Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

Lambiacs Unite!

I noticed there are a few posts on Brian Lamb on the Corner today, including this email to K-Lo:

Mr. Lamb certainly is an interesting fellow. I met him while I was walking from my neighborhood in Crystal City to the Pentagon City mall.

We passed on the sidewalk, I was alone and he was with a quite tall and handsome lady. I said hello and told him that I am a big fan, especially of "Book Notes" (the show was close to it's last with Mr. Lamb as the interviewer, IIRC).

The rest of the interaction went something like this.

Mr. Lamb: "Hi, I am Brian Lamb, what is your name and where are you from?"
Me: "Steve Esposito, from Knoxville, TN."
Mr. Lamb: "Do you live here now or are you just visiting?"
Me: "I have just been working here since 1994, but I refuse to live here. Yes, I do have a condo on Crystal Drive."
Mr. Lamb: [laughing] "Yes, I know what you mean."

The exchange was so quick that I did not notice until later that he was in full-bore interview mode the whole time, which is fine and quite interesting.

And another email to K-Lo:

You wrote "He had some insane calls? and Brian would consistently
pull them along just enough to get to the heart of their insanity."

Yes! I love it when he does that. I caught one the other day...

****
Woman: They're all just out for money.

Lamb: Who's out for money?

Woman: Bush and Cheney and the corporations.

Lamb: And what do they plan to do with this money?

Woman: They're putting in their bank accounts, so when they leave
office they can leave the country and go to where we can't get them
back and put them in jail where they belong.
****

At that point, Lamb, uh, moved on to the next caller...

* * *
This seems an opportune time to combine some of my old (2002 & 2003) posts on Brian Lamb:

I'm a fan of C-Span's founding father Brian Lamb. In beltway talk he's known as "the Spinx" for the poker-face he shows when callers say things like, "Clinton killed, he will kill again" or "the FDA wants to ban NiQuil and it's the only thing that puts me to sleep". Brian lives a sort of 19th century life; he rises at 4am and reads every major newspaper in the U.S., Europe & Asia before having a tumbler of whiskey during open lines at 7am EST. He is preternaturally calm but then again who wouldn't be if you're unmarried, have a cush job and a 58-year old's sex drive? Mr. Lamb is known for his exceptional sense of humor - he once peppered a guest with questions like, "What do you write on?" He's also been known to stretch the truth, like when he referred to Hillary Clinton as a United States Senator. (Wait, ouch….she IS a senator). NB: Much of the above, of course, is blarney.
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There's something refreshingly anachronistic about him. Uber-liberal Michael Moore was on Booknotes Sunday wearing a Boston Red Sox cap. Lamb asked, with a straight face, what the "B" stood for.

Lamb fascinates because his life is a mystery; he's a blank slate in a world where everyone's a pundit (one wag said that America is becoming dumber but more opinionated - not true of Brian Lamb).

Even though he's a mystery, you can pick up clues. He appears to be interested in and have a respect for religion, but when he peppered Jeffrey Hart with questions as to why the Catholic Church wouldn't allow women priests, I surmised he isn't a Catholic. He asked Michael Moore for his take on religion, though he never offers his own.

Single, never married, Lamb appears to have a great love for history and for details some might think minutiae. He seems to have a mild obession with De Tocqueville and obscure Presidents from the 19th century (sounds like a "Jeopardy" category - "obscure presidents from the 19th Century, Alex!").

I'm curious about his spiritual journey. My sense is that anyone who is interested in politics for a long time eventually becomes interested in religion (often rejecting it outright, but at least they think about it) because politics is the poor man's religion, a way to effect change on the temporal plane only.
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It would be extremely un-Brian Lamb-like of me to call to your attention that Google seems to suggest I'm the first person to have coined the phrase Brian Lamb Fan Club, from that 2004 post. (But then see my blog title. Plus, would I admire him so much if I was just like him?) Fellow Lambiac Kathryn Lopez must've googled for the phrase "Brian Lamb Fan Club" two years ago because that post got linked on The Corner once. I also share with Lamb his morbid interest in last words and tombstones, as shown in his authorship of Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb?: A Tour of Presidential Gravesites.