But when it comes to nerdy celebrity worship, Ira Glass is where it's at. Yet I always approached him with a mix of thrill and trepidation that he might actually find out I didn't measure up to his prowess. His unconventional voice. His magical spinning and weaving of tales. His stories that stuck in your head.
But then, there was the incident. Several years ago, when I worked at OPB, we booked Ira for a speaking engagement. It was right at the start of the fall theatre season in Portland. None of the traditional venues were available. So we opted for a large, local church where OPB had held a wide variety of events in the past -- Rick Steves and the like.
The morning after the tickets went on sale, the ruckus ensued. OPB was roundly blasted by a lesbian blogger for daring to host "their" beloved Ira Glass in a venue where they were "not welcome." This being the early days of the blogosphere, we did not realize the power of activist bloggers to stir the pot. And stir they did. Newspapers called. Talking and quoting ensued for days. My colleague John and I were alone on the front lines, with our communications team and bosses all conveniently out of town.
Turns out we did not know that Ira Glass belongs to the gays. And we did not know that this church had a reputation in some circles for being anti-gay. Can't we all get along? Isn't public broadcasting supposed to include everybody? No, said the bloggers, as John was outed in the Oregonian, and I became the "daughter of Satan" and he the "enemy of the gays." Even our own OPB news team filed a report on the issue and posted it online without bothering to talk to us.
We met with the bloggers. We talked at length. We tried to understand each other. John made fine use of his empathetic son-of-a-preacher-man skills. I received another harsh reminder that I have no poker face. The meeting went on and on until finally the CEO arrived and said something which I no longer recall. But it satisfied them, and saved us from ourselves and what we could not fix.
I think Ira had the best solution of all. "If the church really is anti-gay, wouldn't it be the best thing for them to sit their gay asses down in those pews?" But that, he did not say in public. In the end, he became the hero. He declared a new venue should be sought and was hailed with a "Portland Bloggers Win!" headline. And the show went on amidst a flat, cold sea of chairs at the politically expedient and far more costly Oregon Convention Center.
For more than a year, the "daughter of Satan" comment was the first thing to pop up when my name was typed into google. At which point, you just have to laugh. Because you never, ever, wish for things like this to happen. And some of it, you forever wish you wouldn't have seen. As it turns out, Ira Glass is just a guy who happens to be really good at that one thing he does. And me, I got a thicker skin, which made me better at the things I do.
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