Mike Huckabee began his national radio show on Tuesday, (replacing the dreaded JD Hayworth), and already there's growls at his home outlet here at KSFO in the city. A station source tells me the general feeling about the Huckster:
Who repped Huckabee into syndication? Oh, you didn't know it was Bill Bungeroth? Indeed, it is true. I'm no huge fan of JD Hayworth, but at least he made a consistent effort to go local, and he did a GREAT job, considering he was still living in Arizona and doing the show ISDN. Huckabee? He is emblematic of what is wrong with the Dickey's. They actually think that he can take down enough ratings to compete against Rush Limbaugh. Sorry, but that is NOT going to happen.and when Huckabee fails, the Dickey Bros will spin it as a win, and he will drift out of syndication.
My take: I've seen and heard enough of Huckabee to predict he'll do OK and ruffle a few feathers, but no way does he pose the slightest threat to Limbaugh. Limbaugh is still the king, despite his kooky comments about that Harvard woman. Huckabee even knows that. What you have here, folks, is mainstream corporate terrestrial radio at its worst. Bland, ultra-right radio with two distasteful white men playing with their toys in US radio. How dang creative.
TUESDAY NOTES: Ronn Owens on KGO predicted that new Miami Marlins manager, Ozzie Guillen, won't last the year. We agree, except I say he's out this week. It was the dim-witted Guillen who told Time Magazine that "I love Fidel Castro", which in South Florida is like someone saying they love Hitler in Tel Aviv...Comcast SportsNet Bay Area's documentary on the great Oakland basketball players was some fine work. Props to the CSNers...Meanwhile, a story making the rounds in local SF TV: the high probability that a bigwig at a bigwig station is about to be pink-slipped. Stay tuned...Speaking of local TV, any outlet that uses the footage from the Oakland Christian College massacre to use for promos should be called out. Hey, guys, have some taste, eh?...
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It is odd how a sports figure does not have free speech in this country. The knee jerk reactionaries in FL pounced on Guillen for his comment about Castro as though Guillen is some sort of intellectual. He is just a big mouth jock, layoff the guy. By the way, great hearing Christine Craft on Kgone this weekend.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed JD on KSFO. Huckabee is a good guy, but JD was keeping his show mostly local. Sushman and Morgan better watch their backs, they could very easy be next in line.
ReplyDeleteGoogle Batista...the despot Castro's people's movement dethroned..now there was an evil man.It was the privileged class in Cuba who were allied with Batista who left Cuba for money in Florida. I remember campaigning as a surrogate for Senator Gary Hart in 1984 as the Fountainbleu Hotel in Miami.. In the elevator..any angry cuban-american tried to rip the button off my jacket..muttering about communist Democrats. I reminded him he was in the US..not Cuba.Many of these modern day cuban-americans have the "Cuba-Si..Yankee no" tattoos...
ReplyDeleteThank you Christine for reminding, or educating, people. History is written by the survivors or winners, they say, which means it ain't always actually true.
DeleteBatista was a corrupt pig and killer.
DeleteCastro is a corrupt pig and killer.
Choose your poison.
People's army, my ass, Christine. You are obviously unschooled about Castro's ruthlessness and homicidal tendencies prior to taking power.
And you are obviously prejudiced. Not all Cubans who left Cuba are the right-wing, money-making morons you claim here. I would think, as a radio persona, you would know the dangers of such stereotypical generalizations.
It's hilarious to see some moron talk about "free speech" as if that's the issue here. The guy is a high profile (and highly paid) manager of a team in Miami and therefore represents that community as such. There is absolutely nothing he possibly could have said in that community that would have been more offensive or hurtful to that community. Bottom line is that he IS free to say what he wants. And their management is free to fire him for being an idiot, which they should do immediately.
ReplyDeletedon't conflate sports teams and community leadership. don't conflate sports news with real news.
DeleteSports are bread and circuses for the masses..to keep them unfocused and unaware of what's really going on
The wage slaves getting pummeled all week plant themselves in front of the big screens on the weekends and exercise their addiction to the game.
You sound like the kind of guy who would have tackled Tommi Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics for the black power salute....did you used to frequent the brothels in Havana under Batista? Is that why you are so angry about Guillen's comment?
DeleteMany thanks for this all-too-true comment. For a long time now, I've been saying that it isn't religion that's the opiate of the masses, it's sports. Keep their minds diverted from what's going on in our world that's really important. And charge and amass obscene amounts of money in the process of selling beer and keeping people stupid.
DeleteWe could have China occupy Taiwan, but if it happened on the same day as some boy-hits-ball professional sets some silly arbitrary record, the sports figure would still be somewhere on the front page of the paper.
They're not gods; they're mostly guys with limited life and communications skills, who just happen to have a particular flair for hitting, kicking, bouncing, shooting, clubbing, or otherwise knocking about some specially purposed ball.
I have far more respect for a talented cabinet maker, or computer-code jockey, or gizmo designer, than I do for some guy who gets millions of dollars a year for a skill that produces absolutely nothing of real value. And who, all too often, has difficulty stringing together three intelligent sentences.
And I have even less respect for the "experts" who make a living Monday-morning-quarterbacking the guys who at least have some physical prowess.
Who cares what some baseball manager says about Castro! Those anti-Castro folks down in Cuba were partly responsible for creating a mess at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 which led to t he Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 that took us to the brink of Nuclear holocaust. Had it not been for a clear headed JFK, his brother Bobby, and the rest of that fine cabinet of his, we wouldn't be sitting here talking today.
ReplyDeleteThe whole reason that Castro came to power in the first place is that we supported a corrupt, classist dictator (Bautista) who took advantage of many of the poor Cuban people. There are a lot of things not to like about Castro, but remember...Cuba has the highest literacy rate in the world, universal health care, and there is virtually no crime. Is that such a bad thing? I still wonder why we as a country are so beholden to the anti-Castro Cubans of Florida, who represent such a tiny portion of that state. And as for our continued embargo and restricted travel to Cuba...that's just absurd! Cuba is no longer any threat to the US
(not that it ever was), and let's leave that country alone and let them figure out their own problems without sticking our dirty noses into their business, the way we unfortunately haven't been doing for many years in many other parts of the world.
Thanks Christine. People forget or don't know history. And, the survivor, or winner, gets to write the story.
ReplyDeleteThe winner was Castro, and he sure has done a great job of sanitizing his history, so much so that we get stereotypes of a very diverse Cuban-American population in Miami because Christine was there once as a proxy for Gary Hart. That makes her an expert on the Cuban-American community in Miami.
DeleteI'm sure that community would be repelled by her stereotypical generalization regarding a very diverse community.
As for Castro's People's Army, as I said in another comment: My ass, Christine. What an ignorant statement.
Batista was a corrupt pig and killer.
Castro is equally corrupt and a pig and a killer.
And don't give me the bullshit regarding Castro's medical system. Not everything he has done has been a failure. But he is a killer.
It's too bad that morons actually believe there was only a choice between Castro or Batista, two men equally totalitarian and homicidal.
Reminds me of those who say President Obama is so much better than President Bush on foreign policy. Tell that to my Punjabi-speaking best friend on the frontier in Pakistan who knows of people obliterated from the face of the earth by drones authorized by President Obama. Oh, by the way, they were INNOCENT. Their only crimes? Being Muslim and in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like a wedding.
You are attributing things to me which I did not say. Apparently you are unaware of the revolution in Cuba and deny that it was the Batista ruling and propertied class who first fled Cuba in great numbers.They chose NOT to fight for Cuba. Both of those things are facts. I don't give a rat's ass about whether this truth offends some rightwing Cuban emigre. The point of my Gary Hart story was simple and specific. I was assaulted for wearing a campaign button in my own country. That's not a sensibility I'm concerned about offending.
DeleteWhat was Mark Ibanez and Troy Campbell doing on theres only 1 2 @ 10PM? Everyone else on Spring Break? Sure hope Craig Debro landed on his feet...
ReplyDeleteWhy isnt there anything about JD HAYWORTH is off the air on KSFO? Another job from the media to keep info from the public? Except if it is positive to there agenda. Cant find anything about him concerning this.
ReplyDeleteMike Huckabee is a fine and honest man. Stop the hate stuff. Go join the democrat party.
ReplyDelete