Phil Henried radio show: who's the sucker(s)?

Cafe Society
1

If you’ve heard this show, with guest interviewees proposing outrageous claims & behaviors (15-year old boy who has sex with multiple 50-year old women, store manager who won’t let his employees microwave hot lunch because it’s “European,” and therefore un-American, etc.), you’ve probably noticed that Henried is switching back and forth from his own voice and his role as host to the made-up voice and role of the outrageous interviewee.

So who’s the sucker? The people who call in and vent their wrath on the bogus interviewee, or are the callers bogus as well, in which case I’m the sucker?

2

Phil claims he doesn’t fake the callers. He has admitted to sometimes faking callers in the past, but he says he doesn’t do that anymore.

3

Well, IMHO, the sucker is whoever sits through that dreck. YMM, of course, V.

4

Yeah, I listened to his show a few times when he was on the air in Chicago and I thought it was the worst.

5

(But parroting tired lines from tired British sci-fi, and glorifying ass polyps, this is the highest height of cool, I suppose? … If you can’t say anything nice, etc.)

Obviously the real people who call in to speak to all the fake people have fallen for the gag. But sometimes, Hendrie will further confound a real caller with a second fake caller, who will begin by agreeing with the real caller and ganging up against the fake interviewee, then devolving off onto some absurd tangent of its own, further bumfuzzling the real caller. Hendrie tends to employ his character “Lloyd Bonafide” (a bellicose, RV-driving Korean War vet) for these secondary calls.

The show has its trancendentally funny moments and I listen semi-frequently, despite that in the last two years or so Hendrie, once a die-hard liberal, has started to skew a little conservative.

6

I enjoy the show, only because it is so absurd. I can’t believe there are people that actually think the guests are real.

7

you really have to wonder.

A couple times, I thought, “man, I’ve heard this caller before” (meaning the caller, not the fake voice).

The show is occasionally pretty funny. The first few weeks or so I listened to it, I loved it, but then it got a little old. I am impressed by his ability to do what he does, and he’s got some funny lines e.g. “up your giggy with a wa wa brush” and “why don’t you get a piece of fat and slide off it.”

So, it’s hard to believe that the callers are real, but if you think there’s a shortage of idiots calling in to talk radio, just check out the Hannity show sometime. . .