I first saw this on Cspan on Sunday. It showed over 300 views. It took me 3 days to transcribe this segment. A true labor of love as Bill Moyers would say. The number of views is over 900 today. On Cspan no less.
Here are the links:
Cspan video: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/...
Transcription of Cspan video: http://solutionsearch-tbug.blogspot.com/
Bill Moyer's Journal: http://www.pbs.org/...
Books:
Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues
Moyers on Democracy
Bill Moyers conversation with Garrison Keillor on Cspan part I
GK: Thank you very much. Welcome to the Fitzgerald Theater. Thank you for coming out on this gorgeous evening when you should have been outdoors and we will try to make this evening worth your while. Welcome to the Fitzgerald Theater named for the St. Paul author who as a boy used to sit up in the balcony up there and watch plays on stage. And then went back home to Laurel Avenue to tell his family the whole story and thus developed his narrative skills.
Our guest, Mr. Bill Moyers is in town for a very important event, for his grandson's graduation last night. So that's how he happens to be here. He's not just out flogging a book. He's here on important business and we managed to hold him over for a day. Mr .Moyers was born in Hugo, OK 1934. Hugo, OK is a little tiny town just up above the Texas border. His father Henry Moyers, was a day laborer, an odd-jobs man. Handyman. He did whatever he could to get along. His mother Ruby was a woman who was familiar with poverty and with pain. She lost three babies in childbirth. Two before Bill was born, and one after. All of them girls. This was a devout southern Baptist family. Henry Moyers was a deacon of the Baptist church in Hugo. And then in Marshall TX, when the family moved down to Marshall which is just on the other side of the TX border. Oklahoma-Texas border. He was an unusual southern Baptist. At least we would look upon him as unusual because as well as being a fundamentalist and born-again true-believer, he was also a died-in-the-wool Democrat. And a supporter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Its a very interesting combination to us today. If there were a Henry Moyers around, we'd have to put him in a museum. And so that we could study him.
Bill Moyers was an ambitious hard-working young man. He was too light to play football, so he became a cheerleader. He wrote for the school paper. He was attentive to his church. He was there on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings. And he was there for Wednesday evening prayer meeting as well. Young people's and bible reading and all. He was very much involved. He wrote for the school newspaper. He worked at the grocery store. And he got the attention of a man named Millard Cope. Who was the editor of the News Messenger, the Marshall News Messenger. The small town newspaper. Millard Cope took an interest in him. Hired him to write for the paper. And it was Millard Cope, a conservative Democrat, who wrote a letter to his good friend a Senator Lyndon B Johnson recommending the 20 year old Bill Moyers for a internship in Washington. He went to Washington and something happened between him and Lyndon B Johnson. Who was a powerful man. A Senate majority leader. But he took this boy on under his wing. Took him in, as perhaps, the son he did not have. And Mr. Moyers became Mr. Johnson's protege. He came back to Texas. He went to work for the Johnson's radio station in Austin. And enrolled in the University of Texas in Austin. He married Judith Suzanne Davidson. A lucky move on his part. And he became a lay preacher, preaching in country church. He's around. He got a scholarship off to the University of Edinburgh and studied Ecclesiastical history. And that confirmed him in his desire to become a minister. The call to the ministry. His preaching in country churches was not about ethics, my friends. It was about sin. And they were good hard-edged sermons. The southern Baptist of Texas demanded no less than that. And he went off to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He got his masters in Divinity. And took a call at a little tiny church in in a small town, Brandford, TX. And he was good at it. He earned $35 dollars a week and he put his heart and soul into it. He was popular in that town right up to the Sunday when he got up in that pulpit with tears in his eyes. And told them, that he was leaving the ministry. And felt a call to go into politics. To a life of action. And that call was to come to Washington to work for Lyndon B Johnson. This was in 1959, and Lyndon Johnson wanted to run for president. He did with Bill Moyers' help, and lost the nomination to John F. Kennedy. And when Lyndon Johnson was elected vice president, this was Bill Moyers' chance to leave his employer and go work for the Peace Corp.. Which it didn't even exist yet. But he went to work lobbying Congress for it. He was, what only 26 years old. 26-27 years old. He worked for the Peace Corp. until in the fall of 1963. He was sent off to Texas on a political mission. He was sitting at the luncheon in Dallas on that day in November when President Kennedy was assassinated. Mr. Moyers made his way to the airfield and got aboard to Air Force One and flew back to Washington with President Johnson. And went to work as his very close personal assistant on domestic affairs and a speech writer and then press secretary. He left the White House for a couple of reasons, maybe more. He left because, because Mr. Johnson who had powerful trepidations about the war in Vietnam had become obsessed with it. And paranoid. And of any sign of disloyalty. He felt that Mr. Moyers had become closer to Hubert Humphrey's and to the Kennedys then he was to him, President Johnson. He also left because he needed to earn more money. And he accepted a job as editor of a newspaper "Newsday" A newspaper out of Long Island. He was there for a few years. He needed some more money because he taken responsibility for his older brother's widow and his children. And so he had to support them. He stayed with the paper until it was sold out from under him. And then he made his second big career decision. He chose to go into television. And to become a preacher. A sort of secular preacher on television. Which he has been now all of these years. A preacher of good decent American values. He produced distinguished documentaries. He won more Emmy awards than any human being ought to. And every other award possible. And he became famous for his conversations. His conversations, quiet civil conversations on television. Particularly the series with "The Power of Myth" with Joseph Campbell which became a big, big best seller. (applause) Joseph Campbell fans I see, All right, All right, we'll deal with that. (laughter) We'll deal with that in due course. And he became the man whom we meet here this evening. He became this American father figure who sits up at the end of the national dining table. Leads the conversation in a more high-minded direction that you and I might with. But there he is. There isn't any meanness in Bill Moyers. There's no gossipiness. And so people fell better for watching him on TV. You might enjoy watching other things more, but you fell better about yourself. (laughter) When you've seen Bill Moyers. And in that sense, He's a lot like going to church
itself. (laughter) So here he is, he is a giant in our midst. Recently announced his retirement, whatever that might mean. But He's got a lot of work yet to do. As we will try to point out here this evening. (laughter) He is under his laconic easy-going southern exterior, he is very ambitious, very hard working man. Who drives the people that work for him hard. And as a fellow fundamentalist, I can tell you. No matter what you may think, this a man of deep sense of unworthiness. We were brought up for this. They made their mark on us and it never goes away. And a deep need for redemption and I hope he will redeem himself here tonight. Mr. Bill Moyers. (applause)
BM: I didn't know that there were this many Lutherans left in St. Paul. (laughter) You must of bused them in from Lake Woebegone.
GK: I'm in doubt about these people and their Lutheraness. (laughter) We'll see. We'll see. We'll see afterward when we get to the potluck and ah. (laughter) We'll see how much they partake. (laughter) No this theater is crowded with your admirers and your disciples. I'm admired, but not a disciple Bill. And just so we get that clear. (laughter)
BM: 12 is all I can manage. (laughter)
GK; I never cared for Jospeh Campbell, I just never did. (laughter) I tried to read him a dozen times, even before he was on TV with you and it just didn't make any sense to me what so ever. So if we are going to get into "The Power of Myth", you are going to be all by yourself over there. (laughter) You can do that, you can do that later. And there, and there have been guests that you have had conversations, and I'm not going to mention names, that ah, that ah I just think they should have talked a lot less. (laughter) You are the kindest, kindest the gentlest interviewer. You interview Jon Stewart, in this book and Jon Stewart is a funny, funny man. But I watched him with you on TV and I kept thinking to myself, "Jon this is the wrong place for you.. To be serious, your not good at it." (chuckle) He's a good funny man. He's better with Bill O'Reilly than He's with Bill Moyers. You gave him an opening and he took it . To be a little heavy, a little pretentious. So I just want to get that out there. (laughter)