A few weeks ago I gave a Midwest Family Radio Group advertising representative (who was/is courteous, friendly and competent) a copy of my book Springfield Aviation when she promised to deliver to WMAY program director Jim Leach. She returned a few days later saying she had given the book to Jim, that he said he knew me and that as soon as all politics was over November 5 or soon after, he would take a closer look at the book. The book I gave her was not a freebie from Arcadia Publishing; I paid for it because I believed chances were good Jim might call me to chat about the book. Now it doesn’t matter.
I’ve been a Jim Leach fan for almost as long as he’s been on WMAY. I have a soft spot in my heart for the station. When studios were located on West Jefferson in the mid 70s, I worked as a graduate school intern in the news department, filing stories and having the time of my life. State Capitol live feeds when the General Assembly was in session, other reports from the community when the GA wasn’t in session. This was during the Dan Walker years. Richard Dailey the elder was still Mayor of Chicago. Those were good times. Jim Leach’s early gig at MAY was the afternoon drive time slot, and he did very well. He seemed to be the voice of reason in a boat load of looney tunes.
He is not the same head he is today. The respect he showed for callers has disappeared. His disrespect for callers is no better than the worst of the luna-trip array of angry combatants who bring to local radio the same regard for civil discourse John Belushi ACTED during the famous food fight scene in the classic movie Animal House. Only with Leach and his accessories, it isn’t acting and it’s not entertainment.
During today’s noon to 3 p broadcast, the master of twisting the last drop of irony-blood out of a turnip. the program director called attention to a national broadcaster who had sliced and diced the accidental “wardrobe malfunction” of Superbowl Janet Jackson and urged hell-fire and damnation on the schmuck because he unleashed “the F-WORD” during a live cable TV broadcast this morning. So far so good: calling a national name for letting “potty mouth language” out of his mouth: he who had been so unmerciful with Jackson years before. But when a caller called to complain about the language used by two other radio show hosts, language this listener found offensive, Leach tore into him like a shark into the passengers floating for their lives following the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in August 1945! Leach was merciless, a child on mic seeming to delight viscerally in mocking a sincere listener with a valid point to make.
Leach’s opinion that the world is not going to hades in a handbasket because someone glimpses a bare breast on a half-time extraviganza or hears the “F-word” — You want trouble bucko? How about sneaking the dreaded “N-word” into your radio patter? — on a basic cable TV newscast. The world will recover from that once, twice, a thousand times. More alarming is that lack of respect of most WMAY personalities for people who have a differing opinion: the perverse joy they seem to revel in with almost blood-lust ecstasy. That’s why the only person I will tune into any more on that station is Frank McNeil: a sane head, a good head.
What Leach fails to consider is that language is not all either Mary Poppins or Gary Guttemouth: either talking like a 19th century British novelist or a drunken sailor. There is a vocabulary CLOSE TO the “F/N-word zone” that is as inappropriate as your worst string of “F words” and that range of verbiage is not appropriate for public air waves. The bilious flaunting and mockery of those with opinions who did not parrot the radio personality on air is inappropriate even more. I don’t want all of us to agree with everyone; I just want to hear more respect on the air.
I’ll occasionally listen to Leach as I occasionally listen to the personality who is on the air from 3 to 6: five minutes at a time, ten at a time, whatever, until a KY Jelly commercial comes on or Mark T. takes a flying leap off the deep end of propriety, a practice apparently sadly encouraged by the program director.
As for the book I have given to the station, they can have it. I would no more dirty the soles of my feet walking into the studio out Route 54 in the wilds of rural central Illinois — as close to Springfield as Chatham and Rochester — than I would sully my ears by listening to the station when I knew the experience will be neither enlightening or entertaining.
Goodbye MAY; hello more frequently to WGN and WUIS.
Listen long . . . . . and proper.
