'Just look for the truth'

OK, I'll admit it.

I loved Mike Wallace.

Well, let me back up. I had a love/hate relationship with the guy. Sometimes his "60 Minutes" segments made me stand up and cheer. Sometimes they'd make me mad. But, that was the point.

As Scott Pelley said last night on the CBS Evening News, Mike Wallace had a saying:

"Our job isn't hard. Just look for the truth."

Those words are more important than ever in this social media cyclone, in which even the relatively-new 24-hour news cycle has been reduced to a seven-minute one.

You no doubt know I'm a old soul. I've watched or recorded "60 Minutes" since I was a boy. Andy Rooney was my favorite. Harry Reasoner was the one I wanted to be like. Ed Bradley was the dude that dug great tunes. I had a crush on Lesley Stahl since her White House days. Morley Safer was the courtly one. Dan Rather was Dan Rather.

But the guy whose voice and manner and mere presence quickened my pulse was Mike Wallace. I admired his guts. I'd always laugh whenever he'd nail some crook. I loved to watch the powerful and the dictatorial and the arrogant asses dither and squirm. Pelley and Steve Kroft and the current crew (Safer and Stahl are still around and, for the record, I still love Stahl and now have a crush on Lara Logan) are doing a great job keeping Don Hewitt's baby and Mike Wallace's MO alive.

Wallace had been to the top of the mountain and to the depth of the valley. Gen. William Westmoreland sued him in a famous incident in 1982. Wallace later admitted the incident, plus the death of a son, touched off a series of depressive episodes. He admitted to Safer in a late interview he once tried to kill himself. I felt for him because I, too, have been nipped at the heels before by the Black Dog.

Favorite stories? Oh, the time he scooped Seymour Hersh on Hersh's own story -- while on an airplane! And the time he threw up the word "lunatic" to the Ayatollah.

Don't miss this excellent New York magazine piece by Matt Zoller Seitz.

Of the CBS clips of classic interviews, please watch Wallace's heart-wrenching story on the Secret Service agent, Clint Hill, who blamed himself for JFK's assassination. You can find it among these classic clips. Heck, watch 'em all.

As such things eerily go sometimes, I watched a Wallace-hosted 1992 CBS documentary on Watergate about 24 hours before I heard of his passing. I remember thinking how much I missed that voice, that turned-up eyebrow, that look, on "60 Minutes."

He had his faults and he wasn't a saint, but at least by one viewer who appreciated a guy going for the jugular and giving his all into his 90s, Mike Wallace will be missed.

One last story: Pelley said last night CBS threw Wallace a big party the Friday night of the week he "retired." Gave him a cake and everything.

Guess who was back at work, sitting at his desk, the following Monday?

You can't help but admire that.

"60 Minutes" will air a special tribute to Mike Wallace at 7 p.m. (Eastern) Sunday, April 15.

Tuesday morning, 3 a.m.

I've hit the hypomanic high that happens when one finishes a good book.

No, wait. That's not true. "Hemingway's Boat" is more than good. It's great. It is, in fact, the best book I've ever read on the Papa saga. That's no hyperbole.

It's 3 a.m. as I write this. And now I'm alive, full of ideas, ready to write, ready to read. Which is a good thing because I received word today a book proposal I've submitted was accepted! But, more on that later.

Minimized in the right corner of my Mac are three articles. One is a 2004 New Yorker profile of the just-retired knuckleball Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield. Another is a New York Times piece on CBS correspondent Lara Logan. The third is "Goodbye to All That," Joan Didion's 1967 elegy to New York. I just now had to put down the next book in my queue, "Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines A Life" by Ann Beattie. It's weird, but it's literate. I'll keep reading.

Now I'm starting to feel the crash, brought on by exhaustion, by the lateness of the hour, by the final remnants of illness.

Some take drugs. Others jump out of planes. Me? I read books. I listen to music. I watch movies. I write. I dream. I love.

Time to sleep.

Maybe he needs to get out of the Beltway...

Twitter is one of those interesting aspects of modern life that sometimes makes me wonder if it's just another excuse to waste time.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Twitter is a good way to find links to news stories you might otherwise miss, blogs, coupons, traffic tips, weather updates and amusing one-liners. I use it to plug my blog and my newspaper column. And I also follow a few celebrities, mostly news types.

Somewhere along the way I started following Luke Russert. I like his take on sports. I liked his dad, Tim, and still miss Tim's steady presence on "Meet the Press." Luke is a young man (born in 1985) who covers Congress for NBC.

Luke has made me give my Twitter feed a double take a couple of times, though. During one of the Republican presidential debates earlier in the year, he tweeted something like, "Where the hell was gas $1.59 a gallon in late 2008?" after one of the candidates mentioned it.

Well, I knew quite well that gas got that cheap here in Knoxville, so I told him so. He didn't reply.

Today he tweeted: "The entire #Bills bar including myself just went 'Who the hell is Michael Buble?'" No doubt they'd just seen one of CBS's previews for tonight's "60 Minutes" story by Lara Logan on the popular Canadian singer.

Dang, Luke, get out of the Beltway every now and then!



Buble is a Grammy Award-winning pop singer (granted that doesn't mean what it once did) who has sold more than 30 million records. He had a huge hit in 2005 with "Home" and his Christmas CD has roared to the top of the charts. I first saw him 11 years ago in the film "Duets" and enjoyed his concert at Thompson-Boling Arena in 2008.

(He's also hosting a Christmas special on Luke Russert's own network on Tuesday night.)

I can somewhat give Luke a bit of a pass on this one. I don't know much of anything about modern day music. But I do know Buble. He's a throwback in a lot of ways. He wears a coat and tie on stage and has a stronger vocal range than Frank Sinatra did. But he croons in that same style and actually has talent, which is more than one can say for most of what passes for popular music.

I will say that I did shake my head when I saw Logan was going to be profiling Buble on "60 Minutes." But, heck. It's Christmastime. And he can ring-a-ding-ding almost as well as the Chairman of the Board.

I hope you know who that is, Luke.