I remember the first time I was exposed to the right-wing shift to Talk Radio. The year was 1991 and I was just a couple years out of high school. I had landed a job as a school picture photographer as a way to get a foot in the door of the photography industry. At the time AOL had just released for MD DOS and Windows had yet to launch its game-changing Windows 3.1.
The first two weeks of the job involved training with another more experienced school pic photographer, named Dan. So I found myself riding with him on the way to various schools in small towns in the early morning fall hours. Dan was a guy that I could look up to. He was an entrepreneur, having built his small business of doing school photos in a small pocket of SW Indiana up to a point where he now needed an additional photographer and I felt honored to be his protoge.
Dan had a gift of gab and a knack for making topics like the federal budget deficit and government interesting. During our lengthy rides to and from rural schools, he would turn on his AM radio and we would listen and laugh and ponder the statements made by Talk Radio celebrities like G Gordon Liddy, Rush Limbaugh, and ,,,will finish this later..