I just got off a rousing round at the forums over at <WKRPinCincinnatiBlog.com> and I must say the support you all have for me is warmly and deeply felt. The Internet is the greatest advancement for the human species, and its good to know all my buddies in Cyber Land got my back when the flak comes beaucoup. Just because some peck o’ wood sees fit to use the world wide web for slander and hate-mongering, it does not and will not deter upright tax paying citizens and Decorated Veterans our Constitutional Right to enjoy our enthusiasm for that fine program WKRP In Cincinnati. Across the Internet fans of WKRP are uniting, banding together and rising up the banner as a people’s cyber-militia. One conversation in particular I had with my good buddy and fellow vet fire4fever over at WKRP in Cincinnati blog stood out for me. We served together and were reminiscing about the ‘Nam, and through all the names, Sarge., Goodall, Corp. Whitelaw, and Stodges, he broke off into a long pause and out of the middle distance, unexpectedly reels into the strangest idea.
“When The Doctor was on the air, he seemed to always come alive, you know what I mean? Its as though he were becoming complete for the first time. It was a look that came over him and I’ve seen it before. In Paan Nang back in ‘67 when we were nearly ambushed doing recon in the foothills. You remeber…The look on Stodges’ face, you were there… back then… “
And I knew exactly what he was talking about. We had both traveled immediately to that moment in the past that neither of us had spoken about since, nor could we, if we could even find words, but we had both blacked it out, simply as a survival instinct.
“We ALL knew full well what was going on with Stodges,” he continued, “he’d been in it deep for weeks now, it was starting to just seem normal” He was speaking of the mental state that Stodges had been slipping into, and we all had seen it before, like many a young recruit serving in the ‘Nam for the first time and living under inhuman circumstances on a daily basis he was suffering the initial stages of PTS and was gripped under a psychosis we all witnessed the onslaught of but were powerless in our own struggles for survival, to intervene with or help. He was able, as if by remote control, to fulfill all his duties and remain at the ready as we were constatly under fire, yet he had adopted, casually, a strikingly disturbing trait. Sometime in the chaos of battle, and in the wreakage of his deepest mind something had already snapped. He had become a cannibal. At first it was like a joke, he did it so casually.We were surrounded by death 24 hours a day, so the humour turned sort of dark, another cruel survival instinct the mind comes up with under duress.One day Stodges comes up to us all around the fire and he’s holding a tiny arm, a baby’s arm charred from where it was blown off, and jokingly he’s holding it like bugs bunny with a carrot and he’s chewing the end, tearing off peices and eating them and making the same “nyahhh, nyeahhh” noises, grinning a cold blooded macabre grin like skin peeling off a skull roasting in the sun Its not something a civilian can comprehend. Stodges was still the most A1 Front Line Honor Roll blood and guts soldier any of us had ever seen and I have yet to see a more steadfastedly efficient combatant nor more fearless warrior since. We trusted him with our lives no matter how low he sank And he had that same look, the look on his face like Johnny Fever would get years later on WKRP. No matter how bat-shit crazy and whatever regrettable actions he may had taken in the past, he was a soldier, first and foremost, bound by duty, to Search and Destroy in the name of Rock And Roll.”
And you know what? He always did, no matter what. That’s why WKRP has always had a large and loyal following amongst our armed forces personnel, especially for me, a vet and DOUBLE AMPUTEE, it is for its accurate and sympathetic portrayal in the character Johnny Fever, of vets living at home and the challenges we face on a daily basis. With that in mind it would be preposterous to challenge the faith and passion of the many thousands of Americans loyal to Land, Liberty, and WKRP
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