Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [104]
So I became kind of a recluse. Part of me wanted that. Another part of me missed being at the center of attention—even of criticism—even though I detested the media “jackals.”
I started falling into a bit of a depression. What happened next, when I got hired by MSNBC, didn’t make the situation any easier.
CHAPTER 13
Reflections on TV and Teaching
“One of the first things I noticed in MSNBC’s newsroom: No one listens. The visual is everything. On every producer’s desk, TV sets were usually tuned to MSNBC . . . but virtually no one paid attention to the substance of what we were transmitting. I fantasized about interrupting one of my debates to announce that U.S. troops had invaded France—just to see if any of the overworked, deadlined producers would notice.”
—Cable News Confidential, by Jeff Cohen
Our second day at Conception Bay, we drive to a place called Ecomundo to rent a kayak. It is only twenty-five bucks for the whole day. Since the bay is protected on three sides by land, the winds are minimal and this is one of Baja’s ideal places for kayaking.
We head out across the blue-green waters of the marine reserve, the light flap-flap of our paddles the only sound for miles. The water is still so crystal-clear that sometimes we can see schools of fish passing by underneath us—long, skinny sierras, little lisas, even an occasional lone barracuda. “Should’ve brought at least one fishing rod,” Terry mentions at one point. Paddling on past more inlets and coves and cone-shaped islands, we say little. There is no need for words.
Only a single permanent settlement has been built along the seashore, though we do see quite a few motor homes like ours, as well as pitched tents and some palapa huts. For the most part, though, we must feel a lot like the Indians who used to trace this same path in their canoes. It feels great to be this far from “civilization.”
I look at Terry as the day begins to wane and say, “You know, honey, being here isn’t making my decision any easier.”
“What decision is that?” she asked.
“The future. What I’m going to do now.”
“You never can just let it all go, can you,” she says, a statement rather than a question.
She’s right. I can’t. Not entirely. It doesn’t seem to be in my makeup. At least not yet.
Headline: JESSE VENTURA REACHES DEAL FOR TALK SHOW AT MSNBC
Cable news in the new millennium has often been described as an arena where brass-knuckle politics are presented with the showmanship of professional wrestling.
Embracing the times, MSNBC announced yesterday that it had completed a deal to hire Jesse Ventura, the former professional wrestler and recently departed Minnesota governor, as a network talk show host.
The terms were not disclosed, but executives at the network said his annual salary would be in the neighborhood of $2 million.
—The New York Times, February 7, 2003
Coming out of office, I’d been a hot commodity. My agents had talks with CNN, Fox, and MSNBC about my coming on board to host a cable network talk show. Finally, MSNBC won out and I signed a lucrative three-year contract. I made the announcement on The Tonight Show. Originally, the show was supposed to be an hour a night, four nights a week.
I had never gone to a Super Bowl and, the weekend after we made the deal, MSNBC’s president, Erik Sorenson, took me to the game. It was in San Diego that year, and Tampa Bay beat Oakland, 48-21. Afterward, we were driving by limo up to L.A. in the middle of the night to do the preliminaries for setting up my show. I don’t remember how the subject came up, but all of a sudden Erik said something very intriguing. Later on, it kept coming back to me. Right after he hired me, Erik said, he’d received phone calls from two very high-ranking people in Washington. They wanted to know why MSNBC was giving me a national forum. They were obviously not happy about it. I said, “Come on, Erik, tell me who called you.” But he said he couldn’t reveal any names.
My guess is that one might have been Karl Rove, the other perhaps a big mucky-muck