Brave New World Dept.
1998, November 23
Ted Turner in 2000? The media mogul converts some rich people.
By Ann Louise Bardach
One recent Friday night, Ted Turner warned three hundred or so wealthy Southern Californians that the end is near. He was in Santa Barbara with his wife, Jane Fonda, to pick up the World Citizenship Award from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, an organization dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Diandra Douglas and the real-estate tycoon Ken Slaught hosted the black-tie dinner at their Montecito estate, which is still known as the Huffington house by locals who are unable to shake the memory of its previous tenants, Arianna and Michael Huffington. The Turners, who are both sixty this year, made a point of being sociable. "We just came from the marriage counselor in Santa Monica," Turner announced to his startled dinner companions. "Jane wants me to become a saint- but I'm not."
Fonda seemed particularly pleased to see her old friend the nineteen-fifties movie star Tab Hunter, whom she brought over to meet Turner. "'Damn Yankees' is my favorite movie! That's why I bought the Braves," Turner hollered, letting loose with an improvised Broadway medley. A few minutes earlier, he had serenaded another guest with the theme from "Camelot," which was also his "favorite movie."
Turner's clearly ad-libbed after-inner speech, about humanity's self-destructiveness, was an irresistible synthesis of Southern populism, standup-comedy shtick, and talk-radio outrage. " I don't know how many of you have seen 'Road Warrior.' It's a Warner Brothers movie," he said, unable to resist a plug. "It's about these real brutish guys . . . and they're out in the desert driving around, fighting over the last few gallons of gasoline . . . You go back to gangs. It's like L.A."
He then offered some Darwinian consolation: "It's not really all our fault, 'cause really all we are is monkeys without tails." Looking skyward, he added, "Father, I hate to tell you that."
Turner blamed the government for the nuclear nightmare and offered up a curious theory: "The United States is the one that doesn't want to get rid of nuclear weapons . . . because somehow they think that we're going to be able to use nuclear weapons to save ourselves from the starving masses of the Third World when they come to our doorstep." Returning to the "Road Warrior" theme, he warned, "But that's not the way they are going to come in. They're coming from across the Mexican border right now . . . They'll come from Saudi Arabia when they run out of oil over there . . . The real threat is no longer an army marching on us, it's people infiltrating us, you know, that are starving. And what are you going to do? Shoot 'em"
Turner concluded his doomsday remarks with a splash of optimism. "There were some good things that happened in this election. The Christian right didn't roll us," he said, grinning triumphantly. "They didn't roll us!" He added, "I like almost everybody except Rupert Murdoch and fundamentalists."
The normally sedate audience jumped to their feet to applaud him. Following the speech, Turner huddled with several foundation members and let slip some big news. "I am very serious about running for President," he told them, "but Jane doesn't want me to do it." However, as the hosts said good night to Fonda and thanked her for coming, Mrs. Ted Turner shrugged and said politely, "Wherever Ted goes, I go."