Sam Seder filling in for Cenk Uygur on The Young Turks takes a call from a conservative who resents paying for health care for his fellow citizens, but doesn't mind paying for the Iraq War. Why in the hell is this man not on the radio every day of the week?
Sam Seder talks to Matt Taibbi about his article The Great American Bubble Machine. Part 1 of 4. You can watch the rest of the videos here.
Our buddy, Sam Seder, decided to go check out the protest talk show hack (and professional potty-mouthed angry person) John Ziegler organized to take David Letterman off the air in light of his joke about Sarah Palin's daughter, a joke for which he had already apologized twice.
Give Sam credit. It wasn't easy to find those whole fifteen protesters amongst the sea of media covering them. I'm not sure that your protest can be considered effective if the media outnumbers the protesters by more than 2 to 1. Way to try to horn in on the media circus that surrounds Palin, Ziegler.
(T)o show you the lengths Ziegler will go for his point, check out this convoluted logic in explaining the hypocrisy of going after Letterman and not other media figures. When asked why the protest took a week to happen, Ziegler asked, "Why did David Letterman take a week to apologize?" When Air America, in more of an accusation that a question, remarked that Sarah Palin went on Saturday Night Live in 2008 a week after they had aired a skit which said that Tod (sic) Palin had slept with his daughter, Ziegler pointed out that skit was set in a New York Times staff meeting where the paper's staff was considering topics to write, so it was essentially a satire on what the Times might publish to discredit her, not Saturday Night Live saying this directly of Gov. Palin.
So this was more about attacking David Letterman and CBS than in some crusade to go after "perverts." And as Keith Olbermann pointed out, the amount of time for Letterman's apology was a matter of 3 or so hours, not a week. It sounds like Ziegler graduated magna cum laude from the Palin school of upholding responsibility.
The timing of Ziegler's latest round of publicity appears to be tied in with his return to radio in Los Angeles this month, almost as if he got involved to promote his revitalized radio career. But when you look at his track record, it's a wonder that even in the world of conservative talk radio that he keeps getting hired.
Ahhhh...so the real agenda comes out. Well, Ziegler, Freedom of Speech is a wonderful thing. You're free to make an ass out of yourself and others are free to start a FireJohnZiegler.com site to show you for the ass you are.
Fox News recently sent out Griff Jenkins, one of its ambitious young stalkers ambush "reporters," to ambush Janeane Garofalo at a Boston appearance. Both Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity featured the clip; it would be interesting and I bet revealing to sometime get a look at one of these ambushes unedited.
In any event, it looks like Fox inspired another wannabe ambush reporter in the form of WBSM AM 1430's Ken Pittman. Apparently after writing this ambush piece urging fellow "tea baggers" to protest Janeane at the Somerville Theatre in Boston, the turnout was, shall we say, just a little smaller than Mr. Pittman had hoped.
Sam Seder had a bit of fun and called Pittman's radio show to ask him what happened to his protest.
Apparently Ken Pittman doesn't have any screeners for his show. For more on this story check out The Young Turks blog. I do agree with one of the commenters over there that it would have been nice for Janeane to have qualified her statement about the teabag protesters being racist. Not all of them were, but her point is one worth considering. If it's not racism, why weren't these people protesting while Bush was in office?
From Air America's Break Room Live:
The Conservative Political Action Committee finished up last week, with some great hope for the future of the republican party. Sam Seder looks at why.
Television network executives looking for new talent are accustomed to getting pleas from agents urging them to check out their clients.
But in the last few weeks, MSNBC has experienced a different kind of onslaught: a flood of unsolicited endorsements from fans of liberal radio hosts touting them as the network's next potential big star.
The grass-roots campaigns were triggered by the news that the cable channel is contemplating creating a new show for its 7 p.m. time slot, currently occupied by a repeat of "Countdown With Keith Olbermann." That prompted the launch of independent Facebook groups extolling the merits of two radio hosts: Cenk Uygur of the Internet show "The Young Turks" and Sam Seder of Air America.
The lobbying efforts have drawn thousands of supporters and led fans to pepper MSNBC with e-mails in support of their favorite personality. Hundreds of people have posted messages of support online, some even creating their own video spots. (Give the time slot to "The Young Turks," warns one, "or I'll switch back to CNN.") Liberal bloggers on sites like MyDD.com have also weighed in.
They all hope that MSNBC will choose a host cast from the same left-leaning mold as Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, who have helped power the cable channel's ratings.
"You have a block with two unabashedly progressive voices that doesn't exist anywhere else on cable news," said Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of Daily Kos, who urged his readers to back Seder for the spot. "We want to take advantage of locking up that third hour, if we can."
MSNBC President Phil Griffin said he's not necessarily looking for someone who shares the political leanings of Olbermann and Maddow, but is delighted by the response.
"If people identify with us, I'm thrilled," he said. "Obviously, we're going to have flow between our shows," Griffin added. "But it isn't going to be ideology that drives it. I want that hour to be edgy, to be smart, to be a little snarky."
Both Sam and Cenk are good friends of the site and John's appeared on both of their programs, so we're not taking sides on this one. We'd be thrilled if either one gets the nod. But it's also nice to know that Griffin is sensing which way the wind blows and is receptive to listening to us instead of throwing yet another moronic right winger to spoon feed conservative talking points.
So good luck to both Sam and Cenk. Hope we see one of you (or both, dare we hope!) on the air really soon.
Despite having appeared on the greatly lamented Sam Seder Show more times than I can remember, John has never met Sam face to face. Luckily, The Big Tent in Denver was big enough to bring on these two giants in the progressive community to talk shop.
Open thread below...
Progressive radio hotties Sam Seder and Marc Maron are producing an as yet unnamed videocast at 11am Eastern this morning. The audio from last week, as well as the videocast for this week, are at the Sam Seder Show website.
