A voice of reason muted by the times
Like a benched athlete eager to get back into the game, radio voice Michael Jackson is frustrated in repose. He wants to be where the action is, where leaders clash, where terror lurks, where the world changes.
Reading about the great events of our time online and in half a dozen newspapers every day, listening to news reports on radio and watching the Earth-shaking events on television only feed his desire to return to a microphone, interviewing those in whose hands the future lies.
It was almost a year and a half ago that Jackson's talk show ended when KLAC-AM went to a music format. Rumors to the contrary, no one has signed him since.
"I miss it," he says softly, seated in the library of his vast, two-story Bel-Air Estates home, "and I don't understand it. We need voices of moderation on the air, whether it's me or someone else, and we don't have them."
He feels swept aside by the thundering voices of the right, a victim of the times. It is an era of Limbaugh and O'Reilly, pedantic, chest-pounding acolytes of conservatism, anointed by the White House to spread the holy word.
Jackson never was a spokesman for any cause. His guests during more than three decades on the air in Los Angeles represented virtually every political opinion, and he treated them all with a civility today's bombast lacks. If he was perceived as liberal, it was only because he wasn't obnoxious.
"Howard Stern called me a boring English [jerk]," he says, brushing it aside with laughter. Then he grows serious. "Don't make me sound bitter. I'm not. I'm frustrated. I want to be back on the air again. That's all."
Even at rest, the man bristles with energy, though the English-accented voice remains that of a gentleman discussing the weather with an Oxford don. ("I sound smarter than I am," he says with self-effacing humor.) He is much in person as he was on the air, maintaining an equanimity of spirit that few possess.
"Wherever I go, people say, 'We need you now more than ever.' I have had 600,000 hits on my website." He offers a litany of awards and honors, as much to convince himself as to explore the puzzlement of his forced retirement: seven Emmys, installation in the Radio Hall of Fame, a Legion of Merit from France, the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and more. "I don't get it," he says, shaking his head. "I just don't get it." And he truly doesn't.
