by Peter Boyles | Mar 19, 2021 | Blasting with Boyles
Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom during Trump’s State of the Union address.
In previous award-winning columns, I’ve written about the profile of the kind of person who really understands what I do for a living and what other people try to do. “It” being what I call a radio guy.
Rush Limbaugh passed away. In the non-radio world that seems to be now dominated by “talk show hosts” it was akin to the death of Julius Caesar, Winston Churchill, George Washington, and Babe Ruth.
Limbaugh was lionized, put on the shields of fellow warriors and carried through the streets of Rome. You saw it, I saw it, we all heard it. The truth always throws a curve ball and it deals from the bottom of the deck.
Rush Limbaugh was born in a small town in Missouri. His father was a banker and WWII fighter pilot. His grandfather was U.S. Ambassador to India, and his uncle was a federal judge. Limbaugh was a failure. When he was eight-years-old his father and mother bought a system so that he could be up in his room playing records and they could be downstairs listening on what was called a transistor radio. I think the record player needle, like a junkie shooting heroin, went right in the boy’s arm. His father, as an investor, owned part of a radio station in the town. Limbaugh got his first gig.
Now there are earmarks on how a radio guy operates in life. Let me list them for you. Number one, Rush Limbaugh used three different names on the air: Jeff Christie, Rusty Sharp and, of course, Rush Limbaugh. And in true DJ fashion, number two, Rush was married four times.
He went to rehab, another earmark to present someone as a radio guy, and most insiders believe that those drugs caused his hearing loss. As someone in recovery myself, it’s highly probable. He was fired seven times. A longtime friend of mine, Cliff Powers, worked with Limbaugh in Pittsburgh, when he used the air name of Jeff Christie, and told the stories of Limbaugh being blown out in Pittsburgh, not once wrestling fans, but twice.
He had less than a year of college, another benchmark since now this business is dominated by people who address each other as “Doctor.” And what I always thought was the whammo show-stopper, was for all the money, and what’s behind the curtain, when he finally settles in Sacramento, he replaces Morton Downey Junior.
His brother made most of his business deals. He used callers as records like good disc jockeys do. He did parody tunes as most great DJs. He did voices on air and was, in fact, what used to be dubbed a shock jock. He was brilliant, apparently very shy, and a lot of people around him never could explain whether a lot of what he did was an act or whether he truly believed it. I think its probably somewhere in the middle.
He got it! He understood it. He was a radio guy. He wasn’t leading Christianity although at the end of his life he became religious. I think he definitely loved the country. He loved the legacy. Yet with all the foibles, and all the problems, and all the good that he did, he changed what we do for a living, he changed the AM radio band and made us all better.
His voice will be missed, there is no replacement. Rest in peace, the best radio guy I ever heard, Rush Limbaugh.
— Peter Boyles
by Peter Boyles | Feb 19, 2021 | Blasting with Boyles
As, by now, we all know, there were plenty of QAnon supporters amid the chaos at the Capitol in January. You could see many banners with the Q rabbit denoting the QAnon slogan “Follow the white rabbit.” There seems to me to be two forces in our country today, both sides are defended by elected officials and both claim the other one doesn’t exist. If you recall, Joe Biden told us that Antifa is a philosophy not an organization. And although many Republican elected officials adhere to the Q they say it doesn’t exist as well.
Karl Marx always talked about a specter haunting Europe, and I think these two specters are haunting America, and the American political scene. We can all agree that Antifa fashions themselves as a modern Bolshevik party. However, what is QAnon?
QAnon is jumbled theories that say Donald Trump is waging a secret war against the elite, Satan worshipping pedophiles in government and the media. They suffered a huge disappointment when Dr. Jill’s husband was sworn in and commandos did not come down on hot ropes and arrest all the offenders. By the way, I’m really drawn into the Jewish laser beam that started forest fires.
To explain QAnon, I myself am an alcoholic and a drug addict. The organization of Alcoholics Anonymous has a rule. We only use our first names. So that’s where the Anon comes from. According to my reading and listening, Q is a high ranking person inside the government, a source who apparently from time to time actually talks to Alex Jones and other selected elite. But beginning in October 2017, Q put out a series of posts on a message board known as 4chan. He signed off as Q and claimed to have a level of U.S. security approval known as the Q Clearance. These messages became known as Q drops or, if you’re following along at home, breadcrumbs, often written in a very cryptic language with pledges, pro Trump themes, slogans and riddles. True believers, and I’ve spoken to them, contend that deliberate misinformation is sewn into Q’s message so the conspiracy theory is impossible to disprove.
Brilliant historians have dubbed stuff like this parallel histories. Almost any event today or through history, if it’s important enough, from the crucifixion of Jesus to the writing of the Torah, to who shot Kennedy, a parallel set of tracks runs next to mainstream history. True believers are a frightening bunch. Like those of you who still believe Donald Trump had the election stolen from him.
If opinion polls are correct there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who believe in some of the bizarre theories offered by QAnon. People’s careers have been trashed, jobs have been lost. In fact, the Q people have survived with many predictions not coming true. Like almost all of them.
In a post Donald Trump world, Q believes Donald Trump is a savior who will stay in power and wage war against the cabal of satanic pedophiles. And for Q believers who saw President Biden get sworn in instead of Donald Trump it was a reality check. But it doesn’t seem to matter. In fact, the QAnon community has survived.
As crazy as Q is, was, and always will be, they are far less dangerous than Antifa. Militias are being formed in this country, battle lines are being drawn and who controls the streets has been an age old question dating back to the French Revolution. QAnon has survived after Donald Trump. Antifa and Black Lives Matter claim Joe Biden owes them for the win.
Remember this, Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a picture of herself holding a gun alongside images of Democrats like AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. That’s kind of Q-ee, isn’t it?
See you next month.
— Peter Boyles
by Peter Boyles | Jan 22, 2021 | Blasting with Boyles
People believe the three easiest things in the world to do are grow a garden, tend bar and do a radio show. From experience at least two of them are very difficult. I never tried to grow a garden.
As a country we have come through one of the most amazing three month long periods in my lifetime as a radio talk show host, disc jockey/traffic reporter, major TV star.
Our business, the one I love so much, talk radio is about to go through the same thing that happened to Top 40 Radio in the late 1950s during what was dubbed “The Scandals.” It focused on payola, also known as pay-to-play. My mentors in this business were all what we now know as “radio guys.” They made their bones as young, almost teenagers playing top 40 radio, reading the news, doing all nights, working Christmas mornings and being in love with the business.
Talk radio’s advent begins principally with the king of talk, Rush Limbaugh. What always made Rush so incredibly successful is he is a radio guy. He jocked on the air as a guy named Jeff Christie. And notice, if you would, in all these threatened and moving along lawsuits and damage that’s being done Limbaugh’s name never comes up. He knows the line. Rush Limbaugh, with my great respect, is a radio guy.
Now we begin an era of oh, you used to be…. And now you can be a talk show host. Most of these on-airs have alternative ways to make money, alternative careers and income streams. My income comes from doing radio. When we went through the payola scandals in the ’50s lives were ruined, careers were wrecked. We’re heading into it again.
The Democrats will now control the House, the Senate, the Executive Branch. There will be a new Department of Justice and the evil empire, the Federal Communications Commission.
These people have been gunning for talk radio since Limbaugh dismantled the Clinton Administration, parody music, being syndicated clearly planted the ball in deep center field with a home run for radio.
That’s about to come to an end. We have been through this before and tragically we will go through it again. And it literally breaks my heart on this end of my illustrious career. Old five-and-dimers like me always knew the line and now I hear across the country the clarion call — bring it, as though they want to be sued. I’ve been sued three times including one time where I was told when it came back to Jefferson County and the Ramsey story, to pack a bag. All of you who have never been through it across the country, who smile and say bring it, get ready because they are going to do it. Fox News is running backwards, Newsmax is running backwards. People are shutting people off of the air now. The mask has been pulled off Sydney Powell, Lin Wood and America’s Mayor Rudy.
We’ll be damaged by this. There are already many Democrats in Congress who want more control over what we do. The First Amendment and the Second Amendment are in play. To paraphrase what Lenin once said, they will sell us the rope and hang us with it. Well, a lot of talk radio sold a lot of rope. We have been through Father Coughlin. We’ve been through Alan Freed. We’ve been through Alan Berg and now we sit here.
I don’t pretend to know the future but I sure as hell can read the past. I would never silence anybody’s voice but unless you’re a total stooge, the First Amendment has its limits. You can’t pull people into the public spotlight and then tell lies about them and then destroy their companies and force them into hiding. You can’t use the public airwaves to do those things without consequences. This is a statement of my fear of what’s going to happen to a business that’s been so wonderful to me. And to my family and to so many other people, a bunch of rookies are going to wreck it. There was a Cromwellian cry in Parliament and the voice s said, “In the name of God, just go.”
P.S. I hope I’m 100% wrong about everything I wrote in this column today. Thanks for reading.
— Peter Boyles
by Peter Boyles | Dec 18, 2020 | Blasting with Boyles
In an attempt to understand the frightening aspects of political correctness we have to get above room temperature IQ. You have to move up to 10,000 feet and then look straight down. This movement gets scarier and scarier as the frightening politically correct continues to remove the best of western civilization. As unbelievable as it may sound the British Library has axed George Orwell, Lord Byron and Ted Hughes. What are their politically correct crimes? Hard to believe but links to slavery. How do they do that? Listen to these quantum leaps of faith.
For Orwell, his great-grandfather owned slaves in the Caribbean. (It is exactly the same as Kamala Harris, and isn’t it interesting no one wants to ban President-To-Be Harris?) The biographers say Orwell, Eric Arthur Blair, the son of a sub-deputy opium agent in British India; at his birth the great-grandfather’s fortune was long gone. Nevertheless….
Ted Hughes, the poet born in 1930, was added because his ancestor Nicholas Ferrar, born in 1592, was involved with the first British colony in North America. You can see what that did to native people.
Next, Lord Byron. Similar to Orwell his works are being destroyed because of a slave owning great-grandfather, as well as a slave owning uncle by marriage. Oscar Wilde may be coming on the list. This is woke ideology. This is part of the British Black Lives Matter movement that claims racism is a creation of white people and any connection to racism you’ll immediately have crossed the politically correct line.
I’m frightened as you should be as well. But turning our attention away from the UK how about this list of books currently banned by school boards in different parts of our country. They begin with The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn. We’ve been over this before.
I was surprised to learn the number two literary classic that’s been banned is Call Of The Wild, written by Jack London. Do they forget that London ran twice as the socialist party candidate for mayor of Oakland? Missed that one didn’t you guys.
Another one of my all-time favorite books, Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer prize-winning novel, was banned by the library board in East St. Louis, as objectionable language was not fit for anyone’s daughter to read.
Here’s one for you, James Joyce’s Ulysses. As if anyone could ever understand it. By the way, the Nazis burned Hemingway’s 1929 novel, A Farewell To Arms too, in 1933. One of the highlights of my illustrious career was getting to meet Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse Five was clicked.
Here’s another, wrestling fans, The Catcher In The Rye. Because of blasphemy and sexual references. I loved that book.
How about Walt Whitman’s Leaves Of Grass? Can’t be because he’s gay, of course not. And one of my true favorites, the Harry Potter series. JK Rowling’s series. Gee, she’s made some interesting remarks lately, hasn’t she?
I don’t mean to be tongue-in-cheek, I mean to be sounding the alarm. Think of how many wonderful hours you spent reading these books. And the biggest slap in the face is Orwell, who wrote extensively about banning books, himself now banned.
Happy New Year.
— Peter Boyles
by Peter Boyles | Nov 20, 2020 | Blasting with Boyles
Cory Gardner — Rumor has it, this is straight out of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, this sock puppet is thinking about running for governor. For God’s sake, stop now.
Ken Buck — As they said in the Marlon Brando classic, On The Waterfront, a one way ticket to Palookaville, for being the only state in the country that the blue wave actually hit. Good job State GOP.
Lauren Boebert — Who has emerged as the face of the real Republican Party. Went up to Mount Rushmore, met Donald Trump, showed up at a fundraiser I went to this summer packing a gun. You go, girl. In my world you are the face of the Colorado Republican Party. But they will cut her throat just like they did Tom Tancredo’s.
Jared Polis — What do you give a man who has everything and has a lock on a second term if those GOP idiots really do run Cory Gardner. Let’s find another Coors brother, Walker Stapleton, Bob Beauprez, Bruce Benson, or some other stooge that would never be seen wearing a Trump hat. Good luck.
Michael Bennet — Will he and John be roomies? Hope you’re not challenged by Lauren Boebert. But see what we’ve said about the Republican Party. Don’t worry dude, you’re safe.
John Hickenlooper — Thank his lucky stars that hard hitting Cory Gardner never put up any resistance to defeat the weak sister of the Democrat Party himself. Dude, you caught a break. Welcome to the U.S. Senate.
Tay Anderson — How in the world do you think all of the antics that you’ve pulled in the streets of Denver have anything to do with educating the children and grandchildren of Denver? The spotlight is not the place for an educator, but I repeat myself.
Kyle Clark — Are you and the missus going to be cooking the Christmas goose for the armed security guards who protect you from the dumpster burning, dangerous Trump supporters? Man, that’s laughable.
Susan Cordova — the just resigned Superintendent of Denver Public Schools. One-way ticket to Dallas. Have a nice day.
Colorado Republican Party in general — In the words of Joseph Welch to Joe McCarthy during the McCarthy hearings, “At long last, have you no shame?” What this Party needs is a major infusion of testosterone, growth hormone and gunpowder.
Patrick Neville — One of the hopes of the Colorado Republican Party. But don’t worry folks they will shipwreck him as soon as they can.
Ted Trimpa — Aka the Sword of Soros. Great year, my friend. Thank you, all the best.
Your Denver Broncos — The team that continues to buy Harvey Steinberg new cars.
John Bandimere — A great man who had a very hard year. He deserves our Merry Christmas.
Your Local Health Departments — It is amazing how we place tremendous power in the hands of so few and in the words of Winston Churchill, never have so many been screwed by so few.
Candi CdeBaca — Is she Denver’s future? Does Denver have a future? And truly how can it be worse than Michael Hancock?
Michael Hancock — Now that you’ve screwed up the mayor’s job for everyone else… Congratulations.
CDOT – RTD Combo — Seriously how do you screw up everything you touch?
Mayor of Glendale, Mike Dunafon — Job well done. Ever think about running for governor?
Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen — That junior G-man kit. The gift of the truth that someday you’ll tell people where you were hiding the day Antifa thugs beat people up in Civic Center Park. Shame, shame, we know your name.
Brother Jeff — For years and years of appearing on the radio station with me and pissing off the Mile High City, you da man.
Beth McCann — For you and the mister, a can of fire starter. Let’s see if this guy ever does a day.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
— Peter Boyles
