Author’s Note: I wrote this column Mar. 15, 1995, when the Trump-like speaker of the House, Georgian Newt Gingrich, was threatening to defund public radio. So here we go again. You might have known that when the Trump-like Trump started attacking Harvard, the intellectuals who listen to “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” would be next. That program’s over my head, but in general I would absolutely hate to live without public radio. In that regard, I offer this piece from 30 years ago, still excruciatingly relevant.
I’m blasting down through middle Georgia in a Chevy Chevette. No AC, no tape deck, just sunshine and gnat-filled, cotton-poisoned air and an FM radio with two good speakers blaring German voices singing “The Beautiful Blue Danube.” Singing it, and me not even knowing that sucker had words, and here they are wafting me through the stubbled Georgia fields on a winding two-lane Herman Talmadge road singing their Teutonic hearts out. I was still smiling when I got out of the car to explain to the Georgia State Patrol how I got the Chevette up to 70, and he could see that I was in a mood that ought not to be spoiled and only gave me a warning ticket.
That’s what Peach State public radio means to me: deliverance. Not from the state patrol, but from execrable radio. Driving through South Georgia used to be an exercise in aural torture: one radio station after another blaring up only to fade into static as you restlessly roved the dial. And every one of them filled with the worst in ersatz country music or country preachers or country fried chicken steak at the big mattress blowout on the square out in front of Mavis’ House of Mattresses in the next county seat up the road. Awful. Grim. Mindless. Disturbing. A traffic hazard.
Now, look: If listening to public radio makes me by definition a liberal, elite snob, that’s a price I’ll gladly pay. But remember, I didn’t even know they had words to “The Beautiful Blue Danube,” and that’s probably one of about 10 pieces of classical music I even know the title to, and can pronounce. If I’m an elite snob, it was bad radio that turned me into one.
The incredible thing about the Peach State network and South Carolina public radio and all the rest is that you can listen to them wherever you go, more or less. There’s a blank spot between Jefferson and Lawrenceville, for instance, that’ll flat-out remind you of just how much you miss public radio when it’s not there. But generally, you can hear good radio wherever you go.
And of course that’s not to say that there aren’t some good commercial stations out there, like the ones we have here in Athens. But public radio is a touchstone, where you can always go back when the fake country music gets too sappy and the mattress sales are beginning to make you sleepy.
I can’t help but think Newt and them are misjudging the public by threatening to gut public radio. Compared to what it costs to keep all those military bases open to protect our Georgia cotton fields from a sneak attack in case the Russians get tired of fighting each other, public radio isn’t even a blip on the chart.
I think Newt ‘n them are making a terrible mistake, even on their own terms. Look at it this way: Bad radio made me a liberal. Force everybody in the state to go back to listening to bad radio, and the current conservative groundswell could evaporate overnight. Keep Georgia safe for Republicans: Support public radio!
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