The Radio Do you, dear

The Radio

Right about now you must be saying to yourselves: Why would turning on our radios serve to estrange us from fellow humanoids? To which we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” reply: Trust us—one quick perusal of the dial will compel the intelligent man (or semi-intelligent woman) to conclude that there is little sentient life on this planet. And that Billy Joel sucks.

First off, dear reader, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are not even going to waste much time dilating on the horrors of AM radio. Pretty much every AM radio station offers unendurable political chat shows. On such programs, mellifluous hosts trade barbs with like-minded out-of-work auto-repairmen, as if listeners are dying to hear the rigorous political analysis of a guy named Clem.

Those few AM stations that don’t broadcast talk shows appear to offer endless loops of the song “Volare.”

And then, dear reader, there’s the FM garbage. First, the intelligent listener should note that any music of actual aesthetic quality—classical, jazz—is quarantined over at the low end of the dial. We wouldn’t want Schubert getting in the way of our Hootie and the Blowfish, now would we?

In addition, most classical stations offer endless versions of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Gustav Holtz’s The Planets. In short, they present classical music for people who only like the classical music that is played in cartoons. As if this weren’t irksome enough, such stations only appear to have funeral homes and crematoriums as sponsors. As such, after hearing Adagio for Strings for the umpteenth time, one is reminded that most of his fellow listeners are moribund.

Things are even worse in the jazz realm, since most stations play so-called “smooth jazz,” which is, oddly enough, neither smooth nor jazz.

If one pines to hear anything of even middling quality, one must endure the patent indignities of NPR (National Palestinian Radio). In between Hugo Wolf tracks, NPR proffers news stories honing in on the evils of America, and the charms of “Prairie Home Companion.”

This leaves us, dear reader, with the unendurable pop and rock “music” that sullies the rest of the FM dial. As far as we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are concerned, enjoying rock-n-roll should qualify one for spading or neutering. Perhaps both.

And don’t even get us started about “rap.”