I apologize if the has been written. If so, let me know and I’ll take it down – if I can figure out how to do that...
I use C-SPAN the way my mother used radio. It’s on if I home and sometimes I actually listen to it. Today I came in after running errands and flipped on the TV. Shortly, a rerun of the Wheaton College Tribute Dinner to Dennis Hastert began to air. The MCs were Don and Roma Wade from WLS in Chicago. It caught my attention because the first words I heard were "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and God bless America."
Now that they had my attention, I was hooked. Who are these people? I live about three hours west of Chicago so I know about WLS but I am a public radio person. The teaser had made it sound like a bipartisan bunch of folks who wanted to honor Hastert so I wondered what would come next. I didn’t have to wait long. The rhetoric was edgy, just shy of total Democrat-bashing, but not overt until this gem:
"I should point out, we did some research in preparing for this evening, uh, for this tribute, and we looked up Denny’s Kindergarten record (audience laughs nervously) and, and ya know what he wrote? I-i-it’s crayon and it’s a squiggle, like might be an elephant. Very suspicious... "
I don’t think Mr. Wade really understood how this little tidbit hit the audience because a little bit later he let fly with the real zinger:
...I want you to visualize this... visualize this for a second. You’re, you’re in the men’s room in the Capitol and, and in the stall next to Denny on his right is Larry Craig and in the stall to his left is a Democrat. You know what Denny would do? He would get out of there so fast and let them get together, let them get together. (Draws his outstretched hands together as if in prayer! Seriously nervous tittering in the audience now...) Roma says, "Oh dear..."
You couldn’t have cut the tension with a machete. It was embarrassing and demeaning to the honoree. Don and Roma couldn’t get the idea that this was a classy dinner at the Hilton Hotel and Towers and not their little talk show studio with its wingnut audience. I felt bad, not for them, but for the people who attended from both parties. I can understand this kind of vile speech on a silly radio show but the people were there to honor the service of a hometown guy. These people all think he’s great so why do the Wades think they have to put other people down to lift Hastert up?
Anyway, I just thought some might want to be aware of this. The quotations are my own transcriptions so any errors are mine. I found the program by searching Hastert on the C-SPAN site. I don’t know how to link directly to the video. This link might get you there, otherwise, the tribute showed up on the top of the search list. The first quotation appears at about the 3 minute mark.