Rocky D: Santa loves his gun

Rocky D, the long-suffering and ever-beleaguered radio-show host, has posted a few images of his Christmas tree on his website. His show on WTMA is called RadioFree Rocky D. His character is a Northerner who found his true home in Old Dixie. Listening to him, you’d think Charleston was an El Dorado of traditional American values, where the men are strong, the children obey their parents, and the women flash their tits (see this picture, for instance, of Donna Darlin brandishing “momma’s girls”).

Depending on your viewpoint, Rocky is trying to be “edgy.” Emphasis on trying. He no doubt thinks he’s controversial in posting images depicting his, um, unique vision of Christmas. There are modified ornaments — a Captain America whose shield shouts not Old Glory but the Confederate Battle Flag. There is a diorama of “Confederates chasing Yankee invaders away from Rocky’s Christmas tree!” My favorite is this caption: “Santa exercising his 2nd amendment rights.” Which might be funny, except that the ornament doesn’t look like Santa. It’s just some dude in green pants and a hunting jacket with a rifle and his dog.

I don’t mind all this Confederate stuff. The degree to which it’s protected by the likes of Rocky D ought to signal its true impotence. Even so, I sense Rocky doesn’t take himself seriously. I wonder if anyone else does. Perhaps his character, a thoroughly refined invention, is some kind of elaborate postmodern prank a la Charlie Kaufman. Perhaps Rocky isn’t really a conservative at all. Maybe he’s just a guy playing a guy playing a conservative, like in Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York — in which you find an actor playing a theater director who’s playing an actor playing a theater director.

That might explain why Rocky D says Santa is really a gun nut when it’s not Santa at all. Then again . . . —John Stoehr

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