Poser Elitist Suffers Talk Radio Withdrawls

Exposing hypocrisy has long been a tradition of blogs. I believe it was Jedediah Locklace in the early years of the New Republic who exposed Abigail Adams' Jeffersonian tendencies on his blog, written by candlelight on a drum skin with quill ink on the eve of the 1800 election and published as a broadside outside taverns throughout the eastern seaboard, effectively establishing the two-party system.

It's in that spirit of flawless and inspirational journalism that I endeavor to bring you these accounts of car-free commuting. But a funny thing about exposing hypocrisy is the level of effort investigative journalism entails. Try as I might, I just can't seem to intuit surprising, fact-based false positions perpetrated by important people. Although I did once witness a strip tease by Sarah Palin at a dive bar in Nome, AK in the mid Eighties. I was with Joey Biden who used to score the best blow in those days. Like I said, it was the Eighties. Does anyone else think Biden looks like Big Earl from What's Happening!!!? But I digress...



As I was saying, the effort involved at exposing hypocrisy has forced me to look for a shortcut. And so, as is my predilection, I'm turning the magnifying glass on myself. Ouch, it burns.

You see, it's been a month and a half since the last time I drove a car to work. And though I work for the liberal media, I can only listen to depressing Morning Edition stories about the grim situation in the Middle East or the rising death totals in Iraq (on the way to work no less) for so long before I'm compelled to look for loose railing on a bridge to drive through. That's how I happened to discover ESPN's Colin Cowherd on my drive in. Ssshhh...it's my secret.

I can't tell you how much self-loathing the act of listening to sports radio would instill in me. I would change the channel before I turned off the car engine just in case I happened to have a passenger at lunch or on the way home for fear that I'd be exposed. If I could render a snapshot of the image of myself I'd least want to project to the world, I'd have inline skates, short shorts and tube socks and a headband with a cigarette in one hand and a transistor radio tuned to sports talk in the other. Actually, I rather fancy myself in tube socks and a headband.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not ashamed to have or admit to rooting interests in the sporting world. I have a baseball team that I follow and even stay in touch with the old college gang via a fantasy football league I belong to. But when I listen to these talk shows and hear the minutiae and aping analysis of the call-in listeners I shudder to think I'm one of them. And then I stay an extra three minutes in the parking lot with the engine off to hear what they have to say.

So on the growing list of benefits of bike commuting add this: it's executed a restraint that I'm incapable of under my own volition and forced more discerning media consumption upon me.

If anyone asks, corroborate my story. I was listening to Frank Deford.