‘Direto ao Ponto’ turns one month old on five FM stations in Paraná

Today, the program Direto ao Ponto (Straight to the Point) turns one month old. Monday to Friday, from 6 to 7 p.m., Ogier Buchi and I talk politics “on the airwaves” (Curitiba FM 92.9; Londrina FM 95.7). The program is simple and honest. We have been creating an environment that is pleasant to listen to.

Ogier and I have many more points of convergence than divergence: we consider that, above all, those who follow the program deserve our utmost attention with information and opinions. We rarely arrive at a “final word” on a subject, which we leave to the listener.

There is little or no use in turning off the lights on public figures. The more light the better. Of course, occasionally *that* question may be forgotten, but our exercise, today, is to pay attention to longer remarks, to give attention to subtleties.

At the end of the day, what we have is a program that seems to have returned to the gym after a stretch of vacations and desserts. We are getting used to the machines, and we still lift less weight than we will manage in a month.

Our audience, predominantly conservative (that is how we understand it so far), reacts well to contrary stimuli, with one or two exceptions. Perhaps it is our way of including the other (to be Habermasian). Fighting, no. If you want to see a brawl, there are good sites for that content.

In the last edition, we interviewed Curitiba city councilman Pastor Marciano Alves. He is famous on the Council’s website for projects that are provocative, to say the least: a ban on neutral gender, a law against Christophobia, etc. The guest said he was afraid of the press. What have we come to!

First, Pastor Marciano brought chimarrão (the traditional southern Brazilian mate; and a very good one), and then the live conversation revealed that this man can think in his own way, that he even won a mandate by thinking exactly as he does, without persecuting anyone, from the communicational point of view.

I consider this result the fruit of an obstinacy of Ogier’s and mine, namely that it is necessary to open the microphone again, undo fantasies and imaginings, to return to dealing with what is effectively public. From there to the “common good” is a long way.