As you may recall, my first run as a political talk show host didn’t end so well. It was a Thursday afternoon—December 27, 2018. I’d just finished a show and the station’s bosses called me to the conference room to say . . . “Get out—and don’t come back!”
Making it worse—there was tons of stuff to talk about. I mean, just think about some of the wacky shit that went down in the weeks since I got fired. The mayoral race zipped along. One alderman—Ed Burke—got indicted. Another—Danny Solis—got outed for wearing a wire on Burke. According to the Sun-Times, Solis was swapping his approval on zoning requests for Viagra. Man, I could have talked about Danny and his Viagra for days.
I took to taking long walks in the neighborhood at that time of the day. Once I wandered over to the local library and who did I see? Political activist Sameena Mustafa, a regular on my old show. “Oh, my god, Ben, isn’t it a coincidence that I see you at the very time you should be on the air,” she said. “Except you’re not on the air ’cause—you got fired!”
I must admit there were those who openly rejoiced at my misery. Like the guy who wrote an e-mail along the lines of—so, you got fired, huh? Welcome to the real world, pal!
Bob: ‘Cause, if you need some help—let me know.
If that’s not happy enough, consider this . . .
