Paul Harvey

His uncanny ability to mesmerize en masse, and thus to sell en masse, is the lifeblood of "Paul Harvey News and Comment," a truth in which even Harvey himself seems to revel.

"The ratings, I love to read. But the things that mean the most to me are when a sponsor calls and says, 'You increased our share 2 percent last month,'" he has admitted. "Because this says to me, not only are people listening, but they're paying attention, and that's infinitely more significant."

"I can't look down on the commercial sponsors of these broadcasts," he explained to CBS interviewer and fellow Chicago broadcaster Bob Sirott in 1988. "Too often they have very, very important messages to put across. Without advertising in this country, my goodness, we'd still be in this country what Russia mostly still is: a nation of bearded bicyclists with b.o."

During another 1988 television appearance, CNN's Larry King asked him if being such an unabashed shill (though not in those words) had affected his reputation as a broadcaster. Defending himself adamantly, Harvey proclaimed in that impossibly cool and confident manner of his, "These people are putting their money where my mouth is. And if I were to turn my back on them and say someone else has to do that commercial, I wouldn't do it. This is a dreadful affront. Some days," he continued, expounding on his oft-stated belief, "the best news in the broadcast is the commercial. You can keep your natural teeth all your natural life! There is a glove that doesn't wear out! There is a car battery that keeps its promises! That's good news! And I would use those things on the air if they were not in the body of the commercial."

For the record -- and Harvey himself has stressed this many times -- he is not, nor has he ever been, a serious newsman, one to whom listeners turn for an unbiased, cut-and-dried view of the world. Rather, like his offspring Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus, he is beloved largely because of his biases, his willingness to take a stand on something, whether a political issue or a brand of motor oil. His views haven't always been popular -- as when he supported Sen. Joseph McCarthy's 1950s witch hunt, or when he did a sudden flip-flop on Vietnam, declaring, "Mr. President, I love you, but you're wrong," or when he referred to welfare recipients as "pusillanimous parasites" -- but they've always been his.

"I don't think of myself as a profound journalist," he told Larry King. "I think of myself as a professional parade watcher who can't wait to get out of bed every morning and rush down to the teletypes and pan for gold." Introspecting further, he declared, seasoned pro to seasoned pro, "I think all of us, if we're worth our salt, we're for certain things and we're against certain things. And it seems more honest to me to call it 'Paul Harvey News and Comment' and just let it all hang out. Because each of us expresses comment if only by what we read and what we toss in the wastebasket."

Nowadays, even if he isn't quite what he used to be, and even if far more insolent men like Stern and Limbaugh make buckets of dough and boast millions of equally fervent fans, Harvey still rules the airwaves if for no other reason than he was there first; he showed them how it's done. Following in the footsteps of such talk-radio revolutionaries as Edward R. Murrow and Walter Winchell, he damn near single-handedly, and without porn stars, strippers or drunken dwarves, supercharged a medium that had been underutilized and underappreciated for years.

Next Page: Harvey basks in his regular-guyness

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