Two of the truly fun times of the public radio year come when KUSC, one of America’s last surviving classical stations, a Los Angeles powerhouse, begs listeners for handouts. Without surrendering a drop of their dignity, and while maintaining a classy demeanor, the boys and girl of 91.5 act as if they are frolicking at a church picnic. Their marvelous let’s-go-casual attitude is infectious. They raise funds with such creative classiness that their faultless manners could win all of them an invite to Kate and William’s nuptials next season.
Sadly, though, the two weeks in spring and the fortnight in autumn are the only days of the year when you will hear afternoon disk jockey Kimberlea Daggy laugh. The only explanation is the boys of the station, Dennis Bartel, Jim Svejda and Rich Capparela, who are loose and immensely entertaining daily, must be tickling her.
Ms. Daggy has a terrific sense of the humor. But she spends it so sparingly that if she dies at 100, she still will take nearly a lifetime supply of unused chuckles to the grave with her.
KUSC stands in stark contrast to the snarky-tempered drones in charge of semi-annual begging at the other public radio outlets in Los Angeles. They are embarrassing, boring, cheap-sounding, unimaginative, and they left their dignity in yesterday’s clothes. Without exception, they sound like hoods paid off by perennially struggling and ever amateurish KPFK (90.7), the Jackie Gleason of the FM band.
When the Whether Turns Rainey
Which brings me to the latest crayon-written Saturday morning essay by Jimmy Rainey, the lightweight media editor of the Los Angeles Titanic. If JimBoy were a lawnmower, his blades would need to be sharpened every 10 feet. If he is trying to explain an opposing point of view less subtle than a double-fisted biff on the nose, JimBoy is not the flimsy messenger you want to represent your perspective.
Not quite an original thinker, more like the 30 millionth left-winger to make the same Xeroxed statement, JimBoy rubs his eyes, hitches up the only sock he could find this morning, picks his left ear, coughs and asks the Titanic’s shrinking audience:
Why would those meanies in the Republican Party want to kill taxpayer funding of that noble, sizzlingly patriotic institution National Public Radio, which claims 284 member stations?
Not nearly the Paul Revere of his generation, JimBoy tells us that the newly empowered GOP tried last week in the opening lame-duck Congressional session to kill funding of NPR. “They failed but will without question try again, as a Republican majority takes power next year,” he darkly warned us quivering peasants.
Regathering himself for another run at those darned savage Indians who are determined to burn his house down, JimBoy, genuinely stumped, asks his readers: “To what end?” He truly does not know why Republicans want to defund NPR. Reacting the way most left-wingers do when puzzled, he throws the whole bowl of porridge against the new wallpaper and hopes one of his snazzy guesses is correct.
Punily and pedantically, JimBoy reasons: “Apparently to satisfy an itch to lash out at menacing Eastern elites, to vanish Big Government and to vindicate the righteousness of Juan Williams.”
In baseball, that is called strike 1, strike 2 and strike 3, your out, JimBoy.
Why Are You Yelling?
Without knowing whether he was savvy or swift enough to step out of this weekend’s rain, bet your children’s college tuition that the true reason did not creep within a mile of his groping, searching mind. Funding radio stations ain’t part of the government’s job description, JimBoy. I pay taxes for the government to keep me and my family safe, not to underwrite, in this case, left-wing radio. You betcha JimBoy, proudly left, wouldn’t be speaking out so stridently for public radio’s rights if NPR bent as far to the right as it does to the left.
Philosophical coward that he appears to be, JimBoy centrally resorts to the last refugee of a backpedaling defensive person losing a debate, a schooldays’ so’s-your-old-man argument. If the GOP does succeed in stopping funding, he sings shrilly, it isn’t the big boys who will suffer. Golly ned, no. Can we bring in the chorus for this tired old bromide: The little man is the one who truly will endure the pain.
Whenever the Democrats, the I-Am-a-Historic-Victim party, are fading in a debate, they don their bogeyman mask and say “Boo.” It is always the “working families,” a cudgel they wield in one hand, or “middle-class persons,” the bat gripped by the other fist. Thank heaven, the non-working families won’t be affected.
JimBoy, I ask you: If the affected amount of public radio funding is so miniscule, why are you raising your voice? Is the fire edging too close to your britches?
A Kansas City community college professor filed an essay in last Saturday’s New York Post, asserting that those sly devils at public radio are playing magician with their funding numbers, and that the government proportion is closer to 25 percent (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/) You judge.
Is that why JimBoy and his allies on the pretty distant feel-good, heart-aches-so-darned-much left are tearing up. Is that why JimBoy crafted 21 Lawdy-Help-Us-All paragraphs last Saturday? As a “progressive” who thinks the left is the center, JimBoy hoped to clinch his beef with the right by maintaining, with enviable pride, that open-minded NPR also interviews Republicans. Wow. Now there is my notion of broadminded media. He says that NPR interviewed new Majority Speaker John Boehner — whom the left has tried to mockingly twist into this year’s Sarah Palin — and they didn’t even savage him. On the left, this is known as a grudging concession.