Post #55074 by freddiefreelance on Tue, Oct 14, 2003 1:19 PM

I've been debating with myself whether to post here since I had such mixed feelings about the man, but since I seem to be the only person posting here to've met & talked to the man...

When I 1st moved to L.A. back in the mid-'80s I would watch his show & argue with it, yelling @ the screen that he was wrong. I watched him everyday to disagree with what he was saying.

After living in L.A. about 6 months/a year I found better things to do with my time & stopped watching him, eventually coming to think that what he was saying wasn't important since I wasn't interested in it any more.

I later met him while I was an Intern @ KROQ, about the time he was thinking of running for Mayor of L.A., & found him to be an articulate & private man. I asked him how he could run for mayor when he lived in O.C. & he told me he lived up by canyon country but still in the city environs of L.A. He later dropped out of the mayor race 'cause people couldn't differentiate between his public & private faces. I came to realize that although he was a republican, conservative & a patriot (as he measured it), he still wasn't as extreme as he made himself out to be on his show. His show was sort of the talk show equivalent of an interview with a pro wrestler: Screaming, spraying spittle, throwing things, belittling his opponents & occasionally his fans... Very much like an old-school pro wrestler.

Later I remember someone belittling his daughter for some role she took, I can't remember if it was on his show or in another interview, but he took the guy apart verbally from top to bottom & back 3 generations. And anyone who defends his kids like that, right or wrong & whether he agrees with'em or not, is OK in my book. At least @ that moment.