Air America's Last Listener

A Fond Farewell to Stuart Smalley

Written by Carter Clews

Well, it has finally happened. We all knew was inevitable – but it still comes as a shock. Air America has closed its doors.
Decades from now, Americans from all walks of life will be asking each other: “Where were you the day the snooze-it died?” The precise time will now be stamped indelibly in the public psyche and enter the pantheon of history’s defining moments – like the day they added almonds to Joy … the night they raided Minsky’s … and the exact second Mookie’s grounder went through that idiot Buckner’s legs.
Have the gods no mercy? How much can people be expected to take? When, oh when, will it all end? Did Colgate Dental Cream really ever have an “invisible protective shield”?
To get an answer to these, and other questions about the nature of life, the Ptolemaic theory, and how vacuum pumps actually work, your faithful scribe contacted Hilda May Snopes, Air America’s last living listener, at her padded cell in Austin, Texas’, Good Hope Sanitarium. I share that enlightening interview with you now.
Me: Good morning, Miss Snopes, I’m sorry to awaken you in the middle of the afternoon.
HMS: What year is it?
Me: Still 2010, as near as I can remember. Miss Snopes, according to the Neilson Ratings, you were the last living listener to Air America. Is that true?
HMS: Is Karl Marx still alive?
Me: No, ma’am, I believe he passed away some years back.
HMS: Then I guess it’s true. Thank God for short wave.
Me: Indeed. So, how do you feel about the announcement that Air America has now gone bankrupt and is completely closing its doors?
HMS: Where’d you hear that? Rush Limbaugh tell you that? He’s a drug addict, you know – a drug addict who hates Mexicans and went deaf and had to get his ears replaced. Air America did a big special on it. Al Franken hosted it. He’s in the Senate, now, you know. I voted for him. So did the Dallas Cowboys starting line. ACORN got us all absentee ballots.
Me: I’m sure they did. Tell me, what do you think you’re going to miss most about Air America now that it’s off the air?
HMS: Same thing I missed when it was on the air – quality programming. That’s a joke, sonny. I may be old, but I’m still spry. I’ll miss Sean Hannity.
Me: I’m sorry, but I don’t believe Sean was actually on Air America.
HMS: I know. I missed him then, too. Let me think … let me think … don’t rush me now … Did you ever hear the commercial they had on for McDonald’s? The one about “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun?”
Me: Not recently. Who was your favorite Air America host of all time?
HMS: Fulton Lewis, Jr.
Me: With all due respect Miss Snopes, Fulton Lewis, Jr. has been dead for quite some time.
HMS: So has Air America.
Me: One last question, if I may. How does it feel to have been Air America’s last living listener now that they are gone?
HMS: Well, actually, not much different than when they were still around. You know, there were only three of us from the beginning. Then, I guess when Marx died and Mao moved to Tahoe, or whatever, those folks just kind of lost the will to live. I’m gonna miss them, though, I’ll tell you that. Did you ever hear the commercial they used to run for Minsky’s?
So, there you have it. Another great American institution fallen by the wayside. The Reggie Bar … the Edsel … two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun … that idiot Buckner – they all have their day in the sun and then are heard no more.
And now, Air America – the network that made Sominex superfluous and took the listen out of talk – has gone the way of the Dodo Bird. As Hilda Mae Snopes shouted to me from afar as I fled the sanatorium, “Tell Al Franken I liked him a lot better as Stuart Smalley.”
Carter Clews is the Executive Editor of ALG News.