YouSaid · the spoken record

Mary Katharine Ham

lines on the record: 86
first: 2018-10-18
most recent: 2018-10-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yes. Well, when I was in Rockingham working there, I've always been sort of. Libertarian is conservative, but definitely solidly right of center. And even in a rural North Carolina newsroom, I was the weirdo. And so, and I would get some knocks for it from editors when I would write not reported pieces. I didn't, you know, obviously don't put stuff in there, but when I would write opinion pieces, which to their credit, they didn't encourage me to do. But I would get in some tussles and some back and forths with editors about various things. And I just wondered, okay, if I'm moving forward.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did cover, by the way, Danelle Ellerby, who has since gone on to win two Super Bowls. Very proud of I did a feature on him one time when he was just a skinny wide receiver in high school”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I stayed clear of that. I tried to stay mostly on the field, outside the locker room, everyone. But yeah, I do remember the athletes were extremely polite. It's very sort of small town southern thing. They always called me Miss Ham, even though I was like three years older than them.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there was a tiny bit of skepticism, but it wasn't overt. Nobody was overtly rude about it. But I think there was some. Were some skeptical folks, and it went well.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we always watched all kinds of sports and NASCAR. So while I was there, I think I actually was the first woman to cover Friday Night. Yeah, I was going to ask you.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Were you always a football sports fan? Where is this? Oh, yeah. I love, I've always loved sports. My dad raised us on sports. He went to University of Georgia, so I was a UGA football fan, and I was a towny in Durham. So I was a Duke basketball fan. Haters, I know, whatever. I earned it since 1981. Listen, I love profess”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That TV show is, by the way, one of those great things that I think. Red American, blue America can both equally enjoy, and it's like a nice cross-cultural. You can learn a little bit about these towns because it really did ring true to my experiences in a Friday night.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rockingham, North Carolina. And I still have friends there, and I still visit there. And by the way, Richmond County, a sort of quintessentially Obama Obama Trump county. That is the sort of textile industries went away. It's been patching economic life together since then, but not really felt things sort of on the rise. And I was curious after the election, I thought, Richmond County seems like one of those counties. And I looked it up and sure enough. That's what it is. That's the story of that election”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I still have a pretty deep attachment to that town for that reason is because I was only there for a short time, but I met everyone in the county because I was Rockham.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was so much fun. Go Raiders. But I had a blast and you learn the town and you learn the local government and you learn how these wheels turn on a very local level. And then you move up, right? And now I think. Would be really helpful for a lot more reporters to have that. I could not.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is the season. No, that was a great experience. This is one of the things that I mourn about the newspaper industry falling off is that that job as a daily newspaper reporter in a small town is a really great job. Yeah. It's a really great learning experience. Too often now, I think, and like I didn't do that much time there. I did love my time there as a Friday night lights football and NASCAR.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I'm suggesting that perhaps the fact checking and the gut checking are not as rigorous when you don't mind that this person is taking a chance.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right of center person. And Nikki Haley, frankly, is one of the great success stories of the Trump administration. And for whatever reason, someone over at the New York Times, well, actually several layers of people at the New York Times had this giant fact wrong. And interestingly, nobody flags this until it's in the paper. It's a pretty big paper.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was fake news. There was some fake news, but I think it was overblown. They went too far down that path themselves, and then he just turns it around on everybody and goes too far down that path as well, which is one of my issues with the Trump era is that everyone spins each other up into sort of. Bad actors, right? Like, because he's acting this way doesn't mean we have to act this way, right? Because I totally agree. And I think”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, look, I think he uses that term very loosely to apply to anything he doesn't like. I would also note that the fake news term sort of originated with media starting to talk about how fake news had fueled the election. So they sort of got that turned back on them by Trump by using it”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Well, and mostly, I think my take is more as somebody who is in media now with and who's somebody who loves the press and has been part of the press and spent much of my childhood in one of the last metro newspaper battles and just took in so much of that. My take on media is more like, help me help you to understand these people and to not make these giant mistakes that make everyone think that you're exactly what Trump is saying you are. That's where I am”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he's now a retired newspaper man, and my parents. Cagey about Trump in the primaries, but voted for him in the general election, if I think I'm correct about that. And I don't know. My dad does, and I have taken in plenty of this. He spent a lot of years in media. He knows that the media leans very far left. He thinks it's irresponsible journalism a lot of the time. Now, that doesn't mean he uses the same language, but he is very open-eyed about mistakes that journalists make and as a former newsman, he's like, this is not how we're supposed to do things. And so I think he sees it from that perspective plus ideologically he feels like. People on the right are treated unfairly.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think having those conversations with people who wanted to be journalists in Russia, with people who wanted to be entrepreneurs in Russia, one of his family friends became one of our good family friends, was just a guy in the Soviet Union who had a motor and who knew how to. Create things that people wanted to buy, but he wasn't allowed to do that. And I think seeing that sort of made my dad talk more about these principles and capitalism and the free markets and why they're important and free press and why these things are important. So I probably around my middle school years was picking up more of that.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think that sort of his sort of embrace of free market economics and not embrace of it because he had believed in it before, but sort of renewed sense of this is what makes America work. And I saw the other end of the spectrum over here. I think I took in a lot of that as a... 12 year old or”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no. That can't happen. They can investigate my freshman year Russian language class if they want. I can still read Cyrillic phonetically. So if you ever need that for a party trip. All right.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did not get to go. In fact, I still have never been, although I did study Russian in college for a bit It didn't really sink in”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Journalism. Yes, oh my gosh, somebody's going to start a Russia conspiracy about me. He visited the Soviet Union in the days of Glasnost to teach journalists in the Soviet Union how a free press could work. It was a sister city program with Kush from Al Russia, and he taught himself some Russian and went over and. And we had great friends there, and we did all sorts of cultural exchanges. Did you travel with him?”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're probably going to be mad that I said that. But they went through a, during the Clinton years, went through a bit of a shift to the right, spurred partly by my dad's visits to the Soviet Union. So it was about markets. It was about free markets. So I think I took in.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think my parents, like I said, there wasn't an ideology pushed on us at all. There wasn't very It wasn't very defined what they knew who they voted for, basically. They were Carter delegates.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so liberal professors in the neighborhood as well. So that kind of environment where I just kind of. wondered what else was out there.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They might have skipped you a grit if you could do that. It's an unorthodox way to come to conservatism because I was in majority minority I wouldn't say inner city is probably more of a big city term, but Durham, that's where we were. We were in a majority black neighborhood and community.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't want to bash Durham at all because it's a wonderful, special place. But yeah, there were, it was rough in our public schools. And I don't think a kid like me or my brothers who had my parents supplementing our education did fine, but I saw it failing other kids. And I just thought, are there different ways of doing things? And that was really the whole thought. I didn't go much past that because I was eight. But I think it made it made the wheels start turning.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think I have a very serious contrarian streak. It is not why I believe what I believe, but I had from a very young age looked around and was like, it feels like everyone here is saying the same things all the time and believing the same things. And I thought there's probably other things. And so I kind of wanted to test those waters and I like to poke around and see what I could find out and ask questions. And I think that was part of my growing up. I also went to public schools and I think didn't realize it was an ideological or political realization or experience, but I just experienced public policy firsthand that wasn't working real well for the people that I was in school with or for me. And I thought,”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No. No, I joke that they made me what I am, or that everybody back home was like, she was such a nice girl growing up. What happened?”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think sort of taking on the old boys was the object and they were fascinated by this new cast of characters that had come in to run Fobb's campaign. They had a lot of faith in him, entrepreneur, interesting, charming guy, former football player in Alabama. And I think there was just energy around it. And there were young people around that campaign. And it seemed an impossible task, I think. And so it was very sort of romantic to take this on. And to this day, we hear stories in the ham household about that campaign”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it's interesting because when my dad did go to grad school, it was for political science work. So one would think that we were a very political family, but we actually weren't that political per se. It was more of a news junkie family. It was, you knew who the actors were. You stayed abreast of what the issues were. My dad watched the news. We got several newspapers a day because he had to have his own newspaper and the competing newspaper. And so I was always sort of informed, but there wasn't a ton of ideology in the house.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he did do a cleansing round, I believe, of sort of grad school at Duke and then re entered, right? But it was a campaign that my parents still speak so fondly of. And it was 1979, 1980 in Alabama. So the Democratic primary was basically all that existed. And they were backing Fob James and working with Fob James, who was sort of taking on the Wallace machine in Alabama. And they talk about it as just one of the most exhilarating times of their lives. It was shoestring. You know, my mom was like carting around paper campaign materials to different newspapers and to constituents here and there crisscrossing the entire state in their broken down car. And they just had a blast and loved it.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But he was trained as a newspaper man, and most of my life was a newspaper man and editor. And then I worked at a small North Carolina newspaper for a couple years before.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then my grandfather was a sports reporter for him, and then my father dabbling in politics here and there. He was the press secretary for the governor of Alabama when I was born, but he was trained. James, is that? Yes, correct.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually graduated from college with a journalism degree specifically in newspaper journalism because I could really see the future guys. Yeah, exactly. I knew what was coming. My great-grandfather started a paper in Beautiful Pitts, Georgia, way back in the day.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, I'm happy to be the divergent voice. I'm happy to be among the divergent voices. We'll say among. I don't want you to shoulder.”
2018-10-18 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 278 — Mary Katharine Ham · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source