January 2, 2026 • 15 mins
Curtis fills in for Mark Simone. He took time to remember the late, great radio producer and host Bernard McGuirk, sharing personal stories and highlights from his career in a heartfelt tribute. In addition, Curtis explored the growing impact of artificial intelligence on the workforce, considering how advancements in AI technology could potentially lead to significant job losses if companies choose automation over human employees.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now the Red Beret has returned to radio. Curtis lee
Wall guest host The Mark Simone Show on sevent Tenor Oh,
I heard that update about Governor Schurell from a congresswoman.
She's going on a diner tour. Boy. Nobody is from
(00:24):
Jack Ciarelli any longer. Remember he was the big maga
trumper guy this time around, third time around, and her
whole campaign was affordabilely, cost the living, and he washed.
But you don't hear from him at all. I don't
know what he plans on doing. I've known Jack. It's
a good candidate, but the voters were interested in, in course,
(00:48):
the living, affordability. That's what propelled Johann Mondamia New York
and in other races where Democrats beat Republicans around the
country and maywell end up determining the fate of the
House of Representatives. You know, Trump, there was a fake
news fake note. Now it's all about oh no, affordability
(01:10):
courts of OLIVI yeah, yeah, okay, get on board. But
it reminds me of a great radio figure who was
here from time to time, the King of talk radio,
Bob Graham. He was here on two different occasions. But
when he was at WABC, was there I was at
that time, there was the woman trying to become governor. There,
(01:31):
Christine Todd Whitless. What the scratsiata what a shanda? Remember
she's the one who was the EPA chieftains for Bush
forty three and in the aftermath of the attack of
nine eleven said, oh, no toxins in the air. You
don't need gloves or masks or has matt suits just
in hale exl Look how many died, Look how many
(01:54):
still suffered. But anyway, at that time it was Governor Florio,
and Bob grand single handedly got her elected. He coined
the phrase Florio Free in ninety three. And Florio was
originally from Brooklyn. He worked in a butcher's shop, joined
the US Navy, and he was paving the way for
(02:16):
his reelection. He was raised in Texas. And Bob Grant
took Christine Todd wit Lists of Patrician by the hand,
took her on the bus tour from Camden County to
Hudson County, and of course the stopover at his favorite haunt,
the Rio Diner in Woodbridge, New Jersey. We're at the time,
guess who the mayor was, is he? Oh yeah, the
(02:36):
guy who just lost his attempted political comeback in Jersey
City to become the mayor, as he addressed a nation
later on and said, I am a gay American. You
know that is Yeah, like Cormo, he attempted to come back.
He was the mayor of Woodbridge at the time. Jim
(02:58):
McGready greed and he crashed in burnerw Jersey City. But anyway,
the point being is Bob Grant's single handedly took this
woman and got her elected, and then, in typical political fashion,
she stuck the ship in his back. Came up, did
an interview in the studios at WABC at that time
(03:21):
at two pen Plaza, Madison Square Garden. Here's the guy
who got her elected. And because people were calling Bob
Grant a racist, she chimed in, oh yeah, she was
stabbing him in the back. And Bob was always respectful
to his guests on the radio. You know, he would
(03:43):
rail against them when he was doing his commentaries, but
he was always respectful. I was there at the station
that day. It was a horrific political performance, and you
got to understand that you may be loyal to certain politicians.
It doesn't matter. They care only about themselves. And that
(04:04):
was clearly evidenced the Christine Todd Whitless Miserable Verson. But
she had no loyalty. The guy who did have loyalty,
it's the great Bernard McGirk. And I say great because
he earned it. His father was a bus driver, Irish
(04:29):
bus driver in the Bronx. His mother raised kids in
the Monroe housing projects and Soundview, so where Wesley Snipes
grew up. Yeah, Wesley, pay your taxes. They never did.
And many others who grew up there. But when you
were white back then, you were the minority, and it
was a tough upbringing. But when I've been to the
(04:52):
Monroe projects and I speak to the elderly African American women,
many of them still living there, they would say Bernard
McGirk would walk around with books all the time. He'd
be reading books, he'd be teaching kids to read, even
the ones threatening him to give him a beat down.
And as you know, Bernard was a tough guy. It
was a Hayes man. Went to Cardinal Hayes. I think
(05:12):
he went to Mount Saint Vincent up in Riverdale, then
left school, was driving livery cabs up in Young because
overnight you know how dangerous that is. Back then the
slowbine projects, Milford Gardens, thugs and then late and now
you know who's China hal at Back then livery cabs,
(05:33):
it's pimps, it's prostitutes, it's John's, it's drug dealers, it's
drug users and drunks who were getting out of the
bars along McLean Avenue in the wee hours of the morning,
and it was tough. He talked to me about all
the times he got pissed the whip guns to his head, Rob,
because back then it was cash and carry. And then
(05:53):
he fell into radio. It's one of the best things
that ever happened on radio. At some point he hooked
up with Imus, who had had his ups and downs
and was just a nasty guy. Nasty guy, but he
became the lynchpin, the flywheel, the one person who was
(06:18):
able to turn it around for don Imus, who, depending
on which day it was, was probably in a really
bad mood. If I remember correctly, There was Imus, Charles McCord,
his news guy, Rob Bartlett Loifino, who is now sid
(06:39):
Rosenberg's wingman. If he hadn't gotten Luia Fino here from
w o WAL. I don't think sid Rosenberg would have
cut it. Once Bernard McGirk passed away. We'll get into
that momentarily. But by the time they came to WABC.
This is after that Scarlet Night situation with Rutgers, which
(07:03):
I think occurred in about two thousand and seven. All
of a sudden, MSNBC canceled them because they were simulcast,
and then WFA and canceled them, fired, Imish fired. Bernard
McGirr kept the others on a little bit, but let
them go too, and they were in a lurch. They
were persona and on Grada they had a scarlet letter
(07:25):
on them they would call races, which, let me tell
you something, Bernard McGirr coughing up in the projects with
predominantly African Americans and Hispanics around him, not far from
the Soto Mayor Projects which used to be the Bronxdale
Projects renamed in her honor, near the Bruckna in the
heart of the South Bronx. He was no racist. Probably
(07:47):
the saddest moment that I experienced on his behalf is
that he was supposed to in two thousand and seven
be hired over at WRKO for the morning program in Boston,
and boy, they wanted him there desperately because he would
have been a perfect fit Irish. And remember he used
(08:08):
to do used to do the imitations of John and
Cardinal o'conna and Cardinal Egan. You know, you had that
Federal Express envelope as like the cone on his head.
He was great with the Irish brogue man and loved
him in Boston. So there I am in the studios
(08:30):
of WRKO in Boston. I was leading Guardian Angel patrols.
Some black minister had said, don't come to Boston because
you're just asking to end up in a body bag.
It was high crime. The mayor was opposed to it,
and so here it was they were going to hire
Bernard McGirk to be the co host with the former
(08:53):
Speaker of the crooked Boston Excuse mean Massachusetts Legislature, Tom
Finnerant and then Alslom Shady Sharpton and Barack Obama started
working the phones to all the advertisers and telling him,
if you hire that racist Bernard McGirk, we're going to
launch a boycott. So when I got there that morning,
(09:17):
I said, hey, where's Burnie? Oh no, no, no, they decided
not to take him. Honest, but what that would have
helped you, Thomas, You know you're a politician. I was
honest with him. Politicians make horrible talk show hosts because
they always speak with a seven second soundblite the worst.
He goes, No, you're right, I needed Bernie. So once
(09:38):
again Bernard McGirk was off into the ABYSS, labeled a racist. Meantime,
unbeknownst to anybody, don Imus who represented his whole crew,
because you paid Imus, and then he paid his crew,
so you were subject to whatever Imus said you had
to do. He was meeting with the Buckley family who
(10:01):
owned WOR, this station seven ten at the time, family
owned station, and they were on the cusp of hiring him. Now,
remember the morning shows there had either been gambling one, two, three,
or programs that sounded like the Gambling show. You know,
it soundedlikes So this would have been a major departure
(10:23):
for them. I don't know what happened, but negotiations broke
down and at that point WOR decided not to bring
him into the mornings. That's like halfway through twenty two
thousand and seven and then towards the end of two
thousand and seven, what happens. WABC hires Imis in the
(10:45):
Morning and his crew to replace Curtis and Koby. They
fired Kooby and they put me in a box doing
overnight radio and that was syndicated across the nation. But
they weren't gonna let me go, and they said this
so wow. It was all within a year, and every
step of the way, Bernard McGirk was loyal to Imus
(11:11):
and loyal to the team. Never told his stories, the
horrific stories of how badly i'mus treated him and all
the members of his staff. By the way, the executive producer,
when you saw him in the studio, he was feeding
information i'mus. Bernard would read the books, he would give
(11:31):
him the questions to ask. There was sometimes Imus was
almost incoherent, and Bernard McGirk would save the day whether
i'mus was off in New Mexico and then eventually in
Texas at Ranch whatever. And then he had a wish
at WABC. He wanted to have his own show. He
(11:52):
had earned it many times over great talk show hosts,
and he said to management and ownership, I want to
be able to bring up Sid Rosenberg from Florida, who
was having a difficult time, and he convinced him. He
convinced them that, yeah, this could be a good show.
I remember I went down to Florida. I was hosting
a Guardian Angel conference at the hard Rock Casino in Hollywood,
(12:15):
and I was asking questions about Sid because he had
just been fired in another radio station. Assumed he had
some of the same problems he had before. He hadn't.
I reported back to ownership management and I told, man,
you got it. You got to bring Sid up because
he wanted to hire Mike Lupeka, the sports writer at
at the Daily News. Great sports writer, but horrible talk
(12:39):
show hosts. And I must say, convince him. You don't
have to come into the station. You could do it
from your basement in New Canaan. Yeah, just destroy the
station even more, saying God, they listened to me. They
brought Sid Rosenberg up. Sid was a great addition. And
then unfortunately Bernie, and this is a message to all
of you to get to your menfo never took that
(13:01):
PSA test. A simple prick of the finger, A simple
prick of the finger. If he had had that blood test,
it's simple. I can assure you he would not have
died of prostate cancer like so many men needlessly do
because they don't get tested. If you're forty five or older,
you gotta get tested. Women folk listening out there, you
(13:24):
have the right to nag them, be all over them,
make sure they get that test, because the toughest guys
are the ones least likely to take the test because
they think, oh man, it goes my manhood. You know,
I'll have to be using no longer the urino. I'll
have to go into the stall and do a squad
in for us. That's nonsense. I had stage four prostate cancer.
(13:46):
But Bernie was old school. And when we return, I'll
tell you exactly what happened there. For one year, this
guy suffered and you continue to do talk radio while
his partner, Sid Rosenberg was hoping that he would have
(14:08):
a shot to do the show on his own. You
imagine that this guy who had brought him, who said
I want sit up here, and all Sid was doing
while Bertie was suffering, is I could do this show
on my own. Really, No, you couldn't. No, you can't.
(14:30):
And I'll give you the rest of the real story
as I do my homage to a great all round
figure in talk radio, Bernard McGirk, who should be honored
on a regular basis for all he put up, with,
all he did, and what he contributed to the thing
(14:52):
of ours. One eight hundred three two one zero seven ten.
That's one eight hundred three two, one zero seven ten
Now the Red Beret has returned to radio. Curtis lee
Wall guest host The Mark Simone Show on sevent Tenor Oh,
I heard that update about Governor Schurell from a congresswoman.
She's going on a diner tour. Boy. Nobody is from
(00:24):
Jack Ciarelli any longer. Remember he was the big maga
trumper guy this time around, third time around, and her
whole campaign was affordabilely, cost the living, and he washed.
But you don't hear from him at all. I don't
know what he plans on doing. I've known Jack. It's
a good candidate, but the voters were interested in, in course,
(00:48):
the living, affordability. That's what propelled Johann Mondamia New York
and in other races where Democrats beat Republicans around the
country and maywell end up determining the fate of the
House of Representatives. You know, Trump, there was a fake
news fake note. Now it's all about oh no, affordability
(01:10):
courts of OLIVI yeah, yeah, okay, get on board. But
it reminds me of a great radio figure who was
here from time to time, the King of talk radio,
Bob Graham. He was here on two different occasions. But
when he was at WABC, was there I was at
that time, there was the woman trying to become governor. There,
(01:31):
Christine Todd Whitless. What the scratsiata what a shanda? Remember
she's the one who was the EPA chieftains for Bush
forty three and in the aftermath of the attack of
nine eleven said, oh, no toxins in the air. You
don't need gloves or masks or has matt suits just
in hale exl Look how many died, Look how many
(01:54):
still suffered. But anyway, at that time it was Governor Florio,
and Bob grand single handedly got her elected. He coined
the phrase Florio Free in ninety three. And Florio was
originally from Brooklyn. He worked in a butcher's shop, joined
the US Navy, and he was paving the way for
(02:16):
his reelection. He was raised in Texas. And Bob Grant
took Christine Todd wit Lists of Patrician by the hand,
took her on the bus tour from Camden County to
Hudson County, and of course the stopover at his favorite haunt,
the Rio Diner in Woodbridge, New Jersey. We're at the time,
guess who the mayor was, is he? Oh yeah, the
(02:36):
guy who just lost his attempted political comeback in Jersey
City to become the mayor, as he addressed a nation
later on and said, I am a gay American. You
know that is Yeah, like Cormo, he attempted to come back.
He was the mayor of Woodbridge at the time. Jim
(02:58):
McGready greed and he crashed in burnerw Jersey City. But anyway,
the point being is Bob Grant's single handedly took this
woman and got her elected, and then, in typical political fashion,
she stuck the ship in his back. Came up, did
an interview in the studios at WABC at that time
(03:21):
at two pen Plaza, Madison Square Garden. Here's the guy
who got her elected. And because people were calling Bob
Grant a racist, she chimed in, oh yeah, she was
stabbing him in the back. And Bob was always respectful
to his guests on the radio. You know, he would
(03:43):
rail against them when he was doing his commentaries, but
he was always respectful. I was there at the station
that day. It was a horrific political performance, and you
got to understand that you may be loyal to certain politicians.
It doesn't matter. They care only about themselves. And that
(04:04):
was clearly evidenced the Christine Todd Whitless Miserable Verson. But
she had no loyalty. The guy who did have loyalty,
it's the great Bernard McGirk. And I say great because
he earned it. His father was a bus driver, Irish
(04:29):
bus driver in the Bronx. His mother raised kids in
the Monroe housing projects and Soundview, so where Wesley Snipes
grew up. Yeah, Wesley, pay your taxes. They never did.
And many others who grew up there. But when you
were white back then, you were the minority, and it
was a tough upbringing. But when I've been to the
(04:52):
Monroe projects and I speak to the elderly African American women,
many of them still living there, they would say Bernard
McGirk would walk around with books all the time. He'd
be reading books, he'd be teaching kids to read, even
the ones threatening him to give him a beat down.
And as you know, Bernard was a tough guy. It
was a Hayes man. Went to Cardinal Hayes. I think
(05:12):
he went to Mount Saint Vincent up in Riverdale, then
left school, was driving livery cabs up in Young because
overnight you know how dangerous that is. Back then the
slowbine projects, Milford Gardens, thugs and then late and now
you know who's China hal at Back then livery cabs,
(05:33):
it's pimps, it's prostitutes, it's John's, it's drug dealers, it's
drug users and drunks who were getting out of the
bars along McLean Avenue in the wee hours of the morning,
and it was tough. He talked to me about all
the times he got pissed the whip guns to his head, Rob,
because back then it was cash and carry. And then
(05:53):
he fell into radio. It's one of the best things
that ever happened on radio. At some point he hooked
up with Imus, who had had his ups and downs
and was just a nasty guy. Nasty guy, but he
became the lynchpin, the flywheel, the one person who was
(06:18):
able to turn it around for don Imus, who, depending
on which day it was, was probably in a really
bad mood. If I remember correctly, There was Imus, Charles McCord,
his news guy, Rob Bartlett Loifino, who is now sid
(06:39):
Rosenberg's wingman. If he hadn't gotten Luia Fino here from
w o WAL. I don't think sid Rosenberg would have
cut it. Once Bernard McGirk passed away. We'll get into
that momentarily. But by the time they came to WABC.
This is after that Scarlet Night situation with Rutgers, which
(07:03):
I think occurred in about two thousand and seven. All
of a sudden, MSNBC canceled them because they were simulcast,
and then WFA and canceled them, fired, Imish fired. Bernard
McGirr kept the others on a little bit, but let
them go too, and they were in a lurch. They
were persona and on Grada they had a scarlet letter
(07:25):
on them they would call races, which, let me tell
you something, Bernard McGirr coughing up in the projects with
predominantly African Americans and Hispanics around him, not far from
the Soto Mayor Projects which used to be the Bronxdale
Projects renamed in her honor, near the Bruckna in the
heart of the South Bronx. He was no racist. Probably
(07:47):
the saddest moment that I experienced on his behalf is
that he was supposed to in two thousand and seven
be hired over at WRKO for the morning program in Boston,
and boy, they wanted him there desperately because he would
have been a perfect fit Irish. And remember he used
(08:08):
to do used to do the imitations of John and
Cardinal o'conna and Cardinal Egan. You know, you had that
Federal Express envelope as like the cone on his head.
He was great with the Irish brogue man and loved
him in Boston. So there I am in the studios
(08:30):
of WRKO in Boston. I was leading Guardian Angel patrols.
Some black minister had said, don't come to Boston because
you're just asking to end up in a body bag.
It was high crime. The mayor was opposed to it,
and so here it was they were going to hire
Bernard McGirk to be the co host with the former
(08:53):
Speaker of the crooked Boston Excuse mean Massachusetts Legislature, Tom
Finnerant and then Alslom Shady Sharpton and Barack Obama started
working the phones to all the advertisers and telling him,
if you hire that racist Bernard McGirk, we're going to
launch a boycott. So when I got there that morning,
(09:17):
I said, hey, where's Burnie? Oh no, no, no, they decided
not to take him. Honest, but what that would have
helped you, Thomas, You know you're a politician. I was
honest with him. Politicians make horrible talk show hosts because
they always speak with a seven second soundblite the worst.
He goes, No, you're right, I needed Bernie. So once
(09:38):
again Bernard McGirk was off into the ABYSS, labeled a racist. Meantime,
unbeknownst to anybody, don Imus who represented his whole crew,
because you paid Imus, and then he paid his crew,
so you were subject to whatever Imus said you had
to do. He was meeting with the Buckley family who
(10:01):
owned WOR, this station seven ten at the time, family
owned station, and they were on the cusp of hiring him. Now,
remember the morning shows there had either been gambling one, two, three,
or programs that sounded like the Gambling show. You know,
it soundedlikes So this would have been a major departure
(10:23):
for them. I don't know what happened, but negotiations broke
down and at that point WOR decided not to bring
him into the mornings. That's like halfway through twenty two
thousand and seven and then towards the end of two
thousand and seven, what happens. WABC hires Imis in the
(10:45):
Morning and his crew to replace Curtis and Koby. They
fired Kooby and they put me in a box doing
overnight radio and that was syndicated across the nation. But
they weren't gonna let me go, and they said this
so wow. It was all within a year, and every
step of the way, Bernard McGirk was loyal to Imus
(11:11):
and loyal to the team. Never told his stories, the
horrific stories of how badly i'mus treated him and all
the members of his staff. By the way, the executive producer,
when you saw him in the studio, he was feeding
information i'mus. Bernard would read the books, he would give
(11:31):
him the questions to ask. There was sometimes Imus was
almost incoherent, and Bernard McGirk would save the day whether
i'mus was off in New Mexico and then eventually in
Texas at Ranch whatever. And then he had a wish
at WABC. He wanted to have his own show. He
(11:52):
had earned it many times over great talk show hosts,
and he said to management and ownership, I want to
be able to bring up Sid Rosenberg from Florida, who
was having a difficult time, and he convinced him. He
convinced them that, yeah, this could be a good show.
I remember I went down to Florida. I was hosting
a Guardian Angel conference at the hard Rock Casino in Hollywood,
(12:15):
and I was asking questions about Sid because he had
just been fired in another radio station. Assumed he had
some of the same problems he had before. He hadn't.
I reported back to ownership management and I told, man,
you got it. You got to bring Sid up because
he wanted to hire Mike Lupeka, the sports writer at
at the Daily News. Great sports writer, but horrible talk
(12:39):
show hosts. And I must say, convince him. You don't
have to come into the station. You could do it
from your basement in New Canaan. Yeah, just destroy the
station even more, saying God, they listened to me. They
brought Sid Rosenberg up. Sid was a great addition. And
then unfortunately Bernie, and this is a message to all
of you to get to your menfo never took that
(13:01):
PSA test. A simple prick of the finger, A simple
prick of the finger. If he had had that blood test,
it's simple. I can assure you he would not have
died of prostate cancer like so many men needlessly do
because they don't get tested. If you're forty five or older,
you gotta get tested. Women folk listening out there, you
(13:24):
have the right to nag them, be all over them,
make sure they get that test, because the toughest guys
are the ones least likely to take the test because
they think, oh man, it goes my manhood. You know,
I'll have to be using no longer the urino. I'll
have to go into the stall and do a squad
in for us. That's nonsense. I had stage four prostate cancer.
(13:46):
But Bernie was old school. And when we return, I'll
tell you exactly what happened there. For one year, this
guy suffered and you continue to do talk radio while
his partner, Sid Rosenberg was hoping that he would have
(14:08):
a shot to do the show on his own. You
imagine that this guy who had brought him, who said
I want sit up here, and all Sid was doing
while Bertie was suffering, is I could do this show
on my own. Really, No, you couldn't. No, you can't.
(14:30):
And I'll give you the rest of the real story
as I do my homage to a great all round
figure in talk radio, Bernard McGirk, who should be honored
on a regular basis for all he put up, with,
all he did, and what he contributed to the thing
(14:52):
of ours. One eight hundred three two one zero seven ten.
That's one eight hundred three two, one zero seven ten
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