[AGL] Re: Verita Vampirus #3: Marc Maron maybe, but not Mike Malloy!

[Frances Morey]

Oh, Mark,
  Seer of all things radio, I love your wit. You are the Mark Morford of the airwaves is style and substance. Thanks for sharing--keep on composin'. If Mike Malloy goes I'll have no reason at all to tune in to AiAm. The breathless braying of the ads alone were enough to cause me to prefer silence to broadcast.
  Best,
  Frances Morey

Mark Tucker <progdawg at hotmail.com> wrote:
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VERITAS VAMPIRUS
News from the Undead
One Critic’s Journal of Fact & Opinion

Number Three: July 15, 2006
by Mark S. Tucker
“Have pen, will poison.”
progdawg at hotmail.com

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Marc Maron’s a Comic Genius, so...Fire ‘Im!
Air America and the Slouch to the Center
by Mark S. Tucker

INTRO

Comedy is an art much enjoyed but little appreciated. Basically, America’s 
in a Three Stooges / Keystone Cops mode and has been for a long long time. 
Grossly obvious pratfall slapstick is our meat and potatoes. Turn on the 
telly and try to prove me wrong. Go ahead, *try*. I like the Stooges and the 
Keystoners but, more appropriately, I apotheosize Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, 
Bill Hicks, and the gents who shook society until its brains fell out. Then 
I turn to Monty Python, the Goon Show, P.G. Wodehouse, and Brit highbrow 
guffaws for even more intelligent mindplay.

Comedy is the result of a hell of a lot more thought and refinement than 
most of us ever stop to ponder. As someone who used to devour stand-up on TV 
and at the local comedy club, I was able to watch comedians do the same bits 
over and over, appreciating the variations in delivery, the ongoing tune-ups 
of presentation, the brilliant timing and delivery, and just about 
everything a person listens to good music for. Yep, comedy takes the same 
attention to detail and inflection as a song. It begins with unusual 
perception, gains flesh in maverick thinking, and undergoes craftsmanship, 
just as any other art. Those who stand out in their talent deserve to do so: 
a lot of sweat went into the repertoire.

Daily semi-impromptu radio comedy, though, is the newest beast in the 
menagerie. It evolved from the Old School, undergoing a radical 
transformation with guys like Stan Freberg, then led to wiseacres like the 
Firesign Theater. The whole idea of transforming vaudeville antecedents to 
Swiftian satire and Biercian commentary came into focus. The Firesigners, in 
fact, had a weekly radio spot, *Dear Friends*, over and above their vinyl 
output in the 70s, often more topical, immediate. Then, in the 80s, came the 
concept of “drive time”.

THE MODERN DAY

As corporations began to strangle the music world, gaffing itself in 
grotesquely monopolistic behaviors, music radio began to suffer. DJs were 
going the route of the dodo and people weren’t happy with 
computer-programmed schedules segmented by canned voice-overs. What cropped 
up in response was unexpected: personalities doing bits well beyond the 
usual between-platters conversation. In Los Angeles, two particularly 
brilliant duos came to light: London & Engleman and Mark & Brian. The former 
was an acidic pair of savagely parodic writers who took on everything in 
sight: conservatism, liberalism, radio shows, TV shows, cultural issues, 
themselves, and, well, anything at all, managing to deliver stunningly 
hilarious material non-stop. That was the key: *non-stop*. The new breed of 
host had to be on top of its game 24 - 7 - 365.

Mark & Brian may be the most successful such team in radio history, though 
they don’t approach Howard Stern in pure revenues...but then, Stern isn’t 
funny, just an entertaining jackass and a damned savvy one. Brian Phelps, 
the epicenter of the M&B team, is a comic genius and little lauded for it 
critically, above his success and the pleasure it brings millions. That’s 
not surprising: again, few understand what composes Art, the intense labor 
and years-acquired finesse. Yet, guys like Phelps pull it off with daunting 
precision day after day after day after year after year.

Then there’s radio political humor. MUCH harder. The focus is narrow and 
requires a hellish backlog of data, constantly updated. Many hosts have 
historically tried their hand, succeeding to varying degree. Certainly, Phil 
Hendry attempted it and failed miserably but Stephanie Miller was much 
earlier the pick of the lot. Unfortunately, she experienced a seemingly 
extended nervous breakdown while jocking at KFI and was yanked. Back now, 
she’s better than ever and not alone, not by a long shot. Many are 
constantly shaping their hand at it and one guy stands way above all others, 
Miller included: Marc Maron.

MARC MARON: THE NEW HIGH

He commenced his next-most-recent incarnation in Air America’s *Morning 
Sedition*, with Mark Reilly (whose new show is borrrring) as straight man. 
In too-short order, though, Maron was mysteriously shitcanned. The station 
exec who is always negatively mentioned on the devious end of things, Danny 
Goldberg, was somehow implicated. A letter writing campaign eventuated (I 
tossed in two cents during my AirAm series in OpEdNews) and Maron was 
suddenly back on, with a new show and co-host, top drawer comedy writer Jim 
Earle. The two are perfect dynamite and represent the coalescing of a number 
of elder and modern duo approaches: emo boys, playing the dozens, guilt 
trippin’, backstabbing, dogpiling, etc.

Maron is thoroughly uncompromising in his approach, unambiguously and 
fervently anti-NeoCon, prolixly unafraid to let everyone and his mother know 
about it. This is what makes the station’s controllers so damn nervous: the 
wild card, the iconoclast, the individual. Maron & Earle have created a 
whole slew of uncanny characters to carry their conceptualizing, some of the 
best in radio. One in particular, “Laughton Smalls”, is a glib, 
cliche-spouting, Christer nimrod who embodies *everything* wrong with 
conservatism, Christianity, and the Right. It’s unclear who portrays the 
character but the delivery is riveting, photographically accurate, gutbucket 
hilarious, and witheringly dead-on. We all know a Laughton Smalls, and his 
true-believer mentality is disturbing even at the best of times.

Another stroke of genius is the importation of a comedienne (Maria Bamford, 
if I’m guessing correctly) who appears intermittantly and goes by the name 
of Svetlana Somethingrussianlyunpronounceable (whatever it is, it has 17 
syllables), a transplanted Hollywood prostitute who reviews movies in a 
thick accent, with devastating gibes both political and blue on whatever 
comes to mind. She’s stunning in character and too-knowingly sexy, an 
erudite wordly whore with a wearied cynical heart of frosty gold, 
verisimilitude that laughs at itself.

Add to that the pontificating Cardinal Milfington, a local Monsignor 
Boozehound gone semi-secular; Marc The Shark, a nail-spitting Rightie music 
DJ broadcasting from Radio Halliburton, a Marine D.I. type Maron turns into 
in the face of overwhelming conservo agitprop; Mort Mortenson, Jim Earle’s 
alter-ego chokingly reading riffs on peculiar cases amongst the recently 
departed; and whatever else strikes their demented fancy, and you have a 
boiling cauldron of sheer creativity.

TROUBLE IN RIVER CITY

Maron and Earle represent the current pinnacle of political humor and 
post-drivetime format, constantly fresh and ingenious. They also have 
high-profile guests (Greg Palast, etc.) who are given not just the usual pat 
questions but some quite edgy ones as well, even a neurotic inquiry or two, 
perhaps a few bizarre warps, whatever the flying blue blazes strikes the 
pair, making for interludes no one can guess at beforehand.

In other words, Maron’s just too prescient, too unpredictable, and too free. 
That’s dangerous, especially in a radio station whose hosts inveigh against 
corporatism and then, when the commercial slots come up, shill for same, 
encouraging people to incorporate...because, hey!, *they’re* incorporated 
too - ta-da!!! And, uh, what about Air America’s distinctly Center-Right 
news slots? Not quite what’s found in Limbaugh’s stew but it sure as fuck 
ain’t progressive either, Bertram.

Listen, o wary scions of the True Left, as hosts hop and skip around such 
things as Air America’s bungling management, the grotesque perpetual 
screw-ups of the affiliates (in L.A., KTLK is grimly laughable), the 
innumerable bizarre deals cut (friggin’ women’s basketball pre-empting Randi 
Rhodes and the Majority Report - what the fresh hell?), commercially 
unacceptable nonsense (advertising f’Chrissakes GLENN BECK?!?!?!), and God 
only knows what dozen other irritations. Does anyone fool themselves that 
the invisible hand, management, isn’t aware of all this, guiding it? You, 
dear reader, can throw in with Ed Schultz and his old school “anything for a 
buck” pitch, but I want progression, not to sleep with the enemy.

Maron’s ousting is obvious: he’s Far Left and that’s just not acceptable in 
the continually Center-gravitating Air America. Probably, too, he refuses to 
kiss management’s ass...and you know management! Kings. Nabobs. Gods. 
Worship or die. So, let’s not fool ourselves that Maron’s getting “low 
ratings” or any other such nonsense. He’s dangerous to the true intent of 
Err America and must be shown the door. “Bye-bye, Marc, don’t let the knob 
insert itself on the way out! Love ya, babes! Kiss kiss!”

WELCOME TO MEDIOCRITY

In L.A., the slowly mounting purge has been rather obvious. Johnny Wendell, 
who talks about little but Johnny Wendell, has been inserted to lo-ball the 
pay scale on the weekends and imitate Far Left rhetoric...sans substance. 
His history’s bizarre, chiefly of chameleonry to whomever will cut a check. 
Mario Soliz Marich [sp] was planted much more recently, to hold the Left to 
a pro-illegal immigration position, and the rest of the weekend’s basically 
a welter of mostly second-rate talent (except for Kennedy Jr. & Papantonio, 
Firpo Carr, Peter Greenberg).

Air America’s embrasure of the Center and of the Right is nowhere more 
evident than in their new sloganeering and tone: “Corporately owned, 
independently operated!”...as though that’s something to be proud of. I 
never thought I’d see the day when a reputedly Left forum, inferredly a 
*Far* Left forum, would spout such bull-mezz. Lefties are supposed to be a 
bit more intelligent than Righties, no? Well then, in that ‘’corporate / 
independent” equation, who holds the whiphand?

Need I say more?

Relax, America, you’ve had your liberal 15 minutes. Now it’s time to get 
back to making the boss obscenely wealthy. By the way, we’re slashing your 
pay, cutting your benefits, and liquidating all pensions into the Management 
Golden Parachute Fund. Get cracking or we’ll offshore the entire shebang, ya 
bastids.

Oh, and Maron’s been only the most obvious to be 86’ed. Who d’ya s’pose will 
be next? My bet’s on Mike Malloy, another scathingly uncompromising 
non-Centrist Leftie and someone equally unlikely to snuffle up management’s 
sphincter. Yep, all things considered, he’s Public Enemy #2...just watch and 
see.

Call me Nostramarcus.

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NEXT: A lengthy review of Mark Crispin Miller’s *Fooled Again*.

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VERITAS VAMPIRUS #3 is copyright 2006 by Mark S. Tucker but permission is 
hereby granted for reproduction in any format to any degree so long as the 
title (VERITAS VAMPIRUS), author (Mark S. Tucker), e-address 
(progdawg at hotmail.com) and issue date are quoted in close proximity to the 
article. People are encouraged to distribute V.V. as widely as they desire, 
except to OpEdNews.com, which is forbidden the above in full.

VERITAS VAMPIRUS is not available on any site, but solely as text message 
e-mail.

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