Tag Archives: Wallace

February 3, 2013 · 2:58 PM

Fox News Host Blows Up At NRA Head: ‘That’s Ridiculous And You Know It, Sir!’

At times Chris Wallace manifests a few of his late father, Mike Wallace’s traits.  Not often, but now and then…

Think Progress

Fox News host Chris Wallace tore into National Rifle Association’s contention that President Obama and other elites are hypocritical for employing security guards to protect their children, while downplaying the importance of armed protection in preventing gun violence.

During a heated exchange with NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre on Sunday, Wallace played a clip of a now infamous NRA ad criticizing Obama for relying on Secret Service to guard his children and asked if the organization believed that every child in America faces a threat similar to that of the Obama kids. LaPierre said that they do, leading Wallace to forcefully push back against the gun chief, saying, “that’s ridiculous and you know it, Sir!” Watch it:

Wallace went on to note that armed guards in school will not protect children “in the shopping mall, in the movie theater, on the street” and shamed the gun lobby for seeking to use class as a wedge in the gun debate. He noted that LaPierre himself relies on armed security guards and asked, “Does that make you an elite, and out-of-touch elite, because you have security?” “This idea of an elite class is just nonsense.”

Throughout his appearance, LaPierre maintained that universal background checks or limits on assault weapons would infringe on the rights of law abiding Americans and could never deter hardened criminals or gang members from obtaining fire arms. He insisted that only armed guards — the kind that Obama uses to protect his children — and increased prosecution of criminals could reduce gun violence.

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April 8, 2012 · 1:08 PM

Remembering Mike Wallace 1918-2012

I was a Mike Wallace fan and have missed his unique style of reporting and his bold journeys into territory few other newscasters and journalists would dare venture into.

On March 14, 2006, Wallace announced his retirement from 60 Minutes after 37 years with the program.

CBS

Video compilation of Mr. Wallace’s career…

For half a century, he took on corrupt politicians, scam artists and bureaucratic bumblers. His visits were preceded by the four dreaded words: Mike Wallace is here.

Wallace took to heart the old reporter’s pledge to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. He characterized himself as “nosy and insistent.”

So insistent, there were very few 20th century icons who didn’t submit to a Mike Wallace interview. He lectured Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, on corruption. He lectured Yassir Arafat on violence.

He asked the Ayatollah Khoumeini if he were crazy.

He traveled with Martin Luther King (whom Wallace called his hero). He grappled with Louis Farrakhan.

And he interviewed Malcolm X shortly before his assassination.

He was no stranger to the White House, interviewing his friends the Reagans . . . John F. Kennedy . . . Lyndon Johnson . . . Jimmy Carter. Even Eleanor Roosevelt.

Plus all those remarkable characters: Leonard Bernstein, Johnny Carson, Luciano Pavarotti, Janis Joplin, Tina Turner, Salvador Dali, Barbra Streisand. His take-no-prisoners style became so famous he even spoofed it with comedian Jack Benny.

It’s hard to believe, but when Wallace was born in 1918 there wasn’t even a radio in most American homes, much less a TV.

As a youth, Wallace said, he was “an overachiever. I worked pretty hard. Played a hell of a fiddle.”

At the University of Michigan, where his parents hoped he’d become a doctor or lawyer, he got hooked instead on radio. And by 1941, Mike was the announcer on “The Green Hornet.”

“My family didn’t know what to make of it – an announcer?” he recalled.

He was soon the hardest-working announcer in broadcasting.

When television arrived in the 1950s, Wallace was everywhere . . . variety shows, game shows, dramas, commercials.

But it was an interview show called “Nightbeat,” first broadcast in 1956, that Wallace remembered fit him like custom-made brass knuckles. “We decided to ask the irreverent question, the abrasive question, the who-gives-a-damn question.”

Some, like labor leader Mike Quill, had never been spoken to that way. “Go ahead and ask your stupid questions,” he retorted.

Neither had mobster Mickey Cohen, whom Wallace asked, “How many men have you killed, Mickey?”

Continue here…

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