This blog began as a way of promoting my new novel, Luck of the Draw, but my time and attention have been diverted by Trump and I’m getting behind on preparations for the official publication date. Last November I’d set the date for June, six months away but several weeks before I had the idea for Trumpie bumperstickers. Now it’s almost April and about all I’ve done novelwise is to attend a writers’ conference consisting of three days of presentations on using social media and “speed dating” with agents and editors. I learned a lot, including tons of tips on how to promote a novel, the single most important being that a website is essential no matter how many accounts a writer may have on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or whatever.
But back to Trump. In the last week there have been a lot of developments, what with Trump and Cruz and/or their campaigns and SuperPacs having crawled even deeper into the gutter with slurs and slimes and smears on each other’s wives. And now there’s a petition to allow wingnuts to “open carry” inside the convention itself. Something like 30,000 have already signed an online petition demanding that guns be allowed inside so that conventioneers aren’t “sitting ducks” for terrorists. Great idea. Trumpies and Cruzies both packing heat. What could possibly go wrong?
Perhaps this is a good place to tell the story of my first day as a radio talk-show host. It was about three years ago, and I thought I’d give being a radio guy a try on our local low-power, all-volunteer station. I figured that as the creator and host of The Know Show I’d spend an hour a week talking about politics and taking questions as a kind of anti-Rush Limbaugh. It could be fun.
A day or so before my first show one of the many mass-shootings was all over the news (I forget which one it was as there have been so many). I’d written a song titled “Blow the NRA Away” back in 1993 after another such incident. At that time there was a group wingnuts calling themselves the “Michigan militia” who were traipsing around the northern woods in camouflage gear waiting for Bill Clinton’s black helicopters to swoop in and try to take away their Army toys. Since then every time another massacre occurred I’d send tapes (and later Mp3s) out to radio stations and sing it at open-mics in hopes of insinuating it into the public consciousness. Although I got good responses singing it live, I was never able to get it on any radio station.
But now I had my own show, albeit on a tiny station where you never know whether anybody is really out there listening. The very first thing I did on that very first show was talk about the latest mass shooting, then I played the song. When it was over I gave out the station’s phone number and asked listeners to call in.
A minute later the phone rang. I picked up and said, “Hello, you’re on the Know Show.” Suddenly there were two sharp CRACK -CRACKs, followed by the CLICK of the receiver (from the sound I guessed it was a .22 pistol, as a pistol would be easier to hold up to the mouthpiece of a phone than a rifle).
I didn’t take any more calls that day or in any of the following shows. If you look at voting patterns this corner of California is almost as blue as Berkeley or Santa Monica, but it’s a rural area so there’s plenty of pickup trucks and NRA bumper stickers. (I quit doing the show after about ten weeks, not because of the threatening call, but because it was taking me twenty hours each week to prepare for a one hour show.)
Anyow, here’s “Blow the NRA Away.” Feel free to download it, copy it, sing it to your friends, or pass it along any way you can. Just be careful where you sing it.
by
Scotty & the Skeptics
Later.
No Trump Zone 