Ralph Nader Radio Hour Episode 118 Transcript Phil Donahue, James Cullen
Steve Skrovan: Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Skrovan along with the man of the hour Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph. How are you today?
Ralph Nader: Good. We have a wonderful show today.
Steve Skrovan: Yes. I’m very excited about the show today. In the second half of the show, we will be talking to James Cullen, editor of the Progressive Populist Magazine which as it’s title might suggest is one of the leading voices in the progressive movement. Ralph has sung the magazine’s praises frequently in this program. As always, we will check in with the corporate crime reporter Russell Mokhiber, the Stephanie Plum of the corporate crime beat. But, first, we’re going to talk about war and the media with a man who is a legend of the television industry. Our first guest, Phil Donahue, literally invented the modern daytime talk show. “The Phil Donahue Show” had a nearly thirty year run on American television that along the way garnered him twenty Emmy awards. The show touched on the serous social and political issues of the day and was the first to include audience participation. And, if I’m not mistaken, our very own Ralph Nader holds the record for the most appearances on the “Donahue” program. A few years after that run ended, Mr. Donahue hosted a similar show in MSNBC and was abruptly terminated shortly before the launch of the Iraq war. An internal MSNBC memo was leaked to the press stating that Donahue should be fired, because he opposed the eminent invasion and that he would be “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” Over the years, Mr. Donahue has produced and hosted many TV specials and codirected along with Ellen Spiro the feature documentary film “Body of War” which tells the story of Tomas Young, a disabled Iraq War veteran. The film effectively connects the politicians who voted for the war with the tragic human consequences of that decision. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Phil Donahue.
Phil Donahue: Thank you very much. Thank you, Steve.
Ralph Nader: Super welcome from me, Phil. I just want to add to what Steve says as you’ve heard before. I think you were the greatest enabler of the First Amendment right of free speech by all people in the 20th century. Nobody reached more people in your 6,000 shows to give first expression and repeated expression to womens’ rights, advocate civil rights, advocate to consumer, labor and war champions, environmental champions, the rights of a press monitories and the centers of a whole variety of causes. You did it in the framework of an entertainment show, which is a real demonstration of skill that your lesser successors today on daytime television haven’t yet mastered. Dissent is the mother of all assent. If we look back in our history, the dissenters, when they finally prevailed, became normal. And the blasphemy of yesterday becomes the normal standard of today. Particular pleasure to invite you, especially on one of your great interests, which is the life of Tomas Young, a five day soldier in Iraq before he was shot and paralyzed and came back to Walter Reade Army Hospital. You spent a long time doing this documentary, “Body of War” just about what happens when people like Tomas Young come back. You wrote the foreword to the new book called Tomas Young’s War by Mark Wilkerson, who spent eight years in the Army Infantry and Airborne Divisions and decided he wanted to bring this story of Tomas Young to print as you brought it to your documentary film, Body of War. And in your foreword, you said the following about the book Tomas Young’s War: “Brilliantly rendered. Amid the unpleasant realities of urinary tract infections, hollow bedsores, leaking urine bags, failed erections, a collapsing marriage and blinding loneliness, Wilkerson finds a story of love, hope and fierce loyalty. Before another Commander in Chief swaggers before the news cameras and declares ‘Bring it on’ I want him to read this book.” That’s from your foreword, Phil. Can you start describing how you came upon Tomas Young and how you were drawn in to the necessity of sharply personalizing the agonies of veterans returning from war and what they remember they were forced to do overseas?
Phil Donahue: Well, first things first, Ralph, it should be said that I never would have met Tomas Young had it not been for you. Tomas Young’s mother told you this is not a woman who knew you, she only knew of you like everybody else in the world. She wanted you to come and meet her son. I think she was very concerned about the treatment he was receiving, how much attention he was getting and so on. Those bedsores by the way, I think are the result of the absence of attention. Those were sores that Tomas’s inert body sustained as he lie motionless on the couch for example at Landstuhl Hospital in Germany and then on the airplane all the way to Washington and Walter Reade. I happened to be in conversation with you not long after that. You said to me, “A mother at Walter Reade wants to see me. Do you want to go?” And I thought, “Well, yes. I had never been to Walter Reade. So, off we went and there he was lying as I said, motionless on the bed, very whacked out on morphine. And as I stood next to the bed, his mother explained his injury to me. Tomas sustained an AK47 round that had come down from a rooftop as he drove in the back of an open topped truck down main street Sadr City. And the bullet entered his clavicle or shoulder area and exited T4 on his spine. Anatomists know where that is. It’s between the shoulder blades. So, Tomas immediately was paralyzed from the nipples down. This wasn’t from his belt down. It was from his chest. I don’t know, somehow one of the other Army guys in the back of the truck slung him over his shoulder and somehow got him to triage and stopped the bleeding. And Tomas miraculously survived. Tomas was left unable to cough. If you think about it, you have to have control of your abdominal muscles to cough, to expel air from your upper respiratory system. He couldn’t do that. Of course, he couldn’t walk. He did have his arms, and he had he could use his fingers …
Ralph Nader: And he could read.
Phil Donahue: Oh, yes. He could read. And he could watch television. Twentyfour year old, prime of life male, impotent, totally impotent. And I just couldn’t get over this devastating result of this injury. I had brought to this encounter a bewilderment as to how in the “land of the free” this could have been such a sanitized war. I mean, less than 5% of us made personal sacrifices to the socalled Iraq War. We’d never really had any awareness of the enormity of some of these injuries. We had women with their faces blown off. IEDs, you know Tomas used watch those wounded warrior shows where they played basketball and other things and walked with prostheses. That was not possible for him. I thought to myself, “Well, if you’re going to send America’s young men and women to war, show the pain, show the sacrifice. Don’t sanitize the war. And of course, Bush said, “You can’t take pictures of the flagdraped coffins.” And the whole press core said, “Okay.” Then one thing led to another, and I found myself in Kansas City at Tomas Young’s home where Marlo and I went and met him, she of course, meeting him for the first time. And I was just determined to do a movie about this. I figured while been I’ve been in TV all my life, why don’t I do something with the pictures here? And I called a woman in Texas whose name had been given to me by another progressive type. And I told them my story. I said, “I’m Phil Donahue.” And she said, “No, you’re not.” And I thought, “Well, great. She at least she recognizes me.” We met at the Kansas City airport and off we go meet Tomas. And I didn’t know what Tomas’ politics were. But when I walked in, I noticed on this coffee table were bumper stickers, one of which said, “Draft Republicans.” And I thought, “Well, now, what have we here?” And sure enough this is a warrior turned antiwarrior. I said, “Tomas, I want to do a story on what this euphemism means: ‘harm in harm’s way.’ What does that really mean? I think you are personification of that delicately worded – the language that we use to soften the pain of what we’ve sent young men and women to do. And I want to show ‘em what it really means, but I can’t do it without your permission.” He said, “I want to show that, too.” I said, “Okay, let’s go.” And off we went on what had become then an odyssey, really, a spiritual experience. Everybody who worked on that program, I had never none of us had ever been this close to a catastrophic injury before. This is really moved everybody.
Ralph Nader: That came out in “Body of War,” which I urge everybody to see, because it took Tomas Young to the US Senate, extremely memorable interactions with Senator Robert Byrd, who is the arch opponent of the criminal invasion of Iraq, along with twentytwo other senators. And Phil pointed out the roll call of the senators on whether they’re going to support the Bush/Cheney War. And that was really haunting. The exchange with Robert Byrd the senator, I think to me is a spectacular example of what a documentary can be like in terms of deep imprint on the viewers. You showed this all over the country didn’t you, Phil?
Phil Donahue: Yes. No distributor would take our film.
Ralph Nader: Why not?
Phil Donahue: Well, most Iraq docs just fell off the marquee. My film was not to a “take your girl to the movie” movie. It’s grim. And people were wobbly when they come out of our movie. I was determined not to make it tedious. It’s only an hour and twenty minutes long. Landmark Theaters agreed to roll us out as they call it. I was learning the lingo of the film industry and say went along there, I’ve never made a film before. By the way, it’s just grossly expensive. It’s really a shame. It shouldn’t be what it is. I gave checks to people I didn’t know what they did. But nevertheless, if I had to do it over and I would, because it became a chapter of my life. Well, when Landmark agreed to show the film, Ellen Spiro and I who was my partner on this project, the woman I called in Texas, who by the way, teaches film at the University of Texas in Austin – and Ellen and I would do a Q and A in Chicago and Berkeley and Palm Springs and other places in LA and the place would be jammed. I thought I was Fellini. And the next day there’d be nine people in the theater. First of all, I didn’t have the budget to really put in fullpage ads, which is as you know go in Hollywood rolls out of film. Major moneys are spent for promotion. But the film does have legs. I’ve been invited to play it at various peace groups around the country and have met a lot of nice people.
Ralph Nader: But one thing you did, Phil, in the film again that’s really memorable is: Tomas became an antiwar advocate and you showed him going to a church under great pain and speaking to a packed church about the Iraq war. You also showed this is another feature of the film “Body of War” you also showed how the speaking paragraphs that Bush/Cheney fed to their supporters in Congress were repeated again and again. It made them look like fools; and they were. They were just reading from a script saying “Yes, there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Iraq is a threat to United States. Iraq is connected with AlQaeda,” all of the false statements and distortions of the Bush/Cheney jargon up pulling this country into this war from which there’s no end, and metastasized all over the Middle East, and further creating more and more problems for us, more and more trillions of dollars of expenditures. As you say, this “Body of War” has legs. There should be universities and community colleges showing it, because there are a lot of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in these schools.
Phil Donahue: By the way the debate that you’ve mentioned that is part of our film woven throughout the story of Tomas Young on his return to the States the debate shows how shallow was this decision to go war. The White House Iraq Group WHIG was headed by Karl Rove. This is a brilliant execution of the politics of fear. They called certain members of the House and the Senate at various times to the White House, where Rove and oh… these are the people who name our wars they were like the advertising agency warriors, you know “Shock and Awe,” “Rolling Thunder.” It sounds like video games. And they would give them talking points. And these members of congress would go to floor of the House and the Senate and like obedient third graders, they read the talking points as you saw, Ralph, in our film: “A smoking gun will become a mushroom cloud.” And then, another senator or congressman would say, “A smoking gun can become a mushroom cloud.” It was unbelievable that this decision that has roiled the Middle East, has cost thousands and thousands of lives, millions and millions of refugees, uncounted numbers of injuries, homeless people, poverty, chaos, war, disease, unbelievable consequence was caused or provoked by a totally compliant Congress. Only twentythree senators voted, “No.” I think the House was like only a hundred and thirty something voted, “No.” The President took this nation by the ear and led it right into the sewer. I remain stunned at how easy it is to frighten the people and bring them to the bidding of the leaders, which Robert Byrd mentions in one of his many pleadings from the floor of the Senate. And when he says, “All you have to do is tell the people they’re being attacked and that those who disagree are traitors to the country…” and he finishes the statement and identifies the speaker. And it was Herman Goering of the Luftwaffe.
Ralph Nader: That’s such a memorable part of this film “Body of War.” Well what happened it could happen again too is that our barriers “stop, look and listen” to a rush to war by and above the law of presidency with a compliant congress and media are not there. We don’t have a deep enough democracy to basically say, “Hey, look have the framers said, no war without congress declaring it, which means the Congress would have to have hearings and decide whether they want to support a war of choice, which by definition is illegal under international law and the UN charter. So, this “Body of War” is extremely relevant today, listeners, because you are already hearing the drums of going into one country after another, not only drones but Special Forces, all the signs of empire flexing its muscles and preparing to repeat the lessons of history of all empires, which is that devour themselves domestically, eventually. Phil, can we talk a little bit about this book on Tomas Young’s War by Mark Wilkerson? Can you give some observations on that and Mark Wilkerson’s interest in this?
Phil Donahue: Yes. Well, Mark Wilkerson, not unlike Tomas Young himself by the way we should establish that after ten years paralyzed in bed, Tomas Young died a little over year ago. I knew the phone was going ring, and then it finally did. Tomas has joined the cemeteries filled in France and here in the United States and all over world of young men and women who answered the call and the nation of rahrah press that stood behind them and sent them off to war. Mark Wilkerson called me and said he was writing a book on Tomas and I said, “Great.” I thought anything we can do to promote this story, to get his word out, even posthumously, would be a tribute to him and to his family that suffered so much. I watched this mother watch her son die for over ten years. It’s just beyond awful. I saw his wife, who was like a size four lean over and I don’t know how she did it but she put his arms on her shoulders and he did he have hands after he suffered a pulmonary embolism by the way after we finished the film and then he lost his digital ability. His opposable thumb was no longer functional. Somehow, she went with just a big, a explosion of energy, she would get him from the wheelchair into the bed over to the bed, where she would drop him, and he would bounce like a rag doll. I saw that and I thought Rumsfeld should see this. Cheney should see this, Bush …
Ralph Nader: Donald Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense under Bush/Cheney.
Phil Donahue: You know, the “bring it on” boys don’t really see the pain. And they certainly worked very hard to make sure that nobody else saw it during this massive blunder of presidential chutzpah. And Wilkerson in his book, Tomas Young’s War, brings you all the details that you can't get into in a film about Tomas. His own upbringing so much reminds me of everybody’s story, really. I heard a Vietnam vet once say, “We didn’t go to Vietnam, because we loved America. We went to Vietnam because we wanted to get out of town.” Everything seems to conspire to war. No president gets a statue in a park for fixing healthcare. You only get a statue in a park for engaging in war. That’s why we have all those horses and swords. Children play on cannons in parks. We have become a warrior nation. We spend two billion dollars a day on defense.
Ralph Nader: Our homicides due to weapons are staggeringly higher than all other countries. There is a graph in The New York Times recently showing maybe ten, fifteen countries. You add ‘em all up, and they don’t come close to the number of fatalities in this country every year. We’ve been talking to Phil Donahue, the legendary talk show host, author, advocate, champion of the First Amendment. By the way, another aspect of Phil Donahue’s storied career is that he represented the best of understanding the First Amendment, which is you put on the air people who don’t like you, who criticize you, who denounce you. He had Reverend Jerry Falwell whose views are not exactly close to Phil Donahue’s on about thirty times. That’s when you know that he believes in the First Amendment, not just for people who agree with him, people who vigorously disagree with him. What do you think of the present situation, Phil, in media, politics? Give our listeners some of your observations, presidential elections and so on?
Phil Donahue: Oh dear, well, you flatter me, Ralph. You know David Halberstam said to me once a friend of yours Ralph who which whom you shared a childhood in Connecticut…
Ralph Nader: Yes, schoolboy chum.
Phil Donahue: Yeah. He said to me once, “You can't cover Henry and have dinner with Henry.” I thought about that a long time …
Ralph Nader: Meaning Henry Kissinger?
Phil Donahue: Yeah. Who was, by the way, excellent at – how would you say it manipulating the press. The reason that fraternization will get you the brig in the military is because it’s hard to shoot a guy after he shows you a picture of his kid. And similarly, it’s difficult to really bring your “AGame” which is what the press is all about, why we are protected by the first amendment. We are supposed to be the dog that keeps sniffing at the heels of the powerful. We are supposed to be the people who will engage in elegant behavior, like sticking our nose under the tent to see what the Grand Pubas are planning for us. It’s an indignity. It’s hard to do. And it becomes very difficult to do that if you’re sucking up to the people you’re covering. Your status is determined by the stature of the guests that you’re able to encourage to come to your show.
Ralph Nader: Not to mention, Phil, the media company you work for is making tons of money on the ratings by sensationalizing the presidential election with the help of many of the candidates.
Phil Donahue: That’s true. Media is – I’m sort of rambling here, but I want to get it in. I was a reporter in Adrian, Michigan a hundred and four years ago. I had a microphone that said it was the proverbial 250 watt radio station, WABJ Adrian, Michigan and I was a news director. I was the new director because I was the only person in the news department. I had an AP machine and a microphone …
Ralph Nader: You mean the Associated Press wire service.
Phil Donahue: Yeah. With the tickertape, you know this was back in the Middle Ages. I was born on 1935. All of my buddies from Notre Dame have just turned 80. And, don’t fuss. I have plenty of ties, Ralph. You don’t have to send me a gift. But it gives you an idea of where I’ve been and what I’ve seen. It’s been an unbelievable life for all of us who lived this. Imagine same sex marriage, the things that have changed and shifted during our lifetime. I used to drive my children to the drugstore while they stood up on the right front seat of the car, standing. You’d get arrested for that today. Now, my grandchildren, I look in the backseat of my son’s car, and they looked like they’re going to the moon.
Ralph Nader: Phil, and very few people were the vanguard that led all these changes over the last sixty years. And they helped change public opinion. And once they had public opinion on their side, changes occurred, whether in the executive branches in the White House, in Congress, in corporations. That’s why it’s a real tragedy that great voices of history and achievement like yours are not on TV every day compared to what is on TV and radio. I hope some of the listeners will call some of these talk show hosts and say, why don’t they have Phil Donahue and Bill Moyers and Jim Hightower and Gloria Steinem on more often.
Phil Donahue: I agree. I think dissent is very difficult in this country. We have a media, which is rewarded by telling people what they want to hear. And that’s not our job. We’re not supposed to be popular. We’re not supposed to be extolled as wonderful people, who make us happy. We have to show the pain. We are obliged to say what we feel about the decisions of powerful people, like for example, a president who swaggers before the camera and says, “Bring it up.” Well, wait a minute, “Why should we bring it on? And to whom are we bringing it? And who said so?”
Ralph Nader: “And is it a lawful?”
Phil Donahue: Yeah, and right. We haven’t obeyed this Constitutional mandate that only Congress can declare war. I remember in my film Robert Byrd standing up and quoting James Madison, “It’s too much of a temptation for one man.” I mean, he would beg his colleagues, “Don’t rush this through.” And of course he lost 77 to 23. Washington is a place that almost obliges friendship with the powerful. It gets you promoted and enhances your stature as a person. I have to be careful here. When you’re talking about the press not everybody, not everything sucks. There are some wonderful, wonderful examples of people who had a lot more courage than I did, who were out front and saying some very unpopular things that they thought to be true. Many of those people, however, really did fall by the way side to never be seen again.
Ralph Nader: Then they get marginalized.
Phil Donahue: Very much so.
Ralph Nader: Yeah. Then they can't get any attention. Their crime is that they were right, right on the facts, right on the moral issue, right on the law. Once you told me back in 1996, Phil, we live in “a culture of decay.” And one of the signs of a culture of decay is that the people, who are right, and who were shown to be right are marginalized. And the people who are wrong get opeds in The New York Times and $50,000 speeches and consultantships, like the warmongers who brought us the Iraq quagmire and more, people like Paul Wolfowitz and Elliot Abrams and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush all cashing in now. We’re running out of time, Phil, but I want to say that Steve Skrovan soon is going to be reading an excerpt of the last letter of Tomas Young, March 18th, 2013. He wrote a personal letter to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as he put it, “a message from a dying veteran.” And it should have seared the conscience, if there was any, of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But they never even acknowledged it, much less replied to it. And so Steve Skrovan is going to read an excerpt. Phil, we have to conclude. And I hope we can continue this discussion on many other issues in the near future. Thank you very much. Thank you for being a vibrant nourisher of democracy in America for decades.
Phil Donahue: Well, thank you, Ralph. Thank you. I’ve admired you then, admire you now. Nobody has been at it longer. Anybody can get out there on a weekend and wave their hands and jump up and down but to keep on keeping on like you have, I think that’s where the saints are made. And I admire you so much for the contribution you’ve made to America against a lot of odds. You never kissed a baby. You never pandered. And you’ve done so much for this country.
Ralph Nader: Well, thank you. I had a lucky choice of parent, as you know. And my boyhood hero was Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees who played 2,130 games without missing one. He taught me stamina. Thank you. Let’s continue this in the future, Phil.
Phil Donahue: Very good, Ralph.
Ralph Nader: Bye now.
Phil Donahue: Byebye.
Steve Skrovan: We’ve been speaking with legendary broadcaster, Phil Donahue. The film is “Body of War.” When we come back, we will be speaking with the editor of The Progressive Populist, James Cullen. Now, let’s take a short break and check in with the Corporate Crime Reporter Russell Mokhiber. Russell?
Russell Mokhiber: From the National Press Building in Washington DC. This is your Corporate Crime Reporter Morning Minute for Wednesday June 15, 2016. I’m Russell Mokhiber. The global pharmaceutical sector is wide open to corruption abuse with both governments and companies failing to properly address corruption risks. That’s according to a new report from Transparency International. As of the beginning of 2016, one in ten corruption investigations by US authority involved pharmaceutical companies significantly higher than the banking sector. Despite the obvious risk, firms are entrusted with a large degree of autonomy without proper government oversight. The pharmaceutical sector has been largely unchecked for corruption, allowing it to develop into one that has allowed profits to be prioritized at the expense of patients’ health. For the Corporate Crime Reporter, I’m Russell Mokhiber.
Steve Skrovan: Thank you Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. I’m Steve Skrovan along with Ralph Nader. Remember if you have missed any of our interview with Phil Donahue, be sure to download the program for free on iTunes or Stitcher and you can catch up there. As for now we’re going to turn our attention to another form of media, the print version. Now, when Ralph ran for president as a third party candidate for all of those election cycles, a big part of the reasoning was to keep a progressive agenda alive. The two major parties beholden to corporate cash had narrowed the spectrum of policy debates so much that ideas like single payer healthcare, raising the minimum wage, even climate change were off the table, until of course they were picked up this year by the Bernie Sanders campaign. The Progressive Populist is a newspaper that also keeps a progressive agenda alive. It reports from the heartland of America on issues of interest to workers, small business owners, and family farmers and ranchers. It serves as the quote “People’s Voice in a Corporate World.” The magazine publishes original and syndicated columns of progressive journalists and pundits, a number of whom have been guests on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, not least of which is our very own Ralph himself who is a frequent contributor. And with us today is the editor of the Progressive Populist, Mr. James Cullen. Welcome Mr. Cullen, to The Ralph Radio Hour.
James Cullen: Well, thank you. Good to see you.
Ralph Nader: Yes, welcome indeed, Jim. Whenever I’ve given a gift subscription of The Progressive Populist to people around the country, who are interested in public affairs, I think it’s fair to summarize their first reaction is “Wow.” And what they mean is that not only is The Progressive Populist an assembler of some of the finest progressive columns by well known people like Jim Hightower but by other people who aren’t so well known but are smart as can be in what they write but it’s a time saver. It’s a tremendous time saver for people who want to see what’s going on all kinds of fronts and issues affecting domestic and foreign affairs in the country. I thought it would be good to have Jim Cullen on. He, with he’s brother Art Cullen, I maybe stereotypically say, are from the prairies. They’re from Texas and Kansas. And it sort of recalls the old prairie populism at the end of the 19th century with the Cullen brothers leading the way. Jim, let me ask what brought you to start The Progressive Populist, which averages about twentyfour pages every two weeks.
James Cullen: Yeah. My brothers, Art, and also my older brother, John, started The Storm Lake Times in Storm Lake, Iowa in 1990 as a twiceweekly paper. And they were in competition with a chainowned weekly. Originally, they had hoped to buy the paper from the chain, but they weren’t interested in selling so they said “Well, let’s start our own paper.” And at that time I was the capital bureau reporter for The Beaumont Enterprise in Texas. So I was in Austin, Texas, and I got laid off from my job because of cut backs in the newspaper coverage of the state capital. I went to work for The Texas Observer, which is progressive populist magazine in Austin pretty well known in liberal circles in Texas anyway and worked there for about four years. In the meantime my brothers had gotten a press to print their newspaper. And they were trying to find some business that would do printing there that would actually pay their bills. So, we decided to start The Progressive Populist as a newspaper that would get it’s printing done at the Times and actually pay the bills on time. That’s one of the reasons we started The Populist. Another one reason was that was about the time that the Democratic Leadership Council was consolidating its hold on the Democratic Party and eliminating a lot of the old populist influences on the party. And growing up in the Midwest, there was a strong populist element to politics in Iowa and Nebraska and Kansas and Wisconsin. And Tom Harkin was one of our friends, who helped us get the paper started.
Ralph Nader: The senator from Iowa?
James Cullen: Yeah.
Ralph Nader: What years were those Jim?
James Cullen: We started the paper in ’95. November of ‘95 was our first issue. And you are one of the first people we approached to contribute to the paper, along with Jim Hightower and Molly Ivins at that time and a few others, who kind of epitomized The Progressive Populist approach. And at that time, a lot of the people we talked to when we said “We’re going to be The Progressive Populist they reared back at the word “populist,” because that had a conservative pitch at that time. People remembered George Wallace as being a populist, for example, and some of the more reactionary people in the South. But really, populism to our minds was a progressive movement back in the 1880’s to 1890’s and later got corrupted in the latter half of the 20th century to be more reactionary. Anyway, we were trying to install a little bit of democracy back in the Democratic Party and give a forum for people, who wanted to rehabilitate the good name of populism. And we got the paper started originally as a monthly in November of ’95. And then we switched to a twicemonthly publication schedule in 1999.
Ralph Nader: Are you all print now, or is anything on the Internet so people can support you?
James Cullen: Yeah. We have a website at populist.com. And we put some samples of our work out there, just probably about a quarter of the stories we put out there on the website, because we don’t want give it all away, because we do have to sell the paper. And that’s one of the problems that a lot of newspapers have had trying to figure out how to monetize the Internet.
[Crosstalk]
Ralph Nader: Our listeners want to go Jim Cullen editor of The Progressive Populist. Our listeners want to go to your website populist.com. They can find out how to subscribe. They can subscribe for six months or one year, and they can get the details. Why don’t you give our listeners some idea of what kind of columns are in there?
James Cullen: We have introductory subscription for $18 per six months. And that’s eleven issues. And then we have some our writers columns are available on the website at populist.com. And you can also get a list of the other columnists who are published in the newspaper. And we update that after each issue is mailed out. And we also have a blog to publish some of our editorials and tables of contents and things like that. We do reach out to people, who live digitally. And we also put out an email edition, PDF format email edition of the paper.
Ralph Nader: You write an editorial in every issue. And there’s a letter to the editor’s column, is there not?
James Cullen: Oh yeah. There’s a lively letters to the editor page where people take exemption to what we and our columnists have written.
Ralph Nader: Jim, give the listeners some idea of the kind of columnists that are in some recent issues?
James Cullen: Well, our regular columnists include you and Ted Rall, Jim Hightower, Amy Goodman, Connie Schultz, Mary Sanchez and …
Ralph Nader: Jesse Jackson.
James Cullen: Yeah. Jesse Jackson has been one of our long time contributors. And they’re regular contributors. And then we also have some freelance writers that contribute occasionally. Hal Crowther is a good writer we have. He doesn’t write nearly often enough, but when he does he gives a ripsnorter. And we just try to raise hell when we can.
Ralph Nader: Some of the best columns are people, who most people never heard off from various places in the country.
James Cullen: Yeah. One of our columnists is Margo Ford Macmillen, who’s a farmer and an English teacher in Fulton, Missouri. And she writes about sustainable Ag issues. And she’s been doing that for years. Joan Ratsinas writes about health issues. She’s a social worker from Providence, Rhode Island. Sam Uretsky is a pharmacist in Long Island. And he writes about a lot of healthrelated as well as governmentrelated issues.
Ralph Nader: You have a former, famous columnist for the Des Moines Register writing for you.
James Cullen: Yeah. Don Kaul was one of my heroes growing up. He was an iconoclastic columnist for the Des Moines Register. Unfortunately, he recently retired for I think the third time. And this is may be his last time. He’s living in Michigan now. But, he’s a great writer.
Ralph Nader: Jim Cullen, how do you pick up new columnists? There’s a columnist who writes for the Winsted Journal in Connecticut, who is an expert on international law. Let’s say you like his columns. And he was former general counsel to the World Health Organization. Let’s say, you like his column. You just contact him and ask him?
James Cullen: Yeah. We contact them and first ask him if he’s syndicated, and if not, whether we can just reprint his columns. Then we can publish the columns. And I’m constantly looking for new columnists. And although there’s no lack of good columnists, we’re always looking for somebody who has a different point of view, particularly if they can give us a humorous stake on news. That’s always appealing. We try to broaden the mix and get people from all parts of the country not just New York and LA and Washington.
Ralph Nader: Jim Cullen, what if people wanted to have a discussion group about what’s in The Progressive Populist or a teacher in high school or community college or college. Do you have bulk rates? Can you send them an issue and volume for their class?
James Cullen: Sure. Yeah. We can give them a deal.
Ralph Nader: That’s good. Well, listen thank you very much Jim Cullen, you really made a contribution from the storied prairies of America with your brother Art in putting out this twice a month, twentyfour page newspaper or magazine called The Progressive Populist. You want to really get up to date on what’s going on. These are not just opinions, listeners. These are very factually based columnists, almost every subject you can imagine. Thank you very much Jim, and we all wish you good luck.
James Cullen: Well, thanks for your continued support and keep up the good work.
Ralph Nader: We will. Thank you again. Bye now.
James Cullen: Okay.
Steve Skrovan: We’ve been speaking with James Cullen, editor of The Progressive Populist. Go to populist.com for the online version and information about how you can get the twicemonthly print version. Well, Ralph it’s been a great show. We have time for a listener question.
Ralph Nader: Sure.
Steve Skrovan: Let’s do this. This comes from Dr. Gerry Paone. I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly. And Dr. Paone says “I wish to move my savings from a large corporate bank to some place where my money is safe from the high risk investing that such institutions are prone to make. Please give me some choices as a consumer. I do not want to put my funds under a mattress.”
Ralph Nader: Well, you can go any community bank in your neighborhood and you’re savings are insured by the FDIC up to $250,000. You’re super safe up to 250, 000. If you have more than that, just open up another savings account in another community bank. The interest rate, unfortunately, all over the country is very low, whether it’s in a Vanguard money market or whether it’s in a big savings account bank, or whether it’s in a small bank. It’s less than one quarter of 1%, unless you buy a longerrange certificate of deposit, which may give you up to half to three quarters of 1%. But feel secure the FDIC created under the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Administration guarantees you up to $250,000 per bank.
Steve Skrovan: Well, thank you for that question Dr. Paone. And that’s our show. I want to once again thank our guests today, James Cullen of the Progressive Populist and Phil Donahue the pioneering television talk show host. His film is “Body of War.” If you wanted to attend the Breaking Through Power summit two weeks ago but could not make the trip to DC, now all you have to do is make the trip to your laptop computer and then in the privacy of your own home catch up on what you missed. You go the realnews.com and search Breaking Through Power, where they have posted many of the speakers who attended the conference. That’s therealnews.com. THEREALNEWS.com. Now, before we close I just want to take a moment here to let our listeners, who visit the Ralph Nader Radio Hour website know that our producer engineer webmaster and all around MVP Jimmy Lee Wirt had a medical emergency last week and is still in the hospital. That’s why you haven’t seen last week’s episode posted there or on your Facebook page. It’s on iTunes and Stitcher. You still get it there, but until Jimmy gets back or I can figure out how to do all that stuff certainly not as good as Jimmy would we appreciate your patience. He’s recovering at Cedars Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles. Any good thoughts you could send his way would be greatly appreciated. In the meantime, I want to thank John Matthews for filling in to record and edit today’s show. We’re lucky to be in such good and experienced hands. And join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour when we will be welcoming economist attorney, author, and entrepreneur Michael Shuman, author of The Local Economy Solution. And we’ll also have Harvard professor Malcolm Sparrow, who’s going to talk to us about healthcare fraud. We’ll talk to you then Ralph.
Ralph Nader: Thank you very much Steve and thank you listeners. I hope you watch “Body of War,” produced by Phil Donahue and read the book on Tomas Young’s War. It gets you to be very involved and critical of wars of aggression from the American empire
Steve Skrovan: Now, we end with the words of Tomas Young in his last letter. “I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice, but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.”
Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation, but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.