Southern Bookman

Veteran political journalist Bill Nigut says goodbye to outstanding career

Bill Nigut on his last show Friday looked back on his more than 40 years as Atlanta’s premier TV and radio political journalist.

When Nigut came to Atlanta’s WSB in 1984, the TV station had the resources and ambition to cover presidential campaigns along with national media.

Saying farewell as lead host of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s “Politically Georgia” on WABE public radio, Nigut recalled WSB’s heady days when he joined reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post and TV networks on campaign trips across the United States.

Along with “Politically Georgia” co-anchors Greg Bluestein, Patricia Murray and Tia Mitchell of the AJC, Nigut talked to famed political consultant James Carville about the Democratic Party’s fraught prospects.

Nigut met Carville when the Louisianian managed Zell Miller’s successful gubernatorial campaign in Georgia. Later, Nigut connected with Carville when he ran Bill Clinton’s first race for the presidency, in which he defeated incumbent George H.W. Bush.

WSB possessed such national renown that Clinton came to the station for a town hall meeting. President Bush, his campaign sinking to Clinton’s, agreed to a town hall at WSB’s White Columns, a month before the election.

After leaving a diminished WSB, Nigut brought his distinctive voice and objective reporting to Georgia Public Television, covering state politics.

Although he displayed fair-mindedness to all sides, Nigut was fired from state-funded Georgia Public TV in a disgraceful GOP partisan attack.

He came back with the AJC’s “Politically Georgia,” mentoring his print journalism colleagues in radio techniques and conducting insightful interviews with George leaders from across the political spectrum.

Nigut recalled covering a range of national politicians, including Newt Gingrich, Andrew Young, Bob Dole, John Lewis and Gary Hart. He said he particularly admired George H.W. Bush for his gentlemanly qualities.

A theater lover, Nigut will conduct a course on Broadway musicals for Emory University’s continuing education program.

Nigut upon leaving received recorded tributes from a number of state and local leaders, all Democrats. 

Despite his fairness across the aisle, Nigut on “Politically Georgia” revealed liberal leanings that raised Republican suspicions.

Nigut’s voice for beneficial public policies and informed political debate will be missed.

 

 

Atlanta basks in sunshine

After last week’s snow and frigid weather, Atlanta has settled into mild and sunny January days that anticipate spring.

Atlanta’s moderate winters draw people here. Northern transplants marvel at being able to pursue outdoors activities even in February.

For all of Atlanta’s faults, its enervating traffic, mediocre architecture and cultural shortcomings, the winter’s gorgeous sunshine and crystalline blue skies make it a beautiful city.

The kids are playing baseball. Golf balls fly. Walking trails are crowded, parks full. 

Driving in the midwinter sunshine, I realize I’ve loved Atlanta all these years.

NVIDIA plunge brings dizziness

Like many other tech dabblers, I’d never heard of Deepseek until the Chinese AI company cost me big financial losses.

A few months ago, I joined the rush to buy stock in NVIDIA, the king of high-powered chip manufacturing and the world’s richest company until Deepseek shocked the markets with its low cost, high-efficiency AI programs.

Deepseek matches the calculating accuracy of Open AI’s ChatGBT technology with much fewer chips and money.

I’ll refrain from poker chip metaphors.

For some reason my Apple shares rose as Microsoft and NVIDIA plunged. The day was also good for old reliables Johnson & Johnson and Home Depot.

I’m confident NVIDIA will bounce back. Yet my head is spinning from tech whiplash.

 

Michael Ondaatje reclaims lost youth in “A Year of Last Things”

Michael Ondaatje’s “A Year of Last Things” glows with a special light, more of joy than regret.

 

In his first poetry collection in 18 years, the 81-year-old Ondaatje illuminates the past with dreamlike reveries, recalling significant random moments from lost love affairs and long ago journeys.

 

The acclaimed author of “The English Patient” and “Coming Through Slaughter” began his career with poetry 50 years ago, most notably with “The Collected Works of Billy the Kid.”

 

Like strange overheard conversations, the poems in “A Year of Last Things” beguile the reader with veiled language.

 

The book’s visionary atmosphere is heightened by meditative prose narratives of childhood and art’s transformation of life. These memoirs engage in a Proustian rediscovery of lost time.

 

Along with fragmentary revelations of heightened experience, Ondaatje gives homage to a gallery of admired literary counterparts.

 

Ondaatje embroiders the poem “A Night Radio Station in Koprivshtitsa” with lines from Grace Paley and Thomas Merton.

 

Other insights in the collection come from Tomas Transtromer, Cole Swensen, James Salter, Linda Gregg, Lorine Niedecker, Paul Veermeersch, Zbigniew Herbert and Asha Shahid Ali.

 

A valedictory to the English formalist poet Edward Thomas, one of many poets killed in World War I and a master of poems on last things, is a high point of the collection.

 

Dante is also a guiding spirit. Eastern European history, religious monuments and pop culture are other strands in Ondaatje’s tableau.

 

In his luminous poems, Ondaatje gives comfort that last things never really pass away.

Farewell Jules Feiffer, a defining voice of the counterculture

Jules Feiffer’s Village Voice cartoon expressed the hip, irreverent ethos of New York City’s radical downtown artists and writers.

Those of us in the hinterlands who subscribed to the iconoclastic newspaper turned to Feiffer’s cartoon first for clues on how to act with urban sophistication.

A strident liberal, Feiffer satirized left wing orthodoxies and Manhattan pretensions. His progressive audience loved being skewered by him.

Feiffer’s weekly strip gave us an education on art, politics, modes of behavior and moral values.

The influential cartoonist, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, moviemaker and children’s book author died last week at age 95 at his home in Richfield Springs, N.Y.

Suffering from various ailments for years, he died from congestive heart failure.

Outside of his era-defining cartoon, I consider Feiffer’s screenplay for the tragi-comic film “Carnal Knowledge” his greatest accomplishment.

Staring Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen and Ann-Margret, the film directed by Mike Nichols weighs the emotional costs of America’s poisonous male-female relationships.

Younger generations won’t have much interest in the vanished cultural wars depicted in Feiffer’s cartoons.

The sexual battles of “Carnal Knowledge” will remain current.

 

 

Farewell, Garth Hudson

Garth Hudson, the Band’s musical wizard,  gave rock the sophistication of jazz and classical music.

Hudson, who painted sonic landscapes evoking American history, a vanished rural culture and early jazz and rhythm and blues, died Tuesday at age 87 in a Woodstock, N.Y., nursing home.

A classically trained musician, Hudson from his background post behind the Band gave the group its distinctive sound, recalling honky tonks, roadhouses and 1950s R&B, yet strikingly original.

Backing the driving rhythms of Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson. Hudson added symphonic and improvisational coloration, reminiscent of the jazz stylings of John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.

Robertson, the Band’s principal songwriter, nearly equaled the group’s former leader Bob Dylan in his lyrical imagination, writing about the Civil War, haunted love, harvest rituals and the great American desire to escape to the frontier.

The Saturday night and Sunday morning voices of Helm, Danko and Manuel, ethereal and profane, lifted rock into a different realm, striving toward Faulkner and Mark Twain.

Although he never sang or wrote songs, Hudson was the group’s essential genius, planning recording sessions and providing musical virtuosity.

Primarily performing on the Lowery organ, of larger tonal range than Hammond models, Hudson also played piano, synthesizers, saxophone, trumpet, accordion and violin.

In concerts, he took star turns performing improvisational introductions to the driving rock anthem “Chest Fever” that changed depending upon his imaginative mood.

Often building upon themes from Bach, Hudson took daring musical flights in the organ preludes, giving audiences thrilling moments rivaling those of Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix.

Although he mainly stayed in the background, Hudson was rock’s most inventive musician outside of Frank Zappa.

 

John McPhee, Gay Talese still delighting readers

Literary journalism masters John McPhee and Gay Talese keep producing significant work.

McPhee, 93, and Talese, 92, showed they haven’t slowed down with recent appearances in the New Yorker and New York Times.

Returning to his longtime home in the New Yorker, McPhee published the fifth installment of his informal autobiography “Tabula Rosa” on the magazine’s web site.

As with the earlier chapters, McPhee through a series of seemingly random vignettes looks back on his writing career and family life in Princeton, N.J.

The pieces possess an easy-going charm that belies the work that must have gone into writing them.

In his latest offering, McPhee looks back at writing for Time magazine at the start of his career and the birth of his first daughter.

He amusedly traces the glory days and sad demise of the family swimming pool, examines his crossword puzzle expertise and notes his striving to stay active while hampered by a variety of ailments.

Talese was featured in a New York Times interview upon the publication of his newest collection of articles, “A Town Without Time: Gay Talese’s New York.”

The book recycles some of Talese’s most memorable work, including his account of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge construction and the often reprinted “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.”

In the interview, the fastidious dresser Talese laments the sloppy dressing of New Yorkers these days.

Despite the decline in sartorial standards, Talese professes his unwavering love for the city.

Along with their invaluable books and articles, Talese and McPhee have set standards of how to live with purpose and adventure.

Doctor’s visit evokes Atlanta memories

Sitting in a doctors’ office where I’ve had many appointments over the years, I marveled that I’ve lived in Atlanta for such a long time.

Remnants of last week’s snow remained as I drove to the building at 2001 Peachtree where I underwent orthopedic examinations many years ago.

I remembered the courtly elderly surgeon who repaired the torn meniscus in my left knee.

Framed jerseys of Atlanta sports legends Tim Hudson and Dominque Wilkins adorned the Peachtree Orthopedics waiting room.

Today I had an appointment with the young doctor who replaced that very same knee a couple of years ago.

As I approached the office building, I saw majestic Piedmont Hospital, where my children had been born and I’d survived several medical crises.

I’d begun another new year in Atlanta.

 

 

Washington Post reeling as emboldened Trump regains power

As the Washington Post reels from declining subscriptions, budget cuts and staff turmoil, the media company remains an essential source of information.

While the Post’s reporting has been weakened by the loss of staff, many fleeing to rival news operations, I still revere its columnists.

Yet political commentator Gene Robinson, literary critic Michael Dirda and sportswriters John Feinstein, Thomas Boswell and Sally Jenkins are holdovers from the Post’s glory days.

Under new owner Jeff Bezos and former editor Marty Baron, the Post surged during the first Trump administration. Bezos staunchly supported Baron and the newspaper’s rigorous reporting of Trump’s outrages.

As Trump returns to office with virtually unchecked power, the wounded Post appears ill-equipped to uncover his authoritarian actions.

Like other corporate CEOs and billionaires, Bezos kowtows to Trump.

During the presidential campaign, Bezos killed the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, bringing a wave of subscription cancellations.

As Baron pointed out, that was self-defeating for outraged Democratic supporters, weakening the Post further.

Perhaps Bezos will grow tired of losing money on the Post and seek to sell the paper.

The Post needs a new savior and the leadership of an independent journalist like Baron.

 

 

 

Atlanta well-prepared for snowfall

Atlanta’s slowly thawing out from a snowstorm that didn’t cripple the city like those of past years.

Unlike snowjam and snow apocalypse, motorists weren’t stranded for hours on highways. The roads were quickly cleared. Authorities prepared early for the mild snowfall, announcing the closure of schools and businesses before the storm’s arrival.

The snow began early Friday, extending the holidays for another weekend of way too much NFL football.

Prompt actions by Gov. Brian Kemp, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and school and business leaders showed that the state and city have learned lessons from previous winter disasters.

Georgia and Atlanta proved they will be prepared for heavier snowfalls in the future.