“Well, some would say all you need to know about his wife is that she kept her name,” I responded lamely. “Thanks for the call.”
The Florida primary finally arrived, and to no one’s surprise Tobias hammered Vic Baron and his other five opponents. The surprise was what happened on the Republican side. To my secret delight, Margaret Haskel barely edged out Colorado Governor Wynne James. It seemed that the conservative vote was getting divided between Haskel, Redfield, Lewis and Figuera, and the fringe threesome of Redfield, Lewis and Figuera was taking enough of the vote from Haskel to give an opening to the one candidate in that field with whom I was personally comfortable—but of course who my core audience distrusted.
With Florida behind him, Tobias’ attention now shifted to Super Tuesday states. As he made his initial whirlwind tour, I saw Susan constantly at his side. But then one day she was missing, or at least missing from the camera frame. And that’s about when I got another message from Wilma Blake, whose first call I had never returned.
• • •
Most days after my program ended, Alex and I would recap what had gone well and what had tanked, plan the next day, and sift through listener email and (old school) letters. These days, Alex would also review with me requests she’d received for print interviews from newspapers across the country (it seemed that everybody wanted the inside election scoop on Florida) and finally, we’d review the miscellaneous telephone messages left at WRGT’s main number. It sounds like a lot, but we’d run through this list in five minutes, sometimes with Rod sitting in our suite pretending to be going through his own email. Like who the fuck was emailing him? NAMBLA?
“Some lady named Wilma Blake called again,” Alex told me. “She’s left two or three messages, Stan, and says you and she are old friends and she is anxious to speak to you about a confidential matter.”
Confidential matter. That’s another thing. Rare was the phone message or email from a random listener that did not concern a self-proclaimed confidential matter.
“Sure, give me that number,” I said, trying not to attract Rod’s attention.
I had avoided her initial message, and by now I was convinced that Susan would have seen me talking about her husband on TV. I know how presidential campaigns work—they monitor all the media, especially during an announcement week, to see how it plays and how their candidate is being treated in the different outlets. I envisioned Susan sitting in a Radisson in Virginia Beach watching tape of her husband’s announcement, immediately followed by talking heads, including me, raising issues like whether he is sufficiently Christian to be elected president. I’d waited years to reconnect with Susan Miller, but as I prepared to dial the telephone, I was no closer to any kind of a plan as to what I was seeking from the interaction and how I intended to get there.
Convincing myself that I would simply be a good listener, I got in my convertible but kept the roof up like it was one of my Phil sessions where I actually wanted to hear his advice. And then, just as soon as I’d cleared the underground lot and had given my customary nod to the lone fisherman, I dialed.
“Look at you now,” was how she answered the phone.
“No ‘hello, it’s been a long time’?”
“It’s not a social call, Stan. I think you know that.”
“You always were about getting down to business, Susan. What can I do you for?”
“Listen, I’m calling you as an old friend. I think you misunderstand some things about Bob. I’d like the chance to set the record straight.”
“Sure. Come on the program tomorrow. You can pick the time, although I’d recommend the 7:30 segment.”
“I’m not interested in being on your program Stan, and Bob won’t be coming on again either. But I am interested in meeting with you privately to clarify some history.”
“A history lesson would be nice,” I awkwardly responded.
Susan said she was headed to a hospital fundraiser in Sarasota the next night and that she could meet me afterwards.
“It’ll have to be private, Stan. I don’t want this to sound harsh, but it wouldn’t help Bob if we were seen together, and I am counting on you to keep this confidential.”
I wanted to tell her there was a keg freezer where I could usually count on a little privacy but instead I showed some uncharacteristic restraint.
“No problem, consider it off the record,” I said.
And then reflexively, I said:
“I have the right spot. It’s seedy but safe.”
“Sounds like old times,” she said with a laugh that bore distant recognition.
“It’s called Delrios,” I said, and started to give directions.
But Susan interrupted me. “I know where it is. I’ll be there around 8ish. Sit in the back. Bye, Stan.”
The line went dead.
I drove along with the phone to my ear for a few more seconds before putting it down in a cup holder. How did Susan Miller know Delrios? The place was a mystery to many of the year-round residents of Clearwater. What I did know was that Susan Miller, Florida’s first lady, was now acquainted with a numbnuts named Stan Powers, a conservative talk radio host, presidential kingmaker, and supposed right-wing ideologue. For all she knew, the skinny barkeep she’d thrown some snatch at in a cold storage locker many years prior had had a transformative epiphany that lead him on a holier-than-thou path which now included disparaging her husband. She’d have no way of knowing it was all about entertainment in the name of growing my career and lining my pocket—or did she? If she had any doubt, I could let Debbie enlighten her.
I also wondered what history she was coming to explain? Ours? Or that which concerned her husband’s faith? Personally I didn’t give a shit as to which alter he knelt at, and ditto for her. Religion was not something that had ever come up back at Shooter’s. Nor did we discuss anything else all that personal. She’d always kept things close to the vest. And what I knew of her personal life thereafter was what anyone could learn by Googling her and Tobias. Susan Miller had returned to FSU for her junior year and seemingly never looked back. According to Tobias’ official bio, the two of them met during his senior year (her junior) when he was the household-name quarterback of the football team. After her graduation, she followed him to Tallahassee where he was serving in his first job—as an assemblyman. No ordinary political freshman, Bob Tobias already had more name recognition in the state of Florida that just about anyone shy of Dan Marino. Two terms in the state House and two terms in the state Senate later, and he was ready to be elected to the governor’s mansion.
The moment I hung up the phone something else occurred to me. I’d reflexively said Delrios without realizing that tomorrow was a Tuesday. I’d just agreed to a clandestine meeting in my usual haunt on my normal drinking night. The cone of silence at Delrios was about to be tested.
CHAPTER 7
WRGT never did bring anyone else to town for the early shift, other than me. To this day I don’t know if Steve Bernson really tried to negotiate a deal that fell through, or if he always planned on trying to make a go of it with me. Maybe he was following Phil Dean’s advice. All I know is that my 30 days became three months, which before I knew it, had become a few years and my position as a talk host was secure.
Phil was vital to my success. Whenever I start thinking that I could have become a talk host without him, all I need to do is think back to my first two weeks on air. At the moment when the station actually flipped formats, Phil was finishing work on another station makeover, so for my first two weeks in morning drive, I was flying blind. What I knew about the format was limited to what I’d heard and usually turned off when listening to pre-set stations in rental cars. Given that it was a talk format, I naturally assumed that the goal was to make the telephones ring. The more rings the more callers, the more callers the more listeners, or at least that’s what I thought.
Bernson was temporarily my day-to-day manager, and he’d instituted a system whereby the guy ending an air shift
would spend five minutes with the guy taking over. It seemed to make sense. The idea was to try to hold the audience of the guy who was leaving for the guy who was taking the chair. When I was getting started in the mornings, it meant that my crossover time was with the guy leaving after doing the overnights, a fellow named Frank Sellers, who worked the graveyard shift. I can still picture him wearing a Madras sport coat and argyle socks, dressed like he was headed to a sock hop or something instead of a talk studio when most people were sleeping. At age 67, Frank was a veteran talk show host, one of the last vestiges of the era where personality mattered, not ideology, as evidenced by the fact that he was an old liberal warhorse who idolized RFK. We both thought we were placeholders, and maybe that’s why we bonded. In his case that was true. His liberalism didn’t fit with the station’s new direction and he knew his days were numbered, but he wanted the paycheck and the station needed someone to hold down the fort. Frank was old school. He didn’t own a cell phone and couldn’t tell the Internet from intercourse. He read newspapers that were printed on paper and required turning the pages, and to him a newscast was one that began at 6:30 p.m. on one of the “big three” networks.
Well, in the wee hours of a morning during my first week on the job, we did our standard crossover at the shift change per Bernson’s instructions. On air, Frank would ask me what I intended to discuss that morning, and I’d mention a few headlines from the St. Petersburg Times or Tampa Tribune. Frank would play along and tell me that whatever I said sounded interesting when I am sure, in retrospect, it did not. Then the “on air” light would go dark, and he would amble out of the chair, gather up his newspaper clippings from the console and make room for me. One morning, while a commercial played and I was plugging in my headphones, he said something that I haven’t forgotten.
“Just remember, kid, these three things if the phones are dead. First, you can always ask whether social security will be there when you need it. Second, say ‘Don’t tell me where I can walk my dog.’ And if you really get stuck, ask, ‘How come two parents can raise ten children, but ten children cannot take care of two parents?’ ”
All spoken like an overnight veteran, but I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. I just smiled and got in position and started my program as the sun was coming up.
About an hour later, I looked at a computer screen that was intended to display all of the calls from people wanting to get on the air. Only the screen was blank. No one was calling. Whatever I was discussing was tanking, at least in terms of calls. In my mind I equated silent phones with no audience, and so I desperately took Frank’s advice and launched into a story about having taken my schnauzer for a walk on the beach the day before.
“There I was on a late afternoon walk, minding my own business when an old bat came along and told me that dogs weren’t permitted on public sands. She was in one of those 1950s bathing suits that were a combination of dress and one-piece, standing under an umbrella that was the size of a parachute.”
Then I said that when she harassed me, I’d responded, “Don’t tell me where I can walk my dog.”
It wasn’t even 7 a.m. in Tampa, but the telephone lines suddenly exploded. I had never had more than two of the twelve lines illuminated at once and I was so panicked at the reaction that I quickly Googled “schnauzer” so I at least knew what one looked like.
Half the people calling were dog lovers who told me that I went easy on the old bag.
“Stan, you should’ve told her to pound sand. Anyone who disrespects animals is hiding deeper secrets. These guys like Jeffrey Dahmer always start out abusing pets.”
The other half were old bags!
“Staaaaannnnn. How dare you speak to a seasoned citizen like that? How would you like it if someone spoke to your mother that way?”
And so for about two weeks, until Phil Dean got into position, I adopted old Frank’s philosophy, and yes, it made the phones ring. When I got tired of the dog routine, or the social security thing, or wondering why parents could raise kids who later could not care for parents, I learned a few tricks of my own, like pulling out the DEFCON1 of talk radio: guns, abortion and the Church. It hardly mattered what I said, just so long as I mentioned any of those three, the phone lines melted. And after ten days as a talk show host, I was convinced I’d already learned what I’d need to know to succeed. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Turn on the mic, breath the word “contraception” and sit back and watch the time pass.
But all that ended the minute Phil Dean came aboard. He quickly disabused me of any idea that this was either good talk radio or anything that would ever get ratings. And he went on to prescribe a program schedule and formula that he told me would work.
“Rule No. 1 Powers—there is zero relationship between the number of callers and the number of listeners.”
Years later the only criticism I have of that advice was in calling it “Rule No. 1.” Over the years Phil has given me dozens of Rule No. 1’s.
Phil had a detailed thought process as to the role of the caller. He was forever telling me that the callers were there to be used as “stage props” for whatever I was delivering and that they were never to be looked upon as content in and of themselves.
“Let me ask you something, Stan. When was the last time you yourself called a talk radio program?”
“Never.”
“Exactly.”
Phil’s next item of business was to prescribe a program schedule and formula that he said would work. I was enticed by the prospect of success, intrigued by the mystery man from Taos, and dutifully followed all of his advice. My hours were brutal and I worked my balls off, but I was having some fun with the challenge of reinventing myself. My day would begin when the first of my two alarm clocks sounded at 3:30 a.m. Not that any one alarm clock has ever failed; I just refused to take chances. This too was something about which I’d received advice from Frank Sellers. He’d said, “Kid, every morning guy has a strategy to overcome getting up at a God-awful hour. Some guys nap. Some guys go to bed early. Some guys try to catch up on weekends. Well, let me tell you, none of them work. The human body is not made to get up in the middle of the night.”
About this he was right.
So in the morning, I followed one cardinal rule: getting my ass out of bed the minute the first alarm sounded. The worst thing I could do, I soon learned, was lay awake and second-guess my need to get up. Better to get moving instantly and stay on schedule. The way I did it, every second mattered. While it took me 45 minutes to drive home after a program, the early commute took literally half that time. Drunks and DJs were all you’d find on the highway at that early hour (and I know, having been both). After driving through a Stop-N-Go to pick up some coffee, I was sitting in my studio by 4:20 a.m., staring across a conference table at Alex, who always managed to beat me to work. A television was on in the background, showing a local early morning newscast that had begun at 4 a.m.
Following Phil’s advice, I never stopped preparing for the next day’s program. All day long I stayed current in the news, and whatever my mobile device of choice was at the time buzzed and hummed constantly with headline updates and news with a conservative analysis. I never went to bed without knowing the lead stories in the nightly cable news world. Phil told me to take my cue from Fox News, which I did. And as he instructed, sometimes I would watch MSNBC just to know what to avoid. Of course, I never told him that the latter often made more sense to me than the former. But mostly, I thought they were both full of shit. When Obama was president, I never took him for a European socialist antichrist, and neither did I think he was a savior. He was not the Kenya-born Manchurian candidate conjured up by Sean Hannity, just like George W. Bush wasn’t the stumblebum that Keith Olbermann (himself a pompous horse’s ass) suggested in his exhaustive rants. Then, unless it was a night dedicated to grab-assing at Delrios, at about 9:30 p.m., right before turning in, I would send an email to Alex and offer my nightly suggestions for her show outline, which
we would go over, face-to-face, the following morning before sunrise.
The program itself always followed a loose formula outlined by Phil. I often started the 5 a.m. hour with a soft story, sometimes pulled from the front page of the Wall Street Journal, below the fold with one of those pixilated photos. The Journal has a habit of printing terrific, slice-of-life kinda stuff in that spot, often having nothing to do with the world of finance. I remember one day they had a great piece analyzing the number of times college basketball players bounce the ball before they shoot foul shots in games in relation to successful attempts. (Four times seemed to bring the best success, 77 percent of them went in the hoop, as compared to say, 60 percent if you only dribbled once.) Or another day I pulled something from the New York Times about how only seven people in the company that owns Thomas’ English Muffins knew how the muffins got their distinctive air pockets, and how when one of the seven left for a competitor, his departure touched off a case of alleged corporate skullduggery. Phil thought these kinds of stories were a nice way to ease into the day before I got to the red meat. In my head, while determining my content, I would picture my typical listeners as they awakened to Morning Power. The guys were usually fortysomething masters of the universe in the midst of their early morning workout, having just gotten laid, pumping some serious iron and getting ready to drive a 7-Series or S-Class to work. The women were invariably 25-year-old grad students with giant hooters, listening to me via clock radio while lying in 1,000 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and wearing red thongs. (For some reason, both of my stereotypes were always seriously underrepresented whenever we did remote broadcasts or live events that our listeners attended.)
After the soft stuff, I’d begin the process of running through the main headlines of the day, a combination of the local and national. For the entirety of the 6 a.m. hour, I would continue with the rundown of the news, offering some commentary with every headline. For a while, we called this hour “Headlines Redefined” which I liked. Sometimes I would look to Alex for a female perspective, in which case she would always oblige with a pithy, albeit predictable feminist view with which I would invariably disagree. These were the talk equivalent of whacky morning radio bits where the music staples were kazoos, horns and fart machines. For us, it was trashing liberals.
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