![]() “The only thing I own inside of it is my clothing,” he said. I was just like, ‘Fuck it.’ Understanding what they had been through, all I had to do was move across the country.” Ratigan sold his Tribeca loft on North Moore Street, sold the Porsche Cayenne Turbo, and rented a 1933 furnished log cabin near Dana Point, California. “I had all my hesitations about my own assets and my own life. Impressed by their strength, their potential, and Archipley’s leadership, Ratigan had an epiphany. “And they weren’t resentful, and they weren’t petty and self-absorbed,” Ratigan said. Marine Corps ball, Ratigan hung out with Archipley and members of Lima 3/1 Company-a group of guys who had been through hell in the Battle of Fallujah. ![]() Colin is a Marine veteran of three combat tours in Iraq who had redefined his mission as building hydroponic greenhouses that can be run by veterans. But Ratigan was spending more time with a couple he had met on his show, Colin and Karen Archipley. Many observers believed Ratigan’s next step (after a long vacation) might include a run for office, or a return to another platform-another program, another network. “After 780 hours of political cable news, 6,000 hours of live financial television, 45 cities, two national jobs tours, 277,963 signatures to amend the Constitution, 245 pages of book, and a promotion tour for Greedy Bastards, I was exhausted,” he noted on his blog this week. But by mid-2012, “I had lost any sense that that was true.” And so after the book launched, a frustrated and burned-out Ratigan walked away, seeking meaning and purpose in his life. Aside from just talking heads and journalists (disclosure: including me) tossing around left-right talking points, his show featured people who were trying to make a difference, discussions of sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, and jobs programs.Īs a working journalist, Ratigan had long believed that “telling good stories and revealing not readily apparent truths have benefit-to the investment structure, or the culture, or the political construct,” he said. The show and bestseller were simultaneous jeremiads about the search for solutions. Ratigan fleshed out his frustrations in Greedy Bastards, a book about the intertwined and corrupt financial and political systems. The crazy rant came in August 2011, a Howard Beale moment from a journalist who understood the financial crisis from the inside out, and watched in disbelief and rage as banks and financiers got bailed out while veterans returned home to a poor jobs market. “I teach a class at the school on the farm with the veterans, and somebody will occasionally raise their hand and say, ‘Aren’t you the guy who did the crazy rant on YouTube?’ “ “I don’t miss it,” he told The Daily Beast on Thursday. Ratigan, who lived the dream, now inhabits one in which people don’t know what a “hit” is, men typically don’t wear makeup, and few people know-or care- what TVNewser is. Many of us occupy a world in which having your own hour on a cable channel is an all-consuming goal and the ne plus ultra. ![]() Cue the snark from the Twitterverse and the blogosphere. ![]()
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