{"id":13889,"date":"2019-08-02T21:12:33","date_gmt":"2019-08-03T01:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=13889"},"modified":"2019-08-02T21:12:33","modified_gmt":"2019-08-03T01:12:33","slug":"bill-schulz-tribute-in-american-conservative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/02\/bill-schulz-tribute-in-american-conservative\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Schulz Tribute in American Conservative"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American Conservative, August 2, 2019<\/h3>\n

This Reader\u2019s Digest<\/i> Editor Was One Tough, Conservative Cookie<\/a><\/h1>\n

Bill Schulz, who died July 22, wasn’t afraid to publish articles taking down government boondoggles in America’s most accessible magazine.<\/h2>\n
By Jim Bovard<\/a><\/span> \u2022 August 2, 2019<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n
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++Photo: Bill Schulz. (Courtesy of Jim Bovard)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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My old friend Bill Schulz passed away July 22 after a hard fight with multiple illnesses.\u00a0 Bill, who was born in 1939, was one of the most talented editors I ever had the pleasure of working with. For more than 30 years, Bill was the Washington editor for Reader\u2019s Digest <\/i>when the Digest<\/i> was the most-read magazine in America, with over 50 million readers. Bill assured that the Digest<\/i> remained resolutely anti-communist in the final decades of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

Dave Shiftlett, who wrote for Schulz, hailed his editing ability<\/a>: \u201cBill could have condensed \u2018Ulysses\u2019 to 12 pages.\u201d Much more than technical acumen, however, he brought higher literary and intellectual standards to American conservatism. As a teenager, Bill attended lectures by the legendary Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises <\/a>at New York University. He recognized that denouncing Big Government was not enough; you also had to make readers understand the deeper perils and the grave political trendlines.<\/p>\n

Bill masterminded a 1978 bestseller entitled A Time for Truth<\/i> <\/a>that lucidly explained why political takeovers of the economy and American life were disasters for freedom and prosperity. That book was ghostwritten by Edith Efron and published under the name of former Ford administration official Bill Simon, and included a preface by Milton Friedman and a foreword by F.A. Hayek.\u00a0 The book relates how, when Simon was appointed as Energy Czar, President Nixon compared the power he was vesting in Simon with the power Hitler vested in Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments and War Production. (If only MSNBC had been around back then to sound the alarm!) The chapters on \u201cFreedom vs. Dictatorship\u201d and \u201cThe Road to Liberty\u201d are as relevant now as when they were written and could be profitable reading for many Trump supporters.<\/p>\n

After I started writing for Bill in 1984, I never had to go to a pawn shop to pay rent. The Digest <\/i>pay rates gave me the financial breathing space to write for plenty of publications that offered\u00a0 \u201chonorific pay rates\u201d and usually worse editing than Bill delivered.<\/p>\n

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Bill was one of the most devoted patrons of The Palm restaurant, where he spiced lunches with lively anecdotes on Washington political operatives and poohbahs, often including a fun \u201cbehind-the-scenes\u201d nugget about Mayor Marion Barry. I also relished hearing his stories of the great fights he attended, such as the first Ali-Frazier fight in 1971, where <\/a>Bill shouted so loud that he was hoarse the next morning.\u00a0 Maybe Bill liked boxing in part because he was a natural tough guy\u2014he enjoyed publishing frontal assaults I wrote on the Internal Revenue Service, the World Bank, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and other targets that most Washingtonians preferred not to criticize.<\/p>\n

One of my all-time favorite D.C. brouhahas occurred the day that Bill and I interviewed Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole in 1989. Dole was whooping up the federal Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) program as one of the greatest gifts Washington ever delivered to the downtrodden. Bill recognized a boondoggle when he saw one, and JTPA was a geyser of phony success stories and dishonest statistics. JTPA was corporate welfare at its worst\u2014shoveling out tax dollars to businesses on endless false pretenses.<\/p>\n

Secretary Dole greeted us that day as if we were visiting the throne of a small European kingdom. She flashed us a focus-group-tested smile as we entered her palatial office. She was accompanied by her press secretary, a lady practiced in securing the most positive coverage for her boss. She insisted that Dole had only 30 minutes to spare to talk to the Digest.<\/i><\/p>\n

Dole gestured towards a giant bay window and mentioned she had a great view of the Capitol dome. She declared, \u201cI know that if the lights are still on 6 p.m., then I won\u2019t have to fix dinner for Bob,\u201d referring to her husband, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. Her opening gambit revealed that she assumed we were idiots. Schulz later groused that the odds of her making dinner at their Watergate apartment for her husband were akin to a snowball\u2019s chance in hell. Ms. Dole never had a reputation as a homebody.<\/p>\n

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