I had never gone to a Super Bowl and, the weekend after we made the deal, MSNBC’s president, Erik Sorenson, took me to the game. It was in San Diego that year, and Tampa Bay beat Oakland, 48-21. Afterward, we were driving by limo up to L.A. in the middle of the night to do the preliminaries for setting up my show. I don’t remember how the subject came up, but all of a sudden Erik said something very intriguing. Later on, it kept coming back to me. Right after he hired me, Erik said, he’d received phone calls from two very high-ranking people in Washington. They wanted to know why MSNBC was giving me a national forum. They were obviously not happy about it. I said, “Come on, Erik, tell me who called you.” But he said he couldn’t reveal any names.
My guess is that one might have been Karl Rove, the other perhaps a big mucky-muck among the Democrats. Thinking back on it, I figured that the Republicans and Democrats might be dumb, but they’re not stupid. They’d seen that, in Minnesota, where I’d had a statewide radio talk show, I won the governorship and I only had to raise $300,000. If I had a nationwide TV show, I could spend three years expounding my positions, set myself up to make a run for the presidency as an independent, and not have to spend money to do it. Up until you officially file to become a candidate in the summer of an election year, the FCC can’t kick you off the air—but you can do all the “campaigning” you want.
With my show, things got off on the wrong foot because of miscommunication. They started to do the tapings in L.A., but I had an agreement that it would be shot in Minneapolis. I didn’t want to move to L.A. I also felt that most of these types of programs give you only the West or East Coast’s views. Nothing comes from the heartland. And I personally think that the Midwest is the backbone of the country when it comes to common sense.
Very early on, I had to tell MSNBC that they didn’t hire me to be a teleprompter reader. Unfortunately, that is basically what all these news-talk hosts are. All the stories come down from upstairs, even though the hosts pretend that it’s them. People need to understand that Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann, and the rest are not these individual rogues setting their own agendas. Those guys will deny it and say they have artistic freedom. And they may put their little spin on whatever the subject is, but did you ever notice it’s pretty much the same stories talked about on every show? You’re just getting four different “opinions” on the same topic that day.
I know this from personal experience. MSNBC tried to pablum-feed me the subjects they wanted talked about, and I began to fight them on a daily basis. Erik Sorenson might have been the channel’s president, but he was beholden to a leadership cadre that included the president of NBC News—and the man above them both, who used to run the Plastics Division for the network’s owner, the General Electric Corporation.
I didn’t want to discuss the stories they were telling me I had to do. This was after telling me I would have complete artistic control. Now I was supposed to spend my on-air time analyzing the Laci Peterson killing. I said, “Look, there were 15,000 murders in America last year and, as tragic as Laci’s was, she and her unborn baby were only two of them. California may have a big interest in it, but I can assure you that Minnesota doesn’t, other than for National Enquirer-journalism.”
I wanted to do meat-and-potatoes, things that affected people in the big picture. Such as why all our state governments continue to want bicameral legislatures, when a unicameral system would be likely to work much better. Or the situation that was happening in California at the time, where a sitting governor (Gray Davis) was allowed to be recalled by petition, making a signature more powerful than a vote.
The station also had its corporate playlist, a roster of guests that a show’s host is supposed to choose from. Well, I didn’t always want to talk to those people. My attitude was that I’ll create my own playlist. The powers-that-be didn’t like that, either.
The first thing that happened was delaying tactics. Four months after MSNBC hired me, my show wasn’t even close to making a debut. I remember, that June, seeing an article in The New York Times quoting Sorenson. He was still saying, “It is going to be different than all the other shows you’ve seen before. You haven’t seen this format before because we’re literally still inventing it.” He went on to talk about how there had been some unforeseen complications in the planning stage. Since I was six-foot-four and weighed in at 250, the producers were struggling to find a set that could properly accommodate me without appearing like a dollhouse. Supposedly they were having trouble finding me the right chair. Also, since I’d decided to broadcast the program from Minneapolis, this had forced them to start amassing a crew from scratch. Something would be in place by the fall, Sorenson said.
They sent a special guy down from New Jersey to design the entire show. Then Sorenson flew in, but didn’t even watch it, as far as I know. When he met with us afterward, he said, “I can’t put this on the air.” I could see the handwriting on the wall. Eventually, I agreed that they would scale everything back and I’d go on once a week, Saturdays, at five o’clock in the afternoon. MSNBC made the announcement in the middle of August. The story in The New York Times said this “appeared to be a concession,” that I was “perhaps not ready to be the prime-time star that MSNBC had hoped.” Sorenson did say, truthfully, that I had little interest in topics like the Laci Peterson case or the Kobe Bryant case, but that “the cable audience has certain expectations.”
So I did five weekend shows, at about the worst time slot you could possibly have to draw much of any audience—and I had the second-highest-rated news-talk show on MSNBC. I trailed only Chris Matthews. In fact, they had me guest-star once on Matthews’s Hardball. They advertised that eight times during the week, but never once also said I had a show on Saturday. The network simply refused to promote it.
I’d brought the show to Minnesota, and probably fifty Minnesotans had been hired in various positions—but, no surprise I guess, the Minnesota media ripped me. They called it second-rate, with second-rate guests. One week, I had Gray Davis on live, the governor of California who was getting ousted from his job. Would that be considered second-rate?
The guy the network had selected to create the show was sending back “dailies” of what we’d be doing that week. If we were so far off the mark, at what point wouldn’t they have said, hey, you’re going in the wrong direction? But MSNBC waited until five shows were complete. Then, early in December 2003, my producers and I were brought into a room and told, “We can’t keep putting this on.” End of meeting. Out the door.
They maintained it was too expensive to do the show in Minnesota. It was easier to just keep me on the payroll, along with my assistant, and pull the plug on it. This, despite the fact that my contract was for huge money, well into the seven figures, like a professional sports contract. Dee Woodward, who’d also been my assistant during my four years as governor, was likewise to be paid for three years of doing nothing. Dee told me laughingly, “Gee, governor, when this is done, I’ll be retiring.” I said, “Good for you, Dee, you got a three-year early retirement.”
My contract with MSNBC stated that they had exclusive rights to me. That’s standard in the business. When they hire a personality, they don’t want them to have the ability to then go and join their competition. Now that they’d canceled my show, the contract still had almost three years to run. Unless I chose to break it, I could do books, radio, speaking engagements, movies—but I could appear on no other news or cable show.
In that sense, I guess you could say that MSNBC bought my silence. An outdoor show wanted to pay me to go fishing, but I couldn’t do it because it was on cable. I admit that it would have gotten political—because whenever you go fishing, you talk. I couldn’t even do Bill Maher’s show, because that’s also on cable. I’d been a regular guest before on Real Time, because Maher and I think a lot alike and he’d often bring me on as an ally. I was still under contract to MSNBC during the 2004 election campaign, but they didn’t even haul me out to offer an opin
ion. Not once.
I could have violated the contract and probably lost my pay. Did I sell out? You’re damned right. If I didn’t, for this kind of money, you would say I was crazy. The point was, I could do it honorably. It was a contractual agreement that both sides honored. Besides, why would I want to go on the Fox Network as a guest—just to get into a fight with O’Reilly—when you don’t even get a paycheck?
TERRY: It was my fault, too. I wanted to make sure Jesse did not break his contract. We have a lot of people that we take care of who would be in a bad way if we could no longer help them financially. We do it out of love, not duty. We need to have a steady income. It sounds ridiculous to think that, with that kind of income, I would still worry about our finances but, whether you have a little money or a lot of money, the worries are the same. You spend it accordingly. Houses still need repair, cars break down, health insurance costs continue to rise, as do home, auto, and retirement insurance. Utilities cost more every year. And Jesse and I are not getting any younger. I knew he could still get his message out even if he was not on TV, or radio, or in the newspaper every day. Jesse talks about the current events of our nation to everyone he meets. He has made the effort to serve and improve our government at every level he could, since the day he went off and joined the Navy. I felt justified in keeping the contract with MSNBC.
I don’t know how much of a factor the Iraq War was in MSNBC’S getting rid of me. Maybe they’d hired me thinking that, as a Navy SEAL and Vietnam vet, I was probably a right-winger who would automatically be for the war. I wasn’t. I opposed it from the beginning. Remember Ashleigh Banfield, the blond with glasses who had her own show on MSNBC? She disappeared quickly, after she gave a speech at the University of Kansas and said the media were being inherently dishonest in their reporting of Iraq. Gone. Nobody was being allowed on the air who was questioning our invading Iraq. Phil Donahue got the ax, too. He was considered way too liberal by MSNBC.
I remember seeing another quote from Erik Sorenson in The New York Times. “After September 11,” he said, “the country wants more optimism and benefit of the doubt.... A big criticism of the mainstream press is that the beginning point is negative.”
Well, I guess he tried to steer the “right” course, but Sorenson is no longer president of MSNBC. He left that job in 2004, and I don’t know where he is now. But I often wonder how good his memory is, concerning those two phone calls from Washington that he told me about when we left the Super Bowl that night.
But they could only keep my big mouth shut for so long. The contract expired in 2006.
Maybe I missed my true calling: the soaps. I was doing multitudes of interviews when I first got in office, covering a wide spectrum of topics, and one reporter wanted to know my favorite TV show. I sat there thinking for a moment, because I don’t watch much network television per se. Then, all of a sudden, it came to me: The Young and the Restless.
I found that I could relate to the predicament of daytime TV. Those are the hardest-working people in Hollywood. They’re also some of the most talented. Yet they’re the most rebuffed, abused, poked fun at, and disrespected. But just think about the difficulty of doing daytime TV. In one week, the actors need to memorize enough script pages to fill an entire film. They’re the blue-collar, hard-core, working actors and actresses. And they don’t get the praise they deserve, although in many cases these daytime shows are the stepping-stone, the experience-giver. Look at the people who have gone from daytime into Hollywood stardom: Demi Moore and David Hasselhoff (a Young and the Restless alumni), just to name two.
When it made the papers that The Young and the Restless was my favorite program, apparently someone connected with the show read about it. Lo and behold, what came in the mail? The most beautiful portrait of the whole cast, all autographed, accompanied by a great cover letter. I have it hanging on the wall at home in Minnesota.
Then, in the summer of 2000, the producers invited me to CBS Studios in L.A. to make a cameo guest appearance. My scene had me knocking on Victor Newman’s office door. Victor seemed very surprised to see me, but invited me to have a seat. He asked what brought me out here, and I said, “It’s not another campaign contribution, if that’s what you’re worried about, Victor.”
After a minute, Victor asked, “Why did you decide not to run for president? I mean, come November it would have been far more interesting.”
“Well, there’s always 2004,” I said, and then stood up tall for dramatic effect and leaned over Victor’s desk. “Why don’t you run with me? We’d be a dream ticket!”
“That’s an interesting possibility, except . . .”
“What’s that?”
“Who would take the top spot?” Victor went on.
“That would be a problem,” I agreed. “If our two egos were to clash, I don’t think the country could survive it!”
Well, I admitted to the media afterward that I’d had some butterflies beforehand, but calmed down once the taping started—and I didn’t blow any of my lines! When I got back to Minnesota, I threatened to declare the show’s air date, July 10, a state holiday.
When I was out in Hollywood a year or so later, I had dinner with the Young and the Restless producer and Eric Braeden (also known as Victor Newman). Since I had nothing to do the next day until 2:00 p.m., I asked Eric whether he’d mind if I came down and watched. They generally shoot three weeks ahead of the air date, so this way I could get a leg up on what was going to happen.
When I arrived at the studio, they’d written me into the script again. This time I played a security guard and knocked on Victor’s door to tell him I’d be his security for the rest of the day. He said thank you and then, shutting the door, gave a funny look to the camera—“Is that who I thought it was?”—and went on with the scene.
I didn’t get any billing. But, no matter, as a member of the Screen Actors Guild, three weeks later I received a check in the mail.
Life is truly about failures, and how you respond to them. You can’t succeed without also failing. Still, you’d like to fail on your own. When I got censored and taken off the air by MSNBC, despite still being paid handsomely, from a psychological viewpoint it was a nightmare. I think I would have gone into a deep depression—if Harvard hadn’t come along.
It turned out that a student, who was also in the military reserves, had petitioned the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, saying that I ought to be teaching there. He said, don’t you think that what Jesse Ventura achieved in getting elected governor has a place at arguably the greatest institution of learning in the world? The Kennedy School’s dean at that time was Dan Glickman, whom Terry had met when he was secretary of agriculture under Clinton. And Glickman went for the idea. Along came a letter asking if I’d like to become a visiting fellow at Harvard. They offered me as little as a week, or as much as the entire semester. I was dumbstruck. I said to Terry, “Do you believe this, honey? I never even went to college!” I mean, Harvard had produced five American presidents and forty-three Nobel Prize winners. And they wanted me?!
I’d started growing a beard when my TV show ended that same month. I’d also started letting whatever hair I had left grow back, which I thought I’d never do. Perfect timing for going back to school, I guess. I thought, Wow, I missed that part of life. Here I am now at fifty-two, and not only would I have a two-hourlong seminar class to teach for eight consecutive weeks, but as a visiting fellow, you can audit any classes you desire. Which means getting a free semester of Harvard education. I was even to be given a stipend, and they’d provide living quarters. Amazing!
Terry and I agreed that I should do the whole semester. So she stayed home, and I went off to college, in January 2004. I parallel this to only a few other times in my life. Becoming a Navy frogman. Driving off from Minneapolis to become a pro wrestler. Getting cast to do Predator with Schwarzenegger. And winning the governorship.
I’d been to Harvard once before, more than four years earlie
r. After getting elected governor, the Kennedy School had invited me to speak at a “Pizza and Politics” evening. I’d expected Harvard to be a stuffy, arrogant place. But when I got there that day and saw how bright everyone was—what could be better? I loved it.
Even though it was kind of an awkward visit, coinciding with the release of the Playboy interview where I made a few statements that were considered outrageous. Like my definition of gun control: “Being able to stand there at twenty-five meters and put two rounds in the same hole.” Or that drug offenders and prostitutes shouldn’t get packed off to prison: “The government has much more important work to do.” Or the First Amendment rights of protesters: “If you buy the flag, it’s yours to burn.”
When Chris Matthews interviewed me for Hardball that day on the Harvard auditorium’s stage, he said: “I was asked recently if I would do a Playboy interview. Do you recommend that I do that?”
I told Chris, “I’d say do that before you do the foldout.” The eight hundred students in the audience seemed to appreciate that.
Now I was coming back for real. After I landed at the Boston airport, a fellow standing by the baggage carousel recognized me, despite my hair and beard. “Governor, what are you doing out here?” he asked. I said, “Well, I’m going to teach at Harvard.” I’m sure there was more than a hint of pride in my voice.
He said, laughing, “Oh, the People’s Republic of Cambridge! That’s the closest thing to pure socialism that we have in the United States.”
The taxi let me out right by the door to the Kennedy School, where there’s a little plaza. I met the people I’d be working with—marvelous people—and we drove over to the apartment where I’d be living. It was the bare essentials, a little two-bedroom with a living room and kitchen. A long way from the governor’s residence, but I didn’t mind—except the bed was terrible! The first thing Terry did when she came to visit was get one of those inflatable air mattresses to put on top of it. (I have something of a bad back from wrestling, and jumping out of airplanes, and a few other things I did.)
Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! Page 24