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Young talk-show host keeps the lines open for democracy

By STEVE PAUL

The Kansas City Star

So this is what it looks like at the bottom rung of the talk-radio ladder:
It's warm and stuffy in your frayed-carpet control room, even in the relative cool of an early Monday morning.

Two callers in a row test your resolve and the quickness of your hang-up finger when their incoherent utterances turn blue.

And then, later, it's him again: It's Mike from Overland Park and he's gassing on for the third time in less than two hours about the wonders of hydrogen fuel cells and hybrid vehicles, and you have to sit there and keep up your side of the conversation.

Welcome to Benjamin Johnson's world.

To him it's all part of the delicious parade of democracy. What's more vital than public discussion of the issues of the day? Foreign policy? Yes. GDP and WMD? Yes. The presidential campaign, now concluded, and the nation's direction from here on? Of course.

Benjamin who?

Benjamin Johnson is the self-described ?humble radio paragon? of KKFI, 90.1 FM, a volunteer-run, nonprofit station with a freewheeling sound and shoestring budget. Johnson, two months shy of 25, talks the talk once a week on an overnight show broadcast on what is likely the highest-powered, smallest-audience radio station in town.

In the course of a single four-hour, overnight show, Johnson delivers straightforward argument, passionate and sometimes provocative opinions. His politics are in transition but lean toward free-spirit libertarianism. (?When I hear John Edwards talk about two Americas,? he tells his audience, ?I beg to differ and say there are 290 million Americas.?) His radio style is direct and rambling at the same time. His untrained but resonant baritone flows out forcefully, but at lower decibels than the angry political talkers who dominate the field. He's at the beginning of what he hopes will be a career in radio, though it doesn't pay a thing and he waits tables to pay the bills.

To spend four hours with Johnson, his show and his callers, is to experience a drawn-out family dinner-table discussion that lingers long after the serving platters have been picked clean.

1:40 a.m.: Johnson and a caller named Big Dog spend more than 10 minutes discussing the economy, fear and the war on terrorism ? ?It's arguable how far we've come since 9/11 being more safe and secure,? Johnson says.

And then, when the caller hangs up: ?That's Big Dog out there, calling from the road somewhere, pitching the propaganda for the people, of course.?

Johnson kicks off his white Adidas shoes.

When he began doing the show last summer, Johnson joined the ranks of perhaps 1,000 politically oriented radio talk-show hosts, according to one trade estimate, a chattering class of commentators, screamers and agitators. Rush and Savage. Hannity and O'Reilly. And a rising tide of liberals, too.

Johnson is tall and slender. He wears trail shorts and a black Carhartt T-shirt. And with his sideburns and curly dark hair he has the casual-ambitious look of Zach Braff, that guy on ?Scrubs.?

Johnson marks the beginning of his new career path at the intersection of two events: a broken heart and a high colonic.

He grew up in midtown, not far from the radio station's studio on Westport Road. His father, Roy, an exterminator, was active in Jackson County Democratic politics. His mother, Maureen, works as a medical lab technician. They divorced when their son was 10.

After graduating from Lincoln Prep High School, Johnson spent a couple of years drifting from Kansas City to Austin, Texas, and Port

land, Ore., thinking about, but always postponing college. He worked as a ?meter maid? in Port

land, and while bicycling and handing out parking tickets in private lots, he tuned his portable radio to shock jocker Tom Leykis. The outrageous, postmodern male stuff didn't always appeal, but Johnson liked the way Leykis ?rolled social issues, political issues, all these issues into one groove.?

Johnson returned home and enrolled at UMKC. Then, early last year, while he was closing in on a history degree, his girlfriend left him. His ambition to graduate and go to law school up and left, too.

?I blew it all off,? he says. ?I just had no idea what I wanted to do anymore.?

After a while, radio seemed to call to him. At one time his old Oldsmobile had only an AM radio, and he got to listening to popular, extreme talkers like Art Bell, the overnight magnet for night-owl conspiracy theorists and UFO watchers. It was sheer entertainment but oddly engaging.

After dropping out he also went through a period of depression. He wasn't eating well, he says. And he decided to clean out his system and start over. Which brings up the high colonic, a system flush, disputed by medical professionals, that purports to purge one's innards of bad stuff.

Synchronicity: As Johnson tells it, the clinician who performed the procedure had a boyfriend, an Eng

lish fellow, who had been in radio in the 1960s. He and Ben talked for an hour, and by the end he told Johnson to go for it.

Radio. Yeah.

When he approached commercial stations for an internship, he was told he had to go back to school. KKFI presented another opportunity. When he walked into the spartan upstairs studio, it happened to be Volunteer Night, and Johnson signed on.

?One of the dynamics of this radio station is the people it attracts,? he says. ?There are special people involved with this station. They came here out of something, like they needed KKFI. So it worked out like that for me.?

Over the next year Johnson built a reputation as a hard worker. He taught himself to do production work ? audio editing, recording station announcements. Eventually he became the de facto music director, parceling out the flood of CDs that arrive each day to the station's eclectic band of programmers. He does his own two-hour music program on Tuesday mornings ? he's partial to the blues.

To interim station manager John Jessup, Johnson has become invaluable for the hours he puts in and the work he has taken on. For free, of course.

?Volunteers like Ben are few and far between,? Jessup says.

By this summer Johnson was engineering for other show hosts and doing vacation fill-ins. And then he got his own talk-show shift: the graveyard slot from 1 to 5 a.m. on Mondays.

2:36 a.m.: Caller, Shemeka: ?If Bush's plan is to leave no child behind, then why do we have one of the worst school districts in the nation??

?It's a very interesting show,? Shemeka, a nurse, says. ?We need you guys.? Then she mentions her political dilemma: Her boyfriend's a Republican. ?I accept that. I'm too poor to be a Republican but too stingy to be a Democrat??

She talks about Iraq ? her brother is serving there ? and gun rights, and she and Johnson share their concerns about both presidential candidates.

Johnson: ?You're starting to sound like a libertarian, and there's nothing wrong with that.?

Johnson concludes that the two-party political system fails because neither party seems to make room for individualists like him and his caller.

Johnson: ?All right, Shemeka, keep thinking about this, and the only way we're going to solve this is if we do it together.?

As a waiter, Johnson has made the rounds of Plaza restaurants, and lately he has worked at Aixois, a casual French restaurant in the Crestwood neighborhood. He keeps political talk in check as he delivers salads and bowls of mussels, except when prompted.

He says that, like many people, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, caused him to take stock of his own beliefs.

?Sept. 11,? he says, ?was one of those times where you have an opportunity if you so choose to reflect upon what all this means. I think that was the beginning of my activism to a certain degree.?

The radio gig allows him to work out his beliefs and to test them on his varied listeners. To him, it seems like practice for the future.

?That's the beautiful part of KKFI ? I'm allowed to create it as I go.?

He draws on his passion for history. He bones up on the news of the day. And he's ready to go wherever his band of listeners tries to take him ? within reason. His listeners appear to include a stable of regulars; there are conservatives and liberals, racists and quacks, conspiracy theorists and doomsday prophets. Johnson is unafraid to challenge those he disagrees with and to bait and batter the extremists.

?When I'm on, it is like a stream of consciousness, the way an old bluesman will play guitar,? Johnson says. ?He's not playing notes, he's playing his soul. When I get into a flow there, it's kind of like that. When I get to talking about history and politics, I'm just as impassioned by that as any other person would be by their art. That's really how I feel.?

John Jessup says: ?He strikes me as a bright young man and unusually motivated toward encouraging such debate with a view toward making our system work.?

3:09 a.m., Mike from Overland Park makes one of his pitches for hybrid cars and solar energy. ?To get away from Mideast oil,? he says.

?Talk radio works best when it's addressing people who feel disenfranchised and powerless,? says Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a trade monthly and Web site.

?The best talk shows are ones that give people information they can't get other places, that poke holes in hypocrisy, that take on power structures, that fly in the face of establishment ? all that coupled with a charismatic host, who is above all entertaining,? Harrison says.

?You've got to have charisma, you've got to have entertainment value, and you've got to stand up to something.?

4:27 a.m., Stan, from the East Side: ?China's on the verge of dominating the world economically.? Then, 30 minutes later, as the show nears its close, a caller named Ringo suggests that Stan is working for the CIA.

Johnson regards his talk show as a form of political activism. He traveled to New York on his own to witness the street scene and protests during the Republican National Convention in September, which had fueled much of his discussion this night.

Getting people to think and talk about the system and justice and the way the world works is what it's all about.

?If you really want to improve things in America, it's communications,? he says. You can consume CNN in the privacy of your home all you want, he says, but unless you're talking with your neighbors, your friends, your fellow talk-show callers, you are not engaging in the democratic process.

Does Johnson have the conversational savvy and charisma it takes to climb up that talk-show ladder? It's still early to say.

?I understand,? Johnson says, ?that if I'm ever going to be a professional radio host in more than community radio I have a long way to go.?

So it's something to strive for and practice in the early morning hours, with Big Dog and Mike and Shemeka tuning in and helping to shape Johnson's vision.

?I'm not going to save the world,? he says. ?I'm not going to destroy the world. It's just community radio.?

4:59 a.m., Johnson: ?'Til next week; it's been beautiful.?

To reach Steve Paul, senior writer and editor, call (816) 234-4762 or e-mail: paul@kcstar.com.

THE BENJAMIN JOHNSON FILE
Age: 24
Lives: Midtown Kansas City, not far from where he grew up
Career: Rejected law school, now aiming for talk radio
Meantime: Waiting tables at Aixois
On the air: 1 to 5 a.m. Mondays, KKFI, 90.1 FM
Quoted: ?I like to think I talk positively about America, yet I don't apologize for the actions of the government.?
Listens to: Blues guys Fred Horton and, especially, Stevie Ray Vaughan
Kissing Sms.