Hendrik Hertzberg for The New Yorker on the efforts of Anita and Sheldon Drobny to launch a liberal talk radio network:

The main obstacle, probably, is neither financial nor ideological but temperamental. Remember the old joke about politics being show business for ugly people? Well, right-wing radio is niche entertainment for the spiritually unattractive. It succeeds because a substantial segment of the right-wing rank and file enjoys listening, hour after hour, as smug, angry, disdainful middle-aged men spew raw contempt at reified enemies, named and unnamed. The radiocons seldom offer analysis or argument. To the chronically resentful, they offer the sadistic consolation of an endless sneer...

posted: 9:40:40 AM