By Scott W. Graves

RC:  Why were you drawn to radio?
Elder: I think radio was drawn to me. I got into radio quite by accident. I had written an op-ed piece for a local newspaper where I outlined my prescription for limited government, maximum personal responsibility, my opposition to high taxes, my opposition to race-based preferences. And, I was invited on as a guest.

I stayed on for an hour. This was in 1992. I was screamed at, yelled at, called Uncle Tom, called cold and heartless and lacking compassion... you know, the usual.

I didn't have a very good time and I didn't enjoy it. I didn't enjoy getting yelled at.

I got back to my office and the owner of the station called and told me that I was wonderful. He said, "You were articulate, you were funny, you had a good voice, you defended controversial decisions effectively. Have you ever thought about doing talk radio?" I said, "No."

He told me that he had a guy that was going on vacation in a few weeks and that he would like me to sit in. He said, "Would you consider it?" I said, "No." He said, "Why? I am really urging you to consider this because I have rarely seen the kind of talent that you have, and I have been doing this for a long time."

He told me to talk it over with my wife. I did. She asked me why I didn't like talk radio. I said, "Because it is shallow, glib, and stupid." She said, "It is. You would be good at it."

So I did it for five days and after the first twenty minutes, I fell in love with it. I really felt that it was my calling and it was my passion. I felt that I could make a difference. I felt I could persuade people and get people to change their minds, or at least to rethink their assumptions. And, I knew this is what I had to do.

RC: How do you prepare for a show?
Elder: Even for just that week, I was worried I would run out of things to say and nobody would call in. I prepared all sorts of things so that if nobody called in, there would not be dead air. And then after you get into it, you realize the bigger problem is limiting what you're going to talk about from all the different things you could talk about.

So for the first week or so I was scared to death and the first day I remember preparing very, very hard and having all sorts of stacks of paper. But after I began talking about something and stating a point of view, especially if it was a controversial point of view, I started getting callers.

And the next bit of it is, how to respond. Do you yell at them? Do you shout at them? Do you cut them off? Do you allow them to go on for three, four... five minutes? How many calls do you take? Those are the details of talk radio that a rookie just has to learn. You can only learn that by listening to other people or by doing it.

RC: Why do you suppose talk radio has been so successful when the host offers a center-right point of view and a dismal failure when offered from the viewpoint of the left?
Elder: I call it the "Main Scream Media". The Main Scream Media is to the left. If you want to hear an unchallenged view about socialized medicine or gun control or the rich not paying enough taxes, just turn on the Today Show, or the CBS Morning Show, or Good Morning America, or listen to your nightly news.

Left wing ideas are already out there. In every one of your major newspapers with a few exceptions, the editorial page is to the left. The newscasters are to the left. You name the issue, affirmative action, gun control, abortion, Hillarycare, you are going to hear that point of view either corroborated or not challenged. So if you want to hear somebody challenge the left wing orthodoxy of the Main Scream Media, you're going to have to go to alternative sources. And, talk radio provides that.

RC: What are your half dozen go-to news sources?
Elder: I read the Los Angeles Times and the valley newspaper, the Daily News. I read the Orange County Register, the Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, and I read the New York Times. Then I go on the Internet and look at Drudge. I look at a half dozen so-called right wing bloggers like Right-Wing News. I enjoy Michelle Malkins' blog. And I also read left wing blogs like the Huffington Post. I also have a television set on at the same time, listening to CNN, MSNBC, and I'm listening to Fox. And from all that, I begin to develop what I want to talk about for three hours.

RC: To what extent are ratings considered when picking your issues?
Elder: They are always considered. The number one thing that a host has to be, whether he is center-right, center-left, far-right, far-left, is entertaining. If the show is not entertaining, people are not going to listen.

As much admiration as I have for William F. Buckley, and I have a great deal of respect for him, I doubt he would have survived in a talk radio medium like today. He was very intellectual, often monotonic. And he simply was not entertaining. There was not a lot of fireworks and pyrotechnics. He would not have survived in this kind of medium. You need to be, first and foremost, an entertainer.

RC: On what issues do you think talk radio has been the most entertaining and the most effective?
Elder: I think on the basic hot button issues. The war, illegal immigration, Hillarycare, the presidential candidates, the Clinton impeachment, O.J. Simpson...  You name the issue, especially if it is political, and it will be discussed by talk radio. And those of us on the center-right will bring something to the table that you're not going to hear when you're watching the Today Show or Good Morning America or any of the nightly news programs or by reading the editorial in the Los Angeles Times.
 
RC: Have you had a proudest moment in your talk radio career?
Elder: I'll give you one in particular. I was on the old afternoon Geraldo television show. It was about whether the criminal justice system was unfair to blacks. There was a guy on there named Chico Brown.

Chico Brown was about ready to go to prison for dealing cocaine. Every single pundit, except for me, felt it was unfair that he was going to prison. They felt there were distinct disparities between crack cocaine and powdered cocaine. They felt the criminal justice system was unfair to blacks.

They finally got around to me. I said to Chico, "You should go to jail. You know damn well what you did was illegal, you know that you were selling crack, you knew what the penalties were, and you should go to jail. Take responsibility for what you did and go to jail."

Fast forward five or six years later. I'm on the air and my producer says to me, " Larry, there is somebody named Chico that wants to talk to you. He said you and he had squared off on the old Geraldo show."

I put him on the air even though it had nothing to do with the topic we were talking about. We went over what happened. Chico told me, "When you said what you said, I determined that I was going to kill you. Every day that I was in prison, I planned that when I got out I was going to track you down and kill you."

And then he told me, "I began thinking about what you said. And little by little, I realized that you were the only one telling me that I was in control of my life. That I was responsible for selling that crack cocaine. Nobody put a gun to my head and told me to sell it. The white man didn't make me do it. I did it. And you were the only one who was bold enough and brave enough to tell me to my face. And it began to cause me to rethink my entire life. Now I am out [of prison], I am the Executive Director of a youth center called A Place Called Home, and I want to thank you for helping me turn my life around and having the courage to say what you said."

Chico and I are now friends. I now give speeches before his organization and I provide financial support.

That is one of my proudest moments.

RC: You very publicly have acknowledged changing political parties...
Elder: I started out as a Democrat as most people do, then I was a "Declined to State", and then I switched to the Republican party. I have never been a Libertarian because I thought, and still do, that their attitude with regard to foreign policy is naïve to the point of being dangerous.

RC: Any regrets?
Elder: No. I am disappointed by the spending [of Republicans], I am disappointed by the prescription benefit bill for seniors, the expansion of the department of education, and lots of things. But the number one issue is national security. On this issue, the Democrats are off the reservation. They don't understand the peril we face against what I call Islamofascism. And Republicans, for the most part, do. If we do not have a strong national defense, nothing else really matters.

RC: Next year, Republicans are going to go back to the polls and ask Americans to trust them to once again control congress and ask for another four years in the White House. But given their profligate spending and their inability to act on any meaningful reform on issues such as healthcare, immigration, and social security during the twelve years they controlled congress, what credibility do they have in asking to be returned to power?
Elder: That's why they're in trouble. They squandered their credibility. They squandered their reputation. They squandered their values. And, I believe, the American people punished them for it. I don't think it [the results of the last election] was just the war. Although I think the war was the primary issue. I think these guys talked the talk, but didn't walk the walk. And that [credibility] takes generations to rebuild.

RC: Do you think Republicans are going to have to be pragmatic if it comes to a Hillary or Obama candidacy?
Elder: If you mean by "pragmatic" that they are going to have to homogenize their values, the answer is no. I think what Ronald Reagan did was to articulate a strong conservative point of view and wait for the center to find him. Remember, Reagan tried a number of times. He tried in 1968. He tried in 1976. He tried and succeeded in 1980. So it took a while for the American people to embrace the things he was saying. And it took the incompetence of Jimmy Carter to make Americans want a change. But he didn't change his point of view. He stuck to it. He was the "Great Communicator" and articulated those points of view. And the American people began to embrace them. And that's what we need now.

RC: Do you foresee the rise of a bright, articulate, charismatic political leader with center-right values from the African-American community that gets the same kind of exposure and media enthusiasm as Barack Obama has generated?
Elder: First, I never use the term "African-American". I don't like the hyphen. I think it's divisive. I call myself an American who happens to be black. I think when people use terms like that, they are trying to be polite and trying to be politically correct.

I find it bothersome that black people have been in this country from the very beginning but we have a hyphen. Teddy Roosevelt talked about hyphenated Americans and about how it hurts the whole process of assimilation. And I think this whole business of "African-American", which is something that Jesse Jackson persuaded a whole bunch of newspapers to start using, is divisive. But I digress...

I do see the rise of blacks in the Republican party. I am writing a book coming out called Stupid Black Men and the People Who Want to Keep Them That Way. My argument is, among other things, that the Democratic party wants black people to focus on one issue and one issue only, racism. They don't want black people to focus on education because the Republican prescription for that is vouchers. They don't want blacks focusing on reforming Social Security because the Republican prescription for that is a partial privatization that would disproportionately benefit blacks.

My point is, if blacks start to think of themselves as individuals and not racial units, and you begin to look at things issue by issue... national security, healthcare, abortion, education; Republicans have far better ideas that would advance the issues of blacks in particular and Americans in general than do Democrats.

So what you do is keep blacks angry and keep them thinking about race and racism.

RC: Why do you think folks like Al Sharpton, Ray Nagin, Jesse Jackson, and Maxine Waters, who are so divisive, have so much sticking power with the black community?
Elder: Because the Main Scream Media believes that race and racism is a major issue in America, just as they believe sexism is a major issue in America, just as they believe the gap between the rich and the poor is a major issue in America. I think the typical journalist really believes that racism remains a major problem in America. As a result, people like those you named, get a great deal of traction.

I told you earlier that one of the duties of a talk show host is to be entertaining. Like him or not, Al Sharpton is entertaining. He says all sorts of bonehead stupid things. He falsely accused a man of sexually assaulting Tawana Brawley. He referred to the Central Park jogger as a whore. He has done hideous things that would have run anyone else out of town. But, he is entertaining. He is funny. He is clever. He is street smart. So I think he sucks a lot of oxygen out of the room. But he is unbelievably irresponsible.