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This is not the Alex Reimer story, you can find those details on any news site at the moment. This is a story about a young, determined, rising personality in a top US media market who got lost trying to be someone else.
Reimer got a taste of the spotlight early on, with appearances on national tv talk shows as a quick witted 12 year old. He seemed to glide through his adolescent, and young adult career, making a name for himself immediately upon his exit from Boston University. You could find his name attached to articles in Forbes, Boston Magazine, and the Boston Herald, all before latching onto the "Kirk & Callahan" show. The issue isn't a question of his quick success, it's a look into what he felt he had to do in order to keep his stock rising.
Radio is a unique business of mediocrity, (rare) unthinkable success, and even greater falls from grace. Those falls are just as entertaining for some listeners as the success. It's one of the few businesses that allows the consumer to react with you, or sometimes at you, in real time. It's a true story of what have you done for me lately. You could be on top of your game for a ratings book, thinking no one can top you, only to see yourself drop into obscurity without any answers as to why.
The WEEI morning show "Kirk & Callahan" has sat in the sports radio drivers seat for a while now, alot of it due to the unpredictable nature of the hosts and the bench players. In order to stay on top, you sometimes expect the impossible from all involved. You go into the studio with the understanding you have to be on your game 100 percent of the time or the entertainment will come from the cross-hairs turned to you, followed by a verbal lashing. Alex Reimer seemed to understand that, but lost himself somewhere along the way.
You never really knew what the young kid was all about. Sure he used the WEEI airwaves to take the huge life changing step of reporting on his own sexuality, but besides that you only knew the overly negative view of Reimer. Everything was awful, nothing was up to the standards of his young dim view of the world. (or is that what he thought you wanted to hear?)
To understand a grown man attacking a 5 year old girl for simply getting excited about playing soccer makes you have to look at the man himself, and deep down, I doubt that's who Alex Reimer is. The problem is, Reimer is still an impressionable youngin who most certainly looked up to the two hosts he worked with. Gerry Callahan is a seasoned vet, and should be considered borderline teflon for surviving John Dennis, and working alongside the antics of Kirk Minihane. Kirk had a similar quick rise to the top, but he knows how to play the game. Reimer most likely looked at the surface of Minihane as a product, and tried to shape himself into that mold.
The downside of trying to become something you're not, you might be lacking the intangible traits that makes that product work, even though it may seem on the surface as though you're an equal. The brash outlook, and constant contentious verbal fisticuffs only works when you know where the line is. Once you know the location of that line, you can then gracefully skirt it. We may now never know the real Alex Reimer, his future is as cloudy as any at the moment. Unfortunately for him, he'll be known as another failed copy-cat, who flew too close to the sun and burnt up.