If you’ve been reading Righteous Indignation, you know Big Hollywood’s blogfather Andrew Breitbart accurately diagnoses the Achilles heel of conservatives in America as culture. For decades, we’ve been stuck in a rut when it comes to pop culture, journalism, academia, etc. We’ve been disengaged, and the times when we do engage, we’re reactive and imitative rather than proactive and compelling. So today, I’d like to highlight someone who is reversing that trend– a conservative pioneer in entertainment who’s self-made and independent, a man who’s broadening the conservative presence on radio past mere political talk, a man with a taco-loving dog named Hoogie. That man is Louis Fowler, and he needs your support this very day– possibly this very minute!
When Big Hollywood profiled my music back in November of last year, I got an email from Louis (I thought he was using a stage name). He asked if he could play a song of mine on his radio show “Damaged Hearing”, a 2-hour weekly program on a community radio station in Fort Collins, CO. I hadn’t seen a dime of music sales yet, so purely in the interest of my own vanity, I agreed and sent him an mp3. I tuned in to the station’s live stream while at work, and for the next two hours, I found myself confused, caught off guard. Where was the amateurism? Where was my embarrassment? Why did he know so much about pop culture? He had told me he was a conservative! This wasn’t all an elaborate ruse by an Obama plant, was it?
It was the day of the midterm election; he went through a playlist of politically-themed rock without any obvious, overplayed choices (except me, of course) and plenty of deep cuts, and he launched into a monologue sardonically tweaking Obama and his supporters. He joked about Obama’s birth certificate, not for the easy joke of mocking birthers, but to mock bubble-dwelling progressives who believe that every Republican is and always has been a birther. This wasn’t just conservative comedy– this was conservative comedy that was as funny as anything I was going to hear on late-night talk shows; it was brash, subversive, and unpredictable. I broke out laughing at my desk and ended up posting a few comments on the Facebook thread he creates for every show. I didn’t quite understand exactly what I had just experienced, but I knew I’d be back for more.
Since then, I’ve gone from a narcissistic looky loo to a die-hard fan; I changed my schedule and eventually quit my job so I would be available from 1-3 PM mountain time every Tuesday. Waddling to my computer through a minefield of plastic cheese puff bags and off-brand soda cans, I begin the station’s live stream and eagerly await that moment where the gaudy, local indie folk music dies down and Louis’s disclaimer plays. Yes– a disclaimer for a music show.
That’s because Louis is the sole conservative at the station. It’s not an NPR station (it’s totally listener supported), but it’s a non-commercial, community radio station, and for some reason over the years, that type of independent radio has become stereotypically run by the far left. According to Louis, “Community radio is a typically extreme-left medium; just take a look at your NPRs and your Pacificas and all that stuff. I’m pretty much the lone wolf here, and that’s how they’ll describe me if anything ever goes wrong, I bet.”
He stumbled into this position almost by accident in 2001, moving from Oklahoma as a poor Mexican young man who had worked odd jobs to publish his own pop culture magazine called Damaged. “All the zines at the time were personal zines,” he says, “they were diaries of girls with issues and punk guys talking about how much they hate Ronald Reagan and how much they hate cops, and that just wasn’t what I was about, so I wanted to do a magazine that made fun of movies and pop culture and stuff.” When he arrived in the white guilt-infested neighborhoods of Fort Collins, he found he could submit a demo to the local station KRFC, which quickly turned into a (volunteer) gig. Louis adapted the Damaged zine to the radio format and quickly gained a high profile, winning awards, finding a national Internet audience, and raising respectable funds for the station. Yet, some of his co-workers still loathe his very presence on air.
“I spent a lot of time when I was first here just constantly getting my feelings hurt,” he recalls. “Once a person finds out you’re not a liberal or a Democrat or an anarchist, they start talking to you as if you’re not even in the room, and they do things to get you off the air.” Over time, though he had a natural gift for creating playlists for the DJ portion of his show, he started to deflect the hatred of his coworkers into the content of his show. “I’ll take notes throughout the week, and whatever pisses me off the most I’ll just rant on. I allow my rants to ramp up; I start small, but then I’ll just keep working and working and working and see how far I can go. That’s either A) I get a phone call from the general manager or B) I start laughing at the ridiculousness of how far I’m going.”
And he’s gone quite far, relentlessly mocking the left-leaning denizens of Fort Collins for their hypocritical self-segregation from minorities, provoking death threats from peacenik bicyclists– whatever topic he tackles on a given week, you know it’ll be crude, absurd, and absolutely true. Beyond that, he doesn’t hog the mic. His slew of guests and crazy characters add color and variety to the show; from time to time, he’ll get his dog Hoogie on air, he’ll hear from Barack Obama on the golf course, or his signal will get hijacked by Richard LoCoco, a perfect send-up of conspiracy nut Alex Jones.
There’s much more to say about Louis and his show (in fact, I’ve blogged the entire interview I did with him, cuz it’s hilarious), but really, the best way to learn more about Damaged Hearing is to listen live. If you’re on the east coast, it’s from 3-5 PM today. If you’re in central time, it’s 2-4 PM. If you’re on mountain time, it’s 1-3 PM. If you’re on the west coast, it’s 12-2 PM.
EVERYBODY GOT THAT?
More importantly, his station’s fund drive begins today, and if you donate money (lots and lots of money) during his show, the donation is chalked up to him. As he has to fight for the very existence of his show every week, you can send a message to his Obama-loving overlords, that conservatives do support those who are willing to stick their necks out in the entertainment world and engage our culture by besting the left in entertainment and comedy. So during the show hours only, go to krfcfm.org and click “Donate,” or call 970-221-5075 or 1-866-221-5065. I’m calling this mission “Operation Chaos: Community Radio Edition.” Why that title? Just read on:
NPR’s just awful. They’re just awful. And any time we have a meeting, you always get those people who show up at the meetings, saying, “We should become an NPR station! Have you heard Click and Clack? Those guys are just hilarious!” I mean, Ira Glass? He’s like sandpaper. “This American Life,” all those shows? I don’t know how people can listen to NPR- actually sit down and base their whole afternoon around Terry Gross. It’s just the most maudlin, monotonous, boring radio possible. Don’t you want something that’s exciting or really thought-provoking or will piss you off, something that makes you feel life? That’s what I try to do, take everything that’s just horrible about NPR and flip it around and have my way with it, you know?
Have your way with it, indeed, Louis. With that said, vaya con Dios, and may Damaged Hearing live long and prosper.