Got a story for you. It was during the Democratic primary wars last Presidential election and I was working in Fall River, MA doing talk. I was running the board for a guest host, and serving as a co-host at the same time.
This guy was a big time PUMA and was, on nearly every appearance on the station (he'd come in more or less once a week) would bash Obama like the most rabid of right wingers, using their attack points and dog whistles. The birther crap was about the ONLY thing we didn't get out of this guy, but Jeremiah Wright Gawd Damn America Bill Ayers Secretly A Muslim yada yada yackity smackity ad nauseum.
So here we are, at the end of hour two of a two hour excursion, and I'm about hitting my tipping point. It was already acrimonious in there, I was flipping his attacks back in his face and the calls were breaking mostly my way.
Mostly.
I think there was about 20 minutes left in the show, and I'd already gotten the "Shut up, this is MY show" treatment from him a few minutes back.
So finally the hostility was dying down, in spite of the fact that his hour topic was "Is America ready for a black President?"
Which didn't set real well with me. I had my knives out, of course.
So we'd just cleared a caller off the phone and he and I are going back and forth and he was playing the "experience/red phone 3am" game, and referred to Obama's Presidential run as "presumptuous."
"Presumptuous?" I asked him.
"Well, sure!" he said defensively.
I smiled and said, "You mean, 'uppity'? Don't you?"
That was too much, I guess. "Are you calling me a racist? How dare you call me a racist!" and stripped off his headphones.
"10:43, and we'll be back with your calls in seconds."
The guy actually stormed out of the control room and I had to finish the show on my own.
Which was fine.
But...did I actually think that Obama's election would usher in a post-racial America? No, of course not......but I never dreamed we'd fall this far.
"Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization," Mehlman said at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."
