Todd Feinburg and his ilk are surely not going to change the way they speak about these issues. What they need is a counterpoint to debate the issues on the air, and the country wants it:
- The mid-term elections showed Republicans no longer have a free pass to say anything and get away with it.
- Dems' fund-raising is exceeding Repubs for same period.
The era of only listening to your 'side' are over. People want real solutions and want to hear all points of view because there are no easy answers.
Talk radio should do the same - air all points of view.
There is a problem with the borders. We can't take in all immigrants from all countries. The ones who make it here are often better off than the ones left behind, so it isn't even justifiable on humanitarian grounds. But, name-calling is not only not productive, but it actually makes things worse for America.
The US needs to sell more products abroad to help alleviate our trade deficit (that means that, as a country, we are buying more than we sell and are paying for it with a credit card issued by mostly China). The name-calling by conservative talk show hosts and their callers makes this job harder. Ask anyone who works in international sales. If a foreign company has a choice of buying from an American company or a foreign company and there has been some obnoxious incident in the news, what decision do you think they are going to make? Frankly, I wish you guys would SHUT UP about Jose Helpers, etc. because it is a LOT easier to sell to people who haven't been recently insulted. (which will help pay for all those t-shirts you guys are buying from China for $8 that are made by people who earn $.05/hour).
The blathering about immigration, towel heads, and other insulting speech is not helpful. If you are trying to do business with people, you don't call them names to their faces and if you are caught calling them names in private, well the sale is off. And, the US IS doing business with these countries (just because you personally aren't doesn't mean the country isn't), and we NEED to.
And, in my view, it is the difference between having children in charge or adults in charge. Just because you CAN say something does not mean you should say it. When we were teenagers, sometimes we did things just to prove that we weren't a kid anymore. After a while, the novelty wore off and we started doing the 'right thing' because we became grownups.
I think what has changed is that radio used to be essentially private speech, in that radio broadcasts were limited to the local area. Even syndicated shows were limited to the shows on which they were broadcast.
What has changed everything is the internet - nothing is truly 'private' or local anymore. That's what Imus learned - his little private men's 'barbershop' conversation with his relatively small audience wasn't private any more. Same with all the talkers - everything is available everywhere. So even as WTKK and WRKO get more local content, the medium is still international because of the internet.
If you have never lived in a small town, you are not used to being careful about what you say. But, why do you think people are so 'nice' in small towns? Because everything is public.
Get used to it.
And, if you INSIST on saying
whatever you want about
whomever you want
whenever you want, well, you better stop buying t-shirts from China, cars from Japan, food from Mexico, subway trains from Canada, software from India, oil from Saudi because WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SELL ENOUGH STUFF TO PAY FOR IT ALL because the rest of the world is catching up in their productive capacity, their intellectual capital, and their monetary capital. And, there is nothing sweeter than beating #1 and they are lining up to do just that.
Do we think we can beat the Yankees by calling them names? Or does it take really good baseball?
