The lives of great achievers have always had a conventional simile: rags-to-riches aetiology, abusive childhood, poverty beyond hope, violence, and, in some cases, manic depression — a sort of Freudian element that runs through such ‘epic’ stories like blockbuster movies. You’d also think of it as a requisite element directly, or indirectly, responsible for their crowning glory: of accomplishments they’d once fancied, in the subconscious, as not possible. And, when they achieved fame, they often attained more than what their grand dreams would have permitted, thanks to their special, or exceptional perception, depth of understanding, unflinching faith and rectitude in believing what they were aiming, or trying, to achieve was mighty right.
Ted Turner, billionaire businessman, media mogul, cable television magnate, philanthropist, sportsman, and environmentalist, who needs no introduction, was, or is, no exception to this ‘rule,’ if not dogma.
Porter Bibb is a former Newsweek White House correspondent, first publisher of Rolling Stone, producer of several TV and theatrical films, including Gimme Shelter, and managing director of a New York based investment firm, among others. That he published his bestselling work, Ted Turner: It Ain’t as Easy as it Looks [Virgin Books], exactly 30 years ago, is what dreams are made of and achieved too. His book was a brilliant ‘take,’ albeit a tad floppy, in a brace of contexts, on the life and times of the one and the only Ted Turner.
All the same, Bibb, to his fulsome credit, made an enormously good job of it, what with his flair for detail, and in writing an incredibly ‘honest’ saga of an amazing man — America’s maverick billionaire, whose uncanny business sense made CNN more profitable than any other network at a distinctive point in time. More so, because Turner’s statistical roll-call of achievements was equal to Sergei Bubka’s limitlessness with the pole-vault in hand; a persona with a remarkable reputation.
Witness Turner’s business acumen, world class yachtsmanship, or his myriad traits as a sports impresario and his charming, well-known élan with women. If Turner’s charismatic attributes were enhanced by his fairy-tale wedding with Jane Fonda, his third wife, the man’s competitive instincts were always omnipresent in whatever he did. Turner set ocean racing records. The zenith of it all being America’s Cup win in 1977. His ‘Himalayan’ media achievements too were unique. He revolutionised the broadcast news industry and rewrote the definition of news from something that happened to something that was, and is, happening. The Gulf War coverage by CNN was just a case in point.
Turner [born, November 19, 1938] was, and is, certainly a one-man diplomatic corps, an armada and nuclear taskforce, all by himself. He’s endowed with his amazing subtlety. Well, despite his ‘botched’ endeavour to procure CBS, Turner acquired MGM/UA Entertainment Co, and added it to his success list — a feather in the cap, no less, for a man who’s as much acclaimed for his media interests as sports. Here goes — when Turner was 44, Forbes magazine included him among its first list of 400 Richest People in America. The year: 1982. Yet, it wasn’t all too easy. Turner did not get his trophies on a platter. He worked for them real hard with his built-in, also cultivated ken, profound persistence, and never-give-up attitude for excellence beyond compare.
“Turner,” writes Bibb, “grew up lonely and unloved. He was tormented by an abusive, alcoholic father who hoped to provoke his son to greatness by beatings, which as often as not were administered with a wire coat hanger. If he cried, the punishment was doubled.’’ No great revelation, from a Freudian percept. Hence, Bibb’s contradiction — sort of — in another context. “Despite the beatings, Turner’s father loved him dearly and bequeathed to his son a modest fortune and an unquenchable competitive spirit.”
Well, if Bibb is unwittingly favouring child abuse in a world of frenzied competitiveness, he’s badly flawed. Even otherwise, he’s brusquely wrong. Conversely, Bibb showers accolades on his subject, who is “a journalist’s dream.” This isn’t all. He goes a step further and calls him “The only honest billionaire in history.” Truly, a transgression of bounds — one that would have made Turner go red in the face with palpable embarrassment.
Bibb touches upon the adventurous nature of Turner, no less: of how he decided to steal a portrait of Eliza Wheaton, his school’s benefactress, “smashing windows, also inscribing obscenities,” and that none of his school mates “expected that he [Ted] would ever amount to much of anything except a loudmouthed kid…” The real Turner is, of course, beyond the media glare: far from the hype, even jargon. Bibb focuses on this ironical aspect of his emotional side, especially when Turner was heartbroken at the sight of his sister in agony, bogged down with lupus, in the early 1950’s — an era when medicine was medicine, not the super-specialised entity it is today.
For the 1991 Time Man of the Year, CNN provided Turner with extraordinary access. He dined frequently at the White House, whoever was its occupant, and visited everyone: from Fidel Castro to Saddam Hussein. And, he hated to lose, whatever one’s humanistic standpoint. Here’s a paradigm. Ted rammed Judy, his first wife, who was then carrying their second child, in a sailboat race. Why? To keep her from beating him, a man who could control the waves. Maybe, in Turner’s vocabulary, this was fitting, or appropriate. As he once told his second wife, Jane, “Business comes first. My boat comes second. And, you, come third.”
Bibb certainly writes on Turner’s ‘tryst with destiny’ with commendable insight: of how he developed a philosophy, a calculated policy of avoiding controversy. If “Land and video business will last forever,” has been one of Ted’s monumental epitaphs, the celebrity-media baron in him epitomised what race is to the swift, even though his behavioural patterns, in Bibb’s opinion, explain for his life-long obsession with death. A case of classic bipolar personality? Possibly. Flashback: Ted’s father had used a .38 revolver to blow his brains out. And, Ted had kept that old weapon for far too long with him. A fact that would often cause alarm, also panic, within his inner circle in CNN, prone as Turner was to depression.
Turner, fortunately, bailed himself out from that option, thanks to medical help. Circa 1986: Turner began to take daily doses of lithium. As ill-luck would have it, Turner announced, in 2018, that he had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia [LBD], a form of progressive dementia that affects one’s ability to think, reason, and process information, among other glitches. Fame, after all, has its drawbacks. Turner knows that all too well. And, so does Bibb, and all of us — through Ted’s panoramic biography.
— First published in Observer
