Talk

by Michael A Smerconish

  The culmination of Phil’s script was supposed to have been my asking: “Will you today, on this radio program, at least assure the American people that you are a person of a mainstream faith?” Maybe without Susan sitting there I’d have said it. But with those eyes only three feet from mine, I just couldn’t.

  When the program finally ended an hour later, I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of there so I sprinted for the door but was intercepted by Alex. She handed me the day’s stack from the WRGT mail bin. There was the usual assortment of letters addressed in crayon, and a return address or two with long numbers in it meaning that it had come from the slammer. And, within the stack, two phone messages—one from Phil, which was unusual because he never called the station switchboard, although that was probably because he knew I wasn’t anxious to pick up my iPhone—and another that stopped me in my tracks:

  TO: Stan Powers

  FROM: Wilma Blake

  SUBJECT: Shooter’s

  And then a phone number with an “850” area code.

  Poor old Willy Blake had passed away five years prior. There was only one person who would call using that as an alias. It had taken many years, but Susan Miller finally knew that I’d taken the advice she’d given me long ago. It was a phone message I had long wanted to receive, but suddenly one I was not anxious to return.

  CHAPTER 6

  There was only one person who was pleased with my Tobias interview: Debbie.

  “I was really proud of you today, Stan,” she said that night over dinner at Villa Gallace, a terrific Italian spot in Indian Rocks Beach about a 20-minute drive from my condo. I like to go there for a good, quiet meal. When I’d made the reservation a night or two earlier, I figured I’d be celebrating my being trumpeted on all the right-wing blogs for having stuck a knife in the political heart of the leading Democratic presidential candidate. So sure was I that this would be a big night for my ego that I’d deliberately planned to skip the anonymity of a Tuesday night booze-fest with Clay and Carl at Delrios in favor of a night on the town at a see-and-be-seen place with the lovely Ms. Cross. Now, as it turned out, I was dining with the only person I knew who was pleased with my weak-kneed performance.

  “You let the man talk, Stan. You showed him some respect. And your listeners got to hear some dialogue for a change. I was really proud as I listened.”

  She’d never said that before. She meant her words as a compliment, but each assertion was its own indictment for a guy in my profession. In talk radio, letting the other side speak, showing respect and facilitating civil conversation = death. That’ll get you overnights in Poughkeepsie.

  “Debbie, nobody wants to hear that shit. Maybe on headphones tuned to NPR while doing Zumba, but not where I work.”

  “You’re wrong. Maybe not the people who listen to your brand of talk, but people I know and those I work with are sick of the circus our political system has become. They want less of a shout fest. You’re good at what you do. You have a skill set that transcends talk radio. Otherwise you would never have been a success as a DJ before you turned to talk. You’re better than this. And you underestimate the power you have to make real change.”

  Normally I cut short her lectures or at least put up a fight. But I didn’t tonight. I was too frustrated to push back while I drowned myself in a vat of Kettle One, and besides, she was making a certain amount of sense. Debbie was convinced that politicians were the tail of a dog that was talk radio and cable TV news. She thought that people like me had debased the level of dialogue in the country because those who got elected to office took their marching orders from pundits and personalities instead of the broad electorate, and that the whole process therefore became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  “The country’s not run by lawyers, like me, Stan. It’s run by people with microphones, like you.”

  I’d heard this pitch from her countless times before. And while I gorged on a calamari appetizer I settled in to hear it again.

  “You guys spout opinion for entertainment value in order to get ratings. You succeed not by moving the masses, but by winning the support of a relatively small, but exceedingly loyal group of listeners or watchers who are ideologues in their political thinking. They are the ones who turn out religiously in primary elections where nobody else is paying close attention. They vote for fringe candidates who are often ultimately elected because we have so many hyper-partisan districts across the country where one party dominates. So when those candidates take office, they are beholden to the same talking heads who spread the talking points.”

  Pretty insightful for a military brat with no political experience of her own.

  Debbie paused long enough to sip her chardonnay.

  “You’re supposed to end with ‘I rest my case,’ ” I offered.

  “No trier of fact could find otherwise.”

  As I looked at her across the table, I reflected that Debbie was the total package. She was smart. She was a looker. And she was fun to be with. I think the only reason that I hadn’t worked harder at this relationship was that being with her forced me to take a hard look at my own choices and career path, which lately was not a pleasant task. Many nights I had wondered what she was doing with me. On an impulse I decided to ask.

  “I know the real Stan, or at least I think I do. And I really like him. I believe he is a critical thinker who if he were himself and not behind a microphone, would never for a minute be a part of that conversation. The guy I know sees through the bullshit and could count on one hand the number of politicians that he thinks are worthy. Beyond the professional, I think he’s good looking. I think he’s engaging. I think he’s funny as hell. And I am convinced that others would like him too if he ever gave them a real glimpse.”

  This third-person schtick was wearing thin with me even if I liked what she had to say. Kinda like when Bob Dole used to talk about “Bob Dole.” I figured we were finally past the Tobias interview and what it said about me, when she blind-sided me.

  “So what’s she like?”

  “Who?” I replied lamely, knowing full well that she wanted the skinny on Susan Miller.

  “His wife. Don’t tell me you weren’t sweet on having her in your studio, Stan, I know you too well.”

  “I didn’t really have a chance to check her out. They were late and nothing was said between us that didn’t air,” which was about the only accurate thing I could have said without opening a can of worms.

  My iPhone hummed throughout dinner as it had all afternoon but I didn’t even look down. I knew it was Phil and there was no way I was prepared for his review. In fact, I waited until Thursday before I returned his emails, texts and old-fashioned phone calls. I knew he would be pissed about how I went easy on Tobias, and I probably would have waited even longer except that Jules called me and said that Steve Bernson had telephoned him because word had reached the suits at MML&J that I wasn’t responding to “their consultant.” Give me a fucking break. I had reliably utilized Phil’s advice ever since I arrived in Tampa, and they’d made a boatload of money from Morning Power.

  When we finally spoke, Phil was so worked up that he sounded like he was about to pass out and I could catch only every other word. It was an alliteration of P’s. Those that I could discern sounded like:

  “…pussy…Powers…back in Pittsburgh….”

  I remained silent and after spewing for several minutes, he calmed down and demanded an explanation as to why I’d gone soft.

  “Well, see Phil, I used to bang his wife and I’ve carried a torch for her ever since, and the minute she walked into the studio I lost my fucking mind.”

  Of course I didn’t say that.

  Instead I fed him some line about the dual distraction of Tobias’ tardiness and the presence of the local network affiliate cameras taking me off my game. I don’t think he bought it, but he let me off the hook and went from being adversarial to advisory.

  “Lightning strikes only so many times, Powers,” he said. “You are
finally on the radar screen of the big three syndicators, but the way you treated Tobias doesn’t fit any of their business models. Milquetoast doesn’t cut it. Nuanced is for nobodies. They need to know you’re going to be conservative, consistent, and compelling.”

  I thought of Debbie and suddenly wished that she was on the line with Phil and me. She’d be more of a match for him than I ever was. But the two had never met (even I had never met Phil!) nor spoken, and Debbie only knew the dribs and drabs I had told her about him.

  I assured him that the interview was an aberration, and knowing that he’d be monitoring me the following day, I went on the attack against Bob Tobias on Friday morning.

  “Carl in Dunedin, welcome to Morning Power. Go ahead.”

  “Yeah, Stan, Tobias is a secularist without regard for the basis on which this country was founded.”

  The caller spit out the word s-e-c-u-l-a-r-i-s-t as if it were a loathsome disease. So I forced myself to buy in.

  “Well, I agree with you. This country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and it’s right there in the Declaration of Independence, ‘All men…are endowed by their CREATOR with certain inalienable Rights, and among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’ Now, when he was in this studio, he would not embrace that view of our history. And it makes you wonder what hymnal he’s following.”

  “Stan, do you think he’s an atheist?”

  “Well, why else would he refuse to answer my questions?”

  That had been Phil’s latest recommendation (“openly question on air whether he is an atheist”) and it worked. That afternoon, Drudge ran with a squib that said “Florida talker questions whether Tobias is an atheist” and linked to a piece of my audio commentary. Nobody at WRGT had supplied the mp3; only Alex gets access to our air checks, and there was no way she’d have distributed something like that without checking with me first, so I figured Phil had made it happen. I knew he had the ability to monitor all of his clients’ broadcasts and pull air checks, so the idea of him sending it to Drudge wasn’t farfetched.

  The national reaction was instantaneous. By that night, I was doing a TV satellite interview with a blond whose name I can’t recall and whose heavily lipsticked lips said “blow me.” There was a monitor in the Tampa studio where I did the interview that allowed me to look at her while we spoke. It showed her seated at a desk made out of glass or clear plastic, lest anyone should be denied a good leg shot. And here she was questioning me on matters of faith and family values. Go figure.

  It’s funny how TV bookers work. An appearance on one cable news show is always a guarantee that other invitations will follow. It’s like if Bloomingdales has it in the window, Saks has got to be selling it too. The most essential piece of furniture in the office of a TV booker—sorry, “segment producer”—is a power cord and bank of television screens on which he or she keeps tabs on the competition. So long as I did not completely shit the bed on one station, I was guaranteed a phone call from another. By the time the Friday night interview ended, I already had two texts inviting me to do others with cable competitors. The first was with Wolf Blitzer (a name that was a gift from the TV gods) and then with Chris Matthews. My pitch was the same all over.

  “Look, Chris, I’m not saying the guy worships Lucifer. I’m just saying we have a right to know.”

  The cable stations ate it up. After all, this is what they’re wired for, both the left and the right. No need to allow a little substance to get in the way of a good liberal-conservative argument. So long as the issue allows itself to be presented in black/white terms, cable television news and talk radio can sell it, however contrived. They might not reach a majority of people, but those they do reach will walk through fire for their right to engage in a pissing contest that they think is based on principle.

  The more cable TV news I did, the more I began to think that it was even worse than talk radio in terms of its staged nature. Radio usually delivers one guy with an extreme point of view taking calls from likeminded listeners. On TV, you often get some horseshit debate that may as well have been staged by Central Casting with two actors reciting talking points. It reminded me of the Saturday morning wrestling I used to watch as a kid, when Vince McMahon really was a pencil-necked geek. There was a bad guy (usually with a spooky manager like the Grand Wizard of Wrestling or Captain Lou Albano) and a good guy. One was a black hat, the other a white hat, and you knew which was which. (If there was ever any doubt, the bad guy was the one who carried a “foreign object.”) There was no in-between—and this is the way that talk radio and cable TV news are today.

  The professional advantage for me in appearing on cable TV was being able to reach a lot more people in a shorter period of time, and hopefully building my platform. The personal advantage was that cable TV will get you laid. No joke. For some women, doing a TV guy is the ultimate aphrodisiac, even if he is just a lowly pundit. While I had been doing these sorts of TV hits at an increasing pace for a couple of years and had grown pretty comfortable, I still needed even more exposure according to Jules. He thought this was an important step in “building my brand” and getting my radio program picked up in markets across the country.

  “Syndication requires three things,” he had told me. “First, you need big numbers in your home market. You have that. Second, these stations have to believe they can sell your show to advertisers, and the way to prove that is to read any script they put in front of you whether the product is gold or penile enhancement.”

  I wished he were joking, but I’d already done both of those things. In fact, he’d just referenced two of my biggest advertisers.

  “But you also need edge, something that distinguishes you from every Rush wannabe, and that is where TV gives you a chance to shine. Use cable to build your identity, Stan.”

  I remember the first time I got a call from a cable TV booker inviting me to provide a political opinion on then newly elected governor Chris Christie. I was a bit clueless about how the medium worked and how best to use it to my advantage. But I learned two lessons that night. First, I initially thought I would have to go to New York to appear. Little did I know that there was a satellite TV facility in a high-rise office building just two blocks from the WRGT studio. Modern Video, the studio where I have appeared countless times since, has a hokey, fake backdrop of a beach scene that may or may not have been taken in the Tampa area. What I remember from that first night was being surprised that the show was live at 9 p.m. but on the backdrop behind me, the sun was shining. “Who are we shitting with that?” I wondered.

  My second lesson was substantive. Or maybe I should say, lack of substance. A major blizzard had hit the Northeastern states. It was so bad that the NFL took the unprecedented step of postponing a playoff game scheduled between the Eagles and Vikings for two days, which then became good talk fodder when Pennsylvania’s Governor Ed Rendell complained that we’d become a nation of “wussies.” (He later got a book deal and a TV contract out of that one comment.) Although the storm was predicted, some cities and states were caught flat-footed. In a snowed-under New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg lost his cool with a challenging media. And in neighboring New Jersey, both Governor Chris Christie and his lieutenant governor (whose name I can’t remember) were both out of state at the same time. Christie was in Disney World with his family, and his proximity to my market might be why I got the call. Well, as the plows were still moving, I made my first cable appearance that night in a segment discussing the reaction of public officials to the snow.

  “What about Chris Christie being in sunny Florida while his constituents need the roads cleared and the power back on?” I was asked.

  “Well, there is a practical consideration and a political consideration,” I said. “The practical consideration is that snow removal is primarily a responsibility of local governments. That’s why in New York, the focus is on Mayor Bloomberg, not Governor Patterson.”

  I was staring into a satellite camera more tha
n 1,000 miles away from the cold when I finished my thought.

  “But the political consideration is that the optics are bad for Governor Christie who is one of the rising stars of the Republican Party, and you can rest assured that in some future campaign a photograph will surface of him riding Dumbo the Elephant and be used against him in a commercial.”

  Phil watched the segment. He was pissed.

  “Well you fucked up your debut, Powers.”

  “How so?”

  “Too much hair splitting. Too much of you trying to be the smartest guy in the room. And not enough edge. Just way too much inconsistency.” And he was right, at least in the world of cable TV. It was a long time before I was invited back.

  “You should have just said that Chris Christie is working his balls off trying to bail out New Jersey after the disaster that was that liberal cocksucker Jon Corzine, and people need to get off his back while he recharges his batteries with his kids. Stress that he is with his f-a-m-i-l-y,” Phil wisely emphasized.

  Now, years later, I was getting much more face time just as Governor Tobias was touring the country in support of his now-official presidential run official. A few days after his appearance on my program, I watched him speak to a rally at a shuttered manufacturing plant in Reno (“this is what Republican tax cuts do for the working class”) with Susan and their daughters at his side. The Tommy Bahama in his Florida closet had been replaced with Brooks Brothers. But my eyes were fixed on Susan, looking positively stunning in a pair of Christian Louboutin black boots, tight-ass jeans and a turtleneck that ran up to those classic Princess Grace facial features. Fuck Tobias. Maybe my callers were correct. They hadn’t let up from the moment he walked out of the studio.

  “Hello, Stan? You were too nice to that European socialist Tobias. And his wife is to the left of Nancy Pelosi. Why doesn’t she stay home and raise those kids?” said one who was typical.