The Listener ~ by Timothy Lavin

From The Atlantic

Profile January/February 2010 Atlantic

For four hours every night, on holidays and weekends, George Noory is the voice in the darkness for millions of Americans. His show, Coast to Coast AM, has perfected a charged and conspiratorial worldview that now pervades American media. It’s quite possibly the oddest show ever to cross our airwaves. And it may change the radio business forever.

by Timothy Lavin

The Listener
(Image credit: Drew Reynolds)

Every night, when most of the world has drifted into unconsciousness, some 30 percent of the American population stays awake. They’re truckers, insomniacs, night-shift workers, or just people who like to stay up late. They tend to adhere to a different set of norms. For one thing, in an age of digital distraction, they connect with enthusiasm to a decidedly analog device: they listen to the radio for longer periods, with greater attention, and with greater loyalty than do audiences at any other time of the day. They tend to listen alone—alone in bed, alone on a highway, alone in the world—and find that a voice in the darkness offers a bond with a wider community. Perhaps you’re one of them. Or perhaps, if you’ve ever driven across country in the dark, or flipped on the radio because you couldn’t sleep, you know the feeling.

You might also have caught a glimpse into one of the odder realms of modern media. Lately, night people listen, in huge numbers, to a syndicated program called Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. It’s by far the most popular overnight show in the country. And it’s probably the most successful program of its kind ever aired. But just what kind of program it is, no one can quite say. Its topical breadth alone defies categorization: aliens, time travel, 9/11 conspiracies, suspicious murders, vampires, mediated telepathy, birds of unusual size. Shadow People seem to show up a lot. Every evening, Coast to Coast offers a running commentary on what keeps people awake, in fear or fascination, through what Keats called the “unslumbrous night.”

And on such vague apprehensions, George Noory—a man of long radio experience, indeterminate politics, and ominous generality—is likely the world’s foremost authority. His show is more than a curiosity: it has propelled overnight radio from commercial obscurity into radiant profitability, and has helped set a tone that, both thematically and rhetorically, now pervades American media. In the process, it has become perhaps the most complete chronicle of our strange national anxieties ever agglomerated. And these are very anxious times.

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Who is behind quashing the birth certificate issue?

From RenewAmerica This article from August 26, 2009, by Joan Swirsky, is being included today to go along with Mychal Massie's column, "Globalist cover-up hiding Obama's past?" which had referenced it. I must agree with the way Mychal Massie stated his feeling about it: "I'm not an investigative journalist. I write opinion, and it is my opinion that Obama is but the tip of something much larger, and if same were to become known it would reverberate worldwide."

By Joan Swirsky August 26, 2009 Back in October of 2008, when the subject of Obama's constitutional eligibility to be president of the United States was just a blip on the radar screen of public awareness, I wrote an article about how easy it was to find my then- 92-year-old mother's birth certificate.

Frankly, I didn't think finding my mother's birth certificate was possible, given the fact that she had been born in a farmhouse in Storrs, CT, along with nine of her 10 siblings, to parents who didn't speak English. Despairing that she would never be "qualified" to receive the care [in a nursing home] that she desperately needed, I set about to find the document, which I was sure had vanished in the unreliable record-keeping of 1913. When I called the third number, I explained to the woman who answered the phone that I was "asking something impossible." I gave her my mother's first name and her father's last name. Within four minutes, she said, "Here it is!" When I expressed my amazement, the woman said: "That's nothing...we're routinely asked to find birth certificates from the 1800s, and we do that all the time!" Total time it took me to find my mother's 1913, born-in-a-farmhouse birth certificate: 10 minutes!

Obama was born not in 1913, like my mother, but in 1961 — or perhaps in 1957, according to his MySpace page, which would make him 52, born supposedly in Hawaii before it became a state in 1959. So it was quite curious that not one cyber-sleuth could find an authentic, verifiable copy of his original vault-copy birth certificate. I'm not talking about the faux version Obama posted on his website, which was deemed the real thing by FactCheck.org, a "truth"-detecting site that is sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation, the same foundation that hired Obama and his terrorist pal William Ayers and gave them millions of dollars for a research project in Chicago. In other words, the least credible source! Even more significant is that no one in the media thought Obama's missing birth certificate worth even casual mention. Their thinking seemed to be: We're not going to check on his eligibility to be president, if we don't even question why other crucial documents were — and continue to be — sealed? For instance: his baptism certificate; elementary, high school, college and graduate school transcripts; visa(s); selective service record; alleged multiple Social Security numbers; Illinois attorney's license; Illinois State Senate records; law practice client list; Univ. of Chicago scholarly articles; financial records while a community organizer in Chicago; and medical records. I'm also curious about why Michelle Obama's law license was suspended in 1993 by the Illinois Supreme Court, but then again she wasn't running for president. Instead, the media were frantically busy trying to divert public attention away from those pesky things known as credentials with gossip-driven tabloid reportage of Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber in order to avoid the bigger-than-Watergate potential scandal of whether or not Obama was eligible — according to the U.S. Constitution — to become President of the United States! NOW WE KNOW WHY In an explosive interview by Dr. Laurie Roth on her syndicated West Coast radio show on August 7th with Douglas Hagmann — a respected journalist, director of the Northeast Intelligence Network, and longtime private investigator, and Judi McLeod, a prolific journalist and the managing editor of Canada Free Press — the reason for the media blackout about the birth-certificate issue was nothing less than organized Mafia-like dire threats to members of the media issued not only from the heads of major TV and radio stations but also from Federal Communication Commission officials! [CLICK HERE TO READ MORE]

Michael Savage Declares His Retirement From Talk Radio - August 14, 2009

This is major news! Conservative radio talk show host Dr. Michael Savage made the announcement on August 14, 2009 during his show, that he was retiring from talk radio. The question is, when. Savage says it will be as soon as he gets off list of people not allowed in Great Britain and clears his name. He says it will be within a year, "by hook or by crook." I learned of this news while on twitter from one of my friends there, newsguy2005. on Dr. Michael Savage's radio show. He has been on the radio for 15 years. I've never had a chance to listen to Dr. Savage's shows, but I know who he is, and I would love to read his books someday. In the video below, Michael Savage will explain when and why he is leaving radio and what he'll do after his retirement.

The Party of Rush

Who's in charge of the GOP? When someone finds out, let the rest of us know. By Rick Moran For nearly 20 years, Rush Limbaugh has bestridden the political landscape with a power and influence that transcended his talk radio niche, crossing over into the rarefied air of cultural icon. With a combination of a hail-fellow-well-met joie de vivre and a biting, sometimes vicious adder-like tongue, Limbaugh has parlayed a well-honed shtick that combines popcorn sized bites of conservative wisdom with large chunks of political red meat into a career that has made him one of the wealthiest personalities in radio. Limbaugh does not fit any of the comfortable definitions that liberals and the media love to apply to conservatives. Calling him a mere talk show host is simply wrong. Limbaugh has crossed the cultural divide and, like President Obama, he has become more than a political figure (or entertainer) and achieved a peculiar kind of celebrity. [Continue reading]

digg story ~ submitted by Janinco