Enjoyed Studs Terkel being interviewed today on “Democracy Now!” I’ve wanted to be the next coming of Studs for at least 15 years now. Happy 95th Birthday, Studs!

Wanted to post some excerpts I particularly enjoyed. So here they are.

I’m known as a poet of the tape recorder, right? The fact is I have no idea how the hell it works. I’m terrible, I’m a nut, mechanically. I can’t drive a car. I can’t ride a bike. I don’t know what “internet” means, or “website.” Google is an old-time comic strip — “Barney Google” — with his goo-goo-googly eyes.

 

And so, you see, I’m not up on all the current stuff. And people say, “Boy, on that tape recorder, you capture those people.” No, they capture themselves, because I am inept. That comes out quite clearly.

Sometimes I turn the wrong button down. And that person in the housing project, she sees it doesn’t work, and she reminds me of it. And as I say, “Oh, I goofed,” at that moment, she is my equal or better than my equal. In other words, I am not, whoever it is, [inaudible], “Today” or “60 Minutes” or Kathy, whoever she is. It’s me, a guy who’s in trouble, and she helps me out. And so, I’m playing this tape recorder for this woman, very poor, very pretty. I don’t know whether she’s white or black. In those days, the early public housing projects were all mixed. And these little kids running around want to hear their mama’s voice on this new machine. And so, I’m playing it back, and she’s hearing her voice for the first time in her life, and suddenly she says, “Oh, my god!” And I say, “What is it?” She said, “I never thought I felt that way before.” Well, that’s an astonishing moment for her and for me, one you might say are fellow travelers together. So that’s the exciting stuff. She discovers that she does have a voice, that she counts.

The key word, by the way, in all of these people is they must feel they “count.” Nick von Hoffman, the columnist, used to work for the organizer Saul Alinsky, and he said once people get in a group and that group thinks as they do, he feels he counts or she counts more than alone. And so, that’s what it’s about.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you want them to think of when someone says “Studs Terkel”?

STUDS TERKEL: I want them to think of somebody who remembers them, to be remembered, whether it be me or anyone else. They want Studs Terkel, maybe as somebody — I’m romanticizing myself now — somebody who gave me hope. One of my books is Hope Dies Last. Without hope, forget it. It’s hope and thought, and that can counting. That’s what it’s about. That’s what I hope I’m about.