Show
Tonight Doug Dannger, gay man and gay journalist, told Phil that even though Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor was arrested for rape, once people at the Orange County Courier sports banquet this weekend hear about Taylor’s two Super Bowl rings, they’ll be “soothed,” Then Larry Grover blames what he calls a “moral vacuum” at the top of the conservative movement in America for his recent purchase of a teenage prostitute and his friends antics with “a ball boy at the raquet club.”
Showing 3 comments
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Phil,
Love your work. 15-year listener. Want to see you keep doing really great stuff. So here are a few thoughts toward that end.
For all the right reasons, you’re a harsh critic of what talk radio has become: the clueless PDs, the opportunistic right-wing hosts, the predicable formulae of the medium.
Your work at its best — the classic stuff — ignores all that simply by taking another route entirely. Margaret, Ted, Lloyd, Bosell, Bobbi and Steve, Austin — the whole freaking zoo. All of these amazing characters bring terrific character based story potentials that don’t depend on each day’s real world news developments.
Given that fact, and given your contempt for topical news talk BS, I keep wondering why you seem to have settled for a split-the- difference straddling of the two radio worlds: that of mainstream talk radio, on the one hand, and yours, on the other.
Why the hell should you struggle to force Doug Dannger into some non-credible storyline involving idiot-of-the-day Lawrence Taylor? And in your understandable desire to connect Bobbi with Sarah Palin, why in God’s name would you decide to make Bobbi a Code Pink type leftwinger? Man, neither of these works. Both fall flat.
I say all this admittedly as a longtime fan, which means I love your classic work, pre-retirement, pre-comeback. My advice, which you did not request and not need, but here goes: Give up the impulse to connect your characters with this or that day’s breaking news. Go for the pure, archetypal essence of each character. Steve B. files lawsuits; that’s what he does. All the rest — his daughter’s school life, etc. — isn’t relevant. Dannger needs to remain "a gay man and a gay journalist," period. No need to drag in a second tier news story involving Lawrence Taylor.
Stick with the real stuff, bro. That said, I’m with you no matter what. Keep coming to work and I’ll keep listening.
Where’s the video cast Phil?
I was worried when I logged on about 10 minutes ago this wasn’t up. glad to see it is now.