DOOM AND DOOMER

Ray Parker, who used to host The Parker Perspective on the station, echoes that view. Neither Resnick nor Wiedeman will discuss KHNC's finances. But Parker says talk-show hosts pay the station $40 an hour for satellite time and $250 an hour for shortwave time. Then the hosts drum up sponsors who hawk products in what often turn out to be political infomercials.

"I started listening to the Patriot Network and started calling," says Parker. "Then I went on as a guest on the Norm Resnick Show and started telling him and others to cut the crap and hold people's feet to the fire. He said he was very naive and didn't know about his guests. He's the host! It's his responsibility to check them out. They gave me a show, and I told people about the so-called patriots and so-called Christians who use this movement. It's so transparent. I think we should be talking about what's really going on in this country instead of talking about microchips in somebody's head or butt."

Now, to Parker's chagrin, the excesses of patriot radio are getting air time in the conventional press. "The media is pretty much liberal in coverage of this subject," he says. "They single out the kooks and take things out of context."

But he acknowledges that much of what goes on really is kooky. "The government did the bombing in Oklahoma City?" he says. "That is absolutely irresponsible. Nobody knows what happened yet. I've been pleading on the air to have rationality. With freedom of speech comes responsibility."

It would mortify him, he says, if it turns out that the Oklahoma City bombers were linked to the patriot movement.

"I'm not saying patriots did this," he says. "No real patriot would kill these innocent people. But if it can in any way be stuck on to the patriot movement, it's going to hurt us. There'll be more Draconian measures coming down from the government, more laws, more cops on the street. Killing innocent children and civilians solves nothing. It makes people's anger more intense toward you."

KHNC, says Parker, "is at the center of a storm it can't control. The station has the potential to be a very good outfit, but they have decided to ascribe to some of the flakier types, the hucksterish types, not the violent types. They talk about `ELF waves' being emanated from Russia. They're talking about `extreme low frequency' waves, but I call it the `extreme lunatic fringe.'

"It gets a little silly. I'm 58 years old now, but when I was a kid, we used to buy sci-fi magazines. When you're a big boy, though, you don't talk like this.