Radio Host Prager Going Ballistic Over CNN's Non-use of Word "Terrorist"

You all should give a listen to Dennis Prager (syndicated radio host) right now. He is livid over the CNN/Reuter's decision not to use the word "terrorists" in describing the "alleged hijackers."

"I hate fools," Dennis says, and calls them "cowardly" and "incompetent." He states they don't "tell the truth" and/or are "manipulating the truth." (No news to FReepers.) He is asking his listeners not to watch CNN in protest; he states this is a first for him - he never tells listeners what to read or watch - but thinks CNN has gone way over the line. Furthermore, he says he is no longer going to be citing stories over the air sourcing CNN or Reuters as he feels they have lost all credibility.

Dennis says he has been invited on CNN a number of times, and if this means he is never invited back on again, so be it. He says it's time for all of us to stand up and be heard.

Here's one more for Dennis....

McVeigh attorneys to appeal ruling against stay

June 6, 2001 Posted: 3:51 PM EDT (1951 GMT)

DENVER, Colorado (CNN) -- Calling Timothy McVeigh an "instrument of death and destruction," U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch refused Wednesday to stop Monday's scheduled execution of the Oklahoma City bomber.

With time running out for the condemned Gulf War veteran who was found guilty four years ago of the single-deadliest terrorist act on U.S. soil, McVeigh's attorneys vowed to appeal the ruling.

I've been living in Alberta for the last two years for work, but I'll be back soon!

Jay Diamond has served as an occasional fill-in guest for Bob Grant on WOR, and was even called in to partner with Grant on his show in the aftermath of September 11th. My understanding was that when he was fired from WEVD he was given a very handsome severance package that limits his options to have a regular show on another station. If I remember correctly, this restriction is supposed to end sometime this year.

I don't know if you remember this, but Jay used to have a morning show on WABC that ended at 11:00 AM. Ed Koch did his show from 11:00 to Noon, followed by Rush Limbaugh. Koch was out sick one day, so instead of finding a replacement for a one hour show they extended Jay Diamond's show for the addtional hour. That morning was another in a long line of legendary moments on radio for Diamond, because they never announced that Koch would not be doing his show. Instead, Jay filled in and did the show as Ed Koch himself, fielding calls and offering ridiculous, outlandish commentary on events of the day.

Some of the phone calls were memorable.

Caller: "What the hell do you mean by that? On your show yesterday you took the exact opposite stand on this issue!"

"Ed Koch": "Oh, did I? Well, uh, from one day to the next I have no idea, uh, what the heck I'm thinking. This is Ed Koch, your Voice of Reason, on WABC!"

I remember where I was as this show was going on, and I knew something was up because something about "Ed Koch" didn't sound just right. I must have nearly driven off the road about eight times during that hour.

Here's a bit of information that you might find interesting. After that phone call to Jay's show that I mentioned, he and I reached a sort of agreement to disagree when I called back to apologize off the air. He only knew me by my first name, but he was fascinated to learn that I worked in New York several floors up from the WABC studios in Penn Plaza.

Very soon after that, New York Post entertainment writer John Mainelli (the former WABC program director who first hired Jay) wrote an article about Jay Diamond titled "The Angriest Man in Radio." I responded to this article with a letter to the Post that was, to put it mildly, eloquent in Diamond's defense (the article was about how pissed off Diamond had become over the declining quality of radio).

I had e-mailed WEVD to let Jay know that I had written the letter, then promised to follow the e-mail up with the text of the letter. There was no need to do that, since the Post published the letter a few days later. What was really bizarre about this story is that I never listened to him in my office (AM radio signals are bad in Manhattan), but I happened to be in another guy's office for ten minutes that afternoon. He listened to WABC, and when I told him that Jay was on WEVD he turned his radio on (he was able to get a good signal because his desk was right next to a window) and turned the dial from 770 to 1050. The timing was too perfect to be a coincidence, as no more than 30 seconds passed before Jay thanked me by name when a caller asked him if he had read the follow-up letters in the Post. The guy in that office looked at me with one of those open-mouthed, frozen expressions ("Is he talking about YOU?")

Jay and I traded e-mails for a while after that, but after he left WEVD I lost touch with him. I remember him saying once that Ed Koch never forgave him for all those parodies and impersonations. Oddly enough, he said Al Sharpton thought Diamond's impersonations of HIM were some of the funniest things he had ever heard (especially the story that Jay made up about how Al Sharpton was really a Jewish kid named Albert Julius Sharfman who had been adopted by a Baptist family in Alabama when he was a child) and still laughs about them to this day.

If you have never heard Jay Diamond, you have missed a vital part of your life.

He has often been described as a bit erratic, often hard to get along with due to his eccentric personality. I found, however, that he could best be described as "unique," and if he has one fault it is that he has so little patience for many callers to his show. I never understood how a talk radio hsot could have that problem until I heard an interview with a marketing expert a few years ago. He said that talk radio shows are among the most difficult for marketers to guage in terms of the demographics of the radio audience. The reason, he said, is that talk radio listeners tend to be intelligent, successful people while talk radio callers tend to be further down the socioeconomic scale.

Diamond's strength was that he is extremely intelligent and rational, with enough of that grit and sarcasm to make him successful in New York. He may have been trained as an opera singer (I know he was an off-Broadway actor at one time), for he would occasionally sing Bing Crosby tunes on the air in a way that was rather eerie. I remember hearing him interview Crosby's widow (or maybe a daughter?) once, and she asked him to sing for her. He didn't want to, but she insisted, and he went into this rendition of "Do You Hear What I Hear?" that sent an amazing chill through me. She was speechless for a few moments afterward (and probably in tears), and when she was finally able to speak she could only say "Oh, my!" over and over again.

When they came back from a commercial break, she laughed and told Jay that she thought Bing had come back to sing to her one last time.

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