Submitted photo.
Before you accuse me of reveling in the scurrilous details surrounding right wing radio talk show host Michael Berry’s alleged “traffic accident” outside a Houston gay bar, allow me to share. I used to be a radio talk show host on Miami’s WIOD-AM and Tampa Bay’s WSUN-AM. I know something about talk radio. I am also gay so I know something about the Montrose neighborhood in Houston where Berry is accused of ramming into someones car. I don’t know if Michael Berry is gay or not but the speculation is rife now that he is reported to have partied at TC’s Show Bar (a drag queen bar) all by his lonesome on January 31.
Why is this so damned important? Well, it’s because Michael Berry is an Obama hating, gay hating right wing fanatical talk show host. Partying with the people he derides with reckless abandon would make him a hypocrite. Michael Berry is also a former Houston City Councilman and failed Mayoral candidate so you would think that, out of civic responsibility, he would have stopped and called the police after being involved in a traffic accident.
Berry was named “Councilman of the Year” by the Houston Police Officers Union so it’s likely he didn’t want his buddies at H.P.D. to know he had been hangin in a gay bar. Tuderia Bennett, of Galena Park, told Houston police that he was working as a bouncer at the front door during a popular cross-dressing ‘drag show’ that was going on inside the club. He watched the crash happen and told police he rushed up to the car after impact and got a good look at Berry behind the wheel. “I said, ‘That’s definitely the guy.’ For sure, 100 percent,” said Bennett.
Bennett wrote down the license number from the car that he said caused more than $1,500 in damage to his car. Then, when HPD officers traced that license tag to Berry, the victim said he had no doubt it was him. He said he did not know who Berry was until HPD officers told him and he viewed an online promotional photo of Berry. “In my statement, I said there’s no question, 100 percent. I could line this guy up if he’s standing out here with 50 people. I could walk right up to the guy and say, ‘That’s the guy who hit my car,’” Bennett said.
A witness states that he went to the drivers side window of Berry’s vehicle to try to talk to him and Berry just drove off. Berry is a rancid personality on the air. It two years ago when he said of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”: “I’ll tell you this — if you do build a mosque, I hope somebody blows it up…I hope the mosque isn’t built, and if it is, I hope it’s blown up, and I mean that.” He told us at the time, “I am passionate that building a mosque on that site is an affront to the families of victims,” and on his blog somehow argued that he was not advocating bombing the mosque.
The HOUSTON PRESS provided some of Berry’s tweets today from the Grammys:
– “Pepsi woman, trust me, what Elton wants is NOT what you got. #GRAMMYS”
– “Shakira attacked by sea lion. Sources suggest it is Rosie O’Donnell, but I’ve not been able to confirm. Developing.”
– “Is that a dude or a woman on the far right? #GRAMMYS”
– “Katy, I don’t mean to be rude. Believe me. But your boobs are not worthy of being jiggled on national tv. U ain’t even had kids & they bad.”
The HOUSTON PRESS also reported that on December 22, 2007, just as his term on City Council was coming to a close thanks to term limits, Berry attended a concert by his friend Cory Morrow at the Firehouse Saloon on Fountainview at the Southwest Freeway. Berry would later say that as he was leaving the tavern, at 1 a.m. on December 23, he was carjacked at knifepoint in the parking lot. He told the Houston Chronicle that he got in his Chevy Tahoe, put down his Blackberry and stuck the keys in the ignition, when suddenly his passenger-side door flew open and a Hispanic man with a knife jumped in the car.
Berry said that as he was trying to shield himself from the first attacker, a second man, also Hispanic and packing a blade, jumped in the back seat. “Then I realized there were two guys and I needed to get out,” Berry told the Chron. He further told the Chron that as he was jumping out of the Tahoe’s driver-side door, he ran into a third knife-toting Hispanic male. Berry says he ran past him and the guy gave chase. Berry said he was scared that he was about to be stabbed in the back so he turned around to face his assailant. The attacker demanded his wallet, but Berry says he didn’t have to hand it over, because the Tahoe was already rolling by this point and the other two guys picked their buddy up and drove off.
Berry was not injured in the attack. He told KPRC-TVthat he didn’t call police at first, choosing instead to take a cab home and hug his wife and kids. The Onstar system led police to the Tahoe, which was found intact, mere hours after Berry filed his report, at an apartment complex on Gulfton Boulevard, just across the Southwest Freeway from the Firehouse. Perhaps these gangsters didn’t want to take the Tahoe to a chop-shop or smuggle it overseas — they just didn’t have cab fare. No arrests were ever made. At any rate, citing embarrassment, Berry didn’t publicly discuss the incident for the first week or two after it occurred, and then wouldn’t stop talking about it for a day or two, and then clammed up again.
HPD officers involved in the investigation said that the Harris County District Attorney’s office has declined to file criminal hit and run charges in the case, telling officers that no one can positively identify Berry being behind the wheel for the crime. Houston police said the hit-and-run was still under investigation, adding that Berry was not listed as being charged with a crime at this point. If additional witnesses are found, or if prosecutors change their minds about the video and the witness account, Berry could be charged with a misdemeanor crime of Failure to Stop and Give Information (FSGI).
