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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
There are not a lot of people like you doing this right now. Why do you think that is?
Because there is an aspect to it that's sort of ugly. You have to be willing to get the day-by-day dish from NewsMax.com, you have to be willing to see things like the complaint they ran against me. Those kind of techniques. Which I don't use. I won't sink to that level, but what's great about it is when you expose them, it's jujitsu. You just use what they do against them. And when you do that, they get mad. They go, "How dare you read what I said on Nexis!" O'Reilly keeps saying I'm a smear artist, but all I do is just say what they said. They think somehow it's unfair that they're held accountable for what they said, I guess. I don't know. They're awful people. I'm not talking about conservatives, I'm talking about people who do this kind of distortion. There are a lot of conservatives I like, but they don't indulge in what the guys I write about do.
Let's talk a little bit about the "Savin' It" letter you sent to Ashcroft and the 26 other officials. Some journalists have accused you of lying, that by sending the letter you've lied in the same way as the people you write about.
I don't know why, but people have been trying to put this in the same category as the other kinds of lies. No one who reads the book thinks I'm writing a book called "Savin' It." I think even in the context of receiving it it's clear what it is, which is a prank to these 27 people, but it's not like announcing to the public that I won something I didn't win, or that I'm going to fund education for people that I'm not going to fund, or that the vast majority of my tax cuts are going to the bottom, or that I was vigilant before 9/11, or that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Niger. Those are really lies; this is a totally different thing. It's a chapter in a satirical book which makes a satirical point. But it's something the media can bring up, and I think it's their of way of going like, "We're going to give a fair and balanced news report."
What was it like having to issue an apology for it?
Oh, I didn't mind. I shouldn't have written on Shorenstein stationery. I did get one letter thanking me for the apology, from Cardinal Egan. From the original letter I got four letters wishing me good luck with "Savin' It," but that their bosses were too busy to give their abstinence stories.
In your book you say that there's really not a liberal bias in the media, and not even necessarily a conservative bias, but more of a global profit-motive bias, which is why news is skewed towards the sensational, violence and sex. Is there any sex or violence scandal I should know about you before I take this to my editor?
I think when I was intoxicated and deranged I went on a chain saw massacre, but ... oh, man, I shouldn't have told you that. That was stupid. If I wasn't so drunk now I probably wouldn't have told you. But I think the statute of limitations has run out on that.
Hey, whatever happened with that liberal radio show idea that Sheldon Drobny wanted you to do?
It's in the works. What they're trying to do is put together a network, and I would fit into that three hours a day. This is a very ambitious undertaking and they're progressing. I'm not at liberty to disclose everything that they're doing, but there's been progress, and chances are growing that this will happen and I'll be a part of it.
The problem is, with radio these days, if it's talk radio it's conservative talk radio. You can't put me on after Rush Limbaugh because it's like putting classic rock after hip-hop or something.
Are you still interested in being the liberal alternative to Rush Limbaugh?
Well, I don't know if I'd put it that way, but yeah.
It's interesting that the analogy you just used -- classic rock and hip-hop -- has you being the softer voice, in a sense.
Well, no, it's putting classic rock on after something that's incompatible. Me after Rush, I want to get the analogy straight.
OK, but conventional wisdom has it that liberals are too soft to do Limbaugh-style attack radio -- that the reason there are only conservative talk radio hosts is because only conservatives are capable of it. Do you think that's true? Where does that myth come from, if not?
I think there's the empirical evidence that talk radio is dominated by conservatives, so you could draw the conclusion that liberals can't do it. But I think you can do liberal talk radio, and this is something we should have started doing 10 years ago and we didn't. There have been a few fitful efforts by individuals to do things, that haven't succeeded for one reason or another, but I think you can do it. Liberals have a little bit of a different mindset, in which I think liberals by nature look for information and conservatives look for ammunition. NPR, for example, is just giving information, and NPR's very popular. But conservatives consider it to be liberal because they're not bloviating, they're actually giving information. So I like to think of our progressive network as sort of NPR with more entertainment and fewer reports on Appalachian quilts.
[Slips into an imitation of Garrison Keillor for "Prairie Home Companion"]:
"There's a man ... (short pause, cough) ... in Minnesota. Who is ... building a road across the state for no reason. Today on NPR we're going to be profiling him."
[Laughs.] We probably won't be doing a lot of those. Instead we'll be putting words, ideas, thoughts, sounds together -- very little physical shtick -- to make people laugh. Real facts, real statistics, truth. See Rush and Hannity and those guys, their value-added is lying. My value-added will be comedy.
What kind of role do you think satire like yours has in the national debate?
I think it may have a big role. The president's credibility is beginning to crack, and I think humor can always play a role in doing that, if it's truthful and persuasive. I think people listen because it's more fun to listen. It's a way of truth telling that goes down easy.
