Funding for charlie rose is provided by the following. Theres a saying around here you stand behind what you say. Around here, we dont make excuses, we make commitments. And when you cant live up to them, you own up and make it right. Some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where its needed most. But i know youll still find it, when you know where to look. And by bloomberg. A provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. I am kurt andersen, filling in for charlie rose, who is on assignment. We begin the program with a look at the ongoing unrest in the middle east, with Jeffrey Goldberg. He is a national correspond democratic for the atlantic and a columnist for bloomberg review. He joins me from washington, d. C. , jeffrey, welcome. Thank you. Andersen so if we can go back to what started this latest unraveling of things in israel and the west bank, so some palestinian thugs kidnap and murder the three young israelis on their way back from the west bank then apparently Israeli Jewish thugs kidnap and murder or livecally this Young Palestinian in jerusalem in retaliation. As terrible, horrific, inexcusable, dreadful as these two murders, four murders are, is this the thing that is going to start a war between israel and gaza now . Well, i mean, things have been slipping out of control for a little while, especially since the kidnapping of the three teenagers, the three israeli teenagers. I am not so sure that this isnt going to wrap up in a couple of days time. I mean anything is possible and these things have a way of sort of slipping out of control as you know from the previous 39 hamas, israel wars over the past several years. Yes. But on the other hand, both of these parties didnt seem to want to slip toward this, and hamas in particular is in a pretty bad spot. You know, they lost they lost their support in egypt when morsi was overthrown, hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood branch in gaza. And the new government of egypt under a scituate is very antihamas which means hamas will have a difficult time resupplying itself so when you are a terrorist organization and your stock and trade is rockets you dont want to fire too many of those. If you cant get resupplied. Of course we dont know exactly how many they have in gaza, but they are in a tough position. They are pretty friendless in the region. So i wouldnt be surprised if both parties find a way to sort of bring this to a close. On the other hand, you have in gaza right now a very unusual situation where has, hamas is, and this is all relative, hamas smore moderate party compared to Islamic Jihad which is also firing rockets and there are of course some al qaeda outfits in gaza right now. And they might also be involved. So hamas is also at the same time it wants to get out of this spiral with israel and understands it has certain credibility explanations it has to meet with its own supporters so it has to be industry rouse in bombing israel so it could be in either direction in the next couple of days. Andersen and a few days ago, certainly last week, both sides, hamas controlling gaza and israel were talkings deescalation we dont want this to escalate. Right. And trying to keep seemingly a lid on it on both sides. That has not happened, at least there has been some escalation, whether it is going to spin out of control, we will see, but hamas has admitted in this case as they have said in the past they have not been responsible for rockets in this case they said, no, no, we have shot some dozen of rockets at israel. Yes, yes. They seem to have better rockets. The rockets are reaching apparently, all of this is very confusing because it is happening as we speak, but the rockets are reaching the tel aviv area which is obviously the center of israel, sirens are going off even in jerusalem which is the capital and it is pretty far from gaza, so, yeah, hamas seems to be engaged. The thing about all middle east conflicts, maybe all conflicts in general is that, you know, once it goes kinetic, to borrow this sort of pentagon shorthand, once it goes live and people are firing at each other all plans go out the window and so we dont know which way this is going to government i will say this for the israeli side, you know, the good thing or lets put it this way the bad thing about benjamin netanyahu, the Prime Minister is he doesnt do anything. The good thing is also he doesnt do anything. And so the back side of that obviously we saw the Peace Process collapse perhaps in large part, at least as the american view because he wouldnt make the moves necessary to get this process going forward. The other truth of netanyahu is he is very reluctant to go to war. His predecessor, a much more liberal Prime Minister, launched two pretty serious, severe wars against hezbollah and hamas, the netanyahu years, it has been several years now have been noticeably quiet, so he is very, very reluctant to sort of widen the aperture here and sort of go all out against hamas. He is, of course, under pressure from his right, from lets say more militant parties in his coalition to go and give hamas the same old middle east rhetoric and give them the deathblow, strike hard but so far he seems to be resisting that, only pretty minor callup of troops so far and there is not much of a look he wants to go down this road. Andersen right. So you have got, not that they are necessarily strategically or morally equivalent but you have in interesting mirror image where hamas controlling gaza has Islamic Jihad and the people to the right, the more militant side. Figure that out, yeah, more militant. Andersen and these forces that they dont control or dont entirely control or cant keep a lid on over there, but they have got to do some things to say, hey, no, we are militant too, and then you have got netanyahu, again, a guy from the right who has this coalition with forces to his right. Right. Who he has to show he is tough and hardline, but so are they in an equivalent position of having to sabre rattler and sable rattle and bluster and shoot some rockets and move some brigades in . Are they in kind of a equivalent position of neither of us really want this to be a war but we have to show our hardline right that we are prepared to be tough . Yeah. I think you are on to something there. In the sense, i mean maybe this is a universal observation but everyone has politics, even terrorist groups have politics. Hamas is, you know, the titular leadership of gaza and they have constituencies and a base and have people to the right and left and they have got to please people in the same way that israeli politicians or any politician around the world has to please certain constituencies. So yes, they are not fully in control of the agenda and i think certainly on the israeli side, you know, you see people to the right calling for, you know, sort of total war in the belief that there is a military solution, a Permanent Military solution to the problem of hamas rocket. Rockets. I mean the interesting thing on the israeli side, though, is the mood from what i understand, and i havent been there in a little bit but in the last few days the mood has sort of shifted toward a kind of there is a soul searching moment going on because of the murder, the revenge murder of this Palestinian Youth by a gang of apparently you think of as racist hooligans of some sort, it was a despicable murder. It was ostensibly in the reaction to three israelis but these things have their own impetus and own energy and there is a good degree of shock it seems that jewish kids or jewish youth from jerusalem would kidnap a palestinian kid and torture him and burn him alive i think is what happened. Soso that is politically that is forced the Prime Minister to come out to his credit, this is absolutely despicable horrible thing, terrorism is terrorism no matter who is the target so they are busy working that problem, you know, the government is busy working that problem so it is kind of militant language about hamas has been a little bit mooted by this kind of crisis of conscience if you will. Andersen because at least arguably some of the militant hardline language that came after the murder of the three israeli teenagers maybe whipped up the feelings such that these young people decided, okay, we are going to go kill one of these right. Andersen now, how much the fact that the palestinian kid who was murdered apparently burned alive was in East Jerusalem, in essentially in israel. Yeah. That changes the calculus, right, in terms of the soul searching that jewish israelis feel, the anger that 20 odd percent of israel who are arab feel, right . This is a different thing . Well, yes and no. I think it is such a horrifying crime i mean, look, to the credit of the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas the president when i said earlier these kids werent settlers it is true they lived in communities inside israel but studying in yashiba on the west bank and part of the National Religious community that is the sort of the base of the Settlement Movement and for the Palestinian Authority credit and the president in particular they condemned it, they condemned the kidnapping and then the murder in absolute terms, so i dont necessarily think that israelis are more shocked or Arab Israelis are more shocked this is an East Jerusalem kid there is another wrinkle he had dual american citizenship, and so that brought the u. S. In in a bigger way and probably more attention to the issue. I think that the crime was so shocking, just the kidnapping of the three kids in the at the bus stop was so shocking that precisely where it happened doesnt have as much sal yentl, yes, true it is in jerusalem and easier to relate to that and people know where this happened, it is not some remote corner of the west bank but i think it is just generally shocking and the fact there is this weird symmetry of teenagers dying and teenagers going to the streets and doing all sorts of militant things. I think that has a lot of adults feeling like the situation is spinning out of control. Andersen and does it, since there have been protests in arab communities now around israel that are not common or usual in this way as i understand it, that that yes. Andersen is that a short term horror being expressed and tempers flaring or is this is the calculus changed somehow in an on going way . What happened in the second uprising as well, we are talking about arab citizens of israel going to the streets and blocking streets, throwing rocks maybe, one of the things different about those situations is those are israeli situations and you dont have the military involved, that is police versus demonstrators so far they have been relative maybe because i covered some real bad ones over there, these dont seem as dramatic and most of the communities are protesting in other ways, if they are protesting at all, but again this is an acute challenge to the Political Leadership of the country. I mean it is quite one thing to say on the west bank which is under military control the army going in and suppressing demonstrations or riots, the israeli public it is one thing, when you have citizens of the state who are of arab extraction, arab background doing that, it undermines the publics confidence in the governments ability to handle complicated and stressful situations and so that there is a political aspect to this as well. Andersen and in terms of political aspect, i see that the one of the members of significant member of netanyahus coalition, his foreign minister, lieberman, has left the coalition. Yes. As a result of he has gotten a political divorce if you will from netanyahu, yes. As a result of netanyahu not being tough enough i guess with gaza and hamas. Yes. Andersen is he going to come back if this blows over, as you are suggesting it will or is that a new important change in what in the regime, in the Israeli Government . Well, everyone knows in israeli politics leiderman has designs on the Prime Ministers chair. He is a credible candidate for the Prime Ministers job, if netanyahu sinks further in the polls, so a lot of this is opportunistic, sea pretty clever politician and also, he has been playing a strange role, in one hand he is asking for more severe attacks on hamas, on the other hand, he has been in the last months been lets say kinder about or more understanding about the Peace Process than netanyahu at times and made all of these very sympathetic noises in the direction of president obama who of course is in, you know, a tense relationship with netanyahu, so he has been playing all he has been doing all sort of weird moves or clever moves. That are not consistent or coherent, necessarily . Yes, well it wouldnt be the first time in israeli politics or other politics but they kind of have one through line which is that it is wherever netanyahu goes, lieberman seems to be moving in another direction, so i just tend to think that he sees he seize some opportunity down the road to try to get the number one job and as we know Israel Netanyahu dominated politics for a long time now but for various reasons he seems vulnerable and, you know, he has maintained the quiet and maintained the status quo for some time, but this week is obviously a challenge to the idea that the status quo can be maintained prefer or ad infinitum. Speaking of president obama he published in the last day an article that he has written apparently in the israeli newspaper harrad. Well, it was written for him i think is safer to say. As president s do. Often, yes. And it is a piece that says, restating what is said by american president s forever, we love you, we are at your back and giving you all of this money, this help, this intelligence and military coordination. But we of course twostate solution is the only hope ultimately, he says in this article that he signed. What is the point of that . I mean, why go there and essentially not give a speech but go the next best thing, i guess . Why yes. What is he angling for there . Oh, no, it is interesting it might be fairly limited in its ambition, this op ed he wrote for harrad, it is one of israels smaller newspapers but it is known to be its most left wing newspaper and it has a broad readership overseas because it was an earlier internet english edition i think there is a very specific purpose which is president obama whose sympathies obviously lie with what you would call the Israeli Center left and left to signal them i am not abandoning your cause sway twostate solution and pushing netanyahu toward a twostate solution. I am not abandoning you and paying attention, we appreciate the fact that you, you know, the center left block in israel, i appreciate in other words, president obama speaking and appreciate you havent demonized me as antiisrael and here are my bona fides and repeating these things to know how pro israel i am. The joke of this it was probably the most pro israel piece in harra since it was published overnight because it really reflects mainstream bipartisan american thinking about israel. It doesnt break much new ground. I think it was just kind of dash just a kind of signal to the i e Israeli Center left that i am with you emotionally and spiritually and have not given uup, even though the peace structure totally collapsed and appears i have given up i have not given up on this process. Speaking of the Peace Process which the United States and secretary of state kerry invested lots of time and energy and capital and wishfulness to the last year which has collapsed, you interviewed i guess, did the first interview with the point man on that, martin yes, sir nick, our negotiator on that, talk about his take in that interview on why he believed it just couldnt get done this time . Right. There are two contradictory streams of thought coming out of the administration which have been coming out for some time, the last couple of month, one is the more calibrated it is everyones fault line and there is good evidence to show that it is the palestinians fault as much as the israelis fault, but, you know, when you listen and martin endick in the interview we did the other day, martin endick was very careful to say, you know, look, i think blame is shared equally, not with america, by the way and this is his argument and the administrations argument, their argument is essentially we wanted to do this more than either party and so they are sort of blaming both parties for that. But what you hear when you actually going a little deeper is a broad feeling in the administration that israel has the more powerful of the two entities negotiating had more to give and particularly on the settlement issue of signallinging to the palestinians yes, we know the west bank will be your state so we will stop settling it, doing all sorts of things over the past month that signal to the palestinians or at least gave them an excuse to pull out of the negotiation. By saying we are going to going to start these processes showing we are going to expand settlements . Right. This is really complicate because a lot of the problem starts with administration mistake from four years ago when the administration demanded a complete settlement freeze there are a lot of kind of settlements i dont i dont want to go down this load because it is complicate but it is one thing to talk about settlements deep in the heart of the west bank and another thing of settlements that are bordering suburban tel aviv or suburban jerusalem but the american position is if you guys meaning the israelis really wanted to do this and really wanted to be helpful you would not be so provocative in putting out tenders or settlements and actually building settlements, the average palestinians look at the settlement, i am not talking about radical palestinians, hamas, the average palestinians sees the developing of settlement on land they have told will be part of their state and say wait a second on on the one hand you saying i dont you are negotiating in one faith and on the other hand you are eating more of our land, i think the american position on that is consistent with the palestinian position which is not helpful. On the other hand, what martin endick said and others have said is that abu a, Mahmoud Abbas checked out of this process months ago, that even to the point where americans came with counterproposals, with new ideas and couldnt even get a response out of him. Stop talking and said i am done here. Once israel was making these unhelpful gestures in the way of expanding the settlements, but the other thing that one of the things that interested me that martin endick said to you, and it didnt exactly make news but perhaps it should have and i would like to ask you about it. Netanyahu it seemed to him as before the process fell apart, to come to a place of concession making place where he thought, martin endick thought that okay, maybe they are in the neighborhood of really making a deal. Right. Right. He didnt tell you what those concessions were. What do you suppose or what has other reporting led you to believe they were . They are keeping those alleged concessions quiet, because they are not they dont have any there is no real force behind them. Thethey were all theoretical unl everything gets done but i think in terms of borders and in terms of shifting some settlements closer to israel so palestinians have more continuity, i dont think the issue of jerusalem really came up in a deep, significant way, but on matters of security and jordan river valley and certainly on the percentage of land that the sin yanls would be getting in the west bank i think there are some important shifts inside which goes back to the point about the palestinian president you can make the argument if the palestinian president was more interested in continuing the negotiations he would have understood that netanyahu is throwing out, you know, chum or throwing some bones to his right by saying okay you build four more apartments in x settlement but in the realtime he was shifting in some deeper ways on some of the more consequential issues i think that is where the american negotiators are frustrated with abu, he didnt seem to acknowledge that actually, in fact, netanyahu was moving away from some, you know, long held ideological beliefs, now abu masam is 79 years old. Tired. Right. Fed up feels like look at all i have done and this is what i get. Right. Maybe netanyahu as you suggested his poll numbers are not good the sharks politically in israel are circling, so do you, Jeffrey Goldberg have a view where okay a year from now, two years from now we get different players, different israeli brian her search, a different held of the Palestinian Authority, maybe the Palestinian Authority manages to keeps its reconciliation with hamas going so there is a unified Palestinian Peace making partner on the other side . Right. As you see, i am sort of struggling for glimmers of hope, different players because you are american. Right. What do you see two years hence . This is the problem, and perhaps we will look back on this year as a tragic year for the following reason, you know, when i president obama on the Peace Process a few months ago and said this is one of the things that stuck in my mind, he said abu masan is talking to israelis when he said this, she the most moderate Palestinian Leader you are going to get and i think that might be true. And the problem on the other side is this, netanyahu is the only politician in israel at the moment i think who could deliver 70 percent of the israeli population to a difficult peace compromise. If he had the willingness or the fortitude. Both of these guys have not shown, obviously, a willingness or the willingness to, you know, for Political Risk that, you know, a lot of us would like to see, but the tragedy of the moment might be that these two leaders are actually meant for each other and that these are the two who could have pulled something together. I am not going to speculate who is going to be the next leader of the Palestinian Authority, i am not even going to speculate there is going to be a Palestinian Authority in a year or two and on the israelly side there are great centrist hopes that have so far disappointed, there are people to the right, leiderman and bennett are two names, who have designed on the Prime Ministers seat, the Prime Minister is in a strange position where he holds down the left most flank of his particular party, lick cud party, likud that sounds strange to liberal minded americans, he is so to the right he is engaged in the process and arguing for a twostate solution, at least the rhetoric is for a twostate solution but that is what i am really worried that look back in four or five years time and say that was actually a good year to try to engineer something because now we have leaders that dont have the credibility to deliver or the desire to deliver, and that might be these two guys, the problem is, a as martin endick pointed out they loathe each other, thats a real impediment to making peace is when the two parties really sort of just really personally loathe each other, and kind of suggested that abbas loves netanyahu more than netanyahu loves abbas, i guess it doesnt really matter. The thing that sharon before he died, when he was suddenly miraculously being the great moderating hope of israel, israeli politics said and it seems inarguable truth universallyacknowledged is that for israel to remain a democratic jewish state it must make peace with the palestinians, which requires a palestinian state. Right. There has been polling on this, i think it is pretty good polling, the majority of israelis are still for a twostate solution, i think a lot of israelis dont believe it is possible because the sin yanls dont want it, they want all of mandatory british palestine but the majority of israelis seemed to be aware that this is the demographic and i think there is a minority, maybe 15, 20, in that range percent that says if it is a choice between a democracy of one man, one vote, where all of the west bank, arabs and all of the jews in israel or a jewish dominated state they will go for the jewish dominated state, obviously those are people more affiliated with the right wing, Settler Movement but a small minority still and i think most ill race lis havent moved from this. Now. Israel and palestine are not the only places in the middle east that are looking dicey and unpleasant. It looks much better actually than most places. Iraq, a couple of weeks ago it looked like okay everybody decided maliki, the Prime Minister should go. He is not, and they cant seem to form a government, it seems at least assort of risen, riven by dysfunction as washington. On the other hand, isis, this, you know, two militants for al qaeda force that too many about a third of the country a few weeks ago seems to be standing in place not now and not heading for baghdad. Is that just now a status quo that we should worry about or just is that going anywhere my time soon, do you think . Oh, no. We should be in a cold panic about this and the funny thing about in conversation object is the israel palestine dispute from the American National security perspective a relatively minor problem compared to this problem. Yes. This problem is the big, the reestablishment if you will of the caliphate, the selfstyled caliphate, is the big problem. Obviously iraq wont be put back together again. It might have, you know, on a map it might still say iraq in two or three years time, but it is going to be three countries and one hopes from again from the American National security perspective it is not three countries because the idea of having isis in large control of territory is not a sustainable notion. So is the American Interest now should we be looking, a move or two ahead and saying, okay, iraq is going to be a shia south, kurdistan north and a sunni something and our goal should be to get those tribal leaders we worked with a few years ago to get rid of, to crush isis and make sure it is a sunni party we can deal with . This is the problem, somebody is going to have to crush isis eventually, whether think a, moderate sunni or outside forces because, i mean this is, you know, an assumption built on the history of afghanistan among other a places is that eventualy and maybe sooner than eventually groups like isis which as you point out which is considered by al qaeda a little bit too much, groups like isis eventually say to yourself you know what we have to go to the, back to the job of killing western infidels so what was the Afghanistan War about . The Afghanistan War was about denying safe havens where groups like al qaeda and Al Qaeda Affiliated groups can plot and plan and device strategies and figure out ways to build bombs, it is not unrelated way, the csa in the last couple of days has more strip gentle rules about your cellphone, there is a reason for that, there is a reason for that and part is based in yemen where there is a good al qaeda bomb maker but the more, the more free space, the more ungoverned space al qaeda has to develop its plans and plots without being molested by either think a or moderate sunni or americans or whoever else. That is not a tenable situation for the United States or for anyone in the west, and so something has got to give on this question, because for the same reason that barack obama supported the invasion and occupation of afghanistan in order to deny al qaeda a safe haven, you cant have an al qaeda, permanent al qaeda or al qaeda style safe haven in that region between iraq and syria. Right. In both of those countries. And while lets accept that as a given in terms of American National interests that doesnt necessarily argue for saying we must keep iraq together in its current form. No. Right . No, no, by the way i am sort of a partisan of kurdish nationalism, i mean the curds who represent about 20 percent for so of iraq, nonarab muslim ethnic group have basically said we are out of here. I mean, in all but and they built an autonomous state over the past 20 years very successfully and this in the last few weeks obviously they seized kiir cut which is considered their jerusalem, they are not giving it back, they have oil. And they are looking to break away permanently, now i tend to think that is something to support because that is in the interest of justice and peace and the curds have been oppressed by the majority of iraq for years but kurdistan could be an american ally, sitting on top of that isis state let or whatever you want to call it, so these things are coming apart and sometimes will is a bit of unreality coming out of washington in terms of the analysis, everybody is still talking about, you know, you have got to just work the political process in iraq and you have got to pull these sides together, if this one is the speak everrer of the active parliament we will put that one in president. I think we are kind of past that and by the way, you know, a lot of us have learned that just because you want to organize an arab state in a certain way because it seems like the best ways for the arabs and us that doesnt mean the arabs will agree and remember the shia, maliki being, you know, a shia politician, has had quite enough over the past 20 or 30 or 40 years of sunni domination and have no particular vision or dream of pluralism in the way that we do. So i dont think it is very hopeful, so the main goal of American Foreign policy should be to make sure that there is no spillover effect, that isis and related groups in iraq and syria dont figure out ways to harm us and our interests directly. Now, you can look at this whole region and say okay the United States was not able to force israel and the palestinians to make peace, we have been unabl un, unable so fo get maliki out of iraq and replaced by some more inclusive shiite leader, presumably. Right. We cant even make our guy who is the secretary of state saying we are behind, general asissi. Yes, president president ass scituate. That guy makes mubarek look like the governor of vermont, it is kind of like, you know. We look look at these things and all of these things are impossible so we didnt manage to make any of them go more the way we wished or has the. Administration played its cards, its bad cards it was dealt badly . I think those things are correct. I think, i mean, it is funny when you were doing that, giving the recitation of, you know, all of the people we seem unable to influence in the middle east that sounded like something coming from inside the administration. I mean the administration has a somewhat realistic view of americas the limits on the american ability to shape out comes in the broader middle east. They have probably a much better, more sober sense of that than the previous administration, the bush administration, on the other hand, when you can have that feeling that we are powerless to change anything you can have that feeling to the point you dont try to change anything at all and you dont try to shape out comes to think degree and obviously, you know, i mean the president has a good point when he says, yo, you know what . Ifi had gone into syria three years ago to shape the opposition and try to arm it we still would have had assad in power and people running around with weapons who should havent these weapons there is a good argument to be made about that but he might be wrong, and so and he would also say, he would also say, well the one place where i cant be accused of underreaching, where i really went off and did it i in letting john kerry make peace in israel and palestine and look where that got me. Yes. I you know, that to they i am a little curious about the Decision Making over the last six, nine month to deploy the state department in the way it is deployed. There are people inside the government that knew iraq was coming apart in the scene that probably in retrospect we should have paid more attention to that, iraq and syria have obviously become one war, but, but, yeah, i suppose you could, if you are the president you could say, the israelis, we are their closest allies, the still yanls have hundreds of millions of dollars from us and their pro western government, we cant get them to do anything, how will we get shia militants in iraq to listen to our good arguments. And i think, you know, this is the point that people make about leadership on the one hand, people are argue manager the Foreign Policy community, the president has to step up and lead and try to shape this region and try to create out comes that are beneficial to the United States and beneficial to our friends the president knows full well the average american is completely uninterested not only uninterested but completely wary of new adventures in the middle east, they look at the middle east as a swamp and cesspool and uay, really you are going to get the shia and super i think, chicago shia and sunni to like each other and i think the white house takes comfort in that. Jeffrey goldberg, events seem to conspire to keep you employed. Unfortunately, thank you. Thank you. We continue this evening with the writer chuck klosterman, he is an author of pretty much everything, novels, memoirs, cultural criticism and he is is ethical advice columnist for the New York Times magazine, the, his most recent collection of us says is called i wear the black hat, grappling with villains just published in paperback and i am pleased to have him at this table, klosterman, welcome. Thanks for having me. I dont know if this was contrived or you walked into it but this is an age of villains in so many ways, the golden age of television, the walter whites, the tony sopranos, the guy on the wire, everybody who is a villain we love. Why is at this level so desirable in American Culture right now . I think part of it has to do with the way, various mediums have changed, i mean you can find like kind of the antihero idea in novels and like 18th century, you see it in film really in the seventies, you had kind of a stretch where Jack Nicholson had all of the good early films and godfather and some of the Dennis Hopper films embraced this idea, then the eighties and early nineties it sort of became the backbone of hard rock and hiphop, if you were in metal or any relationship to la gangster dab. You were a bad guy. And we perceived that even if you werent. Then television, it really kind of happened in the nineties, you mentioned tony soprano, i remember when the sopranos was coming out and, you know, or maybe a little after it had been premiered and david chase was saying how he was uncertain whether people would accept a main character who essentially murders people, would they accept this person . And like not only did they accept it, they loved it, they loved this person and now if you are making a sophisticated Television Show and making like a high end, hbo or amc or, you know, fx shows, it almost demands that your character is in some ways villainous. To be taken seriously. How do you know if a tv show is sophisticated. Don drape search a jerk. Because there is a drug dealer in it, is he heroic, drug dealers are always positive characters now in television. Don draper, i think that as mad men has run over the years they tried to sort of panelize him for his problematic behavior and yet almost the audience feels that way, i think they still like him. And in your history of the rise of the villain you left out somebody you talk about in the book which is darth vader, the great modern villain who becomes in a sense the most interesting guy in that series of movies. I mean, yes, in some ways it was almost a genesis for this book in a strange way, i dont write too much about star wars but wha what happened is when is working at the idea for this book i knew i wanted to write about, to me, this sort of very interesting thing that happens during the maturation process of someones life that the way they feel about the supposedly negative characters seems to shift and i was talking to my editor about this and by chance his four or fiveyearold son had just watched star wars and of course it blew his mind as you would expect. And you were four or five when it came out so you can relate. It came out in 77 but i didnt the Empire Strikes back was the first movie i sought saw in the theatre because it was a long way from our farm, regardless i saw these movies around the same general age and talking about, you know, his sob, his son and i had this theory talking about when you are a little guy, you know, the character you love is Luke Skywalker who is totally heroic, if you are playing star wars on the playground and eightyearold kid and have seen the movie and playing at recess the coolest kid got to be luke, thats who you want to be and when you move into junior high, or maybe sixth grade, maybe ninth grade, whatever the case may be it moves to han solo who is this person who seems bad but fundamentally is still good which is how High School Students want to feel, especially guys they want to have the perception of being dangerous but in truth they want to be the person they were when they were a kid then you become an adult and maybe you watched star wars again and suddenly it seems like a much different movie. You see some certain flaws in it but also see the big idea and understand why it succeeds, and you sort of conclude or at least i did that the most interesting character and like really the only essential one is darth vader and i think that is because as you age and as you mature, you start seeing the idea of heroism almost as not an impossible dream but something outside of our life, that there are certain people who do heroic things but not really us and that is something you aspire to as a kid as an aspirational kind of concept, but in your subconscious in the back of your mind you kind of worry about what you might be capable of. Have you, that you have go gone to the backside . Dark side . Even though you dont act on them and blow up your planet it is like well if my back was against the wall how would i really react . Who would i really care about, you know, when push comes to shove . And i think that when people now see a villain, especially in first shun, fiction the world word they use the industrial lane is more interesting but actually it seems more real, that people feel a closer relationship to problematic people than sort of the untouchable heroic ones. So thats why we love the walter white methamphetamine manufacturer. Yes, breaking bad is a great example where the creator of the show went into this which i will introduce a character who in the First Episode is impossible not to like, you know, she a teacher, who has cancer and he is worried about his family and overtime i am going to turn them into this terrible scar face type figure and i will see how long the audience will go along with this, at what point will they finally say this problematic character is too much for me to root for, and it last add long time for some people i dont think they to me it lasted to the end of the show. You also in this book very interestingly talk about villains outside of fiction, like lebron james and kanye west who you have kind of a duo and you say about lebron james, the nba free agent i guess right now, you dont really like him as a figure but want him to succeed but where kanye west you like him but you want him to fail. Yes. Explain. Well, i am not a fan of he bronze james as a player so much, thats one of the things about sports that you are able to almost arbitrarily choose who you root for and who you root again but i understand lebron james is the best player of his generation and his utility is greatness, so if his greatness would begin to fade, if you were to begin to fail as a basketball player, almost everything about him sort of evaporates, like i dont root for him but i want him to be great. I always want whatever team he is playing for, if the heat or anyone else to be in sort of th thick of the race. Because it is relevant . Yes, and his greatness is enough to kind of overcome any sort of subjective feeling i have. He is objectively great. Right. Kanye west i think is an amazing musician, certainly the most i often feel in the popular culture, there are always a certain figure who sort of is outside o what everyone else is doing, even though they are kind of working in the same channel, like in film i think eek anderson is like this, not making experimental films but what he is doing is different, in comedy louis ck. The guy who wrote my struggle, in music it is kanye west. Are you gliding over hitler . The norwegian guy. Oh, yes. I am sorry. Karl yes. And in music i would say this is kanye west, who is not really making straightup Experimental Work but doing the same thing everyone else is doing but it feels different because who he is, the role he inhabits in the culture. She a huge but a little indy . But not even indy or huge but it has to do his creativity is also based in his personality so almost any decision he makes is valuable. Like the merits of his music is not economy, autonomous but supported by this character he kind of creates. And because of that, i would be very fascinated to see what would happen if he made a record that really failed, you know, that if he made an album that kind of musically and that seemed to relate to no one and be just coined of his character he is trying to support, this hemorrhaging vehicle i think that would be fascinating. Because it wouldnt just be a record. It is him in some way failing at that point . Well, i believe that if you like a musician you want to hear their best work, but if you love a musician you become intrigued with the lowest points in their careers. I love the band kiss and most intrigued by like their 1979 to 1982 period when absolutely no one liked them, or, you know, i liked the band oasis and i am more fascinate bed at this period where their popularity disappears as opposed to the early stuff, so the same with kanye west i think if he made a record that was terrible it would be fascinating. Bill clinton, you write about in this book as the kind of can. I guess loveable villain in terms of the things he did and the sexually things he did and was impeached for, he was impeached for lying but not really. Yeah. It wasnt that, you know, i was already working in newspapers at that time so part of the reason i wanted to write about that is it was such a vivid period, the Monica Lewinsky stuff happened before the internet was a central part of everyones life so i was working at the Akron Beacon Journal at the time and everyone in the newsroom reading the ap wire on their computer just every new story coming in, the star report was kind of being unveiled. It is just a fascinating thing to me, all of these people involved in that probably there is obviously bill clinton and monica and also hillary and kenneth star and linda trip, this is kind of a five sided problem. And the person who came out of that scenario the best was bill clinton, even though he did what is the most, at least superficially and probably in reality the most unethical act, i mean, he cheated on his wife with someone who was a subordinate, somebody who was too young to sort of realize what was happening, you know, he lied about it to the public, almost every aspect of that relationship would be, it just seems morally reprehensible and yet by the end of all of this, i remember like the week before christmas i think 1999 then. Or 1998. It happened in 98. Yes but it was like just before christmas, he had this highest Approval Rating ever. As he is being impeached. At the time it was sort of described well you see the American People are more sophisticated than the media they knew this was no big deal. But it is more complicated than that. There was something, you know, and it is not just about gender and just about sexism and something about the way he presented himself that made his i mean, villain is kind of a strange word to use there but like his behavior is something that almost validated what the preexisting notion of who he was. And you also made the point because he is a handsome guy then and now, and that, yes, he admitted he was lying but he never talked about the gritty details. You know, you read his autobiography like 1,000 page book and the number of times that Monica Lewinsky, lewinsky is mentioned is less than the number of times he mentions football, it is like a minor blip, he never talked about that and, you know, i always think that overtime the people who say the least end upcoming off the best, you know. As i was writing these essays and trying to see like what is the unifying thing i am finding interesting about this and it seemed to be this. It seemed that very often the person who is the villain is the person who knows the most and cares the least. They seem to have the best understanding of how the world works and how the world can be manipulated and sort of what is at stake and how other people will feel about this but they are the most detached from what their actions actually end up impacting or changing. It is like a distance sort of between an understanding of the world and caring about the world. The interesting thing about america which is especially where you and i grew up in the midwest it is so much about being nice and niceness is the thing. That america and at least in many ways your book convinced me has in these days, the last while embraced villainy almost as a way to compensate for the fact we are all so darned nice all the time. Is that a fair reading . That is possible. I guess i dont know if i would implicitly argue that but i can understand what you are saying. You know, like okay, being from north dakota the idea of like north dakota nice or minnesota nice, the idea that people, in a way it is almost a criticism, it seems to suggest people are very superficially nice and not this deep kindness, i always felt when people talked about the midwestern that niceness comes from a real place. Well, you know, population size changes things so much, my hometown was 500 people their lives were interconnected in a way you wont see in other places. Rudeness would be remembered. It would be and although i mean there were rude people too, i guess, to a sense i think that personality wise that is more uniform across the country than we assume. I mean, you know, like when i moved to new york, one thing i realized is, immediately, if you acted like you didnt know where you were four people would try to give you directions. Absolutely, because they also came from somewhere else and they remember that feeling and like oh i can help this person and direct them where the subway is or whatever. Now that is a form of niceness probably you wouldnt see in fargo if i think if you are in downtown fargo lost they will say hi but not help you out so which is nice tore have everyone say hello or is it nice tore have kind of a jerk give you help . I dont know, it has been a pleasure, thanks so much. Thanks for joining us, we will see you next time. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org funding for charlie rose has been provided by the cocacola company, supporting this Program Since 2002. American express and charles schwab. Additional funding provided by what if i told you that you could change your life in just 10 days . The 10day detox is the fast track plan that will help you not only shed pounds, but put an end to Chronic Health problems. 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