Requiem for a Seditionist

It seems like the world is falling apart worse than usual, and maybe its partially due to having a boy in 2 casts who is most definitely not a happy camper, or the heat, rain, fog, heat, wet, tornado!!, heat… Its just so wet this year, even for Connecticut, which is usually a humid pit by this time anyway.

All of this bloody war and killing has got me down, and I cant help but feel that war begets war, even though the Israel/Palestinian thing has been going on for a long time already. The Middle East, always a bit off its axis, is really a mess, and we don't seem to have even one diplomatic soul working in our government. Im pretty scared right now about Iran and nukes and this whole thing getting blown to hell...literally!

Im also so tired of Bush'’s condescending bullshit, explaining things as if we are children who just don'’t understand how really deeply he is into this thing….we all know that he isn'’t into anything, and I don'’t need to be told by him that diplomacy is a very delicate process that takes patience. This is the brink of WW3, and we don'’t have a military that is ready enough or big enough to even address our own weather disasters and fires, much less Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Israel… am I leaving anyone out?...the whole world hates us anyway, so nothing is impossible except maybe a war with England.

On top of all of this, again Air America Radio is canceling The Marc Maron show as of tonight (Streaming here for the last time 10-12 WST, 1-3AM EST,) after months of fruitless negotiation and some vague attempt at putting back together some semblance of the groundbreaking morning lineup that had honed itself into a tight ensemble of the funny mixed with intelligent discourse, and up to the minute news.

The first cancellation came about because the former new CEO had a personal dislike for Marc and funny morning shows in general. For some reason the board and the suits did nothing to stop him from first dissembling the fantastic Unfiltered, and then moving on to Morning Sedition. He ended Morning Sedition on the day that Howard Stern went to Satellite radio, thus closing the door on the thousands of new fans who might check out a show that features a bit of a comedy zoo thing happening along with liberal politics.

Well, that guy is now gone and we are looking at the ruins of what could have been at AAR. To run down the lame programming left in the place of what was really something special is not even worth it. The future also looks pretty bleak right now.

Once Al Franken leaves to run for Senate, and Jeaneane Garafolo goes back to acting (she just announced tonight that she would only be doing a little subbing work in the future,) we are left with the truly intelligent Rachel Maddow who is sorely misused as a morning news person rather than as part of an ensemble, and the fantastic Sam Seder, who will likely move along sooner rather than later, as he says all the time. Other than that, there is Randi Rhodes who rasps and complains on and on angrily and repetitively, often obliterating her own point in the process, and the package deals of the horrendous Jerry Springer and Satellite Sisters. Hartman waits in the wings along with some others, but there is nothing really compelling there.

How did I even get here?

A million years ago I used to drive around doing my daily mommy grind listening to whatever I could find out there on the radio. A lot of my listening was also music (Elvis Costello, old Springsteen, Tom Petty, and lots of older country and country rock) but at a point around the beginning of the Bush Administration and then 9-11, I started to need to hear people talking about what was going on and, yes, I guess I became my Mother, who is a big listener of all talk radio. I needed to hear voices and to try to sort out what I was thinking about. A big outlet for me at that point was that I was studying a lot of psychology and social work sorts of things at UConn and I got to have it out with stupid kids a few days a week, and, of course, my family is very liberal...but in all of those hours of driving and work on the place here I wanted to hear something of substance that I could wrap my mind around.

Just the summer before, I had sat on an old wooden deck hanging over the sea in Cape Cod with my Mom and listened as the last liberal station in New York City aired its final weekend, leaving the airwaves devoid of any equal time voice save Ron Kuby, who appears on a morning show with Curtis Sliwa of Guardian Angel fame. NPR...eh...not really my cup of tea in its presentation; it lacks a certain reality and grit. You can catch Al Sharpton early on Sunday mornings and the NYC black station that is left is pretty OK, I guess.

So, as I began listening to more talk, I would hop around between the radio shrink, Dr Joy or Laura, whoever she is, Curtis and Kuby, and 1010 WINS News with a little Bloomberg thrown in. I guess I also was listening to some books on tape and at one point I got Audible'’s audio New York Times subscription.

Leading up to the launch of Air America I was hearing alot about this "“Al Franken network"
and the big question of could he do it, would it make it, etc....and on the first day, at the first moment, I was listening as this big experiment launched into a very uncertain world.

I listened to every show, all day, every day. I loved so much of it and some of it I couldn'’t really take, but what was great about it was that I wasn't the crazy one anymore, driving round with these thoughts in my mind that something was really going haywire in this country and trying to find like minded folks. They were saying that all of the crazy sounding stuff was really going on and they were trying to figure out why. This wasn't fringy, tin foil hat stuff, but very smart, educated people who checked their facts and could cite them.

So, in the face of O'’Reilly and Limbaugh, who lie with abandon, came this army of fact checkers, and correspondents who went to work hours early to do the research on the real stories. Say what you want about Al Franken, (and heÂ's not my favorite radio personality or comedian, by far,) but he checks his facts, and his books have pages of footnotes. Facts and footnotes fly in the face of this disinformation administration and their press operatives who walk in lockstep reciting the talking points of the week.

I hate to say this about something as silly as a radio station, in light of all the people that I know and all of my experiences, but this one thing really grounded me at a time when life was a blur and I was raising a kid alone, trying to get by, and very worried about the state of the world.

More than that, the wacky morning shows, with really, really smart people who were also funny, made me laugh out loud. Some of the writers had come from The Daily Show, so there was a sensibility that struck me as just right, and the voices were less entrenched radio folks but rather, untried comics and actors and musicians who were feeling their way through. There was a real humanity there and it had some set of morals and honesty that I could relate to. It had been a long time since I laughed out loud like that and I found myself following it every day. I somehow came to rely on this strange cast of characters and their bits, and I looked forward to the day to day reports on their lives and the interaction in the studio with the crew.

I think of those early days and I envision Marc Maron with all of his insecurity and neurosis taking the subway in from his newly rented apartment in Queens, clutching a Government for Dummies book, and it all seems like such a long transformative haul from birth, sometimes uncomfortable growth, to real blossoming, and lots of low disappointments. Like a fucking rollercoaster and I don't mind saying that the management, board, and CEOs of Air America Radio have dropped the ball so many times along the way that I've gone from a true believer to a total skeptic, to a little hopeful and back again..and now I’m just numb. I really don’t care what they do anymore now that they've struck the final blow.

Just like a parent who has let you down, (didn'’t Marc also say that on his blog?) the feeling of being burned like that never really goes away. Now I don't even know how to approach whatever might be in store from them again. But I selfishly wring out the content that I want and I dump the rest. I never listen live unless there is something big going on, and if it cant be saved on Replay Radio (a nifty lil' program that saves media in a format that will easily import into my iPod,) I just don’t care

At any given time I usually have enough material to listen to last me months, considering that Bill Mahr'’s show and all the news shows, including the New York Times online, have podcasts available. And of course there is always music and now videos and old Alfred Hitchcock TV shows. Steve Colbert’s show is even available through iTunes now.

I used to be all for supporting the whole station as part of the liberal movement (these are things that the suits used to espouse at AAR too,) but they just want to wring out what they can as well, so why should any of us think of loyalty or promises...forget contracts.

Ive been rereading a long piece that I wrote recently when I was down in the city for a few days and, without TV or internet connection I was wandering around, retracing the steps of my childhood, and watching movies on my computer; most notably, Left of the Dial, about the rocky beginnings of AAR. As I was walking around with my ipod plugged into my head, listening to shows on podcast from the week before, I was struck by how many people called in to express their love of AAR and to say that they felt that the shows had literally saved their lives. These shows, some of them anyway, sure opened up the channels for me in thinking, talking, writing, friendships, and relationships. They engrossed me and got me writing again.

It started with Unfiltered and Lizz Winstead and Rachel Maddow, but it was Marc Maron who snuck up on me and grabbed me so hard that I became an avid listener and student; the ups and downs and rants and raves and the funny...He changed me and he changed my outlook on the world. There are very few people who I can say that about. Also, during a very dark period of my life he had me laughing out loud, driving around in the morning. I can still laugh just to think of some of those sketches and just some of his interactions off the cuff with callers and with sidekick Mark Riley.

There is just something about Marc, and knowing him over the past two years via the radio has let the listeners in to all different facets and aspects of his life and every thought hes been thinking. He holds very little back, and he interacts with the world in a way that I really understand because I come from the same sort of place. Of course, Im not an actor or comedian. If anything, I'm a producer, long retired but having grown up around showbiz, I get the insides of that....and also having a questioning mind that doubts a little too much...I see the darkness around the edges of the funny.

He is absolutely brilliant and delicate, and difficult, and hilarious…and for some it can take some time to really appreciate him and his humor. I can see how some people have disliked him right off the bat, and how the departed CEO of AAR didn'’t get him at all.

What Marc does is open himself up in such a real way that anybody brave and smart enough will be able to see some part of themselves there. We know his fears and they make ours easier to live with. And he is just damned sharp...disarmingly sharp. I dont even know if I would like him at all in real life...but as my Marc these past years hes been the perfect invisible friend that I carry round in my ipod.

Marc is the first performer who I've seen successfully come to use what has become my grand theory about the future of all media content .

First, everyone has to realize that a new network will not even break even for years and will need a lot of cash influx. Any business plan that doesn't allow for this is flawed. There is no money to be made here, but the purpose is bigger and the potential payoff in the future could be huge if you've got a long range vision.

This is not about ownership or following patterns that have been proven successful in the past, but rather about making something that is true and good and pure; something that breaks boundaries and takes chances, and giving it room to grow. Of course there are business concerns and things have to be run right, but any business plan that doesn'’t allow for a living wage for the staff and a good wage for the talent, production money, along with the extra influx that will no doubt be needed, is not a fully thought out plan.

Then the real first step in getting the message across and teaching people is to touch them and to make them an active part of the show and bring them into the day to day life of operations and what is going on. Marc has done this beautifully and in a world that is increasingly interactive technically, but more and more socially isolating, Marc is on the cutting edge of what is going to draw and inspire an audience. This is no different from any host reading an email letter from a listener, but its more than that, because there needs to be some back and forth of the blog or call-ins of the same people, and encouragement of this .....a feeling that the listener is contributing and is part of the control of the thing, and the well-being of the hosts.

The unspoken rule of radio is that when a host is replaced, noone says anything. People just disappear and pop up somewhere else...or not. Marc broke this rule when they didnt renew his contract the first time because he cuoldnt see just going away and not letting us know. We were more important than the corporate interest, and in telling us what was happening, he empowered us to not only do something about it, but to become more a part of what he was doing.

If in the future, everyone will pick their content and download it and there will be a huge choice, I believe that the really successful content providers are going to be the ones who are able to have some sort of relationship with their listeners/viewers. Marc is excellent at drawing every intern and phone person into his life as a real, loved being. For a kind of edgy, neurotic guy, he is terribly loving, and from his nicknames for the crew to his treatment of Brian from Everett who called in to MS to sing his songs ("I got an inconsistent mental disposition. Now, hows that gonna look in the deposition?") that love was evident.

I cant even explain how much I have learned and how many days I've driven around writing down the names of books and guests and blogs, the products I've bought and the research I've done, just from listening to Marc talk to people and even go through his sicknesses and his stages of denial: My iPod for example, which is the thing that I could have sworn I would never own. Marc went from a anti-iPodder to an iPod zombie, and along the way I became convinced that I also needed one. I too love my iPod and can't imagine life without it. Now I am podcasting not only his show from Los Angeles via Replay AV, but I hardly ever sweat listening to anything live or worry that I will lack anything to listen to. I have all the shows I like and all of my CDs with me, along with videos and a couple of books too...and without Marc telling me every day about this or that with his iPod, I never would have chosen that way.

A lot of those purchases of books and products have less to do with exact content on the outside than they do with Marc'’s way of interviewing and explaining that gets to the really cool part of things and makes me want to check it out. This happens a bit to me with RFK Jr'’s show, Sam Seder, and once in a while with Rachel Maddow, but never with the frequency that I would be scribbling notes in the car to look up this or buy that.

Maybe it was just me…? Please leave comments below!

Ive said a lot about Marc and I really should also say that I also totally appreciate Jim Earl, Marc's partner in writing, sketch comedy, and recently the cohost of the show. I love Jim'’s characters and the incredible intelligence and epic obscurities infused into everything he does. I was really touched by the Rapture Watch that devolved and spiraled round into a new fangled Yertle the Turtle as cautionary tale .....and I still listen to it from time to time. I also really loved Jim's interpretations of memorable songs of the 70's and 80'’s that he used to use as intros and outros. I believe I will have to edit a bunch of those together just to have. Jim has also taught me a lot about factory farming and vegetarianism, and has picked up where Bobby Kennedy left off with the author of Dominion, in my learning curve there. I cant be as correct as Jim and I don'’t know for sure if he is really huffy sometimes or just comes off that way, but I appreciate him and hope that he sticks with Marc for many projects to come.

I also want to mention that the staff from Morning Sedition really stands out as special and they have been as much a part of all of this as anyone has been. They are also very dear to me. There are probably some people I will forget and have forgotten already, but right at the top are Brendan MacDonald, and Dan Pashman, who hosted the show alone the week of the Katrina disaster, and did such a great job of it, they should have been offered on air jobs right then. The interns (Little Goliath, out there working as a temp somewhere with his garlic knobs,) and the booker and everyone with their laughs and happiness together just made for an excellent experience. If Im ever anyplace and I hear that Pashman laugh I will shout it out because I could pick It out of a crowd anywhere.

So, here we are. Last night, live show, everyone there....I'm very sad.

Good luck Marc and Jim.

Keep up with the Seditionist blog and keep us all informed about what youre doing next.

You will be missed and you are very well loved.

So long

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Cut Your Strings and Run!