Transcript: I would give it to Bill Gates just like Warren Buffet did and say, “It’s your foundation. You just go ahead and do it.”

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: You know it’s interesting. I read something the other day that made a very interesting point. I think it was in conjunction with the debate that was on YouTube where citizens . . . civilians, as we would call them, asked questions as opposed to reporters. And the debate was just as silly as the other debates. I mean there were nine people. It’s not really a debate. It was just sort of a nonsense sound bite thing. But the interesting thing was not the answers, but the questions. Reporters tend to ask questions about how the campaign is going, or how something’s gonna play compared to something else. The reporters are generally interested in the process, and that’s what’s so stupid about saying, “Oh, you know, 80% of ‘em vote Democratic.” I mean they don’t . . . In the first place they’re not ideologues. That’s just how they vote. And also they’re much more interesting in the game than they are in the ideology. And reporters in general are interested in politics and bored by government. So that’s why the minute the election’s over they start talking about the next election. And that’s why when you think about, about 80% – I just made up that figure – of the coverage of an American election is about who’s gonna win . . . something we’re all going to know on election night. Even if the reporters are all death rate, we’re still gonna know it. They’re gonna count the votes and we’re gonna know who won. So why do they keep telling us who’s going to win or lose – it’s not really the point – rather than tell us what that guy really believes or what he’s likely to do? I think that the other thing that reporters ought to try to do . . . And you know, I don’t mean that they don’t do some of this, but the actual issues of a campaign aren’t usually the issues that the president deals with. I mean if you voted on the issues, you would have voted for what’s discussed in the campaign. You would have voted in the Kennedy-Nixon election according to what your beliefs were on the future of the islands of Quemoy and Matsu. That became a big issue between Kennedy and Nixon – would we go to war to protect Quemoy and Matsu, two islands off Taiwan that were sometimes shelled by the mainland communist China. That’s not the difference between Kennedy and Nixon. And that’s not . . . And of course once the election was over, that was the end of Quemoy and Matsu. And nobody has heard of Quemoy and Matsu since. So I think that somehow the election coverage should really tell us, “What kind of person is that?” Because the decisions he’s gonna make are not the decisions that are talked about during the campaign. There are other decisions.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: I think there’s been so much demagoguery on healthcare. And that’s another way we’re falling behind, in fact. I mean if you look at the, say, American automobile manufacturers, their cost . . . I mean why is somebody’s healthcare tied to his job on the assembly line? I mean it’s absurd. But if you do something else, the talk is socialized medicine. But there is, you know, 46 million people I think I read last week, who have no insurance – no coverage at all – and actually don’t go to a hospital. Or as the President said, they can go to an emergency room. It would be interesting for him to try that one of these days – go into one of these emergency rooms late at night when your kid’s sick. So I think that in those sort of things I think that should be a big issue, but I’m not sure that it will be. Everybody’s been burnt on it I think.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: Iraq. I mean I think healthcare, but I think there’s been so much demagoguery on healthcare. And that’s another way we’re falling behind, in fact. I mean if you look at the, say, American automobile manufacturers, their cost . . . I mean why is somebody’s healthcare tied to his job on the assembly line? I mean it’s absurd. But if you do something else, the talk is socialized medicine. But there is, you know, 46 million people I think I read last week, who have no insurance – no coverage at all – and actually don’t go to a hospital. Or as the President said, they can go to an emergency room. It would be interesting for him to try that one of these days – go into one of these emergency rooms late at night when your kid’s sick. So I think that in those sort of things I think that should be a big issue, but I’m not sure that it will be. Everybody’s been burnt on it I think.

Question: What role should journalists play in the election?

Transcript: You know it’s interesting. I read something the other day that made a very interesting point. I think it was in conjunction with the debate that was on YouTube where citizens . . . civilians, as we would call them, asked questions as opposed to reporters. And the debate was just as silly as the other debates. I mean there were nine people. It’s not really a debate. It was just sort of a nonsense sound bite thing. But the interesting thing was not the answers, but the questions. Reporters tend to ask questions about how the campaign is going, or how something’s gonna play compared to something else. The reporters are generally interested in the process, and that’s what’s so stupid about saying, “Oh, you know, 80% of ‘em vote Democratic.” I mean they don’t . . . In the first place they’re not ideologues. That’s just how they vote. And also they’re much more interesting in the game than they are in the ideology. And reporters in general are interested in politics and bored by government. So that’s why the minute the election’s over they start talking about the next election. And that’s why when you think about, about 80% – I just made up that figure – of the coverage of an American election is about who’s gonna win . . . something we’re all going to know on election night. Even if the reporters are all death rate, we’re still gonna know it. They’re gonna count the votes and we’re gonna know who won. So why do they keep telling us who’s going to win or lose – it’s not really the point – rather than tell us what that guy really believes or what he’s likely to do? I think that the other thing that reporters ought to try to do . . . And you know, I don’t mean that they don’t do some of this, but the actual issues of a campaign aren’t usually the issues that the president deals with. I mean if you voted on the issues, you would have voted for what’s discussed in the campaign. You would have voted in the Kennedy-Nixon election according to what your beliefs were on the future of the islands of Quemoy and Matsu. That became a big issue between Kennedy and Nixon – would we go to war to protect Quemoy and Matsu, two islands off Taiwan that were sometimes shelled by the mainland communist China. That’s not the difference between Kennedy and Nixon. And that’s not . . . And of course once the election was over, that was the end of Quemoy and Matsu. And nobody has heard of Quemoy and Matsu since. So I think that somehow the election coverage should really tell us, “What kind of person is that?” Because the decisions he’s gonna make are not the decisions that are talked about during the campaign. There are other decisions.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: Internationally, I think the United States is gonna have to figure out a role for itself as – what sounds like an advertising slogan – “the last remaining superpower”. And obviously it’s not the Cold War anymore. It’s something else, and I don’t think that the United States has quite figured out . . . And I think also the United States is gonna have to figure out how to catch up with other countries not so much economically, but I mean when it comes to just statistics like infant mortality and things . . . literacy. I think that the United States is actually falling behind in a lot of ways, so I think we’re gonna have to figure out how to not be simply the people with the biggest army or the only army when it gets right down to it. I mean I think the United States, last time I read, spends as much money on what’s called “defense”, although not many armies are attacking lately, as everybody else put together. Or pretty close. So I think . . . I think obviously the United States . . . The question of how the United States is going to use its power is still not clear from the days following the Cold War.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: Right now the issue is Iraq that stands out for me because people are just steadily getting killed there. And when I see the . . . that . . . those pictures at the end of the PBS News Hour, it’s heartbreaking to see those people being killed for, to my mind, no reason; and sent there by a bunch of people who were very careful not to put themselves in danger, and whose sons and daughters are not in danger. So I think for that reason if for nothing else, it’s the most . . . it’s the kind of overwhelming issue in the country now.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: Well obviously at this very moment in history, the forces are religion. I mean among the forces is religion. It gives you some idea of how loony it is to predict the future. If you had asked me in, say, 1960 what’s the future of religion in the United States or in the world, I mean . . . and its influence, not just I, but practically anybody you asked would have said it’s dissipating. It’s . . . In all religions, not just Islam which we knew nothing about really; but in say Christianity. I mean who would think that the Republican presidential contenders would have to pay court to somebody like Pat Robertson who, with Jerry Falwell, agreed that 9/11 took place because God lowered His defensive shield in the United States when He saw what was happening with people from the American way and lesbianism and stuff like that. I mean there aren’t any __________ wackier than that. And who would think that Orthodox Judaism would be the force it is now? I mean it seemed to be disappearing really. So obviously you can’t tell what’s going to happen, and religion is certainly one of the things that has shaped the situation we’re in now.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: Well my father had very good advice about that. It’s the only advice I can ever remember his giving me. He was not a heart-to-heart sort of father. He was a good father, but not a “Come in my study and we’re gonna have a heart-to-heart.” I actually never met a father like that, so maybe they . . . only in the movies. But my father used to say, “You might as well be a mensch.” A mensch is a German word and also Yiddish word. In German it means “human being”, and in Yiddish it means “upright person” in big things and small things. So he not only . . . A mensch would not only come to the aid of a friend even if at his peril; but also if he borrowed your apartment would leave it slightly nicer than he found it. And I was always impressed about the way my father put it. My father grew up in St. John, Missouri and spoke very much like Harry Truman even though he was born in the Ukraine and he came as an infant. And he used phrases like, “I haven’t had so much fun since the hogs ate little sister” and stuff like that. But he said . . . He always said, “You might as well be a mensch.” I mean it was never, you know, “Our family is . . . Our honor depends on it” or anything like that. It was . . . He sort of considered the alternatives, and at the end decided you might as well be a mensch. It’s a sort of a Midwestern way to phrase it.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: Oh not a whole lot of impact. You know I always thought that reporters who think that they’re actually affecting things are following the path to madness or pomposity or something. I mean I . . . The only time I ever met Jane Jacobs, the great urbanist, was in Toronto after she moved from here. And we were talking about the effect of one’s work and the impact on changes that might be made – governments falling and things like that. And she said . . . And this is a woman who I think had tremendous influence on city planners, and people who write about cities. And she said when she looked back over the . . . whatever it was, “The Death and Life of American Cities” or whatever it was, that big book . . . she said she imagined a church in the village that, at night, locked its gates of its playground and had barbed wire on top of the gates. And she said after the book came out they took the barbed wire down. They still had the gates locked. And I said the only thing I could think of that I affected was I once affected the clerk – or I’m told . . . I never checked this out – the clerk of the county court race in Lecture County Kentucky with a piece that I thought was about something else. But somebody didn’t come out very well in it, and she ran for clerk of the country court, and people apparently got a hold of the piece. And so I don’t think . . . I think that I would settle for maybe giving somebody a smile on the Madison Avenue bus after a hard day when he or she reads The New Yorker. I don’t . . . I think the idea that you’re gonna have an impact is a kind of pipe dream.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: No. Well the mortgage. I mean I think . . . No. You mean do I get up in the morning and think, “Wow. I see the end of that rainbow, and there’s something telling me, ‘Write the great American story about parking’”? No. No I don’t have that.

Question: Whose writing do you find particularly inspiring?

Transcript: Well it’s hard for me because I do different kinds of writing. And so . . . I mean there are non-fiction writers. I mean the one who has always been sort of my hero is Joseph Mitchell – who was a New Yorker writer for many years who died seven or eight years ago I guess – who I admired partly as just his craft. I mean what he was able to do in a . . . I don’t write the way he writes, but . . . So it’s not a stylistic thing; but I was always amazed that he was able to get the marks of writing off of what he did. And also he approached people head on and without . . . without any sort of condescension, or certainly without any fawning. I mean he didn’t write about the people that some reporters fawn over. I mean he wrote about . . . often people on the waterfront or in the fleabag hotels or something like that. But he was a . . . The stuff was wonderful, and . . . And I think as far as humor goes, one writer who is now sort of half forgotten who I have always admired a lot was Peter De Vries. His novels . . . Again, I don’t write the way he writes. I mean he had a lot of word plays, and puns and things; but I think there are a lot of good, humorous writers now who write short pieces that are funny and often wise, which is remarkable when you think of how many other avenues there are for somebody who’s funny. I mean you know it’s sort of legendary now, but the bright kid from the Harvard Lampoon doesn’t come to The New Yorker now. He goes to Hollywood and writes _________ or something. So . . . or television or movies. So considering how many other outlets there are, most of which pay a lot better than writing for a magazine, or a newspaper, or even books, it’s remarkable how many of the good ones there are, I think.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: Well I have a way of writing. I think everybody has a way of . . . I mean particularly people who work either completely as freelance writers, or in a place like The New Yorker where you’re essentially in the same situation in that you get paid by the piece rather than on salary. And nobody’s asking you for the piece, usually. So you have to figure out on your own how to do it and how to get it done. Or writing books is the same way. You have to figure out how to get it done. Most people invent some structure that allows them to do that, because God didn’t intend people to make livings as writers. I mean that was not in the grand plan. So you have to invent some sort of procedure that will allow you to do it, and it can be really dumb. I spent 15 years doing a piece every three weeks for The New Yorker from some part of the country, and – a 3,000 word piece. And I had the same schedule every time I came home. I mean I knew what I do the first day. I knew what I do the second day. And otherwise I wasn’t sure I was gonna get it done. So . . . And I used to have for longer pieces something called “The Committee for National Goals.” That was a phrase from the Eisenhower administration. And I imagined them as these old guys with beards sitting up high on a kind of a dais who . . . And I would give ‘em excuses. You know, “I don’t feel very well today.” And they’d say . . . they’d tell me how many pages had to be written no matter what. And you know, but people work in a completely different way. I think partly according to their background; partly . . . I mean I guess my first more or less “grown up” job was as a reporter in the south for Time during the Civil Rights Movement. And so you know I was used to writing with a typewriter on the back of the trunk of a car or something. I didn’t need to go into the woods in a shack to write. But some people do. It just depends on how they started, I think, a lot. And also when I was in about eighth grade, the Kansas City school system . . . Kansas City is always a little ahead of its time. Other cities in later years closed the schools when they ran out of money, but Kansas City did this years ago. And they closed the schools in April because they had run out of money and some tax bill wasn’t passed. And my father made us go to typing school and made me type for the rest of the summer. He thought typing was an important skill. And so I . . . I’ve always worked on a typewriter. I mean rather than, you know . . . You read about people who work in longhand, or I can write a letter in longhand. And so . . . And I type very quickly because I’ve been typing since I was a little boy. So I tend to put before computers . . . tended to put things through the typewriter a lot and just keep typing. And it took me a long time to sort of compose on the computer which I do now.

I think most writers at some point realize they sound the way they’re supposed to sound – or at least they’re going to sound, maybe not supposed to. And that’s how they sound.

I think once you’ve sort of settled into the way you’re gonna sound – what the writing teachers call your “voice” – there you are. I have no idea how to find it, but I think most people know when they’ve found it.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: Well I think writing is . . . It’s not the actual sentences. I mean it’s not the language, I think, for most people. I think you can write a sentence as well as you can write it. I mean it sounds like a truism; but in fact if you work on it long enough, write it enough times, you can write it as well as you can write it. You may not write it as well as John Updike could write it, but you can write it as well as you can write it. The hard part of most writing, I think, is the structure of wanting to know . . . of trying to figure out what goes first, and what goes second, and how that leads into something that doesn’t jump around. Or at least the hard part of the sort of writing I usually do. I think the hard part of, say, trying to write a column or a piece of humor is just staring at the page and realizing you might not be able to write anything. I mean that’s not true in reporting pieces where you have sort of a corpus to work on.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: Well it’s better than work for one thing. I . . . At about every two or three years I make myself laugh. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes something just sneaks out before I can stop it and I laugh. So if I . . . I always figured if I got put in solitary confinement I would not be totally without resources. I’d get a chuckle every couple of years. My wife, when she heard me, would say, “I know that’s the silliest line in the piece that made you laugh.” So there’s that kind of joy. It’s satisfying. I mean it’s satisfying to get something right. I mean I think it’s the same feeling that somebody has in building a house or something; that it starts out looking like a mess and just a bunch of boards; and then a hole in the ground; and then eventually you get it so that . . . You never get it quite perfect, but as close as you can get it if you have to make a living.

Question: Which form comes easiest to you?

Transcript: Well the easiest is the verse, I guess. I always say I just put the shower on to iambic pentameter on Sunday nights, and then usually a poem follows. I think writing verse is something that some people can do, and some people can’t do – almost exactly the equivalent of the person in the family . . . Most families have somebody who can do something like bend his thumb back and touch his wrist. That is a very minor facility that . . . but an innate and perhaps genetic minor facility. I think that’s what writing verse is. And so that’s, in a way, the easiest. I mean once I . . . I mean at times it’s difficult if I insist on using some sort of form, or following a song exactly or something like that. But usually it’s the easiest. Or once I have the idea, it’s the easiest to write. And sometimes humor comes very quickly. And sometimes reporting pieces sometimes . . . It’s odd because non-fiction – at least in my experience – sometimes it’s like just a path in the woods. You can sort of see which way to go and you don’t have to cut out much underbrush to go. And sometimes it’s just a thicket and it’s very hard to do. And it doesn’t seem to me predictable what it’s gonna be; although obviously if there’s a narrative in the story to start, it helps.

Question: Which one of your works was the most joyful to write?

Transcript: I don’t think joyful necessarily. I mean there are obviously satisfying things, and some of it is just personal. I wrote a book about my father, for instance. I wrote a book about my wife; but I don’t think I’d think of either one of those as exactly joyful. But I guess satisfying, yeah.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

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Transcript: Not really. I definitely wasn’t the sensitive lad hanging off to the side composing things while the other boys frolicked. I don’t . . . I think I could have gone to law school or something. I knew that I wasn’t going to . . . I think most of the people my age who were in roughly journalism or whatever that is sort of backed in. I don’t think many of us . . . You have to remember that in those days, journalists, so called – except for one or two people in Washington like Walter Lippmann or somebody like that – were sort of a scruffy lot. I mean they were thought of as this guy with a kind of greasy suit and a bottle of bourbon in the lower right-hand drawer. And it wasn’t a very respectable profession, or trade, or whatever it is. And I think most of the people my age who ended up in it sort of backed in. I wrote about this not long ago when I wrote a piece about Johnny Apple – R.W. Apple, Jr. of the New York Times. I wrote a profile of him in The New Yorker. We had met in college. We were college . . . He was the editor of the paper at Princeton the year I was the editor at Yale. And he always knew he wanted to work for the New York Times since about the age of 12. I think it’s really rare of people my age. I think most of us couldn’t make up our minds about what to do, and happened to be working at a magazine or a paper when we realized we couldn’t make up our minds. Or we sort of backed into it, or the novel didn’t work out or something; but I don’t think there are many people . . . I didn’t think of it exactly as being a writer. I think I thought of it as being a reporter.

Question: How has journalism changed?

Transcript: Well for one thing people go into it on purpose. I think Watergate had a lot to do with that, or maybe the movie. Or I suppose it did. I think more educated people are going . . . have gone into journalism. Maybe not in the past couple of decades, but in the past probably three or four decades. I remember once when a friend of mine – who is now on the New York Times who was then working for another paper in Washington – who had gone to boarding school, and gone to Yale, and gone . . . gotten a masters at Berkeley in history or something . . . he was talking about coming back from a hearing and trying to find somebody’s secretary so she could lie to him about whether the guy was in. And then he was gonna have to call somebody else. And he looked around the newsroom at the paper and he saw other guys doing the same sort of thing. And he said, “I started to think, is this a job for a college graduate?” And the answer always was “no” really until recent decades. Not as recent as two, but recent decades. The answer was really no. So I think more people with education, and intelligence, and language ability and that sort of thing have gone into journalism compared to the people who . . . I don’t mean that when I went to The New Yorker it was a bunch of yahoos. I mean they were fairly sophisticated people. But I mean in general, particularly __________ out on the country, it wasn’t true. And I think . . . I think people also had different expectations of it. I mean some . . . Some reporters have gotten rich. Nobody ever thought there would be a rich reporter. And I mean not from journalism you see, but certainly the ones on television have gotten rich from journalism. And a lot of it’s become more bottom-line show business; particularly, of course, television which is . . . I mean when you think about the arguments about . . . or the analysis of who’s the anchor on a . . . on a show . . . And I don’t blame most people. Most of them are good people who have worked hard to get there. But when you think about, say, their salaries and what the set costs, or what the improvements to the set costs, and what the remodeling improvements . . . and you’re talking about an organization that has closed bureaus all over the world, so it’s getting . . . And the same is true of newspapers although they don’t have the anchor people. But the . . . So in some ways it’s journalism has more educated people in it, and it’s also shrinking. And one of the ways it’s changed is that if you go to Philadelphia, or you go to Baltimore, and you look at how many reporters are covering the city government, there . . . I don’t know. I recently read, I think it was in Philadelphia, it’s something like a quarter of what they used to be. So it’s . . . In some ways it’s not doing its job.

Question: What role should journalists play in the election?

Transcript: Well I think . . . You know it’s interesting. I read something the other day that made a very interesting point. I think it was in conjunction with the debate that was on YouTube where citizens . . . civilians, as we would call them, asked questions as opposed to reporters. And the debate was just as silly as the other debates. I mean there were nine people. It’s not really a debate. It was just sort of a nonsense sound bite thing. But the interesting thing was not the answers, but the questions. Reporters tend to ask questions about how the campaign is going, or how something’s gonna play compared to something else. The reporters are generally interested in the process, and that’s what’s so stupid about saying, “Oh, you know, 80% of ‘em vote Democratic.” I mean they don’t . . . In the first place they’re not ideologues. That’s just how they vote. And also they’re much more interesting in the game than they are in the ideology. And reporters in general are interested in politics and bored by government. So that’s why the minute the election’s over they start talking about the next election. And that’s why when you think about, about 80% – I just made up that figure – of the coverage of an American election is about who’s gonna win . . . something we’re all going to know on election night. Even if the reporters are all death rate, we’re still gonna know it. They’re gonna count the votes and we’re gonna know who won. So why do they keep telling us who’s going to win or lose – it’s not really the point – rather than tell us what that guy really believes or what he’s likely to do? I think that the other thing that reporters ought to try to do . . . And you know, I don’t mean that they don’t do some of this, but the actual issues of a campaign aren’t usually the issues that the president deals with. I mean if you voted on the issues, you would have voted for what’s discussed in the campaign. You would have voted in the Kennedy-Nixon election according to what your beliefs were on the future of the islands of Quemoy and Matsu. That became a big issue between Kennedy and Nixon – would we go to war to protect Quemoy and Matsu, two islands off Taiwan that were sometimes shelled by the mainland communist China. That’s not the difference between Kennedy and Nixon. And that’s not . . . And of course once the election was over, that was the end of Quemoy and Matsu. And nobody has heard of Quemoy and Matsu since. So I think that somehow the election coverage should really tell us, “What kind of person is that?” Because the decisions he’s gonna make are not the decisions that are talked about during the campaign. There are other decisions.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

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Transcript: Kansas City, Missouri.The heart of America.Well it made me Midwestern, for one thing. And so I think that’s a somewhat different viewpoint . . . kind of worldview that . . . than particularly Easterners have. I always say Easterners are much more given to sort of analytical thinking of the sort that . . . If an Easterner says something like, “Is it an accident that these two things happened?” Midwesterners usually says, “Yeah probably. Probably an accident.” And there’s a sort of an undercutting quality in the Midwest of . . . I mean the worst thing that could happen to you is to have someone tell your mother at the supermarket that you’d gotten too big for your britches. And that’s a particularly Midwestern quality, I think. And I used to make up license plates for various states, or talk about the difference in license plates. License plate mottos I mean, not the numbers. I let them do those themselves. And like some Midwestern states are so modest they don’t actually have mottos on their license plate, and I would make them up. Like Nebraska was “A Long Way Across”. And I always thought that if there had been a regional license plate for the Midwest, the motto would be “No Big Deal”.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

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Question: What should Americans be doing?

Transcript: If I knew that, I would run for president. I mean obviously we’re doing something . . . We’re doing a lot of things we shouldn’t be doing. And . . . I don’t know. I think that one’s too big a question for me.

Question: What should we be doing as individuals?

Transcript: No. I live in Canada in the summers, and they believe individually they should be recycling. I think that that’s sort of a religious belief in Canada, and that they will be pure if they recycle. I’m not sure Americans have that belief yet.

Question: If you had $100 billion to give away, how would you spend it?

Transcript: I would give it to Bill Gates just like Warren Buffet did and say, “It’s your foundation. You just go ahead and do it.”

Recorded on: 9/5/07

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Question: Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic about the way they world is headed?

Transcript: I’m pessimistic about whether the plumber is gonna come; but optimistic, I think, in general. I’m not sure it has to do about the world, though. I think it has to do with things are gonna probably be okay . . . but it’s sort of personal. It has to do with my family and things, not to . . . not . . . I don’t really think usually in terms of the whole world. They’ll have to worry about themselves.

Question: How will this age be remembered?

Transcript: That . . . Well for instance, at the beginning of that age there were no airplanes. The airplane was invented, what, in 1910 or ’11? Or when did the Wright Brothers or . . . whoever did it. So I don’t know what an age is. Certainly in America, I think there . . . material goods sort of dominate this era, or at least this period right now. It’s hard for me to think in more than a, say, decade

Recorded on: 9/5/07

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Question: When you read the newspaper or what the news, what issues stand out for you?

Transcript: Right now the issue is Iraq that stands out for me because people are just steadily getting killed there. And when I see the . . . that . . . those pictures at the end of the PBS News Hour, it’s heartbreaking to see those people being killed for, to my mind, no reason; and sent there by a bunch of people who were very careful not to put themselves in danger, and whose sons and daughters are not in danger. So I think for that reason if for nothing else, it’s the most . . . it’s the kind of overwhelming issue in the country now.

Question: What are the challenges facing the U.S.?

Transcript: Well I think the . . . You mean internationally, I think the United States is gonna have to figure out a role for itself as – what sounds like an advertising slogan – “the last remaining superpower”. And obviously it’s not the Cold War anymore. It’s something else, and I don’t think that the United States has quite figured out . . . And I think also the United States is gonna have to figure out how to catch up with other countries not so much economically, but I mean when it comes to just statistics like infant mortality and things . . . literacy. I think that the United States is actually falling behind in a lot of ways, so I think we’re gonna have to figure out how to not be simply the people with the biggest army or the only army when it gets right down to it. I mean I think the United States, last time I read, spends as much money on what’s called “defense”, although not many armies are attacking lately, as everybody else put together. Or pretty close. So I think . . . I think obviously the United States . . . The question of how the United States is going to use its power is still not clear from the days following the Cold War.

Question: What should be the big issues of the 2008 election?

Transcript: Iraq. I mean I think healthcare, but I think there’s been so much demagoguery on healthcare. And that’s another way we’re falling behind, in fact. I mean if you look at the, say, American automobile manufacturers, their cost . . . I mean why is somebody’s healthcare tied to his job on the assembly line? I mean it’s absurd. But if you do something else, the talk is socialized medicine. But there is, you know, 46 million people I think I read last week, who have no insurance – no coverage at all – and actually don’t go to a hospital. Or as the President said, they can go to an emergency room. It would be interesting for him to try that one of these days – go into one of these emergency rooms late at night when your kid’s sick. So I think that in those sort of things I think that should be a big issue, but I’m not sure that it will be. Everybody’s been burnt on it I think.

Question: What role should journalists play in the election?

Transcript: Well I think . . . You know it’s interesting. I read something the other day that made a very interesting point. I think it was in conjunction with the debate that was on YouTube where citizens . . . civilians, as we would call them, asked questions as opposed to reporters. And the debate was just as silly as the other debates. I mean there were nine people. It’s not really a debate. It was just sort of a nonsense sound bite thing. But the interesting thing was not the answers, but the questions. Reporters tend to ask questions about how the campaign is going, or how something’s gonna play compared to something else. The reporters are generally interested in the process, and that’s what’s so stupid about saying, “Oh, you know, 80% of ‘em vote Democratic.” I mean they don’t . . . In the first place they’re not ideologues. That’s just how they vote. And also they’re much more interesting in the game than they are in the ideology. And reporters in general are interested in politics and bored by government. So that’s why the minute the election’s over they start talking about the next election. And that’s why when you think about, about 80% – I just made up that figure – of the coverage of an American election is about who’s gonna win . . . something we’re all going to know on election night. Even if the reporters are all death rate, we’re still gonna know it. They’re gonna count the votes and we’re gonna know who won. So why do they keep telling us who’s going to win or lose – it’s not really the point – rather than tell us what that guy really believes or what he’s likely to do? I think that the other thing that reporters ought to try to do . . . And you know, I don’t mean that they don’t do some of this, but the actual issues of a campaign aren’t usually the issues that the president deals with. I mean if you voted on the issues, you would have voted for what’s discussed in the campaign. You would have voted in the Kennedy-Nixon election according to what your beliefs were on the future of the islands of Quemoy and Matsu. That became a big issue between Kennedy and Nixon – would we go to war to protect Quemoy and Matsu, two islands off Taiwan that were sometimes shelled by the mainland communist China. That’s not the difference between Kennedy and Nixon. And that’s not . . . And of course once the election was over, that was the end of Quemoy and Matsu. And nobody has heard of Quemoy and Matsu since. So I think that somehow the election coverage should really tell us, “What kind of person is that?” Because the decisions he’s gonna make are not the decisions that are talked about during the campaign. There are other decisions.

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Question: What forces have shaped humanity most?

Recorded on: 9/5/07

Transcript: My personal philosophy would be not to have a personal philosophy. No. I think the short answer is no, or at least I never thought about it. And I guess if you haven’t thought about it, you don’t have one.

Question: Do religion and faith inform your worldview?

Transcript: No not really. I’m being sort of, you know, culture . . . religious culture and things, but not . . . not whether I’m straight with God.

Question: What is the measure of a good life?

Transcript: Well that’s pretty close to personal philosophy isn’t it? Well my father had very good advice about that. It’s the only advice I can ever remember his giving me. He was not a heart-to-heart sort of father. He was a good father, but not a “Come in my study and we’re gonna have a heart-to-heart.” I actually never met a father like that, so maybe they . . . only in the movies. But my father used to say, “You might as well be a mensch.” A mensch is a German word and also Yiddish word. In German it means “human being”, and in Yiddish it means “upright person” in big things and small things. So he not only . . . A mensch would not only come to the aid of a friend even if at his peril; but also if he borrowed your apartment would leave it slightly nicer than he found it. And I was always impressed about the way my father put it. My father grew up in St. John, Missouri and spoke very much like Harry Truman even though he was born in the Ukraine and he came as an infant. And he used phrases like, “I haven’t had so much fun since the hogs ate little sister” and stuff like that. But he said . . . He always said, “You might as well be a mensch.” I mean it was never, you know, “Our family is . . . Our honor depends on it” or anything like that. It was . . . He sort of considered the alternatives, and at the end decided you might as well be a mensch. It’s a sort of a Midwestern way to phrase it.

Recorded on: 9/5/07