I graduated from Elmhurst College in 2000. That night our commencement speaker was a Chicago columnist named Bob Greene. I didn't learn that until I was sitting in the cold folding chair, hearing his name announced. I remember thinking, "Fuck Bob Greeene." I was a Royko man, all the way. I'd read some of Greene's work, and I didn't like it. Not one bit. If I had to choose a word for it, I'd pick "insipid." Although I might be a little too conservative with that choice.
He surprised me that night. He had a new book out, the one you see above, and he talked about his father's hero, Paul Tibbets. An odd hero, to be sure. He's the guy who piloted the plane that nuked Hiroshima. Not, in my eyes, hero material. Still, the story he told spoke to me and helped me articulate a recurring thought of mine that you're all very aware of. A year before I'd read a Readers Digest article--sitting on the toilet like God intended--about a man who had met a Civil War soldier who, when he was a boy, had met George Washington. I ripped it off for my story, "The Hand That Shook the World." But it wasn't until Greene's speech that I could put it into words: history is never far behind us.
Because, in preparing to write this book, he tracked down Tibbets and had many conversations with him, in particular about dropping the bomb. It lit up my brain, and the only thing that stopped me from going out and buying his book was my experience with his writing.
Two years later Greene fell from grace, which surprised everyone except the people he worked with. Apparently he'd allegedly had an affair with a 17-year-old high schooler. I remember thinking, "Fuck Bob Greene." Royko never did anything like that.
I found some pictures from my graduation night, which got me thinking about this. I wondered what Greene was up to now, and I found this article and learned, holy shit, he was a bigger scumbag than I thought. And I know this is not the worst of his behavior, but I found this part particularly galling:
The trouble was, in public comments Greene made it clear that sometimes he did not believe what he wrote. He was just finding an angle that would make a good column-draw attention, promote his career. He mixed candor and calculation so shrewdly that, looking back over his work, it is impossible to tell when he is being honest and when he is just reaching for effect.
And that's why I never liked his work. My bullshit detector was going off, and I didn't realize it at the time. Which means every fucking word he ever wrote is suspect. And now I'm wondering if he ever really met Paul Tibbets or if he made that up, too.
You may be wondering about the title of this one. In that article I linked to, it describes a sign in the bathroom at the university Greene went to. He probably pissed at Elmhurst College, too. If you read my Shit Poems, you know I occasionally write about pissing next to creators, or into toilets they used. For example, I've pissed with Peter Straub and Garth Ennis. I hope I didn't use the same urinal Greene did. Because fuck Bob Greene. Royko is the king of Chicago columnists, now and forever, amen.
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| There's just one more thing . . . |
Only today did I realize that Greene talking about his book during the commencement speech was fucking weird. What does dropping the bomb on Hiroshima have to do with graduating college? That motherfucker used it as a promotional opportunity. Did my professor even notice that? If he did, he kept mighty quiet about it. If he was still alive, I'd ask him about it. Again, ah well.
All right, one more thing, but that's it. Here's one of those graduation pictures I found:
Maybe a lifetime of classes left me deranged. Or, more likely, I just *am* deranged.
