Riding The
Radio Waves
A

Hallandale, Fla.
fter cover-
ing an
extremely
long political sea-
son, including a
fair share of stump
speeches, I didn't
have the patience
HARRY
for fighting crowds.
KI RS BAUM
I wasn't about to
Columnist
wait in line for a
cavity search to get
on a plane during the Thanksgiving
holiday weekend, so I chose to aim
the "Silver Bullet" (my Mini-Cooper)
south towards a much-needed Florida
vacation.
Driving alone has always been the
best way to clear my head, and the
longer the trip the better. I like to
blast the Allman Brothers, Twisted
Sister and Dean Martin while I'm on
the road, but after a while, I'm search-
ing for something different.
One of the best features in the
Silver Bullet is the autosearch. With
one push of the button, the radio
automatically finds the stations with
the six strongest signals and, at a
leisurely 85 mph, it's a button I
pushed about every 30 minutes.
For most of the first day driving in
the rain through Ohio and Kentucky,
I couldn't get away from sports talk
radio, and the topic was, of course,
Monday Night Football and its pre-
game promotion featuring Desperate
Housewives star Nicollette Sheridan
clad only in a towel, talking sugges-
tively to famous wide receiver Terrell
Owens in a locker room.
No one told me the final score or
even which teams played, but the 30-
second segment was the hottest NFL
story since Janet Jackson's wardrobe
malfunction.
I didn't get to see the clip until later
that night in a Chattanooga hotel
room, and what I saw was insignifi-
cant and not newsworthy. I've seen
more racy pop-up ads for Viagra on
Internet Web sites.
It was about 30 minutes south of
Chattanooga that I pushed autosearch

Harry Kirsbaum's e-mail address is
hkirsbaum@thejewishnews.com

and entered Christian World. For the
next eight hours, at least two of the
six stations were of the fire-and-brim-
stone kind. I learned that I would rot
in hell if I didn't accept the love of
"JEEEE-zus" into my life.
I also would rot in hell if I didn't
complain to the Federal
Communications Commission about
Nicollette. Obviously, the religious
right has spent a lot on postage lately
on the alphabet network.
First, there was the furious letter-
writing campaign that led ABC affili-
ates across the country to pull the
Veterans' Day broadcast of the much
too violent and crude movie, Saving
Private Ryan, or face a $250,000 fine.
In Detroit, I was treated to Matlock
re-runs.
And now, less than one week later, I
was treated to this.
Somehow, in this newly moral
country, the Nicollette Sheridan/T.O.
thing transcended sports, entertain-
ment, race relations and even religion.
I learned that television networks
don't care about quality or morals,
they're in it for the money, said some
holy roller.
After an hour, and a different sta-
tion, another holy man was interview-
ing a someone who had written a
book on how to stop those uncon-
trolled urges that all men have beyond
the age of puberty. I don't think they
were talking about man's uncontrol-
lable urge to leave the toilet seat up,
either.
It's funny how the deeper I traveled
into the Bible Belt, the more bill-
boards I saw advertising topless cafes
and porn stores just minutes from the
highway. I guess sinners within
earshot of 1-75 need something to
repent for on Sundays.
By Sunday, the topic around the
nation was, and still is, the fight
between the Detroit Pistons and the
Indiana Pacers.
The morning after that story broke,
I was in Jacksonville, headed to my
Thanksgiving destination of
Hallandale.
I'm not sure what the Christian sta-
tions thought of the "Motown
Melee." The Sunday sermon was in
Spanish.111

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11/26
2004

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