"Heavens, I spend most of my radio life trying to expose the underexposed - academics, thinktankers, journalists, etc., who get little attention from any broadcast media. Take a look at the guestlist at <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html> and tell me if it displays a weakness for stars with extravagant hair. This is just the sort of purism that makes the American left (oh, right, Carrol Cox says that doesn't exist) so alienating and marginal. The hell with that."
I agree. It's early in the morning, so it's going to be hard for me to find the rights words, but there's this blinkered political mode that goes on in the U.S., which seems to make it literally impossible for the left and the right to hear each other. There is something, somehow unenlightening about turning on a radio station and always hearing people saying the same thing -- even if it's something I agree with. There's this drab, pious, solipsism which undermines the whole foundation of democracy and public discourse.
People also miss the fact that putting a questionable public figure on a "left" radio show is a way to unmask pretentions and to expose that figure. The radio show is, after all, a dialogue.
I'm going to stop here cause I'm feeling decidedly thick this morning.
Joanna