Listening to Talk Radio

When I was a kid, my parents listened to talk radio sometimes, especially when we went on long drives. I remember one hot summer night, my father was listening to the Joe Pyne show and got so irritated by something outrageous that Pyne said that he called in to tell him so. The rest of us went into my brother's room to listen to the radio in there, while my father waited on hold for his turn to speak. I don't recall what the topic was, but I do remember that my father acquitted himself well and didn't let Pyne get the better of him.

Normally, I don't listen to talk radio, as almost all these shows feature extreme right wing conservatives/libertarians. Though I have many libertarian views, especially in matters of personal privacy/freedom and social issues, I'm not all that libertarian when it comes to economic issues. I approach libertarianism from the left, not from the right, as most such talk radio hosts do. I'd probably listen more often if I could find liberal/moderate/left libertarian talk show hosts to listen to, but I've yet to find them.

However, the other night, I found myself listening to a host I'd never heard of before, Jay Severin, who is one of the ubiquitous right wing commentators. After listening for a few minutes, I discerned he was of the extreme libertarian variety, rather than a garden variety neocon.

Severin was speaking disdainfully of maternity leave, taking the view that having a baby is a private decision that isn't an employer's problem, and that employers should be free to fire such women as it isn't an employer's concern if a woman wants to have a child. He prefaced it by saying that widespread maternity leave policies would lead down a slippery slope to companies having to offer paternity leave, which he oddly thought a totally ludicrous concept. He also said that those mothers who did have the opportunity to stay home with their kids, but didn't were "mentally sick". Never mind that men have children too, and might conceivably want the option to take time to be with them, but I digress.

Though I understand his main point being that private business should be free to operate as they wish, there are several things wrong with this view

He stated that employees who aren't always available to an employer have placed themselves in the position to be rightfully terminated. Severin compared maternity leaves to someone who might decide they wanted six months off to "smoke opium".

For one thing, having children is a normal, expected event in the lives of most people of childbearing age. It is ridiculous to compare this to taking sabbaticals for frivolous, obscure reasons.

Secondly, his view betrays skewed priorities. Most people, even those in rewarding careers, don't live to work, but work to live. Employers don't own us 24/7, they merely buy chunks of our time to use to their purposes. No one should be expected to have to give up having a normal life, which, for most people, involves having children, as a condition to keeping a job. Work is just a part of life; it shouldn't be our entire lives.

Third, very few people are so indispensable to the point where they can't take six weeks off from their jobs for parental leave. Because a parental leave is something an employer typically knows of months before it happens, they have time to temporarily assign the work to others or bring in temporary workers to take up the slack.

Despite abhorring nearly everything the man said on his show, I'll probably keep tuning in for the simple reason that listening to views I heartily disagree with will act as a catalyst for me to write and give me plenty of material for blog entries.

Thoughts?
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Note: I found it amusing that when I googled Jay Severin, I found that the Wikipedia article about him referred to him as a libertine. Obviously, we differ greatly in political opinions!