I'm missing live radio

Rick Smith

CORONA BLUES...I'm badly missing doing live, in-studio radio. Hitting Left With the Klonsky Brothers has been on hiatus since June and we've been out of the studio since March. Brother Fred and I did podcast two months' worth of shows from home but it wasn't the same. 

No Friday morning planning meetings at Bridgeport Coffee and no live connection with the studio crew at Lumpen Radio. Doing the show over Zoom left us feeling empty, similar in a way to how many teachers I know are feeling doing remote teaching. 

All three years of archived shows are available and still getting lots of downloads at Mixcloud, Libsyn.com, and wherever else you get your podcasts. 

The clouds lifted a little last night when I got a chance to talk ed/politics live on The Rick Smith Show. Thanks, Rick. 

Rick wanted my take on why, with public education teetering on the brink, there's so little campaign debate over ed issues? Why especially aren't Biden and Harris taking it to Trump and his ed secretary, DeVos for the way they have diverted billions in public education funding to private schools and privately-run charters or for the way they have tried to force schools to open under pandemic conditions without the necessary supports in place? 

Part of the answer is that Trump has been allowed to control the campaign agenda with his bombast and fascist demagoguery. Another part may lie in the Dems not wanting to revisit the Arne Duncan years during the Obama administration. Duncan's Race To The Top, with its use of federal funding to drive school closings, teacher firings, testing madness, and privatization actually set the table for DeVos. 

The Democrat's official ed platform, heavily influenced by the progressive wing of the party, is actually pretty good. But neither Biden nor Harris seem willing to mention it. Maybe it's part of their attempt to keep a safe distance from the progressives. 

Trump bailed out by NBC

While Trump is losing in the polls... He is still controlling the media agenda with direct or tacit support from big media. Look no further than the competing Town Hall meetings scheduled for today in lieu of a second Biden/Trump debate. 

The Trump NBC town hall will air at exactly the same time as Biden is speaking on ABC. This after Trump abruptly withdrew from the scheduled second head-to-head debate after the Commission on Presidential Debates decided to stage the event virtually over concerns that Trump might still be contagious with the coronavirus.

According to the Times:

 Even journalists inside NBC and MSNBC were taken aback at the network’s decision to air the event opposite an already scheduled ABC forum with Joe Biden, meaning Americans can’t watch both candidates live.

Here's some reaction...

Having dueling town halls is bad for democracy-voters should be able to watch both and I don’t think many will. This will be good for Trump because people like to watch his unpredictability. This is a bad decision. #vote

— Katie Couric (@katiecouric) October 14, 2020

 This is a bad result for American voters, who should not be forced to choose which to watch. So much is still going wrong with how TV journalism copes, or still fails to cope, with @realDonaldTrump. https://t.co/eRylzIuIBO

— Mark Lukasiewicz (@DeanLuk) October 14, 2020

Yes, #Vote.