Friday, March 13, 2009

the cramer-stewart and rush-keillor feuds

You can listen to some of the fabulous radio feud between Fred Allen and Jack Benny. One of Allen's best lines was announcing that Benny was named the chairman of the March of Dimes, but that no dime has ever been minted that could march pass Benny.
The feud made for great radio comedy ratings.Allen was an original wit, and wrote most of this humor and program dialogue. Benny needed writers, and, in fact, once told Allen that he couldn't talk to him that way if he had his writers present.
The Jim Cramer-Jon Stewart feud is also media hype, and makes for good ratings.Cramer is a kinda of dangerous kook, and Stewart is sorta of a bargain basement Fred Allen.The feud is helpful in that Cramer is attacking Obama, and along with Fox cable, is sowing deep seeds of cynicism

Speaking of feuds, we have now reached the ultimate.Garrison Keillor is going after Rush Limbaugh:
"...When it comes to disability pensions, you ought to include congressmen, especially these remarkable Republicans who, in the midst of a serious banking crisis, are recycling Herbert Hoover and decrying socialism and paying homage to a fat sweaty guy living alone with his cat in a five-mansion compound in West Palm Beach. At the moment, he seems to be steering the Republican Party like it's his personal power boat and Mitch McConnell is the girl in the bikini on water skis.
"I am at the top of the mountain of what I do. Everybody underneath it wants what I've got," Rush said on his show the other day. "As such, they'll do what they can to take me down or to criticize me or what have you. It is beneath my dignity to be critical of those beneath me. It's just a waste of time."
For similar delusional megalomania, you have to go back to the rock stars of yesteryear, but they were 30 or so, and Rush is somewhat north of there. You have to wonder if the man doesn't need to get out of the compound more and converse with real people and not just talk to his cat. Has he ever sat at a bar and talked to other men over a beer? One of the problems with OxyContin is that it's such a lonely drug: Guys don't get together to toss back a few pills and tell jokes, so an Oxhead like Rush is missing the social skills that one might develop over beer and bourbon. At the bar, a man can rant and rave about Obama and hope he will fail, but when he stops for breath, he has to listen to someone else point out that we are in an economic crisis and the country seems to want a change of course....."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2009/03/11/disability/index.html?source=newsletter