For those of us dealing with the grief of parting from Morning Sedition here's a nice analysis (by Christopher Arnott in the New Haven Advocate, February 10, 2005) of what made Sedition and especially Marc exceptional:
If you wanted to identify the consummate Air America host, the person who most clearly represented the network, it probably wouldn't be the much-ballyhooed Franken, who spends too much time baiting right-wing broadcasters like Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter and not enough time developing his own shtick. It wouldn't be Janeane Garofalo, who too often comes off as insecure and naive in her views. It wouldn't be the exceptional Randi Rhodes, who has been doing radio successfully for a while and hasn't needed to alter her singular style just because she's gone from solo syndication success to a network berth. Ditto with established broadcaster Marty Kaplan and his muckraking So What Else is News show on Saturday afternoons.
No, the defining voice of Air America is probably that of the guy who kicks off the network's broadcasting day at 6 a.m. with a gruff yet amiable growl, ready to take on the world.
I remember a moment in the early '90s when Marc Maron was a regular guest on the late night talk shows. One night, chatting with Conan O'Brien, he launched into a list of when you should start to get your act together. One item was, "You're sleeping on your friend's couch--and you're 40." I looked over at my couch, at a friend in his mid-40s, asleep, and thought, "This guy's good." Maron is trenchant, aware, and as casual and creative on a talk-show couch as he is in a nightclub--or a theater stage, where his long-form stand-up routine on religious identity, The Jerusalem Syndrome, was an Off Broadway hit in the mid-nineties.
With co-host Mark Riley, Maron has turned Morning Sedition into a breakthrough radio experience. It's raw, but it doesn't need vulgarity to keep the early-morning listeners awake. It tackles topical issues, but doesn't get bogged down in them. It lets its guests breathe--visiting musicians can play three or four songs in a row. There is a constant stream of original comedy routines to break up the news and interviews, and some segments, like The Liberal Confessional, are especially designed to encourage listener participation. Maron and Riley are rare in the equality of their co-hosting. They both seem primed to burst into a conversation at any moment. They also offer a layered approach to liberal radio--their opinions don't seem black and white, cut and dried. They're as likely to actively question a clueless leftie cause-monger as a righteous right-winger.
Before starting Morning Sedition, Maron--who just renewed his contract, and will do the show for at least two more years--had no radio experience. He also hadn't held a job where he had to come in at 4 a.m. Plus, he said in a telephone interview last week, "I was not a big radio listener. I was pretty much an NPR guy." He was a natural. "I was kicking around Los Angeles, had a deal with Fox to do some television, and I heard about this gig. I called Garofalo up, she said call Lizz Winstead. So I called Lizz and said, 'I want to do the morning show'--honestly, I didn't want any other time slot. I wanted the opportunity to make a real go of this, something competitive, something through which I could one, take down the president, and two, create a new type of radio show."
One area in which he stands out as radio host is how well he handles some of his crazier callers. I remind him of the time a caller claimed that "the moon moved" behind the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, suggesting extraterrestrial interference on that tragic day. Maron deftly deflected this theory, repeating the magic phrase "the moon moved" in a way which sounded like he was clarifying, rather than mocking, the observation. He then gingerly extricated himself from the conversation before it got much loonier.
"I've gotten mail liking how respectful we are to listeners. These can be really fragile people. There's no reason to shut them down." At the same time--and unlike the more conspiracy-minded Stephanie Miller, say--he doesn't let those with unsubstantiated charges ramble on too long: "We had to decide, 'What are we as a show? Are we going to get mired in speculation and conspiracy theories?'"
The energy on Morning Sedition comes from outrage, based on unbelievable stuff that's actually happening in the world. There's also a balance between journalistic fact-gathering and entertaining indignation. "We've been striving for that for a while," Maron says. "Riley's the guy who'll flesh out the news, and I'm the guy who'll go, 'What the fuck?!' A lot of what we do is conversational.
"You're hearing a real piece of ensemble work, a radically new presentation. We all dug in and wanted this to work. We had a desire, collectively. We were all pretty idealistic."
http://newhavenadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:99568:cry: :cry: :cry:
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