Kennedy-Spaien, Dot Com

Sometimes, I must confess I feel out of step with the listenership at some of the projects that I produce. A case in point is the Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show.

The host of that show, Jimmy Moore, is a great guy who I get along well with. He started his blog around the time I started my first blog, and because our interests overlap, we’ve been good friends ever since.

Now Jimmy comes from a fairly conservative perspective and I, well I guess you could call me a “Massachusetts Liberal” whatever that means. I have a long history of friendships and working relationships with people whose views differ from mine, and I have long since learned not to let let differences of opinion get in the way of a great working relationship.

Since Jimmy has been working with me on the podcast, several times I have had to bite my lip when he says things with which I don’t necessarily agree. And that’s OK, because it’s Jimmy’s show, and no matter where he goes, you can bet it will be entertaining.

Last week Jimmy did an episode that has been very controversial, to say the least. The topic was Veganism/PETA and Jimmy came down rather hard on them and invoked a lot of religious overtones. Getting into religion in what seems — on the surface — to be a religion-free context strikes me as an odd choice, but whatever… that’s his prerogative.

When I first heard the raw audio, I was quite certain there would be an outcry, and I was not wrong. The people Jimmy was criticizing (some have said “demonizing”) were not pleased to say the least, and at last I was compelled to issue an editorial refusing to fire Jimmy.

Now via comments and email, I have received wave upon wave of Kudos from Jimmy’s listers, but this has unsettled me even more. While many were kind and merely thanked me for sticking by their favorite podcaster, some were more dark and even trollish. A recent comment from a listener: “Vgeanism [sic] is a mental disorder, just like liberalism.”

I am flabbergasted at how much people have emotionally invested in their dietary choices. When they start getting politics and religion tied into these issues, it can get downright scary. The commonality between diet, politics and religion is that they all seem to relate on some level to a person’s sense of self-identity and therefore self-esteem.

One person said that Jimmy’s comment about eating animals being OK because they “would never have an everlasting life in Christ” could be interpreted as suggesting that eating Jews is OK, too. I hope that was tongue in cheek!

The gist of this is - am I too out of touch with Jimmy’s listeners to be an effective producer? On the one hand, I feel that I’m a fine editor and my skills are up to snuff, but on the other hand, is that enough? Can I really be effective in serving these people’s needs if my head is in such a different place from theirs?

Ultimately, though, I want to believe that a show on dietary choices can be produced appropriately even by a simple Unitarian-raised, secular humanist, left-of-center geek like me.

Can’t we all just get along, people?