The irrepressible Louis "Studs" Terkel was many things �?
oral historian, radio and TV host, actor, activist, Bronx-born icon of
Chicago, the "great listener" who was hard of hearing, Pulitzer
Prize-winner. But most of all he was an inspiration. He inspired every
younger activist or independent journalist who ever met him. And who
among us wasn't younger than Studs.
The self-described "guerilla journalist" died Friday at
96. He was almost 70 when I first met him, more than twice my age. But I
couldn't keep up.
Whenever I did catch up with him, he never turned down a
request for help �?whether he was sick, under a book deadline, or in
mourning over the death of his beloved wife Ida. If it was an issue of
social justice or muckraking journalism, he (along with Ida) was ready to
sign up and help out.
In 1986 when I launched the media watch group FAIR, Studs
became a charter member of our advisory board. Along with I.F. Stone (whom
he called "the north star of independent journalists"), Studs signed
FAIR's first protest statement ever: a telegram to ABC News criticizing
its exclusion of progressives.
Studs received generally favorable treatment from
mainstream media. The respect was not mutual. He decried the elite
media's coziness with the powerful, the timidity that subverted public
television, and the censorial ways of corporate media bosses. He was
outraged when GE/MSNBC muzzled Phil Donahue for questioning the Iraq
invasion.
Studs wrote the following in his 1997 introduction to
Wizards of Media Oz (a book by Norman Solomon and myself):
When I was young and easy, an old Wobbly rewarded me
with a tattered copy of The Brass Check by Upton Sinclair. The
title referred to the coin that young brothel women were handed by their
tricks; they, in turn, cashed them in with their madam at the end of
their day's labors.
Sinclair's game, however, was not the kept women; it was
the kept press. The former recognized her work as demeaning; the latter
served their publishers, if not tremulously, gladly. And righteously.
Need we mention William Randolph Hearst and his derring-do reporters
covering �?or, in the words of San Simeon's master, furnishing �?the
Spanish-American War?
A century later, our press, especially the Respectables,
have gone Hearst one better. They helped make the Gulf War yellow ribbon
time. It was glory, glory all the way. Our most prestigious journals
found the horrors visited by our smart bombs upon Iraqi women and kids
news not fit to print. It is no secret that our media �?TV and radio,
owned by the same Big Boys, compounding the obscenity �?played the role
of bat boys to the sluggers of the Pentagon.
With his legacy of best-selling books and historic
recorded interviews, Studs will no more be silenced by death than Wobbly
songwriter Joe Hill was by a Utah firing squad. If Howard Zinn wrote A
People's History, Studs developed "A People's Journalism" �?putting
the stories and wisdom of poor and working class Americans on tape and the
printed page.
In 1992, when South Central L.A. erupted in riot after
white cops were acquitted in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, no one
was caught more off-guard than mainstream media �?who (as with Hurricane
Katrina years later) suddenly discovered millions of desperate inner-city
Americans. But Studs was not caught by surprise. Days before the riot, his
quite prophetic book �?Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About
the American Obsession �?was hitting the stores.
No matter his age, Studs always seemed a step ahead of
everyone else. He was a premature anti-fascist in his youth. He was a
premature, unrepentant anti-McCarthyite in the early 1950s: "I was
blacklisted...I signed many petitions that were for unfashionable causes
and never retracted." With mainstream media largely enthralled by Ronald
Reagan's "Morning in America" propaganda in 1986, he neatly sized up the
era: "The only thing trickling down from the top is meanness."
My most treasured memory of Studs was the day we flew him
from Chicago to New Jersey to be a special guest on the (short-lived)
primetime MSNBC Phil Donahue show in August 2002 �?at a time the show was
getting heat from MSNBC management not to appear liberal. I was a Donahue
senior producer. This was years before Rachel Maddow and way before
Olbermann began his dissent. With little critical journalism, Bush's
approval rating stood at 70%.
Shedding his normal coat and tie, Phil decided to imitate
his guest's fashion sense and wore the traditional Studs garb:
red-and-white check shirt and red socks. The two looked like bookends in a
Saturday Night Live skit �?but, with Studs as the solo full-hour
guest, it was not all fun and games.
"What have I got to lose? I'm 90 years old." Studs
declared, in taking off after Bush. "We have a mindless boy right now with
the most powerful job in the world. And that is perilous. We have an
attorney general [Ashcroft] who is like the guy Arthur Miller described in
The Crucible in Salem, Massachusetts, 300 years ago, who urges
people to spy on other people, witchcraft and all."
As for the Democratic leadership in Congress. it "will be
renowned for its gutlessness and its lack of principle and its
cravenness."
As for corporate media, he proudly described his 1950s
blacklisting over civil rights advocacy, how he refused to sign a loyalty
oath for CBS and how black gospel star Mahalia Jackson defended him. "The
cards are stacked. We know who runs the networks," he announced on a
GE-owned news channel. "NBC is owned by General Electric. If Tom Brokaw
said something about General Electric, he'd be out."
With Enron and corporate scandals in the news, Studs
recalled the 1930s depression: "Things don't repeat themselves exactly.
But we've learned nothing from it. Unregulated, free, untrammeled, what's
it called, ‘free market,' fell on its ass again, as it did then. We've
learned nothing."
The end of the show turned to the end of life, with Studs
saying: "I've had a pretty good run of it. And so if I kick off at this
moment, I do OK."
When Phil asked about busloads of fans coming to grieve,
Studs responded: "I don't want them to grieve. I want them to
celebrate."
PHIL: You won't slow down. You're going to be tap dancing
all the way to the end, right? That's your plan?
STUDS: My plan �?my epitaph is "Curiosity did not kill
this cat."
Jeff Cohen is the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College. (See also John Nichols' report suggesting that Studs was cautiously optimistic about an Obama
presidency. Republished from GNN.