Post by bossradio93 on Dec 13, 2003 8:00:46 GMT -5
At around 11:30, an elderly man in a John Deere cap covered in buttons, who had been stalking the perimeter all night, suddenly cut the line, shot past the bodyguards and raced up to the table where Larry sat. He explained tremulously that, while he loved the show, he couldn’t listen anymore because he “changed cars” and didn’t know how to set the radio buttons on the new one, before being kindly led away by Elder’s bodyguards.
By 12:10 a.m., six tired, wrung out fans remained. The store had closed over an hour ago. A thirty-something man wearing shorts handed Larry his book, shook his hand, then meekly proffered a cell phone. “Larry,” he said.
“This book is a present for my wife, Natalie, but if I called her, would you mind saying hello? Because unless she hears your voice I don’t think she’s going to believe I’ve been out all night at a bookstore.”
Larry agreed. The man, whose name was Tim, dialed the phone, and handed it to Larry. “Natalie?” Larry said. “This is Larry Elder. I’m here at a strip club with your husband Tim, and he’s acting like a complete clown…. Yeah, but the good news is that I know an excellent divorce attorney, and I can probably get you a deal.”
Still on, still engaged, still doing improv for an audience of six sleepy white suburbanites, and enjoying every minute of it. It’s one thing to have them at hello; Elder still had them long after anyone else would have said goodbye. As one gaping onlooker commented. “It’s amazing. Anyone who meets this man in person will vote for him.”
Will Larry Elder run for office? The short answer is yes—probably. But when is another matter. He was approached by the Republican party in 2000, though he was not then a party member, and asked to run against Barbara Boxer. He declined at that time, begging off by saying he had just inked a new syndication deal. He says now that while that was true, he just wasn’t ready.
“I think I’m pretty unelectable as a Republican,” he said recently over lunch before his radio broadcast, a smile and a shrug in his voice. “And I think I’m pretty unelectable as a libertarian. I’m just unelectable.”
In person and off stage, Elder’s bluster is gone, replaced by simple, old-school graciousness and surprising modesty—he becomes small “l” Larry. In other words, what he does on the radio, with the bleeps and buzz words and sound effects, is showmanship, not mania—rare in a world where most celebrities and politicians seem to be guided by affective disorders rather than genuine conviction.
Since Elder’s show went into syndication last year, his listenership has grown steadily. “I get around 2000 emails a day. I’m hearing from people who say, ‘You’ve changed my point of view.’ And that’s really something. The question is, where can I be more effective?” he said. “I consider Rush to be more powerful than perhaps any of the candidates up there. If he’s upset about something he can rally the troops, get people calling and writing emails, get legislation accelerated, sometimes even altered. Unlike Rush, I don’t have 20 million listeners a day. But on a smaller scale, I’m in that position.”
Recently, Elder surprised some of his listeners by announcing that he had decided to join the Republican Party. The move seemed perilous for someone who has made his reputation playing both sides against the middle—he risks alienating some current listeners and turning off future ones in new markets, those liberal fence-sitters who might dismiss a Republican out of hand. But it also seemed like the kind of thing one does to lay the early groundwork for a bid for office. Join now and avoid the rush, perhaps. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elder’s positions on the issues barely align with the Republican Party platform, and chapter eight of Ten Things is titled: “Republicans Versus Democrats—Maybe a Dime’s Worth of Difference.”
Being reminded of that made him chuckle. “After I wrote the book I increased it to 25 cents,” he said. “Now, you’re walking down the street and you see a dime, you may or may not pick it up. But if you see a quarter you will!”
The extra fifteen cents comes from tax cuts, and an aggressive, anti-terror foreign policy—but on many, many other issues, such as increased spending on education, health care, individual and corporate welfare, he parts company with the Party’s practices, though he claims that on paper, the Party’s vision “more closely resembles the vision of the founding fathers” than does the Democrats’. Mainly, he says, he’s tired of being outside “throwing bricks at the castle.”
And the Republicans seem to want him, even though he can’t seem to bring himself to cleave unto them, calling out on the air to his singular constituency of “Republitarians.”
Asked whether being a Party member meant he would be feeling the pressure to go easier on his teammates, he adamantly denied it.
“I’m still a libertarian, and I think I’m going to irk a lot of Republicans because of that. George W. Bush has authorized more money for the war on drugs. Outrageous! The farm subsidies. Outrageous! Fuel tariffs, lumber tariffs, prescription drug benefits. Outrageous!”
The essence of libertarianism, Elder explains, is personal responsibility and the assumption of the consequences of your actions for good or for ill. “That has been the bedrock of my value system as a result of the work ethic I learned from my mom and my dad.”
Elder’s father was born during the Depression and never knew his biological father; the woman he thought was his mother turned out to be a grandmother. At 13, he began a series of jobs that “can only be described as dickensian”: hotel valet, shoe shine boy, pullman porter—the job that first took him to California. “He thought that he would live here someday because it seemed freer and more liberal.”
After serving in World War II as a cook in the Marines, the elder Elder did move to California, where he worked for 12 years as a janitor, cleaning toilets, in order to eventually open his own restaurant. “He took a second full time job, cooked for a family on weekends, and went to night school to get his GED,” Elder said, “and never complained about racism, prejudice, the lack of opportunity. My father always told me that sky’s the limit, that the country had radically changed since he was a kid and that if you work hard, keep your nose clean, and don’t make bad moral mistakes, you’ll be just fine. That is what my parents always drummed into me, so I never thought of myself as a victim.
End of Part 2. Source: Los Angeles Radio People-Dec. 12, 2003
By 12:10 a.m., six tired, wrung out fans remained. The store had closed over an hour ago. A thirty-something man wearing shorts handed Larry his book, shook his hand, then meekly proffered a cell phone. “Larry,” he said.
“This book is a present for my wife, Natalie, but if I called her, would you mind saying hello? Because unless she hears your voice I don’t think she’s going to believe I’ve been out all night at a bookstore.”
Larry agreed. The man, whose name was Tim, dialed the phone, and handed it to Larry. “Natalie?” Larry said. “This is Larry Elder. I’m here at a strip club with your husband Tim, and he’s acting like a complete clown…. Yeah, but the good news is that I know an excellent divorce attorney, and I can probably get you a deal.”
Still on, still engaged, still doing improv for an audience of six sleepy white suburbanites, and enjoying every minute of it. It’s one thing to have them at hello; Elder still had them long after anyone else would have said goodbye. As one gaping onlooker commented. “It’s amazing. Anyone who meets this man in person will vote for him.”
Will Larry Elder run for office? The short answer is yes—probably. But when is another matter. He was approached by the Republican party in 2000, though he was not then a party member, and asked to run against Barbara Boxer. He declined at that time, begging off by saying he had just inked a new syndication deal. He says now that while that was true, he just wasn’t ready.
“I think I’m pretty unelectable as a Republican,” he said recently over lunch before his radio broadcast, a smile and a shrug in his voice. “And I think I’m pretty unelectable as a libertarian. I’m just unelectable.”
In person and off stage, Elder’s bluster is gone, replaced by simple, old-school graciousness and surprising modesty—he becomes small “l” Larry. In other words, what he does on the radio, with the bleeps and buzz words and sound effects, is showmanship, not mania—rare in a world where most celebrities and politicians seem to be guided by affective disorders rather than genuine conviction.
Since Elder’s show went into syndication last year, his listenership has grown steadily. “I get around 2000 emails a day. I’m hearing from people who say, ‘You’ve changed my point of view.’ And that’s really something. The question is, where can I be more effective?” he said. “I consider Rush to be more powerful than perhaps any of the candidates up there. If he’s upset about something he can rally the troops, get people calling and writing emails, get legislation accelerated, sometimes even altered. Unlike Rush, I don’t have 20 million listeners a day. But on a smaller scale, I’m in that position.”
Recently, Elder surprised some of his listeners by announcing that he had decided to join the Republican Party. The move seemed perilous for someone who has made his reputation playing both sides against the middle—he risks alienating some current listeners and turning off future ones in new markets, those liberal fence-sitters who might dismiss a Republican out of hand. But it also seemed like the kind of thing one does to lay the early groundwork for a bid for office. Join now and avoid the rush, perhaps. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elder’s positions on the issues barely align with the Republican Party platform, and chapter eight of Ten Things is titled: “Republicans Versus Democrats—Maybe a Dime’s Worth of Difference.”
Being reminded of that made him chuckle. “After I wrote the book I increased it to 25 cents,” he said. “Now, you’re walking down the street and you see a dime, you may or may not pick it up. But if you see a quarter you will!”
The extra fifteen cents comes from tax cuts, and an aggressive, anti-terror foreign policy—but on many, many other issues, such as increased spending on education, health care, individual and corporate welfare, he parts company with the Party’s practices, though he claims that on paper, the Party’s vision “more closely resembles the vision of the founding fathers” than does the Democrats’. Mainly, he says, he’s tired of being outside “throwing bricks at the castle.”
And the Republicans seem to want him, even though he can’t seem to bring himself to cleave unto them, calling out on the air to his singular constituency of “Republitarians.”
Asked whether being a Party member meant he would be feeling the pressure to go easier on his teammates, he adamantly denied it.
“I’m still a libertarian, and I think I’m going to irk a lot of Republicans because of that. George W. Bush has authorized more money for the war on drugs. Outrageous! The farm subsidies. Outrageous! Fuel tariffs, lumber tariffs, prescription drug benefits. Outrageous!”
The essence of libertarianism, Elder explains, is personal responsibility and the assumption of the consequences of your actions for good or for ill. “That has been the bedrock of my value system as a result of the work ethic I learned from my mom and my dad.”
Elder’s father was born during the Depression and never knew his biological father; the woman he thought was his mother turned out to be a grandmother. At 13, he began a series of jobs that “can only be described as dickensian”: hotel valet, shoe shine boy, pullman porter—the job that first took him to California. “He thought that he would live here someday because it seemed freer and more liberal.”
After serving in World War II as a cook in the Marines, the elder Elder did move to California, where he worked for 12 years as a janitor, cleaning toilets, in order to eventually open his own restaurant. “He took a second full time job, cooked for a family on weekends, and went to night school to get his GED,” Elder said, “and never complained about racism, prejudice, the lack of opportunity. My father always told me that sky’s the limit, that the country had radically changed since he was a kid and that if you work hard, keep your nose clean, and don’t make bad moral mistakes, you’ll be just fine. That is what my parents always drummed into me, so I never thought of myself as a victim.
End of Part 2. Source: Los Angeles Radio People-Dec. 12, 2003