State your take on politically-themed TV shows and talk radio

I was, when growing up, a TV news junkie. Network news first and foremost in the late seventies, later followed by CNN = essential viewing for me. The many biases and limitations I would now recognize in it at the time were either not apparent or accepted without much conscious reflection, and in its own way -- deriving from the earlier roots of TV news in the fifties and the radio precursors of that -- it brought 'the world' to me.

But when it came to the political talk shows -- Meet the Press and the like -- I was remarkably unenthused. It all seemed, well, pretty boring, and while you can argue that I was missing the point, thing was that political debate on that level just didn't appeal. Honestly, I was far more entranced by my mom and dad's discussions of current affairs at the dinner table, which were impassioned, intelligent and very interesting to me, and showed as similar a breadth as one could hope for when it came to both what was happening now and over longer term issues. I was lucky in that their views, often opposing (but not always in a simplistic right/left division), allowed for debate and discussion rather than shouting down or any such nonsense.

As for talk radio of any sort -- please. The radio's for music! (Or so thought my eighties self.) I admit my experience with it, outside of observing various talk shows on the radio stations I've worked at, is very limited.

As I've mentioned many times before, of course, I just really don't watch TV anymore anyway outside of very random encounters, though occasionally I have twinges over things I'm missing -- Cartoon Network stuff comes to mind in particular. But now I simply do not miss TV news in the slightest, at all, and I definitely don't miss the subset of political talk shows. What little I have encountered out of a certain morbid curiosity in the Crossfire and O'Reilly Factor and whatevers of the world is something I don't want to deal with much -- I don't want so many of these people's voices in my head, and for god's sake enough with the shouting already.

I can't say I have any sort of conscious manifesto on this subject, it's more something that's happened over time. 9/11 and afterward accelerated it. How in the world I could function having to hear both the idiot pronouncements from the right over the intervening years -- from Bush, from Fleischer, from McLellan, from all the flacks -- is not something I care to imagine. To me it would almost seem masochistic. Placing their words on the written page, on the computer screen, gives me a sort of distance, a way to keep them slightly at bay. And good lord, I can't imagine what it would be like actually remembering what the hell Hannity and O'Reilly and Coulter actually SOUND like, jeepers. Based on what I've seen and heard, I'm glad I don't.

But I wouldn't be too fond of the left either, I just wouldn't be fond of the whole TV/radio process I think. On-line reading, I think, is key for me, interchange on a level where not everything is shouted at you, though the sentiments can be forceful. I really love the Daily Show book America, that's great stuff. The amount of interesting political discussion you can find in blogworld goes without saying. The ability to access papers all over the world for daily reports is wonderful.

Arguably it's a cop-out -- John Peel, bless the man, noted once in a specifically UK context that reading the Guardian and the like wasn't going to be a help if you specifically want to know what people are thinking, that you have to go with what's popular -- all those damned tabloids -- to get a true sense of what is at stake, to know your enemy. Similarly, my pretending that discourse exists solely or predominantly in the way I prefer doesn't change the reality of the situation. So perhaps I cut myself off, and yet, I don't regret it.

Over Xmas, an old childhood friend of my dad's visited from overseas, where he's lived for many years, along with his wife -- she was quite charming, he was friendly but, shall we say, crusty, in a very GOP-or-death. At one point he asked my dad how local Democratic representative Sam Farr 'could get elected to Congress,' as if it was some kind of shock (Farr has been serving a series of terms ever since Leon Panetta joined the Clinton White House). My mom and dad are both huge fans of his, and my dad noted calmly, not seeking to rile, that Farr's reputation lies with him being both good for agriculture -- very much crucial to the Carmel/Monterey/Salinas area, as any Steinbeck reader might guess -- and also for environmental interests, a core part of my dad's beliefs even in, as he put it, his most conservative days in earlier years. And so the discussion went for a while.

My dad's friend was, to my bemusement, still seemingly shocked over Farr's popularity and my dad's support for him -- I think he was even slackjawed for a time. Literally, it was as if he didn't get it, that the idea that somebody would vote for a Democrat was utterly unthinkable. I admit I was amused, quietly. The discussion between my dad and his friend continued on and off through the evening, and I didn't pay full attention to it. But I remember thinking this, that neither side raised their voice, that there were no harsh words, that something which clearly divided them on what turned out to be a very profound level did not ruin or otherwise dispirit the evening, even if the friend was, I think, still quietly stunned at the end of the night.

In the end, I loved it -- because it wasn't a shoutfest, a flamewar, a series of rants from either side. It was civil but, in combination with other issues discussed, revolved around fairly deep waters. It may mean perhaps in the end I am a classic Macneil/Lehrer audience member in the world of FoxNews -- but no regrets there.

Your thoughts?