The lives of great achievers have always had a conventional simile: rags-to-riches aetiology, abusive childhood, poverty beyond hope, violence, and, in some cases, manic depression—a sort of Freudian element that runs through such ‘epic’ stories like blockbuster movies. You’d also think of it as a requisite element directly, or indirectly, responsible for their crowning glory: of accomplishments they’d once fancied, in the subconscious, as not possible. And, when they achieved fame, they often attained more than what their grand dreams would have permitted, thanks to their special, or exceptional perception, depth of understanding, unflinching faith and rectitude in believing what they were aiming, or trying, to achieve was mighty right.
Ted Turner, billionaire businessman, media mogul, cable television magnate, philanthropist, sportsman, and environmentalist, who needs no introduction, was, or is, no exception to this ‘rule,’ if not dogma.
Porter Bibb is a former Newsweek White House correspondent, first publisher of Rolling Stone, producer of several TV and theatrical films, including Gimme Shelter, and managing director of a New York based investment firm, among others. That he published his bestselling work, Ted Turner: It Ain’t as Easy as it Looks (Virgin Books/1996), exactly 25 years ago, is what dreams are made of and achieved too. His book was a brilliant ‘take,’ albeit a tad floppy, in a brace of contexts, on the life and times of the one and the only Ted Turner.
All the same, Bibb, to his fulsome credit, made an enormously good job of it, what with his flair for detail, and in writing an incredibly ‘honest’ saga of an amazing man—America’s maverick billionaire, whose uncanny business sense made CNN more profitable than any other network at a distinctive point in time. More so, because Turner’s statistical roll-call of achievements was equal to Sergei Bubka’s limitlessness with the pole-vault in hand; a persona with a remarkable reputation.
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