Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney

by Morgan, Piers

There are only two exclusive men-only clubs that really matter anymore in the world – those who’ve played James Bond in a movie, and those who have been president of the United States. The six men who’ve been 007 are all still alive – Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig.

  And there are just five living US presidents – Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

  I’ve never interviewed any member of either group – a nagging stain on my talk show career.

  But today, President Carter invited me to spend a morning with him at his Presidential Center in Atlanta.

  As we chatted in his office beforehand, I asked if he’d seen the new Margaret Thatcher movie, Iron Lady.

  ‘No, but I’d like to. I was president for her first year as prime minister; she was a tough person.’

  ‘Did you like her?’

  ‘Yes, but let’s just say she thought she knew more about America than I did, and more about Germany than Helmut Schmidt did …’

  His voice tailed off and he chuckled. The point was made.

  Carter’s one-term presidency has been oft criticised.

  But, as he pointed out, he didn’t go to war with anyone, brought lasting peace between Egypt and Israel, reconciled China’s relations with America, and kept the country’s budget balanced.

  Since leaving office, he’s been an outstandingly industrious world statesman, and still bursts with energy at eighty-seven.

  He also has one of the great marriages in political history, to his childhood sweetheart Rosalynn.

  They wed sixty-six years ago, and I was intrigued how they’d managed to stay so happy together for so long.

  ‘Compromise,’ he chuckled.

  Carter revealed he forgot both Rosalynn’s birthday and her Christmas present in recent years – but resolved both fiascos by making lifetime pledges.

  ‘I gave her a certificate in writing, and I signed it, vowing that I would never again criticise her for being late.’

  ‘He’s stuck to it pretty good!’ she said with a laugh. ‘And when he forgot my Christmas present, he said he would do anything I wanted him to do. So I told him I wanted him to bring me coffee in the mornings. And every morning since, he’s brought me coffee.’

  Carter sighed. ‘From now on, I’m going to buy some earrings or a necklace. It would be a lot easier on me!’

  THURSDAY, 19 JANUARY 2012

  Attention on Rick Santorum has exploded in this Republican nominee race since Iowa, and I sat down with him and his large family today in South Carolina.

  His key selling point seems to be that whether you agree with him or not, at least he’s been consistent on his political views.

  And it’s a fair point. As Romney has flip-flopped all over the place on social issues, Santorum has remained steadfastly hard line.

  I don’t agree with almost any of his views, but I can admire the fact that he’s true to his beliefs.

  He doubled down tonight on gay marriage, suggesting he would actually try and make it illegal throughout America again.

  ‘I would change the law to make a uniform definition of marriage. And that is between a man and a woman. It’s something that reflects nature and God’s will for us.’

  He also insisted there should be no exceptions for abortion.

  ‘If you have a daughter,’ I asked, ‘that came to you who had been raped and made pregnant, and was begging you to let her have an abortion, would you really be able to look her in the eye and say no, as her father?’

  ‘If she kills the child, that too could ruin her life. As horrible as the way that son or daughter was created, it’s still her child. I believe the right approach is to accept this horribly created – in the sense of rape – but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, what God has given you.’

  FRIDAY, 20 JANUARY 2012

  I’ve got a stinking cold, hardly surprising given I’ve already taken eight flights since the start of this year – from L.A. to Atlanta, to L.A., to New York, to Atlanta, to South Carolina to New York, to Atlanta to South Carolina, and now back to L.A.

  This afternoon, I had to fly again, this time by helicopter, to Camp Pendleton in California, one of the largest American marine bases in the country, to interview Jill Biden – wife of Vice President Joe Biden.

  Their son, Beau, served in Iraq, and she does a lot of work with Michelle Obama promoting a charity called Joining Forces that helps military families.

  She perfectly encapsulated the kind of help needed most.

  ‘It’s the simple things. My daughter-in-law was by herself and we had a big snowstorm, and one of her neighbours just came round and quietly shovelled the snow away from her drive. He never said a word, never went to the door.’

  Just as Mrs Biden began to tear up, a large plane flew overhead and interrupted filming.

  This is always the interviewer’s curse. A crucial moment ruined by extraneous noise.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘We’re going to have to wait for it to pass.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ she replied.

  We both looked up – to see Air Force Two coming in to land.

  ‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry – it’s my husband!’ she exclaimed, as the whole crew collapsed laughing.

  SATURDAY, 21 JANUARY 2012

  John rang.

  ‘Congratulations, you’ve been offered your first movie cameo role.’

  ‘Great! What is it?’

  ‘A new Jim Carrey film called The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.’

  ‘Are you serious? That’s fantastic.’

  ‘You may not like the script,’ John replied, trying to stifle a laugh.

  ‘I don’t care what the script says, this is my Hollywood breakthrough moment.’

  ‘Read it before you agree to anything,’ John insisted. ‘It’s not very long.’

  He emailed it over.

  In the scene, I am interviewing Jim’s character, Steve Gray, on my CNN set.

  ‘For me, it’s about the power of the mind,’ he says, ‘I consider myself more shaman than showman.’

  I then reply: ‘What’s going through your mind?’ Steve Gray ponders for a moment before saying: ‘I really have to pee, Piers.’

  And that’s exactly what he then does, all over me.

  I rang John back. ‘Pass!’

  TUESDAY, 24 JANUARY 2012

  Tonight was President Obama’s annual State of the Union address.

  At his side was Vice President Joe Biden, who commentators noted was suffering from a heavy cold.

  A surge of guilt suddenly hit me.

  It would appear that I may have indirectly infected the man a heartbeat from the presidency with acute nasopharyngitis.

  WEDNESDAY, 25 JANUARY 2012

  My signature CNN question, ‘How many times have you been properly in love?’, has now become so cemented in guests’ minds that they’ve started coming prepared for it.

  The reason I like it so much is that it always elicits a great response. Either guests start revealing the truthful answer in often extraordinarily emotional detail, or they sit like startled rabbits in headlights wondering how truthful they should be, or they’re diplomatic and start naming all sorts of people they probably weren’t properly in love with, or they simply refuse to answer and berate me for my impertinence.

  Last night, Alec Baldwin went one further and got in first.

  ‘I must ask you, Piers,’ he began, mimicking an English accent that sounded like a cross between Prince Charles and the Earl of Grantham from Downton Abbey. ‘Have you ever been properly in love?’

  ‘I have indeed been properly in love,’ I replied. ‘But I was about to ask you, Alec, how many times have you been properly in love?’

  ‘The past is just a blur,’ he retorted, deadpan, still in the thick English accent.

  ‘The woman I’m with now is really the only woman I’ve ever been in love with. Everyth
ing else was just child’s play before now. I wasn’t properly in love.’

  He smiled, and winked.

  FRIDAY, 27 JANUARY 2012

  Mum and Dad are on their first trip to Los Angeles, and I took them to dinner tonight with Jackie and Joan Collins.

  Both sisters tell the most fantastically entertaining gossip-laden stories about the rich and famous.

  Joan excelled herself tonight.

  ‘I tried cocaine once, but I sneezed, and blew it all over Sammy Davis Jr.’

  TUESDAY, 31 JANUARY 2012

  Before tonight’s Florida primary midnight show, Julie Zann sent me a warning note: ‘Completely unintentionally, you gave Andrew Breitbart the finger after his answer on his last appearance while you were scratching your face. I talked him off the ledge after he sent me the screen grab his fans were sending him.’

  What?

  I had no recollection of doing anything of the sort, and would certainly have never done it deliberately.

  He’s a strangely sensitive guy.

  FRIDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2012

  My crazy road trip continued today when I flew to Vegas to interview Ron Paul, doctor, author and former politician.

  He’s a true maverick, and it was an engaging hour.

  But when I asked him – as a doctor who has delivered thousands of babies – about Rick Santorum’s hypothetical ‘I’d make my daughter have rapist’s baby’ statement, he stunned me by responding: ‘If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room and I’d give them a shot of oestrogen.’

  An ‘honest’ rape?

  What on earth is that?

  He tried to clarify what he meant. ‘An hour after intercourse, or a day afterwards, there is no legal or medical problem. But if you’re talking about somebody coming in and saying, “I was raped and I’m seven months pregnant,” then that’s a little bit of a different story.’

  Paul’s moral/ethical assessment of where abortion is permissible or not just confirmed to me again how twisted this whole debate is.

  Almost every politician I speak to in America has a different interpretation of where precise ‘conception’ occurs, or at what stage, and in what circumstances a woman has the right to choose what to do with her body.

  SATURDAY, 11 FEBRUARY 2012

  I was driving home through Beverly Hills late this afternoon when I looked up to see three choppers circling the Beverly Hilton Hotel, venue for music impresario Clive Davis’s big pre-Grammys party tonight.

  I assumed they were for the early arrivals on the red carpet.

  But by 5 p.m., there were more than a dozen of them buzzing around, police sirens were blaring everywhere and all hell was breaking loose.

  Then Jonathan called: ‘Whitney Houston’s dead. Suspected overdose. Go straight to the bureau – you’re co-anchoring.’

  Wow.

  I showered, changed and drove at high speed up Sunset Boulevard to the studio.

  There was only one problem – nobody from the makeup department was at the bureau when I arrived. They don’t usually work on Saturday nights, when taped shows tend to air on CNN.

  As I waited for someone to arrive, I toyed with the idea of just going on air without any makeup.

  But it’s a bit like appearing without any clothes. You look weird, and it makes the viewer uncomfortable.

  Fortunately, one of our terrific makeup team raced in from home a few minutes later, and performed an instant miraculous repair job.

  At moments like this on a major international news network, you desperately want to book guests who preferably a) knew the person, b) work in the same business and c) can speak both eloquently and informatively without any preparation.

  Simon Cowell ticked every box.

  But it was now 6 p.m. in Los Angeles, 2 a.m. in the UK.

  However, he’s a night owl.

  And I knew he was in Scotland filming Britain’s Got Talent, so would be bored and sleepless in his room as he always is after shows.

  I texted him: ‘Any chance of calling in to my CNN show to talk about Whitney?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied instantly. ‘Give me the number.’

  Our ensuing half-hour conversation on air was about as good a tribute and analysis as you could wish for.

  ‘This is one of those days that will always be horrible to remember,’ he said. ‘Like when Lennon died, or Elvis, or Michael Jackson or Amy Winehouse.’

  His voice slightly choking up, he added: ‘Whitney had her issues, that was obvious to anyone who saw her in the last few years. But the fact remains that she was one of the greatest superstars the world’s ever seen, and had one of the greatest voices I’ve ever heard.’

  For the next four hours, co-anchor Don Lemon and I interviewed a string of other guests including Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson and Jermaine Jackson – all making the same point that modern-day superstardom of the kind Michael Jackson or Whitney had is much harder to endure with the new, ever-more-intense, triple-pronged prying eyes of the internet, twenty-four-hour media and a paparazzi public armed with camera phones.

  Add drug addiction, illegal or prescription, to the mix and it’s a disastrous, life-ruining cocktail.

  But they were also keen to remember her extraordinary talent.

  I asked Lionel how he’d rank Whitney as a singer.

  ‘Oh, she was the best.’

  Oddly, Clive Davis’s party went ahead, with Whitney’s body still a few floors above.

  To some, it seemed an astonishingly inappropriate decision.

  To others, it was the only thing to do. The show must go on, as Whitney would have understood better than anyone.

  But it did feel very odd when I drove back home around 11 p.m., passed the Beverly Hilton, and heard the sound of revellers, knowing they were all partying a few floors below where Whitney’s dead body still lay.

  Jonathan congratulated me on a solid job.

  ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘something many anchors do. Keep a small compact of makeup in your briefcase and/or office so if you need to go on in a pinch like tonight you can slap some on until the makeup department arrives.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I replied, ‘but what happens if I got stopped at customs with my compact?’

  ‘Give it to them. It’s like five dollars,’ he replied, missing my point.

  ‘Er, I meant from the “What’s with the compact, Piersy darling?” standpoint.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, I assume the heels will be a bigger tipoff …’

  TUESDAY, 14 FEBRUARY 2012

  Juliana sent me an e-card this morning, which summed up today’s meaning perfectly: ‘No woman will ever be truly satisfied on Valentine’s Day because no man will ever have a chocolate penis that ejaculates money.’

  Later, she sent me a photo of herself looking shell-shocked with her head in an ice pack.

  ‘What’s this about?’ I asked.

  ‘I fell at home, smacked my head on the wall heater. Went unconscious. Woke up to lift my head but my ear was stuck in the heater, and when I snapped my head back it pulled all the earrings out and ripped the bottom of my earlobe from my head. 1. Stitches. 2. CAT scan. I think it’s from all the anxiety of working for you.’

  WEDNESDAY, 15 FEBRUARY 2012

  Rick Santorum, who is still surging in the polls, was back on my show tonight, and said an interesting thing about Whitney Houston’s death.

  ‘In a sense, celebrities are the aristocracy of America. They’re the kings and the queens and the princes of our society. And they have a huge impact on the rest of society, much more than any other group, certainly much more than a politician does.

  ‘And that’s why this is so disturbing that you see, in a sense, the royalty of America setting such a poor example and being troubled by these things.

  ‘And obviously, that’s going to have a downstream effect and a very harmful downstream effect.’

  Not many politicians would say this kind of thing about a hugely popular entertain
er who’s just died. Again, I admire Santorum’s courage to say what he really thinks.

  SATURDAY, 18 FEBRUARY 2012

  I co-anchored CNN’s coverage of Whitney Houston’s funeral from New Jersey today, with Soledad O’Brien, and it was an extraordinarily uplifting experience.

  As a Catholic, I’m conditioned to funerals being very sad, often miserably serious affairs.

  But the Baptists celebrate death as much as they mourn it, and I found the joyous laughter and singing that rang out around the church where Whitney sang as a young girl profoundly moving.

  A fact that I tweeted during the service, from CNN’s vantage point five hundred yards away from the church.

  This prompted Ricky Gervais to tweet back: ‘Hey, Piers, you can come to my funeral if you promise not to tweet during it.’

  SATURDAY, 25 FEBRUARY 2012

  At the annual pre-Oscars ‘Night Before’ party, Meryl Streep and I discussed The Iron Lady, for which she’s been Oscar-nominated.

  ‘I felt in awe of Margaret Thatcher,’ she said. ‘Whether you agreed with her politics or not, she was a remarkable woman. To do what she did, when she did it, in a world dominated by men, was quite extraordinary.’

  Thatcher, like Blair, is still much more popular in the States than in Britain.

  ‘Why is that?’ asked Meryl. ‘I’ve never understood it.’

  ‘They both ruled as prime minister for over a decade – do any big political job that long, and everyone ends up hating you.’

  ‘I guess so, yes!’

  I ended our conversation with a stern warning: ‘The fact you haven’t appeared on my show yet will probably cost you the Oscar tomorrow night.’

  Meryl nodded: ‘Of course, I realise this.’

  SUNDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2012

  Meryl Streep won Best Actress.

  Soon after I arrived at the Vanity Fair party, a strikingly tall, slim woman appeared right in front of me, barefoot. Then, very slowly, put two absurdly high-heeled shoes on, one by one, without once using her hands.

  She rose back up to her full, imperious six-foot, four-inch heel-clad stature, winked and walked away.

  It was Karolina Kurkova, the Czech supermodel.

  Jon Hamm, who witnessed the same scene, looked at me, raised an eyebrow and grinned.

  Cameron Diaz was being harangued by two drooling young British men, so I intervened.