Famed broadcaster passed away just the way he would've liked
Nov. 1, 2012
By C.F. Twob
C.F.Twob@gmail.com
ATLANTA –
The talk radio world has gone mute as iconoclastic
legend Neil Boortz has died of an apparent heart
attack while on the air. He was 67.
Boortz was arguing with a listener regarding the reelection campaign of President Hillary Clinton.
The former first lady, struggling in the polls against GOP challenger Jeb "Dubya's Brother" Bush, has been widely criticized for her unsuccessful attempts to levy an across-the-board 99 percent tax bracket to pay for universal health care. (This means everyone nets one cent on every dollar they earn, although this still doesn't include federal, state or local taxes or taxes for Medicare, Social Security, fattening foods, Internet or carbonated beverages).
The talk host, a self-described libertarian who admitted voting third party in the 2008 presidential elections out of a feeling that Democrats were "liberals" and Republicans were "Diet Coke liberals" or "liberal lites", started grabbing at his chest and complaining of excruciating pain. Ironically enough, Boortz had just been thundering away at a listener regarding how difficult heart bypass, angioplasty and transplants would be to get under the president's socialized medicine program.
The paramedics, who later admitted to being Republicans who felt that Libertarian candidates were responsible for the 2008 GOP party split that vaulted Clinton into the White House over GOP candidate Fred Thompson, announced after only five seconds of lackadaisical CPR that efforts to revive Boortz had been unsuccessful.
A former attorney, Boortz began his career in talk radio in 1969 and had been nationally syndicated since 1999. He admitted once to The Atlanta Daily Gripe that his motivation for getting into radio was simple: "I felt I had what it took to be a professional complainer." He saw the radio medium as a way of telling listeners what he thought regarding society's ills—whether they wanted to hear it or not. "If only I could tune every radio in America to the station that carries my show and superglue the dial, the volume and ON buttons," he said, adding that he was joking.
(He wasn't, of course).
No stranger to controversy, Boortz had been in hot water in recent years:
In 2008, joking about Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's so-called masculine qualities, Boortz suggested that former president Bill Clinton would make a great first lady. Later, that year when President Clinton won the national election (that is still being disputed six years later due to a mysterious computer glitch called a "Hanging Brad") someone asked him what he thought about America finally having its first woman president. Boortz replied on his radio show: "We already have! Don't you remember the nineties when Wilma—er, Bill, was in office?"
In 2009, Boortz was off the air for a week due to controversial comments directed at Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, calling them "nappy-headed ambulance chasers". Later, when apologizing, Boortz clarified his comments: "It was wrong to call them 'nappy headed.'"
In 2010, Boortz suggested the world celebrate Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2010: Odyssey Two by sending liberals on a space exploration to Mars. What would make the trip a real success, Boortz said, was if we give them only enough fuel to get there. He added: "But then, even with them getting there, there's no guarantee the Red Planet would have any intelligent life on it."
In 2011, the secret service interrogated Boortz for 29 hours straight after he advocated the legalization of marijuana on his radio program for this reason: "Once pot is legal, maybe one of my listeners can make a grass brownie for Hillary and get her high and her hands away from trying to get more tax legislation passed!" Asked to clarify his comments, Boortz said that as long as the president "tasted but didn't swallow, she should be fine."
Boortz' dislike of President Clinton has been well-documented, but he has insisted on voting libertarian in 2012 rather than support Bush, saying that he was tired of seeing the Bush family in office. "They ought to stick to making baked beans," he explained. Instead, Boortz chose to support Libertarian candidate Harry Browne. Browne's platform included a promise that, if he were elected, he would drop the superfluous silent "e" from his surname.
Boortz was born on April 6, 1945 in Bryn Mawr, Penn. He spent most of his growing-up years correcting people on his birthplace's pronunciation ("It's 'Brin Mauer', NOT 'Brine Maw-errrr'!" he would often thunder). A military brat whose father was in the Marines, Boortz lived all over the United States, a few countries and even on a few planets that were unsuccessfully colonized. Apparently, the people there couldn't stand Boortz and chose to leave.
After graduating from Texas A&M, Boortz attended law school and worked as an attorney for 15 years. Lawyers make a living arguing in court, so it seemed only natural that Boortz would transition to arguing from behind a microphone.
Boortz is survived by his wife and daughter, who, because they never listen to his show, only learned about his death from—ironically enough—the liberal blog www.huffingtonpost.com.