Art Bell retires from Coast-to-Coast AM again saying he wants to be able to spend more time with his new wife and daughter. Well, I guess doing a 4 hour show two days out of the week would take a lot of time away from family. I can’t help but wonder if it has anything to do with the merger between Clear Channel and Mergerco.

I hope you will forgive my cynicism but I can’t help but feel there are issues, other than those stated publicly, involved in both this retirement and previous retirements. That said I’d like to state a few of my beliefs and suspicions. These are nothing more than my beliefs and opinions. I’ll make that clear from the onset in hopes it will dissuade Art Bell and Clear Channel from suing me.

First, a lot of people were critical of Art Bell remarrying only three months and a few days after Ramona’s death. They have suggested that Art was “vulnerable”, or that Airyn is a “mail order bride”. I have even read one blog in which the poster suggested that he “disposed of Ramona and bought a new wife”.

Art Bell lives in Pahrump, Nevada. Prostitution is legal in Nevada counties with low populations and I believe that includes Nye county. Art Bell has large amounts of money. If all he wanted was a hot Asian girl to bang he wouldn’t have much difficulty obtaining same without the commitment that goes with marriage or the publicity.

Although it might seem disrespectful to many that he remarried so soon, it is a statistical fact that when men in a good marriage lose their spouse to death, they remarry substantially sooner on average than men who were in bad marriages.

Having listened to Art Bell over the years, having read his autobiography, and having seen many photos of him with Ramona, I do believe his love for her was very real and that their marriage was very good.

If he were going to mail order a bride, the Philippines wouldn’t be the best option because divorce isn’t even a legal option there. I don’t know what the effect of a legal annulment in the United States would be in light of the fact that the marriage took place in the Philippines. Suffice it to say that he could have gone with some lower risk options.

He generally speaks glowingly of various network officers but I wonder if things are as rosy there as the picture he paints. If you look at the rest of Clear Channels hosts, Art Bell seems very out of place.

Prior to the Clear Channel takeover, Art Bell didn’t use call screeners and did generally have interesting guests. Now calls are screened and the guests all seem to be selling something, usually pushing a new book. The commercial load seems up considerably. These don’t impress me as things that Art Bell would not accept without some resistance but perhaps I am wrong.

During the last retirement, which was somewhat lengthy, one of the substitute hosts that got a long run was Mike Siegel, who I personally couldn’t stand for a variety of reasons. Those of you who had heard Mike Siegel on KVI would know that prior to taking the position on Coast-to-Coast AM, he was a right wing political talk show host.

Ian Punnett, who will replace Art Bell on the weekends, seems to be largely apolitical, reasonably knowledgeable, and reasonably capable of handling callers in a civil and non-abrasive manner. However, for reasons I can’t nail down, he never has impressed me as being as interesting as Art Bell.

Many years ago I heard rumors that Art Bell was connected with the DIA. Whether there was any truth to these rumors or not, I don’t know. I have for many years had the sense that someone else was calling the shots.

I have found his position on various wars disturbing, justification for our continued presence in Iraq, or the continual push for war with Iran. To be specific about what I mean about Iran, he keeps pushing the line that the president of Iran wanted to “wipe Israel off the map”, but neglected to mention that that quote was actually part of a speech in which he is quoting Khomeini and setting himself apart from Khomeini’s policies, which means, taken in context he is saying exactly the opposite of what is being implied by the out of context quotes.

I have written to him on this topic and neither received any reply nor have I heard any on-air correction or attempt to place the quote in the proper context.

I find his penchant for revenge troubling. It’s hard for me to believe that after all of the years of marriage to Ramona and his long time friendship with Evelyn Paglini, he would not understand karma and the connectedness of all things and why revenge is not such a good thing for the person seeking it.

Art Bell received some items that were allegedly recovered from the Roswell UFO crash. I am of the belief that the crash really occurred and that these parts wouldn’t have been allowed to remain in civilian possession if they were genuine, and because of certain characteristics of the parts, I do believe they were genuine. All of this leads me to believe that Art Bell probably has some military intelligence ties.

So now that he’s off the air again, I wonder what is up? What’s getting ready to go down? The world has been strange lately.

There are some of my random thoughts. I don’t know if I am pleased or disappointed that he retired again, but I am not surprised.