Todd M. Siebert: Larry Elder radio show to start national syndication

Larry Elder

Millions of Americans soon will be hearing from the “Sage of South Central,” the author, lawyer and talk-show host Larry Elder.

Salem Communications announced Elder’s talk show will be nationally syndicated starting Monday, April 4. Elder will be taking over Hugh Hewitt’s 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST time slot, as Hewitt is moving to a different time.

“To quote somebody we know, it’s going to be ‘yuge, yuge!’” Elder exclaimed.

Elder said becoming nationally syndicated was a career milestone.

“I just couldn’t be more excited,” he told WND. “At this point, 25 years into my career, I’m going to be heard by more people in more markets than at any time. It’s an ideal time because of the election. I hope that I might be able to have a slight impact and help people think things through a bit better.”

Elder, a WND columnist, said the most important thing for Republicans is to defeat Hillary Clinton in the fall. And while he was not an initial supporter of Republican front-runner Donald Trump, he said he would support him as the nominee.

“I was never an anti-Trump guy, though he was never my guy,” Elder said. “But I’m an ABC guy – Anybody But Clinton. This guy, Trump, hates the Iran deal, loves Antonin Scalia, says he’s not going to raise taxes, is good on the minimum wage, and called Al Sharpton a con artist. As far as I’m concerned, that’s good enough.”

“I call myself a Republictarian,” Elder said, describing his political ideology. “I’m a registered Republican but I’m a small ‘l’ libertarian. What listeners are going to get is the truth. The government is too big, it taxes too much, regulates too much, interferes with our lives too much. As a result, we are less productive and less prosperous than we otherwise would be.

“Listeners are going to hear an attack on seven years of Obamanomics. Attacks on Obamacare. The billions of dollars we spend on ‘green jobs’ and efforts to move us away from a fossil fuel economy to a ‘renewable’ fuel economy. And you’re going to hear about the benefits of government getting out of the way and letting states and individuals do what they should do.”

Elder is passionate about conservatism because he saw how free-market economics and strong traditional values impacted his own life. Elder chronicled the extraordinary relationship he had with his father in “Dear Father, Dear Son.”

“My father was a man who cleaned toilets growing up,” said Elder. “He didn’t know his biological dad. His mom was illiterate. Dad was an only child growing up in Athens, Georgia, during the Jim Crow South right at the beginning of the Great Depression. He busted his butt starting in his 40s starting a small café, which he ran until his 80s.

“And he always told my brothers and me: ‘Work wins. You get out of life what you put into it. You can’t control the outcome, but you are 100 percent in control of the effort. No matter how hard you work, bad things are going to happen, and how you react to those things will show your mother and I whether we raised a man.”

A book about family and adversity that will transform you. Larry Elder’s “Dear Father, Dear Son,” now available in the WND Superstore.

Elder said his father was a black conservative who taught him the importance of working for what you have.

“My dad was a lifelong Republican because he said the Democratic Party is the party that gives you something for nothing,” he remembered. “And he used to say that when you are offered something for nothing, you often end up getting nothing for something.”

As a black conservative, Elder is a frequent critic of the culture of victimization and political correctness promoted by the American left.

“I’m black, but I’m not a ‘victocrat,’” Elder said. “I’m not a victim. I don’t believe the government owes me anything. People who are alive today don’t owe me anything because of my race. And I think it’s divisive to act otherwise. America is a country where you can realize your dreams to a greater degree than any other country on the face of the earth, including all the countries of Africa.

“I think the real privilege is not ‘white privilege,’ it’s two-parent privilege,” Elder observed. “I was blessed to have a mom and dad who loved each other and stayed married 56 years. To have that and be born in America, as far as I’m concerned, I won the lottery.”

Elder was the first person in his family to go to college, “let alone go to law school,” as he noted wryly.

Looking back on how he got to where he is today, Elder credited his country for giving him opportunities available nowhere else in the world.

He enthused: “So here I am, an Ivy League-educated lawyer who has a nationally syndicated radio show. Only in America!”

Elder also had a harsh characterization of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“It’s headed for the ash bin of history,” he charged. “It simply can’t deal with the facts.”

Elder explained the real threat to black Americans is not police officers, but the collapse of the black family and lack of fathers.

“Nowadays, kids are basically taught to confront cops,” Elder said. “All these high-profile cases from Eric Garner in New York to Michael Brown in Ferguson or Freddie Gray in Baltimore or Tamir Rice in Cleveland, all of these involve resisting arrest or behaving irresponsibly. I’m not saying cops are angels. But if you respected the cops, many of these incidents would not occur.

“Why are they in the streets anyway? Why aren’t they studying? Why aren’t they getting ready to go to college? All this drama causing interactions with officers and then, surprise, surprise, something happens and you have it blasted all across the Web. It’s ridiculous. It’s counter-productive. And it harms the very people this Black Lives Matter movement is supposed to help.”

Elder said his show will share a similarity with Donald Trump’s campaign by talking about politically incorrect topics.

“This includes immigration,” he said. “Black people have a visceral understanding that immigration has depressed wages and taken away jobs. And the Democratic Party has this myth of a Rainbow Coalition of blacks and browns when in fact there’s a great deal of tension between the races in South Central. And the research shows mass immigration has a negative impact on low-skilled workers, who are disproportionately black. I think Trump has a real shot at getting 25 to 30 percent of black support, much more than Mitt Romney.”

But Elder said there’s one big difference between him and Trump.

“I have much better hair,” he joked.

The story of an extraordinary personal journey. Check out “Dear Father, Dear Son” in the WND Superstore.

from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/larry-elder-radio-show-to-start-national-syndication/