By Billy cunning Him to Great America and welcome to this glorious Friday afternoon in
the driest Dead Reds Baseball kicks off tonight Hunter Green on the Mound in Milwaukee.
One hell of a series with the brew Crew. The Reds have been
terrible with Milwaukee. I think they're like something like twenty nine and thirteen on
the wrong side of that and it's time. If they're going to make a
move in the Central Division, it's time to get it done. Plus,
the Bengals three day camp has now expired. Joe Burrow is not hurt yet
this year, we'll see what happens, but until then, Chris Cuomo of
News Nation, welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show. And Chris, first
of all, this time of the year we celebrate fathers and I had a
particularly bad one. You had a particularly good one. What did you learn
from your father that causes you to be a better dad? Oh boy,
Bill, that is a great question. And thank you for having me on.
Thank you for being a role model to a lot of people out there
about how to think and what to care about and how to prioritize and starting
with family is always the right thing and finishing with families the right thing.
My pop was very committed to public service, and that absolutely put a strain
on our dynamic because it's such an unnatural thing. But one thing that he
was consistent in was that you know what the right thing is, and it
helps to have people give you moral backstops as a kid. But his consistent
teaching all through my life, you know, and all through his life was,
look, you don't need me to tell you what the right thing is.
You know what the right thing is, and very often you have to
do what is hard to do what is right. And you know, it's
a simple lesson to say. It's a very hard one to live, and
I have certainly struggled with it myself. I am amazed, Bill Cunningham,
you are the great American. I am the great mistake maker. I'll say
this that on your dad. Mario Cuomo. He was the reluctant politician.
He was unlike the politicians of today. He was perceived in nineteen eighty eight
nineteen ninety two as the future of the Democrat Party. And I can recall
the speech he gave in nineteen eighty four, which was I didn't care much
for it at the time, but it was very articulate, well spoken,
represented a viewpoint. And the public persona is one thing. The private dad
is another because the lights are off and it's you and him, and he
had many kids. You have many kids. And the Mario Cuomo of the
public certainly was not the Mario Cuomo who was a dad and a father.
The Bill Cunningham on the air is not the Bill Cunningham as a father and
a grandfather. Different persons, not on the professional sense, but in the
personal sense. You've had difficulties in your life. I've had difficulties in my
life. There's nobody I know that doesn't have serious difficulties. And were there
times when you went through the bad issues that you called your dad and said,
Dad, I got a problem, Man, I need your help.
I'll tell you something that is a little embarrassing, but I think people can
probably relate to it. When I got I'll use polite language because I respect
you and your audience. When I got fired, let's say, I don't
usually refer to it as that, but that's what happened. I found myself,
you know, lost on a lot of different levels. And you can
say I'll please it was just a job. It wasn't brain cancer, true,
but it was kind of an identity, and it took me by surprise,
and I was shocked and hurt by the people who precipitated it, because
they were full of it and they knew it. But I actually called my
father in a moment of like, I just forgot for a second that he's
gone. And I called my father's old number two one two three, one
seven two seventy three three, And you know, if you call it now,
it's disconnected or somebody else's, but it's one of the only phone numbers
I remember, and I called, and I just forgot, And I remember
hearing that disconnected thing and realizing, oh god, it's not here. And
I wish so much I could have had him, because that's exactly where he
was at his best, you know, when things weren't the worst. He
wasn't a great guy to celebrate with. My dad was kind of a stiff.
You know. He didn't want to hear how he didn't want to hear
how good you were, and he didn't want to hear you celebrating because he
felt that you were making yourself soft and vulnerable. He used to joke that
success is failure of herded. But in tough times Bill was. He was
a phenomenal backstop for people. He would do anything for you. He would
make it very clear. Look, there's no question you're going to get through.
You're absolutely going to get through this. How what shape you'll be in
on the other side, I don't know, but it's going to pass.
So do what you can to control how it passes. And again easy to
say, hard to live. But you know, the most important things that
I know about life, I know because I watched him live them. You
know, Chris crooma Chris Croloma. My dad was a raging alcoholic and at
the time my best friend, my baseball coach, my basketball coach. He
left at the age of when I was twelve years old, and I remember
specifically my mom sitting down, had four kids of tender years and in a
little home of four kids, two parents, and my dad was my best
friend. But I knew he had an alcohol problem because of the war.
I'll talk about that later on, but I never saw him again. About
fifteen years ago by and I'm in law school in University of Toledo. I
got a little baby and married the same woman now as I was then,
and out of the blue, my dad calls me and hadn't heard from him
in fifteen years. At this point, I'm like twenty seven, finishing up
law school. And he said, Billy, this is your dad. And
I said, my dad. And I asked him two or three questions to
make sure it was him. I said, what's my day to birth?
He gave it? Where was I born? He gave it. I said,
who is your assistant coach with Rutgers Pharmacy in Deer Park and he gave
me. I said, I said, what do you want? He said,
let me tell you what I want to see you? And I said,
why do you want to see me? He said, I'm dying.
I said, well, what are you dying? He said, I have
liver. They tell me I got liver and kidney cancer. I'm not going
to make it. And I said, no. Where are you? Said
Missouri? I said, I'm in Ohio and I'm up to my ass and
I I mean. I worked eight to four as a constable and common police
court swearing and witnesses for four years, went to law school at night six
to ten. I was busier than I could be. And I said look,
I'm not coming to see you. So I quickly called my mom and
said, Mom, you can't believe he just called me. And Mom said
it was your dad. I said yes, he said he wants your number,
and she explained to me that he was dying. So I didn't go
see him. And then about two months later he calls me again. Didn't
have call or d at the time, and I said, what do you
want? He said, they tell me I have a week to live.
I really have to see you. I said, no, you weren't a
father to me in the living years. I'm not going to be a son
to you and your death. No, goodbye, and I hung up.
About fifteen more years ago by Chris Cuomo and I'm at one of my sports
bar restaurants, Willie Sports Cafe, and this old man comes up to me
and he taps me on the shoulder and met the bar a pretty good crowd,
and he said, can I see you? And I said, now,
what do you got? He said, I was your dad's best friend.
I said really, so I took him off to the size side of
the table. He said, let me tell about your dad. He was
a wonderful guy, funny hilarious. But at Guadalcanal he was a grunt.
He killed Japanese soldiers. He watches, he watched his buddies being killed.
At night, they would put bodies of his friends and bags. And that
went on for months and months and months and months and minds. And when
that got over with and the war was one, he was on ships outside
of Japan ready to invade when the bombs were dropped. When he came home,
he became a raging alcoholic because it was medicine. It was a pain
of what he went through. And at that point, Chris Cromo, I
felt like I was at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, that I should
have reached out to my dad in his hour of need and listened to the
story. I had no idea of the pain it was calling out PTSD at
that point it was like shake it off, just get over it. Well,
he couldn't get over it, and he died a raging alcoholic, with
a new family in Missouri, so to speak, and he left us to
live on our own. It was my aunt, my mother's sister, who
took us in. Otherwise all of us would have been an orphanage. And
so I had nobody. Growing up, when I had big decisions to make
about life, I had nobody I could call, no one. What do
you say to the kids like me that didn't have an functional father that was
with you, and that you had no one to rely upon other than your
own judgment. I think that what life teaches you was, at the end
of the day, you have to be enough. First of all, you
know I don't know you that well, Bilbi. You know I have premendous
respect for your success and what your work is about. Regret is the most
wasted of human emotions. You have clearly taken very profound lessons from what happened
with you and your father at the end of his life, and it unquestionably
has given you a sensitivity and a sense of forgiveness that you didn't have for
him in that moment, which absolutely makes perfect sense. But at the end
of the day, sure, everybody has their challenges. My father wasn't perfect,
my upbringing is far from perfect. But at the end of the day,
you take what you can from the people around you. But it's going
to be about you in the end. Even if you have faith, even
if you believe in something bigger than yourself, everything that's going to manifest in
your life is going to be you. It's always on you at the end
of the day. So you may be alone, but we're all alone at
the end of the day. And you make the life for yourself that you
can. There's no such thing as luck, there's no such thing as fate,
there's no such thing as destiny. You make those things happen, and
that can be scary. People would like to know that there's someone carrying them
along or something carrying them along. But at the end of the day is
your own actions and intentions, and if you do the right things, you
got a chance of having the right things happen to you. They're no guarantees
in this world. Chris, what you just said is so accurate. Two
things I said. I said, number one, I may have many difficulties
in my life, but drugs and alcohol will never be one of them.
Well, whatever I'm going to do, I'm not going to drink and I'm
not going to smoke, and I'm not going to do that. And number
two, when I get a son, I'm going to be the best father
to him that my dad wasn't to me. And I took the lessons of
that to say, you know what, I'm not going to drink. I'm
not going to be a derelict. I'm going to take care of my family
and I'm going to be a father that he never was. And I took
from those circumstances that, and I hope I passed that on to my family,
to my son, to my grandkids. That family is more important than
wealth, more important than anything else in life. But when you bring lives
into the world, damn it, you take care of those kids and you
love them as much as you can. And the same thing with alcohol and
drugs. My gosh, right, now, look at the problems we got
with alcohol and drugs and gambling. I have so many people. Now,
you know, my wife works with the State of Ohio and the Casino Control
Commission and gambling. She's a commissioner up there, and it goes back and
forth. But nonetheless, there are so many opportunities for kids to gamble on
their phones and young kids more than oh my god, let's not forget what
it is though, right, So do these ills, these sins, this
disease, these behaviors all exist and then more supply than ever, Yes,
yes, yes, but those again, those are consequence what we are really
struggling with in our society uniquely so because we have the burden of choice so
much to the society. But everybody's not out there, you know, trying
to find fish in a mud pond to survive, So you have choice.
People have hard times here, but hard times in America are different than hard
times in Uganda, you know. So what we struggle with here is a
sense of purpose, a sense of meaning what are we about? And people
get lost in that. They wind up, they wind up idolizing the wrong
things. And we don't have the value structure and we don't have a common
admittment to values, so we're all there's so many who are lost. They
don't have a structure around them that they can mimic. If they don't have
a path that's laid out for them, they're not going to just necessarily be
Bill Cunningham, who takes adversity, who takes a lack of love, a
lack of concern, and turns it into a commitment to those things. It's
very rare, So why get be great American? They will fall and they
will look for something to make themselves forget how they feel and their disappointment and
the pain, and that's where the drugs come in. That's where the addictions
come in. That's where all the antisocial behavior comes in. And as a
society we have reinforced those problems by having no mercy, no sense of grace,
no sense of forgiveness. Was the only thing that bothered me about Hunter
Biden's case other than the politics behind it. He did it, He's guilty,
Okay, he's guilty. Yes, they don't bring those cases. But
the fact that he's an addict. Even Heraldo Rovert was a mentor of mine
and he's out there in Ohio suis. I love him to death, respect
him so much. But he looks so hard on Hunter for being a junkie.
He kept saying, it's junky horrormonger who's ruined his family. The guy's
sick, not just bad. And it was interesting to me, and I
said to him in private and on television, why are you so hot on
him as someone who's been obviously struggling with a disease for so long and it's
recognized within his own family, why don't you recognize it? And He's like,
you know, after a while, I'm just like enough to stop doing
what you're doing. It's bad, but they can't, you know, And
it's really part of what we got to look at it about ourselves. You
know. You and I were talking before we came on about how divided everybody
is and how it almost seems like contagious. And I talk to people,
I'm very lucky in my life, Bill, like the people like you.
I mean, think about it. How many guys like you and me you
get to have the exchanges that we have in this business. We're not allowed
to talk to each other like this. You know, people don't want to
hear you know, my audience will be like, why are you doing on
those writings. You're talking to them because I love them, because they're my
brothers, because I believe in them. I don't care if they care all
the same ideas. I care so much about what you do and I have
so much respect for why you do it. And people will look at me
like I'm saying, you know, maybe the Celtic's arms so bad, Maybe
I'm not just a Knicks fan. You know, leave that for sports,
not for politics, and for our humanity. You know, Chris Fomo,
I spent years and assistant ag on commitment hearings of the mentally ill and those
with difficulties. And I'm thinking all those thousands and hearings I conducted for the
AG about committing people in mental hospitals, and they came into the room and
it was like, my God, but for the grace of God, there
goes Aye. And I'm thinking, those guys, just shake it off.
You can come over that like my father and those who came back from the
war, whether it was to World War two or the Persian Gulf War,
Iraq, Afghanistan. Hey, just shake it off. It's going to be
okay. Quit drinking, quit using drugs. Today drugs are everywhere, marijuana
is legal. You have young men and women that don't want to form family
structures until they're thirty thirty five years old, and the attitude of no big
deal, just just just get rid of it. What damn it is.
I know it is not easy to shake it off and just forget about it
and move on. It's not easy. Ill it's illness. It's illness.
Look, I am ridiculously fortunate in the land of people who gets exposed to
bad things. And I got to tell you, I'm years of traveling to
foreign wars and watching where the humanity has to offer absolutely affected me, and
I needed therapy, and I needed people around me to tell me when my
behavior was changing. And then I was exhibiting in sensitivities that were obviously a
reaction to me trying to deal with watching heads pop and watching you know,
people killed for sport and all the other horrible things you see in this business.
And that's just a touch of what the fighting men and women have to
deal with. So I've always been very sympathetic to human frailty. You say,
but Bill, We're so lucky. We're lucky a lot of people.
But a lot of people do believe in grace because you don't believe in God.
So I don't believe that there's anything that could hear and that can matter
more than our own beings. And I'm a practicing Roman Catholic, and I
rely upon that. I wanted to talk to you about Hunter Biden, about
Trump's visit of the Capitol. I want to talk about the Disaster Finds trip
to G seven and here we are talking his sons about dads and dads about
their sons. So anyway, we got a run matter. This matters a
lot more my son. You're graduated, Bill, He's going away to college
next year. And that's all that matters in terms of my legacy for me
and Christine and my wife's made him. Thank God, he looks like her.
Okay, he's putting good into the world. And my time here was
everything else before the year is don I like to get Sean Compton, me
and you and have have dinner in New York. I spent so much time
there. I actually we've never I seldom meet my guests. I want to
sit down across the table with you and Sean Compton. Would that be good?
Man? Dinners on me. Bill. You've given me a great opportunity
and I love to be with you. God bless you. Chris Clomo,
thank you very much. Let's continue. And I wanted to talk about everything
that, but one question led onto that, and I hope you, as
a great American listener, found it worthwhile. Now's the time to reach back
and solve difficulties. Bill Cunningham, News Radio seven hundred WLW. Are you
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