For reasons I’m still not entirely sure of, I was invited to be a contributor on the Fox 5 DC 3 p.m. news today, to talk about the vote in the Virginia General Assembly raising the minimum wage.
Assuming that they had me mistaken with another, much more important Chris Graham, I still said yes, because, you never know, maybe this will be a big break, though more likely, I’d trip up two words in and end up going viral for all the wrong reasons.
Turns out, it was a quick in-and-out guest spot, but even so, one that got my anxiety up, just because, it’s been a minute since I’ve done live TV.
ICYMI
I do radio hits and podcasts all the time, but I don’t have to look presentable for radio or a podcast – you know, as if I ever can look presentable.
And then there’s the matter of the interview being on Zoom, which, again, I’m on all the time, practically daily, but.
My Zoom backdrop, which I spend way too much time thinking through for anybody’s good, is, you know, it’s, unique – which is to say, I go out of my way not to be boring, like the other stiffs who do TV and podcast hits from a home studio, with one book on a shelf, beside a fake flower, and a painting of some description that they got at the strip mall.
My Zoom background is built around an encased Tony Bennett-signed UVA Basketball, my signed copy of the Barack Obama autobiography, and my personally autographed framed photo of Hall of Fame wrestling manager Jim Cornette.
How’s that for personality?
The above sentence may be the first in written human history to include the names Tony Bennett, Barack Obama and Jim Cornette.
Making the sentence about that other sentence the second.
I more than half-figured that the producer would get a look at me sitting in front of that background and say, Um, is it OK if we blur out your background for this?
Which didn’t happen.
I was on after a guy who was a personal friend of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who passed away today, and honestly, the friend’s stories about Jesse Jackson were infinitely more interesting than anything I was about to say about the minimum wage.
When it was my turn, the anchor introduced me as the “founder and editor of The Augusta Free Press,” which, I can only imagine the average midday Fox 5 DC news viewer thinking, what the hell is an Augusta Free Press?
The main thing motivating me through my three minutes on the air: just don’t come across sounding like a hick from the sticks.
Good news on that: I think I avoided embarrassing the western half of the great Commonwealth of Virginia, if not also Augusta County Public Schools.
The producer, after my hit, thanked me for being on, and related to me that they might want to have me back, with the message from the anchor:
“Hey, that was good. Where did we find this guy?”
Not quite under a rock, but … close.
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Chris Graham
