Recruit Rick

I agree with Elliot on this one:

Once again Wisconsin Public Radio’s Week in Review on Joy Cardin’s show’s had a pitiful excuse for a Conservative holding up the “right” side of the conversation.

Whenever the “Conservative” agrees with the “Liberal” 80% of the time you can be sure of two things:

the guy’s not much of a conservative
it’s gonna be a pretty boring show
In the past, I’ve recommended that WPR recruit Owen of the blog Boots & Sabers more often to represent the Conservative side of the bench.

But since they already have Owen on fairly often, I’d like to recommend Rich Essenberg of the blog Shark and Shepherd.

Considering that the lefties they have on range from communist to socialist, their average conservative should be somewhere to the right of Olympia Snowe.

For the record, WPR tries to not repeat guests more than once a month.  I’m generally on every 4 to 5 weeks - depending on my schedule. 

1. Reminds me of when Belling used to have Walter Farrell serve as his token liberal on the tv panel...not that Walter was conservative, but he sure was an idiot.

   Posted by on June 15, 2007 at 1040 hrs




2. I just noticed I misspelled Rick’s name in my post. It’s actually “Rick Esenberg.” I’ve corrected it on my site.

   Good thing bad spelling isn’t against the law.

   Posted by elliot on June 15, 2007 at 1106 hrs




3. NPR is a lot more balanced than you imagine and certainly leagues beyond Sykes/Belling/etc. and all the other programming to please local conservative advertisers.

   If NPR is as you say it is, there is still along way to go in which the mainstream media regularly runs far right whako’s—Coulter, Malkin, G. Gordon Liddy, the comedian Rush Limbaugh, etc. and many “thoughtful” conservative writers as analysis has proven.

   Of course the problem is we on the left really don’t have any one THAT extreme.

   As far as Farrell’s appearance on Belling, that would make two idiots.

   Posted by on June 15, 2007 at 1110 hrs




4. KR - the difference is no one is claiming Rush, Belling, Sykes, etc. are objective juornalists.  They have a point of view and they are open abou that.  NPR on the other hand passes itself off as a nuetral news source and its programming would tend to suggest it is not.

   Posted by on June 15, 2007 at 1150 hrs




5. we on the left really don’t have any one THAT extreme.
   Let’s see.  Michael Moore, Al Franken, Rosie O’Donnell, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Cindy Sheehan(before she resinged) and the list can go on and on and on and on.

   Posted by on June 15, 2007 at 1308 hrs




6. Hannity & Colmes purports to be neutral.  There was an Onion headline last year that said “Colmes loses argument to 4-year-old Nephew.” That’s about right.

   Posted by on June 15, 2007 at 1349 hrs




7. To the best of my knowledge, none of those people advocate blowing up things or bombing people. I have no idea how you could put Michael Moore at the opposite end of Rush Limbaugh. Oh yeah excuse me. He cares about people.

   Any charge that NPR is not balanced is pure BS. They bend over backwards along with WPR, one of the best things about Wisconsin. In the minds of some you the presence of any liberals on a medium is a sign of lack of balance.

   May I remind you that we have Fox “News” posing as a news source, though they had more people covering Aruba during the dissappearance of what ever that girl’s name was than they did in Iraq.

   But of course we all are getting tired hearing about bombings in Basra according to BillO.

   Posted by on June 15, 2007 at 1352 hrs




8. Rick is not the conservative you may think he is. He may suck in conservatives but his positions are to support the rich and to win regardless if he’s wrong.

   A true conservative does not trust people that have power and they believe in preserving peoples rights. Find someone like that!

   Posted by on June 15, 2007 at 1438 hrs




9. For those of you sobbing over the mainstream media, here’s Tim Russert with Big Boy stunt double Sean Hannity (all he needs is the checkered overalls):

   Tim Russert appeared on H&C;the other night and repeated Roger Ailes talking points on the Democratic Party’s refusal to debate on the propaganda network.

   Russert: It’s a TV show. If you can’t handle TV questions, how you gonna stand up to Iran and North Korea and the rest of the world?”

   Roger Ailes:

   “The candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face al-Qaeda. And that’s what’s coming,” Fox News boss Roger Ailes said Tuesday.

   Russert also agreed with Hannity, who said:

   Hannity: I think the Democrats have gone further left than anybody would have anticipated. I think these bloggers have really gotten to them. I think they’re really positioning themselves that they’re gonna have a very difficult time moving center. Do you see that?”

   Russert: Absolutely…

   Jack Welch bragged some years back that he turned Tim “the shill from Nantucket” Russert and Chris Matthews into Republicans. Why else would Matthews have the man-crush on Fred Thompson.

   Posted by on June 15, 2007 at 1506 hrs




10. I know yelling that fox news is a conservative organ is cool these days but you have to separate the commentary shows from the news broadcasts.  And I admit that it maybe problematic to have both types of shows on any cable news network, Fox, MSNBC, etc.  Special Report is a news program - it has a panel that has real lefties on it and real righties and it features an anchor who delivers news not opinion.  O’Rielly is commentary and is not balanced and doesn’t need to be because it is commentary.  Sheppard Smith host of the Fox Report - a news broadcast and is himself a liberal.  And when Fox has liberal commentators on, which they do all the time, they have Juan Williams, Susan Estrich, Geraldine Ferraro among others.  These are not lightweights.

    Posted by on June 15, 2007 at 1614 hrs




11. Sorry Joe. Juan Williams might be a liberal if you are a right wing fascist. Look at his book bashing Sharpton and Jackson. And yes, in some ways they are bashable but with some many other things to write about, why did Williams even take the time.

    Susan Estrich is quite simply a joke. But this ruse is working (for you) because you can point at these people and go, “oh look, FOX has liberals.”

    FOX even works ideology into their news program. Hell, their lack of coverage of Iraq in itself is a commentary.

    The only place you could make the claim of separated programming is CNN Headline News featuring the ultra-psychotic Glen Beck. That would be like, but even close, to FOX having Noam Chomsky. But Chomsky is smart.

    Go ahead. Fool yourselves. It ain’t working on the rest of us. Everybody outside of your tribe knows what’s going on.

    Posted by on June 15, 2007 at 1855 hrs