A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity

  Fanne laughs along with the rest of the politically aware audience, finishes her act, and bounces off the stage, everything still intact.

  I guess you gotta make a living.

  When my story appeared the next day, I thought it was a home run. But some of the feminists at the Free Press thought otherwise. The women’s movement was just getting started and, truthfully, I was not engaged. Nor did I pretend to be. My first priority was finding out if I had talent, if I could cut it in the media world, not trying to figure out Betty Friedan.

  So, seeking clarity on that front, I sent the Fanne piece to the feared movie reviewer Rex Reed, a guy who loathed many things and was not shy about saying so. Think Simon Cowell. I figured if Reed thought the piece was good, I knew I had something going in journalism.

  A few days later, Rex Reed’s letter arrived on Chicago Tribune–New York News stationery:

  Dear Bill:

  I think there’s a solid future for you in journalism…that interview with Fanne Foxtail is simply great…better than anything that ran in the NY papers.

  You really do have talent. I hope something good happens for you.

  Years later, I told Rex Reed that he was directly responsible for my entering the field of mass communications and asked him if I should make that public.

  He laughed and said he’d pay me not to.

  What I learned at Boston University firmly set me on the course I continue to this day. Amidst the chaos of Commonwealth Avenue, I found an occupation that I enjoyed, that was noble (at least back then), and that I was certain was my vocational destiny.

  To this day, I keep these lessons close:

  • Work hard.

  • Keep a clear head.

  • Don’t compromise when you know you’re right.

  • Give most people the benefit of the doubt.

  • Don’t fear authority.

  • And definitely have a good time.

  Destiny, I believe, played a role in my BU experience too. Here’s my backup for that statement: in February 2008, a Harris Poll stated that I, the bold, fresh guy, had been selected the most-liked news-person in the United States of America. Of course, back in the day, I never dreamed that would ever happen. But it has, and there are many people to blame. You know who you are.

  STANDING FOR SOMETHING

  He is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON (AUGUST 27, 1786)

  My friend John Kasich, the former congressman from Ohio, wrote a book about standing for sincere principles that benefit society, and that work is far better than anything I could produce. But, in my life, being a “stand-up” person has, obviously, become paramount.

  Thomas Jefferson, of course, did not take his own advice. He tried to do monumental things, and when you make that attempt, people are going to talk, and you are going to get hammered to some degree.

  Anticipating that kind of acrimony, many people choose to sit it out. Whatever they believe, they keep it mostly to themselves. Play it safe. My parents certainly did that. So if that’s true, how did I turn out to be a prime-time bloviator? To understand, we have to once again return along with the Lone Ranger and Tonto “to those thrilling days of yesteryear”: Levittown in the 1950s.

  On the night before my seventh birthday, September 9, 1956, Elvis Presley changed American society. The vehicle was The Ed Sullivan Show, where an astounding eighty-three percent of Americans who owned TV sets (about 54 million people) tuned in to see the rock phenom.

  Presley sang “Hound Dog” and “Love Me Tender.” My parents watched. My sister and I were already in bed. We missed some girls in the audience shrieking and Elvis grinning. Sullivan was his usual taciturn self.

  What Elvis and the other rock pioneers did was alter American culture forever. Rock ’n’ roll was not just music, but also an attitude full of rebellion and subversion against conformity and the prevailing wisdom of the 1950s. As Frankie Valli sang in the song “Grease,” “Conventionality belongs to yesterday.”

  Under the rock music avalanche, the vanilla entertainment of Perry Como, Patti Page, and other crooners vanished as a dominant force, buried under lyrics and physical gyrations that put the fear of Satan into traditional parents. As the rock money came rolling in, much more provocative entertainment evolved, not only in music but also in books and movies. Elvis started it all on the mass-market level, even though he could never have known that back in ’56.

  My mother said she liked “Love Me Tender.” Both parents gave the thumbs-down to “Hound Dog.” Even so, despite harsh criticism about Elvis from religious people and politicians, my parents did not find Presley disturbing or corruptive. In my house, Elvis was tolerated, although rarely mentioned. But Jerry Lee Lewis and “Great Balls of Fire” were out, though, even before “the Killer” ran off to marry his thirteen-year-old cousin.

  The indifference to Elvis was typical of my parents’ reaction to most controversial things. At home, I heard little about the McCarthy hearings, or the Cold War, or even the Cuban Missile Crisis. My folks knew what was happening in the world, but did not feel compelled to comment.

  Much later, I figured it out. Both of my parents were Depression kids, meaning they were raised in terrible economic times. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933, twenty-five percent of working-age Americans were unemployed. My dad was nine years old. In his Brooklyn neighborhood, hungry people stood in line for hours to get free food. For a young boy, the fear and suffering he saw in the adult world made a lasting impression. My grandfather did have a job as a New York police officer, but fear was in the air. Children were reared to obey and keep quiet. There was little joy in Mudville.

  As he grew older, my father’s world continued to be one of conformity. His stint as a naval officer during World War II imposed a dramatic discipline on him. Orders were to be obeyed, authority not questioned.

  My mother was also ultracautious and rather complacent. Her childhood circumstances in Teaneck, New Jersey, were better than my father’s, as both her parents had decent jobs. But constant uncertainty, and the paranoia that causes, deeply affected both of my parents. They became accepting adults, rarely questioning authority, almost never going against the prevailing wisdom.

  In middle age, my father realized the downside of buying into complete conformity, but in my house the code never changed: To get along, you go along. Don’t bring attention to yourself, don’t rock any boats, save your money, and watch out for bad stuff, because you know it’s coming down the pike. And above all else: DO NOT CAUSE TROUBLE!

  So why didn’t I get it?

  My sister certainly did. Rabble-rousing was nowhere on her résumé. But her bold, fresh brother had a decidedly different point of view.

  When I was a little kid, my independent streak (a kind description) was largely kept under control by constant activity. I was a leisure-time demon. A typical summer day might go like this:

  • Get up, put on clothes, eat a bowl of Sugar Frosted Flakes with milk and slices of banana cut on top of it. Stare at picture of Tony the Tiger on cereal box, wondering how tigers eat Frosted Flakes. Do they have milk, spoons, and bowls in the jungle? Do they have grocery stores there? Do tigers have money to buy cereal? The questions are endless.

  • Grab Davy Crockett coonskin cap, Fanner 50 six-guns and holster, and bolt out the door. Forget on purpose to brush teeth.

  • March down the street and pound on Jimmy’s door. “Can Jimmy come out and play?” I ask his mother. Of course. What sane adult would want Jimmy in the house? The kid is a walking disaster and a big-time dirt magnet.

  • Jimmy and I then recruit three other urchins for trip to the woods a couple of blocks away. There, major shoot-outs take place, and massive amounts of dirt and debris relocate onto my clothing.

  • Home for lunch, with Mom making me change clothes and “wash up.” Bologna sandwich and Fritos appear. Food, such as it is, bolted down. Baseball hat and glove are procured.


  • Stickball game ensues, with generally three fights over foul balls, high tags, and general disenchantment. Game usually dissolves when spaldeen (small, pink rubber ball) is hit into someone’s bushes and the guy yells at us to stay off his lawn.

  • Mom takes me and a couple of my thug friends to the Carmen Avenue swimming pool, a Levittown perk. Each housing development got a public pool so buyers could think they were living large.

  • At least one fight breaks out in pool, usually over somebody doing a “cannonball” off the side and landing on another kid’s head.

  • Home to dry off and prepare for supper. TV goes on. The Mickey Mouse Club dominates, because my sister likes it and I am beginning to realize that Annette has a lot more going on besides fake ears.

  • Supper. Often fish sticks, which are breaded and drowned with ketchup. Sometimes mashed potatoes accompany the delicious fish. Usually the potatoes come out of a box. When I ask my father about that, he says they taste better that way. Even I know that’s stretching it.

  • After dinner, play outside for an hour. The parental order is “be home when the streetlights come on.” Early-evening activity often is ring-a-levio, where two teams of frenzied children try to maim one another for little apparent reason. Much clothing destroyed after supper.

  • Bath time before bedtime. Hate this. Lava brand soap constantly in eyes, and what exactly is the point of cleanliness? Yes, it’s next to godliness, but what the heck is that? No one in my circle knows.

  • Lights-out at about nine, but sometimes, moments before, a late snack appears courtesy of my nice mother. These include Mallo-mars or Twinkies with milk. Sugar rush before bedtime leads to much tossing and turning before my father bellows, “Settle down before I come in there.”

  In short, the frenetic pace of my childhood prevented me from doing any real damage to others or myself. Those were the days when American kids pretty much did what they wanted in the play area until exhaustion set in. There were plenty of bikes, but no helmets. Lots of inventive games, but no “playdates.” Ball games daily, usually without adult supervision except for the short Little League season.

  So, for the entire first part of my life, I had largely unsupervised fun, and so did most of the other kids in my neighborhood. That environment will never be seen again in America, thanks to child predators and the Internet that has emboldened them.

  The Class Factor

  Alas, at age thirteen, I began to change. The year was 1962, and for the first time, I was associating with people who were far different than I was. Up until that first year of high school, every kid I knew was a working-class white person with two parents who lived in a small house that looked just like mine.

  As I mentioned, I encountered blatant snobbery for the first time at Chaminade High. Some of my classmates looked down upon me, actually mocked me for my dress and mannerisms. And I wasn’t alone; this kind of class-based hazing was rampant at the school.

  At the same time, I was becoming somewhat aware of the outside world. In August 1962, Marilyn Monroe died, and that was a big deal, although I did not understand exactly why. Also, there was the ongoing tension between the USA and the Soviet Union. That I understood. The Russians were the bad guys. We Americans were the good guys. Kind of like the Green Bay Packers running over my New York Giants in the championship game that year. I understood bad guys.

  Some of the ordinary guys at Chaminade tried to blend in with the cool segment, but I never did. I paraded my working-class pedigree around, and tough if you didn’t like it. That was an important decision. To this day, I feel much more comfortable among the “folks.” The “swells” hold little appeal for me.

  But bucking the cool guys at Chaminade was no easy road. They came at me; I went right back at them. I saw other guys brutalized (mostly verbally) by these villains and not fighting back. But I did.

  One quick story on this theme. The Chaminade football team was a perennial powerhouse on Long Island, and I thought I was good enough to make the squad. However, it was essentially a blue-blooded outfit, and the coach, a guy named Joe Thomas, had no room for me, even though I could punt, placekick, and throw the ball as well as anybody he had.

  After Thomas told me to take a hike, I was teed off but not defeated. So I tried out for the ice hockey team. I wasn’t as good at hockey as I was at football, but the team needed a goalie, and I would throw myself in front of speeding pucks all day long. I mean, why not?

  One problem: goalie stuff. An ice hockey goaltender needs an enormous amount of expensive equipment, from leg pads to special gloves to the all-important protective mask. That cost money, which I didn’t have. So I improvised. A friend of mine gave me a lacrosse mask. I “liberated” (Leninist term meaning “stole”) a baseball chest protector from my summer team, and my mother sewed a knee-pad onto the bottom of my first-baseman’s mitt to create a goalie’s catching glove. Perhaps feeling a bit guilty watching the bizarre assemblage, my father then ponied up twenty-five bucks for some fourth-hand leg pads.

  To say I looked a bit unusual is to say Boy George is a strange guy. You think? I was Herman Munster on skates. But I did not care. I started in goal, and the Chaminade ice hockey team made the playoffs. It’s not how you look; it’s how you play, baby.

  A rare appearance outside the goal!

  By my senior year, I had made relative peace with the school, even though I had developed the edge in my personality that I have to this day. Simply put, no one was going to push me around, and I would challenge authority if I felt it was oppressive. That was my game plan.

  Even though I found success in hockey, the football thing still nagged at me. One day after the football season ended, some of the players were bragging about their athletic prowess. After about thirty seconds, I got fed up with hearing it and issued a clear challenge: my neighborhood guys can kick your butts on the football field!

  Okay. Game on.

  It was a cold December Saturday in 1966 when members of the Chaminade High School football team showed up in Levittown to play my sandlot team. But, like a smart college coach, I had been recruiting. My fullback, Gary Kliss, had a cousin in Virginia who was six-foot-six. Presto, he became a Levittown guy, y’all. Also, I brought in a couple of ringers from the local public school team. We were ready.

  The Chaminade guys wore their nifty red-and-yellow jerseys. We wore gray sweatshirts and jeans. They had cleats. We had sneakers. They were overconfident; we had attitude.

  Stunningly, my father had volunteered to ref the game, because I think he feared a major brawl was going to break out. There was certainly that feeling in the air. He and another Chaminade father stood on the field and kept relative order.

  Back then, we played tackle football without equipment. Not even a cup. It was really rugby, and it was brutal.

  Of course, I was the quarterback. Early on, I pitched out to Joey Dalton, who promptly fumbled. My father sauntered over and quietly said, “Joey’s scared; get him out of there.”

  Done. By the way, Joey was smart to be petrified. The game was a slaughterhouse. Kind of like the movie The Longest Yard. Guys limped off the field or were dragged off after almost every play. By halftime, I saw some Chaminade guys looking over to our sideline and staring. There was blood in the dirt. This was genuine class warfare, no question.

  My guys knew it. They badly wanted to win this game, and we did. The final score was 24–14. After my father blew the final whistle, one Chaminade guy said, “Let’s keep playing.” I thought both teams would beat him to a pulp.

  The game is still talked about back in Levittown, more than forty years after the fact.

  From that time on, I’ve always been on the side of the underdog. Anyone watching me on television knows that. I want everyday folks to get a fair shot and the powerful to be held accountable. I believe cops, firefighters, teachers, and the military are practicing noble professions and are the backbone of the nation.

  It’s not that I dislike the white-wine
crew; I don’t. But I’m uncomfortable hanging with them. I don’t want to explain the songs of Herman’s Hermits or the appeal of Charles Bronson. No, I’m happy using my skills and power to stand up for the folks, people with whom I have much in common. At my age, I don’t want to learn a new skill set. If I see four forks at the dinner table, I know I’m in the wrong place.

  Summing up this chapter, I stand solidly for self-reliance but realize that a fair social and economic system is necessary to complement that. If somebody is getting special privileges, I want to know why. Because of my philosophy, I have taken on some powerful entities in America and have won most of my battles. But like that Saturday football game, it’s been a rough fight; there has been blood, as Daniel Day-Lewis well knows.

  This is not a self-congratulatory analysis. I could have gone another way and there wouldn’t have been anything wrong with that. After getting a master’s degree from Harvard, I had more than a few opportunities to earn money representing “polite society.” I turned them down. My mission lay elsewhere. My upbringing demanded it.

  While I was working as a correspondent for ABC News (a definite blue-blood outfit), my friend, the late Peter Jennings, wanted to send me to work in the London bureau to “round out the rough edges.” I told him no thanks, that I wanted to keep the edges. He politely told me I was nuts, because London, back then, was a fast-track bureau in the world of network news. Peter Jennings himself had achieved stardom while working out of the London bureau. But it was not right for me, and I knew it.

  By the way, without his ever stating it, I believe Peter respected the fact that I was loyal to my roots. When I wrote a piece in Newsweek magazine about working-class Americans who had become wealthy, Jennings asked me to do a report on the article for World News Tonight. That stunned some of the snobby Ivy Leaguers who worked for him.