Free Drama Is Her Middle Name by Wendy Williams

she ever wrote a love letter. Or imagine how many boy-friends broke up with the poor girl in a letter and she never
even knew it.”
    â€œShe ain’t never played Scrabble. The girl ain’t never
played Scrabble!”
    â€œAaron, stop it!” Ritz howled. “I can’t take it.”
    â€œAnd let’s not talk about
Jeopardy
or
Wheel of Fortune.
Ritz, imagine her trying to buy a vowel.”
    â€œAnd what was her mother thinking? Fantasia Barrino?
How hard is that name to spell? That child must have been
having fits growing up with that one.”
    â€œOkay, Aaron, now you have crossed the line,” Ritz broke
in, trying to hold back the uncontrollable giggles that were
building up inside. “You can’t talk about her mother. That’s
going too far.”
    Aaron was on a roll. Ritz knew if she didn’t stop him, he
would go on for the next three hours of the show and it was
only going to get worse.
    Sometimes Ritz felt like she was performing a public service—keeping these celebrities in check and keeping her audience hip to what was real and what was fake. She ripped
masks off for all to see the truth. She worked
for
the people.
    If a male star came through who seemed a little light in the
pants or to have some sugar in his tank or whom Ritz had
some gossip about him being on the down low but couldn’t
substantiate it, she would have Aaron play the sound effect
of an over-the-top gay man howling “Oooooh, how you
doin’?!” The guest never had a clue. The audience did,
though. And they loved it.
    If Ritz had hard evidence that the male star was indeed on
the down low—pretending to be straight but actually enjoying the sexual company of men—she would simply ask him.
And the audience could count on Ritz for that, too.
    She did have a few altercations after a celebrity got back
to his or her camp and found out what really went down during the interview. One tough female rapper whom Ritz hit
with the gay-man-howling sound effect—which could be
used on a man or a woman—every time she opened her mouth
wasn’t too pleased when she found out. In fact, she came
back and waited for Ritz outside of the studio, threatening to
“beat the bitch’s ass.” The cops were called. And the next
day, Big Tony was hired to sit outside of the studio during
Ritz’s shift. A panic button was also placed under the desk in
the studio just in case things got nasty. Aaron and Chas were
men, but neither had enough of a street game to handle potentially violent guests. Big Tony did.
    For the most part, though, celebrities took the whole Ritz
experience in stride. Most understood the rule: The only bad
publicity was
no
publicity. With Ritz’s five million (and growing) loyal listeners, they couldn’t afford
not
to show up. Ritz
had such a great relationship with her audience that if she
said that a CD was hot, it shot to number one. If she said that
a movie was good, it would debut at the top spot. And as for
books, she was having an Oprah-like touch there, too. While
some people hated Ritz, they couldn’t argue with the results
or the fact that her audience loved her.
    The love affair began the night Ritz ruined the career of
the hottest newswoman in the business. It solidified Ritz’s
place in the annals of radio history, but it also galvanized a relationship between her and “her people.” Ritz was their hero,
their champion. She was the one asking the questions they
were asking in their heads. She was the one not taking any
crap from these celebrities. She was weeding out the fakers
from the shakers. She was the ultimate BS detector. She created an “us” against “them” club, recognizing that there were
way more
us
es in the world than
them
s—the celebrities. She
also recognized that while everyone wanted to be a “them,”
when it was clear that they