Posted by chicagomedia.org on December 15, 2008 at 14:28:18:
In Reply to: Steve Dahl will be fired posted by Yo on December 04, 2008 at 20:10:03:
Dahl wasn't dialed in
Longtime radio host will be missed -- but whenever someone says they are going out on top . . .
BY NEIL STEINBERG Sun-Times Columnist
Opening shot
On our most recent road trip, I brought along a Bruce Springsteen CD, thinking it time to inculcate the boys with the wonders of the Boss.
To my surprise, not only did my lads not like the Springsteen songs, but I realized that I no longer particularly care for them either, at least not as mightily as I once did. This was a puzzlement, and since the music had not changed, my only conclusion was that it has to be me -- it must be because I am no longer 18 or 28, but 48, and so "Rosalita" doesn't seem the most moving combination of words and music ever committed to digital bits.
So with Steve Dahl leaving the Chicago airwaves, as he abruptly announced he is doing on Friday -- a melancholy day for those who love Chicago radio -- I will not comment on whether he was indeed at the top of his game, producing his very best stuff, as he claimed in his final minutes on the air. You might be 25 years old and find him hysterical, as I did when I was 25.
Robert Feder would be the guy to make an informed, impartial judgment on this. But he, alas, is spending the sunny Florida afternoons leisurely strolling through Disney World, at least in my imagination, a pair of $400 Hermes calfskin Mickey Mouse ears perched precisely atop his head, smiling at the beloved attractions and reveling in the perfect order of it all.
So it falls to me. I will observe that it was Thomas Jefferson who said "tranquility is the old man's milk." It is a risk that aging pundits of both airwaves and print run, the danger that we will become comfortable, and value our personal equanimity so much we forget that making waves is our job.
I can both respect and like Steve -- which I do -- and still note that it has been years since I heard anyone mention anything he has said on the air. That was not the case when he was on WLS or WCKG.
This will seem like a mean send-off -- kicking a guy when he's down, something I'm notorious for -- and I don't mean it to be. I'm hoping that Steve returns, bigger and better than ever, on a more prominent station than wherever he was at the end, and that he and I cut up on the air again, which I always found fun and readers claimed to enjoy.
But if Dahl thinks he was at his best recently, then it's just more evidence that his keen powers of observation and assessment are not what they once were. A person at his best knows better than to say it.