91 YEARS YOUNG

Leave it to Studs Terkel to put things in perspective. "Colin Powell, we know, is the African-American butler to the new Bertie Wooster," he tells Salon in an interview about his latest book, "Hope Dies Last: Keeping Faith in Difficult Times." Here's the full quotation and the context:

You notice I dedicate the book to a couple whom you may not know, Clifford and Virginia Durr. They were a white couple living in Montgomery, Ala. She was the sister-in-law of [Supreme Court Justice] Hugo Black. And he was a member of the FCC [Federal Communications Commission], who wrote the "Blue Book" on the rights of listeners -- air belongs to the public! -- for as much variety of programming as possible.

Contrast him today to the FCC kid who's the son of Colin Powell, right? And Colin Powell, we know, is the African-American butler to the new Bertie Wooster. Bertie was a little milder than W., not quite so mean-spirited. He had a British butler, and Bush has one too. His name is Tony Blair. But his American butler is very elegant, and Powell's son [Michael] is the footman at the head of the FCC. He lays out the red carpet for them. So now we have an FCC that says, "The hell with regulation! Clear Channel, you can own 10,000 stations if you want!"

Although "Hope Dies Last" has been described as a summation of his long career, Terkel sounds at 91 like someone just starting out. "I thought, why not a book about all those who have had hope, and have taken their beatings and paid their dues -- but as a result of what they've done, something has happened," he says. The book is about "the prophetic minority ... people who we call activists. Who are imbued with a sort of hope and craziness, you know -- who some way or another hope our society, or the world, will be a more decent place to live in. They imbue all the rest of us with hope."

A man of his time as perhaps no other, Terkel cites Feb. 15, 2003, as a special day. "I celebrate that day," he says, "because 10 million people all over the world came out against the preemptive strike [against Iraq]. And then there was silence, because for three days it looked like W. was the liberator of Iraq. Then, well, we know what happened."

He adds: "If ever there were a time for these people, who I've admired for years, this is it. There was Tom Paine, there were the abolitionists. In the '60s there were the African-Americans who fought for civil rights, the kids against the war. Who were a minority, remember; the jocks beat the shit out of them at first and then joined them later. That's what I mean by a prophetic minority."