The Dinosaurs are bellowing

Something must be in the water at MainStreamMedia headquarters, because the fossils seem to have come to life.

The first media Brontosaur I noticed was in the Saturday Deseret News. Don Gale is one of those sincere but clueless people who, when confronted by something they don't like and don't understand, become irrational and idiotic. For those who are unfamiliar with the name, Gale pontificated almost daily to the helpless viewers and listeners of KSL TV and KSL AM for 22 years, every time ending his condescending tirades with the statement "KSL welcomes contrasting points of view from responsible individuals". There must not have been very many "responsible" Utahns back then, because it was a rare occasion whenever someone actually got a chance to rebut a KSL editorial.

Since retiring, Gale has played the part of the crazy old Uncle at the family reunion who rants on and on about the Kaiser or President Harding or the Gold Standard. His columns appear in the Deseret News every few months, and the subject of his ire is almost always conservatives and talk radio (fortunately for The Warren, it seems he has yet to discover weblogs). But what can one expect from someone who decries "extremist" rhetoric from the right wing, and then compares conservative talk-shows to Hitlerarian propaganda?

The second was today when Garrison Keillor confirmed to everyone what a pompous ass he truly is. Keillor, perhaps America's most smug welfare recipient, called conservatives “…evil, lying, cynical bastards who are out to destroy the country I love and turn it into a banana republic, but hey, nobody's perfect.” Then he added another knee-slapper when he said:

Republicans are in need of affirmation, they don't feel comfortable in America and they crave listening to people who think like them. Liberals actually enjoy living in a free society; tuning in to hear an echo is not our idea of a good time.

As far as I am aware, he said that with a straight face. Maybe it's his way of saying he doesn't watch the evening news.

True, Keillor doesn't mind people holding or expressing different opinions, as long as they are the same as his. It's people who say things he doesn't agree with that bother him. And the fact that he uses taxpayer dollars to promote his opinions doesn't bother him, either. After all, he is smarter than everyone else, isn't he?

Gale and Keillor are like two old dinosaurs who have found that small, adaptable mammals (blogs and talk radio) have overrun their former broadcast paradise. To carry the metaphor further, they, like the dinosaurs, dimly recognize that their days are numbered and there's nothing they can do about it. So impotently bellowing is the only course of action left.