Bill Moyers Interview

Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers interviewed by Phillip LeConte

America’s Most Eloquent Journalist Reflects on a Violent Nation

Bill Moyers, one of the chief inheritors of the Edward R. Murrow tradition of "deep-think" journalism, has provided television audiences with landmark programming.

For those who relish long-form, thoughtful conversations with the world's leading thinkers, Bill Moyers is not only the master, he is indeed its soul practitioner.

Courteous, reserved – and without a moment of levity, Moyers granted me a long-form conversion in 1992. Though I would never have guessed it at the time, Moyers later wrote me a note saying how much he in enjoyed our conversation.

I certainly have been enriched by his Q & A's over the years; programs – like the "Power of Myth" – that not only flourish with ideas, but are respectfully submitted for the viewers consideration.

This old school sense of hospitality and civility were on display when Moyers greeted me on the 15th floor of the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Austin. "I have staked out a place to sit in relative peace," he said, motioning to a pair of folding chairs framed by a wall of windows.

After a brief discussion of how the bank across the street obscured what must have at one time been a magnificent view of the University of Texas, we turned our attention to his new book “Health & the Mind.”

Phillip LeConte:  A police officer might see your new book “Health & the Mind” and say that’s fine for you to take up these issues, like meditation or spiritual pursuits.  But, my life is different.  I deal with brutality every day.  Contemplating life’s bigger questions seem a luxury.

Moyers:  I understand that.  I know a lot of policemen.  I have done many documentaries, in fact the last chapter of my first book “Listening to America” is about spending a couple of weeks riding around the worst precincts of Washington with the police.

I know the anguish policemen feel.  I also know their guard is up and prevents them from sharing in the most obvious ways.  I’ve felt society is amiss in providing ongoing counseling, like that profiled in “Health & the Mind”.  I have long thought that every police force, just as they have someone who deals with the press, should have a staff psychologist and group sessions for policemen.  

Time cover 1964You really get the most insight from your peers.  Group therapy is very valuable.  It’s like a bar without the narcotic of beer, a bar without the alcohol.  It’s like a hunting trip.  It’s a group experience from which you learn a lot about how your own peers are dealing with haunting questions about your life and your work.

Phillip LeConte:  This is especially true when a police officer moves into retirement.

Moyers:  The traumas that police feel when they retire is to move from what has truly been a fellowship and a shared danger to losing the unstated support that comes from being with other like-minded fellows.

I’ve interviewed a lot of veterans returning from Vietnam as well as World War II.  I think the experience of policemen in retirement is like that of the veteran who comes back from the front lines and who is haunted by memories he can’t even describe to his family or friends.

You’re dealing with the crudest, the most primal, most uncompromising forces.  But there are certain things one can do to make a life change.  One, you need to stay in touch with people who shared those experiences.  My advice to policemen is to join Association.  That’s why the AARP is so important.  The Veteran of Foreign Wars is so important.  Organizations like that are so important.

Phillip LeConte:  Have your attitudes changed at all toward police officers since you were growing up in Texas?

Moyers:  I can’t say they did.  We had a very small police force in Marshall, Texas.  Earl Franklin was the Sheriff most of the time I was growing up and Shorty Blackman was his deputy.  Shorty was my father’s good friend.  I started working at the age of 16 at the newspaper, so I covered the police beat and I covered the jail so I knew even then what policemen were up against - drunkenness and disorderly ruffians.  I had an implicit appreciation even then.

I often tell the taxi drivers in New York that next to police officers, they have the most difficult job in New York.  I have a keen sense that we have made policemen mercenaries of American life.  We hired them to deal with the barbarians at the gate and are content to let it be at that.  The social conditions in America today, which I think are deteriorating at a very rapid rate, threaten to engulf us at a rapid rate if it weren’t for police.

Phillip LeConte:  What were your thoughts as you watched the riots in Los Angeles?

Moyers:  I’ve seen a lot of riots in my time:  Rochester in ‘64, Detroit in ‘67, Chicago in ‘68.  I had the same thought every time, that civilization is a very thin veneer over the passions of the human heart and that they will erupt.

I think what happened to Rodney King is not unlike what happened in Viet Nam a long time ago.  Days and Phillip LeContemonths of being on the front line erased the distinctions between who was the enemy and who was not and who was the civilian and who was not.

I think the group brutality that took over wasn’t directed at Rodney King as an individual as much as it was directed at Rodney King as the incarnation of all that these officers face every day.

Phillip LeConte:  Do you have a “Wish List” of things you would like to see done to fight crime - a list of changes Chief Moyers would implement?

Moyers:  I don’t think that crime prevention starts with the police force.  I really don’t.  I don’t have an answer to that question.  I don’t know how to put Humpty Dumpty together again.  How do you put families back together in a time when economics has made necessary wage earners of both parents?  How do you put Humpty Dumpty back together when divorce is as easy and as rampant as it is.  This is not a solution that can be addressed by talking to police officers.

Phillip LeConte:  The problem of violence has become so bad that the Houston Chronicle has advised citizens to drive down the center lane to avoid carjackings.  Thousands of drivers are consciously doing just this every morning on the way to work.

Moyers:  We have to make violence as extinct as we made polio.  We have to say in no way is violence going to be exalted in this country.  This begins with the policy that the only people armed in this country are policemen.  We’ve got to come to that.

We’ve got to make it socially reprehensible for movies and TV to glorify violence, to dwell on violence, to exploit violence.  We have to isolate the bully (or bullet) from the crowd early on.  We’ve got to penalize people who indulge in violence by making them pay their way, pay for their prisons, pay their retribution.  We have got to recreate a whole new fabric here of apposition to violence and that’s political again.

Phillip LeConte:  We have a highly decorated police officer in Austin named Officer Robert Martinez.  He works with gangs on the city’s east side.  He said that after the movie “Colors” came out, gang activity absolutely skyrocketed.  Now of course the producers said it was an anti-violence, anti-gang movie.  That’s a nice sentiment, but it shows a disregard for how a popular film truly impacts the community.

Moyers:  There are 81 corpses in Schwartznegger’s “Total Recall”.  The same man that served as Bush’s Chairman of the President’s Council for Physical Fitness.  I’m always appalled when I go see these movies.  I’m appalled when Schwartnegger blows away his wife after saying “Consider this a divorce.”  The audience always laughs.

Phillip LeConte:  Did you seen the “Unforgiven”?

Moyers:  I haven’t yet.

Phillip LeConte:  It was terrific.  A rare, truly “anti-violence” movie.  

Moyers:  I like what I hear about it.

Phillip LeConte:  Considering the violence in the world, I was struck by something Joseph Campbell said in your program.  “The Power of Myth.”  He said people would ask him “Is there any hope for the world with all its horrors?”  His reply was, “It’s great just the way it is.  Celebrate it as a great opera.”  Have you come to that point?

Moyers:  What I took Campbell to mean by that is look upon life as your opportunity.  Leap into it. Remember when he recalled the old Irish saying:  “Is this a private fight or can anybody get into it?  You have to choose sides.  He wasn’t saying to remain neutral in the conflict between good and evil, between right and wrong.  

He was saying you have to choose sides, but rather than sit around waiting for a perfect opportunity, leap into the fray.  Make the difference you can where you can.  I don’t have a solution to the nation’s, much less the world’s problems.  All I can do as a journalist is commit myself to trying to join that strategy of affirmation which I think is at the heart of ethics, that is to be the best journalist I can, promoting a civilized discourse.  That’s what every person has to do.

I don’t know of any solution to a base affection but a higher affection.  You have to use your publication and I use my broadcasting and Martinez uses his work in East Austin to affirm and to try to massage the better instincts in people.  That’s what Campbell was saying.  Don’t chuckle at the misery but don’t scorn the opportunity to leap into it and make a difference.

Phillip LeConte:  That’s a vital message for police officers as well.

Moyers:  Absolutely.  They have to find their solace, their consolidation, their esteem and satisfaction in their own judgment that they’ve lived their life honorably.  I think police groups have got to try to educate the rest of the country on what it is like out there.  I’d love to see all the retired policemen really become educators of the rest of us, really impress upon us what it is they see, what’s happening out there.  They and not the sociologists, journalists or tank experts.

The conditions of social life have come apart and police have got to educate the rest of us.  There’s a second, very powerful vocation in the years after they leave the service.  The greatest pacifists are usually better as they come back from the wars because they know what war is like.  A police officer can tell us what the front lines of our society are about in a way nobody else can.