Genius at work

I guess in the same way that George H.W. Bush likes Maureen Dowd, I like Michael Graham. I can't really stomach talk radio, so I rarely listened to his show when he was here, but I always enjoyed his appearances on Bill Maher's shows, and I appreciated the way he showered Richmond's powers-that-were (Calvin Jamison, Andre Parker, Rudy McCollum) with deserved ridicule when no other local outlet stepped up.

So I was surprised to read today's story about Graham in the Washington Post, not because he pissed off D.C.-area Muslims with a moronic statement, but because according to the article his new station, WMAL, has been bleeding listeners since he arrived. I thought Graham was ready to ascend the talker heights—he has a decent-selling book, does a fair bit of TV, etc.—but maybe Richmond was where his metaphorical water found its metaphorical highest level.

Paradoxically, Graham's popularity will probably balloon with this, because people will be interested in what he'll say next. He called Islam a "terrorist organization" because, he reasons:

If the Boy Scouts of America had 1,000 Scout troops, and 10 of them practiced suicide bombings, then the BSA would be considered a terrorist organization. If the BSA refused to kick out those 10 troops, that would make the case even stronger. If people defending terror repeatedly turned to the Boy Scout handbook and found language that justified and defended murder --and the scoutmasters responded by saying 'Could be' -- the Boy Scouts would have been driven out of America long ago.

I guess by his reasoning Catholicism is the equivalent of NAMBLA and evangelical Protestantism is a big Ponzi scheme, but as Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations notes in the article, there's no law against being an idiot. In Graham's business, there is an unwritten law, though: If your ratings drop enough (and WMAL's morning ratings are down a quarter since Graham arrived), you're soon gonna be taking your show to smaller markets.

So when do we welcome him home?