POWER of the pen…
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the wet and wild island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this very rainy Wednesday morning–the 22nd day of October, 2014–coming to you LIVE from the Hyannis/Hyannis Port Waterfront, a good day, as ‘they’ say, to be a duck.
The ‘they’ may as well have been the late, great Ben Bradlee, former long time Editor of the Washington Post, a charismatic, larger-than-life figure in a town that came to ‘know his name’…
For here was a man, much like his friend Jack Kennedy (whom he met when Kennedy was a mere congressman), who truly had the human touch. A magnetic person, lighting up a room when entering it. Considered a ‘Boston Brahmin’, thus could easily fit in with the upper crust of any society, really leaving them in the dust as he exposed several scandals in the 1970’s that rocked the nation even to this day.
In 1971, the famous “Pentagon Papers” came out, words leaked that embarrassed the Nixon Administration as to how badly the very unpopular Vietnam War was going. His paper forged ahead the following year with a story broke by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward–made famous in a film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, “All the President’s Men”, the now infamous Watergate Hotel break in of the then Democratic headquarters, and the subsequent cover up that eventually brought down an American Commander-in-Chief, Richard M. Nixon.
Speaking to his reporters it has been told, in the midst of that all encompassing crisis in 1972, Bradlee barked out, “…you fellas better be right about this one, because the First Amendment is at stake here–Freedom of the Press, hell, the whole country could be…”.
Bradlee hated the LYING rampant in today’s modern corporate press (as well as in politics), ever searching out the TRUTH. His major passion, being that truth above all else, along with giving his reporters room to find their own voice, their own writing style, thus giving that paper a leg up on it’s competition, those stuffy old, stogy reads that would put Fox “news”’s George Will into a deep coma.
Bradlee was recently awarded the “Medal of Freedom”, the highest award bestowed upon a U.S. civilian–the award presented to Bradlee this past November by President Barack Obama.
Freedom–a word thrown loosely about by our friends on the right side of the aisle in this country so deeply divided now–is found in the TRUTH. For when you know something is broken, i.e. Washington D.C. via the corrupting influence of MONEY in a system not designed for such practices, well then, that “TRUTH–as Shakespeare howled so many moons ago–shall set you FREE.”
With Mr. Bradlee possibly screaming from the Heavens right about now, “…how about a new Constitutional Amendment? Overturning “Citizens United” for starters and banning infinite corporate monies altogether in the future! I mean come on folks, this dark money is killing OUR democracy, the one I fought for in WWII, you know the one with that little letter ‘d’?”
Perhaps that is why Ben Bradlee walked with such grace, confidence and magnitude. Doesn’t everybody want that kind of FREEDOM? This country needs more guys like Ben Bradlee.. God’s speed Sir! Send us down some Love Ben!
We, the real American people, could sure use some about right now!
PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
