Heeeeres Berny!! :Ex-Alderman Stone To Tryout as WLS Talker

Chicago's WLS-Am radio announced today that it was giving recently defeated Alderman Bernard Stone a radio hosting tryout in its Saturday evening 7 to 9 pm slot.

You've got to hand it to old Berny Stone. The 83 year old ex-Chicago Alderman sure doesn't let the grass grow for long beneath his size 13 wingtips.

After his resounding defeat Tuesday, the last digital ballot scanner hadn't yet been rolled out of the polling places in his North side 50th ward and he was already on WLS-AM trolling for a new gig.

Early on election night, Stone gave a post-mortem telephone interview to WLS election show jocks, Bruce Wolf and Dan Proft. Sounding remarkably chipper after his 62-38% trouncing, he hinted that he might want to try his hand as a radio commentator for the clear-channel Chicago talk station.

Stone said that he had been an actor early on in his career and offered that he could do a better job on-the-air than Rod Blagojevich and some of the other ex-pols who have been given a microphone at WLS-AM.


To that, Proft quipped that he might have to get indicted before getting an offer from them.

For sure, Chicago has a peculiar history of meting out radio gigs to convicted ex-pols.

After being sprung from the federal pen, former Congressman Dan Rostenkowski ended up as an election night commentator on WLS. Indicted ex- Governor Rod Blagojevich was given two Saturday afternoon hours to bloviate on the station before his trial started up in earnest.

Most recently, WGN radio gave an early evening 3 hour slot to the felonious former City Clerk, Jim Laski.

The most successful of this genre was former Chicago City Council President, Ed (Fast Eddy) Vrydolyak (his 3 year run at WLS was before his recent indictment and incarceration.)

Having met Berny Stone and spoken with him one-on-one in his Lincoln Avenue office, I must say that, theatrically, at least, he may bring more to the table than many of the others have.


While he speaks in a gruff Chicagoese, his is more of the old, West-side, sing-songy Yiddish variety than the Milwaukee Avenue "dems and dese and dose" with which Laski polluted the airwaves.

And who knows? Maybe Berny will repopularize Catskills vaudevillian humor during his Saturday evening WLS gig.

If he can stay awake.

That Zany WGN Radio: Laski Leads In To Prof. Rosenberg's Show With B.O. Discussion

Just what are they thinking at WGN Radio 720 AM?

I am a lifelong Chicagoan. I like to think that I have some modicum of understanding of the provincial character of this city.

But I have to admit that I am truly mystified by the decision of the Chicago Tribune's, clear-channel radio megastation to give a regular 32 state audience to Jim Laski.(above left)

He is the former Democrat Alderman and elected Chicago City Clerk who went to the federal pen for pocketing $48,000 in bribes and telling the bribers to lie to the Feds about it.

This Chicago machine pol, now in his mid-fifties, is out of the slammer and they have given him a radio program on WGN, one of the major radio outlets in the USA, which issues from Chicago's storied Tribune Tower.

His speech is of the “dems and dese and dose” variety often heard at dingy sorts of corner bars on the “Nort-West and Sout-West” sides of the city.

He thinks that discussions of body odor are uproariously good talk-radio fodder.

WGN puts him on the air every weekday night and has him fill in on some weekend slots.

While this is going on, Dr. Milt Rosenberg's, Extension 720 – an evening WGN broadcast of some three decades of standing and national renown, has been relegated to a later hour and sketchy periodic regularity. It is most nights now, pre-empted by Blackhawks hockey or Cubs nightgame broadcasts.

Rosenberg, (photo right) a professor emeritus of the University of Chicago, conducts a program, so uniquely erudite and seriously insightful in character, that every major author in the English speaking world would literally kill to get on it.

His guests over the years have included British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger and President Jimmy Carter, to name just a very few.

The other night, Milt's guests were law professors from Northwestern and Loyola Universities, who specialize in effecting the exoneration of wrongfully incarcerated prisoners. They were accompanied by two young black men who were the victims of Chicago police and Cook County State's Attorney prosecutorial misconduct – and whom these pro-bono legal advocates ultimately cleared after years of wrongful incarceration.

The lead-in to this disturbingly cogent, two hour discussion was Jim Laski's show.

Moments before Laski had been guffawing on the airwaves like a giddy high-school sophomore, about people who he encountered at the “Jewels” who had bad body odor.

He was fielding calls from his, I suspect, quite limited audience, about this pressing topic.

I suspect in the coming weeks he will be doing shows which will look into the salient issues of farts and boogers.

I've noticed that when Laski does the intro to Dr. Rosenberg's subsequent show, Milt doesn't acknowledge him as he did personalities who formerly preceded him.

No more than an Arabian stallion would acknowledge the presence of a barn-fly.

I don't blame him at all.

But just what are they thinking over at WGN Radio?