Radio Activist

By Ken Picard, Seven Days. Posted March 4, 2004.

It's the top of the hour in a house overlooking downtown Montpelier, and the host of the nationally syndicated "Thom Hartmann Show" is waiting for a cue indicating he is back on the air. "Calling for a rapid and radical return to the old values that made America great," says an announcer's voice, "the values of democracy upon which this country was founded, here's Thom Hartmann."

The 2:00 p.m. introduction sounds generically patriotic enough to open a conservative talk-radio show. But Hartmann's liberal tendencies show through when he begins to rail against the Bush administration's latest assault on the Bill of Rights. A recent guest on the program, Brett Bursey, has just been convicted by a federal court of "threatening the president." His crime? Standing in the crowd at a pro-Bush rally in Columbia, South Carolina, with a sign that read, "No war for oil."

"He was arrested solely -- the police officer told him -- for the contents of his sign. He wouldn't go to the designated 'free speech zone,'" Hartmann tells his listeners from his small home studio, where a cat snoozes contently at his feet. "What happened to the First Amendment and the right of the people to peaceably assemble to petition their government for a redress of grievances? What's happening to America?"

Next, Hartmann takes a phone call that is fed to him from a remote studio in Detroit. "Kyle," a college-aged listener in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, is concerned that Ralph Nader's run for the presidency will once again split the progressive vote and hand Bush the election. Hartmann's assessment? Nader won't be a factor come November. Still, he is angered at Nader's apparent indifference to how his campaign disenfranchises liberal voters and ultimately harms the democratic process.

"Nader says that no one in Europe would dare tell a third-party candidate that he can't run. Well, that's because in Europe, a third party doesn't harm the other party that it is most closely aligned with," Hartmann says. "How can Ralph Nader be so ignorant of politics and history?" He then launches into an impromptu lesson about European-style proportional representation, deftly spouting names, dates and other historical facts without once referring to notes or reference books.

Hartmann's encyclopedic intellect is impressive, though he doesn't seem to notice the symbolic significance of his last caller's location: Cape Girardeau, Missouri, is the hometown of conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh. It has been less than a year since Hartmann's three-hour daily program went national, but already the 53-year-old Vermonter has struck at the heart of conservative America. Since April 2003, "The Thom Hartmann Show" has been picked up by 23 stations from coast to coast, in markets as liberal as San Francisco and as conservative as Grand Rapids, Michigan. In the latter, "The Thom Hartmann Show" now airs opposite "The Rush Limbaugh Show" on a station owned by the media giant Clear Channel radio network.

Hartmann is by no means the first progressive to try to reclaim the airwaves from Limbaugh and the other angry conservatives of his ilk who have dominated political talk radio for more than a decade. Actually, his show is part of a growing movement to broaden the spectrum of on-the-air political discourse. That trend includes nationally syndicated programs like the Vermont-based "Bernie Sanders Show," Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!" and a new liberal radio network expected to launch soon called Air America Radio, which will feature progressive hosts such as Al Franken and Janeane Garafalo.

Haven't heard "The Thom Hartmann Show" yet? No wonder, since the program, which is billed as "uncommon sense from the radical middle," is still so new it hasn't even been picked up in its home state yet. That said, "The Thom Hartmann Show" actually got its start about a year ago with a brief stint on TALK 1070, a small, daytime-only AM station with a studio in St. Albans.

But Hartmann's visibility in Vermont is bound to improve. This week, the network that has been airing his program for the last year -- the UAW union-bankrolled " America Radio Network" in Detroit -- disbanded. So Hartmann, an aggressive entrepreneur and self-promoter, launched his own company to self-syndicate the show. Already, it has been picked up by the Sirius Satellite Radio system, and is being beamed to stations throughout North America. "The Thom Hartmann Show" also attracts about 10,000 listeners each month in more than 100 countries via the World Wide Web.

As Hartmann prepares for the final half-hour of his show during another commercial break, his wife and producer, Louise, shows me around their home, a beautiful gingerbread cottage built in 1850 for Vermont painter Thomas Waterman Wood. The couple moved to Vermont about four years ago from Atlanta to escape the smog and crime and live in northern New England, which they love. Through the lead-paned windows in the dining room, Hartmann's car can be seen parked in the driveway. It's a Toyota Prius hybrid, with bumper stickers that read, "Abolish Corporate Personhood" and "Eat My Voltage."

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