If You Name It Like an Airline

If You Name It Like an Airline, Don't Be Surprised When It Crashes

The uber-liberal talk radio network is going into Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

JOHN FUND

Bad news for liberals appears to come in threes this week. First the political earthquake in Massachusetts. Then yesterday's news that the Supreme Court was eviscerating portions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, an icon of liberal statism. Finally, word arrived that Air America, the uber-liberal talk radio network set up in 2005 by sympathetic investors, was going into Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Air America did give voice to such liberal pundits as Al Franken and Rachel Maddow, both of whom have gone on to other gigs -- in Mr. Franken's case the U.S. Senate and in Ms. Maddow's a show on MSNBC. But it failed to attract large audiences and was eventually limited to an ever-shrinking network of fewer than 100 stations.

Conservatives will crow that Air America's demise shows that liberal talk radio can't cut the mustard in a competitive media environment. Air America had gobs of mainstream media publicity, highly visible hosts and generous dollops of "virtue" capital from acolytes of George Soros and his ilk. It still flopped. President Obama should be nervous because he had few cheerleaders more persistent than Air America's hosts. Its decline in recent months has mirrored his own precipitous drop in the polls.