The Land of Ozz

I had a heart-to-heart with my best friend and wife last night. She asked me what my motivation was when writing my recent posting on Casey Bartholomew. I could not come up with a good answer. The bottom line is that I feel right into his trap. I gave him attention. He even acknowledged in his email response to me that was what he really cared about anyway. He seems to have no regard for who he hurts or what he has to say in order to gain attention.

Today will be the first day that I no longer listen to Casey Bartholomew. I recommend you do the same. If he is ignored, he will go away. He can not maintain a job in radio without listeners. I refuse to support his name calling and degrading of other humans where he has no clue what their true circumstances are.

I apologize to the readers of my web site for lowering my standards to the level of the Casey Bartholomew show and repeating offensive things he said on the air. There’s no real value in doing that even in the name of exposing the evil in his behavior. I thought I was sharing the truth. While I may have been, I was also bringing attention to his show and I refuse to do that any more. There’s no entertainment value in the humiliation of other human beings and will have no part in this practice.

I will not post anything else on the Casey Bartholomew Show until the day I am able to report that he was replaced as the afternoon host of WSCC-FM drive home show. I will keep and eye on the radio station’s web site from time to time to see when this happens as I am sure it will soon if others feel the same way I do about the current show.

In the furture I will take a new way home as I will be enjoying other stations during my drive. I hope you do the same in the Charleston area. Today I will also begin a whole hearted effort to only post information that can be seen as informational while maintaining a positive and uplifting theme. Once again, I apologize for anything that may have been offensive in my recent postings.

Sincerely,
Hank Osborne

The Casey Bartholomew Show featured on WSCC-FM in Charleston, SC is at it again. It is more often than not that Casey Bartholomew turns my stomach with his rants and name calling. I am becoming less of a fan of his by the day. It was not enough to make fun of folks who live in mobile homes a couple of months ago. Now Casey is after the homeless. I sent an email to Casey ands asked for a transcript or audio copy of the show that included his rants on people living in mobile homes, but my email went unanswered. So, I will have to go with what I remember which should at least give you a good feel for my impression of Casey Bartholomew’s opinions as I heard it.

A couple of months ago Casey had a segment of his afternoon talk show dedicated to mobile home residents. Casey went off on people who live in mobile homes. If I remember correctly Casey believes that if you live in a mobile home you are basically stupid, ignorant, and the scum of society. I take offense to that attitude towards folks living in mobile homes. I have lived over 25% of my 38 years in mobile homes and have a number of friends and family members who still live in mobile homes. I now live in a neighborhood much like the one Casey Bartholomew lives in, but I have not forgot where I came from. I have lived in a single wide trailer on private land as well as in trailer parks. I am here to tell you that the physical structure of your home does not have anything to do with your intelligence, character, or criminal status. If anything, a trailer park may have more of a sense of community than most neighborhoods like the one in Summerville, SC where Casey Bartholomew lives today.

My wife taught 3rd grade in a public school in the same town where Casey Bartholomew lives. The best student to ever step foot into her classroom lived in a mobile home in a trailer park. This little girl and her family would fit into Casey’s trailer trash scum category. This beautiful and intelligent little girl was reading at least two grade levels ahead of the next best student in any class my wife ever taught. So, how will Casey’s young daughter feel when she sits down next to one of these trailer trash child geniuses? How will his daughter feel when the little trailer trash girl asks his daughter, “why does your daddy go on the radio and call my family scum, ignorant, and stupid?” I would not want to put my child in that situation, but it appears that Casey Bartholomew has no problem with it.

Casey now is exploiting the misfortune of the homeless to increase his pathetic ratings which I will get to in a minute. He claims that he is doing this to help the homeless the way Ben Rogovy from Seattle is doing. Casey’s help amounts to giving a homeless person a T-shirt for carrying a sign advertising for his show. He then goes on the air and tells his listeners how worthless and stupid he thinks homeless people are for living life the way they do . He believes it is their choice to live that way. I have never official been homeless so I can not argue that point, but I have come pretty close a few times and it was not by choice. Casey even posts a picture on the station web site titled “Bum-Vertising”. How can this possibly be a good advertising strategy? It is by far a bad deal for the homeless people that Casey uses. Casey makes a deal with someone to advertise for him and then takes a picture of them to be used to exploit their situation on the radio show’s web site. Here is what the WSCC-FM web site has to say about the Bum-Vertising project idea that Casey admittedly stole from Ben Rogovy:

We here at The Casey Bartholomew Show believe that any good idea is worth stealing. Following in the footsteps of budding Seattle entrepreneur Ben Rogovy, we have done some of our own Bum-vertising. We agree with Ben that the homeless and panhandlers are an untapped labor force. So, we enlisted the aid of Leroy to help advertise the show by walking around down town Charleston with his sign. Don’t worry; we gave him a t-shirt for payment.

It would not be so bad if Casey just made a deal and moved on, but he had to take it a step farther and start making fun of the people. At least Ben Rogovy let them keep their panhandler sign to continue to gather extra cash while advertising. There are details on the www.bumvertising.com web site and pictures of some of Ben Rogovy’s “bum-vertisers”. You can read more about Ben Rogovy’s original idea on bum-vertising from ABC-NEWS and learn that the original idea includes a little more than a T-shirt in return for advertisement. I don’t think it is a total bad idea since they homeless are doing something in return for the money being given to them. At least Ben Rogovy is not going on a talk show ranting about how stupid these homeless people are. Casey Bartholomew needs to choke up some food, water, and cash if he really wants to copy Ben Rogovy. He might also consider piping down on his name calling when referring to his little pet project on the air if he really wants to compare himself to Ben Rogovy. Not everyone agrees with this idea of bum-vertising. Read more comments from the Mises Economics Blog, Catallarchy, and MIT. MIT also reports that this type of idea has also been used by nuns in Holland.

It does not stop there. Casey Bartholomew believes that the listeners of his show are responsible for the resignation of the Charleston, SC police chief. Has he not looked at the poll on WSCC-FM web site? A majority of the people who took the poll believe that Greenberg was effective and it is a shame to see him go . Casey cheered on the air as he played the announcement of Greenberg’s retirement. He then goes on to apologize for doing what needed to be done to get Greenberg out of the police chief position. Casey Bartholomew actually believes he is some kind of hero in this deal. He even referred to himself as the great one yesterday on the air during his boasting over the outing of Chief Greenberg. Also during the segment on Chief Greenberg, Casey took a phone call where he yelled at the caller for disagreeing with him. I gathered that this was another critic of Casey’s from what I could tell, but I did not get his full name. I beleive it was Sam. The caller accused Casey of being power hungry with his microphone. Casey a;; but agreed with that point. I think Casey does often go overboard and become offensive with his comments.

One other show recently talked about parents who gave their high school graduating seniors breast implants for a graduation present. I agree that this was not an appropriate present for a teenage girl, but Casey Bartholomew took it a step farther. He called the young girls sluts and whores. The name calling is one thing, but what really disturbed me most about this rant by Casey was that the commercial break during this segment featured a Promise Keepers commercial. I wonder if the folks from Promise Keepers knew that their advertisement for the Christian Men’s conference was running within minutes of Casey Bartholomew ranting about these teenage girls as being sluts and whores simply because their parents made a dumb decision.

Now lets talk about ratings for the Casey Bartholomew Show and WSCC-FM. Casey has been bragging about the recent ratings that have his show on top as the number one afternoon talk radio show in Charleston, SC. Well, it’s not hard to be number one out of a total of one FM talk radio stations in Charleston, SC. The only other real contender is an AM talk radio station WTAM-AM which actually comes in ahead of WSCC-FM in the most recent Radio Online ratings. I would argue that The Casey Bartholomew Show probably comes in behind Rush Limbaugh on a show by show comparison, but that is just my guess since I could not find specific ratings for the Casey Bartholomew Show.

I find myself only listening to The Casey Bartholomew Show to give me something to write about lately. It appears that I am not the only one with less than stellar reviews of The Casey Bartholomew Show. I was leaving a parking garage in downtown Charleston, SC yesterday, when an attendant overheard Casey Bartholomew on my car radio. The attendant wanted to know how I could listen to that jerk as he referred to Casey Bartholomew. My response was to the attendant was that I do find some of Casey’s stuff to be interesting. I more often than not get turned off by his ranting and name calling. Casey considers all of his rants to be entertainment. Radio is an odd medium and a person can come in an just pick up some pieces out of context that can really be offensive. I am sure that this is the case for me at times. I recommend that the Casey Bartholomew Show start making show material available on MP3 for download. Heck, I will even help them get it done. I think it would be a great way for people like me to go back and get the whole story instead of just relying on a few pieces that may not represent the true views of the station or The Casey Bartholomew Show.

I will let Casey have the last word in this posting with a response to an email exchange between Casey and me over my Maximum Age Drivers post recently. Casey wrote to me, “I hope I didn’t offend you, too much. The show is all about entertainment, sharing ideas, and starting a dialogue. Just the fact that it got you to write something, even if you don’t agree with me, makes me happy.”

Update: Found an local news papaer article from back when Casey Bartholomew come on the scene in Charleston.

I could not let this one go. I was listening to The Casey Bartholomew Show on my favorite talk radio station NewsRadio 94-3 WSC-FM on the way home Friday evening. The subject on The Casey Bartholomew Show was elderly drivers. Casey told of a 100 year old man who lost his driver’s license simply because the man turned 100 years old. I came into the segment a little late so I am not sure where this story took place. Casey Bartholomew is known for his radical opinions on the issues he really cares about. This subject was not immune to his radical opinions. One caller suggested recently that Casey could not possibly feel that strongly about some of these subjects and Casey’s response was that he really does have the opinions that he shares on the air.

On Friday Casey suggested that people should surrender their driver’s license at age 67. He believes that when drivers get to a certain age they become too much of a danger to the general public. Several callers weighed in and basically said they disagreed with the 67 year old age suggestion that Casey proposed. I am sure that Casey threw out a number that he felt would cause a stir and it worked. I caught myself wanting to set him straight. I even called in but was not put on the air because they ran out of time on that segment.

I believe that people should not be considered dangerous drivers just because of their age. Yes, most people reach a point in their lives usually at an older age where they should surrender their license. I do not believe that the magic age is 67 years old. I do not believe there is a magic age. I agree with the one caller who identified himself as a truck driver. He said that he is required to get a physical every so many years to maintain his license no matter what his age. The caller suggested this as an alternative to just yanking a person’s license simply due to age. I agree with the caller. He and Casey briefly talked about pilots having to get a physical. That informaiton on pilot physicals is a fact. Pilots much get a physical no matter what age they are with only a couple of exceptions related to some new sport pilot ratings. Casey’s response was basically that he would not fly with a older pilot of 67 or more years. If Casey had heard the Phil Hendrie Show a few weeks ago he would have realized that age should be the least of his worries when it comes to pilots. Phil Hendrie had a commercial pilot on his show who basically said that a pilot’s health was becoming less of a concern since the planes basically fly themselves. This particular pilot had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and saw no reason why he should loss his FAA Medical Certificate. One of the most notable symptoms of Parkinson’s is the loss of muscle control which I find a very good reason to get grounded. UH, I want my pilot to have muscle control even if the plan does fly on automatic most of the time.

I am a private pilot and have to get a physical every two years to maintain my pilot’s license. I recently renewed my FAA Second Class medical certificate. It was a good bit more of hassle this year due to a diagnosis of hypertension since my last physical. The FAA physical cost me $100 and then I had to spend about $100 more jumping though hoops to fill in requirements to get my current heart condition documented as a baseline for future FAA medical certificates. I was cleared relative to my health to fly up to an including commercial flights with no restrictions. I feel more confident in my health as a result. I only get the commercial medical certificate in the event I find myself out of a day job and have to go to flying for a living.

I will get back to the point of this posting. I have a hard time reading the mood of Casey Bartholomew sometimes. He has accused me of not listening very closely when responding to his topic in early May on the proposed increase in cigarette taxes. He claims that his “comments were dripping with sarcasm” when talking about giving the tax money to the schools. Maybe his comments today were dripping with sarcasm and I just missed it again. I hope so, because the idea of taking someone’s license simply due to age is a bad idea.

Maybe Casey did not take my call because he is afraid I will pull a Neal Boortz on him and fill his shoes after he commits professional suicide with his radical opinions. According to the FAQs on Neal’s web site, he got his start in talk radio by showing up at the station asking for a job shortly after the morning host committed suicide. The station managers of the first talk radio station in Atlanta had no clue that Neal would grow to four million listeners across America right from that same station 30 years later. I admit that I have never heard Neal on the radio, but I like everything I read about him. What is not to like? He has his own little private air force comprised of a Mooney Ovation2 and Super Decathlon. He is quoted on his bio page as saying, “There’s nothing like flying upside down to clear your mind … among other things.” Amen brother. A man after my own heart. I will get back to Neal Boortz later. Neal has written on a subject that Casey has a very radical opinion on.

I like Casey Bartholomew on most days. There are other days when he gets so far off base on one of his rants that I would rather turn off my radio, let down my windows, and listen to traffic noise. Who knows, maybe that is the desired affect that Casey wants to have on his listeners. Stay tuned for more on Casey’s rants. I promise it will be good.

I was happy to hear Glenn Beck give Michelle Malkin a plug on his show today. Glenn said, “I think she’s brilliant” and I agree with him. Glenn and Michelle are ranked at the top of my chart in star terms and I arrived at my opinion about each of them independently. I had never seen an article on Michelle Malkin’s site referring to Glenn Beck until I searched for them today. I had never heard Glenn mention Michelle before today either which is what prompted me to search to see if Michelle had any references to Glenn on her site.

I probably average spending more time listening to Glenn Beck and reading Michelle Malkin’s web site than I spend watching television these days. The remainder of my long nights caring for my youngest son Caden includes working from home and writing in my blogs. This is mainly because a large majority of television programming stinks and TV news is almost certain to be bias in favor of ratings no matter what the subject. Michelle is an awesome resource for complete and accurate information concerning the hottest news stories. Glenn comes up with well researched topics for his show and often has some creative and entertaining ideas for solving some of the world’s problems.

The really bizarre thing about my findings today is that Glenn Beck show regularly reports approximately 8 million total listeners. Today MichelleMalkin.com reached an equally impressive number of 8 million total visitors to her web site according to her trusty little Site Meter statistics.

You can read article where Michelle mentions Glenn Beck here, here, here, here, here, and here.

You can become a Glenn Beck Show Insider like me by going here.

Thanks to Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin for their pursuit of the truth in all that matters. Keep up the great work.

My favorite radio station NewsRadio 94-3 WSC-FM runs a few of my favorite shows. The Casey Bartholomew Show is one that is scheduled to run from 3pm until 7pm weekdays. I normally pick up part of it on my way home everyday from work. The Casey Bartholomew is not my favorite show on WSCFM but I do try to give him a chance everyday. Yesterday Casey nailed a hot button issue with me. He brought up the subject of how teachers are pass kids who may not deserve is by giving the kids nothing lower than a 50 or 60 grades. Yes, this is happening. Most people in the general public never hear about these policies because it would not look good for one of our prize winning school districts to be exposed for padding the numbers. The underlying motivation is probably more likely geared towards the feelings of the children. Yes, one more example of how our society tries to keep our children happy at all cost.

What does this really cost? We end up with a society of people who think that everything should be handed to them because that is what they were taught in school. The Casey Bartholomew Show did a great job of pointing this fact out yesterday. I was so pleased with Casey’s subject that I actually called in to participate. Casey had a teacher call in who did not seem to realize that this kind of thing was going on in schools. I could not leave this notion unchallenged. My wife did teach third grade for a few years in public school. Her grade book was checked by the administration to be sure that she was not giving anything lower than a 50. My wife detested this notion in most cases, but was forced to go along with it by the administration of her school. She believes that there are special cases that might warrant giving a grade, but those a few and far between. For instance, maybe a truly special needs child has been put into a mainstream classroom. While I am of the opinion that most kids with special needs do not belong in mainstream classrooms, they are getting put into them. That is a subject for another day.

There were two points that I wanted to make by calling the Casey Bartholomew Show yesterday. The first was to give Casey some support against this teacher who called in who was either in denial or just living in a fantasy land. The second was to say that much of the blame should be put on the parents. The parents are mostly to blame for child who is riding the system and getting grades less than the knowledge and capabilities will permit. The system is pretty messed up, but an involved parent would know what their children is actually doing. Parents should be at every meet the teacher night and should be scheduling regular conferences to follow up on their child’s progress. A parent should want to know why their child is skimming by. If their child is consistently getting Cs and Ds then they should take a look at the teacher’s grade book. When the teach shows a long list of 50s and 60s then the parent should want to know what kind of work their child is passing in to get these grades. Most teachers who are in the situation of being forced to give minimum grades are more than happy to tell a parent when I child is turning in nothing and getting a 50. Most teachers what to help these kids. They are certainly not in it for the money.

I want to thank Casey for bring up this subject. The Casey Bartholomew has potential, but many times I will switch over to NPR or listen to a CD on the way home because Casey is off on a subject that just rubs me the wrong way. Sometimes I actually think his show’s catch phrase should be “Talking about the things Casey really cares about” rather than the actual show catch phrase “Talking about the things you really care about.” Casey actually hung u on me the day before yesterday when I called to suggest a change of subject. The subject was really not that bad, but it was rather that Casey was doing a ton of name calling. He was calling teen age girls who get breast implants as graduation presents from their parents some pretty nasty names. He also went off pretty good yesterday on the teacher who was obviously out of touch with reality. Casey called him stupid along with yelling at the guy for a minute or so. While Casey does have the right to defend himself, the practice of belittling callers with name calling is not appealing to me. The fact that Casey does expose some of our society’s ignorance and what I call over tolerance is often appealing to me.

The Quran is to the Muslims as the Bible is to Christians. Well, almost. The major difference is that most Christians would not run out in the street and start killing people if they heard from a magazine article that some foreign military officials were flushing pages from the Bible down the toilet. True or not the story was published. I have not read the story from Newsweek and I probably will not. Newsweek is something I read for comical entertainment while waiting to see a doctor. Others that I find amusing are parenting magazines that run the “let’s keep our children happy at any cost” stories. These magazines are great examples of I believe is a big problem in our country today. Too many people are worried too much about pleasing other people by telling them what they want to hear and they have stopped worrying about doing the right thing.

I listen to talk radio quite a bit. One of my favorite shows is the Glenn Beck Program. Glenn has folks respond to Newsweek’s recent incorrect story on the treatment of the Quran by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Well, it may have been incorrect, or maybe not. There is a CNN story saying that the Red Cross Warned U.S. over Quran with no specific references to Quran mistreatment.

The bottom line is that the Quran probably is mistreated at times. There are people in the US military and other government agencies that break the rules. You can make all the policies you want on how the Quran should be handled, but that does not guarantee that all people will follow these rules and polices. That should not be news to anyone.

There are wackos wearing uniforms in our military. Why do you think they have two man control on nuclear weapons? I worked on nukes for over five years in the Air Force. No single person was ever allowed access to missile silos. That is because the military knows that there are wackos that might take advantage of the opportunity if given unmonitored access to a nuclear missile silo.

I agree with the former Marine who called into the Glenn Beck Program on Monday. He said that he went through interrogation training in the military. He was kept from urinating for a long period of time before his trainers took him and other trainees to a pit. The bottom of that pit was covered by an American flag. The trainees urinated on the flag. They were able to do so because they viewed the flag in that pit as a piece of cloth. The flag has a meaning, but it is just a colored piece of cloth. They were not disgracing their country by what they did. I do not like to see the flag burned or even touch the ground, but I am not going to spill my guts to the enemy because the flag was defaced or destroyed.

I feel similar about the Bible. It is a book. It is ink and paper. Pressing a bunch of trees into paper and plastering ink on the pages does not make that paper sacred. Heck, the Bible in on the Internet. Does that make the Internet sacred? NO! What it represents is sacred, but the book itself is not. I know people that would argue with me on this one. I was raised to respect the Bible. I was taught not to put other things on top of the Bible. I still practice these beliefs as much as possible. I would not spill secrets as a result of the enemy flushing it down the toilet. The Muslims might spill their secrets as a result of the Quran being flushed. They don’t think like us.

The problem is that Muslims do not view things the way Christians do. We have a pastor at our church that has immediate family members who are Muslims. He says that Muslims take care of you if they like you and the will kill you if they hate you.

I am sure that Newsweek would not have run this story if they thought it would cause riots that would kill people. I am not sure that the riots were solely in response to the Newsweek report. For all I know this may be a case of my unconfirmed story is bigger than yours. The kansascity.com story did not cause riots. These riots would have happened for some other reason if it were not for this Newsweek story.

Weather the Quran was flushed, burned, or chewed by a wacko military member or a legitimate interrogator does not matter. I believe that it is entirely possible that it did happen at some point. I would even support flushing a book if it were effective at extracting information from the terrorist captives that can save American lives no matter what is written on the pages of the book. Muslims Riot Over Spelling of ‘Quran’ in U.S. Media indicates that the reason for the riots may not be because of the flushing of the Quran, but because of the spelling of the word Quran.

Other interesting views from:

Patrick Ruffini - A Test for Liberals
Conservative Outpost - Newsweek lied…people died
Right Wing News - The Newsweek “Qu�ran In The Toilet” Fiasco? It’s Just Another Karl Rove Conspiracy!
Black Five - Haven’t Read Newsweek Since May 26th, 2003

I am once again amazed at how much press is given to the concept of fixing public schools with money. I happen to listen to The Casey Bartholomew Show on the way home from work every day. Yesterday Casey was taking calls to get comments on whether the listening audience thinks South Carolina should raise cigarette taxes. One of Casey’s main arguments in favor of the increase was to help public schools. “Do it for the children,” Casey said. I have a reality check for you Casey. You can pile money from the floor to the ceiling in most of these classrooms and it will not fix their problems. There are several big problems in schools that money will not correct.

I agree that adding money into the public school system could help. It could allow for teachers’ salaries to be increased to help keep the ones we have and to possibly attract more talent into such an important career field. The money could help buy more materials to prevent the truly dedicated teachers from digging into their own pockets to buy supplies for their classrooms. Many teachers spend one third of her net income or more for the first year to buy supplies for their classrooms. Money could help those situations, but unless the real problems are fixed, you can not expect the teachers to stick around for long.

One problem goes back to the home. Children are not being sent to school prepared or disciplined. By disciplined, I mean there are too many kids that have not been taught to respect authority at a young age. Many of these kids become massive disruptions to the classrooms. The parents then get called and many times the parents want to blame the teacher for the child’s behavior problems. Therefore the teacher gets fed up and moves on to a career that pays more with less stress. Many kids have parents who are not involved in their kid’s daily work and do not ensure that homework and projects get done on time. This is not completely the parents’ fault because they may have to work two jobs to make ends meet. The kids may be left alone or with someone who has less of a vested interest in making sure the kids are on track. Many kids end up raising themselves for the most part due to the circumstances of their home.

Another big problem is mainstreaming. When it comes to academics, we were not all created equal. Advanced children do not need to be in mainstream classrooms. Special needs children do not need to be in mainstream classrooms. Money will not fix this problem. There is little to benefit from creating a third grade classroom out of kids where they range in academic ability from pre-school through seventh grade. They ones who may already be struggling with learning, emotional, or physical disabilities are going to have even more stress introduced from having to try to keep up with kids who work at a faster pace. The advanced kids will get bored waiting on the teacher to challenge them.

You can argue that with funding we could have smaller classrooms and more advanced and special education programs. That is true. You could also start dividing kids among existing teachers based on abilities and test scores. This could be done at the beginning of the next school year with no additional funding required.

Oh, I can hear the arguments already. It will hurt their little feelings. Well you know what, that is life and they need to learn it sooner or later. Not everyone has been blessed with the ability to perform at the same academic level at the same age in their lives. Some will never perform at the same level as others. Some will perform at a level that the rest of the population can not even comprehend.

The bottom line is that money could help the public education system, but it is NOT the cure all for the public education system. I wish people like Casey who have a voice to the masses would stop leading people into thinking that money is going to solve this country’s education problems.