What's So Funny? Trouble with the Troubleshooter

Hello, my name is Adam Cayton-Holland—unless you happen to be Tom Martino, in which case my name is Jared Maher.

Or are you not up to speed on the Troubleshooter and his latest antics?

Martino is a well-known local television personality and host of KHOW's The Troubleshooter Show, a consumer-advocate radio program.

“Hey Tom,” a typical complaint may begin. “Other day I bought a box of raisins from the store, but when I opened the box, it was full of AIDS!”

“That’s outrageous!” Martino may respond.

Then he’ll call up the store and berate them for selling AIDS raisins. If the business agrees to stop selling AIDS raisins—as well as agree to Martino’s code of ethics, a code that includes also paying various fees—they can then join the Troubleshooter Referral List. Then all the consumers in Martino Nation will only purchase their raisins from said grocery store, AIDS residue or no.

Such is the Troubleshooter’s power.

I used to find Martino hilarious, because he would get so fired up, you could swear he was the one who ate the AIDS raisins in the first place. When I was a kid, my mom and I used to listen to him on the radio and laugh our heads off as we pictured froth gathering in his then-signature thick, black mustache. But then he shaved his mustache. And he wasn’t funny anymore. He was just some bare-upper-lipped creep bleeding his antics across the local media.

On television, Martino is quite fond of the ambush-with-camera-style of journalism, often employed by the most sophisticated and professional of newspeople, such as Maury Povich and the host of Cheaters. Martino, sadly, is yet another cheesy host in the hacky world of oh-no-you-didn’t journalism.

And recently Maher, a friend and former colleague at Westword, got straight-up oh-no-you didn’t-ed.

In July, Maher penned a story calling into question Martino’s endorsement of an energy drink with a multi-level marketing strategy, a strategy that some have compared to a pyramid scheme. While Martino is up front with most of the products he hypes, the sentiment of the article is that there are those who feel Martino is behaving like a sketchy Reggie with regard to this product.

So how did Martino respond? By inviting Maher to a McDonald’s parking lot via an anonymous phone call with a hot tip, only to waylay him with a camera crew. Maher drove off, so Martino stormed the Westword offices, and when he couldn’t find what he was looking for there, he posted a video on the KDVR website calling Maher a liar and a coward.

Only problem was, he used a picture of me.

[This video is a clone. The original post has since been taken down from the KDVR website and replaced with a shortened version sans the Cayton-Holland clip.]

And here’s how that happened: Whimsical gadabout that I am, affable rube fond of bon mot and jocularity, I happened to pick up Maher’s nametag at a media soirée we co-attended four years ago. As I affixed the label to my chest, he cried out, aghast, “Adam, what will people think upon mistaking me for you?”

“Let them think as they wish,” I said. “Life is too short never to jest.”

We squealed delightedly, and then retired to salon chairs to discuss the affairs of the day. Someone snapped a picture, labeling me “Jared Maher,” and that picture sat deep within the bowels of Google, awaiting the light of search.

A light it turns out that would be provided by Martino and his team of crack fact-checkers, who in their research for a photograph of Maher—photographs readily available, I might add, on Facebook, as well as accompanying a recent article he wrote—were only able to come up with a grainy black-and-white mug of me. Martino zooms in on my face dramatically, asking why those who malign him don’t care about “the truth, the facts.”

But I do care. The truth is I never had a dog in this fight, Martino. The facts are that you called another journalist out for inaccuracies while at the exact same time showing a picture of the wrong person. I would like to think that this would embarrass you, but I imagine there’s not too much that can turn those Martino cheeks crimson. So I won’t hold out for that. Instead I will hold out for an apology for wrongly dragging my image through your accusatory muck, for calling me a liar and a coward—an apology, Tom Martino, that I will accept only in the form of you growing back that awesome, thick mustache.

Because then I will know you really mean it.