Radio Stooge

A one chapter excerpt from

Work Ethic?
One Man’s Adventures in the American Work Place(s)

by
Keith Lowell Jensen
keithlowelljensen@gmail.com
916 470-9393

(A 50 page excerpt is available by clicking here, or
Click here to download it as a word document.)

KLJ praised in The Washington Post. Click here for details.

“Arabs and Muslims are the enemy, they have chosen to be our enemy, and we will not be safe until every Muslim and every Arab and all of their sympathizers in this country are rounded up and put where they can be kept track of. I don’t want to see them hurt, I just don’t want them allowed to hurt me, or my loved ones, or our way of life.” I was saying these awful things in a loud and impassioned voice which was being broadcast throughout the Country.

While still working at PetCo I received a call from a man named Larry. Larry found me through my friend Brett who, tiring of being sexually harassed while cleaning fish tanks, moved to LA to and became The World Famous Lizard Boy. Larry hired folks like Brett (and me) to call in to talk radio shows like Mancow and Howard Stern pretending to be various loonies.

I talked with Larry, proved I could improv and do various voices and he agreed to put my talents to use. The gig paid $50 a call. The radio show folks would phone me at 5am, sometimes 4am, and then put me on hold for an hour or more making me listen to their horrible right wing ranting until they got to me, the DJ pretending that I had just dialed in.

In the beginning Larry wrote the roles for me to play and they were awful. My first time on the Mancow show I played a guy who washed his ass with a tooth brush. I added the detail that I was working on a kid’s book. I did research, finding statistics and developing an argument. I discovered that over percent of Americans suffer from hemorrhoids. I had no idea. Man cow didn’t need much; he just called me a sick jackass and hung up. I barely had a chance to get in, “I’m sick? You sit there with a filthy bum, and you call me sick?”

I played a few more of these horrible roles and then came the abortion call. Larry wanted me to be a guy who had spent large amounts of money on fertility treatments trying to have a baby with his new wife only to find out that she had had three abortions prior to their relationship. I had a really bad cold making it easy to sound like I was in tears. Mancow sympathized completely with me, and instructed me to leave that bitch, slut, whore. His callers were less understanding as they slung insults at me in my time of suffering. I felt like a tool having aided Mancow in this moronic propaganda. Mancow is not pro-life; he is anti-pro-choice, more about hating on the enemy than loving on the fetus.

I was done, unless I could insure better calls. I pitched some ideas of my own to Larry and he bit.

After seeing Bowling For Columbine I went on as Mad Dad who was sending his kid to school with a gun so to play hero should any of these “Marilyn Manson faggot freaks” decide to make the school a shooting gallery. By playing the most exaggerated version of the conservative asshole that Mancow represented I could push him back the other direction. It worked perfectly and Mancow told me what a moron I was. This I enjoyed.

September 11th had me concerned over the backlash against Muslims and Arabs. I called Larry and pitched an idea. He went for it. I wanted to be sure that Mancow would disagree with the caller. I figured he would, but he was extreme enough that I had to be sure. Larry called the obnoxious DJ with me listening on the other line and described the Arab hating caller.

"God yes. Get him on tomorrow." Mancow was excited.

"So, you disagree with him?" Larry asked.

"What! Of course I do. He's an asshole!" Mancow answered back sharply.

I went on Mancow yet again, this time with my suggestion that all Arabs and all Muslims be interned. I had to make as strong of an argument as possible to get the response I hoped for.

“Sure it’s easy to say interning the Japanese was wrong, but we won the war didn’t we? We’re all better off now aren’t we?” I challenged.

Mancow went nuts as did his listeners, all of them professing their love for Muslim Americans. Ha ha. It was hard to maintain my angry voice. I was dancing around my living room, bubbling over with excitement.

“Yeah, sure, go ahead and love them from your secured building Mancow. I don’t hear any of them there with you in the studio. Easy for you to love ‘em while you stay out of their reach.”

“What? I have a Muslim, Arab woman right here, working the phones.”

“Prove it.”

Now I really scored. Mancow put a female Arab voice on the radio. She was awesome. She defended her ethnicity and faith, and told me off in what I could only guess was Farsi.

Mancow kept me on for over an hour, where I usually got a couple of minutes. I was on as my neighbors began waking and starting their days and I worried that they'd hear my racist ranting. Brett was on later that day, but was mostly ignored as the Muslim love fest continued.

I had never felt such pride in my creative endeavors. Larry must have been pleased as well. He got me on the Howard Stern show. Unfortunately, I would be playing a part that Larry had written. I was Animal Lover Ben AKA Bestiality Boy, a man trying to create a man dog hybrid using his neighbor’s dogs. Oh well, you can’t win them all.