State Rep. Jeff Lewis (D), some dork, and U.S. Congressman Bob Barr (R)
Some of my readers have expressed interest in Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr. I'm almost certain they're really just hinting they want to hear my Bob Barr story again. Well here it is.

Back in the 1990's I worked at a 1,000 watt AM radio station in a rural area and was hoping to move up. I had read a radio classified ad where a station wanted to know what kind of promotions a potential morning host had done, and wanted photos, so I started brainstorming.

People magazine provided an idea. Singer and Republican Congressman Sonny Bono had recently skied into a tree. The owner of a Chicago nightclub had Sonny's old nehru jacket and wanted it placed in the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. He had a petition drive going in Illinois and appeared to have made headway. This had the makings of a great promotion. I looked the club up, called the owner, interviewed him on the air and told him I would head up the Georgia wing of his campaign. I planned a big ceremony to get signatures.

Georgia Congressman Bob Barr was a central figure in the Republican Revolution going on at that time, and the small town I was in was part of his district. It turned out a guy I was acquainted with from college had become Barr's right-hand man*. So I phoned up Barr's office and and asked if Barr would speak, and they agreed. Man, I used to have a lot of balls. The county commissioner, sheriff and local representative to the state legislature also came out. All these real-deal politicians showing up to participate in my bullshit...wow.

We set up chairs in the studio of the cable TV station and the news director laid out a snack buffet. Someone had an old Sonny & Cher LP, so we had "I've Got You Babe" cued to play before we got started, and propped the record up for display as it was the only pic of Sonny I could find. I had some banners with my logo hung up.

I faxed this news to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but it failed to gather any ink except to be mentioned in the local events notices, without any mention of the radio station or me. I also called up the Atlanta NBC affiliate, but they said while it was an interesting event, since it was happening at 4 p.m. they wouldn't be able to get it on the 6 o'clock news, and later on it wouldn't be a story.

These were minor bumps compared to how the rest of it went. Our rinky-dink station didn't have any satellite gear, just this thing that dated from the 1960's called a Marti. You plugged your mics into the Marti and it sent the signal back to the station...Lord willing. This day the Lord did not will. He smited me for attempting to promote myself atop the casket of Sonny Bono!

I gave my speech, and clearly no one gave a shit. The politicos in the room probably had no idea who this 27-year-old punk was.

So I introduced Bob Barr. We got word that trucker CB's were interfering with our Marti signal to the station. So I decided to lay a telephone on the podium, as that seemed to be our only hope of getting out a clear signal. I told Barr to just talk loud so the phone could pick it up, but instead he picked up the phone and started talking to the board operator back at the station! I couldn't believe we had this roomfull of people watching half a phone conversation.

It was a fiasco, but everyone seemed to enjoy the cheese crackers. I tried to chat Barr up a little afterward but he was a bit aloof, probably thinking I was a fool, and I couldn't blame him.

I took my banners over to a friend's apartment and told him how the whole thing had fallen short of my vision. He came up with a classic line that really summed up everything I've ever done. He said, "You're Don Quioxte. You're trying to qualify for the Indy 500 on a riding lawnmower."

Later a public speaker told me Barr had actually done the right thing, going to the phone instead of addressing the present audience. You should always speak to the larger audience. Whether there were more people listening at home than the 30 people in that room is debatable, though.

We only got about 50 signatures on that petition. Everyone thought we were signing them up for junk mail.

* I told my college acquaintance that I had seen Dennis Miller talking about his boss in his monologue on his HBO show the night before. He said, "It'll be a cold day in hell when Dennis Miller says anything nice about Republicans." Hell's been freezing for a few years now.