Rummel: I’m a progressive millennial producing a conservative talk radio show

When I told my mom I was going to produce a talk show on a conservative radio station, she said she was worried.

I asked her why and she said “It’s a conservative station and you’re a progressive! The listeners won’t like you anymore!”

Think about that for a second.

Even my own mother only thought people liked me to the degree they agreed with me politically.

Is that really where we’re at as a country? The answer is probably yes.

The Pew Research Center put out a poll in 2016 indicating that 4 out of 10 Democrats and Republicans believe the other party’s policies are a threat to the nation. It really does seem we’re more divided than ever before.

In fact, that’s one of the reason’s I took this job.

You don’t have to do very much googling to find a story about how we’ve all created echo chambers for ourselves with our social media. Places like Facebook and Twitter only expose us to perspectives we already agree with, and that’s why so many progressives were taken so off guard by Donald Trump’s election (and let’s face it, this has been an issue for a long time, and a lot of conservatives were really taken off guard by Obama’s reelection in 2012 too).

It makes sense. It’s way easier to read a column you agree with than one you actually have to grapple with and square with your world view.

As a progressive producing a conservative talk show, I’ll never have this problem. My media diet will never be restricted to the opinions of people I agree with. I’ll rarely be surprised by the reasoning of a Republican politician. And I think this is a really good thing. I think it makes me a more well rounded person. I think it makes the conclusions I do arrive at stronger because they’ve been through the crucible of conservative thought.

By the way, this is a two way street. Listeners also derive a benefit from having a progressive at the producer-helm. The Jason Rantz Show on 770 KTTH is still unequivocally a conservative show. He’ll provide you with a conservative perspective, and we’ll have plenty of big-name champions of the conservative movement on the show as guests. But Rantz and I agree it’s important to have mature, healthy discourse with people we disagree with. We’ll have guests like that too, and everyone will be better off because of it.

Here’s my plea: help me prove my mom wrong. If you don’t like me, that’s fine, there are plenty of reasons to do so (I’m scared of elevators, I’m weird at parties). But don’t dislike me just because I have a different opinion than you.

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