Before the global pandemic. Before the standoff over election results and the storming of the Capitol. Before dozens of indictments – Donald J. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.
The day after his historic win, I hosted an open-line episode: “Donald Trump will be the 45th US President. Can you believe it?”
I wrote this reflection in early 2017.
“Go Donald Go!”, howled Mike from Brantford, the day after the US Presidential election. For ten years, I’ve hosted a live open line show on CBC Radio at lunchtime.
Here’s where this on-air exchange landed in just a few seconds.
“Sure he gets carried away with his locker room talk. He’s a guy! Guys talk like that. Nuthin’ wrong with that. It’s just normal. I know some women get offended...”
I turn on my microphone and sigh. Loudly. “Some men too,” I insist.
“Yeah. (pause) Well, not a lot of men. They might say that to you but as soon as you walk away they’ll look at ya and say, yeah, you got a nice butt.” Then he laughs. An immense, creepy, slightly-demented laugh.
I was speechless. What was this man thinking? Calling up a radio show and talking to a woman like that?
That’s one mystery. The other is why, after all these years, I can still be caught off guard. People have called up to confess and talk about every secret and taboo under the sun. Suicide. Sexual assault. Driving high, or more precisely, toking and calling the radio show! Dare to ask and every day, the airwaves fill up with real-life testimony on just about anything. It may be lunch time on good old public radio, but ask about hiring sex workers, and cover your ears, the phone lines light up.
Even so, Donald Trump’s ‘movement’ has uncorked something. There is a zesty exuberance to this rebellious say-anything-and-everything mood so many people seem to be in. I’ve hosted open line radio long enough to remember the before-times. I know exactly when I realized that something really big was happening.
Last January, my family sat in a booth at a Tim Horton’s in Mattawa – a small, isolated village, somewhere between Ottawa and Sudbury on the TransCanada highway.
“She’s crooked!”, scowled one gray-haired man. “They need to lock her up,” growled a woman. Yimmer. Yammer. They were enthusiastically trashing Hillary Clinton and praising Donald Trump. I couldn’t believe my ears: townsfolk in the pinprick-on-the-map Mattawa frothing over US politics. At that point in the Republican race, Trump was still a punchline. Except, way up north in Canada, a gaggle of seniors at the Timmy’s were totally dialed in. They took Trump very seriously, and so did many many others.
Debating politics mostly causes trouble, and it is especially volatile on a live open line show. Be vigilant. Check your biases. Give every side a hearing. Balance the callers’ natural instincts to embellish stories -- with facts. Ah, those alternative facts and inconvenient truths. As I write this, I’m staring at an 8 by 10 piece of paper, pinned above my computer: the “Adding Insult to Injury Award. Recognizing Deception, Distortion and Dishonesty in Media.” I received it in the mail. The offense? Having the audacity to allow a medical doctor to promote the merits of immunization on the air.
On some days, I am wrung out. Sometimes it seems that people are just yelling at each other, (or me) with no interest in finding common ground. Sometimes, the conversation is unexpectedly revealing.
Like the day callers in Ontario queued up en masse to admit and explain why they would readily join the “Lock her up” chants in Alberta.
“I’d be right there mobbin’ with them,” says Cheryl in Toronto.
“You realize that some people might imagine you carrying a pitchfork, when you talk like that?” Gulp. Did that come out of my mouth?
Then, melt-your-heart Matt.
No weird rants. No horns pop into mind listening to Matt. Just a 30 something year old guy, worried about his dad and grandfather. They used to work at the old Stelco plant in Hamilton and they could lose their pensions as the company tries to emerge from credit protection.
“Never thought I might have to be taking care of my dad,” he says, with a palpable sadness.
Matt touched a nerve. Everyone that day heard the same thing: a normal-sounding man, talking about normal people, panicking about how to pay the bills. The emails poured in. A light bulb had gone off. People gushed genuine relief -- hey, they proclaimed en masse, not every chanter (or pro-Trumper) is a nutter!
They had begun to redraw the cartoons in their heads.
The live radio call-in show has paradoxical qualities. On one hand, it is a basic, old-fashioned concept. Phone plus human equals radio show. But a curious thing happened on the way to the social media age. The radio call-in can also be supremely modern. Done well, live interactive radio can deliver more than the cacophony of blah-blah-blah generated in blogs, Twitter feeds and online comments. (Let’s exclude rant-and-angry call-in’s. They are not the hallmark of public radio.)
One of the beauties of listening, is that people can judge for themselves: Does that woman calling sound sincere? Is he full of it? Or the best: “Hmm. I never thought about that before.”
Consider the potency of being able to persuade another human being.
There is a sense of urgency. The radio airwaves may be a fading chance. Norway is shutting down its national FM radio network. We all tend to commune in familiar orbits online, reinforcing our existing views, and confirming our biases.
From my daily perch, here in the winter of 2017, I still hear from a mind-spinning variety of people. A hipster mom nursing a baby. A 30-something stoner. People born here, and there. These unscripted encounters, the candid stories and views of real people, are more than vapours of air.
After the shooting at the mosque in Quebec, the words, and tears, came bubbling out. Sadia, a Muslim woman in Ottawa, wondered what it would be like to have police knock on her door to relay news of a nightmare. In her soft, heavily accented voice, pursuing a train of thought that cannot be precisely conveyed in writing, she made a heartbreaking plea.
“I am so humble to be Canadian,” she said, her voice cracking. “I am willing to give my life for Canada. And my kids lives. Please…” she begged. “On behalf of the kids who lost their fathers, please, look inside your heart, please don’t give politicians that vote. Please. “
A male teacher wrote to say he sat bawling in his car. A woman sobbed at her kitchen table. Sadia didn’t speak perfectly but they understood exactly what she meant.
They heard her. Just like they heard the man chortling about ‘nice butts’. And the son worried about his father’s pension.
Sometimes hearing what is in a stranger’s heart can make your head feel like exploding.
Sometimes it shakes up the way you see the world.
And these days, when people argue about whether purple is green, or blue is yellow – listening may be our last shot at holding our world together.
I hope we stay tuned in to each other.
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