Pandering to "The Base"...

I don't know why I do it. Everytime I do it, it just makes me angry. I should know better by now. But I do it anyway.

What is "it"? Why, it's listening to right-wing talk radio, that's what.

I usually try to take the back roads when heading to my office, simply to avoid the miasma that is Interstate 40. But as I headed in early once last week, and again this morning, I saw the billboard for "Miller In The Morning," the new drive-time show on that bastion of free speech, 99.7 WTN.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, I'll note that I once worked for the company that owned WTN. That company decided to divest themselves of the station...and strangely enough, me...right about the same time.)

Anyhoo, I didn't give it much thought until later this morning, as I took another back route from the office to Belmont to teach my 8am class, when an MTA bus passed in front of me and there he was again. So I thought, why not? Let's see if this guy lives up to the blowhardian tradition of predecessors such as Steve Gill and Phil Valentine.

Hand to God, I listened for 30 seconds, before turning it off because of the stream of expletives coming out of my own head threatened to send me rocketing through the school zone I was crawling through at the time.

Within that half minute, I heard him promo an upcoming interview with Tony Snow. I thought, "Why would the White House press secretary call a brand talk show in Nashville?" Then I heard him promo another interview with Karl Rove...and that's when it clicked.

He was broadcasting from the White House.

He confirmed it mere milliseconds later, and that's when expletives started flying. This pinhead was doing a live, four-hour Republican infomercial directly from the White House, broadcasting directly into the center of a state with a hypercompetitive Senate race that could help determine the balance of power in this country.

Unbe-frickin'-lievable. I could have sworn there were rules against this kind of blatant politicking within the White House itself. But, then again, so many rules and guidelines we hold so dear (like, say, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights) have been suspended, ignored or flat-out obliterated, this shouldn't surprise me at all.