Classic DC

The fuel on which DC runs is polls, polls, polls, polls, polls. Nobody takes a poop in DC unless the polls are favorable. This is one of my favorite stories about falling off the edge of the world into this--speaking of poop--city. It should be inserted here as I mentioned before that I am an insufferable snob. I was pleased that DC had a Classical Music radio station when I moved here. They're becoming as rare around the country as a book in Dubya's bedroom. I listened for a few weeks and started to get a little perplexed. Where was the Beethoven, the Berlioz, the Delibes, the Tchaikovsky, the Stravinsky, the Hanson, the Adams, the Ades, the Kalinnikov, the Shostakovich, the Jarnefelt, the Saint-Saens, the Pierne, the Borodin, the Gottschalk, and for the Goddesses' sake, where the Hell was Copland?

So I innocently e-mailed the program director, politely questioning the OVER USE of Johann Christian Bach (of all people) among my naive other questions. He snappingly wrote back to tell me that they only play what their listeners want to hear. They poll their listeners. There's a whole big wide world of composers out there, and a Polovetzian Dance every now and then is going to chase their listeners away?!

Esprit de l’escalier : Classical one-oh-three-point-five is not a station that loves Classical Music--they are a station that whores it out.

Sometimes I wonder.