- "Imagine these startling headlines with the nation
at war in the Pacific six months after Dec. 7, 1941: "No Signs of
Japanese Involvement in Pearl Harbor Attack! Faulty Intelligence Cited;
Wolfowitz: Mistakes Were Made."
-
- Or how about an equally disconcerting World War II headline
from the European theater: "German Army Not Found in France, Poland,
Admits President; Rumsfeld: 'Oops!', Powell Silent; 'Bring 'Em On,' Says
Defiant FDR."
-
- It seems to me that when there is reason to go to war,
it should be self-evident. The Secretary of State should not need to convince
a skeptical world with satellite photos of a couple of Toyota pickups and
a dumpster. And faced with a legitimate casus belli, it should not be hard
to muster an actual constitutional declaration of war. Now in the absence
of a meaningful Iraqi role in the 9/11 attack and the mysterious disappearance
of those fearsome Weapons of Mass Destruction, there might be some psychic
satisfaction to be had in saying, "I told you so!" But it sure
isn't doing my career as a talk-show host any good.
-
- The criterion of self-evidence was only one of dozens
of objections I raised before the elective war in Iraq on my afternoon
drive-time talk show on KFYI in Phoenix. Many of the other arguments are
familiar to readers of The American Conservative.
-
- But the case for war was a shape-shifter, skillfully
morphing into a new rationale as quickly as the old one failed to withstand
scrutiny. For a year before the war, I scrambled to keep up with the latest
incarnations of the neocon case. Most were pitifully transparent and readily
exposed. (Besides the aluminum tubes and the trailers that had Bush saying,
"Gotcha," does anyone remember those death-dealing drones? Never
have third-world, wind-up, rubber-band, balsa-wood airplanes instilled
so much fear in so many people.) Still, my management didn't like my being
out of step with the president's parade of national hysteria, and the war-fevered
spectators didn't care to be told they were suffering illusions. So after
three years, I was replaced on my primetime talk show by the Frick and
Frack of Bushophiles, two giggling guys who think everything our tongue-tied
president does is "Most excellent, dude!" I have been relegated
to the later 7-10 p.m. slot, when most people, even in a congested commuting
market like Phoenix, are already home watching TV.
-
- Why did this happen? Why only a couple of months after
my company picked up the option on my contract for another year in the
fifth-largest city in the United States, did it suddenly decide to relegate
me to radio Outer Darkness? The answer lies hidden in the oil-and-water
incompatibility of these two seemingly disconnected phrases: "Criticizing
Bush" and "Clear Channel."
-
- Criticizing Bush? Well then, must I be some sort of rug-chewing
liberal? Not even close. As a boy, I stood on the grass in a small Arizona
town square when Barry Goldwater officially began his 1964 presidential
run. And I was there for the last official event of the Goldwater campaign.
My job was to recruit and manage my fellow junior-high and high-school
conservatives in a phone bank operation, calling supporters to fill up
as many buses as possible to help pack the stadium-a show of strength for
the nation's television viewers. Of course that's an insignificant role
to play in a presidential campaign, but it was pretty heady stuff for a
14-year-old kid from Flagstaff.
-
- I broke with Goldwater in 1976 over his decision to back
Gerald Ford instead of Ronald Reagan for the Republican presidential nomination.
Ford was a perfectly decent, if ordinary, Republican (who could have taught
the big-spending W. Bush a thing or two about the use of the veto!). But
I took my conservatism seriously. Reagan was clearly the champion of the
conservative cause.
-
- Perhaps I'm just anti-military? No. I am proud of my
honorable service and of the Army Commendation Medal I was awarded. I also
spent a good deal of time in the 1980s as a member of the Speakers Bureau
of High Frontier, promoting Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, a defense
policy unlike today's in that it was actually designed to defend the American
people.
-
- I have been a Republican precinct committeeman; my county
Republican Party elected me its "Man of the Year" in 1988; I
have written speeches for conservative candidates and office holders; and
I have been employed by statewide and national political organizations
and campaigns, including the National Conservative Political Action Committee.
Despite my disappointment in Goldwater for not supporting Reagan, I was
there when a small band of the faithful-no more than four or five of us-gathered
for a potluck dinner to support the creation of a brand-new public-policy
think tank named after "Mr. Conservative." The enterprise blossomed,
and I was honored several months ago to serve as Master of Ceremonies for
the Goldwater Institute's 15th Anniversary Gala.
-
- I can assure you then that my criticism of Bush has been
on the basis of long-held conservative principles. It begins with respect
for the wisdom of the Founders and the Constitution's division of power
and delegation of authority, and extends to an adherence to the principles
of governmental restraint and fiscal prudence. It proved to be a message
that was more than a little inconvenient for my employer.
-
- Clear Channel Communications, the 800-pound gorilla of
the radio business, owns an astonishing 1,200 stations in 50 states, including
Newstalk 550 KFYI in Phoenix, where I do the afternoon program or did
until last summer. The principals of Clear Channel, a Texas-based company,
have been substantial contributors to George W. Bush's fortunes since before
he became president. In fact, Texas billionaire Tom Hicks can be said to
be the man who made Bush a millionaire when he purchased the future president's
baseball team, the Texas Rangers. Tom Hicks is now vice chairman of Clear
Channel. Clear Channel stations were unusually visible during the war with
what corporate flacks now call "pro-troop rallies." In tone and
substance, they were virtually indistinguishable from pro-Bush rallies.
I'm sure the administration, which faced a host of regulatory issues affecting
Clear Channel, was not displeased.
-
- Criticism of Bush and his ever-shifting pretext for a
first-strike war (what exactly was it we were pre-empting anyway?) has
proved so serious a violation of Clear Channel's cultural taboo that only
a good contract has kept me from being fired outright. Roxanne Cordonier,
a radio personality at Clear Channel's WMYI 102.5 in Greenville, S.C.,
didn't have it as good. Cordonier, who worked under the name Roxanne Walker,
was the South Carolina Broadcasters Association's 2002 Radio Personality
of the Year. That apparently wasn't enough for Clear Channel. Her lawsuit
against the company alleges that she was belittled on the air and reprimanded
by her station for opposing the invasion of Iraq. Then she was fired.
-
- They couldn't really fire me, at least without paying
me a substantial sum of money, but I was certainly belittled on the air
for opposing the war. The other KFYI talk-show hosts-so bloodthirsty that
they made Bush apologists and superhawks Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity
sound moderate-vilified me almost daily. As a former radio-station owner
myself, it was a little hard to believe management would allow one of their
key hosts to be trashed day in and day out on their own airwaves. After
all, we sell radio time on the basis of its ability to influence people's
behavior. A wiser programming approach would have been to showcase me as
an object of curiosity, with a challenge to listeners to see if they could
discover where I had gone wrong or how I was missing the imminent threat
Iraq posed to the American people. No doubt the constant vilification I
received and my heterodoxy on the war cost me audience during the interlude.
It was certainly enough to get pictures of me morphing into those of the
French president posted on the Free Republic Web site during the "freedom
fries" silliness. A banner there read, "Boycott Charles Chirac
Goyette at KFYI radio Phoenix, AZ! Protest against the Charles Goyette
Show from 4-7pm at KFYI for his leftist subervsive [sic] Bush-bashing rants.
Turn off KFYI radio for the Charles Goyette Show! No liberal scum talk
shows on KFYI!" Radio does provoke people, doesn't it?
-
- One Clear Channel executive had me take an unexpected
day off for the sin of reporting the breaking news on March 27, 2003, that
neocon hawk Richard Perle, of the Defense Policy Board, had relinquished
his chairmanship under scrutiny of his business dealings and for blaspheming
that Donald Rumsfeld was the worst Secretary of Defense since Robert McNamara.
So great were these transgressions that the radio gods themselves must
have been aghast at my impiety. I explained in conference-room confrontations
that both positions were completely respectable points of view. The comparison
with McNamara had been made repeatedly in subsequent days in the mainstream
media. I specifically cited "The McLaughlin Group" the following
Friday and the New York Times the following Monday, and in describing the
Perle resignation, I relied upon details from both Seymour Hersh in the
New Yorker and from syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington. "Well,
then," they explained, the problem was "the emotionalism"
of my remarks. Imagine that, emotionalism in talk radio? I reminded them
that for years we had run promotions identifying KFYI as "the Place
with More Passion," where the Charles Goyette Show was positioned
as "Fearless Talk Radio!"
-
- Clear Channel made it clear-"With you, I feel like
I'm managing the Dixie Chicks," said my program director-that they
would have liked to fire me anyway. While a well-drafted contract made
that difficult, it did not prevent them from tucking me away outside prime
time.
-
- So I'm a talk-show war casualty. My contract expires
in a few more months and-my iconoclasm being noted-it is not likely it
will be renewed. Among the survivors at my station: one host who wanted
to nuke Afghanistan (he bills himself as "your voice of reason and
moderation") and another who upon learning that 23-year-old Mideast
peace activist Rachel Corrie had been run over by an Israeli bulldozer
shouted, "Back up and run over her again!" As he doesn't quite
get some of the important distinctions in these debates, such as that Iranians
should not be called Arabs, we would hope that he's not taken too seriously.
Likewise my replacements in the afternoon drive slot, brought in for glamorizing
the war and billed as "The Comedy Channel meets Talk Radio."
If you remember the "Saturday Night Live" skit "Superfans"
with Mike Myers and Chris Farley-"Who's stronger, God or da Bulls?"
"Da Bulls!"-then you get the idea. Only instead of "da Bulls,"
it's three hours every afternoon of "da Bush!" Expect to hear
more insightful topics like "So Who's Tougher: Michael Jordan or Donald
Rumsfeld?"
-
- I've seen how war fever infects a people. And I was in
a no-win situation, with an audience pre-screened by virtue of 11 hours
a day of screaming war frenzy-unlistenable for the uninfected-that surrounded
my time slot. So I knew there would be a personal price for opposing the
war, and I was prepared to pay it. But as a lover of the rough and tumble
of public debate and the contest of ideas, I am disappointed at what is
happening in my industry. At least at Clear Channel, there's only one word
for the belief that talk radio is still a fair and fearless search for
the truth: "Un-Bull-ieveable!"
-
- Charles Goyette was named "Best Talk Show Host of
2003" by the Phoenix New Times.
-
- February 2, 2004 issue
- Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative
- http://www.amconmag.com/1_19_04/article3.html
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