SIRIUS Pickup

Call it Activism Day here at The Big Con. Our mini-movement to fight SIRIUS Satellite Radio's imprecation that liberals aren't patriots [1] has picked up virtual steam - at, among other places, Talking Points Memo [2] and the front page of Daily Kos. [3]

Watching Those We Chose [4] points out the promotional copy on SIRIUS's site compounds the insult. They promote SIRIUS Patriot as, "Coast-to-coast conservative -- SIRIUS Patriot celebrates the red, white and blue with patriotic conservatives who aren’t afraid to tell you what they think." SIRIUS Left, more prosaically, is merely "Liberal talk radio at SIRIUS. Liberal radio with entertaining hosts only on SIRIUS."

West Virginia Blue [5] points out that the imbalance even extends to the two-word description on the site! "SIRIUS Patriot" is identified as the station for "CONSERVATIVE VALUES," whereas as "SIRIUS Left" is merely "LIBERAL TALK."

Gues what? To Mel Karmazian's megacorporation, you're not just unpatriotic, you have no values.

Best of all, we have an endorsement from Orbitcast.com [6], a web site that covers (and puffs) the satellite biz full time. Say they:

Sirius Patriot was actually named Sirius Right until it underwent a name change a little over a year ago. I don't see Sirius changing the name back, but I also don't see much harm in changing the name of Sirius Left to something like Sirius Liberty (as suggested by Taylor Marsh). It might be a nice way for Sirius to show they're "listening to the listeners" and to flip some negative publicity into something positive.

Next move, SIRIUS?