No, I don’t mean the navigational system: I mean George Pratt Shultz, former secretary of state, former a lot of things — and present a lot of things. This month, PBS is airing a three-part documentary on him. For a website, go here. It was my intention to view and review this documentary, before the public airing. But time was just gobbled. In any case, I look forward to seeing the documentary. And may I share a piece I did on Shultz, after a visit with him a couple of years ago? Go here. It’s called “Around the World with Shultz.” Hope you enjoy.
At the end of April, John F. Harris had a piece on Jay Leno and political humor. We were treated to the following, about the 1987 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner:
. . . Leno soon found himself chatting with Reagan himself. A bald, jovial man sidled up beside them. Huddling conspiratorially, Secretary of State George Shultz urged that they take a gander across the room.
“Did you see the ass on Fawn Hall when she walked in here?” Shultz asked (at least, in Leno’s telling; Shultz did not return a call), purring over the dazzling blonde secretary who had recently vaulted into the headlines as Oliver North’s document-shredding assistant in the Iran-Contra scandal.
You know, I can believe this story: Shultz struck me as a guy’s guy. I have something to tell you that’s not nearly as good as the Fawn Hall thing. But you may smile at it — and it makes a geopolitical and historical point! Shultz related to me an East German joke, and did so with some relish. Kind of a lusty twinkle. The joke’s about Erich Honecker, the old dictator.
He had this “hot new girlfriend” (in Shultz’s words). “He was crazy about her.” Honecker said, “I’ll do anything for you.” She said, “Anything, Erich?” “Yes, anything.” “All right, then: I want you to tear down the Berlin Wall.” “Oh!” said Honecker. “You want to be alone with me!”
Finally, a reader sent me an article about Shultz a few months ago (here). He said it made a point about “safe zones,” a regular theme of mine (actually, the violation of such zones is the regular theme). Here is an excerpt from that article:
At a fundraising dinner for a charitable cause a few years ago, Shultz quietly got up and left in the middle of an anti-George W. Bush political monologue by Lily Tomlin. Is it hard for him to be floating in the Bay Area sea of Democrats? “Not a problem at all,” he said. “But if I go someplace and it’s supposed to be a good time, I don’t like that it’s political. I don’t like it when I go to church and the pastor has a political speech. I don’t like that. I go to church to hear the Gospels.”
Well done, GPS.