Inside the blogger’s studio

If you look up “self-indulgent blog post” in the dictionary, you’ll find the following. You’re all excused from reading it.

I was driving to work yesterday, listening to KRBE do their wacky news thing. Maria reads a short story about the NRA blacklist. She says that the NRA has made a list of organizations with anti-gun policies or views. The list includes Britney Spears, Oprah Winfrey, Hallmark Cards, Jerry Seinfeld, and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Sam the co-host didn’t believe it. “Kansas City Chiefs?” he kept asking. He was apparently sitting in front of a computer and went to the webpage listed in the story, www.nrablacklist.com. The webpage is very slick and very obviously not affiliated with the NRA. He called the story a hoax and said that “We need to do a better job of screening the news.”

Now, I knew that this story was true. I knew that you can find the list on the NRA-ILA page, and that the list also incudes the St. Louis Cardinals, Lenny Kravitz, Marilu Henner, Julia Child, Mary Lou Retton, Moon Zappa, and the Temptations. (The link is on top of the slick NRA blacklist page, but it’s not hard to miss.) It’s really weird, but it’s real.

As I thought about posting on this subject, two little creatures appeared, one on my left shoulder, and one on my right.

A little voice on my left said, “This is just great. The NRA blacklist isn’t the biggest story in the world, but it is, in fact, true. Tens of thousands of people just heard that it’s a crazy prank. It’s going to be that much harder to mention the NRA blacklist, or make a point about the NRA in general.”

On the right, it said, “Well, you’ve got to admit that it did sound strange. I mean, what do professional sports teams have to do with guns? You’re not in the habit of criticising broadcasters for fact-checking. Why start now?”

On the left, it said, “His scepticism might be warranted, but the fact is that he’s wrong. If he had clicked on the very first link on the page, he would have seen that he was wrong. Ted, you only listen to the show once every few weeks, but even at that rate you’ve heard them passing on false stories. This is the first time you’ve ever heard anyone expressing scepticism about one of them. They passed on the BS story about paintball games where hunters track down nude women, and they didn’t express any kind of scepticism.

Remember that this is the same pop station where a DJ read the essay about knocking down anti-war protestors until they got the idea on the air. Do you think that this is a coincidence?”

On the right, it said, “Look at it from their perspective. If they pass on a fib about Bambi hunters or about ourfirsttime.com, they’re not going to get two hundred angry calls. But if they had said this about the NRA, and it wasn’t true, they’d never hear the end of it.

Besides, let’s say that you’re completely right, and the KRBE morning show has a right-wing bias. So what? It’s a friggin’ drive-time morning radio show! Who gives a damn if Boomer and the Nudge lean right? Walton and Johnson run an openly right-wing morning radio show, and you don’t care. You just don’t listen to them.”

On the left, the voice said, “Lord, no. Those guys are the worst.”

On the right, it said, “Yes. Yes they are. But they’re just part of life.

You live in Texas. It’s a conservative state. If you can’t stand it, move, listen to CDs, or turn off the radio and have a teddybear picnic on the way to work.”

The creature on the left shook its fist and popped out of existence. The creature on the right did a little victory dance and followed it. The end.