A blogger steals someone else's life story and calls it her own.
How William Orr's quest for better, cheaper gas became a crime.
I worked at Kmart with John McCain's director of strategy.
Oh boy. What follows are calls from a bunch of aspiring comedians. One guy says he'd like to be black because he thinks he'd have an easier time getting food stamps. Kaufman rages: "You bigot! You racist! You guys, you've got the wrong radio show!" The next caller says he'd like to wake up black because he'd "get" affirmative action. Kaufman flushes him, adding, "You'd also get me to beat you up." Another caller suggests that hanging a noose from a tree is protected under the First Amendment — it's free speech.
Something isn't gelling. Maybe it's the topic?The next day, Kaufman decides to read an e-mail from a listener during her opening monologue. "I apparently upset many of you [yesterday]," she says, "as I generally seem to do when I talk about anything except illegal immigration."
Deep exhale.
"This is from Chris in Parkland: 'PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE' — three pleases, with capital letters — 'No O.J. No Andrew Meyer being Tased. No Jena 6 today. There are things that are going on that will impact our lives more than any of the above. If ever there was a time when we needed our allies in the media to hammer on the fact that we need to be on the phones with the Senate, it is now.' Yes, it is now."
But Kaufman has already played a sound bite of George W. Bush stumbling over his words. She's called him stupid and invited listeners to defend him. The phone is ringing.
Cecilio in Greenacres takes her to task for disrespecting the president, but his English is heavily accented and difficult to understand. She calls Cecilio a moron and hangs up.
Then the program gets interrupted by a breaking news story about a small plane that crashed near the shoulder of the southbound lane of Interstate 95. The flow of Kaufman's show is broken. She storms out of the studio and starts to pace the halls barefoot. The station's morning news anchor, Ron Hersey, slides into her place to handle the plane coverage.
Producer Brennan Forsyth has several callers to the Joyce Kaufman Show on hold, but they start to drop off as snippet after snippet comes in about the downed plane.
Suddenly, the phone lights up again. It's a woman who thinks the station switched to news so Kaufman could hunt down Cecilio in Greenacres and beat him up. As he hangs up the phone, Forsyth mutters, "Boy, they're crawling out of the woodwork today. The crazies."