Friends and fans, asking for a bit of help here. While I appreciate the continuing strong interest from all of you (free) subscribers, it’s harder and harder to reach new readers, thanks to politically-inspired suppression of feeds at Twitter and Facebook—the new reality for many. But you might help attract more readers here if you’d take the trouble to “share” below, or post a link on your other outlets, or recommend to a friend in email. Thanks again for your support!
Colbert took off early for vacation last night, so no monologue to post today, but I am surprised to see that there actually is a brand new The Late Show book club, just launched—and here is the first interview, with Samantha Harvey, author of the great novel astronauts-in-space “Orbital.” I loved the book even before a surprising and poignant “Nagasaki” angle arrived. Here’s Stephen announcing the new club and the pick. Our usual cartoons and song picks down below.
Was so sad last night to see that Bill Moyers, perhaps the greatest TV journalist with a conscience of our time, has passed away at age 91. Tributes have poured in ever since, so I probably don’t need to add much about this influential, kind and decent man. He will be deeply missed by all. We were friendly for several decades and I appeared on his PBS show three or four times, and wrote for his web site.
Moyers performed far greater services, but on a personal note let me just mention that he was a prominent proponent of much of my work for the past quarter century, verbally and writing blurbs for some of books. Ten years ago, I interviewed him for my book “The Tunnels” on incredible escapes under the Berlin Wall during the JFK and LBJ administrations, and he later hailed the book. He even devoted almost a dozen minutes on his Friday night PBS show to a film about the political ripples from Beethoven's 9th symphony that I co-produced, along with a companion book. Here is the clip:
I was invited on the Moyers show three times as a critic of media coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Then in 2007, he provided the first major TV special that hit that coverage hard. Below is an excerpt from how I wrote about it at the time. Photo below from left: Bill, yours truly, and two of the Knight Ridder reporters who got Iraq right from the start, John Wolcott and Jonathan Landay).
The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq will appear on April 25, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called "Buying the War," which marks the return of "Bill Moyers Journal." While much of the evidence of the media's role as cheerleaders for the war presented here is not new, it is skillfully assembled, with many fresh quotes from interviews along with numerous embarrassing examples of past statements by journalists and pundits that proved grossly misleading or wrong. Several prominent media figures, prodded by Moyers, admit the media failed miserably, though few take personal responsibility.
The war continues today, now in its fifth year, with the death toll for Americans and Iraqis rising again -- yet Moyers points out, "the press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush Administration to go to war on false pretenses."
Among the few heroes of this devastating film are reporters with the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. Tragically late, Walter Isaacson, who headed CNN, observes, "The people at Knight Ridder were calling the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and finding out, you know, that the intelligence is not very good. We should've all been doing that."
At the close, Moyers mentions some of the chief proponents of the war who refused to speak to him for this program, including Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire. But Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor, admits, "I don't think there is any excuse for, you know, my performance and the performance of the press in general in the roll up to the war. We didn't dig enough. And we shouldn't have been fooled in this way."
With great fanfare, The New York Times has been slowly rolling out a list of the 100 allegedly greatest films of this century, chosen by 500 actors, writers, directors etc., while also allowing readers to vote in a separate contest, not yet tallied (but many have been posting their picks). This is nothing new as leading cinema magazines such as Sight & Sound have been doing similar for decades.
Anyway, the Times finally got to its full list today, and I find many of them very questionable. Good movies, sure, but masterpieces? Come on. Two Wes Andersons in the top 22? A fair number received rather mixed or muted reviews when released. This only highlights how far American films have fallen. I will provide my only list within a few days and you can critique that as you wish.
Let me draw your attention to my post last night over at my “other” Substack, which emerged almost exactly two years ago during “Oppenheimer” mania, and quickly grew popular. It had been rather dormant until recently but now it is picking up with new posts, so I urge you to take a look and maybe subscribe. My current post concerns two articles in the new issue of The Atlantic, posted online, offering fresh warnings about the current threat of nuclear war, written by Tom Nichols and editor Jeffrey Goldberg. You know about my own fears (and books and films), so please check it out, along with preview for my new PBS film.
Haaretz, the great Israeli daily newspaper, and the only one that has published frequent criticism of their country’s devastation of Gaza, with this new piece today:
The article opens: "Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children," said UN Secretary-General António Guterres as early as November 6, 2023. His statement was harshly criticized by Israel and dismissed as exaggerated by much of the Israeli public and media. In the 21 months since, the number of casualties in Gaza has largely remained on the margins of Israeli media coverage….”
With his (pricey) collection of songs from junked albums out today, Bruce released a bunch of them at midnight, here’s a good one, “The Great Depression.”
Also just out another tune from John Fogerty’s upcoming re-makes of classic Creedence, this time he’s back in “Lodi” again.
From Tunes to Toons
Two from Steve Brodner:
A beautiful tribute. I'll always remember Bill Moyers for his great interviews with Joseph Campbell, the Power of Myth. Thank you so much for the work you've both done on Beethoven, by the way.
Another gone who we cannot afford to lose. RIP. I wish he had changed his mind and spoken to Robert Caro, but that's neither here nor there.