(For those recent transplants to Rochester: in 1999, morning radio legend Brother Wease was sued by his former cohost, Cindy Pierce, and the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. In 2002, Wease violated a gag order involving the lawsuit, and a second lawsuit was initiated by Pierce; this time Wease, pervert Tommy Mule (also from the Wease Morning Circus), and Wease's best buddy, Joe Tantalo, were all named in the lawsuit. In response to the lawsuit, Bob Lonsberry wrote a disparaging column about Pierce and got sued as well. And if that was not enough, the same year of 1999, a former WCMF account executive named Jodi Strata also sued Wease for sexual harassment. She also received a settlement, moved to Florida, went into real estate, and died recently at a very young age).
This is one of the most swept under the rug events in Rochester radio history.
Wease's many buddies in the media, including former anchorman Sherman Burdette and present Channel 13's anchorman Doug Emblidge avoided talking about the lawsuit on-air, and the Democrat & Chronicle (a big recipient of station goodwill) relegated the lawsuit involving the biggest name in local radio to the back pages of the paper, where it could easily be missed if your eyes wandered a bit. I was greeted with bemusement and contempt when I asked WUHF anchorman Sherman Burdette in 2000 why his station refused to report the lawsuit on their 6:00 pm broadcast, and he pushed me as he crossed East Avenue to the old WUHF studios. He soon lost HIS job at WUHF, and if one cannot hack it in a tiny cable station, you may as well pack it up and leave television for good. But the game was on: the local media was either too afraid of Wease and his "friendships" with local police and politicians from both sides of the aisle, or they, too, were in Wease's deep pockets, reaping rewards from the many local charities he supported, to accurately and fairly report on the lawsuits flying around him like bees to honey.
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| Joseph Tantalo with Brother Wease |
Cindy Pierce, the on-air name of Cindy (nee Garns) Beck, was probably the most famous and longest serving female cohost of the Brother Wease Show (when it was also known as the Brother Wease Morning Circus) on WCMF-FM from the late 1980s through most of the 1990s until that day in 1999 when we awoke to the biggest headlines Wease had ever faced (outside of Rochester, where, as I stated, the suit was buried by the local media) --- and it was not for him being inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame, his bout with cancer, or for his emceeing Woodstock 1999.
From what is the genuinely agreed upon "straw that broke the camel's back," concerned a picture of Pierce. In 1999, Wease's Show had a nascent website associated with WCMF-FM that contained pictures of the cast of the radio show. One of the pictures included an image of Cindy biting into a hot dog. It was captioned. Predictably, the caption was not too clever, but one can easily suppose the gist of the caption, which translates into the pleasurable manipulation of the male genitals involving female lips and tongue. Cindy went through the roof. She quit the show. She also filed suit against Wease and the show and did win an undisclosed settlement from the courts.
Cindy
Pierce Garns did not go away angry, she went away kicking and screaming. A couple of years after the settlement, Wease violated a gag order by talking about her disparagingly on the air. In response, Cindy filed suit, to the tune of 17 million bucks, claiming Brother Wease "and others" (we all know that "and others" was Tommy Mule, the biggest creep in radio) had disparaged her, her health and
her family on the air. She had claimed in the second suit, following her departure from the show, that a written
confidentiality agreement was broken by Wease by attacking her on the air. She took as her attorney Christina Agola, known for taking high profile cases involving sexual harassment and worker harassment.Then other webs got tangled in the wake of the second lawsuit. The oft-mentioned feud between Brother Wease and loopy conservative douchebag Bob Lonsberry continued for years and years, spilling into interviews Wease did with CITY Newspaper, and it got pretty personal, as well. Their feud began in earnest in 1997, when Lonsberry kept up a running stream of commentary and calls on the state of WCMF on his radio show on 1180 AM WHAM. One WCMF listener who had participated in the station's focus group called in to Lonsberry's radio show to talk about what he'd heard (not very complimentary stuff about Wease's show). That, coupled with Lonsberry's assertion that Wease was sounding tired and old, was enough to get Wease back in the station for a rare afternoon appearance, as he turned WCMF into a talk station to sound off against Lonsberry, and Lonsberry retaliated by encouraging WCMF advertisers to jump ship to other stations, including WNVE, who had Wease's hated rival Howard Stern. But the bloodless war between the two ended with this essay Bob did on his silly little blogspot: Cindy Who? On June 5, 2002, Cindy responded to that column by Ned Flanders by filing a $22 million defamation and libel lawsuit against him, WHAM-AM 1180, and Clear Channel Communications Inc. She was not messing around.
It is not lost on me that Bob Lonsberry even got into a pissing match with Cindy's daughter Savannah on that very blog:
Lonsberry claimed in his column that that the lawsuit was frivolous, but evidence points to the contrary. In the late spring of 2002, state Supreme Court Justice Thomas A. Stander allowed the suit to go forward. Stander declared that the settlement agreement did prohibit Levin aka Wease and others from talking about Pierce directly or indirectly in any media forum, including radio, Internet and television, as well as with third parties. Judge Stander also ordered WCMF to turn over to Christina Agola the tape recordings of Wease’s show made since June 8, 2000. (No wonder Wease was as happy as a pig in shit when Christina Agola was disbarred by the New York State Bar Association in 2015. He devoted an entire segment of his show to her disbarment ruling, of which even I was a call-in). It is also notable that Lonsberry himself had been fired from the Democrat & Chronicle for his sexual improprieties, so it is not a stretch to believe that in this particular instance, Wease and Lonsberry had more in common with each other than they assumed.
To add insult to injury, not long after Cindy Pierce Garns filed her lawsuit, a former WCMF account executive named Jodi Strata filed a lawsuit against Wease as well, contenting he made disparaging, damaging on-air references to her. Her case is particularly sad because her lawsuit was also settled out of court; she subsequently moved to Florida, but died at a very early age (35) in 2009.
The full outcome of the Alan Levin "Wease"/Cindy "Pierce" Beck case has never been disclosed, mainly due to a gag order from all parties, but it is not pretty, because all of the named parties were trashed publicly (in print and on the radio) in its wake, and the ramifications exist to this day. But you can buy the case right here:
The "Joseph Tantello" named in the lawsuit is actually Joseph Tantalo, co-owner with Wease of the Physical Graffiti tattoo parlor located in Rochester. He is called "Wease's best friend" in at least one internet posting. In February 2014, his wife Faith died, and Wease's new station, 95.1 the Brew posted a tribute to her. His photo can be seen on this tribute. Why Tantalo was named is anyone's guess but it proves the harassment may have not been contained specifically to within the station's doors. Kevin LeGrett, also named in suit, was in 2002 the head of Clear Channel Media (later known as Entercom) and is presently iHeart Media's LA chief.
Wease always gets pissed off when a website mentions the cause celebre la Cindy Pierce. It was readily apparent in 2005, when a local website devoted to local conservative politics, Rochester Watch, devoted a long thread to attacking Wease and his penchant for attacking and belittling conservatives. In the thread were accusations of mismanaging his Wease Cares charity and contained several mentions of the Pierce lawsuit.
The legendary Rochester Watch thread, which led to a week-long harangue by Wease on his show (along with Pierce's replacement, Sally Carpenter, and creepy co-conspirator Tommy Mule still onboard) against the website (which received close to 100,000 hits in a week), and culminated with the appearance on the Wease show of the website's founder, Mark, is here.
Mark's site, thanks to the publicity it received from the week of Wease mentions, became a focal point for spammers and hackers, to which he had to spend nearly 1000 bucks to prevent his site from further hacking.
My entire conclusion to the entire mess lawsuits and bruised reputations called the Cindy Pierce Incident is this: I think genuine harassment did occur on the Wease show, but possibly not by Wease himself. I think she knew his personality and temperament going onto the show and it is unlikely a woman who was known to flash her boobs to guys on Wease's boat in Irondequoit was another Anita Hill testifying in a joint session of Congress about Long Dong Silver. This was the same woman that whipped out her breasts live on the air and squeezed breast milk into Tommy Mule's coffee for him. I hoped his Sanka improved with the additional lactose. But I also noticed that no local feminist nor women's groups came to Cindy's defense ever, which showed the people in this city feared Wease and his wrath...and his many charities in his city was too much for anyone dare raise their voice and face severe consequences for their vocal disapproval of his actions.
When Kimberly & Beck were fired by Entercom Media in 2014 (the same fucking media empire that stood by Brother Wease when he was being sued from two different directions), I saw the light as to who are the pampered princesses in Rochester. The media swarmed around Kimberly & Beck like Indians to covered wagons: their firing was front page news for days and days. Wease's lawsuits were page 14 on the B section of the Democrat & Chronicle, and barely mentioned by the local news media. Remember, Wease, since the late 1990s, took on a more anti-conservative stance and verbally lambasted anybody who was on the right of the political spectrum. That line of thinking mirrors the ultra left-wing D&C and local news talking heads. Kimberly & Beck were not as liberal, and lampooned idiot liberals like Bill Johnson, Sandra Frankel, the old hag Louise Slaughter, Lovely Warren, and Adam McFadden, who Wease had had on his show, engaged in kid gloves interviews with them, and coddled them like these minskas were his own kids.
But what ever happened to Cindy Pierce? Cindy probably can never get another radio job in Rochester due to her notoriety, and that probably is okay with her. She is not a public figure anymore and probably is doing all she can to shield her identity, although public records point to her still residing in this area. I became friendly with her daughter, Savannah, a few years ago due to some comments she made on YouTube of some VCR copied uploads of the old WUHF show, Brother Wease's Prime Time Circus. I emailed with her and I did feel sorry for her that her mom's name was dragged through the mud by slimy people like Bob Lonsberry, whose own personal failings make his anti-Pierce blog suspect.
I was surprised (actually not too surprised) that her mom now goes by the name Cindy Garns and wrote an occasional computer column for the Democrat & Chronicle, but the last found online column dates from 2008. She does live in Pittsford, is 55 years of age this year, and probably wants to completely disassociate herself with her radio years.
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