Megyn Kelly Is a Sadist

Megyn Kelly was always a jerk, as noted by the pretentious Welsh spelling her parents used for her first name.   But recent comments from the inexplicably popular conservative talk show host reveal that she may have a brain worm far worse than what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. dealt with.

Kelly, who recently signed with Sirius XM to launch a show on one of its talk channels, got herself in hot water almost as soon as she began her show, Last month, she created a firestorm of a backlash for comments she made about Jeffrey Epstein, in which she suggested he was technically not a pedophile  because he preferred fifteen-year-old girls over third-graders, and that fifteen-year-old girls are close enough to maturity - "the barely legal type."  No, they're not.  They weren't close enough to maturity in 1980, when Brooke Shields was that age and made those suggestively suggestive Calvin Klein jeans ads, and they're not close enough to maturity now.

And as if that weren't bad enough, Kelly, talking on her show to fellow discredited media personality Mark Halperin, said she wanted to see the alleged drug dealers on the Venezuelan boats that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth have been blowing out of the water die slow and painful deaths for a crime they likely  did not commit - namely, running drugs.

"So I really do kind of not only want to see them killed in the water," Kelly said to Halperin, "whether they're on the boat or in the water, but I'd really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little."

Why do I get the feeling that Kelly knows tortures that were banned during the Spanish Inquisition?

I used to think Kelly was just a mean bitch, but even female Rottweilers are kinder and gentler than this bottle-blonde harridan.  She is happy to defend pedophilia and try to redefine it to make the late Jeffrey Epstein - and, by association - Donald Trump - look like they're being railroaded (well, she is a attorney), and she's also happy to suggest death-camp justice to Spanish-speaking mariners accused of drug running without even a fair trial or adherence to international law in sentencing the guilty parties.  I'm trying to think of a female political commentator on the left who are as mean-spirited and as morally bankrupt as Kelly.  Of course, I can't think of any as morally bankrupt as she is.  Mean-spiritedness?  A couple of ladies on the left, including Jennifer Welch ("We're not fans of the Catholics"), occasionally get close, but once female liberal commentators reach a certain level of viciousness (as when Joy Reid tried to gay-shame Charlie Crist and then denied it despite the evidence), they usually just stay there.  Megyn Kelly, like her spiritual benefactor Donald Trump, moves heaven and earth to get  progressively worse.  If you think this is as bad as Megyn Kelly can get, you don't know Megyn Kelly.

It is for these transgressions of intelligence and taste on her Sirius XM show that many Sirius XM subscribers to cancel their subscriptions in protest, as there are no signs that Kelly's days at Sirius XM are numbered.  That is a brave thing to do, as Sirius XM has no competition in satellite radio, and so-called terrestrial radio is virtually unlistenable.  It is for those reasons - but for the latter reason, especially - that I remain a Sirius XM subscriber despite Kelly's presence on it.  Because I don't listen to political commentary on Sirius XM.  I subscribe strictly for the music channels, and I listen to it in my car more than I do on my laptop.  I consider my car to be my refuge, as I consider music to be a refuge, and so I want to get away from politics when I'm driving.  I listen to my favorite rock Sirius XM channels - which play records going back sixty years - while on the road.  If I still listened to regular FM radio and tried to find a station that still played music made before Jimmy Carter left the White House, I wouldn't have much luck.  And thanks to an oligarchical communications law passed nearly thirty years ago, I'd have to deal with stations owned by politically connected conglomerates such as iHeart Radio, which has done more damage to American radio than payola.

I even listen to the jazz and classical channels on Sirius XM instead of the local public classical and jazz stations on the FM dial, mainly because the reception of these stations is so bad that I get interference on my receiver; the classical station gets cut out by a rock station from Scranton - over a hundred miles from where I live - that broadcasts on the same frequency.  And sometimes I like to listen to Sirius XM's contemporary jazz (derided by its detractors as "smooth jazz") channel, Watercolors.  I can't listen to the FM contemporary-jazz station in New York because it went off the air seventeen years ago. 

It's all good and fine to stop subscribing to Sirius XM to protest Megyn Kelly's presence on it, but such a boycott is highly impractical when FM and AM radio are particularly awful these days and Sirius XM is the only place to go to listen to the sort of music you can't hear on the FM dial anymore and haven't been able to hear on the AM dial since at least the late 1980s.  My advice to Sirius XM subscribers is simply not to listen to Megyn Kelly's show rather than quit the service.  Sirius XM will likely still get the message that way.  Why do you think 50s on 5 and 60s on 6 were moved from channels 5 and 6 to farther down the dial and renamed "50s Gold and "60s Gold"?  Because Sirius XM found that it could get many more listeners on its channels at the top of the dial if there were more "current" music stations on channels 5 and 6.  And I don't think it was in response to canceled subscriptions.  It's because Sirius XM was responding to what its customers liked more as opposed to what they didn't like as much.   And sticking it out and ignoring Megyn Kelly could possibly be more effective in not just pushing her show down the dial but getting it canceled entirely than just quitting the whole damn company.

Get that sadistic excuse for a human being out of your mind, tune in to Watercolors, and chill out. 

The Last DJ

I enjoyed listening to Jim Ladd's weeknightly radio show on Sirius XM and continued listening to him on Mondays when his schedule got curtailed to that day of the week.   When I first got satellite radio, I was hooked on his show almost immediately.  Here was the famous DJ from the City of Angels that I'd heard of, the one who played the best rock and roll, not the most commercial rock and roll, the guy who helped keep rock music relevant by focusing on what was fresh and not what what was stale - a mix of familiar tunes, obscure tracks, and new bands and solo performers.  He was one of those very few remaining radio pioneers who stood in the way of the businessmen who always ruining everything with their demographic studies and their money chasing.  And Sirius XM now gave me the opportunity to hear what this Ladd chap was all about.   

I caught part of the show Ladd did on Sirius XM's Deep Tracks channel on December 11, 2023, driving home from my stamp collectors' club's Christmas party.  It wasn't very inspiring that night - too much prog, it seemed - but it was still Jim Ladd as we and LA terrestrial-radio listeners always knew him, and a lackluster Ladd show was still better than any radio show on a terrestrial classic-rock station that paid lip service at best to the spirit of rock and roll.

I had no idea that I was listening to what would be his last show.

Jim Ladd died of a heart attack on December 16, 2023, and an era died with him.  As the leading and fiercely independent DJ at KLOS-FM and KMET-FM, he pushed free-form radio to its freest and most formless incantation, playing what he wanted regardless of whether it fit a conventional "rock" format or not, refusing to define the music according to market research.  He established many a rapport with several rock stars of the 1970s, including Pink Floyd's Roger Waters and California rocker Tom Petty, both of whom made records inspired by Ladd's career.  (Waters' second solo album was a concept record about radio and included Ladd himself on some tracks; Petty's song "The Last DJ" was an attack on greed in the music business, which led Big Radio to ban it.)

Ladd's passing most likely means nothing to a younger generation of radio listeners, most of whom are fans of the empty pop and electronica that dominate the charts these days, who probably listen to a former rock station that changed formats a couple of times after it stopped playing rock due to "demographic changes."  Nor does it likely matter to young sports fans in the Northeast who don't have satellite radio and never heard of Ladd - and listen to an FM simulcast of an AM sports station, blissfully unaware of the great rock music that once played on that same FM frequency.  Today's listeners are too tuned into the present and are thoroughly disconnected from a time when there was genuine variety on FM music radio and when radio was free - not just available without charge (unlike sat), but liberating and liberated.

And there goes the last DJ.  RIP. 😢

No Alternative

Radio programmers have officially given up on rock and roll in New York City.

WNYL-FM, the alternative-rock station in New York that went on the air in 2017 on the 92.3-mhz frequency, signed off this past month and became WINS-FM, a simulcast of  WINS-AM, which switched from Top 40 to news back in 1965. 

The format flip allows WINS to reach more listeners on the stronger FM band, but it also makes it clear that rock and roll radio has no place in New York.  All of the great FM rock stations in the Big Apple are gone, with only a couple of rock stations with spotty reception in the northern New Jersey and Westchester County suburbs.   In the city, rock is down to WAXQ-FM, a classic rock station that is putting way too many eighties hair bands in its playlists.

Rock, of course, has been in trouble for years, many because its demographic matches that of the folks who voted for Donald Trump.  (Many political reporters have made note of Trump's heavy use of rock songs at his rallies, even as Joe Biden has hosted Olivia Rodrigo at the White House to encourage her to spread the word about COVID vaccines to young people; I would note, in addition, that he didn't send for Greta Van Fleet to publicize the vaccines.  Yeah, yeah, I know - Greta Van Fleet? Who's she?)   Rock became associated with aging white people who never changed their tastes even as tastes in popular music kept changing, which only allowed rock to calcify rather than remain open to new bands and new innovations.  It thus became so irrelevant that, if not for the rock category at the Grammy Awards, rockers wouldn't win any Grammys at all these days.   

It makes sense that, whenever YouTube guys like Rick Beato comment on whether or not rock can come back, they look like they're going through shell shock.

And although black people invented rock and roll, and despite the presence of predominantly black bands like the Alabama Shakes and TV On the Radio, as well as Gary Clark, Jr., people of color these days would rather not bother with guitar-driven blues-based numbers you can't dance to.  Among female acts, it's no accident that Taylor Swift is more pop than rock - so much, in fact, that she named one of her albums 1989 not just because she was born in that year but because 1989 was a year dominated by pop divas like herself and a year in which only one rock album - Dr. Feelgood by Mötley Crüe (one of those cassette-era bands that reaffirmed black people's decision to by and large disown rock and roll and create rap) - topped the Billboard album chart.   

And so, even an alternative-rock station in the country's biggest metropolitan area couldn't save rock and roll radio.  Or rock and roll itself.  (What, you thought they were going to flip a hip-hop FM station to simulcast WINS?)

Aah, I've long since given up on terrestrial radio, which is dying faster than rock and roll is.  Sirius XM satellite radio's rock channels have all the songs you love.  The Spectrum channel promotes new bands and plays a few classic rock songs, and the classic-rock channels Classic Vinyl and Classic Rewind are there for all of your favorite tunes.  And the Deep Tracks channels plays rock songs that may have never aired on terrestrial radio at all.   Sirius XM isn't cheap but in today's declining and falling terrestrial-radio environment, it's worth it.  In fact, it's essential.

Let, then, New York rock radio pass.  It's a pity that this song has lost all of its relevance and meaning.  

Sat!

I finally have satellite radio in my car!

I got Sirius XM for my Volkswagen as a Christmas present.  (Never mind who it was from; that's a family secret.)  

It's been a long time coming.  If you want satellite radio - or "sat," as I call it - Sirius XM is your only recourse since Sirius and XM merged in 2008, but if you want plain old radio the way it used to be, then satellite radio is your only recourse, period.  Terrestrial radio is mostly just a bunch of stations that play the same old boring pop songs and rap records of recent vintage, as older music from farther back has all but disappeared from regular radio and new music that I actually want to listen to is virtually nowhere to be found on regular radio at all.  I still wonder how long Alt 92.3, New York's alternative-rock station, is going to last.  Public music stations still offer new music I like to hear, but I couldn't help but notice how the public music station in my area, WFUV-FM, which broadcasts from Fordham University in the Bronx, is actually getting quite lame.  I think I've had my fill of Iron & Wine for years to come.  

On Sirius XM, the choices are practically endless.  Now I can hear 1950s music, 1960s music, 1970s music - all of which get their own individual radio channels - and I can hear more of that same music on other channels!  And with none of the commercial interruptions that have become more prevalent on terrestrial commercial radio and have virtually ruined old-school radio for me.  Sirius XM has rock channels that play basic classic rock, but there's even a channel that plays obscure songs from classic albums and from obscure albums by famous bands - bet you never heard anything from Jethro Tull's 1978 album Heavy Horses on terrestrial radio before! - as well as music from bands even I have never heard of!  (Family, alas, don't get airplay on sat, but who cares, I have all their albums.)  There's a new-rock channel, a channel playing new and classic rock together, a blues channel,  a jazz channel, a show-tunes channel, two classical channels, and all sorts of themed music channels, such as one for  Elvis, another for the Beatles, another for the Grateful Dead . . . there's even one for Tom Petty.  And there are many more.  My only regret is that I can only program ten channels maximum on my receiver.

News and talk?  Yeah, there is some of that, along with a channel for Howard Stern, but I'm not interested much in any of that - and I'm completely disinterested in Howard Stern in particular.  My old fellow Drew alum Karen Hunter, who once ridiculed former House Speaker Paul Ryan for still listening to Led Zeppelin in 2012, has a Sirius XM show, but I'll be damned if I know what channel it's on.  Anyway, I don't plan to listen to Karen's show.

I'm too busy listening to the classic rock channels and '70s on 7.

It's amazing how there are songs you used to hear on terrestrial radio that you only hear on sat now.  A couple of weeks ago I had '70s on 7 playing, and "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" by the Bee Gees came on.  "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" was the Bee Gees' first American number-one hit, having topped the charts for virtually the entire month of August 1971, yet you'd be hard-pressed to find a terrestrial radio station that plays it today.  Heck, I've even noticed how FM classic rock stations seem to be leaning more toward classic rock performers that only began their recording careers after Jimmy Carter left the White House.  Imagine that: rock from the genre's 1960s/1970s "classic" period, which is supposed to stand the test of time, has seen its time up on terrestrial radio.

Am I still listening to WFUV?  Yeah, about that . . ..  I love WFUV's Saturday afternoon "Mixed Bag" show, where Don McGee plays an eclectic mix of folk, soul, rock and country music.  One Saturday after I got satellite radio, I turned off Sirius XM and tuned in to "Mixed Bag" . . . only to find that it was pre-empted by a Fordham basketball game.  The show was still on WFUV's Internet page, but WFUV is obliged to air Fordham varsity sports on the radio station.

I turned it off and went back to sat.

I don't want to abandon terrestrial music radio entirely.  But there's too much good stuff on Sirius XM to listen to now.  And despite WFUV's eclectic mix, it's hard to settle for variety from one station when sat gives you even more variety over a hundred-odd channels.