Talk of the town.

TALK OF THE TOWN

IF SOME present-day Tocqueville were planning a sequel to Democracy in America, he would be well advised to tune in to talk radio. He would find there the lively interchange of ideas that the learned Frenchman found so pervasive in nineteenth-century America.

Talk radio took shape as a political institution during the 1960s and 1970s. It is, says Murray B. Levin, author of Talk Radio and the American Dream, "an astonishing testimony to the growing belief that something fundamental and corrosive is sapping the vitality of the Republic."

"Congress has left a void," says Mike Siegel of KING radio in Seattle. "It does not respond to the needs" of the people. Polls show that 90 per cent of America supported President Bush's actions in the Persian Gulf; while only 52 per cent of the Senate and 57 per cent of the House backed the resolution allowing the use of force.

Mainstream Medium

IN CONTRAST to most forms of mass media, talk radio is not contrived. The listener is most of the show. Nor is it any longer a phenomenon attracting mainly kooks, the disfranchised, and the unemployed. Talk radio today has become attractive to the mainstream citizen espousing mainstream conservative or liberal opinions. Indeed, the cellular phone has enabled high-powered commuters to join in on the fun.

Rush Limbaugh, the most popular show host today, is a character made for radio: a great conversationalist with a boisterous voice and a refreshingly clear, distinct point of view, which provokes impassioned listener responses. Most are sympathetic: "Love ya, Rush"; "Ditto, Rush" (callers are encouraged to save time by cutting out repetitious accolades)--though some criticize his "insensitive" and "derogatory" ways.

Limbaugh is the new kid to the mike. He had a show in Sacramento in the early Eighties, winding up at WABC in New York, from which his national show is broadcast, and which also carries two longtime conservative radio icons--Bob Grant and Barry Farber.

Limbaugh's program airs on 371 stations nationwide. With some seven million listeners per week, he is the most listened-to voice on radio. He has taken his show on the road, attracting thousands of "Dittoheads" to on-stage performances. He even has gotten some one thousand people to pay $1,500 a pop to take a Caribbean cruise with him. On one such trip he had the entire ship bestow the middle-finger salute on Fidel Castro as the ship sailed by Cuba.

The key to his success? "People love conservatism," he says, "they love the things I stand for. . . . And as long as there is Ted Kennedy, Alan Cranston, Joe Biden, Mario Cuomo . . . then conservatism will be a vital force."

Generally speaking, those who call Limbaugh have legitimate gripes about intrusive government, high taxes, affirmative action, and the decline of higher education. But for all the politics, Limbaugh (like other talk-radio hosts) is as much an entertainer as an opinion-maker. He derides left-wing characters and mocks liberal issues. In the daily introduction to the show, a voice announces: "The views expressed by the host of this show are not necessarily the views of the staff, management, or sponsors of this station--but they ought to be." All are welcome on the program, we are told, even "femi-nazis."

Others avoid the shock tactics. Boston's most popular voice, David Brudnoy of WBZ, is, to the horror of Harvard liberals, what he calls "resolutely and maniacally conservative." But he focuses his political enthusiasm on issues and not antics.

Brudnoy ses his show, and talk radio in general, as democracy's forum. People want their voices heard and will seek the medium most accessible to them. Through radio, Brudnoy believes, comes "the silent majority of views"--the ones politicians don't express; the ones news organizations don't give awards for. One thing Brudnoy can't understand, however, is why Americans don't elect their representatives the way they choose their talk-radio hosts.

Most talk-radio programs focus on local issues. Jim McLaughlin on WALE in Providence says, "the pothole you back into as you drive to work is a bigger problem for people" than any current national issue. He calls his show "therapy radio . . . an outlet from a clearly liberal mainstream media."

Even nonconservative hosts view themselves in the same way. Jerry Williams of WRKO in Boston, an FDR liberal concerned with the radicals who have taken over the Democratic Party and liberalism's good name, says that talk radio is "the only avenue left where people can express themselves."

Carol Hemingway of KABC in Los Angeles calls herself "a breath of fresh air" for a media world dominated by "conservative bosses." So what, she says, if the reporters and broadcasters are liberal: it's the guys in the suits who decide what runs. She's in radio because she believes it has a large influence on society; some 95 per cent of radio listeners are voters, and she wants to make activists of her listeners--what kind of activists, she really doesn't care.

Many mike jockeys are themselves activists. When House Speaker Jim Wright was proposing a congressional pay raise, Jerry Williams rallied hosts around the country to urge their listeners to call, fax, or write their representatives, expressing outrage. Since then, Williams and Mike Siegel of Seattle have organized some three hundred hosts from around the country into a sort of political-action committee (the National Association of Radio Talk Show Hosts).

However, Mike Rosen of WRKO in Denver demurs. He doesn't think it is radio's place to be actively rallying support for this or that cause; radio, he says, is entertainment.

The only real generalization you can tag on talk radio is variety. Each show has its own geographical idiosyncrasies and concerns. Even Limbaugh, though he concentrates on national news, is very much New York: big, brash, truculent.

Radio's simplicity (a microphone and a host) and its limits (only sound) are what enable it to be what it is. Our new Tocqueville may find our House of Representatives unrepresentative and the Federal Government a remote bureaucracy. But democracy in America--"the most continuous, ancient, and permanent tendency known to history"--today finds a home on the air.

Mr. Morris is NR's executive editor.