What's the old line, "If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas?" By the way it is going here in February, John McCain is going to be one sorry mass of welts by the time November arrives.

The business in Cincinnati on Monday—where Team McCain thought it'd be a good idea to wheel in the area's standard-issue, more-haircut-than-brain talk radio star, Bill Cunningham, to "warm up" the crowd—bit the candidate back pretty badly.

Here's the clip of Cunningham's shtick. As I say, it is very much standard issue red-meat-for-the-knuckleheads stuff; demonize the "enemy" (the dumb-everything-down, talk-radio-for-the-base bit runs on an endless series of enemies); create hyperbolic negative associations in agitated, uncritical minds; set one toenail up to the line of outright racism; and wrap it all in superficial patriotism. Same old, same old. It has been a profitable act for two decades.

So Cunningham's "warm up" lays something of an egg when (who knew?) it plays out in public and gets picked up and shown to audiences far outside of the Ohio torches and pitchforks Bund rally. This forces McCain to disavow Cunningham barely an hour later. All that does is create another episode of blow back when Cunningham goes on his daily radio show, and CNN, and denounces McCain—for good this time, he says. THEN, as if that wasn't bad enough for one day, McCain has to also, uh, "rethink" his statement that he had never personally met Cunningham. (It seems he did. Maybe a couple of times.) Meanwhile, all the braying Cunningham-like types all over the country, many of whom who had rallied to McCain's defense by attacking The New York Times last week, resumed kicking and chewing on him again. He isn't pure enough, remember? He's certainly no deep thinker, such as Bill Cunningham.

This cycle will go on and on unless McCain decides these characters are far more trouble than they are worth. McCain is being told that the talk radio audience is essentially synonymous with the Republican base. I wonder about that. Someone ought to run the math for McCain on how many votes the Cunningham-like crowd controls across the country. They might be shocked. In the Twin Cities, the hardcore, hair trigger combustible conservative "base" is barely 5 percent of people listening to radio. There are, no doubt, other hardcore conservatives who aren't on a talk radio IV drip who think Barack Obama is a Muslim and, therefore, a trained agent of Al Qaeda, but they seem to be getting their "red meat" from somewhere else.

Altogether, I guess, there might be 8% of adults who walk upright. Whatever it is we're talking a group of people who truly see no flaw in the logic when someone, such as Cunningham, says, with flagrant disingenuousness (as reported by The Cincinnati Enquirer):

"The purpose of using Obama’s full name—Barack Hussein Obama—“is to identify that person. I meant no offense by it,” Cunningham said. Those who oppose his use of Obama’s middle name are those who should be criticized, Cunningham added."

(In the CNN clip above, Cunningham ups the ante and says the people who "object" to him trying to associate Obama with Muslims and dictators are "the racists," which is another standard, tried-and-true talk radio rhetorical device—accuse your "enemies" of your own worst sins.

Talk about playing your customers for chumps.

Anyway, at some point, McCain, who I tend to think is embarrassed about having to associate with this collection of dimwits, hucksters, and bigots, might have to decide to stop pandering to them for what very little they can do for him. As I've said before, if you condense all this campaign blather about "change," I believe you can make a convincing argument that change away from the talk radio idiocracy—as practiced by high government officials—is what everyone is really talking about.

Problems today are too large, complex, and dangerous to be guided in any way by cynics such as Bill Cunningham.

WCCO-TV anchor Don Shelby, who suffered a mild stroke as the result of a congenital heart problem four years ago, experienced  "about ten minutes of difficulty speaking" while doing his afternoon radio show (for WCCO-AM) last Thursday. Encouraged to "go home, get some sleep, and call a doctor," Shelby went home and came back to do TV's ten o'clock show—he then allowed his wife, Barbara, to call a doctor the following morning.

Shelby hasn't been on radio or TV since, but he says he'll be back on the ten Wednesday evening—the last  night of the February ratings period—before taking a planned weeklong break.

'CCO-AM will fill his radio gig until he returns from holiday.

So Don, you've had a stroke, you're having trouble speaking, and instead of calling a doctor you go home . . . and come back to work? WTF?

"Oh hell, it's easy for everyone else to say, 'Go see a doctor.' They're not the ones going. I know what that means. [The whole gruesome battery of tests.] But I checked myself in the next day, and they ran 'em all and . . . "

"And . . . ?"

"Well, they say I'm OK. I've got new medicine, which is actually like the old medicine [the blood thinner Coumadin], which means I guess I'm not going to be swinging an ax too much for a while, and I can't cut myself shaving. But I don't feel too bad, fairly normal. It's just one of those things that happens, and about four years after the kind of surgery I had (to patch a small hole in his heart) is about right for something like this to happen."

So why not blow off work entirely? What's one night? Or are you going to be the guy off the bench that sinks the winning three-pointer that wins the ratings for your team?

"Yeah, like Scotty Brooks. Remember him? [An early member of the Timberwolves. A five-foot-ten-inch "role player" who hung around the league for years because he had a deadly three-point shot]. But seriously, people worry, and I think I have to go down and reassure them I'm fine."

They will of course all be watching your every twitch, waiting for you to blow something.

"Oh, I know. If I blow a word, they'll think I'm checking out. Hell, I blow ten words a newscast as it is. But it's better if I go in."

Shelby says he will make some comment about the episode in his "In the Know" segment during Wednesday's show.

I take no pleasure in the news that The Rake, where this blog began, is shutting down effective immediately. Employees were cleaning out their desks when I called over this afternoon.

With the two dailies as diminished as they are—in breadth and depth of coverage and saddled with a self-neutering notion of appropriateness and tone—, cities as large as these need vital, constant, readily available alternatives . . . badly.

The Rake, led by the husband-and-wife team of Tom Bartel and Kris Henning (they got into the business thirty years ago with Sweet Potato, which evolved into City Pages, which they sold in the late '90s), might never have gelled as a provocative, must-read alternative (it always seemed conflicted over whether it was a rarefied literary magazine or a reliable source of unsheathed attitude and opinion), but it tried.

I tell the story of canvassing the town prior to signing on with The Rake a year or so ago. The standard conversation went something like this:

"So, you're going to work for old Black Bart [Tom], huh?"

"Yeah, maybe. Why, what's the story there?"

"Story?"

"Yeah, how was it working for Bartel?"

Long pause.

"Kris is so nice."

In my experience, Bartel savored his not-exactly-unfounded reputation as an occasionally rank bastard (certainly when he wanted to be). He saw a world of cutthroat competitors and an endless stream of parasites hitting him up for jobs, contributions, and bar tabs. There was probably a bit of paranoia there, and he may very well have engendered more dark feelings than he absolutely needed, but lousy judge of human nature that I am, I kind of liked him. But then I have a misplaced affinity for unsentimental characters, people with an overactive radar for other bastards coming over the hill at them. More to the point, he proved he could take a shot.

The key question for Bartel today was, "So how are you going to keep this web-only version of The Rake going with all your writers heading out the door?" (On-line editor Cristina Córdova is the only one of sixteen employees staying for the near term.)

"Well, I don't know," he said. "We're mostly doing it because we have a couple obligations to people we still have to fulfill." He emphasized that he is current with his bills and has no intention of "stiffing" anyone. He added though, "we have a budget for [online] content. The only thing that is really going away is the long-form journalism."

He seemed genuinely upset by having to lay off a staff to which he has been remarkably loyal. He told me he was planning to get with key personnel, such as writer Brad Zellar, in hopes of cooking deals to keep them contributing to the site. There were no specifics on how he plans to compensate them, but my guess is he finds it difficult-to-impossible to retain the services of writers at some kind of low-end, x-dollars-per-post equation.

Zellar told me he was surprised by the suddenness of the closing and, with a book coming out, plans to devote at least "some time" to getting that promoted. "We're all kind of disappointed. But it wasn't like we didn't see it coming."

No kidding. I'm hardly a world-class economist, but it seems fairly obvious that this current recession is going to go on longer and probably deeper than others in recent memory. Few of the sources that I read expect any significant recovery until the first or second quarter of '09. That many months of seriously declining ad revenue spells the shakeout of several more local magazines (and further miseries for the two newspapers.)

I have my deep thoughts about the direction (or lack thereof) that The Rake took over its five-plus year run. (As I was leaving late last year, Bartel had the epiphany that the mag should be snarkier and funnier.)  But the point today is that with its evaporation, the nation's fourteenth-largest media market, with two increasingly stale daily newspapers, is losing a vehicle that always held the potential for thoughtful cultural commentary . . . and from time to time delivered.

The New York Times's report last evening (dead tree version this morning), with Sen. John McCain mentioned in close proximity to a good-looking blond lobbyist whose clients had business before his  committee, fell like a five-pound slab of steaming meat on the desks of America's cable news impresarios, none of who had managed to gain any traction with the Obama-as-plagiarist story.

On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, the liberal, couldn't repeat the "breaking news" about McCain and the blonde—and the various (apparent) conflicts of interest—often enough between commercial breaks. And over on FOX, where McCain isn't pure enough for FOX's usual unconditional support of anything in Republican skirts, they were sporting no less foam at the corners of their mouths. I won't even begin to assess how serious this is—although Dan Abrams, on MSNBC, was quickly flogging the notion of McCain being forced out and Mike Huckabee or even—cue Psycho shower scene music effects—Mitt Romney getting back in.

All I know for certain is that cable news loves a good blonde, and when you can pack together a twofer, a blonde and a presidential candidate, you've got 99 percent of the required ingredients for ratings gold. No self-respecting cable news producer is going to back off this one for a week or more, especially with no new primaries until March 4. And I don't care if it is revealed tomorrow that the blonde in question is both McCain's sister and a practicing nun.

After reading the Times piece, I am in agreement with NBC's political director, Chuck Todd, when he said that the story felt an awful lot like the kind of piece where the paper's editors are holding back some of their best information. (The gist of the story really isn't the blonde and suggestions of extramarital schtupping so much as McCain's intermittent relapses into cronyism followed by high-profile repentance and wearing of sackcloth.)

I personally liked this graph from the article:

"In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others."

Hmmmm. "A series of confrontations . . . spoke independently of each other . . . details that were corroborated by others."

That sort of verbiage suggests to me that the Times is drawing interest on other choice information.

The story includes the bit about McCain calling Times top editor Bill Keller directly to "complain about the inquiries." Knowing as he must that the story was due to break yesterday or today, I have to wonder if that explains McCain's oddly stiff "victory speech" Tuesday night? He was off his game. I mean, what upbeat, feeling-the-mojo politico needs to read all of something like that off a TelePrompTer?

A bit later on in Abrams's MSNBC show, Jim Warren of the Chicago Tribune reminded lay viewers of how often his paper (and, by extension, others) have held off dropping a bombshell story against some political candidate immediately prior to an election—the ethical consideration being the subject's ability to fully respond in the time before voting takes place. (The Times apparently had a lot of this nailed down prior to the New Hampshire primary.)

This echoes of course the Times's own decision to withhold publication of the blockbuster, Pulitzer-winning story about the Bush administration's illegal domestic surveillance activities until AFTER the 2004 election. Editor Keller's account of how all that transpired has always seemed very carefully parsed.

As I say, I will not bet on this beyond predicting that cable news and the Internet will spin like dervishes trying to keep things going for at least a fortnight.

But something tells me the American public of 2008 is way past getting all that indignant about sex and might actually take a deeper interest in old school, big-money cronyism.

That, after all, is what this "change" talk is all really about.

Although I am skeptical anything will change soon, your FCC is currently soliciting comments from taxpayers like you, about the crazy-ass notion that radio license holders should both locate their main studios in the towns they serve and also staff them round-the-clock with, you know, actual trained human beings. (The link above allows you to say whatever you'd like about real localism, etc. If you need more than seventy characters, just hit return and keep on keeping on.)

As I've written before, the current FCC has held public meetings throughout the country the past couple years and has been told— "reamed-out"  might be a more accurate description—that it has done a lousy job monitoring the public airwaves. Citizen input on the question of how good a job giant broadcasters, such as Clear Channel, are doing serving local interests has been overwhelmingly negative. It isn't too far off base to say listeners/consumers look at what has been going on the last twelve years (since the Telecommunications Act of 1996) and see another industry that has been gamed like some wretched Ponzi scheme.

Everything that follows a sapping of true, competitive energy—from stale, computer-generated music play-lists to the same eight syndicated talk personalities clogging the brains of everyone from Bellingham to Key West to ear-glazing advertising clutter—can be traced back to a highly centralized, out-of-local -touch radio industry.

Here in a large metropolitan area, we aren't affected as much by the 24/7 robotic delivery that plagues smaller cities where radio "groups" have heavily automated everything about the local operation in order to reduce overhead and deliver ... added value to shareholders. But no one who used to or still does use radio is unaware of the general monotony of the music and talk.

I sincerely urge anyone interested to make a comment to the FCC. Simultaneously, I urge you not to be duped by acts such as this or this, which were both slapped together by the same D.C. law firm (read: lobbyists) trying to argue that their satellite-delivered programming (very heavy on the usual "God Votes Republican" jeremiads) is actually a blow for "localism."

Bite me.

Most of these "small stations," the self-professed champions of "true local radio," are in fact very often distant outposts of large radio groups—in this particular case, so-called "Christian radio." The budgets most affected are those of the groups' principal shareholders—folks who see only waste of time, energy, and profit in programming and staffing their farthest flung properties in the communities where they are actually located. Their brand of "true local radio" works best piped in from hundreds—if not thousands—of miles away. And as far as "new entrepreneurs," give me a break. The "new" blood getting into the serious radio game is practically nonexistent under the current system.

Finally: The tally from last week's Slaughter poll on music radio.

The question:  "How much music radio do you listen to compared to last year?"

"Almost none at all anymore" ..... 38%
"Less"................................. 33%
"Much less"........................... 19%
"More"................................ 10%

If ever a business needed re-regulating and a form of trust-busting—for its own good—, it's radio.

Admittedly I had to have it pointed out to me, but damn, that Jerry Zgoda, the Strib's Timberwolves beat writer, can cover a lot of ground.

This past Wednesday morning's Strib featured a very nicely written 1A story by Zgoda on the Westminster Dog Show in Madison Square Garden. (Zgoda reminded us of his NBA chops by working Willis Reed into the lead.) As we all know by now, Uno the beagle won best in show. Damn cute dog. (BTW: Do you think Uno ever rolls in deer crap like my dog?) Zgoda worked in Minnesota angles, dropped mention of Christopher Guest's hilarious movie, and pretty well delivered enough goods to call it a day, hit a couple Manhattan bars, and do a little damage to the Avista expense account.

But no.

The same Jerry Zgoda was also in the paper Wednesday back on C2 with a report on that big, make-or-break Timberwolves vs. New Jersey Nets game across the Hudson in the Meadowlands. Never mind that anyone covering the Wolves these days should get combat pay, or at least a prescription for Cipro. Zgoda struck again. Another solid piece.

But . . . wait a minute. Weren't the dog show and the basketball game going on at pretty much the same time? I mean, the dog show was on TV from 8 to 11 p.m. New York time, and the Wolves game started a little after 7:30 p.m. EST. I've had some insane cab rides in New York, but that's Clark Kent stuff—from Madison Square Garden to New Jersey in no time at all?

OK, so we all know how this really went down. Zgoda (whom I haven't heard back from), probably did the day in the city working the dog show, getting his interviews, then cabbed it over to the Meadowlands—or flew, whatever—and covered the Woofies. Maybe he caught the end of the dog show on TV from the Izod Center. (The what Center?)

But the 1A bit plays like the Strib's man, Super Zgoda, was an eyewitness to beagle history.

Glen Crevier, Zgoda's boss and the Strib's sports editor, says that's pretty much what happened. "Jerry loves dogs, and he always wanted to go to the show, so he offered to do another story while he was out there. It got picked up on 1A. He did the beagle story early in the day then went over to the game."

Now I don't know if there is any point at all anymore in talking wistfully of "the old days" when supposedly newspapers would send TWO reporters to New York to cover two completely different stories going on at precisely the same time. Never mind Zgoda deftly conflating Willis Reed and Uno the beagle. But Crevier headed me off just as I was building up steam for a rant about cheapskate papers milking a poor, working stiff (Zgoda) for double duty to justify a plane ticket to New York.

"No, no," said Crevier. "We haven't pulled anyone off the road covering the Wolves. It isn't a money thing. Jerry just likes to do stories on the side. He did one out of Memphis not too long ago." (It occurred to me after we hung up that the real story here might be the fact the Strib HASN'T sliced the Wolves-beat travel budget despite all the paper's money troubles and the nearly non-existent local interest in "our team.")

Knowing how many Strib writers are voluntarily taking on additional work to look like the busy, indispensable guy/gal when (not if) the scythe goes through the newsroom again, I still wonder if all things being equal Zgoda might have preferred taking a casual stroll around Central Park that afternoon instead of filing a dog story before covering a basketball game.

Then there's the "perception" issue of the Strib allowing its readers to believe Zgoda was there in person at the moment Uno got the nod.

"Well, look," said Crevier. "It's a story about a dog show. It's not like we were covering a presidential debate or something."   

Readers of this blog in its former incarnation will recall occasional check-ins with Randy, the Star Tribune's readers' rep. In the wake of one of last year's semi-monthly purges, belt tightenings, and outsourcings at the once-venerable paper (among them the demotion of their previous readers' rep), Randy, a semi-employed septic system maintenance engineer and seasonal bear-hunting guide officing most afternoons out of the Dry Dock Tavern in rural Chaffey, Wisconsin, was hired at $12/hour to answer reader questions both about stories appearing (or not appearing) in the Star Tribune as well as baseless gossip involving Minnesota's largest news organization.

Out of respect for his devotion to ice fishing, replacing the blown motor on his '97 Ski-Doo, and tolerating his wife's demand that he put up another cord of firewood, we haven't bothered Randy as much lately. But mail has accumulated. So we checked in this morning.

Suspicious in Shakopee asks:

"Randy, I see that the Star Tribune is now laying off another fifty-eight people, a bunch in circulation. And according to the publisher, Chris Harte, in a very long, windy e-mail he sent to his staff yesterday, the situation down there just keeps looking grimmer and grimmer. So I have two questions for you: One, are they really going to use machinery to replace these circulation people? Like what? Those Roomba things that bounce around off walls until they eventually vacuum the whole floor?

And, two, when Mr. Harte says:

'Salaries of senior executives—my direct reports and me—were frozen last month.'

Is this the same thing as saying that prior to last month neither he nor any of his, uh, 'direct reports,' received any kind of salary increase or bonus for supervising the cuts, layoffs, outsourcing, etc., that took place last year?

I remember hearing talk that St. Paul Pioneer Press editors, 'direct reports' to then-publisher Par Ridder, received nice, five-figure bonuses for overseeing cost cutting over there a few years back. Knowing that skeptical b****rds like newspaper employees will always assume their bosses are taking dough to lay them off or suck the last vestiges of dignity out of their jobs Harte and his "direct reports" wouldn't be so stupid as to hide bonuses or deny them . . . would they?"

Randy, the Strib readers' rep replies:  "First off, Suspicious, if that's your real name, I don't know if I like your tone. The current owners of the Star Tribune care a lot. And if they think a fleet of circulation Roombas will do a better job than some people who are probably always bellyaching about having to kiss up to whiny customers, then that's a good thing. Up here, we call it progress. It's the same as riding an ATV instead of slogging all over hell and getting your boots filthy. It's the twenty-first century last time I checked. Machines do a lot of things people used to do. Hell, I've got a calculator in my glove compartment for when I go down to Hole in the Wall. YOU try tracking pull tabs on your fingers sometime.

As for this business of the top dogs getting bonuses for making life miserable for everyone else. Now THAT is some kind of sick mind you've got. When I took this job, I was told—straight to my face—that the boss types down there are 'brave' and 'courageous' and are always making 'tough decisions.' And I don't care if they were the ones saying this. The fact is, times are tough. Everyone's gotta' cut back. Me, I'm laying off the Michelob and switching to Keystone until Bush's rebate check gets here in May.

But if—and I say IF because brave, courageous people don't need money waggling in their faces to make tough decisions—but IF they did, well hell, they earned it, right? They're the ones taking the flack. How would you like to be the guy telling Reusse there's no money left to cover the Masters this year? Christ, get out of that blast zone.

But, I doubt there were any bonuses. I mean, come on, somebody'd find out. Then you can just imagine the caterwauling."

Teflon Tim from Eagan asks:  "Don't you agree it was reckless and rash to call for Lt. Governor Carol Molnau's resignation as the Star Tribune did a few days ago? After all, the National Transportation Safety Board has practically exonerated her with that gusset plate stuff a few weeks back. I know your paper thinks if they pile on this woman long and hard enough, they'll win a couple prizes and be big swinging [bleeps] with their fellow reporters. But isn't it time to play fair? Besides, if Molnau goes away right now, just as the legislative session starts and McCain starts looking for a vice-president, aren't your hired shivs just going to start taking more shots at our young, good-looking, well-spoken, unimpeachably conservative Governor? (Sorry, bad choice of words there.)"

Randy, the Strib readers' rep replies: "Damn straight, I do. I wasn't one bit pleased when I saw that. Lord, what does that gal have to do to catch a break? I mean, she's already got those two pricks, Kennedy and McEnroe, hammering on her like my pal Al beating dents out of his bumper, and then despite all those calls from what's-his-name, the pretty boy, telling the big bosses at the paper to dial it back on this new tax and bad inspection BS, the editorialers go ahead and rip her the big one anyway. It ain't fair, and I'm saying so right out there where you can like it or not.

I'm with you, bro. What is so tough about cooling your jets for a few months? You yank Molnau out of the way, and the next thing you know, you've got every crazy-ass sport plinker in town taking shots and scuffing up The Man right when all those boozed-up, big-spending Republicans are rolling in.

What comes over people? I mean, are the rich bear hunters who come up here every fall from Milwaukee a bunch of lame-ass dorks? Sure. But I wait until I've got their money and they're on the road home to say so out loud." 

I'm worried because I found myself actually enjoying last night's Grammys. I've made merciless fun of this thing for years, ever since the "Academy" drooled all over the likes of Christopher Cross and Toto in 1980s, stiffing Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd. I mean, how far up do you have to have your head stuck up there to miss those two? But Sunday's Grammys, especially in HD, was pretty glitzy eye and ear candy. Keely Smith and Kid Rock. That was funny. Herbie Hancock and Lang Lang duetting on "Rhapsody in Blue." Excellent. Amy Winehouse. Great pipes on that train wreck.

Unlike the oh so self-serious and windy Oscars, the Grammy crowd at least understands that this is a  premium opportunity for a lot of people to show their stuff to a mainstream crowd. Obviously, you can't run movies live, but the Oscars could steal a clue or two from its recording brother and deliver more bits celebrating the best moments in the year's movies.

But as I watched the Grammys, with its heavy emphasis on the usual suspects so heavily promoted by the record companies and in such monotonous, heavy rotation on broadcast radio—and I like Amy Winehouse, her CD is in the car deck—, I kept hearing echoes of the latest portents of radio-industry doom.

Last Friday, Jim Cramer, the arm-flapping hysteric of theStreet.com and CNBC, declared the death of music radio. The business has been done in essentially by a lack of imagination on the part of major operators, such as Clear Channel, whose multi-billion-dollar private-equity deal, he believes, is inconceivable now that Clear Channel's stock price has cratered so badly. (Clear Channel stock has lost 35 percent of its value since fall 2006).

"Radio is finished as we know it," says Cramer, who you can obviously choose to believe or not. But all indicators (or "the metrics" if you want to sound techy and cool) point to a rapidly eroding audience for music radio almost as bad as it is for daily newspapers.

The link above says, " . . . veteran industry analyst Jim Boyle, usually a sympathetic voice . . . declared in a note to investors that 'radio is indeed the "new newspapers" with its slow-to-no growth prospects in the mid-to-long term.'

(The story also quotes Radio Advertising Bureau figures showing ad revenues down 2 percent, 6 percent, and 5 percent this past October through December, respectively.)

Every complaint music fans have made for a generation still apply and are now like a knife into vital organs. Stale, highly-repetitive playlists featuring only a couple pre-selected songs of the most-favored artists; generic, if not voice-tracked, DJs; absurd ad clutter; and tremendous corporate debt loads as a result of multiple consolidations that have wrung every available nickel out of the business (cutting to profit) and back to short-term investors. To this self-defeating scenario, you add those 150 million iPods; individual, ad-free radio stations; and the next sound you hear is music radio's casket being lowered into the ground.

Says one commenter on the hear2.com sight linked above, "I think music radio is dead or dying. Companies are still spending tons of $$ on music radio but it is almost like they are waiting for the best of the unknowns to rise to the top so the money can be shifted there. I think talk radio is vibrant. Watching music radio die sucks, but it had its time and it was a damned good run. The companies that run music stations have sucked the life out of the stations."

Note, though, the delineation between music radio and talk. Anything capable of delivering unique, live content still has a fighting chance although syndicated talk is starting to feel like a double-edged sword with its lack of local content and little inclination for on-air interaction—interactivity—with callers.

It is hard to imagine two industries with less in common than the music industry and daily newspapers. Believe me, no one looking like Beyoncé has ever walked through a newspaper newsroom. If she does, someone better be following along close behind handing out nitro tablets to the rumpled, pasty sports reporters. But for all the recording industry's troubles with piracy and file sharing, it is possible to see an expansion of access to audiences by artists otherwise shut out of its  "star system."

However, the music industry's reliance on broadcast radio as a primary promotional tool seems destined to break down much sooner rather than later.

Poll
The music end of the radio industry is having a daily newspaper-like meltdown, with most radio aimed at people who haven't adapted to iPods.

How much radio to you tune into? Take our poll.

Big shock here: I'm no longer part of the Tommy B. KQRS Morning Crew demographic. (Too old. Too tired of the music. Already heard most of the jokes.) But even I am not as out of it as those "loyal listeners" who still think Barnard does the show from the KQ studio in Dinkytown.

Doesn't everyone know he has a studio at his house, and this time of year he does a lot of shows from his other place in West Palm Beach? Apparently not, judging by the notes I got and the "radio insider" chatter over on RedandNater.

As I understand it, Tommy had some kind of surgery on his nose recently (no doubt making it more pert, something like Sarah Silverman's maybe), so in addition to his ISDN line failing this past Thursday morning ("a bad loop" I'm told), he was also in a bit of pain as he tried to carry on via cell phone.

I reiterate, I did NOT hear any of this. But a KQ spokeswoman confirms the Florida ISDN problem and Tommy's nose issue. Nevertheless, various KQ listeners have professed outrage at Barnard "phoning it in." It goes without saying that Barnard's long, "colorful," and remarkably successful career has created both admirers and enemies. The latter are of the opinion that this "remote broadcasting" shtick is an outrageous fraud.

Those people might want to get out more. Or at least read The New York Times.

Personally, I could not care less where he or any other broadcaster is physically located unless he is trying to fake Minnesota-in-February presence from under a palm tree, which is what a few of his accusers are charging. Since I didn't hear any of the veiled references they point out, I'll stop short of my usual harsh, rash judgment. ... Other than to say ... if it is true Barnard is trying to gloss over his Florida location, he ought to rethink that bit.

I mean, why bother pretending? What percentage of Minnesotans are either in Florida this time of year or wishing they were? I'd think it'd be a pretty good running bit, playing up the piña colada stains on my Rash Guard swimwear while my knucklehead compatriots are kicking slush off their Uggs.

The KQ spokeswoman argues that Tommy B. in Florida is "no different than doing a remote." Well, when Dan Barreiro is out on the deck at Maynard's, he says so constantly. I get the feeling Tommy isn't exactly copping to his Florida "remote."

But if anyone ever hears him say to Bob Sansevere, "Bob, a sperm whale washed up in front of the house here last night, and it looked better than you on a good day," shoot me another note.

I'm not exactly sure what Rush Limbaugh is thinking about when he uses the term "anal poisoning." But he's up to three separate mentions now in recent months, and I'm starting to wonder if there is something more going on with the beefy bloviator and his super-sized cigars than the obvious unconscious motivations. If you missed it, Limbaugh hit on "anal poisoning" again the other day in describing the relationship of two Republicans he dislikes and despises, Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain. In Rush world, and the world of his wannabes and listeners, McCain, in particular, is worse than persona non grata. He's . . . well, the anal bit gives you a pretty good idea.

Among all the available avenues for media dissection coming out of this past Tuesday night, the ongoing, widening, deepening crackup of the talk radio echo chamber will do just fine for today.

To recap: With the resurgence of John McCain, America's methane-producing print and broadcast elite—first Limbaugh, then, in no particular order, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt, our own Jason Lewis, and (most recently jumping on the bus) Glenn Beck—have expressed horror so deep at the thought of a McCain candidacy that they've openly vowed not to vote for him, maybe not vote at all (James Dobson). Or in the case of Ann Coulter, who always knows how to grab a headline, vow to "campaign for Hillary Clinton rather than support" McCain. (Coulter's beef, in part, is because McCain emphatically opposes torturing Guantanamo detainees. Is that girl a psych-class study or what?)

Naturally, these difficult choices by well-off/extraordinarily wealthy media personalities are all being made in the name of unimpeachable principles.

Riiight. (Snippets of what the right wingers have been saying about McCain are collected below.)

Other luminaries of conservative conscience, principle, and rectitude—I'm thinking indicted, arguably psychopathic, former Republican majority leader Tom DeLay here—are also avowedly anti-McCain. With enemies like these, is it any wonder the guy is doing so well?

Now, James Dobson of Focus on the Family (see below) might be working a slightly different angle than the others what with his avowed concern about stem cell research, yadda, yadda, but I suspect not. I think they are all tightly focused on the one, same cherished "principle."

The "principled" separation here between a remarkably influential arm of pop culture—right wing talk radio and right wing punditry—and a Republican candidate (whom you'd think even they would see as best able to compete in November) is not over "fighting terrorists." McCain is gung ho on fighting Al Qaeda wherever it lives—or, in the case of Iraq, even where it doesn't—as Limbaugh and the rest are.

The divorce is also not over defense spending, which McCain and his talker critics (none of whom, unlike McCain, ever came close to actually wearing a uniform and "serving" the country) all believe should continue at robust-to-obscene levels. (A thought here: At the rate we're borrowing money from the Chinese to cover the deficits and the $1 trillion in off-the-books military spending in Iraq, wouldn't it be smarter just to rent the Chinese army?)

Nor are the right wing stars all that upset with McCain over so-called "social issues," Dobson's stem cell complaint withstanding. (Do you honestly think Limbaugh gives two [bleeps] about abortion?) What this is really all about—and I've got a one-time $800 tax rebate for anyone who guesses correctly—is "the Bush tax cuts," and the kind of demonstrably unsustainable, counter-effective "small government"/"fiscal conservatism" they represent.

Now, I really am trying to avoid going off on a deep political track here. But to my mind, the administration's fundamental raison d'être, the primary reason they were picked for the job by Republican money men (and women), the reason they were then bankrolled for election, and the reason they have been so epically incompetent at operating every other facet of the government is because of their commitment to the series of tax cuts for the monied elite Bush drove through a once-compliant Congress. (Keeping the tax cuts for the 1 percenters on track is, after all, "hard work"—a guy can't be expected to pay a lot of attention to all that other crap. You know, wars and stuff.)

The nut of my beef with the "small-government crowd" and right wing talk radio, which is "small government's" loudest, most pervasive and influential bullhorn, has always been that both embody a reckless disregard for a society functioning adequately for all social classes; each is also nakedly self-serving and, as far as this "fiscal-conservative stuff" goes, intellectually dishonest. As nutty as the evangelical conservatives often look and sound, I give them credit for being more honest in their belief that what they're pushing is "best for all mankind." As far as the "fiscal conservatives" go, their concern for "mankind" ends at the foot of their gated driveways.

I strongly suspect the Limbaughs (and Dick Cheneys and Karl Roves) of the world have always regarded the evangelical conservatives as useful idiots when it comes election time and are now aware that with all the Bush-era corruption and incompetence, they've lost any hope of carrying/bullsh***ing them again in '08.

Despite wrapping themselves—very ironically—in the mantle of "true" and "pure" and "principled" conservatism, the "fiscal conservatives"—Limbaugh, etc.—are wholly devoted to the narrowest of self-interests. Their principal "principle" is piggishness.

"Fiscal conservatism" is a very good deal for them, for their ownership groups, and their major advertisers. Therefore, anything or anyone who has called this faction's cherished, long-stymied tax cuts reckless or counter-effective—as McCain has—must, therefore, be derided and denounced . . . on "principle," of course.

All that said, the question is: Is this split going to be bad for the right wing talk radio business? Will Limbaugh and the rest continue to make payments on their Palm Beach mansions even while denouncing "their party's" candidate?   

Not having Limbaugh's cell number, I called Jason Lewis over at KTLK. Lewis has been hammering McCain, too. Also on principle, of course. I asked him if it wasn't true that the best thing that could  happen to him and his fellow talkers would be a Democrat—any Democrat but especially Hillary Clinton —back in the White House. I mean, come on. They should all be sending Bill Clinton half of their annual grosses just for feeding off him for fifteen-plus years.

"That will be good for my show, yes" Lewis conceded. "But look, I've been beating this drum about McCain for quite awhile. The most conservative you'll see McCain is in the next month. [As he schmoozes evangelicals.] What you're really seeing is the party going back to its Rockefeller roots, where all they hope to do is play ball with the Democrats between the forty yard lines. [The horror!] The evangelicals are a part of the problem with their talk about Biblical stewardship of the environment and all that."

I told Lewis—whose show holds no value for me at all but who I otherwise enjoy for his l'esprit du combat—I hoped that on principle he was driving something that got well less than ten miles a gallon. "SUV, baby!" he crowed. That's walkin' the walk.

"But the evangelicals aren't as much of a problem as the big-government Republicans, the Neo-Cons, most of whom are former Democrats [Cheney? Paul Wolfowitz, the pro-ABM aide to Scoop Jackson? Douglas Feith? Who?] and, you know, The Weekly Standard crowd. The whole bunch has elevated party over principle. That's my complaint."

For an indication of how serious the intramural fracture has become, Lewis also rips FOX News for "placing party over principle." (Gosh, isn't FOX News boss Roger Ailes still selling that channel as a collection of simple truth-speakers? The ONLY news operation without a partisan agenda? "Party over principle?" Even more, on what planet are the words "principle" and "FOX News" ever used in the same sentence?)

Lewis sounds sanguine about any hit he might take in audience size. Those who reject his argument, he says, probably weren't serious conservatives anyway. And my guess is that he's right, at least as regards his audience. The heyday of right wing talk might be over. Even with a Clinton back in the White House, it isn't likely so many listeners will ever again be so credulous. The radio universe has fragmented, and the right wing talk act is no longer fresh. Far from it. But when all you need is a 5 percent share of any local audience—roughly Limbaugh's take out of the Twin Cities, mostly older men—to hold your time slot/syndication fee, you can boil your pitch down to a pretty hard . . . "principled" . . . core without risking much of anything.

McCain voting against the tax cuts in 2001:

"I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle class Americans who most need tax relief."

Good Lord. What kind of principle is that?

Here's a clip from Limbaugh on McCain:

"He's going to reach out to Democrats in Congress. This is how he's going to get even with Republicans for defeating him in South Carolina in 2000. The Republican Congress will effectively be neutered."

Laura Ingraham:

" ... it's pretty clear and easy to understand. The pieces of legislation that John McCain became most famous for are all pieces of legislation that he co-authored with liberals, whether it's McCain-Kennedy, obviously, the amnesty bill, or it was McCain-Feingold, which was a direct curtailment of political free speech in America. They're just, on the conservative scale of 0 to 10, 0 being the least offensive, 10 being the most offensive, both of them are like 12. ... Carbon taxes. Failure to want the Bush tax cuts to be permanent. The list goes on."

Hugh Hewitt:

"Therein lies the problem that many conservatives have with John McCain. It is the nagging feeling that after all of his years of chummily bonding with liberal reporters and garnering favorable media coverage from them that the Arizona senator is embarrassed to be seen as too much of a conservative."

Ann Coulter:

"[McCain] has led the fight against — well, as you say, interrogations, I say torture — at Guantanamo. [Clinton] hasn't done that."

"She lies less than John McCain. She's smarter than John McCain, so that when she's caught shamelessly lying, at least the Clintons know they've been caught lying. McCain is so stupid he doesn't even know when he's been caught."

"John McCain is not only bad for Republicans, he is very, very bad for the country."

And James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family:

"I'm deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, who voted for embryonic stem cell research to kill nascent human beings, who opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, and who has little regard for freedom of speech, who organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language.

"I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are. He has at times sounded more like a member of the other party.  McCain actually considered leaving the GOP in 2001, and approached John Kerry about being Kerry's running mate in 2004.  McCain also said publicly that Hillary Clinton would make a good president.  Given these and many other concerns, a spoonful of sugar does not make the medicine go down.  I cannot, and I will not vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience."

Fans of classic radio have been in mourning for, uh, let me count—eighteen months!—since the cancellation of Lambert & Janecek on KTLK-FM. Few shows reliably delivered the level of suspense that one did.

Do you ever for second worry that Paul Allen will leap across the table and strangle Jeff DuBay before a live mic? Lori and Julia? Moon and Staci? Well, Lambert & Janecek—with yours truly taking on Sarah Janecek (a well-known local lobbyist, Republican insider, and publisher of Politics in Minnesota) as well as every drooling, flat-earth wing nut who could steal their mother's cell phone—was bona fide moment-to-moment, life-and-death drama. The next sound you COULD have heard was gunfire, never mind that Clear Channel explicitly bans firearms from its studios.

I mention this because FOX9 has invited Sarah and me out for a reunion of sorts tonight. We'll begin on the FOX9 website live at 8 p.m. and then appear periodically on TV from 9 to 11, offering our deep thoughts on Super Tuesday returns from Minnesota and the rest of the nation. I have already begun toning up my bloviation skills. (Do you think I should begin with a reading of the bill for the impeachment of Dick Cheney? Or should I save that for after California comes in?)

The phenomenal rise of Barack Obama and the run up to Super Tuesday—the closest thing to a national primary in case you haven't heard—got me wondering about how local veterans plan to cover not just tonight but the rest of this campaign, assuming that Obama's campaign continues on for weeks to come, which seems an absolute certainty. The contrast in Saturday evening coverage between the 20,000 who packed into the Target Center (for SEVEN hours) as opposed to the 700-800 who turned out for Mitt Romney in Edina couldn't have been more stark, yet in the interest of balance most of the locals, TV and newspapers attempted to split the pie equally. (Love the Strib subhead Sunday describing the "overflow" crowd for Romney. If he had held his event in a parked Escalade, they would have been "safe" and "fair" and "balanced" in calling that an "overflow" event, too.)

The tricky ground for any political reporter trying to play fair is describing the scene—and what's driving it—without enhancing what is clearly an extraordinary-to-unprecedented wave of enthusiasm for a political candidate.

The two top dogs in local TV coverage are WCCO's Pat Kessler and KSTP's Tom Hauser. (My—and everyone else's—old drinking buddy, Neal Justin of the Strib, cruelly referred to Kessler as "the 3000-pound gorilla" of political reporting. That, sir, is both low and cold. Kessler turns the scales at no more than 2,250, 2,500 tops.)

Kessler conceded that what is going on with Obama—the surge in polls across the country throughout the past two weeks, 20,000 people of every imaginable age and ethnicity in the Target Center, a 50-50 chance of taking out Hillary Clinton in California—"creates a difficult balancing act." On the one hand, polls and rallies in February don't necessarily translate to victory in November. On the other hand, if you're a veteran observer of political wars, of the numbing corniness and faux hype of political campaigns, you sense immediately that there is something qualitatively different going on here. (The sight of street-styled hip hop guys, kids you'd usually figure for gangbangers or worse, jumping up and down at a political rally is something you don't see everyday.)

"It is definitely possible that there is something unusual going on here," says Kessler. "Young people are coming out, and the energy level is like something I've never seen before. But the news judgment has to be on the facts. And I think we have an advantage there over the papers because of the pictures. They tell the story."

But isn't the detectable phenomena—polls, crowd size, and composition—a legitimate part of an "objective" story?  "Oh, absolutely. I've been telling people the only thing I can compare this to is Wellstone and Ventura, but neither of them approached the size of this. I mean, the guy walks on stage, and it's like The Beatles at Met Stadium."

KSTP's Hauser was putting together a piece on local TV buys for Monday night's news when I called. (Obama—flush with cash—was the only candidate to buy local broadcast TV.)

"Obviously we can't really say what our opinions are. But when you look at these things empirically, you can see what's going on. But polls have a way of being wrong. Look at New Hampshire. But there's no question [Obama] certainly has momentum."

(Hauser, by the way, will have the DFL Senate candidates on his Sunday At Issue program for a mini-debate.)

The sense from both Kessler and Hauser was that they are both being careful to modulate the narrow ground between "reporting" the obvious and injecting tacit expressions of something extraordinary going on in the normally formulaic American campaign process.

My point is that they would be well within the unwritten "license of objectivity" to make more emphatic notes of the unique dimensions of the Obama surge. This is big-time different and rare, and, therefore, worthy as news. Although were they to "punch" the extraordinariness of Obama today, they would inevitably open themselves to accusations of "liberal bias" from those kids waggling their Romney baseball mitts and arguing that their guy will deliver the change America sorely wants. (Is it just me, or is most of what Romney embodies, the craven impulse to exploit any loophole and game any system for narrow personal advantage pretty much whatever every other candidate—McCain included—is trying to change away from?)   

Kessler's boss, WCCO news director, Scott Libin says, "This past weekend was a good example of the problem. You've got one guy talking for an hour to 20,000 people and another talking for ten to fifteen minutes to maybe 800. It's hard to treat them equally. But what we're telling each other over here is to remember that our reporting has to reflect reality—polls and crowd size being real numbers—, and 20,000 is a bigger number than 800."

Lord knows this thing has a long ways to go. But even the 3,000-pound pros will have to ask themselves if the standard rules apply if this situation continues on as it has.

Anyway, back to the top: Lambert & Janecek redux. Tune in. 8 p.m. on the Web. 9 to 11 p.m. on TV. I'm the one who is not blond.

This just in from Star Tribune publisher Chris Harte:

"Star Tribune Real Estate
by Chris Harte, Publisher and Chairman

Chris Harte

February 1, 2008 - I want to let you know that we are moving forward with a process to list our downtown Minneapolis real estate for sale. We have hired a real estate broker who will start working on a marketing plan to conduct a private sale. The process will take months to complete and a deal is by no means certain. Even though this will not be a public process, you may see news reports, so I wanted to anticipate some questions you might have.

The listing will potentially include our headquarters building, and I'm sure you would wonder why we would do this while we are currently consolidating all our operations into the 425 Portland building. One big reason is that it is not a certainty-just a possibility- that we would sell the 425 Portland building as part of this process.

We decided to list the 425 Portland building because our belief-affirmed by our real estate advisors-is that offering all the property will make it more desirable to many potential buyers.

Certainly if we sold the 425 Portland building we would make sure we have plenty of time to find, prepare and move to another location.

We believe there are many positives in moving to a newer, state-of-the art building that would create a more comfortable and efficient work environment. Even if we do sell 425 Portland, the process will take some time to complete. Moreover, we may potentially enter into a lease with a buyer that would allow us to continue occupying our headquarters over the longer term. So it makes sense to consolidate all our operations into 425 Portland for now and assume business as usual. Plus, we will have a substantial savings by closing down the Freeman building.

So we will finish moving all of our Freeman Building employees into the 425 Portland building as planned. We have no idea when, or if, a buyer will come forward, but we will keep you informed as new developments occur."

More later as we get it. But for the moment I'll refrain from my usual, "I told you so."

Can we agree, once and for all, that Wolf Blitzer is a putz? And a stupendously overexposed one at that? Even accepting that every cable news "personality" is paid for their most cartoonish qualities and that none of them, even Keith Olbermann who I generally enjoy, hold up that well on regular nightly viewing, Blitzer is something else—something less. Does the guy understand the concepts of humor and irony?

(On Olbermann—Keith, baby, we know you're a damn smart and clever fellow. But try boiling your questions down to one or no more than two sentences. Those blank stares and long pauses you get from guys such as David Gregory and Michael Wolff? It's because they don't know what in the hell you just asked them.)

God knows every cable news "host" is overexposed, but CNN has the lights on Anderson Cooper and Blitzer so often, both are starting to look parboiled. Somebody needs a deeper bench. It'd be different if either gentlemen were uniquely gifted in some way—a deeply-versed student of foreign affairs, a fluid and gracious moderator, a uniquely curious intellect—but  neither ever seems capable of pursuing anything but the most thuddingly obvious line of questioning and, in Blitzer's case, playing the clumsiest of gotcha games. In front of a big Hollywood crowd last night, a gang that knows a few things about playing your audience, timing, and tone, it was not surprising that the biggest reaction was the loud booing Blitzer got for trying to get Hillary to cop to being "naive" about her Iraq War resolution vote. Smooth move, dude.

Last night's well-behaved love fest between Obama and Clinton—(Is this that third phase of the classic Hollywood romance? You know, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back?)—undoubtably drew a large audience, one that had to have CNN smacking its lips in anticipation of boffo ratings. But really, was it necessary to pepper the screen with all those cutaways of Stevie Wonder, Steven Spielberg, Rob Reiner, and George Costanza? I mean, why not a remote of Britney Spears from her hospital bed?

Somewhere, some Democratic strategist was groaning about how this was playing with the "What's the Matter with Kansas?" crowd who already thinks Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie dictate policy to the Democratic National Committee. It was Hollywood, we get it. Tickets were reportedly going for $1,000 a pop—proceeds to some homeless shelter, I'd like to hear. Could it ever be possible for CNN not to overplay the celebrity card?

We all know the answer to that question. Cable news can't resist any grab for the glamour of a movie star in the audience any more than it can modulate its frenzied hyperbole over what rational adults regard as nothing more than garden variety campaigning. Like last week. What I saw was nothing much at all like the "bruising," "bitter," "nasty," "warfare" that the cable kids would have us believe had broken out between the Clinton and Obama camps. To listen to Blitzer in his nightly Situation Room (the image of Wolf Blitzer guiding crisis strategy from an undisclosed location is laughable), last week's "out of control" Bill Clinton-ignited apocalypse was second only to the Russians opening up on the Germans from the Seelow Heights. Does this guy remember Lee Atwater?

Confronted with cable news' aggressive-to-hyperbolic marketing of these "themes of the day" (whatever it takes to goose that night's show and hold the eyeballs), I always see an irony. Blitzer and Cooper and Chris Matthews and Olbermann over at MSNBC are supposedly pandering to an obsessional interest in politics on the part of their junkie viewers. Yet at the same time, they cover this stuff with such farcically hyped and overreaching "analysis," they undermine their own credibility as "learned" and "experienced" in the ways of the political game.

Finally, I thought Obama—who, let's face it, has now fully acquired the ineffable quality of "A Cool Guy," something that millions aspire to and can't be faked—soft-pedaled what could have been a straight and fair shot at the fringe of the movie industry when he slipped into inoffensive gobbledygook on the topic of Hollywood's responsibility to the broader culture. He did make brief reference to slasher movies. But he could/should have been far more pointed (those credulous Kansans would have liked to hear it). The celebrities in the Kodak Theater are hardly the problem, and the real sleaze merchants most likely weren't watching. The guys cranking out Saw 12 ... this time with real decapitations! don't hang out much with the likes of Spielberg and Reiner and Leonardo DiCaprio. Taking a specific whack at the bona fide "culture predators" would have been a shrewd and timely thing to do.

Of course, if he did, Wolf Blitzer would come back with something insightful such as, "So you're saying you're in favor of censorship?"