Lord help us, Lionel on CSPAN 1 right now, on the future of talk radio.

[Gabi Hayes]

As one duer replied to him, during his first week, when he asked listeners what they wanted to hear:

Sam Seder

[Gabi Hayes]

1. Hannity on now, making joke out of stolen elections

I bet he'd been a real card in 1938, yokking it up about Krystallnacht

[eleny]

2. Pushing the myth of Limbaugh

Leaving out how he was carried for years until he finally started making them money.

[patrice]

3. I like Lionel.

I DON'T like Randi. They should replace Randi with Sam.

[Quixote1818]

4. Randi is smart as hell but she is mean and can be stubborn over stupid things

Not to long ago she was ripping on people with dreadlocks as being loser's. I am white and I thought it sounded racist even though I know she is not racist. So then this African American guy calls in defending dreadlocks and she goes NUTS on him saying he was racist for assuming she meant Blacks!

She should have simply apologized for what she said coming across as racist and then reassured the guy she wasn't and she was talking about white people with dreadlocks. Instead it turned into this huge yelling match (mostly her yelling at him) then she cut the guy off. After she cut him off she continued to rip on him for the next hour.

The guy was being reasonable and she was losing the argument so she went off on him. It was certainly not Randi at her best. Very disappointing.

I would rather hear Sam than Randi too. Or else Rachel or Laura Flanders.

[patrice]

5. I have tried to be fair about Randi, but then, I heard her do things

similar to what you describe a couple of times.

Everyone goes off now and then, and I let them know if I hear them. Sam has done it once that I recall generally, though I've forgoten the specific context. He sounded stoned.

My problem with Randi is that she won't let it go, because it's all about her. She raved on for weeks and weeks about someone breast feeding an infant in the Senate (I think it was the) Visitors' gallery at some hearing. Okay, it made her uncomfortable, but to go on and on and on was simply offensive to breast-feeding mothers everywhere and it displays a lack of a worldly perspective. Yes, to her audience, Randi's "lack of perspective", read that "artless" or, to some of us, "crude", IS part of their allegiance, but you've got to wonder what's up with remarks such as (to a self-identified Gay caller) "I want to be the cream in your gay cookie." This and the breast feeding incidents and numerous pointed repetitions of anecdotes with the likes of this or that celebrity or on this or that TV show indicate that Randi's show is about Randi and I'm simply not interested.

I wouldn't mind her artlessness so much if, like Lionel, Randi had a wider deeper knowledge base to entertain and educate me with, but she doesn't. Sometimes she gets on a research bend and does pick up and then pass on a lot of information on a specific topic, but her more widely cultural orientation is limited and by that I don't mean "highbrow" stuff, but stuff more like a deeper history of significant and repeated experiences in a wide variety of social economic classes and sub-cultures.

I think I heard recently that she might have had some bad health news not long ago and, having lost a sister, for that I feel real concern for Randi. I hope she gets through it fine, because, although I'd prefer Sam, she fills some kind of need for others, so I take it back what I said about replacing her. I'm not saying she shouldn't be there for her audience. I'm just not one of them.