Tuned in today just to see how WTKK was playing the suspension thing. Anyone who’d missed the developments last week would think that Jay is just on vacation. They still have hosts “filling in for” him, and they’re still running commercials that Jay recorded. Today’s host was Doug VB Goudie from the local Fox affiliate. I heard him talking about a proposal to allow retail stores to be open on Thanksgiving. Whoa, talk about your hot button topics ….
Jay Severin is still not dead
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Yesterday I heard his fill-in host say that Jay was taking a “vacation day” so I suspect he will be returning. If not, it would be no surprise if Faux news picks him up.
Today’s Boston Globe quotes his agent saying he expects Jay to be back.
I don’t think we’ll see Jay on Channel 25. Jay’s face is perfect for radio.
David,
Thank you for directing me to the correct site.
Anyways, from your comment here :
Today’s host was Doug VB Goudie from the local Fox affiliate. I heard him talking about a proposal to allow retail stores to be open on Thanksgiving. Whoa, talk about your hot button topics ….
It sounds like you miss Jay…..
No, Patrick. I don’t miss Jay. But I will admit that discussions about torture are more interesting than those about blue laws.
David,
Jay affords you the opportunity to engage in intellectual discourse concerning a variety of topics. From Jay’s integrity to his conservative view points, he entices you to engage him both through your phone calls and your website.
You can fly your dissent for him under any flag you like, but the fact remains the same, your life, at least partially, is enriched by the presence of Jay.
Jay being suspended and/or fired should not be an optimum result for you in this particular situation. The website alone must exist as some type of escape from the mundane nature of a 9-5.
As usual, thank you for allowing me to have a forum to voice my opinion, I also need an escape from my mundane 9-5.
Patrick:
You must be absolutely delusional if you think Severin allows you to engage in any kind
of discourse. He quickly cuts off people who challenge him or even bring up any facts
that contradict his point of view. He has a closed mind (and dare I say it, more damningly
a lazy mind, that is what accounts for his racism) and his listeners who fawn over him are
likewise intellectually lazy.
The reason why David has this web page is to provide a counter point to someone who
won’t have honest debate on the air and who garners nutjobs by claiming they are the
best and brightest.
Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. And I believe I am a conservative (who believes
in fiscal responsibility as the primary pillar of conservatism).
Duli,
While I respect your opinion (and also your right to make it, by the way,) I will politely point out that you perhaps misinterpreted my point.
Discourse is not so narrowly linear, as you seem to suggest. You vilify Jay for cutting callers off who disagree with him, (Which I urge you to read David’s “What Jay Severin thinks about the poor” page to read a transcript of a back and forth between David and Jay,) however discourse is not so pigeon-holed to one type of medium or venue. Jay’s viewpoints are conduits for thoughts beyond directly engaging him in a back and forth. His words are meant to engender responses like “I agree” or “I disagree” and heres why, and that thought process is what can be called the philosophical discourse. While you might not be able to directly speak to Jay about the topic, you can go home to your family and friends and pose similar questions and simply involve a confluence of opinions to foster new and innovative ways to analyze age-old topics.
You seem to suggest that Jay is not “worthy” of the discourse label, yet you post comments on a website that was simply generated to present the opposite opinion to Jay’s. This IS part of the discourse that Jay has created.
Patrick, do you really think Jay is engaging in “philosophical discourse?” The problem that Duli and I and others like us have with Jay is not that he espouses opinions contrary to ours. The problem is that he introduces demonstrably false information to support his points, plays rhetorical games to “win” arguments when neither facts nor logic are on his side, injects gratuitous and demeaning insults into the conversation (and then accuses liberals of “feeling” rather than “thinking”), and cuts off debate the instant he senses that he’s losing.
Do you deny he engages in those behaviors? Or do you think that such behaviors have a rightful place in legitimate political discourse?
David,
We differ slightly in our perception of how Jay operates, for example:
I happened to call in and get through to his show the second-to-last day that he was on the air. He asked what was on my mind, and I said that I had a question about political theory for him, but wanted to preface my question with a bit of history first. He allowed me to preface the question, give my history lesson, and make a point I know he does not agree with. He paused thoughtfully, and responded in a respectful and thought provoking manner. He never cut me off, or insulted me.
Your question at the end of your comment got me thinking a bit about the word “argument” in general. My sense of any argument is that it has, with in its very core, an impassioned nature. Politics in general is a very emotional topic. So I consider most arguments that get recapped for me by one party or another and usually the recap is very biased, and does not normally reflect the actual truth. So that gets me wondering, considering my viewpoint on how Severin operates, and your own, would it not be prudent to say that the truth is probably somewhere in between. Moreover, is it really fair to universalize Mr. Severin’s behavior as either “hateful” or “thought provoking?” I feel that all people, not just Jay, cannot be universalized into either category, there are always shades of both
Your question, also, I feel proves my point about Severin’s ability to generate discourse. Is your question not one of philosophical value? What truly has its place in the realm of a political discussion? Because of your bias against Jay, you were enticed to pose this question to me (rhetorical I know, but a question nonetheless) and it sparked a further discussion as to what the Platonic form of political conversation is.
In any case, the forum in which we communicate lends itself absolutely to my point.
Patrick, if Jay displayed a fraction of the thoughtfulness and courtesy that you do, I probably wouldn’t have such a problem with him. Then again, he probably wouldn’t have (or should I say, have had) so many listeners. The unfortunate truth, I’m afraid, is that most people don’t have the patience for nuanced arguments and complex dilemmas. They want something they can form an opinion about within 30 seconds, and they want to be able to defend their positions with humor, sarcasm, and moral indignation. At least that’s the impression I get from listening to the WTKK callers.
David,
First and foremost, thank you for your kind words. I have made this comment before, and I truly mean it, I do thank you for allowing me to voice my opinion on your blog, so thanks again.
While reading your post, I wondered aloud whether or not your characterization of “most people” is simply referring to the conservative radio crowd, the liberal radio crowd, or both. I would hope it was simply an assessment of people in general, and not slanted toward one ideology or another.
While I do agree that most people need ” humor, sarcasm, and moral indignation” to litter any political conversation, I would argue that this is the nature of the beast. Jay Severin is, first and foremost, an entertainer, in terms of his job. He only keeps his job if he continues appease the masses and placate their rigid sense of binary morality.
Why is this important? Well it implies that we cannot hold Jay to too high of a standard. If Jay, yourself and I were in a room and wanted to have a legitimate conversation about the American political system, I am inclined to believe it would sound slightly different then the circus he puts on everyday (I suppose I should put that in past tense, but I’ll still operate under the realm of wishful thinking.) Jay, like so many others, are slaves to the market. Jay gets paid a million dollars to through red meat at a crowd that does not think on the same level that he does. When a caller thanks him for taking his call, he immediately thanks them for his job, and hes not kidding, he is literally at their mercy.
Its comical at times actually. You can tell Jay is playing in a different league, and he will slip into a complex foreign policy argument, and then get roped back in by his producer. For example, one day he was speaking as to the validity of the American policy toward Israel. He was wondering whether or not Israel still qualifies as a “necessary ally.” Moreover, whether or not this relationship will ultimately pull the US into a world war. He took it to a higher level and wondered how you can qualify a necessary ally versus a traditional ally. Through out the conversation he was throwing around the world “existential.” My guess would be the vast majority of his listeners had no idea what he was talking about.
Sometimes you have to search through the dirty laundry to find a clean sock….
Patrick: When I said “most people,” I was imagining that the lack of intellectual curiosity and rigor displayed by the predominance of callers to Jay’s show extends to the majority of voting-age Americans, regardless of political persuasion. I don’t think it applies to all talk radio audiences, though. If you listen to any of the call-in shows on NPR I think you’ll find a much more enlightened set of callers.
I think you are absolutely right to ask what standards we should be using in assessing Jay’s performance. If he billed himself as an entertainer and peppered his remarks with comments like “but don’t take me too seriously, what the hell do I know,” I would feel no need to go on record to correct his mistakes. But while Jay acknowledges the fact that he tries to make his show entertaining, he certainly seems to take the points he makes very seriously, and so does his audience. I don’t object to having Jay Severin around as a comedian, but as a commentator/reporter/educator, he’s got to go. (And to be clear, when I say he’s got to go as a commentator, I don’t say that because I disagree with him on positions; I say that because he presses his point through deceitful means.)
David,
I think its important to illuminate bias whenever it can be clearly identified . In this case, your desire to put the NPR listeners above the WTKK listeners may be legitimate, but I sense that because NPR has more of a liberal slant than WTKK you might feel inclined to classify its listeners as better. You call NPR listeners more “enlightened,” but it would seem prudent to identify them in that way because you, yourself, are more liberal, and would view their opinions as enlightened because you agree with them.
I do agree to certain extent, I listen to some callers from WTKK and they are “rugged” to say the least. But I do not believe that NPR has the flexibility to extend itself far beyond the realm of political correctness. WTKK can flex its first amendment muscles a bit more.
In regards to Jay, and whether his an entertainer or a commentator:
Can he not be both? Are these two titles mutually exclusive? I do not believe them to be. In fact in order to be a successful media personality, you must find the balance between both of them. Jay is not giving a college-lecture tour, hes hosting a rush-hour radio SHOW. Its a song and dance, or as my personal favorite Machiavelli would put it, “bread and circuses.” The mob yearns for both, and Jay is simply providing for the latter. Jay’s arguments have subtlety to them, and while he is remarkably candid at times, there is a need to read between the lines.
Patrick, I believe that people on all sides of the political spectrum can be “enlightened.” I just have a hunch that if a team of 10 random NPR callers faced off against a team of 10 random WTKK callers in a quiz on history, political science, and current events, the NPR folks would decimate the “best and brightest.” I also think that NPR does a far better job of eliciting and respecting different points of view than WTKK (at least in Severin’s time slot).
As for entertainers and commentators. Sure, one can be both. I think Jon Stewart is both. The difference is that when Jon Stewart exaggerates or tells lies to get laughs, he’s pretty clear about it. When Jay Severin calls Obama a communist, he does so in what seems to be an earnest attempt to convince his audience that Obama really is a communist. And many in his audience seem to believe him. And that’s just wrong.