E.J. Becker

every time i see her now, in think of sneezing.  in photos, she always has her elbow in front of her face.  if it’s a video, she’s putting it in front of her face.  if it’s a press briefing she’s having sticks moved around to puppet an elbow in front of a red, velvety face (i am desperately trying to avoid mentioning elmo here).

and when a national news guy sneezes into his hands, she manipultates (through her words and outraged facial expressions) his elbow too.

so the term ’secretary of sneezing’ came to mind this morning and as i ponder it more, i find myself looking for a more sleek, modern term.

secre-sneeze.  sneezatary.  secre…secre…secre-chooo.

kansas powerfrau (this isn’t negative, just german), former governor, pilates phenom and now sneezemander-in-chief.

anyway, let’s hope her efforts pay off. how can you not get nervous when you hear stories like the one we had this morning on kansas city’s morning news (weekday mornings 5-9 on newsradio 980 kmbz — tell a friend) — a 24 year old independence woman with the swine flu, died.  24 years old.  24!

scary stuff.  and if it breaks out like they say it might, it’ll be nothing to sneeze at.

Uncategorized, the indoor voice chuck todd, e.j. becker, elmo, kansas city's morning news with e.j. and ellen, kathleen sebelious, sneezing

it’s sunday evening at 1800 (military time is so exact. i love it!) and i have just awakened.  i fell asleep at 1800 on friday evening and haven’t been awake since. it was such a week, so much going on, history made, short nights, long days and lots of excitement.  in short, it was the kind of week we live for.

i have to tell you that when you host a morning news program, there’s nothing as exciting (and taxing) as a big election. you spend alot of time (in this case two years) building up to it, finding the right interviews, making sure they come on, and coaxing them to give you as much insight as possible in a limited amount of time. everyone on the team pushes everyone they know to get the interviews with the big names. i’m not sure (because i can’t listen to every show) but i doubt any other k.c. radio program had obama, mccain and biden as often as we did on kansas city’s morning news (i’m sure everyone had palin on as often as we did).

you work to make sure you cover both sides of an issue and both candidates in a race and you answer the letters accusing you of being biased one way or the other.

then the day before comes and the tension mounts.  every campaign is calling trying to book that one person that will resonate most with listeners.  the day of, things start to cook.  trouble at the polls, some voter registries get delivered to the wrong precincts (anybody lose a gig over that one??), long lines and overall excitement all-around.  and then at 2200 hours kc time on tuesday night, history.

wednesday, the analysis continues. why did mccain lose?  what do people think of the winner?  what was the role of race in the race?  then the rumors:  a national magazine says palin can’t spell her own name and doesn’t know how to make a grilled cheese.  at least south park did what it does best.

by the end of the week, heck, by the end of his victory speech, the prez-elect was trying to lower expectations, find his appointees (and balance “change” with the apparent desire to pick “insiders”) and deal with the economy without any power to actually do so. saturday night live slides back into obscurity by playing a rerun.  and columnists look ahead to p.e. obama’s first visit to 1600 pa av since winning by recounting his first visit to the white house (what do people have against hand sanitizer?  it’s washington.  i’d have an aide at the ready with a squirt too!).

at the end of it all, we get a new president. a new approach.  new stories.

and if the new presidential administration fails to provide enough interesting content (which i doubt will be the case), no doubt local politics will (as that funky volunteer ordinance proved on friday).

rock’n'roll

behind the scenes africa, e.j. becker, funkhouser, grilled cheese, hand sanitizer, media bias, obama, palin, south park, volunteer ordinance

this morning, we had the third installment of our listener debate panel.  beth donovan, sam kane and kj turner were among the group of folks who volunteered to talk with us after each debate and review what they as listeners – not politicos – thought of the outcomes.

beth is a farmer, sam is a small-business owner and kj is a local webmaster. and all of these folks are really nice, cordial, fun to hang out with (at least early in the morning in a radio booth). but push the right buttons and watch’em go.

while we were prepping to switch topics from the economy, health care came up as the next topic to touch on and boy did things heat up.  as a matter of fact, ellen and i had to have been thinking the same thing: “here’s another example of when the good stuff happens during the commercial and never makes it on-air.”

not so.

kj and beth have very different ideas on “responsibility” (tom brokaw’s term…not outs) and they didn’t hold back (just ask mark who thought the control board was gonna explode because of the yelling). Check out the podcast here.

i think we came away with a couple of things.  first, there’s no clear solution to the health care question in the u.s. with such widely (and wildly) differing views.  second, it was interesting to hear how socialized medicine sounds so similar to having no health care coverage at all (again, this is in reference to the discussion on the podcast).  third, and this is something we didn’t have time to touch on, you have to wonder what will happen to the issue of health care once the election is held and the new president is seated.  will it be a priority or just another campaign talking point.

rock’n'roll.

behind the scenes e.j. becker, kansas city's morning news, kmbz, off-air, presidential debate

this can’t be good. they’ve given me a blog.  first problem is that the shift key doesn’t work on my computer so i can never get the stupid computer to type in caps.

here’s the good news, all the stuff that we talk about off the air, that never makes it to a (purposefully) open mic, we can write it here.

also, this’ll be a great place to talk about one of  my favorite things:  food. just typing about it makes me hungry.

rock’n'roll.

behind the scenes e.j. becker, kmbz, open mic