How To Talk Radio

Joe Beamer is a young man who wields a degree of political power in Buffalo that is disproportionate to his knowledge and ability. Last Thursday, he allowed our public airwaves to be polluted by disgusting and abhorrent pro-Putinist propaganda, and he let it on without contemporaneous challenge or cross-examination. It was a monologue of disinformation.

Beamer did critique it some minutes later, but that is why the phrase “too little, too late” exists in that syntax.

If you have any doubts about why #WNY has a growing #GQP problem, check out this disgusting snippet of the disinformation @ThejoeBeamer and @WBEN allowed to fill the afternoon drive airwaves in #WNY. pic.twitter.com/pKd8eJQu3n

— WNYmedia Network (@wnymedia) March 24, 2022

Let’s be honest: WBEN ceased to be “news” radio a long time ago. It is now an empty shell that barely competes with your Spotify playlist or favorite podcast. WBEN used to be the local home of Rush Limbaugh. Remember him? He was the biggest thing on right-wing talk radio from 1988 until his death, yet he is remembered for nothing. All that hate and bile brought him riches and an empty void of a legacy.

Now, talk radio is made up of Limbaugh clones, none of whom have the smarts or talent to do what he did. It’s all the same dumb tropes and talking points that you now get on Facebook. Calling women “femi-nazis” only gets you so far, especially when you have real-life contemporary nazis threatening the western liberal small-d democratic order.

I don’t listen to WBEN. I don’t need some stranger telling me what to think about things. I don’t need “Charlene from Lancaster” giving her deranged opinion about Vladimir Putin any more than I need “Rambo Jim’s” take on anything. I can make up my own mind by consuming the news from various sources. I don’t watch cable news talk for the same reasons. It is boring.

Last week, however, “Charlene” called up WBEN during Beamer’s time hosting and spewed a vicious, untrue stream of pro-Putin propaganda, which she likely picked up on local Q-Anon bulletin boards or Facebook. To call it unhinged would be a gross understatement. It was sheer insanity, delivered with a self-assured ignorance that is the hallmark of contemporary talk radio and Facebook political discourse. Putin is getting the job done in Ukraine, she said.

Why is it that so many people in western New York in particular are so deeply and shamelessly radicalized on the right? The common denominator is WBEN. Caputo, DiPietro, Mychajliw, Paladino, Aldinger, Dinero, Thompson, the risible “Financial Guys” – just to name a few – all of them share a nexus with WBEN. It is where right-wing ideology goes to grow an audience, to spread propaganda, and to seek legitimacy. I mean, the radio wouldn’t let lies on the air, would it?!

It starts with Grand Island tolls, morphs during the Obama years into the “tea party”, Bauerle declares that Obama is worse than al Qaeda. They go through the Koch-funded “Americans for Prosperity,” then Trumpism, the alt-right, “Groypers“, and anti-mask/anti-vaxxers. It is a straight line that has done so much and worked so lazily to poison our society and political discourse. It has helped to transform the conservative movement writ-large, and the Republican Party, into a local branch of United Russia.

They want to be ruled by an anti-woke dictator. They like Putin because Putin is anti-woke. Putin does not think “black lives matter.” Putin doesn’t “say gay”. Putin hates trans people and gays and lesbians and queer people, too. Like they, Putin has no real use for (((George Soros))) or the (((globalists))). Putin only cancels the libs who dissent from his party line. They like that Putin literally eliminates opponents when he doesn’t put on a show trial and sends them to Siberia. Trump and Putin got along. Trump wishes he could do to critics what Putin does.

This is why Q-addled right-wing talk radio callers praise war crimes and call their victims Nazis – because Putin is right, in two senses of that word. But if you’re a young talk radio host bringing up Ukraine as a topic, you should have enough of a grasp of the subject to cross-examine callers. It’s supposed to be a dialogue, not a soliloquy.

Non-sports talk radio is the gateway to right-wing authoritarianism, and this has been a gradual process over the course of the last 50 years. “Charlene” is a symptom. WBEN is the opiate.