TG had to drop her bike at the shop this morning, so I took the car to pick her up and bring her home. In the car, we tend to listen to CD’s on the changer, but I pulled them to restock with fresh music, so we wound up listening to the radio on the way back.

As I’ve noted in the past, I tend to see the radio as a cultural periscope.

What it showed this morning wasn’t good for Dean.

One of our buttons is KROQ, the local corporate alt-rock station. The morning show is personality-driven, with Kevin and Bean as the two core DJ’s, and their sidekicks Ralph and Lisa.

And they talked about Dean.

Dean’s speech last night got some comments around the blogs, but we hadn’t seen or heard it. Until they played it on KROQ, with the DJ’s laughing and exclaiming in the background. At the end of his speech, Dean cut loose with what was supposed to be a rousing yell, I guess, but his hoarseness and the fervor with which he spoke strangled it into a fairly funny-sounding squawk.

And the DJ’s played the squawk several times as punctuation, laughing each time.

Campaigns can survive a lot of setbacks, but when the candidates are being mocked, it’s a Bad Thing.