With the defeat of Proposition 11 in June 1980, I found myself at the dawn of a new decade with a new home in Marin County, a wonderful, supportive wife, two lively, healthy sons, a wealth of experience in statewide politics, and an extensive network of friends and allies—but no job.
At first, I took time out to volunteer for Jerry Brown’s second presidential campaign in New Hampshire and Maine, then returned to Inverness to focus on my next career move.
I set three goals: I wanted to find a job that would keep me involved in public policy issues, keep me in the public eye—“If you’re not appearing, you’re disappearing”—and, needless to say, also provide a paycheck. After dismissing going back to teaching, running political campaigns, or leading another environmental organization, I decided to try to get a job in the media.
True, I’d never been to journalism school or worked in journalism, but I wasn’t a complete stranger to the world of the press. In every job since teaching at Sacred Heart, I’d been involved with the media at some level. I’d written several op-ed pieces and given many interviews on radio and television. And it was clear to me that television was the most powerful medium for communicating any message. So television was where I set my sights, and I decided to start at the top: KABC-TV in Los Angeles, the number-one-ranked TV station in the state. If I didn’t succeed there, I’d work my way down the list till I got a job in some smaller market. Maybe Fresno.
I started out by writing a letter to Dennis Swanson, news director of KABC-TV, warning him that his station might be number one in the ratings today, but would soon sink if they didn’t hire me. After all, energy and the environment were the two biggest issues in California in the ’80s, and I knew more about those issues than anybody else on the planet. It was, I admit, a rather brassy letter. But what did I have to lose? And what do you know? Score one for cojones. It worked.
A couple of days later, I got a call from Swanson, inviting me to meet with him in Los Angeles. At the old ABC studios on Prospect Avenue in Silver Lake, Swanson explained that his station was about to expand its evening newscast from two hours to three. They already had two political commentators, Bruce Herschensohn and Al Julius, and were looking for a third when my letter arrived. Swanson remembered me from the Prop 11 campaign and offered me a job as a political commentator on the evening news, starting two nights a week. A couple of months later, he made it full-time, five nights a week, delivering a two-and-a-half-minute commentary at 5:00 p.m. on KABC-TV’s Eyewitness News. I stayed at KABC-TV nine years.
I’m often invited to speak to journalism classes, and every time, as corny as it sounds, I tell the story of that letter. Because there’s an important lesson there—for me and, I hope, for other aspiring young people in every field of endeavor: Be sure of yourself and always go for the very top. The higher you aim, the higher you’ll end up. Never start at the bottom. Never settle for halfway. Never sell yourself short. It worked for me at KABC-TV, it worked for me later at CNN, it’s worked my entire life. As Robert Browning wrote, “Ah, a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
As exciting as it was, one big problem with landing a job at the number-one television station in the state was that KABC-TV was in Los Angeles, while my family had just settled into our new home in Marin County. But with Carol’s understanding, we made it work. On Monday, I’d leave Inverness around noon and drive to Oakland International Airport for a 2:00 p.m. flight to Burbank, where I’d head directly to KABC for the 5:00 p.m. broadcast. I delivered my commentary live on set Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings. Meanwhile, I’d pretape a commentary for Friday. Immediately after Thursday’s newscast, I’d rush to Burbank for a 7:00 p.m. return flight to Oakland, arriving home in Inverness in time for a late dinner with Carol. That became my weekly schedule for the next nine years, until Carol moved to Los Angeles.
If finding a job was the first challenge, finding a place to live in LA was the second. Problem solved when friends Michael Nicola and Steve Smith introduced me to Clyde Cairns, an openly gay businessman, who offered me a basement apartment in one of his two fabulous mansions in the Hollywood Hills. Little did I realize what a colorful scene I was moving into.
At home, Clyde always walked around with Delilah, a green parrot, perched on his shoulder. He gave wild dinner parties, and he often rented the house out for photo shoots—usually porno flicks, gay or straight. I often came home to find the strangest collection of people walking around the house, some fully clothed, some not. Life at Clyde’s was never dull. I’d come a long way from the Oblates!
Sadly, Clyde was an early victim of AIDS. If only we knew as much about AIDS then as we do today, with today’s miracle drugs, Clyde might still be with us.
After Clyde’s death, I rented a guesthouse in the Hollywood Hills, just outside of one of the hidden entrances to Griffith Park. Even though it was in the middle of Los Angeles, living in the Hollywood Hills was like living out in the country. Most mornings, I’d jog for three miles around nearby Lake Hollywood. Once a week, I’d join friends for an early-morning hike in the Santa Monica Mountains, occasionally running into then-just-an-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, hiking with his bodyguard.
In addition to a fun job and a big paycheck, there was one other happy benefit of living in Los Angeles: the opportunity to reconnect with the Siciliano family and Seth and Margery Warner.
The Sicilianos had moved from Washington to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, where Rocco was now head of TICOR, the giant title insurance company. Once again, he took me under his wing, introduced me to several movers and shakers in the LA business community, entertained me often at the downtown California Club, LA’s most exclusive business gathering place, and included me in many Siciliano family dinners.
Marion Siciliano, meanwhile, was involved in many local environmental issues. She recruited me to join the board of the Los Angeles TreePeople, which she chaired. I, in turn, enlisted her help in raising funds for the Wildlife WayStation, an animal rescue sanctuary located in Little Tujunga Canyon, north of Los Angeles.
Seth and Margery Warner lived on Point Dume in Malibu, about an hour away, just close enough that, once a month or so, I could bolt out right after the 5:00 p.m. news, dash to Malibu for one of Margery’s great dinners, and rush back for the 11:00 p.m. broadcast. Those evenings were not only great fun, they were like graduate school with two great professors. I learned so much about the history of ideas from Seth and so much about the good things of life from Margery.
Seriously, I could not have had a better break than landing a job at KABC-TV. First, the job itself was the perfect fit. A lot of people have strong opinions about the issues of the day. But unlike everybody else, I not only got to express my opinions in front of a million people every evening, I got paid for it.
And in a way, it brought together both sides of my life so far. I started out studying to be a preacher, then switched to practicing politics. Now I had a job that gave this proud progressive the opportunity to preach about politics from one of the biggest pulpits of all.
I was also lucky to work with a great team of broadcasters. General manager John Severino and news director Dennis Swanson had assembled some of the best talent in the country: anchors Jerry Dunphy, Christine Lund, Paul Moyer, Ann Martin, Tawny Little, and Harold Greene; meteorologists “Dr. George” Fischbeck and Dallas Raines; sports anchor Ted Dawson; investigative reporter Wayne Satz; plus a whole arm of talented producers, writers, and editors.
Movie reviews were an important part of the news at KABC-TV, of course. After all, this was Hollywood. And our movie critic was none other than Regis Philbin—he started out as a page on The Tonight Show in the 1950s and went on to make television history as host of Live! with Regis and Kelly and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Regis still holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for the most time spent in front of a television camera.
My own introduction to broadcast journalism was rocky, at best. Arriving at KABC-TV, I showed the draft of my first commentary to Swanson, who leafed through it quickly, then handed it back with the warning “Looks okay. Don’t fuck it up.” And that was it! All the advice I received before appearing on the air for the first time, and all the journalism training I’ve ever had.
Next, I sought out political reporter Leo McElroy for his advice. “Just stare into the camera,” he said, “and when the red light comes on, start talking.” Which is exactly what I did. And the result was as stiff and awkward as it sounds.
At any rate, for what it’s worth, here’s my very first commentary on KABC-TV—September 16, 1980—in which I staked out my territory:
California. The last stop in the Far West. The first step to the Far East.
California is, in Carey McWilliam’s memorable phrase, “The Great Exception.” People do, in fact, accept and expect almost anything from California, whether it be the newest, the most expensive, the wackiest, or the most outrageous. They are seldom disappointed.
California today is America tomorrow. The events, the trends, the changes that began in California are the direction America is heading toward. If it exists, it started here: the semiconductor, the disco, the freeway, the smog, the martini, the United Nations, and the John Birch Society.
California is the land of plenty. We have more swimming pools, 450,000; more millionaires, 38,691; more dogs and cats, 50 million (that’s 2.3 per resident); and more mobile homes, telephones, microwaves.
California is also the land of contradiction. Our water and politicians are in the north; our people and votes are here in the south. Agriculture is our number-one industry. Yet most of us have never seen a plow or touched a cow.
Yes, California is the great exception. Yet sometimes we become so blinded by the tinsel glare of what makes California so special that we never slow down to take a closer look.
We may have given birth to the electronics industry, but it’s now abandoning California. There is no new housing that the average worker can afford. Agriculture may be our number-one industry, but we’re paving over 20,000 acres of our best farmland each year. We may boast a concentration of wealth, but we can’t deny large pockets of the poor and unemployed. We may live in the future, but we are ignoring the lessons of the past by building in flood zones, fire zones, and on top of earthquake faults.
And now California, faults and all, heads into the eighties. Is California still leading the way, or have we lost our way?
Those will be the questions before us in this and other commentaries that will follow. I’ll be here twice a week. We’ll take a close look at California’s energy policy. We’ll look at California’s environment. We’ll look at California’s economy, health policy, housing, schools, and cities. And of course, the glue that holds them all together, California politics. I’m Bill Press.
Okay, let me admit: Looking back now, I’m almost embarrassed by that commentary. It was too soft, too philosophical, too mushy. Clearly, I was just feeling my way. But it didn’t take long before I took the gloves off and my commentaries became a lot more pointed. Ronald Reagan had just been elected. I soon became his chief critic in Southern California, and I also spoke out on animal rights, gay rights, gun control, civil rights, nuclear weapons, the environment, and other hot-button issues. Why the change from philosophical to colorful? Because I recognized the importance of a rule I still live by: If you’re given a platform, if you have the microphone, either at the local, state, or national level, don’t waste the moment. Don’t pussyfoot around. Don’t hold back. Take no prisoners. Take full advantage of that opportunity to be as proud and strong and hard-hitting as you can.
One thing I did not expect: the outpouring of telephone calls and letters in response to each commentary. Even though they were, in my case, mainly negative, management always had my back. The first time I met general manager John Severino, he asked, “Press, do you realize how many complaints I get about you?” He told me there were two boxes of hate mail in response to my commentaries on his desk. “You know what I tell ’em?” he added. “I tell ’em to go shit in their hat!”
Actually, there were two operators in the middle of the newsroom who did nothing else but take calls from viewers and make notes of their comments. Most of the day, they just sat there, reading or manicuring their nails. Until I came on the air, when the phones would go bonkers. Most of them with callers screaming, “Why do you have Bill Press on the air? I’ll never watch Channel 7 again until you get rid of that Commie!”
Right then and there, I discovered a few things about TV viewers and radio listeners that remain true to this day. First, if I did not piss a lot of people off, I was not doing my job. Second, in the media, you have to have the hide of an armadillo. If you can’t take being regularly called an asshole, or worse, get out of the business. Third, sometimes people are weird in what they choose to listen to. There are some who will only tune in to programs they will agree with 100 percent and never hear a dissenting point of view: Fox viewers, Rush Limbaugh listeners, Rachel Maddow fans. But there are a lot of others who will turn on the opposition just to get their daily hate fix. They get off on getting pissed off and then lash out with angry letters or phone calls. In the movie Private Parts, Howard Stern is told that listeners who love him listen for thirty minutes. Those who hate him listen for two hours. Same for my viewers at KABC-TV: no matter how much they threatened to boycott the station, as long as I was on the air, they couldn’t wait to tune in the next day. Go figure.
Not everybody hated my commentaries, I hasten to add. I actually got lots of positive responses, too. One day, I scorched LA coroner Thomas Noguchi for his tasteless handling of the tragic drowning of actress Natalie Wood off Santa Catalina Island—blasting him for speculating about drinking, drugs, or foul play. Why not just say, “Requiescat in Pace—Let her rest in peace!” Within minutes, Nancy Sinatra called to tell me her father asked her to call and thank me.
In August 1988, I defended Lew Wasserman, chairman of MCA, the parent company of Universal Studios, which had just released Martin Scorsese’s movie The Last Temptation of Christ—and blasted right-wing Christians who were picketing outside Wasserman’s home. The next day, Lynne Wasserman called to say her father wanted to take me to lunch.
That was the beginning of a great friendship with the legendary Wasserman who, in his days as a talent agent, had represented everyone from Bette Davis to Ronald Reagan. We often had lunch in the studio commissary. Because of his power and seniority, he may have been a feared figure in Hollywood, but he became a very warm, generous, and valuable mentor to me. Years later, when I ran for chair of the state Democratic Party, Lew gave me his private phone number and asked me to call him as soon as I learned the outcome of the vote.
A great raconteur, Wasserman especially loved telling one story about Governor Pat Brown and President John F. Kennedy. As Wasserman related, JFK once called and asked him to help organize a big fund-raiser at the Beverly Hilton. Wasserman delivered, even though it meant kicking a group of high school students out of the grand ballroom and moving them to a smaller ballroom.
That evening, before the event, Kennedy said he’d like to surprise the students by popping in on them, and sent Governor Brown to prepare the way. Brown soon returned, assured them the coast was clear, and proceeded to lead the president and Wasserman down to the ballroom level, where he ushered them into not the high school prom as expected but a wedding reception. Brown had scoped out the wrong ballroom. Kennedy seized the moment, first congratulating the stunned newlyweds and having his photo taken with them before moving on to greet the high school students.
It wasn’t long before I encountered one other reality about appearing on television every night: being recognized almost everywhere I went in Southern California. And, usually, when I least expected it. That led to some funny experiences.
One evening, while checking out at the supermarket, the clerk was busy scanning my items when she glanced up, took one look at me, and blurted out, “Oh, my God. Do you know who you are?”
Another morning, I was enjoying breakfast in a neighborhood restaurant when a stranger walked up to my table. “I’ve been watching you ever since you walked in here,” he volunteered. “You look so much like that guy who’s on Channel 7 every night. Could that be your father?”
Being recognized increased exponentially once I landed on CNN’s Crossfire—which led to the funniest experience of all. While waiting with friends to play golf in Winnapaug Country Club in Rhode Island, a member of the foursome ahead of us walked over and remarked that I looked just like that guy on television. I waved him off, as I often did, with a laugh. “Yeah, people tell me that all the time.” A few minutes later, he returned to say he couldn’t believe how much I resembled that guy on TV. Same comment from me. Then he came back a third time to insist, “I can’t believe it. You look so much like that guy on CNN. I can’t remember his name, but he’s a real asshole!” By that time, I couldn’t resist. I stuck out my hand and said, “Hi, I’m Bill Press.” He slinked away, and I never saw him again.
Before Carol moved to Los Angeles in 1989, my home away from home was Jerry Brown’s favorite hangout, Lucy’s El Adobe restaurant on Melrose Avenue, across from Paramount Studios. Lucy’s is where, as I recounted earlier, Jerry and I had sealed the deal on the California Urban Strategy with the blessing of owners Frank and Lucy Casado. I ate there at least a couple of times a week, often joining Jerry and Linda Ronstadt for dinner. Other regulars included Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Rosemary Clooney, Jimmy Webb, Jack Nicholson, and Lily Tomlin. John Belushi had dinner there a couple of weeks before his death.
We all felt a great loss when Frank Casado died suddenly in 1990. I was one of the pallbearers at his funeral. Linda sang a hauntingly beautiful “Ave Maria.” Lucy passed away in 2017. Today, daughter Patty and son James Casado continue the Lucy’s tradition of a friendly meeting place over great Mexican food and margaritas.
If politics makes strange bedfellows, so do radio and television. While at KABC, I made friends with people I never thought I could stand to be in the same room with. First on the list: Bay Buchanan, Pat’s baby sister and an equally conservative firebrand. She and I squared off in a lively debate, and we both enjoyed it so much we scheduled several more.
I also ended up befriending the entire Reagan family, except for Ronnie and Nancy. Michael was a fellow talk show host and lively debate partner. For a while, his younger brother, Ron, was an intern at KABC-TV, and we both ended up at MSNBC together. Daughter Maureen and her husband, Dennis Revell, were fun to hang out with.
The Reagan sibling I got to know best was Patti Davis, the real renegade of the family. She eventually reconciled with her parents, but when I met her she was not on the best of terms. In her 1992 autobiography, The Way I See It, she brutally recounts what a dysfunctional family she grew up in. Appearing on my radio show at KFI-AM, she admitted to smoking pot in the White House with her brother Ron. I asked her if she’d ever had sex on the rug in the Oval Office. She fessed up that she’d always wanted to but was never able to pull it off because there were too many Secret Service agents around.
Shortly after that interview, I was invited to Patti’s fortieth birthday at her home in Santa Monica. On the way, I stopped in West Hollywood and picked up her birthday present, a T-shirt with the printed message: IF YOU THINK I’M A BITCH, YOU SHOULD MEET MY MOTHER. She loved it.
EYEWITNESS IN NICARAGUA
At the time, one story that interested me greatly was Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas under Daniel Ortega had overthrown American-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza. Now the right-wing Contras, allegedly with American assistance, were in turn trying to oust the Sandinistas.
After commenting on the war in Nicaragua and attending several meetings with Southern California peace activists—including businessmen Harold Willens and Aris Anagnos, Rabbi Leonard Beerman, producer Lila Garrett, and former priest Blase Bonpane, head of the Office of the Americas—I asked news director Dennis Swanson for permission to travel to Nicaragua with a video camera and report on the conflict.
Swanson agreed, but first I had to figure out how to get there. Problem solved when I spotted an ad in The Nation magazine for educational trips to Nicaragua led by one Alice McGrath of Ventura County. I called Alice and signed up for her next trip. But first, she said, it was important the two of us meet privately.
A week later, in the coffee shop of the Burbank airport, Alice told me that, early in her career, she’d been a member of the Communist Party. As a TV journalist, she wanted me to know that and would understand if I backed out of the trip. Even though she was the first “Communist” I’d ever met, I assured her I’d have no trouble traveling with her. After all, I’d often been accused of being a “fellow traveler” myself. And Alice proceeded to tell me her amazing story.
She was the very Alice McGrath of Zoot Suit fame. In 1942, Alice had been hired by attorney George Shibley to assist in the defense of twenty-two Mexican American youths charged with murdering a farmworker near Sleepy Lagoon in Los Angeles County. After all twenty-two were convicted and sent to San Quentin State Prison, Alice worked with the renowned journalist Carey McWilliams, executive secretary of the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, making speeches, writing articles, and raising funds in support of the group—all of whom were eventually released after an appeals court ruled they’d been wrongly convicted on insufficient evidence. Alice’s role in the Sleepy Lagoon case was the focus of Zoot Suit, the highly successful play (1978) and movie (1981) by Luis Valdez.
Alice later moved to Ventura County, where she founded a pro bono legal defense committee, earned herself a brown belt in judo, and became a peace activist—or, as she called herself, a “Sandinista in exilo.” In spring 1986, our group, the eighty-sixth mission she’d led to Nicaragua, included Irish American actress Fionnula Flanagan and Lydia Brazon, a Nicaraguan American from Los Angeles with important high-level contacts in the Sandinista government.
In Managua, we met several top Sandinista officials, including interior minister Tomás Borge. We also met with business leaders, teachers, and mothers who’d lost their sons in the Contra war. We traveled to Estelí, where you could still see bullet holes from the revolutionary war in the walls of downtown buildings. In the beautiful mountain town of Matagalpa, we ran across Los Angeles contractor Steve Kerpen, who was working with a group of American volunteers, building housing for farmworker families.
We met and talked with Nicaraguans of whatever political persuasion. And our overwhelming impression was that, after suffering under Somoza for many years, and even though still mired in poverty, the people of Nicaragua were excited about the new opportunities they enjoyed under the Sandinista government. There was no reason—except the stale, meaningless fear of communism left over from the Cold War—for the United States not to recognize the Sandinistas, much less support the Contras.
Back at KABC-TV, I produced a five-part report on what I’d discovered in Nicaragua. I also arranged a screening of the documentary at the Dance Palace in Point Reyes Station, near our hometown of Inverness, after which our friends Jim Campe, Rufus Blunk, and Michael Mery organized a group of carpenters from West Marin to spend a month in Nicaragua helping Steve Kerpen build houses for farming families.
But ironically, it was only after leaving Nicaragua that I learned the most about what was really happening in that country. At the suggestion of a friend in Los Angeles, I moved on from Nicaragua to Costa Rica to meet with American freelance journalists Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan, Central American stringers for ABC Radio and NPR.
Tony was not only a veteran but a victim of the Nicaraguan conflict. He’d been severely wounded when a bomb planted by a Contra double agent exploded at a confidential press briefing with former Sandinista and renegade Contra leader Edén Pastora, deep in the rain forest. Four people were killed.
Martha was out of town, but over dinner in San Jose, Tony unveiled in great detail an incredible story of weapons being supplied secretly to the Contras by the United States, via airfields in northern Costa Rica, through a network of connections that led all the way to the Reagan White House. Nobody had yet reported this story.
I must admit that even as a severe Reagan critic, I had a hard time believing Tony’s wild, conspiracy-laden tale: the Reagan White House, defying the law by secretly arming the Contras? Indeed, returning to the States, I did not write or speak about it at all. Until, about a month later, I received a call from Tony telling me that he and Martha were coming to Los Angeles. Would I organize a news conference where they could share their findings on illegal arms trafficking in Central America?
At my invitation, a respectable crowd of radio, print, and TV reporters showed up at the Los Angeles Press Club, where Martha and Tony outlined for them the same elaborate chain of events Tony had laid out for me earlier: a covert plot run out of the White House to bypass Congress and secretly provide arms to the Contras for their campaign to overthrow the Sandinista government. It had all the elements of a great spy novel: Orders from the White House. Jungle hide-outs. Secret memos. Mysterious nighttime flights into Costa Rica and Honduras. Yet, even for skeptical journalists, it seemed far-fetched.
As I had done a month earlier in Costa Rica, my friends and colleagues listened politely, asked a few questions, and then went back to the daily grind. Not one of them reported on Martha and Tony’s press conference. Little did we realize that we were sitting on what would soon become the biggest story in the country.
Less than two weeks later, news broke that a cargo plane carrying supplies to the Contras had been shot down over Nicaragua. Two pilots and a radio operator were killed in the crash. But American Eugene Hasenfus had parachuted to safety and was immediately arrested on suspicion of aiding the Contras. Sandinista officials then revealed that in the plane’s wreckage they had discovered a phone book belonging to Hasenfus, which contained links to a Contra base in El Salvador and to Ollie North’s office in the Reagan White House—exactly as Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey had reported.
The very next day, then White House counsel Ed Meese walked into the White House Briefing Room and admitted the entire operation to reporters. From his office in the White House, and with direct knowledge and approval of President Reagan, Colonel Oliver North had been leading an elaborate scheme to sell arms to Iran and then use that money to buy and ship arms to the Contras—in direction violation of the Boland Amendment, which banned American aid to the Contras.
Thus was born the Iran-Contra scandal that marred Ronald Reagan’s second term. Suddenly, I started getting calls from reporter friends in Los Angeles: “Isn’t this what Tony and Martha told us about at the Press Club?” The lucky ones had saved their notes and tape from their news conference.
BACK IN THE USSR
I guess travel to Nicaragua whetted my appetite for travel to Communist countries. But for whatever reason, in the summer of 1987, when I read that a group of American and Russian citizens had walked from Saint Petersburg to Moscow in the first annual Peace Walk, I decided to sign our family up for the next one, one year later: across Ukraine from Odessa to Kiev.
It was an incredible experience for all four of us. Our group numbered about two hundred Americans and two hundred Soviets (half of whom we assumed were working for the KGB), plus a support team of another hundred or so. Every morning, we’d walk ten or twelve miles, stop for lunch, then walk another few miles before setting up tents for the night in a field or city park. A small fleet of trucks carried our luggage and supplies from one site to the next.
For us Americans, especially, it was a heady experience. As the first Americans seen in Ukraine since American soldiers liberated the republic in World War II, everywhere we went we were received like rock stars. Crowds lined the sides of the road two or three deep in every town we passed through and piled our arms full of flowers, books, medals, photos, and other souvenirs.
The Ukrainians’ ultimate expression of hospitality was to invite us to their homes for dinner and an overnight stay, which was, in fact, more of an ordeal than it sounds. Rather than a night off the beat, it turned out to be a night onstage. Our proud hosts would also invite all their neighbors to meet “real Americans” and enjoy a long and lavish dinner. And the entire evening, from start to finish, would be filled with toast after toast after toast—of vodka. After one of those “nights off,” it was hard to keep up with the pace of the walk the next day.
As exciting as the Peace Walk was, Carol and I had another mission in what was then still the Soviet Union. Before leaving Los Angeles, I’d asked Rabbi Marvin Hier and Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to put us in touch with some “Refuseniks”—Soviet Jews who’d been denied permission to emigrate—whom we might meet with. The people whose names they provided all lived in Leningrad, so once our group reached Kiev, without informing anyone, Carol and I went directly to the airport for a flight to Leningrad.
That’s when we learned that in the Soviet Union “not a sparrow falls” without Big Brother knowing where it’s going to land. Again, we had told no one where we were going or why. What a surprise, then, to be met at our gate in Leningrad by a government official with a car and driver, who whisked us directly to our hotel.
I immediately placed a call to the first name on the list, Lev Shieba, who turned out to be fluent in English and immediately invited us over to his apartment—assuring us there was no doubt we would be tailed. Nonetheless, we headed to the subway, and Lev met us at the assigned stop and took us to his home, where he and his wife, Vera, proceeded to tell us their sad story, similar to that of so many Jews in Leningrad.
Lev had been a senior acoustical engineer for the Soviet Navy until he applied for an exit visa to immigrate to the United States—at which point he was summarily fired and forbidden to travel anywhere outside of Leningrad. They were now living hand to mouth, without any income, depending on the charity of friends.
The next day, Lev and Vera showed us the sights of their magical city, including the Hermitage Museum, the Winter Palace, and the Peterhof Palace. That evening, they also organized a reception for other Refusenik families, after which Carol and I took the overnight train to Moscow. True to form, we’d no sooner pulled into the station when there was a knock on our compartment door. “Mr. and Mrs. Press, welcome to Moscow!” Another USSR official was waiting with a car and driver to take us to our hotel, where we were reunited with Mark, David, and the rest of the Peace Walk. It was amazing how the Soviet government could be so incomparably efficient about some things and so grossly incompetent about others.
We ran into even more Big Brother in Moscow. To celebrate the completion of our Soviet/American Peace Walk, we had applied for permission to hold a rally in Red Square. The Kremlin said no. We appealed, citing all the positive international publicity our joint appearance would generate. Still no dice. So we simply informed authorities that, with or without permission, we were going to show up.
As planned, we arrived early the next morning, expecting to be arrested. Instead, Kremlin authorities adopted a different strategy: They simply closed Red Square to everybody but us. With Soviet troops stationed on nearby streets, we held our little rally in the middle of a huge, eerily empty Red Square. We held hands, sang peace songs, and proudly waved the American and Soviet flags. Sadly, nobody was there to see it but us.
That wasn’t the end of our adventure, however. Shortly after we returned to the United States, Vera Shieba obtained a temporary visa to visit her daughter, then living in the United States. We took Vera to see our friend Senator Barbara Boxer, who immediately went to work on behalf of Lev and Vera with the State Department. One year later, thanks to Senator Boxer, Lev and Vera were able to immigrate to the United States, where Lev soon put his acoustical engineering skills back to work—this time for the U.S. Navy. Now U.S. citizens, Lev and Vera are still here, enjoying their children and grandchildren.
TALK RADIO
For over thirty years now, I’ve enjoyed a career as a television commentator and radio host at the same time. So it seems strange that when I landed my first job in television, I never thought about appearing on radio as well. To me, they were two different worlds. How wrong I was.
I’d been at KABC-TV less than a year when Wally Sherman, program director of KABC Radio, asked if I might be interested in appearing as a guest or filling in as a guest host. I appeared on a few shows, enjoyed it, and before long I was a regular at KABC Radio, sitting in for Michael Jackson (the talk show host, not the moonwalker) and providing a two-minute liberal commentary via ISDN from my home in the Hollywood Hills on the morning show with Ken and Bob. For a couple of years, I also cohosted an afternoon, left-right debate show, appropriately called The Dueling Bills, with Bill Pearl. And, yes, our theme song was the dueling banjos from Deliverance.
I soon learned to love talk radio, loved working with the gang at KABC, and thought general manager George Green loved me—until the buildup to the first Persian Gulf War, when Green revealed himself to be a real asshole. When I argued against starting another war in the Middle East, George would walk into the studio, glare at me, and, as soon as I took a commercial break, start screaming at me.
Then one day, he walked me to my car, insisting that I stop opposing the war in order to provide “balance.” I pointed out that, out of some dozen hosts on KABC, I was the only one who openly opposed the war. In other words, I was the station’s balance. But Green would have none of it. He made it clear that if I didn’t change my position, I’d be out of job. I didn’t. And I was.
But actually, getting fired from KABC was a blessing. KABC had started to slip in the ratings, while KFI AM, offering a much livelier mix of talk radio over a much bigger signal, was climbing under the banner “More Stimulating Talk Radio.”
It didn’t take me long to knock on KFI’s door. And, thanks to program director David Hall, I soon had my own show on KFI, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, following the weekend Best of Rush Limbaugh show. Hall was probably the youngest program director in the country, and still to this day, he’s the smartest and most creative radio executive I’ve worked with anywhere.
It was Hall’s idea to both enrage and engage Limbaugh’s conservative listeners by branding me “Bill Press, True American.” We peppered the Rush Limbaugh show preceding mine with corny promos created by assistant producer Tim Kelly. “He helps little old ladies across the street. Of course, he’s Bill Press, True American.” Or “He bakes a cherry pie. Of course, he’s Bill Press, True American.” As Hall predicted, Limbaugh’s followers were pissed, but they couldn’t resist tuning in.
KFI had a great team in those days, many of whom went on to bigger and better things: Dr. Laura Schlessinger; Stephanie Miller; Tammy Bruce; Hugh Hewitt; Tom Leykis; Bill Handel; John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou; and Marc Germain. They were fun to work with. They all helped me find my voice as a talk show host.
JOINING THE UNION
There was one other huge benefit to working at KABC-TV: I was required to join a union—in my case, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or AFTRA. News director Dennis Swanson apologized when he informed me of this rule and was surprised when I told him it’s something I’d always wanted to do.
It was one of the best decisions of my life. Seriously. With its health plan and pension plan, the union’s been great for me and my family. It’s even stronger now that AFTRA and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) have finally merged, forming SAG-AFTRA.
My proudest moment as a union man came years later, after I’d moved to KCOP-TV, when the engineering staff and members of IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, went on strike and set up a picket line outside the studio. As on-air talent and a member of AFTRA, I was technically not on strike, but I refused to cross the picket line anyway, out of solidarity. I even walked the line myself in support of my union brothers and sisters.
After the strike had dragged on for a week, KCOP’s general manager called to suggest a compromise. I didn’t have to cross the picket line, he proposed. He would send a camera crew to my home to record a commentary for the evening news. No way. As I pointed out, I would still be crossing the picket line, via videotape. I would still be a scab. I refused.
Over thirty years later, I’m still a proud union member. My commentaries reflect that because that’s who I am. No matter the issue—living wage, collective bargaining, health care, workplace safety—if it’s management versus working men and women, I’m on the side of the workers and their union. Because I realize, as all working men and women should, that many of the great benefits working families share today exist only because of the battles fought by our union brothers and sisters who came before us. Do you like weekends, health care, and the forty-hour workweek? Thank a union! And join one.
By this time, I’d been working on TV and radio for eight years and, if I may say so myself, I’d gotten pretty good at it. I had definitely found and established my progressive voice. And I’d learned a few basics about how to be a successful broadcaster. One, do your homework. Two, know your stuff. Three, be comfortable and relax. Four, tell the truth. Five, whatever you do, be yourself. Don’t pretend to be anything else, because television can spot a phony a mile away.
I’d learned TV and radio so well, in fact, that I was ready for a bigger stage. But first, politics got in the way. Ever since high school, I’d had that proverbial political itch—and I finally had to scratch it.