Getting Into The Spirit
My post on misspellings has received a comment:
Hey I see you have had items on Mancow Muller and his not [sic] slot in Southern California radio. I am doing a stoiry [sic] on how he is playing out here and wonder if you have had any listener comments.
Vince
Vincent Schodolski
West Coast Bureau Chief
Chicago Tribune
VSchodolski@tribune.com
posted by Anonymous : Wednesday, July 20, 2005 10:19:31 AM
Unfortunately, I don't have information for Schodolski's stoiry:
Dear Van Earl, Andrew, and Krystal,
Although this is minor in the macro scheme of things, I just wanted to drop you a note to say that I'll be dropping KLAC AM 570 from my car radio presets.
This ISN'T exclusively because of the removal of "The Morning Extravaganza" from KLAC's lineup (after a ratings increase?!? obviously there's something else going on that we the public haven't heard), but that event indicates a continued move by KLAC away from sports programming. I happen to like Phil Hendrie, but his appearance on KLAC bumped evening sports off of the station, and the coming of Mancow bumps morning sports off of the station.
Perhaps they'll get a DJ to spin 80s hits during lunch hour and be done with the sports format altogether.
Before I research what Mancow is doing, I'll check the writing career of the Tribune's West Coast Bureau Chief. His body of work is eclectic. Kewl. Ferezampel:
Chicago Tribune Correspondent Vincent Schodolski
Reviews the Wynn Las Vegas
By Vincent J. Schodolski, Chicago Tribune
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Apr. 29, 2005 - Modest men do not build hotels that cost $2.7 billion, and so it is no surprise that Steve Wynn compares his new resort and casino to the place where the new pope was elected.
"Michelangelo took four years to complete the Sistine Chapel. Your room took five," says one of the pitches for the new Wynn Las Vegas, which opened Thursday.
Wynn, 63, who helped re-create the Strip with the Mirage, Treasure Island and Bellagio is back, with a resort boasting 2,700 rooms, 18 restaurants and an 110,000-square-foot casino....
And there's an article that was written by one person and had a lot of contributions. Perhaps the journalist bloggers can describe how this process works, but I think I have identified Schodolski's contributions to this article:
LONDON TERROR ATTACKS: IN CHICAGO
Police, dogs to ride trains
By Gary Washburn and Jon Hilkevitch, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune reporters David Heinzmann, Sam Singer, Stevenson Swanson, Dahleen Glanton and Vincent Schodolski contributed to this report.
Published July 8, 2005....
...CTA officials saw no discernible decline in ridership Thursday. Nationally, about 29 million people take commuter trains or subways on an average workday, and millions more take buses. The New York City area accounts for about a third of the rail total, followed by Chicago, Washington, Boston and Philadelphia.
The West Coast's largest transit system is in San Francisco....
In Los Angeles County, officials said there would be two deputies on all trains....
Well, since I haven't listened to Mancow (other than a 30 second snippet here and there), let's see what is said about him. Here's something from a non-Tribune paper:
Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, Mancow Muller loves Jesus.
Yes, indeed, the shock-jock ringmaster of "Mancow's Morning Madhouse"...the guy with a sidekick named Turd and a pseudo-memoir that describes, among other things, his enthusiastic embrace of a smorgasbord of carnal pleasures in Amsterdam's Red Light district, is a Christian....
"If you go through and you read the red parts of the Bible [quoting Jesus' own words], that's what I believe," Mancow says. "I'm a real guy, I live in a real world, and yes, I'm a believer."...
Born and reared in a small town outside of Kansas City, Mo., Mancow grew up Roman Catholic until he was in grade school, when his parents left that tradition and began attending Baptist and various Protestant churches.
"We did go to a lot of different churches just to experience different things," he says. "My dad and I went to different churches. I went to a church called the Berean Church, which scared me to death. They were speaking in tongues, and that just terrified me.
"I went to Catholic school for a year. I got kicked out for kicking a nun. Our Lady of Lourdes in Raytown, Mo. Third grade. They asked me not to come back."...
After that, Mancow attended a couple of private Christian schools through portions of middle school and high school. It was during those years that he became a born-again Christian and considered, rather seriously for a time, he says, becoming a minister.
"I felt that I had gotten the calling to do that. However, I lost the call to do that," he says....
"I had some questions that they couldn't answer and that also caused me to stray some," he says. "I had a real problem with the attitude that those who were not saved were going to suffer eternity in hell. And that's what the church believes, certainly the Baptist and Christian churches. And there's no way around that.
"I said, 'What about somebody in India or in the jungle of Africa who has never heard the Word?' Their answer was, 'That's why we've got to get the Word out.' You mean, people are going to suffer for eternity if they don't, you know, get born again? So. That was one of the questions. That's probably a question a lot of people get hung up on. And there were others."...
Most people confuse Mancow the shock jock with Mancow the man. That's like assuming actress Linda Blair is possessed or that actor Anthony Hopkins is a cannibal because they played those roles on film, he says....
He would like to write a couple of books on religious subjects. One about the legendary Spear of Longinus, the weapon supposedly used to pierce Jesus' side as he hung on the cross. The other book would be about St. Paul, who Mancow believes may have been the anti-Christ. (It's a long story.)...
A couple of years ago, the shock jock attended a Christmas party at Cardinal Francis George's Gold Coast home. He was the guest of an invited guest. "I had a long conversation with [the cardinal]," he says.
Pictures were taken. Then, according to Mancow, someone from the Chicago archdiocese, apparently displeased that there was photographic evidence of the shock-jock at the archbishop's house, sent out a photo taken with the cardinal with Mancow's image excised by scissors.
"It broke my heart," he says.
(After the Sun-Times told archdiocesan officials about the incident last week, a representative from the archdiocese phoned Mancow to apologize and sent him fresh photos -- with his likeness included.)...
When it comes to spiritual counsel, Mancow often turns to John Calkins, a Christian Scientist trained in spiritual healing who lives in Italy. "Like everything else he does, he's intense and comes at things from a different direction," says Calkins, a writer who met Muller 14 years ago when he rented the shock jock a home in California....
Mancow, a voracious reader in general, says he regularly turns to the Bible, most recently to find passages about forgiveness.
"The more I study, the more I believe," he says.
One recent morning, between discussions of "The Apprentice" and The DaVinci Code, Mancow tells his listeners about something he has gleaned from his study: Jesus would enjoy a dirty joke.
"Look, he was a carpenter," Mancow explains later. "He hung out with fishermen. You ever hung out with sailors? Do they have dirty mouths? . . . He wasn't sitting around with the Pharisees, pontificating. He was hanging out, in the dirt, with the regular people."
I agree that Christ hung out with the sailors, but I got lost when the person who believes that St. Paul is the Antichrist goes to a Christian Scientist for counsel. Based upon his comments on "red letters," I wonder if Mancow's views on St. Paul are related to Lennon's famous views regarding Jesus vs. his followers (emphasis mine):
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
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