and so it ends.
don't say i didn't warn you.
unfiltered is no more.
1 pro-choice feminist woman, 1 braniac lesbian (both white) and 1 african-american male with humor and common sense were just too much diversity for the new clear channel carried air america.
how 'too much?'
three times 'too much.'
which is why on april 1st, the fool's day, jerry springer's show will fill the spot and unfiltered willbe no more.
jerry! jerry! jerry!
well ... it's a different audience.
another old white guy with a moon face and a short neck that screams for a buzz cut but, like al franken, no 1's ever had the nerve to point out that longish hair doesn't work with what either al or jerry has got.
the florence henderson flip in the back ain't working either. hey boys, if julia roberts couldn't revive that look, you don't stand a chance.
but there are differences.
for instance jerry is blonde and al is brunette. also jerry is thin-ish and al was screaming 'supersize this!' in his diapers.
class wise, al fancies that he has some while jerry suffers from no such illusion.
jerry's more politically honest than al but how long that will last is anyone's guess.
also any 1's guess is how long the women left will be able to hang on.
for instance, if ed shultz could get randi rhodes' ratings, she would already be gone -- as al is rumored to wish she was.
randi does radio better than al so he'll have to keep dreaming.
what's in store folks? a dick measuring contest between al and springer. nothing funnier than watching 2 nerds try to jock-it-up. laughs will be plentiful, even if not intentional.
on air? laura flanders and janeane garofalo may prove to be too independent for the so-called left network.
janeane and laura share a key feature besides 2 X chromosones - they're independent thinkers.
you think the network that cancels unfiltered really wants independent thought from women?
whose fault is it?
well it's pretty obvious.
but guess what, if you didn't e-mail air america to protest when lizz winstead was 'disappeared,'
or if you didn't call them, or if you didn't sign the petition to bring her back, or if you didn't stop listening online, if you didn't do 1 of those things (just 1) you are at fault too.
when congress wants to push through some objectionable piece of legislation, we have to flood them with calls, e-mails and letters to get them to listen to the people who elected them.
and it was the same thing there. i gave you guarded warnings as did c.i. i said lizz was treated horribly and when i have to stick up for her, you know it was horrible. we knew what was coming. i had e-mailed c.i. tuesday and got an e-mail back that same day saying do not miss unfiltered thursday. then yesterday c.i. e-mailed a breaking story from associated press about how jerry springer was coming to air america.
we knew. my friend elaine knew.
two of my e-mail buds knew too: martha and maria. they knew. they and others took it the unfiltered blog and elsewhere to say 'people get angry.' but you had liars on the unfiltered blog and elsewhere. not just idiots but flat out liars.
the 1s elaine didn't think were real people but ringers sent in by air america to hush the topic of the disappearing of lizz.
and what did they do?
they'd go online and say stupid things. they'd spread rumors that they "heard" or that they "knew" lizz winstead was sick. and that we shouldn't talk about her being gone because she is sick and needs her privacy.
that was a lie. people who repeated it lied to you.
when that lie started being fought back on the unfiltered blog, the liars tried a new tactic:
lizz likes to create a show and then leave. that's what she did with the daily show, they would lie. that is not what happened with the daily show and that is not what happened with unfiltered.
those people lied. they are liars. they are full of shit liars. liars that can kiss my ass.
they manipulated people with false information.
scared them that lizz had cancer.
nothing was off limits as they tried to get people to stop talking about how lizz was gone.
they had no shame.
were they ringers for air america? who knows. but they certainly spread lies to push an agenda of silence.
and people who fell for it, even when others on that blog would say, 'that's a lie!' well it's your fault.
because if the huge uproar that lizz winstead deserved had happened, they would have had to rethink the push to bring another male on because some were worried that 2 (white) women and a black man couldn't reach audiences.
what audiences?
white male audiences.
if you're a female, wake up. air america just spat on you.
they don't want you as a morning listener.
they want males. white males.
and they think they can get them by putting on pudgy, middle-aged men.
so if you're a woman with any self-respect, don't listen to that network when al and jerry are on in the morning. turn on randi when she comes on. stay for janeane. stay for malloy who doesn't do al's sexist jokes but actually respects women. on the weekends, listen to laura. listen to marty and bobby and mike.
but don't listen to this bullshit that's geared for white males.
if you're an african-american male, skip the bullshit of jerry and al. chuck d got served his walking papers. 2 black males on during the day was 2 too many.
if you're a male of any color, show some self-respect.
and if you're a white male who cares about women and people of color, just say no to al and jerry.
martha sent me a wonderful e-mail explaining how offensive this was to her as an african-american and a woman.
she also included a parody of the asshole liars who tried to hush the talk of lizz. this is what she sees as the blog on march 31st, the last day unfiltered airs:
**blue: come on guys, we have to do what air america wants. we have no ideas or thoughts of our own. and you just go with the flow.
swing*****girl: absolutely. look people corporationsneed to do what they think is best! that's what this country is all about so just back off. yes, i loved rachel and i hope i hear her or see her again somewhere. but if this is what air america wants, hey i take my marching orders with a smile.
NOTDANNYGOLDBERG: swing*****girl and **blue, you are both so right! and besides, i hear rachel is really sick and doesn't want to talk about it.
**blue: that's right! what if 1 of you was sick? would you want the whole world to know? quit talking about the end of unfiltered! rachel is sick! you aren't helping her! she wants us to stop talking about this!
swing*****girl: that is so true. in fact i heard from a friend that lizz winstead wanted that too.
NOTDANNYGOLDBERG: i know that's what lizz would want to.
swing*****girl: i am not about the person! i am about the politic! and i will listen to unfiltered without lizz. i will listen to it with just rachel. because it is about the show! and now that the show is no more it is about the hour! so i will listen without questions or complaints to this three hour block of air time no matter who they put on!
**blue: here here swing*****girl!
read that because it's damn funny. and it's also very true.
so if you see conversations like that, if you're at an air america blog and you see that sort of shit,
know you're dealing with liars. know you're dealing with people attempting to strip you of your power.
if the liars hadn't spread (for over a week) the lie that lizz was sick and that's why she wasn't on the show, if they hadn't done that, the outrage would have built fairly quick.
instead they clamped down on the outrage by lying. they lied to you. they made you think lizz had cancer. they made you think if you objected or spoke about lizz being gone, you were making lizz's life harder.
they fucking lied.
and when enough people started calling them on that lie (and some called them right off -- a few brave voices), suddenly they pushed the lie that lizz likes to create something and once it's started, she likes to leave.
that was a lie as well.
you were lied to. you were lied to because they wanted to quiet you.
if you had been enraged and flooding them with complaints, they would have had to have done something. elaine doesn't think it would have brought lizz back. she does think it would have gotten rachel a female co-host and it would have meant that they'd have to figure out a way to keep unfiltered on the schedule.
right now, the liars are out there lying to you again. they're telling you that chuck d and rachel are going to be jerry springer's co-hosts.
they're saying 'just wait guys, you'll see.'
they are playing you for a fool. they did it before. don't fall for this shit again.
what happened to lizz winstead was disgusting.
she helped create that network, not just unfiltered, not just her own show. she was there before the network had even shored up the hosts. she was there figuring out how to make al's program more interesting, for instance. (randi rhodes's program was all randi. she was already doing it and doing it damn well.)
the network wouldn't have lasted a year without lizz winstead's contributions. and the thanks she gets is that on the one year anniversary of unfiltered (april 1st) the show will no longer be on.
now if you scream right now, they might find rachel a slot on the weekend.
that's up to you.
but don't fool yourself that the network's inclusive.
a woman can play mommy and let al be the bad boy. a woman can be the patricia heaton of the network. but that's all they want.
they didn't promote randi who was already on air for years and successful in the markets her show aired in. they shoved al franken down your throat.
that would be the big titty baby who 'stood up' to bill o'reilly on c-span. remember that? when big bad al started whining and his voice was breaking and he was about to cry like a little titty baby.
and i've told you to look at al's guests. i've told you to ask why you have those people from the american enterprise institue on. you know the one, i mean. al's friend norm. what the fuck is he doing on the network?
or what the fuck are all those other 'centrists' doing on al's show.
al has lost his sense of humor. he had 1. it was sexist and could be off putting. but he had 1.
now he just wants to gloat that arafat's dead. and he wants to do that over and over.
he gave ronnie reagan a pass during the week long is-he-still-dead reporting. he got offended when the great greg palast attempted to bring up the reality of reagan. he couldn't even let jeremy glick speak when glick was on.
al's a loser. he's a fat fucking loser. some of you 1st noticed it when he interviewed jesse helms's biracial daughter. an elderly woman whom al thought it was appropriate to make cracks about where her mother had sex - the garden or the kitchen? that wasn't tasteful and it wasn't funny.
but you've seen the hate spewed constantly at arafat. and you've heard him present his view of the peace process as the only view. over and over.
unfiltered is gone. and with it, 3 people who would challenge the democratic party's rush to the right. and you're left with al franken, the self-proclaimed dlc liberal. as though there's anything liberal about the dlc.
After fellow panelist Molly Ivins disabused O'Reilly's claims that she was a "liberal," Franken declared, "Unlike Molly, I am a liberal," adding curiously "I'm a DLC Democrat." Curious, because anyone who knows the centrist, pro-business Democratic Leadership Council knows that it has nothing to do with being "liberal" (in the generally accepted definition of that word; if Franken were to say he was a neoliberal, his identification with the DLC would make perfect sense).
that's from "Al Franken and Al-Shifa: The Age of Sacred Apologies" by tom gorman.
it appeared in counterpunch. and for the record, molly ivins sees herself as a progressive.
one more quote to clue you in on al, from tom gorman's article:
Franken, as well as his fans, need to be extremely careful of falling into the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" mentality that can ally good people with the lesser of two evils. Witness this Fox News-worthy Franken quote from the August 25 edition of CNN's Crossfire: "I think the American armed services did a damned good job in Iraq and a damned good job in Afghanistan, frankly."
that's the hero of the left. that's the man being set up as our savior. the man who turned titty baby when confronting o'reilly. and he's going to lead us to the promised land?
