Hot Air

Lionel Macomb is a New York City radio shock jock, his provocative right wing rhetoric which has led to cries that he is making the airwaves toxic, exactly what he wants partly to rile up his faithful angry listeners. His latest target is Senator Judith Montefiore-Salters and her Clean Slate initiative, which is to provide protections to offspring of illegal immigrants. In this era of philosophical wars between the right and left, he is losing listeners to upstart Gareth Whitley, a former protege who has created his own radio show styled on old fashioned revivalist meetings and thus espouses traditional values, which Gareth arguably only uses as a counterpoint to Lionel and thus in a quest for increased ratings. While he lives a lavish lifestyle afforded by his success, Lionel comes by his views honestly, which is more than what he believes many others can say, in that his success is a result of his own hard work emerging from a difficult growing up in a broken home without any real adult guidance, something only that his inner circle knows. That inner circle includes his publicist and girlfriend Val Gannon, who stands by him despite his flaws, including infidelity, in her belief that she can reform him. Lionel's life is upended when his sixteen year old biracial niece, Tess Macomb, tracks him down, she the daughter of his estranged junkie sister Laurie Macomb, Tess who Lionel had no idea even existed and could not have cared less. Tess has managed to overcome her broken home life to emerge a bright young woman who has a full scholarship to prestigious Harper Academy, she needing a place to live while Laurie has checked herself into rehab, which she only did this time as a deal to Tess a condition of accepting the scholarship. Lionel does take her in largely to avoid any publicity not only about how he would have otherwise treated Tess, a minor, but of any news about his own childhood coming to light. Despite their philosophical differences, liberally-minded Tess and Lionel end up having a profound effect on each other's lives, with Val a moderating influence between the two.