Chapter Seven

Fateful Encounters

Much of this book focuses on the worst days of my drunken past and the best days of my sobriety. The before and after are closely related to my success as an investigative reporter, sometimes giving me an eerie peek into the minds of characters I encountered. This was certainly true in reporting Jimmy Swaggart’s antics. Both of our lives were defined by addiction. And attempts to escape our demons.

Labeling the televangelist as a sex addict is not idle  speculation. He privately admitted to top officials of the International Assemblies of God that he had been addicted to pornography since adolescence. He said his trips to the seamier side of New Orleans were to feed the compulsion by seeing live demonstrations by prostitutes. His mid-day visits were crazy.

But after the fall, I came across the reason for his insanity in a remarkable treatise that was a rehearsal for Jimmy’s confession to church elders. He wrote the tiny pamphlet in 1981. Titled that Thing, he told a detailed story of counseling of a young man addicted to pornography and masturbation. In retrospect, it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to deduce that the young man was a surrogate for Jimmy’s own inner turmoil.

“I can’t cast this sick thing out of my life. I’ve promised God a thousand times I would quit and broke these promises a thousand times. I’m thinking seriously of killing myself.”

Bill Clinton, and other philandering politicians and celebrities  could have written the same words. So could I. But in a different context. Like most alcoholics, I knew about the battles of trying to overcome addiction.

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Sixteen years before Brother Jimmy Lee Swaggart got his comeuppance, I reached the nadir of my drunken degradation on a New Orleans curbside a few miles from the motel where he and a street-walker companion were caught on candid camera.

My life-altering bender began at the Baton Rouge Press Club, a midnight spa for reporters who put the morning newspaper to bed. The club was often my last stop before putting me to bed. From there, I staggered four blocks to a dingy studio apartment conveniently located next door to the radio station that tolerated me as its News Director and the host of a daily talk show. On nights of really heavy-duty frolicking, I went directly to the station and slept on a couch outside the newsroom. The Farm Editor woke me  in time for my early morning newscast. I altered this routine on February 1, 1971.

Standing unsteadily before club members, I declared my intentions to abandon my job, family and all pretenses of respectability. I was going to New York City’s Greenwich Village to start a Bohemian life as a writer. The announcement was greeted with an apathetic “good riddance.”

Page 197:

It seemed that my broadcasting career was over. Prospective employers in Louisiana knew enough about my drinking episodes to give me the brush-off. “We’ll call you if something becomes available.” Unable to find a broadcasting job in the state and lacking bus fare to leave Louisiana, I was ready to answer convenience store “Help Wanted” signs when serendipity intervened.

I received a call from Lew Carter, General Manager of WXOK, Baton Rouge’s “urban” radio station, which targeted African-American listeners. Its programming was dominated by rhythm and blues, funky disc jockeys and loud commercials.

WXOK was part of a white-owned network of stations in several Southern cities. The exploitative trash-for-cash format had prompted the Federal Communications Commission to order the company to add local news and public service, or risk losing lucrative broadcasting licenses.

I was not Lew’s first choice to meet the FCC mandate.