January 14, 2004
FORGET AMOS & ANDY, THIS IS RADIO COMEDY:
-AUDIO INTERVIEW: Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill (Fresh Air, January 14, 2004)
O'Neill and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ron Suskind speak about the new book on which they collaborated, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill. The book chronicles his nearly two years with the Bush administration. O'Neill was the administration's top economic official and a principal of the National Security Council. The book has created a firestorm because of O'Neill's assertion that President Bush was intent on invading Iraq as soon as he took office, nine months before Sept. 11. O'Neill also criticizes Bush for his "disengagement" at important cabinet meetings. The book draws on O'Neill's account as well as other high-level officials, and relies on thousands of internal documents. Ron Suskind was The Wall Street Journal's senior national affairs reporter and won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing while there. He is also the author of the best-selling book, A Hope in the Unseen. (This interview continues into the second half of the show).
This interview is just hilarious. You have to assume it was booked before Mr. O'Neill renounced the book, because Terri Gross asks him a question based on what's been attributed to him; then Mr. O'Neill completely blunts the gist of the point, defending the Administration in almost every instance; then Mr. Suskind has to leap in and try to rebury the President and defend the book from its co-author without completely discrediting him. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 14, 2004 07:44 PM
I am of a certain age and I cannot forget Amos and Andy. It was the funniest show in the world. If you could hear it now you would crack up laughing. Of course you would then have to strip naked, crawl five miles over broken glass and then spend a year in a re-education camp.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at January 14, 2004 09:04 PMTurns out I was right a couple of days ago when I posted that O'Neill having an Adrimal Stockdale moment in front of Katie Couric would probably be the only way to avoid being deluged by Paul's face and/or voice and/or words on TV, radio and in the press for the foreseeable future (if only I could pick stocks, football games or lotto numbers as well). His major media appaeances are going to dry up fast if he keeps going against the "Bush lied/It's all about oil" template he was fitted for on 60 Minutes.
I suppose Suskind could continue on as a solo act for a while on the interview circuit, though the current act is far more entertaining, and could get moreso, if O'Neill finally realizes he was actually the "useful idiot" in this entire secnario.
Posted by: John at January 14, 2004 09:30 PMSaw a post somewhere where the author wondered if O'Neill got a horse head in the bed the way he has turned around on his own book. Either that or he really didn't think the media would use it to bash Bush.
Posted by: AWW at January 14, 2004 11:35 PMSome of what O'Neill says would, if taken seriously, betray a naivete that is breathtaking. For example, his statements that someone waving around a document marked "Secret" on national television shouldn't cause an investigation, but rather should be handled by a call from the Treasury Secretary to his counsel's office.
Posted by: David Cohen at January 15, 2004 07:52 AM