Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!

by Jesse Ventura; Dick Russell

  “This feels pretty close to heaven to me,” Terry says.

  “Conception Bay.” I turn the words over in my mouth. “The name sure fits, doesn’t it? I’ll bet this is the honeymoon spot of the Baja.”

  Terry smiles, and curles up in my arms.

  We spend the night here, awakening soon after sunrise to walk the beach with Dexter. Out near one of the islands, another couple is already paddling around in a kayak. There is barely even the ripple of a wave.

  “Let’s just not even think about getting anywhere today,” Terry says, and I nod in agreement.

  Back at the camper, she returns to reading Steinbeck’s Log from the Sea of Cortez. Long ago, his expedition had pulled into Conception Bay to collect marine life and, when Terry comes to a certain passage, she motions to me. “Listen to this,” she said quietly.

  “Behind the beach there was a little level land, sandy and dry and covered with cactus and thick brush. And behind that, the rising dry hills. Now again the wild doves were calling among the hills with their song of homesickness. The quality of longing in this sound, the memory response it sets up, is curious and strong. And it has also the quality of a dying day. One wishes to walk toward the sound—to walk on and on toward it, forgetting everything else. Undoubtedly there are sound symbols in the unconscious just as there are visual symbols—sounds that trigger off a response, a little spasm of fear, or a quick lustfulness, or, as with the doves, a nostalgic sadness.”

  In a timeless place like Conception Bay, words like those call up a lot of food for thought. I’ve never spoken publicly about why I didn’t run for a second term as governor. Ultimately, it had to do with my family, especially Terry’s health. There were other factors, too. Times of painful realizations. The first of these happened not long after September 11.

  Headline: 28,000 State Workers Strike in Minnesota, Drawing Fire

  Nearly 28,000 Minnesota state employees walked off the job today in a demand for higher pay, drawing criticism from many Minnesotans, who said the strikers were acting selfishly at a time of national crisis.

  —The New York Times, October 2, 2001

  I’d offered them a slight pay raise and an extension of benefits—these things get negotiated every two years—and still they walked out. I had to assign National Guard troops to fill in for them at more than a hundred state hospitals, nursing homes, and veterans homes. The strike hurt me deeply. We didn’t know if more terrorist attacks might be looming. In my view, the United States was at war. Going out on strike was their patriotic response? For a dollar-an-hour pay increase, at a moment like this, after the biggest attack on American soil in our history? I felt their concern for their pocketbooks potentially disrupted my ability to govern.

  When I’d taken office almost three years before, Steven Bosacker, my chief of staff, scheduled me to pay visits to each of the twenty-five departments in the state. That’s all I did for my first two weeks. When I’d walk in, I had state workers come up to me and say, “I’ve been working here thirty years and this is the first time a governor has ever set foot in this building.” So I thought I really had a rapport with these employees. For them to strike now felt like a stab in the back.

  I know how strongly the Democrats control the unions and, although I have no proof, in my heart I blame them for the strike. One time when I went to broadcast my weekly radio show, I was greeted by a hundred workers, and I’ll never forget the signs some of them held up: “Jesse ‘the Scab’ Ventura.” I found this personally degrading and offensive.

  The strike got settled and everyone went back to work by the middle of October. But that day of the picket signs was when I’d turned to Terry and said, “Honey, I don’t think I want to be their boss anymore.”

  The Minnesota unions had also torn me apart for leaving the state and making the twenty-four-hour trip to Ground Zero while the strike was still on. The Minnesota media were furious, too, because they weren’t allowed to come along when Terry and I went to the Twin Towers site. That wasn’t my call, it was Governor Pataki’s. He felt it was too dangerous. With a lot of heavy equipment and workers risking their lives, you needed to minimize the presence of cameras. But by that point, my relationship with the media had already sunk below the horizon.

  I had a radio show every Friday called Lunch with the Governor. I did that so I could speak directly to the people of Minnesota, without the press always as the intermediary. It was more than my having an adverse relationship with them. Never once was I criticized over policy. It was always personal—what Jesse said, how Jesse reacted. Which, in terms of the popularity game, might have been “powerful stuff”—but it was meaningless in terms of what I was trying to accomplish in the big picture.

  Let me tell you about a double standard, in terms of how I was treated. Soon after I took office, I wrote my autobiography. It became a bestseller. I was immediately assailed by the Minnesota press for supposedly using my victory to make money. A huge effort was made to convince the public that I was nothing but a profiteer. Then, a few months later, Senator John McCain came through Minnesota on his book tour—and the same media hailed him.

  I understand that career politicians write books prior to running for president. Books are used to help catapult yourself into the White House. I had no intention of going for anything like that at the time. I’ve always stuck to the belief that before you look for another job, you finish the one you were voted in to do. Well, as I write this Barack Obama is being hailed as the Democratic Party’s new champion for 2008. He’s written a new book, but do you see any public outcry about it? Yet I was chastised by the media for writing a book about my beliefs and what I felt and how I got to where I was—much the same as Obama’s book, I’m sure. My question is, why was I held to such a different standard?

  The reality is, the media jump at personality more than they do substance. They don’t judge you for what you are attempting to accomplish, they simply want to dissect your personality. And I have a volatile personality. So I’m easy pickings for them.

  TERRY: Why did the Minnesota media come to hate Jesse so much? Minnesota has a tendency, if one of their own goes beyond a certain scope, to rip him to shreds. They did it to Prince, and to a football player who got involved with drugs. If you don’t walk around really humble and hang your head, once you reach a certain stature, you will get creamed. That was one aspect of it.

  The second aspect was, I think, that most of the media already take a side. They are either for the Democrats or the Republicans, and there is no room for anybody else. They want to keep their connections good, because that’s how they make their living. If they start getting behind an independent like Jesse, who they already know is not going to make a life out of politics, this puts their careers in jeopardy.

  Besides, people are more interested in reading sensationalistic “bad stuff” than “good stuff.” So the more they can dredge up, even if it’s innuendo or outright lies, well, that’s just more people picking up the paper.

  Terry always told me, don’t watch the news and don’t read the papers. Stay focused on what you’re doing, and don’t give a damn. I could do it for a month or even a month and a half, and it worked. But eventually I couldn’t stop myself; I was like a drug addict. In hindsight, if I were to become governor again, I would follow her advice explicitly to the T—for the entire four years.

  Headline: VENTURA SERVES UP A WEEK OF THE JACKAL

  On Tuesday the governor, an independent (big time) . . . decreed that reporters covering him would have to wear a jackal press badge.

  On the front is a full-figure picture of the governor (in a fingerpointing, Jesse- Wants- You pose) and beneath that is the reporter’s name and organization, and the words “Official Jackal.” On the back is a warning that the governor can revoke the credential “for any reason.”

  The governor’s office says the new badges are meant to enhance security and accountability.

  Many news organizations object, and their reporters r
efuse to wear the badges. They say what started out as good-natured fun has become demeaning and unprofessional.

  —The New York Times, February 25, 2001

  I used to get so worked up. One particular journalist with the Minneapolis paper came out with a story about my once having supposedly jumped up onto a topless bar in Montana before being physically removed from the building. The source was an elderly Montana couple who were convinced they’d seen me do this. Well, I’ve only been to Montana three times in my life—twice on a train with my mom traveling to and from the World’s Fair in Seattle when I was a kid, and another time when Terry and I were leaving the Portland wrestling territory and heading home to Minnesota. Yet this story got printed without any fact-checking, and I had to respond to it and deny it.

  Another time, I remember reading a comment: “What else can you expect when you have a governor who admits that he never reads?” I never said that. If you counted every book on Kennedy I read on an airplane when I was wrestling, those alone would add up to an encyclopedia.

  TERRY: That’s one of the things I really liked about him, because I am a reader, and here was a man who read! In his wrestling days, the first thing he would say in the morning was: “Who’s got a newspaper?”

  It’s little things like that that you think won’t get to you but, when you’re in a position like I was, all those little things become a big thing.

  TERRY: See, we weren’t seasoned. We didn’t have the backup, and we didn’t have professionals around us. Everybody that worked for him, they were all like us: We can change the world. You can’t go into politics with that attitude. You are a fool if you do. You have to go into politics saying, “This is going to be the hardest job I’ve ever had in my life. I’m going to have to fight to stay alive, fight to get every single inch of ground”—and then hope to heck there’s somebody behind you holding onto it when you’re gone.

  Just remembering makes me want to go and lie down for a while.

  Even more important than placing term limits on politicians, I believe they should have term limits on Capitol reporters. Some of those guys have been down there in the statehouse basement for twenty-five years; they hardly ever see the sun! It would be a good policy, on the part of newspapers, to do a rotation. Move these people to another beat when they become too comfortable and entrenched. In the end, they don’t take an objective point of view. They start feeding into their stories what they want to see happen. They get overrun, I think, with the feeling of power—just like career politicians do.

  The St. Paul Pioneer Press had an editorial writer named Steve Dornfeld. Probably 90 percent or more of his editorials were negative toward me. Weeks after I left office, Dornfeld left the newspaper and became communications director for the Metropolitan Council, which is overseen by a new Republican governor. To me, that’s a clear example of how aligned our media are with the two parties. The media are very comfortable with a two-party system, and don’t want to see it changed.

  I actually did my best to help out the media when it came to an infringement on its First Amendment rights. I’d just gotten out of office when the infamous Janet Jackson incident took place at the Super Bowl, where Justin Timberlake ripped off her top in front of the TV cameras. I happened to catch in the paper one day that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had fined CBS half a million dollars for that. I also learned that Fox had drawn a million dollar fine for running some sort of “indecent” program. My curiosity was piqued. When the networks write out these checks to the government, where does the money go?

  I called the FCC headquarters in New York, explained who I was, and asked my question. I was then transferred six times. No one could answer me. I thought, this is ridiculous, it should be public information. How come these people either can’t tell me, or won’t? Finally, I was told that someone would be calling me back. The next day, a fellow did. First he got defensive, thinking I was accusing the FCC of a “take the money and run.” I assured him this wasn’t the case, I simply wanted to know.

  Then he dropped the bombshell: that $1.5 million in fines went into the government’s general fund. This might not cause the hair on the average lay person’s neck to stand up, but it should. The general fund is the trillion dollar elephant—what the entire federal government runs off of, where all your tax dollars go. When you pay taxes, you also elect public officials. But this is taxation without representation. The FCC consists of appointed officials; therefore it’s their definition of what is obscene. If you, as the public, disagree with them, you have no means to remove them. This is the government’s ability to levy fines anytime they want, because the FCC holds these stations hostage. If they pull a station’s license, they’re out of business. So I find this a clear case of dictatorship, in the world of communications and free speech. You’re guilty if the FCC deems you so.

  Some people will say, yes, but we don’t need little Johnny hearing any bad words over the radio. My answer is, trust me, there’s nothing little Johnny hasn’t heard already on the street. And you can always turn the dial. If what Howard Stern says offends you, don’t listen. If enough people refuse to listen to Howard’s raunchiness, he’s gone—because he has to bring in advertising dollars.

  We just don’t need the government controlling that dial, telling us what we can and can’t listen to. We are free thinking individuals who ought to be able to make our own choices, and if we worry about what our children are hearing, that’s called parenting. Rest assured that, when the government starts raising your kids, before long you’re going to see the kids turning in their parents to the government.

  In June 2002, when I went to China with the largest trade delegation ever organized at the state level (roughly a hundred government and business leaders accompanied me), not one TV network in Minnesota covered it. They all claimed “expenses.” That’s the first time I ever heard the media say something was too expensive. I was out there trying to help bring Minnesota into the future by forging a relationship with the country that’s going to be the economic power of the world. This affected everyone in the state in some way, or it would someday.

  So what was the front-page headline in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on the day that I returned from China? “People’s House or Party Pad?” it said. Their story was quoting former members of my staff who claimed that my son, Tyrel, and his friends had been abusing the governor’s mansion—supposedly draining statepurchased booze, strewing beer cans and broken glass around, and damaging the furniture.

  I think the timing of that story was set up to overshadow what I’d accomplished in China. It was a case of slander and libel against a twenty-two-year-old kid. I knew the main source of the lies. His name was Dan Creed. He’d been executive director of the Governor’s mansion and, in the spring of that year, I’d dismissed him and a few others for leaking stories to the media when I was threatening to close down the mansion as a cost-saving measure. Behind my back, I found out later, he was meeting with the Democrats and Republicans, who were orchestrating what he should do and how. He wanted the funding of the residence changed from the governor’s office to the general fund, meaning people like him would become state employees rather than being employed at the governor’s pleasure. In simple terms, he—not the governor—would then run the governor’s residence and could not be fired. Creed was working on one of those so-called “tell-all books,” which came out the same day that my official portrait was unveiled in the Capitol that November so that he could draw more press attention.

  The Minnesota media simply ran with Creed’s accusations against my son. They did no investigating. A lot of times, Tyrel would go out and meet some friends at a nightclub—he was old enough to have a drink—and bring them back to the residence. But these weren’t “underaged drinking parties.” And I don’t know how Dan Creed could possibly have known what was going on at midnight, since he went home every day at five! There wasn’t a single state trooper—and one was inside the governor’s residence twenty-f
our hours a day, seven days a week—who ever said one thing about my son misbehaving in that house. In fact, half the time he wasn’t even there because, for virtually my entire term as governor, Tyrel was working for Sean Penn as his personal assistant out in Hollywood or on a film location.

  Yet the media went so far as to have investigative teams interviewing Ty’s friends, trying to dig up any dirt they could, wanting to know if he did drugs or hung out with somebody who’d been busted for them. They came up with nothing. It was a choreographed attempt at character assassination. Today I view those media people as equivalent to pedophiles, because they attacked my children on multiple occasions. They even later listed my son’s name in a big article about all the children who got in trouble when their parents were in office. Yet no charges were ever brought against him, so how is he guilty of this?

  Tyrel will not live in Minnesota anymore. Ty feels that he’d always be looking over his shoulder, for fear he might do something that the media would then go after his father about. He’s the only kid who went to Hollywood to become anonymous, instead of famous, to be able to live and work in peace. If something drove one of your children from living in a state, wouldn’t any parent hate whoever was responsible?

  Not only did the media go after my children, they went after my dog. At the time I had an English bulldog named Franklin. There was an instance when Terry and I were staying on for the weekend at the governor’s residence, instead of going back to our house. And, of course, the dog can’t stay home alone. So a state trooper who was going off-duty told me, “It’s not out of my way; I’ll be happy to bring the dog down to the mansion.” The Minnesota media then came out with a story that my dog was being chauffeured around by state troopers. It was ludicrous.