[\/\/ayne]

It was a fake persona that Weiner made up for a joke; a gravelly-voiced angry stereotype. It became surprisingly popular so it turned into a second career for him.

Knowing that from the beginning kind of ruined the show for me so I was a rare listener but hats off.

[relictele]

I too got a disingenuous vibe from the constant fatalism.

Ironically, if he was putting on an act some of what he proposed made sense so it resonated.

But it was always very difficult to believe that someone raised in NY and living in the Bay Area was nevertheless a hard-core conservative or libertarian.

The books were/are paint-by-numbers affairs as most of them are.

Production-wise, the show always seemed a mess. Oddly-timed ad breaks. Ad breaks that lasted ages. You could never tell what was live and what wasn’t. Allowing affiliate stations to choose their own airtime (ie many used tape delay) may have been a concession to carriage but such an arrangement waters down the product. Laura Ingraham limped along for years with a crazy quilt of affiliates and time windows on each.

[PghBaldy]

Are any of them real? I do not know. Aren’t they all just voice-actors in a way?