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Phil's motives were strictly financial, not political. I figured he could just as easily have programmed the opposite end of the ideological spectrum; in fact, my hunch was that he was personally more into ganja than government. Never in our hundreds of conversations had we ever discussed his personal view of the world. And I could sometimes sense that he was humored by his ability to create a political groundswell. He enjoyed guiding the puppeteers who manipulated the marionettes, and drew perverse pleasure from the way the audience reacted to every movement of a limb.

Now he reiterated one more time, “This could be your year, Stan, so long as you remember to always be….”

“Yeah, I know,” I told him. “Conservative, consistent, and compelling.”

That was Phil's blueprint, and it had certainly worked for me so far. But as he monitored me from the New Mexico desert, he was quick to pick up on any deviance from this media menu, or any intonation in my voice that suggested my heart wasn't in it.

Like when the whole illegal immigration debate had kicked in after Arizona passed a law to get tough on those crossing the border. Naturally that was big on my program.

“Our Mexican border is wide open because the feds have been derelict in their duty,” I'd said.

So far, so good.

But Phil didn't like what came out of my mouth next.

“Arizona had to act, but by drafting their law so broadly, I think they have left their police vulnerable to claims of unconstitutional traffic stops.”

When he heard that, he pounced.

“You're not teaching law school, Powers. Stop confusing the audience with your nuanced bullshit. Praise Arizona; condemn the fucking feds. Like everything else, make it the failure of the federal government.”

When it came to colorful opinions, Phil had no interest in shades of gray. Just black and white.

“The audience will think you're a pussy, Powers. And pussies don't get nationally syndicated.”

That statement was usually enough to right my way of thinking. Especially where there was no mistake about whether his counsel worked. The ratings for my program,
Morning Power
, proved it did. The more I followed his advice, the more I saw a spike in the numbers.

“Stan, let me repeat for you a lesson from ‘Talk Radio and Cable TV 101',” Phil often told me. “There is no political middle. It doesn't exist on radio. You will never get anywhere saying anything moderate or mushy. Either you offer a consistent conservative view, or you're not getting traction.”

My idiotic response: “Well, isn't democracy based on an exchange of ideas, not just one point of view?”

“Fuck democracy, Stan. You're not a Founding Father, you're a talk show host. This business is all about ratings, not governing. And here is the secret. Ratings are driven by passion, not population. They are not controlled by general acceptance.”

“Three extremists are worth more than ten moderates,” was yet another favorite Phil-ism on this point.

Now, as I drove past Sand Key Park, he ranted, “When it comes to cable TV, Powers, you show America a woman in Borneo who is topless, getting eaten by a shark with her house on fire, and they could never turn it off!”

Oh boy. I was almost home and Phil was finally circling back to “fire, tits, and sharks.” So far, in this, our first conversation of the new year, I hadn't heard any of his aforementioned brilliance. All he had for me was an idea for a TV show where some naked chick was getting eaten by a shark in her pool while the roof burned. And I'm not even sure her radio was playing.

The call had now run longer than a half hour. I was finally turning onto my street when my iPhone hummed and alerted me to another incoming call, one from the “212” area code, which I hoped was a cable TV booker. Either that, or it was Jules, which would be unusual because most often I had to call him, not vice versa. I gave Phil the hook and answered the phone just as I pulled up to the gate outside my building.

Was I willing to go on TV that night and debate the construction of a 2,000-mile-long moat along the Mexican border as a means of stemming the tide of illegal immigration?

Hell yes.

“The bastards are breaking into our country!” I barked to the twentysomething TV producer using a paint-by-numbers kit to arrange the evening broadcast.

“Good. We will see you tonight.”

“Me? I'm a dentist.”

Standing next to me at the bar, I heard my buddy Carl—a real estate developer—laying that rap on a fortysomething floozy who claimed to be 35, wearing a tube top that looked like she'd pulled it from a 1970s costume shop.

“Good,” she purred. “Cause I got a cavity that needs filling.”

That may or may not have been her reply. I may have been imagining. What I know for sure was that he was prepared to order her another round of Novocaine, just before all hell broke loose.

I was leaning against one of the 50 or so stools around the oval bar inside Delrios, my favorite dive. It was about a week after my long call with Phil, but talk radio and politics were the furthest thing from my mind, just when both of those worlds were about to get turned upside down.

The first sign that anything was unusual at Delrios was when somebody suddenly pulled the plug on the jukebox. What had been the thumping beat of the Dropkick Murphys'
“I'm Shipping up to Boston” was replaced by the murmurs of conversation and somebody yelling “Quiet!” In the front corner of the bar four guys paused their game of pool. Near the entrance to the men's room, toward the back, two other dudes clutched their feathered darts and stopped a game of baseball on an old wooden board. It took me a moment to realize all eyes were now on a giant flat screen that hung about 20 feet from where we were standing. The TV that was usually tuned to ESPN now showed President Parker T. Summers, looking very serious, sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office.

The sound was too low on the set for me to hear a damn thing he was saying, and then, all of a sudden the people closest to the TV erupted in cheers. It immediately reminded me of when people had first heard we'd killed bin Laden.

“What'd he say?” I shouted at no one in particular.

No one close to me had any idea. Then a guy who'd been closer to the set broke the news.

“He said the economy sucks and there's no way he can do what it takes to fix it and run for re-election at the same time.”

“Holy shit.”

Every American knows where they were and what they were doing when President Summers made the announcement. For me, that night had started out like any other Tuesday, meaning that I was busy getting fucked up with my two drinking buddies, Clay Troutman and Carl Verazano. Clay was a chiropractor who I met after I threw out my back playing a pick-up game of basketball outside a local high school. Carl was a real estate developer who'd once owned the building where I now lived in Sand Key. None of us was married although we each had a sometimes-significant other. But on Tuesday nights, we had a standing pass to get together.

I'd met them both at around the same time and introduced them to one another. Clay's a bright guy who has built a pretty incredible practice in a strip center where he sees a combination of Medicare retirees and middle-aged chicks for back manipulations and so forth. He's also supported by at least one hollow leg; the man can really put away his booze. Carl's a fairly imposing guy who's taken more than his share of knocks in the topsy-turvy world of Florida real estate. I met him at the height of one of his cycles, and judging by the Bentley he's driving, I think he's still on the upswing—but I don't ask. With Florida developers, it's always feast or famine and it's not my place to inquire which. That's just bad taste. Besides, one of the best things about Tuesdays was that none of us talked any shop when we were together. And unlike Debbie, neither Clay nor Carl would ever dream of giving me a raft of shit about something I said or stood for on the radio.

Debbie M. Cross was my oftentimes significant other. She was a lawyer who practiced with the white-shoed law firm of Dilworth & Beasley, not far from my studio in downtown Tampa. I'd seen her around town before I met her; she's a stunning brunet who wears her hair in a bun while sporting expensive Oliver Peoples frames that give her the look of some lab technician you'd love to bang. We met a few years ago at a cocktail party after
Tampa Bay Magazine
named her one of the area's “40 under 40”, meaning 40 people to keep an eye on who were under 40 years old, in the same issue where they profiled my program under the headline: “Tea Partier.”

Debbie's father was a hardcore air force colonel stationed at MacDill, and he looked like he could kill me with nothing more than his car keys. He also made no secret of his approval of the sort of bullshit that Stan Powers spewed on a daily basis. In fact, he was effusive with his praise, not only on his own behalf, but also on behalf of those with whom he served.

“Stan, me and the boys are grateful of your understanding of the need to keep Gitmo,” he'd once said.

“Stan, you have no idea how correct you are about our use of enhanced interrogation techniques.”

“Thanks, Stan, for your continued support of the surge in Afghanistan.”

Each time he'd say something like this in Debbie's presence she'd roll her eyes at me in disgust. Not so much because she disagreed with her dad, but because she saw through a lot of my on-air bullshit. How do I know? Mainly because she told me.

Which wasn't entirely fair, because some of the stuff her dad liked I actually meant.

For example, I was in full support of kicking the shit out of the al Qaeda motherfuckers who took down the Twin Towers. I just wasn't as enthusiastic about using 9/11 to justify building bases around the globe in places where we had no right to be. I figured each time we built a new base we were stirring up a hornet's nest and increasing the odds of another 9/11—but that's not the sort of thing Stan Powers would ever say on his show.

With her Hermes bag and the Blahniks on her feet, Debbie was too classy for Delrios. “The booze is cheap and the grub gets no fancier than hot wings,” Carl had told me the first time he brought me here. And he was right. If somebody ever ordered a cosmopolitan in this place, they'd get thrown out. Plus, there was a pretty substantial part of me that didn't want Debbie to see just how comfortable I was in a scene like this. Besides, Delrios is a lecture-free zone.

Delrios is well located but discreet. It's just two blocks down from the Fort Harrison Hotel which is the giant place on North Fort Harrison Avenue that the Scientologists call a “religious retreat.” I'll say one thing for the Scientologists, they're good neighbors. The hotel is immaculate and their other holdings are
nicely maintained, but the neighboring blocks quickly change and most of the storefronts are abandoned. That's where, set among the vacancies, you'll find a nondescript maroon door with a big “D” on it without any more clues as to what lies beyond the entrance. I'm not sure it's by design, but the quiet exterior and rundown location seem to deter the tourists. Not even during spring break do you normally see anybody in here who doesn't live nearby, which is pretty remarkable given how overrun Clearwater gets at certain times of year. And those that do wander in mostly wish they hadn't.

“Check out the guy with the Irish tan wearing Tommy Bahama,” Clay would say, using what he called his “tourgar”—or gaydar for tourists. “Just arrived on the Jet Blue flight from Newark.”

Then we'd sit around and watch Ralph, the primary bartender, deliberately ignore the poor guy. He'd keep ‘em waiting ten minutes for his first drink and even longer between rounds. And if the guy ordered food, he'd be told, “Sorry bud, we just ran out.” Only a place like Delrios, with a loyal local following, could get away with such rudeness.

That kind of camaraderie was also why it had become one of my regular stops. The last thing I wanted after hours was to be hassled by a listener when I was looking to unwind. It used to be that I could go anywhere and fly under the radar. But with an increasing number of cable TV news appearances under my belt, I was starting to think those days were numbered. I had no idea if the Tuesday crowd at Delrios knew me, nor did it really matter, because there was a cone of silence that seemed to protect the patrons. Probably because I wasn't the only one looking for a little anonymity; some of the women looked like pros, and a couple of the guys looked like they made a living helping others fill their nasal canals. But I appreciated
the clientele because I sure as hell could not afford to have one of my family values-driven P1s present if I was trying to get fucked up on a Tuesday night.

One reason we picked Tuesdays to hang out was that it was kamikaze night. If you ordered a beer, it came with a shot of tequila, triple sec and lime juice. If you ordered a kamikaze shot, they brought you two. Clay, Carl and I would typically arrive at about 8 o'clock, and each pony up for one round.