As a conservative East Texan I’ve been a fan of talk radio since I started listening in the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties. Over the last few years I’ve been a dedicated listener of KTBB AM 600, and now more recently 99.3 FM. In fact even as I type this I do so while listening to the news and information delivered by talk radio. My addiction has annoyed my more liberal acquaintances who refuse to ride in my car knowing that I prefer politics to music.

Overall, my love of talk radio has been a staple of my life that has endured a lot. I have been derided from time to time as a right winger. I have traveled across country surfing the radio dial looking for the conservative station in whatever city I happen to be passing through. I have also endured the cancellation of my local favs from time to time. But none of these has dampened my enthusiasm for my favorite medium. I must confess however, that there is one issue above all others which has robbed me of some enjoyment of my local stations. That issue has a name… she is known simply as Judy!

Regular listeners, who read this, know immediately of whom I type. Of course, I’m referring to Judy of “Jim’s Jewelers.” I’m rarely ever in the market for jewelry, but my beef is really more with Judy herself and not Jewelry Stores. Evidently she see’s her ads as a vehicle to achieving status as a local Tyler celeb. I’ve actually seen her face on television promoting community projects. If I was responsible for the kind of advertising that she is, I wouldn’t be showing my face at the local Valero let alone on TV.

Her ads are often particularly insulting to the masculine audience, insisting that they buy diamond jewelry for the women in their lives in order to make up for their love of football or some other boorish behavior inherent to being male. She constantly assumes that the men in the audience can actually afford her wares but deny them to the women they allegedly love, simply out of thoughtlessness. The most insulting approach I’ve heard Judy take was when she encouraged women to wait until their husbands were engrossed in a ball game, and then go buy Jim’s tacky jewelry on their own. Can she also recommend a good divorce attorney?

The fact is what rankles me most about Judy’s work is the condescending seesaw delivery of her lines. When put against the background of that unmistakable music, it’s enough to make me want to turn into oncoming traffic. I’m pretty sure she’s contributed to numerous road rage episodes in East Texas. All told I hope the local radio station is charging her through the nose. If they’re going to put their audience at risk (and they do) they should at least be compensated for their boldness. As for me, I will continue to turn the channel during the Jim’s ads. Hopefully for KTBB, I and others like me will remember to turn it back. For more information on KTBB, go to the Tyler Blog section of the site and look for the title “National Politics and Local Coverage.” Also, see their website at www.ktbb.com.