Ed Asner Had Spunk

Ed Asner had spunk -- and I LOVE spunk. Asner died on Sunday at age 91 after a long career as an actor and political activist. I had the pleasure of interviewing Ed back in 1982 with fellow Mother Jones editor (and friend) Mark Dowie. Asner's TV show, Lou Grant, in which he played a hard-nosed newspaper editor, had just been canceled by CBS, obviously for political reasons during the Reagan era. And Ed was not going gently into the night. He had used the show -- and his platform as president of the Screen Actors Guild (a union my father Lyle had cofounded) -- to go after Reagan's savage war policies in Central America as well as the age of greed that his administration ushered in.

In the photo below, Asner had just turned the table on us, asking Dowie a tough question about Mother Jones (I forget what it was) and Mark wisely passed the buck to the junior editor -- me. That's why I have that deer-in-the-headlights look.

Years later, I saw Asner again at a Los Angeles fundraiser for Salon, the online progressive publication I founded in 1995. Ed would always show up for a good cause, speaking to crowds large and small with his trademark growl that hid a heart of gold. He was a true Hollywood hero -- and they're not many of those around.

Btw, speaking of Mark Dowie, he and I remain friends after 40 years, Mark and his wife -- painter Wendy Schwartz -- dropped by a houseboat on Tomales Bay that my wife, writer Camille Peri, and I are living and working in this week. (Better air here in smoky California.) We talked about our Mother Jones days (when we edited and went drinking, and drinking, with Christopher Hitchens), journalistic ethics, and why some journalists and pals (like Hitch) crossed the line and went to the dark side.

Ed Asner wasn't a real journalist. But he played the kind of one on TV that all of us ink-stained wretches should emulate.