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“Cultural Heroes [3]: Studs Terkel, a Wired Diogenes”

Leonard takes the opportunity to write about Terkel on the occasion of the publication of Race: How Whites & Blacks Think & Feel About the American Obsession. He sums up Terkel by writing, “He is, of course, the opposite of a public-opinion poll. He goes anywhere, but when he gets there he stays put long enough to let people explain themselves” and calls him “Our premier oral historian…”

Leonard notes that Terkel interviews and writes about people (mostly from Chicago) that “Have never shown up on Face The Nation…where all we here from are the male and the pale and their credentialed feedback…” and notes “America would be a better place if everybody listened to these working Americans, not just racial-humanist Studs Terkel.”

New name: Diogenes = Greek philosopher in the 4^th Century BC that founded cynic philosophy (also known as Diogenes the Cynic)

New learning: Studs Terkel played a sports reporter in John Sayles film about the 1919 Black Sox scandal “Eight Men Out.”

Studs (seems like only a B&W photo works for him: