The Monday Rant: A View To A Shill

There was an episode of the great Aaron Sorkin show SportsNight that really stuck with me.

The fictional and titular sports show was given the opportunity to interview Michael Jordan, only to later find out he will not be talking basketball, but rather his new cologne, and nothing else.

The SportsNight crew comes to their senses by the end of the episode and turns down the supposed pimpfest.

Unfortunately no such integrity exists in today’s media.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that in today’s radio and/or TV world no one is going to call or come on your local station for an interview unless they are promoting something, I have come to terms with that, and don't really mind.

It’s when they are using their name to pimp something completely unrelated to them that really burns my hide.

This brings me to my new biggest pet peeve in the world of radio:

THE POLITI-SHILL!

For the past few months, basically ever since Oregon’s Presidential Primary looked like it would actually matter, we have been inundated with offers of interviews with big name stars, the only catch being their purpose is not to talk about their new movie, TV show, album or what not, but rather to talk up their candidate of choice.

So basically, if you’re scoring at home, they are using their name to score a free political ad for their fav candidate.

This comes off as unbelievably fraudulent to me, but everyone else seems to drink the kool-aid.

I won’t name the names of said celebrities, but there have even been a couple offered to me, folks I am a big fan of, that I couldn’t bring myself to be privy to.

The worst by far was the one we had today.

Unnamed popular actress from unnamed popular TV show called in to show her support for Hillary Clinton.

She rattled off her bullet points for a few minutes and when our afternoon host tried to reel her in at the end and asked about the upcoming season finale of said show her answer was:

“Yep, it’s Thursday night”

Wow, how profound.

Not surprisingly, we have received no such offers from the McCain campaign, but that is most likely for three reasons: a) He already has his nomination sewed up, b) our particular listenership is particularly left-leaning and c) most of the celebrities that would support McCain are already dead (Sorry couldn’t help myself).

Now, the candidates aren’t the only folks guilty of this. For instance, sports radio is damn near unlistenable during Super Bowl week from all the pimping going down on press row.

But for some reason, it seems all the dirtier when it involves decisions that will greatly affect our nation’s future.

All I can say is thank god the primary is tomorrow and some of the whoring will ease back a little.

Now celebrities can go back to shamelessly plugging things they…you know…actually had a hand in creating!