Talk Radio

Oliver Stone's Talk Radio took its inspiration from a real event: the murder of liberal Denver radio personality Alan Berg at the behest of a militant right-wing hate group. Here is the story: Barry Champlain is a provocative radio talk-show host, whose racy eloquence and inflammatory views stirs up both love and hate among his listeners. He's witty, cynical and self-indulgent, while his fucked-up fans seem born to advertise for the dark side of America: he gets calls from drug-abusers, suicidal teenagers and angry neo-nazis from all parts of Denver.

Fame comes rapidly and the show gets promoted to national broadcast. And the real troubles begin. One night Barry pushes one caller just a bit too far, and just before hanging up the phone, he hears a scary voice saying: "I know your face, Jew. I know where you live. I'll find you soon." Two days later he gets shot in the street, just a few meters away from the studio.

For some, this is the story of a guy who wittingly played with fire and eventually got burn. In a sense, they're right. To give people a chance to unleash their darkest instincts is to play with fire. Especially people whose audience is usually limited to police stations, intensive care units, bums and drug dealers.

But this film goes beyond the case of Barry Champlain/Alan Berg. Barry here operates as the lightning rod of society. He sure takes pleasure at riding the lightning, but he discovers pretty soon that the game he started is endless, and that it takes no rules. People suffering daily from anger and frustration, lack of money, lack of love and lack of recognition should be happy to find a soapbox and someone to talk to, even if he's an act. But they're not. They feel even worse.

In all their misery, they still have more respect for the racist cop or the corrupted politician, because these two stay where they belong. Barry doesn't. They can take the lies from the nababs above, because they've been groomed to and because they have no choice. But they won't take the truth from a simple radio host whose outspokenness is a constant offence to the system that didn't favor them, but which they look up to as an almighty God.
These people won't shoot the President. But given a chance, they will shoot the one guy who has the guts - or the freedom - to call it an act at the face of the world.

The losing side

In normal democracies, main elections are won - or lost - on an average 53/47 % balance. Barack Obama hasn't exactly edged Mc Cain out of the presidency. He secured a pretty comfortable victory. Still, the figures show that the gap between the two candidates isn't wider than in previous elections: 62,443,218 votes for Obama (52%) and 55,386,310 for Mc Cain (48%).

In France, however, 80% of the people surveyed by French medias declared themselves Obama supporters, and would have voted for him if they were American citizens. I would probably have voted for Obama myself. But are these figures not a bit too extravagant not to deserve some form of cross-examination?

Today on TV news, female newscaster Elise Lucet couldn't hide her joy. One may have thought she was still under the spell of an intense love-making night with whoever bangs her at the moment. But she wasn't. She was genuinely pleased with Obama's victory and didn't need to hide it since her state of mind is (apparently) shared by 80% of the French population.

The answer of this enigma is to be found on the losing side. Whenever images were shown of John Mc Cain and his supporters, you couldn't see anything but white dickheads reading out the bible and listening to country music. Every middle-aged guy looked like the bearded white-hair pervert of Oliver Stone's U-Turn. No black people, no children. There must have been some in the crowd, but the cameraman ignored them. They didn't fit the cast.

Then we had a short coverage about Alabama, where Mc Cain got 60% on his name. It wasn't to praise the beauty of the place, but just to remind us that Alabama was once the cradle of the Ku-Klux-Klan.

This is just like what French medias did all over the US campaign and before that. Showing the republicans as unevolved, racist, war-hungry sons of bitches. American people obviously know better than that. For if they didn't, the country would be shifting to civil war. But they already had one and moved on from that point. By voting Obama, they maybe showed they didn't want another good vs evil four-year soap-opera. French medias would love it.