Paul Harvey: A Stilled Voice of the “Old Right”
By David Beito on Mar 3, 2009 in American History, Budget and Tax Policy, Constitution, Entertainment, Personal Liberty, Presidential Power, War
Paul Harvey
When I was seven years old or so growing up in the small town of Albert Lea, Minnesota, Paul Harvey was one of the first voices I heard in the morning. His memorable over-the-top delivery kept me entertained as I gulped down my mother’s signature “mush” (which, contrary to the name, was a tasty Norwegian dish of cream, cinnamon, and butter). None of the reserved Minnesota adults I knew sounded like that! Harvey’s bracing “Good Day!” helped get me in the right frame of mind for the coming day in school—one my least favorite activities.
After we moved to Minneapolis, I rarely heard him on the air. Even the old fogie stations didn’t seem to carry him. His fan base was always in small towns, where he often preceded or followed the daily crop report. Like many, I eventually came to dismiss Harvey as an antiquated vestige from a 1950s time warp, a sort of precursor to such bumbling and pretentious fictional new announcers as Les Nessman (“WKRP in Cincinnati”) or Ted Baxter (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”)
Later, however, in my research for my book on tax revolts I gained a new appreciation for Harvey. He stood out as one of the last prominent survivors of the once powerful “Old Right” of the 1940s and 1950s. Old Right conservatives had fought a dogged rear-guard action against the New Deal welfare and warfare states. The man who published Harvey’s first books in the 1950s was none other than John M. Pratt. An ardent FDR hater, Pratt, while in Chicago during the 1930s, had led one of the largest tax strikes in American history. He obviously saw something in young Harvey.
While Harvey moved away from his earlier Old Right isolationism, events sometimes pulled him back to it. It was Harvey, along with Walter Cronkite, who was instrumental in turning the heartland against the Vietnam War. In 1970, when Richard Nixon was still popular in countless small towns Harvey announced dramatically in his daily commentary: “Mr. President, I love you … but you’re wrong.” He was deluged with angry mail and phone calls.
For this expression of old fashioned Midwestern horse sense alone, Paul Harvey deserves the recognition and thanks of all Americans who value peace.
I thought this was so good…and I Love Paul Harvey!!!…with all of his comments!!!..I Loved his Radio-voice and almost always agreed with him!! He was Truly a Good Man!!
Dian
Dian williams | Mar 9, 2009 | Reply
Harvey was not a “talk-radio” pioneer as stated in the lede of the AP obit-story about his death—certainly not if talk radio is considered to be a person on the air who invited and takes calls from listeners. He never had a talk-radio show.
Harvey’s schtick was “news and commentary”—often more of the latter than the former, and more often entertaining than deeply informative, especially in his latter years.
On the ABC Radio Network, he was a successor to the style and popularity of earlier radio network commentators such as H. V. Kaltenborn and Gabriel Heatter and Fulton Lewis, Jr., whom I listened to as a small child. And his delivery of commercial messages that often were seamless transitions from his news and commentary were in the mold of the old master of the technique, Arthur Godfrey.
In his earlier years on ABC radio, Harvey seemed to me as a high school and then college student as objective—albeit colorful—in his news commentaries, although that was before I got into the news business and was not as discerning as I became. Like Walter Cronkite, he often called ‘em the way he saw ‘em, but it was done reasonably and without discernable partisanship.
But over the past several years, Harvey often delivered RNC and White House talking points—or at least based his commentaries on them—and a conservative bias became increasingly evident. Was it because of his advancing age or something extra from conservative sources to fatten the estate that he would soon be leaving?
It’s a shame that in his latter years his commentaries became more of the mold of what one hears on the Faux News Network than from the venerable and respected ABC radio-news operation. That, and less of the mold of the Paul Harvey of old.
Joe B. | Mar 9, 2009 | Reply
With the present administration in power—and no Paul Harvey—how will we ever hear “the rest of the story”?
Ralph | Mar 10, 2009 | Reply