Mark Slackmeyer

Few aging agitators are as unreconstructed as Walden Commune Alumnus Mark Slackmeyer, and fewer still are as proud of it. Known as "Megaphone Mark" during his campus activist years, he was on the national organizing committee for the Vietnam Moritorium, and was interviewed after the massive anti-war demonstration by Dick Cavett. Adopting the on-air moniker "Marvelous Mark," Slackmeyer created a distinctive campus radio program that was influential during the Watergate period, though he was widely censured at the time for some of his editorial comments. After stints as a bricklayer, a computer operator, and a part-time bartender, Slackmeyer returned to broadcasting with a post at WBBY. Sensing there was nothing wrong in Nixon's America that wouldn't become even more deplorable in Reagan's, he chose to stay permanently and professionally mad, and went to work for National Public Radio. Activist folklore is the richer for it. Still making waves on air, he combines probing interviews with "Lite 'n' Easy Rock," for the generation that still gets down but can't catch up. Mark is the only major FM disc jockey known to have outed himself on the air. He and his life partner -- conservative commentator Chase Talbott III -- appear together on NPR's All Things Being Equal.

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