Time for Bob Lonsberry to be replaced

It’s really time for Lonsberry to go

 Rochester is plagued by racial tensions deep seated inequality and persistent poverty. It has one of the highest concentrations of poverty in the nation, a high rate of childhood poverty and a history of maltreatment of racial minorities. The gap between the richest suburbs and urban poverty are vast. Yet throughout much of its history elite Rochesterians and today suburbanites have had an air of superiority. In the title of the famous book by Curt Gerling.  The old Rochester is a Smugtown. Its leadership has little use for the working folks of Rochester

Unfortunately local Rochester broadcast media haven't been of much constructive use in helping Rochesterians address and understand the problems it faces. News here is mostly infotainment, Remember back in the 80's and 90's when Rochester was shedding jobs the media promoted happy talk and a Pollyanna mentality. I remember news features like positively Rochester trumpeting all the good things about our area and telling people prosperity was just behind the next door, These pieces were not news but civic boosterism and entertainment, Their job was not too inform but to distract and avoid the real social and economic issues

In the meantime the middle class was disappearing and poverty rising, Sometimes negativity, if it is based in reality is a good thing, It forces one to act to change the situation or to do something constructive, But for the elite of Rochester, negativity was not desired. It was bad for business, and any though the masses of Rochester folk might start to want change was scary as hell.

There is of course a dark underside to the happy talk. It doesn't really convince anyone, but acts as a form of official censorship again critical thinking. People who aren't happy in Rochester are told they don't have a case and left out of the conversation.

Still someone or somebody has to be to blame for our discomfort and distress and the poor and minorities make a great scapegoat. Personally I have never met a poor person who laid off several thousand people, moved a plant to a foreign country or gave one his crony friends a sweet government job or a no bid contract, yet the poor  became the target of the and tool a lot of blame for the country's woes.

Rochester has sunk a long way in its racial attitudes. Once the home of Frederick Douglas and other abolitionists, and an important stop on the underground railroad the greater Rochester area has become its opposite, a hotbed of racial intolerance. A recent article I read found that upstate New York was one of the areas with the greatest indications or racist attitudes. I don’t really know the whole story of how Rochester turned away from its abolitionist heritage, but one part of the story has to include Rochester’s patron saint George Eastman, He thought that African Americans did not have the intelligence and discipline to work at Kodak and hired few if any at his burgeoning industrial complex. This refusal was one among many reasons (police brutality was another) fueling the race riots in the early 60’e that shook staid Rochester to its core.  Despite some reform efforts racism and its partner economic inequality

The rise of hate radio has played a large role in creating this climate of blame. Figures like Rush Limbaugh arose and targeted liberal ideas and vulnerable people or groups like feminists and gays who are seem to threaten the conservative values.

Originally the media were seen as public property. No one owns the airways. Licenses for radio and broadcast TV are not ownership of the frequency but groups are granted use of a frequency based on the public interest. To be sure that notion of the public interest was never very well developed or realized but it did provide a small bulwark against the worst offences through the fairness doctrine and the notion that broadcasters had to provide coverage of controversial public issues. Even this weak public interest standard along with a number of others was eliminated in during the Reagan administration and the deregulation continued under Clinton, THe argument was basically economic. The fairness doctrine had according to this argument been based on the scarcity of frequencies. The limited number of frequencies limited competition necessitating regulation. But the expanded number of outlets along with cable (at the time later the internet would be invoked) created an abundance of outlets thus cancelling the need for regulation. Of course the fallacy of this argument is apparent. It doesn’t matter if there are an expanded number of channels if they are controlled by just a few people and if ordinary folk don’t have the resources the capacity or the influence to use them. As deregulation increased the limitation on the number of stations one company could own in a market were lifted and the number of total stations a corporation could own giant conglomerates like Clear Channel were able to own thousands of stations nationwide and localism in radio declined, and as localism declined so did diversity both in opinion and in ownership. Few women or minorities were represented in ownership and on the air. THe rise of talk radio would have been impossible without the deregulation that left the fairness doctrine in abeyance. Otherwise every time a Rush Limbaugh went on a diatribe about liberalism feminazis or Obama a station would have to grant equal time to those discussed. We shouldn’t think either that talkers like Rush stepped in and got an immediate audience, They were creations of the market power of the large conglomerates created after deregulation, Stations owned by the mega companies were forced to run Limbaugh who then immediately had a captive audience market for that national advertisers would get onboard,

Along with national figures like Limbaugh and for time Glenn Beck spawned a host of local programs, and Rochester has its own hate radio platform on WHAM a 50,000 watt superstation and host Bob Lonsberry. Just like his bigger cousins, Lonsberry has a history of racially insensitive comments, Back in 2002 when a young African American boy had been shot by police and raised tensions Lonsberry criticized urban teens who were "raised like animals, groomed as predators” and called the victim “genetically a man, but socially a wolf.”2003 he called the African American mayor of Rochester, William Johnson an orangutan. He was suspended and subsequently fired for this transgression. Somewhat chastened he made a public apology and returned less than a year later promising to take sensitivity training,

While it is the American way to give people second chances, Lonsberry has long since squandered it and more. He quickly showed his promise to be more sensitive and inclusive to be empty. Over the years he has continued to disparage people of color women gays and of course liberals. Like Rush Limbaugh you cannot really have a discussion with Lonsberry He will just call you a name an Obama supporter and hang up.

Lonsberry may have learned to be a bit more subtle in his racism although only a little. Lonsberry sells merchandise call FUBO (F*&# You Barack Obama) and his disdain for this African American president along with African American mayor of Rochester (and a women to boot) drips off his microphone. He continues to use racially charged rhetoric and thinly disguised racial stereotypes. He has extended his racism to included Latinos.

If you were to listen to Lonsberry you would find a consistent thread running through his diatribes. There are two kinds of people in this world. The hard working people who earn and create wealth and the takers. All our problems like poverty, taxes and even inequality derive from this divide. The takers are the lazy no good ones who live off the dole. We all know who Lonsberry has in mind here.

In the genteel language we academic types sometimes use this view is basically crap. It reverses cause and effect, the results of economic inequality and racial prejudice are transmuted into its causes.  We don’t live in a Horatio Alger world where everyone succeeds by pulling themselves up form their bootstraps, but one in which mobility and climbing up the social ladder is harder than ever. Our society is one of small individual enterprises but one dominated by large corporation and interests who hold an inordinate amount of power. Here economic barriers to mobility are multiplied by institutional racism. The upshot of this is kind of bankrupt moralism in which the others lack of character we “honest and hard working” people possess. It averts out gaze from the larger social issues.

Back in 2008 Lonsberry made fun of Rochester Urban League awards horning students who achieved a B average in schools for its low standards and made also made light of another program honoring teen mothers for graduating from high school. His response telling them to keep their pants on seem a bit ironic coming from a Christian conservative with several failed marriages but this seemed lost on Christian warrior Lonsberry.

These actions led the Rochester School superintendent jean Claude Brizzard to call for Lonsberry's removal amidst a threatened boycott of his advertisers. He survived this storm too,

More recently you can read in Lonsberry's blog he views that the real problems in racially charged areas like Ferguson is the disrespect African American's have for police. He was more worried about the ruined life of policeman Darren Wilson than Michael Brown who lost his life. Clearly black lives don't matter to Bob.  More recently he has upped the rhetoric again. In wake of the recent resignation of the President of the University of Missouri for his inattention and insensitivity to racial and ethnic hate on campus, Lonsberry claims that the students who protest are petulant spoiled brats who can't take criticism, They are instituting a new wave of repressive PC that threaten our universities. If course having attended Brigham Young University, Lonsberry is no doubt an expert on the campus climate in our nation, Had he ever wonders in a P stupor onto one of our local campuses say for example SUNY Brockport he might have noticed that racial tensions often simmer just beneath the surface of campus life,

However, in recent days Lonsberry has visited his crusading wrath on the whole of Islam in the wake of the terrible even in Paris. Islam is a "gutter religion." that has to be eliminated. Of course Obama gets roped into this too.  Obama's careful considered response lacks the understanding of the world historical clash that is occurring, Rather than an attack on humanity, it humanity (short for godless humanist or non-Christians) that are at war with beleaguered Christianity. He seems to be advocating a new Crusade by Christians against the heathens. Luckily we have some advanced mathematics to create new war technologies that were facilitated a long time ago by the mathematical discoveries of these uncultured heathens,

I think Bob Lonsberry has had enough chances to show he can be a voice for community dialogue and discussion of important issues. he provides little substance or thoughtful considerations of issue. He is more concerned with keeping his profile high and expanding his audience to find a regional or even national base than helping us address crucial issues.

This was illustrated in an article in the Syracuse Post discussing Lonsberry’s expansion to the Syracuse Market in 2012 a move that according to the article gives him a chance to become "the region's most powerful radio commentator/

Joel Delmonico a vice president of Clear. Channel in Syracuse, the radio conglomerate that owns WYSL in Syracuse WHAM in Rochester along with thousands of other stations nationwide thinks that Lonsberry is a good host because he inspires intense followers an intense dislike. THe important thing for him is that a radio host shouldn't be bland, Lonsberry he says attracts listeners who think he is a 9 and who think he is a 1. This is apparently the criterion for successful talk radio in his view the creation of outrage.

While it might be useful for talk show hosts to provoke listeners to think there is a major difference between a provocation that leads to discussion and provocation that is designed to stop it. As in Rochester Syracuse listeners quickly found that only certain opinions are allowed on Lonsberry’s after first being dismissed with the usual thank you mister Obama, the same caller on his next try got a simple hang up another time he was told we don’t want the same type of caller as Jim Reith (the previous local Syracuse middle of the road host let go in favor of Lonsberry) Sandwiched between Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in Syracuse and ahead if both of them in Rochester. The aim of this block of shows is not to educate and inform but to disinform. It is in the business of playing on the fears and anxieties of working folks and to inculcate authoritarian and dogmatic patterns of thinking,

 

I don’t make this claim lightly.  the dumbing down of the American citizen has been a topic in the news in recent years While there may be a number of causes, certain high among them is the deliberate disinformation provided through hate radio and outlets like Fox News, It has long been remarked that Fox News viewers are less informed than other viewers and are more likely to believe conspiracy oriented ideas such as President Obama was not born in America and is a secret Muslim or that global warming is a liberal conspiracy. One recent study claimed that watching Fox News makes one less informed than watching no news at all. Surely studies of hate radio listeners would come to similar conclusions. No doubt it contributed to the deepening political polarization of our country and the local Rochester region too.

 

 

Even in times when public interests standards are on the decline, we still can make headway against hate radio.  An organized nationwide boycott of sponsors of Rush Limbaugh has had an effect. The number of stations running Limbaugh has declined. Equally as important in many major markets he has been dropped from high profile stations, and is running on low rated low profile stations, and advertisers are fleeing Limbaugh in the wake of the boycott and his increasingly intemperate remarks,

 

Rochester can’t afford to continue on as a bastion of hate radio. We need forums for a serious discussion of the issues facing Rochester and the nation and radio that provides information not disinformation, and sows prejudice both petty and large. Lonsberry has been on the edge for a long time subject to firing and boycotts, he may seem like he is Teflon but he is not invincible. A concerted and sustained effort to remove Lonsberry will succeed if local groups take up the issue again and press both advertisers and WHAM executives to change. Public interest arguments can have an effect.

We have to make the argument for better public interest standards and press stations to live up to the public interest obligations and call to account those who are supporting hate Radio in Rochester. One of the pressing needs in our community is intelligent discussion and thought our dilemmas not ignorance and bigotry. We can’t settle for less.