The following night, Andy opened his show differently than usual: “I’ve cancelled tonight’s scheduled guests,” he said, “because I want to talk about something, ladies and gentlemen. I . . . am mad . . . as hell!”
There wasn’t an open line for more than thirty seconds that night. Liberals called to complain about his sudden change of attitude and his unfair generalizations and conservatives called to complain about the tit-sucking liberals. Blacks complained about whites and whites complained about blacks . . . and Asians and Iranians and American Indians. Men complained about women and women complained about men. AM radios throughout Cincinnati crackled with the wholesale condemnation of Jews and homosexuals and Democrats and Communists and drug dealers and feminists and homeless people and . . . and anyone who disagreed in any way with the caller. Cincinnati was angry and Andy Craig had given it an opportunity to throw a tantrum. Along with the city’s anger, however, came a barrage of racial slurs and profanity which Andy, at first, edited during the seven second delay; but as the show continued that night, getting better by the minute, he left his finger off the button and let the bile flow. He knew he’d get yelled at for it but, in his gut, it felt right.
Two thirds of the way through the show, Dexter Grady, the station manager, burst into the engineer’s booth and glared at Andy through the small square window; his face squirmed with anger as he waved his arms and yelled silently at the engineer. Moments later, the show broke, quite abruptly, for a commercial. Grady disappeared from the window and stormed into the studio shouting, demanding to know exactly who the fuck Andy thought he was, allowing all that Goddamned profanity to go out over the fucking radio. He yelled for quite some time, threatening not only to fire Andy, but to see to it that he never worked in Ohio again, not in a radio station, not even in a MacDonald’s, and then—
—the phonecalls started to come in.
Grady had told the engineer to play a few songs, to go to some network programming, anything, just as long as he didn’t go back to Andy’s show.
And people complained. Oh, how they complained.
Andy stayed at the station and continued doing his late-night talk show for almost two years. It didn’t last any longer because the sponsors got fed up with the show’s controversy; the controversy was the only reason it lasted as long as it did . . .
In the lounge, Andy poked through a box of stale donuts left in front of the coffeepot and picked out a cruller, which he dipped into the black coffee he’d poured. He was a small, wiry man with short reddish-brown hair and a mustache between his slightly sunken cheeks. His skin was smooth and somewhat pale; he didn’t get much sun. He chewed his cruller as he stared out the window at the black, light-smeared city nineteen stories below and listened to the news, which came over the P.A. He’d become addicted to the news; the more current his topics, the more riled his listeners became, and the more riled they became, the better were his ratings.
“You seen this?” Tanya asked, bursting into the lounge.
Andy turned as she tossed a section of the Times onto one of the round tables. It was opened to an article accompanied by a photograph of Andy; the headline read, DANGEROUS RADIO, DANGEROUS LISTENERS, OR BOTH?
“No, I haven’t,” Andy said, glancing over the article.
Tanya smirked. “It’s great stuff. The kinda stuff that brings in new listeners, y’know? It was in this morning’s edition and my buddy over at the Times says they’ve been getting phonecalls all day. I mean, complaints. Starting tomorrow, the letters to the Editor section’ll probably be full of epistles from your loving fans for a couple weeks.” She beamed at him through the smoke from her cigarette.
“Why? What’s it say?”
She shrugged. “Oh, the usual bullshit. You’re stirring up the masses, using sick jokes and faulty logic that sounds intelligent and reasonable to get them so upset that they’re willing to hand over their freedoms to the first dictator that comes along. The usual bullshit. He says that you’re—” She swept the paper up and raised a stiff forefinger. “—listen to this, ‘. . . sucking up ratings like a vampire sucks up blood, flashing his fangs all the way to the bank’. Isn’t that great?” she laughed.
Andy grinned as he finished the cruller and plucked Tanya’s cigarette from her fingers, taking a deep drag.
“I thought you quit,” she said, slapping the paper down again.
“Just quit smoking my own. It’s cheaper that way.” He glanced at the clock.
“Don’t worry, you got another six minutes.” She started for the door as she said, “Got a great call for ya. A pro-choicer raving about the abortion laws.”
“Man or woman?”
“Woman. A real bitch. Give her your Jerry Lewis speech.” She winked at him as she went out the door.
Finishing Tanya’s cigarette, Andy scanned the article. It accused him of stirring up hatred and racism, of helping to destroy the freedoms that made America great—especially the one freedom that provided for radio shows like his own—and suggested that his “careless and irresponsible form of broadcasting” could ultimately bring about “the downfall of American freedoms as we know them.”
He chuckled bitterly as he sipped his coffee. He’d gotten the same response from the Cincinnati press since the day he’d changed the format of his show; they’d hated him.
But the women had loved him. Not just the women callers, but the women who attended his personal appearances . . . the women who wrote to him . . . the women he met in bars and restaurants and grocery stores who recognized his name or, better yet, his voice. Building his entire radio show around the political stance that riled his listeners the most—the one that would have sent most feminists into a convulsing, mouth-foaming seizure—Andy had more women hungry for his attention than ever before in his life. The change was so sudden and drastic that Andy had actually been relieved the day he’d come home and found Katherine stripping his apartment of her belongings.
“I can’t live with you anymore,” she said, throwing her toiletries into a satchel.
“But you don’t live with me. We agreed you’d keep your apartment, I thought that was—”
“Listen to yourself!” she snapped, stabbing a forefinger at his chest. “You’re such a stickler for details, like my fucking apartment. What difference does my apartment make? It’s just a little section of a building in which I get my phonecalls and keep my cat! When I say I can’t live with you anymore, I mean that I can’t live with the fact that you’re such a stickler for details and yet, when someone tries to point out the details of what you’re doing, you blow up, or just laugh. I can’t live with the fact that I’m wrapping my life around a person who can, so very casually, do such vicious damage to things that so many people have died to protect, things that have taken so many decades to finally realize and are already being dismantled fast enough as it is without any help from you! I can’t live with you, Andy. And how you possibly can will be one of the greatest mysteries of my life.” She was gone in ten minutes.
Half an hour later, he had a dinner date, and only a few hours after that, he had her in bed. Suddenly, life was good, really good. Suddenly, everything was going his way, and that included his break up with Katherine.
Then, a few months later, someone threw a brick through the windshield of his car at a red light. Not long after, the first death threat was phoned into the station, followed by a few more over the following months. At first it had, like everything else, worked in his favor and stirred up some publicity-grabbing controversy. But during the week of the second bomb threat received by the station, the sponsors began to drop like computer generated aliens in a video game and the manager and owners became so afraid for their lives that they saw no alternative but to let Andy go.
At first, he’d been very depressed. In fact, for a couple days, he hadn’t left his apartment or answered the phone. But only two days after his firing had been announced, he was offered a job by TBN—Talk Broadcasting Network—the biggest talk radio
network in the country. He’d responded with appropriate nonchalance, asking for a few days to give it some thought and talk it over with his agent; he needed the extra time to get an agent.
The network’s offer was impressive: a nation-wide weeknight call-in talk show with timely guests covering controversial topics. Andy would have to move away from Cincinnati, of course, but that was okay. The only problem was Andy’s certainty that the show would be watered down by the network to satisfy their sponsors, eliminating, at the very least, the profanity allowed on his show and, at the most, restricting his broadcasting style. But TBN surprised him. Countless polls had shown that, due to the overwhelming popularity of television, very few people listened to the radio unless they felt they were missing something unique or unusually popular, so the sponsors wanted Andy to be profane and aggressive and controversial and they didn’t give a damn about his politics. Controversy usually attracted publicity, which always drew listeners. And listeners listened to advertisements.
After his recent experiences with bricks through windows and telephoned bomb threats, Andy was reluctant to use his real name on national radio, so, after acquiring the job and moving to the big city, he decided to come up with a pseudonym.
The Arthur Colton, Jr., Show began without fanfare, a strategic move by the network; they were confident that it would generate its own publicity and saw no reason to pay for any. They were right. The show created a wave of controversy and, within the first two weeks, inspired newspaper columnists across the country to write a column in response; some were positive, but most were vicious protests, some calling him a broadcasting whore who was willing to say anything, no matter how damaging or dangerous, that might garner a few more ratings points.
Once again, Andy was puzzled by his critics. He could understand if they just didn’t like the show, but they made it sound dangerous. Didn’t they understand that he wasn’t really that person on the radio? He didn’t even use his real voice anymore, let alone his real name; his radio voice was deeper, more authoritative than his regular speaking voice. And of course he didn’t share the opinions of his radio alter ego; nobody really thought that way about everything, it was ridiculous, a caricature. In fact, Andy had very few opinions of his own. He watched the news and read papers only for the benefit of his show. He wasn’t that concerned with world events; they were out of his hands. Didn’t they realize that it was—
—“Just show business,” he muttered, leaving the lounge with the paper and his coffee. He ducked into the control room where Tanya was occupied with a caller and didn’t notice when he snatched up her cigarettes. In the studio, he tried to read the rest of the article, but the dim shadowy lighting only made his eyes water, so he leaned back in his chair with a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose.
The night before, he’d gotten less than an hour of light dozing scattered between bouts of rolling and rutting in bed with a voluptuous, squealing coed named Debi, and that morning he’d had a brunch date with Jaretta, his hairdresser, who had agreed to grab a hotel room halfway through brunch so they wouldn’t have to waste time deciding on his place or hers. Andy had seen them both before and would see them again, along with the several other women he saw regularly—Sherrie and Dina and Kaylee and Lynda and Melonie and Shawn—and the many others whom he had not yet met. His social life was better than it had been in Cincinnati despite the fact that he protected his identity and no longer used his celebrity status to impress women; it made no difference because, back in Cincinnati, he’d gained a lot of confidence with women, learned a lot about being funny and charming and tap dancing around commitment and exclusivity like Fred Astaire. And he was making a lot of money now, which didn’t hurt a bit.
But tonight, he was taking a rest. After work he was going to call Sol’s All-Nite Deli and order a pastrami and Swiss on an onion roll and one of Sol’s fat dill pickles, take them home and eat them with a cup of hot tea in front of Shane, which was on the Late Late Movie, then he was going to sleep until noon. Maybe later. He lit a cigarette and sighed the smoke from his lungs, looking forward to his evening with relish.
“This is the Arthur Colton, Jr., Show and we are now entering the final hour of the show with open phones for those of you who have something to say. Anything you want. You got a gripe? You want to bitch about something? Give me a ring. Any questions? I’m almost always right, you know. Give me a call. And if you have a personal problem and would like to benefit from my experience, strength and wisdom, as the sniveling drunks say at AA meetings, don’t hesitate to pick up the phone. Janice is calling from Witchita, Kansas. Janice, my dear, you’re on the air.”
“Yes, Arthur, I’m calling about your previous guest, Melissa Cartwright. I’m not a regular listener, but I heard Ms Cartwright was going to be on tonight and I’m a big fan of hers, so—”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“—I listened and I was very disappointed that you never allowed her to make her point. I mean, she is a very wise and warm person who has an open mind and she is not a man-hater. I think it’s sad that you deprived your listeners of what she has to say, but I think it’s indicative of a frightening trend in this country today toward woman-hating, a trend to which you seem to be a powerful contributor.”
Andy smiled. This was the pro-choice woman Tanya had warned him about earlier. Andy didn’t give a damn about abortion one way or the other—it meant nothing to him—but the great majority of his listeners were against it, and that was what mattered. It had been a hot topic ever since abortion laws had been reintroduced back in the eighties and he got a lot of calls for it, so he’d prepared a stock response—a funny, sarcastic, angry response—specifically for callers like Janice from Witchita.
“Janice, my dear, I may be a lot of things, but I am not a woman-hater. Women are my favorite living beings. Anyone who knows me will tell you that Arthur loves women. But I do not love castrating women. This is a free country, so you’re entitled to your opinion just as I am, and my opinion is that Mizzz Cartwright is one of those castrating women. Believe me, I think there are plenty of men who deserve to have their balls chopped off, but not all of them, for crying out loud, and the women who think so are, in my opinion, no better than the psychotic men who beat women. Now. Why did you call? What’s your question?”
“I don’t really have a question, I just wanted to point out that this kind of attitude—the attitude you’ve exhibited on your show tonight—is greatly responsible for one of the most frightening changes to take place in this country in my lifetime.”
“And what is that, praytell?”
“Within the last several years, laws have been passed in every state in the country stripping women of the right to do as they please with their bodies. Abortion has become a crime. It’s like our bodies are now the property of the state! I don’t see any laws prohibiting men from doing what they want with their bodies! How would you feel if a law was passed that required you to have a vasectomy? How would you like to be arrested if you weren’t circumcised? And if you feel abortion is a moral crime, why can’t you at least give women that choice? Why can’t you allow them the right to commit that sin if they feel it’s necessary?”
“Are you finished?” he asked calmly. “Is that your question? Because if it is, I have an answer.”
“Yes. That’s my question.”
“First of all, that business about vasectomies and circumcision is just bullshit and I won’t dignify it with a response. Okay, now. You and the women who agree with you claim that it is your right—your inalienable right—to do with your bodies as you wish. But I disagree, and I’ll tell you why. Have you ever heard of Jerry Lewis?”
“Of course.”
“Have you seen his Muscular Dystrophy Telethon?”
“Well . . . I’m familiar with it.”
“Okay. Here’s a man who has performed financial miracles for the battle against muscular dystrophy, and yet children continue to have their bodies withered by this disease. Do
they have that right? Do they have the right to be crippled by this disease?”
“That’s the most—”
“Do I have the right to get cancer?”
“That’s the most—”
“Does my father have the right to have a stroke? Does my mother have the right to have a heart attack? Which they both had, and they are now dead”
“That is without a doubt the most—”
“What I’m saying is that our bodies are really not our own. When it comes right down to it, we don’t own them. If we don’t have the right to choose whether or not we get these horrible diseases or are stricken with these deadly ailments, what gives you the right to kill the life that is growing inside your body?”
“That is the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard in my entire—”
“Thank you for calling, Janice. We go to Tucson, Arizona, where David is waiting to speak with the host. David?”
“Hey, Arthur, it’s great to talk with you, man, really.”
“Thank you.”
“I love your show and I think this country needs more people like you who’s willing to tell it like, well, like, y’know, it is. I mean, I get so fed up with, like, all these liberal talk show hosts who . . . well, who think this whole fucking country should be run by a bunch of communist faggots who . . . who, um . . . well, and women! They think the country can be run by, y’know, women! I mean, women like the one you had on tonight . . . what’s her name? The one who hates men?”
“Melissa Cartwright.”
“Yeah, like women like her can run the damned country, I mean . . . give me a break, okay?”
Andy smirked. Ignorant as he sounded, David was a typical listener—friend, not foe—and required a green light. “You’re right on the money, David. You’ve got your fingers on the pulse of America and I appreciate your call. Paul in Anderson, California, what’s on your mind?”
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