Who will the talk radio haters love?

By JIM SHEA

HARTFORD COURANT

I’m worried about hate radio.

It could be losing its influence.

If hate radio loses its influence, it will lose its audience.

If it loses its audience, it will lose its sponsors.

If it loses its sponsors, well, I’m not sure I want to live in a country where people can disagree without hating. I mean, debate without hate is so, I don’t know, so lily-livered, so PBS.

Of course, the maestros of hate radio — the Michael Savages, the Glenn Becks, the Big Kahuna of Hate his own self, Rush Limbaugh — have only themselves to blame for their predicament.

In the race for the Republican presidential nomination, they put all their hate in one basket and lost big time. You would think they would have been savvy enough to hedge their hate, just in case it became necessary to switch hatreds in midstream. But they weren’t.

No, the boys gave all their man love to Mitt Romney, and when he dropped out of the race — after concluding that discretion was the better part of remaining wealthy — they were left at the altar.

The obvious thing for Rush and his supporting cast to do would be to back the presumptive GOP nominee, John McCain. That, however, is not as easy as it sounds.

Illegal immigration

What got McCain condemned to hate radio hell is his position on illegal immigration. In hate radio’s view, McCain doesn’t hate the 12 million or so illegals in this country enough to be a real conservative, not to mention American.

So, for the mullahs of the microphones to start supporting McCain, they would have to ease up on their hatred of illegal immigrants, and that’s just not going to happen. Life’s too short.

Hate radio must not be allowed to fall silent.

If hate radio loses its voice, where will listeners go for their daily infusion of vitriol, “Prairie Home Companion?”

If hate radio fades to static, where will we turn for the half truth? Distortion? Mean-spirited humor?

And what would become of fear-mongering? Tell me life without fear-mongering isn’t a frightening thought.

What to do?

Here is my suggestion:

I think all the hate-radio jocks, along with all the TV talking-head haters, should turn on each other.

Seriously, these people are not only accomplished haters but are themselves easy to hate.

We’re not just talking Limbaugh and Savage here, we’re also looking at the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and the undisputed Queen of All Hate, Ann Coulter.

This group would push each other to new levels of viciousness, which would be very entertaining, which is the point of hate media, right?

The hatefest would attract not only the regular hate-radio audience but people from the other end of the political spectrum, who would tune in to see people they hate hate each other.

Like I said, I’m concerned about hate radio. I hope this helps.

X Shea is a columnist for The Courant. Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service.