Word: rizzo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...THOUGH Rizzo, who turned Republican to run in the last mayoral election after he lost the Democratic primary, has been out of office for nearly a decade, he's still throwing his hefty weight around in the City of Brotherly Love. After he lost last year's mayoral race to incumbent W. Wilson Goode, Rizzo became a talk show host on WCAU-AM, one of Philadelphia's highest profile radio talk stations...
...show has brought Rizzo national recognition. The former mayor earned a blurb in Time magazine. And earlier this week Rizzo found his way onto the front page of the Boston Globes's Living/Arts section in a full-page feature article...
While the sweet $100,000-a-year job might be a windfall for Rizzo, "Frank Talk" has got to be one of the biggest embarrassments for the city this decade. And that's a pretty tough feat considering the 1985 episode when Goode bombed a house owned by MOVE, a radical group, and burned down a whole city block to bring the city national notoriety...
...starters, the ex-Mayor isn't one of the most eloquent guys around. One Temple University communications professor claims that Rizzo "murders the English language." Rizzo punctuates his show with lots of South Philly "Yos," and the 68-year-old has little problem using his loud voice to over-power callers and ram his points home. Often he sounds like he'd silence his critics with a night stick if he had the chance...
Perhaps the style wouldn't be all that intolerable if Rizzo could actually come up with anything intelligent or informative to say. But the big guy fails when it comes to that part...