The Bird lucked into Anita Drobny's home phone number in Illinois and gave her a ring. The weepy, morose Drobny would not discuss details of the Manzo lawsuit — which claims that the Drobnys didn't pay Manzo's withholding to the federal government, that they'd been late in paying Nova M's bills, that Sheldon Drobny had erroneously claimed the FBI was investigating Manzo — save but to say that the legal action was "ridiculous" and "wasn't going anywhere."
As for Randi Rhodes, Mrs. Drobny said, "People are saying it's about money. It's not about money at all. I just could not fulfill one of her requirements." She did, however, note the financial impact of Rhodes' departure:
Lefty talk-radio yenta Randi Rhodes jumps Nova M's waterlogged dinghy in the nick of time.
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"I looked at [our] site, and I see that because Randi Rhodes isn't on, there are so many people leaving the Founders Club [which involves a fee paid to Nova M]. And you can't operate without people's participation."
As to the rumor that her husband had attempted suicide, she responded, "My husband had a breakdown. That's the most correct thing I can say. A breakdown from all the radio stuff."
Drobny said she hopes that "someone can take this over for us," and that "we tried; we tried real hard."
John Manzo pointed out to the The Bird that the Drobnys each had said in the past that the other was experiencing a breakdown or acting bizarre for bizarre reasons, and Manzo mentions more than one occurrence in his tort claim.
As The Bird went to press, it received a report that the trade publication Radio and Records had quoted current Nova M general manager Eric Reinert as stating that Nova M is no more, and that a new company, called On Second Thought LLC, had been formed. (It remains to be seen whether the place will make it past Sean Ryan's death pool bet.)
"It's been like watching a six-month pratfall," Manzo said of the collapse of Nova M.
COMMIE PICNIC
Seems you can't turn on right wing-nut radio these days without someone like Glenn Beck (or some other conserva-crazy saliva jockey) calling President Barack Obama a Marxist, a socialist, or worse. Is our beloved (for now) chief executive really a full-on devotee of Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin? Well, you don't ask an on-air goosestepper such as Beck for an answer to that question. You ask a dyed-in-the-red Commie.
That's why this cardinal winged down to Tempe's Kiwanis Park recently for a picnic sponsored by the Arizona branch of the Communist Party USA, where the national chairman of the CPUSA was in town to speak. Hell, the CPUSA's been around since 1919, figured this finch. And back in the day, when hardliner Gus Hall was still chairman (Hall died in 2000), the party opposed Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika program, saying it was diluting and destroying the basis for communism. (Hall once touted North Korea as a nice place for Americans to take a vacation.)
In other words, if these Commies don't know who a Commie is, then no one does.
So this yardbird made the scene, half-expecting it to consist of a bunch of old doods in berets and Birkenstocks. But, amazingly, about half of the roughly 40 in attendance were under 40 years old, and there were even a couple of hot Commie babes, which beats nativist and neo-Nazi meetings The Bird's been to by about, well, a couple.
Alas, no one was in a Mao Tse-tung jacket, and there was only one cat wearing a hammer and sickle, a local, 20-something musician who calls himself the Black River Bandit. Everyone else looked pretty friggin' normal. Actually, too normal and way too laid back.
Whatever happened all those boisterous hellraisers The Bird saw in that Warren Beatty flick Reds, way back when? When this seed-swallower wondered to one young Commie present why he and his fellow pinkos don't go out and kick some neo-Nazi ass — as there are plenty of swastika-lickers in town — his eyes got all big, and he told this beaker they like to keep a low profile.
Real low. That's why you could've practically confused the meeting with some Christian kumbaya sing-along. Anyhoo, the beer and the hot dogs were free, even though the Commies were askin' for a $5 donation.
The meat of the meet was an hour-long address and Q&A with chairman Sam Webb, who took over leadership of the party in 2000 after Hall's demise. But Webb, unless you listen real closely, sounds a lot like a Democrat. In fact, most of his speech was given over to what a great fella Barack Obama is and how Obama's election was the beginning of a new age in American politics, one free of the ravages of an oppressive right wing.
"Because of the election last year," enthused Webb to his audience, "there's a possibility that this can be an era of social progress in this country."
Webb hoped that with Obama and the Dems in power, and the Republicans out, lefties could realize their dreams of socialized medicine, the nationalization of major industries, and public ownership and control of the financial markets — which, granted, doesn't sound as farfetched as it once did.
