An evening with Richard Ben Cramer

Presented by the Povich Journalism Program
Learn more here: writing.upenn....
Dick Polman introduced journalist and author RICHARD BEN CRAMER for this Povich Journalism program. In Polman's introduction, we not only find out that Cramer's book, What It Takes, is considered by Polman to be "one of the most iconic books ever written", but also that Cramer wanted to entitle this talk "Why I Love Politics". Cramer has conducted enormous research on what it takes to become a president in America; he shared, with our audience, his insights into the families, backgrounds, and personalities of these iconic men, and what kind of a person pursues this highest office in the nation. He also entertained our audience with some funny stories on the nation's most infamous politicians. Cramer answered questions ranging from topics of foreign affairs, the flawed methods of reporting politics, and advice for those who want to become journalists. It is evident from his knowledge and passion that as Cramer says himself, there truly is no irony in his mind when he says he'd like to entitle the talk, "Why I Love Poltics".
Born in Rochester, New York, in 1950, RICHARD BEN CRAMER attended Johns Hopkins University, earned an MA in journalism from Columbia University and was hired by The Baltimore Sun in 1973. Cramer covered city hall and local politics for three years before leaving for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he became the paper's New York bureau chief. In 1977, Cramer was sent to Cairo to cover the Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations. His dispatches earned him a 1979 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, and in 1980 he won the Ernie Pyle Award for foreign reporting and an Overseas Press Club Award for his writing from Afghanistan.
Despite his fame as a newspaper reporter and foreign correspondent, Cramer came into his own-professionally and aesthetically-as a magazine journalist. Cramer left the Inquirer and moved to New York, where he became a full-time freelance writer, producing lengthy profiles for Esquire and Rolling Stone. Freed from the constraints of newspapers, he reveled in the amount of space he could devote to his intensely reported articles.
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[@rapier5]

If anyone has some insight on why Cramer disliked Al Gore, and dragged the entire press corps with him, could you chime in? I mean he actually sort of like all the 50 or whatever the number of candidates were that he covered in his 4000 page book, so why hate Gore?