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I'm going to school, and I deliver pizza at night to pay for it.<
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I
ing up pizza delivery, because this job gives me lots and lots of time to listen to the radio. I long ago quit listening to top 40s stations, in an effort to keep myself sane.<
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Instead, I cruise talk radio stations. Sadly, there is no Air American
oadcast where I live, except for a very dimly received AM 1530, so I don't get the chance to "hear the other side" when it comes to talk radio. I do listen to NPR, but in spite of some people's bleating otherwise, NPR is actually very balanced, especially in comparison to the rest of talk radio (i.e. Rush, Savage, Hannity, Drudge).<
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But, because I get bored, and because NPR news coverage ends at 7pm and I usually work till 1-4am, and because ESPN Radio is sometimes covered up by local sports programming I don't care about, I tune into the different conservative programs out there.<
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Savage-- I start with him because I find him absolutely the worst of the radio hosts I hear regularly. His drivel is so off the wall, vindictive, and so far from reality that I rarely last more than a minute or two before I turn this man off in
. Apparently everyone who disagrees with him is a Nazi fascist pig, and this gets tiring after a while. His arguments are simpleton at best, and rely on simply yelling down a caller with names everytime someone manages to get on the air with a point from the other side.<
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Drudge-- I rarely hear him, as I believe his programming is generally on the weekends on the stations where I live. I can listen to him for a long time, as while I disagree with him often, he at least doesn't come off as the redneck asshole that Savage has perfected. Often he also presents stories that are not purely partisan driven, and I appreciate that.<
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Rush-- I listen to this guy more then Savage, but less than Hannity. Rush has his favorite issues, and since he is incredibly popular among conservatives and is widely heard, often on these boards you can tell when someone is posting a Rush post. Dittoheads, indead. However, he's not *quite* as offensive as Savage, and allthough he's very careful to only take liberal calls from people who are stupid to make him look better, at least he's sometimes entertaining. The fact that millions of people take his words as gospel truth make me sad, however-- I think because of the
eadth of his influence and the fact that so many think he's telling the truth all the time, that he's ultimately the most damaging of the talk show hosts in terms of misleading people from reality.<
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Hannity-- I have mixed feelings on Hannity. On the good side, he's willing to take real, thoughtful liberal calls as well as liberal guests. On the bad side, much of the time he wastes these opportunities by throwing slanted questions at them that have no good answers, and that often distort the truth of the situation. Then, if said guest points any of this out, he points at them and says, "see, those liberals won't even answer simple questions! But what you can you expect?" blah blah blah, and then as soon as said guest is off the air spends 20-30 minutes in a pointed character assassination with very little basis in truth. All that said, since he doesn't always spend his time liberal bashing (don't get me wrong, the liberal bashing and general mischaracterization of liberal views is pretty constant), and sometimes speaks of other topics, I can stomach this man more than any of the others. <
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He has, however, developed in the last few months to a year a tradition for conservative callers who call in to call him a "Great American" and let him bask in the praise over and over and over and over again. This gets incredibly tiring, especially when immediately following the "omg we're all great Americans" comments is a diatribe of half truths and deliberately deceptive statements about those evil liberals.<
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"Let freedom riiiiiiiing" indeed. Sometimes that over the top patriotic bullshit makes me want to puke.<
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Anyway /shrug-- I do totally agree with Tarot that sometimes in posts on these boards and others, you can easily tell what radio host they are parroting .<
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