Tom Brokaw Bought a Dude Ranch with Clinton Admin's Robert Rubin
MRC ^ | June 23, 2005 | BrentBaker
Last year Tom Brokaw bought a Montana "dude ranch" with several others, including Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, actor Michael Keaton, one of the other partners, revealed on Wednesday's Late Show with David Letterman. The February issue of Sunset magazine reported the purchase and how the buyers turned the ranch into a private fishing camp, but didn't mention Rubin's involvement: "Last spring...an out-of-state partnership including former anchorman Tom Brokaw and actor Michael Keaton purchased a 640-acre ranch for a reported $8 million, creating a private hunting and fishing preserve."
Back on the May 12, 1999 NBC Nightly News, the day Rubin resigned from his Treasury post, Tom Brokaw praised Rubin, telling viewers he "is going back to private life after quietly and very skillfully positioning the government to help fuel these extraordinarily good times."
On Wednesday's Late Show, Michael Keaton, a star of the new movie for kids, Herbie: Fully Loaded, brought up fishing and that prompted David Letterman to ask: "Recently, I've heard from Tom Brokaw, that you and Tom purchased a fishing camp."
Michael Keaton: "Yeah."
Letterman: "Now, what is that? Is that on the up and up?"
Keaton: "Yeah, yeah. It's a friend of our's, Skip Herman, and Tom and Robert Rubin, actually, who was in the Clinton administration, Secretary of the Treasury. And, of course, you know, we were smart enough to, like, make him, like, you know, like, groundskeeper, instead of taking care of the money. Hey, Robert, you mow the lawn or something. Shouldn't I take care of the money? No, Tom will do that, don't worry about it!"
Letterman: "What goes on there? What happens there?"
Keaton: "Oh, I could never tell you about that."
Letterman: "I mean, you guys get together, like once a week-"
Keaton: "No, no, what we did, it was more to preserve it than anything. It was an old dude ranch that had been in the family -- it's right up the valley from me -- and, you know, the guy would let us fish there after the dudes had gone, you know -- I know-" (cut off by audience laughter)
Letterman: "After the dudes had gone."
Keaton: "So we bought it, just really to save it. It's a really pristine section of the river, and a beautiful section. We just all went together to buy it. It's really beautiful."
Letterman: "And you're not running around snapping each other with towels."
Keaton: "Well, yeah, I mean, that happens. (Audience laughter) Yeah, yeah, we have a sign, like an old rickety sign that says, 'no girls!'" (laughter)
(The MRC's Brian Boyd corrected the closed-captioning against the video of the June 22 Late Show.)
To see where this ranch is located and if anyone had reported this Brokaw-Rubin venture, I performed some Nexis searches and came up with only one article, in Sunset magazine, which reported the 2004 transaction for the ranch in the area of Big Timber, Montana. (Letterman also owns property in Montana.) The article cited Brokaw and Keaton, but not Rubin.
An excerpt from the story in the February edition of Sunset magazine, "Home on the range: Meet Montana ranching families want to raise healthier beef for you -- and save their way of life," by Jeff Phillips:
The town of Big Timber, once the region's largest wool producer, today has only 1,700 residents, but Montana State University Extension agent Marc King, who works with both farmers and government agencies in Sweet Grass County, says the face of that population is starting to change. "Most every ranch in this county has been in the family for at least three or four generations," explains King, "but as those families are forced to sell, new owners are taking the land out of production."
Last spring, for example, an out-of-state partnership including former anchorman Tom Brokaw and actor Michael Keaton purchased a 640-acre ranch for a reported $8 million, creating a private hunting and fishing preserve. Members of that partnership now own at least 12,000 acres of ranchland in the heart of the region.
END of Excerpt
The article is posted online, but you'll need to be an AOL member or pay to read it: www.sunset.com
In a later letter to the magazine, Brokaw corrected the price to $7 million. |
