How many hours must I have spent listening to Bob over the past 35 years? I was in high school when Bob arrived on the New York radio scene. There wasn’t anyone else quite like him. There still isn’t.
This January 13th, Friday the 13th, is an unlucky day for the multi-generational fans of the Bob Grant Show. Bob will return from vacation on Jan. 5 and do 7 final days of programs for WOR. The sudden but “mutually agreed” leave will end nearly 10 years at WOR. Bob, more than a bit past the age most men seek out retirement, might do just that. Or as Bob stated in the New York Post, “Maybe somebody will make me an offer I can’t refuse.”
Michael Savage, whose show follows Grant on WOR, lamented, “Where am I going to get a lead-in like Bob Grant?” Well he certainly isn’t going to get it from restaurant and food show host DiSpirito who the station claims is going to take the drive-time slot. We’ll find out before long what’s really in store for WOR listeners. Savage invited Grant to call in for some reminiscing about the early days.
But maybe Grant is too busy for reminiscing. Maybe he’s planning to add his voice to the satellite mix. As the Post stated, both XM and Sirius “expressed immediate interest”, upon learning the news.
Whatever the path, good luck Bob. And thanks. It was a terrific 35 years. Straight ahead.
Kingmaker, villain to some, loved by generations of listeners, betrayed by a governor, and schemed against by a slimebag U.S. Senator, its been a tumultuous career for Bob Grant. Long before anyone was to hear of Rush or Sean or Howard, it was Bob who year after year led the ratings in New York radio.
| "it’s sick out there and getting sicker" |
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Grant is weaving his way through his fourth decade of NY talk. Race-baiters, leftists and all other types of pc police have tried to term it hate radio. The show has always been an in-your-face, tell-it-like-it-is, no-holds-barred presentation from someone seeing their nation heading in a horribly wrong direction. As Bob often says “it’s sick out there and getting sicker.” In a city where some school pregnancy rates threatened to outpace literacy rates, and welfare moms produced collections of fatherless children, Bob mildly suggested an answer. Thus was born the Bob Grant Mandatory Sterilization Program. It was not enacted.
Way back in 1971, after a trip to Israel, where he learned of Muammar Gadhafi’s sponsoring of terrorist events, Bob would end every broadcast with the exhortation, “Get Gadhafi!” He continued until 1986 when Saint Ronald’s F-11s nearly solved the problem. We now know all these years later that this terrorist leader was also responsible for Pan Am 103. Too bad they weren’t Bob’s F11s.
Man of Independence
It was the only time I’ve seen Bob in person. Luckily, I didn’t have to go far through the snow, it was just the next town over. It was in a school auditorium and the speaker at the podium was calling for the impeachment of the President. The speaker was Grant. Today, its not hard to imagine him calling for a presidential impeachment. However, the year was 1973.
A friend of mine likes to tell the story of the time Bob revoked freedom of speech. In light of the apathetic frame of mind of so much of the population, Bob explained that perhaps people don’t deserve all the freedoms they enjoy. And thus he spaketh and freedom of speech was no more. And terrified callers in the little hamlet of New York City wondered at how Grant could officially end freedom of speech and how they might earn their rights back. Before long, Grant, being a kind ruler of the airwaves, returned freedom to the people.
From Grant’s “Let’s Be Heard”, 1996
“America will not fall because our enemies are so strong – it will fall because we are so weak.”
“I was born a conservative. . . . We lived in a crowded apartment building . . . the fashion was to put a photograph of your candidate in the window. You’d stand outside looking – Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Roosevelt . . . Wilkie?! That was our apartment. I got into fistfights because of my father’s rebel politics. He wasn’t hanging around with kids in schoolyards or on the streeet. He didn’t have to defend Wilkie with his fists like I did.”
On freedom of speech and p.c. – “Gee, did I hurt your feelings? You’d like me to say I’m sorry? I can’t – the pain is the price of freedom. And I’d rather you be free than pain-free.”
On religious fanaticism – “People use it as an excuse for all manner of ungodly behavior. Religious zealotry has been the cause of more pain, more anguish, more sorrow in the history of civilization than perhaps any other allegiance.”
On Mario Cuomo – “Hey, tu sei un proprio sfaccim.”
On elitist journalism – “They don’t gather news. News stories aren’t like acorns lying on the ground waiting for squirrrels to gather them. The media invent news. They decide news. They decree news.”
“Talk radio represents the democratization of the mass media.”
