Beyond JonBenét

Boulder muckraker Jann Scott ("Access Denied," February 10) sure as hell didn't receive valentines like this one for his stint at Longmont's KLMO-AM, at 1060 on the dial. His plug was pulled on August 30 after a grand total of one hour on the air; afterward, general manager Ron Crider laughingly described those sixty minutes as "the low point of my entire career as a broadcaster."

Predictably, there's plenty of dispute about what led up to this catastrophe. Whereas Scott says Crider, who'd hired him to work at his former outlet, KNUS, back in 1993, made a verbal contract with him to helm the 7-9 a.m. weekday shift for $50,000 per annum, Crider swears he was simply conducting an "experiment" by pairing Scott with host/Second Amendment zealot Robbie Noel, previously heard on KHNC, Johnstown's notorious "patriot" station.

Noel, who debuted on August 28, is ideologically in tune with KLMO, part of a five-station mini-network owned by Indianapolis's Pilgrim Communications (its ultra-right-wing programming includes Ken Hamblin). But he crumpled under attack from Scott, who did the August 30 broadcast from his Boulder home; Crider estimates that Noel stormed out after around two minutes. That left Scott free to splash conservatives with ridicule, calling right-wingers "gun nuts" and "jack-booted Nazis" and celebrating the liberal virtues of his hometown. "You hate Boulder?" he asked at one point. "Well, Boulder, Boulder, Boulder, Boulder, Boulder!" Then, after announcing that he was communing with nature "bare-ass naked," he said he would prove his devotion to "the most famous small town in America" by walking into his backyard and hugging a pine tree. "Mmmmm," he moaned. "That feels good! Pine-tree love makes me feel horny in the morning."

A couple of dozen hysterical listeners phoned the station to voice their hatred of Scott, which by KLMO standards qualifies as a deluge. So Crider put on a half-hour infomercial and went looking for Noel, who was coaxed back to the station just before it concluded. "After all these years, I thought maybe Jann had mellowed a little bit," Crider says, "but he's crazier and more radical than he's ever been."

To a thoroughly remorseless Scott, that's a fabulous compliment. "No Timothy McVeigh-loving dirtball is going to start a right-wing debate with me and win," he says. "Never. Because I'm from Boulder."