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May 9, 2008

Time Flying, Apology, and Preemptive Explanation

Justin Katz

My hour in the the spotlight of Matt Allen's Violent Roundtable tonight was one of the most fun that I've spent in awhile, although I suppose one can only hope that listeners were that engaged. (Streaming audio available here). Really, conversation from commercial break to commercial break felt not unlike a seaplane touching down on the water for a few moments at a time. As the one non-radio guy there, however, I fear that I should take some responsibility in the face of complaints that this edition wasn't sufficiently "violent."

In keeping with my mitigated personality, I'd like to offer a preemptive explanation of something that I said: While discussing gambling in Rhode Island, I joked that the government ought to begin supplementing decreases in the public assistance that people receive with lottery tickets. (Hey, match it dollar for dollar!) Before RI Futurites get out their fire-dance costumes and add this clump of hair to the effigy of my evil opinions, I'd like to clarify that I wasn't promoting a system of giving people in precarious situations an unsecured rope to grab. To the contrary, my intention was to lampoon the practice of using gambling revenue to support the government. Statistically, it's a very regressive form of taxation, and further soaking the poor and working class into further debt with the dubious promise of unlikely riches is tantamount to giving them a turn at the roulette wheel in exchange for money or public investments that might actually improve their lives.

But I could go on. Such roundtables are like rapid-fire brainstorming sessions for more contemplative writing, and the breadth of the topics are evidenced by the conversation that continues during the commercial breaks. For example:

  • How the storyline will go if Obama wins the nomination but loses the election. My thought was that there's plenty of time for the American people to forget the primaries and for Democrats to construct the much more comfortable storyline that it was the angry old white man who kept Barack down — not the storied woman. Matt, I believe, took the position that the next few years will see Hillary building on that impulse with a ready-made retrospective "if only" of her candidacy. Jason Martins seemed to believe that Hillary's done after this.
  • I got looks from the other panelists when I responded to a caller's question about Israel taking out Iranian nukes by suggesting that the Jewish nation would swing in with a last-ditch strike, that the world would be outraged for a day, but then everybody would go back to business as usual, knowing deep down that Israel had done not only what it needed to do to survive, but the right thing. Everybody else thought the radical Muslims wouldn't possibly tolerate Israeli military strikes inside Iran. My response was that these regimes are centrally concerned with maintaining their own fragile rule and realize that they cannot win an all-stakes battle with the United States and Israel. I'd add, now, that there isn't much amperage that they can add to their anti-Israel hate rhetoric.
  • Although we didn't get into it, the whole concept of the state's profiting from gambling is excellent fodder for some ruminations about church and state — to wit, that the state is committing us, via our representatives, to be in the position of profiting from others' misfortunes to so direct a degree that we're expanding the hours during which those people can lose their hard-earned money with the explicit intention of raising more to support our detrimentally large government. A theist might be tempted to suggest that thus do we pull ourselves further into darkness.
  • I was going to say that the comic book conversation should have come first, as a warm up, but then again, it did: before we were even on the air, we were discussing the likely plot setting of a forthcoming Captain America movie. I swore I'd read somewhere that rumors are of a Captain America who's part of a U.N. mission of some sort (which was the missing context behind Jason's on-air comment about Captain United Nations), but I can't find the article that gave me that impression.

ADDENDUM:

The audio quality of the above-linked stream has been increased to a more comfortable level.

Comments

don't worry Justin, no one listened anyway....

Posted by: Pat Crowley at May 10, 2008 12:20 PM

Duck-suit surfaces for a drive-by response.Everybody drink!(I plead guilty to lifting this line directly from the target).Sorry I missed it-I was watching the P-Bruins lose.

Posted by: joe bernstein at May 10, 2008 12:55 PM

"... my intention was to lampoon the practice of using gambling revenue to support the government. Statistically, it's a very regressive form of taxation, and further soaking the poor and working class into further debt with the dubious promise of unlikely riches is tantamount to giving them a turn at the roulette wheel in exchange for money or public investments that might actually improve their lives."

Whaaa ...? You mean we take from one set of poor to give to another??

(Good radio.)

Posted by: Monique at May 10, 2008 1:09 PM

Some observations of just how regressive gambling is:
I was working at Lincoln Park from 2002-2005 and I noticed that many gamblers were maxing out their cash advances on their credit cards to gamble(I've mentioned this on another thread)and on one occasion I saw a group of people just finished with a demonstration at the PUC,still wearing their George Wiley Center,Acorn,etc buttons playing the slots with money they couldn't seem to use to pay their utility bills.What jerks!At least take off the buttons-it's like saying F**K YOU to the rest of the state.When I engaged Maggie Rogers on Matt Allen's show I didn't bring this up because I already ahd enough to say to her.She probably would've used a "progressive" pre- digested deflection tactic to diminish what I saw.These people have a playbook-I can almost put their lines in for them.Not all of them do this,but there are enough.I don't like it any better from the neo-cons.Thinking in slogans and talking points wears down the ability to evaluate things clearly.

Posted by: joe bernstein at May 10, 2008 1:37 PM

"Whaaa ...? You mean we take from one set of poor to give to another??"

A similar example would be SCHIP. Funded by tobacco taxes, five of seven dollars comes from people who make less than $35k per year. SCHIP uses that money to provide health insurance for children AND ADULTS who make up to $80k.

Do the politicians making these laws 1) know where the money comes from but don’t care, 2) don’t know where the $ comes from, or 3) know where the $ comes from but hope that the public doesn’t?

Posted by: WJF at May 10, 2008 2:17 PM

You might be thinking of the GI Joe movie.

Posted by: Mario at May 10, 2008 3:13 PM

You did a good job in a new medium. Rookie status is and always will be difficult but in the long run very rewarding. I did not agree with much but you presented a credible and listenable argument on a few fronts

Posted by: David at May 10, 2008 8:14 PM

Justin,

I caught the last half hour. As a former radio guy who's been a noob before, you aquitted yourself well. My one bit of advice would be to try to limit the 'um's & ah's'. It's difficult to learn at first, but radio is all about soundbite and moving from one thing to another.

You're the most eloquent blogger in RI - in my opinion - and with a little more polish I think you can bring a very unique perspective to the radio medium.

I'll be listening!

Posted by: don roach at May 10, 2008 9:55 PM

D'oh! Mario's right.

Posted by: Justin Katz at May 11, 2008 8:41 AM

You are terrific - have benn since May 18,1975

Posted by: Maxwell Katz at May 14, 2008 10:10 AM

These prayers help me to keep God in my life, especially with the many distractions I encounter.c

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Posted by: john at November 26, 2008 5:47 PM

Wow!!! Good job. Could I take some of yours triks to build my own site?n

Posted by: Robert at December 7, 2008 9:29 PM