Former baller Charles Barkley has never been one to mince words and he’s not about to start now at 46.

In an interview with The Chicago Sun Times, Barkley discusses (among other things) the prospect of him hosting his own talk show after wrapping up an appearance on a year-in-review special talk show, With All Due Respect (taped Monday in New York before a live studio audience), where joined he fellow co-hosts Dennis Eckersley, Kyle Petty and Robin Meade and discussed everything from politics to (you guessed it) Tiger Woods.

Barkley, a long-time friend of Woods who has confessed to the media that he has tried repeatedly but unsuccessfully to contact the golfer since his infidelity scandal broke, talks about Tiger and athletes in similar situations and the unfairly obsessive media being a dire representation of society at large.

But it’s when Barkley is asked about the prospects of hosting his own talk show that he really unleashes his frustrations:

“When it’s fun, when they would put me on and allow me to talk about substantial things like health-care reform and abuses in college athletics and lingering areas of discrimination… You know, [CNN] sent me to the [2008 Democratic] convention, and I wish they would have done stuff like that sooner. I’m in year 10 [at Turner] now, and I’d love to do it. I’d be good because I’m honest and I have no hidden agenda.”

Not surprisingly, his most acidic criticisms of the talk show world were levied at the most controversial and highest paid talk show hosts:

”We have so many idiots on radio and TV today like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs, all with hidden agendas.  I think America more than ever wants some honest, open truths and dialogues — especially because most of them believe almost everything on TV — and I wish they’d give me a platform where I could do what I wanted to do.”

It seems Mr. Barkley is keeping the faith that he will get the opportunity to host his own show.  The question is, will the powers that be grant him his wish?