![]() ![]() On the radio and in his Boston Herald column, Howie is sarcastic, crude, and proudly chauvinistic. Speaking personally, I am not made to feel like a VIP. Later, he releases “Cheap Bastard” tickets-for this performance, $35-which entitle fans to the exact same show, minus the receiving line. When Howie announces a Deplorables Show, his website offers only VIP tickets, one of which I bought for $75. In fact, most of these VIPs are not VIPs by choice. ![]() The meet-and-greet consists of you shaking Howie’s hand, getting one of his books-plus a pair of plastic “lock her up” handcuffs-then being shuffled off the receiving line. The VIP experience turns out to be a minor scam. Howie’s wife, Kathy, who runs the business end of his small empire, monitors the action from behind a merch table, wearing a purple blazer and pearls. Except for a couple of Hells Angels types in their leathers, the crowd is populated by exactly the white, middle-class empty-nesters you’d imagine listen to Boston’s longtime king of conservative talk. Today’s production technically runs from noon to 2, but dozens of “VIP” ticket-holders have arrived an hour early for a meet-and-greet. He’s also had hair transplants, liposuction, and gastric sleeve surgery, which listeners of his WRKO talk show may know, since he promotes weight-loss and hair-restoration procedures on the air. When I get there at 11 a.m., Howie is sitting behind a table in slacks, brown loafers, and a button-up shirt, signing books. The show I attend takes place in September, at the banquet hall in Achushnet, a blue-collar hamlet of 10,000. You can learn a lot about Howie by going to one. These are some of the places Howie Carr has been spending his weekends lately, renting them out for stage shows in which he relives his favorite moments from the 2016 election. A couple of weeks later, it’s a tavern in Maine. The next day it’s a temple in Concord, New Hampshire, home to a Freemason sect whose worshipers like to wear red fezzes and drive miniature cars. One day it’s a banquet hall on the South Coast of Massachusetts. ![]()
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