Michael Graham, back in the day

Radio Host Fired After Anti-Islam Remarks

This is not one of those I-knew-him when-stories. This is one of those-I listened-to-him when stories.

Once upon a time, there was an AM easy-listening station in Richmond, Virginia. Then the FCC decided to de-regulate broadcasting and allow media conglomerates to buy up a lot of stations in each market. Clear Channel did that, and wound up owning a bunch here, from rap to oldies. They sent in an employee, Randall Bloomquist, to convert the easy-listening station to a talk-radio format. This earned the undying animosity of stodgy Richmond residents, who had been listening to the same format for years. Clear Channel didn’t particularly care since they were a business in business to make money.

The lineup included the usual list of suspects: Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and in the afternoon drivetime, a local host named Michael Graham, a former South Carolina Republican operative. Graham was clearly on the fast track, determined to emulate the success of his hero, Rush Limbaugh. To his credit, though, he didn’t drink the Flavor-Aid when it was revealed that Rush had been taking popping Oxycontins like M&Ms. He was critical of Limbaugh.

I started listening to Graham during the run-up to the Iraq War because I didn’t have internet, cable or XM satellite radio at the time and any news was better than not much news. Graham would occasionally have on a critic of the drumbeat leading up to the war. I believe Mike Farrell was a guest a couple of times. (A famous tactic for devaluing the opposition, as Garofalo has noted: get an actor as spokesman.) Graham was a part of the noise machine favoring the Great Patriotic War, though he was not as primitive in evoking emotions as Mike Gallagher and Glenn Beck. Then, of course, there was the initial euphoria following the easy defeat of the Iraqi military (surprise, surprise – we kicked the ass of a third-world country), followed by the slow realization that – hey – there were no WMDs.

While Graham had a cynical and mean streak, he was certainly not operating on the level of the talk show host who followed him on the station later in the evening, Michael Savage. Savage seems to have a profound dislike for humanity in general.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, Graham got his big break and left for WMAL radio in Washington, DC, so he didn’t have to answer to his Richmond audience for his support of what turned out to be the 40-car-pileup on the Interstate that it is Iraq today. He probably would have a better job of explaining it away, or would have actually admitted to the mistakes the Bush administration admitted. Unlike, say, Sean Hannity, he was actually smarter than his audience, which is actually one of the reasons I believe Sean is so successful. Hannity has a certain low cunning but his knowledge of history is as thin as Karl Rove’s hairline. I once heard Sean explain Arnold Schwarzenegger’s father’s collaboration with the Nazis based on Hannity’s viewing of “The Sound of Music.”

My take on Graham was that, unlike Limbaugh, he actually believed in the ideology he pushed on the air, though he was certainly a careerist as well. Limbaugh is outrageous for the sake of being outrageous and attracting listeners. I think Michael actually does believe that Islam is a terrorist religion, which is why he didn’t back down when WABC urged him to make acts of contrition.

Of course, selective quotations and examples from history can give pretty much any religion a terrorist label. In any case, I don’t know whether Graham’s misguided conviction makes him one of the few talk show hosts who actually got fired for his genuine beliefs rather than simply for pushing the envelope for the sake of ratings. I suspect he will pay for that, in that now he will never achieve the success that other right-wing talkers have achieved. Then again, as H.L. Mencken said so famously, no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, and that goes mega-dittoes for talk radio.