Acceptance by Ira Glass of the Medal for Spoken Language

A couple years before my mom died, she framed this photo and gave it to me. It’s leaning against a wall in my apartment right now because I still can’t bring myself to put it up.

It was taken during one of the few family vacations we could afford when I was a kid. A client of my dad’s accounting firm somehow hooked us up with cheap rooms at what was then a very glamorous hotel—the Playboy Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach. This was August 1972. I was thirteen years old. Michael Jackson and his entire family were staying at the hotel. You’d see the Jackson Five goofing around in the pool like normal kids, or coming out of the elevators for dinner, dressed in matching gold suede outfits.

The photo my mom had printed and framed for me and thought I’d want to put up on the wall was taken by the swimming pool. While the Jacksons were becoming international superstars, I’d also been working as a professional entertainer. I’d learned some magic tricks from books I’d gotten from the Baltimore County Library, taken out ads in the classified section of the Baltimore Jewish Times and was booking myself at kids’ parties around the suburbs for fees as high as 10 dollars.

In the photo, I am showing Michael Jackson a magic trick. You can’t see exactly what I am doing. I’m probably making a coin disappear. You can see Michael Jackson’s face very clearly. He obviously could not give a damn. He is literally, no kidding, rolling his eyes. I don’t know if I had realized this yet at the instant the snapshot was taken. My back is to the camera. Perhaps the truth only hit me a moment later, as I slowly opened my right hand, one finger at a time, revealing— oh my!—nothing there! Or perhaps just after that. Definitely before the encounter was over, I understood. And immediately set about trying to forget the moment ever happened.

I found myself thinking about that photo when I heard you all were giving me this award because I feel today I am in the exact same situation ... in the company of incredibly accomplished world famous superstars ... while what I do is some stupid magic trick I taught myself sitting in my room: speaking in a conversational voice,

American Academy of Arts and Letters 1 Ceremonial, May 15, 2013 going out recording what people say, putting the quotes in an order, throwing a bit of sincere-sounding, vaguely wistful music under it ... voila!

Mostly I’m an editor. Except for the hour each week when I’m on the radio, I’m doing an editor’s job—commissioning stories, drafting and redrafting scripts, working with writers. Editors get few awards at all. Many of you work with editors. You know they get bupkes. I’m proud to be an editor standing here today.

And the work that I do is actually not just mine, but done in collaboration with very talented and extremely strong-willed people who are just as much a part of the decisions as I am. I have argued in our editorial meetings against doing many stories that went on to become audience favorites. One that I was utterly indifferent to will win the Peabody Award on Monday.

I’m pleased to be getting an award that until 1935 was called The Medal for Good Diction, given the dismaying number of emails I get each month from listeners telling me to please slow down and enunciate more clearly. In writing this talk, I actually searched my email box for the word “enunciate,” and was horrified.

In December a woman named Joni from Asheville, NC wrote “Please tell Ira Glass that I will donate $100 to the WBEZ Alliance and $100 to my local public radio station IF and ONLY IF he will stop saying ‘Ack One’ instead of ‘Act One.’ Can he not see that there is a ‘t’ at the end of that first word? Does he not hear the rest of the English speaking world saying ‘act’?

“p.s. My public radio station is WCQS and they REALLY need my donation.”

I’ll admit I never heard of y’all or your organization before someone got in touch to say I’d won this medal. I am not entirely clear why someone would form an organization of the nation’s greatest artists. What would be the purpose of such a group? Might we be in a situation where our national leaders will call on you to go to war with the artists of another country? Perhaps you will all move into a big house to film what would probably be the most unasked-for reality TV show in the history of television?

And yet, as soon as I learned that I had been offered an award, as soon as I learned that y’all existed, I wanted to be part. I wanted in. I am so glad to be chosen.

American Academy of Arts and Letters 2 Ceremonial, May 15, 2013

I’ve admired so many of you, including and especially Mr. Trillin. It is thrilling to be in this room. I suppose that is the point of an event like this: to look each other in the eye and say, “Of my god, you exist! As a human being! I am so pleased to meet you.”

Also, I learned during this ceremony that the purpose is to give away huge gobs of money, which seems great to encourage other artists.

I am so proud to win this award with my stupid magic trick, and I am grateful that you think that it is more than a trick.

American Academy of Arts and Letters 3 Ceremonial, May 15, 2013