Chapter 12

Ed Harlow

"Intelligence without ambition

is a bird without wings.

The wisest man would do well

to clip the wings of others."

~ Walt Whitman, 1893

Lost to the annals of history are the tales of a man by the name of Ed Harlow. Ed was my news director at WNYX for four brief years. It would seem he is merely a footnote in the tale of what makes Bill McNeal tick. My time with Ed was but a fleeting blip in the timeline of my history. So, you may wonder why, out of all my illustrious twenty-two years of experience in radio and the art of interviewing, would I choose to highlight my brief brush with the now disgraced Mr. Harlow within these memoirs. In fact, I had the same question. But my publisher told me I should include him, so here we are.

Ed Harlow joined the crew of WNYX in 1991. At that time I would have described him as a bright-eyed young man with a full head of hair and a dream in his heart. He walked into my newsroom with a pie-in-the-sky vision of leading our ragtag group of radio hooligans to the top. As someone who was already on the top, I knew it was my job to bring this poor naive soul back down to reality.

I recall asking Ed to join me for a drink one evening after his first full week as news director. As the two of us sipped our scotch in a dimly lit bar, he told me his vision for the future of the station. He had a long list of lofty goals and, one by one, I explained to the poor, delusional bastard why they would never come to pass.

He wanted to see WNYX hit number one in the ratings. Can you imagine? I explained to Ed that, while it worked in his favor that he had Bill McNeal on his team, I couldn't very well be on the air 24 hours a day. The very second one of these other schmucks took over the microphone, the listeners would start turning the dial and the ratings would start dropping. Unless he could scrape up another one of me—and I assure you, I'm one in a million—he should kiss that dream goodbye.

He also wanted to see us finally win an American Broadcasters' Society Award. When I finished laughing I explained to Ed that WNYX never wins and that his best bet would be to give up hope entirely. WNYX didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of ever winning one of those awards. Besides, since one had never been bestowed upon me, it was obviously a meaningless award and, thus, not worth winning.

Ed had visions of WNYX scoring interviews with big-time politicians. He even mentioned his dream of one day airing an interview with the President of the United States of America. That was when I decided to order him a second scotch. He was going to need it in order to swallow the hard truth that he should kiss that dream goodbye. Why would the president want to do an interview with an AM radio station? It is true that I am highly sought after for my interviewing skills, which I have perfected over the course of more than two decades. Still, the president would be quite a stretch. I did, however, throw old Ed a bone and tell him he could probably get an interview with Governor Pataki so long as he mentioned it was a favor for Billy M.

Once I gave him a dose of reality, I saw the light in his starry eyes begin to die. That was how I knew I had done my job. Some may say that I was wrong to tell Mr. Harlow to get his head out of the clouds. To them I say, this is New York City-the city that never sleeps. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. As someone who has made it here, I had a right—nay, an obligation—to make sure Ed knew he wasn't going to make it anywhere. Besides, with someone of my considerable talents on air, an ambitious news director really just gets in the way. Honestly, I was doing us both a favor.

Over the course of the next four years, I watched as my words of wisdom took hold in young Ed. He went from the wide-eyed, bushy-haired, young lad I first met, to the hunched, cynical, balding sad-sack most of you would recognize today. Day in and day out, I did my best to break this man of the illusion that he would achieve any sort of greatness. It was in his best interest, of course, to set his sights low. And what better way to do that than by kicking him when he was down. The day he walked into my newsroom and I realized I barely recognized this poor, broken soul, I knew I had taught him all there was to know about this cruel and unforgiving city. That was when I knew his days with WNYX were numbered. We all knew it, really. Ed was the last one to realize his time with us was done.

After being fired from WNYX in 1995, Ed began a downward spiral from which he never fully recovered. He tried to get another job as a news director with competing AM stations in New York. His first stop was with WXYP where he thought he had a foot in the door via his old college buddy, Tom Novacheck, who ran the station. He claimed to have a standing offer to take up the position of News Director at that station any time he wished. Some friend Ed must have been. He didn't realize his old chum had recently tucked in for a long dirt nap. His hopes of a quick career recovery were soon dashed. He received rejections from every news station in the city. He even stooped to the pathetic low of applying with a station in New Jersey. It was no use. Mr. Harlow's reputation preceded him everywhere he went. I had made sure of that.

Faced with a sea of opposition, Ed did exactly what I had trained him to do: he lowered his expectations. He forgot about that prestigious title of News Director altogether. He applied for producer positions. When that didn't pan out, he sought out reporter openings. As the never ending rejections piled up, Ed began to think he may never work in radio again. Finally, just as he hit rock bottom, a ray of light shone upon him and he pulled himself up by his bootstraps. After months of searching, Ed had landed a job. Sure, it wasn't the high profile position he originally saw himself in, but desperate times call for desperate measures and a man like Ed has got to take what he can get. So, he accepted the job as a clerical assistant with a Spanish radio station in Newark, in spite of the fact that he didn't speak a word of Spanish.

Ed tried in vain to climb that corporate ladder. He spent two years making photocopies and fetching coffee for anyone who was superior to him—which was basically everyone. He tried his best to make a good impression. He told anyone who would listen about his former glory as a news director. He dropped more than a few hints about wanting to advance his career. No one would listen to the poor, sad slob. No doors opened for him. There simply weren't any positions available for someone of his waning caliber.

As his frustrations grew, out of pure desperation, Ed began to form a deviously cunning plan. It was a plan befitting of the hardened, cut-throat New Yorker into which I had tried to mold him. Ed decided that the role of Communications Director, the head honcho's title at that particular radio station, would be his. He would take that throne by elbowing out the current director, a man by the name of Eduardo Caballero.[1] Yes, Ed decided the best way to take Mr. Caballero's job was to get him fired. Thus began his well calculated, although poorly executed plan to sabotage his boss.

Ed first tried to destroy the man's reputation by starting rumors about Eduardo conducting illicit affairs with young interns in the office. He tried dropping hints around the water cooler, but it turned out everyone had stopped listening to anything Ed had to say a long time ago.

For his second attempt, Ed tried making his own romantic advances, despite the fact that both Ed and Mr. Caballero were heterosexual men. He had hoped to make a claim of sexual harassment, but to no avail. Eduardo either completely ignored Mr. Harlow's advances or was simply repulsed by the stooped and balding specimen. Either way, Ed didn't get any evidence he could use against his boss. His advances were ignored and his plan failed for a second time.

For his third attempt, Ed really gave it the old college try. He went all in to try to ruin this poor unsuspecting man and, in doing so, ended up sealing his own fate instead. His plan was as complex as it was diabolical. It was as masterful as it was evil. It could have been a thing of beauty. Instead it was his downfall. Ed Harlow set out to frame his boss...for murder.

Ha ha ha. Not really. But wouldn't that have been something? No, Ed didn't frame Mr. Caballero for murder, but he did attempt to frame him for financial crimes—the same financial crimes of which Ed would eventually be rightfully accused. His scheme was actually pretty brilliant. He may have made a real name for himself if he had pursued a career in embezzlement instead of AM radio. Ed set up an intricate web within the financial workings of the radio station. He established fake vendors who would send fraudulent invoices to the station. Ed tricked the communications director into approving expenses that had never occurred and then got some schmuck in accounting to make fraudulent payments to an account that Ed, himself, had opened in Eduardo Caballero's name. This involved creating a fake ID and impersonating his boss at a credit union branch in a neighboring state. When the account had built up a hefty sum of stolen money, Ed approached the station owner and presented him with all the evidence he would have needed to fire Mr. Caballero as well as press charges against him. Unfortunately it was also all the evidence the owner needed to send our own Mr. Harlow to the gallows.

Eduardo, of course, denied the charges. Ed insisted that was exactly what a guilty person would do. Still, the station owner was adamant that the communications director be given the benefit of the doubt. As it turned out, Eduardo had a well-documented alibi for the date and time that the account was opened. Upon further investigation, the credit union had security footage of Ed Harlow opening the bank account himself. Of course it didn't help that Ed accidentally included his fake ID with the evidence documents.

Ed was summarily fired, as well he should have been. The station owner opted to press charges against him. Those charges were eventually dropped. Given that all the money was returned, the owner stated that the crime was really more stupid and pathetic than it was damaging. He did, however, feel that the crime should not go entirely unpunished. He agreed not to continue with prosecution, provided Ed was assigned some community service. Recently, I saw Mr. Harlow scrubbing graffiti off of subway walls. I said hello, but he just stared right through me with a blank, vacant gaze. Perhaps he couldn't believe his eyes. It's not every day the average citizen runs into a celebrity like myself.

So, there you have it. That's the end of Ed's story. I wish this chapter had a happier ending, but, alas the saga of Ed Harlow is a sad one. Consider it a cautionary tale. Steel yourself against the city that will try to eat you alive. Set your sights low before it's too late and failure is imminent. And, if you're going to frame someone, hire some spaz to do the dirty work for you so you don't get caught.

In spite of everything, at least we can say Ed Harlow had a moment in the sun. After all, he once shared the spotlight, ever so briefly, with the one and only Bill McNeal.

[1] Editor's note: There are no records of any person by the name of Eduardo Caballero at the radio station cited here.