Reading Bill Moyers is like having a comforting brain massage. Not that his messages are comforting; most of them are not. But he has mastered the art of rhythm and cadence that aligns somehow with the mind's ability to assimilate thoughts. In this, he reminds me of historian David McCullough, who reads his daily writing production to his indispensible wife, Rosalee, before dinner as she takes notes; after dinner, she reads it back to her scribbling husband, who edits his text the next day. The final product, like Moyers's, as a result is easy on the brain.
Moyers' latest collection, Moyers on Democracy, draws from his speeches, most of them from the last couple of years. At 74, he's increasingly drafted to deliver encomia for good friends, among them Rev. William Sloane Coffin, former Rep. Barbara Jordan, Lady Bird Johnson, and broadcast executive Fred Friendly. His tribute to Jordan is particularly affecting. A few excerpts:
"Barbara was singing the last time we were together. There were twoscore of us at Liz Carpenter's up on Skyline Drive, belting forth old favorites from the Broadman and Cokesbury hymnals. "Standing on the Promses," "Throw Out the Lifeline," "The Old Rugged Cross." And spirituals, too. "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "Deep River," "My Lord, What a Morning." Friends have said her music often eased the smarting wounds of her long battle with multiple sclerosis. But this night some other wellspring opened as she sang one of her favorite blues songs. Hands on the arms of her electric chariot, that big head tilted back, a mischievous glean of light in her eyes, she sang "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out."
"...She had electrified the nation (during the Watergate hearings) when she had famously declared her whole and total faith in the Constitution despite having been excluded from it because of her race. The convention of 1787 had decided people like her were '60 per cent a person,' which is how slaves were to be enumerated for the purposes of representation. But the truth is, in her understanding of justice, Barbara Jordan would have fit right in with any of the 100 per cent white men in that hall, two hundred years ago, in Philadelphia."
---Steve Goddard
