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     Attention: feature editors. Ms. Sydney Weisman is a free-lance
writer. The following article appeared originally in The Reader, a
Chicago weekly.
     By Sydney Weisman
     (Distributed by Field News Service)
     CHICAGO-I spoke with Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mike Royko
shortly after he made a major life decision: switching his allegiance
from the Chicago Cubs to the Chicago White Sox. Following is an
edited version of our conversation:
     Sydney Weisman: What took you so long to become a White Sox fan?
     Mike Royko: It took me until there were players I did not like as
people. That's really the truth. I've been watching this Cub team for
a couple of years and something was bothering me about it and I
couldn't figure out what it was about this team that bothered me. And
then I realized I don't like those guys. I don't like whiners, I
don't like people who go out and cry to the public about their
problems when they have no problems. At a time when people at all
levels of life are really having a hard time making it, you have a
bunch of grown men, not even grown men, young men making these
incredible sums of money and just crying and moaning. I don't care
how unhappy they are and what their business dealings are. I don't
care how much money they make. I just don't understand people going
public with this. Like (relief pitcher Bruce) Sutter did and like
(Jerry) Martin, their center fielder, these guys are a bunch of
jerks. So what am I doing here, wasting my time, cheering for jerks?
     SW: Can we expect to see you at Comiskey Park watching the Sox?
     MR: Yeah. I'm gonna broadcast part of one of the ball games.
     SW: Have you ever considered writing about sports full-time?
     MR: I could never be...oh, it might be fun to try for a few
months...but I'd really get bored with it. I get bored with athletes.
I might have enjoyed it 40 or 50 years ago when you had a different
kind of athlete. They were more inclined toward having fun, both
while playing ball and in their private lives. But these guys take
themselves too seriously.
     SW: There's a very corporate feeling about the Cubs.
     MR: Yeah, so much...actually, this goes throughout the major
leagues. Throughout major league sports. You read so much about how
much money they're making. The sports pages read like a business
page. I don't wanna write that stuff. I don't care how much they're
making. Let's talk about your swing, let's talk about the way you
throw a ball. I'm not interested in any of that other stuff. I don't
wanna know how much a guy's making. I don't wanna know what their
problems are. And it's not the writers who deal with this stuff,
these guys wanna talk about it. Their grievances and their complaints
and their unhappiness, and I don't think I'd enjoy it. Most of 'em
are very limited guys. You know, they're selfish, mercenary people.
And I don't want to be around people like that.
     SW: Do you think politicians are better than that?
     MR: Oh, yeah. Politicians are much better. Politicians are far more
intersting than sports people. And they have a much better grasp of
reality than sports figures. Politicians know more about...To be a
successful politician you've got to know more about life than ringing
door bells. If you're gonna be a success at it. Where a guy could be
a successful athlete just because he can swing a bat, that's it. His
mind may end its development at that point. I have fun with sports,
you know, when I see something that strikes me funny. I'd only been
doing my column a couple or three years when the Washington Post
asked me if I wanted to do a sports column for them. And frankly, I
was insulted. And since then, they've offered me a regular column,
but no, I could never write about these guys. They'd drive me crazy.
     SW: There was a time when the Washington Post idea intrigued you.
Actually, you were, it seemed, more concerned about what you'd write
about after Mayor Daley died. Whether there'd be material...
     MR: Yeah, well that was probably...Actually, I was worried about
whether or not this city would become a dull city politically. And
that hasn't been the case. In many ways, it's more exciting,
especially in the last year. After Daley died, I had no trouble.
Because I used to have long periods where I didn't write about Daley.
After I wrote my book (''Boss''), I was really tired of Daley as a
subject. By '71, I'd been doing the column more than seven years and
I'd written about Daley a great deal, and I'd done the book. I was so
tired of Daley, I think I went about a year without having mentioned
his name and I had no trouble finding material. And my concern was
that if you got this town reformed, it would be like writing a column
in Milwaukee or somewhere. Then I'd probably have to go somewhere
else.
     SW: Is it the graft and corruption that keep you going?
     MR: Nah, it's just the over-all atmosphere...During (Mayor Jane)
Byrne's whole first year, it's one interesting subject after another.
If anything, it's more fun.
     SW: Because she's so unpredictable?
     MR: No, it's because the Machine has really opened up. When Daley
was here, you only had one voice and that was Daley. Now you've got
young Richie (Daley) making waves and all kinds of people making
waves. They're more talkative. And she's great copy.
     SW: Is she better copy than you thought she'd be?
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n545  0352  08 Aug 80
 
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     SYDNEY WEISMAN x x x THOUGHT SHE'D BE.
     MR: Yeah, yeah. I didn't think, I didn't anticipate that things
would be as volatile as they have been. And it isn't all her making.
The instant press around here-by instant press, I mean all these
crazy people running around with microphones whose sense of history
goes back about two hours-they aren't aware that there's been a
powerful movement throughout the cities in this country toward
municipal union activity. We have a firemen's strike here and
immediately Byrne is a villain because she somehow didn't prevent the
strike. They haven't looked around to see how many cities there have
been strikes in. And the (public transportation) strike-actually if
Byrne were a corporate executive and, for her corporation, she had
managed to beat two unions, she would probably be voted a bonus. She
did her job. She beat the CTA drivers, she beat the firemen. Her job,
contrary to a long list of romantics, like Studs (Terkel), while I
love him, I think Studs was completely off base on this. They seem to
think it was Byrne's job to make the unions happy.
     She is management. She represents us, and I don't want a fire
department with the power, whenever it chooses, to endanger the city.
And she's prevented that.
     SW: Let's move away from this. You've done this kind of interview a
million times. You know, I have no idea how you work. What it takes
for you to produce this column every day. On an average, what kind of
work goes into a column?
     MR: Work-what is somebody's law, work expands to fill the time
available? It depends on how much time I have. I'll poke around, I'll
mess around, and I'll take all day, I'll take 12 or 16 hours to get a
column done. But if there's a gun placed at my head, I'll do it a
helluva lot faster. The morning the firemen went on strike, I came in
and I didn't even know they'd gone on strike. I hadn't listened to
the news that night and I got down here and was at my desk at 9:30
and my deadline is 10 AM. And I'd already done a column the night
before. I had a column done and that's why I got down here at 9:30.
But the firemen were on strike. And I wondered, ''Can I do it?'' I
had a half hour and I did a column, my regular length column, in 30
minutes. And, if I may brag a little, if you look at that column,
you'll see that I predicted exactly what was going to happen in that
strike. I predicted the outcome. I told them she was going to beat
them, what her weapons were, and I told them why they shouldn't be
doing this.
     SW: Had you thought about this before?
     MR: Well, I'd followed the story. So I can do a column damn fast,
if I have to. At political conventions, things like that, where you
have to move fast, I'll get a column done about as fast as it takes
me to type it. I don't like to work that way. I prefer to have time.
And I usually do take my time. I generally work about 10 or 12 hours
a day. I don't work as many hours as I used to, the first three or
five years of my column, because I know more. There are things I
don't have to go out and check on now. Because I've learned more over
the years and I know this city better than when I began. I know the
political structure much better than when I began, so I can shortcut.
I don't have to work as hard as I did then. I used to go months
without a day off. And I don't do that anymore. My weekends are
generally free.
     SW: The column began when?
     MR: In the fall of '63.
     SW: Where did it come from?
     MR: I was about 30 or 31 years old and I had to make a decision
about what I was going to do. I began thinking about it the previous
year. I had one child and another on the way. I didn't think I wanted
to spend the rest of my life as a general assignment reporter. I
wanted to make more money than that. I liked newspapering but I
wasn't dedicated enough to spending the rest of my life working at
(union) scale.
     SW: What else would you have considered?
     MR: Well, I was considering...Seymour Simon, who was then president
of the Cook County Board ... I knew Seymour, liked him, I thought he
was a straight guy and I was covering the county building. And
Seymour asked me if I would go to work for him and consolidate all
county public relations offices under one person and he wanted me to
do it and write his speeches for him and be his PR adviser. And
besides the county salary, I would get a salary from him, and it
would have more than doubled what I was earning. It would by today's
dollars, it would be the equivalent of going from about $22,000 a
year to $45,000 a year. And so, it was one of the things I was
considering because of the money. We were always going from payday to
payday and hell, I moonlighted from the time I got into this
business. In order to stay in this business, I had always moonlighted.
     SW: Doing what?
     MR: Well, when I worked for the Lerner papers, my first job, I
worked nights in a machine shop. When I worked nights for City News
Bureau, I worked days in a machine shop.
     SW: Did you work on automobiles and stuff?
     MR: No, no, I worked on a deburring machine. I used to remove burrs
from whatever we were manufacturing. They made metal products, pieces
that would fit...well, you didn't know what you were making, it was a
thing. Later, it would be part of a toaster or some goddamn thing. It
was a greasy machine. I had the dirtiest hands of any journalist in
Chicago. It took me months after I stopped doing it to get the grease
and metal shavings out of my pores. But it paid good.
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n546  0403  08 Aug 80
 
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    SYDNEY WEISMAN X X X PAID GOOD.
     I worked on some suburban papers. Then, when I came to work at the
Chicago Daily News, I went on nights at my request because they paid
you 10 percent more. And I was starting at $105 a week, so I picked
up an extra $10. And then I spent two years, my first two years at
the Daily News, during the day, I'd be over at the Polonia Monument
Company on Ashland Avenue. I sold tombstones. It was a legitimate
thing, we sold people nice tombstones. I always felt sorry for the
widow ladies and took a smaller commission than I had to. And I
worked for the 4-H Clubs of America, writing press releases. I'd
always moonlighted. Well, I thought, I wouldn't mind being in a
position to work only one job. Here I was, working 15 hours a day and
weekends. So I was really looking for something that would pay me
more money.
     SW: How long had you been in the business?
     MR: I'd been in eight years. So when Seymour talked to me, I
considered that. I also considered moving to Door County in
Wisconsin. We liked Door County. We had vacationed up there. There
was a bar and restaurant for sale and the saloon business was
something I knew about. My father and mother had both been in that
business. And I knew the bar business. And I thought about going into
television because it paid better than newspapering.
     I told the editor about a year earlier that I'd wanted to do a
column. In '62, the Chicago American offered me a job to do for them
what I was doing at the Daily News, but they offered me a little more
money. And I was a little mad at the city editor because he had
promised me a raise and hadn't come through on it, so I told him I'd
take the job. The editor (at the Daily News) was Larry Fanning and
I'd never met him. And the rumor was I was going to quit. So Larry
called me in, and it turned out he'd been watching my work and liked
it. I was writing a weekly column called the County Beat ... He liked
the style. It was sort of a forerunner of what I do now at a much
more provincial level. And he liked it and asked me what I wanted to
do.
     SW: You just happened to be doing this little weekly column on the
side?
     MR: They aked me if I wanted to do it because Jay McMullen (now
Mayor Byrne's husband) was doing a City Hall column. And someone
asked me if I wanted to do something like Jay did. Well, actually, I
did something entirely different. Jay did something like a gossipy
column, which alderman is vacationing where. And I started off right
away, doing an essay column and raising a little hell.
     SW: Why that way?
     MR: It's just my nature and it was the kind of column I wanted to
write. I could never do a chitchat kind of column. If they were going
to let me do a weekly column, I was going to write about things I
thought should be written about. In my first column, I figured out
how much it cost taxpayers to close City Hall, and almost all local
government, down for the Saint Patrick's Day parade. And my God, you
had all these Irish city editors in this town and they were horrified
someone would write something like that. No one ever criticized the
Saint Patrick's Day parade.
     So I'd been doing this thing and it didn't seem like a big deal to
me. But Fanning had been watching it and I later learned had seen
potential in it. And when he asked me what I wanted to do, he was
talking me out of going to the American. And he asked me what I
wanted to do and I said I hadn't actually given it much thought. But
I said I'd like to do my own column. And the idea kind of appealed to
him. He asked me what kind of column and I said one with a strong
Chicago flavor, and hopefully it would have some humor in it. Certain
amount of investigative stuff. And he liked the idea. But after
almost a year passed, he still hadn't done anything. So I told the
managing editor, I've got to get off the mark on this. So he said,
OK, let's try two a week. Any subject and it'll run on the column
page. At that time, the Daily News had a column page. We'll try two a
week and you continue covering the County Building, and we'll see how
it goes.
     And that's when I really date when my column began, September 1963.
And they were pretty damn good. Well, we got down to around
Christmastime and nothing was happening. I was still covering the
County Building and they were using me to fill in in Springfield when
they needed me and I'm writing two columns a week. And I was still
making (union) scale. So then, Seymour came up and this thing in Door
County. And I marched in and said here's the offer and I've got to
find out now whether I'm gonna do my own column on a full-time basis.
Or I'm going to work for Simon. So the next day, they said fine, you
can do five a week. Start Monday. And that was the beginning. It was
the weekend after New Year's Eve.
     SW: Did you aspire to be a columnist and go into journalism when
you were growing up?
     MR: No, when I was growing up, I aspired to survive.
     SW: I've had a chance to talk with your brother, Bob.
     MR: Well, did Bobby tell you about our life in Lake Forest? And at
Yale? Tennis?
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n547  0413  08 Aug 80
 
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     SYDNEY WEISMAN X X X AND AT YALE? TENNIS?
     SW: (Laughing). No. He did say the family always knew you could
write. That your letters home from Korea were funny and they always
knew you had writing talent.
     MR: Yeah, everybody with whom I corresponded during the service
knew I could write. When I was in school, people said I could write.
I always wrote for the fun of it.
     SW: Were you an unusual kid on your block because you could write?
     MR: Well, I was the smartest kid in my school. I went through
grammar school in six years. I was only 12 when I graduated, I didn't
go to kindergarten, so I went through in six. I really had a
fascinating academic career. I graduated from grammar school at 12,
high school at 19, and I received my first college degree when I was
about 41. An honorary two-year degree.
     SW: How is it you graduated from grammar school at 12 but not high
school until you were 19?
     MR: Well...after about a year of high school, I decided this was
the most incredible waste of time I had ever seen. I could learn more
spending one day a week at the pubic library, and so I just became a
professional truant.
     SW: Where were you going to high school?
     MR: Oh, I went all over. My father was a little bit flush at that
time. His tavern had done well. It was the war. It was about '43 or
'44. My dad had a few bucks. My parents were divorced. My dad was
doing OK and they got the cockamamy idea of sending me to Morgan Park
Military Academy. It was a very fancy-assed school for
upper-middle-class kids. You had a lot of kids like the kids whose
dad was the president of Andes Candies, state's attorney of some
nearby county, a construction company president's kids, a lot of
money. And I was a saloon keeper's kid. Military academies are very
sadistic places. When you're a plebe, you're expected to submit to
hazing which amounts to physical assaults. And I had been reared in a
neighborhood where if somebody manhandled you, if you were big enough
you took him out with your fists, and if you weren't you went and got
a two-by-four to work on him. And I just didn't react well to this
and after I beat the shit out of an upper-classman once, who demanded
the privilege of beating me on the behind with a shelf - he told me,
''Assume the position,'' and I knew that meant I was supposed to grab
my ankles while he swatted me, so I assumed him the position right in
the mouth, and he was running out, all bloody and so I was put on...I
don't remember the term they used-but nobody was allowed to talk to
me, I was ostracized by the entire student body for violating the
code and all that stuff. So I didn't get along well there and when I
left there, I went to public high school. It may have been a good
school, but by the time I got there, it was a place they stuffed kids
in to keep off the streets. But I preferred the streets. So I just
took off.
     SW: How old were you?
     MR: I was about 13. And I set pins in a bowling alley. I had to
work. Couldn't get hired at any regular job but I could pick up jobs
setting pins in a bowling alley and things like this. I became a
foul-line man in a bowling alley. That was before they had electronic
eyes that said your toe was over the foul line. You'd sit up in a
little bird cage looking down all the alleys, watching their toes.
And you had a console and you'd press a button if someone fouled.
Tremendous feeling of power. Especially on the nights the women's
industrial leagues bowled. That's when I found out how well women
could swear. All these beefy women bowlers yelling out ''Eh, puck.''
I'd say, ''You got big feet lady, long toes.'' So I bummed around. I
had a taste of gang life. I was a member of a gang and we used to go
have riots. So I never felt at home...
     SW: Was it a tough street gang?
     MR: Yeah, it was very tough. And I didn't like being part of a
gang, having other people doing my thinking for me. And so I drifted
away from that. I got a job downtown as a movie usher. When I was
about 16, they kept coming to get me to go to school. The truant
officer would come and I'd go back to school and then I'd take off. I
just couldn't stand it.
     SW:s Were your parents appalled?
     MR: Well, my parents were divorced, they both had their own
problems. My father never'd been inside a school in his whole life.
He came from the old country, from the Ukraine at about eight or
nine, and he went right to work. He was not actually Ukrainian, his
mother was Ukraine and his father was Slovak. His father had come to
the Ukraine from Czechoslovakia. My mother was Polish, her family
came from Warsaw. My mother was born here. So they kept trying to
make me go back and finally, when I was 15, they lowered the boom on
me.
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n548  0426  08 Aug 80
 
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     SYDNEY WEISMAN X X X BOOM ON ME.
     They put me in Montefiore, which is sort of like reform school.
Except you go home at night. In every other respect, it's reform
school. It was where they sent kids from Chicago public schools who
were too tough for the regular schools. So they would send them all
over there. Well, knowing the Chicago schools and the way they've
always been, you can imagine the kind of kids that were in there. I
mean, Christ, if we had been turned loose, we could have seized the
city. And there are guys who went there who later became crime
syndicate guys. Not many went to college but a lot went to prison. It
was a fascinating year.
     I spent the year there and when I turned 16, I quit school. Then
you could quit legally and I went to work downtown. After about a
year of that, I thought, ''Oh, Christ, I don't want to be pushing a
hand truck around Marshall Field's the rest of my life.'' So I went
to Central YMCA High School, which was a small high school that
charged tuition. It was for kids and adults at that time, because we
had World War II veterans there. It was mainly for people who had
jobs but had quit school and wanted to get a high school education.
There I received a fine education. Excellent school. I was working
and went there two years and did four years of work. And graduated.
     SW: You wanted to go to college?
     MR: Oh, sure. What you had was a kid bummin' around, suddenly
finding himself and getting very ambitious. I did four years of
college preparatory in two years, while working eight hours a day
plus eight hours on Saturday. And so, I went to junior college
because it was the only thing around. It was a disaster because of my
schooling at Central Y. It was like going from college to high school
rather than high school to college. And I was so bored. They had
bobby-socks kids and I couldn't take two years of that. The Korean
War was going on, I was tired, mentally tired, and I figured, screw
it. The pace I'd been keeping had been pretty rugged. And I got
pretty fed up with it all and so one day, on impulse, I went down to
the Air Force office and enlisted. And the next day, I was on a train
to Texas. And spent the next four years in the Air Force.
     SW: And you put in time in Korea?
     MR: Yeah, in Korea. It's funny, all my buddies went in the Army and
they didn't go into Korea. I went in the Air Force and wound up there.
     SW: Were you married at this time?
     MR: No, I didn't get married until three years after I went in the
Air Force. I was married my last year in the Air Force.
     Then after I got out of the Air Force, I went to work for the
Lerner papers. But your question really was, what led me to
journalism? My final year in the Air Force, they didn't need me. I
was a radio operator. My mother had come down with cancer and it was
a question about how long she'd last. I was stationed in the state of
Washington and I asked for a transfer near Chicago because of my
mother's condition. So they transferred me to what was then O'Hare
Air Force Base, that was before it was a commercial airfield.
     They didn't need a radio operator and they didn't really have a job
for me. I was afraid they were going to make me a cook...or military
cop. I really didn't like the idea of being a military cop. I
happened to hear they needed someone to edit their base newspaper.
The editor was discharged.
     So I lied and told the personnel officer that before I joined the
Air Force, I'd been a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. And they
don't check resumes in the Air Force, so he was very excited to have
a professional journalist to run the newspaper. So they made me
editor of the paper and chief public information officer. And so when
I got home that day and told (my wife) Carol what I'd done, and she
said, ''What are you gonna do? What do you know about newspapering.''
''Well,'' I said, ''I read 'em.''
     So I asked for a three-day pass, to settle in our apartment in
which we were already settled...but I needed time to go to the
library and get a bunch of books on journalism. So for the next three
days and nights, I read everything I could about journalism. You
know, the fundamental stuff and writing news stories, a lot of stuff
on makeup and layout, because I had to do that, too.
     Fortunately, I found a book that showed prize-winning tabloid
layouts from actual papers. So what I did, I drew these things and
when my three-day pass was over, I had all these drawings of these
prize-winning layouts, drawings of front pages and inside pages. And
my God, I put out amazingly good newspapers right away. Everyone was
impressed. What I was doing, I was lifting the layouts of front pages
that had won awards from the Inland Press Association.
     And because I always did have an easy way...you know, writing
wasn't hard for me, I took to writing journalism style right away.
And I immediately gave myself my own column. And my first column, I
attacked the American Legion. In my next column, I criticized
officers' wives for walking around the base looking frumpy, with
their hair in curlers and baggy old housedresses while we were
expected to shine our shoes, and I said how unsightly they were and
how bad for morale it was to have this kind of doggy-looking women on
the base.
     That was the first time I knew how much fun it was to be
controversial. The door flew open at the public information office
and in flew half a dozen women with the paper in their hands, yelling
''Where is this guy Royko who wrote this?''
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n549  0439  08 Aug 80
 
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     SYDNEY WEISMAN X X X WHO WROTE THIS?
     And I said, ''Oh, he's on leave, Ma'am.''
     SW: So you enjoyed it?
     MR: Oh, yeah. After about a month, another guy was transferred in
and assigned to the paper. He had a master's in journalism, he'd
worked for the Associated Press. He was Stanley Koven from Chicago.
And after about five minutes around there, Stanley said, ''Let's go
get some coffee.'' And we went over and he said, ''Did you really
work for the Daily News?'' And I said, ''You spotted me, huh?'' And
he said, ''Yeah.'' He was a wonderful guy. So between his expertise
and my willingness to learn, we put out an award-winning paper. We
were judged the best paper in the Air Force or something.
     So my plan had been, when I got out of the Air Force, I was going
to study law under the GI Bill. He was looking for a job and went to
one of the wire services. We got discharged about the same time. But
he'd heard about a job with a small local paper and he thought I
could get it. He said ''Why don't you give it a try?'' So, I talked
it over with Carol and we decided to give it six months. Six months
isn't that much and I could always resume my plan to become a lawyer.
So, I took the job. So...ah, here I am.
     SW: And the rest is newspaper history.
     MR: Well, the rest is 20-some-odd years.
     SW: Do you ever regret the decision?
     MR: Nah, how can I regret going in this business? I've had a
certain amount of success. So you can't regret it. No, I don't regret
going into journalism.
     SW: Is there anything professionally, that you wish you could have
done?
     MR: No, when it comes to my work and things like that, I don't feel
that way. I don't think that way. When I covered the County Building,
I knew a lot of lawyers and judges. And, I did have a knack for law.
I understood the theories of law a lot better than a lot of lawyers.
So I think I would have been a very good lawyer. But I don't regret
that I didn't.
     This is what I went into. I'm sure had I gone to college, I could
have studied medicine and become a doctor. I'm smart enough. I could
have done all those things. But this is what I chose and it has been
satisfying and fun. It's been profitable. So really, I haven't given
any thought to what I might have done in other fields.
     SW: The amount of work you've had to put in and the time you still
put in and what you put out every day is extraordinary. I think, on a
day-to-day basis, and I think this is undisputed by your colleagues,
you consistently turn out good material. This isn't meant as
flattery. You seem to have survived a long time at writing a very
good daily column. You've stayed fresh. You aren't tiresome.
     MR: Well, that's very nice of you to say. Uh, sometimes the job is
tiresome. I generally, if I sense that I'm tired and I don't have it,
I just don't like the piece...I'll work harder on a piece. When I'm
clicking, when I'm well rested, and my mind is really sharp, and, you
know, people go in cycles and are foggy sometimes, high other times,
then it's very easy. When I'm sharp, it's easy for me to do a good
column. Give me a subject and I'll get a good column out of it. It's
always been my tendency, because this has always been my bread and
butter, that if I sense at all any weakness in myself, I'll work that
much harder.
     An example of that was the year 1971. In March of '71, ''Boss''
came out. And it was the most grueling year I'd ever spent because I
had to promote the book while doing the column. The year before that,
I had used all my vacation time, both years, to work on the book. By
'71, I'd gone two years without a vacation.
     During one period, when I was writing the book, I went through five
months without taking a day off. And I had a brief period when the
book was being printed and then when it came out, there was the
totally exhausting business of proofing the book. I went to New York
several times for television, TV shows around here, interviews of all
kinds. It was a helluva terrible year for me. And I had to do the
column all that year, at the same time.
     The following year, they gave me a Pulitzer Prize for the columns
I'd done in '71. And it was because I was so concerned, that I didn't
want the column to slip while I was doing all this extra stuff, I was
working harder on the column than I normally did. I really drove
myself to be sure I didn't let the column slip.
     The book was great. It was nice to have done a book that got some
recognition. But the column is what I do, it's my main job. And I've
always been very concerned that other things would spread me thin.
Which is why I almost never make speeches.
     Now I have extra time on my hands because I have a reduced personal
life, so now I'm going to make some speeches. Because people have
offered me a lot of money and I'll go make a speech and grab the
money. I've done very little TV. Over the years, I could have done a
lot of TV. I could put together a talk show and I've been asked by
stations to do daily commentary. But all that would cut into the
amount of time I can spend thinking about my column, working on my
columns. It would tire me. So I avoided doing these things. I don't
do magazine writing because once again, it would be a time drain. So
I haven't made the mistake a lot of other columnists do and that is
when they get a column, the column leads to offers to do other things
and they grab these other things.
     SW: You haven't been seduced.
     MR: Yeah. Nick von Hoffman, who I thought, when he started his
column at the Washington Post, was doing just about the most
brilliant column in America. And Nick started making speeches. Every
time I would talk to Nick, he'd be flying through town on his way to
make a speech. That, more than anything, wore Nick down. So Nick hurt
himself by doing that. His column hasn't been the same.
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n550  0445  08 Aug 80
 
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     SYDNEY WEISMAN X X X BEEN THE SAME.
     SW: Did your private life suffer?
     MR: To some extent. On other other hand, it permitted Carol and I
to do things we might not have done had I been less ambitious and
taken something that didn't pay me as much money. Both of us came
from modest backgrounds, working-class families. We enjoyed it when I
started making some bucks, we enjoyed going to Europe and spending
Januaries in Florida. And so, we gave up certain things but there
were other compensations.
     SW: You talk of a reduced private life now and you've been quoted
as saying, ''They can't embarrass me anymore since my wife died.''
That was in reference to Bill Griffin allegedly investigating you.
     MR: Yeah, trying to dig up something to embarrass me.
     SW: There were columns you wrote when you first returned (after his
wife died) that made me think that...the tone was different. A little
more reflective. I'm remembering a column, I don't specifically
remember it...but you talked about a man who should be happy with
what's in his own backyard.
     MR: Yeah.
     SW: Has there been that kind of change?
     MR: Yeah. I guess my attitude's changed to some extent. I don't
take as many things...uh, seriously as I once did. Because I've
discovered there aren't that many things that are as important as
they once seemed. And I find it a little more difficult to be quite
as rough as I once was. I...uh, find it harder to inflict pain.
     SW: The veneer comes off...your own personal shield against that
comes down, maybe?
     MR:Yeah.
     SW: You have two boys?
     MR: Yeah, my youngest son, Robby, is 17 ... Robby had a hard time
getting on track in school. Very bright kid but like a lot of kids
today, there are just too many external stimulations.
     SW: Not unlike you perhaps?
     MR: Yeah, not unlike me. I'm afraid. Robby's having about the same
kind of time I had. He's like me in a lot of ways. David, my oldest
son, is 21. David's a great deal more in temperament like his mother.
And David's just...it's one of these contrasts, superficial
contrasts...when you have two children. David is a remarkably good
student in college. Works morning at a job mostly because he likes
the job. He works at WFMT helping the engineers. He's out of the
house at 5 a.m. He's a junior at Lake Forest (a north suburban
college). He's trying to get two degrees, one in psychology, one in
music. He's a terrific drummer and he knows music. Both kids grew up
in an atmosphere of classical music. I love classical music.
     SW: You do?
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n551  0454  08 Aug 80
 
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     SYDNEY WEISMAN X X X SW: YOU DO?
     MR: Yeah, it's all we ever had...jazz, folk music, it's all we ever
played. It's all we ever heard. Carol and I. And so the kids grew up
with a lot of that type of music around them and David's absorbed it.
And Robby's a smart, sensitive, slightly confused kid. But he'll get
over that.
     SW: You did.
     MR: Yeah, to some extent.
     SW: Do you still feel confused? Or, do you still have some of that
adolescent anger?
     MR: Well, yeah. I don't know if it's adolescent. But I get angry.
But I'm not always angry. And actually, you talked about me
maintaining my column all these years. One of the things that saved
me is that I don't fly into a rage over everything that happens. I
rarely froth over a pothole. What the hell are you gonna do when you
run into a Richard Nixon and a Watergate? . . . If your maximum anger
is directed at (Cubs broadcaster) Jack Brickhouse, what are you gonna
do when you run into Ronald Reagan? So, I've always tried to not
sound too damn angry in my column, unless it's something worth really
getting damn mad about. I can laugh off a lot of things. I can
criticize people without banging my fist on the desk. And I can find
things to laugh about. And that really has been my secret. If anyone
really wanted to know my secret for surviving all these years. I
measure out my indignation and I measure out my anger.
     SW: I don't have the sense you ever take yourself seriously.
     MR: I take my work very seriously, but I never take myself
seriously.
     SW: Yes. For example, you answer your own phone. And you are
accessible, to students, to other reporters, to the public.
     MR: Well, it's very simple. I answer my own phone unless I'm
writing. People, when they call me, it's a contact, a potential
story, an opinion, it's always something. And I can walk around the
streets, contrary to the romanticized view of what a columnist would
be doing, you know, in these wonderful old movies where the columnist
spends time talking to Sadie, the flower lady on the street, and he
gets a tip from Jake, the newsstand guy in Times Square, and Joe, the
bartender, and before you know it, by the end of the day, he's got
this huge story. Well, I don't work that way. I can't run around the
streets saying, ''Hi, I'm a columnist, what can you tell me?''
     It works in reverse. I hear from people, sources. Ninety-five
percent of it never leads to any column. But I do spot trends. I do
pick up information, I do get opinions. Somebody calls me about
something going on in their neighborhoods. Well, it may be that I
haven't been in that neighborhood in a long time and I'll chat with
them about their neighborhood and I'll find things out that way. And
every so often, someone says something worth writing about.
     SW: Do you have assistants?
     MR: I have one. I started hiring assistants after I had the column
for four years. Working alone, I couldn't do investigative stuff.
And, like I said, when I'm writing, I don't like to have to break off
and answer phones and things. Back then, I had no help, it was
getting to be...I just couldn't do the columns I wanted without
getting some help. So having one assistant made a tremendous
difference.
     SW: Do you have a favorite columnist?
     MR: I don't know that I can say there's any one. There are so many
different kinds of columns. I like Russell Baker. Buchwald, I like.
Along sports, everyone loves Red Smith. Talk about staying power,
Schulian on the Sun-Times is a wonderful sports columnist. I read
most columnists and I like anyone who does what he does well. I like
Sydney Harris. You know, Sydney does his thing and he's done it well.
Sydney has a very high readership. Garry Wills, I really like Ellen
Goodman.
     SW: Do you have any idea why there are so few women who write
opinion pieces?
     SW: Well, one reason is that it hasn't been so many years since
journalism was kind of a man's-only field. Since it's only been about
20 years since women started moving into the city room, women are
only just coming of age, chronologically, to the age where they start
getting columns. Most columnists do come out of the news business in
some way, although there are guys like Safire and all these
Republican creeps who get into it because they worked for guys like
Nixon.
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n552  0506  08 Aug 80
 
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     SYDNEY WEISMAN X X X LIKE NIXON.
     But most columnists, Tom Wicker, Reston, almost anyone you name,
especially those who aren't Republicans, were working newspapermen.
And it's really a remarkable thing. All the Republicans, big
Republican columnists, weren't working newspapermen. Buckley wasn't,
Safire wasn't. Have you ever noticed how much, how open the
Republican columnists are about the politicking they do in their
columns? They make no bones about it. They are propaganda machines
for Reagan or whoever the Republican is. Yet, the conservatives are
always yelling about the liberal press. And those of us who have at
one time or another been thought of as liberals do a helluva lot less
propagandizing. We don't use our columns to be shills for the party.
But Republicans do. Anyway, I think women...it just reflects the late
start they've had. They only have recent stock in journalism. Today,
you go into the Sun-Times city room and there are times when there
are four women to every guy. But that's something new.
     SW: You talk about Red Smith's longevity. Do you think you'll go on
for the next 20 years at this?
     MR: No, no. I'm not going to do this that long. Uh-uh. I don't know
how long I'll do it. In six months, I may just decide to pack it in.
In two months. A year. Three years. I don't know. I'm going to do it
until I don't want to do it any more.
     SW: Was that always your plan?
     MR: No...no
     SW: Is that something new?
     MR: Since Carol died. I just don't know if I want to keep doing it.
I don't need the money. And there's nothing really to keep me in
Chicago. I have never been as happy at the Sun-Times as I was at the
Daily News. And I just don't know if this is what I want to keep
doing. I've done it, I really don't feel that I...I'm the only guy I
know on this newspaper who's doing the same job he was doing 16 years
ago.
     SW: Is there something else that appeals to you? The saloon in Door
County or the drums along the Potomac?
     MR: No, I haven't got any interest in going to Washington. I could
have gone. But it doesn't interest me. I don't know what I want to
do. I get goofy ideas sometimes. We went down to Pensacola, did some
fishing with my kid, and I went out on this fishing boat. I figured,
hell, I could learn to run a fishing boat and take tours out. I
kicked that around. I like fishing....So, I don't know what I'm going
to do.
     SW: Fiction?
     MR: Yeah. Yeah, I could do that. I could probably earn a living at
it. And I thought about that. That's something I'm actually
considering...is stopping the column, writing books. It's a lot
easier. I enjoyed writing ''Boss.'' ''Boss'' was fun to write and do
the reporting on. I liked writing it. I did it during my vacation and
a couple extra weeks off. It was nice getting up in the morning,
knowing what I was going to be writing that day and not worrying
about coming up with an idea, coming up with material. I had the
material there. I'd done the reporting and research and in a given
time, when I'd written as much as I wanted to write that day, as much
as my outline called for, I'd stop and I knew where I was going to
resume the next day. And I really like that type of writing. I don't
think I've ever done any writing over a prolonged period that was as
much fun. I could do that. I've been working in a self-starting job
for years and you have to do that to write books. So, I'd have no
trouble sitting myself down every day and saying ''Time to work,''
because I do it now...and, so I've thought that. I have a fuzzy idea
for a play, I've thought about doing that....
     SW: You say you haven't been as happy at the Sun-Times as you were
at the Daily News?
     MR: I'm not unhappy working there. Fortunately, there were a lot of
Daily News people who came (after the Daily News folded) and that
made it easier. It would have been very hard for me to go to an
entirely new environment, like the Chicago Tribune or something. But,
it's not the same. I just had a much stronger sense of commitment to
the newspaper than I have now. I was much more involved with the
newspaper. Here, I'm involved with my column and that's it. In some
ways, that's better though. I find I don't have to worry about other
things, I just worry about getting my job done.
     SW: What about the stories that Marshall Field wants to sell the
paper and is looking for a new publisher...
     MR: Well, uh, if Marshall wanted to sell the paper, he could have
sold it already for a lot of money. Marshall was offered a huge sum
by one of the major chains, a chain that would have been acceptable
to his sense of responsibility to the city. I don't think Marshall
wants to sell it. He's given me no indication he wants to. And we
talk occasionally ... Marshall has never pretended he is a
newspapering publisher. He is a businessman and his strength in the
corporation is as a businessman. And that's what he wants to do,
which is why Jim Hoge has more responsibilities. I don't think
Marshall would make Jim publisher if he were intending to sell the
paper.
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n553  0512  08 Aug 80
 
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     SYDNEY WEISMAN X X X SELL THE PAPER.
     SW: Can you live with that?
     MR: With Jim as a publisher?
     SW: Yes.
     MR: I think Jim will be an excellent publisher. I really have a lot
of respect for Jim. During the year and a half he edited the Daily
News, he did a helluva job. I thought the paper was as good toward
the second half of our last year, it was better than it had ever been
since I had been on it. And he worked like a dog. I think he'll be
fine as publisher.
     SW: So all this corporate maneuvering would have no impact on your
decision about your future?
     MR: No, not at all.
     SW: Do you ever wake up with a fear that one day you'll just not
have an idea for the column?
     MR: No, 'cause I know I'll have one later that afternoon, or if not
then, that evening. I know I'll find something to write about.
     SW: But you really are thinking about other areas.
     MR: Yeah, I am. I don't have the financial responsibilities. I
still have financial responsibilities, I've got two kids. And I want
to get them through school or to be in a position to be sure they're
going to go through school. So I don't really have to do this. I came
back....I really didn't have to come back...I came back because it
was something to do ...
     SW: You talked earlier about Carol's death making you more aware of
perhaps the potential for pain that you could inflict through your
column. Had it really never occurred to you or had you not cared
before?
     MR: Well...maybe...I was less sensitive because I'd never had a
tragedy of that enormity in my life. I don't know how to explain
it...I don't know.
     SW: Are there things you would take back now, if...
     MR: There might be, there might be. Yeah, I suppose if I...if I...I
can't tell you what, but I'm sure that if the same situation occurred
today, that may have occurred often years ago, say, I might be a
little gentler, a little more understanding. Although there are
people I'm writing about now who might say, ''Jeez, if this is the
nice side of you, I'm glad it wasn't 10 years ago.'' I try not to
throw really low shots. And I don't know who said it originally and
I'm sure any book of quotations would have it attributed to 40
people, but there's an old saying, ''The eagle does not hunt flies.''
I try to avoid going after flies and that attitude is nothing new. I
mean, over the years, I don't want to catch some guy and wreck 'em,
some two-bit grafter or two-bit anything when there are enough
gold-plated grafters, gold-plated bums. I'd rather write about Spiro
Agnew or Nixon or Daley than some ward sanitation guy, although I've
done that. (Smiling) All in all...I mean, I haven't exactly turned
into a pussycat.
     ENDIT WEISMAN
    
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n504  2303  14 Aug 80
 
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     Context: a commentary on current affairs
     By Mike Royko
     (c) 1980 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)
     NEW YORK-I don't think many people noticed, but somebody finally
made a highly intelligent speech t
 this convention. It dealt with
issues that haven't been talked about. It avoided most of the tired
cliches that the speakers have been tossing around the podium.
     And it passed almost unnoticed, which is what usually happens to
any thoughtful observation made at a political convention.
     No, the speech was not made by Ted Kennedy. He specializes in
grandiose spending plans, pie in the sky social benefits and
sentimental slop that dulls the mind.
     Nor was it made by Jimmy Carter. Carter is capable of saying
something smart, but the challenge of trying to keep Ted Kennedy from
wrecking his candidacy and the Democratic Party is almost more than
Carter can handle at one time.
     The speech was made by Jerry Brown, governor of California, who is
sometimes referred to as ''Governor Moonbeam.''
     I have to admit that I gave him that unhappy label. I'm sorry I did
it because the more I see of Brown, the more I'm convinced that he
has been the only Democrat in this year's politics who understands
what the country will be up against in the future.
     And that's been Brown's problem as a national candidate. He won't
talk about creating millions of make-work jobs, spending billions of
dollars, following economic policies that will lead to even higher
inflation, and getting involved in a mad arms race that will probably
blow us all up. He won't pander to organized labor, tell a well-fed
and materialistic America that it is deprived, or try to convince
voters that only the federal government is capable of solving our
problems.
     So what did Brown talk about?
     Strange things, by the political standards of this convention. You
could tell they were strange by the way the delegates became
glassy-eyed or drifted into conversational groups. And by the way the
networks became itchy and looked for people to interview while Brown
was talking.
     The delegates didn't know how to react when Brown said:
     ''It is not the time for a candidate and party that believe the
only long-term threat to our survival comes from one particular
nation 5,000 miles away. Rather, it is time for a candidate and party
which sense the profound change to be wrought by the addition of 2
billion new citizens to this Earth within the next 20 years.''
     Some delegates appeared confused when he went on to say:
     ''It is time to redirect the vast pension funds of this nation to
more socially responsible objectives. There are $650 billion in
deferred wages, earned by the working men and women of this country.
This is the single most significant source of investment capital for
the decade of the '80s.
     ''It is larger than the budget of the federal government and it
will grow to nearly $3 trillion in the middle of the next decade.
...We must devise some creative way-consistent with sound investment
policies-to ensure that these funds rebuild and revitalize America,
contribute to full employment, and provide the new technologies that
will allow us to maintain and improve the quality of our lives.''
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n505  2309  14 Aug 80
 
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     MIKE ROYKO xxx OUR LIVES.''
     Everyone else around here, especially the Kennedy clique, has been
talking about blowing federal money by the ton. Brown is the only one
who talked about pension funds as a national resource. He might be
the only one who was aware of them.
     A few moments later, he said:
     ''As a small minority of the world's population, we must live by
our wits, think better and work harder. We cannot sustain a way of
life that uses one-third of the world's basic resources for but a few
percent of its people. But we can invent new ways to live better. We
can learn to place quality above quantity, and caring above
consumption.''
     People just don't talk that way at political conventions: Make do
with less? Quality over quantity? Less greed and selfishness? That's
the way most of us have to live, but it isn't the kind of political
rhetoric that brings standing ovations. Which Brown didn't get.
     And he thoroughly confused most of his listeners when he went into
this view of America's future:
     ''I share your dream that all Americans can advance together but
that we do so in a form of regional interdependence. I see a type of
common market or economic community that will bring along with us our
brothers and sisters who share this land of North America. Mexicans,
Canadians, Native Americans-North and South-all are part of our
destiny and it is time that we recognize that we are a part of theirs.
     ''The people of North America can prosper together. We have the
potential technology, the environmental resources, the people and
adequate energy. But we will achieve this only as we 'disenthrall
ourselves' and work to save our entire continent.
     ''We are a country that is growing older and diminishing in size in
relation to the exploding populations of Mexico, Africa, Asia and
South America. We must see our challenge as not only East-West,
capitalist-communist, liberty-tyranny. But also, we must see the
challenge as North-South, dark and fair skin, rich and poor, hungry
and well-fed, equality and inequality.
     ''Even if the American people give Ronald Reagan his Kemp-Roth tax
cuts, his nuclear bombs, his breeder reactors, and his superiority
over Russian imperialism, I say it will be as verbal cellophane and
an empty symbol when marshaled against the outraged enmity of the
emerging one billion hungry people. Without hope, their last refuge
will be revolution, anarchy and terrorism.
     ''In a world made small by jets and satellite communication, our
oceans and our missiles will not protect us if we separate ourselves
from the wider longing of humanity.
     ''Liberty for us? Certainly it is our most precious possession. But
also justice for all, wherever on this Earth. That is the advance
that can become the dream of tomorrow. Let us save our dying cities.
Let us lift up the least among us.
     ''But let us do so in concert with our neighbors to the north and
to the south.''
     I hope Brown is still around in 1984. I think the moonbeam has
landed with his feet on the ground.
     ENDIT ROYKO
    
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