Secrets of the City

Psst, Rex, before dismissing KFAN, you should listen to it. Dan “Common Man” Cole, Chad Hartman, and Kelly Guest are not right-wing radio. Mike Morris is easily right-of-center but not intolerably so. And while Dan Barreiro claims on the KFAN website to discuss politics, he and most of the other KFAN hosts stick pretty exclusively to sport.
That more people are listening to KFAN should be taken as a good thing (in my eyes). It is more a reflection of the traditional middle-of-the-road Minnesotan mindset that isn’t properly served by either major national party.

I didn’t realize that I dismissed anything.

Ah, perhaps not. I guess I’m taking issue with the statement that “most of the right-wingers are now listening to KFAN.” The implication there is that the programming is right-wing, which — to me — would be worth dismissing. My point, poorly made, is that I don’t think KFAN is drawing right-wing listeners as much as it is drawing people of traditional Minnesotan mindset who are gradually weaning from their unholy flirtation with right-wing radio/politics.

You didn’t.

Anecdotally, I listened to Air America before I moved back to the cities, and now I listen to KFAN. However, Kelly Guest and Chad Hartman pride themselves on their opinions of defiance. One is the only woman on air at KFAN, and has promos referring to her as a radio dominatrix, and the other is the son of Sid effing Hartman. They form opinions with the aid of GPS.

Common and Barriero are the voices of reason on the fan, and probably of no coincidence that they also put on the best radio programs. I don’t agree with all of it, but at least they’re thinking.

Perhaps the point is that conservative radio listeners are becoming depoliticized now that everything is hunky-dory in their universe. Meanwhile, much of what I hear on Air America sounds as shrill and shallow as vintage KSTP-AM.

I’m glad Kelly Guest is gone. Now I don’t have to hear how she has to pay people to clean her house, and her subscription to Playboy. Former cheerleaders shouldn’t work in talk radio, they try to hard to appear intelligent.