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The Yak-Box Tapes

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White: No, they don't make waves, they make noise. They may call themselves activists and doers, but they're not. They're little wimpy cowards who hide in their homes and call a talk show anonymously and talk big but when it gets down to doing something important -- like going out to vote or going to a PTA meeting or refereeing a soccer match -- they're not there to be counted.

The exchange was vintage White, with the host bashing a caller for a perceived miscue. It didn't hurt White's audience, because he was the kind of talk-show host many people hate to listen to but do anyway.

White was known for his gruffness, cutting people off, taking things the wrong way, routinely getting testy when someone opened with a perfunctory "How are you?" He could be sappy and cornball, too, but when he felt like it, which was fairly often, he could be a jerk. And if White could be seen as the Slobodan Milosevic of late-night radio, then Kelahan was just a tenacious member of the Kosovo Liberation Army, fighting a guerilla action, trying -- almost daily -- to ruffle the radio talk-show host with the highest rating in the city. Consider this exchange, ending a call that dealt with why White refused to discuss controversial topics on his show:

Elvis: Well, I just wanted to express my opinion that controversial things are good fuel for a talk show.

White: No, Elvis, you're wrong.
Elvis: The other talk shows are certainly successful using controversy.
White: They're not as successful as mine, Elvis. My ratings are bigger than anybody's. My ratings are higher than Rush's.

Elvis: Your ego's bigger than anybody's too, y'know.
White: Elvis, I've been at this a while. I know what I'm doing, believe me.
Elvis: That's all I had to say.

White: You know the rules, Elvis. Heh-heh-heh. Eleven-twenty-five on KMOX radio.

The tapes contain plenty of call-ins to other shows. There are calls to WGNU-AM, the old KXOK, national shows and to other KMOX stalwarts such as Bob Hardy and Anne Keefe, even a Bob Hyland guest spot. One favorite target was WGNU's Shirley Adams. Kelahan recalls that arguing with her "was like shaking up a can of beer before you open it."

It didn't take much for an argument. On one call, Kelahan was reacting to White's assertion that a suburban car wash couldn't get anybody to apply for a job. Kelahan said it might be that the work was hard, that the car wash was understaffed and the pay wasn't worth it. White jumped on that, knowing that Kelahan had previously said he was a musician who had part-time gigs and didn't have a full-time job.

White: What kind of work do you do, Elvis?
Elvis: I'm in the entertainment business, and that's all I'm going to say. I know you're going to ask me something else.

White: No, I'm not going to ask anything else. When you say it's too hard, no, it's not too hard. For example, the fellow who owns the place has just undergone quadruple-bypass surgery, and he's out there on the line many times doing it himself.... They can't even get people to apply for the jobs, much less take them. Or they take the job ...

Elvis: I just thought I'd point that out to you.
White: You're not pointing anything out to me, you're just confirming my suspicions that there's a bunch of lazy bums out there.

Elvis: I remember when Hardee's started serving chicken, they said it was going to be "labor-intensive." That's a fancy word for understaffed.

White: Ever work for a living, Elvis?
And so it went, night after night, picking nits. It was never a fair fight, because White had the buttons to push to turn the caller into dead air, but Kelahan kept calling, and thousands eavesdropped on their spats. Last Thursday in the studio, off the air, White said he remembered a chronic caller named "Elvis" and even went so far as to call him "intelligent."

Now White plans to take his boat for a circle tour of the eastern half of the country, filing reports along the way. John Carney, son of the late Jack Carney, will take his place as one more example of how KMOX is becoming a ghost of itself with the offspring of Carney, Jack Buck and Dan Kelly.

So will Kelahan miss White?
"Oh, I don't know," says Kelahan with a sigh. "Like I said, he's kind of a prick.

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