Podcast 458

Not George Washington. With the Iowa Caucuses less than a week away, political prognosticators have finally gone off the rails. This week’s poster child for idiocy goes to the talk show host who claims Texas Senator Ted Cruz is ‘The New George Washington’. How is the ‘endorsement’ of candidates from personalities, talk show hosts and commentators different from endorsements that come from governors, senators and candidates who are exiting the race? How has the endorsing of candidates by talk show hosts hurt talk radio? Ted Cruz is Not George Washington, but that fact doesn’t stop charlatans from saying so. Why do they do it? It’s a desperate quest for something called ‘relevance’, which is yet another example of the talk radio cesspool. This podcast has been steadfast in not supporting any candidate for president in 2016. The penchant commentators have this year, to influence voters to support candidates based only on polling data, is shameful. Moreover, participation in primaries and caucuses is very low. The result of primaries and caucuses this spring and summer have more to do with the nominating conventions for both mainline parties than the general election. Despite this fact, talk radio and the media are already making predictions and issuing endorsements for the presidency? The victors in the first few primaries or caucuses, at least on the republican side, are usually not the nominee. The only reasonable conclusion is that commentators are manipulating their listeners and voters for their own gain; a sad feature of a presidential cycle already off the rails. You can imagine how the real election will be reported. This podcaster is not going to endorse anyone for president, since all of them are more like Nucky Thompson than anything approaching George Washington. Sponsored by Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate and Hydrus.

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Podcast 452

Jeb’s Baack! With less than a month to go before people actually start voting for candidates to lead their party’s presidential bids in 2016, get ready for the story lines to change. In this first of the year podcast, we get back on the political horse to both warn and speculate on the potential changes in media story lines, which have come to constitute ‘political’ coverage in our time. Our media may think of itself as an informal ‘fourth estate’; an additional fourth branch of government. Fortunately the founders vested sovereign power in the people as represented in three estates of our republic; The legislative, executive and judicial branches. Our media is more like The Borg, or a mob. A faceless, brainless maw that seizes on reactionary story lines, based only on the personality of various politicians, the things they say and outrage generated from it. These form story lines that run until they wear out, or some new outrage is manufactured, or some actual event called ‘news’ happens. The lack of actual journalism and reporting on issues is palpable. The dominant story line that started this political season was that flash in the pan known as Donald Trump. Now that Trump is the dominant candidate on the Republican side, a new story line is being manufactured that says, ‘Hang on, Jeb Bush is going to reemerge’. Given the power and money behind the Republican establishment, don’t be so quick to discount that one. When people start voting, look for candidates to get out. Those who stay in will reap the benefits. On the democrat side, the story line was Hillary Clinton was the inevitable candidate, then Bernie Sanders was going to upset the apple cart, now the story line is what kind of presidency Mrs Clinton will have. Fasten your seat belts; the one constant in politics is change. Sponsored by Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate, and Hydrus Performance. 

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Podcast 448 – Andrew Davis

Andrew Davis. How will millennials change the political process? To find out, my favorite millennial Andrew Davis joins the podcast. He’s working on a new way to use television to examine issues, called The Millennial Project. So, in this very personal podcast, some history about the way father and son have interacted over the years on political issues, a discussion of this new television project and some of the problems selling the idea in Hollywood, what kind of content the Millennial Project will feature, and the political landscape for young adults in the United States in 2016. Specifically one of the new stories that will appear on the Millennial Project’s You Tube Channel is a hot button issue in Los Angeles. The center of this fight about property rights and the public commons is the famous Hollywood sign in Griffith Park. It’s a great backdrop for a piece on inequality, but in a city you usually never see featured in inequality stories in the mainstream media; Los Angeles. Specifically Hollywood. It’s also interesting to see where father and son disagree on some key issues, or at least how those issues should be treated by the media. While there are some key differences about younger adult’s perceptions of politics, work and life, and other generations of Americans, there are also some similarities that may surprise you, according to Andrew Davis. One of the things we talk about in this podcast is the fact that neither of his parents – career media types – wanted him to work in media. After graduating from college, working on Capitol Hill for at least 3 members of Congress, he decided there was an opportunity to develop in depth, detailed and substantive coverage of the issues and set out to do it. Our friends laugh when we tell them this story saying, “What did you expect? He was raised by media people!” Sponsored by Hydrus and Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate. Plus some out takes at the end.

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