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Medium Roast

April 4, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Foundation News, News media, Nixon Administration figures 

Friends of the Nixon LibraryFriends of Dennis Prager, the nationally syndicated radio talk show host, chose the Nixon Library’s White House East Room for a roast Thursday night to celebrate his 25 years in broadcasting, but you could tell their hearts weren’t in it. Everybody likes the bookish, genial Prager so much that the vengeful, passive-aggressive energy that makes for a classically mean roast was missing. Besides, Prager appears to have no idiosyncrasies beyond buying stereo equipment and enjoying a Diet Coke and cookie (eaten with a knife and fork) for breakfast, as reported by his longtime executive producer and co-author, Allen Estrin (left).

Other roasters included fellow Salem Communications hosts Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved and longtime friend Bruce Herschensohn (right, in photo and in life), who spoke earnestly if bogusly of Prager’s birth and boyhood in China a year before the 1949 communist revolution. Prager’s parents, Max and Hilda, roared with delight, having raised their two sons in Brooklyn. No Sinophile, Bruce had made up the name of Prager’s Chinese home town.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin (center), Prager’s schoolmate at Yeshiva Flatbush, provided one of several conflicting accounts of Prager’s hapless performance on the school’s basketball team during an exhibition game in Madison Square Garden. During his own remarks, Prager set the record straight. Called in a minute before the final buzzer, the lanky but not especially adept senior (“I didn’t care about basketball, I didn’t want to play basketball, but there were no 6′4″ Jews, so I played basketball”) couldn’t get his teammates to tell him what basket he should run toward. After a jump ball, he ran in the wrong direction and found himself alone with a ref, who said, “What are you, some kind of schmuck?”

Before over 800 of his family members, friends, and fans, who listen to Prager, Hewitt, and Medved on KRLA-AM 870, Prager spoke of how moved he is each time he learns that he has affected someone’s life for the better and how surprised to learn how close his listeners feel to him. When he announced not long ago during drive time that he was getting divorced, many wrote to say that they’d pulled onto the shoulder and wept. Having gotten his start in LA radio as the host of a program called “Religion on the Line,” he said he’d developed an abiding affection for priests, pastors, monks, and the other faith leaders he’d interviewed. Today, he’s especially proud of serving as a bridge between Christians and Jews. Invited to participate in a debate at a national convention of nonbelievers held on Easter Sunday, he said he’d begun his remarks by saying, “Only in America can a Jew wish a bunch of atheists a happy Easter.” As regular listeners know, he believes that America’s strength and spirituality are closely linked: “If there is one thing in our country that is truly an endangered species, it’s not a frog or a plant, it’s the United States of America as a Judeo-Christian country,” he said Thursday night.

Hewitt, left, a former Nixon Library director, and Prager are shown as producer Estrin played a clip in which his boss had confidently predicted that Gen. Wesley Clark would win the Democratic nomination in 2008.
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  1. Mike K on April 4th, 2008 9:29 am

    Kudos to all who participated in the “roast”, and credit for even trying. It is a Herculean task to attempt to roast such a good man who has no foibles! Thanks to Mr. Prager for his quarter century of broadcasting. It has made the world a better place than it would be otherwise.

  2. Mike H on April 4th, 2008 11:05 am

    Reading about the Prager roast reminds me once again how much I miss listening regularly to Prager/Hewitt/Medved since I left the Twin Cities for St. Louis several years ago. Alas you can find none of them on any accessible station here. A shame. Their collective wisdom, insights, and good humor would be widely received here in St. Louis.

  3. Bob S. on April 4th, 2008 11:18 am

    When I lived on Kauai I bought a shortwave radio and ran 300 feet of wire for an antenna so I could listen to mainland stations carrying Prager, Medved and Hewitt. They are national treasures. I wish I could have been at the roast and told them so in person.

  4. StevenInBrooklyn on April 4th, 2008 11:51 am

    Mike H, what about over the Web or via Postcast? That’s all we have here in NYC…

    (at least until this June, I’ve been told).

  5. Thomas M on April 4th, 2008 12:57 pm

    MikeH;

    I too am a transplanted SoCal person here in St. Louis and miss Dennnis’ show. I’m sure you know that he streams his show on-line. An interesting note, a station in Hannibal, MO carries Dennis’ program. Go figure!

  6. Lee Newcom on April 4th, 2008 1:24 pm

    How wonderful it is to read that friends are celebrating this great man. I greatly miss listening to Dennis Prager. Listening to him I learn and grow, not just react to poltical events. Sadly, the one station I can get him on, WIND Chicago, has moved him to the Siberia of 10 PM to Midnight, substituting the VERY forgettable Dennis Miller show in the morning. Listening on-line is not an option in the government office environment where streaming media is blocked. Thank you Dennis for great entertainment, but most of all for wisdom!

  7. David Lund on April 4th, 2008 7:12 pm

    I used to listen to Dennis’ shows and lectures on cassette tape in Western Norway– with a 6 month delay! Now in Seattle, the daily podcast on my computer is like a wicked luxury. Dennis has influenced me theologically and politically more than any other living human. What a blessing to live in a time where someone sitting in a little room in California can so greatly influence, and become dear to, people all over the world.

  8. Bette S on April 4th, 2008 8:54 pm

    Some of the best three segments of the day are spent listening to Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager. For 49.00, I invested in Replay AV (bought it on the Internet) when my local station stole them away from me. On Replay AV their shows are recorded to my computer and later downloaded to my iPod. I listen to these shows every night and haven’t turned the television on since they went off the air in Miami. Television is a vast wasteland and I am so happy to go to bed with these two great men. OK, just a little attempt at humor.

  9. wik on April 5th, 2008 2:05 pm

    Sadly, Prager is tape delayed here in the ATL, but my Saturday pre-dawn drive to the golf course always includes the Happiness Hour…..congratulations on 25 years, Dennis.

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