Interview with legend Ed McElroy on Comcast Channel 19 Tuesday night was great

The Ed McElroy interview with me ran tonight on Comcast Channel 19 (8 PM) ... Ed McElroy has his own show on Tuesday nights, as I do on Friday nights. I think I'll invite Ed to do an interview with me as host and him as guest on my Friday night show (8:30 PM Channel 19).

The show was taped on early March, I believe. And the 30 minutes went by fast talking about City Hall, the great Front Page reporters like my Sun-Times colleague Harry Golden Jr., and Bob Davis of the Chicago Tribune, who died, I believe, in 1995 (not 85 as I think I said during the show). Davis was one of the best and funniest journalists in Chicago. Golden was probabaly one of the best in journalism itself. The only other journalist at City Hall who I admired was WBBM Radio's Bob Crawford, who also was a great reporter, too. Very good. Retired a number of years ago.

McElroy is no John Calloway, who interviewed my back in January before I traveled with Aaron Freeman to do comedy shows in Israel and East Jerusalem on his Channel 11 Friday night show. But McElroy is a good former reporter himself. And also a publicist. I noticed he enjoyed pointing out I have been involved in some controversy, but then, there as many people who dislike me and like me as there are who dislike Ed and like Ed, too. Controversy is the mark of a good journalist. It means you know how to get to the heart of the fight, don't pull punches and tell readers like it is without sugar coating anything or distorting the news to make your friends appaer better than they are. Good journalists really don't have many friends outside of journalsim. If we wanted friends, we'd get dogs. I have two dogs and they've both taken chunks out of my hands. :)

Anyway, we talked about Jane Byrne. Rich Daley, Daley's father the late great Mayor Richard J. Daley who was my first political interview in 1976. And we talked about Betty Loren-Maltese, who I honestly believed was a good person between 1993 and 1996 when I worked with her, before she succumbed to the dark side and the terrible influence of Ed Vrdolyak, who was just indicted by the phenomenal US Attorney from Chicago Patrick Fiztgerald.

This weeks columns online, by the way, at www.swnewsherald.com focus on the Mitt Romney interview on CBS 60 Minutes, and a second Tuesday on the growing controversy around U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who certainly should follow the lead of his top deputies and resign from office. The sooner the better. And another online column this week addresses the topics of convicted murderer Juan Luna, (1993 Browns Chicken massacre of seven owners and employees, killed in cold blood), the death of Rev. Jerry Falwell, someone I never admired and wondered hat he might say about himself if he were to comment on his own death, and a brief remembrance of scandal plagued and convicted felon George Ryan, the former governer ho tried to buy public love by imposing a death penalty moratorium.

Check them out.

I'll also post the McElroy interview of me on Google and have it linked to my own web page at www.TVChicagoland.com or www.hanania.com.

-- Ray Hanania