B
Bob1370
Guest
What we forget is, as loud and crude as Downey was in his time, he was at heart, and on the air, far less mean-spirited and far less extreme than what passes for a lot of commercial radio and TV talk today. He may well have been an actor playing a self-created character called Morton Downey Jr. built on an exaggerated version of his own personality. But his blue-collar cultural conservatism, which those who knew him say was genuine, sincere and not an act, was a whole different animal from the nasty, elitist rant on the airwaves now.
Compare him to the race-baiting that Limbaugh and Savage engage in daily, the strident self-aggrandizement of Hannity, the xenophobia of Lou Dobbs, or the bizarre theories that Glenn Beck presents, and mix in the worship of money and power and disdain for working people they all display, and Downey seems like a memory of a kinder, gentler past. I knew some people who produced his later radio show down in DC, and they told me that he had a kindly, compassionate side to him that often came out to the people around him (and came out on the air from time to time, both there and on his TV shows)--I wonder if we'd say that about any of today's counterparts?
Compare him to the race-baiting that Limbaugh and Savage engage in daily, the strident self-aggrandizement of Hannity, the xenophobia of Lou Dobbs, or the bizarre theories that Glenn Beck presents, and mix in the worship of money and power and disdain for working people they all display, and Downey seems like a memory of a kinder, gentler past. I knew some people who produced his later radio show down in DC, and they told me that he had a kindly, compassionate side to him that often came out to the people around him (and came out on the air from time to time, both there and on his TV shows)--I wonder if we'd say that about any of today's counterparts?
