Holiday stuffing
Thanks to everyone who attended the TV Fest on Saturday. Number 7 was a beauty.
Here are some stories I've been reading this week...
- Sean Penn new film "Milk" opens this weekend, but the actor has also been busy traveling to Venezuela and Cuba, where he met with Hugo Chavez and Rauol Castro. His account in
The Nation is
a terrific read.
- The Green Party still has a chance to send a representative to Congress this year.
Malik Rahim, a hero during the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort, is challenging incumbent Democrat William Jefferson in Louisiana's 2nd District in a delayed election on December 6th. Jefferson was indicted last year on 16 counts of corruption after FBI officials infamously found $90,000 wrapped in aluminum foil inside frozen food containers in the Congressman's home freezer.
- While Washington considers a bailout of the nation's automotive industry, the simple solution lies right beneath its nose--
universal health care.
- College football is a pathetic charade. The Fighting Cardinals of Ball State University just completed
a perfect 12-0 season, yet will get nowhere close to a chance at a national championship.
Happy Thanksgiving to all. Try not to gorge yourselves.
Moeller TV Listings 11/22/08
Saturday afternoon, 12 of the greatest episodes of all-time will be on television, marking an extraordinary occurrence. But there's a catch: it's only at one location-- my house, for the 7th Annual Moeller Television Festival. Classic episodes of "The Cosby Show," "The X-Files," and "Saturday Night Live," among others, will be screened, and the food and and mental stimulation will be plentiful.
Again, I live at 700 15th St #6, Des Moines, and the screenings begin at noon. If you're planning to attend, skip breakfast. We have enough food to last us a week (although the festival typically ends on Saturday in the early evening.) We've ditched the store-bought submarine-style sandwiches this year in favor of homemade Guinea Grinders, little smokies, and a vast array of fancy hors devours courtesy of my friend Melissa.
Moeller TV Festival VII-- Don't miss it!
Dos trofeos para Pujols
Congratulations to baseball's best player, Albert Pujols, on being named the National League's Most Valuable Player Monday for the second time in his career (the other came in 2005), and on becoming the only Cardinals player other than Stan Musial to win the award more than once. (Stan won in '43, '46, and '48.)
As to which player deserves the annual award, I'm previously on record as saying it should go to the best player on the best team, but since the endless round of playoffs have rendered the regular season almost entirely meaningless, and the "best team" utterly insignificant, who the hell cares? I'm glad the guy from my team won. He was the best offensive player in the league, and he's also a better defender and baserunner than the MVP runner-up at the same position. The Cards may have finished in 4th place in their division, but their 86 wins was only seven off that of the champion Philadelphia Phillies. The Great Pujols had been the Maid of Honor in the voting three times before, but losing this time around to a guy who batted .251 and struck out 199 times while playing his home games in the best hitting park in the majors would have been a bitter pill indeed.
In all candor, Pujols has actually morphed into one of the
Least Valuable Players in baseball as his presence on the Cardinals' roster allows the team ownership group to go cheap at every other position.
Waiting for Obama
President-elect Obama and Washington Democrats are not off to a blistering start:
In addition to having career senator Joe Biden in his cabinet in the role of Vice President, Obama added Bill Clinton hatchet-man, DLC veteran, and generally-oily operative Rahm Emanuel last week as his Chief of Staff. Barack's choice for Attorney General, Eric Holder, earned his Profile in Courage in 2000 as Deputy AG in the Clinton Administration when he went AWOL during Clinton's pardoning of convicted pal and fundraising heavy-hitter Marc Rich. Then Holder, after the Patriot Act was signed into law in 2002, said that we should
"get rid of" any dissenters employed in the Justice Department. And reports indicate that Hillary Clinton has been definitively offered the role of Secretary of State in the cabinet.
Is this the type of change we were promised by the "Obama for President" campaign? Is this what Americans thought they were voting for? It sounds more like-- at best-- a time machine back to the corruption of the 1990s.
As a saber-rattler on Iran and a key Democratic vote to authorize the War on Iraq, Hillary's one of the biggest hawks in Washington. I contend this despite a half-successful public relations effort during the Democratic primaries to inform the contrary. Hell, she's been endorsed for the Secretary position by Henry Kissinger. What more do you need? This is setting up to be Obama's first catastrophic mistake. It goes without saying that Hillary's one of the worst team players in town, and he's going to be stuck with her politically good or bad. Her husband's
a snake with a list of interest conflicts a mile long; and as Chris Hitchens
pointed out on television Monday, her principal foreign policy experience is having falsified a story about a trip to Bosnia.
Presumably in the spirit of "moving forward" and "bipartisanship," Obama advisors said this week that there is little if any chance that the new president's Justice Department will pursue legal action against anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out torture prosecutions during the "War on Terror." In very short time, that Justice Department will be asked to deal with legal challenges to the warrantless wiretapping ok'd by Bush and the Congress on behalf of the National Security Agency. When he was courting left-wing Democratic voters last spring, Candidate Obama called the program illegal and threatened a filibuster, but then he voted to extend the program later in the year after he had secured his party's presidential nomination. Anybody taking bets on how that one will turn out?
As for Senate Democrats, they're in a class all by themselves. They'd probably grab ankle even if they had a 99-1 voting advantage in that chamber and the sole Republican was Chuck Hagel. Against all human reason, they voted (in secret) today 42-13 to allow Bush-cheerleader Joe Lieberman to not only remain in their caucus, but to keep his chairmanship within the powerful Homeland Security Committee. (President-elect Obama first gave the approval on forgiveness. "He called the shots," one insider said.) Lieberman had practically begged out of the caucus this year. He was a keynote speaker at the GOP convention! Does anyone remember this?! Maybe the Democrats will let Ted Stevens retain his committee assignments next year. The Democrats couldn't be more spineless if they were still being led by Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt.
Please note, I couldn't care less about party loyalty. Really, fuck that. But how about booting Lieberman from the chair just for having helped establish Homeland Security as one of the most bloated, expensive, corrupt federal agencies in American history? Americans of all political stripes should be outraged.
The war profiteers are skating. The torturers are skating. Greedy Wall Street speculators have skated. Exactly who
will be accountable during the Obama presidency? How many of his supporters plan to make
President Obama accountable? Is the new Chief Executive only going to be asked to outperform his dimwitted predecessor?
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All of the above actions are being done in the name of "bipartisanship," the healing of some type of mythical rift between Democrats and Republicans. The increasingly-baffoonish Howard Dean said of the Lieberman vote today that there was an electoral "mandate for reconciliation" on November 4th. Is Dr. Dean alluding to the manner in which conservative candidates were kicked to the curb on ballots coast-to-coast? For Christ's sake, there are
33 new Democratic members of Congress. I shudder to think what former House Speaker Newt Gingrich could do in this current climate with a majority like the Democrats have just been given.
"Bipartisanship" is a phony bill of sale. In the last eight years, Democrats and Republicans have bipartisaned their way to two Patriot Acts, the invasions and occupations of both Afghanistan and Iraq, the abolition of habeus corpus, warrantless government wiretapping, the declaration of part of Iran's government as "terrorists," a $700 billion Wall Street bailout, "No Child Left Behind," crippling top-heavy tax cuts, and a record-shattering trade deficit. There's no way we could have done it without both groups.
Moeller "(Faux)ler" TV Listings 11/17/08
Not only is this week the leadup to the much-hyped Moeller TV Festival VII on Saturday afternoon, it's also "Tribute Band Week" on Letterman. Join Dave and his guests "Purple Reign" (Prince), "The Cold Hard Cash" (Johnny Cash), "Mr. Brownstone" (Guns'n Roses), "Super Diamond" (Neil Diamond), and "The Allstarz" (James Brown). Only on CBS.
And just a reminder, TV Fest 7 begins at noon on Saturday at 700 15th St #6 in Des Moines. Food and drink will be provided. Screening schedule
here. RSVP at 515-249-3457.
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Does it make sense what I'm doing with that headline?
The endorsement: Larry Flynt
"I don't watch it to see what I can get from it. I watch it to see what they leave out."-- pornographer Larry Flynt, on television news.
Publishing pioneer Flynt has evolved into one of the most important media critics of his time. The founder of
Hustler was already an historic First Amendment figure after a legal judgment against his porn magazine in favor of evangelist Jerry Falwell regarding an offensive ad parody was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988.
But in the 20 years since, Flynt has done much valuable work that the mainstream news media has failed to do. During the Bill Clinton impeachment hearings of 1998, Flynt succeeded in exposing the hypocrisy of some of the president's Congressional prosecutors. He offered a million dollars for evidence of sexual affairs with Republican lawmakers and then published the results, leading to the resignation of Louisiana Rep. Bob Livingston, at the time the incoming House Speaker, which would have made the Congressman third in line to the presidency. Livingston responded to the publication of "The Flynt Report" by referring to Flynt as "a bottom-feeder," to which Flynt remarked, "Yes I am, but look what I found when I got down there."
Later, more importantly, and while the traditional newsmedia was busy cheerleading President Bush during the launching of war on Afghanistan, Flynt sued for his magazine to get reporting access during the execution of combat missions in Afghanistan. Though frontline war access had been commonplace for American news outlets from the founding of the Republic through the period of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon in 2001 had limited access on such missions to humanitarian groups. The case of
Flynt v. Rumsfeld was eventually thrown out by a district judge in 2003, but the publisher's court action had a positive result as the courts affirmed the press' First Amendment right to be present on the battlefield. Government attorneys had argued that the media had no constitutional right to battlefield access. During the subsequent invasion of Iraq in 2003, tradional news media reporters were embedded with the fighting forces, though the conventional thought more than five years later is that most were cowed by the Department of Defense into promoting the war. Representatives from Flynt Publications (LFP) have never been allowed access.
Who else is fighting these media blackouts besides Flynt, the populist smut-peddler? The Pentagon has maintained a ban on the photography of returning dead bodies from the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A second round of Abu Ghraib photos have never been released to the public. The images, according to NBC News reports, include "American soldiers beating a woman to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys." The Freedom of Information request filed for the release of the pictures was filed not by a news organization, but by the American Civil Liberties Union and an organization called the Federation of American Scientists, and those requests have been continually rebuffed, obviously to prevent further erosion of public support for the war on Iraq. The first round of photos from Abu Ghraib had caused a steeper immediate decline in the approval ratings of the Bush Administration than any other single, isolated event.
The film documentary, "Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone," is must-viewing on the life and times of the man. It's been available for rental on Netflix for several weeks (I watched it with pleasure last night), and it will be aired next on the cable television channel, IFC, Saturday, November 22nd, at 6:45pm central time.
Carlin remembered
Comedian George Carlin was honored posthumously Monday night with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center in Washington. The ceremony will be broadcast at a later date on Public Television. In a spectacle almost too good to be true, a handful of protestors gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the venue, some holding signs that said "Carlin's Going to Hell."
I know hell exists-- I work there, but George Carlin, who died of heart failure in June, didn't believe in a heaven or hell. In concert, he said that rather than to prescribe to any religion, he worshipped Joe Pesci because "he's a good actor" and he "looks like a guy who can get things done." Carlin, the always discontented satirist, would have loved the fact that a pack of imbeciles bothered to gather outside the venue during such an important evening in his honor. Mark Twain also would not have balked at the site of the religious protestors. He once wrote, "I'm uncommitted between heaven and hell. I have friends in both places."
Carlin's 14th and final HBO comedy special, "It's Bad For Ya," will be released on DVD November 25th.
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Someone else's vacation pictures: Blogger and media critic Jeff Jarvis attended a conference in Dubai this week. It's
a strange land indeed.
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We're always on the lookout for more Bill Lee nuggets to give you-- the former pitcher was inducted into the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame on Friday night. As usual, he offered
some keen insights (sound warning)-- this time on Manny Ramirez, the 2008 Red Sox, and the Boston sports media.
Bidder pill for (Cubs) fans
Thank heavens this time around for the "good ole' boy" network in Major League Baseball.
Cubs-haters in the National League Central Division breathed a sigh of relief on Friday when the Chicago Sun-Times, under a headline so terrific I stole it for myself,
reported that billionaire sportsman Mark Cuban now has "zero chance" of purchasing the division's Chicago franchise.
"Sportsman" is a marvelous term that has often been used to describe a certain type of individual that's become terribly endangered in the ownership ranks of professional sports. The owners' boxes in Major League Baseball stadiums used to be populated by lively, ultra-competitive "sportsmen" the likes of master promoter Bill Veeck, America's Cup yachtsman Ted Turner, horseman and beerman Gussie Busch, and
APBA board game afficionado and beerman George W. Bush.
Mark Cuban, entrepreneur, blogger, and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, has been cut from the same cloth as these other gentlemen (or at least the first three), and it made perfect sense for him to buy the popular, profitable Cubs. During the current global credit crunch, he was likely the only bidder that could purchase the franchise outright. He's popular with sports fans everywhere, and he had certainly become the consensus pick of all of 'Cub-dom' (which is not to be confused with 'Cub-dumb').
But Cuban is also consequently outside the mold of the bean-counting corporate drone, the current favored executive model of the baseball lords. The colorful, competitive, and aggressive Cuban, as the Sun-Times referenced, would have no doubt spent many of his summer afternoons as owner of the Cubs sitting in the Wrigley Field bleachers among the proletariat actually enjoying the games. And, of course, the biggest rub they have against him is that he would probably spend an unacceptable percentage of the franchise's profits on the services of competent baseball players. So now, before approving a transfer, the league's team ownership cartel will wait as long as it has to (at one point during the 1990's, it took them six years to name a commissioner) to allow Bud Selig's BFF, John Canning Jr., to secure the credit he'll need to buy the historic ballclub.
As a loyalist of the rival Cardinals, I say "Hooray!" to this news development. Having Cuban own the Cubs, what with his perverse emphasis on building winners over building profits, was among my most-frequent nightmares (along with the recurring, menacing images connected to Albert Pujols having to step out of a wet, slippery shower once or twice each day of his life). Make no mistake, the recent spending spree by the Cubs has not been a harbinger of a new long-term competitive strategy. A sale to Canning's lesser-funded group of partners will insure that. It was only a temporary increase to likewise boost the financial value of the franchise prior to sale. Upon completion of the transfer, the moderately-successful current era of Cubs baseball will shortly be finished and can begin its fade into the sport's history books, hopefully yet without their claiming the long-elusive World Championship. The Cardinals and the other NL Central clubs can then return to sharing the cul-de-sac with the erstwhile Windy City punching bags of yore.
Obama's sanctification
Barack Obama has to be considered partly responsible for the narrow victory of Proposition 8 in California allowing discrimination against gay marriage. The largely-symbolic Obama for President campaign commanded the support of 61% of California voters, but that "liberal" tide of support didn't seem to sway the results of a very concrete measure of legalized discrimination-- Prop 8.
The Democratic nominee has been on record for some time as saying he supports civil unions, rather than gay marriage, and fliers advertising this fact were distributed in many of California's African-American communities. Obama told the Chicago Tribune, "I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman."
Then it seems Barack needs to try a little harder. Candidate Obama said on the campaign trail that he supports individual states deciding if gay and lesbian marriage should be legalized. So I guess he's cool with the Democracy-in-Action of Tuesday's outcome. Of course, the irony is that President-elect Obama is a product of an
interracial marriage, and laws that discriminated against those were not outlawed by the Supreme Court until 1967, six years after he was born.
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With the Democrats in control of the White House, and with sizable advantages in both the House and Senate, the party is now officially out of excuses.
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Roger Ebert
seems taken by Sarah Palin.
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Quote of the day: Chris Rock, last spring-- "President Bush has fucked everything up so much, he's even made it hard for a white man to become president."
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I hope her election defeat doesn't mean an end for Sarah Palin-inspired erotica.
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The New Yorker treats
Bill Ayers like a human being.
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Now that we're about to have an African-American president, the nation can focus its attention on integrating an almost more restrictive profession-- college football coaching. A study released this week finds that only 4 of 119 Division I head gridiron coaches are African-American, the lowest number in 15 years. And at its peak, it was only 9. Fifty-five percent of all collegiate student-athletes are minorities, but that experience certainly hasn't translated into the top job opportunities after these athletes are expended on the fields of play.
College sports are a billion dollar industry masquerading as amateur competition, and of course, many of the coaches' employers are publicly-financed institutions. One of the most important actions Congress could take is to remove the NCAA's tax-exempt status.
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More "30 Rock" actor profiles-- Tracy Morgan last week, now
Alec Baldwin and
Jack McBrayer. If you read the entire nine-page Baldwin piece, you get a gold star.
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Yesterday, Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina was presented with his first Gold Glove for defensive excellence. It was the 73rd Gold Glove that's been given to a Cards player since the inception of the award in 1957. The National League franchise with the second-most Gold Gloves is the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves with 54.
The campaign wrap up
Going into this legislative race, I had no idea what kind of impact we could have, or what percentage of the final vote was even conceivable. I never expected to win, but admittedly, my mind often drifted to percentages loftier than 22. Maybe that was unreasonable considering the elements against us.
In some Iowa House districts this year, candidates were combining to spend upwards of $300,000, according to financial filings. During the quarter leading up to election day, my opponent collected $9225.00 in contributions, all from Political Action Committees. Our campaign took in about $1500.00 for the entire race, all in personal contributions, and we finished with a bank account balance of a little over 30 bucks. I guess Iowa taxpayers will have to wait just a while longer for that type of efficient fiscal representation at their statehouse.
As the member of a state legislature, I would have become the highest ranking Green Party officeholder in the country, and matched the highest office achieved in the party's history in the United States. The Greens claim a few mayors, quite a few city officials, school board members, and the like, but indeed, this was a tall task. (Internationally, it's a much rosier picture for the party.) It was a tall task also, perhaps, for a rookie effort. And in a district where I have no long-running or family ties.
I've already told you how much fun I had exploring the district and sharing my message. The community forum two weeks ago now feels particularly like a peak moment, but the various other events I attended, and the wonderful people I talked to I won't soon forget. People in this part of the world are so remarkable, so engaging and impassioned. I absolutely take it on faith that the people who voted for me voted for the progressive ideals we spoke for. People here vote their hopes, not their fears. From a selfish standpoint, it's hard for me to fathom 1,872 people selecting my name on their ballot, and I take that for what it's worth in reality, but it's a much happier thought than to consider that another 6,600 or so of my Des Moines neighbors seemed so determined to stab me in the back. Just kidding.
Up to the last moment, I took great pleasure from the fact that my third-party candidacy seemed to cause such unusual problems for local media. The CBS television affiliate last night, for some reason, used a different font for District 66 results in their on-screen graphics. The NBC affiliate, from inside a building that I worked in for eight years, never posted the House 66 voting results (at least that I witnessed) in their bottom-screen crawl, presuming, I guess, that the incumbent was essentially unopposed after June's primary. (It gets worse. Their 10pm news anchor had one of my opponent's yard signs in front of her house throughout the campaign.) The Des Moines Register, which never got around to adding my name to its online electoral map prior to the vote,
lists me as a Democrat in the final tally. I've never been so insulted in my life.
The day after, I actually feel more energized than abused by the process, and I have an initial instinct to go at it again, perhaps in the very near future. The overall feedback has been so encouraging, and I thank all of you who comprise my "blog base" especially for that. For now, I look forward to doing more writing here again-- and toward a better range of topics than you've been reading for the last 90 days. Thanks for your patience on that.
Also, I'm gonna stop shaving.
The election results
Iowa House District 66:
Ako Abdul-Samad (Democrat) 6,648 (78.0%)
Chris Moeller (Green) 1,872 (22.0%)
What change?
Paper or plastic? That's the question always posed by the clerk at the neighborhood supermarket, and if the customer then responds by presenting a canvas bag to said clerk, that customer is often met with stunned silence. You mean there are other options?
Pundits and politicos have overwhelmingly declared that this is the most important presidential election of our time, but sadly, regardless of whether Barack Obama or John McCain is elected tomorrow-- and of course, it will be Obama in a landslide-- we know, thanks to the candidates' public policy statements and positions, this much will
NOT change in the aftermath of Election Day 2008...
-- The U.S. military will still stand as imperial occupier of Iraq, in defiance of the wishes of that country's sovereign government and its people, as well as a majority of Americans. We will actually see an escalation of the war on Afghanistan as our armed services try feebly there to conquer terrorism through force, and despite the fact that the perpetrator of the tragedy of 9-11 is actually in Pakistan. Meanwhile, America's anti-war movement, which surrendered itself to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid two years ago, will remain cowed and beaten.
-- Palestinians in Gaza will still reside inside the world's largest prison as the U.S. continues to back the radical and militarist right-wing agenda of the lobbying organization AIPAC. There will be no hope for the two-state solution in that part of the world despite that resolution being favored by a majority of both Palestinians and Israelis.
-- The Federal Treasury will still be open for business in providing 12-figure bailouts to greedy Wall Street speculators, with no oversight or strings attached.
-- At least three trillion dollars will be added to the country's already-record financial debt (according to nonpartisan analyses of both candidates' economic plans.)
-- China's oppressive and totalitarian government will still enjoy "most-favored-nation" trading status from the U.S., helping to worsen what is already the most lopsided trade deficit in global history. NAFTA and the World Trade Organization will remain undisturbed, with America as partner, and the U.S. will continue to produce ever fewer actual products. Impoverished Mexicans and Central Americans will continue to flood across the U.S. border, fleeing NAFTA's damage to their respective homelands and agricultural economies.
-- Americans will still get to hear plenty of promises of "bipartisan" action in Washington. And why not? Both the Democrats and Republicans can easily agree on corruption and deficit spending. The original Wall Street bailout bill last month wasn't bipartisan
enough so the Senate added another $130 billion of bipartisanship to help pass it through the House.
-- Corporations will still be boldly and loyally represented in Washington. Obama accepted more money from banks, insurance providers, and pharmaceutical companies than even the Republican McCain. How does such a thing happen? By Big Business having the ability to see the writing on the wall more than a year ago. This was, and still is, the Democrats' year, with George Bush Jr. having wrecked the GOP brand. Both sides of the bread needed to get buttered during this cycle, and Obama was more than happy to oblige, becoming the first-ever presidential nominee to opt out of public financing for his campaign, setting back that cause by perhaps a generation. With whom will Obama stand as president, the corporations or the people? Hint: These major financial players aren't in the habit of giving away money for nothing.
-- An ever-growing number of Americans will go without health coverage. We're up to 47 million in uninsured already, and the number is certain to grow as our "Wild West"-inspired economy continues to topple. Neither Obama nor McCain has a plan to change the fundamentals of the health care system. We'll remain the only major country in the industrialized world without a form of universal, government-provided coverage, while it costs each of us progressively more to receive less and less.
-- Despite the phony establishment outrage over voter disenfranchisement and election fraud, neither man nor his party will take steps to do away with the movement towards paperless ballots, or to abolish, at last, the undemocratic Electoral College.
-- Six global corporations will continue to control over half of the nation's mass media: newspapers, magazines, books, radio and television.
-- Our nation's energy agenda will continue to rely on the burning of fossil fuels, and we'll likely see a growth again in the use of nuclear energy. The elected president, Obama or McCain, will oppose the carbon tax, and the Kyoto climate treaty will still go unsigned by the United States.
-- Americans will be in an almost identical spot four years from now, being told then that the 2012 election is the most important of their lifetimes.
Studs Terkel 1912-2008
I came to Studs Terkel through Ken Burns' "Baseball" on PBS in 1994. Already in his 80s, Studs was one of the commentators whose anecdotes enlivened the filmmaker's nine-part historical account of our greatest game. Studs offered his thoughts on the sport, on Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson. He recalled longtime National Leaguer Pat Moran on his death bed in 1924: "What's killing you, Skip?" the manager was asked. "Bases on Balls," he replied.
Always clad in a red shirt or sweater vest and red socks ("The color of his politics," he quipped), the elderly Terkel was a terrific storyteller because he had spent a lifetime listening. The broad collection of his books in publication were the transcripts of tape-recorded conversations with Americans of every age, race, creed, vocation, and idea. Beginning in the mid-'60s, his books pulled together remembrances of urban conflict, economic suffering, and race relations. His best known book was probably 1974's"Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do," which was later turned into a play, but his 1985 book, "'The Good War': An Oral History of World War II," won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. His last book, "P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening," will be published November 11th.
Studs was an institution in the city of Chicago. His music and talk program aired on public radio station WFMT for 45 years, beginning in 1958, "Studs' Place" was a nationwide television show originating from the Windy City during the early days of that medium, and he portrayed famed Chicago sportswriter Hugh Fullerton in the 1988 film "Eight Men Out," about the Black Sox baseball scandal of 1919.
His family had moved to Chicago in 1923, when he was 11 years old. After earning a degree from the University of Chicago, he joined the WPA writer's project, worked as a radio actor and writer, and he acted also with the Chicago Repertory Group. He shifted his work to public radio in the mid-50s only after being blacklisted by Senator Joseph McCarthy and commercial radio due to his public support for liberal and left-wing political causes, such as anti-Jim Crow and anti-lynching laws and peace with the Soviet Union.
Though a man of all the people, Studs palled around with other Chicago institutions such as Saul Alinsky, considered to be the founder of the modern community organizing movement; Nelson Algren, author of the book "Chicago, City On the Make"; popular newspaper columnist Mike Royko; Oprah Winfrey; and film critic Roger Ebert, who
remembered his friend and mentor in Friday's Sun-Times.
To the nation, through his radio show, Studs was an important promoter of jazz and folk music, and the socially-conscious music of Mahalia Jackson, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, and Bob Dylan. He was an outspoken supporter of Henry A. Wallace's presidential bid at the head of the Progressive Party in 1948, and years later, would reference the Iowan Wallace as-- along with Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr.-- one of the three most important Americans of the 20th Century. While a number of Terkel's books rest on book shelves across the country, multiple others carry his name in acknowledgement and inspiration or his words in print as preface or introduction.
One of the last of the great Lefties, Studs Terkel never suffered himself from what he called "the national Alzheimers." His work always recalled and celebrated, among others, the contributions of the Wobblies, the New Deal reformers, and the '60s Radicals. Having died Friday, his body was set for cremation with his ashes to be spread over Washington Square Park, or Bughouse Square, the popular "soapbox" or free speech center of Chicago.
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Here's
a video conversation with Studs Terkel from 2003.
