Last updated on January 3, 2023
Little later than I wanted, but still a good scoop.
The LA Press Club has some pretty good speakers, but I was looking forward to the one on talk radio for weeks, and it didn’t disappoint!
KFI’s John Kobylt, half of the John and Ken show, Talkers magazine publisher Michael Harrison and KPCC/LA Times journalist and radio host Patt Morrison will be among the participants of a high-powered panel discussing the state of talk radio in L.A. and the nation, presented by the Los Angeles Press Club, Thurs., Oct. 28, at the Steve Allen Theater.
According to Talkers magazine publisher Michael Harrison, who coined the term “talk media” and defined it years ago in preparation for this new era, “Talk media is collectively the most accurate bellwether of American public opinion in the mass media today.”
Radio veteran Bill Moran will moderate by tossing such queries as “What is the impact of Talk Radio on the mid-term elections?” and “Is a strong news department relevant or even necessary to the content of Talk Radio?” And there are many other probing questions he will be challenging participants to answer. Two of those being put on the firing line include top talk show program directors Robin Bertolucci of Clear Channel and KABC’s Jack Silver.
I happened to sit next to Bill Moran at another event and knew he would be a good moderator. He told a couple of us beforehand that he was going to ask John Kobylt why John and Ken had such a strange position on Prop 23 (set up by oil
companies to squash AB 32, our very strong anti-pollution act, which hasn’t even started yet). John and Ken have been ranting for weeks that it will cost everyone their job, and no one believes in Global Warming anyway. (Right.) Bill did ask John about this, and he went right into his spiel against global warming! (Although I agree with him about fluorescent bulbs are ugly, don’t fit anywhere, and have terrible light. Hate.)
Also, before it started, I talked with Patt Morrison of NPR for a couple of minutes about her dog – told her I had been following rescue groups on Facebook. Then she said she had to leave to go change her hat, because she had a better one in the car. (She is known as the hat lady everywhere. She writes a column for the LA Times, and has a hat in that pic, too.) I wasn’t sure if she was kidding, but she returned wearing a different hat!!!
John Kobylt came late; I was so excited I got his autograph! He brought his wife and kid, too, so maybe he thought it would be fun for them – I hope so. Not that it toned him down any. Anyway, it turned out that he, another fellow, me, his wife, someone else, all from PA/NJ area – kind of funny. I told him my editor at CalWatchdog, Steve Greenhut, was a guest host on KFI on Superbowl, and he laughed. (Steve was great!)
To get back to Meg: John & Ken interviewed her for half an hour on August 5, and kept playing the interview again the next few days.
The SF Chron describes it:
I heard part of it, but it made me uncomfortable – I would hate to be on the spot like that (although they interviewed me over a year ago about my Mexico cartoon and couldn’t have been sweeter!). But it turns out all of it was
on purpose to make her feel terrible: John said there were no breaks or commercials, so she wouldn’t have any place to cool down or ask anyone anything or compose herself. As he put it, there was no corner for her. They were surrounded by cameras and hot lights, and questions that didn’t stop – he said her face got very red. They also interrupted her the whole time.
Someone else on the panel said it was like they shanghaied her. He himself said she shouldn’t have agreed to come on, and that Jerry Brown had come on many times in the past, but wouldn’t come on before the election, and that was wise of him. *John also said JB is crazy!
As I said, they played the interview several more times that week, so everyone could hear how she stumbled, etc. A couple of other people on the panel said they thought this will be what makes her lose. I don’t know, the poll has been falling mostly this month, 2 months after their interview. If it’s the maid’s fault, I hope they sue her. What a low-class human being she is.
A couple other interesting tidbits: Michael Harrison said that talk radio became right and rabid in 1987, when they no longer enforced the Fairness Doctrine: to interview each side the same amount of time. I didn’t know that. And John said that their biggest audience isn’t in LA, it’s Orange County, and places like Riverside County, where they come out to meet them in tens of thousands! I always thought there were more people like me here in LA – my friend Bruce listens to them all the time, even more than I do. But I’m not like “those people” in Riverside, really I’m not! And finally, at different times during the evening, John described himself and Ken as either/or populist and libertarian.
Your choice.
Cartoon caption: Cartoon is 2 separate parts. One is a woman doing a tree pose, a yoga position. The other half is Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown duking it out, called Political Posturing. Bam! Pow!
Yeah, been doing a little yoga lately. I had fun drawing Meg and Jerry doing the dance of hate – boxing, about to wrestle. I have never understood wrestling – it’s so mean, and so INTIMATE, all up in someone else’s space! Boxing, too. Who wants to touch someone else’s face, unless you love them? But when it’s just the two of you, I guess…
Gocomics (Sorry, no link now. Uclick Gocomics threw away 2 years of my cartoons on Slate, Gocomics and Yahoo News when they kicked me out.) has…9 comments on this cartoon. Not about yoga, no.
And speaking of Halloween, here’s the one I did last year for Slate (no link now), which, oddly enough, still works today!
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