A Word on Words; 0865; Dewayne Wickham

A Word on Words, a program delving into the world of books and their authors. Tonight, Duane Wickham talks about fire at will. Your host for a Word on Words, Mr. John Siganthaller, publisher of the Tennessean and editorial director of USA Today. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, once again welcome to a Word on Words. This evening it is my great pleasure to bring to all of you a colleague, a friend, an author, a journalist, one who has headed the National Association of Bike Journalists, one who writes regularly for USA Today and the Gennett News Service, Duane Wickham, welcome to a Word on Words. Good to be here, John. The book, Fire at Will, really reflects what you've been saying over a number of months in columns you've written, the title, where does that come from? I should begin by saying it is not an attack on George Will, it is, it is in fact a very

vivid reflection that I have of the initial meeting with Jim Gheon, who was then Vice President of the Gennett News Service, having offered me the opportunity to write this column, I said, when do I begin? And he answered fire at will. Well, that's a good recollection and as one of Jim Gheon's Mars, I'm glad he had that response and I'm glad you did fire at will, you've been firing at will ever since. And while it's not a direct shot at old George, there are aspects of it from time to time that have hit at the philosophy that's expressed by George Will and others and that is the, and that is the philosophy and the ideology of what's generally characterized as the new right.

Now, when I came in a journalism 40 years ago, it was very difficult to find a legitimate conservative columnist, I mean, there was Westbrook Pegler, John Chamberlain came along shortly thereafter. But the op-ed pages of this country were loaded with liberals, Walter Lippmann was the dean of the op-sad editorial pages in those days, but even the writers of humor like Fred Othman came to the work from the left side, today it's quite different, it seems to me, there are plenty of columnists from the conservative point of view and I find relatively few who really represent what I would characterize the left.

Although the jury is still out there as to whether or not they are legitimate conservative, I mean, they are truly conservative, but whether they are viewpoints of legitimate or not, I would suggest that there's probably still a lack of legitimate conservative columnists. There is a shifting in the waiting, I don't know what happened journalismistically, but we certainly know what happened in the country with the sense of Ronald Reagan and Reaganism generally, we saw a major swing in terms of attitudes in this nation, I don't know whether he led the charge or whether he was pulled by a mass of people whose thought patterns just generally changed, but there has been a great shift from a liberal vantage point that we did see, I think in early 70s particularly, to one that I think really is really mainstream Central America, it is not, as many would argue, a swing to the right. It is a swing to the political center. Central America, centrist America, as opposed to anything that's Latino, well I bring

it up only to ask this question, as a journalist, as a colonist, as one who offers opinions, labels bother you, do you mind having the big L, plan it on your part, making a mess there. Labels bother me to the extent that I think that we do not understand well what liberalism means in the black community, among African-Americans, in fact I told a Republican friend of the other day that if Republicans really are intent upon making inroads among the black electorate, they really have to do a better job of understanding what it is that moves many black people to action. I think that if you are conservative on the issue of equal opportunity and affirmative action, you tend not to be received well within the black community, but one who is conservative on issues of criminal justice and it crime generally would not find that their reception

would not be good among African-American people. So to the extent that I am liberal, I think I am liberal in those areas that generally are acceptable among African-Americans. You talk in one chapter about, well the chapters have interesting headings and you use those sort of as theme umbrellas to put up over personalities and events about which you wanted to offer your opinions. There's one that's called something like, it's a crying shame or what a crying shame. A crying shame. Yeah and how often we say that and you really use it to bring together some things you've had to say about tragic events, sad happenings, so much of that in our society, so much in the news, so much has always been in the news.

But it seems to me that as journalists, we so often treat it superficially. It's a headline, it's a one-day story and then it passes, it's forgotten. You've tried to give it a little depth and add it a little lasting pathos. I think that many of the issues that I touch upon in that chapter particularly strike to the heart of those kinds of things that bother people where they live, close in as opposed to a Chernobyl or a multi-generalistic perspective. When you talk about a woman such as Catherine Fuller whom I mentioned in the book who is beaten and robbed and just abused physically, just a block or so from her home in Washington DC while spectators look on and you touch upon an issue that moves people to emotion. And I suspect that many would in fact say it's a crying shame.

When you talk about Pat Schroeder as I do in that chapter stepping down from the Democratic Party chase for the presidential nomination in 1988 because she felt she could not in good conscience pursue that mantle and maintain the close contact that she wanted to have with her constituents and she cried in making the announcement. And she was taken I think to the well over that incident by the media. I thought it was a crying shame not that she cried but that the media attacked this woman for having some compassion for the people she served in her Denver Colorado district. Well you know when I read that piece it's a crying shame, I read the chapter and then the piece on Schroeder and you mentioned the media reaction that. I was reminded and I'm reminded again today of another politician who cried who was taken to task the media and literally was driven out of a presidential race because he showed emotion.

He really cried an anger at musky ed musky dead. But I raised that question to raise another and that is how often do you think we who are in journalism are just dead wrong not in opinion pieces. Your opinions may be wrong but you're entitled to them whatever they may be. Not in reporting in such a way that leads the public to conclusions that have sometimes catastrophic effects on the lives of the people. I was brainwashed to set another presidential candidate a few years before that and drove a distinguished governor out of another race. He told the truth. He said I was brainwashed about Vietnam before any of the rest of us were willing to admit that we all had been brainwashed. More often than most of us are willing to admit. There is today and has been for all of my career a pack journalism mentality so that the

leaders of the pack, so to speak, the New York Times, the Washington Post to a lesser extent of the LA times of the world, to the extent that they take on an issue. There is a kind of swelling of interest journalistically and that swelling may occur in areas where we are trampling on very thin ice. Well Governor Romney as I mentioned was literally forced from a race because he told what he saw as the truth. I guess it's less fair to say that about Mondale because after he said to Reagan you will raise taxes. He never said it again, which probably says something about the political process more than it says about and who runs the political process and who runs the thought patterns inside the process more than it says anything about journalism. But since you and I are journalists I thought that I think that there are people who view

what we do as having a great deal more power than we think we have and still you see what happens to a Romney to a musky, to a lesser degree to a Mondale because I think you could argue did it to himself and it does make you wonder if the power in our hands is not greater than we are willing to recognize. Well I think certainly the power is awesome in the hands of a columnist, one who is allowed to write one's opinions but I think likewise it is also rather enormous in the hands of a reporter who chooses to cover something or not to cover a story and in making that decision in fact gives life to an issue or cast one aside. Tugs, thugs and heroes, number of personalities that you have crowded under that theme umbrella. One I know you are from Baltimore, Robert Urce was not your hero.

He took your team away. He is a world-class body snatcher and rank him right up there with Bella Legosa. What he did really says something about our culture too, says something about our sports culture and he is not the only fellow who has taken a team away. I mean if you go to Oakland and mention Al Davis's name in a positive way it might get you a lynch. Although Oakland has gotten back into the bidding for the years and so it may not turn out that badly but these body snatchers are around. What do you think about what has happened at first of all, it seems to me that for people who want to read a thoughtful guy's views about the total society, some people say oh far it will.

There is an ideolog who will tell me about politics and government, you have wandered far from that in this book to great advantage to the reader I think. But how do you feel about this trend in sports? Well it depends upon what level we talk about. If we talk about professional sports there is one perspective I have that generally is let's pay these players as much as they can get, they deserve it and a $3,000 baseball player or $3,000,000 baseball player represents someone who is working for a very rich owner, someone who is making millions of dollars more. Professional sports is not the sports that I grew up with. It's not Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, it's not the pursuit of the October chase that brings one the world pennant, the world series, it is big business today, it is a business that is dominated by television, dominated by commercial advertising and to a great extent players are really lesser personalities in all of this.

I'm bothered more by college sports and what happens at the college level and by the the force that we still engage in to suggest that somehow something is happening at that level that really allows us to refer to these people as student athletes. And in fact if we're talking about college football or college basketball we're talking about minor league football and minor league basketball in much the same way that those who go off to play minor league baseball as a part of the chain of a baseball organization are engaged in the training and apprenticeship that takes them forward into a professional career. The difference being that in minor league baseball the minor league players are paid and at the college level they are penalized if they are even allowed or caught driving a coach's car and so is the university for that matter. Mitch Schneider is a guy whose name turns up in your book. Nice guy.

Nice guy. Not in everybody's lexicon of values would be considered, I mean some people think of him as an exploiter of issues of people of the political process. He's a guy who really worked hard to create an environment where the homeless could have some self-respect. They made a movie about Mitch Schneider, they called it Samaritan. Mitch Schneider is a Washington activist who makes a great effort to find homes for the homeless, he is the liberal champion of activists across the country. He by simply grabbing a telephone can attract dozens of Hollywood stars to come to Washington for a fun reason. Martin Sheen was so attracted to him, he played his part. Mitch Schneider is also a man who deserted his wife and children. He served time, was in one incarnation the Maytag man of the month before he found his way to Washington.

He was quite traditional in the sense that he worked a regular job on Long Island. He was maybe a bit untraditional in the sense that he walked out in the middle of the night on his wife and kids. But now holds himself up as one who is a Samaritan of sorts and certainly has been touted in much that way by a doting media. You write a doting media, yeah. Do you think that we have missed that this doting media has made him out to be too much of a hero? Much too much of a hero. Mitch Schneider, what's interesting about Mitch Schneider is that if you see him on television, he shows up at all these public events dressed in an army fatigue. So as to align himself with the oppressed that he so publicly represents. But he's always in a fatigue jacket that is washed and ironed, well-pressed. It just gives an image that I think is less suggestive of one who is struggling than

one who is fronting. Speaking of fronting, let me take you to another chapter. You won't be able to touch every chapter in the book, but it's not surprising that you have something to say about the system of apartheid that really represents a blight on decency all across the world. Nobody should be surprised that you have deep feelings about it. We all should have deep feelings about it. And you are a writer, you are a black writer. In writing about issues of race, and particularly about whatever, there's ever worry that you might be typed that it might be said he really doesn't have an open mind on the subject. No.

And I don't think that that's what we as columnists get paid for having an open mind. What we're asked to do is to offer to our readers a viewpoint that is unique to ourselves. I'm more troubled by what this all holds for the history of this era and what it holds for the history of this country. I think history will not judge the United States well in terms of its role in the support of apartheid. I think that history will suggest that we were in fact partners with a racist regime that created a pigmentocracy, one which devalued the lives of a black majority, some 25 million people, and held very sacred the lives of 4.5 million whites, to the extent that they were willing to literally slaughter people to maintain this oppressive control of this piece of land that we call South Africa.

Back off from no one on that issue. Do you think there was any glimmer of hope in the recent language that spoken by Dekler to the president? I think that what Dekler does offering is a kind of gentler form of apartheid. I wonder as I wander, I don't want to run out of time here before I give you a chance to wander a little bit. Well you know that chapter. That chapter is a chapter in which I was able to offer readers a just a popery of some of the things that came to me as I moved about the country. Little glimmers tantalizing pieces that suggest maybe something, maybe nothing. I'll leave it to the readers to decide. I was struck in one of those chapters, one of those columns, by Philadelphia, and I touched upon Philly on a couple of occasions. I found it amazing that in Philadelphia, a city that is so rich in political heritage that they allowed the choice for mayor recently to come down to Frank Rizzo in Wilson Good.

Rizzo, a former white mayor who was oppressive of the black community, Wilson Good and incumbent the black mayor who had as much right to be mayor of Philadelphia as I think both are P.W. both are who was president then of South Africa had to be president of a country that was so dominated by a black population, a majority of black population, I mean Wilson Good is incompetent by any unbiased analysis of his performance in office, and for the citizens of that great city to allow the choice to come down to these two scoundrels, I thought it was just absurd. You are plain spoken if nothing, Dwayne. That's not new to me, my old friend, but it will delight our viewers, I'm sure. I know that you're now looking to a new reputorial assignment, a new assignment as a journalist

and a columnist that involves the drug war. You have strong feelings that this nation has, to the extent it has declared war, it has declared a war that has been uncovered by the press, talk about that a little bit, I find it fascinating. Well I think that there is a great danger that we always get into with the media and that we cover the government, we cover governmental agencies, but we really don't cover events. And that is true I believe certainly with the drug war, that we spend a lot of time following the drugs, we embed it about, we spend a lot of time talking to police chiefs and DEA agents, but we really haven't taken a look at this drug war as a war. Because they are commander in chief, they are hierarchy, who are the personalities involved, how is this war being fought, how is it being managed, what about the troops in the field, who are the winners, who are the losers, where are victories coming from.

We haven't given that kind of coverage, the kind of coverage we gave Vietnam, and that's the kind of thing that I hope to do over the course of the next year to look at it in that way and hopefully to bring a clearer understanding of what is taking place back to my readers. And the war be one, I mean you know I know I'm asking for an opinion there, but you know there's some question as to whether it can, we've seen not too long ago, a federal judge saying let's legalize it, let's declare the war is over, we want it and now let's get on with the next phase. My gut feeling is that we have embarked on another thousand year war, that it is unwinnable in its present form, but that if you ask any of the generals, any of the commanders in the field, they will all tell you we're just one victory away. A light at the end of the tunnel. One battle away, it's the same thing we got from West Moline and from Abrams in Vietnam, just one more battle, just one hundred thousand more troops. Now we're talking just a billion dollars more, George Bush said, let's give him eight

billion dollars to fight this war and Charlie Rungle said no, we'll give you nine billion dollars to fight this war. The fact of the matter is we're spending that money, more drugs are coming into this country than ever before. In Washington, just the other day they are convicted, the largest drug dealer in the history of the city and at the same time that this guy was being convicted, there was a report from the DEA that said there's more cocaine and it's cheaper than ever before in the District of Columbia, we're losing the war, we're fighting the wrong war. If in fact we are to fight a drug war, liberal that I am, I will say this, if we're going to fight a drug war, let's really fight a war. I mean give a general the choice and you ask a general, where would you like to engage in combat in your home turf on the turf of the enemy? And I think most generals will tell you, let's take the war to them. And so if we're going to fight a drug war, why are we fighting it on the streets of Nashville in the bayous of Louisiana, in the back country of California, when in fact cocaine is

being grown and processed in Bolivia, in Peru, in Colombia, why allow them to plant this stuff, to grow it, to harvest it, to process it, to package it, to place it on planes and airplanes and ships and then send it into this country and then engage them once they cross the borders. Which is truly to be a war, it ought to be a war that seeks to stop this poison from being grown and harvested long before it's able to get to the veins of Nashville, in the most aggressive way that wars are fought. I mean if we declare the war, let's fight a war. If it requires a military solution, God. We're storming the beaches of Bogota. Well God knows that there has been historically no reluctance on the part of this country, to storm beaches in Central and South America. Not only have we stormed beaches in those countries, but we've often propped up local indigenous

governments. And when that didn't work, we put our own people in the end of Dominican Republic and now Salvador and other places in Nicaragua to run the government themselves, so historically we have a precedent there. But truly if America wants to fight a war, we can't, I think we can't, dilly dally on this question. If it's a war to be fought, fight the war. You're planning on spending a good deal of your time in Central America in the next year? Hopefully I'll be moving you about across the country, certainly along the borders of this country, into Central and South America, and into the Caribbean as well. Your view of this is so important that you really want to, in a small way, maybe more than a small way, but in a way shift gears. What will happen to the columns I read and run on the, I've had a page of USA today and on the editorial page?

We're juggling that question. We do two columns a week now for the Genet News Services, one of which will be devoted to this drug project. The other will be the same free form, wide-ranging column that you see represented in that book. How I do both, it's going to be very difficult to determine, but that's what we're going to attempt to do. Part of the problems of the country that I find has recurring place in your book touches on violence, violence in almost every aspect of our lives, guns contribute to that violence and you're outspoken on that, you fire at will, somewhat out of character to hear you talk about the hit in the beaches of Central American countries to stop drugs from coming in, knowing how you feel strongly that guns have helped destroy the quality of life in

this country. But certainly, if one has a system that is worth preserving, one ought to be willing to go to almost any length and to suffer almost any risk to preserve the system. And we have in this country all be it imperfect, a system that I think is worth preserving. And if that system is being attacked by drugs. Duane Wickham, author of Fire at Will, has been our guest on a word on words featuring John Sickenthaller. This program was produced in the studios of WDC and Television, Nashville, Tennessee.