They don't make them like Studs Terkel any more, but then, he was a product of his times and those times are long gone.
He observed the Great Depression from his family's boarding house, witnessing the hard luck and hard times that made Communism seem like a better way to go.
As an adult, he asked questions and crafted the answers into book form, coming up with oral histories of ordinary folks living ordinary lives. No catalog of the rich and powerful, his works chronicled those who aren't featured in the history books.
Not that he was one of those ordinary ones, however. At the height of the Depression he attended the University of Chicago, even then a prestigious and expensive private university that a good Catholic wouldn't go near. Someone had some spare change to send the young Studs off to university when others couldn't even find a job.
He made a point to stand with labor, while he toiled as a radio disc jockey. He dabbled in acting, with a local television program to his name, followed years later by a bit part in Eight Men Out, a story of betrayal and corruption that could only have happened in Chicago.
From his perch on the ivory tower, he championed the working man whose ranks he never joined, speaking from his observations rather than experience.
They're still there, down in Hyde Park, surrounding the University of Chicago---the Hyde Park liberals, spouting rhetoric about social engineering and change over white wine and cheese. Men like Studs Terkel, the quintessential Hyde park liberal, was their voice, and sadly, that voice is now silenced. Sic transit gloria.
2 comments:
"Quintessential Hyde Park Liberal" is the most bizarre description of Studs Terkel I've ever heard. You don't know hyde park and you don't know studs. Studs Terkel was exactly who he said he was: a writer, a radio guy, an actor, a commentator. Did he ever say he was a plumber, an electrician, a waiter, a....? no. He was a writer. He wrote about those people. And he didn't happen to live in Hyde Park, which by the way, is full of a wide variety of people, not just quintessential liberals. He went to law school there for three years a long time ago. Nor was he a Catholic, so why would he care whether a "good catholic" would go there? Of course, many good catholics have and do go there.
Ah but I do indeed know Hyde Park and I'm well aware of Mr. Terkel's biography and body of work. And you don't know your Chicago history if you're so unaware of the antipathy of the Archdiocese of Chicago towards the godless communists of the U of C.
The workers of the world find it amusing when the likes of a Studs Terkel stands in Bughouse Square and preaches about the working man. Grand that he was a writer, but the point of the post lies in all the rhetoric.
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