Meandering Diatribes: March 2004 Archives

24 hours until Progress Media's liberal news/talk Air America Radio goes on the air. WNTD-AM 950 in Chicago is ready.

New Yorkers can tune in on WLIB-1190 AM. Los Angeles can find it on KBLA-1580 AM. San Franciso, you're on your own. The Internet doesn't wanna give up the station. Sorry, guys.

Other markets, find out where to tune in here.

I've had my doubts, but after spending an hour listening to Franken emasculate a Limbaugh dittohead live on Howard Stern without breaking a sweat, I'm pretty convinced he can handle a show of his own... And, amazingly enough, manage to make it entertaining. I just hope the ads aren't unbearable ten-minute blocks of weight loss supplement promotions; Commerical radio already drove me away screaming once.

Janeane Garofalo and Chuck D have shows, too. No idea how they'll handle it, although Garofalo is entertaining enough when she guest-hosts Loveline. We'll have to see.

Either way, anything would be better to listen to while I ink than Wheel of Time audiobook number umpteen. TUG BRAID SMOOTH SKIRTS EMBRACE SAIDAR.

Abortion in America is legal, thanks to Roe vs. Wade. It's legal because we live in a free and reasonable society where the law, through a process much more torturous and absurd than it should have been, isn't any longer permitted to be used as an expression of moral contempt. Women are trusted enough to make the right decision in what should be a very private matter for themselves.

Not that you couldn't have gotten an abortion in pre-Roe-v-Wade America, of course. Know what that would have been like?

They do. (Warning: RealPlayer link. Graphic content.)

The Beta Project is a roughly half-hour long radio show, featuring interviews with women who obtained illegal abortions. Some were lucky enough to get real doctors and painkillers. And some had their cervixes liquify and run out of their vaginas.

Considering how ridiculously close this country came to outlawing abortion again in 1992, I think a goddamn reality check is in order.

In a perfect world, no one would need an abortion, ever. But it's probably time we all realized this isn't a perfect world.