Great Men, Part I: Neal Boortz 


In a new weekly series examining the men who inspire me to be and do my best, I first look at Neal Boortz, who is what some people like Bill Clinton like to refer to as a "Preacher of Hate"... 



Aside from sharing a name--OK, fine, Neal isn't exactly the same as Neil, but they're damn-close!--Neal Boortz and I are nearly identical, when it comes to things concerning politics, economics and society. I have claimed to people on more than one occasion that I am a "Boortzian" through-and-through. Neal's no-nonsense view of the world and his intellectually honest persona are elements of his person that are often controversial but, at least in my opinion, also extremely admirable.

I remember hearing one broadcast in which Belinda, Boortz's call screener and radio show producer, had managed to send a woman who was hot for him into the list of who was going to be put on the air. In a quiet voice, at first, "Kelly" started out by telling Neal that it was "too bad you're not single. You'd be my perfect man." She continues by saying, "You'd be my perfect man." In the effort to not crack up on-air (he's usually a lot "spunkier" than that) he begins talking about how he was raised in a military family and grew up all around the country. Although he was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, his family moved quickly after his birth to Texas; he says that the reason that he moved is because he "didn't particularly like the accent of the people up there".

Enter the (in)famous sense of humor that is synonymous with the words "Neal Boortz".

Politically, Boortz is a self-described Libertarian. Boortz says, "I believe that the principal difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats just want to grow our Imperial Federal Government a bit faster than the Republicans do." Hey, what he says may be true, and it most likely is--the man is a keen observer and analyst of current events. He's made several predictions of things that were to later happen on-air--predictions that hadn't always seemed obvious. While you may think that his view of the two main American political parties is a bit pessimistic (as I do, in some ways) men are only men and political power has a certain tendency to spoil and make rotten the lot of us. The Democrats will try to push their agenda when they're in power and they'll spend all of our money, that's a given. But the Republicans are appearing to do the same thing now that they're in control of both the Congress and the presidency. This is an extreme source of contention that Boortz has with our current president, George W Bush.

But who is Boortz going to vote for in the November elections? George W Bush.

Boortz contends that the greatest concern of the American people should be and is the threat of "Islamo-Fascist terrorists", as he likes to phrase it. He claims that the al Qaeda terrorist group and its allies want nothing more than to kill every American man, woman and child, innocent or guilty. But wait, we're all guilty in their eyes, as well are every other person of the Western world. We have to bring the fight to them and destroy them before they do the same to us, Boortz says, and has convinced me 500 times over of that unfortunate fact. He labels the Democratic party as the modern-day appeasement party and, as you might imagine, does not regard the "tactic" of appeasement as acceptable. Fighting terrorism is not a law-enforcement problem, but a military problem. Boortz has cited that during the Clinton years terrorists gauging the strength and willingness to fight of America were met with indictments and the occasional arrest. After September 11, 2001, however, and with a president who is willing to meet the challenge of life and death issued to "US" by bin Laden & Co., world terrorism is being met with a zero-tolerance policy and with preemption--we attack them before they attack "US".

Aside from believing that we have to be brutal in our fight against the enemies of our country and way of life, Boortz is also an avid advocate of personal freedom and responsibility. He constantly proclaims that "you live with the choices that you've made in your life" and that "you are where you are today because of decisions that you made years and years ago". He discovered this first-hand and made an ideological shift from freeloading liberal to free-thinking conservative at the same time. He always talks about his failures in his earlier life, for example, he did poorly in college. He decided to get serious about his life afterwards and went on to law school to graduate at the top of his class. This is one of his sets of tenets that I am paying close attention to at this stage in my life and I very much appreciate him continually planting these truths into my head--other people also promote these ideas to me, but there'll be more on them in the following weeks and parts of this series.

Many people to whom I speak despise Neal Boortz and, thus, also hate everything that he stands for and promotes. Because of his sometimes somewhat rabid and angry personality on the radio some people automatically discount his free-thinking and brutally honest "sermons"--it is the "Church of the Painful Truth" with "High Priest" Neal, after all.

Don't ever ask Boortz if you look fat in that dress.

Visit Neal Boortz's website by clicking on the link to Nealz Nuze on the right side of this page or by going to boortz.com (he takes pride in his belief that he's so big now that the "Ws" in "www" aren't needed--he doesn't assert to know much about computers or technology, only airplanes).

Next week: Steve Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple Computer and Pixar. 

Posted: Sun - April 11, 2004 at 11:33 PM          

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