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road to gonzo. it's published by our friends at university of california, press focusing on honduras thompson's influences development and his unique model of authorship mr. richardson archughes that thompson's literary formation was largely a san francisco story and indeed those of us at city lights across paths within whilst. he passed through the bay area kenneth test to this thompson was a regular atasca cafe just across the street from city lights. so we'd see him on a pretty regular basis. his life was intertwined with north beach culture and awesome. see him walking down the street either warren hinkle from editor of ramparts or jeanette etheridge former owner of tosca. so peter richardson is not a stellar job. he seem together the trace elements of thompson's literary influences and a really compelling. it so we're thrilled. he can grace our halls peter richardson has written critically acclaimed books about the iconic rock band the grateful dead also ramparts magazine legendary muckraking magazine and carrie mcwilliams the radical author journalist and editor of the nation magazine. he's going to be joined tonight by none other than david talbot. i actually can't think of anybody better to be doing the honors. david is the esteemed author of four popular history books and the founder and original editor and chief of salon magazine former senior editor of mother jones magazine. he is a journalist a columnist. he's written for the new yorker for time for rolling stone the guardian much much more is book the season of the witch, of course his legendary san francisco chronicle best seller for many years his most recent book as titled by the light of burning dreams the triumphs and tragedies the second american revolution. it was co-authored to the sister margaret talbot. so david is a neighbor of ours here at city lights is offices are just down the street from us so you can easily say all in the family tonight, so please join us now in giving a warm welcome to our evening's guests peter richardson david talbot it is a great pleasure to have you both gracing our virtual halls welcome. to city lights live well, thank you here. many peters tonight. we have peter richardson peter maravillas from city lights, and it's a great honor for me to be here with the author of savage journey peter richardson. i'm very pleased to be here tonight. i've been a big fan peters for some time now i read with great interest his history of ramparts magazine, which played a big role in my development as a young journalist and hunter thompson did too i have to say i first read hunter thompson when i was a student at santa cruz you see santa cruz back in the early 1970s and his fear and loathing in las vegas and then later his coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign had a huge impact on me as a young journalist, so i read with great interests new book about honor. i knew hunter a little bit myself later on as editor of the san francisco. diameter i actually have the great pleasure of editing a couple columns by hunter thompson that was late in his career, of course, but you know to me he was an icon still is an icon. i had a huge impact on me and many at many other young writers and journalists in america, so i'm delighted to be here tonight with peter. i will jump in with a few questions and then we're gonna open up i think and take questions from some of you peter maverick mirabellas will help out there, but peter good to see you. where are you look like you're in woody creek, colorado. where are you? i'm actually in glen allen, which is not far from from where you are, but it is another spot where hunter thompson live briefly before he decamped for, colorado. actually before he moved to san francisco, so peter, let's talk about hunters san francisco roots, and since we're being sponsored tonight by the iconic city lights bookstore in north beach, let's talk about what drew hunter back to san francisco back and they what the late six in the early 60s late 50s. what what period are we talking about? right he arrives for the first time in san francisco in 1960 and he had hitchhike to cry. well he had driven a rental car. are driven a car and cross country and dropped it off and then hitchhiked from seattle down to san francisco. and what drew him here frankly was was a place like city lights books. he was very into what the beats were doing. he didn't idolize the beats, but he really respected. especially what jack kerouac could do in terms of getting a new kind of writing. not only published by a major publisher, but you know to become a kind of publishing phenomenon. so he was very strongly attracted to san francisco. wanted to learn more about it by this time. he was out of the air force and had written for some newspapers. and when he arrived in san francisco, he applied for work at the at the san francisco chronicle francisco examiner fruitlessly. and he almost immediately decamped to a big sur, which was another kind of beat outpost and was also the home of henry miller who was one of one of his real heroes, but but the original poll i think was was the kind of impulse which was hadn't quite crested yet, but was was starting to give way already. neil cassidy would go to san quentin and and karawak would move back east and and alan ginsburg would would move away as well, but what they accomplished while they were in san francisco was very important to hunter thompson. and since you did write a great book about ramparts the legendary and very important magazine added by warren hinkle and bob shearer two great beer the area journalistic figures heroes of mine, and your book was fascinating about ramparts, you know, that was also a very important magazine from hunters development in those years wasn't early on. yeah, it was i mean really more after he had written right around the time. he published tells angels that that was in a very important magazine for him and that was a very important kind of social nexus for him. he never published anything in ramparts, but he felt very strongly connected. i actually heard from bob shear today and it's worth noting that he worked at city lights books for three years. right around the time that he was starting with with ramparts. so ramparts was still finding its feet. it had not even begun. really when when hunter thompson arrived in san francisco. it began as a catholic literary quarterly in 1962. it's really only when warren hinkle takes over as editor and brings the magazine to san francisco. that it becomes the legendary san francisco muckraker that that we know today. yeah, but that hunter could have really developed the way he did as a journalist anywhere else in the country or was this something about northern california in particular in those years in the 1960s? there was more open to his style of writing. yeah, i don't think there's any doubt, you know that he he i don't think he could have done it in new york. he certainly could have done in louisville or aspen or or chicago or boston. i think not only that. i don't think he could have done it in san francisco 10 years before or 10 years later. i think he needed to be in san francisco right when he was in san francisco, and he acknowledged that too much later in life even first in fear and loathing in las vegas. he talks about his san francisco period as a peak era. and then later on in life, of course, he comes back and works in san francisco in the 1980s, but even much later than that looking back. he said that those were my people. you know mid-1960s in san francisco. that it was really formative for him. and that's one of the arguments that i want to make in the book. is that even though he lives in in woody creek colorado for four decades after that i think in in many ways, he's best seen as a as a a bay area, right? well, he did live in the heat astrophy for some time. talk about hunter doing that period what does he absorbing? what does he learning? how is he growing as a writer during that period he was living in the heat, right? so he had he had moved down he he went from big sur up to here where i am glen ellyn not far from here. that didn't work out very well, and he moved to 318 parnassus avenue in san francisco near uc, san francisco. and he wasn't really cut out for urban living. he really wrapped. he would really rather live in these kind of bucolic places like big sur glen ellyn or or aspen. but i think it was really important that he did come into the city during that time. he was still writing for the national observer, which was a wall street journal or you know, dow jones publication at the time, but he wasn't really thriving there. he he attended the 1964 gop convention in san francisco. but and you know learn learn some things there. i think that was a kind of you know an important lesson for him about the modern conservative movement, but he wasn't really into politics at that time. he was really in short order. he was really trying to do what tom wolfe was doing. back east which is take these kind of exotic west coast subcultures and turn them into stories for big national magazines. and i'm like tom wolfe. i'd say tom wolfe to me is i i you know, someone who got a lot of credit for very little he was more of a dandy. i think hunter was really got involved with what he wrote about. he got stumped by the hell's angels for god's right? yeah. yeah, that's really important. so, but he didn't generate that story. he he left national observer kind of, you know, sort of broke off his relationship with them. he was always a freelancer, but that was his main outlet. so he needed new outlets and so he he wrote a query letter really importuning carrie mcwilliams at the nation and they only paid $100 for an article. they barely pay more than that now, but i mean, you know, he was trying to make a living as a freelancer. and he said i'll you know take whatever you have and carry mcwilliam said why don't you write about the motorcycle gangs because the california state attorney general had just issued a report on them as a threat to plan order. and thompson said great and you're right. he was he went straight to. one of their meetings he had he had a kind of buffer bernie jarvis who worked for it was a crime reporter for the san francisco chronicle and a the hell's angels. so he had a kind of entree and then and then he he did it was all participatory reporting. and not very many people could do that. i don't think tom wolfe could do that. i don't think john didian could do that. i mean riding with the hell's angels i think took a kind of physical courage that not very many reporters had any and hunter dined out on that for the rest of his career in a way. he got the kind of respect that that you know sort of war correspondence get because he rode with the angels first for a couple weeks he wrote the article for the nation magazine. then he parlayed that into a book deal and it became his first bestseller and then he rode with them for another year. and that and at the end of that year is when he got stomped by some of the hell's angels in a kind of dispute which remains a little bit fuzzy, but it probably had had to do with the fact that they thought they were going to benefit directly from his story. they said he promised him a keg a beer and he didn't pay up and he had another story but the point is that was how the book ended with his with his stomping. participatory journalism to the max let's talk a little bit about the legendary bay area editors warren hinkle again. rampart slayer scanlon's magazine the brief, but but very important scanlons and rolling stone. there could be no hunter thompson, of course without yan wen or the young editor of rolling stone and without warn ankle right you write about how important those, you know editors were to him encouraging the kind of enterprise thing kind of slash buckling journalism later becomes gonzo journalism. yeah, that's a really really important time for him. so so yes, he has his first bestseller. he moves to colorado even before that book comes out. and but he maintains a san francisco connections and continues by this time. he's matt warren at who was presiding over a lot of success really at rampart's magazine not financial success, but in terms of impact and circulation and you know, there's a famous story about them going out to lunch and and when they came back the the cappuccine monkey that that warren kept in the office had gotten into into hunters dexedrine and was tearing around the office. so they were friends they met. okay, peter. tell us a little bit warren. what a character he was. so they hit it off. immediately and and even though he who i never got him to write for ramparts. they remain friends and then um, and then frankly hunter began to struggle a little bit. you know, he signed he signed some contracts. but he was having trouble with his second book. he couldn't finish it. and that log jam didn't really break until another rider novelist james salter. at a dinner party gave him the idea to go and write about the kentucky derby. he pitched that story to warren and you know, if you don't know who warren was you know, he could match hunter thompson in terms of you know, the size and force of his personality and his stamina as well and he had he had a really great feeling. for you know high kind of conceptual stories, and he realized that this could be a really great way to work together now scanlons was just starting. you know, that was the first issue of scanlons. and that and so he was recruiting people actively and even though he couldn't get more i couldn't get thompson into ramparts. he did get him into the debut issue of scanlands and and again thompson thought the story was an adject failure. he thought it was going to kill his career. he was ashamed of this story. and weren't that once he saw i was ashamed peter. oh, he just didn't feel like he finished the story. he he claimed that he began ripping notes out of his. out of his notebook pages out of his notebook and just faxing them in he couldn't he couldn't couldn't write the story couldn't fill in the patches in the story. it just felt like just a mess that he sent to warren and warren sort of put the pieces together and polish it up. and warren said that he knew as soon as he saw ralph steadman's illustrations, and it was warren who introduced those two. they had never worked together before. they've never met. so once warren puts those two together, you know, i think it takes a little while but people begin to realize this is a franchise. so one midwifing it was kind of the midwife of gonzo journalism in a way he by pairing him with with ralph saidman, and then publishing and then scales now i misspoke. the first issue of scanlands ran the hunters jean-claude khali piece that didn't have ralph steadman's illustrations, and it's not usually regarded as an example of gonzo journalism, but once you put stedman and thompson together you know so thompson thought he had failed. but then everybody was saying this was a big breakthrough in journalism. and you know, he described that feeling as falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids. you know, the thing that he thought was a failure turned out to be a huge success. and he immediately went back to warren and said this is it. it's going to be the thompson stedman report. we're going to go around, you know to america's cup and the super bowl and the masters tournament and the mardi gras. and you know, this is going to be a franchise and we're going to turn and we're going to take those stories and and put them into book form. so he really thought he had something that the only problem was that scanlons. was already going under and there would never be you know, i think i think they published their last issue in january of 1971. and then, you know, unfortunately because you know, i think warren deserves a lot of credit for not just pairing those two but kind of conceiving and and birthing gonzo journalism. thompson would eventually have to find another outlet. for for that kind of work. so in some ways yon wen or who's the young editor who started rolling stone and had god has started ramparts under warren hinkle young went a really benefited inherited gonza journalism and hunter thompson from warren hinkle at rolling stone. yeah, that's that's absolutely true. and you know, i think i think john ended up getting a lot of the credit and i think warren was very aware of that. that you know the the conception of gonzo journalism was really a scandalous thing. but you know, he really didn't have i mean nobody had any choices here. it wasn't obvious that. that thompson was going to be a great match with rolling stone, which was still a fledgling rock magazine, you know thompson was older than most of the people who wrote for rolling stone. he wasn't a college graduate. he was an air force veteran, you know, there are a lot of ways that he didn't quite fit the mold. that rolling stone, but yon really? saw that his stuff might click with rolling stones readers. and he encouraged him. actually. the first contact came. when hunter wrote to john after the ultimate coverage came out in rolling stone. he just said that was fine was the concert that some people say was the death of the 1960s where the hell's angels pounced on a young african-american concert going and stabbed into death. right? right. and of course the hell's angels were there and and they they were responsible for life. what's that so-called providing security at the cost? exactly so, you know thompson thompson followed that story with some interest because you know, of course after having written about and ridden with the hell's angels, he was very very tuned in to that story and he really thought rolling stone did a fantastic job with it. they won their first national magazine award. so rolling stone was coming along very quickly, and i think you know hunter as a freelancer was always on the lookout for new outlets. he began to see that rolling stone could be one now the first couple of pieces that he wrote for rolling stone were not gonzo type gonzo-style pieces. but and you know, there's a whole story about how how gonzo much like the i was gonna ask you so peter, let's let's talk about fear and loathing in las vegas, which to me was the piece that introduced me as a young reader 200 thompson darrell said steadman illustrations again were of course, you know leaped off the page, but i that was a collector's item that issue of rolling stone in which hunter thompson really gave birth to ganza journalists as we know it. so my first question about that is for you to define gun so journalism for those who may not know what gonzo means what is exactly gone so journalism. yeah, it sounds like it sounds like a genre like the new journalism, but it's not really a genre. it's really just to kind of description. i think of hunter thompson's a strain of hunter thompson's work after 1970. the label was wasn't really a label at the time but his friend from the boston globe bill cardozo after he read the kentucky derby piece said man, that piece was totally gonzo. yeah and hunter had heard him use that term when they were both covering a primary in 1968 in new hampshire. any thought oh, well, you know, let's let's call what i'm doing gonzo journalism. so it was very successful as a kind of branding. exercise it wasn't really the name. i don't think of a of a genre. but it was it was a super important step and once again and but it was never it was never sort of the predictable result of a conscious project, you know, he was in la to cover a different story and he was working with oscar acosta the chicano activist attorney. in the middle of that research you got an offer to cover a road race in in the last in the las vegas desert outside of outside of las vegas. so he and it cost to go. he comes back writes up the story submits it to sports illustrated. they reject. so, you know a lot of people would say, you know, okay on to the next thing. but he is furious. he actually doubles down expands. the story was already 10 times longer than what sports illustrator wanted. and he sent it to rolling stone who he's already written two pieces for and as soon as he does, you know the people in the office of rolling stone just say, this is magic. you know again, it's participatory journalism hunter put itself himself in the in the story as well as oscar. he took a lot of drugs he fueled this kind of insane coverage of las vegas high often. he made no bones about that. he just the kind of a heightened realism to ganza journalism kind of absurdity seeing the absurdity where other people's may not other reporters who are more objective may not see it how yeah, i'm heading on some of the things. you know, that that entertain me when i read fearing clothing, but what are some other aspects have gone so journalism, you think well, i mean, you know first it's sort of taking the new journalism out to it's logical conclusion by putting the writer at the very center the experience and in this case the writer is not just a character but the entire all kind of reveals its meaning through his sensibility in a way. right, so so he's the indispensable part of the story. it's all about him and oscar and their invention now i would go back to some one of the points you made there and they didn't have a lot of drugs actually in that car when they went to las vegas. they had some alcohol. they had some benzedrine which oscar liked and they had some dexedrine which hunter liked and that was about it. yes, no. oh, that's one of the reasons and of course, they don't go as oscar and hunter they go as dr. gonzo and raul duke. and i think there's good reason to see this as a kind of. if not, a traditional novel some sort of hybrid. you know fictional form, you know, we see sort of working the crease between journalism and fiction. and i think it considering you know, this drug cache which he outlines at the very beginning of the book raul duke that is in the trunk. none of that. was there almost none of it was there. and so i think we have to start we need to think about it more as fiction than as as journalism though, of course the label remains to this day gonzo journalism and um, it's still it's still shelved. it's still classified as nonfiction if you go to a bookstore, which you should by the way. you do have you do have a way to buy books on your on your zoom. link so think a little bit about that but yeah, so it was it was a brand new thing for sure, but i'm not sure it fits comfortably either in us as a form of journalism or as a traditional form of fiction. well, i want to drill down on this point because i think this is the essence of hunter thompson and this whole hybrid style of writing. today i think journalism is pretty drab and you know, it could be there's no voice to it very little voice to it. it's been taken out largely in magazine writing in online. maybe his last repository. some writers have a voice some bloggers, but certainly in mainstream journalism. you don't come across voice writing the way that hunter thompson really pioneered so it could he i don't think he could succeed in today's marketplace. he had a difficult enough time as you write and savage journey as a journalist in those days. he has run in the 1970s, but you know, it got increasingly difficult for a writer like hunter but there's something about it peter and we were talking about this beforehand that something that has writing that god the inner truth about it. america and particularly in those years when he is writing and in the so-called lunacy of gonzo journalism. there was the kind of heightened realism a kind of truth that other journalism can't get at talk some about that as coverage particularly of the 1972 presidential campaign when nixon was running for real election and you know share with us your insights into that which you go in the book. right, so just i mean the first point to make about his coverage in 1972 then i want to trail back and see and talk a little bit about how he got that assignment, which i think is really important. but by the time he had collected his dispatches from the campaign trail and put them into the book which became a critical and and commercial success triumph. he had decided during loathing on the campaign trail during loathing on the campaign trail 72, right, right, so he had decided to to take this assignment. later, his work was described as the least factual and most accurate description of the campaign. and there i think you have the paradox. least factual that is he got a lot of things wrong. he didn't even try to get it right it was there was a lot of satire. there was a lot of invective. there was a lot of exaggeration. you know, there was a lot of hallucination even so you're right. there's a kind of heightened realism there and and you know, he was trying to get at some truths that he realized his colleagues on the campaign trail. either didn't see or couldn't express in the kind of hard news stories that their editors demanded. so he decided to to try a different way of covering the story now. in some ways he had to come up with a different way to do it because he had no advantages in the traditional way to do it. he surrounded by very seasoned reporters from major news organizations who had a lot of support who had resources who had connections who had readerships and you know, they had everything they needed. he was at the bottom of that totem pole so we had to think hard about how he could make his mark and he did that by saying i'm not going to try to do any of the stuff that they're doing. he took his own weakness and turned it into a kind of strength because he had no intention of coming back to the campaign trail. he didn't he could burn all of his sources if he decided to didn't matter. and so the fact that he represented a you know this kind of fledgling rock magazine from san francisco. that should have been a disadvantage, but he managed to turn it to advantage. by just telling the unvarnished true as he understood it not only about the campaign and the politicians we went after viciously. democrats as well as one republican richard nixon who he hated open. openly detested and he made no bones about his his preference for george mcgovern. so you weren't getting anything like objective journalism. he dispensed with all of those conventions instead he gave you the unvarnished truth as he understood it not only about the campaign but about the other media outlets. and i think that's super important about his work is that he's always working. he's always looking rather both ways. he's looking at the thing that he's writing about and then he's looking at the way other people are covering it. so every time you read something by a hundred thompson, you got a good laugh. some crazy ideas and also, you know you learn something because he showed you what was behind the curtain. you he had radical vision? i think that's what i took from his writing as a young journalist. and as you point out in the book here, he is rockrib, republican, kentucky. and kind of a libertarian has politics were very diffused and yet he saw america a wash and greed and violence and war addiction to war. and frankly the country hasn't changed all that much in the last several decades. yeah, but i think there was a kind of insane insight into what america was all about in his writing. yeah. no, i think that's right. and i think that's why so much of it is held up over the years, right? i mean, you know some of it as has an age well, you know, i don't think he's going to get a lot of plotteds for the way. he handles a race or women feminism or homophobia. you know if you reread him now, you're gonna you're gonna see that very quickly, especially if you read as letters, which i think is probably his best work. you really see that that's his that's his voice, but you're quite right about his politics. i mean, he only really becomes interested in american politics after he goes to the democratic national convention in chicago in 1968. and he is traumatized by what he witnesses by the police riot that he witnesses there and it's only been that he pivots away from the kind of tom wolfe new journalism stuff. and starts taking a direct. a bead on on american politicians like hubert humphrey like edmund muskie like richard nixon like mayor daley in chicago. so really it's it's a kind of it's it is a kind of journey in a way a multi-step journey and then some you know, some more serendipitous things happen as well to shape. his body of work but let me ask you a question david. i mean you mentioned. his affinity for warren hinkle. i don't think warren's politics were really worked out cleanly, i think he was also a kind of rebel and iconic classes. i mean would you put them both and in a similar category in that way? i think warren is more productive san francisco. he grew up here. i think he kind of along with the water. he drank drank in the kind of ethos the liberal progressive ethos of san francisco. so i would put him to the left politically of a hunter thompson. i think consciously left but they are both mavericks and they both like their drink and they both like to have a good time and that was very much a part of the spirit of the 60s and 70s when they were operating at their best. there was something that linked the two i think the kind of journalism the key out of the bay area in those years ramparts the early days rolling stone before it moved to new york and even my salon back in the, you know, during the.com era. we're all examples of a beer journalism that i couldn't exist anywhere else, and i'm proud of that and you know even reading some of the the obits about joan diddy and that went online about it. what iconic and great figure she was you know, she obviously produced you as a great writer who produced a lot of great writing, but i think again and again, california is not given it's due and that's why peter. i'm so you know grateful for the work you've done over the years on ramparts and karen mc williams and now hunter thompson because i think the left coast doesn't get it to do from the new york media mandarins till to this very day. yeah, you know, i'm glad to see you give hunter thompson the dude that he deserves. yeah that that's that's very much in my mind when i sit down to do this work, but i think the funniest version of feeling that you're expressing. i was at the san francisco public library when the ramparts book came. warren was there and some of his family members and other other people who contributed. and the person who organized the event for the san francisco public library listen carefully to the presentation and conversation. and he stood up from the floor and ask a question said seems to me that. if ramparts had been published in new york city there would have been a broadway musical about it 20 years ago, and i think there's some real truth to that because you know in a way it was in a way it was a it was an advantage to be in san francisco. because you could try new things. without fear of immediate failure. i mean there was a kind of nurturing. culture underneath it. that was more experimental and innovative and do it yourself and collaborative and you know, so i think all those things helped i mean, you know, google sturmer at ramparts magazine was helping out rolling stone on all their early issues the art directly. all that and then all the guys that left ramparts and went on to start mother jones. i think that was the real synergy though. yeah, absolutely. well, look i want to talk about your process about the archives and how you get one about your research on this book and then open it up. i think peter marivellis will be very in about five minutes to open up to questions from the audience, which we're very anxious to hear. but let's talk peter a little bit about your process as a writer. i know you are frustrated by the the blocks to that you faced in, you know, trying to access hunter thompson's archives many researchers run in a similar similar blocks when they're doing their own work, but tell something about that and andy and hope for the future. is it gonna are these archives gonna be open to the public at some point? right? well the good news. is that hunter kept everything you know, he had there's something like 800 bucks as of stuff mostly correspondent. he correspondence he kept copies of his correspondence going back to his teenage years, maybe even before that. so it's just an enormous treasure and we've seen two great edited volumes come out of that both edited by douglas, brinkley, and if you haven't read it, and if you love tom's and i highly recommend that again, i think it's some of his best stuff not on deadline his voice not edited, you know, not written for money. just hit him expressing himself in the direct and colorful way. and then you also see what a great literary networker was and and maybe that's why he kept everything the way he did. i think it was inspired from some by some other people like henry miller who posted up in big sur and used his correspondence to to keep his literary network alive, you know, that's what you have to do if you're going to live in these remote places and so his model of authorship this thompson. i mean his model of authorship was so unique. that you know, he had to he had to do things a little bit differently and one of them was write letters like crazy. so the letters are a great source, but except for the ones that were published in those books by brinkley. unavailable to everyone including his son. i think one even i think is only seeing the archives wants, you know when he was riding his mom who's the archives? why why who is responsible for it being so shut so close all the to a consortium the family or thompson sold it to a consortium that includes johnny depp. and there has been some talk about, you know trying to do something with it, but he probably know that depth finances are and personal life are a little messy right now. and so i don't think these letters are really at the top of the list of things, you know, he's going to get to in the short term. and also, i think they may be trying to sell them, you know to to a different place. i understand they have librarians research librarians working on them. you know processing them. and so on they're supposed to be in a storage facility in los angeles right now. they make they may be made available. who knows but right now and go about your research then for the book. yeah. so what what do you have then you you can go out and talk to people who worked with them, which i did at that as much as i could of course covid put the kibosh on a lot of those face-to-face interviews, but as you probably inferred i spent a lot of time thinking about how he worked with his editors and i think they were very important. but the only more important person in his career was probably stedman in terms of the success that he achieved the artist. yeah, i think that was really, you know, it's easy to overlook his contribution to to that franchise. of course. he didn't go to las vegas, you know oscar did. so but he still came up with that fantastic those fantastic illustrations that gave a kind of that gave gonzo. it's iconography really so it's very distinctive iconography. so you couldn't go to oscars archive, which is at ucsb. same thing shut down because of covid. but i did talk to as many of his editors as i could and just tried to tease out what it was like to work with him and in a word it was excruciating, you know as the 70s wore on. he wasn't doing any new drafts any second drafts third drafts, which he always did when he was younger. no first drafts after fear and loathing in las vegas, and he begins to live into his into his persona. more and more so i you know, i wasn't that interested in the celebrity. i think his biographies have covered as celebrity adequately. i really wanted to get at what made him distinctive as a writer and that's right focused my research and and my assessment, you know, i was just trying to read it and and and then situated using the correspondence and some of the oral histories that have been done. so we can figure out his decision making during this time. it was not a smooth. you know frictionless process for him it was it was haphazard uneven, you know the stuff that made him famous. it took him years to figure out that those things were his most important literary assets. you know, but when he finally figured that out he stuck with it. in fact probably for a little too long, you know, i think he was getting diminishing literary returns, and i'd like to ask you about that because when you worked with him in the 1980s obviously most of his best work was was behind him. and yet, you know and then talking to the editors about how they work with them then turned out to be very eliminated. so, what did you see david when you saw hunter thompson in san francisco in the 1980s? well, i was in editor it wilhurst san francisco examiner the hearst corporation out runs the chronicle but back in the day will was very interesting as an editor about bringing in people like warren hinkle and and hunter thompson and other unique voices and dave mccumber was the newsroom editor who usually edited hunter his columns and dave and he had a unique relationship and i think you talked to dave didn't you for the i couldn't get him to to go on the record. he said he would and then that happened a couple of times i think you know, i think these interactions with with hunter thompson are so valuable that i think writers are tempted to kind of keep them to themselves. although he never said that intimate. i told you this story. i know peter for the book and you know, it's my one great memory of working with hunter. he did come into the newsroom my colleagues steve chapel. who's a great later, i described him as walk walking like an upright praying mantis. he had a kind of turkey jerky movement his lanky frame. that was really funny and interesting to watch as he made his way across the newsroom, but i did work with them on a couple columns from the cumber i think was out. he was sick or his on vacation and i always remember rewriting the great hunter thompson to me was like repainting michelangelo, you know, and i was in that position because we are on deadline and he hadn't filed and he filed something that was on printable. and so i actually rewrite the great hunter thompson. he i read it to him back over the phone. he wasn't in the newsroom that day. i think he was up in woody creek. sorry that to him. there's a silence over the phone. i'm going. oh my god, this is terrible. he's gonna hate what i've done. he said, hey, it's not bad. he changed one or two words and they're brilliant. what he actually recommended i too be more hunter thompson like so, you know by then he had one brain cell and probably left or two brain cells, but god bless him. he's still had enough. i think self-respect to change my writing back here and there to you know, make it more a hundred thompson original, but but you certainly literally funny it in by then this would have been i don't know the late 1980s i guess and it wasn't the hunter towns and i grown up with right so this thing but hey speaking of the marketplace just the fact that he was able to break through and even those days in 1960s and 70s with a unique way of writing. i'm reading the book now the novel from the victorian era by george guesting a novel. long forgotten called new grub street about how difficult it was for writers back in that day the same thing to make a living as a writer in victorian england. that's where the book is set written by i think a writers are saying in george kissing and a devotes the the great hardships and ridiculous kind of travails that writers have to go through again and again just to get published and yet published for very little money. so for someone like hunter thompson to not only breaks through all that difficulty and to establish of voice as a writer and to establish a life long career. it didn't end well for him, but god bless him. he still to me as a blazing light and i'm glad that you were able to write the book you did and and to acknowledge his great contribution. yeah. let me say one more thing about the marketplace and maybe we open it up after that. um if it's time, maybe peter can guide us on that. but you know toward the end in the 1980s for example, and he's riding for will hurst. it's interesting to me. not just because it's a bay area thing. but of course he went after the hearst newspapers viciously when he was younger. i mean he they were a real target for him and his kind of on the on the fly media criticism some of his funny some of his funny as cracks were at the examiner's expense. really and and then there he is working for the examiner and then you know, he had the books going during that time, too. but at the end of his career, he's writing for espn. he comes full circle. he starts as an as a sports writer and ends as a as a sort of sports writer. but don't forget espn a quarter of espn was owned by the hurst corporation. and the people that were his editors there he knew from rolling stone and you know, he and he met will hurst and you know through through rolling stone as well. so, you know those those networks and those connections, you know, kind of turned out to be very helpful for him. and you know, when is when his literary productivity was was declining. you know there there were there were these old friends and i think will hearst and and espn were two of his best friends toward the end. yeah. great. well peter manvelas, i think we should open it up. take questions from our wonderful audience. yes, indeed and we do have some joseph asks. can you talk a little about hunters first novel prince jellyfish, although a short acts of appears in his book the songs of the doomed it still not ever been released. is there more to it? no, i don't think so. i'm not looking for that the person i've looked to on that is william mckean his biographer. um, you just don't know that much about it, and i'm not i don't think it's coming out. haven't heard that. and you know, i don't think he was a great fiction writer. that's the funny thing and if you've read the wrong diary, you can see why it took so long to come out. it's pretty traditional, you know, as journalism is so, you know energetic and and powerful and precise and funny and you know over the top with all at the same time. the fiction is pretty traditional by comparison and and if prince jellyfish was not as good as the ram diary then you know. i know he pitched it to angus cameron. who who was? an editor at randomized he had been blacklisted in the 1950s. he was kerry mcwilliams's editor actually a little brown and very successful, but he had been blacklisted arthur slezinger jr. led that charge and anyway, you know, they they he and cameron struck up a correspondence which turned out to be, you know, super instructive and interesting. but prince jellyfish never made it over the top. if anyone else is on on here that knows something else. i welcome that. so we have a question from stuart. would hunter consider nixon as a lightweight now that we've had the donald can you imagine what he would have said about the country today? yeah, well a couple things about that i mean i write in the book that i don't think donald trump or is supporters or the media reaction to them would have surprised hunter thompson. he had been trying to warn us about people like this for a long time. and at the time, you know when he wrote that stuff in the 70s, for example, it seemed hyperbolic, right? but hybrid hyperbole has its place. and over time, you know, it seemed more prophetic than hyperbolic. i think all the things that he was imagining about nixon who of course he despised. and i think nixon as bill i mentioned bill mckean the biographer. he said about he said about hunter that nixon was his muse in a way. that nixon really brought out. hunters best work in a way because he hated him was this white hot intensity. that that it's sort of pushed his it pushed his pose to a kind of new register. anyway, don't forget that after nixon is reelected in a landslide. thompson writes enrolling stone stone a few days later comparing him nixon to a werewolf. haha. the problem there is once you compare nixon to a werewolf. what do you say about reagan, you know or much less trump? so i think that that's one the downside of hyperbole as well is that you have less running room once you've you know gone over the top in in that in that particular way. but i do think that thompson was got lucky with nixon in a way. that that you know when nixon's presidency goes down in flames. service thompson kind of you know, i mean most of his best work comes out before nixon resigns. david asks, can you tell us about how the friendship between honduras thompson and ed bradley came to be? great question. i'm not sure what the answers are. i do know. that thompson befriended charles corral who was cbs news guy very early on like in latin america in the early 60s. and they remain friends for a long time. so any who sort of he had a ton of friends, i'm sure there are many of them on on this call right now. and and many girlfriends, you know, many of them have contacted me. you know with with their stories and and and it's all interesting believe me, but i'm not sure quite sure how he and and ed bradley crossed baz. now, of course he was doing a lot of political reporting. so it's it's not wouldn't be uncommon for him to run across. anybody that did that kind of political coverage? along the way but it's true that they had a a close friendship and and bradley would come to woody creek or to owl farm. and watch football with hunter. and you know that there was a there was a real kind of social network there. that was very important hunter ran a kind of a little shadow. there was a lot of bedding, but it wasn't really about the betting the bedding kind of brought them closer together in a way. and hunter bat with the political journalists, too. i mean if you read fear and loading on the campaign trail, you'll see that hunter was very proud of his record. betting on the primaries betting against experts the other journalists. you know, but but he didn't do it just to win or to just play his expertise. i think he also did it to bring bring him closer together with his colleagues and he needed that he wasn't part of that group. when you join the campaign, press corp. so the force of his personality and then these other little mechanisms to kind of is kind of ingratiate himself and even stand out. in that press car was one of the many things that he was very good at. kurthymer asks if we now see fear and loathing in las vegas as a work of fiction a novel then what distinguishes it from kerouac's on the road. great question, you know, i think i think that was one of that's the thing that hunter really admired about kerouac. was that he was taking his lightly fictionalized experiences and turning them into fiction. yeah, i mean, you know his own experiences lightly fictionalizing them and and selling them as fiction through major publishers. and it included, you know stuff about taking drugs, which was very important to hunter in the 1950s. you know his other you know, his other is other favorite novel is the ginger man right by jr. dunlavy and it's the same sort of transgression and you know, there's this kind of rogue kind of at the center of the story. and of course that was that was sold through an imprint that was known mostly for its erotica. you know for many years so all of that was catnip for a hundred thompson. same thing with henry miller. now the fact that his stuff had been banned. i think for for someone like thompson was very important. he took he took henry miller's the world of sex. and sent it to norman mailer, they'd never met this was his introduction to norman miller. and you know, it's a really interesting letter. it's a sort of announcement to mailer that there's this young kind of viral. fiction writer on the rise that's how he presented himself as the person who was writing the great puerto rican novel that i get the question. bill asks your recent nation piece referenced hunter s thompson comment to angus cameron facts are lies when they're added up. can you elaborate on what you think he meant by this? i think he meant that there are certain kinds of truths that fiction can get at that nonfiction can't get out certainly journalism, you know traditional journalism. objective journalism you know, they're gonna miss some plain truths and great example is nixon, you know. nixon knew how to play the game. he knew the rules of ejected journalism. and so he knew how to manipulate the press corps so did his his campaign staffers? and thompson saw that and realized that that you would you would better get out him and his essence. by fictionalizing it not worrying about the facts. and go for the truth of him in a way that you know fiction lends itself to in a way that traditional journalism didn't and another way to put it i mean you can get more theoretical about it. i don't think that was hunters interest in it, but you know later historiographers would say just getting the facts tray is not always going to get you to the truth. you know that every every list of facts is a theory in the weak sense. so, you know they you know, that's that's at theoretical concern, but i think hunter came at it from the point of view that fiction was better at getting at this stuff. than than traditional journalism, and i think that's what he meant. and certainly his critique and tim krause's critique. of campaign journalism suggested that you know, these guys are missing the real story. the real story is about nixon and and impress wrote for rolling stone. also, he wrote the boys on the bus. right, right. so, you know, i think what you know what they added and of course they end up writing the most memorable accounts of the 1972 campaign. again least factual and most accurate. i think tim krause's was probably more accurate. it was a more sustained look at the media and at shortcomings and blind spots. you know hunter was a little bit more intuitive about that i think but i thought he was an astute media critic. i think we have time for a couple more questions rm asks. what surprised you the most while writing this book? yeah to i guess two things one is you know, i the letters just at the end of the day, you know, i just think it's that his best stuff. you know, i i didn't expect to reach that conclusion. the other thing i've already alluded to you like to peter. what's that? he wrote the letters to what to editors to friends too? oh, you know he would ride him to llb, you know complaining about their latest product, but i mean it just took it to a level of art that um, oh he would write to the television station and grand junction, colorado. tell them about the garbage that they are airing and you know hilarious really, you know letters to sonny barger, you know letters to phil graham the washington post. i mean, it's just incredible how many people he wrote to and and came to know but the letters themselves are incredible so that that's one thing. i mean, i'd read the ladders but after you sit with them for a while you realize yeah this spot. i think he knew that too. he said it a couple times these letters might be my desktop. so that was one thing the other thing is and i had to sit with this a while too is he didn't know what he had. you know, some of the stuff was almost. accidental some of the success that he had. you know, these were fleeting opportunities and very serendipitous just pursuing this and then even after being successfully didn't always realize that that was his future. you know that the gonzo franchise was going to be it. here's an example. i don't think i mentioned this i should. his editor wanted him his editor and his age. wanted him to include the las vegas material in a second book that he was supposed to give to to random house. and he said no, i don't want that stuff. printed with my other stuff my serious stuff. it will ruin me. it'll make a fool adam. i don't want you know, that's why they that's why they called it nonfiction because he had a contract to write a book in one fiction. and that's why i came out separate. you know, and of course it became the most important thing maybe arguably that he ever wrote. but he thought you know, he thought if it wasn't handled just right that i would ruin him and he thought the same thing about the kentucky derby piece. i think that's really interesting. you know that a sharp guy who knew the business. you know an experienced. season freelancer you know didn't see that path. even as it was opening up and once he saw it, of course he couldn't walk away from it, and we i talked about that a little in the book as well. probably should have he was encouraged to you know kind of shed the guns out thing and and start writing in another mode. but you know he it just was really hard for him having worked so hard to achieve that success. and even though the celebrity was kind of a mixed bag in many ways. you know, he couldn't he couldn't let that go. and we have time for maybe one more question anika asks, are there any future projects you hope to tackle that developed out of the work that you did for this book? uh, you know the one word version one word answer. yes. i think i had another idea but the more i think about it, and i'm getting advice including some from david that i might want to keep turning on this a little bit. and because in many ways, you know, i realized again after i'd finished this whole thing that the last three books on ramparts grateful dead and a hundred thompson in our kind of informal trilogy about the san francisco counterculture of course if you if you add in the carrie mcwilliams, you know, it's he's not a countercultural figure. it's more about the you know left of center political journalism. but some advice that i've been getting from very knowledgeable people is maybe there aren't enough books about san francisco. i mean, there's certainly a lot of good ones and david's written one of the best. seasons of the witch but i think there's still some more here. and i think you know the fact that people have responded positively to it. not just mine, but david's and others. is a sign that you know. there's still some story to stories to tell not just for us but for for broader audiences as well. well, we look forward to that next book and the thing i regret the most about these virtual events. you can't go out for drinks out. yeah, so a rain check is due to you both david peter. thank you so much a lot of familiar faces here. i don't have time to acknowledge all of them plus a lot of new ones and and
New-yorkUnited-statesNew-hampshireKentuckyGlen-allenMassachusettsColoradoBostonPuerto-ricoCaliforniaTogoPoland thompson's literary formation was largely a san francisco story and in the those of us at city lights across town it can attest to this. thompson was a regular at the cafc across the street from city lights and became a regular basis. his life was intertwined with northeast culture and you can see and go from writer to ramparts cortina etheridge, the former owner of costco so he's done a stellar job piecing together the trace elements of thompson's literary influences in a compelling read so we're glad he can grace our halls. peter richardson has written books about thegrateful dead , also rampartsmagazine , and carey mcwilliams, the radical author and editor of the nation magazine. he's going to be joined by none other than david dollars, i can't think of anybody better to be doing the honors. he is the esteemed author of four popular history books and founder and editor in chief of the law magazine. former senior editor for mother jones magazine. he is a journalist, a columnist who has written for the new yorker, for rolling stone and the guardian, much more and his book the season of the witch is legendary. san francisco chronicle bestseller for many years and his recent book is titled by the light of o-waiting dreams, the tragedy of the second american revolution co-authored with margaret talbot. his offices are down the street so you can easily say it is all in the family. join us in giving a warm welcome to our evenings guest peter richardson, david astalbot. it's a great pleasure to have you both gracing our virtual halls. welcome to city lights live. >> thank you peter. many peters tonight. all of us from city lights and it's a great honor for me to be here with the author, peter richardson. i'm very pleased to be here tonight. i've been a big fan of peters for some time now. i read with great interest his history of ramparts magazine which played a big role in my development as a young journalist and hunter thompson did too i have to say. i first read hunter thompson when i was a student at santa cruz back in the early 1970s. and his fear and loathing in las vegas and later his coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign had a huge impact on me as a young journalist. so i read with great interest peter richardson's new book about hunter. i knew hunter a little bit myself later on as an editor of the san francisco examiner. i actually had the great pleasure of editing a couple of columns by hunter thompson late in his career. but you know, to me he was an icon, still is an icon. had a huge impact on me and many other young writers and journalists in america soi'm delighted to be here today with peter . i'll jump in with a few questions and we're going to open it up i think and take questions fromsome of you . peter will help out there peter, good to see you. reyou look like you're in woody creek colorado, where are you ? >> i'm actually in glen ellen it is not far from where you are but it is another spot where hunter thompson lived briefly before he decamped for colorado. actually before he moved to san francisco. >> let's talk about hunter's san francisco roots and since we are being sponsored by the iconic city lights bookstore, let's talk about what drew hunter to san francisco back in what, the late and early 60s, late 50s. what period are we talking about? >> he arrives for the first time in 1960. he had driven a rental car or he had driven a car cross country and dropped it off and then hitchhiked from seattle down to san francisco . what drew him here frankly was a place like city lights books. he was very into whatthe beats were doing . didn't idolize the beats but he respected especially what jack kerouac could do in terms of getting a new kind of writing not only published by a major publisher but to become a kind of publishing phenomenon. so he was very strongly attracted to san francisco. wanted to learn more about it but moved out of the air force and wrote for some newspapers. when he arrived he applied for work at the san francisco chronicle and examiner. he almost immediately decamped to big sur which was another kind of big outpost and was nealso the home of henry miller who was one of his real heroes but the original paul i think was kind of big impulse which was having quite crested yet but was starting to get giveaway already. neil cassidy would go to san quentin and karabakh would move back east and allen ginsberg would move away as well but what they accomplished while they were in san francisco was very importantto hunter thompson . >> since you did write a great book about ramparts, the legendary and important magazine edited by warren hinkle and bob shearer, two great bay area journalistic figures, heroes of mine. your book was fascinating about ramparts. that was also a very important magazine for hunter's development in those years.t >> it was. it really more after he had written, right around the time he published tells angels, that was an important magazine for him and an important social nexus for him. he never published anything inrampart but he felt strongly connected . i heard from bob today and it's worth noting that he worked at city lights bookstore three years right around the time that he was starting with rampart. so ramparts was still finding its feet. it had not really begun when hunter thompson arrived in san francisco. it began as a catholic catholic literary quarterly and it's only when warren hinkle takes over as editor and brings the magazine to san francisco that it becomes the legendary san francisco muckraker that we know today. >> and hunter developed the way he did as a journalist anywhere else in the country or was there something about northern california in particular in those years in the 1960s that was more open to his style of writing? >> i don't think there's any doubt. he couldn't have done it in new york. he certainly couldn't have done it in louisville or aspen or chicago or boston. not only that, i don't think he could have done itin san francisco 10 years before or 10 years later . i think he needed to be in san francisco right when he was in san francisco and he acknowledged that to . later in life and las vegas he talked about his san francisco period as a peak era and then later on in life of course he comes back and works in san francisco in the 1980s but much later than ho that looking back he said those were my peaks, 1960s in san francisco. that was really informative for him and that's one of the arguments i want to make in the book is that even though he lives in woody creek colorado fordecades after that , i think in many ways he's best seen as a bay area writer. >> he did live in that he asked.for some time. talk about hunter during that period. what is he absorbing, what is your learning? how is he growing as a writer ? >> he had moved down. he went from big sur up to hear where i am, glen ellen not far from here. that didn't work out very well and he moved to 318 parnassus avenue near uc san francisco and he wasn't really cut out for urban living. you really would rather live in these kind of you collect places like big sur, glen ellen or aspen. but i think it was important that he did come into the city during that time. he was still writing for the national observer which is a wall street journal dow jones publication at the time but he wasn't really thriving there. he attended the 1964 gop convention in san francisco. and you know, learn some things there. i think that was you know, an important lesson for him. but he wasn't really into politics at that time. he was really in short order trying to do once tom wolfe was doing back east which is take these kind of exotic west coast subcultures and turn them m into stories for big nationalmagazines . >> unlike tom wolfe, i'd say tom wolfe to me is someone who got a lot of credit for doing very little. he was more of a dandy i think. hunter really got involved with what hehe wrote about. he got stomped by the hells angels for god's sake. >> that's important. but he didn't generate that story. he left national observer kind of sort of broke off his relationship with them. he was always a freelancer but that was his main outlet sohe needed new outlets . he wrote a query letter really importuning carey mcwilliams of the nation. they only paid hundred dollars for an article. they barely pay more than that now but he was trying to make a living as a freelancer . and he's said i'll take whatever you've got. and terry mcwilliams said why don't you write about motorcycle gangs because the california state attorney general had justissued a report on them as a threat to law and order . thompson said great and you're right. he went straight to one of their meetings and he had a kind of buffer, bernie jarvis who worked for, he was a ll crime reporter for the san francisco chronicle and a member of the hells angels. he had a kind of entrce and then he did. it was all t participatory reporting. not very many people can do that . i don't think tom wolfe could do that for joan dion to do that. writing with the hells angels took a bit of courage that not very many reporters have and hunter died out on that for the rest of his career. he got the kind of respect that sort of war correspondents get the cause he rode with the angels. first for a couple ofweeks. he wrote the article for the nation magazine . then he parlay that into a book deal and it became his first bestseller and then he rode with them for another year and at the end of that year was when he got stopped by some of the hells angels and i think in kind of a dispute is running a little bit fuzzy probably has to do with the fact that they thought theywere going to benefit directly from his story . they said he promised them a case of beer and he didn't pay up. he had another story but the point is that was how the book ended with his stomping. >> participatory journalism to the max. let's talk a little bit about the legendary area editors. warren hinkle again, ramparts . a very important scandal in and rolling stone. there could be no hunter thompson of course with jann wenner and that was warning hinkle. you talk about how important those editors were to him encouraging the kind of f enterprising kind of swashbuckling journalism that later becomes gonzo journalism. >> that's a really important time for him. so yes, he has his first bestseller. he moves tocolorado even before that book comes out. but he maintains his san francisco connection . by this time he's not wine is proceeding over a lot of the success at rampart magazine, not financial success but in terms of impact and circulation and there's a famous story about them going out to lunch and when they came back the cappuccino monkey that warren kept in the office have gotten into hunter's dexedrine and was screaming around the office. so they were friends. >> can you tell us a little bit of warren, what a character what he was ? >> they hit it off immediately. even thoughwarren never got him to write for ramparts , they remained friends and then frankly hunter began to struggle a little bit. he signed some contracts but he was having trouble with his second book. he couldn't finish it and that didn't break until another writer, novelist james salter at a dinner party gave him the idea to go and write about the kentucky derby. he pitched that story to warren and if you don't know who warren was, he could match hunter thompson in terms of the sizeand force of his personality and his stamina as well . he had a really great feeling for high conceptual stories and he realized that this would be a really great way to work together. scanlon, that was the first issue with scanlon and so he was recruiting people actively. even though he couldn't get thompson into rampart he did get him into the debut issue of scanlon's and again, the story was an abject tfailure. he thought he was going to kill his career. he was ashamed of the story and warren thought once he saw. >> he just didn't feel like he finished the story. he claimed that he began ripping notes out of his notebook, pages out of his notebook and just faxing them in. he couldn't write the rystory. couldn't fill in the patches of the story. just felt like just a mess that he sent to warren and warren took the pieces together and polished it up. warren said that he knew as soon as he saw ralph steadman's illustrations and it was warren who introduced those two. they had never worked together before. they hadnever met . so once more and put those two together, i think it takes a little while but people begin torealize this is a franchise .>> so warren midwife and, was kind of the midwife of gonzo journalism in a way. >> by pairing him with ralph steadman and then publishing in scanlon's. in this book the first issue of scanlon's ran hunter's piece. that didn't happen, ralph steadman's illustrations and it's not usually regarded as an example of gonzojournalism . but once you put steadman and thompson ktogether, so thompson thought he had failed but then everybody was saying this was a brick breakthrough in journalism . and he described that feeling as falling down an elevator shaft landing in all pool full of mercury. this thing that he thought was a failure turned out to be a key success and he immediately went back to warren and said this is going to be the thompson steadman report.we're going to go around to oiamerica's cup and the super bowl and masters tournament and mardi gras and this is going to be a franchise thing and we're going to take those stories and put them into book form. so he thought hehad something . the only problem was scanlon's was already going under. there would never be i think they published their last issue in january 1971. unfortunately because i think warren deserve a lot of credit for not just hearing those two but kind of conceding and birthing gonzo journalism, thompson would eventually have to find another outlet for that kind of work. >> in some ways, jann wenner who started tarolling stone had gotten started. ramparts under warren hinkle. jann wenner really inherited gonzo journalism and hunter thompson from warren hinkle at rolling stone. >> that's true and jann wenner ended up getting a lot of the credit andwarren was very aware of that . that the conception of gonzo journalism was really scanlon's thing. but he really didn't , nobody hadchoices here . it wasn't obvious that thompson was going to be a great master at rolling stone which was still a fledgling rock magazine. thompson was older thanmost of the people who wrote for rolling stone . he was an air force veteran. he didn't quite fit the mold at rolling stone ngnebut jann really saw that his stuff might click with rolling stones readers and he encouraged him. the first concept came when hunter wrote to jann after the altamonte coverage came out and said. >> was the concert that some people say was the death of the 1960s where the hells angels pounced on an african-american concert door and stabbed him to death. >> right, and of course the hells angels were there and they were responsible. what's that? >> so-called providing security. >> thompson follow that story with some interest because of course after having written about the hells angels he was very tuned in to that story and he really thought rolling stone did a fantastic job with it. they won their first national magazine award so rolling stone was coming along quickly. i think hunter as a freelancer was always on the lookout for new. and he began to see that rolling stone could be one. the first couple of pieces you for rolling stone or not gonzo type pieces. but you know, there's a whole story about how gonzo much like ... >> but not fear and loathing in las vegas which to me was the peace that introduced me as a young reader under constant. ralph steadman illustrations again were of course you know, left off the page that was a collectors item. that issue of rolling stone in which hunter thompson really gave birth to and so journalism as we know it. my first question about that is for you to define gonzo journalism. for those who may not know gonzo means. what is exactly gonzo journalism? >> it sounds like a genre like news journalism but it's not really a genre . it's a description i think of hunter thompson, a string of hunter thompson work after 1970. the label wasn't really a label at the time but his friends at the boston globe after you read the kentucky derby he's said that he's was totally gonzo. and hunter had heard him use that term when they were both covering the primary in 1968 in new hampshire and he thought well, let's call what i'm doing gonzo journalism was successful kind of branding exercise. it wasn't really the name of a genre. it was a super important step but it was never sort of the predictable result of conscious project . he was in la to cover a different story and he was working with oscar, the activist attorney. in the middle of that research, he got an offer to cover a road race in the las vegas desert outside of las vegas. he comes back, rights of the story, submitted to sports illustrated . lthey rejected. a lot of people would say you know, okay, on to the next thing he is furious. he actually dolls down, expands the story. it was already 10 0 times longer than what sports illustrated wanted and he sent rolling stone movies already as soon as he does people in the office at rolling stone status is magical . >> so again is participatory journalism. hunter puthimself in the story . as well as foster area he took a lot of drugs. he fueled this kind of insane coverage of las vegas. he made no bones about that. he, kind of buying realism to gonzo journalism, kind of dirty, seeing the absurdity where other people, other reporters are more objective may notsee it . i'm heading on some of the things that entertain me in fear and loathing but what are some of the other aspects of gonzo journalism ? >> first is taking the new journalism out to its logical conclusion by putting the writer at the center of the experience and in this case the writer is not just a central character but the entire world kind reveals its meaning through his sensibility. so he's an indispensable part of the story. it's all abouthim and foster and their invention . i would go back to one of the points you made their. they didn't have a lot of drugs actually in harmony with the las vegas. they had some alcohol. they had some benzedrine oscar they had some dexedrine under linux and that was about it. one of the reasons and of course they don't go as oscar and hunter. they go o as doctor gonzo and ronald and i think there's good reason to see this as a kind of, if not a traditional model as some fictional form. he's sort of working the crease between journalism and fiction and i think it's considering this drug cash which he outlines at the very beginning of the book, role do in the, and that was there, almost none of it was there. i think we rtneed to think about it more as section that asked journalism the of course the label remains a mistake. it's still classified as nonfiction if you go to a bookstore which you should do my way. you have a way to buy books on your resume link. so think a little about that. it was a brand-new thing for sure but i'm not sure it sits comfortably either as a form of journalism or as a traditional fiction i want to drill down because i think this is the essence of hunter thompsonand this whole hydrant style of writing . today i think journalism is the draft. and you know, there's no voice to it, very little voice to it. it's been taken largely in magazine writing online maybe as the last repository. some writers and bloggers but certainly in mainstream journalism you don't come across voice writing the way hunter thompson really pioneered. but i think he could succeed in today's marketplace. he had a difficult time you write in a savage journey asa journalist those days . it got increasingly difficult for our writer like hunter. but there's something about it peter and we were talking about this beforehand that something about his writing got the inner truth about america. particularly in those years when he's lying. and in the so-called lunacy of gonzo girls and, there was kind of realism, a kind of truth that other journalism. some about that about his coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign when nixon was running for reelection . and you know, share with us your insights into that which you go into in the book. >> so i mean the first point to make that his coverage in 1972 and i want to trail black and talk about how he got the assignment which i think is important. but by the time he had collected his dispatches on the campaign trail into the book which became a critical and commercial success, a client. he had decided ... >> fear and loathing on the campaign trail. >> so he had decided to take this assignment, later his work was described as the least factual and most accurate discussion of the campaign and there i think you have the narrative. least factual, that is he got a lotof things wrong. he didn't even try to get it right there was a lot of satire, invective and exaggeration . there was a lot of hallucination. so you're right, there's a kind of heightened realism there and he was trying to get at the truth and he realized he's his colleagues on the campaign trail either didn't see or couldn't express and the hard news stories their editors demanded so he decided to try a different kind of covering the story. in some ways he had the difficulty to do it because he had no advantages in the traditional way to do it. he's surrounded by reporters from major news organizations who had a lot of support, who had resources, who had connections. who had leaderships. they had everything they needed. he was at the bottom of that totem pole so he had to think hard about how he could make his mark and he did that by saying i'm not going to try to do any of the stuff. he took his own weakness and turned it into a kind of strength because he had no intention of coming back to thecampaign trail . he would burn all of the sources if he decided to get that now so the fact that he represented dthis kind of fledgling rock magazine in san francisco, that should have been a disadvantage but he managed to turn it to an advantage by telling the unvarnished truth as he understood it not only about the campaign and the politicians. he went after them viciously, democrats as well as one republican, richard nixon who he hated openly. he made no bones about his preference for george mcgovern so you weren't getting anything like objective journalism. he dispensed with all of those conventions. instead he gave you the unvarnished truth as he understood it not only about the campaign but about the other media. i think that's super important about his work is that he's always looking both ways. he's looking at the thing that he's writing about and looking at why other people are covering it so every time you read something by hunter thompsonyou got a good laugh . some crazy ideas. and also you learned something becausehe showed you what was behind the curtain . >> he had a radical vision i think that is what i took from his writing. as a youngjournalist . and as you point out in the book, here he is from a republican from kentucky and kind of the libertarian his policies word iq's and yet he saw america awash in greed and violence and addiction to war. and gefrankly the country hasn't changed all that much in the last several decades. but i think there was a kind of insane insight into what america was all about in his writing. >> i think that's right and i think that's why so much of it hasheld up over the years . some of it has not aged well. i don't think he's going to get a lot of plaudits for the way he handles race or women, feminism or homophobia. if you reread him now you're going to see that very quickly especially if you read his letters which i think are probably his best work. you really see that his voice but you're quite right about his takes. he only really becomes interested in american politics after he goes to the democratic national convention in chicago in 1968 . and he is traumatized by what he witnesses by the police writes that he witnesses there. only then that he pivots away from the kind of tom wolfe journalism stuff and starts taking a direct be on american politicians like hubert humphrey, like edmund muskie. like richard nixon. like mayor daley in chicago. so really it's kind of, it is the kind of journey in a way, a multistate journey and then some more extended as things happen as well to shape the body of work. but let me ask you a question david. you mention his affinity for warren. i don't i don't think warren's politics were really worked out cleanly. i think he was also a rebel and i can iconic iconoclast writ would you put them both in a similar category? >> i think warren is more appositive from san francisco. he grew up here. i think he kind of along with the water he drank in, the kind of pathos. the liberal progressive pathos of san francisco. i would put him to the left politically. of hunter thompson. i think consciously left. but they were both mavericks and they both liked their drink and they both liked to have a good time. that was very much a part of the spirit of the 60s and 70s when they were operating at their best. so there was something that linked the two. i think kind of the journalism of the bay area in those years, ramparts early days with rolling stone before it moved to new york. and even my salon back in early during the.com era were all examples of the bay area journalism that they think couldn't exist anywhere else and i'm proud of that. been reading some of the obits about joan didion that went on and on about what an iconic and great figure she was. she obviously produced. she was a great writer, produce a lot of great writing but i think again, california is not given its due and that's why peter, i'm so grateful for the work you've done over the years on ramparts and terry mcwilliams and now hunter thompson because i think the west coast doesn't get its due on the new york media mandarins to this very day. i'm glad to see you give hunter thompson the due that he deserves. >> that's very much in my mind when i sit down to do this work. i think the funniest version of the feeling that you are expressing is that that i was at the san francisco public library when the rampart book came out . some of the family members and other people who contributed and the person who organized the event in the san francisco public library listened carefully to the presentation and conversation and he said do not from the floor and asked the question and said seems to me if rampart had been published in new york city there would have been a broadway musicalabout it 20 years ago . and i think there's some real truth to that because you know, in a way it was an advantage to be in san francisco. you could try new things. without fear of failure and there was a nurturing culture underneath it that was more experimental and innovative and do-it-yourself and collaborative. so i think all of those things helped . people asked her rampart magazine was helping out rolling stoneon all their coverage . and then all the guys that left ramparts and went on to start mother jones . there was a real synergy there. >> absolutely. i want to talk about your process, about how you went about your recent on this book and open it up. i think peter will be ready in about five minutes to open it up to questions from the audience. which we are very anxious to hear. but let's talk about your process as a writer. i know you're frustrated by the blocks that you faced in time to access hunter thompson's archives. many of these researchers run into similar blocks when they're doing their own work but tell us something about ethat and for the future. are these archives going to be open tothe public at some point ? >> the good news is hunter kept everything. there's something like 100 boxes of stuff mostly correspondence. he kept copies of his correspondence owing back to his teenage years, maybe even before that. so it's just an in or miss treasure and we seem to great edited volumes come out of that. both edited by douglas brinkley. if you haven't read it and you love thompson i highly recommend that. i think it's some of his best stuff. not on deadline,his voice, not edited . notwritten for money . just him expressing himself. in a direct and colorful way. you also see what a great literary networker he was maybe that's why he kept everything the way he did. i think it was inspired by other people like henry miller who posted up at big sur and used his correspondence to keep his literary networker alive. >> .. one of them was write letters. so the letters are a great source but except for the ones that were published in his books by brinkley, including. his soni think has only seen the archives wants when he was riding his -- >> who is responsible for being so -- >> they sold it to a consortium, the family or thompson sold it to a consortium that includes johnny depp and that includes some talks about try to do something with them but his finances and personal life are little messy right now and so i don't think these letters are really at the top of the list of things he's going to get to in the short term. and also maybe they're trying to sell them to a different player. i understand that librarians come research librarians working on them, processing them and so on. they are supposed to be at a storage facility in los angeles right now. they may be made available, who knows, but right now -- >> what about your research and for the book? >> what do you have been? you can go out and talk to people who worked a with them which i did that as much as i could. covid put a lot of kibosh on those face-to-face interviews but as you probably inferred i spent a lot of time thinking about how he worked with his editors and i think they were very important. the only more important person in his career was, in terms of the success he achieved. >> the artist. >> it's easy to overlook his contribution to that franchise. of course he didn't go to las vegas. he still came up with that, this fantastic illustrations that gave ad kind of, gave gonzo its distinctiveness. so you couldn't go to oscars archive which is at uscp, same thing, shut down because of covid. i talked to as many of his editors as they could and did a word it was excruciating. as the '70s war on, he wasn't doing any new drafts, any second drafts, third drafts which he always did when he was younger. no first drafts after las vegas and he begins to live into his persona more and more. i wasn't that interested in the celebrity. ihi think his biography covered his celebrity adequately. i wouldn't want to get that what made him distinctive as a writer and that's why focused my research and my assessment, just trying to read it and, and then situate it using the correspondence and some of the oral histories that have been done so we can figure out his decision-making during this time. it was not a a smooth, you kns frictionless process. it was haphazard, uneven. the stuff that made him famous,, took them years to figure out that those things was most important literary assets. but when hee finally figured tht out he stuck with it. in fact, probably for a little too long. i think he was getting diminishing literary returns. when you worked with him in 1980s, obviously most of his work was behind him and yet beet talking to the editors about how to work with and then turned out to be very illuminating. so what did you see, david, when you saw him in san francisco it in the 1980s? >> i was an editor in san francisco, editor of thehe heart corporation now runs thehe chronicle but back in the day will was very enterprising as an editor about bringing people like warren hinkle and hunter thompson and other unique voices, and dave mccumber was the newsroom editor.r he usually edited hunter, his columns. dave and he hadun a unique relationship at a think he talked to dave, didn't he? >> i couldn't get him to go on the record. he saidpl he would. that happened a couple of times. i think these interactions with hunter thompson are so valuable that a think writers are tempted to kind of keep it to themselves although we never said that. >> i told you the story i know for the book, and it's my one great memories of working with hunter. he did come into the newsroom, my colleague steve was a great writer, described him as walking like an upright praying mantis. he had canada herky-jerky movement, his lanky frame which is really funny and interesting to watch as he made his way across the newsroom. it i did work with them on a couple of columns when the cumbre was out turkey was sick or on vacation, and i always remembered rewriting the great hunter thompson, to me was like repainting mikel angelo. -- michelangelo. i was in that position because we were on deadline and he hadn't filed and is filed something that was not printable and so hadad to write the great hunter thompson. i rated turn back on the phone. he wasn't in the newsroom that day. i think he was up in woody creek. there was a silence over the phone and thinking of my god he's going to hate what i have done. he said hey, it's not bad. he changed one or two words and they were brilliant. what he actually recommended made it more hunter thompson like. by then he had one brain cell, or twoel brain cells. but god bless and he still had enough i think self-respect to change my writing back here and there to make it more a hunter thompson a original. this would have been i don't know the late 1980s i guess and it wasn't the hunter towns and i grown up with right so this thing but hey speaking of the marketplace just the fact that he was able to break through and even those days in 1960s and 70s with a unique way of writing. i'm reading the book now the novel from the victorian era by george guesting a novel. long forgotten called new grub street about how difficult it was for writers back in that day the same thing to make a living as a writer in victorian england. that's where the book is set written by i think a writers are saying in george kissing and a devotes the the great hardships and ridiculous kind of travails that writers have to go through again and again just to get published and yet published for very little money. so for someone like hunter thompson to not only breaks through all that difficulty and to establish of voice as a writer and to establish a life long career. it didn't end well for him, but god bless him. he still to me as a blazing light and i'm glad that you were able to write the book you did and and to acknowledge his great contribution. yeah. let me say one more thing about the marketplace and maybe we open it up after that. um if it's time, maybe peter can guide us on that. but you know toward the end in the 1980s for example, and he's riding for will hurst. it's interesting to me. not just because it's a bay area thing. but of course he went after the hearst newspapers viciously when he was younger. i mean he they were a real target for him and his kind of on the on the fly media criticism some of his funny some of his funny as cracks were at the examiner's expense. really and and then there he is working for the examiner and then you know, he had the books going during that time, too. but at the end of his career, he's writing for espn. he comes full circle. he starts as an as a sports writer and ends as a as a sort of sports writer. but don't forget espn a quarter of espn was owned by the hurst corporation. and the people that were his editors there he knew from rolling stone and you know, he and he met will hurst and you know through through rolling stone as well. so, you know those those networks and those connections, you know, kind of turned out to be very helpful for him. and you know, when is when his literary productivity was was declining. you know there there were there were these old friends and i think will hearst and and espn were two of his best friends toward the end. yeah. great. well peter manvelas, i think we should open it up. take questions from our wonderful audience. yes, indeed and we do have some joseph asks. can you talk a little about hunters first novel prince jellyfish, although a short acts of appears in his book the songs of the doomed it still not ever been released. is there more to it? no, i don't think so. i'm not looking for that the person i've looked to on that is william mckean his biographer. um, you just don't know that much about it, and i'm not i don't think it's coming out. haven't heard that. and you know, i don't think he was a great fiction writer. that's the funny thing and if you've read the wrong diary, you can see why it took so long to come out. it's pretty traditional, you know, as journalism is so, you know energetic and and powerful and precise and funny and you know over the top with all at the same time. the fiction is pretty traditional by comparison and and if prince jellyfish was not as good as the ram diary then you know. i know he pitched it to angus cameron. who who was? an editor at randomized he had been blacklisted in the 1950s. he was kerry mcwilliams's editor actually a little brown and very successful, but he had been blacklisted arthur slezinger jr. led that charge and anyway, you know, they they he and cameron struck up a correspondence which turned out to be, you know, super instructive and interesting. but prince jellyfish never made it over the top. if anyone else is on on here that knows something else. i welcome that. so we have a question from stuart. would hunter consider nixon as a lightweight now that we've had the donald can you imagine what he would have said about the country today? yeah, well a couple things about that i mean i write in the book that i don't think donald trump or is supporters or the media reaction to them would have surprised hunter thompson. he had been trying to warn us about people like this for a long time. and at the time, you know when he wrote that stuff in the 70s, for example, it seemed hyperbolic, right? but hybrid hyperbole has its place. and over time, you know, it seemed more prophetic than hyperbolic. i think all the things that he was imagining about nixon who of course he despised. and i think nixon as bill i mentioned bill mckean the biographer. he said about he said about hunter that nixon was his muse in a way. that nixon really brought out. hunters best work in a way because he hated him was this white hot intensity. that that it's sort of pushed his it pushed his pose to a kind of new register. anyway, don't forget that after nixon is reelected in a landslide. thompson writes enrolling stone stone a few days later comparing him nixon to a werewolf. haha. the problem there is once you compare nixon to a werewolf. what do you say about reagan, you know or much less trump? so i think that that's one the downside of hyperbole as well is that you have less running room once you've you know gone over the top in in that in that particular way. but i do think that thompson was got lucky with nixon in a way. that that you know when nixon's presidency goes down in flames. service thompson kind of you know, i mean most of his best work comes out before nixon resigns. david asks, can you tell us about how the friendship between honduras thompson and ed bradley came to be? great question. i'm not sure what the answers are. i do know. that thompson befriended charles corral who was cbs news guy very early on like in latin america in the early 60s. and they remain friends for a long time. so any who sort of he had a ton of friends, i'm sure there are many of them on on this call right now. and and many girlfriends, you know, many of them have contacted me. you know with with their stories and and and it's all interesting believe me, but i'm not sure quite sure how he and and ed bradley crossed baz. now, of course he was doing a lot of political reporting. so it's it's not wouldn't be uncommon for him to run across. anybody that did that kind of political coverage? along the way but it's true that they had a a close friendship and and bradley would come to woody creek or to owl farm. and watch football with hunter. and you know that there was a there was a real kind of social network there. that was very important hunter ran a kind of a little shadow. there was a lot of bedding, but it wasn't really about the betting the bedding kind of brought them closer together in a way. and hunter bat with the political journalists, too. i mean if you read fear and loading on the campaign trail, you'll see that hunter was very proud of his record. betting on the primaries betting against experts the other journalists. you know, but but he didn't do it just to win or to just play his expertise. i think he also did it to bring bring him closer together with his colleagues and he needed that he wasn't part of that group. when you join the campaign, press corp. so the force of his personality and then these other little mechanisms to kind of is kind of ingratiate himself and even stand out. in that press car was one of the many things that he was very good at. kurthymer asks if we now see fear and loathing in las vegas as a work of fiction a novel then what distinguishes it from kerouac's on the road. great question, you know, i think i think that was one of that's the thing that hunter really admired about kerouac. was that he was taking his lightly fictionalized experiences and turning them into fiction. yeah, i mean, you know his own experiences lightly fictionalizing them and and selling them as fiction through major publishers. and it included, you know stuff about taking drugs, which was very important to hunter in the 1950s. you know his other you know, his other is other favorite novel is the ginger man right by jr. dunlavy and it's the same sort of transgression and you know, there's this kind of rogue kind of at the center of the story. and of course that was that was sold through an imprint that was known mostly for its erotica. you know for many years so all of that was catnip for a hundred thompson. same thing with henry miller. now the fact that his stuff had been banned. i think for for someone like thompson was very important. he took he took henry miller's the world of sex. and sent it to norman mailer, they'd never met this was his introduction to norman miller. and you know, it's a really interesting letter. it's a sort of announcement to mailer that there's this young kind of viral. fiction writer on the rise that's how he presented himself as the person who was writing the great puerto rican novel that i get the question. bill asks your recent nation piece referenced hunter s thompson comment to angus cameron facts are lies when they're added up. can you elaborate on what you think he meant by this? i think he meant that there are certain kinds of truths that fiction can get at that nonfiction can't get out certainly journalism, you know traditional journalism. objective journalism you know, they're gonna miss some plain truths and great example is nixon, you know. nixon knew how to play the game. he knew the rules of ejected journalism. and so he knew how to manipulate the press corps so did his his campaign staffers? and thompson saw that and realized that that you would you would better get out him and his essence. by fictionalizing it not worrying about the facts. and go for the truth of him in a way that you know fiction lends itself to in a way that traditional journalism didn't and another way to put it i mean you can get more theoretical about it. i don't think that was hunters interest in it, but you know later historiographers would say just getting the facts tray is not always going to get you to the truth. you know that every every list of facts is a theory in the weak sense. so, you know they you know, that's that's at theoretical concern, but i think hunter came at it from the point of view that fiction was better at getting at this stuff. than than traditional journalism, and i think that's what he meant. and certainly his critique and tim krause's critique. of campaign journalism suggested that you know, these guys are missing the real story. the real story is about nixon and and impress wrote for rolling stone. also, he wrote the boys on the bus. right, right. so, you know, i think what you know what they added and of course they end up writing the most memorable accounts of the 1972 campaign. again least factual and most accurate. i think tim krause's was probably more accurate. it was a more sustained look at the media and at shortcomings and blind spots. you know hunter was a little bit more intuitive about that i think but i thought he was an astute media critic. i think we have time for a couple more questions rm asks. what surprised you the most while writing this book? yeah to i guess two things one is you know, i the letters just at the end of the day, you know, i just think it's that his best stuff. you know, i i didn't expect to reach that conclusion. the other thing i've already alluded to you like to peter. what's that? he wrote the letters to what to editors to friends too? oh, you know he would ride him to llb, you know complaining about their latest product, but i mean it just took it to a level of art that um, oh he would write to the television station and grand junction, colorado. tell them about the garbage that they are airing and you know hilarious really, you know letters to sonny barger, you know letters to phil graham the washington post. i mean, it's just incredible how many people he wrote to and and came to know but the letters themselves are incredible so that that's one thing. i mean, i'd read the ladders but after you sit with them for a while you realize yeah this spot. i think he knew that too. he said it a couple times these letters might be my desktop. so that was one thing the other thing is and i had to sit with this a while too is he didn't know what he had. you know, some of the stuff was almost. accidental some of the success that he had. you know, these were fleeting opportunities and very serendipitous just pursuing this and then even after being successfully didn't always realize that that was his future. you know that the gonzo franchise was going to be it. here's an example. i don't think i mentioned this i should. his editor wanted him his editor and his age. wanted him to include the las vegas material in a second book that he was supposed to give to to random house. and he said no, i don't want that stuff. printed with my other stuff my serious stuff. it will ruin me. it'll make a fool adam. i don't want you know, that's why they that's why they called it nonfiction because he had a contract to write a book in one fiction. and that's why i came out separate. you know, and of course it became the most important thing maybe arguably that he ever wrote. but he thought you know, he thought if it wasn't handled just right that i would ruin him and he thought the same thing about the kentucky derby piece. i think that's really interesting. you know that a sharp guy who knew the business. you know an experienced. season freelancer you know didn't see that path. even as it was opening up and once he saw it, of course he couldn't walk away from it, and we i talked about that a little in the book as well. probably should have he was encouraged to you know kind of shed the guns out thing and and start writing in another mode. but you know he it just was really hard for him having worked so hard to achieve that success. and even though the celebrity was kind of a mixed bag in many ways. you know, he couldn't he couldn't let that go. and we have time for maybe one more question anika asks, are there any future projects you hope to tackle that developed out of the work that you did for this book? uh, you know the one word version one word answer. yes. i think i had another idea but the more i think about it, and i'm getting advice including some from david that i might want to keep turning on this a little bit. and because in many ways, you know, i realized again after i'd finished this whole thing that the last three books on ramparts grateful dead and a hundred thompson in our kind of informal trilogy about the san francisco counterculture of course if you if you add in the carrie mcwilliams, you know, it's he's not a countercultural figure. it's more about the you know left of center political journalism. but some advice that i've been getting from very knowledgeable people is maybe there aren't enough books about san francisco. i mean, there's certainly a lot of good ones and david's written one of the best. seasons of the witch but i think there's still some more here. and i think you know the fact that people have responded posi and i think, you know, the fact that people have responded positively, not just mine but david and others is a sign that there still some story, stories to tell, not just for us but for broader audiences as well. >> well, we look forward to that next book, and the thing i regret the most about these virtual event is you can't go out for drinksri afterwards. >> yeah. >> salt rain p check is due to you both, david, peter. >> a lot of familiar faces here. i don't have time to acknowledge all of them plus a lot of new ones and thanks for coming, all. really fun. >> watch tv now on sundays on c-span2 or find it online any time at booktv.org. it's television for serious readers. >> good morning. my name is sam abrams, i am a senior fellow graph american enterprise institute and a professor of politics and social science at sarah lawrence college here in new york. i would like to welcome you to the american enterprise institute and another edward and howl enhance book forum event. simply put, american journalism today is under attack in this age of intense polarization many major news outletss facere
New-yorkUnited-statesLouisvilleKentuckyNew-hampshireColoradoBostonMassachusettsCaliforniaPuerto-ricoCanadaTurkey [♪ theme music ♪] >> stephanie: hello, current tv land happy friday. representative jan schakowsky on the show today, and john fugelsang. jacki schechner >> yes good morning. >> stephanie: we are both helping the other member of our trouple melissa fitzgerald pack this weekend? >> we're going to try. >> stephanie: we could bring a special surprise i could steal the stripper pole and install it in here. [ bell chimes ] [ applause ] >> i think she would notice >> i would be like the days we used to broadcast from the playboy studio. >> stephanie: yes. >> there was a moment when she said i think the pole could fit in here. >> stephanie: yes, let's put the stripper pole down the list of priorities. >> exactly. >> stephanie: here she is jacki schechner. >> good morning, everybody, happy friday a hacker has allegedly accessed the email accounts of the bush family and the secret service tells cnn this morning it is invest indicating. the smoking gun broke the story and says it has been corresponding via email. the hacker says he has access to core upon dense send between 2009 and last year. one belongs to jim nance who is a long-time family friend. the smoking gun details links to many of the private correspondences and images taken. allegingly a picture george bush sent to his sister of paintings he is working on one is of him in the shower and the other one is of him in the tub. a knew poll shows that hillary clinton is very popular. something she could take into consideration as she figures out what she is going to do next. her favorability rating is at 61%. on the respect side the potential 2016 presidential candidate with the best numbers at the moment is senator marco rubio. 57% of people say they just don't know enough about him to have a real opinion. rubio is going to give the republican response to the state of the union address on tuesday night. we're back with more show after the break. stay with us. ♪ [♪ theme music ♪] >> announcer: ladies and gentlemen, it's the "stephanie miller show"! ♪ i'm walking on sunshine, woe ho ♪ ♪ i'm walking on sunshine woe ho ♪ ♪ it's time to feel good ♪ ♪ hey all right now ♪ ♪ it's time to feel good ♪ >> stephanie: uh-huh. yes. happy friday, everybody. representative jan schakowsky coming up on the big show today. and john fugelsang in tour number two. and the tickets flying out the window for the chicago sexy liberal show. vip is gone, but you can get your tickets if you hurry. hurry! for april 13th at the chicago theater. chris lavoie people think that conversations we have on the show are weird. >> right. >> stephanie: that's because they don't know what we talk about off the hour. >> right. my friend jeff in d.c. -- >> stephanie: my boy toy. >> yes he would like to buy you a pinball machine to put in your basement so you and he can recreate the scene from "the accused." >> that's hot. [ applause ] >> that's weird, a, because we are both gay. >> that's true. >> it may outshine cat videos on the youtubes. >> stephanie: and i have a new straight boyfriend i have been sexting with. which is weird. [ inaudible ] >> i don't think they had packers back then. >> stephanie: no. >> we're talking about participate's day. taft should get a week. president's week. >> stephanie: exactly. oh, lord, because with the straight guy it's in that testing phase to find if i'm that kind -- >> or the two drinks away -- >> stephanie: i'm not the lesbian porn gay you are hoping for. move along. i have to give judy the smartist girl in class award. steph gun owners say you can't compare insuring a gun to a car. in state after state my constitutional right to an abortion is being severely restricted. so why can be we impose the same restrictions on guns. there is one place to buy a gun. once you get there, you will have to walk by gun protesters then fill out personal details in the paperwork, and then you have to wait 72 hours to think about it. finally when you return in 72 hours you will again walk past the gauntlet of anti-gun protesters, and you will submit to rules one through five every time you want to purchase a gun. there you go. [ applause ] >> stephanie: judy arguing for some consistency? the gun argument. let's run that up the flag pole over at the stupid party. >> not going to happen. >> stephanie: speaking of the stupid party. >> what? >> stephanie: what is our latest thing from fox news? >> fox news claims that solar power won't work in america, because it is not sunny here like it is in germany. >> they are kidding, right? >> stephanie: no they helpful have a map. >> yeah, and america -- >> we have a southwest here -- >> it raining all the time in germany. there are no deserts in germany. >> yeah, germany is blue and green for the amount of sunshine -- fox news is stupid. >> stephanie: it's science for dummies. >> exactly. >> the entire southwest could fuel the entire can't next. phoenix by itself could generate enough -- >> absolutely. i have lived there. there's a lot of sun there. >> yeah. even at night the buildings blow practically. >> stephanie: no wonder this doll is such a big seller. >> the barn owl says -- the hippo says -- [ inaudible ] >> the [ inaudible ] says -- >> our top political priority over the next four should be to deny this president a second term. >> the chapel pan agency says -- >> i would like to stay here all day, but i got to go to vegas. >> the sheep says -- >> [ inaudible ] >> where are you specifically hearing these things? >> fox news. [ giggling ] >> stephanie: oh, happy children. the sound of happy children with their new toy. oh, can i -- [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> stephanie: i cannot get enough of the republicans in disarray story. >> i know. yeah. >> stephanie: donald trump karl rove is a total loser. why are people still giving him money. karl rove's strategies are the worst i have ever seen. money given to him might as well be thrown down the drain. >> this from a guy who lost money on a casino. >> use your hair -- head -- you know what i mean. >> stephanie: i have tried to be helpful, by saying please don't fight. you are all losers. please. the tea party crazies and the republican establishment. all of you. >> the whole lot of yous. >> stephanie: there is another one in "politico." republicans and fox news moving to purge the controversial political creatures it created. now the develop with his dismal image, and fox news scrambling to dim those voices sarah palin, and dick norris two of the most obnoxious players. and karl rove sidelined to help get rid of the tea party crazies. >> whatever! >> stephanie: is that becoming like jumbo shrimp electable republicans? [ phyllis diller laughter ] >> kind of. >> stephanie: okay. >> and you are a poopy head. >> stephanie: exactly. right. we have grover norquist going poopy heads. they are the pee wee herman heads. there are two huge unresolved impediments, suicide conservatives, who would rather lose elections than win seats with moderates. yes! yes! have some principle! i implore that! >> move further to the right. >> stephanie: yes, go. and the many groups on the hard right that requires a high degree of audacity and borderline shrewdness. throw in a third obstacle, loud-mouth personalities, and candidates who are hard to control. [♪ mysterious music ♪] >> stephanie: there are your monsters enjoy. they brought you abby normal brains. >> perhaps i could help you that hump. >> stephanie: i urge them to put the candle back. >> listen to me very carefully. put the candle back. >> stephanie: i don't know what that means but -- >> i have no idea. >> stephanie: it's better advice than you are getting from anywhere else. >> better advice that christine o'donnell gave you. >> i'm not a witch. i'm one of you. >> stephanie: a parade of crazies. [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> stephanie: steve king. >> the stunning steve king. >> stephanie: stunning steve king according to michellee bachmann bachmann. maybe he inadvertently climbed one of his electric fences. he is asking for cash to stave off efforts by the karl rove group. karl rove have already launched a crusade against me. [ baby crying ] >> stephanie: yes, he is the one that said that would work the electrified fence because it works on his farm animals. >> yes equating the two -- >> stephanie: that was not offensive to anybody. >> oh, boy. >> stephanie: wait, one more. fight! fight! fight! [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> a group of conservatives called on american cross roads to fire its spokesman. he went on the radio station and said he is a hater for opposing the new rove group. >> okay. >> stephanie: he said he is hater and also has a long soredid history. [ applause ] >> he looks like he smells of ginn-flavored cigarettes. >> stephanie: a number of activists, mark levin. >> stephanie: and tony perkins. >> no god! >> stephanie: no not that family. they want to fire the spokesman. fight! fight! fight. all right. seventeen minutes after the hour. we'll be back with eventually fridays with fugelsang. >> announcer: call steph now. she is easy. 1-800-steph-1-2. ♪ >> she gets the comedians laughing... >> that's hilarious! >> ...and the thinkers thinking. >> okay, so there's wiggle-room in the ten commandments is what you're telling me. >> she's joy behar. >> and current will let me say anything. >> only on current tv. ♪ ♪ you know sometimes i get the feeling deep down inside ♪ ♪ it's -- >> announcer: stephanie miller. ♪ because i'm a party girl because i'm a party girl ♪ >> stephanie: uh-huh. it is the "stephanie miller show." welcome to it. twenty-two minutes after the hour. 1-800-steph-1-2. mike in chicago. welcome. >> caller: hi, how are ya? >> stephanie: good go ahead. >> caller: i was just wondering how you can give somebody the smart person of the day award when they are talking about abortion -- >> stephanie: she was talking about her right to have an abortion. >> caller: but it's not constitutional. >> the supreme court decided that it is constitutional. >> stephanie: there are a lot of restrictions in a lot of states why should there be no restrictions on guns at all. >> caller: there are restrictions on guns -- >> stephanie: really? >> as part of a well-regulated militia. >> caller: technically she is wrong. >> stephanie: no she is not. the nra wants virtually no restrictions on gun ownership. literally -- they think it's okay if you are on a terrorist watch list to have a gun. i mean seriously? >> caller: here is the thing. buying a gun doesn't take a life, having an abortion takes a life. >> what is a gun for, mike? killing. it's for killing. >> caller: target practice. >> stephanie: practice for doing what? >> shooting at black helicopters. >> caller: inherently a gun doesn't kill anybody. you have to do that. >> it is a tool that people use for only killing things or people. >> stephanie: it is something that is legal to have, and an abortion is something that is legal to do in this country, period. >> caller: and that's fine. but she said it was in the constitution, and it's not. >> stephanie: she said it was her legal right was her point. >> it's not in the bill of rights. >> caller: that's my point. >> stephanie: if you had a vagina, mike how would you feel about having to have a transvaginal probe before you bought a gun how about that? >> caller: i don't see the point of that. >> stephanie: exactly! we have a winner! [ bell chimes ] [ applause ] >> stephanie: and thanks for playing proving our point exactly. [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> stephanie: oh, that was a thing of beauty. >> bless his heart. >> stephanie: bless his heart. he did not see that coming. all right margaret in texas you are on the "stephanie miller show." >> caller: hello. >> stephanie: hello. >> caller: i was just wanting to comment about the gun debate. >> stephanie: uh-huh. >> caller: actually there's -- the congress and there was one -- up to the president, everybody is talking about what to do about the gun problem. it's kind of ridiculous because it -- the government should have never let people have these assault weapon-type guns. we have lots of guns in the country -- >> stephanie: we did have a ban on those kind of guns, and then it expired. and this is what the result has been, so yeah. i'm just waiting for the nra after john brennan's testimony to say that everyone should have a drone. [ bell chimes ] [ applause ] >> well, yeah. >> as long as you don't have the hell fire missile attached it to. >> stephanie: exactly. you can have a drone but not with a hell fire miser -- >> miser -- >> stephanie: it's friday, i'm -- >> drunk. >> stephanie: yes. nate in asheville you are on the "stephanie miller show." hi, nate. >> caller: hi stephanie thanks for taking my call. >> stephanie: yes, go ahead. >> caller: i wanted to ask or suggest, you know, why are we cutting people's throats and other social supports to attempt to balance the budget? it seems like the framing of the conversation is going that way, instead of cutting the military budget. why is nobody talking about that. >> stephanie: go ahead, jim. >> yeah, why should they go after entitlements when we have this huge bloated military budget. >> caller: $750 billion a year in ridiculous. >> stephanie: i don't even know why we're arguing about things the military doesn't even say it wants or needs. >> plus stationing soldiers in europe to keep the soviet union out, i think that ship as sailed. >> stephanie: just one, dolph lumgrin. >> yes. >> stephanie: stephanie in utah. hi, steph. >> caller: hi, i love you guys you are great. >> stephanie: thank you. >> caller: i watched the news yesterday, and they were talking about, you know, the drone, and the one guy says . . . the american people need to know. we need to know what? i need to know if my neighbor who is very angry -- i need to know if he has a gun. i need to know if the guy on the bus sitting next to me has a gun. there is a need to know. and they are talking about terrorism and all of these kinds of things. what about upstate idaho, there is nothing but terrorists up there. >> stephanie: you are talking about white supremacists? >> caller: yes, they are as angry as terrorists. >> there are things besides white supremacists in the panhandle of idaho -- >> stephanie: there's potatoes. potatoes and terrorists. >> and occasionally batman. >> and some good skiing. >> stephanie: if you want to have french fries with a white supremacist, that's the place to do it. >> vats of boiling oil. algators and moats -- i made that part up. >> chewing up small children. >> stephanie: wearing boller hats. >> technically it would be illegal to bomb a united state -- >> stephanie: do we seem like fancy liberals with very little knowledge -- understanding of what is in the middle there. >> i have lived there. >> stephanie: right. idaho? >> i lived in idaho, but i lived in the mountain time zone, y'all haven't. >> stephanie: look at you. >> i'm fancy. >> stephanie: right back on the city slicker show. while your carpets may appear clean. it's scary how much dirt your vacuum can leave behind. add resolve deep clean powder before you vacuum to expel the dirt within your carpets. resolve's deep clean powder is moist. absorbing and lifting three times more dirt than vacuuming alone. leaving you with a carpet that's truly fresh and clean. don't just vacuum clean. resolve clean. ♪ >> announcer: stephanie miller. >> she has got me all tangled up in one big doughy love pretzel. >> stephanie: uh-huh. >> you have been hanging out with john lithgow. >> stephanie: yes. jacki schechner is here from her little health care corner. ♪ come on get jacki ♪ >> stephanie: good morning, jacki schechner. >> good morning. >> stephanie: so we played this sound bite in right-wing world yesterday this michelle malkin rant. she was saying -- she was -- >> she was saying we're all going to hell in a hand basket. >> stephanie: right. there are going to be no more doctors. actually, i think there's no more doctors. here it was. >> out here in the real world the effects of obamacare including the medical device tax that is cutting r&d and causing layoffs across the country in the most innovative firms, the fact that so many people who were intending to no longer going into medicine, thank you, brain drain, a consequence of obamacare, and doctor who were individual practicers are either bailing and retiring all together or going into concierge care. have you heard that term? do you know the people that are shutting down their practices, dropping insurance all together where now only the wealthiest can pay for care. congratulations obamacare. heck of a job. >> stephanie: so we tried to impact that little rice ball of nonsense yesterday. and i got a letter i sent to you. dede rights malkin is right. hey, steph the hospitals systems have brought up the big doctor practices. smaller doctors were not brought into their systems. medicare pays three times the amount that they pay a single doctor. i'm related to a physician. there is going to be a shortage of doctors. i'm very concerned -- blah blah blah. what are your thoughts on that? >> a lot of scooping generalizations, considering it doesn't kick in it will 2014. it's like chris brown did you read the account of his community service hours, where somehow he went back in time -- >> stephanie: yeah. >> that's what it is like michelle malkin's time machine where she is predicting what has already happened. there is a medical device manufacturer tax and if we're going to find money to help subsidize affordable insurance in this country it has to come from somewhere, so why don't we tax the people who make medical devices. but i don't think there has been any stifling of research and development. it's an argument they made to try to avoid the tax. medicare is one of the leaders when it comes to innovating new procedures and technologies, and they are not having any problems. >> stephanie: you and i talked about the fare mongering, like for instance they have said insurance companies are raising their rates. and you said -- blame the culprit, the insurance companies. >> i don't understand why people are so hesitant to blame the people who are actually doing the bad act. if your employer is cutting back your hours because they don't want to give you access to affordable health care blame the employer. >> exactly. it's like papa john's pizza is going to be $0.14 more i have to fire people because of obamacare. blame the companies, because you are a douche. >> yeah the top five health insurance companies made more money they did the year before and the year before that. why are we feeling sorry for the wealthiest? and the people who are making record profits and paying incredible salaries d health insurance companies don't provide any actual health care. and as far as doctors are concerned, i don't know a lot of people who are deciding not to go to medical school because they don't think it is going to be a lucrative profession. >> stephanie: yeah. we are having jan schakowsky and she had bernie sanders introduced this bill that is basically making corporations pay their fair share. >> there is a novel idea. >> stephanie: of course the republicans will be against this, because they are go you are hurting businesses and -- but you are right. we're having all-time corporate profits, and this is what i mean, whether it's healthcare of whatever it is, they run the same play every time. >> right. the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer. it's much harder to survive in the middle class in this country, to be middle class in this country. so what we're doing is inflating the wealthiest, and arguing to make them wealthier. there is no shortage of doctors -- it has been for years and years and years, try to get into a primary care physician anyway. there is a waiting list now. >> stephanie: right. >> there's no teams in that. the insurance companies prohibit you from seeing people now. we're trying to fix the system and it hasn't gone into effect yet. >> stephanie: i want to get in michelle malkin's time machine and go back and fix a few things in my personal life is that possible? >> can i come with you? [ laughter ] >> stephanie: all right. jacki schechner thank you, honey. >> my pleasure. >> stephanie: see you at the top of the hour, bye! [ applause ] >> stephanie: cynthia in north carolina. hi cynthia. >> caller: hi, stephanie i love you and listen to you all the time. i keep hearing people make comparisons between abortion and gun control. abortion is a decision that one person makes that only effects them, whereas gun control affects many, many people without any consent whatsoever. it is so not the same, and for people to keep bringing that up is absurd. >> it only make sense if you believe zygotes are people too. >> i got a letter from an attorney, women have reproductive rights based on the constitutional right. but like the right to bear arms it is not absolute. >> stephanie: yeah, why it is okay to place that many restrictions on that right when -- like she said. they go crazy when you try to place any restriction on gun ownership. >> right. >> stephanie: and that's what i can never understand is how is that legal? it's talking about invasions of privacy. >> yeah. >> stephanie: okay. >> i have a feeling if that does go to the supreme court, that will be an invasion of privacy. >> stephanie: yeah sticking things up the hoo hah. that's the legal term. >> right. >> stephanie: hi, chris. >> caller: i'm sorry i am laughing over the hoo hah bit. >> stephanie: right. >> caller: i'm a first time caller -- >> stephanie: if i were arguing in front of the supreme court, i would say -- >> there is no chance i am going to roll around naked in creamed corn with a bunch of yahoos trying to stick corn bits up my hoo hah. >> caller: i was thinking i have been around guns pretty much my whole life and why anyone would want an ar-15 which is a rotten knockoff of the m-4 carbine, is beyond me -- >> stephanie: whatever you just said there. that was like latin to me. but okay. you are speaking gin. okay. >> caller: one thing i have to correct you on is you can own machine guns in america. you just have to pay the taxes and do all of the paperwork. i mean -- i just don't understand the need for it. but the big problem with the assault weapons ban is it doesn't work. i works to one extent but what happens is you have to work on the manufacturers, because what they do is you make a list of what constitutes an assault weapon, and then the manufacturer goes oh well it can't have a bayonet and then we'll just make the exact same gun and take that piece off. and the assault weapon ban in california is bypassed by a peace of plastic that mountains to the stock and the trigger guard. to make it look like a one-peace stock. >> stephanie: chris, just the fact that gun manufacturers have absolutely no legal responsibility at all -- they have complete immunity, even if they knowingly sell guns to somebody that they know is a straw purchaser. how is that -- what product in america has complete immunity -- >> cars. >> well not the pinto. >> caller: well, okay. [ laughter ] >> caller: but it's the same concept i can't sue ford for somebody having a drunk driving incident. but i don't think it should be the manufacturer you need to hit for the straw purchaser, you need to hit the actual dealers because they are the ones that will be able to know whether or not somebody is buying 47 -- whatever. >> stephanie: right. the bad actors. chris thank you for joining us here on gun talk. >> caller: thank you. i love your show. you are one my liberal outlet here in kentucky. >> stephanie: oh, boy. quick close the drapes. thank you chris. whatever he said was like charlie brown's teacher, wa wa wa, wa wa -- because everybody can agree that other thing was a garbage gun any way -- >> whatever! >> geez. like having a [ inaudible ]. >> stephanie: the point is liberals no nothing about guns -- well this one doesn't. and i don't want to. la, la, la la. right back on the "stephanie miller show." >> announcer: red, white and steph. it's the "stephanie miller show." ♪ (vo) this afternoon, current tv is the place for compelling true stories. >> jack, how old are you? >> nine. >> this is what 27 tons of marijuana looks like. (vo) with award winning documentaries that take you inside the headlines, way inside. (vo) from the underworld, to the >> everyone in michael jackson's life was out to use him. (vo) no one brings you more documentaries that are real, gripping, current. rich, chewy caramel rolled up in smooth milk chocolate. don't forget about that payroll meeting. rolo.get your smooth on. also in minis. irene, drop the itch. we dropped the itch, you can too. with maximum strength scalpicin®. it's not a shampoo so you can stop intense itch fast wherever you are. i dropped the itch. free yourself from embarrassing scalp itch. drop the itch with maximum strength scalpicin®. also available scalpicin® 2 in 1, itch relief plus dandruff control. i think the number one thing that viewers like about the young turks is that we're honest. they can question whether i'm right, but i think that the audience gets that this guy, to the best of his ability, is trying to look out for us. ♪ ♪ going to going to get up to get down ♪ ♪ [ inaudible ] -- >> announcer: stephanie miller. ♪ to see if i can get some attention, stop ♪ >> stephanie: uh-huh. it is the "stephanie miller show." welcome to it. fifty minutes after the hour. 1-800-steph-1-2 the phone number toll free from anywhere. richard in illinois, you are on the "stephanie miller show." hi, richard. >> caller: i think a better compare to leave the abortion and gun control thing separate. >> stephanie: but they are both legal was her point. >> caller: yeah, but people are trying to use registration and things like that to make gun ownership so difficult to purchase -- >> stephanie: richard there are 300 million guns in america is it that onerous to get a gun -- >> caller: let's get back to the point. >> answer her question. >> stephanie: where would you find one? oh, there's one. >> caller: if a person wants to be promiscuous, they should have to go to a medical doctor and have psychological evaluations -- >> stephanie: people get pregnant by accident all the time that weren't promiscuous. >> caller: i'm talking about people who are engaged in behaviors that can be risky like owning a gun. a gun is designed to kill either an animal or a person -- >> stephanie: a doctor can't have the right to say you are a shut -- >> caller: i definitely need a little education -- >> stephanie: a doctor should be able to ask are you promiscuous before he gives a woman a legal medical procedure, but you are not allowed to ask a person if they are crazy before they buy a gun -- >> caller: i'm agreeing with many of the perspectives that democrats have on gun ownership -- >> the nra should agree on those too. >> caller: i am a member and i have written to the nra and told them i agree -- >> stephanie: it's a perfectly legitimate comparison. someone said why it is so right to so restrict this right, and the gun lobbyist are going for virtually no restriction -- >> caller: no, they need to grow up -- >> stephanie: i need to grow up -- >> caller: i'm not attacking you in any way. >> stephanie: yes, you are. >> caller: abortion is designed 100% to end a life -- >> stephanie: right and what is the point of guns? >> caller: i said i don't want to talk about it -- >> to end a life. >> stephanie: i don't want to talk about it? well, fine. >> so if a doctor is allowed to ask you how many people are you sleeping with then they should be able to ask a gun owner how many people have you shot? >> right, or how many people are you thinking about shooting with this particular weapon. >> stephanie: oh boy. joe in chicago. hi, joe. >> caller: how are you doing? >> stephanie: good. >> caller: i'm calling because i completely believe that the assault weapon ban is -- it's a joke. the high capacity magazine ban is a joke. i don't understand why they keep fighting over a cosmetic issue with a gun that isn't going to change anything. >> it's not cosmetic. if you have a large clip you can keep firing and firing and firing if you have a ten round clip somebody can tackle you before you kill another ten people. >> caller: first of all -- first of all you can tackle somebody while they are shooting and -- >> stephanie: they can shoot you -- [ laughter ] >> caller: let me finish. that's what i do every single day as a police officer. >> but most people don't have that training. >> caller: let me finish. a magazine exchange if you are proficient at it, you can do it easily in under two seconds. secondly a gun doesn't have to be empty and can still fire and you can do a magazine exchange. so i can have a bullet in my gun, and do what is called a tactical reload -- >> stephanie: you are a cop. most people don't have -- [overlapping speakers] >> caller: you don't have to be a cop to do that. anybody can do that. and limiting the number of rounding -- >> stephanie: you don't want to just make it a little bit harder for someone to, you know, be able to shoot i don't know 45 people in nine seconds. >> i don't think a cop would be against regulation. >> stephanie: i don't either. jim so you sense some malfeasance. >> yeah sure i work for the flameherman -- >> stephanie: it's like, when they say hi stephanie, i'm an independent and i listen to both sides, and i just happened to stumble across your show. >> on your facebook page someone said i'm a liberal democrat who owns a gun, and i will vote for anyone who votes against control of guns -- >> stephanie: uh-huh. >> i'm a baby killer -- oops. oh, i wasn't supposed to say that. >> stephanie: go on with a lamb and skidaddel. >> stephanie: yeah i'm a cop who think there isn't enough -- we need bigger magazines. hello ron. >> caller: hey, stephanie. i'm glad i got on your show and one thing i wanted to talk about is first of all i am a gun owner -- i'm also an assault weapon gun owner -- [♪ mysterious music ♪] >> caller: here comes the tone. >> stephanie: but i wanted to talk about the things that i have in common with yourself and some legislation that i think would be good. >> stephanie: okay. >> caller: one of them is the private transfer in state -- and i have got to be specific -- in state between one person and another. the reason why is i have done an out of state transfer with my dad, and this was in illinois and to do that, you have to go through a dealer take the gun, send it to a dealer my dad had to go and do the background check before he could get the gun. and that's just state to state. in state you can just give the person the gun. >> stephanie: yeah, that's the right that is the bad idea. right back on the "stephanie miller show." [♪ theme music ♪] >> stephanie: hello, hour number 2. oh, chris, somebody else is -- jacki we have someone else -- he -- hello a four star general. >> yes, as a 12-star general i too am against gun control. i can also fly and i know big foot personally. >> stephanie: and i am against gun control of any kind. >> i it's l likike e when s somomeoeone w wriritetes a a tete letter in all caps. they are immediately discarded. on the grounds that they are unable to hit a button. >> or maybe they are talking very loudly! >> stephanie: if you don't know how to get it off all caps you should not have your finger near a trigger. >> it would be interesting to see who is coordinating all of the [♪ dramatic music ♪] >> good morning, everybody. the ap reports that a group of four senator, two nra members and two who get an f from the nra are working together on a bipartisan deal that would expand background checks for all gun sales. 90% of americans are in support of background checks but the nra said it will refuse to support any changes to current law. right now federally licensed gun dealers have to run background checks, but sales from gun shows or other private transactions are exempt. joe schumer and joe mansion who does belong to the nra, and other republicans the hope is that meaningful legislation with bipartisan support will help bring around some republicans who would otherwise not want to support legislation that puts any new gun control in place. just how many people do belong to the national rifle association? wayne lapierre testified last month that his organization represents some 4.5 million americans. the "washington post" fact checker took a look at that claim and give it one pinocchio. it took a look at the membership through how many people receive the magazine through subscription numbers, because people get free magazines from the nra, and the number is closer to 3.1 million, a very small percentage of the 70 million americans who say they own a gun. we're back after the break. [♪ theme music ♪] >> announcer: ladies and gentlemen, it's the "stephanie miller show"! ♪ i'm walking on sunshine woe ho ♪ ♪ i'm walking on sunshine woe ho ♪ ♪ it's time to feel good ♪ ♪ hey all right now ♪ ♪ it's time to feel good ♪ >> stephanie: it is the "stephanie miller show." welcome to it. it is amazing how many 12-star generals there are out there that are against any gun control of any kind. hello, stephanie i just strumabled upon your show. wow. >> i listen to both sides of the argument. [ laughter ] >> stephanie: okay. some people think we should have drones and tanks, some people don't. >> speaking as representative as doctors for cancer. i -- what? >> stephanie: speaking as the head of firemen for pyromaniacs. back in the real world a new quinnipiac poll found 92% -- that's 90% almost. >> stephanie: more than 90%. >> stephanie: what? support the checks. including all of them that called this morning. the screening process is not very exhaustive here. you say what now? you are a 45-star general. yes, we talked to a cop, who was the president of cop for cop killers. >> as a navy general -- what? dammit. >> stephanie: 56% also support a ban on weapons. >> travis just typed you up a message. >> stephanie: i pay him for loosesy goosy. remember when jim used to screen? hi, okay. hold on. >> how are you? >> oh, dick in dayton, how we miss ye. >> stephanie: hi, jim, good morning, how are you wow this is humor from eight and a half years ago. >> yeah, early days in the show. >> stephanie: tommy in columbus -- >> speaking of columbus. >> stephanie: right? we were talking about the drone stuff yesterday. steph a team of american and iraqi [ inaudible ] estimates that 655,000 more people have died in iraq since coalition forces have arrived in march 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred. the deaths are in the millions and people are still dieing to this day because of our invasion into iraq saadam was a no good piece of [ censor bleep ], but he used to have al-qaeda supporters shot on sight. one of my best friend's son is in afghanistan right now, and if a drone strike helps to keep him safe, then go ahead and launch them drones. [ applause ] >> stephanie: that's tommy. again, i understand the concern, the other side of it like he says it is not a black or white thing. first let's dive into the right-wing world. why not? [♪ circus music ♪] >> stephanie: okey-dokeyy then. shawn hannahanty. we have a gunman on the loose -- >> it turns out that the gunman christopher dorner is a vocal supporter of some develop democrats, but he vehement antly opposes the nra but don't expect hear much about this on liberal news outlets, because it turns out dorner is a big huge fan of those networks. if he read a book by sean hannity or ann coulter this would be big news. >> he also mentioned he is a fan of the morning and afternoon radio host at the rush limbaugh radio station next doors. >> stephanie: oh heavens. fortunate no right-wing lunatics have ever done anything violent of any kind. >> right. >> stephanie: karl rove on o'reilly. >> this is about being a bad candidate. marco rubio is a strong conservative candidate -- >> i think he is a moderate republican. >> rand paul -- [ overlapping speakers ] >> look, we gave more money -- spent more money on behalf of these tea party candidates than any other group in america. and the groups criticizing us saying they are fake conservatives. i repeat we spent $30 million for tea party senate candidates. there is no group that comes close to what cross roads has done in terms of financial support for tea party candidates. >> you are the one being defensive shut up. [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> stephanie: oh, no, i hate stories like this. civil war they are calling it. brewing republican civil war between establishment types like karl rove and tea party activists. many tea partiers are wildly lashing back. citizens united president david bossy said the civil war has begun. yes, fight! fight! fight! [ applause ] >> stephanie: tea party groups -- i love this part -- and by the way, jim this is a spectacular idea -- tea party groups threatening to even back third-party candidates. yes! yes! [ applause ] >> go be free. >> stephanie: don't be rihanna, fight back. yes! go third-party all the way. if a tea party-backed group loses, they might support third-party candidates. [ applause ] >> do it! >> stephanie: more democracy the better. [ giggling ] >> stephanie: tea-and then a he. glen stanton from focus on the family. >> this is a -- a really pernicious lie of satan that the gender part of humanity doesn't matter, because the gender part of humanity is denying the distinctive part of males and females. and we need to understand that as christians. the other is kids don't really need a mom and a dad. they just need any configuration of loving adults who care for them. in fact think about this -- we all know about what hate speech is. the fact of saying a child needs a mother and a father will be deemed hate speech because that is a statement against the same-sex marriage and parenting. >> yes. it's all so clear to me now, state tan -- uh -- >> stephanie: i'm not going to say i'm gay anymore, i'm going to say i'm a pernicious lie of satan. [ bell chimes ] >> stephanie: okay. glen beck -- the blaze >> on the blaze. >> stephanie: right. >> i know it sounds crazy, but i was pretty convinced that president obama was a marksist i was convinced that the arab spring would end badly, i was convinced that the mortgage and the banking system would begin to collapse and eventually collapse. i'm convinced of all of those things. >> stephanie: hum. and that's why i'm building a big right-wing wally world. hurry get your time share now. >> six brain cells over texas. >> stephanie: okay. that's a good one. >> bingo. >> stephanie: nicely done sir. [ applause ] >> stephanie: again with michelle malkin. >> we have chris rock deemed obama as his father sandra fluke treating obama and her boyfriend, and jamie foxx who said obama is our lord and savior. these people need group therapy. >> stephanie: that's exactly what he said that president obama was her boyfriend. yeah. all right. [ applause ] >> stephanie: that was i am a slut and the president -- >> is not my boyfriend! >> stephanie: all right. >> we got an email. it says 4e8 low ms. miller my name is brentwood flint, i am a five-star general, [ inaudible ] i am very much opposed to any gun control whatsoever. i am also a liberal democrat. once you understand the issues you too will encourage gun ownership of every kind. [ applause ] >> stephanie: we have the smartest listeners in the world. [ laughter ] >> stephanie: okay. kathy in arizona you are on the "stephanie miller show." hi, kathy. kathy? >> caller: oh, hello. >> stephanie: oh, hi. >> caller: kathy in arizona? >> stephanie: yes, you are. >> caller: steph, i love you and your show. i took my daughters to see you in columbus. you flashed me. >> stephanie: oh, well. okay. classy with a k. >> caller: i think if anyone has testosterone level they -- has a high test test tone level they can't have a gun. >> stephanie: i like that. >> caller: the lower your t the bigger gun you can have the higher your t the smaller gun you can have. >> stephanie: you are so smart i'll going to give you a $50 sherry's berry's card. go to berries.com, click on the mic- mic-hi fan stephanie. right back on the "stephanie miller show." >> announcer: if your radio sounds funny, don't touch that dial. it's the "stephanie miller show." >> she gets the comedians laughing... >> that's hilarious! >> ...and the thinkers thinking. >> okay, so there's wiggle-room in the ten commandments is what you're telling me. >> she's joy behar. >> and current will let me say anything. >> only on current tv. ♪ >> announcer: stephanie miller. ♪ take a little piece of my heart now baby ♪ >> stephanie: it is the "stephanie miller show." welcome it to. twenty-two minutes after the hour. representative jan schakowsky coming up at the top of the hour. and sexy liberal john fugelsang. rocky mountain mike has declared this right-wing troll boy day. >> uh-huh. >> stephanie: all right. ♪ ♪ i have been listening to your show ♪ ♪ since i first sat on my remote ♪ ♪ i'm a small business owner who likes to listen to both sides ♪ >> stephanie: right. ♪ i have got some lame half-baked opinions like obama is a kenyan ♪ ♪ and a list of fox news talking points to get through ♪ ♪ like a right-wing troll boy ♪ >> stephanie: yep. ♪ talking out my ass about subjects i don't even know ♪ [ laughter ] ♪ and hogging up all of your phones ♪ >> this morning, absolutely. >> stephanie: yep. ♪ like a right-wing troll boy ♪ ♪ hogging up theary ways of cnn radio ♪ >> stephanie: yay. we need some right-wing colon blow. >> we do. >> stephanie: sam in new york you are on the "stephanie miller show." >> caller: hey, how are you doing? i got to say i'm just discovering your show. and i'm sorry for being so late but you guys are absolutely great. >> stephanie: oh, thank you. normally this doesn't go well for me. normally i'm an acquired taste, but thank you. >> caller: but since obama was last elected i think the republicans stopped taking their meds and they are just going full-out crazy. >> stephanie: it is obama derangement syndrome absolutely. >> caller: and it's sad because at this point in our country, i think young people are starting to understand the political forces, and they are seeing such a bad side of it and they have got such a bad taste in our mouth because of that. >> stephanie: they are in such disarray, because they created this cartoon of the president that normal sane people just don't believe. you know? >> caller: it's troou. it's absolutely true. but i done -- i hope it doesn't damage the future for young people. >> stephanie: yeah. >> caller: i hope young people still see this country as a great country. i served in the military for 15 years. i loved it. i don't want anybody to pee on my leg and tell me it is raining ever again. >> stephanie: that's right. since you are a soldier, and i am a liberal hippy. i would like to give you a $50 pro flowers gift certificate. >> caller: oh, thank you. although i was a sailor and basically held a mop for 15 years. >> stephanie: oh, that's okay. >> you didn't have to say that. >> stephanie: i gave him flurs for being a new listener. amy in columbus you are on the "stephanie miller show." hi, amy. >> caller: hi, how are you? >> stephanie: good go ahead. >> caller: all of the people who have called against gun control in the beginning act like the only reason women have abortions is because she is a slut but to talk about what they have to go through, it's maddening. and maybe if they want less abortions, maybe they should keep funding planned parenthood so they can give birth control and provide sex education in the first place. >> stephanie: exactly. that's the box they put women in. we don't want you to have birth control, but oh, you are got pregnant. you are a slut. >> caller: yeah, and you should have to wait 72 hours before you get a gun, because then you have to be sure if you want to kill someone. >> stephanie: yes. it's the drink filter. >> i'm angry! i don't remember who i wanted to kill. >> stephanie: think how many lives were saved in the day of muskets, by the time you were are like you are -- oh forget it go away. >> it's not worth the trouble. >> that was old timemy times version. version. >> and even if you did get it loaded you were unlikely to hit anything with it. and it wasn't good for fuselage when they had a bunch of guys shooting simultaneously. >> stephanie: that's right. osh you are on the "stephanie miller show." >> caller: good morning. thanks so much for taking my call. >> stephanie: you're welcome. >> caller: i am calling because i am so tired of these violence fantasy addicted fanatics controlling the decisions about guns. i am a former marine and former cop, i voted for several republicans over the years, but once the neo-con took over that party, all of the ideas got tossed out and i now consider myself a progressive. >> stephanie: right. >> caller: i'm calling because of this -- i guess troll, but perhaps former cop that was talking about wanting to allow high-cap magazines. and it sort of dove tails into this whole conversation about why we would allow things like high caps, why we would allow teachers to carry, or anyone in a school to carry, it doesn't make any technical sense, right? so we know when a magazine is changed in the case of someone who is very proficient it can happen in a couple of seconds. >> stephanie: right. twenty-nine minutes after the hour. right back on the "stephanie miller show." ♪ >> we're like -- >> announcer: stephanie miller. >> teenage bedroom, eight boys just waiting for it all to be over. >> stephanie: hi, john in california. hello. hi, john. >> caller: hello. i love your show. you are awesome. >> stephanie: thank you. thank you. >> caller: you are all kinds of awesome. >> stephanie: thank you. >> caller: maybe i'm missing the point but the debate seems to be primarily about what weapons we should haven't, and that's great. i think there's some weapons we should haven't. but ever since sandy hook we heard a little bit talked about early on, but we haven't heard -- what about crazy person control. >> stephanie: right. we need that too. >> caller: we have seem with serious problems but it seems as no one is talking about that >> stephanie: no we have. the president, everybody has said -- >> ptsd is a big factor for the soldiers coming back from afghanistan >> stephanie: for instance i do my part. if i dated you, you probably should haven't a gun. [ bell chimes ] [ applause ] >> really? >> stephanie: yes. [ inaudible ] you are on the "stephanie miller show." >> caller: hi stephanie. i don't walk michelle malkin, i don't even know her, but i heard your thing about her. just wanted you to know, leave it to texas for the greedy bone heads to lead the way. i have a brother who lives in dallas, this is happening in the dallas-fort worth, houston area it's called concierge doctors. it's like a knee-jerk reaction just to prove a point. >> stephanie: exactly. michelle malkin's time machine as we said. >> yeah. >> stephanie: she is warning us of all of the horrors. >> say nothing of the fema death camps. >> exactly. >> stephanie: okay. so -- [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> who is secretary of the treasury! jack bening? >> stephanie: i think so think some of our callers are kind of a medium gun nut. s like for instance, aurora theater shooter victims harassed by conspiracy theorists. >> oh, my god. >> you made it up. i knew it. >> stephanie: some survivors of the mass shooting have been relentlessly harassed by conspiracy theorists who believe the shooting never happened. they have contacted victims in this case, and have even gone so far as to contact other members of the public and posted their residents online. some residents of newtown connecticut have also been harassed by conspiracy theorists there -- >> oh my god. >> stephanie: now you have been through that, and now you are going through this. >> wow. >> stephanie: okay. all right. so the john brennan hearings were yesterday. there was a bit of a hubbub. >> there was. >> stephanie: john brennan yesterday. >> i think there is a misimpression on the part of some american people who believe we take strikes to punish terrorists for past transgressions, nothing could be further from the truth. we only take such actions to save lives. we need to make sure that there is an understanding, and the people that were standing up here today, i think they really have a misunderstanding of what we do as a government, and the care that we take and the agony that we go through to make sure that we do not have any collateral injuries or deaths. >> stephanie: yeah okay. john den nan again. >> i clearly had the impression when i was quoted in 2007 that there was valuable intelligence that came out of her to interrogation sessions. i must tell you senator that reading this report from the committee raises serious questions about the information they was given at the time, and the impression i had at that time. now i have to determine what -- based on that information as well as what the cia says, what the truth is. >> stephanie: yeah, because at that time, dick cheney was on television every day saying water boarding worked. >> right. >> stephanie: and people who have read all of this intelligence say this is not true. they said this is a misimpression. so john brennan. >> i never believe it is better to kill a terrorist than to detain them. we want to illicit the intelligence from them. >> stephanie: somebody else was saying that it sounded like he was for killing instead of detaining. and he corrected this. this is the aforementioned code pink hubbub. >> john brennan [ inaudible ]! >> if i might ask -- >> [ inaudible ]! >> i'm going to ask that this room be cleared right now. will the capitol police please come in and clear the room. >> stephanie: that was senator feinstein. >> yeah. >> stephanie: huh? >> hum. >> stephanie: okay. >> it's just interesting, you know. >> stephanie: i had this debate, i was on governor granholm's last show -- [ applause ] >> stephanie: i can't breathe without her. she might be up for a cabinet post, though. i'll just keep calling her over and oversee if she'll take my call. >> no, she won't. >> stephanie: no but we had a really interesting discussion this is just not a black or whitish you. but she believed that the president is fighting a smarter tougher war on terror and george bush with one bomb took out several blocks in iraq bought he thought saadam might be there or whatever. and talk about a dumb war. mickey in south dakota you are on the "stephanie miller show." hi mickey. >> caller: yes. howdy everybody. first off i wish i could come see you guys in chicago. i can't financially afford it but -- >> stephanie: we have some $25 tickets on sale -- >> it's getting there from south dakota -- >> stephanie: yeah. >> caller: but at least i get you on direct tv. >> stephanie: oh, yay. >> caller: these men -- and i mean all men no matter who the guy is -- they do not have a right to tell a woman who to do with their body. >> stephanie: yeah. >> caller: okay. a woman's body is their body. so how dare any man say that this woman cannot be an abortion especially his damn idiots who run this country and are put in politics. first up i have an older sister and a younger sister. my older sister got married got pregnant, the heavens opened up, and god gave her the best baby in the world. she never cried a bit. but think baby sister got knocked up at the age of 14. and at the age of 14 she was so undecided. so that child when it was born cried the first three years it's a life because she knew she was an unwanted baby. so anybody who gets raped and gets pregnant fact and they want to have an abortion how dare any man try to tell them how to run their bodies. no man on this planet is going to carry a baby for nine months first of all. >> stephanie: thank you, mickey i appreciate it. ♪ let's hear it for the boy ♪ >> stephanie: you don't have to control my body unless i want you to. and then it's hot. [ ♪ patriotic music ♪ ] >> stephanie: this was a really good letter by judy. gun owners say you can't compare driving and insuring a car to gun ownership. i agree. in state after state my constitutional right to an abortion is being severely restricted. why can't we impose the same restrictions on gun ownership? there will only be one place you can guy a gun. when you choose to buy a gun, you have to walk past a gauntlet of gun protesters. then you have to fill out paperwork with detailed personal questions of your live. and then you have to wait 72 hours to decide if you want to buy the gun. number 4 you will be sent to an evaluation. number five when you return after 72 hours, you again have to walk past the gunt let of gun protesters, and you have will pub mitt to rules one through five every time you want to purchase a gun. [ applause ] >> stephanie: just saying. >> yeah. >> stephanie: forty-five minutes after the hour. right back on the "stephanie miller show." >> announcer: what other act of unmitigated evil shall the republican party undertake this week. >> announcer: it's the "stephanie miller show." >> jack, how old are you? >> nine. >> this is what 27 tons of marijuana looks like. (vo) with award winning documentaries that take you inside the headlines, way inside. (vo) from the underworld, to the world of privilege. >> everyone in michael jackson's life was out to use him. (vo) no one brings you more documentaries that are real, gripping, current. now find the most hard core driver in america. that guy, put him in it. what's this? [ male announcer ] tell him he's about to find out. you're about to find out. [ male announcer ] test it. highlight the european chassis 6 speed manual, dual exhaust wide stance, clean lines have him floor it, spin it punch it, drift it put it through its paces is he happy? oh ya, he's happy! [ male announcer ] and that's how you test your car for fun. easy. i think the number one thing that viewers like about the young turks is that we're honest. they can question whether i'm right, but i think that the audience gets that this guy, to the best of his ability, is trying to look out for us. ♪ >> announcer: stephanie miller. ♪ going to make me lose my mind up in here, up in here ♪ ♪ y'all going to make go all out, y'all going to make me act a fool up in here, up in here ♪ >> stephanie: uh-huh. it is the "stephanie miller show." up in here. >> up in where? >> stephanie: up in here. >> oh. >> stephanie: hello, larry. >> caller: hi stephanie, how are you? >> stephanie: i just talked to rolland sexy liberal tour director, and he said there is a run on milk and eggs and everything you need to make french toast. >> stephanie: right. what is happening. >> caller: we're up near syracuse, so we haven't hardly gotten anything yet. >> well you are used to it up there. >> caller: oh yeah nine months of winter, and three months of bad skiing. [ laughter ] >> caller: i was talking with your producer when i first called. i spent 25 years as a government attorney prosecuting among other things child abuse and neglect cases. and this thing with the abortion restrictions and especially this transvaginal probe just doesn't make any logical sense. and i have been thinking about it, these guys aren't conservatives or republicans, they are a bunch of perverts is what they are. >> stephanie: yeah, it's about controlling women and shaming them, right? >> caller: to a degree sure. but just to be able to write into a public document the worlds transvaginal gives them a thrill. >> stephanie: yeah. >> caller: and i would be willing to bet -- and this is a little radical, but i would be willing to bet that a good portion of them when they do that, visualize that procedure, and they are the withins holding the probe -- >> stephanie: yeah i think the minute we enact a bill that so get see alice you have to have a colon probe. >> caller: that's right. >> stephanie: you are absolutely right. have you had your transrectal invasion yet? okay. i'll check the box. [ laughter ] [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> stephanie: the post sandy [ inaudible ] invasion said wouldn't happen has begun. remember there was a snow storm the year i was there, and then they stopped garbage collection and the rats came and then the crows started eating the dead rats, and i'm like i got to get out of here. [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> stephanie: gawkers said the rats -- [ inaudible ] the experts were wrong. the rat invasion of new york city has begun. driven from shorelines the rodents came inwards in droves. >> wow. [ applause ] >> stephanie: and another storm on the way, and everybody is like, oh let's make french toast! [ applause ] >> stephanie: oh, the benghazi hearings are still going on? >> oh, yeah. >> you can't just willie nilly send f16s there and blow the hell out of the place without knowing what is taking place. >> well, we did that in iraq. >> stephanie: right. >> lieutenant colonel ralph peters looking at you. >> stephanie: and secretary clinton having to answer ridiculous fox lies. i loved that look on her face. there was no -- no there was no video feed -- >> hillary clinton: turkey? >> stephanie: all right. senator graham. >> did you ever call him and say mr. president it doesn't like we have anything to get there any time soon. >> the event was over before we would move -- >> it lasted almost eight hours. >> stephanie: i declare i will be on the fainting couch with a mint julep until i get an answer. >> i will not be ignored. >> stephanie: senator graham again. >> caller: if the president shows any curiosity about how is this going? what kind of assets do you have helping these people? did he ever make that phone call? >> stephanie: he said as he slammed down his 1947 telephone. what? it's a tiny one. [ [ bell chimes ] >> stephanie: you can only do so many things. jennifer -- jennifer? general? dempsey. >> caller: they had me call the embassy to see if they wanted me to extent the special security team there, and was told no. >> stephanie: what? first of all the republicans are the ones that -- they said no to funding for extra security. >> exactly. >> stephanie: senator [ inaudible ]. >> your responses, general dempsey are very inadequate and in my opinion the same kind of inadequacy for the security that you provided at that consulate. [ phone bell chimes ] >> stephanie: everyone the president nominates are troubling. >> i'm troubled but i haven't found anything troubling about you yet but i'll find something. >> stephanie: corky in rochester, new york. hello, corky. >> caller: hello, stephanie. >> stephanie: hi. >> caller: there's a guy here that i'm sure you know. he had a 15 year old kid call in to his radio show and defend the right to own magazines and assault weapons, and i thought oh, my god what is this kid hearing at his dinner table? he is 15 years old. >> stephanie: yeah. >> caller: it's affecting the children, these guys. >> stephanie: yeah. >> caller: why don't they just shut the hell up? >> stephanie: okay. all right. mary in missouri. >> caller: i have to get in on this on abortion. i'm so tired of these comparisons, and they say abortion is taking a life. that's their opinion. i'm an atheist. i don't feel for me it's taking a life at that stage that you get abortions. you are not. it's not fair for them to try and tell me i have to go get an invasive procedure if i choose to have an abortion not because i have been promiscuous but because it happened. >> stephanie: right. married couples get pregnant that don't want a child. obviously there's a host of reasons. that's why that kind of moreizing doesn't belong in the debate. >> you are right. you would have to be a little more detailed. a zygot is not the same thing as a third-trimester fetus. >> stephanie: yeah a zygot can have a mortgage according to the personhood amendment. >> that's right. >> stephanie: let's go to dennis. >> caller: good morning. >> stephanie: good morning. >> caller: i'm an nra member and i'm a veteran, and the nra leadership does not speak for us. they just want our money. but they are full of propaganda and i think they are paranoid and they need mental health. >> stephanie: yes. >> caller: and as far as i'm concerned people don't need a gun for anything. >> stephanie: yeah well when wayne lapierre talks about mental health, he knows what he is talking about. [ cuckoo clock chimes ] >> video games kill people. not guns. >> stephanie: by the way the nra has a new video game. [♪ magic wand ♪] >> stephanie: check out our new app. fifty-eight minutes after the hour. right back with representative jan schakowsky, and john fugelsang on the "stephanie miller show." [♪ theme music ♪] >> stephanie: hello hour number 3 tv world. we have representative jan schakowsky coming up and john fugelsang. it was holiday valley bridge where i went skiing. how was skiing in miami? >> it was fabulous. >> stephanie: i picture you as one of those old-time water skiers. >> oh, with the bathing cap. no, i didn't even see snow until i was 15 years old. >> stephanie:' that is so cute. you are such a precious little beach bunny. >> i am at heart. >> stephanie: did you go water skiing? >> i did not. >> stephanie: jim wanted a picture for his screen saver. >> don't have one. >> stephanie: all right. here is jacki schechner. >> happy friday everyone. the u.s. postal service lost $1.2 billion in the last three months of last year but compare that to the $3.3 billion it lost in the same time frame the year before. it wants to stop saturday letter delivery starting august 1st, a move it says will save it $2 billion a year. so why is the postal service hemorrhaging money? in one word, congress. in 2006 a congressional mandate requires that the postal service prefund healthcare benefits for future retirees. it hit its $15 billion debt limit last september and isn't allowed to borrow anymore. karl rove is warning ashley judd that when it comes to political attack ads there is more where the first one came from. they attacked the actress as a radical hollywood elite. rove tells fox the opening act is just that a starter, and all together the spot ran him less than $13,000 to create and post online. last year's the political organizations affiliated with rove spent an estimated $105 billion in total on ads, and advocacy. we'll have more show coming up after the break. stay with us. rich, chewy caramel rolled up in smooth milk chocolate. don't forget about that payroll meeting. rolo.get your smooth on. also in minis. [♪ theme music ♪] >> announcer: ladies and gentlemen, it's the "stephanie miller show"! ♪ i'm walking on sunshine, woe ho ♪ ♪ i'm walking on sunshine woe ho ♪ ♪ it's time to feel good ♪ ♪ hey all right now ♪ ♪ it's time to feel good ♪ >> stephanie: yes, it is. happy friday. six minutes after the hour. 1-800-steph-1-2 the phone number toll free from anywhere. we were talking about senator sanders and representative jan schakowsky's bill earlier, now look who is here. >> what? >> stephanie: good morning representative jan schakowsky? >> good morning, stephanie. >> stephanie: you are just my favorite. a lot of times you present a bill, and people think well that just seems like such common sense. >> i know. that's why it is going to be so hard to pass in the house of representativetives. yeah. >> stephanie: yeah, like your public option reduction act. >> right. >> stephanie: what a great idea. everyone is for it right? >> everyone out there is for it especially when you pose taxing corporations against cutting social security and medicare. this is a slam dunk. and so we want to -- you know, say we can raise $590 billion from -- from corporations that are mostly outsourcing jobs or putting their corporate headquarters in the cayman islands, and it's there. >> stephanie: it's called the corporate tax fairness act to stop corporations from sheltering income in the cayman islands and shipping jobs overseas overseas. what is not to love about this bill? >> there is one office building in the cayman islands that have 18,000 corporations that are registered there. there is a lawful that serves as a registered office for 18,757 entities, and so they don't have to pay the same taxes as they would pay if they were actually located in the united states of america if their headquarters were there so one of the things that our bill says is that they would absolutely have to pay some taxes. >> stephanie: and it would take away incentives obviously for corporations to move the jobs overseas, or shift profits offshores, because the u.s. would tax their profits no matter where they are generated, right? >> that's right. right now if they are generated overseas they are called deferred. basically it means unless they bring those profits home then they don't have to pay taxes on it. it would end that sort of deferred tax payment. if their management and control operations are primarily located in the united states -- so instead of corporations paying next to no taxes, which many have done, that is zero taxes, we would be able to collect more from these corporations. >> stephanie: and as you say it raises more than $590 billion in revenue over the next decade. it will increase investment employment, and wages in the united states, and as senator sanders says corporate profits are at all time high but we'll hear the same thing from the republicans, right you are going to hurt these companies. this seems to just again make so much practical sense. what are you going to hear on the floor? >> one of the things they are going to say is actually corporate taxes in the united states of america are higher than in most other places. and that is true on paper, except that in fact the average that they actuallily pay is about 12%, and of the 83 of the fortune 100 companies in the united states use these off-shore tax havens to lower their tax rate and it's just -- it's completely unfair and so we're going to get the money that is really owed. look, these are not tax breaks that are offered to ordinary americans. i know very few who actually have stashed their money in a post office box -- >> stephanie: i don't even know where the cayman islands are. >> oh, yeah. and they do it in bermuda too. >> stephanie: right. but you got to go through the triangle to get there. >> that's true. >> stephanie: but it's loopholes, that's all you are talking about, right? >> that's right. the republicans would seem absolutely come -- comfortable saying all of these old folks -- by the way the average social security benefit for women are about 13,000 a year. these are the people that the republicans are comfortable going after, but you are right will squeal when we talk about the corporate tax fairness act. the american people are with us. i'm relying on the good sense of the american people more and more these days to really frighten the congress that if they do things like go after veterans benefits or -- or social security benefits they are going to pay at the poles and i think that's going to happen. >> stephanie: were you at this retreat yesterday, that the president spoke at -- >> i ran it. >> stephanie: oh okay. >> so cool. >> not only do we have the vice president, then the president, the former president, bill clinton, but steven colbert just left. >> stephanie: owe. >> yeah. >> stephanie: the president said it won't be smooth there will be frustrations, but he said if you keep focused i expect nancy pelosi will be speaker again pretty soon. echoing what you just said the american people are largely with us on all of these issues, and we have got to go for it. >> the republican congress right now is less popular than head lice. it's true. there was a poll head lice colonoscopies, root canals -- still more popular than -- oh gosh what is that -- std -- >> stephanie: chlamydia? >> no. >> stephanie: not the one okay. >> anyway they are at risk and even they are saying and worried about it that if they really botch this -- all of these fiscal debates that they are going to be in trouble in 2014. well, they are doing a really good job at botching these by targeting absolutely the wrong people in our world, and everybody i think is catching on, and so we'll see, although eric canter -- i don't know if you saw. he gave a speech that sounded really similar to the president's inaugural address. hit all of the points. they are trying to remake themselves. so we'll see. >> stephanie: yeah, i hear the president said to you guys yesterday, that he has heard the republicans aren't interested in a temporary delay unless the argument includes additional spending cuts. he said i have to tell you that's an argument they want to have before the court of public opinion, it's an argument i'm more than willing to engage in. >> and that's where we are going to take it. the president also said that he is going to take that argument also on behalf of democrats that are running for congress. he is going to be campaigning for us, which is very exciting. and we have a very systematic plan on targeting of -- where these people are on the wrong side not only of history, but i believe the wrong side of even those in their district. if they think the conservatives or tea partiers are for dez mating veteran's benefits medicare, social security they are not. >> stephanie: that's right. i'm enjoying the fight between the republican establishment and the tea party, aren't you? >> i think it's great. i think it's great. it's wonderful. >> stephanie: i told them not to fight. they are all losers. representative we found that statistic. republican congress less popular that a chlamydia infected cockroach that gets stuck in your hair. >> all right. that's it. >> stephanie: thank you representative. >> thank you steph. >> stephanie: i love her. [ applause ] >> stephanie: i hate when that happens. because they let you see -- you can see the camera during a colonoscopy. and you are like doctor is that a -- >> in your colon? what? >> stephanie: hey, everybody it is friday. >> yeah, you get to follow that john. >> how do i follow that. a chlamydia infested cockroach during a colonoscopy. good morning guys. >> stephanie: john fugelsang i don't think if you heard the box office has exploded since our sexy liberal tickets went on sale. >> hey, chicago you say twice isn't enough stephanie miller sexy liberal comedy tour is making a return visit to the chicago theater on april 13th. witness john fugelsang, hal sparks, and catholic girl gone wild, stephanie miller as they reunite for another night of inspired comedy. >> we are on a mission from god. >> come see the tour that sparked a number 1 album, and its own documentary. it's more fun than a bag of vipers. that's the sexy liberal comedy tour on april 13th at the chicago theater. ♪ sweet home chicago ♪ [ applause ] >> stephanie: whoo! all right. john fugelsang? >> it's going to be a fun night. >> stephanie: right. >> yeah. >> i enjoyed your dick cavit interview. >> oh thanks. >> i did an show with him. >> oh, wow. it's always amazing to shake hands with somebody who shook hands with groucho. >> i got him to tweet once and he hads like 6,000 followers just for one tweet and he has never done it again. i'm going to try to get him to be on a panel for "viewpoint." >> stephanie: wow. [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> stephanie: representative jan schakowsky are you back? >> i forgot to tell you something. >> stephanie: oh, my god. [ laughter ] >> steven colbert was telling us that his sister is running for congress as a democrat in south carolina, and john lewis and james clieburn are working on an endorsement today. we'll see if that comes through. >> oh, cool. >> stephanie: that's awesome. >> yeah. >> stephanie: i saw a funny thing that he couldn't support her as his fictional character. >> yes. but he gave john lewis a great big hug when he said they were going to come up with an endorsement. >> stephanie: oh that's awesome. >> john lewis of the united mine worker's union. >> stephanie: no. >> her name is elizabeth colbert bush, and what is amazing about this is that if she gets this she is going to run against mark sanford. >> stephanie: oh that's hilarious. i'm guessing that will be featured at chicago's sexy liberal show. nineteen minutes after the hour right back on the "stephanie miller show." >> announcer: the station where the hand basket to hell leaves from. it's the "stephanie miller show." ♪ >> she gets the comedians laughing... >> that's hilarious! >> ...and the thinkers thinking. >> okay, so there's wiggle-room in the ten commandments is what you're telling me. >> she's joy behar. >> and current will let me say anything. >> only on current tv. ♪ >> announcer: stephanie miller. ♪ all fired up ♪ ♪ all fired up ♪ ♪ all fired up ♪ ♪ all fired up fired up fired up ♪ >> stephanie: it is the "stephanie miller show." twenty-four minutes after the hour. chris in oakland writes e-gads it has begun, the rat carcasses by large birds and all it is going to take is have one of those dead rat infected birds to bite someone and that will be the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. >> we have to arm the rats come on. >> stephanie: how is new york john fugelsang? >> new york is disgusting. this morning when i woke up to a screeching baby at oh-god oh clock. [ baby crying ] >> yeah, it's delightful. and he is almost 11 months old. you know how much he weighs? 161 pounds! >> stephanie: wow. >> these babies will abuse you, and poke you, and slap you and we take it. babies are chris brown. they wake me up. no snow it's very nice outside. and then suddenly it starts pouring, and it's like charlie sheen's dressing room it is everywhere, and then it all turns to rain and slush. it is so cold and disgusting in new york right now. it is supposed to be like two feet by the end of the day. >> stephanie: awesome and screaming infants. how is the lovely mrs. fugelsang's vaginal rejuvenation going? >> she had a c-section, steph. >> stephanie: oh. okay. don't give me that look. sarah, you are on with john fugelsang. >> caller: hi, steph. i want to talk about this gun-control thing. >> please. >> stephanie: please. >> caller: i live in tennessee and i swear i'm thinking about moving, because the state legislature here is trying to push a law to allow guns no matter if the businesses say no guns allow at schools elementary schools, churches any kind of business and the governor -- the only thing he has said here -- you know -- to -- about it is that -- well i'll have to look into it. i don't really think that we need guns at schools. and his daughter is a teacher! >> uh-huh. >> stephanie: yeah. >> wow. >> if we could get a time machine, we would get wayne lapierre from the '90s to be opposed to that. >> stephanie: yeah, we should all have drones. >> you want to talk about the john brennan hearings today? i would love to. >> stephanie: yes. >> the arkansas senate voted last week to allow guns into churches, and i thought good someone is looking out for the alter boys. but, no. >> stephanie: they can treat the communion hosts like clay pigeons. >> once you get away from that whole faith thing it's a pretty good idea. >> jesus should have been the prince of packing a piece. [ gunfire ] >> stephanie: jay, in illinois you are on with john. hey, jay. go ahead, 30 seconds. >> caller: yes, in illinois the guy on there earlier, in illinois we have to go through extensive background checks to be lawful gun owners. you have to have what they call a [ inaudible ] card which is issued by the state police and then you have to go to the gun shop and fill out the atf paperwork, and then you have to wait 24 hours. >> but not in indiana. >> stephanie: that's right. back with more fridays with john fugelsang on the "stephanie miller show." ♪ ♪ >> was it just me or was that stripper look exactly like -- >> announcer: stephanie miller. [ scooby-doo's "huh?" ] >> stephanie: it is the "stephanie miller show" thirty-four minutes after the hour. pattive writes steph and the mooks do you know what is sweeter than the sound of a child's laughter silence by not having any children. i am child free by choice. [ applause ] >> yeah, they are terrible but i'm also codependant so i'm stuck with it. from kevin in chicago. be the first to take out a zygot mortgage. receive our first transvaginal ink dispenser. >> i'm pretty tired. i think i'll go home now. >> oh fred thompson you hack. >> stephanie: john fugelsang president of parents against infants -- we have your friend tina dupuy on here who is the head of -- it's kind of a niche group, people who don't want to be shot. but we with tell we're getting the right-wing trolls. hello, i'm a 17,000-star brigadier general who is against gun control of any kind. [♪ mysterious music ♪] >> you should go on the internet they are evil. >> and they all seem to have an egg for avatar. >> yes they do. and they have haste illy put up profiles. this guide todd [ inaudible ]. >> stephanie: yeah, the super bowl tweets. >> he does it for attention, so you just have to block him and ignore him. and often [ inaudible ] sound pictures he was sending of his -- his -- member. and one of those great patriots and i think men who do that don't deserve to have a camera or email or penis. but it turns out his best work is behind him. [♪ circus music ♪] >> stephanie: there you go! john fugelsang marco rubio will be giving the response to the state of the union. the media idolization has reached genius. the republican savior. here are some fun facts. [♪ fun-facts music ♪] >> yes. let's hear it. last year it was mitch daniels. >> mitch who? >> stephanie: he works in a tree. >> oh, he makes those yummy cookies. >> yeah, he was going to save the gop last year. >> stephanie: yes, that little guy. [♪ fun-facts music ♪] >> stephanie: so number 1 refused to raise the debt ceiling, cosponsored and voted for the balance the budget amendment, if the amendment were in place during the last unemployment crisis, unemployment would have doubled, number 5 doesn't believe in climate change, he voted against the motion to debate the violence of women act. believes employers should be able to deny birth control to their employees. and urging americans to deny equal rights, and wouldn't say whether same-sex couples should receive production under the immigration law. >> oh there's more than that. would you indulge me? >> stephanie: yes, please. >> he tweeted yesterday there is only one savior and then he felt the need to hashtag jesus. >> stephanie: oh, thank you. >> and he revealed his list of favorite songs. paul ryan said he had rage against the machine as one of his favorite bands. >> stephanie: and the machine was like hey you are what we are raging against. >> he had cold play and even the tupac song changes, but he said one of his favorite tunes was click by kanye. it's a great song but the lyrics actually say ain't nobody fresher man my mother click click click, my crew deeper than wu tang and then calls out george tenant. so that's his favorite song. >> this is it. >> don't play it. you will get in trouble if you play that song. >> these are all radio friendly songs on the commuter -- >> i'm just looking out for you guys. >> stephanie: unless it were a trap. [♪ dramatic music ♪] [ laughter ] >> stephanie: all right. by the way -- [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> stephanie: how cool is this. paul mccartney after serenading a tram with his classic hits he began belting out hard day's night as he travelled in a streetcar, he was initially taken for a look alike. bun louisiana resident said everyone was just ignoring him really, he started to sing directly to my friend evelyn and she was quite uncomfortable at first, and then we realized it was sir paul mccartney, and we were just in shock. [ applause ] >> yeah, he is a very very very cool person. i had the great pleasure to work with paul a couple of times in london and new york, and that's the most shocking thing about him is how real he is. he is really real. >> stephanie: you can forgive them for thinking it was probably a crazy hobo on the train. oh, my god! it's you. okay. [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> stephanie: other celebrity news simon cowell, to launch a new cooking show. >> another great. >> stephanie: yeah, he wants to broadcast a competition reality food show, so find the best home cooked meal with the winning dish being sold in top supermarkets. >> you call this water? i'm sorry. i'm not refreshed. >> that was the worst souffle i have ever seen. it is flatter than the ratings for kitchen nightmares. >> stephanie: a little pitchy. >> although he hasn't been on "american idol" in five years. >> oh, he hasn't? really? i'm happy to have not noticed. >> barbara walter will be returning to "the view." she fell and cut her head got a concussion, and then came down with chickenpox. he called into the show and said hello, my dolls i miss you. i talk to you ever day, i join the hot topics. i do everything. >> stephanie: that would be the most entertaining reality show with barbara walters at home with chickenpox just talking to the tv. she is all delayous. >> chickenpox doesn't make you delaireouselairous. >> that sounds like the child of mitch mcconnell and barbara walters. >> i can't get chickenpox through my shell. >> stephanie: disney has awarded him 37 million shares as part of the deal for the purchase of lucas films. >> he is going to make enough money off of this deal to buy disney. >> fun wow! >> stephanie: i think i'll be knocking on his door. >> he is literally giving billions of this money to education. it's just amazing. he is giving back so much after taking so much away from us. [ laughter ] >> and now they are going to make five movies. the new trilogy, and then hans solo, and that bobo thed. >> who said that? >> stephanie: i don't know who that is. >> well, you are a girl. >> i don't know who that is. >> well, that is appalling. you probably had friends and had a life as a child. that's all i can think. >> i remember when star wars came out. my dad went to go see star wars my mom went to see the spy who loved me and my sister and i went to see herby goes bananas. >> herby goes bananas was a terrible movie. >> yes. [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> stephanie: jim christopher walkins say his number one piece of advice is to buckle up. >> he -- [ overlapping speakers ] >> what kind of gay are you? >> stephanie: betty davis also said fasten your seat belts. >> fasten your seat belts it's going to be a bumpy ride. [ applause ] >> stephanie: there you go. >> walkin he has like three movies out right now. and he is wonderful doing a dramatic role playing a non-psycho path in this film i saw about a classical group. >> oh, that's right. he is working a lot. >> he plays cello in it. >> stephanie: all right. forty-five minutes after the hour. fasten your seat belts, it's almost the end of the show. we'll be right back. >> announcer: it's the "stephanie miller show." (vo) next, current tv is the place for compelling true stories. >> jack, how old are you? >> nine. >> this is what 27 tons of marijuana looks like. (vo) with award winning documentaries that take you inside the headlines, way inside. (vo) from the underworld, to the world of privilege. >> everyone in michael jackson's life was out to use him. (vo) no one brings you more documentaries that are real, gripping, current. he broke all the rules of journalism and insisted on writing the final chapter himself. of all the hours in all his days, these are the ones you'll never forget. ♪ ♪ she's got greta garbo [ inaudible ] ♪ she's got -- >> announcer: stephanie miller. ♪ eyes ♪ >> stephanie: fridays are sexy liberal john fugelsang. what did you say about eric cantor? >> did you enjoy his rebrand of the republican party? >> stephanie: yes. >> he rebranded the entire gop without changing any of the ideology. more facelifts than a desperate house wive's reunion show. in 2010 it was the young guns campaign. remember how that sounded like gay porn. and in 2011 it was the cut and grow plan. and yesterday he made the making life work plan. >> stephanie: steve you are on with john fugelsang. hello, steve. >> caller: hey, there. i just wanted to make a quick comment about a guy who called in a couple of days ago who somehow tried to mix the abortion issue with gun control. whenever i get into an argument a virtual argument on facebook with my gun nut friends, eventually i work in the fact that apparently i'm pro life and they are not, and i can't tell you how upset that gets them. >> stephanie: yes. >> wow. >> caller: i'm pro life because i believe in gun control, and then of course they bring up the fact that i'm pro choice and i say yeah i'm pro choice, and i'm pro life. >> stephanie: yeah, and then their head explodes and the conversation is over. [ explosion ] >> and most of them support the death penalty anyways, so they are pro some life. >> stephanie: yeah. dan go ahead. >> caller: i wanted to talk about the supposed cops that were against limiting the number of rounds in a magazine. >> stephanie: yeah we were suspect that they were not cops. >> caller: yeah, i'm a guy who says if it takes you two or more seconds to change out, even at 185 pounds in high school i could cover ten yards in two seconds. so i'm one of the guys that will put him on his back. >> stephanie: yeah as jim was saying earlier this isn't a fantastic call scenario this is how it happened. john as a lot of people have said that's the only chance sometimes you have. and don't you want to give our kids that chance to run away. >> exactly. wayne lapierre is essentially fighting really hard for the american maniac community's right to not have to reload mid-massacre. >> we have too many live children. >> how did they get the aurora shooter? when he stopped to reload. >> stephanie: exactly. tina turner [ inaudible ] pass port because she can't stand the rain. and canada denies randy quade's request to stay. [ buzzer ] >> stephanie: wait a minute. that is not a good trade. >> get out eh. >> but we get to keep dennis wayed. >> dennis quade is good. >> stephanie: who was in charge of that trade? what the hell? camella in new hampshire you are on with john. >> caller: hi, stephanie. there should be a lot more strong women like you in the world. >> stephanie: right. >> caller: and the reason i'm calling is i wanted to share my gun experience. i grew up in california and i'm 49 years old and never found a need to have a gun in my life. now i live in new hampshire, and i went in and they told me ooze long as i didn't have a felony i could get a gun in an hour. but what they don't know about me is an i'm a recovering alcoholic, and bipolar. and it is amazing how they could give me a gun within an hour being the person i have because i have no felonies. >> stephanie: yeah. >> it just shocks me. and the man showing me a gun showed me a beautiful little pink gun. and i guess that was the gun that killed a child because he thought it was a toy. >> stephanie: yes. thank you honey. [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> kim kardashian tweeted a photo of her new diamond-encrusted gun she bought. >> stephanie: jim here is a random fun fact for you -- [♪ "world news tonight" theme ♪] >> stephanie: de niro wore socks during sex. >> little bit. >> stephanie: i just have a visual of that. the actress model who wrote a [ inaudible ] affair with norman miller has [ inaudible ] another book about other sex partners including robert de niro who wore his socks to bed. >> so i can pretend i'm wearing a condom except for on my feet. little bit. little bit. >> stephanie: one more for you jim, halle berry took her top off and dunked her bear breasts into a bowl of guacamole on the set of a movie. it is a scene of a couple who played truth or dare and she just improvised. i should have try at my super bowl party. [ laughter ] >> stephanie: john you had some thoughts about the john brennan hearings. >> yeah. to me he was like the most thoughtful soft-spoken reflective man who would kill us all with his bare hands, but i want to believe a lot of things. i was really disappointed no one asked him why all adult males are considered combatants, i was surprised why no one asked him about the cia's new definition of the world "imminent" because now it means not imminent. and i was surprised by his unwillingness to say water boarding was torture. i think he was great -- i know he is against water boarding -- >> stephanie: yeah, he said he had the impression in 2007 that intelligence came out of water boarding, but since then there has been serious questioned raised about the information i was given at the time. >> yeah. [overlapping speakers] >> stephanie: why would they keep secrets. >> he is against water boarding but he is against killing americans before they have had a
ArkansasUnited-statesLouisianaTurkeyCaliforniaRussiaSyracuseNew-yorkWashingtonDistrict-of-columbiaReunionArizona >> host: we've been talking with tim gay, author of "assignment to hell." thanks, tim. >> guest: thank you very much, appreciate it. >> next on booktv, paul dickson presents a collection of words popularized by american presidents. the author's collection includes warren g. harding's founding fathers invoked during his 1920s presidential campaign, theodore roosevelt's use of the word muckraker in a speech critical of specific journalists, and military industrial complex delivered by president eisenhower during his final presidential address to the american public in 961. 1961. this is a little under an hour. [applause] >> thank you very much. i've been playing around with words for a long time, and i think when i was a kid, one of my -- i wasn't that athletic, and i wasn't that, you know, smart in various ways, but i could always go home and memorize a couple words, so i would learn words like ap nettic and things like that -- apathetic, you know, which for the third grader was a lot of of fun. and as i got to be an older person, i got really fascinated by doing some tricks with words. one of my favorite exercises was one time when my kids were young, you know, they worshiped the guinness book of world records, and in those days in order to get in the guinness book you had to either eat a bicycle or push a peanut across iowa with your nose to get in this book. so i was looking at the guinness book, and i came upon the word that had the most meanings in english which was set, s-e-t. it had 137 meanings, you know, a set of of numbers, set of tennis, etc., etc., but set meaning set your hair, but it was the word with the most meanings. so i realized that the soft underbelly of the guinness book was language, was words. and so i started working on a collection of words for drunk, and i have o now gone through about seven or eight collections. in fact, there are people in this room who have actually added to the collection in the last 72 hours. but we're now up to almost 3,000 words, synonyms for drunk. and what was interesting about it was it was not meant to be a celebration of what is a social ill, but it was to show the phenomenal sort of what did the english is, how many euphemisms, how many different terms we have. and what really got to me was looking at all the other people who had collected lists of drunkenness from their time; tom payne, benjamin franklin, a.m. bros bierce -- ambrose bierce, langston hughes had all been sort of fascinated by the fact that at their moment in history there were all these euphemisms that were used for drunk. and, of course, in doing the book i had many, many helpers, some of whom are in this room tonight, that they go back to shakespeare, and a lot of them are unscrambling euphemisms in shakespeare. for example, when falstaff comes into the room and he's coming in the like this squinting, and so that was the word for drunk. so a lot of what i've been fascinated with, i've written a number of books, but more than a dozen are books about language, and they tend to be -- they range from the very serious books like i've done a baseball dictionary which has been in three decisions and is now about 10,000 entries which is more than most people want to know about baseball, but i look upon language as a recreation, as something, you know, i guess the term is recreational linguistics which is the ability to use languages as a placing, what drives at the cross word puzzles and scrabble games and things like that. language has pleasure, language is recreation. if you're drowning in yale help, that's the most, you know, efficient use of language, help. but beyond that a lot of it's word play. and one of the reasons i still -- i can wow 4-year-olds with knock knock jokes because they're based on word play. but this book got me started and, again, i've done a number of books on language. this one really got me started a while back when i made sort of what i thought was an interesting discovery which is the word "founding fathers," the phrase founding fathers did not go back to the early days of the republic but, in fact, was created by warren g. harding for the 1920s front porch campaign. he actually used it once in 1918, but it was really his phrase was "founding fathers," referring to those people who wrote the constitution and created the country and created its fundamental set of values and laws. and, um, before that i couldn't -- at first i'd pinch myself. i just couldn't get over the fact that there was no earlier use, and i used all the databases, and i actually got somebody the legislative reference service at the library of congress to actually back me up on it. can you guys find an earlier example of it? at first there was sort of a deep breath saying, oh, my god, this guy's nuts, but the idea was nobody could find it. then somebody said the founding fathers of harvard university or something, but it was never used as a scripter for the -- descriptor for the people who framed the constitution. it's interesting, also, that it really didn't take off until 1941 when a book was written called "founding fathers." but it was immediately adopted by both sides of the aisle although some of the early uses when you go back and track when it starts being used in the '20s more and more often in replacing the word "framers," it's often used as a negative. the founding fathers never meant for us to have pastel-colored postage stamps, or the founding fathers never meant for us to help poorer nations at the time of war. it was used sort of giving these people who framed the constitution sort of a collective veto on certain things. and it was an interesting use of language. and then i got fascinated with harding because harding's misuse of the language was so intense that warren g. harding -- i mean, h.l. mencken created a term which was a description of how badly harding murdered the language. but harding had a interesting ability to create words like bloviate meaning what i'm doing right now, orate, you know, upontously. but it was also his word he picked up a very old word that had really no use at all except in chemistry which was normalcy. normalcy existed before in chemistry for a state of normality, but it was during the 1920 front porch campaign which is another term that came out of the harding years that we first heard normalcy and the return to normalcy. and, of course, immediately everybody threw up their hands, and the language police went crazy and said this was not really a word or anything. but it gradually has worked its way into the language. often after there's a major calamity or a major setback in this country, somebody will say the return to normalcy. and people don't really bat an eye lash anymore. it's now considered a proper word. or not -- it's not a proper word, it's a word. aaron mckeon, probably one of our great lexicographers said the other say somebody said something wasn't a word, and she said, no, you got it wrong, you don't have to have a pedigree to be a dog. a word is still nothing more than a unit of communication. but the -- so i really started looking into this. did a lot of, you know, research, a lot of looking into the presidents. and the storyline in this, it's an a to z book, so you can go and dip in as you see fit. some of the stuff is funny, some not so funny. but really what the nexus of the whole thing is if you look back at the beginnings of this country and the whole concept of language and of what this country was, there's a letter that's written between benjamin franklin and noah webster, the dictionary maker, in which they talk about acts of resistance, acts of rebellion, acts of response to the british. and they're talking, they use various words to talk about it, but they're really sort of american acts to sort of identify who we are as a people. and what are involved in these acts? one of the acts is public libraries. benjamin franklin has come to this country, his father's come to this country smuggling a bible, smuggling a bible into the seat of a chair and tells benjamin at one point that one of the things, most important things you can be is a printer. and this is the idea that when england at that time when his father came over, when the franklins came over that in england there were only two printing presses, one in oxford, one in london. and franklin was very interested in these acts, these definitions of who we were as a people. so when franklin creates a free library in philadelphia, this is seen as an act of resistance, an act of -- against the british. it's a thumbing of the nose against the british. when noah weber the goes and literally -- webster goes and literally crusades for literacy, this is his way of not only to sell dictionaries and can books that he, spelling books and such, but it was also part of these acts against the british. and copyright is another. weber the's one of the early people with this. and the early presidents and are all very much aware of this. jefferson probably is the lead on this. jefferson creates words with great, great abandon. he just loves to create words. he loves to sort of tuck a jibe at the british by creating words. 1840, much later, but he writes -- i'm sorry, 1820, he writes a letter to john adams, and he says, you know, our duty as americans is to neologize, to create new phrases. so jefferson creating all these words, and some of them are -- he creates the word ottoman. not for the empire, but for the foot stool. he creates -- there's just, there are 114 words now in the oxford english dictionary which are credited to jefferson either as the coiner or the introducer, the first one to actually bring them into the mainstream. and the list is really sort of fascinating. pedicure is his word. pussy -- i'm sorry, that's teddy roosevelt. monocrat meaning a person who believes in a single rule. the one he does probably the most with and becomes the most egregious to the purists and the language police is the word "belittle." he creates the word belittle, he knows what he's up to. he knows he's creating something that's going to be very disturbing. noah webster himself loves the word. in fact, one of noah webster's teachers at yale writes noah webster a letter about the word "belittle," and it extends -- the british hate the word to the extent that when fowler comes out in 1938, fowler is still attacking the word as sort of a piece of american trash that jefferson did to create sort of, disturb the british. the very early days of language from the jefferson, adams, washington, they all were aware that they were creating a new language. and one of noah webster's precepts was that the united states -- the american language would be descriptive rather than proscriptive. it would not be the king's english. it would be the language of the trapper and the farmer and the tradesman. and so when webster really starts to go at the dictionary he's mustering out at the end of the revolutionary war and he is in a camp in newburg, new york, and there's groups, large groups of people mustering out of the service at that point. and there's groups of cockney, and there's groups of irish and their brogues, and there are indian, american indian groups and all these other groups, people speaking haitian, german, all these people in these fields, and he's wandering through the fields and the campfires are burning, and webster says we're going to have to figure out how to make this one language. we're going to have to create our own american language. so he's right from the beginning he's very adealt at picking -- adept at picking up indian words like creek instead of brook which is the kind of thing the english are very upset about. raccoon was probably the first one. john smith introduces the word raccoon. it was an algonquin indian word which means he who washes his face with his hands which was what the raccoon did. so these were the early or words. and they would pick up words like sleigh and coleslaw from the dutch and cafeteria and hacienda from the spanish. and these were, again, this was seen as acts of defiance, and it was very clear right through, you know, madison comes up with his own -- i mean, madison maybe the greatest word that madison came up with, "squatter." he needed a name for somebody who was illegally possessing somebody else's property. john adams came up with a bunch, caucus which he gets from an indian term, speck meaning to buy something on spec, speculation. quixotic meaning in the manner of don quixote. that was adams. john quincy adams when he was of pretty much, when we came to the alien and sedition acts, he came up with the term -- needed a name for what was going on, and he came up with the word "gag rule." that was his. so you see in the early presidents this ability to sort of watch things and write them down and use them. so when george washington in the oxford english dictionary if you go in there today and look up the word "tin can," you will find that that word is credited to george washington. bakery and bake were washington's words. washington came up with these words at a very early time when the bakery was a bakehouse like a smokehouse. it was a distill erie and there was a bakehouse, but then in washington's diary it became a bakery. so this was part of our early -- and, of course, the fact that we had webster to write this all down is rather amazing. webster comes up with, noah webster comes up with his first dictionary in 1807. there are two words that really, really bother the british x those are "congressional" and "presidential." and they say they have no reason to be in the dictionary. and between 1807 in the first dictionary and his second dictionary in 1820, webster goes to england and walks the streets of england picking up language. and he knows this this is the stuff that is not in the english dictionaries at that time. the samuel johnson had not picked them up. he saw the language of of the street as part of what was part of language. so this -- there was this sort of democratic background of this thing. and as it goes along, there are things that, for example, jefferson creates which are hysterical. i mean, he comes up with twistification which sounds like something that george bush would come up with. [laughter] but there's some just wonderful things. and, of course b, his -- preble on the seedier side -- probably on the seedier side, and i'm relying on the oxford english dictionary to tell you this, but the cop la story verb to shag is credited to thomas jefferson in one of his diaries. and it does not appear in the any slang dictionary for another 30 years. and this, again, i'm using the be all and end all for sort of early nailing down when a word was created, so austin powers did not create the word "shag," it was thomas jefferson. [laughter] you can tell, by the way, that i have a lot of fun doing this. the other challenge was just looking at how this progressed. you can look at different presidents and see who really was clever, who was just remarkably clever, who was really, you know, the smartest. i mean, along the way there was president johnson, the first president johnson is the first one to come up with the phrase and the concept of racial discrimination. it was the first time discrimination had ever been used in the distinction between race, religion, etc., discrimination in the fact as opposed to judging the size of eggs or something, being discriminate. and so by giving it a name, by giving it a fame it started -- a name it started to have it own life. the ability of a president to name something, i'm jumping ahead a little bit, but in 1934 franklin d. roosevelt was going to give his annual address to congress and was from day one in this country the president at the beginning of the year would give an address to the nation and to the congress. and roosevelt in 1934 says, oh, i'll give it a name, calls it the state of the union. so a lot of these terms which are sort of created by presidents we think are, um, they are from day one. in fact, they're ones that have been added later. and, again, some of them are just wonderful. i mean, i'll just jump to a couple. zachary taylor created the term "first lady." he applied it to dolly madison. that was the first anyone had ever used that term. he said the first lady of the land. benjamin harrison was "keep the ball rolling." i'm jumping around a little bit, but it's sort of fun. woodrow wilson had potomac fever which was something harry truman love offed to quote. -- loved to quote. watchful waiting was very closely associated with woodrow waiting first in his relationship to the dictatorship in mexico where there was a lot of feeling that we should go in and intervene in mexico where there was a fairly active and ugly dictatorship afoot, and wilson said, no, this this is watchful waiting. we're going to wait and see. and once the world started, world war world war i, that was attributed back to woodrow wilson, that he was using watchful waiting. for whatever reason, watchful waiting is now used in, um, diagnosis of certain illnesses where rather than treat them immediately, you go through a period of watchful waiting. but, so that's one of the more serious ones. some of them are capricious and interesting. you know, mckinley, william mckinley, the spanish-of american war is starting. mckinley's got a telephone, he's got the telegraph, he's got a room full of maps, and he clears out the room, sets up the telephone, sets up the telegraph, pulls down the maps and declares this is my war room. that term does not exist before then. still jumping around, you know, it's coolidge, calvin coolidge comes down from massachusetts where he's put down a police strike in boston, and he is, he goes to the convention, and he is the law and order candidate. and there are political buttons out there on ebay and stuff that says, you know, calvin coolidge, the law and order candidate. that was his -- the phrase had been used before, but it was the first time it had really been used as a political motto. the, um, again, there are to various people i just have the list as the best people. there are a couple of thing that are in the book that are not american, that came from overseas. disrailly is the one who created dark horse which is very much a part of american political language. and one that sort of threw me a bit was the first person that used social security was winston churchill, he used it in 1906 in an essay about modern society and what has to be done. he's the one that creates the term "social security." i, um, there are some people that really did well with it. i think if you're sort of going down a list of who were the most powerful presidents in terms of language and innovation, i think you've got to have, frankly, roosevelt's got to be way up there. not only the phrase "day of infamy," iffy, 1937 he's talking about the supreme court, and he said some of the decisions of this supreme court, if you ask me, they're iffy. and the next day the lead in the papers was, in fact of, the president created a word today, iffy. and for five or six years i remember finding a columnist in the tribune said pardon me if i use the president's word, but this is an iffy preposition. and, of course, slang gets them in trouble. woodrow wilson is a great slangster, and one of the things, there are editorials. he said let's get a move on, and he'd say this, and he'd use gal instead of girl. he's use a lot of almost like tin pan alley's kind of slang, and he was really lam basted for using slang. and he would come up with these aphorisms, a man's leafage depends on his rootage. [laughter] and, you know, the guardians of the language were just appalled by this, by his use of this. >> he just love today play around with language. and presidents do get in trouble. i'm not even going to mention george bush in this breath, but the biggest flap is probably -- well, teddy roosevelt does write a letter to the head of the english department at harvard university saying that he believed we should be splitting infinitives, and that created its own furor that he got involved in that. [laughter] eisenhower's second inaugural, he gets up, and he's -- eisenhower's quite articulate and comes up with some wonderful phrases, domino theory is his, he comes up, of course, with the military industrial complex which rings down through the decades. but in the second inaugural he said, um, before we can finalize our plans and the word "finalize" was such a discordant tone that there were editorials all over the country. there were people wringing their hands. burr begin evans had to do a special column or for parade magazine defending eisenhower for turning, creating this verb out of the word "final." and they hadn't even heard prioritize yet. [laughter] but it was just this angry sort of reaction to his use of that word that was astonishing. and eisenhower did have a nice, very nice way of talking. um, but -- and created some nice stuff. counterproductive is eisenhower's. the first example they can find of the word counterproductive which sounds like a military, bureaucratic term. it sounds like something somebody would say in a war room. this is, doing this is counterproductive, it doesn't get us anywhere. i'm building up to who i think is the king of them all, so there's a little bit of -- um, lyndon johnson had some nice ones, but lyndon johnson picked up a couple -- lyndon johnson, again, i'm using every authority i can find, but i'm sure he picked this up. pressing the flesh was a johnsonism. i'll be down there pressing the flesh. and ladybird gets credit for motorcade. that doesn't exist before she comes up with motorcade, and it's picked up by "time" magazine. there's no at least written example of that being used before that. um, richard nixon has some nice ones. he -- depending on your point of view -- but silent majority is his, deleted a coinage of his speech writers when they're going over the records of the watergate, their use of term instead of saying censored they used the term expletive deleted which became its own sort of curse word. another one which was very interesting at the time, created quite a stir was when he talked about, started talking about winding down the war and winding down seemed to be sort of -- you know, we're winding up, it was few to american ears and created -- it was new to american ears and created some real response at that time. george h -- yeah, george herbert walker books came up with some nice ones. new world order was his, thousand points of light. he got that from somewhere else, but he made that his own, he popularized that. george bush came under a lot of criticism for a lot of his terms, and i did -- i took them all at face value. i went and looked them up. in other words, i didn't -- cheap shot is to say that these were all mall apropose riches and he was entirely off the wall. but i did find that indebter, which was one of his, according to the oxford english dictionary it entered the english language in 1893, and the word resonate came into the establish language in 1531. and one of the words that ha's always attributed -- that's always attributed to him which is strategy was actually a creation of saturday night live, and he never did say it. but the one you can already hang on him is misunderestimate, but there have been several pretty well known people who write about language online, including one of the top writers in england, who said, um, he said it actually works. it's to underestimate by mistake, which he says happens to all of us, especially with building contractors. so it may be one of those words like normalcy which will gradually become more and more acceptable. um, i guess i've got to jump here. anybody else i got to mention in passing. um, but i guess i've got to go to the king of them all has got to be without question, and in the back of the book i pick the neologist in chief, and even though jefferson clearly wins on volume, it's got to be teddy roosevelt. roosevelt just has, he just goes up and down. i mean, his is parlor pacifist is his, becomes parlor pink. weasel words is his. meaning euphemisms, words that are the meaning of which is like a weasel going into an egg, it sucked all the meaning out of it. they're weasel words. lunatic fringe is his, and he comes up with it in reference to the, he sees the armory, the famous abstract expression, beginning of abstract expressionism in modern art, and he sees the duh champ nude descending, and he says in everier moment there's a lunatic fringe that takes over and destroys. roosevelt has got, um, he's got invisible government is his, a secret bond between government and business. he's got malefactors of great wealth. he's got great white fleet which is what he dubs the group, the fleet that'll go around the world. nature fakers is his. he starts reading some of these nature writers who are attributing a phenomenal powers to animals, you know, wolves who lead pioneer children out of the woods from starvation and animals with codes of of behavior and animals which act with biblical precision. and, of course, he comes up with this term nature fakers and he crusades against them. earnest thompson is one of the nature fakers, and he goes after him. the -- one of my favorites which is, actually, william sapphire is the one who proved this before he died was, who a lot of this stuff is, of course, deeply involved with of sapphire, and i did some, a lot of research for sapphire and some of these terms including mulligan with eisenhower. i'll come back to that in a second. but the term that teddy roosevelt which was loose cannon meaning not in the nautical sense of the cannon on a carriage floating around on the deck of a ship killing, taking the legs off seamen, but the loose cannoning being the errat, you know, the person out of control. that, you know, the person who's the loose cannon. so you can go on with teddy roosevelt. you go through the book, you'll find -- the other one which was quite curious was good to the last drop which he invents. he's at the maxwell house which was a famous restaurant and hotel in nashville, tennessee, and they pour him a cup of coffee, and he says, ah, this is good to the last drop, and before you know it, they're promoting this coffee all over the country, it becomes a national brand using teddy roads svelte's slow began. -- roosevelt's slogan. he may be the first and only president to write an advertising slogan. so i think the next question, of course, that everyone wants to know is how does our present president, president obama, what has he tone that's interesting? he's yet to really make a mark. he's not done -- he's done a couple interesting ones. shovel-ready is really his. it's hard to find that anywhere in the first t.a.r.p., he said we've got projects that are shovel ready. sonoma get done's his. ing he -- that was a totally spontaneous, this was in the 2011, the monster snowstorm that came through here, and he gets, he leaves the white house, and he gets to -- everything's shut down, the whole city's shut down. he gets to a hotel to give an address, and he looks out and says this is snowmageddon. the other one that's his, too, i think in 2011 he used the term sputnik moment. we came up -- in his state of the union special saying this country needed a challenge, an outside moment that would regenerate our interest in research and development and in education and stuff, as had the sputnik launch in the 1957. it may have been to a younger generation it may have been too diffuse, because sputnik is probably not as big a thing as it is to an older generation, but that was pretty clever. but most of his slogans, most of his abilities so far have not, have not really caught on. the first summer he was in washington he said, and it's a strange construct, but he said in august he said this is the time when washington becomes all wee weed up and things are hard to get done. no one really knows what it means, but it's somehow applicable. [laughter] so on that low note, i think i'm going to see if you guys have any questions and want to talk about these things. yes, ma'am. >> i'm surprised that you didn't mention the president that we popularly think are the most eloquent; ronald reagan and john f. kennedy. were they just good at regular words, or did they -- >> oh, no, they had, i mean, john f. kennedy had wonderful phrases, and the new frontier was his. but they were more or eloquent in sense of their ability to give speeches. ronald reagan as well. but they didn't have the -- it wasn't that they created a term that was, that just was with everlasting. i mean, some of them have interesting, you know, you go to new frontier, you go to truman, truman had some nice things. i mean, snollgoster, it was an old american term. truman had, um, i know that wasn't your question, but they've all got stories. my favorite trumanism was at one point he was having a lot of trouble with congress, and he invoked the term "trocar." trocar is a metal trumpet that's used to relieve pressure in organic places. and in the prairies in missouri when a bull or a cow or bovine animal would eat too much clover, there would be a huge amount of gas inside the, inside the animal, and they would insert this instrument called a trocar. and they would create a whistling sound that would cascade along the prairies. and truman wrote to one of his aides saying that congress was a trocar. [laughter] and the buck stops here was truman's. i'm jumping around a little bit. which is actually a sign that somebody, it's an illusion to poker and the buck, meaning the pot. and it actually was a friend of his had bought it from a prison gift shop where one of the prisoners had carved it on a piece of wood, and he hung it above the desk. but, again, there is eloquence. i didn't want really address presidential eloquence, but i think that, um, i was looking more for the phrases, the keywords. and the origins. i mean, it's interesting, i think i've got five pages in the book on new deal because this is franklin roose svelte's new program -- roosevelt's new program. and roosevelt, every one of his -- all of his aides, three of his aides actually claim that they invented the term. but roosevelt is meeting with one of mark twain's distant relatives, and he insists, tells twain's distant relative, um, that he got it from a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court in which the hero is trying to, the characters in the connecticut yankee, the serfs, the pez sames are -- peasants are subjugating the rule of king arthur and not doing very well, and he stands up and says you guys need a new deal. and that was from connecticut yankee. and the other one, i'mty depressing for a second because i'm working on another book about words from famous writers. if you'd remember the old laugh-in show, they'd always start with a picture of mark twain. and that's because in connecticut yankee he is also the first one to use sock it to me. they're about to hang -- they're going to execute the hero, and he said, come on, sock it to me. so that became the biword for -- the other one, i have to tell you for a book that isn't even written, but i just found the other day that if you read all of paradise lost carefully, you'll find that john milton in paradise lost talks about all hell breaking loose, which i thought was a nice, you know, modern itch. modernism. yes, sir. >> i have a comment and also a question. first, the comment. with your introduction of all these new words, i don't think english is our number one language anymore. i think it's more like united states. we don't speak english, we speak united states -- >> that's what h.l. men kin did with his -- mencken did with his monstrous three volume on the american language which he was roundly criticized for, but in 1910 there was a dictionary of americanisms based on historical principles, and he found 50,000 words which were american in origin. many of them obscure and lost in time and many of them having to do with names of apples. [laughter] you know, things like that. but they were american in their basis. and so that's -- and one of the things webster says 1807 in the first noah webster dictionary he says in 50 years the predominant form of english will be americanism. and americanism, the term for american words, is jefferson's own word. >> my question, was fireside -- did franklin roosevelt's fireside chats, did he coin that phrase, or was that done by a radio commentator who might have introduced him? >> it was, the guy was harry butcher who was with nbc -- >> abc. >> cbs. >> cbs. harry butcher's the guy who invented it. and the first one to enunciate it, and roosevelt budget prepared for it, was robert trout who was the one who introduced the fireside chat. and so, but the word roosevelt at first budget sure, and then he realized it was just perfect for what he was doing. and it's always been associate with the the fireside chats. again, a quick digression, but when i did, i've done some baseball writing and a baseball dictionary, and one of the things i found out was that when roosevelt's starting to write the fireside chats you realize he's a very well educated man with a slightly, you know, aristocratic boston braman sort of sound to his voice, but he wants to really talk to the american people. he feels the fireside chats that he's coaching them out of the depression. and he starts using baseball. he starts using baseball very heavily. he says, you know, my boxcar score with congress is just terrible. or i just thought i'd -- i just can't get to first base with this legislation. or there's some member of the opposite party that are out in the left field, they don't understand what's going on in this country. so we've used these metaphors. and it's again picked up by eisenhower. eisenhower misses with a lot of football -- mixes with a lot of football metaphors, and that sort of becomes a big chain in language is the presidents take on more popular metaphor for explaining things. and an earlier generation would have explained it in much more legislative sort of, you know, bureaucratic kind of language where all of a sudden it's we just can't get to first base or with a touchdown or something. jim? >> do you think the white house speech writers have ruined presidential eloquence? [laughter] >> uh, that's a good question. i mean, they've had them all along, so there are some people who would argue that some of the best stuff was written by speech writers. there's a question of whether or not eisenhower actually wrote military industrial complex, or was it really malcolm moos who was one of his aides? maybe they've homogenized it. maybe, maybe that's the -- i mean, i still think there's got to be some degree of spontaneity. i think probably to speech writer passed on -- when obama said snowmageddon which was an obvious blend of snow and armageddon which, you know, you can concede, of course, that it probably just popped out of his head. and i think a lot -- but, again, they may have, they sort of dumbed them down to some degree. i think, you know, president obama, actually "the washington post" last summer ran a list of about 20 of his slogans, and they're all just dead fish. i mean, together we win, and -- but they don't have any resonance. and so i think sometimes maybe some of the crispness goes out of it. but it's a good question. i'm sure there's a presidential -- a guy like bob orbin who we all know who was a speech writer for gerald ford, i suspect bob was actually a great asset to gerald ford and wrote some really good stuff for him, so -- yes, ma'am. >> if john wood, i think it's very interesting what he said where he said speak united states. would you tell that? >> i grew up in a neighborhood in northeastern pennsylvania, and we came home from school, one of my class mates was italian, and he said something in italian, a greeting to his father who very, very difficult. was speaking english, very broken english, and the father said, mickey, i send you to school to learn english, but he said you just speak united states. [laughter] >> not english, but speak united states. >> so that's where i -- but words have been added. we are speaking a language that we created here. >> right. >> it is united states, or it's created by the presidents and the other people who use the language, speech writers, whatever. >> and the writers themselves. i mean, in doing this other book -- i'm drifting into a book that i haven't even started writing yet, but i've just gotten copious notes. there's sometimes when a writer will just come up with something that nobody can understand. when f. scott fitzgerald writes tender is the night, he come cans up with t-shirt. and the critics can't figure out what is a t-shirt? and he just sort of made it up meaning it wasn't the kind of undershirt like this, but it was just that these names -- and often writers and presidents will create a word on purpose. they'll do it to create a word. when norman miller creates a factoid, something that was not a fact at all, it was a piece of conventional wisdom that was wrong. but now it's being used to mean mini fact or small fact. yes, sir. >> yes, i'm sorry. i missed first part of your presentation, so maybe you addressed that, but what does it take for a new word from the white house to become popular and stay? i suppose some might be forgotten or lost. >> oh, absolutely. i mean, that's the whole business of creating words, and, of course, i quoted erin mckeon before, the lex kohler if who said, you know, a word is just a single unit of communication, and just because you're not in the dictionary doesn't really mean anything. you don't have to be a pedigree to be a dog, that was her one-liner. but there's no reason why you just can't make up words -- i've been working for years to create words. i created the word demonym because there was never a word for those names for places where people have come from. and it get into this book even -- george washington creates michigander, and later people were saying, no, it's really michiganian, and i've tried mightily to get that word into the dictionary. now that it's on c-span, wow. .. >> it spread like wildfire. then a couple people over the years has studied how award are how joke, that so great initiative anthropology is how does a joke ago from los angeles to johannesburg in three days? it's partly this hidden language. there's a book by a couple of british folklore, hidden language of childhood. they talk about these things, jump rope. but again it's humongous now. but the first time you heard it into exactly what it meant. it's humongous. you know what it meant. and even in this book, the one that really, really amazed me is that john adams is credited with a word meaning the bird. you can't imagine that he came up with that himself. you probably heard it from a gardener or somebody in the street. but he's the person ever to write it down and defined and say what it is. a chickadee. which is again the word is, you know, on the monochromatic, a word that is made to sound like what it is. so smile, because try to say it without smiling. or laugh. forgetting all the greek and latin stems. that's part of it also. the word has got to fit. it can't just be something that is greater to be funny. it's got to think the situation. think about it. >> something might be similar, finalized and prioritize. i wish i knew the answer, if we all picked up on it afterwards but i was in a meeting today at work, to mattress size this. i thought that's not a word. but your point, what do we adopt and pick up on, and how does it become part of our vernacular? >> what was the word you just said? [inaudible] spent there's a microphone. >> again, if you look, you can't really say it's not a word. because all it is is a unit of communication. even though it got you angry and wanted to throw high at the person said, the fact is you know what they meant. it was communication at work. and it might be also useful as a word that makes other people in the room -- >> we all understood what it meant your but do you have ideas or thoughts on trends like that? finalize and prioritize, but how may things get picked up, adopted in othe in other ways? >> i would have to find a reverse dictionary. gershwin said we will rhapsodize about this beautiful singer. that works. you throw rhapsody into rhapsodize. final into finalize is not a major transgression. the other thing you've got to realize, sometime i did some language commentary, and there is a language police out there. if you ever say, hopefully -- there will come that you -- so there is, that are people out there who want to keep it straight. but i've done some work and i've talked to people who read dictionaries. they don't run around saying language is going over the cli cliff. they said, you know, a changes. there's a lot of examples of words that were once another way. the word and apron was also an app can originally. it was tricky. but it migrated over to the apkin and became a napkin. so -- i don't have the paperwork on it because it was a long time ago but when that migrated there were probably people pulling their have out saying put that back over on the end. so language is organic. but someone like myself who makes a living, a partial living writing about all the stuff, it's wonderful. one of the most recent words that went into the book, a book which is just out in a new edition is now 2800 -- now, 986 words and we're trying to get to 3000. they all have to be verified. one of my recent ones was -- describing a party in manhattan. they said a major interior designer had come out of the party with the furniture in his brain reorganizing. he was schwayed, meaning he was three sheets to the wind. [inaudible] >> everybody howls and boots and throws themselves on the floor. but it was meant to be an emphasis. so the language in this country, especially this country, the english language, is a daily pleasant side effects of 2 million schoolteachers tomorrow say a regardless of what you say, and hopefully i'm wrong, but if all those people are saying a regardless, it's not going over the transom from barbarism to part of the way we talk. so i don't get as -- about irregardless. we are down, i'm just watching, we are down to about five minutes. >> [inaudible] >> the original in who took tocqueville to task. it was first brought up in "the new yorker." he had been using hopefully before that in the very sense that they were -- and there are other people. merriam-webster have done massive studies of the distinction, and they say there is none. and that, the modern language fits. >> in the book do you talk only about -- or their associate with -- [inaudible] >> i do. i have sort of a subcategory like teflon president ronald reagan which is very interesting. i do have the words that come out of them, over bills and who've arise which was a wonderful word for the person -- president who was in charge of the feeding of europe and the food stops for the world. who've arise meant to be frugal, to be careful, not waste food, do not throw food away is to hooverise. but i do that in the book. that's part of their legacy. spent are the reasons it might be harder for modern presidential obama to notably be -- than it was for the founding fathers? can you talk about how you researched the book? >> it probably is a little bit harder but he, i mean, you know, if you just look at the language that's been created by the internet and the language that's been created by, you know come in the last 20 years, probably isn't. it may happen by chance. when lincoln creates -- lincoln creates some really great was but one of the first words he thought about secession. he said that secession is the sugar coating, the impact of this country. lincoln when he first used sugarcoated, the printers of the united states comes to lincoln and said we cannot put this in the official record, the word sugarcoated. and lincoln says i can't imagine any american not knowing what you're saying. lincoln was also, again i'm going back to william safire's influence, one of the first uses of cool, not innocent of temperature but in the sense of being callous, he said, something he said that was cool. that was callous. it was a behavioral thing. so again, those are, a word like cool. obama could come up with a new name of cool. that's another thing. one word and you give it different many. as i said with all these different meanings. and how i did this was i did a lot of reading and i get a lot of use of huge proprietary databases at the library of congress. 19th century database where you can find the original document in which 1807 when jefferson writes and comes up with the phrase separation of church and state, which is not in the constitution. in fact, the first articulate in this letter to danbury baptists by jefferson. so a lot of it was just looking at terminals where these monster, not google kind of things but these proprietary databases where it has encapsulated every word and phrase. and it's just, it's fascinating, this stuff. mckinley thing came out of market leeches in the day with mckinney. i read that book years ago. when he comes up to the war ro room. so that was an easy one. i think we are down to about one question. >> tell us about mulligan spent mulligan meaning an extra shot in golf, teeing off the first hole, the first, that's a mulligan. meaning that you could get a do over. and it existed before and but it was when eisenhower starts playing golf and he starts invoking the mulligan. "the new york times" has a great explanation of what a mulligan is. so it's a classic example of a piece of sort of low slang, golfer guys, tougher slang. here's eisenhower playing with arnold palmer are some and he takes a mulligan. [inaudible] >> presumably. i think it's like murphy's law. it's sort of a slight on the irish at you have to take an extra shot. thank you very much, everybody. i appreciate it. [applause] >> that was paul dickson author of parenting. for more information visit his website, pauldicksonbooks.com. >> we're at the national press club book fair the other night with celia wexler, author of "out of the news: former journalists discuss a profession in crisis" you are a former journalist. y. speak with why and my former journalist? does i could not become, be the mother of one to of a small child into the journalism i wanted to do. then i found a really wonderful and fulfilling career as a public interest lobbyist. but i always was very emotionally attached to journalism, and this book gave me a chance to connect with people, many of them left to journalism at the top of their games, with some of the biggest media allies in the country. and i was able to explore with them their feelings about the profession. and this is really media criticism with a human face. so these are wonderful stories, because the lives of journalists are very exciting. and rich. and the reasons for leaving the profession, and sometimes they leave and come back or sometimes they leave and start their own nonprofit investigative journalism organization, as chuck lewis the, sometimes they leave like david simon, and become an author of the water. so these are people who have had rich and varied stories, and the stories end up leaving the reader with an idea that journalism is not dead. that the future of journalism is a little uncertain, but that the need for journalism continues. spent you profile and 11 journalists are just a former journalists in this book. what is different now than today's contemporary landscape in journalism and med t
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