On his 630 KHOW-AM show, host Peter Boyles was speaking with parody songwriter Don Wrege about creating a song mocking Denver columnists Diane Carman and Mike Littwin when Wrege told Boyles, "Media Matters is going to make a big controversy out of this." Boyles responded, “Yeah, they got -- they were mad at you” over a piece Wrege wrote for a talk-radio trade magazine. In fact, the criticism Boyles referred to was directed at him -- not Wrege -- for promoting the piece on the air without disclosing that Wrege, his business partner, was the author.
Boyles attempted to deflect Colorado Media Matters' criticism of him onto business partner Wrege
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
On the April 3 broadcast of his 630 KHOW-AM radio show, Peter Boyles criticized columnists Mike Littwin of the Rocky Mountain News and Diane Carman of The Denver Post, who described U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo's (R-CO) long-shot presidential bid as a single-issue campaign on immigration reform that would be confined almost exclusively to conservative talk-radio shows. During the broadcast, Boyles called his business partner, parody songwriter Don Wrege, and proposed writing a parody song about the two columnists based on John Cougar's "Jack and Diane." Wrege told Boyles, “You know, Media Matters is going to make a big controversy out of this,” to which Boyles replied, “Yeah, they got -- they were mad at you. But that's OK, that's -- you know, they're allowed.”
In fact, Colorado Media Matters has never criticized Wrege. Boyles presumably was referring to a March 30 Colorado Media Matters item which noted that Boyles boasted at least eight times during the March 27 and 29 broadcasts of his show that he and Wrege “got a write-up in a national magazine” for their political parody production company, without noting that Wrege himself had authored the “write-up.” Wrege's piece appeared in the “Opinions” section of the March 2007 edition of Talkers Magazine, which bills itself as "[t]he Bible of Talk Radio and the New Talk Media."
Together, Boyles and Wrege run the production company Mediawhore, which creates political song parodies, many of which Boyles plays on his show.
In telling Wrege that Colorado Media Matters was “mad” at him, Boyles -- as he has before -- attempted to deflect onto his guests criticism that was directed at Boyles himself. When Colorado Media Matters initiated a petition urging Boyles to apologize for repeated false and misleading statements he and his guests made about illegal immigration, Boyles responded by saying on the air that Colorado Media Matters “want[s] me to apologize for what ... other people said.” Similarly, Dick Kreck's October 20, 2006, column in the Post about the Boyles petition quoted Boyles as saying, “Here's the deal. They want me to apologize for what other people say on the show. They're not accusing me, they're accusing other people.” In fact, the petition explicitly stated that "Colorado Media Matters has identified numerous instances since June in which 630 KHOW-AM radio host Peter Boyles gave listeners inaccurate or misleading information regarding illegal immigration" and called on him to apologize “for his specious claims.”
From the April 3 broadcast of 630 KHOW-AM's The Peter Boyles Show:
BOYLES: All right, so you could look at this and you say to yourself, they both go after talk radio. Mike, Diane, a little -- here's a hint: If one is a shrinking media outlet, one is a gaining media outlet -- gee, which one is it? Newspapers in this country, we know, they're heading to the porcelain convenience. Talk radio -- but the whole thing is -- I mean, they could have written each other. You could have puttin' -- puttin', there's a word -- you could have put Mike's name on her column, her name -- and then this whole idea of how she -- how the TT [Tom Tancredo], as Carman calls him, won't talk to the newspapers. Hey, Diane, when's the last time you would answer our calls?
But she writes, “Still, it's nothing like his love affair with talk radio,” meaning Tancredo. And listen to how this is written. [Unintelligible] This is -- remember she wrote a column one time all about me and gave me another name and talked about it after we made her look bad. We pulled her pants down on the air one time real bad, and she came back and wrote something about us. And I know your husband's all involved in that other deal, and that's OK -- it's cool; it's America. But, she writes, “There's nothing like his love affair with talk radio, until there's another JonBenet case, a Bigfoot rumor, or a UFO sighting.” Now, look at -- look at this. This is what she's saying about you, Schmodo. “There's nothing like his love affair with talk radio, until there's another Jon Benet case” -- that's obviously aimed here -- “or a Bigfoot rumor or a UFO sighting.” So all you're really good for is a Bigfoot or a UFO.
[Plays “Jack and Diane”]
Here we go. We got him on the line? Wrege's here? We gotta bring him up. Hey Donnie, what do you think? You're on the air. Donnie?
WREGE: [Unintelligible] [Singing] Mike and Diane.
BOYLES: Stay with me on this. There's Don Wrege from Mediawhore. Here's a little ditty about Mike and Diane. Two American -- two Denver writers trying do what they can.
WREGE: Writing about the city.
BOYLES: In the heartland. Football star. Diane in the back of the car. [Laughs] There -- it's here, Don. It's writing itself.
WREGE: Come one, come all.
BOYLES: Yeah, it's writing itself.
WREGE: How many, how many is enough?
BOYLES: Yeah, how many is enough, and that's --
WREGE: You know, Media Matters is going to make a big controversy out of this, Peter.
BOYLES: Ah, wha -- you know. Hey. Yeah, they got -- they were mad at you. But that's OK, that's -- you know, they're allowed. That's cool. That's all right. But I want to ask you something. There's a song here, isn't there? A little ditty about --
WREGE: You could -- there could very possibly be. Let me research the articles --
BOYLES: All right.
WREGE: -- today over lunch and see what comes out of it.