Sound and fury

Howie Carr's claim that he has off-the-air tapes of former radio colleague Marjorie Clapprood heats up a bitter rivalry

Don't Quote Me by Dan Kennedy

Put on your work boots and hard hat, because there's muck and falling debris ahead. One of the nastiest and most bitter public rivalries in Massachusetts will be played out in the fight to succeed Joe Kennedy in Congress. This particular battle, though, has little to do with politics and everything to do with jealousy, paranoia, and a heaping helping of personal animosity.

In one corner: Howie Carr, Boston Herald columnist and bad-boy talk-show host at WRKO Radio (AM 680). In the other: Marjorie Clapp-rood, who's seeking to resume her political career by running for Kennedy's seat following her own six-year stint on WRKO, where she frequently tangled with Carr both on the air and off.

So far, Carr is the only one who's fighting. Clapprood, who's reluctant to talk about her past dealings with Carr, makes it clear that the last thing she wants is to provoke a public pissing match with someone who writes the Herald's most popular column and hosts 'RKO's highest-rated program.

But given Carr's performance to date, Clapprood may have no choice. Indeed, Carr has already injected a Watergate/Fornigate twist into the proceedings by claiming to have a tape of some of Clapprood's gamier off-the-air comments. If he's telling the truth, his possession of such material raises potentially serious legal and ethical questions. Yet Carr, given a chance to let himself off the hook, declined to tell the Phoenix the circumstances under which he obtained the tapes.

Carr fired his first shot on March 15, two days after Kennedy announced that he wouldn't run for Congress again. "Memo to wrinkly old Marjorie Clapprood: Go ahead, make my day," Carr wrote after Clapprood said she would probably run.

But what started tongues wagging was Carr's March 27 column, in which he suggested that he had memorialized some of Clapprood's more embarrassing moments at WRKO. "Personally, I know one of the candidates better than the others," Carr wrote. "I've rolled more tape on her than Linda Tripp did on Monica Lewinsky. Right now it's all sitting there. In case of fire, break glass."

Now, of course, anything Clapprood said on the air would be fair game -- and given her frequent jokes about breasts, menstruation, and defecation, there would presumably be no shortage of material. But Carr upped the ante considerably when he included this passage, directed at Clapprood's rival candidate (and former state rep) Sue Tracy: "So, Sue, do I have an audiotape for you. You won't believe what one of your opponents, who shall remain nameless, said off-air about the sexual preferences of female members of the armed forces." (Insinuating but not quite saying that Tracy is a lesbian is a classic Carr technique. Tracy got the message: she came out last Thursday in a sympathetic column by the Herald's Peter Gelzinis.)

"If any of the candidates would like an audiotape bomb, you know where to reach me," Carr concluded. "Just remember, you didn't see me, and I didn't see you."

This isn't the first time Carr has tortured his victims with embarrassing tapes. Several years ago, Carr obtained a copy of then-city councilor David Scondras's slurred, semicoherent late-night call to the Boston Police and played it over and over -- thus contributing to Scondras's loss at the hands of Tom Keane, who is now one of Clapprood's rivals for the congressional seat.

But though Carr's sophomoric reveling over a low point in Scondras's life was repulsive, at least there was no question that the tape was a public document. That's certainly not the case with the alleged off-air tape of Clapprood. In Massachusetts, it's illegal to tape a conversation unless both parties consent. If Carr or someone acting at his behest recorded things that Clapprood said during commercial breaks, for example, or while taping an ad, then he could find himself in legal difficulty.

Neither Carr nor WRKO program director Kevin Straley would shed any light on the matter when contacted by the Phoenix. Straley said he hadn't seen the Carr column, but added that it is against company policy to tape employees off-air without their being aware of it. Clearly the last thing Straley needs is a legal hassle. American Radio Systems, WRKO's owner, is in the process of being sold to CBS, which in turn has promised to sell 'RKO and several other stations to a third party in order to stay within the Federal Communications Commission's antimonopoly guidelines.

When contacted by the Phoenix, Carr was evasive, declining to comment about the tapes except to say, "Let's just say they're around." Asked about the ethical or legal implications, he replied, "It's not something I've given a lot of thought to." Asked whether he's worried about legal action that might be taken against him if he uses any such tapes, he responded, "As Ted Kennedy once said, I guess I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it."

If Carr doesn't sound particularly worried, perhaps he has good reason. Though taping someone without her knowledge is illegal, Clapprood -- if she was actually taped -- may fall victim to the perception that anyone who works for a radio station ought to know better than to say something embarrassing, either on or off the air. "If you are a talk-show host sitting in a studio, surrounded by taping equipment and sound equipment, then the circumstances might not fit neatly within the two-party-consent law," says Ed Cafasso, spokesman for Attorney General Scott Harshbarger. "It could be argued that there's a different level of awareness for someone who makes their living on radio."

Michael Harrison, editor of the talk-radio magazine Talkers, and Donna Halper, a Boston-based radio consultant, say that although it would clearly be unethical to tape a radio personality secretly when that person was not on the air, experienced announcers are smart enough to watch their mouths at all times. David Brudnoy, a talk-show host for WBZ Radio (AM 1030), offers this informal industry rule: "Don't say anything anywhere near a microphone that's really stupid."

The Clapprood-Carr feud goes back to 1991, when Clapprood, a former Democratic state representative from Sharon who had just lost a campaign for lieutenant governor, joined WRKO as its morning cohost. Clapprood, who had cultivated a glamorous, outspoken image in politics, quickly established herself as a star, and was soon earning big bucks and appearing on her own national show on the cable TV network Lifetime. Carr, though already renowned locally for his snide but knowing political columns in the Herald and Boston magazine and for his occasional local TV gigs, was struggling to establish himself as a talk host.

Clapprood and Carr were never particularly enamored of each other, and a real rift developed in 1993, when Carr was fired from WRKO under murky circumstances. Carr refuses to discuss his relationship with Clapprood, but friends say he believes she may have had a hand in his departure. Soon thereafter, Carr returned to the air, first on WRKO's sister station, WHDH (now WEEI, an all-sports station), and later back on WRKO -- taking the afternoon drive-time shift of his mentor, the legendary Jerry Williams, with whom he'd had a falling-out. Carr began making fun of Clapprood on the air, which hardly made management happy. Indeed, sources say Carr battled with his own producer for refusing to let anti-Clapprood callers get through. And there are rumors that Carr was disciplined by station officials, although Carr himself says it was more along the lines of being told not to do it again.

Carr's friends say he was especially piqued at Clapprood's alleged habit of parking in a handicapped space near WRKO -- and once even suggested that he have the Herald run a photo, an idea that was strongly discouraged by station management. Meanwhile, Clapprood's ratings began drifting south (she was let go last year), and sources say Carr complained that she was hurting his ratings because commuters were getting out of the habit of tuning to WRKO. "That bitch is killing me," a friend recalls Carr as saying.

Program director Straley -- wisely -- declines to get in the middle of this one, refusing to comment on whether Carr was ever disciplined or whether Clapprood was known to park in a handicapped space.

As for Clapprood, she is clearly uncomfortable discussing Carr, but denies any impropriety on her part. On whether she helped get him fired, or bragged to anyone that she did: "I would love to take credit for that, but unfortunately I was never that powerful." On the handicapped-parking space: "Gee, I don't know about Howie, but I had a company-paid parking spot, so there would never be any need for me to park anywhere but there." On her relationship with Carr: "There is none. My only fear in this campaign is that some morning I'm going to be having my coffee, feeling really good about myself, and I'm going to pick up the Boston Herald and find to my horror that Howie Carr has endorsed me. Imagine me trying to explain that to the Eighth District."

But Clapprood turns more serious when asked about the tapes, and whether she's worried about what might be on them. "I've got no reason to believe that any hosts at WRKO had to worry about anything they said ever being recorded by anyone," she says. "I was always assured that that was not only improper but illegal. And frankly, I can't believe that WRKO would jeopardize their license by letting that happen to any employee."

In the end, the tapes may prove to be nothing more than a prank conjured up by Carr to get under Clapprood's skin. If he really had illegal tapes, it would be far better for him if copies simply appeared in brown paper bags on the doorsteps of one or more of Clapprood's fellow candidates.

After all, the essence of the well-turned political dirty trick is not to get caught. Carr has already precluded that option.

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Dan Kennedy's work can be accessed from his Web site: http://www.shore.net/~dkennedy

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Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com

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Articles from July 24, 1997 & before can be accessed here

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