Another Minor Celebrity Friend
I read about Halx's baseball catching friend and thought, "who do I know that is a minor celebrity that I can truly say is a friend?"
I've met a lot of celebrities, both minor, mid-major, and major, but actual friends?
I know a guy who worked at some of the same places I've worked as a journalist. He's also worked for NPR and ABC radio. And he has a book out, his fourth. He told me it was about radio.
I met him a few months back when I went to work for an environmental non-profit stumping for money. He does the same thing Monday through Wednesday. We've discussed radio journalism at great lengths and how even the major stalwarts of that practice are not what they used to be.
His encyclopedic knowledge and ability to get interviews on national shows to push his books made me curious. So I googled Larry. I had been meaning to do it because he said he was going to be on the Jim Bohannon show and I wanted to know when.
It turns out Larry has a closet full of all the major awards. Pulitzer, Peabody, and 18 months in the federal pen for a story he was working on. More on that in a few.
I did not know this was the same guy I had read about as a junior in college. It was an article in one of the news magazines - about him, not one that he wrote. While working for WTOP, an all news station in DC, he did a story on the growing homeless problem. One of the men he tried to interview told him all the reporters wanted the same story, that he should try living it.
And so he did. He left his wife and kids for a while and lived as a homeless man. His story won one of those awards in the closet.
I wrote an essay about that for a class and became fervently inspired to do the same thing in Charlotte, which also had a growing homelessness problem at that time. As did everywhere I guess. My professor gave it a good enough grade but noted on the cover page that it was a good way to end up arrested or dead. The collegiate equivalent of, "you'll shoot your eye out."
That was Larry.
Later, as I was getting started in my first full time job working for a public radio station in the middle of Kansas, a huge first amendment case was brewing. A reporter had been arrested for trafficking in kiddie porn. That was also Larry.
It's amazing the things you learn after a few seconds of googling.
Let me slant this towards his innocence before I go on. The raciest thing I've seen him read was a Richard Russo book, which usually features middle aged to elderly sex, if any at all. His family and his wife stoutly defended him back when it all broke, as did almost all of his colleagues. Larry had already done a three part series on kiddie porn (which also won an award). He had been downsized along with most of his co-workers and was working on a freelance article to sell to a national publication.
Larry's defense was that he was immersing himself in the grimy world of pederasts to report on them, just as he had when he reported on homelessness and countless other subjects. He was convicted of trading 7 pictures of porn. The prosecution never described or released the pics, even with censoring. So nobody knows what was traded except for Larry and them.
Another caveat, Larry used the exact same tactics that the first groundbreaking net porn expose used, the very case that brought the practice to the attention of authorities. Another journalist was busted about the same time and tried to make the same case. The big difference was that that reporter saved thousands of images. Larry had saved none. Even though the bust was a complete surprise he had no images whatsoever stored anywhere. No hard copy, no data. the prosecutor's own expert witness testified that pederasts save their pics and generally has, as found on the other reporter's hard drive, thousands of them.
So attorneys argued that he must have felt guilty because he deleted the images.
Every journalist that worked with Larry testified on his behalf that this was not that kind of guy. Except for one. One guy who I also know and who struck me from day one as being a survivalist cockroach of a reporter. And Larry still really likes this guy. I never did.
Fast forward, Larry went for a plea bargain that turned 15 years and a sex offender tag into 18 months and no designation.
Judge for yourself, Jake Tapper's story from when it all went down
How did the FBI find Larry? He originally went to them with a lead on a woman who had been offering to sell her 8 and 13 year old daughters for sex. By that time, Larry was already on an FBI watch list for reporting on draft dodgers (he himself served in army special operations).
So yeah. That's that guy. The guy who eats his pastrami sandwich next me before heading out into the DC area to canvass for the environment. He's on vacation this week in my old stomping grounds. I told him all the best places to visit - he was primarily concerned about finding the best seafood. Another interesting tidbit, our last conversation was about how he tried to put together a pilot show on faith and religion for NPR.
I've met a lot of celebrities, both minor, mid-major, and major, but actual friends?
I know a guy who worked at some of the same places I've worked as a journalist. He's also worked for NPR and ABC radio. And he has a book out, his fourth. He told me it was about radio.
I met him a few months back when I went to work for an environmental non-profit stumping for money. He does the same thing Monday through Wednesday. We've discussed radio journalism at great lengths and how even the major stalwarts of that practice are not what they used to be.
His encyclopedic knowledge and ability to get interviews on national shows to push his books made me curious. So I googled Larry. I had been meaning to do it because he said he was going to be on the Jim Bohannon show and I wanted to know when.
It turns out Larry has a closet full of all the major awards. Pulitzer, Peabody, and 18 months in the federal pen for a story he was working on. More on that in a few.
I did not know this was the same guy I had read about as a junior in college. It was an article in one of the news magazines - about him, not one that he wrote. While working for WTOP, an all news station in DC, he did a story on the growing homeless problem. One of the men he tried to interview told him all the reporters wanted the same story, that he should try living it.
And so he did. He left his wife and kids for a while and lived as a homeless man. His story won one of those awards in the closet.
I wrote an essay about that for a class and became fervently inspired to do the same thing in Charlotte, which also had a growing homelessness problem at that time. As did everywhere I guess. My professor gave it a good enough grade but noted on the cover page that it was a good way to end up arrested or dead. The collegiate equivalent of, "you'll shoot your eye out."
That was Larry.
Later, as I was getting started in my first full time job working for a public radio station in the middle of Kansas, a huge first amendment case was brewing. A reporter had been arrested for trafficking in kiddie porn. That was also Larry.
It's amazing the things you learn after a few seconds of googling.
Let me slant this towards his innocence before I go on. The raciest thing I've seen him read was a Richard Russo book, which usually features middle aged to elderly sex, if any at all. His family and his wife stoutly defended him back when it all broke, as did almost all of his colleagues. Larry had already done a three part series on kiddie porn (which also won an award). He had been downsized along with most of his co-workers and was working on a freelance article to sell to a national publication.
Larry's defense was that he was immersing himself in the grimy world of pederasts to report on them, just as he had when he reported on homelessness and countless other subjects. He was convicted of trading 7 pictures of porn. The prosecution never described or released the pics, even with censoring. So nobody knows what was traded except for Larry and them.
Another caveat, Larry used the exact same tactics that the first groundbreaking net porn expose used, the very case that brought the practice to the attention of authorities. Another journalist was busted about the same time and tried to make the same case. The big difference was that that reporter saved thousands of images. Larry had saved none. Even though the bust was a complete surprise he had no images whatsoever stored anywhere. No hard copy, no data. the prosecutor's own expert witness testified that pederasts save their pics and generally has, as found on the other reporter's hard drive, thousands of them.
So attorneys argued that he must have felt guilty because he deleted the images.
Every journalist that worked with Larry testified on his behalf that this was not that kind of guy. Except for one. One guy who I also know and who struck me from day one as being a survivalist cockroach of a reporter. And Larry still really likes this guy. I never did.
Fast forward, Larry went for a plea bargain that turned 15 years and a sex offender tag into 18 months and no designation.
Judge for yourself, Jake Tapper's story from when it all went down
How did the FBI find Larry? He originally went to them with a lead on a woman who had been offering to sell her 8 and 13 year old daughters for sex. By that time, Larry was already on an FBI watch list for reporting on draft dodgers (he himself served in army special operations).
So yeah. That's that guy. The guy who eats his pastrami sandwich next me before heading out into the DC area to canvass for the environment. He's on vacation this week in my old stomping grounds. I told him all the best places to visit - he was primarily concerned about finding the best seafood. Another interesting tidbit, our last conversation was about how he tried to put together a pilot show on faith and religion for NPR.
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