By Tim Cuprisin Media Columnist Published Jul 19, 2010 at 11:00 AM
Watch Tim Cuprisin's On Media on Time Warner Cable's Wisconsin on Demand Channel 411, with new episodes posted Fridays.

First things first, WTMJ-AM (620) talker James T. Harris says he's not planning a rematch with WMCS-AM (1290) talker Earl Ingram Jr. after their planned debate about the NAACP and the Tea Party fizzled last week.

"No, I'm going to lay low," Harris tells me.

Laying low isn't what you'd expect from the lightning rod African-American conservative. 

"No, I'm going to lay low with him," he explains, saying he's not inviting Ingram on his show, or seeking another exchange. "I'm gonna keep doin' what I do."

Now, let's get to the Harris side of the scheduled debate that didn't happen on Ingram's Thursday afternoon radio show

Harris  showed up at the station with a camera guy to videotape the confrontation over the NAACP's resolution asking the Tea Party to refute racist comments from some of its members.

Harris regularly posts his videos to YouTube.

Ingram told him management didn't want cameras in the studio.

"We had a go-around," Harris tells me. "I said, 'Earl, this is how I roll.' He said management said we can't let any cameras in."

According to Harris, there was a compromise reached, allowing him to plug the camera into the station's audio so he could at least record the sound. But they couldn't make that work for technical reasons.

That ended it, and Harris says,  "I shook his hand and gave him a hug."

But when Harris left, Ingram let loose on him. On Twitter, Ingram called him a "drama queen," and on the radio, Ingram said Harris was "prostituting himself" as a conservative talker.

Ingram told me Friday that Harris and the cameraman said the video was to advance Harris' career.

"Well good riddance, take a walk, take a hike. We are not going to help you advance your career," says Ingram.

Harris denies his career was discussed, quoting Ingram as saying, "I'm not here to promote you."

Harris says he countered by saying to Ingram, "I'm here to promote you ... I'm all about that. Why wouldn't you want to do that or me. We're two brothers in radio."

Harris says he was talking with people on Fox News Channel, and he says he would have promoted Ingram's show in his discussion of the NAACP issue. He talked about it on his Saturday WTMJ show, and you can find that audio here.

For the record, Harris appeared on Ingram's show last December, and was allowed to videotape that appearance. 

On TV: "Full House" star John Stamos took to Twitter for his response to a federal court case in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in which two people were convicted of trying to extort money from him:  "There was no hot tub, no drugs, no nudity and nothing sexual in nature involved in my friendship with this woman. They lied about everything from a pregnancy to compromising photos."

A sorta salute to George Steinbrenner: TBS is airing 10 episodes of "Seinfeld" featuring Larry David portraying recently deceased New York Yankees own George Steinbrenner.  You can see "Seinfeld" reruns at 6 and 6:30 p.m. weeknights on TBS.

In the meantime, here's one of those Steinbrenner appearances:

Tim Cuprisin Media Columnist

Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.

A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.

In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.

When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.