Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times

by Bill Moyers

Book Overview

The Peabody Award-winning journalist shares stories and insights into our country and the crises we face in an "eloquent selection of . . . commentaries" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Millions of Americans have invited Bill Moyers into their homes over the years. With television programs covering topics from American history, politics, and religion to the role of media and the world of ideas, he has become one of America's...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565848926
• ISBN13: 9781565848924
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

I wish there were more thoughtful reporters

As always, Moyers is thought provoking. Admittedly, he is always on the liberal, compassionate, side of issues, but he believes in the American dream and he questions where we have diverted from that path of hope. In fact, the book is a bit depressing when one wonders where we have departed from that path, and whether we can return to national goals that encompass hope for all of our citizens. This is an intelligent man who should be read by both sides of the political spectrum. Incidentally, I was so astonished by Timothy Cornwell's review of this work that I tracked down his other reviews. This guy is a kook-he clearly has some weird rightwing and peculiar religious view of our future and of politics. I just wish these weirdoes would read Matthew before they find think they have God's word.

A man who loves his country and his craft

Whether or not one agrees with his conclusions, it's hard to deny that Bill Moyers loves his country and his craft. This volume is a series of his speeches, pieces for television, and other writings, which have been edited for the book. Nearly every page sparkles with his love of democracy and the people who depend upon it. The book is divided into four parts, the first two concentrating on the nation and the questions America faces in a new era. While the author devotes a lot of time to the war in Iraq, especially in Part One, he also writes passionately about the loss of good jobs and the lack of aid available for families who fall on hard times. His critique of the media is solid, as Moyers has worked in the field since the 1950s. His essay "Making of a Journalist" traces his beginnings as a cub reporter at a small Texas newspaper. Elsewhere the author condemns the mega-mergers and vested interest of the modern corporate media, noting their silence during the reforms of the Telecommunications Act in 1996. But while the author decries the trend toward corporate media domination, he isn't overly sentimental about the past. During his days as a cub, there was virtually no coverage of blacks in the paper, even though they represented half of the town: "Only white people counted in those days," he writes, "only their doings were considered newsworthy. What blacks did, felt, and thought never made the paper." His final chapter, "Looking Back," is most revealing. Here we get a sense of the influences that have shaped the man. His piece "Where the Jackrabbits Were" tells of going home to East Texas to spend time with his father. Life was very rough there, especially during the Depression years. The essay gets its title from his uncle's story about eating rabbits when there is nothing else. The author's father wants to be a farmer but has to give it up because he simply can't make enough money. He has to take construction jobs, or whatever work he can find. His family has no ready access to health care in the early days, and lose two of their five children to illnesses. Clearly, it is life experiences like these that have informed Moyer's passions, from his role in the creation, and later production, of public television, to his calls for campaign finance reform. In his piece "Wearing the Flag," he recalls his decision to put a flag pin on his lapel. In blasting the proponents of the Iraq war, he asserts that the flag "belongs to the country, not to the government." At the very least, one has to agree that he's consistent. Moyer's is a progressive message that's all about returning power to the people.

I Wish Moyers Had Written More!

Historians will be kind to the gentle but passsionate Bill Moyers and will rank him as one of our best journalists, both for his skill and integrity. Here he has collected some of his speeches and commentaries--they range in time from the 1970's to the present--about some of the things he cares about deeply: democracy, politics corrupted by money, the costs of war, the possibility of people with diverse religions living in harmony, integrity in journalism. Mr. Moyers also writes about growing up in the Southwest and gets personal about friendship, growing old and dying. He is right-- though not to the right-- on a lot of things here. His essay on why he has worn the flag in his label is one that someone needed to write. He is totally correcct. How about his description of Baptists when he compares them to jalapeno peppers? ". . .one or two make for a tasty dish, but a whole bunch of them together in one place brings tears to your eyes." And that slaveholder Thomas Jefferson wrote it right but "lived it wrong." Mr. Moyers also includes an insightful chapter on President Johnson, reminding us of all the good things he did for this country-- Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to education, the right of blacks to citizenship-- before he slipped into the great hole called the Vietnam War. I was so touched by Mr. Moyers' chapter "Where The Jackrabbits Were", that I read it twice. When the author was born in 1934 his father was earning $2 a day working on the construction of a highway from the Texas border to Oklahoma City. He describes the difficulties that the Moyers family and their neighbors had with little money and no doctors. Moyers makes it clear that he is not trying to idealize his past. About his father Moyers writes: ". . .a seventy-year old man who has buried four of his five children doesn't extol the good old days. . ." For me, that's the most poignant sentence in the entire book. Is there any question why Mr. Moyers is unhappy about the way our country is currently going? If you have ever caught Mr. Moyers on PBS-- and if you haven't, you probably won't be reading this-- you can hear his voice with that accent he never completely lost coming through, one of the pleasures of reading this book. I often find books of this nature repetitious and too long. That is not the case here. I wish Mr. Moyers had written more.

Moyers Speaks for All of Us

Moyers, Bill, Moyers on America. New York: The New Press, 2004. Subtitled, "A Journalist and His Times," the book consists of a series of TV columns and speeches worked into essay form. All of it is worth reading, but the parts I liked best were the fiery defense of the Constitution, the unmasking of reactionary politicians as inhumane and proudly mean-spirited--"they narrowly defined membership in democracy to include only people like them"--and the comparison of today's politics with the struggles of the Progressives in the 1900-1920 era, after which FDR denounced "economic royalists" for what they were. Moyers' point is that the rich have no right to buy democracy. The politicians of terror "win only if we let them, only if we become like them: vengeful, imperious, intolerant, paranoid, invoking a God of wrath." "Mencken got it right when he said, "Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it." He denounces the consolidation of the media into a handful of plutocratic oligarchies. A statement that has stayed with me, because he repeated it during a book-signing in June 2004, was "No man is fit to be a master." "The fight between the human scale and the giant scale--between the master and the governed--left unresolved by the Progressive Era, is returning for some kind of epic confrontation." Today our liberties are threatened by the punishment of criticism and the distaste for variety or dissent. Our government is a study in bribery, conflicts of interest, corruption, and is awash in money from private interest groups. The media has turned to celebrity journalism, speed over accuracy, opinion over reporting, and this in turn is the result of concentrated ownership. (A panel of anchormen at the Democratic 2004 Convention admitted that they hadn't asked enough questions before validating the Bush move for war against Iraq.) "The job of telling the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is almost as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place." A "deep and pervasive corruption has settled upon the republic." Moyers calls this a "cynical age." The rest of the book relates episodes from Moyers' youth, a tribute to cultural literacy, liberal arts education, and contemplations about religion (he is an ordained minister). In sum, the book is an eloquent denunciation of the imperial state now in the hands of those with the Top Secret stamp all over government actions. It also includes a tribute to I.F. Stone, and a tip of the hat to poetry, which formed the basis for one of Moyers' PBS series. Describing an auto trip he made with his elderly father, he writes, "A later afternoon sun the size of a prospector's imagination was hanging in the sky as we drove out to their old farm." A nice postscript.

Should be required reading

This book is a damning summation of the path that democracy is on right now. A path towards oligarchy. The world would be a better place with more people like Bill Moyers.