‘Fuss With Me’

It was probably not Yolanda Gaskins’ finest hour. As the centerpiece of her 9 a.m.-noon show on KTZN-AM (710) recently, Gaskins, who is African American and a graduate of Georgetown Law School, was talking about “bad seeds”--those that produce violent children, not damaged vegetables.

Inspired by a batch of get-tough bills for juvenile criminals, proposed last week by Gov. Pete Wilson, Gaskins said that she now believes some people are “just born bad, [with] no possibility of rehabilitation.” Picking up on Wilson’s suggestion, she asked: “Why not consider lowering the death penalty to 14 years old?”

She muddled some phrases, mentioning kids who are “going to spend their entire lives behind jail,” when she meant “behind bars.” At the end, she allowed that “it’s so confusing” figuring where bad seeds come from--heredity, environment or what.

Afterward Gaskins admitted that she was tired, not yet used to getting up at 5 a.m. to be at the station by 7. She’s been in the morning time slot less than a month, having made way in the noon-3 p.m. period for “The Dr. Toni Grant Program.”

The honey-voiced host with Nefertiti cheekbones has had a hot-and-cold career on South La Cienega, beginning in 1991 as a news reporter at sister station KABC-AM (790). In 1994, Gaskins moved to a shared weekend slot on KMPC (now KTZN), then aired weeknights with her own show in January 1995, only to be replaced by sex talker Suzi Landolphi that summer. Gaskins did fill-ins--and endured hiatuses. And began another career, guest-hosting and reporting for CNN. Under the new management headed by Maureen Lesourd, Gaskins returned to KMPC as a Christmas fill-in. In January, she got the 7-10 p.m. weeknight berth and, two weeks later, the noon-3 p.m. slot.

Despite her hot-button topic on bad seeds, Gaskins did not engender anger or nastiness. “Go ahead and fuss with me,” she urged. Instead of argument, she got discussion. Her call board was full with a wide range of folk--male and female, black and white, cops, probation officers, mothers. When caller Lisa told of her 6-year-old, who was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and is now on medication--at 4, he was setting fires and putting the cat in the toilet--Gaskins was sympathetic.

Over lunch, she said she picked the issue because it “comes from the heart. All of us have had an experience where you’ve seen a kid and you’ve said, ‘Oh, my God, that kid is just 5 years old but one day he’s going to jail.’ And maybe if we could get that bad seed out of the way sooner, he doesn’t grow up to kill somebody.”

When her table mate said she was surprised to hear an African American woman with a liberal bent talking about the death penalty for 14-year-olds, Gaskins replied: “I don’t think any of us should be cubbyholed.” Indeed not. A day earlier, Gaskins’ subject was opposition to the ruling by a three-judge federal panel that Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative action ballot measure, was constitutional.

“I am a product of all the experiences that I’ve had,” Gaskins added, “ . . . and you can’t predict anything about me because you look at the color of my skin or my gender. Because you don’t know what else is going on in here,” she noted, pointing first to her head, and then to her heart.

Asked when she got interested in broadcasting, Gaskins said it was when she was 7, on the back porch of her grandmother’s house in Washington, where she grew up, and saw a woman on TV. “I said I would like to be on television, and my mother said, ‘You can’t do that. You are black. White people look at white people.’ That stayed in my mind.”

After graduation from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, frustrated that she couldn’t get into broadcasting, she went to law school, then practiced real-estate law for five years until she realized that “evicting little old ladies was not for me.” She got into radio at Howard University’s station. Next she hosted a magazine show for the Fox station in Washington. Other stops included the NBC affiliate in Miami and Black Entertainment Television. She arrived in Los Angeles in 1990.

In her newest slot, Gaskins goes up against Rush Limbaugh on KFI-AM (640) and KABC’s Michael Jackson. She says she’s not worried. After all, with lifestyle matters high on the Zone’s agenda, would either of them discuss what it means when a man sends you six roses instead of a dozen? Or close-cropping your hair because you got tired of putting straightening chemicals in it?

But don’t cubbyhole. Gaskins is now a redhead.