BILL MOYERS responds to Stephen F. Hayes’s piece “PBS’s Televangelist”:
Stephen Hayes opens his attack on me (“PBS’s Televangelist,” Feb. 25) by claiming that in the PBS specials following September 11 I interviewed, among others, “Cornel West, O.J. attorney Alan Dershowitz, and ‘Vagina Monologues’ playwright Eve Ensler.” He gets it right only once. I have never met or interviewed Alan Dershowitz or Eve Ensler. Two errors on the opening pitch: Not a promising start. But it’s the standard (no pun intended). Mr. Hayes maintains for the remainder of his game. For example, by garbling the record, he tries to score points on comments I once made about interviewing right-wingers who want to “hit first and ask questions later.” But he says nothing about all the interviews I have conducted over the years with such widely admired conservatives as Ronald Reagan (for a full hour on PBS, from his ranch–the first such interview he had permitted there), George H. W. Bush (also a full PBS hour), Sandra Day O’Connor (another hour), Edwin Meese, Robert Bork, Leon Kass, Thomas Wolfe, Mary Ann Glendon, John Lukacs, etc. To have included such information, of course, would have spoiled Mr. Hayes’s polemic.
