Those who know me know that I have an unhealthy addiction to talk
radio. I don’t discriminate much in my listening habits, I’ll listen
to conservative, progressive, book talk, baseball, whatever. I find
the combination of dynamic radio personalities and often ridiculous
callers to be a recipie for first rate entertainment. My fiancee (and
almost any everday American) disagees, so I am limited to listening to
it when I am in the car alone… which happens to be about 97% of the
time. So, needless to say, I get a healthy (?) dose of it everyday.
My go-to station lately has been 850 KOA, which is Colorado’s version
of the famous station of my hometown Cincinnati, home of the Reds and
the ever entertaining Willie Cunningham, who my step-dad once called
in to yell at on air for calling liberals “baby-killers”. Not that I
don’t enjoy listening to conservative talk radio, which by-and-large
is way further right of center than I would claim to be, but for the
sake of my sanity as well as my propensity to be fair and balanced
(not unlike my favorite news network), I sometimes turn to Colorado’s
Progressive Talk radio station.
It’s funny what one can notice when they are listening to a program,
or to anyone for that matter, if they don’t have the “everything you
say is right” filter on. The blatant untruths I hear across the board
when listening to this station is sometimes nothing short of
laughable. The primtime personality of Colorado’s progressive talk
radio station, Mario, is an interesting and bombastic fellow, who
refuses to pronounce “Colorado” like an American, and is never in
short of completely fallacious and ridiculous ideas.
His latest gem was his show a few days ago, which was completely
devoted to defending the recently defeated “tuition equality” bill in
the Colorado House. The proposed bill would have allowed undocumented
residers of Colorado to attend Colorado schools and pay in-state
tuition. Mario went at length to emphasize that this was a “black and
white issue” ; to oppose it would be simply to be oppose the dreams of
innocent children.
What Mario refuses to consider is what incentives such a bill would
provide for parents in Mexico considering illegaly crossing the
border. Just as I would have taken a much closer look at Colorado
schools if I knew I could get cheaper tuition here, a Mexican parent
would surely be incentivized to bring their child to Colorado illegaly
if this bill had passed. Here’s an idea: let’s pass a bill which gives
tuition breaks for naturalized citizens, therefore providing
incentives for LEGAL behavior? I’ll put a bumper sticker on my car for
that one. Apparently, Mario thinks that encouraging parents to cross a
raging river and desolate desert (alliteration anyone?) with little
food and water while being chased by law enforcement, WITH THEIR
CHILDREN, is the compassionate thing to do.
Mario, on second thought, this IS black and white issue, I’ll agree
with you on that one. I applaud the members of the Coloardo house who
refused to give in to such an ill-conceived piece of legislation.
