Talking Loud, Saying Nothing

The novelist David Foster Wallace has a long piece on talk radio in the April issue of the Atlantic Monthly. I've blogged about the essay over on Xferen, but here I'd like to comment on the peculiar kind of cognition exhibited by the talk-radio host profiled in the piece, and by extension his peers in wing-nut broadcasting.

Despite protestations to the contrary, John Ziegler, the profilee, comes off as more than a bit racist, especially respecting O.J. Simpson, with whom Ziegler has an unhealthy obsession. Wallace comments on the misfit between Ziegler's racist pronouncements and his assurances that he's not actually a racist, but Wallace doesn't fully explore this personal issue (probably because only a psychotherapist could), or the larger problem of race- and class-baiting on talk radio. The hosts' rantings nonetheless come off as a kind of rhetorical rear-guard action: America is changing out from under white men like them (especially in SoCal, where Ziegler works), and it's unlikely that the browner America of 2020 will brook their nonsense. I can hope, at least.