Issue date: 1/17/08 Section: The Weekly

It's 8:58 a.m., two minutes until show time and there he is, rushing through the studio door with his graying, shoulder length mane bobbing behind. Chuck Mertz, the host of WNUR's This Is Hell, is a bit late, which is to say right about on schedule. The last show tune from Breakfast With Broadway cuts off and an ambient track fills up the dead air. Mertz darts around, shuffling papers, pulling them up just an inch or two from his door-wedge of a nose so he is able to read the page. For the next few minutes, he is a 45-year-old, legally blind flurry. Then at 9:08, he is seated and ready, script in hand and a bottle of RC Cola at his side.

For nine years, this has been Mertz's Saturday morning ritual. More than 60 hours of his time each week go into planning This Is Hell, a four-hour, current affairs marathon, which he presides over like a Gonzo Charlie Rose, careening between pot jokes, wry observations, dive-bar schtick and serious, long-form interviews. Noam Chomsky has been a guest four times; Howard Zinn, Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Moore have chatted with him on air; so do Hugo Chavez supporters, war reporters and experts on Chicagoland gangs. Guests often speak for up to forty minutes, giving listeners a rare window into their thinking. By many accounts the hard work has made This Is Hell WNUR's flagship show, with a cult audience that, thanks to the web, listens in from Chicago, England, Australia and even Senegal. This would be Mertz's dream job, if only it paid.

Unfortunately, it doesn't. Mertz has not had a paying job since 2000. Because of his vision, he gets a disability check and Medicaid, but lives largely on the support of his longtime girlfriend. He says he only recently dodged the last of his bill collectors, and has put off a hernia surgery for a year and a half. He still cannot afford it - the government certainly won't cover the full cost - but he is afraid that if he waits any longer, he could develop sepsis, a potentially deadly infection caused by the buildup of feces in the intestine. It is time, he thinks, to bilk a hospital out of some much-needed care. In the next few days he will go in for a consultation, perhaps eventually have the operation, and, if he can help it, not pay.

Continued...

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