Posted by Bud on February 28, 2010 at 11:17:57:
Bruce Wolf howling to get back on the air
MEDIA | Court jester of local broadcasting hits a rare dry patch
February 28, 2010
BY MIKE THOMAS
For more than three decades Bruce Wolf has been the hyperactive, hyperbolic, mocking, smirking, linguistically preening court jester of Chicago broadcasting.
Since early last March, when the multiple Emmy winner was ousted from his latest daily radio perch alongside Jonathan Brandmeier at WLUP-FM (97.9), he has been casting about for regular employment.
"I'm 56 years old and the good thing is I've been there and done so many things," Wolf says during lunch at a downtown restaurant near Millennium Park. Coincidentally, the place is co-owned by former Chicago radio mogul Jimmy de Castro, who gave Wolf his first big shot -- on WLUP, with Brandmeier, in the 1980s. "So it's kind of a blessing that I've been thrown into this and have to try and find something different. Sometimes this just forces you to tap into whatever creative power you have."
Besides Brandmeier, with whom Wolf has done three tours, he's been a foil to megawatt yapper and podcaster Steve Dahl.
For the past year or so, Wolf has stayed in the game via shifts on WGN-AM (720), WSCR-AM (670) and WLS-AM (890). Not long ago, he auditioned to play Big John Howell's second banana on WIND-AM (560). Another daily radio gig, he says, "could be a lot of fun."
Free-lance sports reports and features for WMAQ-Channel 5 Chicago keep him on camera, though not consistently.
These tryouts, one-offs and fill-ins, however, don't pay the bills. So as to augment his income until another media opportunity arises, the onetime personal injury lawyer has joined a friend's firm to handle divorce cases.
Then there's the writing. Wolf blogs for a "minimal" fee, usually about sports, when the spirit moves him on Tribune-owned ChicagoNow.com (www.chicagonow.com/blogs/blogshakalaka). He relocated there after helming the more eclectic Chet Chitchat's Blog on Wordpress.com in September and October of 2009. Politics and pop-culture enter the mix, too, and Wolf is at his most biting (some might say offensive and/or obnoxious) when tipping sacred cows or articulating what he considers to be hard truths.
Until recently, on an almost daily basis, Wolf also served as an unofficial and uninvited online sidekick of sorts to Vocalo.org (and former Sun-Times) media columnist Robert Feder. Using only lower-case letters and always leading with the whiny catch-phrase, "What about me?," he fired off sometimes lengthy rebuttals to the columnist's posts and reader reactions.
"What I'm attempting to do," he wrote at one point, "is hijack this blog."
Having sufficiently amused, harangued and annoyed Feder's faithful ("Please go away, Bruce," carped one. "There's nothing about, or from, you that we're interested in hearing"), Wolf's Feder-described "rants, digressions and self-serving plugs" ceased a couple of weeks ago. At the moment, he's unsure if they'll return.
"At some point you're just entertaining the people who you're trying to impress," he says, "and I don't feel like doing it for nothing."
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From rapid-fire sportscasting and wacky parodies to colorful interviews and idle chit-chat (not to mention Chet Chitchat, a motor-mouthed alter-ego spawned during his tenure at WXRT in the '70s and early '80s), Wolf's performances and inventions have earned him plenty of praise. Searing pans, too. He is, it seems, a love-him-or-hate-him kind of guy.
On his widely read blog, Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert recently referred to Wolf as "my favorite value-added sportscaster. I'd watch you on a day with no sports news. In fact, I'd prefer that."
Veteran broadcaster Bob Sirott, who spent many years with Wolf on WFLD-Channel 32's "Fox Thing in the Morning" and WMAQ newscasts, calls Wolf "one of the top guys in the country" at sports anchoring. Acutely aware of Wolf's outsize personality, he likens his erstwhile collaborator to a free radical ("You know, the ones you read about that cause cancer") and the atom. Of the latter: "It can be used for the benefit of all mankind, or toward the destruction of the Earth. It depends how you harness the power."
When Wolf parted ways with Fox in early 2006, after 18½ years at the sports desk and two suspensions -- including an odd incident where, on a dare and on the air, he keyed a car at the Chicago Auto Show -- fans and foes weighed in.
"Bruce was the quickest-witted guy I've seen on local TV," an anonymous commenter (sure, it could have been Wolf) wrote on Chicagoist.com. "Wolf was the only reason I tuned into Fox each morning," another unnamed poster gushed.
Many others blasted Wolf as "a bumb" (sic), "an anus," "A REAL JERK." They were glad, ecstatic, to see him go.
Post-Fox, the Northwestern grad and son of a Chicago hardware store owner did traffic reports and co-hosted an irreverent early-morning talk show on WMAQ. Conceived by the station's president and general manager, Larry Wert, "Barely Today" lasted only four-and-a-half months. Wolf, though, considers it his greatest accomplishment. (Wert declined comment.) Evening sports anchoring and reporting for WMAQ followed, but those duties ended on a full-time basis last February.
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In tandem with his sporadic radio spouting, Wolf's relentlessly sarcastic and cynical online venting has further revealed a deeply conservative streak on which he is hoping to capitalize.
"I'll be on WLS radio from noon to 2 p.m. as I try to reinvent myself as the Chicago Rush Limbaugh," he e-mailed several days before a spirited Saturday afternoon shift on Limbaugh's Chicago outlet. He views the right-wing radio capo as a kindred spirit.
"[W]e were both inspired by William F. Buckley and Larry Lujack," Wolf has said and written of Limbaugh. "I also happen to agree with just about everything he says."
Those who know and have worked with him think Wolf's attempts to metamorphose are unnecessary.
Remarks Feder, a longtime friend, "I don't think Bruce could be the Chicago version -- or the 'next' version -- of anything or anyone else. He is a unique entity unto himself. His talent defies categorization and his personality defies description. He has a steel-trap memory for information and seems able to recall instantly things that he saw, heard or read years [or decades] earlier. Combined with his quick wit and sharp tongue, he's a whirling dervish of literary, political, sports and pop-culture commentary." (Note to Wolf: copy/paste, e-mail to prospective employers.)
Sirott, too, thinks Wolf ("kind of an idiot savant broadcaster") needn't retool himself.
"I kind of like the old Bruce," says Sirott, who grew weary of Wolf's blogging and Feder bleating. "I don't know what to make of the new Bruce, the blog Bruce. The blog Bruce, to me, is the Bruce that I would hear off the air all the time."
Throughout this reinvention process, the non-political Wolf has frequently lambasted fellow media creatures, including Tribune staffers and a bevy of Sun-Times scribes.
"Let me tell you something about the bias at your own newspaper," he says. "Limbaugh wants to buy into the St. Louis Rams, OK? Was there one person who wrote anything in favor? Carol Slezak ripped him. [Rick] Telander ripped him."
For those who don't know, Limbaugh's bid was dropped in light of his divisive nature and controversial statements he'd made. Among them: "The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons."
And actually, Wolf is off-base about Slezak. She was clear that Limbaugh's bid should have been considered despite his spewing. "Limbaugh might be a joke," she wrote, "but there's no NFL rule forbidding clowns from owning a team."
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That he has failed to secure a prime spot in Chicago's media firmament is something that obviously frustrates Wolf.
"I've pretty much been on the periphery my broadcasting career. The sportscaster, the fool," he notes in an e-mailed stab at introspection. "And it happens over and over again. So what, if anything, am I doing wrong? How come I've never had my own show for more than a blink? What about me? Why do I need to take a backseat to Steve Dahl, [former Fox cohort] Tamron Hall or anyone else?" (Dahl and Hall declined comment.)
"OK, maybe Rush Limbaugh," Wolf allows. "He does have talent on loan from God. Mine is on loan from CitiBank."
His trademark wisecracking tempers the self-pity.
"I do think I tend to act like I'm the smartest kid in the room," Wolf adds, "and since I am the smartest kid in the room, I shouldn't really do that. It's intimidating."
He also writes of possibly coming across "as a bit too much to my superiors because I'm overcompensating for a decided lack of self-esteem."
Behavioral issues aside, Wolf finds himself stymied by a desire to pair rebel iconoclasm with mainstream acceptance. It's been done before, of course. In his prime, Dahl was the local poster boy. But not everyone can rock the boat and stay afloat.
"The problem with me is, I want to say things that are provocative, but I still want people to love me. And you can't have both."