When I was your age, I used to listen to Rush LImbaugh, sometimes. Not often, because he was on on weekday afternoons, when I was in school. But, now and then, when I had a day off, I’d hear him. At the time he was calling himself Geoff Christie. He was a rock Jock on KQV AM, the coolest rock station in Pittsburgh, PA.
AM Rock was an interesting phenomenon. Countercultural songs like “4 Dead in Ohio” about Kent State, interspersed with tunes like “Yummy Yummy Yummy I Got Love In My Tummy”, and Bobby Goldsboro’s ultra saccharine “Honey”. In between were ads for local department stores, clothing companies, shoe stores, fast food restaurants, soda companies, all eager to reach the burgeoning youth market. All of it presented by the disc jockey.
Have you ever seen “Good Morning Vietnam”? That was an A.M. DJ. They played all the hits all the time, with patter, quick, loud, cheerful. Silly jokes, comic characters, played by the jock. All designed to appeal to the baby boomers.
DJs at KQV broadcast behind a plate glass window, at the Chamber of Commerce building downtown. We thought it was the coolest thing in the world to go down there and watch them.
Of course that meant they were visible. Which was one of Geoff Christie’s problems. He wasn’t that much to look at then, with his receding hairline and his increasing waistline. He lacked the charm the other guys on the station had. He didn’t really understand what his audience was like, or what they were interested in. If you wanted to get the girls to call in, you asked them if they thought David Cassidy was cooler than Bobby Sherman, or if they would wear a pants suit to school. You didn’t ask them to call if they were against “women’s lib” (These days we call it feminism.)
A 16 year old feminist, I called in filled with righteous indignation, and we had words. End result, I stopped listening to KQV. Some months later, he stopped working for KQV. Even if he hadn’t been caught, more than once, cruising known gay hangouts, (It used to be illegal to be gay.) he would have gone. He was too mean to be a good rock jock.
LImbaugh went out to California, where he lived on welfare for a time, before he found his niche on talk radio. But he is now, and always has been a failed rock jock.
For the life of me, I have never understood why people listen to him.
When I was your age, I didn’t listen to Rush Limbaugh. You should do the same.