Goodbye Talk Radio. I will hardly miss ye.

I have Jason Lewis of KTLK-FM to thank for the fact I am getting a divorce. No, not that kind of divorce. Rather, I have decided to rid myself of the foul stench that has become talk radio.

I feel better already.

Lewis is a talk show host in this area. Like most talkies, he is repulsed by John McCain (because he is not conservative enough) but will end up voting for him because he thinks:

A) Hillary Clinton is evil and another word that rhymes with witch.
B) Barack Obama is a good orator who has no idea what the hell he is talking about.

Those thoughts don't bother me because, since most talk show hosts are ultra- conservative, this is a rather common view.

Generally, I will listen to a bit of Lewis' show as I drive home for its humor content and the fact one needs to keep up with all points of view. But something he said the other day struck a chord with me. After I thought about it some more, I realized this was a common thread with the talkies.

Lewis was in a bad mood as it is because McCain appears to be a shoo-in for the Republican nomination. Then he read that President Bush had the temerity to offer a helping hand to the folks in Tennessee who lost their homes in the tornado last week. This set him off on a tangent. In a nutshell, he proclaimed it was the idiots' fault for living where a tornado might strike. If they had been thinking, they would have either moved to a tornado-free zone or spent as much money as needed to get insurance so the government wouldn't have to spend a dime on them.

And why is the government getting in the business of helping people anyway? Government is supposed to stay out of people's lives.

Lewis had offered a similar view last August when the I-35 W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, costing 13 lives and injuring several others. Tough break, he said. But why should the state offer help? Tough breaks happen. Deal with it.

It suddenly hit me the problem with conservative talk radio is its proponents think the world is black and white when it is really different shades of gray. In the talkie world, you are agree with our point of view or against your country. If you do not agree 100 per cent with the major talk guys like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc., you are a dullard who is uninformed. Oh, you're anti-American, too.

The talkies have an incredible level of hate and disdain for those who aren't in step with them I can no longer tolerate. Although it may have been at one time, it is no longer even faintly humorous.

When the thrill and laughter is gone, it is time to move on.

I realize that guys like Lewis and his ilk will say good riddance to me. I was never one of them. They didn't need me anyway.

The truth is, I will miss them a bit. I love to be challenged and I really do want to understand all viewpoints. But the time comes in your life when you can no longer accept being talked down to or mocked because you choose to disagree with another person's viewpoint.

As a rule, divorce is emotionally painful -- at least for one party. In this case, however, it really is for the best. The talkies can have their loyal listeners who hang on every word and truly believe all lefties are scumbuckets. And I can now drive home listening to something that might make me feel better about life -- a favorite song perhaps.

Now that I think about it, that sounds like a marriage made in heaven.