But to have right wing callers lambasting you makes you one tough cat I bet.
Good luck to you
January 16, 2009 8:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks DD. Yeh, that's why I picked the Feral Cat image. We are undomesticated and still have our claws. We are behind enemy lines, so we have to be tough but also thick skinned enough to purr a little. Interestingly, we had all kinds of bashing phone calls for the first three years, but this last year people are coming around to at least listening. We have more and more conservatives that call in now who are friendlier because "even though they don't agree with us on some things, we make them think." I think the economy has our listeners really questioning what is the truth. It's a hard time for everyone. Who do you trust?
We try to have good sources and good guests.
But Montana is a deeply conservative and libertarian place.
January 16, 2009 8:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
'...get people to start thinking for themselves again.'
True, that.
January 16, 2009 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rec'd for sheer grit and determination over all these years!
Thanks for your description of how you and your friends followed Howard's advice. Another proof of the reach of the Dean Campaign.
I salute you!
January 16, 2009 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, Thera P. I have been blogging for 4 years and never told the personal side of this until now. I have just blogged about issues. It's a tribute to the safety of the Cafe that I felt that I could tell a more personal version. Yes, Howard Dean's influence is profound. And though a flawed guy, I am still proud to be part of the Edwards team. It was never about the man. It was about the message of "rewarding work over wealth" and "ending the game" of the finance banksters. We along with the Deaniacs and the Kucinch folks, spoke truth to power.
January 16, 2009 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Feral:
I'm sorry I had to work today. I would have liked nothing better than to link to your radio program.
As someone who loves a part of the US (the South) that is, despite my deep and abiding affection for it, as conservative as it is painfully possible to be, I honor your ongoing liberal efforts -- in a hostile territory.
The image of the feral cat is absolutely accurate. Proud, self-sufficient yet often hounded, in both the literal and figurative sense. Brava.
January 17, 2009 6:06 PM | Reply | Permalink