But this thread is more about masty slams at Rush than about radio itself.
My first reaction was to want to write a response in bold, all-caps and underlined.... but that is what we are talking about... conversation without screaming and all-caps and name calling.
Here is my reaction to what you just wrote, and I say this as carefully and graciously as I can... but it seems to me that here is the "situation packaged up with foil wrapping paper and a ribbon on it."
The thread, as you have put it, is
about nasty slams at Rush rather than radio itself. Point well taken, but since Rush is the MASTER of putting forward nasty slams, one can assume that there will be much conversation in which people want to respond nasty slams about Rush.
But that doesn't get at what you wrote. Does all of this give us some kind of license, some kind of free pass to make nasty slams about radio?
If radio operated in the mode of a public utility (which isn't a totally off-base descriptions of what radio was 50 or 60 years ago, then we would probably be off base to compase hasty slams about radio... we would be off base to always talk about Rush and never talk about radio itself). But radio today has a lot of freedom that it did not always enjoy. (Not necessarily freedom as in reduced government regulation... but freedom as in the public will tolerate things they would not tolerate in the past.
The radio no longer has a face, a persona... Radio follows the dollar and you can create some quick controversy by starting a conversation about regulation of radio, etc. If radio has become just this trolley, this street car, the subway line that anybody gets on if they have the price of the ticket...
what is there to discuss if we just want to discuss radio itself. It's like the air we wade around in all day. What's to discuss. Breathe it or don't breathe it. Take your choice. What do we discuss in that area? We talk about the pollen count. We talk about the humidity level. We talk about the crap floating around that will turn into acid rain during the next thunderstorm.
We don't talk about radio. We just talk about the crap that is floating around in there. Rush is our acid rain so we discuss whether he is corrosive or not. Some days he is like the spring pollen so you either go out and take Rush in and get the drippy nose, or you stay home with the special A/C filter.
