RIP Morning Sedition

Despite my justly earned reputation for being absolutely fascist about my aural environment, I've been listening to all the radio options offered through iTunes at work lately. I'm totally addicted to WOXY, which is basically the best alternative rock radio station in the universe (even better than KEXP!) and which broadcasts, improbably, from Cincinatti. It streams at pretty decent quality through the Radio tab in iTunes and is definitely worth a listen. They're very receptive about playing requests, too.

I've also gotten pretty obsessed with a few of the Air America shows. For those of you who don't know - and my friend who goes to UC Berkeley's graduate school of government had no idea what it was, so don't laugh - Air America is the liberal response to the right-wing talk radio echo chamber. It got off to a pretty bumpy start, and there's definitely some crap - I'm looking at you, Jerry Springer - on there. But the stuff they have on during early mornings, particularly my lesbian girlfriend Rachel Maddow, is pretty great. It's nice that they're available for podcast, because God only knows the last time I was up at 5 am AND capable of digesting intelligent liberal talking points. Actually, it's probably never happened.

In addition to the totally tasty Maddow, in the last few weeks I got into Morning Sedition, a pretty strangely formatted show (with perhaps the best name ever) consisting of news digests, listener calls, sporadic interviews, and comedy bits reminiscent of the Firesign Theater.

Conveniently enough, I got into it just in time for it to be canceled. Today was the last day of co-host Mark Maron's tenure on the show - as far as I can tell, he got fired because one of the Air America suits didn't like his style - and the other co-host Mark Riley is getting his own solo show.

I quite liked Morning Sedition during the brief period I was able to listen to it. From the rather weepy, reminiscent tone of the final few shows it appears that lots of other people - including luminaries such as Susan Sarandon and Ted Leo - did too. Maron has an acerbic sense of humor that resonates well with my own - his default method for referring to the current administration was "The Neo-Con Death Cult" - and although it may have just been a function of the fact that he was leaving, it seemed like his was the show's dominant personality. I'm undecided as to whether Riley will be effective on his own. In any case, goodbye Morning Sedition - your name alone should have kept you alive.