THE WORST RADIO HAS TO OFFER

By Brad Kava, SJ Mercury News - Ear (column); Friday, October 1, 1999

Contact Brad Kava at bkava@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5040; fax (408) 271-3786.

A few weeks back, my family and I ran across the still-ghoulish Tammy Faye Bakker with her new husband at a coffee shop in Big Sur.

After explaining to the kids who she was, I thought for a minute that we'dmade some progress since the 1980s -- that vampires like the Bakkers, who preyed on a dumb, unsuspecting audience, were mostly gone from the airwaves.

Then, I got into the car and switched on the radio. There was "Dr." Laura Schlessinger. And Michael Savage. And some moron named Ricker. And a Ku Klux Klansman on Stern. Nope, we haven't gone very far at all.

Readers have sent me nominations for radio's worst of the worst. And I've come up with some of my own.

NOMINEE 1: On the most holy day for Jews, Yom Kippur, KSJO-FM's (92.3) night guy, Ricker, made a joke about shooting Jews.

He was talking about the tourist season. His show, an example of what big corporations are doing to radio, is broadcast from Tampa, Fla. He pretends to be in California while doing his bits from 3,000 miles away (which is not unlike local TV deciding to broadcast Jacksonville Jaguars games, instead of the 49ers).

Some Tampa residents don't like tourists, even though they keep the economy humming. (I know; I lived there.) In his attempt at humor, Ricker suggested that, since tourist season is starting, "we should shoot them. What if they were rich? Jewish even?"

His words generated a complaint and got him suspended for three days by KSJO's program director, Jim Richards.

"He wasn't saying you should shoot Jews," says Richards. "But he did inappropriately step over the line by marrying those two thoughts in one break."

This DJ thinks?

Anyway, it got worse. On Monday, Ricker issued his "apology," which he said "isn't really an apology but I've got to keep my . . . job."

"Some races or religions are just depressing," he added. "They have no sense of humor." He went on to argue that if he'd called Roman Catholics or Muslims dumb, they wouldn't complain but the Muslims might shoot him.

They don't have to. This guy is well on the way to destroying himself.

NOMINEE 2: I see that KGO-AM (810) physiologist Laura Schlessinger had to issue an apology of her own. She called a woman a pedophile, according to the Web site RadioDigest.com. And then had to retract it on the air. Oops.

Schlessinger has had a tough year. First, she denied having an affair while married. Then, her boyfriend posted nude pictures of her on the Internet. Then, she denied they were of her. Then, she admitted they were and apologized for youthful indiscretions -- but not for lying about them right up to the last minute.

The woman seems to think the Ten Commandments were handed down to her personally, but she doesn't have to follow them.

She's battling her former Web master, who accuses her of breaking promises and not paying her.

She tells callers it's OK to be gay, as long as they don't have sex.

The only thing I can say is: Anyone who calls a radio talk host for counseling really needs some counseling.

P.S. Great "Darth Laura" Web site: www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/8975/darthlaura.html. It contains quotes from her such as: "Too much freedom in the mind is dangerous; it only leads to confusion and makes people mean."

NOMINEE 3: KSFO-AM's (560) Michael Savage. To return to our earlier theme, on the day after Yom Kippur, Savage played tapes of Adolf Hitler's speeches over German military music.

Don't talk to me about context, and it doesn't matter that he's Jewish. His show is filled with nothing but hate, in the tradition of the radio hatemonger of the 1930s, Father Charles E. Coughlin.

I know he was trying to make fun of a caller who labeled him a Nazi after Savage suggested that homeless people -- "living rats," he called them -- should be run off the streets and put in state hospitals.

Savage also suggested that police should use their nightsticks to beat the homeless, as in the old days. And he slammed girls at a Marin Catholic school who passed out sandwiches to homeless people -- "fresh white nookie" was how this purveyor of bad taste described the girls.

As progressive as a driver trying to change the law by heading the wrong way on a one-way street, Savage a few days earlier had called for a new Joseph McCarthy to rise up and start a House Un-American Activities Committee to fight communist spies.

I have to say, his show is good for a laugh. But the fact that some people may take him seriously is scary. Very scary.

NOMINEE 4: Howard Stern (KITS-FM, 105.3) seems tame these days, compared to his imitators. You might almost think this father of three has developed some taste. Or is it just that nothing shocks us anymore?

Spanking lesbians and strippers got dull. Now, Stern is into incest. He interviews fathers who sleep with daughters, sons who sleep with mothers and sisters who sleep with sisters. Yawn. You can see that on Jerry Springer.

Then, there's regular guest Daniel Carver of the Ku Klux Klan. The bit works in a way, because Carver is so stupid that he makes racists look bad.

That is, until you hear the response he gets from his regular spots on Stern's show. Thousands of people are calling to buy his products, T-shirts and handbooks, he says.

"I don't even believe Howard is a Jew," Carver said recently. "He looks like a white man. I don't care, as long as he gives me a place to sell my things."

I don't know whether to laugh, or head for the hills.

More next week.

Meanwhile

Ratings (other than Stern's) are sagging, and word is that the station, guided by consultant Kevin Weatherly, is trying to toughen up its format.

But who did those ape sounds for last weekend's promos for the new Rage Against the Machine song? It's "Guerrilla Radio," not Gorilla Radio.

Sad what's happened to what was once the Bay Area's flagship of alternative. Now it's just another cash cow for former ad salesman Mel Karmazin.

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