YouSaid · the spoken record

Tim Alberta

lines on the record: 74
first: 2021-03-11
most recent: 2021-03-11
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

“That's right. Yeah, so that was, and it was good fortune on a number of fronts, David, because when I was covering the State House in Lansing, Granholm was the governor and Republicans controlled the State House, and they couldn't get anything done. So the government shut down quite a few times. And it was a, there was a ton of interest in what was happening in Lansing. And I happened to sort of be in the middle of it. And I realized.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, my folks were, especially my dad, I mean, it was a very much a, which I teased them about all the way until up until we lost him. I said, you know, listen, part of the reason I'm so incredibly critical of Donald Trump is because you drilled into my brain as a kid this idea that moral leadership was a prerequisite for political leadership, right? So yeah, that's something I remember very clearly.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just sort of general morality as it would pertain to politics. So, like the Clinton impeachment was really my first as a kid, my first taste of sort of political awareness. But other than that, it just wasn't something, no, it wasn't a dinner table topic. It wasn't something that my brothers or I spent a whole lot of time engaging on.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know we did to the extent that my dad was very much involved in pro-life politics, so big on the abortion issue. But other than that, and really this was a more throwback version of sort of evangelical activism, David, because it was like. One part anti abortion activism and one part like refugee resettlement, right? Like it was like those were sort of the big kind of animating forces. It was like feeding the poor and helping the less fortunate and raising money for like missionary things and then domestically it was like abortion and some same-sex marriage probably too. But really there was much more of an emphasis on”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And work in Lansing right down the road and cover the statehouse and get credits for it. And basically all of these small papers around Michigan that couldn't afford an AP wire. They subscribe to And I thought, well, that sounds kind of interesting. And I was not a political kid at all. It just wasn't at that point in my life, I didn't know a whole lot about campaigns.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And actually, I think I was part of the way through my junior year. And one of the professors at the school at Michigan State named Eric Friedman, he came in to a class I was in and he gave a presentation about a program called the Capital News Service where you can take a semester.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a lot of luck. So I actually didn't write for my school newspaper. I just wasn't, for a variety of reasons. I wasn't terribly drawn to it. I knew a lot of the kids who did write there because I was in journalism school, but I just didn't really love it. It seemed like a lot of rules and a lot of structure. What happened was I was entering my junior year.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, David, as with much of my career, a lot of good luck and some hard work too. And I'm not being self-deprecating here, but just, you know.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. So I actually started at a community college because, again, I didn't have the grades coming out of high school. I was a bit of a Hellion and just wasn't real serious about my parents a pretty hard time. And of course, I was the fourth in the last. So the last kid usually gets away with more stuff than the first kid. And I think I probably got away with too much. So I went to a community college and worked a couple of jobs to save up some money and kind of get my life together. I was a janitor and I waited tables and grew up a little bit. And then I transferred to Michigan State.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that was the plan. I really wanted to be a sports writer. I mean, that was, you know, I, and I know you can relate to this, David, but that was. When I could get my hands on that sports page and read it front to back and everything, the box scores, the recaps, the columns, I mean, all of it. I just loved it. And really, it was the dream was. I can remember being 15, 16 years old and thinking, you know, what if I could be a baseball writer and just be a beat writer, just travel with the team, write up every game. I just thought that that would be the greatest thing. And that was for a long time to the extent that I thought about journalism. Even when I got into journalism school at Michigan State, that was the plan was to try and pursue baseball.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was quite a ways later when I actually thought to myself, well, maybe I could make a career out of this. Maybe I could actively pursue this as something to do for a living. But it wasn't really until I was probably 20 years old.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I would often wind up with the metro section. And I found myself really interested in it. And while I would bide my time to get to the sports page. And so it was something that was just a part of my daily life. And I liked to read and write, but I didn't really like a whole lot else, Dave. I was a very bad student. And I like to party and I didn't get good grades. And so it wasn't.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I would say in a very informal and not terribly well-conceived way, it was on my radar in high school, primarily because I love to read and we woke up and came down to the breakfast table every morning and there was a copy of the Detroit News, often a copy of the Detroit Free Press as well. And my brothers and I would fight each other over it. And whoever got down there first would get the sports page.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did not, and it's funny because, you know, one thing my dad always would say is there's No job on the planet more important than being a minister, but there's no job that is sort of more dangerous if you're not 100% invested in that life than to become a minister. And I should note on the former, not important as far as your worldly contributions, but as far as the influence you can have over others and the service that you can contribute. And so, no, I was never quite on track to become a minister. I think I'm a little bit too much of a troublemaker and a smart ass, quite frankly.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, well, you know what's interesting is the church actually grew into something of a local, I mean, you wouldn't call it a mega church by any stretch, but a very successful church. He was asked to take over a new church that had been planted recently in a town called Brighton, which is where I grew up. And it was just a small kind of new startup church. And over the next 30 years, as the pastor there, he and his team grew it into a very big, successful church, but it did not start that way.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think about that a lot. It's interesting, David. And in fact, we can come back full circle to this, but I was just having conversation the other day with my new editor at the Atlantic about sort of my family and how really it wasn't until my dad's death that I met most of his family because there was sort of a breakage in the family. And I really met them for the first time at his funeral. And all of which is to say that, you know, I identify very much as a small town Michigan kid, very working class background. We didn't have money. We lived a pretty modest life. And yeah, I think my mega church.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My dad came home from work one day and they'd been having a lot of tension in their marriage trying to figure out what was next. And she said, guess what I did today? And he said, what did you do today? And she said, I prayed to accept Jesus today. And I think that you should enter the ministry. And as it turns out, a group of from a local church had just been knocking doors in the neighborhood and had come by and had asked my mother if they could, you know, if they could come in and talk to her. And she said, sure, whatever. So it actually had nothing to do with my dad, funny enough. So a bit of serendipity there. And then the next thing you know, they were selling everything that they had and moving to Philadelphia. So my dad go to seminary.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. So very abruptly changed plans and decided that he wanted to go to seminary. And my mother, who was not yet a Christian, was looking at him like, you've got to be kidding me. And I should mention that, David, that they had just had my oldest brother, Christopher, who they had named him Christopher before either of them had come to Christ. So they had a newborn at home and they both had great careers. he wanted to enter the ministry and his family and her family, my mother's family more notably, they thought that he lost his mind. I mean, legitimately, none of them could understand for a moment what he was thinking and what he was doing. And so it was a very rough time for them. And suddenly, as my mother will tell the story,”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wound up falling under the tutelage of the local minister there and found himself sort of for the first time in his life anchored to something and feeling as though he was connected to something much more important than himself in his own life. And he became a ballgame Christian.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes, that's right. And it was, I shared that poem at his funeral because that was a poem that my dad used to recite to us quite a lot. And I think it reflected his life's journey and for people listening who are not familiar, it's essentially the story of an incredibly successful, impressive person who felt sort of empty on the inside, that an emptiness that no one else could see. And he winds up committing suicide. And so that was very much my dad's story. As he tells it, even as the world was sort of at his feet, he felt a great amount of despair. And when a niece of his asked him, would you like to go to church with me this weekend, Uncle Richard, which she would regularly pester him, ask him if he'd like to go to church? He said yes, quite unexpectedly and wound up.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's exactly right. When I eulogized him, I read this poem called Richard Corey. I don't know if you're familiar with that, David.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it was a pretty interesting story, actually. He began, as he would describe it, my dad is gone now. He passed in the summer of 2019.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's definitely fair to say. So my folks were high school sweethearts, grew up in New Jersey, and they were sort of regular people. My mom actually had an early interest in journalism. She worked for a while for ABC Radio in New York. They both attended Rutgers University, and after graduation, she was working in New York for ABC Radio. And my dad was sort of a hotshot young banker and was quite successful and was thinking about going to law school. And neither of them had come from religious homes at all. And in fact, my dad had come from what you could, I think, fairly describe as a pretty broken home. A lot of Just a lot of unpleasantness, a lot of violence, bad marriage between his folks. And very abruptly in his late 20s, he became a born-again Christian.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“David, thanks for having me. This is pretty cool for me. I'm a longtime listener. I don't know if I'd say first time caller. I guess first time interviewer. First time interview.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source