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Ted Turner Represented The Best And Worst Of America

From baseball to cable news to restaurants to political advocacy, his legacy in various ways represents the very best and worst of America.

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He ran multiple successful businesses, only to hemorrhage many millions of dollars when other ventures seemed to spell financial doom. He won the girl, the belle of the ball, not once, but multiple times. He was beloved and despised, celebrated for his foresight and brilliant ability to read the times, and condemned for being a boorish bully. No, I’m not talking about President Donald Trump, but media and entertainment mogul Ted Turner, who died last week at the age of 87.

Love him or hate him, you have to admit, Turner seemed like a corporate “King Midas”: (almost) everything he touched turned to gold. From baseball to cable news to restaurants to political advocacy, his legacy in various ways represents the very best and worst of America.

A Hard-Scrabble Southern Childhood

Though Robert Edward Turner III was born in Ohio, he was Southern through and through: raised mostly in Savannah, Georgia, his father’s family were Mississippi sharecroppers deprived of their farm during the Great Depression. His father, Ed, ran a successful Georgia billboard business. He was also a cruel and physically abusive drunk who may have had bipolar disorder. Adding to the younger Turner’s misery, he also lost a beloved younger sister to lupus and encephalitis while in high school.

Sent to a military school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Ted eventually........

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