When a Pot is Still, Imus Must Stir It

Imus and James Bradley found common ground today on an issue of national importance so huge, it’s difficult to understand why more news shows weren’t covering it this morning.
 
“I agree with you about the outrage of Susan Boyle being number one on Amazon,” Bradley, the author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys, said. Like Imus, he thinks the top slot should belong to The Imus Ranch Record II. Shocking, given that Bradley’s appearance today was meant to promote the paperback release of his most recent book, The Imperial Cruise.
 
But before touching on that, Bradley told Imus that he shopped around his first book, Flags of Our Fathers, which was based on his father’s experience in World War II and became a movie directed by Clint Eastwood, to 27 different publishers over a 26-month period before Bantam finally said yes.
 
“One publisher wrote me a letter saying, ‘Mr. Bradley, you have to understand nobody is interested in what old veterans are crying to you on the phone about,’” he recalled.
 
Thankfully, he persevered, and is now working on a forthcoming book about how Mao Zedong’s ascent to power in China caused the rise of McCarthyism in America. Imus was thrilled to learn that Whittaker Chambers would be featured in the book, and went on to provide way too much information about some mental patient, Alger Hiss-related typewriter he has in his possession. “We could talk more about it,” he told Bradley. “But then I would go to sleep.”
 
The Imperial Cruise also deals with Asia, specifically a diplomatic delegation sent there in 1905 by President Theodore Roosevelt. It was the largest official group of United States representatives ever sent to Asia, and the ship sailed from San Francisco, California to Hawaii, then on to Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea.
 
“One hundred years later to the month, I followed in the wake of that imperial cruise, and I was just shocked by the hidden history I found,” Bradley said.
 
Among other surprises, he discovered that Roosevelt had actually been acting as an agent of the Japanese in 1905, instructing them to adopt a Monroe Doctrine-like approach in Asia to show all the other countries that Japan was “boss.”
 
“Japan invaded Korea, and then that was the first step to China,” Bradley said. “In other words, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s problem in Asia was Japanese expansion in Asia…Theodore Roosevelt cheerleaded that, approved it, and agreed to an unconstitutional treaty in the summer of 1905 that created the problem that my father later had to go out to Iwo Jima to deal with.”
 
Earlier this year, Imus had tried to foster some sort of “snit” between Bradley and known adorer of Theodore Roosevelt, the historian Douglas Brinkley. Though Bradley offered that he is not worthy of a “snit” from someone as accomplished as Brinkley, he told Imus he’ll be at a book event in Austin, Texas, where Brinkely lives, in December. “My publisher asked him to come down, and work out any ‘snit’ he has,” Bradley shared.
 
In case there was any confusion, Imus clarified Bradley’s remarks. “What he’s saying is, ‘Come on, bitch,’” he said, happy as a clam to have cultivated discontent between any two people, regardless of identity.
 
-Julie Kanfer