Brutally Honest Rant - 10/24/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: The Worst Fears – Part 4
Audio Transcripts
10/24/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

We’re almost finished with the month-long look at “The Worst Fears”… which will wrap up next week on Halloween Night. And it’s a good thing too, because I’ll be wrapping this one up with a story that will scare the CRAP out of you!

BUT of course we still have to get through tonight’s. So here we go…

(Lead-in music – “Heavy Price Paid” by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori)

His morning started early, as it always did.

Once upon a time that used to be an obligation so he could deal with all of the demands of his job, but of late that’s been more of a matter of habit than necessity.

He showed up at the studio early, but nobody bothered to say hello to him as he walked past the receptionist desk. They used to beam a super-friendly “Good Morning” to him when he would walk through the front door. Now they just glance up at him as if to say “Oh, yeah, it’s you, ho-hum”. He used to see a big poster of himself on the back wall… but that got replaced a few weeks back. No word why; they just did it. At least, he told himself, it wasn’t replaced by another superstar. That would have been a blow to his ego. Instead, it was replaced with some art deco mural.

He didn’t want to check his emails. He knew it wouldn’t be good. He got the usual talking points from his political friends. Nothing great. Nothing scandalous. He just had to sugarcoat it all, which was something that he was always good at doing.

His programming meeting wasn’t any better. There were really no more causes to triumph. Sure the liberals would make the usual whine about things, but they’ve always lacked the spine to do anything, and that was even WHEN they had both the power and the public support behind them. He knew that. That was why they would lose every single time, and he would be there, on the air, to gloat about it all.

But now all he CAN do is gloat. And it doesn’t feel very good anymore.

He started off his show with his usual good news about how great things were going, how the conservatives were still in charge and still calling the shots in government. He went on about how the liberals were pretty much nothing more than useless whiners about things and how much of a failure they were. All of it was pretty much the same diatribe that has made him so successful.

But then he looked at the phone lines to see who would react to his opening salvo… and he found there were no callers!

He was absolutely flabbergasted by that, but he didn’t let it show on the air. He just went to commercial and then had his producer check to make sure that the phone lines were working. Sure enough, they were working just fine.

He came back from break and calmly asked that people call in, then tackled some more news of the day. But with each article that he brought forward, and each way he spun those articles, he expected to get at least one or two people pissed off enough to call in, only to find his phone lines still dark.

At the end of the first hour, he had thoroughly exhausted the whole gambit of news articles for the day, and he still had two more hours of airtime to fill!

During the news break, he got a couple of disturbing phone calls. The first was from his publishing agent. The sales of his latest book were pretty much non-existent. Most of the major bookstores were remanding them to the bargain bins. The second call was from his attorney. The divorce of his latest wife has been finalized. Even though she was bound by a prenuptial agreement, it was written during much profitable days. Her two-million dollar settlement would take away two-thirds of his available money. And it was money that he obviously couldn’t make up through his book sales.

He started his second hour sounding a little desperate and annoyed. He was angry that this was happening to him at a time when everything is going so well for the conservatives. They dominate and control the government; they have effectively neutralized any kind of liberal resistance; they control the courts; they control the news media and the education systems; they essentially have EVERYTHING that they could ever want or need! This would be a time for him to be IDOLIZED for what he has helped to accomplish, and yet here he was struggling to just get people to call in.

He let his anger get the better of him on the air. Maybe that would generate a few callers. Get the politicians pissed at him. Get the political consultants worried.

Still… no callers.

He went into the half-hour break and then went after the politicians themselves, by name. He first he accused them of being not conservative ENOUGH, then he changed tactics and accused them of being TOO conservative. Hypocrisy is always worth a few callers! People just can’t wait to call a hypocrite out; especially when it’s someone like HIM!

Again, there were no takers on the phone.

He put his call screener on the air to verbally confirm that there have been NO callers whatsoever and to immediately send over ANY caller who calls in. Don’t screen them, just send them over!

Five minutes later he got his first caller… it was a telemarketer looking to sell him a new water heater. As soon as the telemarketer realized the mistake, he hung up before any pertinent questions could be asked.

Now he was pissed. Almost two hours had passed and the only person with the courage to call him was a lousy telemarketer with some screwed-up dialing program.

Finally he said what he believed was unthinkable… he actually speculated that the liberals may have been right all along!

Now THAT should generate quite a few phone calls, he believed.

Sure enough, one call came through. But as soon as he answered it, he realized that it was a plant. He recognized the caller as being one of the studio interns! They actually had to pull up an intern to call in!

This was something that he had PROMISED his people would NEVER, EVER have to do! He used to boast about that and accuse his competition of manufacturing callers, and now here his people now had to do the same thing.

And the intern wasn’t even any good in the conversation. The intern couldn’t handle any of the retorts and simply bounced from one distorted talking point to the next. The only thing the intern was able to do was kill time until the next news break.

And that’s when it happened.

As soon as the ON AIR sign went dark, the producer got a call from the station’s general manager. That call got immediately forwarded on to him. The conversation was short and to the point. The producer will be airing a repeat for the final hour, while he would meet with the people who sign his paychecks.

It was a meeting that he feared was coming. He had already lost so many sponsors. He didn’t even bother to look at the on-air ratings anymore. Things only had to go so far down before they invoked that little clause in his contract that would send him packing. They’d have a press release by the end of the week, but it was pretty much official at that point. He was done.

Welcome… to the worst fear… of a conservative talk show host! Of finally reaching a point when nobody would care what they would say.

(Computer – some timely things)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

I’ve said this a few weeks ago and it is worth repeating here… radio and television have primarily been set up not for education or information or even for entertainment… but for the sole purpose of airing ADVERTISING with really long periods of programming as intermission. Listeners or viewers are thereby translated into advertising dollars. And the same rules pretty much apply to newspapers as well.

The name of the game for conservative commentators is NOT to be right, but rather it is to get as many people to listen to your show or to read your newspaper or to read your book as possible. You do that by creating controversy. You piss people off and you get them to debate you or rebuke you or to even censor you, thus generating even MORE interest.

So YEAH, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and all of the other conservative commentators will say pretty much anything to get the attention, because they know the secret of the business… that controversy creates cash.

And this is why liberal commentators have pretty much thrived only on public-sponsored media… because that communications model is not designed around advertising.

So if you REALLY want to hurt a conservative commentator, then you don’t try to debate him or even try to shut him up… instead you simply don’t give them the attention that they crave. You ignore them, and you let them self-destruct on their own.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
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