WASHINGTON — Haitians, Jamaicans, Liberians, Cambodians, Vietnamese–they’re ruining the American standard of living, complained Bill from Queens. Pretty soon, he told the right-wing radio talk-show host, everyone in America will be playing bongos.
“This is insanity,” he insisted.
But if the irate caller from New York expected any sympathy from the Orange County congressman who is standing in this week as host of conservative comic Rush Limbaugh’s national radio program, he expected too much.
Warming to the fight, Rep. Robert K. Dornan, the conservative Republican from Garden Grove, leaned into the microphone in the downtown ABC radio studios. “If you’re talking about Cambodians, you’re talking about my friend Teddy Noy, N-O-Y,” Dornan said, “who started hustling doughnuts in one shop, his wife (working) in another. Now he’s a millionaire . . . I think it makes our country stronger.”
But the Queens caller, who traced his ancestry to 19th-Century Ireland and Austria-Hungary, was not satisfied. “I hope California is swarmed by . . . immigrants from Third World countries,” he said, before unloading the ultimate insult. “You’re a liberal on that issue.”
Later, in an off-the-air aside, the red-haired, Irish-proud Dornan said of the caller from Queens: “It wasn’t his Irish side” speaking. “It was his Austrian side.”
It was one of the few brickbats thrown Dornan’s way this week during the two-hour broadcast, which is carried by 240 stations and heard by more than a million people, making it the most listened-to radio talk show in America. In Southern California, the show is heard on KFI (640 AM) between 9 and 11 a.m.
Dornan, 57, who hosted radio and television talk shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles before he was first elected to Congress in 1976, is no stranger to the studio.
In recent years, he has been a regular on political talk shows, such as CNN’s “Crossfire,” and, most recently, stood in for a day for KABC (790 AM) radio host Michael Jackson. But the five-day appearance on the Rush Limbaugh Program, for which Dornan is being paid union scale, represents the apotheosis of his post-electoral broadcasting career. Dornan’s final show is Friday.
“It’s kind of nice being back in the saddle,” Dornan told Limbaugh’s listeners, who are accustomed to hearing the portly Limbaugh attack liberal positions on everything from feminism to gay rights.
“I think (Dornan) has handled it beautifully. He’s a very interesting host,” said Ed McLaughlin, president of the company that owns and produces the Limbaugh program. “Bob and I worked together at KGO in San Francisco years ago . . . I’ve been seeing him on CNN and C-SPAN (which televises congressional proceedings), and I realized he hasn’t lost any of his old fire.”
Nor drawing power. Listeners who tuned in to Wednesday’s program got a surprise when Dornan took a call from Washington, D.C., from a fellow named George.
“This wouldn’t be the President of the United States of America and the leader of the Free World, would it?” Dornan asked.
“How you doing Bob?” replied Bush, whose call had been anticipated. “What’s a nice guy like you doing trying to be a talk host on such a big show?”
Dornan took the time to effusively express his support for the President’s attempts to cut federal spending, despite a revolt among fellow conservatives triggered by Bush’s retreat from his pledge of “no new taxes.”
“You’re our leader, you’re the boss, and we’re solidly behind you,” Dornan said. Bush thanked him for the remarks.
Persuading the President to phone in wasn’t the only evidence of Dornan’s media savvy this week.
Concerned that some of Limbaugh’s remarks have been branded anti-feminist, McLaughlin had suggested that Dornan try bringing in more calls from women, Dornan said.
So Dornan’s opener for Tuesday focused on rape, pornography and violence against women.
“Pornography degrades women, it is an assault and an attack on women and children, and I believe there is a direct correlation to the rape rate in our country,” Dornan told the radio audience.
Nearly half a dozen women did call in, but not all of them wanted to talk about rape. One wanted to discuss her dream of owning an AK-47 assault rifle, a dream that Dornan criticized because, he said, the guns are modeled after weapons manufactured by Communists. None of Dornan’s callers asked about his staunch opposition to abortion.
But others wanted to talk about subjects as diverse as the National Endowment for the Arts, Nelson Mandela, Ron Kovic (the Vietnam veteran and anti-war activist who nearly ran against Dornan this year), and the cheesecake “nose art” painted on the sides of World War II-era aircraft.
David from Sacramento wanted to know about Pete Wilson, the Republican U.S. Senator who is running for governor of California, and his Democratic opponent, former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein.
“Well, they’re both wrong on all the social issues,” Dornan said, hurrying along. “Now let’s go to economics, so I can be positive. Pete Wilson is a shining knight on economics.”
Later, Dornan allowed that he would give Wilson “two, big, French military kisses if he’d appoint me” to fill out Wilson’s term in the Senate, should Wilson win the governorship. “I’d love to go to the Senate,” Dornan said, but added that a Gov. Wilson probably would seek a moderate Republican to fill out his Senate term.
Another listener wanted to discuss gun control.
“I’ve always said that I am for gun control,” Dornan said, “and all my life in the United States, the type of gun control I’ve been for is outlawing automatic weapons, and they’ve always been illegal. We’ve got the laws on the books, let’s enforce them.”
And, of course, there was pornography.
“And now with the liberalized society, as far as pornography has gone, (we have) high-powered, Ivy League lawyers donating their careers to hiding the slime of the earth behind the beautiful . . . First Amendment . . . ,” Dornan intoned. “We have a major cultural war going on in this country.”
When the broadcast was over, an ebullient Dornan gathered an armful of news magazines, newspaper clippings and books he had brought into the studio as reference material, and admitted how much he enjoyed chatting with a million people.
“That’s 10 Coliseums, filled with 100,000 people, that’s the way I’ve always looked at it,” he said. “When my TV show was getting 400,000 viewers, I used to picture standing in the middle of four Coliseums.”
Dornan also allowed that his legendary gift of gab comes naturally.
“The garrulous side comes with the Irish blood,” he said. “But I love the issues, that’s why I speak on the House floor so much.”