had worked on the problems with me playing the piano because
I couldn’t do the pedals. I tried to invent a machine that would
try and work it out. I came pretty close with this machine and
that was my project as a junior. It went very well, but it taught
me that I didn’t want to be an inventor. But I got sidetracked,
and journalism was it.
Where was your first assignment abroad?
Jerusalem in the middle of the first uprising called Intifada
— young people throwing rocks at Israeli troops. It was delib-
erately designed to be asymmetrical so that the Israelis would
have to use their heavy weapons against young kids who were
just throwing rocks, so the pictures would sort of tell the tale of
what the occupation was about.
I loved living in Jerusalem; I love the confusion and the con-
tradictions of the place. You pick up the phone and there’s no
dial tone. You turn on the water; it doesn’t work. There’s no
something that was so magical, and he was proud of what he’d
done and he wanted to show me. And I couldn’t speak a word
of what he was speaking and he knew no English, but we had
like a half hour conversation just looking at tires and spokes.
My producer said, “We have to get the fuck out of here
now!” Just bullets flying and everything, and I said goodbye.
He just said “Jambo,” which is kind of see you later in another
life. I still get all choked up just thinking about that.
What do you do when you interview difficult people? The
one interview that comes to my mind was the day after the
election when you talked to Paul Ramsey and he’s just go-
ing on and on and said things like Hungary doesn’t have
the threat of Muslims, and women can walk around without
worrying about being raped. And then he talked about get-
ting back to being this 80 or 90 percent white Christian na-
‘If you’re a disabled person, this is your orientation. You
wake up in the morning and go, “Oh, what’s going to
screw up now?”’
— JOHN HOCKENBERRY
electricity for hours at a time.
If you’re a disabled person, this is your orientation. You
wake up in the morning and go, “Oh, what’s going to screw up
now?” I found that it was just so familiar being in a place like
that just having this expectation that things weren’t going to
work and that people were around to help.
Jerusalem wasn’t the only place that had that — Cairo was
that way. Tehran was that way. In Africa, Somalia, the Congo,
I mean in the midst of horrible conflict, terrible cruelty and
death and pestilence and famine and things that just broke your
heart, still there was just this sense that most of the world was
having this experience that stuff just isn’t going to go your
way. I felt bonded to that.
tion. What do you do during those interviews?
The key in something like that is you don’t want to debate
him. You want him to say what is his gospel; you want to
hear from his mouth what he believes. You want to put him
in context that he believes he has influence and he does have
influence and you get that out of him. He realized that he was
going to have to take the position of deporting tens of millions
of people.
It was just a way of letting him not hang himself, but reveal
himself. I would rather have people understand their influence
and then understand what it is they are trying to achieve, and
they can make their own decision about whether this person is
dangerous or not.
During your TED Talk when you talked about being in Zaire,
the DRC now, and you were talking about how this other
person in a wheelchair came up to you, and then you guys
were sort of invisible and you were just there. What was
going on around you?
There were riots in the center of Kinshasa. People were
pouring out of the banks. It was just falling apart and these poor
people were just being told that their life savings were worth
nothing.
And in the middle of this whole big crowd of chaos this guy
rolls up selling newspapers, on his hand-cranked wheelchair,
and he wants to compare. And everybody just stepped around
us we were like in this world shielded, this brotherhood of
So as the U.S. continues to fall on the World Press Freedom
index, it’s 43 out of 181, what advice do you have for jour-
nalists who are living in a place where the president has
called the press an enemy of the American people?
Wear it like a badge. Sure, that’s my necktie. I’m an enemy
of the people? Okay, prove it. I’ll save more people than you
save any day.
Trump and his tweets are his worst enemy. The enemy of
the people is the deteriorating U.S. economy, the degraded
educational system, the inability of the U.S. to match jobs with
workers, the increasing divisions and inequalities in income.
I’m afraid of them. I’m not afraid of my colleagues in journal-
ism.
• Big changes are afoot at Saturday Market
downtown Eugene with the coming departures
of General Manager Kimberly Cullen and
Manager of Promotions & Advertising Kim Still.
“These are two high-profile, essentially Eugene
jobs that require high levels of creativity and
dedication to the cause of providing an
accessible marketplace for local artisans and
customers,” Still says. Both are pursuing other
work in the Eugene area, but Still did not
elaborate by press time on why they are leaving
or where they are going. A third position as
market assistant is also open. Find job
descriptions at eugenesaturdaymarket.org.
Deadline to apply is June 9.
• Taylor’s Bar & Grill just off the University of
Oregon campus on 13th Avenue has a new
owner, Ramzy Hatter, known in the Portland
restaurant community as one of the founders
and owners of the Lardo sandwich chain, a
Russian restaurant Kachka, and a Pearl District
bar, the River Pig Saloon. A May 17, 2016
Oregonian story reported on two lawsuits Hattar
filed against his partners, one for $9 million and
another for $1.6 million. Willamette Week has
also tracked Hattar’s legal battles. Taylor’s has
been a popular and storied UO watering hole
since 1922. The previous owner is Chuck Hare of
Hop Valley Brewing.
• Star Gate Awareness Resources, the
metaphysical book, gift and music store at
1374 Willamette Street, is celebrating its 30th
anniversary in June. “Staying in business can
be difficult because you are always being tested
for your accountability, integrity and staying
true to your heart’s vision,” owner Alan Stein
writes in a letter to the EW editor in 2007. A
celebration is planned from noon to 3:30 pm
Sunday, June 11, at Lamb Cottage community
center in Skinner Butte Park, 130 Cheshire
Avenue. The event includes live music by Chad
Wilkins and Rob Tobias, dance, a vegan lunch
and a “Gratitude for the Earth Ceremony.”
• Marché Restaurant Group is welcoming
back two noted former staffers, Rocky Maselli
and Leah Pearl. The couple are returning to
Eugene after five years working in San Francisco,
says Marché founder and CEO Stephanie Pearl
Kimmel. Rocky will be leading the Marché
kitchen he helped design and build almost 20
years ago. Leah will return to her post as general
manager of the newly expanded Provisions
Market Hall.
www.AESrenew.com – 541-683-2345
CCB #160523
Congratulations Art Johnson and all of our partners
in Sustainability for developing a new 28 kW Solar
power system with Advanced Energy Systems.
eugeneweekly.com • June 1, 2017
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