Hmm… just got off the phone with Steve Corbett, who was the main opinion columnist back in the day when I was a newspaper reporter in Wilkes-Barre. He had a front seat for when I came out at work, fought those battles, and got my footing.

I just got an e-mail from the WILK Insider, a radio station back home, this afternoon mentioning that Bill O’Reilly is back on their lineup. O’Reilly got his start as a TV news anchor in my hometown, so the radio thing makes sense. I knew Corbett had some affiliation with the station from when I was last back home, but that has since morphed into a full-on four hour show.

But, he does his 4 hours following Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, and O’Reilly comes on after his show. So, my first thought was… what the hell happened to Steve? Usually, radio stations don’t counter-program, there are conservative stations and Air America, and that’s usually how it works.

As it happens, I was on their website while Steve was in the middle of his show, so I clicked the “Listen Live” button and checked him out. My concern were unfounded that living in Santa Maria and hanging out in the insanity of the Michael Jackson trial had made something snap, and he was now coming at things from the right. Or, being in California, he went so far left he went all the way around.

Instead, it seems like he sort of has this incongruous show in the middle of conservative land. He’s challenging the locals about immigration a day after Vincente Fox visited, in the region where illegal immigration is one more way to look out your window, instead of into your mirror, for problems.

He seemed to be in his element on the radio. It wasn’t an unfamiliar voice to me, however. I recognized it immediately from how he used to relish arguing with people who would call the newspaper to challenge his views.

On the WILK website, some of his writing is available. Now, it would be a lot better if there was some RSS link for his writing, and a podcast version of the show so I could check it out when it wasn’t live and on my own time, but nothing like that is there yet.

In any event, it was fun hearing his voice, so I decided to call in and we chatted on-air for a bit about me being in San Francisco, how often I get back home, election day stuff, etc. In any case, I’ll try and check it out every so often.