Well, that was weird. The Mark Johnson Show this morning, that is. The crown jewel of programming at the otherwise overly-folksy and self-loving WDEV.
Johnson led off the show with an interview with Vermont’s Senator Sleepy, also known as Leahy. The Senator’s staff is well aware of the Senator’s wandering attention span these days so they’re more and more careful about orchestrating his interactions with the public.
Trick number one in the game of “hide the Senator’s growing frailties” is to limit one-on-one contact. In radio, that means keep it as brief as possible and duck out before listener calls are allowed. It’s easy enough to pull this off, especially with the always-compliant Vermont media.
Johnson could put an end to these drive-by interviews by demanding more time from the politicians, including an ample amount of time for listeners to chime in. If they won’t agree to that, so be it. And Johnson could then report on the fact that Senator-so-and-so was invited but wouldn’t come because – apparently – they don’t want to take calls.
If you missed it, don’t worry, you missed nothing. Well, other than the fact that Leahy thinks Vermonters are special. Snore. At least with Leahy calling in you didn’t have to imagine the belly rub Johnson was giving him while sitting in his lap.
But then it got really weird. Johnson’s next guest was Allison Hooper of Vermont Butter & Cheese fame – well, in the goat cheese world. It began as one of those feel-good interviews you expect between Johnson and a local businessperson (think: advertising).
Lurking in the studio, however, was disgruntled goat farmer, Fred Huard, who was upset with Hooper because he failed to make a decent living at goat farming. It felt a whole lot like an ambush, of the bush league variety.
Huard flailed away at a sometimes shell-shocked Hooper, who was apparently expecting the typical love from WDEV. And the common theme from all his attacks came back to the same thread: Somehow it was Hooper’s fault that he had to keep his day job because goat farming didn’t pay off like he thought/hoped it would.
Ah, dude, here’s another tip: There is no Santa.
Frankly, it was just weird. Because, while a discussion on the realities of farming in Vermont would be great, this Huard character is certainly not the poster child for that campaign.
At one point, for example, he asked Hooper why she didn’t pick up the dead goats at the farms she contracts with and deliver them to the Food Bank. As Johnson kept him lingering and allowing him to throw one bizarro accusation after another at Hooper, I was half expecting to hear that Hooper was to blame for Hurricane Irene.
There was clearly something more to this story than we, the listeners, were told. How, exactly, did it come about? Did Huard set it up and then Hooper got invited in the name of “fairness”? Or vice versa? Does Huard have any connections with the Squier family? Did Johnson recently bite into some bitter goat butter? Would Johnson do a similar ambush on…say…Cabot? Or Green Mountain Coffee Roasters? Or Ben & Jerry’s?
If Mark Johnson is turning a new leaf and deciding to ambush guests, I’d like to volunteer to be the in-studio guest when he interviews Welch, Leahy or Sanders.
What do you say, Mark?