Studs

Another giant bites the dust but his humanity and sense of humor lives on. Studs Terkel died at the ripe young age of 96.

"Terkel was the voice of Chicago, the city of big shoulders, when it really was a bustling industrial hub and slaughterhouse to the nation. He moved there when he was 10 from another great city, New York, and called it his home for the rest of his life. During the Great Depression, his parents ran a boarding house and Turkel witnessed first hand those dispossessed by the nation’s greatest economic calamity.

Tradesmen, who often had lost their jobs, washed up at the hotel and would gather to argue about the social issues of the day. “The thing we miss today is argument,” Terkel said in a speech at the University of California-Berkeley in 2003. “We miss debate. We miss the whole idea of people going back and forth. I loved hearing those arguments.''

His take on the rightful role of the press says it all:

"Information, news, ideas--that's the juice that gets a democracy going. When a few corporations control all the juice, they decide how the democracy works. Or how it won't work. I don't worry that much about people doing the right thing if they have the facts about what their government is up to. But if they don't get the facts, the whole thing falls apart,"