William Lindsey Jul 6, 2025

Eric Alterman offers a touching reminiscence of his friend journalist Bill Moyers, noting:

"This ordained Baptist minister from a little town called Marshall, Texas, somehow became, for most practical purposes, my rabbi."

Alterman asks where Moyers got the fortitude to stick to his difficult and solitary path when he was very much a voice crying in the wilderness, especially in his native South.

#BillMoyers #courage #TruthTelling #journalism
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https://newrepublic.com/article/197400/bill-moyers-dead-obituary-three-careers-excelled

Bill Moyers Had Three Careers and Excelled at Every One of Them

The Baptist minister from Texas became this New York Jew’s rabbi. How lucky was I?

The New Republic
Show threadWilliam Lindsey Jul 6, 2025

Alterman quotes an interview Moyers did with Salon in 2003:

"I think my life, and certainly my career in journalism, have been informed by two things. One was being a Southerner. Whenever you learned about Southern life, you realize that when we drove the truth-tellers out of the pulpits, out of the editorial rooms and out of the classrooms—people who were telling the truth about slavery—"

#BillMoyers #courage #TruthTelling #journalism
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Show threadWilliam Lindsey 

"that politics failed and we wound up in the Civil War, from which we still haven’t recovered.… Being a Southerner informed me about what happens when a society closes the wagons around itself, when it doesn’t tolerate good journalism or prophecy in the pulpit or truth-telling in the classroom."

#BillMoyers #courage #TruthTelling #journalism
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Jul 6, 2025 at 2:55pmWeb