1994 Club President Gil Klein recalls Ted Turner’s boisterous and unexpected National Press Club speech
CNN founder Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III, 87, died May 6, 2026, in Florida.
One of my favorite stories that I tell from my 1994 presidency is the day Ted Turner spoke at a National Press Club luncheon.
Sitting next to me during lunch was Turner’s wife, actor and activist Jane Fonda. Ted was acting a little strange. He jumped up from the head table and left the room. He had spoken twice before – 1983 and 1985. He had gone to see if his photo was on the wall of past speakers, and said it wasn’t.
“How come my picture isn’t up there?” he asked at the beginning of his speech. “You’ve got a lot of bozos up there who haven’t done anywhere near as much. I mean, I’m really serious. I ain’t coming back unless my picture gets up there.” (The picture is there).
I noticed during lunch that Jane was visibly shaking. I asked her, “Jane, are you cold, can I get you something?” She said no, she was just nervous. "You have nothing to be nervous about, I just introduce you and you stand up and sit down," I replied. She said, “It’s not that. I don’t know what he’s going to say. It could be awful.”
Now, I was nervous.
Turner spoke without notes. He started by talking about his business maneuvers, especially his fight with Time Warner, a minority shareholder in CNN that was blocking him from acquiring another network while it worked on its own acquisitions.
But right at the end of the speech, he launched into diatribe against female genital mutilation.
“Millions of women have their clitorises cut off when they are 10 or 12 years old so they can’t have fun in sex,” he said. CNN ran a video of it, reporting that in Egypt between 50 and 80 percent of the women had the procedure.
“You talk about barbaric mutilation. Well, I’m in an angry mood. I’m being clitorized by Time-Warner, and I don’t like it any more than they do. If they think it’s bad for women to want sex, then why don’t they cut the heads off of the little whackers of the 10-year-old boys over there, and make it an even-steven deal.”
And, that was how he ended his speech.
I stood up to begin the Q&A and said, “Well, there goes our G-rating.”
When asked about an article in The New Republic that criticized CNN for giving people too much information too quickly, Turner gave a Bronx cheer, which cracked me up. “What a jerk. What a jerk,” he said, of the writer. Newspapers used to come out with special editions all day. “People want to know what’s happening right now, and we give it to them.”
The last question passed up to me from the audience was “Tell us about Jane. How has she changed your life?”
He replied, “That makes me smile just thinking about it. She’s changed my life in a lot of wonderful and pleasant ways. And, Jeri (his name for her) I really love you. Thanks a lot.” That got a nice smile from Jane.
In 2025 when a Max documentary series called “Call Me Ted” was previewed at the Club, that moment popped onto the screen. There I was, 31 years ago, asking that question that ended one of the most boisterous luncheons of the year.