Podcast 385

The Pope and The Media Circus. After a long trip home from the East Coast in the Mobile Podcast Command Unit, it’s time for a full stereo podcast from just outside the Broadcast Bunker, on the flat, by a real fire, back in Minnesota. Sometimes getting you ready for the coming week is a tall order, especially when it comes to the ‘borg’; the modern media machine. Will the new technology revolution – and it is coming – disrupt institutions that have existed for generations? Government, and religion, all seem to have become cloying media whores, looking to make one more lurid statement so they can get another story written for the Daily Beast, or get on CNN, or get some kind coverage for something…anything to stay relevant. Here comes the Pope all tarted up, to condemn capitalism and the ‘filth’ in the world. Of course the reaction is already classified as right wing or left wing, in tweets, on FaceBook and any number of shout-fests, roundtable gabs, and table pounding orations. If there is one takeaway from the recent trip through the American Southeastern Coast, including Washington DC, and from a trip earlier this spring to the West Coast, its seems like the people in this country are living their lives in spite of the constant chatter. Is it possible that our government and other institutions are becoming irrelevant, thus their leaders struggle more and more to be heard, by making one lurid statement after another? The media, and the politician, even when he is a ‘man of the cloth’ have become all one thing, feeding on each other, feathering their own nests and advancing no one else’s fortune but their own. All of them busting into our living rooms, cars and onto our phones with their incessant nonsense. Most of the time we spend our time just trying to get out of the way, hoping whatever international initiative, legislation or some nonsense laden bill sponsored by a publicity hungry politician doesn’t ruin our business, our town, our life or the lives of someone we love. Sometimes you find yourself wishing they would just shut up. You know, maybe we need a new holiday in America. How about Dead Air Day. All the stations go dark, all the politicians shut up, and all the media whores take a day off, including and especially the Pope. Oh wait! That would mean passing another law. Never mind! On the longest day of the year, and the shortest night. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing of Saint Paul. 

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Podcast 384

Final Thoughts From The Road. With a tragedy in South Carolina, and more nonsense coming out of Washington DC, the chattering class will be busy chattering this weekend. They’ll be telling us the country is falling apart, sowing the seeds of discontent, depression, confusion, envy, and anxiety. The thing is, if you travel the country state by state, you don’t see discontent, depression, confusion, envy and anxiety. You see people coping; in fact thriving. In the middle one of the most dense population centers in the world — the US eastern seaboard — you’ll find Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a rural paradise. Then there’s Ocean City Maryland, which actually is hot and sweaty, but everyone seems to be having a good time. Fifty states, with fifty different histories, cultures, many of them thriving. Yes, thriving. How can this be? The America you see and hear about on Fox News and MSNBC, or you hear about on scratchy dying AM Talk Radio stations is burning; falling apart, splitting at the seams. The pounders and the screamers polarize us into right and left, and tell us our country is a place where people hate each other, members of different ‘castes’ seethe, where the rich get super rich and everyone else gets nothing. The only thing is, that’s not what is going on in the real America. If you travel it, you’ll see what I mean. Are there injustices? Is there crime? Poverty? Yes. But, somehow in this place, painted as the seventh level of Dante’s Inferno, people raise families, go to work, do what they can for each other, start businesses and vacation together. I saw people of all colors, cultures and languages working together, eating together, living together. Meanwhile, the truck stops are chock full of trucks, RV’s and travelers twenty four hours a day. The restaurants are busy, as are the Targets and Home Depots and Food Lions, even small town grocery stores. It used to be said that the media in America is a mirror, to show society what it is. Well, I am here to tell you, Houston we have a problem. The media isn’t showing us what we are, or what is going on, because the images just don’t match. The Media and the politicians in Washington are lying to us, and using the outrage machine to their political advantage. I’ve seen about three quarters of this country in the last 4 months, at the most basic level; Interstates, two lanes, and dirt roads. I’ve driven through the big towns, and the small towns, meeting and talking to regular people. I just don’t see the strife and struggle we’re being told ‘we’ are experiencing. There are challenges in every time. Our challenge is turning off these idiots on television, and in Washington DC. America not only has a future, it has a great future and it’s time we had leadership that recognizes and encourages our innovation and energy, rather than scares, and divides us, lies to us and tells us what we have to do. Let’s start making it happen, regardless of what the chattering chatterers have to say this weekend. Sponsored by X Government Cars. 

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Podcast 377

Summer 2015 Road Trip Part 1. A midnight ride to Iowa, with the first leg ending at Walcott Iowa’s ‘Iowa 80 Truck Stop’ where we encountered the first blush of Internet Upload problems. While I usually don’t write these podcast notes in the first person I have to break format to suggest that a real problem with traveling and ‘untethering’ is spotty Wireless Internet Service, particularly at Truck Stops. Iowa 80 gets points for allowing free access to their WIFI, but when you start uploading huge audio files, it becomes impossible to file. Starbucks used to require people to sign in with AT&T Wireless Service (blah blah blah) but figured it out. It’s free, and its fast downloading and uploading. Unfortunately, in the desert that is Central Illinois and Eastern Iowa, there aren’t many Starbucks. So, Kudos to the Sapp Brothers Truck Stop near Peru, Illinois. I was able to get this package uploaded and posted by around noon central Wednesday. Anyway. Lots of energy and enthusiasm for this trip out east, to the Atlantic Coast, with stops in Illinois, via Kentucky, Tennessee, Southwestern Virginia, onto Richmond, and Washington DC. Bored with the Bruce Jenner changeling story, as the moon rose over the fecund fields of Iowa last night, I began to wonder whether ‘The People of Iowa’ really deserve all the attention their getting in the media, because they hold the ‘first in the nation Caucus’, in 2016. What has become a cliche of American politics; The Diner photo op, the chat with the farmer by the barn, the waving fields of amber, is abundant in Iowa. What happens when an honest, real population becomes aware they’re on the Truman Show, as politicians and Media caravan all over this state? Lots of federal largesse evident in Iowa from Wind Farms to Bio Diesel. Is this good? Is Iowa, with its farms and burgeoning small cities, aspirational? 100 years ago most Americans lived in rural, small towns and cities. Does Iowa represent a desire to get back to that kind of bucolic existence or is it just that they have the first major political contest in what is becoming an insane circus called the Presidential Election of 2016? Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul. 

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