Said Ken Auletta, "a Turner biographer and media writer for the New Yorker,' quoted in "Ted Turner, cable TV visionary who created CNN, dies at 87/His sprawling legacy encompassed conservation, philanthropy and professional sports, and his bellicosity and bravado earned him the nickname 'Mouth of the South'" (WaPo).
He's the father of the world we live in today, but I bet you're gearing up to inform me that he was married to Jane Fonda.
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A world observed and presented in frames and handmade tales. That said, multiple, independent sources. Be an AI, not an AI.
I'm writing to inform you that he was a Cutty Sark drinker.
From 1981: "Here's to gut feelings and those who still follow them."
He'll likely be remembered for being in the Trump cultural generation and for having a similar influence.
That's back when she loved billionaires!!!
Had friends in that war. It was wild to see the coverage 24/7 back then!
>but I bet you're gearing up to inform me that he was married to Jane Fonda.<
Naa, only to inform you that the quality of his wives deteriorated badly after the first two.
Most people are not capable of being the warriors that protect the rest. One reason is they are not built to see war up close and stick with the fight. Even many warriors have a hard time of it. We need to be careful not to be ruled by the weakest among us. The meek may inherit the Earth, but history says don't count on it.
Breaking character: In memory of Ted Turner, the amazing letter his dad wrote him when he decided to major in the classics. Yankees just can't write this, my friends. Do yourself a favor and read at least the first few paragraphs. The amazing part is how much smarts and how much dumb could coexist in one man. But of course Faulkner showed us that kind of American over and over.
https://www.bu.edu/arion/files/2010/03/Autolycus-1.pdf
Enigma, thanks. I was trying to remember if he was a Dewar's Profile. I also remember from some article back then that when he won the America's Cup, he said he could have been the Confederate challenger had history gone a little different. CC, JSM
He made so good made-Tv-movies. Andersonville was one, treasure island with Heston was another. IRC, he can be seen as an extra, Gettysburg (1993), in Pickett's charge.
He took a bath when Time-warner took over in 1996. The merger with AOL was a disaster. But I suppose he eventually recovered.
87 as good long life. And as a atheist, he's finding out how true his beliefs were.
The biggest winner in the first Gulf War was the marketing guy who bought all that commercial time for Ricola cough drops, no doubt months before Saddam invaded Kuwait.
I can’t remember a word Norman Schwarzkopf or Colin Powell ever said but that Swiss mountaineer is burned into my memory.
Ted Turner was a king size patchwork quilt of an American icon.
Archived here: https://archive.ph/30uug
A 20th Century combination of Horatio Alger heroes and Theodore Dreiser antiheros.
One of the shapers of our current world. I remember the feed was on 24-7 in the Star Wars building. We were stuck there, and thought we were missing out on our generation's war.
Turns out, we didn't.
I thought Ted Turner had died already.
I thought he died several years ago. RIP.
I keep turning to CNN for war news, but they seem to have better things to do. Ultimately I think they had too much time to fill so now there are a lot pre-planned feature stories, and reporters interviewing each other. And advertisements.
He had more of an impact than that other Georgia guy - Jimmy Carter. After all these years, we're still cleaning up after his mess.
Naa, only to inform you that the quality of his wives deteriorated badly after the first two.
If you were a Braves fan in the late '80s, Ted Turner's marriage to Jane Fonda was a godsend. After they got married he stepped back from screwing up the team and actually hired competent (e.g., John Shuerholz) front office personnel.
Like others, in addition to CNN I remember him for America's Cup. RIP.
A Hearst for the modern era. No matter what you thought of him, he was a big, big deal. RIP.
I think I have mentioned my long planned book of thumbnail bios here before. I finally started and have 14 chapters so far to review on the plane Sunday.
Now it sounds like I should add a chapter on Ted Turner. He was not on my list but should have been. He and I differed politically but he lived an interesting and fruitful life. CNN was a major accomplishment. No worse than any of the other networks in the 80s and 90s while he still owned it and better in some ways than some. The idea of national TV stations was also pretty visionary.
Yup, gonna write a chapter about him.
John Henry
I thought Vietnam was the first live war. Not quite real time but close and personal.
I joined the Navy in '67 and throughout Basic and A school the constant threat, heard at least once a day, was that if one didn't shape up, they would be assigned as a Corpsman and shipped off to Vietnam. It was directed at me more than once. I was 19 and believed these chiefs had Godlike powers and took the threats seriously. They scared the shit out of me. Looking back I realize how ridiculous they should have sounded.
We were watching the war every night on a 1-2 day delay. I vividly remember live footage of Khe Sanh, watched in the lounge with a bunch of other newbies and thinking Please spare me that. And a couple who worried that it might be over before they got there.
Vietnam was very real. It was on the TV every night.
John Henry
There was some talk in conservative circles in the 80s that he'd change the newsiverse by moving the center to Atlanta. That didn't happen. Journoworld was too tilted to the left and ideology didn't motivate Turner. There was similar conservative enthusiasm for Jim Webb (or maybe it was John Lehman) in those days.
Turner was an odd fellow, a devotee of the Old South who described himself as "a socialist at heart." Like Trump he considered a presidential race in the late 90s, but he didn't run because Jane Fonda would have left him (or so the story goes). If he hadn't married Hanoi Jane, he conceivably could have won -- Southern-fried "socialism" was still popular in Democrat circles back then. If he had won, the Democratic Party would be far different from what it is today.
Children of arrogant fools rarely turn out well.
The NYT confirms that they are more concerned with what you are than who you are. I’m tempted to call that bigotry.
CNN’s coverage of the LA Riots was its high point. After that it started to turner to shit.
… but I bet you're gearing up to inform me that he was married to Jane Fonda.
So is she why CNN is so bad?
IIE, thanks for that letter from his Dad. Funny!
In defense of the classics, this guy wrote How To Argue With Ted Turner's Dad.
Oof. You doth protest too much, methinks.
Billboard Tycoon 1, Classics Scholar 0
According to wikipedia, he wanted to run for president and Jane Fonda stopped him.
The Woman Who Saved a Nation
“ He's the father of the world we live in today, but I bet you're gearing up to inform me that he was married to Jane Fonda.”
Well, of course. I would have led with that.
What I like about is how much reverence it shows for education and the classics.
https://www.bu.edu/arion/files/2010/03/Autolycus-1.pdf
I will forever think well of his preservation and revival of the movies of the 20th century.
RIP Ted.
I remember him partying in truly epic fashion after the Americas Cup win.
I didn't always agree with him but he was an original.
This made my eyes a little wet.
CNN Founder Ted Turner Talks Prayer, Heaven Hell
RIP, Ted
Reddit Top comment with over 3,300 up votes: “He's been alive this whole time?”
Ted had a bit part in "Gettysburg," as a Confederate officer shot near the front lines. He was in a couple of other scenes too, but that was the most memorable even if a bit over-acted.
Per IMDb: "Ted Turner made a cameo appearance in the 2003 film Gods and Generals. He played Colonel Waller T. Patton, a Confederate officer, in a scene where he appears in the audience during a musical number.Role Details: Turner's character was the great-uncle of General George S. Patton.Production Role: Besides his acting cameo, Turner produced and financed the movie through his company, Ted Turner Pictures.Cameo Context: Turner also played a similar cameo role as a colonel in the 1993 film Gettysburg.Other Cameos: The film notably features multiple political figures in cameo roles, including U.S. Senators George Allen and Robert Byrd.Gods and Generals was a prequel to Gettysburg, which was based on Jeffrey Shaara’s book about the early part of the Civil War."
He is also the father of overemphasis on Washington DC and the federal government, as his 7x24 news channel needed content that would attract the entire nation.
Used to be that we'd get 30 minutes of national news, and 30 minutes of state news, each night.
HNN and CNN ran 7x24 and sought a national audience. State news doesn't play in that channel - doesn't attract the sought-for viewers. Therefore, national news - federal government and large fires or accidents - became the focus, much to my anti-federalist displeasure.
I want 50 centers of power, not one. CNN did'nt help preserving the balance of power between states and federal.
Lewy Body Dementia sounds like an awful way to go. They broke the mold with him. RIP
Turner Classic Movies was a great channel, and it started at a time when there weren't many options for watching lesser-known old films.
Turner Apologizes to Christians - ABC News https://share.google/Zib5w8RIynxu05BRJ
CNN/HNN weren't hard left until after the rise of Fox News in the late 1990s. "Crossfire" was once a credible show. I don't blame Ted for the shift, rather, a bunch of profit-minded people seeking to find a niche as cable TV faded away.
Yes but fox wasnt a major presence for a number of years
I thought Ted Turner had died already.
No, that was CNN.
Its just wearing the skin
Leora- “ I will forever think well of his preservation and revival of the movies of the 20th century.” Yes! Ted Turner will always have my deepest respect and admiration for conceiving Turner Classic Movies.
Turner created TCM and the television superstation TBS and owned the Atlanta Braves baseball team when they were loaded with awesome players. If you love movies, television, and baseball, thank TT for providing quality entertainment.
I spent about 30 hours lying on my back on a scissorlift attaching 16' black fiberglass curtains around some tv invention of his, 3D, or HTV, or some new kind of tv for a tech show in the early 90s. But the tv still sucked, so about two hours after finishing, they called me up at home, out of bed, and made me spend the next ten hours on my back replacing the fiberglass curtains with thicker black velvet ones that were so heavy I had to use wire and pliers to tie them on, gagging.
Why gagging? The forklift crew had been eating free Varsity chili dogs for about 40 hours at that point. Ted Turner stood in the booth below me, also eating Varsity, yelling. I finally had to drape black velvet across the top of the booth too, to minimize the ceiling lights, which cut off the last possible air circulation to make that stupid tv look better. I believe the product failed anyway. I d still don't know what it was.
But I will never forget the smell, and I appreciated his manic energy and attention to detail. I always associated him with the smell of a dead sea lion. We encountered each other one other time, and, otherwise, I had to babysit his insane anorectic commie then ex-wife a few times at state hearings back before I knew better.
Yet they seemed genuinely, deeply fond of each other, even after the divorce, so why not mention her?
Not to mock any of the horrors of his illness, but how did anyone even notice that he had Lewy Dementia? He seemed entirely crazy to me 35 years ago.
John Henry: no offence.
Most of the Criterion Collection-type films I've watched were on TCM. I've also been able to view a lot of really awful movies that I loved as a kid attending the local sticky-floored one-screen movie theater on Saturday afternoons. For all of those, I'm grateful. Thanks, Ted.
Married to Jane Fonda? Ted fixed that mistake before he died.
I must admit, back in the day I probably had WTBS on more than all the other channels combined.
I thought he created Turner Classic Movies. What's this about being divorced from a communist war crime apologist and creating a failing news network?
I greatly appreciate Ted Turner for financing "Gettysburg" and its sequel "Gods and Generals" despite the former not making money. The latter was much more expensive and he probably lost a ton of money.
RIP.
I didn't trade a walk on part in a war for a lead role in a cage.
CNN broadcast live video of F-111s taking off from Incirlik, Turkey on the first day of Desert Storm.
A few nights later, CNN had a panel talk show with DS as the topic. Somehow, a command post Master Sergeant got past the call screeners and ripped CNN a few additional fundaments for its broadcasting obviously sensitive information.
On account of time zones and things, we were in the Ready Room waiting for push time with nothing else to watch other than CNN.
Standing ovation. That guy couldn't buy another drink for the rest of the war.
Yes i like tcm once upon a time i liked cnn
"CNN really heralds the world of Twitter and social networks and interactivity. During the Persian Gulf War, you had a live war for the first time..."
"... without commercial breaks. You’d see bombs dropping and people screaming and fire engines roaring. Everything is immediate. It’s the world we live in today. He’s the father of that world."
Just like lying with statistics.
Ted Turner and his detestable traitor wife hated everything about this country except for how wealthy it made them.
They are disgusting people who never had to live with the consequences of their intentions and actions.
They both should have been shipped to China or North Vietnam or North Korea and lived in a country that they wanted.
thx boatbuilder for bringing up the Americas Cup. That was an underdog win for the US and Ted Turner.
Here’s a good writeup:
https://www.americascup.com/history/63_TURNERS-1977-TRIUMPH
RIP to a great man
Siskel and Ebert were aghast when Turner started to colorize old movies. In response Turner threatened to colorize Citizen Kane. lol
As a kid who grew up right below Hartsfield Jackson, I can safely say that everybody who grew up there and are arch conservatives or whatever loved Ted, even when he married that bitch unapologetically. When I got out of the Navy in 1985, you could drive down to the Omni and park down below for free, then go up to the 1985 Atlanta Hawks who featured Dominique Wilkins and the runningest, damned team in the NBA up to that time. To this day they’re my favorite basketball team ever and I’m not naming the rest of the guys, but they weee awesome. Ted Turner played for all of it. Most of all, thanks to his communications vision, he also saved my beloved Braves, who drafted my buddy Rick Behenna, whom Ted took time just bullshitting him and befriending him till Rick passe. I’m sorry y’all, Ted was the bomb, there’s just so much
More of him being awesome that I’ve seen. I’ve never met Donald Trump or Bill Clinton, but I bet that was something similar. Again, I apologize for gushing.
It’s like when Country Dick Montana (The wonderful Dan McLain) died. It’s really caught me.
Listening to NPR's obit, prominently featuring comments by Eason Jordan, was truly surreal. Especially the awestruck way the Iraq / Baghdad war coverage was discussed.
Fonda left him, you know.
When Turner was married to Fonda, they were in the owners box for a Braves game. Fonda refused to do the “tomahawk chop”, claiming it was racist. Lewis Grizzard, the great Southern columnist for the Atlanta Journal, blasted Fonda in his Sunday front page column. He concluded with “This was to be expected. Once a traitor, always a traitor.”
Amen.
If anyone is passed their "Sell date" its Jane Fonda. She must be what 90? Frankly I hope she kicks the bucket, not because I hate her but because I'm so Goddamn bored reading about her.
Three things explain her. First, her mother was crazy and killed herself. Second, she's an exhibitionist and loves being the center of attention. Third, she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and has always despised her fellow Americans. She considers herself an American "aristocrat".
Creola: no, she did the "Tomahawk Chop" with him. It's recorded. She may have been her sanest while married to him, but she's still a commie traitor.
She did donate a lot of money to troubled kids in Atlanta when she was married to him. If I learned one thing about uber-rich people while working in nonprofits, it's that they often just accidently do some things that are good.
Tina, you are correct, Fonda did start off doing the chop. But after she got pushback on it, she apparently had a moment of moral clarity when, like she did in North Vietnam, and decided the chop was racist and she stopped doing it. Her free swinging moral compass once again landed her on the wrong side of the issue and Lewis Grizzard called her out. Interestingly, I was in a sports bar in DC at the time and a group of Navajo’s, in town to visit their Senator, were all doing the chop. They told me “We love the Braves!” Chop, chop!
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