Stephanie Miller

I heart Stephanie Miller. Ok, I said it. I hope it doesn't make my honey jealous.

Before I started listening to Steph (or Mamma as she calls herself), my mornings were the typical overeducated underemployed routine of listening to Morning Edition on NPR. I was even in the (gasp) camp of folks who liked the switch from Bob Edwards (snore, wait was I listening to the radio or was I asleep? snore) to Renee Montaigne and Steve Inskeep. I especially liked finding out the Renee was a fan of Dan Neil, my favorite writer at the L.A. Times. And that he was a fan of hers. Read Neil's car reviews. Really. They won a Pulitzer. They deserved it. And it made the NY Times get its collective panty in a wad, which was a nice side benefit.

Anyway, I listened dutifully to NPR in the mornings. Even though it sometimes made me remember going to see Ira Glass talk about This American Life and how he said that sometimes he just wasn't a big enough person to learn more about the dire situation in Eastern Europe. You can listen to NPR and feel informed and feel searingly depressed. And that's just Eastern Europe. We're not talking about Iraq or Darfour or ...

But then I discovered that Air America had an affiliate in L.A. I listened some, but it got me worked up and I found myself railing against Harriet Miers. At dinner. In polite company.

Still, Air America got a preset from me and one day while feeling slammed by NPR, I switched over and there was Steph. Being funny. And progressive. And playing clips from Sunset Boulevard: "Don't speak, don't speak..." And from Katherine Harris saying in her scary-ass breathy way that she would spend "ten million dollars" on her senate campaign. And remember that according to Steph, George W. Bush is the "ding" worst "ding" president "ding" ever! See. NPR isn't going to say that.

I'm sure lots of people know about her already. Fine, whatever.

I heart her.