Mike Wallace: Tell me a story — and make it good

“I missed the ’14-’18 war, but not the sorrow afterward.” — The Clash

Mike Wallace was born so long ago, we see placements in his chart that seem like they happened a long time ago even when we see them in people one-third his age (Chiron in Aries, which last happened in the 1970s). He made it to his Pluto opposition, a term you never hear in astrology — Pluto, with its 250-year orbit, made it halfway around the Sun in his lifetime.

How did that happen? Wallace lived to be 93 years old, but Pluto has been fairly close to the Sun for all those years, and when it’s closer to the Sun, it moves through the signs significantly faster (in a way similar to Chiron). Still, it was a long time ago that he arrived on the planet.

What we love about Mike Wallace is that he’s the product of a different time in history, a different world, where electric light and telephones were a novelty, where people were still getting around on horse and buggy, and where a reporter was supposed to go digging for the truth.

He was born in the last months of World War I, what some called the ’14-’18 war, when the age of industrialized combat fully took over. He was born before most of what happened in the 20th century, so this natural born storyteller had something to talk about — and someplace to do so. Had a journalist of his stature been born 100 years earlier, we might not have known about it. Mike Wallace was a product of television, and in some ways TV was a product of him.

He had Pisces rising, with a flair for image and drama. In that Pisces ascendant (rising sign) is a planet astrologers are barely beginning to understand — Eris. Talk about a harbinger of the chaos he would witness, and describe, through the 20th century in the peak of his career: one war after another, numerous assassinations, nonstop political scandal and his supposedly prosperous nation in constant turmoil.

When you remember Mike Wallace for that incisive journalism for which he was so famous, remember three things — the first two of which are from his chart. The third, maybe we can find in his chart (view chart larger).

He had the Moon and Sun in Taurus; the Moon had just ingressed that sign two hours before his birth. Had his Moon been in very late Gemini, he would have lacked the focus and intensity we associate with him. Taurus Earthlings are famous throughout the galaxy for their ability to be stubborn, focused and principled, in some combination. He was dealt a royal flush in this regard, with that Mercury retrograde conjunct the Moon, in Taurus; supported by a Taurus Sun. Once he decided he was right, there was no way he was going to give up in an argument.

In the chart of any journalist or writer, Mercury is the planet to study. No matter what the aspects, if there are a lot of them, Mercury will stand out — and he had plenty. Mercury made contact with nearly every planet in his chart.

The Mercury retrograde piece means that nobody was ever going to tell this guy what to think or what to say; at least he had to think he was making up his own mind. He has one of the most stubborn, hard-headed charts you’ll ever see. Fortunately, he was a principled person. That way, he could get away with asking the Ayatollah Khomeni if he was a lunatic (that’s really the word he used, of course quoting someone else — then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, like a good journalist of his era would). Khomeni, who had recently taken American hostages, said no, Sadat isn’t a real Muslim. Sadat was assassinated not long after that.

Wallace had to be big to interview people of this stature, which in TV-land means big ego. Part of what made him big was having Venus in Aries, conjunct Chiron — in the 1st house. That little equation says: self x self to the 10th power. He understood that it was his “me-ness” that made him who he was, and he banked on that almost exclusively. He had to stand out (a Chiron trait), however he could, even if that was, to some real extent, an image (always carefully check the theme of image with Pisces rising).

He had his Moon-Mercury in Taurus configuration square two extremely influential planets — Saturn and Neptune (which were closely conjunct) in Leo. When Saturn and Neptune align, it’s like building on a swamp. You can do it, but you need special tools and a clever design. His intense focus on getting the truth out may have been in response to that, a kind of reaction formation.

As for Mercury square Neptune (one aspect in the mix): if these people lack integrity they can lack all integrity. Even still, ‘the truth’ does not necessarily translate to ‘the whole truth’. True, perception is selective — but then it’s often the intent that counts. He was known for his hidden camera reporting as much as for the straight-up question.

Second is Pisces rising, with Eris in the ascendant. I interpret this as ‘unfazed by insanity’ — and able to make a good show of it. Pisces by itself has a flair for the dramatic. So does Eris, in a somewhat less benign way; the era of warfare and decadence that Wallace covered was matched perfectly for his particular frequency.

Note also that Pisces used to be called “the sign of self undoing.” In the presence of a Pisces journalist, people can be particularly disarmed. They say things they don’t expect to say, and don’t understand why they said it. It’s like that watery Neptune energy dissolves the resistance people didn’t know they were depending on, but by then it’s too late. So this is the perfect placement for an interviewer.

Last, 60 Minutes has hardly ever done an original piece of journalism. Yes, what they did was “hard hitting.” That was the style; the meme. Back in the mid 1990s, I was interviewed extensively by a 60 Minutes producer for a prospective piece on PCBs. He explained that the program never does an original story. They always redo a piece that’s been done numerous times, so that it’s time-tested and has withstood scrutiny. They take no chances whatsoever.

Once they select a piece, it comes off solid because it has a history. The glitches have long since been worked out — and then the hard-hitting part is the talent and drama necessary to create TV. The good part of this is that they brought a lot of stories to public awareness that might never have gotten past a particular region of the country. Well tested stories became big stories. But in this case, hard-hitting does not mean daring or innovative; generally it meant safe.

I am aware that 60 Minutes prepared a full treatment on the Kennedy assassination. They worked for years on the piece — a real one. The segment never got on the program. From what I understand, they knew the truth, but they never told us. Since we don’t know what they found out, we don’t know why they didn’t pass the information along.

Where do we find that in the astrology of Mike Wallace? We find it in his Mercury: square both Saturn (insecurity and hesitation) and Neptune (a struggle with the solid truth). The Moon is also conjunct Mercury, meaning that he could not communicate unless he felt very, very safe doing so. Finally, Mercury was retrograde: he told the story that was told before. He was uncomfortable in new territory.

But he knew how to tell a story, and he knew how to make it sound good. As for whether this kind of journalism merely entertains in a compelling way, or really changes the world for the better — this we would have to study carefully.