Dodge Ram Trucks

As those of you who have read my blog know, I live in a small town outside Seattle. A long, long way outside of Seattle (almost as far from Seattle as one can be and still work there). If you have read my blog, you have a pretty good idea as to why I do not live in Seattle. But that is not the purpose of my post.

To get to my town, all roads are two-lane roads. The State Highway Department is going to widen it into a four-lane road (since my town is very nearly now a Seattle suburb). But in stages. They were going to make it a four lane road ten years ago, but the governor at the time took the money out of the budget to fund his socialist medicine proposal (which was eliminated thanks to Representative Mike Sherstad, the only Juanita graduate in our state legislature, indicating that Juanita graduates do great things).

Our road is so bad, that it made "Reader's Digest" worst roads of America list. That is because people keep dying on it. A former next door neighbor of mine, when I was a kid, died on this road - but that is because he was drunk from his birthday party and was going way too fast in his Porche. But he could have survived had the road been safer.

As such, this is one of the few roads where, oftentimes, the speed limit is actually too fast for the road. That is because you have a windy, very wet, crowded roadway, and any error will cause one to veer into the other lane and result in at least two deaths. When it is dry, it is safe to greatly exceed the speed limit, but when wet, or icy, or foggy, a different story. And, big critters, like deer, like to jump out onto the highway a lot. This will not kill you, but it will leave a big dent in your car, totalling it.

I use to not worry so much about this stuff. Then I got into insurance adjusting, and saw the horrors of bad driving. A few years of this job will make safe drivers out of almost anyone with a bit of sense.

There are a lot of people who realize that this is a hazardrous roadway, at least until they widen it. So they go a reasonable speed for the conditions.

However, some people do not like to go a reasonable speed. They are a. people in muscle cars, and b. people in pickup truck. While a lot of citizens in my town own pickup trucks, that is more due to a faux-rural ideal they are expressing, like "I wanna be a cowboy." However, cowboys do not buy pickup trucks that are way jacked up in the air. Just like the film writer of "Brokeback Mountain" mistinterpreted what is meant by cowboy (and no, I don't mean the sex scenes - I mean the fact that the men in that movie were really shepherds). To be a cowboy, you need to watch over cattle, and just because you wear a cowboy hat, drive a pickup, own a gun, listen to so-called "Country" music out of Nashville, and live out in the sticks does not qualify you to be one, no matter how much you fantacize about it.

Anyways, in my town, there are a lot of people who own pickup trucks that are jacked way into the sky. Their truck of choice is the Dodge Ram. And in my town, there are a lot of them.

Sometimes, they get really impatient. Even if you go the speed limit, they insist you go faster - even if conditions dictate against it. So they tailgate you.

Another thing they do - they put their brights on - all the time. The Washington State driving guide recommends you turn the high-beams off if there is traffic that is 250 feet away from you. Given my road is no longer a rural road - it has not been for about twenty years - it is now impractible to drive with your high beams on, because there is always traffic coming in the opposite direction. Not only is it impracticable, it is also very rude.

Yet, these people in these Dodge pickup trucks like to drive with their high-beams on all the time. Even if you are directly in front of them, at a stop light. Even if it is safe to go above the speed limit (they will still tailgate you). And not only that - they like to buy the brightest, most powerful lights, too. And they sometimes like to add a bunch of extra lights. When you are at a stop light, their lights are so powerful, it lights the whole inside of your car up - and bounces off of your windshield, creating a somewhat blinding effect.

Now, not only do they do this in Monroe. Once when I was coming into work in Seattle, I was being tailgated, by someone in a Dodge Ram Truck, who started flashing their high beams at me. Ever hear of Seattle traffic? It's pretty bad. And I come into work during normal working hours. In this case, you cannot go any faster, or get out of the way, because the cars in front will not let you. This guy was trying to get me out of the way even when I was stopped and had no where to go. And he was honking at me, too.

I have a theory as to why this is. Let me explain this to you. Get out a ruler. If you cannot find a full 12" ruler, that is ok, because you do not need one. In fact, if your ruler is less than half that, it is more than sufficient.

You can go up to the guy in the cab and measure the crotch. Actually, that is theoritical. No guy in their right mind is going to pull down his pants in broad day light. Well, maybe in Seattle proper that is not considered unacceptable behavior, but for the most part, this little experiment will yield little result.

And yes, even if all the men driving the Dodge Ram Trucks complied, that is what you would get - little results. Those men who like to drive big, souped up vehicles do so because they have small wee-wees. I'm not talking about the man who has a big pickup truck with a trailer behind it - or the man who has stuff constantly filling the bed of it his truck. I'm talking about the ones who drive big, gas guzzling pickups over any other vehicle for no apparent reason - for them, any vehicle will do, like for most people.

And not just any pickup. But for some reason, the Dodge Ram Pickup seems to be the official pickup of men with small dicks. Ever wonder why the theme of Dodge Pickups is "Heavy!"? That is because it is directed toward men who have fantasies of a woman reaching down into their crotch and exclaiming this word! Especially since such an expression is inaccurate and totally inappropriate.

I don't know why they choose the Dodge Ram over any other pickup - for example, those who drive Ford F350's or Chevy Silverado's do not seem to be (such) jackasses.

Maybe there should be a law that anyone who buys a Dodge Pickup truck needs to undergo a psychological assessment before given being given their license back. Actually, this seems like a good idea, but so many regulatory laws seem like a good idea because they appear to make a better society. The libertarians are right in that we cannot turn every prejudice (no matter how good) into law. We don't need more laws - we can merely idealize what society would be like with ways to sceen them out people like this. Unfortunately, we cannot throw every jerk in jail because they are a jerk.

I guess the moral of my story is - if you see a shiny new Dodge Ram Pickup, for your own safety, get out of the way, for behind you is a man very angry at society because of his miniature extremity.

The Book of Daniel

Recently, I heard that NBC will host a series called "The Book of Daniel." Yes, it involves religion. No, it is nothing that would find favor with God.

It is my understanding that it involves a corrupt priest, a lesbian sister, a drug dealing child, and other nefaroius characters. This is supposed to be funny.

And, some conservatives are naturally attacking it. Which garbage like this should be attacked. What will happen is that because of the notoriety, I predict it will have high ratings for the first two-three episodes, then ratings will fall, and if it lasts, it will barely go into the second season.

Why my prediction? I will note.

As I have noted in previous posts, the television world have become greatly fragmented. However, to the networks, they barely recognize this fragmentation. Hence, they have spent a lot of time in their own little network world, circa 1965-1970. However, their attitude toward morals and mores has been much, much more "progressive" than the rest of America. Yeech.

At one time, the sitcom was a successful innovation to keep America entertained. You could keep America laughing for 1/2 hour. Sure, there were other things - like a nightly movie, or Monday Night Football, or a news show, or a drama - during prime time, but the staple was by-and-large the sitcom.

Sitcoms are supposed to be funny,thru-and-thru, right? Well, many were not. They all had to teach some moral. So there had to be some crises that began 17 minutes into the show, and ended ten minutes later. Then there was time for a last laugh. I found this tiring and stupid. Which is why I found "Family Ties" especially annoying (yes, the hero of the show was a young Republican, but that did not make up for the fact that it wasn't really funny, and I was a leftist at that time, anyway).

I found sitcoms especially appealing that were humorous the entire time. Which is why I liked "Married...With Children" (which was a parody of "The Cosby Show"). Seinfeld was the same way. These shows lasted longer than most sitcoms.

When television began, it needed to find some way to get people to watch it during those prime hours, the family hours, 8-10 pm. At that time, there was still somewhat of a shortage of entertainment. Before WWII, not all families had radios - so could not bring radio comedies into the home. Right now, I am working on a history of my Grange (yes, some young people are members of fraternal orders!) Before the 1950's, there was a lot of entertainment at those meetings. And those meetings had high attendance, too. That was because those meetings were the only game in town. While that town probably did not have a theater at that time, if it did, it probably would have shown the same one movie over and over again, so something else needed to be done. I suspect that this was the case of many a small town, and rural district, across America.

Well, Hollywood is made of people who are entertainment specialists. And there are a lot of them. In fact, there probably has been a glut of these people since the end of WWI. When given the opportunity, especially the opportunity to bring entertaining features into the home every single night, it has plenty of talent waiting with baited breath to take this opportunity. And so it did. And people sucked it up, especially since it was free (after the initial investment of a TV set, and the cost of a little bit of electricity). To the detriment of civil society, too. In my review of the above-mentioned meeting records, the attendance did fall preciptiously as the television merged into peoples' homes. I have been told by members of other Granges that the TV did much to destroy meeting attendance. I can tell that is the case with my Grange, because the area around it had very little change during this decline.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, while the average television show was much, much more entertaining than the average community meeting, and could draw attendance from it, it's success was still due to the fact that there was still somewhat of a dearth of entertainment options. The community meeting's high attendance figures demonstrate that. However, when confronted with new entertainment options, how would it fare?

A friend of mine, who is a generation older than me, told me of what those days were like. He said that his father wanted to watch Laurance Welk, who is probably burning in hell by now (and in the lowest level described by Dante). He did not want to watch it. His father made him watch it. So couldn't he leave the room? Well, no, because there was nothing to do.

So the challenges came. The late 1970's-early 1980's was not only the beginning of the information revolution, but also, of the entertainment revolution. This saw the introduction of the video game consoles, personal computers, movies-by-demand, and an upshot of cable subscriptions. As a minor aside, bookstores got much larger, indicating more choice in reading material. TV's got cheaper, too, so you could have more than one in the house. The internet would come later, to more havoc. And, of course, there will probably be other forms of entertainment in the future. There was a challenge to the prime-time hours, which, are, the prime-time leisure hours. As families spent less time together, (and as the structure weakened) entertainment had to become more individualized.

And the networks? Like GM, they remained dinosaurs. They became inflexible to change. The sitcoms that once brought in hoards of viewers now looked antiquated, and even, un-entertaining, given that more and more options were available to people to spend their free time. Boredom is no longer really a problem, but rather, too little time to do what you want is.

In the late 1980's, Rupurt Murdoch presented the Fox Network to the American audience. His goal was to create a fourth network. Although the time had passed for it to occupy the prominent perch that the three other networks had, he succeeded somewhat, especially be grabbing some major league sports seasons. A hallmark of his network were shows that were "edgy." At the time, this was a fresh perspective, and it did draw new people from the old networks, with old, boring shows.

Thus, over time, people in Hollywood saw that putting shows featuring traditional American values on the air did not sell, so they thought - maybe by putting shows with our values on the air, we will succeed! At least, that is the only perspective they get in the West Hollywood bars they all hang out at.

Thus, we saw the liberalization of values on prime-time. However, while they could let Ellen out of the closet, by-and-large, the old three networks got the wrong answer.

First, the risque shows that succeeded were on Fox, then moved to cable. The outrageous "Married with Children" was overtaken with the outragous "The Simpsons" The outrageous "The Simpsons" was overtaken by the outrageous "Beavis and Butthead." The outrageous "Beavis and Butthead" was overtaken by the outrageous "Southpark." And there it shall remain. At least without paying for a "premium channel" that is even less regulated by the FCC.

Both "Married..." and "Beavis and Butthead" moved into the TV graveyard about a decade ago. "The Simpsons" is now viewed favorably by those factions of society that used to condemn it (after all, here is a family that eats dinner together every night! And Homer doesn't cheat on his wife (actually, could he?)). "Southpark" still trudges on, because it can grab a faction of society, youth, who still are willing to watch it.

Hence, the FCC limits have pretty much been pushed as to how much risk one can have on regulated TV. Today, such "edgy" shows are not going to attract those who would have the propensity to watch it, because such an audience has many options that are even more risque. And people who are interested in risque do not have the time to go to shows that are less risque - they will go to the real thing, such as can be found inexpensively on the internet, or by rental, or if they are willing to shell out the extra bucks, by pay TV. Or, they can pay for HBO, which can show the real stuff.

And of course, middle America, most of whom finds such shows like "The Book of Daniel" wierd or disgusting, isn't going to watch it, either.

It does not seem to register with the executives who run the networks that there are many, many other options besides their (formerly) boring shows or (currently) bizzare and degenerate shows. They seem to forget that they are not only competing against each other, but also against game consoles, personal computers, DVD's (and even VCR's!), basic cable, the pay channels, pay-per-view, the internet. I.e., a glut of entertainment options. Oh yea - a higher percentage of Americans are single today, too, and there is a proliferation of coffee shops for them to hang out at. And, I forgot to mention that Mexican immigrants have their own channels, like Univision, and they sure ain't going to watch this weird, disgusting stuff that is promoted on archaic networks (in a language in which many are not comfortable, anyway). Other immigrant groups probably have their own channels, too.

No, the television executives are still in the mindset they were in during the "golden age" of television. For these people, they catered to individuals who were almost one-generation removed from the time when any entertainment on hand was a big deal, and a play, from which all visual entertainment mediums evolved, any play, was found to be a highly enjoyable experience. So even in that era, they could produce anything (albeit with highly trained entertainment specialists) and it would still sell, because there were still not a lot of options available for one to spend their free time, or at least considerably less today.

Well, to survive, they need to break out of that mindset. And for once, think outside the box!

I have noted in earlier posts that for the networks to survive, they will need to stick with their specialties, one of which is sitcoms, and dramas. So they really do not have an out. But they can do so without sinking into a moral morass.

"The Book of Daniel" will not make it to the television hall of fame, or even to the next season, because for such a show to succeed, to get the audience it is geared toward, it needs to do stuff that is not permitted on FCC regulated TV. The cast will not only need to speak like sailors, but the lesbian sister needs to be extroardinarily hot, and be caught in delicto flagrante with another extremely hot lover. Many times, with many extremely hot lovers. And the priest will need to have some extracurricular activites, too (but not the sicko pediophiliac ones we have been hearing about - not only will that not sell, but that will get the actors arrested). Not only is he living high off the hog, but the covent where his extracurricular activies take place, after dark, must look like a Victoria Secret's convention - only the residents are wearing somewhat less than what one would see at such a convetnion. And the drug addicted daugher must of course be hot, too, but sound just like Cheech-and-Chong.

Of course this ain't going to make it to network TV. And, attacking priests in this fashion did not begin in 1970 - much of the enlightenment thought (aka Voltaire) that contributed to the French Revolution is believed to have been "translated" to the masses in the form of priestly pornography. And, stuff like this probably went on in the middle ages.

No, for the networks to succeed at sitcoms once again, they need to re-create a new golden age of the sitcom. They will need to figure out what really makes middle-America laugh. They will need to find new avenues of creativity - one of the reasons they are producing such trash is that they seem to have run out of creativity. Good, clean entertainment will sell, as there is not a lot of it anymore. Especially if it is something that parents will want their kids to watch. Especially if it can reach the entire family, for which all members will get a very positive experience from watching it. And, if it is especially entertaining. Which I believe one of the keys to having it especially entertaining is this - to keep it funny throughout.

However, it is difficult for anyone to truly think outside the box, and those who do, are often ridiculed, and do not get too far, and their ideas fail. One thing that the history of institutions shows is that thinking outside the box is what truly saves institutions, for times change, but mindsets don't, and it is the old mindset that does not keep the institution current with the times. So people leave it.

"The Book of Daniel" thus demonstrates continued in-the-box thinking, as it is what less than 1% of all Americans find appealing, which is with whom the producers spend their time. Hopefully, once this flops, the brains of Hollywood will wake up, get some fresh thinking, and pruduce something that much of America will like. However, as other entertainment commentators have urged similar themes, I don't think they will learn anything from this show's eventual failure.

Costco vs Sams Club, or, Politicizing Bulk Shopping

Now that the holiday season is upon us, we are going to hear about the various places to shop. We are also going to hear about the various places not to shop.

This year, WalMart is evil incarnate. Hence, one should never buy there. And heaven forbid buying at Sams Club - they are merely an evil version of Costco. In fact, my father and my little brother absolutely refuse to go there (and they both often vote Republican), and my middle brother only goes to Sams Club because there is no Costco where he lives.

Why some people get so excited about what is essentially grocery shopping is beyond me.

It has puzzled me why we would want to beat up on a company that has generated a lot of jobs. Until I figured out that leftists like to bash companies that create a lot of jobs - for them, it's the job of the government. So of course it's quite natural they do so.

Now, I usually do not buy stuff at WalMart. This isn't because I am boycotting the store, only that, for me, it's a long way to drive to buy what is essentially crap. Since WalMart is about 1/2 hour drive for me, it's not worth looking at the grocery store, so I would need to buy so-called durable goods (economists define these are goods that last one year). However, my experience with WalMart "durable goods" is that they often last less than one year. So, boycotting a store because they sell garbage is a good reason to boycott it.

However, I do my shopping at Sams Club. And that is about 45 minutes away. While the Costco is 20 minutes away. Of course, going to Sams Club might not be worth it - except I go there and shop when I am in the area of a Sams Club.

Acutally, I shop at both and have memberships at both. I buy most of my non-perishable grocery items at these stores (and fruits and vegetables that last a long time), so it turns out in the long run I am saving money on the memberships - than if I only shopped at say, Safeway. However, Costco has recently had a problem.

When Costco was founded, it essentially existed to buy name-brand stuff, in bulk, at discount prices. However, over time, Costco has gradually reduced the size of their name-brand bulk items, made them unavailable, or switched them to their "Kirkland" brand. (By the way, Kirkland is a nice town, and naming toilet paper after that town is highly inappropriate!). Now, they are switching to "luxury items," meaning that a bunch of wealthy yuppies - oops, bobos - and those who like to waste money can spend money on memberships and spend the same amount on some so-called "gourmet" product, in a much smaller volume, than before (for example, spices). Heck, I am even having a hard time finding bulk apples at Costco!

So, I am buying less at Costco.

Sams Club, on the other hand, still buys name-brand items in bulk, and sells them. Hence, I spend more and more at Sams Club. And less goes to the local company.

Leftists like to complain that the WalMart corporation abuses human rights, doesn't pay it's workers much, destroy's local businesses. "The High Cost of Low Price." Costco, on the other hand, is a model corporation (i.e., gives the majority of it's monies to Democrats), and does pay a high wages (for which of course they should be given credit).

However, the main purpose of a store is to sell items that a customer wants. And if it does not do so, the customer should go elsewhere.

Of course, one should realize that this anti-WalMart spin is due to union pressure. WalMart will not unionize it's over one million workers. So WalMart is made to look like Satan! I thought something was up when I read, on e-mail, that WalMart was forbidding employees from saying "Merry Christmas," and forcing them to say "Happy Holidays." Boycott over this??? I suspected union activity. My suspicions are due to the wedge tactics that were used when Coors shut the union out of it's plant, as was similarly mentioned in a biography of the Coors family (by Dan Baum - I forget the name at this point.) When Coors adopted a gay-friendly employee policy, the union thug in charge of the boycott sent clipping to Jerry Falwell (I believe) with pictures of gay sex-toys - to get conservative Christians to boycott Coors.

Of course, one cannot boycott everyone with which you disagree. For example, if you are a Democrat, and live in the suburbs, and have kids, how will you drive your car? The oil companies overwhelmingly support Republicans (for obvious reasons). And if you are a Republican, going naked is obviously against your values - it seems that the vast majority of the fashion world supports Democrats.

Hence, you cannot boycott something on emotion. Especially something that offers lots and lots of diverse products. You have to be selective. For example, although I could be wrong, it is my understanding that the Cinnabon Corporation supports Democrats 100% (according to buyblue.com), so it is relatively easy (well, politically, not culinarily) to boycott them (well, at least I'll be somewhat healthier from not eating one of their ultra-fattening rolls!).

Hence, one needs to analyze your needs, and not pick out a bulk store, due to some polically-correct emotion. Instead, there is a limit to where your shopping needs supercedes your political emotions. Otherwise, you will make life too difficult for yourself, and possibly, take time away from such things, like, maybe activism?

Why Air America isn't Taking Off

A couple of years ago, a bunch of leftists got tired of losing - actually, they have been plotting ways to get their power back for a long time - and rather than realize that they have lousy, stupid, and evil ideas, they came to the conclusion that the woe to all their problems had to do with the fact that conservatives have talk radio. So if they had a talk radio format, they could overtake conservatives.

At first, they aimed this for those in the middle of the road. However, today, since the number of middle-of-the-roaders who are truly ardent about politics is about 10 (remember, it's a contradiction for moderates to be ardent about anything!), they realized that they had better market toward leftists. So they created Air America.

They have been trying for ten years. Remember the Mario Cuomo show? The only thing funny about that was the fact that Mario Cuomo had a talk show, and that he actually thought he was entertaining! Rather than learn from the fact that no one wants to listen to new left wing talk radio, they decided to go out and create a whole network of left wing stations. Then they would truly wow America!

The only wowing that's been going on is the amount of cash they have bled. In the meantime, Air America has very low Arbitron ratings. For example, in Seattle, for all four talk stations, they are at the bottom (and near the bottom of the ratings for all stations). Yes, you read that correctly - this is in the nutty Seattle area. What's even more embarrasing is that there are two voiciferous conservative stations nipping at each other, and even they have higher ratings that this Air America affiliate!!! And this is despite the fact that there is no other all-out "progressive" station (the other station is largely made up of leftists, but it does have a few conservatives on it)

So, what has been going on? I have a few ideas:

1) When talk radio started, conservatives had few places to find daily opinions they would agree with. Leftists have always had lots of outlets.
Circa 1988, when Rush Limbaugh started the conservative talk-radio craze, conservatives have always complained about the ("liberal") mainstream media, and how it is out of touch. This has recently been proven by none-other than Walter Cronkite (who offered no apologizes for this bias in his piece). So there was an audience hungry for news.

2) Conservative talk stations filled the gap left by the repealing of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine".
For a very, very, long time, if a station offered an opinion, they had to present the other side. This was due to an FCC guideline called the "Fairness Doctrine" I believe it had been in place since at least the 1930's, if not the 1920's (you can prove me wrong on this point). If one stations was not being "fair", it's licence could be pulled. This only happened once, during the Kennedy Administration, but the threat was there to be very powerful.
In the meantime, public radio existed to present all sides. At least all "educated" sides. There was a very real belief, still prevalent in some circles, that only dummies could believe in such things like free enterprise, because most who graduated from elite schools believed in either socialism, or a very heavily regulated market economy. Anyone who believed in a market economy was really not that educated. So it was ok to present someone who was a pure fabian vs a moderate fabian, on NPR, and that would pass for "balance".
In 1988, Ronald Reagan did away with the "Fairness Doctrine." No one really paid attention to this at the time. He certainly did not know what was going to result, and not in his wildest dreams did he, or anyone, realize what a boon to the conservatives this would be. However, since stations could present one side now without fear of FCC fines, they could hve an all-conservative format, and many succeeded because of this.
In the mid-1990's, there was talk of attempting to re-implement this doctrine. However, if re-implemted today, there would be little change on public policy, due largely to the internet (see below).

3) All talk, all the time, eventually gets tiring.
For a while, talk radio was quite exciting. Especially in 1994. On the eve of the Iraq liberation, it was exciting again. It felt like a revolution was going to be made.
However, after things happened, hosts could not find good topics that would get people excited. So they started sounding like a broken record. Even if someone totally agrees with the statement "Democrats suck" or "liberals suck," there is only so much they can hear before falling asleep.
On both sides of the ideological divide, there are quite a few open-minded people who do listen to the other side - and call in. In fact, many liberals only (or largely) listened to conservative stations because this was the only place where they could get the other side. And, many hosts gave thoughtful, informed arguments for their positions, so these liberals could try to find ways to counter conservatives. However, enthuiasm wanes for them, too.

4) Ratings for talk radio have faded over the last ten years
In 1994, Rush Limbaugh, the King of Talk Radio, had 21 million listeners. He has lost almost 1/3 of them. Two reasons. First, see point #3. Then, see point #5. Even if conservative talk radio went away completely tomorrow, the infrastructure is largely in place so that the conservative agenda can be pushed without much damage.

5) Between 1994 - 2003, several new news outlets developed.
First, there is the Internet - and the explosion of news sites (in fact, one of the first categories of sites that arose on the web in 1995 had to do with news). Well, basically, the internet. Most people today who are coming of age politically largely get their news off of the internet. So they do not need to find another biased source.

6) Early talk show hosts were radio specialists. Air America got celebrities who know nothing about radio.
Many of the early hosts had been radio hosts for several years. For example, Bob Grant. Ken Hamlin is another example. So they had training.
Rush Limbaugh had only a few years of talk-show training. However, he had been in radio since high school. If you listen to his small talk at the beginning of each segment, you will figure out the key to his success - "Maha Rushie" "America's Doctor of Democracy," "The Truth Detector" (actually, this is in response to a rant of Bill Clinton's over ten years ago). Most importantly "I am a highly-trained broadcast engineer."
Rush came from Top-40 AM radio, which had to be the most entertaining of all, since it catered to high-school kids. He started during the late 1960's, when Top-40 radio was not the most preferred choice of music for his age group. So, to survive, he really had to hone some skills to get his points across. These had nothing to do with politics, but imagine if he applied these skills to politics.
Since he is so highly trained, he knows the most effective ways to get his points across. In the meantime, Air America consists of a failed comedian (Jeannine Garafallo) and, well, Al Franken. Al Franken stayed a long, long time on Saturday-Night Live. Over 20 years. This program is basically a training ground for actors and actresses. If you do not make it after a few years, you've "braken" it. I.e., you are not going to be a success. And Al Franken never became a successful comedian, or actor, for that matter.
Remember the "Al Franken" decade? This was supposed to be the 1980's. Reagan's decade. Oops. So there was the "Al Franken Junior" decade, the 1990's. The decade of conservative talk radio, Newt Gingrich, etc. Oops again.
So, if a man is not entertaining in a format that he was in training for 20 years, what makes one think he will be entertaining in a format for which he has no training? So now you have an idea why people may not want to listen.

7) Talk Radio built it's own subculture
While largely a marketing gimmick, the conservative subculture has been basically vulgarized into a more populist subculture. Conservative is not only an ideology, but almost, a way of life. And talk radio is largely part of it.
This is due to the fact that conservatives were largely alienated from American society (expecially in the media) for about half-a-century. So when offered a chance at their own identity, many took it up.
On the other hand, the only alienated leftists were those wierdos in the 1960 who wore funny clothes, smoked a lot of dope, engaged in lost of promiscuity - i.e., the hippies (gays were someone alienated, too). However, even then, many media outlets glorified such a lifestyle - especially since many young actors and actresses aspired to many aspects of this counter-culture.
Today, leftists are not alienated in society, but largely push social changes. So there is no real basis to create a leftist subculture like the conservatives have (which fuels much of the agenda).

8) Many cities already had left wing talk show hosts, if not left-wing stations
In Seattle, there is one station, KIRO, which primarily consists of left-wing hosts (it has a few conservatives, however). And I suppose there are other cities, too. People are often loyal to hosts to whom they listen to decades - only they listen less over time. They are not going to switch the radio to listen to some failed comedian giving their opinions, when their own hosts have studied all the issues much longer.

And finally,
9) Leftists already have very many entertainment and news outlets.
First, there is NPR. Not too entertaining, but it is very informative (the Seattle NPR station carries a lot of "Jazz", and since I cannot stand modern jazz, I never have it on my radio). If a leftist is not into news, they have tons, and tons, of places to find entertainment - like the TV, the movies, the internet, video games, and now, if they have a car, they can listen to Howard Stern on satellite radio. So here is Air America, in the middle, combining an entertaining way to present the news. For those who are not into entertainment, but are into news, they go to NPR (or conservative talk radio, or the internet, or newspapers). For those who are into entertainment, they go to those various mediums mentioned above. There is some truth to Ann Coulter's statement that leftists get their news from "Lifetime, the West Wing, and a million episodes of Law and Order where the perp is a religious fanatic who quotes the second amendment while blowing the victims away" (or something to that effect - I do not have the exact quote on hand). That leaves very few crumbs for the Air America station.

Thus, Air America is a classic case of too little, too late. People are bored with this format, they have many many more options now than the conservatives had when "hot talk" started over 15 years ago, the underlying American culture has changed significantly in the 15 years which provided the fertile ground for the conservative stations, and the hosts are largely improperly trained. Since the left almost monopolized public opinion from the Depression until the 1990's, there probably would not have been much success in creating a format for a long, long time.

I believe that the best time to have created a left-wing talk format would have been no later than the 1950's, when radio formats started in response to television. However, that time for success has long passed, and I believe that such a format catering to leftists will never have close to the effectiveness that the conservative formats have had over the last ten years.