Aaron has yet to compromise his principles. He constantly strives to find justice in his journalism and is chronically humble all along the way. I don't think of Aaron as insecure. I think of him as resolved but willing to look at whatever might be shortcomings to his ability to find the justice he wants most at the forefront of any news he tenders.
I think it wonderful he can have this time with his daughter. Time flies and to get to know your children and the accomplishments a parent has rendered in their success is the most gratifying experience one can invest in. He is fortunate at this time in Gabby's life he can realize the young woman she has become under his tutelage/mentoring as a father. I know all too well what it is to say good-bye to children that are now adults when they have achieved a standard of living that will sustain them. It's a pride and yet a realization that 'the future' no longer belongs to you but to the young people that once depended on the loving home you provided for them.
Though clips of his 9/11 coverage are seen and heard throughout World Trade Center, CNN exile Aaron Brown says he has no plans to see Oliver Stone's acclaimed film.
No surprise there. Brown hasn't seen United 93, either. And the tapes of his own anchor marathon from September '01 have never left their storage container in his home in the New York suburbs.
"It's too soon," says Brown, 57, pushed out of CNN in November. "I wish I had a smart answer. I just know for me, I'm not ready to watch it.
"It's not like I'm the only person affected by 9/11. I did it. I lived it. I told the story as well as I could. I live in New York. I can look out at the skyline and see it. People died there. All our lives changed."
Brown finds it "odd" that none of the major anchors who covered 9/11 - ABC's Peter Jennings, CBS's Dan Rather, NBC's Tom Brokaw, and Brown - are working today.
"I didn't expect not to be working," Brown says. "It's the way things turned out. Nothing about TV surprises me. Ever. I did it too long."
Brown isn't exactly itching to work. Why should he be? He's collecting an estimated $2 million salary for not working until his CNN contract expires June 30.
"I'm not interested in working 15-hour days, 48 weeks a year. I've done it. I don't quite get why I'd do it again. Every now and then, I think of what I'd like to do."
He'd like to do a "newsy" five-day-a-week interview show, taped over three or four days. As for where, "there are millions of outlets," he says. "Maybe a Bravo-like show."
Aside from suffering a herniated disc, Brown has been having a ball this summer. The best part, he says, has been hanging with Gabby, his only child.
"We do stuff. Sit around watching TV together, going to movies, sometimes just talking. She's a 17-year-old girl. It's not like she's waiting to see what my plan is for the night."
Brown sees his time with Gabby, a high school senior, as "a kind of bonus" and says he's developed a much better sense of her character.
"I watch how comfortable or uncomfortable she is with people she thinks lack character - people who have to do all their shopping at Saks, girls who can't just have cars, they have to be Beamers."
Brown and his wife, Charlotte, are building a house in North Scottsdale, Ariz., where they plan to live seven months a year after Gabby heads to college.
"I like the West. Neither one of us wanted to be in a place like Palm Springs, where there's nothing to do but count the days until you die."
After Jan. 1, he'll join Arizona State University as the John Rhodes chair of American Public Policy, doing a few major speeches and talking with students at the Cronkite School of Journalism.
Like Jennings, his former ABC colleague, Brown is acutely aware that he lacks a college degree. (Brown says he "stopped by" the University of Minnesota for about a year.)
"I'm sort of embarrassed that I don't have a degree. It's the only thing in my life I think I regret... . There's not a day that I don't think, 'I wish I knew that.' I'm not dead, either. I've got time to learn stuff."
Brown says he and Jennings used to discuss their mutual insecurity over their lack of formal educations.
"We talked about the fact that both of us were stupid and didn't know stuff, and how it impacted how we did our work. Peter was a voracious reader of serious stuff. I'm a less serious person.
"I've sort of blithely gone through my life. I'm constantly amazed at how it turned out... . I've lived most of my life fooling people. Is there any reason to stop now?"
With the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaching, Brown says he wishes he had a TV platform to express his feelings.
Until his contract runs out, CNN must approve all his speeches, public appearances and job offers. He'll do a speech Sept. 8 in Washington before a pair of major think tanks.
"There are a lot of questions I'd like to ask," Brown says. "Have we honestly done the things we should have done in the post-9/11 era? The administration tried to sell 9/11 as a bumper sticker - 'They hate us for our freedom.'
"That's ridiculous. They hate us for very specific policies. Some should change, some shouldn't. We need to understand that, and we don't want to challenge ourselves to really understand anything."
