Latest / Revisionist History / Chutzpah vs. Chutzpah

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Chutzpah vs. Chutzpah · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin heads up. In this episode, I interview an old
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: school guy from New York who drops a lot of
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: f bombs. Just so you're aware, say your name the
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: way in Israeli would say Melia Vital and say my
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: name is Millia Vital in hebrewal, my name is Malcolm Glodwell.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and misunderstood. So far in season four, i've talked about
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: grand themes, huge issues. This episode is about something very
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: specific a word. The word I'm interested in is hutzpah.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I decided I would like to examine the phenomenon of footspot.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Since Millie is my neighbor and in Israeli, she has
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: agreed to help this teach Coushia Malcolm how to say
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: this word appropriately. First of all, are we doing are
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: we doing that kind of thing in the throat that
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: so many the gutt do I have to the.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Soft I think we have a closer to Arabic. It's
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: deeper in the throat and there's a lot more contact
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: of the soft palate.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: It's really deeper. Yeah, so so softer, not not a
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: whole but footspa.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: No, who the this. Okay, So the sound is right,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: it is deep, but the vowel is not whole. It's
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: who who.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: In Hebrew there's only I A E O. There's no diphthongs,
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: and there's no awe in there's no book and book right,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: there's only woo. So you understand what I'm talking to myself.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: For me, it's very clear, because sadly I worked on
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: it so hard. But okay, so it's not hootspa. Yeah,
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: just like it's not Milli, it's meally Meali e oh ooh,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: so it's who. H's the team who, not who who? Yes,
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: that's better enough. Who.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: It strikes me that there is a lot of Hootspa
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: in the world at the moment, and that maybe it
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: would be useful to find out something more about it.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: So I started with Millie and the first thing she
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: told me is that there isn't one hood spot. There's
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: actually two, the American version and the Israeli version. Hootspa
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I knew, but not this other one.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Hoots Spa not bad, but it's not a paw.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's baa.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: It's a bottle that doesn't exist sexually in England. Now
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: you've got to have the say, you gotta say certain Yeah,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: he's hit the second syllable.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Bats it.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of air coming out of the mouth.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: And he said, why so when? Uh? But in America,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: the accidents on the first syllable yeah hots right, huts
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: ba and huts ba and they are worlds apart and
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: maybe our hoods. But problem is that we've confused the two.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: When I was in Los Angeles a little while back,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I went to see a Hollywood legend named Al Ruddy.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Tall guy, lean close to ninety. He lives up in
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the canyons of Beverly Hills, one of those nineteen sixties
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: houses perched on a hillside that looks like something off
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: the set of a James Bond movie. I had a
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: specific reason to go and see Ruddy, But Ruddy is
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the kind of person that when he starts talking, specific
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: reasons go out the window.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: I was born in Canada. Also, now that I know
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: everything about you, I was born in Montreal. I know.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I saw that.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I went to Montreal and then my mother, my
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: mother snuck over the border with she divorced with three kids.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: We stuck over the border in New York. My mother
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: said when they asked you junior and Junior highway you
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: were born, saying, oh, no, what do you look like?
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: A fucking mor I don't know where the fuck I'm born?
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: You quit.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Already was the middle child.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: So I was the one that worked harder for everything.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: I avercat because I had an oldest sister who was beautiful,
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: and my brother, who was the baby. I was a
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: schmuck in the middle, right, So I was always working harder.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: But I decided, and I learned it early, and it
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: was it was actually a blessing, you know. I said,
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: you know, I better learn how to take care of myself.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: No one's going to open the fucking doors for me anyone.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: I gotta do it.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Al Ruddy way, we all right away meant going to
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Brooklyn Tech, then bouncing around working at a gas station,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: studying architecture at USC, and winding up with a job
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: as a computer programmer at the Rand Corporation think tank
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: in Santa Monica. While he's working at Rand, Ruddy meets
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: an unemployed actor named Bernie Fine.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: So I tell Bernie, why don't I'm not Bernie? What
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: the fuck they have they're not to write at a
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: half hour show it's a one liner. It's the simplest
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: format that the one act could break the high point
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: and he resolve in an act too.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: So on the side, the two of them start to
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: write a television pilot, a comedy set in a prison,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: not just any prison, a Nazi prisoner of war camp,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: and the comic leads are the head of the prison,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Colonel Klink, and a prison guard, Sergeant Schultz, whose signature
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: line is I know nothing, I see nothing, I hear nothing. Somehow,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Ruddy gets the script to an agent named Mike Levy,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and Levy gets them a pitch meeting with CBS. This
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: was the mid nine teen sixties when CBS was known
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: as a Tiffany Network. It was the most prestigious television
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: broadcaster in the world, intellectual high class. Its president was
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the legendary William Paley.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: I'm sitting opposite William S. Paley, who fucking owns CBS.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: The whole room, CBS guys and me and Mike is
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: that Mike discussed a show called Hogan's Heroes, Bill Pelley's
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: across the table, and Mikey says, I find the idea
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: of Nazis doing comedies. Those were totally reprehensible.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Mike Leavy, the agent looks over at Ruddy.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: You tell him he blown away. Don't know what to
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: say is oh, I'll have him tell you about it.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: He points to me. I never saw a fucking thing, right,
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: I acted out the whole show idiotic. I'm jumping up
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: and down. I know nothing but machine guns, and Bill
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Paley starts like he can't stop laughing. I swear to
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: cross before I know it, the Paul romas clapping on
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: the other side, So he got through and I thought
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: it was Bill Pelly stands up. He says, I don't
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: know if I can ever buy that show, but I said,
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: I just want to commend you that that's one of
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: the funniest things I've ever heard.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Hogan's Heroes runs for six seasons from nineteen sixty five
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy one. The show wins two Emmys, has
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: a huge following, and makes CBS a fortune.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Oh, I say nothing. I was not here. I did
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: not even get up this morning.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Now, since our topic is hutzba, let us break this down.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: A computer programmer named al Ruddy, who is Jewish, has
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: his agent, who is Jewish, set up a meeting with
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Bill Paley, who is Jewish about a comedy starring two Nazis,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: and Paley says, I'm Jewish, I'm not interested. But then Ruddy,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: who is never who sold a screenplay before in his life,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: convinces him it's actually a great idea. And by the way,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: the lead Nazi in Hogan's Heroes, Colonel Klink, is played
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: by Werner Klemperer, Jewish whose family fled Nazi Germany in
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, and the prison guard, Sergeant Schultz is
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: played by John Banner, Jewish who fled Europe in nineteen
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: thirty nine. The word hutzpa refers to audacity. This is audacious.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Ruddy would go on to write The Longest Yard, starring
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Burt Reynolds, and Walker Texas Ranger starring Chuck Norris. He
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: was one of the producers on the two thousand and
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: four film Million Dollar Baby, which won a handful of oscars.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: I could go on and now, sitting with him in
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: his kitchen as he wheeled his wheelchair back and forth
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: to emphasize the highlight of each of his stories, I
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: realized what Al Ruddy is. He is hutzpa. But this
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: is a very specific kind of hutzpa.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Remember this show is being made only twenty years after
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: the Nazis stopped terrorizing Europe.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: This camp clink, this camp is a black page in
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: the glorious history.
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: Is a sad right, which I shall report when I
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: get back to Berlin.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Paley admired Ruddy for the way he behaves. He rewarded him.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: If you and Bernie Fine were not Jewish, could you
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: have gotten away with it?
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: Didn't that to It didn't even enter my mind in
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: those says yeah, no, and no one asks. No one
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: knew that, no one, There was never an issue.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: It's funny Ruddy didn't brazenly set out to violate social norms.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: It didn't occur to him that there was a social
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: norm to violate. In America. This is what is meant
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: by hutzba, but not in Israel. Houts ba is a
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: whole different matter.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Hutzpa.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Hootspa.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, you also don't say hutzpa like with this sort
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: of curl to it, like a cute kind of hootspa.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: It's hot spot, you say, like it's a hot spot,
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: like what a what an insult? It's it's edgy and bitter.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: It's not like she's got so much hootspot. That's a
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: totally different word. It has the connotation I would say
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: is like it's a hot spot, like someone who's someone
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: who has no care about anyone else's life or feelings,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: or like if your child is rude to you. If
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: I say to Benjamin it's it's this is like as
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: low as it gets. He actually wants like teared up
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: when I said that, I could see his face like shocked. Yeah,
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: he knows what it means, like no manners or no
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: or no regard to someone else's feelings or condition. That
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: would be the spa.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one word, two very different meanings, and we've been
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: conflating the two. I'll get into the consequences when we
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: come back. Let's do a second Hutzpa k study involving
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: an exact contemporary of Al Ruddies.
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure how to introduce my next guest. He's
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: a businessman with leads the most colorful life. His name
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: has been in the paper, is a great deal lately,
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: and I just met him backstage, but I'm anxious to
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: meet him further. We welcome, please, mister Joseph COLUMBOO.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: In the late nineteen sixties, and early nineteen seventies, Colombo
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: began making the rounds of talk shows and news programs
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: in New York City. Invariably, the interview would begin with
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: the question of what Joseph Columbo did for a living,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: and invariably his answer would be the same. Here he
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: is on the Dick Cavit Show in April of nineteen
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: seventy one, explain.
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: What you do for a living, as if I had
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: never met you.
• 12:10
  Speaker 6: Well, I'm a real estate salesman, and I own a
• 12:13
  Speaker 6: piece of a funeral home, and and that wasn't meant
• 12:20
  Speaker 6: to be now, funny, Vick.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: You may have noticed, by the way, there's a lot
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: of Dick Caviot in this season of Provision is History.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I love Dick Cabot.
• 12:29
  Speaker 6: And anything I can do to iron a living, honestly
• 12:32
  Speaker 6: and sincerely, I hope so cause and an a florist,
• 12:37
  Speaker 6: and I own a piece of a cut room in
• 12:39
  Speaker 6: New York that we cut material for dresses.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: Ah.
• 12:43
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a cut room. And with all these things
• 12:45
  Speaker 6: put together, I iron eleven. Yeah, and I worked very
• 12:49
  Speaker 6: hard at it, very honest and sincely.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Colombo's media tour was to promote an organization he had
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: started called the Italian American Civil Rights League.
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: Well, we believe that we are escape goats. We have
• 13:03
  Speaker 6: been labeled and stigmatized, and I maintain and I'll keep
• 13:07
  Speaker 6: saying that it's each and every Italian American throu the
• 13:10
  Speaker 6: United States that there is a conspiracy against.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: I asked the writer Nick Peleggie about him. Maybe you
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: remember Pelgi from our fourth of July episode earlier this season,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: and what was he like?
• 13:22
  Speaker 7: From everything I hear and I've seen him speak on
• 13:25
  Speaker 7: occasion and live in rooms with him, he was as
• 13:30
  Speaker 7: mild and calm and relaxed as you can imagine. He
• 13:35
  Speaker 7: was like a dry good salesman.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Pledge grew up with Colombo in benson Hurst, Brooklyn.
• 13:40
  Speaker 7: He came up with this idea of the Italian American
• 13:42
  Speaker 7: Civil Rights League. There are prebus was that Italians were
• 13:46
  Speaker 7: being stigmatized by the mafia, that there was really no
• 13:50
  Speaker 7: such thing as the mafia, but the media was going
• 13:53
  Speaker 7: after Italian Americans and denying us our right place in
• 13:57
  Speaker 7: the world, and we would be prejudiced against getting good
• 14:01
  Speaker 7: jobs or because the New York Times couldn't stop writing
• 14:04
  Speaker 7: the word mafia.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Now, what was Joe Colombo's real job. Aside from running
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: a funeral home and a cut shop and selling real estate,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: he was a big time mafia don the Profaci family.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Old man Giuseppe Prafacci dies in nineteen sixty two. Colombo
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: takes over the organization. American Jews had The Anti Defamation
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: League formed in nineteen thirteen to combat the long history
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: of antisemitism around the world. African Americans start the NAACP
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: in nineteen oh nine because black people were being openly
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: and ruthlessly deny their civil rights. The Italian American Civil
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Rights League was started by a mobster upset that the
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: media was calling him a mobster. In April of nineteen seventy,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Columbo and a group of his associates started picketing the
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Manhattan headquarters of the FBI. That protest eventually grows to
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: five thousand people. They come up with a logo in
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: evoking Christopher Columbus, the greatest Italian immigrant of them all.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: By the summer of nineteen seventy they have forty five
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: thousand dues paying members. They throw themselves a big benefit
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: concert in Madison Square Garden, starring, of course, Frank Sinatra.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: They go after Alka Seltzer for their most famous TV commercial,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: in which an Italian man, overseen by his doting wife,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: eats one too many spicy meatballs.
• 15:36
  Speaker 7: Sometimes you eat more than you should and when it's spicy.
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: Besides, Mamma Mia, do you need alca seltzer as.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Italians eating meatballs, according to Joe Colombo, perpetuates harmful stereotypes
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: about Italians.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: Mom of me, that's a spicy meat board.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Here's my favorite story involving Joe Colombo. In the late
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, Johnny Carson was the king of late night
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: TV and one of the most famous television personalities in
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: the country. According to his former attorney Bushkin, Carson was
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: out drinking one night at Jilly's, a bar in Manhattan
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: run by a close friend of Frank Sinatra's Jilly Rizzo.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: This is Bushkin telling the story on the Artie Lang
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Show a few years ago.
• 16:21
  Speaker 8: It was on I think fifty second and eighth, a
• 16:24
  Speaker 8: famous watering hole, and Johnny was in there one night
• 16:27
  Speaker 8: with McMahon.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Johnny being Johnny Carson, McMahon being his sidekick, Ed McMahon.
• 16:33
  Speaker 8: And they try to pick up the wrong girls happened
• 16:37
  Speaker 8: to be the wife and sister of a well known
• 16:41
  Speaker 8: mafioso type of character.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Who was not sensitive about stuff, like.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Not happy, irritated, you might say. Carson ends up being
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: thrown down the stairs at Jilly's. He's so banged up
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: there's no way he can go on television. Then he
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: learns that the mobster in question has put out a
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: contract on his life.
• 17:01
  Speaker 8: What happened was they went looking for Johnny. Johnny holed
• 17:05
  Speaker 8: up in the apartment at U N Plaza.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: He's hiding out. He takes the week off work. He's petrified.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: So what happens Joe Colombo makes a deal with Carson's network, NBC.
• 17:18
  Speaker 8: The Columbus Day Parade was about to come up. It
• 17:21
  Speaker 8: was like three weeks away and no network who would
• 17:24
  Speaker 8: agree to cover it then, because they knew it was
• 17:27
  Speaker 8: the five families of New York that were sponsoring this
• 17:30
  Speaker 8: parade to make the Italian Americans look, you know. So
• 17:34
  Speaker 8: Carson's hiding out and a deal was struck. If NBC
• 17:38
  Speaker 8: covers the parade, they let Carson go. So that year,
• 17:42
  Speaker 8: NBC is the only network that covered the parade.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: Carson gets.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, and what happens the following year, nineteen seventy one,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: when Joe Columbo stages the second, even more elaborate Columbus
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Day event, intended to show the world that the Italian
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: American community of New York is peaceful and law abiding.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Someone shoots him.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 18:06
  Speaker 7: They had the first one a Columbus Circle. In the
• 18:08
  Speaker 7: second one, he shot Joe Colombo. I mean, it's just insane.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: But you couldn't make this up, like oh at the
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: grants too.
• 18:16
  Speaker 7: They could have done at any location in the city
• 18:19
  Speaker 7: besides Columbus Circle.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: But in the middle of a rally.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Of a rally intended to whitewash the Italian American community,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: somebody offs the guy trying to whitewash that. What I
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: mean is this is hootsba all over the place. But
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: it's not Al Ruddy's kind of hoods. But is it
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Having a Jewish actor play a Nazi prison guard who
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: runs around saying in the middle of the Holocaust, I
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: know nothing, I hear nothing, I see nothing in a
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: primetime television sitcom is well, it's kind of amazing. But
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Joe Colombo, mob boss starting the Italian American Civil Rights League,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: this is hutsba on a whole other level. For goodness sake,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: At the time he was shot, Colombo was under federal
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: indictment on charges of controlling a ten million dollar a
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: year gambling syndicate. This is not audacity, This is shamelessness,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: the other kind of hutzba hutzpah. In the Book of Genesis,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: there is a famous passage where the prophet Abraham speaks
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: to God about the moral outrages in Sodom and Gomorrah.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: God wants to destroy both cities, but Abraham says, wait,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: what if there are fifty righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah?
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Will you really sweep those cities away and not spare
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: them for the sake of those fifty righteous people. So
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the Lord says, okay, if you can find fifty righteous men,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: I will spare the cities. Abraham then says, what if
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: there are only forty five righteous men? You wouldn't want
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: to kill forty five perfectly innocent men for the sake
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: of five at the margin, and God says, you're right,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: let's sake it forty five, to which Abraham responds, why
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: not thirty? I mean same logic. God says, okay, they
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: keep going. In the end, Abraham gets him down to ten.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Abraham is being very Israeli. Here, Israel is what is
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: called a low power distance culture, meaning that it's a
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: place where there is very little respect for hierarchy or
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: formality in social interaction. France is the opposite kind of place,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: a high power distance culture. Nobody just calls up God
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: directly in France. In France, Abraham would have had to
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: file an application with the Department of Divine Communication, wait
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: three months for an appointment, then present some kind of
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: formal legal writ on behalf of the righteous of Gomorrah.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Not in Israel. Here's another example of low power distance
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: at work in Israel. It's the word new n you.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: New is what linguists call a reactive token, word used
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: in conversation by the party that's doing the listening. Uh
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: huh is a reactive token, so is really? The point
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: of a reactive token is to signal involvement without claiming
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: the floor from the speaker. I understand, I'm interested, keep going.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: But new is an unusual reactive token because it's not neutral.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: It's not I'm listening. It means hurry up, get to
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: the point. New new now is new polite in virtually
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: all cultures in the world. Of course, the answer would
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: be No. New is not some gentle conversational nudge. It's
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: a hijacking. The listener is interrupting the speaker in order
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: to control the pace of the narrative. But in Israel
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: this is not necessarily true. The Israeli linguist Isle Maschler
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: has written extensively on new. She says quote. By exhibiting
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: their impatience with the movement towards the climax of a story,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: to the point of taking the liberty of controlling the
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: flow of another's discourse, hearers can show maximal involvement in
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: the narrative, meaning we in Israel have no need to
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: beat around the bush with neutral reactive tokens. We're a
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: tiny country with zero power distance. What happens tell me
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: I can't wait any longer. In Abraham's argument with God,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Abraham talks God down very methodically, fifty righteous men to
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: forty five to forty to thirty to twenty, and then ten,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and surely, right around the forty mark, when it would
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: have been obvious to any omniscient entity where Abraham was going.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: God must have interrupted. No, I love you, Abraham, you
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: know that there is no need to drag.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: This out.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: My friend Milly says that since coming to America, she
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: has struggled with the transition to a land of excessive
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: social nicety, like this past winter when she was dealing
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: with her children's school.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: If I say, for example, you know, can we have
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: less snow days? Like even if there's a snow day, like,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: can't you just leave the school open? I'm just asking.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: My husband says, that's hot spot, Like you don't think
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: about what their point of view is. You don't think
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: about what the teachers have to do to get to school,
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: you don't think about their safety, you don't think about
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: the other kids. I'm not true, but I just want
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: to know the like why can't I just ask the question?
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: So that's you know, Yes, Let's say you were in
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Israel and the same scenario. I mean, I realize it's
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: not snow days in Israel. But suppose you're making the
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: same request at the school and I am the principal
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: of the school and you're asked, I would like you
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: to ask me, as an ISRAELI ask me why the
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: school can't stay over more?
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Say excuse me, you know my kids at home, I
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: don't have the time to take care of them. They
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: need to be inside the school. You need to keep
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: the school open so I can leave my kids there.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: And everybody else agrees with me. You want me to ask,
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: I'm going to get twenty people who agree with me.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Do you want to This would be like not and
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: this would be very nice, by the way.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: And the principle in Israel would respond her.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Excuse me, I'm not working for you. I'm running a school.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: I have a long way to come from home. Driving
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: in the snow is not easy, so please. And also
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: there's also insurance and all things that you don't think about,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: So please, you know what, call me later after I
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: put my own kids down, and we'll talk on the phone. Okay,
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: this would be the conversation. She wouldn't hate me. She
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: would just like continue arguing with me, and then she'll
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: tell me to shut up. But you wouldn't like here.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: They don't even like answer my email.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: It's so embarrassing. So we have two very different scenarios here, HOOTSPA.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: That's already convincing Bill Pelly to green light Hogan's heroes,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: and Israeli would look at that and say, already's just
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: being direct. So what But Joe Colombo starting the Italian
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: American Civil Rights League. That is not Abraham arguing with
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: God to save the righteous of Sodom and Gomorrah. That
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: is not new. That is not why can't the schools
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: stay open on a snow day? That is an uffront.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: It's not the I do something and i'm you know,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a dog has no who's ba right, a dog that's good?
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: That was not bad, getting very close, very close.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: But the thing that's distinctive about this is the person
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: who is completely unencumbered by shame exactly.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Well, shame has nothing to do with it. They don't.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: They're so beyond shame. They don't even see they don't
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: even see you to feel shame. It's their point of view,
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: without any regard to anyone.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Else's life, without regard to anyone else's life. Remember that,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: not long after I spoke with Milli Avatol, there was
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: a hearing in front of three federal judges at a
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: courthouse in San Francisco. It was about the treatment of
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: migrant children detained at the border. At issue was whether
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: the conditions under which the children were being held violated
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: a previous legal commitment made by the government to provide
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: safe and sanitary conditions in detention centers. The Department of
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Justice sent an attorney, Sarah Fabian, to make the case
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: that the government was in compliance with the safe and
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: sanitary standard. Her principal argument was that the term safe
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: and sanitary didn't have an explicit definition.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: And that's any number of things might fall under those categories.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: That's Fabian, And this is one of the judges, Marcia Burzon.
• 26:58
  Speaker 9: Yes, but sleep surely does. Right. You can't be safe
• 27:03
  Speaker 9: and sanitary or safe as a human being if you
• 27:06
  Speaker 9: can't sleep well. An you sent in your breeze, it
• 27:10
  Speaker 9: doesn't say anything about sleeping, so therefore there's nothing in
• 27:13
  Speaker 9: here about being able to sleep.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: The children, it turned out, didn't have beds or blankets
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: or in some cases even room to lie down. So
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Burzon wonders, how is that not a violation of the
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: agreement to provide decent living conditions?
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: And Fabian answers, I think the concern there is, your honor.
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: The court finding that sleep, for example, falls under is
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: relevant to a finding of no safe and sanitary conditions.
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: It is one thing, but the ultimate conclusion is safe
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: and sanitary is a singular category in the agreement.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: You probably need to be a lawyer to understand what
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Fabian is saying. And I'm not a lawyer, so I'm
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: going to have to guess. The government's argument goes like
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: this sleep is one thing safe and sanitary or another.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: If the agreement had meant for sleep to fall under
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: the requirement of safe and sanitary, it would have said so.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Then Judge William Fletcher chimes in, maybe sleep wasn't explicitly
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: part of the safe and sanitary definition because it's too obvious.
• 28:14
  Speaker 10: I mean, it may be that they don't get super
• 28:18
  Speaker 10: thread counts Egyptian linens. I get that, but the testimony
• 28:23
  Speaker 10: that the district judge believed was it's really cold. In fact,
• 28:27
  Speaker 10: it gets colder when we complain about is being cold.
• 28:30
  Speaker 10: We're sports to sleep crowded with the lights on all
• 28:34
  Speaker 10: night long, and all you to put us on is
• 28:37
  Speaker 10: the concrete floor with an aluminum Lincoln. I mean, no
• 28:41
  Speaker 10: one would argue that this is secure and sanitary.
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: Yer, And I think what I'm arguing is that the
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: way that the district cart reached the conclusion was to
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: say these these specific items, and I think I will acknowledge.
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: I think sleep is the more difficult end of what
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: I'm arguing.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Sleep is the more difficult end of what I'm arguing.
• 29:04
  Speaker 10: You think cold all night long, lights on all night,
• 29:07
  Speaker 10: now sleep on the concrete, and you got an aluminum
• 29:09
  Speaker 10: foil blanket. I think I find that inconceivable that the
• 29:12
  Speaker 10: government would say that that is safe and sanitary.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: From sleeping blankets. The discussion moved on to toothpaste, toothbrushes,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: and soap.
• 29:22
  Speaker 10: It wasn't you know, a high class milled soap. It
• 29:25
  Speaker 10: was soap, and that sounds all that's part of safe
• 29:28
  Speaker 10: and sanitary?
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: Are are you disagreeing with that?
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: I'm What I'm disagreeing with is that the court ultimately
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: concluded these things.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, she was disagreeing with that. All of this went
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: on for some time. I would encourage you to listen
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: to the full hearing for yourself, since if you are
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: an American, it was your government, paid for by your
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: tax dollars, that was doing the arguing, and ask yourself
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: how did it come to this? There are a thousand answers, obviously,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: but maybe one of them is it. Over the years,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: our moral vocabulary has become impoverished, which is a problem
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: because you cannot make sense of things that you cannot describe,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: and lumping together audacity and shamelessness creates a loophole large
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: enough to drive a tank through. One last question, what
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: happens when Hutsba and huts Bah go head to head
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: when they meet each other in the field of battle? Well,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: it happened famously in nineteen seventy. Already at that point
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: was working at Paramount Pictures. That was the era when
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Robert Evans was the head of production at Paramount, and
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the studio was on maybe the greatest run of any
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: studio ever, Love Story, Three Days of the Condor, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: on and on. Already, in typical Alreaddy fashion, had just
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: talked himself into a big job there as a producer
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: a reporter to do a piece on him. He asked, Ruddy,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: after you did Hogan's Heroes, what did you do next?
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: Oh? No, that's all I did. That's it. He puts
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: the pedal. Can I go off the rekler for a
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: second with you? He said, how the fuck did you
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: get in here? I know guys can't get in that
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: gate who been here twenty years? Kick in? I said, listen,
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: neither were off the rugged. I had no idea what
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: the fector. I've never developed a screenplay. I did one
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: half hour show. Okay, I'm the dumbest guy on this
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: lot at the moment. I won't be for long, but
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: just don't write in the art of me.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Still with the Hootspa. Around this time, Paramount, almost by accident,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: got the film rights to a novel by a writer
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: named Mario Puzo. The novel was The Godfather. No One
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: had high hopes for the movie since the mobster genre
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: scene played out, so they gave it to the new
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: guy ready to produce, in hopes he could bring it
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: in on time and underby. Almost immediately, trouble began with
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: the Godfather project, trouble from Joe Colombo because Colombo was
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: not at all happy about the movie. They were death threats,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: union problems, shady guys followed Ruddy around the window of
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: his car was smashed. The corporate headquarters of the company
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: that owned Paramount had to be evacuated twice because of
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: bomb threats, and then the Italian American Civil Rights League
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: called up Ruddy's boss, Robert Evans.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: The Lee called Bob Evans up and threatened him, we
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: didn't want that movie. He made if that movie made,
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: someone's gonna get height. So Bob called me, will you
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: go see the sky to your columb These people are crazy.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Ruddy calls up the Godfather's author Mario Puzzo, says, come
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: with me to meet Joe Colombo.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: He said, out, are you crazy? You don't understand I
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: write about those people. I never want to be involved,
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: and you'd be very careful, he evolved, because these are
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: not people you can tour with. The bullshit you're gonna
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: get in a lot of trouble. So to answer your question,
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: I am not like I'm gonna go up tell him
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: you don't even know me.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: So Ruddy says, okay, I'll do it myself. He goes
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: to the offices of the Italian American Civil Rights League,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: meets up with Colombo and his guys Brooklyn.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: To Brooklyn, looks like half of them are on parole,
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: you know, with the lump under of the jacket.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: They tell him they don't want the movie made. It's
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: bad for the Italians. Ruddy responds, you know what, I'll
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: let you read the script. Come to the Paramount office
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: in New York. Colombo shows up with three henchmen. Ruddy
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: hands in the script. It's one hundred and fifty five
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: pages long.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: He puts on thervent flank. My classes goes the page.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: When his sister looks at for about five minutes, what
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: does this mean? Fade in as well. The screen's black
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: and event I said, I raise, there's no way the
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: guy's going to page Oh, I can't read with these glasses.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: I'm mafia boss is not going to work his way
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: through one hundred and fifty five page script. The whole
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: point of being a mafia boss is that you don't
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: have to read things that are one hundred and fifty
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: five pages. Mafia bossays, do not have to do the
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: fine print, the letter of the law, or chapter and verse.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Those are for the people who have chosen not to
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: live a life of crime. Colombo hands the script to
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: one of his henchmen, a guy named Caesar. But Caesar's
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: not going to read it either, is he. Caesar's not
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: in the business of giving notes. Caesar's muscle.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: Here's why me, but my script or over my desk. Finally,
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: Jill gets pissed Offiqus slester it on my desk? Do
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: we like this guy? Yeah? I like her? That's just
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: a really fuck, it's print for So, I said, well,
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: what do you what do you want? Where do you live?
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: He said, would you take the word mafia out of
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: the movie.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: What Colombo doesn't realize because he hasn't read the script,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: is it the word mafia is barely in the script.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: It only appears once.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: So I crossed the word mafia. I said, Joe, I'm
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: gonna do this. I'm gonna take this out of the movie.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: He didn't know how many times it was ill is
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: he to promise? Shook his hand. I made a deal
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: that nobody could have made. No one read this way plan.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: From that moment on, all trouble with the movie ceased.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: It's why The Godfather got made. Hoots Ba is a
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: bunch of violent mobsters threatening to shut down a movie
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: because it depicts them as violent mobsters. HUTSBA is tricking
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: them because they're too lazy to read the script.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: It's so difficult, Malcolm, I'd bite my tongue all the time.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: It's not easy. It's not easy for you to be
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: over here in this politeness.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: I'm basically living ten percent of my personality because I
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: have to be i'man.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Mealy wants to be direct she's not a bully, and
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I wonder can we even tell the difference anymore?
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: It's not good.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: It's not good. It's it's a very thick street. I'm
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: a desert person having to deal with yah snow.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Revisionous History is produced by Mela Bell and Jacob Smith
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: with Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton. Flon Williams
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: is our engineer. Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: by Luis Gara. Special thanks to Carl Migliori, heater Feine,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Maya Knigg and Jacob Weisberg. Revisious History is
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Godlaw, so
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: wait say again me me Melli.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: It's a flat elka. If the tongue is flat, the
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: snow all l.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: MILLI.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: So that's melli and it's not avial. It's a vital vital.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: There's the other difference is also the ta. It doesn't
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: have a sort of air to it, so it's not it's.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Ah.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: So do you hear the difference or is it just
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: me