The Pleasure of His Company
Milton J Rosenberg, 1925-2018
https://www.steynonline.com/8381/the-pleasure-of-his-company
Milt welcomes Mrs Thatcher to his studio in the Tribune building
Milt Rosenberg died in Chicago late on Tuesday night at the age of 92. When truly great people depart this earth, I am inclined to be selfish and mourn not just the glories of the past but the glories that will never be: I will never hear a brand new Frank Sinatra album, never see a new Jerome Robbins dance... With Milt's passing, the selfishness is compounded: whenever my next tome is published, I will never again know the satisfaction of having Milton J Rosenberg conduct a substantive, informed two-hour discussion on the book and its themes unlike anything else anywhere on the airwaves.
For almost four decades Milt's show at WGN was a favorite stop on the tour for the grandest of authors - Norman Mailer, Mary Higgins Clark, Carl Sagan, Salman Rushdie, Betty Friedan - as it became for more intermittent wordsmiths - Mrs Thatcher, Kirk Douglas, Henry Kissinger... Many of those guests became his friends, so that, for example, on the day after the London Tube bombings, he called up the mystery novelist (and author of The Children of Men) P D James and sought out her views, which were characteristically insightful. As Milt told his guest, "I live in continued borrowed radiance from the pleasure of your company" (a very Miltonian formulation), but you can hear that Lady James feels the same about him, as did many of those he interviewed.
The program was called "Extension 720" - 720 is WGN's wavelength and "Extension" was used in the sense of continuing education (in the same way that my local 4-H is formally affiliated with UNH's agricultural extension program). It certainly was that, but, while there may be the rare Chicagoan who refers to it by that title, I never heard anyone in my trade call it anything other than "the Milt Rosenberg show", which it was. It depended on his very particular set of skills. When it started in the early Seventies, WGN hedged its bets and installed multiple rotating hosts, and Milt, whose hosting experience consisted entirely of a little light panel moderation of University of Chicago discussions, would have been nobody's choice for the guy to come out on top. But he was better prepared, more curious and with a wider range of interests, and it quickly became his show, and stayed it.
If you write a book, you're naturally interested in its subject, and it comes as something of a shock - especially in its launch week - to realize how few other people are. If you've even the most modest public prominence, you're quickly sought out by a zillion bookers of TV and radio shows (which is flattering), only to discover that hardly any interviewer has read the book (which is less flattering but, given the pressures of a busy life, understandable) and can't even be bothered to pretend that he has (which is less understandable) and mainly wants you on to talk about whether Trent Lott has been outmaneuvered by Tom Daschle or whatever passing frippery is sucking up all the oxygen that day (which is just profoundly depressing). Milt read his guests' books, and indeed would not have them on the show if he wasn't interested in what they'd written. And, as his show went out late in the evening, it ensured that the author at least returned to his hotel room with a warm glow, and the grimmer hits of mid-morning long forgotten.
I remember one launch day a decade or so back. I was in an hotel in midtown Manhattan and had been slogging through Regnery's launch model of radio interviews every half-hour starting at 6am, punctuated by occasional telly appearances and a speech somewhere or other. Milt's was the last show of the day, but he wouldn't do phoners: you had to be in a studio, and they'd procured CBS Radio's, which was somewhere over on Tenth Avenue or thereabouts. It had started to rain, and immediately the yellow cabs had dried up, as they always do. And, with the clock ticking on, my publicist Kathleen eventually hailed one of those bicycling rickshaws that take romantically inclined tourists for moonlit rides round the safe bits of Central Park. Our chauffeur assumed we were a courting couple and couldn't understand why two lovebirds insisted on being bicycled over to Tenth Avenue, which involves en route some pronounced inclines that aren't the easiest to ascend by pedal when you're dragging some svelte publicist and her flabby out-of-shape author behind you. So he protested most vigorously all the way, and kept trying to turn back and take us to the Plaza for cocktails, and it all took longer than expected and we arrived at CBS with moments to spare. And Milt began, as he often did, with a classical quotation, whose author he invited me to identify, and I was punchy and frazzled and a little out of breath and struggling to recall. And then I thought, "Hang on, this is the Milt Rosenberg show. It's gonna be great" - and I settled back and let Milt reveal aspects of my book I didn't know were there.
And two hours later, at midnight, we left CBS and I was the happiest guy in Manhattan, and the cares and woes of awkward, fumbled exchanges with the morning man at WZZZ-AM were totally forgotten, and, when Kathleen said the next day's round began at 5.30am, I was entirely unperturbed and would have agreed to 4am. There's certain shows you do for your publisher or the distributer or for obscure reasons of corporate synergy, but Milt's was for the author. I think many of us would have happily done the program even if it only had three listeners. In fact, in that P D James clip, when Phyllis invites Milt for dinner next time he's in London, she seems completely oblivious to the fact that she's on the Chicago market's top-rated evening show with sufficient wattage to blast out up into Canada and down the spine of America and out to some thirty states. The Internet brought him even more devoted listeners from every corner of the world. Here's a Latvian-Canadian working in China and sufficiently tickled by my self-description as "a Canadian subject of Her Majesty The Queen" to adopt it himself for his no doubt befuddled students in Wuxi. But notice Mr Kaulins' summation of Milt's show:
Listening to the Steyn interview has also made me an instant fan of the Extension 720 podcast. The host Milton Rosenberg covers a whole range of topics from science to politics to history to sports to music. Over the past week, I have listened to his programs about the French Revolution, the early history of baseball, Humphrey Bogart, the Eichmann trial, Quantum Physics, and Louis Armstrong.
That was a very typical week. Milt was a professor of psychology by training, but a self-taught polymath who considered almost every subject worthy of exploration other than, in his words, "pop psychology and poodle-primping". I sort of got the impression that he'd have been willing to make an exception for the latter, but the former was definitely a no-no. The range of talk on talk radio can be very narrowly drawn, but Milt was like the best of the chaps on the old BBC wireless (before they wrecked it): you never knew you were interested in a particular topic until he started talking about it. I was a fortunate beneficiary of that: he liked my big-picture stuff on Islam and demography and whatnot, but he also loved me as an obituarist and was happy to devote a show to my anthology of eulogies and appreciations. They were for him part of the same story - the long lives of seemingly peripheral individuals are close-ups on the big canvas. Before the University of Chicago, he had taught at Dartmouth - and one time, when I drove down the Connecticut River to do Milt's show from the Vermont Public Radio studio at King Arthur Flour in Norwich, just across from the Dartmouth campus in Hanover, we talked off-air about how much the college had changed. A lot of old-timers do that. But what struck me was the way he connected the closure of this or that restaurant or clothes store to some larger social trend or geopolitical phenomenon. Most people live in the assumptions of the present: that what is is forever. Milt seemed always to sense under his feet the continuous shifts and surges of the currents of history.
A decade ago, during the Conrad Black trial, I spent a couple of months basically living in Chicago at the old Intercontinental Hotel, with Johnny Weissmuller's swimming pool, right next door to Milt's home in the Tribune building. So it was great to be able to sit across the table from him not only in the studio but also at dinner afterwards with his wife Marjorie. The old line is that if you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no head. With Milt, I got the sense it took a little longer: He migrated rightward in his sixties, and further so in his seventies. It caused some grief among certain old friends of his in the Chicago media, precisely because it was hard to damn the most courtly and civilized inquisitor in radio as a "shock jock" (although off-air he was rather interested in the comings and goings of Michael Savage et al). But in 2008 he and Stanley Kurtz made the mistake of getting a little too curious about Barack Obama's relationships with Tony Rezko, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and the Obama machine was happy to demonize dear old Milt as some foaming rabid wingnut attack-dog.
Sometimes across the studio table, during commercial breaks, he would sigh over the latest bumpy descent in his tanking Tribune stock. Even by the standards of flailing media companies, they were remarkably badly run. A week before Christmas in 2012 WGN announced Milt's "retirement". He had boffo numbers, but the program was, by the shoestring standards of today's radio, "expensive" - booking those remote studios and the ISDN line, etc. The geniuses who ran the joint figured that lower ratings would be worth it for a cheaper host and no producer. So, on the Monday, Milt and his fans discovered that Thursday's show would be his last. The program had been on the air for over 39 years, but the no-talent wanker presiding over the station (briefly, as it turned out) lacked the class or style, or care for WGN's listeners, to let Milt stay on for a couple of months and sign off after a grand 40th anniversary party. So Milton J Rosenberg was retired "by mutual agreement".
It wasn't that mutual. When an 87-year-old man is doing a daily radio show, it's because he's not the kind of fellow who "retires": his "work" is what he does, who he is. So Milt decided to carry on, as a podcast. He relaunched his program as what it had always been: "The Milt Rosenberg Show". And I was very touched to be invited to be his very first guest. You can hear that show by clicking the button at the top of the page. A station in, I think, Evanston then picked it up, and on one memorable occasion two years ago Milt hosted both me and the aforementioned Conrad Black. You can hear that show in its entirety here. I believe that was my penultimate appearance with him: he began with a reference to Lord Tweedsmuir, former Governor General of Canada and (as John Buchan) bestselling thriller writer, and then moved on to ask us about the surging Trump campaign. Tweedsmuir and Trump on one broadcast: only Milt would do that.
We send our condolences to Marjorie and their son and grandchildren. I shall miss his curiosity - about distant lands, and remote history, and complex technology, and all the other difficult topics he made so easy for listeners. And I shall miss enormously how, in the most unobtrusive way, he'd shape an interview to give it a real arc: He was the best at that. His archive can be found here, and will afford you years of unalloyed pleasure in, to borrow his phrase, the radiance of his company.
Robert Meador • Jan 21, 2018 at 14:13
I would listen to Milt whenever I could. His description of his transformation from the left to classical liberalism was always instructive. He commented about "the damage" liberals did to people in the course of "helping" them, and saw the contradiction of their efforts. When he could not stand the contradiction any longer, like all wise men he adjusted his world view.
His passing leaves the world a less erudite, and much coarser place. We are better for having heard him. Perhaps Milt will gain some new fans now, who will draw inspiration from his example.
Zack Jones • Jan 12, 2018 at 15:31
Mark, A kindly, decent and lovely obituary. Just listened to that first podcast and three thoughts popped up.
Why negotiate with the left on immigration or any policy when as with the IRS and DACA they don't except a certain standard for lawful behavior? They'll Obama their point of view into practice through Alsup style judicial or executive order regardless of agreed legislation.
European expansion with its "unenlightened", "unwoke" cultural self regard of centuries past was a disaster for the cultures they never wished to assimilate into. And we original sinners must pity and pay indulgences to those groups forever more. Yet that thinking never applies in the current day as you say, "where Islam bumps up against their neighbors". Had native people's #Resistance been stronger we wouldn't be here with the luxury to mourn their absence, all our ancestors would have been killed at the border and our distant cousins would still be in the old country. Why is the left unwilling to acknowledge that part of ever present cultural friction and violence as history repeats?
You've spoken often with great humanity about the survivors of the carnage amongst attacks the world over. Thanks for that.
Richard Trzupek • Jan 12, 2018 at 13:08
Terrific piece about a wonderful guy - class personified. I had the honor to appear on Extension 720 a few years ago to discuss environmental issues, me representing the dirty-rotten-polluters for whom I work and the head of the Illinois chapter of the Sierra Club defending purity and virtue. In my experience, that kind of discussion usually falls of the rails pretty quickly with me patiently explaining that no, I have not slept with either Koch brother as far as I can recall and no, I have not cashed any checks from Exxon-Mobil. But with Milt there was no silly posturing, no ad hominem nonsense - none of it. There couldn't be, not with this genuine gentlemean politely asking probing questions without even a hint of personal bias. It was a true discussion and an experience I will always treasure. RIP Milt - you were one of kind.
(PS: In case you're wondering, most judges gave me the win by TKO in about the fifth round...)
George Pazin • Jan 12, 2018 at 12:37
I finally had the opportunity to listen to this wonderful interview last night. The entire interview was terrific, but I was especially heartened to hear Mark state (more eloquently) two things I've been saying for awhile now:
1) The Left uses sex (and I'd add drugs) to hide behind their desire to strip everyone's rights. The average nimrod is more concerned with someone taking away his weed or her right to have sex without repercussions than things like free speech, property rights, etc.
2) This one was a little less explicit, but in mentioning how those who shout "Diversity rules!" somehow choose to live in walled off, homogeneous communities, I believe Mark was illustrating something I've been saying for awhile: No one on the Left really believes their own ideas. When I say this, I mean that they don't believe them in the sense that they don't live them. They may preach, even even scream from the mountain tops, diversity, sticking up for free speech (as they define it), standing up for the little guy, etc, but they don't actually live it. It's much like they love to say "That's not who we are". They, in fact, AREN'T who they say they are, repeatedly, but rather they believe if they say it often enough, they can convince others, and perhaps even themselves, that they really are.
The truth hurts, alas...
Wonderful piece, Mark, as always. I'd say I hope you write my obit, but I'm only 50 and you don't actually know me... :-)
chickensoup • Jan 12, 2018 at 11:10
Wonderful retrospective on a well-lived life. Mark I bask in the radiance of your work.
Doctor Bass Monkey • Jan 12, 2018 at 00:25
These kind of thoughtful, gentle-spoken interviewers with intellectual curiosity are all but gone. Now, it's all about the sound bite or YouTube clip for our shallow culture. It's a shame. I loved listening to Milt's podcast much as I enjoyed Tom Snyder's interview program.
Ken • Jan 12, 2018 at 00:12
Just having listened to the entire interview Milt did with Mark for "Passing Parade", I was most struck by the last segment. Not only because of the analogy drawn between the Princes of Wales, past and present, but for the call-in from the man in the radio audience in 2007 who had ten children. Or was it twelve? His obituary may be the most interesting none of us will ever read.
Richard Ryan • Jan 12, 2018 at 00:11
A beautiful and moving tribute to a great gentleman and Chicago treasure. Thank you Mark.
Xavier • Jan 11, 2018 at 20:52
Thanks for your thoughts. The breadth of Milt's knowledge was incredible.
Guy Anderson • Jan 11, 2018 at 19:21
and you said you knew Milt and he knew you....the gig was clearly up when he asked you for a "consoling aphorism." No one goes to Mark Steyn for that!
The Mark Steyn show is one of our last remaining hopes to retain that level of discourse which too often seems lost....Do NOT let us down please!
Michael Ainslie • Jan 11, 2018 at 17:53
I grew up in Chicago and really enjoyed Milt. Many of his broadcasts are available on line. Like you I enjoyed his eclectic approach to many subjects. He will be missed.
PK33 • Jan 11, 2018 at 17:11
Interesting post Mark, and wonderful to discover more audio of a thought-provoking nature.
The mention of interviewers not reading your book made me think of Peter Robinson and Uncommon Knowledge. Mr. Robinson always seems to always have read the book. Here's a link to his interview with you Mark, about America Alone in 2010.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQELHJx8Vf0
Some of the Eastern European countries alluded to in the interview may given up having children, but they aren't importing "munchkins" either. Hungary and Poland come to mind. Nice reference to Ruritania BTW.
A. Koresaar • Jan 11, 2018 at 16:54
Listening to the podcast with P.D. James was ultimately dispiriting. She's obviously a very smart woman going by her writing and started out the best of the British in this interview with clarity on the Muslim threat BUT even she got caught in the woolly headed thinking that solving the Palestinian problem (presumably to Muslim satisfaction) would decrease Muslim unhappiness and terrorism. And this after clearly stating that one can't negotiate with people whose belief system urges them to kill you! There's an incoherence in logic here.
What hope is there when the best minds immediately after a Muslim terror atrocity (the 7/7 bombing in Britain) are so easily deflected to thinking the Palestine-Israel question is even solvable (when Muslims have made it unsolvable) and believing it's some magic talisman that will decrease their terrorism? When Arabs/Muslims obtain what they consider a victory, they don't pull back but press forward, encouraged, as even lazy students of history should know!
Fran Lavery • Jan 11, 2018 at 15:08
I can see why Milt was so respected. He thought the world of you, too, so all of your followers have that in common with him. Decay, Dishonesty, Decline, Debt, Decadance and Demographics! No crikey, mate! What a wonderful world it can be! I feel good knowing you are on top of all of it for your fans all over the planet.
David Elstrom • Jan 11, 2018 at 14:46
Being a Chicago area resident, Milt's show was regular listening for me. He was amazing for the breadth of topics he covered, as well as the depth of his discussion questions. Milt was the best prepared interviewer, and I dare say that Mark shows a similar preparation in his in depth interviews. The other quality instantly noticeable listening to Milt was this: he came across as the consummate gentleman. RIP Milt. We'll miss you.
Ken David Elstrom • Jan 11, 2018 at 22:14
"The other quality instantly noticeable listening to Milt was this: he came across as the consummate gentleman." Hear! Hear! What a loss going forward, backward, and forever. An hour and a half with Conrad Black, Mark Steyn, and their venerable host was the best time I've spent since last week's epic On The Town audio program.
Robert Johnston • Jan 11, 2018 at 14:32
A quiet thoughtful diamond atop a hill of screeching zircons.
Milt would often restore my flagging faith in humanity.
John Lewis • Jan 11, 2018 at 14:16
This is the first I have ever heard of Milt.
To paraphrase the eleventh Doctor Who, I wish I had known him better.
Sol Cranfill • Jan 11, 2018 at 13:57
Mark Steyn and Milt Rosenberg are a little bit of heaven on earth. The only match I ever heard for Mark Steyn was the distinct, pleasant voice and razor-sharp mind of Milt Rosenberg. Both can make you feel like you've traveled along with them, seeing and sharing the joy of life, a gratitude I cannot express nor repay. Milt often mentioned restaurants in Chicago, and you almost felt like you'd eaten there yourself.
This remembrance of him does bring into focus the loss of something exceptional, in terms of civilization. I couldn't help thinking "Paradise Lost" at the moment fits his first name, Milton. If it weren't for Mark, I wouldn't have known of Milt. People who broadcast and publish have no idea of their impact on individuals, and even humanity, but his was epic.
Richard Ryan Sol Cranfill • Jan 12, 2018 at 00:09
"Mark Steyn and Milt Rosenberg are a little bit of heaven on earth."
Well said. My thoughts exactly. As a life-long Chicagoan, there was nothing quite like being swept away some evenings as Milt delved into some topic with a great guest.
Charles Wascher • Jan 11, 2018 at 13:20
From Chicago - I loved Milt ... listening at 9 PM daily to his show on WGN was a pleasure ... the diversity of his guests was unbelievable ... You could get a week that covered everything from the issues of the day to the best and worst customer designed products. Mark - you were one of his favorites - he thought you were the most eloquent conservative thinkers. Milt is the reason I am now on the Steyn bandwagon....
He is Chicago and the University of Chicago at its best. RIP
Mark replies:
Thank you, Charles - and thank you, Milt, for introducing us.
Evan Osborne • Jan 11, 2018 at 13:19
One can't be too mournful when someone passes away at his age. Still, I find it sad because I once also had the pleasure of being on his show. I simply emailed the address associated with the show and proposed in my arrogance that he have me on to talk about my first book, which I had just written.
To my great delight, I was told within days that he would be willing to have me on, if I were willing to go to the WGN studios in Chicago from Dayton to make it happen. So I did, and enjoyed the experience not just of speaking with him about the book but taking questions from his audience, many of which were quite well-informed, and from which I learned something on a topic I thought I knew everything about.
Podcasts are great, but there's nothing like the (rare now) interactive and well-done old-fashioned radio talk show.
A. Koresaar Evan Osborne • Jan 11, 2018 at 17:02
I find the reason to be mournful is that Mr. Rosenberg appears to be one of the last of his kind - a civilized man who can discuss even incendiary topics in a civilized manner. He was in his 90s and no one other than Mr. Steyn himself comes to mind in lower decades of life who has this gift and has made a soap box for himself.
Also Mr. Rosenberg's relatively late conversion to conservatism indicates he remained open minded well past middle age and changed his beliefs according to evidence coming in. How many leftists remain capable of that?
Jamie Ward • Jan 11, 2018 at 13:16
A really shame as an early middle aged English man, I discovered Milt later than many (2012 if memory serves). He was clearly a very old man already but I always half harboured hopes that he would go on forever. R.I.P Mr Rosenberg
Peter B • Jan 11, 2018 at 12:57
Beautifully written, Mark, as only you can do. I still have your interviews with Milt (for both America Alone and After America, I think) and indeed, it was of a type we do not see (or hear) anymore. Our loss.. but thankfully we do have the archives.
Bob Belvedere Peter B • Jan 11, 2018 at 21:17
John Batchelor has a bit of Milt Rosenberg in him, so there's that.
Usually, he talks with authors in his last two hours of the show, and I've found myself never knowing I was 'interested in a particular topic until he started talking about it'. To Mrs. B's mild annoyance, I've spent the past year buying many of the books featured on his show.
Wokers of the World Utd