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About the time I began writing regular columns for the Post, I got a call from Bill Murphy, owner of KVRH, the local radio station. Would I be interested in taking over the daily one-hour afternoon talk show?
Totally inexperienced at such things, I told him I'd try it once and see how it went before giving him an answer.
It went well enough. I spent a couple hours preparing for the guest, although I forget his name. He was a Democrat running for Congress in the Fifth District of Colorado, and that is a certain route to oblivion. We chatted about his dismal prospects and took a few calls from people who wanted to talk interminably about totally unrelated topics. I figured I could handle the job. It wasn't too much different from answering the phone at a small-town newspaper.
However, my idea of what the job should be worth was substantially different from what Bill Murphy had budgeted for the position, and so that's as far as it went.
Now when I see Rush Limbaugh on the cover of Time, and pundit after pundit announces that talk radio has totally altered the political climate of this great republic, I'm tempted to add that episode to my long list of blown opportunities for celebrity, wealth and power.
Ranking it is tricky. Is Refusal to Become a Radio Talk Show Host worse than Dropping Out of College? More destructive than Somehow Alienating Most Colorado Newspaper Publishers? An improvement on Never Finding a Hot-shot Literary Agent? Can a career counselor help here?
Since then, I've maintained my connections with talk radio by appearing as a guest as often as possible, especially when I've got something to promote. It still worries me that I'll inadvertently let loose with a string of profanity, but these forays into the broadcast world have provided some insight:
1) By its very nature, afternoon Talk Radio is not the Voice of the People. It's the voice of Angry White Guys. A Regular White Guy turns into an Angry White Guy when he's out of work.
If these callers had jobs, they'd be framing houses, fixing computers or driving trucks during that time of day. They wouldn't be at home listening to the radio.
You used to be able to spot unemployed guys because they were Chicago Cubs fans. They were the guys who weren't working in the afternoon, so they could always catch the cable broadcast of the Cubs' home games. Now you can spot them because they they're Dittoheads.
2) Talk Radio represents further evidence that we're becoming a non-literate society. This is not to demean the hosts; the ones I've dealt with, no matter what their politics, have all impressed me with their reading and preparation.
But America doesn't happen in printed words any more.
The action is on television, in movies and recently, from
multi-media
to provide noise and pictures for those
who lack imagination. Anything that requires mental effort,
such as comprehending reasoned prose, is dead. Anything
that can be handled by a six-year-old, like blabbing on the
phone, will continue to rise. Try to imagine the Federalist
Papers happening today.
3) Talk Radio favors attack rather than defense. It's easier to come up with a quick quip about why some policy or proposal is conceived in infamy and dedicated to lunacy than it is to construct a reasoned, if somber, defense of the same policy or proposal.
Thus it isn't especially liberal or conservative. If
liberals are in power, the successful hosts will be
conservative: Joe Pine, back in the 60s (remember him
telling earnest social improvers to go gargle with razor
blades
), or Rush Limbaugh in recent years.
Now that professed conservatives hold power in Washington, the talk show hosts will find themselves either attacking the new establishment, in which case they might start sounding liberal, or defending it, in which case they'll cease to be interesting.
For example, the Newt notion of curing poverty by issuing lap-top computers cries for attack. Will Rush rush in? If he does, he's tarnishing an idol. If he doesn't, he'll get boring and his moment of fame will be over. Who remembers Father Charles Coughlin today, even though he was a major radio-borne force in the 1930s?
But I might be all wrong about Talk Radio, and here's an experiment.
We've got an adjustable-rate house mortgage, and thanks to the Federal Reserve Board's raising rates six times last year, our house payment just went up by about $40 a month.
That's $500 a year that I might have spent on things I wanted or needed. But the bankers on the board believe that it's dangerous for money to be in the wrong hands (ours); better that it go into their responsible pockets.
This has to be happening to millions of other people, too. So we should soon see if Talk Radio is really a populist force or merely another tool to keep us in line.
If it's populist, you'll hear Alan Greenspan's personal fax number and some sustained public outrage over decisions that benefit the elite at the expense of the majority.
If it's really just another establishment mechanism, then we'll hear more Hillary jokes while the bond dealers of Wall Street will rest comfortably, secure in the knowledge that America works for them, if not us.
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