Ben Bradlee. He's the most famous newsman in America and possibly
thecrustiest and saltiest. He brought down Richard Nixon. And he never
forgets the point of the story: "The motherf--ers always lie."
pt: In your book, A Good Life, every once in a while you talk about
your experience with psychiatrists and psychologists. Basically, you
called one an asshole.
BB: One was an asshole. The others were fine. I've never been
analyzed, but on several occasions I've gotten into jams over
relationships that I couldn't handle. And I sought help from somebody
that could.
PT: You pride yourself on being a guy who goes straight ahead and
doesn't analyze, doesn't try to figure things out.
BB: The guy that I called an asshole was a child psychiatrist and
who did absolutely nothing for my children. We ended up talking to him
for our own problems. And he was worse than useless. But the first
psychiatrist I ever went to was a fantastic man. I used to consult him
about stories. I was covering the dregs of crime for the Washington Post,
and there was a story of some guy who split his wife in two on a family
picnic as She sat down to pee, and buried a child alive. I couldn't
understand why this person would cut somebody in half.
PT: How important do you think it is for people to have a big-time
enemy as you had with Richard Nixon in your career?
BB: Nixon put me on the map. How can he be an enemy?
PT: You say you never liked him.
BB: I couldn't get on the same wavelength with him. He never
appeared to be natural. I never could be natural with him. But I did not
think of him as an enemy.
He made me. You wouldn't be here without Richard Nixon.
PT: That's true. Are you advising people to look for the biggest
possible enemy they can find to despise and be obsessed with?
BB: I didn't look for Nixon. It was totally accidental. I found him
as a result of his behavior. I don't need an enemy to function. If I find
some guy who's got his hand in the till in some sense, I go after him.
But not as enemy, as target.
PT: You had a female boss/Post publisher Katharine Graham] back
when few women were in positions of authority.
BB: Yeah. I worried about that because I didn't have any experience
at it at all. My advice would be to find a boss like her who likes you
and who sees tremendous advantages in supporting you. I see it as a
fantastic relationship. We've had one argument in the whole time.
PT: Where do you get your information?
BB: Well, I read the Post and the Times thoroughly, cover to cover.
And then I read Time and Newsweek from the back. I've been doing that for
30 years. And I don't read periodicals much.
I read the journalism reviews. I have a network of people that will
flag me if there's a good piece somewhere. If you've got a good piece,
I'll hear about it. And I hang out, boy do I hang out. I get a lot of
information from my wife, who has got a fantastic network of pals that
she talks to during the course of the day.
PT: Are you on-line?
BB: No. I can run that computer as a word processor, period, and
I'm pretty proud of that.
PT: Do you watch much TV?
BB: I watch news and I watch 60 Minutes and I watch Brokaw.
PT: In a study at Harvard that you referred to in your book, they
described you as immature, emotional, with a romantic outlook. Is that
still true 50 years later?
BB: Bradlees are late bloomers. We come to whatever wisdom we're
going to get fairly late in our lives. I absolutely screwed around at
Harvard. I didn't do anything there. I had a Greek professor I liked and
an English professor. But I didn't learn much.
Immature is an interesting word. I think I have a young outlook. I
have a young lack of fear of what people might think of me.
PT: Why is that?
BB: I don't know. I know a lot of people who have an almost
childlike sense that it's okay to be zany or absurd or not to
worry.
PT: You've had some advantages in life. You're good-looking; there
was, as you say in your book, the promise of dough;. your dad was an
All-American football player. Have these advantages been
overstated?
BB: I had lots of advantages, lots of advantages. My family lost
all its dough in the Depression and they didn't get any back for
thirty-some years.
PT: Your father lost his job.
BB: My dad cleaned out a railroad car in the Boston & Maine
Railroad with a mop. This for a vice president of a bank who was an
All-American football player. It made me admire him enormously.
PT: Is there something about the Depression that we who didn't go
through it don't get? As with World War II?
BB: I think there is. It seems to have marked my generation. So did
the war. My kids look at me and they say, "Uh-oh, here comes the big II,"
if I ever mention a story about World War II
To have had an active role in it was a marking experience.
Especially in the Navy, where they gave 20-year-old kids 370-foot toys
with 300 men and let them drive it.
PT: That must have been really fun.
BB: Unfucking-believable. They go 36 knots. That's almost 40 miles
an hour. And you're 21 and a Greek major.
The war was a fantastic experience. And it's probably good that we
all were scared at one time or another. It was very important to me to
know that I could handle that. But once you knew that you could, there
was no point in testing it every 20 minutes.
PT: What about your having had polio?
Tags:
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Ben Bradlee,
big time,
child psychiatrist,
dregs,
family picnic,
fear,
jams,
Kennedy,
map,
news,
occasions,
pee,
reporting,
same wavelength
