Booknotes

Mr. JIM HIGHTOWER ("There's Nothing In The Middle Of The Road But Yellow Stripes And Dead Armadillos"): It is a prehistoric critter that is kind of the state critter of Texas.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, it actually is something that was said to me after I had gotten elected agriculture commissioner in the state of Texas. There's a phenomena, Brian, in Texas politics called `getting well,' those lobbyists who opposed you when you ran come around and try to make amends. And a particularly a smarmy one, who had opposed me with a vengeance came up and said, `Well, Hightower, we can get along with you, I guess, if you'll move over to the middle of the road.' And I was laughing with a farmer friend of mine from out west Texas about this later and he said, `Oh, hell, Hightower, there's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos. So get out there with your friends and let's fight the bastards.'

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yeah, this is pretty much mine. Yeah, mine and this farmer's. I owe this farmer.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Grew up in Denison, Texas, north of Dallas, right on the Oklahoma border. We considered ourselves the first line of defense against the Okies back then.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: It was just typical idealistic, little--growing up in a middle-class family and my mother and father were small businesspeople. Ran--ultimately ran the Main Street newsstand there. And--but they were folks who constantly were hav--having fights with the powers that be. So the populism that I express in this book and in my radio work and politics comes honestly. It's not something I learned in college. Daddy was always having to fight the downtown crowd and deal with the bankers--go hat in hand to the bankers to get his business loans. Then the chain stores came in. So instead of dealing with a--a--a grocery store owner or something there in town, he'd have to send forms in triplicate to Dallas to--to get his business done.

So he was always having to--to fight against the--what he considered the--the power establishment at the time. Then also, Brian, the culture was full of this as well; the kind of mainstream Methodist church I went to--fairly bland, actually. But--but the minister, more often than not, had that kind of radicalism of Jesus, you know, being taught in the sermons. The likelihood of a rich man going into heaven as likely as a camel going through the eye of a needle. That kind of thing was taught. And then a sense, too, of--of the music, which was country music and blues music that had a--a working-class attitude against the powers that be.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, it's really somebody who believes in the power of the people as opposed to some liberals who will look at a problem and s--say, `Well, we've--we've got to create some bureaucracy to deal with this problem,' or the conservatives who will say, `Well, that's the way it works. Tough luck.' A populist tries to empower people to be able to--to help themselves. But it's also--its focus is to take on c--economic concentration, not just look at--some of these other radio commentators, right wing, will say, `Well, the problem's Washington. You got to do something about Washington.'

Well, the problem is Washington but it's--you--you've really got to look at who's pulling the strings of those puppets here in the capitol city. And more often than not those are strings of money leading up to Wall Street.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I think today--well, al--we always--we go through these cycles in our history because it's the nature of--of a capitalist system for power to concentrate. You play that game of Monopoly--you know, the objective of the game of Monopoly is to control everything. And that's pretty much how it works in the real world as well. The difference has been that periodically we have people's rebellion when the powers that be reach too far--the corporate interests go too far.

There is a political rebellion and there are parties that fight to control the excesses of--of that corporate power. And that's what's missing today. And that's what I talk about in this book. And it's why I reserve my most heated verbiage for Bill Clinton rather than Newt Gingrich. I mean, to me--yeah, Newt Gingrich is wacky as can be but he's doing what he's supposed to do. H--his party is supposed to represent the corporate elite. My party, the Democratic Party, is supposed to stand for the working stiffs and for the environment, for old folks and children. But instead they've taken off those Sears Roebuck work boots and strapped on the same boots Guccis and Puccis that the Republicans are running around in.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, I had a radio show at the time, a--a weekend show, that was on ABC. And he was getting beat about the head and ears by Rush Limbaugh and other--and other commentators and talk show hosts and he was getting very upset about this and--and not knowing what to do. This was a new thing. And he feel--felt very beat up on.

And so some of his folks said, `Well, call Hightower. He's got this show and he's on the air.' So he called and said, you know, kind of, `What should I do about this?' And my recommendation was that he go on the radio show with them. Indeed, that--instead of doing that Saturday morning kind of stiff, informal--What is it?--five minutes, I guess, that the president gets on radio on Saturday mornings--that was started by the Gipper, by Ronald Reagan who was very good at those presentations, but for Clinton, he would be much better to do an hour-long Saturday morning talk show.

He's a talky Southern kind of guy, you know? He--I think he would do very well on the radio. And--and then I thought, you know, maybe talking to Tom in Tupelo might kind of loosen him up a little bit, might even make him a Democrat. And so--so I urged him to do that. But, of course, instead, tighter minds in the White House got around him and said, `No. What we need to do is to attack the talk radio show people,' not understanding that if you attack the hosts, you're also attacking the 40 million people a week who are listening to those shows.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: He did. For--for one time we had him on. And--and it went very well. He loved it, in fact. And I thought maybe, you know, it would develop into something, a--a kind of p--positive offensive on talk radio rather than a defensive posture. But it shows how much influence I have in the White House.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I live in Austin, Texas. I broadcast a daily radio show out there, "Hightower's Chat and Chew." We literally are coming from a restaurant in Austin called Threadgills. We broadcast, Brian, from Threadgills' world headquarters on the top floor from the Chat and Chew. Th--it's a one-story building, but it's radio, so...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: We're all across the country, 86 markets by the latest count, Maine to Maui as we like to say. And it's--is available also on the Internet at jimhightower.com through real audio you can get my program.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yes. Right.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: That was in 1995 and that's in the section there where I'm dealing about the conglomeratization of our media and the concentration of our media, which is a little more important than automobiles and--and even computer chips because you're talking about people's access to information through which we're supposed to have a democratic process. Things are going swimmingly with ABC. I had a weekend show Saturdays and Sundays; was all across the country in good markets, adding markets.

ABC had just been down to visit with me and say, `Well, things are--we--we're--really like the show. We think it's going to work. And we're in it for the long haul. It's going to be a slow bill but we're with you on it.' And then on--I believe it was August 1st, it was announced that Disney Inc. was taking over ABC. And that same week the telecommunications bill passed the US Senate, an issue we'd been following and criticizing. So I went on the air on Saturday criticizing both the ABC merger and the passage of the telecommunications bill as being a shrinkage of American democracy, something that was detrimental to our society, and allowed as how I now work for a rodent and--and even had a little Mickey Mouse character. It turns out Mickey didn't have a real sense of humor about this. So there was a chilling of my relationship with ABC, not really over that show but over the notion that--in--in my view what happened is that the powers that be decided that the one thing they don't want talked about on their network was big money interests, and that was essentially what my show was about.

Their radio ownership is willing to have liberals on and--if they'll talk about welfare and immigration and people fighting each other. But once you all begin to look up and say, `Wait a minute. There's the powers that be and we've got to talk about that,' that's one thing that they don't want discussed on their air. So I was punted.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: They told me that--that we weren't getting stations fast enough, that suddenly, af--after having just a month before said, `We're in this for the long run. There'll be a slow build but it's going to work. We are adding stations,' now they came in and said, `Well, it's not working. We're not getting the advertising,' even though I had suggested advertisers for them, some of whom they had not approached, and others who had approached them. For example, some labor unions had wanted to advertise and ABC rejected that on the basis that it would be advocacy advertising.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, fundamentally the--the big one today is class war--the fact that we have a class war being waged and has been for the last 20, 25 years but not as is classically imagined, the--the masses rebelling, but, in fact, the elites from their bastions of power and privilege in Washington and on Wall Street lobbing bomb after bomb at the people. The massive layoffs and downsizings, taking g--jobs out of this country, exploiting Third World workers, paying just abysmally low wages even by the standards of those foreign nations, those impoverished countries, and then using those wages to come back here and say, `Now we're going to knock your wages down, too, because you've got to compete in this global economy,' just all--all kinds of economic bombs being fired at the people themselves.

The--the welfare reform bill, which said to a million welfare moms, `Get a job' when they knew there were no jobs out there and they also knew that putting a million welfare moms on the--into the workplace at the same time was going to further depress the wages of people who were trying to get jobs out here. So th--that's what I mean by class war and the rebellion of people willing to--to take--now is being--beginning to take place, that people are saying, `Hey, we're going to start fighting back in the class war.' And we've had some recent examples of that.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yes.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: It is--well, what's wrong with it is it goes against a fundamental principle of our society and that is that we're all in this together; that what's happening today is that the gain is being generated by the many--and even the CEOs admit, indeed, worker productivity is up. The workers in this country are doing a great job. But, hey, adios chump. They're taking the money. Virtually all of those economic gains have been hauled off by the CEOs and the largest investors at the top. And then they turn and fire h--hundreds of thousands, even millions, in a year's time, the people who produce those gains.

So it's not--it's not that CEOs are making money, as I point out in another section, Brian. Some people say, `Money is the root of all evil.' But that's not what the Bible says. It says, `The love of money is the root of all evil.' And those who love money are having an orgy today. It's the greed that I am against, certainly not making money. I'm--I'm with Mark Twain on that, who said that, `I'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.'

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Indeed. Well...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I steal most of them. I read--I get a bunch just by being with people as I travel around and also on the radio. I--you know, people are full of these kinds of--of witticisms and--and offer 'em to me and I very carefully tuck them away in recesses of my mind. But also if you read the funny pages, if you read sports pages, if you're just kind of out there with the popular culture, these are the kind of things that ordinary folks actually say.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Mm.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, quite a few. I mean, at one level, it's--it's everybody who sort of has a fighting spirit in this country and who fights back against these abuses. But it's--I--I am of the pamphleteer tradition in this country; Thomas Paine for me, Daniel Shays and the Shays' Rebellion, and then moving forward into Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, the--the Populists and the Wobblies, Socialist Jerry Simpson and Mary Ellen Lees, on into Huey Long and John L. Lewis and more modern day--Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez. These are the folks that--that I admire, people who extend democracy.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I think so. I mean, somebody's buying my book. It's amazing. We're on our third printing, so there are actually people out there buying the book. And my radio show is out there and expanding markets. I see myself as a--as a messenger of this particular viewpoint but also a messenger who tries to connect people up. It's my belief that we don't have to create a progressive movement. It's out there. Just about every place that's got a ZIP code has somebody who's taking on the powers on--fighting on environmental issues, fighting for neighborhood schools, fighting for living wages, you know, those kinds of fights, but they're not connected up. People in Portland, Maine, don't know that people in Portland, Oregon, are fighting the exact same powers and usually over many of the same issues. And they don't even know that across town there are other people who are doing--in these same kinds of fights.

So I see my role as trying to literally connect them up as I do on--on the radio show when I can literally be on the air with 'em, but then also through my words to be able to--to give that some perspective and some value system that's attached to it. And that's what I say in my speeches, Brian, is that whatever battle you're fighting, if--if it's about wages, if it's about farmers, you know, getting a fair break, being able to sustain the family farm, whatever, it comes down to basic values--things like economic fairness, social justice and equal opportunity for all people. I think those are the founding values of our country. And so we need to speak in that language and that is--those are values that people have in their guts and in their hearts that--people will respond to that. They will identify themselves within it. And that's what I've tried to do. I tell a lot of specific stories in the book and I do talk about outrages, but I also talk at length about people who are fighting back and who are winning. There are some wonderful stories in there.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yes.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, this is a man who has laid off quite a few thousand employees through the Dial Corporation, which is a consumer product manufacturing outfit, a man who has been very parsimonious with his employees. I mean, literally scolding memos going out about, you know, `Don't make any phone calls. Don't you dare take a paper clip home,' and etc. But there was an incident in which some $10 million of the company's money was invested in the Diamond--Diamondback Rattlers baseball team that Teets is an owner of. So this company that's supposedly supposed to be very parsimonious suddenly is putting $10 million into a baseball team that--that this guy owns; and that was his response when he was asked by reporters about, `Isn't there a little hypocrisy here?' He said, `Well, we're talking about futures, my future.'

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, it's--it's not like just getting the pink slip, which is what ordinary working folks have been getting and maybe, you know, th--three weeks, four weeks severance pay. But he's getting a--a--a major payoff just straight up front, a...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: There you go. That's just to start with.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: And he's not even the--the golden winner of the--of the firing game 'cause Michael Ovitz who got fired--or some say fired, he says quit--from Disney Inc. as number two, having been on the job barely a year, and by s--many accounts having been quite inept at the job, he got fired and I believe his payoff was to the tune of $140 million. And so there's a joke going around at Disney instead of having--putting a sign on somebody's back saying, `Kick me,' you know, that old joke, people were--executives were putting signs on their backs saying, `Fire me.' It's a better deal.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yes.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, it means that they're supposed to have a governing body called the board of directors. But the problem with that theory is that the chief executives of these companies turn up putting their golf buddies on their own boards of directors and people--and executives from other companies on their boards of directors. So they're--they've kind of got a sweetheart setup to start with, but then they go further by lavishing benefits on the boards of directors, so they are loathe to do anything that would maybe cause a cutback in their actual benefits. And by benefits, I mean, actual pay that in many cases--above $100,000 a year for a few hours work a year to come to a board meeting, and then other special bennies. I know that General Motors gives its members of its boards of directors a new Cadillac every three months just so that new-car smell doesn't disappear.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Oh, yeah. Astonishing. Yeah.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, it should be stopped, of course. Well, one thing you can do is stop the tax deductibility of this giveaway. I mean, it's one thing if they really want to spend their own corporate funds on this, if the--if the shareholders themselves want to allow this, though there is a--a--I will say, a rising shareholder rebellion against these kind of sweetheart deals. But the other thing is, you know--and if--if boards of directors and shareholders want to pay a--a chief executive $100 million, which is, you know, not uncommon these days, that--that the top-paid executive in the country makes that level of money--fine. But I don't think they ought to be able to deduct it from their income tax, to shove that burden back on the rest of us taxpayers. So that's one way to stop it.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yes.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Not generally known about the president, but what I'm talking about there is the--the whole issue of happiness. And, today, happiness is defined for us as consumption; the amount of toys that you can amass. Essentially, the American citizen is asked to go to work and buy. That's pretty much the expectation. And I'm asking in this book, `Whatever happened to the third inalienable right that was talked about in the--in the founding days?' which was quite a full debate because it was life, liberty and property was the--the contention point. Some wanted property in there. But the one that carried the day was life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that happiness had a very broad meaning. It didn't mean get a job and buy stuff. It meant being able to have a full life, you know, your cultural sensibilities being satisfied as well as your financial needs. That was the pursuit that our country committed itself to back then. But now that's not even on the table. You do have politicians come out and ask, `Are you better off than four years ago?' But when's the last time one came out and said, `Are you happy?'

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I am happy because I am doing--I am getting that enrichment. I'm getting that sense of doing something that is--that is not only worthwhile in my view and able to reach people in a rather significant way, but--but also having fun. And my credo, Brian, is `You can fight the gods and still have fun.' That's very important to me--to me to be able to enjoy it.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Isn't that handsome? Mm. I'm concerned, though, Brian, because, you know, I try to--I'm making serious points. I've got funny and good stories in here, but with that picture I could--I could be dismissed as a sex object. What do you think?

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I don't even know. HarperCollins came up with it somewhere. I don't even remember. But it would have been--it's not a--it's not a--taken for this book, so it would have been in the last six years or so.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: No. I'm not married, but I--I have an extended family that I am very much a part of and very committed to.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: That was, like, September of 1995.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, I got to do nothing because they not only said it was over, they did not let me go back on the air because they were afraid of what I was going to say. So that was the--the crude and rude aspect of it was...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, it--it happened a--a--again because, essentially...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: No, they--they showed up. A--a vice president of ABC radio appeared ostensibly to--to talk about some of the show's promotion and that kind of thing, and--but, basically--and he--and he did it in a--you know, he was a friend of mine. He's the guy who had brought me onto the air, and--and said, you know, `We're pulling the plug on it,' just that straightforward. I mean, this...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: This was in Austin. He did--you know, took me to lunch, but even before we ordered, said, `By the way, we're pulling the plug on the show.' He di--not a guy to beat around the bush, which I actually did appreciate that.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: No. No. B--again, because the show had been doing well and we had just recently received a--a positive report from ABC on the performance of the show.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, I was...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: ...I was in some shock and had to talk to the people--I mean, there are other people besides me who were involved in the show, so they were going to have their futures changed very dramatically, so I had to deal with that. And then I--I wanted to deal with the way this information got out. I wanted it to go out and ask that it go out in a joint kind of communique between myself and ABC, but that is not what happened. Very quickly--they agreed to that, but very quickly word was leaking out from ABC that--that I was being punted and there was an effort to put the blame on me, that Hightower just--it wasn't working, he just wasn't very good and--and--and the--the--we weren't getting affiliates--we weren't getting sponsors. So that kind of stuff began to get out. So then I fought back by putting out my own statements and talking to the media about, you know, what had actually gone on there. And the good news was that within a year's time I was back on the air through United Broadcasting Network with a--my "Hightower's Chat and Chew," and--and even a better format because instead of it just being weekends, I'm every day for two hours.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, it--they actually came to me, in part, because I did have an audience out there. I mean, there--and there were--you know, we did a good show and there were people who liked the viewpoint and clearly a--a listenership for that viewpoint. So a couple of networks, actually, were approaching me to--to do another show, but this particular one, United Broadcasting Network, came along and they were very entrepreneurial and had the kind of feisty attitude and even to some degree the politics that I had. So I--I'm--I had less fear with them that the same s--scenario was going to be repeated that I went through with ABC, in part because among the other ways that--including advertising, that United Broadcasting Network gets its revenue is it's kind of like a home-shopping channel of radio. You can call an (800) number and get a catalog that has `made in the USA' products. Everything in there made in the USA, 70 percent of 'em union made. So it's a--a lot of people search for that, so it's a niche in the marketplace, a very clever way to--to find a way to finance a--a broadcast that takes a--an anti-corporate viewpoint, since they're usually the advertiser.

You know, my momma taught me years ago that two wrongs don't make a right, but I soon figured out that three left turns do. And--and that seemed to be a three-left-turn kind of cleverness that United Broadcasting Network came up with, so I joined with them.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Several different investors are in it, but among them, that's another point, is the United Autoworkers. So th--it has ownership that is also supportive of the kind of anti-global greed politics that I talk about on the show.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: It has been a network for a long time. It has--it was previously called the People's Radio Network and then changed ownership about a year and a half ago, if I got my dates right here, and I've been on the air about a year and three months now.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yeah. The old Chuck Harter station. And--and Chuck's still on the radio on another network.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: East Coast time would be noon to 2. And then time zones work it across the country.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, radio is, as L--Rush Limbaugh keeps saying, and he's right, and as basically all program directors say, radio is about entertainment. I mean, people do ten--tune in to get information, but it's also got to be presented to them in a way that they might want to receive it. And so I've learned to have fun. You know, the show--the PBS show, "Car Talk," Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers? There's apparently actually been some timing done of their show that shows that a third of their hour broadcast is them laughing. You know, so--so we--we don't go quite that far, but we have a lot of laughter on the show and a lot of fun stuff. It's all very pointed. Even the light and fun topics that we deal with still have a political point that's--that's within them. But, again, back to that credo, that, `You can fight the gods and still have fun,' that's what we try to do on the show.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Quite a bit 'cause we're very information loaded and we deconstruct the news every day. As Bennett Cerf once said, `You gotta learn to read between the lies,' and that's--that's what we try to do for folks. So we'll take the news story of the day and--and say, `Here's what's really going on and here's who's getting what out of that,' for example. But it takes--I've got a producer who spends two hours in the wee hours, early in the morning, going through the papers and listening to some broadcasts. Then I write in the mornings, then I come in usually at 9:00 and I spend a couple of hours preparing, then we go--go on the air with the show. So it does take a lot of work, but we also tie in to a lot of grassroots organizations, public interest groups who have wonderful, wonderful information that usually is not getting out. So we also provide a service, I think, in--in making sure that that's--those kinds of issues get on the table.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Ralph Yarborough, my man. I worked for Ralph Yarborough, a great fighting people's Democrat from the state of Texas...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: ...back in 1967, '8 and '9. He--when he was a senator, I was a legislative aide to him...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Here in Washington, yeah.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Twenty-four, I think, when I first started there and--and was really--I mean, I was amazed 'cause I was just a couple of years out of college then--went to North Texas State, now University of North Texas, then a small college in Texas. And here I was suddenly in the big city, city of power, Lyndon Johnson, president--so much going on at that time in our history--the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement beginning, just gigantic issues. All things seemed possible, the world could be saved; and I saw myself doing that, and here I was hired by an actual United States senator.

And on that first morning of my first day, I walk into that office, and as a legislative aide, among your other duties, is you--you han--you--you have to handle the letters of constituents who write in about your areas of--the topics that--that you're responsible for. So I reached into my first folder on my first day and pulled out my first letter, thinking, indeed, this worthy citizen has written to his elected representative to--and I will give him the best I can, and the salutation was `Dear Peckerwood,' and I realized that--that not all was going to be gigantic statesmanship in politics right there.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yes, he was. He d--he didn't like the term himself because there were--ba--back when he was first getting into poc--popul--politics, some so-called populists back then were actually racists, and Ralph Yarborough didn't like that connotation. So he didn't like to be called a populist, but he certainly was in terms of the policies and ideals that he fought for.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I l--I learned that power is not here and too much of the progressive movement of my generation at that time was trying to speak to the country nationally and generally--corporate power is a problem--rather than speaking to them locally and specifically, which is where people live. And--and as--as good as the public interest movement is, it still fundamentally is predicated on using--borrowing the power of people who've been elected from around the country to come here.

That's why, after 10 years in Washington, in Yarborough's office and public interest work, I knew it was time to go back to Texas because that's where power was. If I was actually going to have power, then I had to be on the ground level, where--where the power fight is going on. And I did that both as a journalist and then made the only downward career move you can make from journalism. I actually went into politics and amazingly got elected.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: The Monsons are th--symbolic of the establishment everywhere, and there's the establishment like Wall Street that has a national connotation, but in every little town out there, there--there is a family or maybe a small group of families that--that is the establishment, that have powers. And the Monsons were the ones that--that my old daddy and--and his small business and working-class folks always were having to--wanting to beat, wanting to have a politics that addressed them. And the Monsons had a s--the park in the town was named after them...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yeah, in Denison. And they had the power, and Daddy and his friends would say of the reigning patriarch of the Monson family at the time, `He can strut sitting down.' I mean, they--they didn't th--there--there was the--an aloofness and a superiority that was given off by--by this family. And then came my first race for--for office, and the Monsons supported my opponent.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: This was in 1980--supported my--I'm sorry, 1982, 'cause this was when I was running for agriculture commissioner--and s--brought my opponent in, who was the incumbent agriculture commissioner, got this grinning fool's picture made with them on the front page of The Denison Herald, raised money for him and just--my daddy--they--you sh--you could've stuck him in the eye with a sharp stick and caused less pain than that would cause 'cause my mother and daddy were the--were my campaign coordinators in Denison. And so he was outraged and he--he got to doing even more organizing as a result of this.

And on election night, when I had won a statewide victory over this incumbent, I called my family--it was about midnight--expecting, `Lord, they'd probably be to bed,' but instead, there was this raucous party going on. They were celebrating this victory, and I got my m--my mother answered the phone, talked to her, and then she got my father on the phone, and instead of him saying, `Way to go, boy,' or, `I'm proud of your statewide victory,' he said, `We beat the Monsons. We beat the Monsons.' And that's the kind of politics I think people want. They wanna beat the Monsons. They wanna take their country back.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: That's my daddy, known as `High,' so if you wanna know where I get these little witticisms and kind of crazy things, start with the fact that my daddy was named High.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Died four years ago.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Still kicking and al--al--alive and more than well up in Denison, Texas.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: They were--they were folks that, I think, as a r--that remarkable generation that so much changed in their lifetime, change that they wrought. Both of them came off just dirt-poor tenant farms. My mother raised on a s--a subsistence farm, they made their own soap. They made everything. And Daddy's mother, when he was just a boy, sh--graduated from high school, she said, `Get off the farm. You gotta get off the farm,' and--and he's very ambitious, hard worker, believing in the middle-class dream. And they connected up and came together in Denison, Texas, and raised a middle-class family.

And--and they believed in that notion of the common good, and that's--that's what's missing in our politics today. My last essay is--I call "Daddy's Philosophy," and my daddy didn't know he had a philosophy, but it was expressed to me a number of times by him. He said, `Jim, everybody does better when everybody does better,' and that's what's missing. And wh--in fact, that's quite the opposite of what is being pursued from Wall Street and from Washington today.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: It had a little bit of everything. You could buy cigarette paper and you could buy magazines and newspapers, you could buy school supplies, you could buy a little bit of hand lotion, so it was kind of a--kind of a general store. It was really a--a magazine and office supply store, is what it was, but he had a little bit of everything in there. And, of course, he was the chief BS coordinator, and every morning around 9:00 or 10:00, the l--some of the local clerks and delivery men and that kind of thing would show up and--and they would drink Dr Peppers or Coca-Colas from his--he had a cold drink box there, a Dr Pepper box, that he considered the--he bragged had the coldest soft drinks in the Greater Denison metroplex. You know? And--and--and they would shoot the breeze and solve all the world's problems, you know, in 15 or 20 minutes, and that's where I really got my humor, was, you know, just listening and later being able to participate with these folks.

And--and that's when I realized that--that the real political spectrum in our country is not right to left, it's top to bottom. Right to left meant my father had to say he was a conservative. If your choice is liberal or conservative, then he would've said a conservative. But if you'd stood there with him at the Dr Pepper box and heard him and--and his friends talk about what bank holding companies were doing to small towns like Denison and to small businesspeople like them, if you talked to them about the power of the lobbyists in Washington and Austin to--to squeeze out the working people, you could talk to him about the pollution that the big corporations are doing, why, you--you would've scratched William Jennings Bryan--I mean, just a--as--as hot a--a progressive as you ever wanted to be in front of.

The real spectrum--right to left is theory; top to bottom is where people live; that's experience. And as I argue in this book, 80 percent of us who've had our incomes knocked down over the last 20 years, the eight-out-of-10 majority that don't have a four-year college degree, the eight out of 10 who make less than $50,000 a year, they're nowhere in shouting distance of the powers at the top anymore, whether they--those powers call themselves Republican or Democrat. And that is a--the kind of bottom-up politics that I'm advocating we've got to have in this country if we're going to be a United States of America.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Quite a bit. I worked--as a boy, I worked Saturdays at the cash register, you know, just selling the goods, and then--and then in the summers and on--and then often on the weekends, too, would work in the magazine distributorship that Daddy also had. So we distributed the magazines around, so I--from--from the time I was--that I outweighed a bundle of magazines, which was about 12 years old, I was a--was working. It was a real mom-and-pop operation.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I did, and got great exposure to--to reading, and I think--and--and even to the classics, you know, because it w--also the pocket books. Back then, you could buy a pocket book for 25 cents, so--so began my exposure to--to literature and ideas and--and a bigger world than Denison, even though it turns out the world has a lot to learn from Denison.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Now it's probably a--back then, it was 17,000, when I grew up.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yeah. There's light assembly industry, that sort of thing. Used to have a Levi plant--it's gone now. Safeway had a oil plant there. There--those kinds of light industries.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Just kind of idyllic. It's on the rolling hills, the rolling plains going down to the Red River and, you know, lots of trees and just single-family homes for the most part, small downtown, a main street literally called Main Street and--and had a good, strong feel of it. And I even--you know, we used to--pre-television--I grew up pre-television, so I was 10, I guess, before we had a TV. So doing the Main Street promenade in the evening was something that I actually experienced, kinda window shopping and stopping off at the local ice cream place and getting a cone and saying howdy to folks and that sort of thing. It was...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: That's an old cowboy saying from out in--out in west Texas, and--and that's--that's what I feel that my politics is about, my--my messenger service is about. It is to speak some truths that the powers that be don't really want us talking about. And it involves that--the fact that corporatism is taking over our society and our globe, that there is a class war being waged, that our democracy--the dialogue that we have in this country is being shrunk as a result of conglomeratization of the media, that there are some real truths that ordinary people know are happening but that the political system and mostly the establishment media are not discussing but people do wanna talk about it.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Went back to take over the Texas Observer. I was editor of the Texas Observer for...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Three years.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Then I ran for political office, lost my first race, which was for an o--weird little office called railroad commissioner, which has very little to do with railroads and a lot to do with utilities, and oil and gas, in that state, and--and then turn and two years later ran for agriculture commissioner, which I--I won, and served two terms there.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yes.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, it's indicative of the `all--all the news that's fit to print' mentality of establishment media today. The day Ted Koppel left town was in August, I guess it was, of 1996 at the Republican National Convention in San Diego, and Ted Koppel, after two days there, covering it from the convention hall, announced, `There's no news here. I'm leaving town,' packed it all up and off he went with his entourage off to wherever they went. Of course, there's no news inside a convention hall because they're totally scripted, orchestrated television extravaganzas.

But had Ted really wanted to have some news, he could've gone two blocks from that convention hall to a marina, where Tom DeLay, the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, was hosting a--a fund-raiser with all the lobbyists gathered around and Tom, in a aquamarine shirt and--and white shorts, rubbing up against the money powers in this country. Or he could've gone to another yacht--or--the previous day where he held yet another fund-raiser or he could've gone to another yacht where he had a breakfast fund-raiser the day after that. It was a money orgy, a wonderful media opportunity to show the--the synergy between big-money interests and influential members of the Congress. That would've been a wonderful TV moment, but instead, Ted was busy packing.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I don't think that reporters today are--high-level folks like that I'm talking about, your big byline reporters at major newspapers and newsmagazines, the on-air television network people--are any more in touch with the American people than the politicians that they cover these days. It used to be that reporter--reporting was a working-class activity. You were a worker and you h--had a rumpled trench coat maybe and after work you went to a place called Shorty's and then you went home to, you know, a subdivision that was a working-class kinda--kinda place; and that's who you were in touch with.

Now instead of going to Shorty's or going to the Headliners Club or some place like that, they're dressed in Guccis and Puccis. They are going to the same gated and guarded ca--compounds that the elites live in--not, again, anything conspiratorial, but it changes the--the world view of the news that we get because those folks are--for them, for example, NAFTA, fast-track, these kinds of international trade deals, that's an interesting after-dinner conversation, but it's not about, `Hey, what about my future? Am I going to have a job? Are my kids going to have a job?' So that changes the way that--those kinds of fundamental issues get covered. And it's why a lot of folks look at the TV set and say, `Lord have mercy, I have no idea who they're talking about, much less who they're talking to.'

Mr. HIGHTOWER: This was a little fund-raiser for me up in Paducah, Texas, I believe it was, a little farming community, and one of my local supporters had a $25-a-head gathering at their home. Twenty or 30 folks showed up, and doing the usual--you know, having a cups of--cup of goat's milk there, a beer, and--and getting ready to--to go in to--for me to say a few thousand well-chosen words, you know, to demonstrate my dynamic vision for the state of Texas. Instead, as I walk in behind the hostess, she turns to the assembled and says that line, that, `Instead of hearing Jim speak, we saw the segment that he did on--that "60 Minutes" did on him recently and we taped it, so we're going to show that instead.' So the whole room turned from me, the human being, and watched me, the virtual person, on the television set and were, I would daresay, much more impressed by the fact that I was on television than that I was actually in the room with them, and...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: It--it amused me at the time, but it bothers me in terms of what politics has become, that--that the virtual image is--is more important politically, not to people but more important in terms of--of what politicking has become than actual standing for principle, enunciating a program and being willing to fight for it and going out among the people. Now we have actual US Senate campaigns where the--the candidates do not campaign, they do not go to people. They spend their time on the telephone and then that money goes on the--on the--the money that they raise on the telephone then goes into television advertising, and that's all the campaign is.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yes.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Right, but this was a--this was the pre-Clinton Greer and s--and still is in his heart. Frank then headed the Public Media Center out in San Francisco, California, and we recruited him in the Fred Harris campaign for president back in 1976--a good populist campaign, by the way; unsuccessful. I was the national coordinator and, as I like to brag, made Fred Harris what he is today, a professor in Albuquerque.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: That would've been the '82 primary for president.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Right.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yes, Tom Tomorrow, otherwise known as, the great cartoonist.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well--well, he is, along with--he is--couple of reasons he's in my book: one, generally I talk in this book about getting access to real information. If you're fed up with the little that you are getting from the establishment media, then there are alternatives that are out there, including this very network, C-SPAN, but there are also all korn--all kinds of feisty publications and newsletters and radio broadcasts and even television broadcasts. But the ones that I admire the most really are the editorial cartoonists in this country 'cause not only do they get it, not only do they express it in one panel, but they draw you a picture of the thing, and I--I greatly admire their skill. I think they're the true pamphleteers.

Tom Tomorrow--Dan Perkins, his real name--was at the great debate, presidential debate, between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton, in 1996, the debate in which Ross Perot and Ralph Nader and the other third-party candidates were deliberately excluded, and he gave a report about the media covering this event.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Right.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yes.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: And that's why, you know, people have about as much respect for the media these days as they do for politicians.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I don't think it has to be. I think we've got to build a new politics in this country, and we have to build a new media. I think that media is being built already because the people want information. People find you and they find me on the radio because they are seekers of--of truth as they see it. And so a--as long as--as we have spunky, feisty outlets a--and then even new ones coming along, like the Internet, which I suspect will become the radio of the future, will actually be the Internet.

But fundamentally, we've got to create a new politics that is based on those folks that I mentioned are out there in the countryside, not a need to create a progressive movement--it's already out there, but it's not connected up. And those are the folks who are mad as hell about the--the `globaloney,' as they see it, otherwise called global competitiveness--that is, same old global greed that's knocking them down--and that's, again, the 80 percent majority. And if we--we cannot as a country have a--a United States of America and a healthy political system that excludes the 80 percent majority of the country. So that vacuum will be filled. The questions is, is: Is it going to be filled in a positive way and a--and a--and a progressive way? It could be filled in a very ugly way.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I promised not to do that. I've been cured. I've taken the waters and I have found ways, Brian, to run my mouth and have a lot of fun doing it and have, really, a greater impact. I mean, I'm reaching millions of people every week on the radio, able to do the books and I've got a political newsletter that I'm putting out called The Hightower Lowdown, so--got the Web site, so I'm finding plenty of ways to run my mouth and get my message out, which I think is the most important role for me right now.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Good question. Rupert Murdoch being the owner of HarperCollins--this is one of the big conglomerates and I do get asked that question. As I say, Rupert Murdoch would probably moon the queen of England if he thought there was a dollar bill in it for him, so I think he's willing to publish anything that might sell. But also, I had a great editor there, Adrian Zackheim, the very guy who edited Newt Gingrich's book, by the way, so Adrian is a little schizophrenic. But--but he understood what I was trying to say in this book and also the humor that was going to be in the book, and--and he wanted the book and that's why I'm at HarperCollins.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: A little bit of everything. Some of them asked to do it. The publisher asked a couple of them and I asked a couple of them.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I know all of them.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yeah.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Yes, absolutely, all--all good voices for this political message, all very different. I mean, o--obviously, Al Franken essentially is a humorist but with politics. Michael Moore is a political animal with humor. And then Molly Ivins is just, you know, possibly the most wonderful Texan alive.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I owe Molly a dinner.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, I--I certainly can't--not going to say that there is, but--but it--Molly understands that in addition to this being a series of essays and--and having my Texas humor in it, that this is--as the subtitle of the book suggests, this is a very important book in terms of what it takes on, what it challenges. The subtitle of the book is a work of political subversion.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: No, I--I don't, and there's nothing personal in this. I don't care for Bill Clinton, the political leader, because I feel he's led us astray. As I say, he's a quisling in the class war, a traitor.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Right, and I think that's happening to him right now. He's bitten the constituency that should be the Democratic Party's constituency: working folks, people concerned about clean air and clean water, old folks and children, poor people, the middle class. He's bitten them again and again and again, turned his back on them, betrayed them. And, you know, if he's not standing with them and his party is not standing with them, why should they stand with him and with that party?

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I--I will just keep running my mouth and--and finding maybe even more microphones to use. I would put that--a--any money that I make basically goes into my work anyway 'cause I live pretty modestly.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Embarrassed by riches?

Mr. HIGHTOWER: No, I don't worry. I think it's too late for me.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, I'm--I'm really committed to this cause. I've spent my lifetime--this isn't, you know, a book I've written and--and my radio show isn't a radio show. I've--from the time I got out of--well, really, from the time I was a mature person beginning to--to understand issues around me, I have been involved in the--in the political issues of our day and--and fighting back against those that I see running over the--the people I really care about in our society. So, you know, that--that is deeply ingrained in who I am, and--and finding another dollar bill in my pocket is not going to make any difference.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Right. Right.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, to--I think to some degree, they--they--they may ha--may already have rebelled in terms of, you know, supporting this book, of--of--of allowing it to--to get an audience in some of their forums. But--but that's the nature of the game. If you--if you--and that's what I wish politics would be. I mean, say what it is you're actually thinking and--and tell the stories and let people know what is going on, and I don't do this in a mean way, even with Bill Clinton, who's the one I do take on most in the book, because I think he has the most responsibility for the collapse of our politics in this country.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Well, certainly ignored, I think, because, I mean...

Mr. HIGHTOWER: I--I--I can't say that. I mean, I don't--I don't know that yet and I'm still trying to get on their shows, so--you know, the book's been out a month, so we'll see.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: No, they--they used the--the populist message, I think, and they--and they used the populist history to try to gain political strength, some of that with integrity, some of it not. But the issue was not who they were, it's who their voters were. The media tried to say, `Well, Perot and Buchanan are using the people.' That's not what I find in my discussions on the radio with people and traveling around. People were using them as a two-by-four to whack both political parties upside the head and say, `Hey, both of you are horse hockey and you better be paying attention to the majority.'

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Down the road. It's--it's a long-term building strategy and that's what I point out in this book. You gotta quit looking to the next presidential election. You've gotta build at the grass-roots level. Who's going to be state rep? Who's going to be county commissioner? And then down the road, you worry about the presidency.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: No, I've not, but I've actually been to an armadillo race. Hmm.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: More than you would like to know. They're--and they're moving north, by the way. Beware o--you know, in your own back yard, Brian.

Mr. HIGHTOWER: Thank you, Brian.