Ever since the National Radio Hall of Fame announced the list of nominees for its 2008 induction, chairman Bruce DuMont has been on the hot seat. The 16 candidates for four spots were revealed in April and there was plenty of indignation about who’d been left out and which current nominees should have been recognized long ago. The Reader‘s Michael Miner, for example, wondered how Studs Terkel could have been overlooked. Other media mavens wanted to know why Steve Dahl and Howard Stern were just now being considered (neither of them made it this year, either). That’s the kind of heat DuMont expected—it goes with the territory.
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This is not a controversy DuMont needs. He’s been struggling for years to reopen the Museum of Broadcast Communications, which he founded in 1987 and ran from 1992 to 2003 at the Chicago Cultural Center. The museum’s new home at State and Kinzie has been stalled out in mid-rehab since May 2006. DuMont, who blames the state for withholding $6 million he says it promised him, continues his fund-raising efforts, and the $500-a-plate hall of fame induction dinner, scheduled for November 8 this year, is one of them. So he watched with concern as TWO rallied opposition to Dobson in the gay community and Dobson, who can reach 2.5 million supporters with a single e-mail blast, fought back.
But it wasn’t over for the anti-Dobson forces. They’ve mounted a new campaign to get the museum to disqualify Focus on the Family before the induction.
But Besen claims he didn’t hear about Dobson’s candidacy until two weeks before the voting ended. “I was at the Saint Louis Pride when I got the e-mail on my phone,” he says. “With hardly any time left, we scrambled, we did what we could.” Now he sees the induction as an opportunity to “tell the world who James Dobson really is—an extremist who doesn’t believe in separation of church and state” and who “has built his empire on the backs of gays and lesbians.” If the hall of fame goes ahead with the induction, Besen warns, “we’ll have a big protest outside their dinner.” He says he’s coming to Chicago in late August or September to plan the demonstration with local leaders.
“We are nearing the goal line,” he says. “But this controversy doesn’t help. We need to put it in context. The people who nominated are not the MBC board. And the voting was done by the public.” As for the protesters: “Do they want me to undo the votes? Their principal objection is to what Dr. Dobson says. We don’t un-nominate people because of their political persuasion.”v
