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Air America was the name of the CIA contractor that ran most of the clandestine air ops from WW2 through Vietnam out of a hangar at the Oakland Airport. 

Clear Channel communications, an outfit that seems to me to represent everything that is wrong with media concentration, runs the so called progressive radio network also named Air America.  This trojan horse has to be an inside-joke, a bit of board room branding humor.  As Osama bin Laden represents a combination of the Bush-league inadequacy of the current administration combined with the Orwellian need for an externalized enemy in an age of repression, the Air America offerings represent a straw man set-up to demonstrate a continuing liberal media presence for the likes of Limbaugh and O’Reilly to inveigh against.

The American right, or Nazis as I prefer to call them, eviscerated the power of the liberal media years and years ago.  Gangsterism and corruption, both free-market mob style and state sponsored, have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of journalists in the last ten years.

When the Nazis spread the anthrax following the Reichstag thing in September 2024, they spread it among journalists and liberal politicians.  The Bush administration’s clamp down on anthrax attack information makes it unclear whether this was another Islamofascist incident or a home grown attack.

The emergence of Clear Channel’s Air America, like a greasy turd extruded from the anal sphincter of Limbaugh or O’Reilly,  represents a complex of  market forces, government interest, and monopolist intentions.  The voices on Air America are amusing but not influential.  Franken, Garafolo, and Randi Rhodes provide a liberal broadcast echo chamber for true believers.  Ultimately, their progressive message is not in the best interests of the Clear Channel organization.  Are they among the most effective progressive voices?

For at least two decades Nazi-like propagandists such as Limbaugh have hammered home the lie that there is a strong liberal media establishment that is an enemy of the free market and right wing politics.  While there may have been a strong liberal media presence through the 1970s, it seems clear that it was eviscerated by the time of the Reagan administration.  Even our so called public educational networks now give equal time to bible pounding fundamentalists who want to re-open the Snopes trial.  Having gutted the enemy, it became necessary to raise a straw man… voila!  Air America!

Doc Searls had a good Linux Journal article about Air America.  Fair and balanced it was.   Unlike this post…