Re: Citizen Radio EDIT

History is filled with couples who have been kind enough to illustrate their time, place, and culture. Something important is expressed by such pairings: Antony and Cleopatra, Sid and Nancy, and William F. Buckley and his wife; each set gives us some clue about the respective environments in which they thrived or at least set each other on fire.

Progressive blogger Allison Kilkenny and similarly progressive comic Jamie Kilstein are not akin to such power couples of the past. They are not all that powerful, for instance, and at any rate they do not even seem comfortable with the idea of power. Nor should we expect anything very power-coupleish from the two of them in the way of personal exploits - no civil wars, heroin addictions, or journals of increasingly mediocre conservative commentary are likely to emerge from this marriage. They are vegans, for instance.

But the background to their relationship is insufferably romantic insomuch as that the two of them met when each was poor and unknown and then together became slightly less poor and moderately well-known. "She was starting as a writer and I was failing as a comic, and we were both working at a book store," Kilstein recalls. "So we quit, left our closet in New York, and hit the road."

Their self-imposed exile worked out better than self-imposed exiles tend to. A stand-up comedian, Kilstein now tours internationally as a politically-oriented stand-up comedian, while Kilkenny is among the handful of journalists to have gained a solid readership by the direct and unorthodox means of the blogosphere. Together, they host Citizen Radio, a weekly public affairs webprogram that features a prominent array of leftist luminaries (Noam Chomsky has made three appearances so far) and which has so far garnered high praise from folks like The Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead for its particularly policy-oriented brand of humor delivered by two hosts with unusually effective on-air compatibility. Few other programs demand as much from their listeners, who in this case are not only subjected to high wonkishness on a weekly basis but are also routinely exhorted to refrain from being "apathetic hipster douchebags;" Kilstein and Kilkenny are both activists by nature and want other young people to start picking up the slack again. In January, the web show itself will switch to a live format with a studio audience of sorts; the first of these events will be held at UCB NYC with appearances by such reliably funny and ideologically sympathetic guests as Janeane Garofalo. They also live in a little apartment together in Queens and are in addition very much in love with each other and will probably have a bunch of little babies at some point.

What does the accelerating success of this couple tell us about the here, the now, and perhaps even the little bit later? Kilstein, whose act draws heavily on politics and religion and who now draws regular comparisons to Bill Hicks, has won particular acclaim in Europe, where the large crowds he routinely draws seem hungry for reassurance that Americans still understand irony; that he is far better known internationally than he is in the U.S. may probably be explained by this desire for an America that can once again evoke laughter of the intentional sort.

Kilkenny's increasing prominence as a journalist and commentator is perhaps more telling, and at any rate ought to reassure those worried about the degeneracy of America's opinion-making class. In a manner that would have been impossible fifteen 15 years ago, the 26-year-old writer managed to build her own audience by virtue of ability, a commitment to actually getting the story right, and other such novelties of modern media. She's now a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and True/Slant along with such more traditional outlets as The Nation.

That real journalists with talent are replacing fake ones with credentials is particularly heartening if one we considers how many mediocrities have risen to the top over the past decade or two. Kilkenny turns to Peggy Noonan when in need of something to ridicule. "Every column is a hysterical cry for a man to stick a penis in her and make the world right again," Kilkenny says. On the left, she looks to Maureen Dowd when in need of a reminder regarding how vapid the commentariat has become. "She's useless, Kilkenny says, and she's taking up valuable real estate. I've never read an interesting idea in her columns. All she writes is bad puns when she isn't plagiarizing or repeating gossip."

Like her husband, Kilkenny is too nice to make such criticisms on her own, and must be prompted to do so by vindictive interviewers. She's also quicker to praise those journalists who actually break important stories and provide accurate analysis - people like Amy Goodman of Democracy Now ("fearless and wonderful") and Glenn Greenwald of Salon ("the most morally consistent journalist I've ever read").

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Andy Battaglia <abattaglia@theonion.com> wrote:

Ah, OK. But yeah, just give a good read and you'll see the changes. Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks!

Andy

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Unfortunately, I don't have track changes as I don't have access to Word and work in Google Documents, but I can decipher what changes you've made by way of the differences in phrases, etc. I'll tweak this for you and have it back to you by Thursday.

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 1:40 PM, Andy Battaglia <abattaglia@theonion.com> wrote:
Hi Barrett,

I like the piece. Thanks for writing it for us. I did an edit, in TRACK CHANGES and with notes embedded within the text. I explain in the document so will defer here to there.

Could you take a look and get this back to us by Thursday at 3:30? We'd like to run it on Monday, and our production deadlines are moved up because of the holidays.

Feel free to give me a call if you like.

Best,

Andy

--
Andy Battaglia
New York City Editor, The A.V. Club
536 Broadway 10th floor
New York, NY 10012
p NEW! 212.777.3700 x 258
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twitter.com/AVClubNY

--
Andy Battaglia
New York City Editor, The A.V. Club
536 Broadway 10th floor
New York, NY 10012
p NEW! 212.777.3700 x 258
newyork.avclub.com
twitter.com/AVClubNY