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Gallagher visit revs up
fans
Radio talk-show host meets listeners during stop in
Corning.
July 20, 2005
By LARRY WILSON
Star-Gazette Corning
Bureau
lwilson@stargazette.com
LARRY WILSON/Star-Gazette
Disabled veteran John Palmer, 80, of Horseheads,
meets conservative radio talk-show host Mike Gallagher on
Tuesday in Corning's Centerway Square. Gallagher broadcast his
three-hour show from a bus in Corning as part of a national
tour to promote his new book.
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CORNING - John Palmer of
Horseheads waited patiently Tuesday in Centerway Square, clutching a
copy of Mike Gallagher's new book, "Surrounded by Idiots: Fighting
Liberal Lunacy in America."
Palmer, 80, a World War II
veteran, has lost part of each leg to diabetes and uses an electric
scooter to get around.
Gallagher, a nationally syndicated
conservative talk show host, bounded off his broadcast bus during a
commercial break to find Palmer at the bottom of the
steps.
"I'm so honored to meet you," he said, looking the
veteran in the eye and smiling. "Thanks so much for your
service."
Gallagher, who has more than 3 million daily
listeners, took to the airwaves from Corning on Tuesday as part of a
nationwide tour to promote his new book. The broadcast and
book-signing session were sponsored by WWLZ-AM 820, Storylines
Bookstore and Cafe in Watkins Glen and the Gaffer District Business
Association.
Palmer said he listens to "The Mike Gallagher
Show" nearly every day.
"I like his attitudes and what he
believes in," Palmer said. "I like what he's doing for the troops. I
was once one myself."
Gallagher sells T-shirts and dog tags
to raise funds for the education of children of soldiers killed in
the war on terror.
Charlie Marshall of Horseheads is another
Gallagher fan who attended Tuesday's broadcast.
"Luckily I
work nights so I can listen during the day," he said. "I think he's
right on the money. He has a lot of common sense."
Marshall
already has read Gallagher's book.
"It's outstanding," he
said. "It talks about family and his career and the basic
fundamentals this country was founded on. He's a very likable
guy."
Among the early arrivals in Centerway Square for
Gallagher's three-hour broadcast Tuesday was Gloria Misnick of
Corning.
"He's a good, sensible conservative," Misnick said.
"We don't need loony liberals. They have given the country a bad
name. He tells it like it is. He has a common-sense
philosophy."
Gallagher broadcast from an air-conditioned bus
parked by the Centerway clock tower. Small groups of fans were
invited onto the bus for short segments of the program. At tables in
the square, books and fund-raising items were available for
sale.
Speakers set up outside the bus allowed several dozen
people gathered at tables in the square to listen to the
broadcast.
Despite the sometimes strident tone of his show -
he suggested with tongue in cheek Tuesday that U.S. Sen. Hillary
Clinton is a witch or the Antichrist - Gallagher says he longs for a
time when America will be united again.
"Despite what I do
for a living, despite the title of the book, I really do wish we'd
figure out ways to be together, to be unified," he said. "I hope the
book includes that message. We can disagree politically, but that
doesn't mean we have to hate each other."
His rant on Clinton
may cost him the next time he talks to his wife, Denise, a liberal
Democrat who is a big fan of the Democratic senator.
"She
doesn't very frequently listen to me because it would just drive her
crazy," Gallagher said. "The few times she does it usually leads to
an argument at the dinner table, and I don't need that. I've got
enough arguments during the day."
Gallagher doesn't see his
own popularity and that of other conservative talk show hosts as a
sign of a conservative resurgence.
"I think it's always been
there," he said. "I think there's been a much more in-your-face
agenda by a lot of real extremist liberals and so now mainstream
Americans are saying, 'Enough already, we've got to take our country
back.'"
Gallagher got his start in radio as a teenager in
Dayton, Ohio. He spent time at stations in Albany, New York City and
Greenville, S.C. before his show went national in 1998. It is
syndicated by the Irving, Texas-based Salem Radio
Network.
Gallagher, who does a one-hour local radio show in
the Dallas market each day following his three-hour syndicated
program, says he doesn't get to talk as much at home as he does on
the air.
"Never," he said. "Why do you think I talk so much
on the air? I've got to get it in. Because I don't get it in at
home. Denise and I manage to avoid a lot of political debate in our
household. We find the things we can agree on more often than
not."
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