An Important Message For Bill Cunningham

Dear Mr. Cunningham:

Yes, we know your power is out.  As I type this, 154,000 people in the Cincinnati area are still without power in the wake of Hurricane Ike’s visit to the Tristate.  Unlike you, most of them do not have a radio show on a 50,000-watt AM station.

However, let’s put a few of things in perspective.  Since your power’s out, you can spend the time you normally spend watching Hannity and Colmes to good use turning this over in your addled brain.

1. Tropical storms don’t normally reach Ohio with any degree of intensity or moisture.  The last one to come to Ohio still relatively intact was Opal in 1995, which didn’t come through Cincinnati.  It only dumped an unexpected rain shower on us.  The last hurricane to make it to Ohio with its winds still intact was the killer storm that struck Galveston in 1900.  In other words, this is a freak occurrence.  And you want to sue Duke Energy because a freak storm, the likes of which hasn’t happened here in 108 years, is keeping you from watching The O’Reilly Factor?  Hey, dumbass!  Downtown didn’t lose power!  Go stay in The Cincinnatian!  It’s not like you’re poor or something!
2. Your power’s been out for only four days.  I have a friend in Texas who also has no power and doesn’t expect to well into next week.  In Houston and Galveston, they’re looking at SIX WEEKS! Quit being a pussy, you pussy.  You’ll get your power back in time to masturbate to more footage of Sarah Palin.
3. If I yell “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater, the police would arrest me and quite rightly.  I’m creating a menace to public safety by stirring up people in an enclosed space.  Similarly, if someone puts on a swastika arm band and starts reading from Mein Kampf outside a synagogue, he will be arrested probably seconds before the congregation breaks out the pitchforks and clubs and considers whether dead bigot meat is kosher or not.  You are on 50,000 watts threatening Duke Energy, the people trying to turn your freaking power on, not only on your show, but other people’s shows on WLW.  Meanwhile, people who will never afford to live in your palatial Indian Hill estate are already stressing from the loss of power.  Were I Simon Leis, I’d be waiting for you in the lobby of the former Bank One Towers with a pair of cuffs, a Miranda Card, and a copy of public safety laws which you apparently forgot to read while you were in law school marching on the plains of Xavier.  In short, Willy, you are a public safety menace.  Rather than waste the sheriff’s time, SHUT THE HELL UP!
4. Let me give you the same advice you gave to survivors of Katrina back in 2005:  Man up!  I’ve lived in Cincinnati for 17 years now, and I’ve yet to see you be anything resembling a man.  Keep in mind I don’t define a man the way your fellow WLW host, Tracy Jones, does.  But we do agree on one thing.  A man doesn’t whine like you do when he’s merely inconvenienced.  A good start would be to apologize.  You’ve been nothing but a child with an AARP card all week.  Time to prove you’re at least technically an adult.

To paraphrase Sam Wyche, Willy, you don’t live in Houston, you live in Cincinnati!  Grow up!

They Really Need To Toss Him Under The #82 And Let The Freeway Traffic Finish The Job

WLW talk show host Bill Cunningham has a problem.  He doesn’t understand why John McCain “threw me under a bus” with the national media.  Apparently, McCain didn’t cotton to Cunningham’s trademark confrontational remarks before a political rally yesterday.

Here’s my problem.  Cunningham is one of Cincinnati’s biggest crybabies.  Criticize him, and he has to go on the warpath to discredit his detractors.  This time out, he’s insulted because McCain, like, yanno, doesn’t want to play politics as usual, doesn’t want to be one of those Republican candidates who toe the Far Right line to microscopic tolerances.  I don’t want to tell tales out of school, but I suspect John McCain has never knocked on the wall of a men’s room stall or shown any interest in Congressional pages.  Some of Cunningham’s heroes seem to run into problems with that.  (Full disclosure:  I know enough people who know Cunningham to say that he doesn’t have that problem either.  One listen to his old night show on Fridays is enough to prove that.)

But that’s not Bill Cunningham.  Since the 1980’s, Cunningham has made his fortune in radio as a True Believer to the right of Rush Limbaugh.  Sometimes, in the context of Cincinnati culture, he’s pretty damned funny.  Like when he went on vacation, and WLW’s general manager came on the air to say she was offended by his comments and had suspended Cunningham.  With a liberal he respects, like Mayor Mark Mallory or Governor Ted Strickland, he’ll gladly play the buffoon.  But…

Knowing full well he was being asked to introduce John McCain, knowing full well what kind of campaign McCain wants to run, Cunningham took it upon himself to try and kick McCain further to the right than the people voting for him wanted by crossing the line in his remarks about Barack Obama.

Cunningham likes to say he was just using Obama’s middle name, like he does with Hillary Rodham Clinton or any other politician he discusses.  However, Cunningham is on record as saying the closet Muslim myth and the black separatist myth, both long since disproven and discredited, are facts “not reported by the mainstream media.”

Now he’s upset McCain took him out to the woodshed.  Excuse me, Bill, but you weren’t on your dime, you were on McCain’s.  If anyone should be apologizing, it should be you.  Seems like every time you open your mouth anymore, I feel embarrassed to live in Cincinnati.

Bill, you may be a fine American, but you’re a total asshole sometimes.  This is one of those times.