By Michael Miner
So he writes letters to newspapers. “I probably have seven or eight in the pipeline right now,” he said. “Believe me, I don’t do it for ego. But I was on the radio for 23 years, and I felt I was involved. I was part of the community. And not being on the radio I have to find other ways of being involved.” The letters are pointed and smart, and the dailies have printed several. These he’s clipped and mailed to me to let it be known he’s still weighing in.
He does?
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“Ah, yes. If I think of something pertinent to Chicago I write it up, usually in longhand, and if I’m extremely passionate I send it to the mayor’s home. Because I know he’ll read it. But usually I settle for sending things to his office.”
This sounded to me like a precocious burst of contemporary Republicanism.
“Actually, I find Rush Limbaugh reprehensible,” Schwartz said. “From what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard, what I’ve read of Rush Limbaugh, he’s in it for the money. To me it’s a tragedy that a man with such above-average communications skills uses all he knows, all he’s learned, and all he can do to fatten his bank account. I suppose that he represents what we have commonly come to know as the American way, but the American way is helping your neighbor and not just out-earning him. And it bothers me that Rush Limbaugh is unfair. He uses his power as a mass communicator to further his agenda, without any interest in listening to those who disagree. I don’t think you learn anything by closing your mind.”
His home is the top of a high-rise overlooking Lake Michigan. It’s like living on top of a radio antenna, he says. “I’m 600 feet in the air. I can pick up shortwave radio signals from Saudi Arabia. The night the TWA flight went down and everybody turned on CNN to see what was going on, I turned on the shortwave and listened to the coast guard rescue effort at the scene.”
