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Charles Karel Bouley

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Charles Karel Bouley, known on-the-air as Karel, is an American talk radio host. Bouley is best known for his work on KGO in San Francisco, California before his firing by station management for his on-air use of obscenity during a newscast. He is also an occasional columnist for The Advocate.com and a contributing blogger for The Huffington Post. Bouley has also authored a 2004 book of essays titled, You Can't Say That, published by the LGBT publishing house, Alyson Press.

Biography

Charles Raymond Bouley, Jr. was born November 7, 1962 to Charles Raymond Bouley Sr. and Rose Marie (née Tremblay) Bouley.

Before radio

Before his radio career, Bouley was a struggling stand-up comic who later released a 1999 music album entitled "Dance...Or Else". He later recorded the single "Don't Stop" with Steve Bronski and the single "I Am" with Jellybean Benitez as well as "Take Your Heartache Away", also on the Jellybean label. Several of Bouley's recording projects included Thea Austin, former lead singer of Snap!

Radio talk show host

Bouley, along with his domestic partner, Andrew Howard, started in radio at KYPA Los Angeles in addition to Triangle Broadcasting based in Palm Springs, California. For the latter, the duo hosted a morning program, "Good Morning Gay America".

Known as "Karel and Andrew", Bouley and Howard became the first openly gay couple to host a drive-time talk-radio show on a major station in 1998. Hired for the afternoon drive slot at Los Angeles' KFI, the duo replaced KFI mainstays John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou.. In March 2000, however, Bouley and Howard were bumped from the coveted afternoon-drive slot into the less-desirable evening-drive slot, being replaced by the nationally syndicated Phil Hendrie Show. According to Howard, the move was made to accommodate Hendrie's live-broadcast, West Coast program so it could be heard on the East Coast at an earlier time.

In May 2001, after twenty-two months on KFI, Bouley and Howard were replaced in KFI's evening-drive slot by Phil Hendrie and returning hosts Kobylt and Chiampou were again put into the afternoon drive slot. David G. Hall, KFI's vice president of programming and operations was quoted at the time of the change as saying "KFI might still find a spot" for Bouley and Howard and stressed that the pair had not been terminated. Reportedly, the station's owner was preparing to launch them on another Clear Channel station, but the May 21st death of Howard from cardiac arrest due to arteroscelorotic cardiovascular disease changed that course. After Howard's death, Bouley returned to KFI and hosted his own talk-show there until he was fired by station management in April, 2002. Seven months later, Bouley was hired by San Francisco radio station KGO.

Appellate court battle

Following Howard's untimely death, Bouley went on to file, and win, a malpractice suit as a domestic partner in a Los Angeles appellate court. This court victory effectively rewrote the wrongful death laws in California for domestic partners as well as making them retroactive.

Controversy

Ronald Reagan

On June 5, 2004, Bouley opened his weekend KGO program with a clip of The Wizard of Oz song, "Ding-Dong the Witch is Dead!" as a "tribute" to former President Ronald Reagan, who had died earlier that day. He went on to rant about Reagan during the first two hours of his show because of what he saw as the inaction of Reagan and his administration in the face of the then-new AIDS crisis. On the Monday following Reagan's death, Bouley was castigated and panned by listeners in addition to being strongly reprimanded by KGO management. He later apologized on the air for choosing to air his comments the same day as the former president's death and later included an open letter of apology to Nancy Reagan in his book You Can't Say That.

Tony Snow

On March 27, 2007, Bouley wrote the following for the online The Huffington Post, regarding reports that White House spokesman Tony Snow had developed colon cancer:

"I hear about Tony Snow and say to myself, well, stand up every day, lie to the American people at the behest of your dictator-esque boss and well, how could a cancer not grow in you?"

Consequently, the draft was replaced and Bouley's inflammatory statements removed without a notation in the blog that it had been edited from the original version. The original post, however, got wide airplay in print, on television, and the internet, compelling Huffington Post editor Roy Sekoff to speak out about the issue on The O'Reilly Factor shortly after the row.

Joe The Plumber

When Bouley was hosting his weekend 7-10 p.m. call-in program on KGO Saturday, November 1, 2008, the sound engineer unintentionally failed to mute Bouley's microphone during the national news break. When a reference to Joe the Plumber came up during the news, Bouley was clearly heard on-air to yell "Fuck goddamn Joe the goddamn mother-fucking Plumber! I want mother-fucking Joe the Plumber dead!". Following the news break, Bouley apologized to the audience for his comments, explaining that his words were not intended to be aired. Bouley's comments earned him the title "pinhead" from Bill O'Reilly on Fox's The O'Reilly Factor on Monday, Nov. 3, 2008. Bouley posted on his website Nov. 4, 2008, that he had been "suspended pending review from KGO" and as of Nov. 5, 2008, his profile and blog on KGO's website were removed. On Nov. 6, 2008, KGO host Ronn Owens confirmed on-air that Bouley had been suspended indefinitely. KGO issued a news release on the afternoon of November 11, 2008 stating that he had, indeed, been fired. Bouley stated on Nov. 11, 2008 via the blog on his web site that he had been fired from KGO. Bouley stated on November 11, 2008 on his own website blog that he takes responsibility for the incident but " not my fault", blaming the newly-hired KGO engineer instead. Bouley then went on to blame KGO for his remarks being aired in Brad Kava's November 11, 2008 column in the S.F. Radio Examiner where he stated, "Weekends are cheap and they were using a cheap engineer for my show... shouldn't have had an inexperienced engineer for my show, which is done remotely, and in which the host doesn't have an on/off switch on his mic. They put an inexperienced driver in the seat and the show crashed."

Current life

Currently, Bouley is hosting a syndicated talk radio show on KKGN, San Francisco. The latter two-hours of the show is also broadcast weekdays on KRXA out of Monterey, California, KUDO in Anchorage, Alaska and on KYNS, San Luis Obispo. Since December, 2008, Bouley has been performing stand-up comedy in the Rrazz Room at the Hotel Nikko and Cobb's Comedy Club, both in San Francisco. He has most recently been seen performing at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles and The Laugh Factory in Long Beach, California, where he currently resides.

References

  1. Amazon.com
  2. ^ Moxley, Scott (27 Mar 2003), Dr. Kooshian vs. the Gay Community, retrieved 2009-09-17
  3. Kowalski, Eileen (4 June 2001), "Andrew Howard", Variety, retrieved 2008-11-19
  4. LA Times - July 14, 2000
  5. LA Times - May 2, 2001
  6. LA Times - May 2, 2001
  7. HalEisner.com
  8. Bouley, Charles Karel (10 Oct 2006), "My Ground Zero of Fear", The Huffington Post, retrieved 2009-09-16
  9. Huffinngton Post - My Ground Zero of Fear; October 10, 2006
  10. Bronstad, Amanda (28 Mar 2005), "Surviving partner in gay couple can sue after revision of law", retrieved 2009-09-16
  11. Bouley, Charles Karel (2007-03-27). "There's All Types of Cancers Growing". The Huffington Post.
  12. "Video: Michelle versus HuffPo editor on O'Reilly". Hot Air. 2007-03-30.
  13. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/k-daniel-glover/2008/11/12/liberal-talker-fired-over-joe-plumber-rant
  14. "Ronn Owens Program". 2008-11-06. {{cite episode}}: Missing or empty |series= (help)
  15. Bouley, Charles Karel (2008-11-11). "KGO Talk Host Karel Fired". Retrieved 2008-11-18.
  16. Bouley, Charles Karel (2008-11-11). "Fired". Retrieved 2008-11-11.
  18. Kava, Brad (2008-11-11). "Karel and engineer fired in one-paragraph e-mail and three-minute phone call". Retrieved 2008-12-06.
  19. http://www.green960.com/pages/karel.html
  21. http://www.kudo1080.com/staff.asp
  22. http://calcoastnews.com/2010/02/kyns-1340-signs-up-controversial-gay-talk-show-host/
  23. Kava, Brad (18 Nov 2008), Fired Radio Host Karel Back in San Francisco--With a Standup Comedy Act, retrieved 2009-09-19
  24. http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision/2009/11/bruce_vilanch_karel_and_nico_s.html

External links

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