The LuLac Edition #4,416, October 9th, 2020

INTERVIEW

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We’re here today with one of the most consequential talk show hosts Wilkes-Barre/Scranton has ever known, Mr. Steve Corbett. Corbett has been busy since he left radio and has been occupied with his craft, writing. His new book is a novel about the 2020 Presidential election.

LuLac: Steve, first off before we get started about your book, what have you been doing since your departure at WILK?

Corbett: Corporate bosses fired me in March 2017 for fighting Trump and his rat pack which includes timid local advertisers. Since then I’ve been promoted to 4th degree black belt in aikijujutsu and 3rd degree black belt in aikido, visited Ireland, saw Avventura Press publish my first novel, Blood Red Syrah, got a hip replacement, and retreated deep as a Shaolin monk into coronavirus sanctuary with Dr. Bressler, my political scientist manager, wife and partner in time. I’m also letting my hair and beard grow.

LuLac: Do you feel that perhaps the audience you reached had its own share of issues and bitterness that anyone couldn’t fix?

Corbett: Some listeners were and are beyond repair. My expectations are too high for hard coal country. Some of my shallowest critics on and off the air, including some esteemed business and elected political leaders, will always crave intellect and guts. Others, like my dull neighbor U.S. Sen. Bobby Casey, just panicked, froze and didn’t do enough to prevent the devolution of civic involvement and challenge we now experience as a region and a nation.

LuLac: What are your thoughts on the last four years and do you think we’ll ever gain back the time and energy we lost?

Corbett: We’re screwed. The coal region might never get back to so-called normal which wasn’t all that normal, anyway, with our regional emphasis on high school and college football, chicken wings and binge idiocy. Much of America will remain Trump country. Suffering will increase in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

LuLac: Okay, on to your writing. Besides this new book, can you outline your writing projects from the past for us and tell us where we can find them?

Corbett: Blood Red Syrah, my first novel, is a gruesome California wine country thriller based on my time between 2002 and 2006 living and working as a newspaper columnist on the Central Coast. The novel is available online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and wherever books are sold. So is Paddy’s Day in Trump Town, my most recent Avventura Press release. I also post news columns and essays about contemporary culture and politics on theoutlawcorbett.com, my killer website. My free online novel, Bugout!, a bizarre tale of real-time pandemic chaos, is available on the bloodredsyrah.com website. And, this month, a national Irish magazine, Village, will publish a piece I wrote about my new novel.

LuLac: The new book. Obviously, the idea came from what happened in ’16. The characters in the book though, would anyone who reads it recognize one and say, “My God that’s me” or “Jeez that’s my neighbor!!”?

Corbett: I drew my fictional characters from human behavior good and bad I observed and wrote about at the Times Leader during the 17 years I lived and worked in downtown Wilkes-Barre. That’s longer than I lived and worked anywhere in my life. My characters represent haters and those who fight them in a town and region where good people lose too often and bad people too often win. They know who they are. Even a dirty, cracked mirror never lies. 

LuLac: Do you think that when people read this book they’ll think “Wilkes-Barre” and will it help the image of Wilkes-Barre? And whether it did or not, do you care?

Corbett: The book is set in Wilkes-Barre during the first three weeks of March 2020. The city is a hard place that pound-for-pound is America’s most bigoted city. This is a raw Wilkes-Barre book that bleeds into Scranton and all the white ethnic patch towns in between. Countless Northeastern Pennsylvania generations share a depraved propensity for racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia and a vicious dose of self-hatred that infects their children. Bigoted Luzerne County voters put Trump over the top. Now he and his species are pushing America off the edge. The truth hurts, Wilkes-Barre. Deal with it.

LuLac: Tell me about the cover. Where did that come from and what does it represent in this book?

Corbett: Local music and arts masters James Callahan and Kristin Rose put the cover together. They understand the abuse and pain my main character feels. Pug Mahoney, a severely mentally ill teenager, first-time voter and Trump supporter, sits slumped on the cover, wounded, hurting and ready to destroy. Royal Hell guitarist and local metal fanatic Eugene Pavlico posed for the cover photo. Ace photographer and Teamster Scott Kucharski shot the back cover picture at the pool table.

LuLac: Using St. Patrick’s Day as a type of reference point, is it fair to say that St. Paddy’s day is even a character?

Corbett: The “Irish Guys” in the novel are an East End social club that will do anything and everything to re-elect Trump. Irish Americans all, they’re bigots and proud of it. They make the Proud Boys look like an NAACP chapter. Irish Americans, my tribe, have become some of America’s worst oppressors. Other NEPA ethnic groups have their own bigots, but the Irish Guys are kings. They control provincial politics, religious hypocrisy and bad cops. Because of the horrors their ancestors experienced, they really should know better. But they have become the very tyrants their ancestors fled in Ireland, a magic kingdom they have never visited. The Irish Guys don’t share or play well with others. Irish Guys like their privilege well done.

LuLac: Without giving anything away, does anybody get killed in this book?

Corbett: Injustice always gets people killed.

LuLac: Juxtaposing the characters in this book with the real characters you’ve met along the way, dealing with your radio callers as well as people who are not critical thinkers, do you have hope for the survival of this country as a Republic?

Corbett: Most of my callers were not critical thinkers. The masses are asses. Thomas Jefferson said that. OK, that’s a lie. But so is the myth of liberty and justice for all. I have little faith in 21st Century morality and discipline required to save the American Dream. Still, the fight is always worth the effort. Good citizens die with integrity. They want their examples to rub off on somebody even when it doesn’t. But sometimes it does.

LuLac: What should our path be going forward after election day?

Corbett: If Trump wins, Canada. But they probably won’t let us in. I’m voting for Biden. For the first time I believe he’ll win. But  America needs more than Biden. We need a non-violent revolution that evolves public policy with aggressive and crushing political, cultural and economic pressure. Shame the status quo. Drive them out. Mostly militant women must lead the fight against establishment elites, mostly white men, who control the Democratic Party. We don’t want to take part. We want to take over.

STEVE CORBETT TODAY IN PHOTOS  

Corbett at book signing. 

Steve on his bike. 

Corbett relaxing but still playing to win.