I have to say, it must be tough to interview Scott Gessler.

He says so many half-baked, half-proven, innuendo-laden things that, as an interviewer, you’d have to constantly be interjecting with: Where do your numbers come from? Do you have proof? On what documents do you base these claims? Do you think your behavior befits your office?

Just yesterday I bashed Mike Rosen for failing to interrogate Gessler when he said Democrats like to “rile” up Hispanics to get their votes.

But I have to give Rosen a bit of a break here. I took a second look at the Gessler interview and found yet more outrageous claims that I had missed previously, demonstrating that even with the luxury of sitting at a computer and being able to re-wind a podcast, it’s easy to miss stuff Gessler says that should be challenged.

My first time through the Rosen interview I managed to miss Gessler’s statement that he thinks, categorically, that Democrats are trying to “game the system” by backing a bill in the state legislature allowing clerks can to send ballots to registered voters who did not vote in the previous election.

Gessler said: “So, it seems to me that they were really invested in making this change, trying to game the system. And it was maybe more than just a policy dispute for them.”

In retrospect, Rosen should have asked Gessler for evidence that Democrats are essentially against fair elections, trying to rig the system in their favor. This is a serious allegation, even coming from Gessler.

As it was, the only proof Gessler offered in his interview was that Democratic State Chair Rick Palacio was, Gessler said, “uncorked” and “red-faced.”

Gessler: You know what I found really interesting?  When we were sort of in this battle at the legislature, I mean, I viewed it very much as a policy disagreement.  And, you know, you can have different views on the policy.  I think that the position they were trying to advocate was completely wrong.  But when you look at how uncorked [Palacio} became, and was just all sort of red faced and angry, it makes me wonder if there was something in there that the Democrats were using to try and game the system.  And remember, this is the same framework that we’ve had for seventeen years, now, in Colorado. And then to sort of trot out these stale claims of disenfranchisement, as if there are thousands of people in Colorado now being disenfranchised, which is simply not the case. So, it seems to me that they were really invested in making this change, trying to game the system. And it was maybe more than just a policy dispute for them.

So here’s my advice for anyone whom Gessler grants interviews to. Schedule two interview sessions, no just one. Tell the Secretary of State that your second interview slot will be for the follow-up questions that inevitably slip by in the rush of unsubstantiated allegations and outright misinformation that comes out of him.

When Art Carlson started his internet radio program, “Art’s Place,” he wanted to create a “soap box” to voice his “opinions from a different perspective.”

Now, two years later, former Colorado Senate President John Andrews cites Art’s Place as one reason he’s endorsed Carlson in his GOP primary race against John Lyons to face off against Democrat Nancy Todd to represent Senate District 28.

“His radio show has networked him to leading conservatives across the state,” Andrews told me, adding that he has “a lot of regard for Carlson’s grit and gumption” and that Carlson is “a well-anchored conservative.”

“He’ll never quit on promises he’s made,” said Andrews.

When I guy like Andrews is impressed with Carlson for never quitting, it means a lot. Andrews is a guy who “positively” hates lunch, he says, because it’s a distraction form his “Niagara productivity.”  (I thought he said Viagra productivity, but he confirmed that he said Niagara, as in Niagara Falls.)

Carlson, who lost in the GOP primary for a House seat in 2010, told me he’s “always been interested in politics, but I didn’t get involved until about four years ago.”

“I got tired of yelling at the TV and decided to try to do something,” he said.

He says Colorado Sen. Shawn Mitchell and Rep. Chris Holbert “rally helped me out and encouraged me and got me pointed in the right direction.”

In terms of specific issues, Carlson is a serious conservative, as you’d expect with guys like Andrews, Mitchell and Holbert behind him.

He says, for example, he signed the Colorado Union of Taxpayers tax-cut pledge over two years ago.

Carlson’s  opponent, Lyons, promised to do so during a March 20 interview on KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado:

Host Jason Worley:  Have you signed the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights Pledge?

Lyons:  Not yet.

Worley:  Are you planning to?

Lyons:  Yes.

Lyons is not yet listed as a pledge signer on the CUT website, but Carlson prefers to discuss his own plans and positions.

He tells me during our phone conversation that he’s a Little Person and he has disability called Arthrogryposis, a non-progressive muscle and bone disorder.

I asked him why he told me this. “I don’t think it matters,” he said. “But when I go out to meet people, they go hmm, but once they get to know me, that goes away.”

Also, he says, “it gives people an idea that I know something about the health care system too.”

Does that mean he supports Obamacare?

“No,” he replies.

Carlson currently works at Rocky Mountain Orthodontics, but he’s also made a living as a stand-up comedian.

“I went into it after college 20 years ago,” he says, explaining that he performed regularly in local clubs.  “I got to travel around the world and entertain our troops in Japan and South Korea. That was the high point in my stand-up career.”

His entertainment background adds a sort of dry poise to his Art’s Place interviews, where guests have included U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, Colorado Rep. Robert Ramirez, and others.

He’s not sure he can continue the radio show during his campaign.

“I’m going to see how it goes,” he said. “Campaigning takes a lot of time. Right now I’m evaluating whether I should do another month or two of Art’s Place in addition to full-time campaigning.”

Conservative talk-radio hosts are obviously a big part of the reason the Republican Party has a problem with women voters.

But they’re also a serious drag on the GOP’s appeal to Hispanics.

“I’m still looking for that immigrant who came to America who had a burning desire for free birth control,” said KLZ talk-radio host Jason Worley on the air Wednesday. “I haven’t found them yet. If we do find them, I will offer to put them on the air, so we can get the ditsy college girl from Illinois who can come on and go, ‘Yah, what I’d like for freedom and liberty is, ahh, free birth control, Yeah me!’”

This elicited laughter not only from co-host Ken Clark but also from Pauline Olvera, a vice chair of the Denver Republican Party.

Olvera is also on the Board of Directors for Colorado Hispanic Republicans, a new group trying to recruit Colorado Hispanics to join the GOP.

Asked by Worley “what message is catching on in those Hispanic communities,” Olvera answered:

“Well, we don’t really talk about [Republican] party issues,” she said.

One wonders why. Do Hispanics maybe dislike Republican issues? Worley didn’t ask, and Olvera flew up to a cruising altitude of 5,000 feet and waxed broad and meaningless.

“We talk about our values,” she told Worley. Our values are faith, family, freedom, individual freedom. And those are very strong values in our Hispanic community. And those values are exactly what the Republican stands for. So when we talk about those things, it clicks, right away. A lot of small business owners are in our community. They want a really good education for their children. They want choices in the education of their children.”

So why is Olvera’s organization opposing legislation that would give the top-achieving children of undocumented parents a break on college tuition in Colorado? How does that comport with giving Hispanic children choice and freedom? 

Worley didn’t ask, but you get the feeling he understood the problem his party faces with Hispanics, when it comes to real-life issues, because he did ask Olvera, “What kind of resistance, if any, do you find to the quote-unquote Republican Party?”

“Well, she answered, you know there is always going to be, for the time being, that little bit of a negative connotation to the Republican name, unfortunately.”

Full stop. You’d think Worley would have wanted to delve into this a bit. Is it because Hispanics understand that freedom is meaningless without opportunity? Opportunities provided by stuff like the college tuition bill, Obamacare, and government protections that create the kind of level playing field that give immigrants a chance?

Worley didn’t ask, so Olvera continued:

We go out there and we just start talking to people. And asking them questions about their values. And doing surveys and stuff. And we’re going to be going to Cinco de Mayo in May. And we’re going to have our booth up there. And we’ll have our nice big banner. We’re going to be bringing people along and inviting them to our meet-and-greets.

Great. The organization plans to fly a big banner a couple months from now. Nothing fired in Worley’s mind to make him as the question, “Where’s the substance?”

So on went Olvera:

“The reason we all came to this country is because of individual freedom. We left tyranny and dictatorship.  I think people are starting to wake up and see America kind of going toward the type of government immigrants are leaving and starting to resonate with our message.”

Olvera’s statement is so out there, along the lines of a GOP state Senator comparing Obama to Hitler last week, that I doubt it’s ever been put to Hispanics in any of the gazillion polls Olvera is obviously thinking of when she talks about the “values” Hispanics embrace.

Again, one wonders about the specifics here, but Worley didn’t ask for any.

Which was probably good for Olvera’s cause, because if Worley and Olvera tried to explain with a few details why America is heading toward dictatorship, probably citing stuff like Obamacare, Medicare, worker protections, etc., basically government acting on behalf of people, they’d be offering up a list of reasons Hispanics are known to dislike the GOP. Of course, I could be wrong, but with shallow interviews like this one, we’ll never know.

Secretary of State Scott Gessler recently made an appearance Colorado’s flagship Tea-Party radio show, KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado.

I was jealous because Gessler’s office won’t talk to me, and it’s possible that even my audience of three people is bigger than KLZ’s.

But it made me feel a little bit better when I found out that Gessler’s also boycotting the Colorado Independent and AM760′s David Sirota show, as I’ll explain below.

Still, it raises the question of whether it matters all that much that a conservative elected official, not just Gessler but any of them, boycotts progressive media outlets. Or whether a progressive office holder should feel obligated to talk to conservative media types.

If I were Gessler, I’d look at the actual work of the journalist or media person who’s requesting the interview. If their work shows them to be unfair, inaccurate, and generally unconcerned about civil discourse, then an elected official can justify not talking to them.

For my part, I can’t help but be nicer to people if they let me interview them. I normally try to be fair, but I’m even more careful if I actually talk to someone. I like to think most writers are this way.

I asked progressive columnist and talk-show host David Sirota for his thoughts on this broad topic. According to John Turk, producer of the David Sirota Show on AM 760, Gessler spokesman Rich Coolidge told him last week, just after Gessler appeared on Grassroots Radio Colorado, that Gessler had “no interest” in coming on Sirota’s show to talk about possible voter fraud.

Sirota emailed me:

My view is that the best elected officials are those who make themselves available to the widest possible audience of their constituents. In Colorado, though, that’s the exception (Ed Perlmutter is one for instance), not the norm. Here, most politicians see themselves – and carry themselves – as if they are part of an elite country club. They typically only make themselves available to their friends in the media who they know won’t ask them a single substantive or hard-hitting question – those who will simply propagandize for their agenda and kiss their ass in a very public way. I’m not surprised by that. I’m a journalist, and genuine journalism is a threat to those in power who are either ashamed of their behavior or who shouldn’t have to answer to anyone. Most of the politicians in the state know that regardless of party, I don’t pull punches and will ask them tough questions, and so many of them avoid my show. I see that as a badge of honor.

The Colorado Independent’s John Tomasic has also gotten the cold shoulder from Gessler. Tomasic offered these thoughts in an email:

The question of officeholder responsiveness matters mostly in its relationship to accountability.

It seems obvious that when people elected to office are willing to go on public record regularly on topics big and small and to field unscripted questions, it’s always a good sign for the city or state or country they’re serving. As any fair-minded person in a position of authority knows, explaining your actions means making the case for them. If you can do that well, you gain legitimacy for those actions and support for them and cooperation to bring off your grand plans.

The energy it takes to explain yourself, even in fraught political or business environments, is worth it

Our secretary of state is a longtime controversial figure. It’s my opinion that he revels in it. He’s a courtroom attorney. I like that about him, the fact that he’s a fighter, if for no other reason than he’s fun to write about. Unfortunately, in office, it seems clear he is increasingly adopting what has become a familiar approach to the media on the right, which is to malign the media and retreat into a silo of friendly outlets while delivering an occasional stock quote to the paper of record. That just seems like a short-haul strategy to me.

Gessler is not a  representative from some very conservative district.

He is a state officeholder. The topics he deals with every day as secretary of state are enormously important for all the citizens of Colorado. He oversees voting, campaign finance rules– really basic stuff that is of equal interest to citizens all across the political spectrum. For that reason alone, he is a person of interest for everyone reporting about politics in this state: newspaper people, broadcast people, bloggers, etc, and he has a crack staff of communication experts at his disposal. Use them, I say! Let’s hear more every day from spokespeople Rich and Andrew at the secretary of state’s office. Turn those guys loose! “Free Rich!” “Free Andrew!”

Granted, the media is a player in the political process and dealing with the media as an elected official can certainly be like navigating a mine field. It’s only my opinion but, as someone who has watched this politics-media tug of war with keen interest for years and who has watched big political stories unfold from the inside, as an editor and reporter, I can say that the subjects of those stories would have nearly always fared better by talking to the reporters writing the stories.

I’m reporting on the war over voting laws that has taken the nation by storm in the past two years. Gessler has put himself on the frontlines of that war, proposing major changes to our state election rules. So I’ll keep asking questions. Maybe some day soon, I’ll get a response.

Meantime, I’m developing a cordial and, I must say, fruitful relationship with the secretary’s office conducted via the Colorado Open Records Act. It could be worse.

I’m ready to join the “Free Rich” campaign, and I’m thinking about offering myself up for the dunk tank at the first “Free Rich” fundraiser.

But as Tomasic illustrates, part of the trick of journalism is to find ways to get information when you can’t get it mouth-to-mouth. Who else knows? What documents are available? Getting blacklisted for interviews, even in an apparently partisan manner from the Secretary of State, is how it  goes.

And obviously both parties do this. Gov. John Hickenlooper won’t go on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman show, the hosts allege on air. Though he’s on KOA’s Mike Rosen’s Show monthly.

Rep. Scott Tipton isn’t talking to the tea-party-leaning radio program, the Cari and Rob Show. But Tipton’s Democratic challenger Sal Pace will go on the show.

KHOW’s Peter Boyles likes to say no elected official will go on his show anymore, though I heard Rep. Chris Holbert and Sen. Ted Harvey on Boyles’ show Feb. 15 to discuss their gun bills.

Mitt Romney skipped over all the major Denver media last month, eliciting an admirable Howard-Beale-like outcry from Fox 31 political reporter Eli Stokols.

It’s always been this way, you’d say. But the changes in the media make the situation worse for real people (who stopped reading this blog post before the first paragraph, even though I put “rabid” in the title to lure them in).

With the major media in decline, and more small outlets lining up along ideological lines, many people are less likely to hear from elected officials they disagree with.

Progressives, for example, who consume news from progressive news outlets, won’t be hearing from Scott Gessler directly any time soon, it appears.

That’s not good, and you have to think it will get worse, because, politically, Gessler can write off the left, talk to his conservative base, and try to reach moderates through other means, which may or may not include The Denver Post in the long run.

Under this scenario, how does the partisan divide do anything but get wider?

To be fair, and this is my attempt at ending on a hopeful note, I should tell you that even after Gessler’s office rejected my own interview requests, Gessler was willing to speak with me when I approached him after a speech  he gave at Colorado Christian University. I told him I was a liberal blogger, and he still spoke with me.

In the semi-public setting, maybe he felt a responsibility, as an elected official, not to turn away from me?

But,  like Westword, I didn’t ask him the right follow-up question. Who knows if I’ll get another chance?

There’s a personal quality to talk radio that lends itself to emotion.

Take for example this segment on KVOR’s Jeff Crank Show March 10 about the Senate District 10 primary between Republicans Owen Hill and Rep. Larry Liston.

You can snooze through a lot of talk radio, but not this type of discussion. Crank gets upset, and so do his callers, and you can feel the anger.

When El Paso Country Republicans get mad at each other, Ref C often makes an appearance, as it does here with Crank saying that Hill is falsely acusing Liston of having voted for Ref C. Liston, who was a guest on the show, says he voted against it in the state legislature.

Crank said on air that he was ready to host an on-air debate between Liston and Hill.

 But when Crank gave Hill four possible dates for an on air-debate, Hill rejected all of them, Crank told his listeners.  Hill would only debate after the county assembly, he said.

Then this from Crank:

“Last I checked, this is not the Owen Hill show,” said Crank on air. “ This is the Jeff Crank Show, and I decide when you come on and when you don’t come on.  And you don’t call me and demand that, ‘Well, I’ll come on your show but only after this.’  That means you’re forfeiting your right to come on the show.  You come on when I ask.  I decide the topics, not you.

“And what kind of an elected official would that be, by the way, if he’s telling you, ‘Oh, I’m going to call in on this day but not this day.  I’m going to decide when I do this, as opposed to something else.  I’m sorry, that’s just not the way it works here on this show.   When I decide that we’re going to have a debate, that’s when we’re going to have it.  And you either show up, or you don’t show up. Okay?  So, let’s be real clear about that.”

“Second… I gotta tell you, I think there’s an honesty problem here.  Because I have been repeatedly told, and people in our community who I respect, people like Steve Schuck, and many others have asked whether a certain person named John Hoteling was working for Owen Hill, and he tells them, ‘no’.  Because he has a checkered past, you see. He was Doug Lamborn’s campaign manager, ran the slime against me; he and his brother Mark Hoteling, ran the slime against me.  So he doesn’t want everyone to know.”

On the radio, Crank said that Sen. Ted Harvey supports Hill and that Harvey wrote on Facebook that Hoteling is Hill’s camaign guru.

“I was around when Ref C was going,” Crank said on air. “And I was falsely accused of supporting Ref C. So I know what’s it’s like.”

Two days after Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,” Colorado Springs talk-radio host Jimmy Lakey asked his listeners if they thought Fluke spent her “birth control” money on “cigarettes afterwards,” “booze,” and a “hotel room.”

Lakey, who ran for Congress in the 2010 Republican primary for Rep. Ed Perlmutter’s seat, said he couldn’t believe that Fluke spends $3,000 per year on birth control. He did the math and calculated her monthly birth-control expenditure to be $249.

From there, Lakey went into a jag March 4 on his 740 KVOR talk show about how in the world Fluke’s birth control could cost so much?

Lakey:  Two hundred and forty nine dollars a month.  That’s … Does that include the booze?  Does that include the cigarettes afterwards?  I mean, what does that include?

Guest Nathan Fisk:  It’s gotta include something other than prophylactics, I’m sorry…

Lakey:  Does that include the hotel room?  Does that include….  I… I..

Fisk:  [inaudible]. I don’t know.

Actually, Fluke testified that “contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school,” which would make the annual spending closer to $1,000. But it’s hard to imagine that this would make any difference to Lakey. In fact, initially Lakey thought the figure was $1,000 per year.

But, to be fair, Lakey told his audience he was joking, straight up, during his show. “We make fun of Ms. Fluke,” he said. Limbaugh explained later that he was joking, and he apologized.

Here’s more of Lakey’s “fun” with Fuke’s congressional testimony:

Lakey: You know, her parents, her grandparents, all of her family has just got to be really proud.  (laughter in background)   They’ve got to be really proud about right now… (Impersonating Sandra Fluke’s grandfather)… “Oh, Sandra!  Oh, Sandra!  Oh, we’re so proud of you.  We’re so proud of that Congressional testimony you had.  So happy!  Oh, Granpa’s happy.  Come give Granpa… a little hug!…

Lakey also said on the air that he thought the congressional hearing at which Fluke testified was a waste of time, a distraction from the core job of fixing the economy.  He called the hearing an “embarrassment” and he scolded House Republicans for allowing the hearing to occur at all.

“And the House committees are all chaired by Republicans,” he said. “And they said we’re gonna have a hearing about this?”

Lakey said:

Lakey: Now, I don’t know what kind of birth control the girl is using.  I don’t understand… Can you imagine, in these serious times that we live in, our Congress is having hearings with a young lady who has very frequent sexual encounters in college, and this is the Congressional testimony they get.  Amazing!  But birth control – I thought if you’re taking the birth control pill you go like monthly, and they give you the little spindle of the pills, and you time them out and take them daily, and you’re done.

Lakey apparently thought Obama’s call to Fluke was dumb, unless he was joking.

Lakey: This girl who in Congressional testimony, saying that she is having relations of a Bill Clinton proportion on a regular basis.  [Impersonating Clinton]:  “I did not have sexual relations….”  But she says, [still as Clinton] I did have a thousand dollars of sexual relations this year…”  And she’s doing that this year.  And Obama calls her to congratulate her and thank her for telling us. “Thanks for speaking out.”…Ms. Fluke gets a high five from President Obama.  “Thatta girl!”  It’s like a fraternity house around there.

As I write this, Lakey’s radio station, owned by Cumulus Media, prominently features Rush Limbaugh’s apology on its home page.

But there’s no apology from Lakey, who describes himself on his Facebook page as an “entrepreneur,” “humanitarian,” “former candidate for U.S. Congress in Colorado’s CD7, “ and “a frequent guest host for radio talk shows across the USA.”

Lakey did not respond to an email Monday asking if he’d apologized for his comments or if he thinks an apology is warranted.

Fisk told me in a telephone interview that Lakey is currently in Africa doing charity work, which could explain his not responding to me.

But Lakey also did not respond to my past requests for comments for blog posts about his comparing Michele Obama to Chewbacca and his laughing wildly when a caller compared Michele Obama to a character in The Planet of the Apes (though KVOR management did comment).

Fisk is not a regular co-host of Lakey’s show. He was a guest. He told me both he and Lakey thought Limbaugh’s apology was appropriate, and said so on the air. The banter about Fluke was intended to be like a “Saturday Night Live” skit, he said, pointing out that it has been over a week since the show aired and he doesn’t remember every minute of it.

“I think it was a discussion on the radio intended to actually look at what was said and to condemn words like whore and some of the other words that were used, and to make light of parts of it the same way a Saturday Night Live sketch would, but to clearly draw a line and say there were clearly some inappropriate things that were said on national radio,” Fisk told me.

Fisk has joined the show for its “Scotch and cigar segments in the past,” Lakey said on air, but I’ve never listened.

Listen here to excerpts, spliced together, of KVOR’s Lakey joking about Sandra Fluke 3-4-12

Jimmy Lakey Show (with guest Nathan Fisk), Excerpts of Commentary about Sandra Flukes testimony, March 4, 2012

JIMMY LAKEY:  The girl we’re talking about, obviously, is trying desperately to create a family, but not have any result… I …She’s uh…. A thousand dollars a year.  A thousand bucks a year on birth control.  Right?

NATHAN FISK:  Wow

JL:  Did I get this story right?

NF:   You did.  I don’t have a good answer for you, Jimmy.

JL:   Now, I don’t know what kind of birth control the girl is using.  I don’t understand… I didn’t ask.  They should have asked… Can you imagine, in these serious times that we live in, our Congress is having hearings with a young lady who has very frequent sexual encounters in college, and this is the Congressional testimony they get.  Amazing!  But birth control – I thought if you’re taking the birth control pill you go like monthly, and they give you the little spindle of the pills, and you time them out and take them daily, and you’re done.  That doesn’t… That’s twelve months a year, and that doesn’t total ….

NF:  Ummm

JL:  A day earlier now, President Obama called her to congratulate her.  (Laughs)  I mean, you,…this is such a strange story.  I mean, if I were Obama, you let Rush swim in it and whatever he’s got to do.  Rush can dig himself out. Rush is a big boy, and Rush will be just fine.  But now Obama’s out there… This girl who in Congressional testimony, saying that she is having relations of a Bill Clinton proportion on a regular basis.  (Impersonating Clinton):  “I did not have sexual relations….”  But she says, (still as Clinton) I did have a thousand dollars of sexual relations this year…”  And she’s doing that this year.  And Obama calls her to congratulate her and thank her for telling us. “Thanks for speaking out.”

NF:  Aren’t there more important things for Congress to be worried about?  Aren’t there more…ah…absolutely right-in-front-of-us kind of issues:  the economy, the election coming up, the Republicans running, whatever.  And we’re talking about this.  It doesn’t make any sense to me.

JL:  Makes absolu… for a Congressional hearing to be going on about this, it’s absolutely … ah… positively…. dee-gusting, is what I would say…

(BREAK)

JL:  Well, evidently it’s reached presidential level and Ms. Fluke gets a high five from President Obama.  “Thatta girl!”  It’s like a fraternity house around there.

NF:  Don’t know what to tell you, Jimmy.

JL:  I don’t either.l..

(BREAK)

JL:  All right, the calculations were off, my friends.  It’s worse than we thought.  Sandra Fluke spends three thousand dollars, not one thousand, she spends three thousand dollars a month on…ah… a year, on birth control.  That’s two hundred and….forty nine?

NF:  Two hundred and forty-nine dollars.

JL:  Two hundred and forty nine dollars a month.  That’s … Does that include the booze?  Does that include the cigarettes afterwards?  I mean, what does that include?

NF:  It’s gotta include something other than prophylactics, I’m sorry…

JL:  Does that include the hotel room?  Does that include….  I…

NF:  [inaudible] I don’t know.

JL:  What… whatever… I… Two hundred and forty-nine dollars a month…a year, on contraception….. uh, a month.  Two hundred and forty-nine dollars a month.  Three thousand dollars a year.  I’m going to post it on the Facebook fan page, the actual testimony of her wasting time and Congressional dollars and your tax dollars, uh, testifying before the Congress, in which she confesses to such…  You know, her parents, her grandparents, all of her family has just got to be really proud.  (laughter in background)   They’ve got to be really proud about right now… (Impersonating Sandra Fluke’s grandfather)  “Oh…”

NF:  Do we know where she’s from?  Do we know what state she is from?  Have we… have we seen this?

JL:  (Still impersonating Ms. Fluke’s grandfather): “Oh, Sandra!  Oh, Sandra!   Oh, we’re so proud of you.  We’re so proud of that Congressional testimony you had.  So happy!  Oh, Granpa’s happy.  Come give Granpa… a little hug!”  Is that a … Does that sound like Granpa?

NF:  (laughing)  That sounds nothing like Granpa.  (Both laughing)

(BREAK)

JL:  Seriously, I think,…. We make fun of Ms. Fluke, but it is an embarrassment that the House … there was a House …this was a House committee, right?  And the House committees are all chaired by Republicans. And they said we’re gonna have a hearing about this…

NF:  And they said okay.  Instead of a hearing about our economy, instead of a hearing about jobs, instead of a hearing about … oh, about a million other things that are more important than this.

JL:  Yeah, I think that’s the point that could get lost on some things is um… is that this is John Boehner’s house!  These are Republicans!  This should have been shut down long before.  This should have never … we’re not,… because all they’re doing is playing into this nonsense that they’re trying to get the Republicans…They’re want to take the eyes of America off the economy, off of the failed policies of Barak Obama, and so they want us to be painted as a bunch of cooks, and talk about social issues, and that’s why they’ve been going after Santorum, that’s why they’ve been going after Romney and Gingrich, and all this stuff … They’re trying to get all the attention on social issues.  And whoever chaired this committee… I ought to find out who it is and give you his office phone number…. Really ought to have his committee chairmanship stripped, unless I’m …. Maybe I’m missing some explanation because this hearing happening was absolute ludicrous, I tell you, ludicrous!

NF:  Well, the phones are lighting up hotter than a sex pistol… (Lakey laughs)

KOA’s Mike Rosen agreed with Colorado Attorney General John Suthers Thursday that the legal decision forcing states to offer a grade-school education to undocumented children is bogus.

If you don’t think this tidbit deserves to be my first blog post of the week, you would be wrong.

Here’s what Suthers had to say on the topic, which came up during a discussion of the ASSET bill, granting a tuition break to children of illegal immigrants, which Suthers called the “a complete run around” of two federal statutes:

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers: For some incredible reason, in 1982, the United States Supreme Court in a case called Plyler v. Doe, I think it was a San Antonio case, said any child regardless of immigration status is eligible for a free primary or secondary education. I’ve never been able to find that in the United States Constitution, but they said it’s in the 14th Amendment.

Rosen: Yes, which was all about slavery by the way, but that’s another story.

The federal requirement to give a basic education to all children, regardless of immigration status, is a long-settled legal matter.

No reporter, no teacher, no chef, no mom, no dad, not even a Republican talk-radio host, should let Colorado’s top-dog lawyer trash this Supreme Court’s decision in favor of undocumented kids without any discussion or scrutiny whatsoever.

Too much is at stake. We’re talking about grade-school education for some of the most vulnerable children in our country. And Suthers’s unsympathetic tone on Rosen’s radio show seems to show that it’s not just the legal issues that bother him, but the notion that children of illegal immigrants should be offered a public-school education in the world’s richest nation.

Rosen should have Suthers back on his radio show to illuminate more details on this topic, and, meanwhile, Rosen should bring a guest on air who will defend the basic humanity — and legal reasoning — for giving undocumented children a public-school education.

With advertisers dropping the Rush Limbaugh and after the apparent widespread backlash against his comments, I thought I’d call KOA, the radio station that airs Rush Limbaugh in Denver, to find out if the station was considering dropping Limbaugh.

On the “contact” page, I found a statement expressing KOA’s respect for the “right of Mr. Limbaugh, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions.”

In its statement, KOA said Limbaugh “did the right thing…by expressing regret for his choice of words and offering his sincere and heartfelt apology to Ms. Fluke.”

KOA’s entire statement is here:

850 KOA is committed to providing its listeners with access to a broad range of opinion and commentary without condoning or agreeing with the opinions, comments or attempts at humor expressed by on-air talent.  We respect the right of Mr. Limbaugh, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions.  The contraception debate is one that sparks strong emotion and opinions on both sides of the issue.  Last week, in an attempt at absurdist humor to illustrate his political point, Mr. Limbaugh used words that unfortunately distracted from the message he was trying to convey.   We believe he did the right thing on Saturday, and again today on his radio show, by expressing regret for his choice of words and offering his sincere and heartfelt apology to Ms. Fluke.

ABC reports that at least 22 companies have pulled their ads from the show:

Geico, Netflix, Service Magic home contractor, Goodwill, Amberen menopause medication, PolyCom web conferencing, Hadeed Carpets, Accuquote Life Insurance, Vitacost vitamin supplier, Bonobos clothing company,  Sensa weight- loss program, Thompson Creek Windows, AOL, Tax Resolution Services, ProFlowers, Legal Zoom online document creator, Carbonite web security firm, Citrix software maker, Sleep Train Mattresses, Sleep Number mattresses and Quicken Loans.

I’m hoping to reach a Clear Channel spokesperson later today, and I’ll update this blog post at that time.

The media frenzy around Rush Limbaugh’s “slut” comment last week, referring to a woman who believes birth control should be offered as part of her health insurance plan, makes you wonder whether progressives should ignore right-wing whackadoos on the radio.

Obviously, insults run deep on the conservative airwaves. Limbaugh hit a nerve last week, but Rush-like comments aren’t uncommon from radio hosts in Colorado.

Should the major media, or the minor progressive media critic like me, ignore them, given the tiny audiences (mostly) that listen to them.

The Denver Post’s Joanne Ostrow wrote a good piece a couple weeks ago laying out different explanations for why conservatives dominate on talk radio and TV.

But she didn’t address the question of whether they deserve the attention of reporters, like her or me.

Should progressive journalists listen to their shows, shine the sun of the blogoshphere on what they’re saying, and hope the attention stops their insensitivity/hate/insults from infecting others and spreading underground? The assumption here is that educating the wider public about his stuff is a good thing.

Or does the light of day simply allow the worst of conservative talk to gain strength? The assumption here is that publicity help these jokers get more people to listen to them.

But before we get to those questions, here are possible explanations, offered by Ostrow for why talk  radio and TV is dominated by conservatives: 1) the right is more hate-filled, and the angrier the rhetoric, the more people gravitate to it in the talk format, and 2) conservatives own more radio conglomerates, which provide the infrastructure that the left lacks.

I’m not sure what the reason is, but I tend to agree with Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers Magazine, whom Ostrow quoted her article:

Harrison of Talkers magazine believes conservatives dominate, “because the conservative audience is easier to target than the liberal audience.”

Listeners of a conservative bent, who feel alienated and disenfranchised by big media, Hollywood and academia, represent “a perfect mind-set for radio, a niche medium, to target an audience that will be loyal,” Harrison says. “They’re seeking validation.”

Harrison, who avers he is apolitical and speaks only as a broadcast expert, says, “the conservative audience mind-set is much more cohesive and uniform, whereas “liberal” is a broader term that takes in many different political philosophies, ethnicities, voting habits, socio-economic classes. It’s not as cohesive a unit.”

Ostrow reports that even though most of the radio airwaves are filled with righties (“Conservative talk radio rules 90 percent of the political airwaves today.”), Denver’s David Sirota pulls a cumulative weekly audience of 115,000 on AM760, beating KHOW’s Peter Boyles by 2,000 listeners. But Sirota trails KOA’s Mike Rosen by 30,000 listeners.

At the end of her piece, Ostrow writes that the “titans of talk actually draw tiny niche audiences.”

That would include Rush Limbaugh. In other words, their voices are loud and shrill, but few real people are listening.

Unless, of course, a righty talker like Limbaugh ignites a media frenzy like he did last week. Then his audience is massive.

So this leads back to the question, should we ignore our local Colorado yappers when they get ugly (e.g., Democrat Donna Brazile as “ignorant slut,” and Michele Obama as “Chewbacca,” kill all Iranians, Katrina victims who didn’t leave deserved their fate, etc. )

Or is the silent treatment the best way to fight back?

If you follow my blog, you know I’m on the side of listening and exposing them. That’s why I follow these talk shows and write about the misinformation, omissions, and rudeness you find there (not all the time, for sure, but too often).

I like to think that pulicizing the latest talk-radio outrage, and possibly educating some people about it, undermines the audience for it in the long run, though maybe a few more people are drawn to it in the short term.

Limbaugh’s idiocy last week proved my point. Now more people will quietly dismiss the Limbaughs of the world when they say insulting or outrageous things about women who expect birth control to be covered by their health insurance.

Limbaugh and his anti-woman cause lost ground last week–and advertisers.

And eventually Limbaugh and his allies in Colorado will lose their audience and their jobs, as they become more and more irrelevant, right? Or is that wishful thinking?

You don’t have to read the polls to know that real people (none of whom read this blog) are tired of our rude and extreme political culture.

Journalists like to think of themselves as representing real people, so reporters should ask public figures to explain themselves when they make mean and sweeping statements.

Case in point: Joe Coors, who’s running in Colorado’s 7th Congressional District, hopped on the syndicated Cari and Rob radio show Feb. 8 and pretty much trashed the entire voting record of Rep. Ed Perlmutter. Coors said:

And my track record, well I don’t have a voting track record, but the things that I would vote for are things that Perlmutter has voted against. His voting track record is, you know, he voted for the stimulus packages. He voted for the Obama health care. He voted against Keystone, which is just absolutely tragic in my opinion. So there’s a clear choice for the voters here on Nov. 6, 2012.

This is the kind of statement that should catch the ears of journalists. The way I read it, Coors is saying Perlmutter completely sucks, nothing good about him, at least when it comes to his voting record.

So reporters should ask Coors if he’d vote against all the stuff that Perlmutter supported: payroll tax cut, unemployment-insurance extension, government insider trading regs (passed 417-2), auto bailout, HIRE Act (incentives to hire unemployed workers), ENDA (stopping discrimination based on sexual orientation), Lily Ledbetter (equal-pay-for-equal work), etc.

And would Coors vote for some of the most extreme Tea Party legislation, opposed by Perlmutter, that moved through the House this session? I’m thinking of last month’s vote not to concur with the U.S. Senate on extending the payroll tax break. Early votes not to extend the debt limit? Not to pass continuing budget resolutions?

The ins and outs of these positions are complicated, I realize, but reporters should be advocates for basic civility and truthfulness, and you can bet that Coors’ sweeping condemnation of the votes of a sitting Congressman is most likely something Coors himself would back away from if asked for details.

There’s a desperate tantrum-like quality in public figures who make sweeping allegations, like Mitt Romney’s statement on a Colorado talk radio show earlier this month that Obama has done “everything wrong when it relates to building an economy.”

Reporters should listen carefully for comments like these, and dig into them.

Partial transcript of Joe Coors’ appearance Feb. 8, 2012, on the Cari and Rob Show.

Hear entire segment here. Joe Coors on the Cari and Rob Show 02-08-12

Hermacinski: Mr. Coors, why at this point are you choosing to run for political office?

Coors: Very Good Question. This thing has been growing on me. What’s happened in the last three years back in Washington DC is almost unconscionable. I just feel compelled and called to stand up for limited government, balanced budgets, and a business approach to running Washington DC. And that’s why I’m in it…. I can tell you, based on caucus meetings I attended, voters are angry. And they are fed up with the liberal agenda back in Washington DC. And my track record, well I don’t have a voting track record, but the things that I would vote for are things that Perlmutter has voted against. His voting track record is, you know, he voted for the stimulus packages. He voted for the Obama health care. He voted against Keystone, which is just absolutely tragic in my opinion. So there’s a clear choice for the voters here on Nov. 6, 2012….

Douglas: …Talk about the importance of [the Keystone Pipeline] and of energy in the 7th congressional district.

Coors: …Personally, I just don’t understand why we import oil from countries that don’t like us. We have more resources in the state of Colorado for energy than whole Middle East combined. Why the environmentalists or the squeaky wheels keeping us from tapping that resource is something I’m going to challenge.