As I prepared this week's feature story on KMBZ 980's 6 to 8 p.m. conservative talker Darla Jaye, the biggest surprise for me was how often Jaye is not quite doctrinaire with what I've come to think of as Kansas conservatism. Turns out, she got some theater in her early, and all the tea parties in the world haven't flushed it out.
In high school, she played a stripper in Gypsy: "I came out on tote shoes, and of course I started humping the curtain," she told me. "I heard my mother through the entire -- she went, 'Oh my goodness!"
I asked whether she would complain about such a performance at a Johnson County school today.
She thought for a couple of seconds before answering. "I probably would argue for the theater, the performance, and imagination," she says. "When I first got here, one of the things that caught my attention was Jerry Johnston's [First Family] church protesting Harry Potter. I got in a big fight with Johnston on the air.
"Having been a child who read non-stop, took a flashlight to bed under the covers, I was astounded by that. Kids aren't going to become wizards and warlocks, especially if they have good parents!"
Still, she's a staunch tea-party advocate.
Jaye seems to believe that promoting the protests is a chance for conservative talkers to show that they're something more than entertainers.
"Why wouldn't you want to use this opportunity to effect change for something you believe in?"
She continues, "When I went to Johnson County Community College for the April 15th event, and I saw all the people and flags there, and heard all the songs, I sat in my car and cried for a minute. I'm not kidding. Regular people don't get off their couches like this until something huge and fundamental has happened. They're outraged, and it's not just because of talk radio. That they got up and actually did something was so moving to me. How can you not look at that and go that is just amazing?"
Then came the surprise: For a moment, Jaye seemed to criticize KMBZ afternoon hosts Mike Shanin and Scott Parks, neither of whom gets as excited about the tea parties as she does.
"Scott said to me, 'You're an activist talk-show host,'" she told me, a touch of amazement in her voice. "That's another reason I say he's a liberal."
Since an accusation of liberalness is awfully serious in talkland, I asked Parks -- a moderate Republican -- to respond.
He said, "I consider myself to the left of Darla Jaye, which doesn't make me a liberal."
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