Fred Thompson - Teaching the Pig to Dance

Tomorrow, Thompson releases a new book. It is called Teaching the Pig to Dance: A Memoir of Growing Up and Second Chances - Fred Thompson remembers the solid American values his father taught him -- and that he took to Hollywood and Washington.

Fred Thompson has been a TV star, a Senator, columnist, radio host, and a candidate for President of the United States – and now, in this homespun recollection of growing up in small-town America, he sets out with abundant charm and wit the American values that carried him through his remarkable career. In Teaching the Pig to Dance: A Memoir of Growing Up and Second Chances, Thompson takes you to the Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, of the 1950s -- an American town where young men like Thompson learned the importance of hard work, honesty, perseverance, and other solid American virtues that are sadly vanishing in Barack Obama's America.

"There is an old saying," Thompson recalls, "that teaching the pig to dance is a fruitless endeavor. It is a waste of your time and it irritates the pig. That was probably how my parents, teachers, coaches and townsfolk felt about me. That, of course, makes me the pig." Thompson brings to life the characters he ran into in Lawrenceburg and the indelible lessons he learned from his father and family, and then carried through life. He tells it all with a wry good humor that makes Teaching the Pig to Dance a Southern, solidly conservative version of the NPR tales of Lake Wobegon.

Teaching the Pig to Dance is not a political manifesto, but in it, Thompson recounts his life-changing discovery of Barry Goldwater and conservatism. That makes this not just a heart-warming evocation of a lost, better America, but a soft-spoken manifesto for taking our country back today.

Sample the wit and wisdom of Fred Thompson: "My parents never set the bar high for me as far as education or professional titles were concerned. But they gave me much more. Dad set the standard for what a man ought to be -- strong and protective of those who depended on him. Trustworthy and striving every day to be a better man."

"Good guys looked and dressed the part, were strong, brave, took up for the little guy, won against all odds and apparently never had to make a living. Any little boy who didn't want to grow up to be like Roy Rogers or Gene Autry would have been cause for serious concern by his parents."

"Many years later, when I was in the United States Senate and attending a hearing, we were talking about how violence in the movies and television had increased over the years. I made a passing reference to growing up with Gene and Roy and watching them shoot a lot of bad guys. Soon I received a long letter from a Gene Autry-related organization taking umbrage and expressing outrage over my statement. They pointed out that Gene Autry always shot the gun at the bad guy's hand. He never actually shot anybody. I stood corrected."

"Perhaps surprisingly to some, having political views based on childhood religious influences does not necessarily translate into approval of a lot of the political activities of some religious groups. In our church we drew a clear distinction between the responsibilities of church and state. This was not a legal concept. This was based upon scripture. 'Render under Caesar. . .'"

Back in law school for my final year I had to smile when asked what I had done on my summer vacation. I wanted to say, 'Well I won my first case, carried a gun and busted a strike.'"

"Although my friends and family had conservative viewpoints, the Republican Party had little standing in the South; everyone still seemed to be trying to reconcile their values with the policies of the Democratic Party. But it's a reconciliation that I could not make. So although my state, my country and my Dad. . .were Democratic, I decided I was going to be a Republican."

"As a campaign manager I got to sit backstage with Governor Reagan for a few minutes before he went on stage. He turned to me and said, 'What do you think I ought to tell them?' Taken by surprise I gave him a few thoughts. He went out and said exactly what I had suggested. I was amazed. So Reagan had me for life even before I fully understood his philosophy. His philosophy was a bonus."

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