Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Heather Ann Thompson - The 1980s Blueprint for Today’s Culture Wars

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Interview Only w/ Heather Ann Thompson - The 1980s Blueprint for Today’s Culture Wars · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: So as we try to figure out all right, it's
1:53
Speaker 1: a question I get all the time about sort of
1:56
Speaker 1: the Trump era, how did we get here? Right? And
1:58
Speaker 1: sometimes we begin with the financial crisis in nine and
2:02
Speaker 1: sometimes some people say, well, it's the ball, you know.
2:05
Speaker 1: I've made a case about the fall of the Berlin
2:07
Speaker 1: Wall and sort of the end of the Cold War
2:10
Speaker 1: that sort of certainly helped respark the rise of the
2:14
Speaker 1: sort of the political bases in both parties, but There's
2:18
Speaker 1: always been another part of Trump that people, you know,
2:22
Speaker 1: why did Trump? You know, how did Trump form the
2:26
Speaker 1: ideology that he formed right and understanding New York City
2:31
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties, which shaped Trump's mind for
2:34
Speaker 1: better or for worse, and the characters of that are
2:37
Speaker 1: extraordinarily important. There's a new book, Fear and Fury by
2:41
Speaker 1: Heather and Thompson, that focuses on a specific incident in
2:45
Speaker 1: the early eighties that became a massive national story and
2:51
Speaker 1: put the word vigilanteism sort of front and center. I
2:54
Speaker 1: was twelve or thirteen at the time of this incident,
2:58
Speaker 1: but I remember it very clearly how big of a
3:01
Speaker 1: deal it was, and of course now I understand it
3:03
Speaker 1: why it was a big deal, because of all, our
3:05
Speaker 1: media is based in New York City, so of course
3:07
Speaker 1: we were the entire country it's going to know about this.
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Speaker 1: But Heather Ann Thompson joins me now, author of Fear
3:13
Speaker 1: and Fury, who takes basically is making an argument that
3:18
Speaker 1: the Bernie Getz was sort of the first sign of
3:21
Speaker 1: this sort of white rage that would incubate and certainly help,
3:27
Speaker 1: I think, form much of Trump's ideology over time, and
3:33
Speaker 1: it metastasized into something that we now see nationally. So
3:36
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating argument. It's a terrific book. Look, New
3:40
Speaker 1: York City in the seventies and eighties is an incredible
3:44
Speaker 1: landscape to be thinking about if you're an author, a
3:48
Speaker 1: screenplay writer, you name it. So let's get started, Heather,
3:54
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast.
3:55
Speaker 2: So glad to be here.
3:57
Speaker 1: So let me just start with Look, you've done a
4:00
Speaker 1: books that sort of explored sort of what's happened in
4:03
Speaker 1: urban America urban decay. How long have you been thinking
4:06
Speaker 1: about doing a Bernie Getz book.
4:09
Speaker 2: Well, in some respects for a very long time, because
4:12
Speaker 2: I remember the event and it always struck me as
4:15
Speaker 2: such jarring thing to happen in the middle.
4:18
Speaker 1: We haven't talked about what the event is. Let's remind
4:21
Speaker 1: people what the event Bernie gets is on a subway.
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Speaker 1: Take it away.
4:26
Speaker 2: So it's nineteen eighty four in New York City and
4:30
Speaker 2: New York City, if anyone was around or anyone remembers it,
4:34
Speaker 2: it was a pretty grim place to be in the
4:37
Speaker 2: mid eighties. It was suffering greatly financially. If you were
4:42
Speaker 2: to take this upway on a regular basis, which everyone did.
4:44
Speaker 2: It was graffiti smeared, it was the streets were trash filled,
4:50
Speaker 2: and homelessness was on the rise, and it felt very
4:54
Speaker 2: much like a city in crisis. And on this one day,
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Speaker 2: three days before Christmas, kind of a loner white guy
5:02
Speaker 2: named Bernie Getz gets on the train, and on that
5:06
Speaker 2: train are already four young teenagers from the South Bronx,
5:11
Speaker 2: another place that had really been been decimated by the
5:15
Speaker 2: economics of this period, and they end up in a
5:20
Speaker 2: very very brief conversation Hello. One of the kids asks
5:25
Speaker 2: him if he has five dollars, which, of course, in
5:28
Speaker 2: this time period of panhandling and everyone's asking everyone for
5:32
Speaker 2: some money, it's not particularly unusual. But what is unusual
5:37
Speaker 2: is this guy stands up as if he's going to
5:40
Speaker 2: get some money and turns around, immediately assumes a combat
5:45
Speaker 2: stance and guns down these teenagers. One he shoots straight
5:50
Speaker 2: in the chest, the other in the back as he's
5:52
Speaker 2: running away, the third also trying to run away, in
5:56
Speaker 2: the arm, and the fourth, who he misses. What was
6:02
Speaker 2: most staggering about this event, as he gets up, walks
6:05
Speaker 2: over to him, stands over him and says, you look
6:09
Speaker 2: all right, here's another and shoots him at point blank range,
6:13
Speaker 2: severing his final calmn. So it was this incredible, especially
6:19
Speaker 2: as you might imagine for the passengers on that train.
6:23
Speaker 2: Really a horrific event that happens. The story I tell, though,
6:27
Speaker 2: is really about the thereafter, the fallout from this, which
6:32
Speaker 2: is as stunning in many ways as the event itself.
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Speaker 1: You know, think about though. You know, what's interesting is
6:40
Speaker 1: you put together I think a very you really provided
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Speaker 1: some visuals that you did a terrific job just now
6:46
Speaker 1: describing it. But we ought to remind folks there were
6:49
Speaker 1: no cameras. That's right, right, this is all putting together
6:54
Speaker 1: all of the eyewitness accounts right in sort of sort
6:57
Speaker 1: of consensus accounts, and this is this is this is
7:01
Speaker 1: the account I can only imagine, right, This is pre
7:04
Speaker 1: social media and pre cameras everywhere, Right, something like this happens.
7:08
Speaker 1: Now we would see the footage and every American would
7:12
Speaker 1: be making up their mind on their own. In this case,
7:15
Speaker 1: we basically had the New York Post and the national
7:17
Speaker 1: media right shaping the events, and it took a while
7:23
Speaker 1: for people to know everything that happened on that what
7:26
Speaker 1: you just said was not the first reports.
7:29
Speaker 2: Well that's actually that's so true. And what was really
7:34
Speaker 2: remarkable is that after he shoots these kids, he then
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Speaker 2: disappears into the subway tunnels. He is on the run,
7:42
Speaker 2: he's on the lamb for nine days, and before so
7:46
Speaker 2: many New Yorkers even know his name, they are celebrating him.
7:50
Speaker 2: He is the death Wish vigilante. He has taken out
7:54
Speaker 2: these thugs, these animals. What is really amazing about this
7:58
Speaker 2: story is that nobody, nobody knows what's happened, but so
8:03
Speaker 2: many New Yorkers, I have to say, particularly overwhelmingly white
8:06
Speaker 2: New Yorkers, have decided that they understand exactly what's happened
8:10
Speaker 2: as the story unfolds.
8:12
Speaker 1: Actually damned right.
8:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, And so in so many respects, this
8:16
Speaker 2: story is ground zero, not just for where we end
8:19
Speaker 2: up today with this unleashing of kind of rage and
8:22
Speaker 2: violence and how it's vindicated in the courts, but also
8:27
Speaker 2: this moment we're in where up is down and down
8:30
Speaker 2: is up, and even if you see the video, you're
8:33
Speaker 2: kind of told, well, that's that's not what happened in
8:37
Speaker 2: this case. He actually will confess on a lengthy video
8:42
Speaker 2: taped confession where he says exactly what he did, and
8:46
Speaker 2: even then it's not going to matter, which is why
8:49
Speaker 2: this is such an interesting moment to revisit an unpack.
8:54
Speaker 1: You spent some time with one of the survivors of
8:57
Speaker 1: the shooting.
8:58
Speaker 2: No, I did not, So what is interesting? No? No, no,
9:02
Speaker 2: So this is the interesting story here. I am a historian,
9:05
Speaker 2: so I usually I just start back in the beginning.
9:08
Speaker 2: I'm doing the recovering everything that was written at the time,
9:12
Speaker 2: every confession. But the reason why I was not talking
9:17
Speaker 2: to any of the present day survivors is because I
9:20
Speaker 2: had to make a decision. Bernie gets the shooter. He's
9:24
Speaker 2: still around, he's still talking very loudly about what he did.
9:29
Speaker 2: But when I realized I could not also talk to
9:32
Speaker 2: his victims, I couldn't rescue their stories in the same way,
9:37
Speaker 2: I stepped away from that and I said, let me
9:39
Speaker 2: just start from the beginning. Let me reconstruct this story,
9:42
Speaker 2: because the most amazing thing to me was the way
9:45
Speaker 2: in which the victims were completely erased from this story,
9:49
Speaker 2: written out of it didn't matter, And so my journey
9:53
Speaker 2: was really trying to reconstruct who were they?
9:56
Speaker 1: How did you do it without talking to them?
9:59
Speaker 2: You know, the one thing about being a historian is
10:02
Speaker 2: we are pretty good detectives. We have to go back
10:06
Speaker 2: to the beginning. I was looking at everything. I was
10:09
Speaker 2: looking at every newspaper, counter's looking at original, you know,
10:13
Speaker 2: the probation report of Bernie Getz himself. I was the details.
10:18
Speaker 2: They are depositions, court transcripts, and from one of the
10:22
Speaker 2: really interesting pieces of information that gave me a lot
10:25
Speaker 2: was these young men had applied for compensation, a few
10:29
Speaker 2: of them from something that New York has, which is
10:31
Speaker 2: called the Crime Victims Board. And if you're a victim
10:36
Speaker 2: of crime in New York City, especially in the eighties,
10:38
Speaker 2: there was this provision you could apply for some funding
10:41
Speaker 2: because of course people were you know, disabled or injured
10:44
Speaker 2: from these horrific crimes. And when they try to do that,
10:48
Speaker 2: they are denied. They are decided to not be the victims.
10:53
Speaker 2: It was they that deserved what they got. And so
10:56
Speaker 2: from there it was just kind of like WHOA. We
10:58
Speaker 2: got to start at the beginning, How is it? How
11:02
Speaker 2: is it that this all happened? And so I take
11:04
Speaker 2: you into their lives, into the cell.
11:06
Speaker 1: So I want to go back to because I see
11:10
Speaker 1: what I see the distinction you're trying to draw here
11:12
Speaker 1: which is you're trying in some ways not to pollute
11:17
Speaker 1: the moment with what could be what these folks could
11:26
Speaker 1: believe they're telling you is truthful. But you know, the
11:30
Speaker 1: brain misremembers right for some of it by for survival reasons,
11:35
Speaker 1: whatever it is. And so do you feel like you
11:38
Speaker 1: had a more pure sense of perhaps who they are
11:41
Speaker 1: if you didn't talk to them in the present day?
11:44
Speaker 2: I mean, I think so, I hope so. I mean,
11:47
Speaker 2: it's not that I would not have talked to everybody.
11:50
Speaker 2: Perhaps it is that, you know, I realize, look, I
11:52
Speaker 2: mean to one of the victims ends up killing himself
11:56
Speaker 2: on the anniversary of the event. Another dies very young.
12:01
Speaker 2: I mean, he's completely drug addicted after this. His life
12:03
Speaker 2: is so much in shambles. One of them is who's
12:06
Speaker 2: still alive, is paralyzed brain damage from this event. So
12:11
Speaker 2: when I sort of realized that part of this story
12:14
Speaker 2: was about the erasing of the costs of this unleashing
12:19
Speaker 2: of vigilante violence, then I just wanted to say, look,
12:22
Speaker 2: let me, let me, let me go back, let me
12:23
Speaker 2: reconstruct this. And you know that that is what I
12:27
Speaker 2: did in my first book on the Attica Uprising. It's
12:29
Speaker 2: what I did in this one. It's a journey I
12:32
Speaker 2: will convince, but it is one that I feel like
12:36
Speaker 2: I'm able, I hope anyway to take take readers there
12:40
Speaker 2: in that moment on that subway train, or in that
12:43
Speaker 2: project where the teenagers lived, or in Greenwich Village where
12:47
Speaker 2: Bernie Getz lived and was what he was experiencing.
12:50
Speaker 1: So, you know, I've been thinking about after reading your book,
12:54
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about what did I think? What what
12:58
Speaker 1: was shaped? How was Bernie gets shaped from me? Right?
13:02
Speaker 1: And I vigilanteism? Right, And it was sort of this
13:06
Speaker 1: idea that New York was under policed, under protected. You know,
13:13
Speaker 1: I would go two years later, I would go to
13:16
Speaker 1: the hundredth anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. I had
13:18
Speaker 1: an ant that lived there, and I wanted to see
13:20
Speaker 1: all of that. And there was you know, you had
13:22
Speaker 1: to be careful when you went on the subway, and
13:24
Speaker 1: there was all these you know. So this was a
13:27
Speaker 1: city where even the residents, it's not that they lived
13:30
Speaker 1: in fear, they themselves were vigilant, yeh, constantly, Right, there
13:36
Speaker 1: was this feeling. And so I don't want to say
13:40
Speaker 1: that Bernie gets was portrayed as a hero in sort
13:43
Speaker 1: of the my memory, but it was more of like
13:48
Speaker 1: he had been pushed to the like it was a
13:51
Speaker 1: he was the representative of a city that had been
13:54
Speaker 1: pushed to the brink.
13:56
Speaker 2: I think that's exactly right. And what was interesting to
13:59
Speaker 2: me was unpacking not why people felt like that, as
14:06
Speaker 2: if it were somehow illegitimate. I remember it as you say,
14:10
Speaker 2: people were vigilant.
14:12
Speaker 1: Look, I went to that. I was a young staffer
14:15
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two for a news publication and we
14:18
Speaker 1: were covering the Democratic Convention, and that was at Madison
14:22
Speaker 1: Square Garden, and my job at four point thirty in
14:24
Speaker 1: the morning was to go to a newspaper sort of
14:29
Speaker 1: a place that got all the newspapers from the East Coast,
14:33
Speaker 1: and it was in Times Square, right off the Times Square.
14:37
Speaker 1: And the cab driver said he wouldn't wait. This is
14:41
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, you know, and you know this was people.
14:44
Speaker 1: It's like the turnaround in New York really didn't begin
14:46
Speaker 1: until the mid nineties, and so the early nineties really
14:50
Speaker 1: were more like eighties New York. And it's like, you know,
14:52
Speaker 1: that was the mindset. Cab drivers were afraid of certain
14:55
Speaker 1: parts of Manhattan. You know, We're not talking about the
14:58
Speaker 1: Bronx or Queens. I'm talking about man. Yeah.
15:01
Speaker 2: And what was so interesting to me to kind of
15:05
Speaker 2: reconstruct and I keep using that word because that's what
15:07
Speaker 2: it felt like. It felt like kind of going back
15:10
Speaker 2: to the beginning piecing it together, was how did that happen?
15:13
Speaker 2: How does New York City come to feel so under siege,
15:17
Speaker 2: so abandoned, like everything is falling apart, And what people
15:22
Speaker 2: remember and even what they were being told every time
15:25
Speaker 2: they picked up the New York Post, every time they
15:27
Speaker 2: picked up any kind of tabloid media was crime is
15:32
Speaker 2: out of control, and there's a certain kind of predator
15:35
Speaker 2: out there. It was not subtle. They were young, they
15:39
Speaker 2: were black, they were poor, and you always had to
15:41
Speaker 2: be on the lookout for that kind of a threat.
15:45
Speaker 2: But what was really interesting when I sort of went
15:48
Speaker 2: back was the realization that there had been kind of
15:51
Speaker 2: this political story behind this. One of the things that's
15:55
Speaker 2: happening here is that it is the eighties and we
15:58
Speaker 2: have had the election of a new president. This president
16:01
Speaker 2: is Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan was determined to do
16:05
Speaker 2: something that frankly, a lot of wealthy people had wanted
16:09
Speaker 2: to do before they had not really been successful, which
16:12
Speaker 2: was to dismantle the New Deal kind of liberal welfare
16:16
Speaker 2: state in America. And so he sets about doing this
16:20
Speaker 2: really effectively. So by the time we get to eighty four,
16:23
Speaker 2: the trash is piling up, their areas are feeling under police,
16:28
Speaker 2: they are feeling under siege. People have lost their jobs.
16:32
Speaker 2: The public sector is being decimated. There is the public schools,
16:37
Speaker 2: the public hospitals. Meanwhile, an AIDS crisis is developing that
16:41
Speaker 2: is getting no care. And so in this context it
16:45
Speaker 2: was a possibility, right that people would say, wait a minute,
16:48
Speaker 2: what's going on here. We don't actually want all these
16:50
Speaker 2: resources taken away. But their attention is almost by kind
16:55
Speaker 2: of you know, remarkably effectively directed towards people worse offt
17:01
Speaker 2: than them. No, the wrong with New York City is
17:03
Speaker 2: not that we don't have funding anymore for you know,
17:06
Speaker 2: the public sector, for the social safety net for people.
17:10
Speaker 2: The problem is those people. It's a moral problem. It's
17:14
Speaker 2: a problem of the underclass that kind of working that
17:18
Speaker 2: out and seeing it in real time and actually seeing
17:21
Speaker 2: how the media Rupert murdochs media that will become Fox News.
17:26
Speaker 2: I mean, he is a right hand guy in the
17:28
Speaker 2: Reagan administration. They understand that he's promoting a message, a
17:34
Speaker 2: kind of a conservative sensationalists to message that they want promoted.
17:38
Speaker 2: And so the book kind of, I mean it lays
17:41
Speaker 2: this bear, I think, and we get a different understanding,
17:44
Speaker 2: not that people weren't legitimately fearful, but that it was
17:48
Speaker 2: kind of tragically misdirected and the consequences of that were vast.
17:54
Speaker 2: For So.
17:57
Speaker 1: You did you do you feel like you had to
17:59
Speaker 1: then go back to sort of you know, how did
18:02
Speaker 1: we go from let's just it's New York City. I mean,
18:07
Speaker 1: you know, you go back. I remember the great tabloid
18:10
Speaker 1: headline that's like President Ford to New York City dropped dead, right,
18:14
Speaker 1: which was over a funding funding dispute. But you know,
18:18
Speaker 1: to me, the eighties New York really was built in
18:24
Speaker 1: the seventies.
18:24
Speaker 2: Right, Well, so that's also kind of a it was
18:28
Speaker 2: a surprise to me, I think it'll be a surprise
18:30
Speaker 2: to some of the readers. Yes, and no, the forties,
18:35
Speaker 2: the fifties, the sixties, this is the prosperous time in America.
18:39
Speaker 2: This is when the American middle class is built on
18:41
Speaker 2: so much of that social funding that we came to
18:44
Speaker 2: depend on the sixties become very tumultuous, to be sure,
18:49
Speaker 2: as the discriminatory aspects of this are challenged, But the
18:53
Speaker 2: seventies will experience an economic downturn that is actually global.
18:57
Speaker 2: It's a fiscal crisis, is global everywhere, all right, But
19:03
Speaker 2: it recovers, and it would have recovered it we recovered
19:07
Speaker 2: around the globe. It actually recovered. But into this really
19:11
Speaker 2: interesting moment steps an opportunity, or is an opportunity, I
19:16
Speaker 2: should say, for again for folks who had long wanted
19:19
Speaker 2: to kind of dismantle attack structure that felt burden some
19:22
Speaker 2: to wealthy people, and they actually will take that kind
19:26
Speaker 2: of already very much struggling civic infrastructure that you know,
19:32
Speaker 2: again was on the mend elsewhere, and we'll double down
19:36
Speaker 2: on this austerity. It happens here, it happens in the
19:39
Speaker 2: UK under Thatcher, and it's a moment that we've kind
19:42
Speaker 2: of forgotten, and it is a moment that every subsequent
19:46
Speaker 2: president will actually contribute to, including Clinton and everybody else,
19:50
Speaker 2: will continue to kind of erod at that social safety net.
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21:36
Speaker 1: slash chuck. Okay, but so how would you explain, because
21:44
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at it right in the eighties,
21:46
Speaker 1: it was the cities can't be helped, right, That was
21:50
Speaker 1: kind of the mindset. It's too late for the cities.
21:53
Speaker 1: Everything was moving to the burbs, right, malls all, you know,
21:56
Speaker 1: all of the e commerce was moving out of the
21:59
Speaker 1: cities left and right, you know, including basketball arenas and
22:04
Speaker 1: and stadiums. Right. Everything was going. And then at some
22:09
Speaker 1: point in the mid nineties we figured out, hey, that's
22:12
Speaker 1: a bad idea. We should invest in our cities again,
22:15
Speaker 1: which of course gave us this sort of renaissance for
22:18
Speaker 1: a period of time that feels like we're in retreat again, you.
22:24
Speaker 2: Know, that renaissance that what they would call at the
22:28
Speaker 2: time is I know you remember, right, the Giuliani miracle
22:31
Speaker 2: that happens in a saying area. But is it.
22:34
Speaker 1: I mean, every city experience right downtowns every pretty much
22:37
Speaker 1: every city except the other one you wrote about, Detroit,
22:40
Speaker 1: right Detroit, And in fact, I've got a request. I'd
22:42
Speaker 1: like you to do Saint Louis next. But that's a
22:44
Speaker 1: that's a that's a separate because it's very it's fascinating
22:47
Speaker 1: to me that Detroit is recovering in Saint Louis, isn't. Yeah,
22:50
Speaker 1: which is? Which is? But I don't want to distract
22:53
Speaker 1: us here from New York. But you're right, like, there's
22:55
Speaker 1: this you know, the broken windows mindset, right, that that's
22:59
Speaker 1: a part of seeing as a part of it. And
23:01
Speaker 1: yet you know it wouldn't it mattered who was mayor
23:05
Speaker 1: every city recovered was recovering by the Turney Center.
23:09
Speaker 2: But one of the things that I think that you'll
23:12
Speaker 2: see is that this is all connected to what we
23:15
Speaker 2: were just talking about. So once we start to free
23:18
Speaker 2: up taxes and we start to have this very popular
23:21
Speaker 2: message that the problem is with people, the problem is
23:25
Speaker 2: with the undeserving, the problem was with the criminal element.
23:29
Speaker 2: People like Giuliani are very savvy, right, He's part of
23:32
Speaker 2: the Skeets story too, and they're very savvy. They understand
23:36
Speaker 2: that this is a message that sells. But also when
23:39
Speaker 2: you free up monies at the top, you can invite
23:42
Speaker 2: businesses in, you can invite that kind of redevelopment, and
23:45
Speaker 2: you touch off this kind of moment of gentrification, and
23:50
Speaker 2: all of that feels really good when you're coming into
23:54
Speaker 2: a city. Times Square, right, goes from feeling undersieged to
23:57
Speaker 2: feeling a bit like Disneyland, and it does feel like
24:01
Speaker 2: an economic miracle. But there is the other side of that, right,
24:05
Speaker 2: which is the explosion in incarceration in New York City
24:10
Speaker 2: and in New York and around the country. The hyper
24:13
Speaker 2: policing that goes on that leads in New York City
24:16
Speaker 2: to stop and frisk, tons of people being pulled over
24:20
Speaker 2: with no criminal charges, and it leads to a pushing
24:24
Speaker 2: out of that poverty into other boroughs, other neighborhoods. This
24:28
Speaker 2: happens of course across the country. And so what I
24:31
Speaker 2: think we're seeing now, which is super interesting in a
24:33
Speaker 2: place like New York is it's wearing thin. What's wearing
24:37
Speaker 2: thin is this idea that the private sector can save
24:40
Speaker 2: everybody that cutting taxes at the top. While it makes
24:44
Speaker 2: everything glitzy and brings Gucci to your downtown, it doesn't
24:49
Speaker 2: actually make people more prosperous. Income inequality is more severe
24:55
Speaker 2: now than it has been since the Gilded Age, And
24:58
Speaker 2: that's kind of the story we tell. Well, but also
25:01
Speaker 2: this is Trump's story, and Trump is kind of always
25:05
Speaker 2: ever president here benefiting from this, navigating this and ultimately
25:11
Speaker 2: writing to the White House as a beneficiary of this.
25:15
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's funny. One of the jokes that
25:16
Speaker 1: many of my political reporter friends and I always make this, like,
25:19
Speaker 1: you know, Trump's been stuck in the eighties, right, that
25:23
Speaker 1: he never got out of the eighties. And part of
25:25
Speaker 1: that is, you know, if you actually any elderly person, right,
25:28
Speaker 1: any older person, when you talk with them, they'll always
25:32
Speaker 1: spend more time on in the era that was best
25:36
Speaker 1: for them, right. So you know, Donald Trump in the
25:40
Speaker 1: eighties was popular. Donald Trump in the eighties was interesting
25:44
Speaker 1: to people. Donald Trump in the eighties was fun to
25:47
Speaker 1: watch on David Letterman, right like he was. So I
25:50
Speaker 1: think in a weird way, his obsession with the eighties
25:53
Speaker 1: is because it was the last time he was liked, right, Like,
25:56
Speaker 1: he really has been, weirdly, you know, always searching for this.
25:59
Speaker 1: I think he's always been in search of in his
26:03
Speaker 1: own life, heyday. Yeah, trying to bring the eighties back,
26:06
Speaker 1: right first, you know, in his own way, in the
26:08
Speaker 1: nineties in the ox and then obviously make America great. Really,
26:12
Speaker 1: in his own head is about just making America the
26:15
Speaker 1: way it was when I was interesting and popular to people.
26:19
Speaker 1: And so talk about what Trump's experiencing in this moment.
26:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he is ground zero in the story as well.
26:28
Speaker 2: The eighties is on the one hand, completely falling apart
26:32
Speaker 2: for so many, but he is navigating it. He is
26:36
Speaker 2: part of this kind of group of very wealthy New
26:40
Speaker 2: Yorkers that see this as an opportunity to get wealthier,
26:44
Speaker 2: to build a real estate empire, really, but also to
26:51
Speaker 2: understand the importance of the media, the flashy media, the
26:55
Speaker 2: New York Post is his friend. And ultimately, by the way,
27:00
Speaker 2: recognizing very sadly how powerful the fear mongering is, how
27:06
Speaker 2: powerful the race baiting is, and really watching this so
27:12
Speaker 2: carefully watching and benefiting from the Giuliani political experience in
27:18
Speaker 2: New York and Trump himself. He tries to court the
27:21
Speaker 2: Reagan White House. He's happy courting the Clinton White House.
27:24
Speaker 2: He doesn't really care so much initially about what party
27:28
Speaker 2: he wants to have power, and as this story unfolds,
27:33
Speaker 2: he understands the formula he will wants. Rubert Martach creates
27:39
Speaker 2: the Fox News. He will make that his platform deliberately,
27:44
Speaker 2: again having watched the New York story. But also right,
27:49
Speaker 2: he goes on The Apprentice, and he goes on Worldwide
27:53
Speaker 2: Wrestling and things like that, because he is selling what
27:57
Speaker 2: the Reagan Revolution sold, which is we're going to say
28:00
Speaker 2: day this country with businessmen and the people who are
28:04
Speaker 2: going to put us in office to do it, or
28:06
Speaker 2: working class white guys. So he's really masterful.
28:12
Speaker 1: Actually, you know, if Bernie Gets doesn't happen, does he
28:17
Speaker 1: insert himself into the Central Park five? Right, it's an
28:21
Speaker 1: unknowable but you know you can't help but wonder watching
28:25
Speaker 1: the Bernie Gets story, Yeah, does that sort of why
28:29
Speaker 1: he dabbles even more into something like that?
28:31
Speaker 2: I think so. I think so. And actually, you know,
28:35
Speaker 2: turning the question slightly differently. I mean, you know, would
28:38
Speaker 2: the Central Park five have been quite the media inflammatory
28:43
Speaker 2: episode that it was without the Guest story and without Trump?
28:47
Speaker 2: I mean, it is it's so interesting that this happens
28:50
Speaker 2: quite a few years later, but it is. It is.
28:54
Speaker 2: It is absolutely unleashed on them in a way that
28:58
Speaker 2: had just been building since eighty four, by the way,
29:00
Speaker 2: as did the mob of killings in in Howard Beach,
29:05
Speaker 2: you know, in benson Hurst. Because the thing about the
29:08
Speaker 2: Guests case and if you're if you're reading it, you're
29:11
Speaker 2: it's you know, day by day you're in the courtroom,
29:14
Speaker 2: you see that there is a bloodthirst that is kind
29:19
Speaker 2: of being nurtured and stoked. And when he is and
29:23
Speaker 2: this is the key, when he is vindicated in the courts, Uh,
29:28
Speaker 2: it sends a message. Uh. It sends a message to
29:31
Speaker 2: the n RA, for example, who has funded his his
29:35
Speaker 2: legal defense to come to New York. Guns are no
29:38
Speaker 2: longer about gun you know, sportsmanship and hunting. They're about
29:43
Speaker 2: protecting your domain from their stems so much. And I
29:48
Speaker 2: hope I connect the dots for people.
29:50
Speaker 1: You really do see that is it's interesting the NRA
29:53
Speaker 1: aspect to this, that that it transforms the NRA from
29:58
Speaker 1: a sportsman club to to it became Yeah.
30:01
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And by the way the media is transformed by
30:06
Speaker 2: this moment, we've kind of begun at the end of
30:09
Speaker 2: the story, which is that there is this tabloid sensationalist media.
30:12
Speaker 2: But but what we don't really understand is that that
30:15
Speaker 2: media becoming mainstream. This moment when that kind of starts
30:21
Speaker 2: to happen, so that even papers of the record, like
30:24
Speaker 2: the New York Times, which is you know, initially a
30:27
Speaker 2: little sober in the reporting.
30:29
Speaker 1: On this, is well in typical Times fashion. If I'm
30:33
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure this must have frustrated you, you know,
30:35
Speaker 1: buried on the local section, right, probably never made it
30:38
Speaker 1: to the front section until it became a thing versus
30:41
Speaker 1: the New York Post, which was always front paging it
30:43
Speaker 1: every day.
30:44
Speaker 2: Right, absolutely, And then the repeating of the misinformation about
30:49
Speaker 2: this story is so effective that it it is also
30:53
Speaker 2: sending a message to the mainstream media. You want to
30:55
Speaker 2: sell papers, you want to get an audience, you too,
30:58
Speaker 2: have to sell crime.
31:00
Speaker 1: We're in the earlier stages of talk radio at this
31:02
Speaker 1: point too.
31:02
Speaker 2: Oh yes, ab WABC in New York City, Curtis Leewa,
31:07
Speaker 2: who will of course recently tried to be the mayor.
31:11
Speaker 2: He is, he's ground zero of this case as well.
31:14
Speaker 1: He the Guardian Angel. Had he started like the timing
31:17
Speaker 1: of Guardian Angels started yet or not yet?
31:20
Speaker 2: Oh yes? And they they will go on the the
31:25
Speaker 2: muscle to raise as much money for Bernie Gets as
31:27
Speaker 2: they can. And and Curtis ly was a talk radio
31:32
Speaker 2: show which was increasingly conservative and again kind of just
31:36
Speaker 2: really a side of misinformation just takes off as a
31:40
Speaker 2: result of the Bernie Gets case. So you know, it's
31:42
Speaker 2: kind of funny. We don't want to put it all
31:43
Speaker 2: on one case. But I was myself, I'm rarely surprised.
31:47
Speaker 2: I was a little surprised by how it all came together.
31:50
Speaker 1: You know, just to put this in context, how often
31:54
Speaker 1: were there subway shootings?
31:56
Speaker 2: I mean just didn't you know, rarely there?
32:00
Speaker 1: I thought this was not this was a really unusual thing. Yeah,
32:04
Speaker 1: and it just you know, obviously it was stuff people feared.
32:07
Speaker 1: But then you know, here it was, this wasn't common
32:11
Speaker 1: subway shootings, That's right.
32:12
Speaker 2: And if you've ever been on a subway, you know
32:15
Speaker 2: how tight that is, how confined it is. Sure, And
32:19
Speaker 2: so for this to have happened. I mean, imagine being
32:22
Speaker 2: that passenger while this is going down. People are running,
32:27
Speaker 2: you know, they're trying to get off this train, and
32:30
Speaker 2: it is a it is a shock, even even in
32:34
Speaker 2: an era of people feeling very unsafe.
32:37
Speaker 1: So let's peel back the public policy aspect of this.
32:41
Speaker 1: If one thing, if you could have changed one thing
32:44
Speaker 1: on the public policy front in nineteen eighty one, right,
32:51
Speaker 1: what's what has the biggest impact in the positive for
32:54
Speaker 1: New York City?
32:56
Speaker 2: H Well, I think what was most consequential on the
33:02
Speaker 2: ground was the stripping away of resources that people desperately needed,
33:09
Speaker 2: which in turn led to, for example, people turning to
33:15
Speaker 2: the illegal drug trade at a whole record level to
33:19
Speaker 2: support themselves their families, which in turn also contributed to
33:24
Speaker 2: the AIDS crisis, which in turn could not get the
33:28
Speaker 2: care and attention it needed without the public resources it needed. So,
33:33
Speaker 2: if we are to really look at a kind of
33:34
Speaker 2: a ground zero moment, the Reagan tax cuts starting in
33:38
Speaker 2: eighty one actually and then getting doubled down on in
33:41
Speaker 2: eighty three, are monumentally important in a place like South Bronx.
33:46
Speaker 2: Think about it. Most African Americans in places like the
33:49
Speaker 2: South Bronx are dependent on public sector jobs right working
33:55
Speaker 2: for the city, working for the state. They are eviscerated.
33:58
Speaker 2: Teenagers got summer employment through something called SEDA ceda jobs.
34:03
Speaker 2: Reagan eliminates them. Mentally ill people relied on general assistance.
34:10
Speaker 2: It is gutted. And of course again it's not just Reagan.
34:14
Speaker 2: It is a long Reagan revolution because it will actually
34:17
Speaker 2: be Clinton. As I you know, am not shied ap point.
34:20
Speaker 1: Out shifted right on these issues. Yes, that's right.
34:24
Speaker 2: So the round zero changing moment is really an economic one, uh,
34:29
Speaker 2: from which the cultural, the racial, all of it will
34:33
Speaker 2: get much tenser, much more exacerbated. But you know, but
34:39
Speaker 2: the flip side of that, and I just want to
34:41
Speaker 2: go back to your point about Times Square, about about
34:44
Speaker 2: the Giuliani moment. The flip side of that is, if
34:47
Speaker 2: you had means in this country, if you were wealthy,
34:51
Speaker 2: the tax burden just shifted dramatically for you in a
34:55
Speaker 2: really wonderful way that we've also been doubling down on.
34:59
Speaker 2: So when Trump is elected, where our eyeballs are focused
35:03
Speaker 2: on Denmark or we're focused on Minneapolis, but meanwhile, the
35:08
Speaker 2: economic story of what's going on is just stunning. We
35:14
Speaker 2: have concentrated wealth at the top in a way that
35:18
Speaker 2: few have really paid attention to.
35:20
Speaker 1: No. I mean, it feels, you know, I've been obsessed
35:24
Speaker 1: with the first twenty five years of the twentieth century
35:27
Speaker 1: because it feels it feels like we're in a similar
35:31
Speaker 1: moment where we're having this massive change in nightmare shifting
35:35
Speaker 1: from a grarian to industrial and the industrialists basically think
35:42
Speaker 1: they're such geniuses they should be in charge of everything,
35:46
Speaker 1: not just their little corner of what they've invented or
35:50
Speaker 1: what they're profiting from. And then you see this, you know,
35:54
Speaker 1: massive gap, and then the people fight back, right that's
35:56
Speaker 1: when we get the director. We pass an income tax
35:59
Speaker 1: constitution constitutional amendment to allow for an income tax, and
36:02
Speaker 1: you know, which was at the time just designed because
36:05
Speaker 1: people were fed up with the super rich, and the
36:07
Speaker 1: only people actually got got taxed back then we're the
36:09
Speaker 1: super rich. And so it does feel like we're we're
36:14
Speaker 1: sort of stumbling back into that moment. It's a different
36:17
Speaker 1: set of robber barons this time. They're all in Silicon
36:20
Speaker 1: Valley and so and here we are in this an
36:24
Speaker 1: economy that that right now, if you if you have
36:27
Speaker 1: money Europe you're you're okay, but if you don't, it's
36:30
Speaker 1: ten times worse.
36:31
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's it's the new Gilded age. Uh.
36:34
Speaker 2: And on the racial front, and on the kind of
36:37
Speaker 2: racial violence front, it's the new Jim Crow. And so
36:40
Speaker 2: we we are, I think, in a changing moment. But
36:43
Speaker 2: this is where the misinformation media and that story told
36:48
Speaker 2: uh that really locates in the eighties is so important
36:51
Speaker 2: because unlike other moments, uh, you know, we as a citizenry,
36:56
Speaker 2: we're just stabilized. What is the truth? What is you know? Up? Down?
37:00
Speaker 2: Down is up? And so I kind of wanted to
37:04
Speaker 2: really elevate that as important to the story because, yeah,
37:08
Speaker 2: we are in a terrible crisis right now, and it
37:10
Speaker 2: could go in any direction.
37:11
Speaker 1: But well, this is a great you're you're myth busting too,
37:14
Speaker 1: which is like, you know, back then, there were actually
37:17
Speaker 1: fewer media outlets. Yeah, and the ease to create misinformation
37:22
Speaker 1: was actually easier, right. There wasn't alternative you know, maybe
37:26
Speaker 1: you had a village voice. The New York Daily News
37:28
Speaker 1: wasn't nearly what it was was sort of a different
37:31
Speaker 1: vibe back then, for sure. It is you know, I
37:38
Speaker 1: think the when people talk about the good old days
37:40
Speaker 1: of the media. I'm like, well, you have no idea,
37:42
Speaker 1: actually how poor those journalists were back then, and how
37:48
Speaker 1: mona mona culture. The journalism was right, it only and
37:53
Speaker 1: it was more group think than you than you realize.
37:56
Speaker 1: In fact, the criticism of group thing today is actually
37:58
Speaker 1: to me more a legacy issue. There was a ton
38:02
Speaker 1: of group think in the eighties, which I feel like
38:06
Speaker 1: in some ways that's what you're surfacing here. There was
38:08
Speaker 1: just just massive mainstream media group think, which is why
38:12
Speaker 1: Bernie gets gets off right absolutely.
38:16
Speaker 2: And one of the startling things is the way in
38:20
Speaker 2: which this at that time was absolutely about race, but
38:26
Speaker 2: it was racially coded in the way that today is not.
38:30
Speaker 2: So it's not so much that, as you say that
38:34
Speaker 2: the kind of group think is so different, it is
38:36
Speaker 2: that it has now been kind of unveiled in a
38:39
Speaker 2: different way. And so in the eighties people were not
38:43
Speaker 2: making always in race has nothing to do with this,
38:46
Speaker 2: Race has nothing to do with this. Even while you know,
38:49
Speaker 2: Reagan is talking about the welfare Queen and this and
38:52
Speaker 2: he's racializing all of it. One of the things that
38:55
Speaker 2: happens is the Guests case kind of allows for just
38:59
Speaker 2: peeling back we don't need to pretend anymore. You know,
39:03
Speaker 2: these guys deserved it. They were black thugs. They were.
39:07
Speaker 2: And of course the civil rights movement is still around.
39:10
Speaker 2: They're pushing back, They're saying, look the hypocrisy here. If
39:14
Speaker 2: a black guy would have gotten on that subway and
39:16
Speaker 2: shut down four white teenagers.
39:18
Speaker 1: They had gotten the death penalty New York back then.
39:22
Speaker 2: But no one's hearing it, right, no one's hearing it
39:24
Speaker 2: because there's this a denial that it has anything to
39:26
Speaker 2: do that. I think that is different today. The decorum,
39:32
Speaker 2: the decorum of the decorum, maybe even of double speak
39:37
Speaker 2: is we're not there.
39:38
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny you say, you call it decorum. I've
39:40
Speaker 1: always said, you know, and I have confessed to this,
39:44
Speaker 1: meaning you sometimes when you're reporting for these big media companies,
39:50
Speaker 1: you round the edges.
39:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I do that.
39:53
Speaker 1: So because you don't want to upset, you don't want
39:56
Speaker 1: to create extra controversy in the coverage itself. Right in
40:00
Speaker 1: the goal of being dispassionate in your reporting and detached
40:04
Speaker 1: from the story personally, you end up putting a more
40:11
Speaker 1: too sanitized of a version of events on the air,
40:14
Speaker 1: even though that wasn't the intent. It was the intent
40:17
Speaker 1: actually was to just sort of not insert the media
40:21
Speaker 1: organization into the debate, right, And and that's that's my
40:27
Speaker 1: guess of how the how the how the major networks
40:29
Speaker 1: covered it versus how the tabloid media covered it.
40:32
Speaker 2: I think that's right. And so what is so striking
40:34
Speaker 2: is the way in which the success actually of the
40:38
Speaker 2: tabloids in this time period, the success of that more conservative,
40:41
Speaker 2: sensational and media is we've underestimated it actually as making
40:46
Speaker 2: its imprint on journalism in general, I think, and you know,
40:52
Speaker 2: this is not to throw all mainstream journalism under the
40:54
Speaker 2: bus by any means, but it is to say that
40:58
Speaker 2: the culture shift that happens over the last fifty years
41:03
Speaker 2: maybe driven by politics and driven by the economic agenda
41:07
Speaker 2: of you know, certain segments of the population, but ultimately
41:11
Speaker 2: it has to be translated, and ultimately it has to
41:14
Speaker 2: be either legitimated or seen as outrageous. And there's something
41:19
Speaker 2: about this moment when again we first see that up
41:23
Speaker 2: is down, down is up kind of moment that we're
41:25
Speaker 2: in today, and no one set of hands is dirtier
41:29
Speaker 2: than another. It's just more it's an ecosystem that starts
41:33
Speaker 2: to get developed, which I personally just found fascinating and I'll,
41:38
Speaker 2: you know, share a confession with you like I found I,
41:42
Speaker 2: you know, try my hardest to kind of be well
41:44
Speaker 2: informed and read and know what's going on in my world.
41:47
Speaker 2: And when I started this book, I was embarrassed to
41:50
Speaker 2: admit internally, like I knew who Bernie Getz was, but
41:54
Speaker 2: I had no idea the names of the people who
41:59
Speaker 2: he had shot.
42:00
Speaker 1: I mean, what was the alternative media landscape back then?
42:03
Speaker 1: In New York? You had the village Voice about the.
42:06
Speaker 2: News, Amsterdam News, Yeah, newspaper.
42:10
Speaker 1: How did they cover this story?
42:12
Speaker 2: Very differently? Imagine very differently. You know, of course, you
42:18
Speaker 2: knew who those victims were, you knew what had happened
42:21
Speaker 2: to them, you knew the context.
42:24
Speaker 1: From was that where you got most of the information
42:27
Speaker 1: trying to fill out the paint the portrait of the victims,
42:31
Speaker 1: of the gets victims, you got to get it from
42:34
Speaker 1: the alternative press.
42:35
Speaker 2: I got a lot of it from there, and I
42:38
Speaker 2: also got a lot of it because ultimately, one of
42:41
Speaker 2: the most severely injured victims, his mother is this kind
42:44
Speaker 2: of diehard advocate on behalf of her son, Darryl KB.
42:48
Speaker 2: And there will be a civil case against Ernie Getz,
42:51
Speaker 2: where a jury will award him forty three million dollars.
42:57
Speaker 2: This is how kind of how obvious to them it
43:00
Speaker 2: is the damage a bronx jury and that deposition that
43:04
Speaker 2: trial trans so much came out and there that I
43:08
Speaker 2: think was really blurred over in the criminal trial. I mean,
43:12
Speaker 2: you know, kats is he is unapologetic, and it doesn't
43:17
Speaker 2: he's he says, you know, in this one of these moments,
43:21
Speaker 2: you know that surely Katy Derrell's mother should have had
43:23
Speaker 2: an abortion, she he should never have been born. He
43:27
Speaker 2: ends up deposing the young man that he actually paralyzed
43:32
Speaker 2: in this civil case. I mean, it's just just it's
43:34
Speaker 2: an unhinged story that you just kind of can't believe
43:38
Speaker 2: until you walk yourself through it. And here we sit today,
43:42
Speaker 2: uh and you know, even today, you know, Bertie gets
43:46
Speaker 2: his still giving interviews on what he did, and people
43:48
Speaker 2: still don't know who he did it to. And so
43:52
Speaker 2: I'm I'm hoping this is kind of shiny new light
43:56
Speaker 2: on it. If nothing else. We take us through a
43:59
Speaker 2: cr criminal trial with Barry Slotnick. Barry Slotnick is his lawyer.
44:04
Speaker 2: He is a you know, he's John Gotti's lawyer. So
44:07
Speaker 2: you can imagine this trial is theater from start to finish.
44:13
Speaker 2: So it's a mix of taking you back there, but also,
44:17
Speaker 2: I hope kind of showing us I ouch ouch, you know,
44:21
Speaker 2: this is how we ended up here.
44:25
Speaker 1: Having good life insurance is incredibly important. I know from
44:29
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44:32
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46:00
Speaker 1: life insurance is something you should really think about, especially
46:03
Speaker 1: if you've got a growing family. You know, what I
46:08
Speaker 1: was reminded of in reading this book is how much
46:10
Speaker 1: this incident sort of clearly was the inspiration for Bonfire.
46:15
Speaker 1: The vanities tumble right, like it's like obvious right that
46:20
Speaker 1: you know, which was such you know an early book
46:23
Speaker 1: that I, you know, devoured back in the early nineties,
46:27
Speaker 1: the movie The Paper, which is my I think nobody
46:31
Speaker 1: captures a newsroom better than that movie. It's one of
46:35
Speaker 1: to this day, I think it holds it holds up
46:37
Speaker 1: in the in understanding how journalists interact with each other
46:41
Speaker 1: really well. But people forget this sort of the the
46:43
Speaker 1: backdrop of the of the of that story is sort
46:47
Speaker 1: of a a fictionalized version of of a racialized incident.
46:55
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it is sort of Bike Lee Spike Lee's
46:58
Speaker 2: you know, do the.
46:59
Speaker 1: Right thing, all of this in some ways that it
47:02
Speaker 1: goes back right gats is the and. And this is
47:06
Speaker 1: what I love about historical fiction. Sometimes there's an actual
47:09
Speaker 1: moment that actually helps shape the historical fiction that helps
47:15
Speaker 1: tell the story of America and tell the story of
47:17
Speaker 1: New York City. I'm curious. It is so obvious now
47:22
Speaker 1: reading this book and watching the divide over the killing
47:26
Speaker 1: of Renee Good in Minneapolis and the dividing the political
47:30
Speaker 1: dividing lines that immediately shaped I mean, I'm sure you
47:33
Speaker 1: watched this and thought this is my book.
47:36
Speaker 2: You know, sadly tragically that's right. You know, it plays
47:41
Speaker 2: out on film as we begin the.
47:43
Speaker 1: Difference, that's the big distinction.
47:46
Speaker 2: But it doesn't matter at some level, right because because
47:51
Speaker 2: the because it is a story, it's going to be
47:54
Speaker 2: a story or it's it's trying to be a story
47:57
Speaker 2: of the self defense of the of the shoe. And
48:01
Speaker 2: that is the ground that is the ground zero of
48:03
Speaker 2: this book. I mean, as is stuff that might surprise us.
48:07
Speaker 2: You know, back in the day, you know, people watch
48:09
Speaker 2: the glitzy media shows, uh, television shows like Lifestyles of
48:13
Speaker 2: the Rich and Famous and and you know, Dallas and
48:17
Speaker 2: Dynasty and got swept away by the magic of being wealthy.
48:23
Speaker 2: But but of course, meanwhile they're being kind of told that,
48:27
Speaker 2: you know, there they should be Charles Bronson to protect
48:29
Speaker 2: themselves on the real streets.
48:31
Speaker 1: Dirty Harry, Dirty Harry.
48:33
Speaker 2: And I feel like we're in that moment again, right
48:35
Speaker 2: we are. We are meant to admire on social media
48:40
Speaker 2: the wealthy, the elite, but meanwhile we are meant to
48:44
Speaker 2: you know, arm ourselves and walk with severe suspicion on
48:48
Speaker 2: our city street. So it's it's alarming, you know, we uh,
48:54
Speaker 2: we can't look at Minneapolis right now, I think and
48:56
Speaker 2: not feel alarmed.
49:00
Speaker 1: I want to pull back a little bit in your
49:02
Speaker 1: journey here. You've done You've done these urban stories in
49:07
Speaker 1: the past on Attica and then you did Detroit. You know,
49:11
Speaker 1: what's the thread that always seems to, you know, serve
49:15
Speaker 1: as a magnet for you when you see something like
49:17
Speaker 1: I gotta, I gotta, I want to tell that story.
49:20
Speaker 2: You know, Usually it is there's something about the way
49:25
Speaker 2: that I learned it, or it continues to be told
49:28
Speaker 2: that just doesn't strike me as the full story. It
49:33
Speaker 2: just doesn't bear the smell test. I I'm always gravitating
49:39
Speaker 2: towards these really powerful events that I know, or I
49:42
Speaker 2: suspect very strongly have kind of shaped where we went,
49:47
Speaker 2: impacted the direction the country took. But I'm also very
49:51
Speaker 2: persuaded that we've only heard one side of it, usually
49:55
Speaker 2: the side of the people with the most power in
49:57
Speaker 2: that story. So I'm always intrigued to kind of go
50:01
Speaker 2: back and tell all of the stories and try to
50:06
Speaker 2: humanize the experience of how it all unfolded at the time.
50:10
Speaker 2: At Attica, for example, you know, we were told that
50:13
Speaker 2: all these brutal, violent prisoners had killed hostages at Attica,
50:17
Speaker 2: and it kind of became this excuse for mass incarceration
50:20
Speaker 2: and not caring about conditions behind bars, and lo and behold,
50:24
Speaker 2: I dig in and that's not at all what happened.
50:27
Speaker 2: And in fact, there's a massive cover up at Attica,
50:30
Speaker 2: which we don't say that word cover up lightly as
50:33
Speaker 2: historians are as journalists, I mean, you have to have
50:35
Speaker 2: real evidence to say that. And and this was a
50:39
Speaker 2: slightly different approach in this book because I wasn't looking
50:42
Speaker 2: for cover up or I wasn't looking for you know,
50:44
Speaker 2: smoking gun. I was just looking to understand, like, how
50:47
Speaker 2: did we end up here where you know, our eyes
50:53
Speaker 2: aren't to be believed, and decorum is out the window,
50:56
Speaker 2: and and and it feels like our democracy is in
50:59
Speaker 2: real danger. And I wanted to understand how that could
51:02
Speaker 2: have happened in such a short period of time.
51:04
Speaker 1: Really, are you convinced if it wasn't Bernie Gets it
51:06
Speaker 1: have been another incident. It was just that this was
51:10
Speaker 1: a moment that was going to It was inevitable, it
51:12
Speaker 1: was going to happen. That they were just looking for
51:15
Speaker 1: the star for their show.
51:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't think the
51:19
Speaker 2: world would have looked differently had Bernie Gets not lived
51:22
Speaker 2: in New York City in nineteen eighty four. But I
51:25
Speaker 2: do think that the way it all comes together was auspicious.
51:30
Speaker 2: It was an opportunity, it was it was a moment
51:33
Speaker 2: that everyone understood the significance of it as would be
51:38
Speaker 2: the Central Park five and eventually exonerated five that we
51:42
Speaker 2: now even could understand that better. Right? How that all happened?
51:47
Speaker 1: I want to ask you from the point of view
51:49
Speaker 1: of a story, and I'm going to sort of get
51:51
Speaker 1: you sort of land the plane this way. I had
51:53
Speaker 1: Garret Grafhon It's written some really good oral histories and
51:56
Speaker 1: he's put together and we were talking about the sweets
52:00
Speaker 1: when you're trying to sort of find out what really
52:04
Speaker 1: happened and that you know, there's this point where, you know,
52:12
Speaker 1: do you want people who are around to help you
52:16
Speaker 1: navigate what happened then? Or because of the way memory works,
52:20
Speaker 1: it could be misleading? And is it easier to get
52:24
Speaker 1: the truth after everybody dies? I'm curious where you are
52:27
Speaker 1: and what does it take, you know, when you feel
52:31
Speaker 1: like you can paint a complete picture? Is it fifteen
52:33
Speaker 1: years after an event? Thirty years? Is five years? When
52:37
Speaker 1: is it? And when is it too soon to try
52:39
Speaker 1: to unpack an event? Like you know? I often wonder,
52:43
Speaker 1: you know, do we need more time to truly understand
52:48
Speaker 1: nine to eleven? I don't know right like it because
52:52
Speaker 1: you know, it's often. How often is it the case
52:54
Speaker 1: that a book written forty years after an event surfaces
52:58
Speaker 1: something that perhaps the popular memory of it had completely erased.
53:05
Speaker 1: So you, as inn historian, what's your general like when
53:10
Speaker 1: when is it too soon to tackle to try to
53:12
Speaker 1: unpack an historical event in your mind? And when is
53:15
Speaker 1: it too late?
53:17
Speaker 2: Well, I certainly would not want to write. I do
53:20
Speaker 2: write about the present day, but always trying to do
53:22
Speaker 2: so with some past context. But I wouldn't want to
53:26
Speaker 2: do a book on that because I do think you
53:28
Speaker 2: do need time. I think you need a little bit
53:30
Speaker 2: of distance. But what is kind of stunning to me
53:33
Speaker 2: is doesn't matter how much time has passed. If you're
53:36
Speaker 2: only going to rely on kind of official sources, if
53:39
Speaker 2: you're only going to rely on the print media to
53:41
Speaker 2: tell you what happened, if you're only going to rely
53:43
Speaker 2: on people's recollection of what happened, you're never going to
53:47
Speaker 2: really be able to pull it back together or reconstruct
53:51
Speaker 2: it and pull it back together. So to a pitch
53:54
Speaker 2: for being a historian, believe it or not, you know,
53:57
Speaker 2: we start at the beginning. We have preconceived notions. Everyone does.
54:01
Speaker 2: But we are routinely surprised and routinely uh, you know,
54:05
Speaker 2: challenged by what we in fact see in uh, in
54:09
Speaker 2: the record. And sometimes that's simple as seeing an original
54:13
Speaker 2: autopsy report, or sometimes it's as simple as actually going
54:18
Speaker 2: and looking at the context that no one ever bothered
54:22
Speaker 2: to look at. So I don't think it's about how
54:24
Speaker 2: much time. I think it's about the sources that we
54:27
Speaker 2: get at, and that it's context. Context. Context matters, and frankly,
54:33
Speaker 2: we don't have a lot of patience for context as
54:35
Speaker 2: a society.
54:36
Speaker 1: We don't.
54:37
Speaker 2: Context feels like it's a drag. And so when I write,
54:40
Speaker 2: I always try to like, it's still got to be
54:43
Speaker 2: a narrative, right, we still got to move through it,
54:45
Speaker 2: We still got to put ourselves there. But context matters.
54:50
Speaker 1: How do you check your own bias? Right? Like in
54:55
Speaker 1: your own and what I call present day bias? You know,
54:58
Speaker 1: for instance, right, you know what can be offensive to you?
55:04
Speaker 1: And I today was mainstream thinking at a certain period
55:09
Speaker 1: of time in our history. And how do you correctly
55:14
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? It's like, how do you
55:16
Speaker 1: weigh that when you're surfacing an historical moment?
55:21
Speaker 2: Well, it interestingly, it goes back to this question of
55:25
Speaker 2: both context but also sources, So the question of what
55:28
Speaker 2: is normal in a given moment. Right, So people would
55:31
Speaker 2: write back in the day about the you know, the
55:34
Speaker 2: end of slavery, and you know how few people were
55:37
Speaker 2: actually standing against slavery? Was kind of you know, everyone
55:40
Speaker 2: was everyone kind of accepted slavery. But when you actually
55:42
Speaker 2: go back and you look at the record, but it's
55:44
Speaker 2: not true. Actually a lot of people were against slavery.
55:47
Speaker 2: There were there were sides to take even then. There
55:49
Speaker 2: were there were positions to take even then, and so
55:53
Speaker 2: you kind of test yourself always like, well, what would
55:56
Speaker 2: the other side have said? And you try to find
55:58
Speaker 2: that other perspective, and you try to make sure that
56:01
Speaker 2: you are painting an accurate picture of the zeitgeist of
56:04
Speaker 2: that moment by making sure you've heard from everybody. Frankly,
56:08
Speaker 2: like looked at all of the like you mentioned earlier,
56:11
Speaker 2: like there's the black press and there's the white press
56:14
Speaker 2: in New York. Well, we need to look at both
56:16
Speaker 2: if we want to have some sense of how this
56:19
Speaker 2: case was being understood at the time. That's just an example.
56:22
Speaker 2: But I think that you know, you as a as
56:25
Speaker 2: a journalist, myself as a historian. We are constantly aware
56:30
Speaker 2: of Oh, let me, let me, let me stop, let
56:32
Speaker 2: me think about that. How am I writing that sentence?
56:34
Speaker 2: How am I? How am I understanding what just happened?
56:37
Speaker 2: Because if we stop doing that, then we're just plembics.
56:40
Speaker 2: We're just we're just we're writing tracks, you know.
56:43
Speaker 1: I mean, it's this whole thing, you know, you want
56:45
Speaker 1: to what people want more than anything I've at least
56:49
Speaker 1: I think the people that gravitate to what you do
56:51
Speaker 1: and what I'd like to think I'm trying to do,
56:53
Speaker 1: is they want clarity. Yeah, that's right. They definitely want clarity.
56:57
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not there. And I think that we, you know,
57:00
Speaker 1: and that's the hardest thing to convey, is you know,
57:05
Speaker 1: I wish that were I wish that was an easy
57:08
Speaker 1: step one, step two, step three. That's how we got here,
57:10
Speaker 1: and that's how we get out right. And I think
57:13
Speaker 1: that even when you try to speak with clarity and
57:17
Speaker 1: if you don't include the context, the clarity falls flat.
57:21
Speaker 2: Well, and especially where we're going to go next. So
57:24
Speaker 2: you know, we can speculate, we can hope, we can fear,
57:28
Speaker 2: but at the end of the day, we only actually
57:31
Speaker 2: have our past as guide. And so yeah, we just
57:34
Speaker 2: kind of cross fingers and through stories and through education
57:39
Speaker 2: of what actually happened, perhaps bring some clarity on the present.
57:43
Speaker 2: But but forward is the gamble, right, We can get
57:47
Speaker 2: a whole lot worse before we get better, but we
57:50
Speaker 2: hope we won't.
57:51
Speaker 1: So what are you? How many projects are you working on?
57:54
Speaker 2: That? Well? I actually was meet.
57:57
Speaker 1: Most historians have more than one going.
57:58
Speaker 2: I was knee deep and writing a whole other book
58:01
Speaker 2: which I'm now going to return to, which is on
58:04
Speaker 2: the move bombing in nineteen eighty five in Philadelphia, where
58:09
Speaker 2: Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on an urban black neighborhood
58:13
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia where a black radical group resided and took
58:17
Speaker 2: out incinerated to full city blocks of that city. And
58:22
Speaker 2: it was one of these also dramatic moments that is
58:26
Speaker 2: told very very differently depending on who you were and
58:29
Speaker 2: what you thought about it. It's about the police, it's
58:31
Speaker 2: about the city, it's about race again. So that's where
58:34
Speaker 2: we're going next.
58:35
Speaker 1: Oh, if Philadelphia in some ways was even more divided
58:40
Speaker 1: on race.
58:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, story, this story, I think you'll see is really
58:45
Speaker 2: ground zero of so much of why that was. And
58:49
Speaker 2: also it has scarred the city to this day.
58:51
Speaker 1: It's interesting what you just said. I'm going to go
58:53
Speaker 1: back to it. What was gets always out there? Or
58:57
Speaker 1: was this sort of a aha moment it for you?
59:01
Speaker 2: So guesses, Yeah, that's what we kind of dropped that thread,
59:04
Speaker 2: Guess is something that I remembered at the time. I
59:07
Speaker 2: was re reminded of it when I was working on
59:09
Speaker 2: Attica because one of the lawyers that will defend one
59:13
Speaker 2: of the boys is Bill Kunstler, who was a key lawyer.
59:16
Speaker 1: Oh my god in the right who you'd start to see,
59:20
Speaker 1: you know, all these lawyers from the eighties became TV
59:23
Speaker 1: pundits during OJ and he was one of them.
59:26
Speaker 2: That's right. So Kunseler was a lawyer at Attica, but
59:28
Speaker 2: he was also a lawyer at Guests. So I was
59:30
Speaker 2: kind of already reintroduced to Guess working on the Attica book,
59:34
Speaker 2: and then when Trump was gearing up for to likely
59:38
Speaker 2: win a second term, I was just like, I just
59:39
Speaker 2: need to stop, I need to pivot. I'm really interested
59:42
Speaker 2: in this moment. I just want to go back and
59:45
Speaker 2: work on that. So that's that that was what happened.
59:47
Speaker 1: Look, I think this is an important piece of the story, right,
59:50
Speaker 1: Like with the trying to understand. I go back to
59:53
Speaker 1: how I introduced you, which is, you know, there's a
59:54
Speaker 1: constant the question I get all the times, how'd we
59:56
Speaker 1: get here? And you know, there's a lot of ways
59:59
Speaker 1: we got here. There's no one way we got here.
1:00:02
Speaker 1: It's been there's a variety of ways that you know,
1:00:05
Speaker 1: it takes a village, and it took a village in
1:00:08
Speaker 1: the negative sense too. But this is an important cog
1:00:13
Speaker 1: in the story. I think you've I think you've surfaced
1:00:15
Speaker 1: an important moment. So when is the when is the
1:00:19
Speaker 1: scripted mini series come out? Well? These are stories. Look,
1:00:25
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in this. I think we need
1:00:27
Speaker 1: we need to educate people better. And if you want,
1:00:29
Speaker 1: if people want to watch something more than they want
1:00:31
Speaker 1: to read something, I don't, as long as they want
1:00:33
Speaker 1: to inform themselves, let's put it in every platform neutral
1:00:37
Speaker 1: this screams episodic show.
1:00:41
Speaker 2: Well. Well, luckily, as with Attika, I am very much
1:00:46
Speaker 2: knee deep trying to get all of this out there
1:00:48
Speaker 2: in a different platform like in television series. And so
1:00:52
Speaker 2: you know, fingers crossed and stay listed and but you know,
1:00:56
Speaker 2: thank you so much for allowing me to share this
1:00:58
Speaker 2: story with people, if nothing else, I think it's you know,
1:01:02
Speaker 2: I hope it is going to get people thinking and
1:01:05
Speaker 2: also and just treat intrigued by the human beings at
1:01:08
Speaker 2: the heart of the story.
1:01:09
Speaker 1: So I mean, it's almost like a whole series. You
1:01:11
Speaker 1: could read, right, the Bronx is Burning. You read your
1:01:13
Speaker 1: Bernie Gets book, maybe throwing a roy Cone, right, the
1:01:21
Speaker 1: one about I forget Zion is it. I can't remember
1:01:26
Speaker 1: the guy who wrote it. You know, it was supposed
1:01:28
Speaker 1: to be an autobiography and it turned into kind of
1:01:30
Speaker 1: an antagonistic thing. Bonfire the vanities, right, you sort of
1:01:35
Speaker 1: you get to you get New York City in the
1:01:36
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties.
1:01:37
Speaker 2: Huh, that's right, that's right there. And I think there's
1:01:40
Speaker 2: a reason we're going back to the eighties. I will
1:01:42
Speaker 2: just leave us with that thought. I mean, I think
1:01:44
Speaker 2: that was a decade that we either remember so fondly
1:01:47
Speaker 2: as you know it was Madonna, it was Neon and
1:01:50
Speaker 2: it was it was great fun, or we remember it
1:01:52
Speaker 2: as oh, that was a scary time. But either way,
1:01:55
Speaker 2: we got it, we got it.
1:01:57
Speaker 1: It depends on it depends who you were, right, by
1:01:59
Speaker 1: the way, nineteen fifties have the same vibe to it.
1:02:02
Speaker 1: For some people, the fifties were this amazing moment in
1:02:05
Speaker 1: American history and the advancement of the suburban America. YadA, YadA, YadA.
1:02:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:02:11
Speaker 1: And that's if you were white, right. If you were
1:02:14
Speaker 1: black in America in the nineteen fifties, Ye're not. They
1:02:17
Speaker 1: weren't happy days. Yeah. To borrow a to borrow a
1:02:20
Speaker 1: TV show.
1:02:21
Speaker 2: Phrase, Yeah, absolutely.
1:02:23
Speaker 1: Anyway, Hey, hither and this is great man. Congrats on
1:02:26
Speaker 1: the book.
1:02:27
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on