Posted on 10/13/2023 4:21:21 AM PDT by relictele
So what do we make of Jesse Kelly?
I’m probably no different to many in that I’ve searched for something, anything to replace a mere portion of Rush Limbaugh and his program. There are many pretenders, few contenders.
I’ve addressed the ‘officially designated heirs’ of Clay Travis & Buck Sexton in another post. Their biggest problem is attempting to be nice guys while getting into the dirty business of politics. They simply won’t attack the Marxists & statists directly. They’ll criticize, they’ll complain but that’s about all. They have fallen into a rut of Chicken Little shrieking about all the problems and abuses, especially where Trump’s legal issues are concerned. They claim they want to win but aren’t doing much about it, Travis’ playbook of self-evident cliches notwithstanding.
Which brings us to Kelly, who has an interesting background but the interest level wanes quickly thereafter. First of all, he’s awfully pleased with himself much of the time. Rush’s braggadocio was obviously tongue-in-cheek to all but those who didn’t get it. I don’t hear the same overt or implied self-deprecation from Kelly. I hear only bluster and check-me-out. Branding is just that but incessantly announcing one’s own name as part of the show title, the email address etc is something beyond branding. And it's often the worst kind of filler.
Kelly demands that his audience be up to date, informed and intelligent but his shaggy-dog common-man analogies, or illustrations, on a particular topic are exasperatingly long and meandering. ‘Let’s say you need a gallon of milk. And you want 2% not whole milk. So you walk to the bedroom to get your wallet then you get your keys to start your car. And your car is a Toyota. Then you drive to the store and enter the dairy aisle etc. etc. and Rod Stewart’s ‘Passion’ is playing on the Muzak blah blah ad infinitum ad nauseum…..’
Kelly is apparently attempting to use these parables of a sort to educate but the level of mundane – and hypothetical - detail is stultifying. Gratuitous.
He doesn’t seem to support any particular politician, candidate etc. Kelly WILL denigrate the powerful, the annoying and the dangerous. but often does so in the course of berating the public ie the listener for not doing more about it. Clay & Buck have this same unfortunate tendency. Limbaugh often expressed false humility (‘just a guy on the radio’) but he knew that applying subtle pressure to sensitive areas – egos, embarrassing personal details, scandal – could make politicians uncomfortable, even angry and spur them to action even the reckless kind. Rush’s imitators and heirs will simply not engage at that level despite having the power of a mass audience.
(PS - Dan Bongino was everyone's 'hammer' as a guest or guest host during the Trump years. Bongino knew - or hinted that he knew - all the dirty details from inside sources. As Bongino became his own man ie hosting a show of his own and being a primary rather than a secondary media figure he has been gelded. Or gelded himself. Lots of whispering that he still knows the dirt but he won't reveal it. His Twitter feed, once provocative and even funny, has become a tiresome they're-out-to-get-me self-pity party. He's really lost his way. If he had a way to begin with.)
The rules may have changed for media over time but regularly insulting your audience as dumb, intransigent etc. is still not the best path.
Advertising dollars are hard to come by. It’s understandable, but still off-putting, that Kelly will do more of his conversational shtick as he gears up to sell this or that container of snake oil. In other words, content and not-really-content are intermixed.
I condensed a recent episode by editing out all the self-congratulatory blather and, of course, the interminable sales pitches and (automatically) deleting long pauses. A 3 hr show boiled down to about 1 hr 5 min. And in that 1 hr 5 min I counted 4-5 salient points that I hadn’t heard elsewhere or that provoked thought. In other words, he’s capable of insight and educating the audience but that is lost in the noise.
As above, Kelly has some observational and analytical talent but like a hotshot guitarist he needs a producer (in the record-making sense) to make the music more appealing, consistent and accessible. He doesn’t seem big on the opinions of others so that may be a forlorn hope.
Who is Jesse Kelly?
Never heard of the guy
Feet-of-Clay Travis and Cuck Suxton are horrible. Mental midgets...
Maybe he’s the Next Rush.
Oh, wait. We already have one of those.
Bongino is the best of the lot. Informed and principled.
If you don’t like him, why are you listening to him? It’s his right to blather, and if his sponsors want to pay him to blather, that’s their right. It’s called diversity.
I like Bongino just fine. I like Chris Plante, he’s funny and smart. Rush certainly did not call out the RINOs in a way they deserved. He did a great job on democrats, but missed the more insidious threat within the Republican party.
Rush used to say, “Words have meanings.”
Your post is offensive as you are using “We” instead of “I”. If you do not know what you think, why are you so intellectually weak as to think “we” can help you make up your mind? When I was a kid (80 years ago), people like you would have been sent to Middletown (the location of the state nuthouse) because of one or more of your apparent medical deficiencies.
Stop pushing your agenda on this website.
A criticism and an analysis is a very different thing to ‘don’t like.’
And you’re assuming I do listen to him. If you had read the original post, I noted that I used an audio editor to reduce the content out of curiosity to see how much wheat vs chaff there was. It’s part of an automated RSS download haul so the MP3s are there and usually deleted.
Nobody is denying or attempting to deny rights. And sponsorship isn’t a ‘right’ it’s a contractual arrangement.
conservative radio died with Rush. I listed my AM radio for sale on eBay two years ago. No luck.
I like Wilcow.
I take him seriously but not literally, and take into account that he’s as much an entertainer as anything else.
Enough with the “The Sky is Green” story, though. People get the point already and groan when he goes through it all week after week.
He definitely does use self deprecating humor. That is especially true when he talks about his community college education.
He’s largely right about communist infiltration of government bureaucracies, the entertainment industry, Academia and “news” in addition to politics.
He’s fun and generally doesn’t take himself too seriously.
He’s also Julie Kelly’s brother (she, who has done such excellent reporting on the plight of the January 6 political prisoners).
He’s a 6’7’ former Marine who ran for congress (unsuccessfully) twice.
He was also all-in for DeSantis. I don’t know if he’s come around yet to the fact that DeSantis has zero shot at beating Trump.
Reagan’s wins were so vital AND he won not only against the Democrats but against the GOPE.
One of RL’s liabilities, for lack of a better term, was that he never stopped celebrating vanquishing the ‘Ford/Dole/Rockefeller wing of the GOP.’ The 70s crowd were his go-to criticism well into the 90s when he could have been taking on the RINOs as you suggest.
Try Matt Walsh. More informative than Kelly and more confrontational toward the left. Not much humor but he knows what time it is.
Offensive? To whom?
If you complain that the pronoun ‘we’ is speaking for others and unacceptable, then we will assume you’re speaking only for yourself. So why are you offended? How?
As it happens my pedantic friend, the use of ‘we’ is a rhetorical device, often called The Royal We in jest. It is a means of soliciting opinion. How do we think the Chiefs will do this year? and so forth.
My, my you are are a rather hostile 80something. Medical deficiencies? Are you a doctor practicing internet medicine? Someone asks for opinion and you lose your temper?
To what agenda do you refer? Do you have a topical point to make or merely engaging in ad hominem?
Is he XM satellite? I looked for podcasts but I don’t think he provides them. Maybe they’re worried he will cannibalized his live audience?
I think some of your observations about Kelly are on the mark. As I listen to the show on my boring drive home from work he demonstrates the ability to excite but with a certain logic that usually makes sense while interconnecting topical news.
Interestingly, he takes no calls; this is one thing that sets him apart from every other conservative show.
His rants are from the heart IMO. He gets very angry and can easily pull the listener along with the rise in emotion.
He has but one overarching theme and that is the destructive nature and history of Communism, which he believes is the motivating force of most radical movements of our time.
In general, I like to listen to Kelly but I don’t think I could take the full three hours like I could with Rush.
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