While I am not a huge advocate, I do occasionally listen to Air America radio. Many of the shows are bit ranty, the one worth checking out is Al Franken’s, which can involve fairly extended discussions with lefty (but not far lefty) pundits and major bloggers. One of the things that is really unpleasant about listening to the station is the same thing that is unpleasant about listen to any radio station, namely the ads.

(NPR might not have ads per se, but all those announcements for local performances of the Nutcracker Suite can make me long for someone to scream at me about how much I can save on aluminum siding).

The advertisements on Air America are just sad. An ad from downingstreetmemo.com calls for Bush’s impeachment using a voice-over, ominous synthesizer, and a single rising trumpet line that would made Ron Howard embarrassed. Most of the ads are to help you lose weight, get rich from home, recover from bankruptcy, and the like. It’s like 3 in the morning on cable access all day, every day. More deeply sad, however, are the ways in which the ads appeal to the listener’s open-mindedness and, uh, intelligence. The New York Review of Books has long used an aggressive form of this appeal: the reply card with which they attempt to lure you into subscribing gives options along the lines of: “Yes, I’m a thinking, curious person, sign me up!” or “No thanks, I’m not interested in learning about the world.” The Air America version is more lovey-dovey. We sensitive, educated, creative people are under siege in this crazy Bush-world: why not take some refuge with a sack of widgets?

While it is not the most singularly annoying, perhaps of the most self-referential ad is for an on-line dating service called “Democratic Match,” which includes a very bad Rush Limbaugh impersonator identifying himself as “Brush Lintball.” Brilliant! I couldn’t resist checking it out! Actually I could, but after a year of not turning down the volume in time to avoid hearing the ad I find myself needing a blog topic, so check it out I did.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the site is how completely unsurprising it is. It features links to PETA, Media Matters, Smirking Chimp . . . the company’s mission statement has epigraphs from four sources: “Chinese proverb,” Kahlil Gibran, Helen Keller, and “Cree Indian proverb.” It is well-known that wisdom and contact with nature come from largely anonymous non-white people. If it has to be from a white person it really needs to be woman, preferably blind, deaf, and mute. The site’s politics are distinctly focused on environmental issues, rather than, say, race, gay rights, minimum wage, to speak nothing of, you know, class. The features list makes note that there are “Gay and Lesbian categories as well - Liberal, remember? :)” but the couples shown on the site are all hetero and all the people, with the exception of one lightly browned man with his arms full of tropical fruits (oh yes!), white.

The demographics come through in the little things. The sales pitch happily proclaims that “for the price of a Latte you could meet the liberal soulmate you've dreamed of!” and explains that the site’s listings are searchable via keyterms: “You could type in ‘theater’ or ‘vegetarian’ and everyone with those words in their profile will show up in your search results.” The main page provides a definition of liberal as “Favoring political and social reforms tending towards democracy and personal freedoms for the individual [. . .] Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; not bigoted.” But looking around the site it seems that the real definition of liberal is outdoorsy, athletic, good teeth and clear skin, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and laughing while caring about the cute animals that dot the mission statement page.

Being single, if you don’t want to be single, isn’t easy, so I hate to hate on a service that might bring all kinds of happiness to people who are probably more or less on my team. (Look at all those testimonials!) And one can’t realistically expect a dating service to feature pictures of people described as unattractive in test-marketing. But this is exactly what people who hate liberals hate about liberals. Well, not “exactly” because the whole liberal-hating discourse only works as a catch-all that can be retooled to meet the needs of the moment, but the larger point is that for many “liberals” themselves liberal is not a politics but a style –maybe not even a lifestyle. The problem with this is not so much the lack of politicization per se, but the implicit and no doubt unintended acceptance of the Right’s terms of debate, namely that the country is to be divided in two based on consumption and leisure habits. When politics is consumption, political discourse is advertising, which is why it is so easy for advertising to present itself as political discourse.