Monday, August 15, 2005

Err America

I spent a lot of time on the road this weekend, so when not listening to my Sharansky audio CD I was flipping through numerous radio stations. Among other things I caught part of the Air America network, which has been in the news lately. Some woman, whose name I can't remember was on complaining about the economy. She played a clip from Bush, who although nominally is on vacation, met with his Council of Economic Advisors and made a statement that unemployment is at 5%, lower than the average for the 70s, 80's or 90's, that the economy continues to grow at a healthy rate, and that we added over 200,000 new jobs last month. Of course all of this is completely true, so having no real factual argument the radio host called upon her listeners as her own "Council of Economic Advisors" to call the show and complain about how bad the economy was. Of course she was immediately innundated with callers whining about how they were poor and unemployed and life generally sucked and it was all George W. Bush's fault. One generally has to wonder, of course, about the economic viability of a radio network, whose base demographic is a bunch of people who have nothing better to do than call up a radio station, on an August Sunday afternoon, and bitch about how miserable their life is. No wonder they have to steal money from children's charities.