The Ear October 6 Cheyenne Wells, Kansas
“You wouldn’t ask the local dealer to let you test drive one of his cars for 10 years. He’d know you might go somewhere else. That’s the problem with living together. You can stray”
My radio scanner bar picks up a Christian station about one of every three clicks
It’s my fault. I didn’t plan my books on tape. At the last minute, I grabbed 3 Cd’s Brenden had left from school assignments:”The Scarlet Letter, Slaughter House Five, In Cold Blood.” The first two remind that great thematic writing remains great in print or voice. Capote, after the book and movie, is way too wordy. I keep flicking ahead or going to radio. After 4,000 miles, I’ve developed a radio acronym, It is:
CCCPT–That’s Christian, Country, Classic Rock, Public (NPR) and Talk.
I also have CD’s –worn enough to seriously skip–and my IPhone–which doesn’t play through the Subaru radio because the Japanese didn’t put in a digital player jack as late as ‘06. Detroit beat them on that.
Christian radio often doesn’t sound religious. It’s soft sell like those mega churches. There’s Christian rock, county and even rap. It’s only when the rapper starts talking about Him and getting Saved that you know what’s up. There are national Christian broadcasters like James Dobbins and Gary Bauer but also lots of no name regional preachers. There is Catholic radio too. In Northern Wisconsin and North Dakota they broadcast a Mass everyday–maybe aimed at shut-ins, I don’t know. It’s part of a pro life agenda. Karl Rove, originally from Oklahoma, enlisted Christian radio when Bush beat Kerry in ‘04. The secular media never saw it coming. Sneak attac
Country is mainly the phlegmic Nashville charts stuff but there are local stations spinning old time classics. You’ll hear Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, the Oak Ridge Boys and some early blues bands. The canned stuff wears like crotch rot. The classics are refreshing and once in a while an independent station will gin up some local talent– less polished but authentic. That happened mainly in the Dakotas. Ditto for Rock up there. Little rap, often back to the 50’s classic rock. Good stuff for the white hairs ? places. I have white hair.
Public radio is well—public radio. Get past the cloying delivery and you quickly learn it’s more essential for news than anything else out there. Sometimes a local public station will cut short the national NPR feeds, which are as repetitive as Christian radio–and do a local talk session or surprise you with old time radio dramas like CBS Radio Mystery Theater. I’ve left the car radio on at the camp site to hear end — radio under under the stars like they did out here before TV.
Talk radio is mainly right wing radio and Rush dominates for 3 hours. It’s unfashionable to like Rush, but he’s a pro with an ego to match– funny and effortless with flawless timing, delivery, cadence, timber–whatever makes a broadcaster hold an audience is what he knows. Hannity who follows is a preachy bore. So if you’re trapped in a car or a nursing home Rush is your best comic relief for the day- from swine flu edicts to Letterman’s couch, Obama’s failed mission to Copenhagen or his lining up the docs in white coats on the White House lawn. Fish in a barrel. Win a couple, and Obama changes the equation. Rush’s knows policy and trillion dollars deficits sends his audience back to sleep.
Liberals aren’t allowed to laugh. So what amounts to center or center left talk radio is mainly NPR–ha ha– with an occasional local college radio station doing interesting and provocative local stuff such as a debate on legalizing pot. It’s a reminder that God put High Points are in rural places. Rural is my radio.
