Darla Jaye: Pissing off First Family Church and outing a ‘liberal’ KMBZ colleague

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As I prepared this week’s feature story on KMBZ 980’s 6 to 8 p.m. conservative talker Darla Jaye, the biggest surprise for me was how often Jaye is not quite doctrinaire with what I’ve come to think of as Kansas conservatism. Turns out, she got some theater in her early, and all the tea parties in the world haven’t flushed it out.

In high school, she played a stripper in Gypsy: “I came out on tote shoes, and of course I started humping the curtain,” she told me. “I heard my mother through the entire — she went, ‘Oh my goodness!”

I asked whether she would complain about such a performance at a Johnson County school today.

She thought for a couple of seconds before answering. “I probably would argue for the theater, the performance, and imagination,” she says. “When I first got here, one of the things that caught my attention was Jerry Johnston‘s [First Family] church protesting Harry Potter. I got in a big fight with Johnston on the air.

“Having been a child who read non-stop, took a flashlight to bed under the covers, I was astounded by that. Kids aren’t going to become wizards and warlocks, especially if they have good parents!”