Thank you for your passion, sir.
Posted on 11/20/2004 12:15:48 PM PST by wagglebee
My friend Reed Irvine died this week. Although we disagreed on some matters, I always admired Reed as one of the toughest warriors I knew.
I gave one of my first speeches at one of his events almost 20 years ago. I was so nervous speaking to a conservative audience that I wrote out my entire speech and read it. Afterward several people came up to me and complimented me on what I had said. But Reed came up to me and said, "You know, people get bored when you read a speech; you should make your speeches extemporaneous." Reed was blunt and to the point and an activist like that.
Making a speech off the cuff seemed an extremely daunting task to me then. But after this encounter with Reed, I always did just that. I benefited as a result and my audiences did as well. And I am grateful to him for the advice he delivered in a way that I could not ignore.
What I admired most about Reed was that here was a man in his late 60s and then 70s when I knew him, and he had more fight in him than most of the young conservatives I met at the time (Grover Norquist would be the exception) and all of the adults. Reed was like the radicals I had known in his passion for the cause and his persistence in pursuing it. And I wished that all conservatives were like him. If they were, the battle would be already won.
I remember an evening in 1990, when Reed would have been 70 years old. It was a little after 8 p.m. and I was lying in bed reading when the phone rang. It was Reed. "You've got to call in to Larry King's show. Carl Bernstein is on talking about his book on his father and the McCarthy era. You've got to take him on."
Bernstein had written a preposterous book about his Communist father claming that the McCarthy era was a "reign of terror." In fact, Bernstein's father was working for the Soviet enemy and the consequences to him were not that great. As Carl's book showed, his father was still lying to his own son about his Communist activities.
So unlike a reign of terror was McCarthyism that when Bernstein the younger told Ben Bradlee, his editor at the Washington Post, about his father's Communist Party membership, Bradlee kept him on the Watergate story and the hunt for President Nixon. As far as the Washington Post was concerned, it was OK for the son of a Communist to bring down a sitting American president in the middle of the Cold War.
"Reed," I said, "it's 11 p.m. where you are; you should be in bed, relaxing. Larry King will never take my call and he'll hang up on me if he does." (I knew that King had been a fellow traveler in the McCarthy period and he was obviously a fellow traveler still.) But I said, "OK, Reed, I'll turn on the show."
Ten minutes later the phone rang again. It was Reed: "Are you listening? Have you called?"
"No, Reed. I just think there's no point."
"But you've been there. You know what this guy is doing. King is just fawning all over him. You have a responsibility to refute him with the facts."
Ten minutes later the phone rang again. By this time I was feeling guilty enough that I assured Reed I would call, and I did. I waited 45 minutes on the line before King picked up my call. "My parents were members of the Communist Party," I said, "and this is a preposterous book." King hung up on me.
I have no regrets about making the call. Whether Reed was right about this use of my time or not, he was right about the need for all of us to put our all into these battles. He set the example.
For nearly two decades he hammered away at the leftist media; he made the powers in media uncomfortable. He afflicted the comfortable and was a comfort to the afflicted.
And lo, his irrepressible agitation for two decades at a time in life when he had earned the right to relax and devote himself to himself, bore fruit for the rest of us. The leftist media are on the defensive; their ratings are falling, their audiences dwindling, their credibility at an all-time low. For the first time in the modern history of American elections the leftist media have real conservative competition and have been beaten at their own game.
And among the many who are responsible for this victory, and for the fact that their country is now better armed against its internal foes, none is more so than Reed Irvine. May he rest in peace.
Reed founded Accuracy in Media, Media Research Center is Brent Bozell's group.
I think Bozell was, but I'm not certain.
http://www.mediaresearch.org/bios/lbb/welcome.asp
Rest in peace, noble warrior.
Thank you for your passion, sir.
I used to work for Accuracy in Media in the early 90s. A great place to work and a wonderful experience I will never forget!
Reed Irvine was one of the great ones.
Irvine was a revelation to me when he began speaking about what many of us were beginning to notice but not quite put into words.
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