A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from December 30, 2013
“Get off my phone!” (radio talk show saying)

“Get off my phone!” was the catchphrase of conservative talk radio host Bob Grant (1929-2013). If Grant didn’t like a caller, Grant would shout, “Get off my phone, you creep!” “Get off my phone!” has also been used by conservative radio talk show host Glenn Beck.
 
It’s not known when Grant first used his catchphrase. “Get off my phone, you jerk” was cited in print in 1991.
 
   
Wikipedia: Bob Grant (radio)
Bob Grant (March 14, 1929 - December 31, 2013) was an American radio host whose real name was Robert Ciro Gigante. A veteran of broadcasting in New York City, Grant is considered a pioneer of the “conservative” and “confrontational” talk radio format.
(...)
Characteristics of Grant’s radio shows
Grant’s political philosophy generally followed American conservatism, but with some lurches into populism, libertarianism, conspiracy theory, and unorthodoxy (such as being pro-choice and anti-Flag Desecration Amendment). Grant was known for using a number of catchphrases on his show, such as “You’re a fake, a phony, and a fraud!”, “Straight ahead”, “Get off my phone!”, “Anything and everything is grist for our ever-grinding mill”, and his closing line, “Your influence counts. Use it.”
   
Google Books
Mediaweek
Volume 1, Issues 32-47
Pg. 34:
Then as soon as the little guy speaks up, the squinty-brained host screams, “Get off my phone, you jerk!”
   
Google Groups: alt.current-events.haiti
HAITI INSIGHT Volume 5, No. 2, Apr
Toni Kamins
3/30/94
(...)
BOB GRANT: HATE TALK by Toni L. Kamins
New York Magazine once called him “the man you hate to love”, but listeners to Bob Grant’s daily radio hatefest on WABC-AM are more likely to recoil in horror.  His unrelenting diatribe against Haitians, Hispanics, and non-whites in general is reminiscent of such bilge as that promulgated by Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and other white supremacist groups.
   
Racial and ethnic calumny is not new to radio.  Back in the 1930s, in radio’s early days, Father Charles Coughlin, Gerald L.K. Smith, and Huey Long (governor of Louisiana 1928-31; U.S. senator 1932-35) could be heard vilifying Jews, blacks, and immigrants.  Grant, who for over twenty years has hosted one of the most popular call-in shows in New York City, is just one of the more recent manifestations of this form.
   
To be perfectly fair, Bob Grant doesn’t like anybody.  The airwaves crackle with the sound of “get off my phone, you lowlife” when a caller raises his ire, and woe betide the politician who does not live up to Grant’s standards, as President Clinton, New York’s Governor Mario Cuomo, and former New York City Mayor David Dinkins (to name but a few) have found out. 
     
Google Groups: alt.fan.howard-stern
BOYCOTT WABC NY
spicenets
4/19/96
(...)
Grant’s racism often prevents him from talking to callers:
 
Mimicking a caller with an accent: “I think you da da da, you know, I can’t stand the way you talk, how come you talk so funny, how come? Get off my phone, you creep, we don’t need the toilets cleaned right now.”
 
YouTube
Beck “Lose[s]” His “Mind;” Screams At Caller: “Get Off My Phone You Little Pinhead!”
mediamatters4america
Uploaded on Jul 15, 2009
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/20090715…
From the July 15 edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ Glenn Beck Program
 
Google Books
Vox Populi:
The O’Shaughnessy Files

By William O’Shaughnessy
New York, NY: Fordham University Press
2011
Pg. 10:
w.o.: Bob Grant, I just want to hear you say it one more time for the record, “Get off my phone!”
   
Google Books
Race-Baiter:
How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation

By Eric Deggans
New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan
2012
Pp. 165-166:
... including shock jock Howard Stern, Glenn Beck (who uses Grant’s signature phrases “get off my phone!” and “sick twisted freak”), ...
 
Twitter
The Star-Ledger ‏@starledger 24m
Bob Grant, father of conservative talk radio, dead at 84 | http://nj.com  http://nj-ne.ws/sdA0C
 
Mike LaMarca
‏@ChasingLaMarca
@starledger The Radio legend will surely be missed…NOW GET OFF MY PHONE!
1:32 PM - 2 Jan 14
   
New York (NY) Times
Bob Grant, a Combative Personality on New York Talk Radio, Dies at 84
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: January 2, 2014
Bob Grant, the right-wing talk radio host whose testy, confrontational manner made him a dominant voice during the drive-time hours in New York for decades, died on Tuesday in Hillsborough, N.J. He was 84.
(...)
Part of Mr. Grant’s appeal was a Dirty Harry persona, expressed in outbursts of impatience with callers. He dispatched them profligately — sometimes for disagreeing with him, sometimes for agreeing too obsequiously, and sometimes, it seemed, just because he could. “Get off my phone, you creep!” was his signature shout.

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityRadio/Television • Monday, December 30, 2013 • Permalink


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