Who is Henry Santoro and why is he saying those terrible things about me?

Well, no, he hasn’t really said anything, but I see around the Internets that I made a veteran Boston newsman stomp off the set yesterday and claim he was quitting radio! All without lifting a finger from my remote Seattle headquarters-of-villainy.

What happened, if you missed it: somebody at WFNX ran a taped interview with me on the wrong date, leading the interviewer to claim that my Boston signings were the wrong week (two weeks earlier than the actual scheduled dates). This is an easy mistake to make, but I didn’t want people showing up on the wrong nights and getting disappointed/pissed. So when I heard about it, I told Random House about the goof, in case they could persuade the station to do an on-air correction. That one-line email was the sum total of my involvement in the bizarre affair of Henry Santoro–an affair, Watson, for which I believe the world is not yet ready.

The next morning, all hell broke loose in Boston. I haven’t listened to the podcast, but apparently the morning guys spent ten minutes on the goof, riffing on the “army” of phone calls they’d gotten about the mistake, and Santoro mentioned that he’d gotten into a dust-up with his bosses over the screwup and was quitting radio forever. Then he abruptly left. On air.

And then I started getting charming emails like this one, from one Amanda Dameron:

I’ve never heard of Ken Jennings and I doubt I’d care much if I had. I heard today that WFNX Boston’s beloved newsman, Henry Santoro (who clearly, I HAVE heard of) resigned on-air because of a great deal of berating from the Ken Jennings, er, “people”.

Wow. How shameful, pathetic, and disgusting. I suggest you rein in your publicist and “fans”.

Like I said, I’ve never heard of Ken Jennings before today. Now I think of him as a pompous, self-centered ass. Hey, great publicity, publicist!

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Amanda that she’s probably just dished out more dumb, knee-jerk abuse than any of my “fans” inflicted on Santoro! I guess that’s the beauty of the Internet: Amanda Dameron, like any of us, can be a jerk–in full public view!–before she has time to get her blood down and wiithout having to consider the human being at the other end of her little tirade (or, failing that little bit of human decency, to consider the fact that “angry wacko” is not a good look on anyone).

There are so many crazy things about l’affaire Santoro that I hardly know where to begin.

1. First, I don’t buy the idea that the station was besieged with calls about a mis-announced book signing date. I’m happy to get 50-100 people at an in-store event. How many of those knew the date two weeks in advance? And how many of those were listening the WFNX for my interview? And how many of those care enough to call the station with a correction?
2. Second, I don’t buy the idea that anybody calling a radio station to correct a date would heap personal abuse on the person they talked to. People might be a little ruder over the phone than in person, but not Amanda Dameron rude. I know the Random House publicist must have been pretty nice, because she got a perfectly cordial–even chummy!–email back from Henry himself. (I tried to email Henry last night for this story, but haven’t heard back.)
3. Third, I don’t buy the fact that a radio station would come down on a newsreader just because he got a minor event date wrong. I’m sure radio stations get iittle details wrong all the time, get listener feedback, and run corrections. It’s routine.
4. Finally, I really don’t understand a beloved local newsman quitting over some angry phone calls, even if there were any. It’s not like he ran forged National Guard papers about the President. He mis-announced a little book signing. Who the hell cares?

Clearly there are/were some other WFNX issues going on here that I know nothing about. Which is fine, because–just like the rest of this whole stupid thing!–it has nothing to do with me! Santoro is back on the air today, apparently. Dear Henry Santoro fans: you can leave me alone! I am willing to stipulate that Santoro is a truly great newsman, the local-morning-radio equivalent of Edward R. Murrow. I have nothing against the guy and wish him well. I’ll always try to get radio stations to announce event dates correctly, but I hope nobody claiming to speak for me was an Amanda-Dameron-level jerk to Henry or his coworkers, because that’s not cool.

I had fun at the University Book Store signing in Bellevue last night–next week: Utah! For some reason, my Utah events for Brainiac were more skimpily attended than any other city. Clearly Utah is so over me. (It was just a summer thing, apparently. Summer 2004.) Come on out, Salt Lake City. Represent.