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The New Yorker Radio Hour
Jerrod Carmichael, and the Truth About Impeachment
00:55:27
The comedian Jerrod Carmichael explains why he simply will not give back to the community. And a former lawyer for Bill Clinton explains what it really takes to end a Presidency.
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- [00:08]
Jerrod Carmichael
You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. And the other day I was walking into my building and I walked past my guard and I had a hoodie on and he didn't stop me. And I was concerned, very concerned. And, and I turned around.
- [00:26]
David Remnick
Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The comedian Gerard Carmichael is razor sharp when he jokes about the complications of being a young, successful black man in Hollywood. He'll sit down with the New Yorker staff writer Vincent Cunningham later this hour. But we're going to start off in Washington. Now. We know that some in the Democratic Party have been talking about impeaching Donald Trump well, since before he even took office. But since the firing of James Comey and Trump's own self defeating acts and remarks, the talk of impeachment has grown more intense, more serious. The New Yorker's Evan Osnos recently took a look at what impeachment is and how it happens. He talked with a real expert on the subject. Gregory Craig was the special counsel to Bill Clinton when Congress last brought impeachment proceedings almost 20 years ago. Here's Evan.
- [01:19]
Evan Osnos
We have about 1300 days left in the first term of the Trump administration. You and I are speaking here in the middle of May. And at this moment, the White House is, to put it mildly, besieged. It is under a range of investigations. It is, by most descriptions, it is in a state of disarray. There are accusations of potential violations like obstruction of justice. There are lawsuits facing the president in one form or another. A month ago, if somebody had talked about impeachment or removal from office in Washington, D.C. it was a kind of magical thinking. Today you're seeing it on the front page of the newspaper. And impeachment, after all, has been part of the Constitution from the very earliest moments of the Constitutional Convention. In fact, they agreed on the details of impeachment before they even agreed on the details of the presidency. But one of the things that they did was they set a standard that can be hard sometimes, I think, for the public to understand, which is that they said a president can be impeached if he or she commits high crimes or misdemeanors. So what does that mean?
- [02:30]
Gregory Craig
Well, it means what the House of Representatives decides it means and ultimately what the Senate, if the president is tried for, quote, high crimes and misdemeanors. And in arguments, certainly during the Clinton administration, we went to the historical definition of high crimes and misdemeanors to see if there was some reference there that would help us in the defense of President Clinton, and it really was. There is a list of what back in the 18th century, people believed to be high crimes and misdemeanors. But it doesn't give you all that much instruction or advice as to what really is an impeachable offense. It does give you some sense of what is not an impeachable offense. And simply because you may have committed an impeachable offense doesn't necessarily mean that you should be impeached or removed from office. That's the thing that's hard to understand.
- [03:25]
Evan Osnos
Well, that seems like a crucial point. How is it that you can have committed an impeachable offense but then not be subject to impeachment?
- [03:31]
Gregory Craig
Well, when you are subject to impeachment, it requires a majority of the House of Representatives to vote to impeach you, and it requires 2/3 of the Senate to remove you. A vote of 2/3 of the Senate. And so it's certainly possible that a president could be found technically guilty of some offense or some misdeed that satisfies the 18th century definition of a high crime or a misdemeanor. That doesn't necessarily mean that the people in the House of Representatives or the members of the United States Senate believe he should be removed from office. And so that this does have. Because of the use of the words high crimes and misdemeanors, this process of impeachment wears the garb of a judicial process. But in reality, it is fundamentally and profoundly a political process. So high crimes and misdemeanors means whatever the House of Representatives ultimately determines it to mean.
- [04:30]
Evan Osnos
But hold on. That's quite an amazing thing to realize that when you're saying that it really is up to what the members of Congress believe it to be, that means that an impeachable crime could be different in 2017 than it was in 1998 or in 1974.
- [04:47]
Gregory Craig
Exactly. That's exactly correct.
- [04:50]
Evan Osnos
So in the fall and winter of 1998, you were quarterbacking the defense of Bill Clinton and a member of his defense team when it went to Congress. What did you discover about that process? That was the key element, the essential element to getting the president and the White House through that process.
- [05:12]
Gregory Craig
I thought, perhaps naively, that it would be possible to generate a bipartisan defense. But what I found as we went further and further into the process was that partisan politics really took over and that even though the President was not very popular with the Democratic Party, particularly in the House of Representatives, and I got an earful whenever I went up there and dealt with Democratic members of the House. They had to tell me exactly how much they disagreed with President Clinton, not only his politics, but his personal life. But they were going to support him and defend him because of the way in which the Republicans had gone about the process of impeachment. That was even more dramatic in the Senate. And what happened was it became quite clear to me that as long as that partisan aspect to this process continued and existed, it was unlikely, if not impossible, for the people supporting impeachment to prevail. So out of that, I conclude that maybe one strategy for defending yourself is to keep it a partisan process, because as long as it's a partisan process, you're not going to succeed in removing him from office.
- [06:24]
Evan Osnos
How do you, as the president, or as the president's defense team, keep it as a partisan process? What role does the president play in that, and what role does his lawyers play in that?
- [06:36]
Gregory Craig
Well, this is worth spending a moment on, Evan, because I think one of the reasons President Clinton was successful in his defense had nothing to do with the quality of his lawyers, although they were great.
- [06:49]
Evan Osnos
Modesty noted.
- [06:50]
Gregory Craig
Modesty noted. It had to do with his performance as president those six months from September through February, March of 1998, 1999. He was spectacular. His performance as president while he was being impeached was never better. He was making peace in the Middle east right at the height of the impeachment, and his employment numbers were very, very high. The economic growth numbers were unbelievably positive. His capacity to compartmentalize was amazing. And every day he was as good a president as he was ever in his entire term of office. So in a major way, I think he, himself and his performance and his approval rating that resulted from this was responsible for the inability of those who opposed him to remove him from office.
- [07:44]
Evan Osnos
One of the really interesting points that you made at the time was that you didn't say, this man is innocent of all accusations. What you said was that the real question is whether the conduct, however blameworthy it might be, rises to the level of an impeachable offense. And you focused attention on that question, which is the impeachable standard. So if we take the current moment for a second, at what point do you begin to say to yourself, okay, now we've entered territory where we can begin to reasonably talk about an impeachment process. What is the thing that you're thinking about or looking for on the horizon.
- [08:26]
Gregory Craig
That is meaningful with President Clinton? I remember that quote that you gave to me, and I think it was Also accompanied by a comment about the abuse of power, that the real question here is whether, however blameworthy his conduct was, did it represent an abuse of his presidential power, of his official duties? Was he somehow, as president, using the authority that he had in an abusive way that nobody intended him for him to use either to enrich himself or to strike out at enemies, go to war on behalf of friends? There's all sorts of ways in which an abuse of power can occur. In my arguments back in 1998 and 1999, there was no abuse of power at all. And I think at the end of the day, the American people saw it that way. We're already into the world of abuse of power with Trump very early on in this process, because it looks as though, as president, he fired the director of the FBI who was conducting an investigation of him or his associates could fall into the category of an abuse of power. So even though I think it's premature, we're closer to what I believe is a legitimate discussion of impeachable offenses than we ever were with Clinton.
- [09:54]
Evan Osnos
In 1998, when you embarked on this process of helping to defend President Clinton from impeachment, to what degree were there lessons that you could take from Richard Nixon's experience? What was there that was useful for you from that?
- [10:09]
Gregory Craig
Well, that's a good question. One of the lessons that we took from that, I'm not sure was the proper lesson, because I'm not sure it was a successful way of managing this or handling it. But the truth of the matter was that President Clinton felt deeply regretful and unhappy at his own conduct. And it was important for us somehow and in some way to communicate that regret and that self judgment. I mean, he was judging himself as harshly as anybody else was. And that was different from Nixon. And we thought, had Nixon shown acknowledged mistakes and shown a little regret or an apology to the nation for the way he conducted himself, it might have ameliorated the anger, but he was feisty, he was partisan all the way to the end. And so we tried to make sure that President Clinton's true feelings about his own conduct were communicated to the country.
- [11:30]
Evan Osnos
So if you have a president, as we do today, who is very comfortable in front of the camera, he conducts in many ways his own. He conducts all of his thinking in public. He does it on Twitter, he does it in front of the press. How much does that make your life easier or harder as the lawyer who's trying to defend him?
- [11:49]
Gregory Craig
Oh, if he doesn't, I will tell you right now that it is very important for you to be working from a plan that you can sit down with your client, who is the president, and say, here's our strategy. This is what we're saying to the world. This is how we're presenting your case. Please don't say anything that's inconsistent because the president has to speak to the public all the time about a wide variety of issues. And we made it quite clear that he was not going to be talking about the impeachment. On every occasion he spoke about the impeachment. I mean, in my experience, there maybe three times in the course of the fall, and each time it was carefully thought through as to what he was going to say, consistent with what our strategy was in the House and the Senate.
- [12:39]
Evan Osnos
As we're trying to understand the comparison between the Richard Nixon near impeachment, the Bill Clinton impeachment, and now the challenges that Donald Trump is facing. In Nixon's case, you had what's known as the smoking gun tape, literally an audio tape in which you heard the President talking about using the powers of the office to try to squelch an investigation. In Bill Clinton's case, famously, you had even address that was evidence of a romantic relationship with an intern. And then there was evidence of him trying to cover it up. In this case, the accusations are fuzzier. They are harder for people to grasp. They're still hair raising in many cases. They represent major constitutional issues, but they are not as concrete and as easy for the public perhaps to grasp as an audio tape or a blue dress. How important is that kind of call it the theater of the important, the concrete element. How crucial is that in order to be able to build an impeachment case?
- [13:37]
Gregory Craig
I think it's critical. But I may disagree with you about one aspect of what's happened recently. It's fair to raise the question as to whether or not the Nixon resignation would have occurred. But for them getting access to that tape, it's fair to raise the question of whether President Clinton ever would have acknowledged the relationship that he actually had with Monica Lewinsky, but for the dress. But we already have a very difficult and sort of highly dramatic situation in the Comey vs Trump question about what happened in that conversation. And there's some drama to that. And if I were the President of the United States and my office depended upon the country believing me over former director Jim Comey, I would not sleep well at night. Because if his future, if the president's future boils down to that question of he said versus he said and the American people end up believing that Comey is correct and Trump is not telling the truth. That could have devastating consequences for the president. I think we're not there yet, but two or three other events of that nature which are highly dramatic and his own credibility are at issue, or his own performance or his own competence are at issue. We could be there.
- [15:04]
Evan Osnos
One question, which is this is the question, frankly, that everybody is talking about around their dinner tables, which is, what do you think the chances are that he doesn't serve four years in office?
- [15:16]
Gregory Craig
I think the odds are that he will serve four years, but I have no special insight as to what went on in the campaign vis a vis the Russians or what has gone on with his own personal and business relations with the Russians in the past. I just, I don't know of any existing evidence other than his personality and other than the way he's handled the first hundred years of his, of his presidency with one misrepresentation after another, that is poisonous. If the president loses his credibility and if the president almost systematically alienates really important components of the constituency that he needs to govern, he's now added the FBI as an institution to the list of institutions that really are working for his demise now, including the intelligence community, including the media, including almost all Democrats. And you can't carry on successfully governing this country by adding to that list of adversaries. They're very powerful adversaries and they have ways of pursuing their agendas at your expense. And I think it's a mistake for him to think that he's invulnerable.
- [16:45]
Evan Osnos
Greg Craig, thank you very much for coming in today.
- [16:47]
Jerrod Carmichael
You're welcome.
- [16:54]
David Remnick
Gregory Craig, one of the key lawyers for Bill Clinton's impeachment defense in 1998. He's an attorney now with the firm Skadden Arps, and he spoke with the New Yorker's Evan Osnos. You can find Evan's article about presidents and how they can be removed from office@newyorkerradio.org work it's the new Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We often talk about how divided the country is. We think it's worse than it's ever been before. The coasts and the heartland echo chambers of opinion. You know the argument. But of course, it's been much worse in the past. And for all we know, it could get a lot worse in the future. In the year 2075, parts of the south have once again seceded and America is in a full blown Civil war. That's the premise of a new novel titled American War. And while it's said in the future American war is not science fiction, what it describes is all too recognizable and realistic. The author is Omar El Akkad, a journalist formerly from Canada's Globe and Mail. In Elicad's novel, the moment that finally leads to secession is a new environmental regulation passed by the federal government. Is the question of climate change in your mind, the central ideological rift in this country? Or was it a stand in for any number of divisions that we all disagree about?
- [18:41]
Omar El Akkad
No, it was a stand in, in my mind, for stubbornness and for pride and for the often sort of ruinous power of tradition. In the novel, climate change has effectively ravaged the world, especially the United States. The coasts are gone, the coastal cities are gone. The capital has had to be moved inland from Washington, D.C. to Columbus, Ohio. Florida is gone. In other words, the damage is already done. Long after it would do any good at all, the federal government decides to prohibit the use of fossil fuels. The point being that they're going to do something about it, finally. And yet, even though most of the world has moved on, most of the world uses cleaner, more efficient, more sustainable forms of energy. The south still decides to secede rather than go along with what is basically a symbolic move. At this point, to me, almost everything in the book lives as a sort of analogy. And climate change for me had to do with that idea of we do these things because we've always done these things and that must mean they're right.
- [19:55]
David Remnick
Now, as a journalist, had you spent much time in the South? You grew up in Egypt and Qatar and then came to Canada. Most of your reporting has been abroad. Have you spent much time in the South?
- [20:11]
Omar El Akkad
Yeah, for the last four years, I worked as the de facto sort of US Correspondent for my Canadian newspaper, and I did a lot of reporting from the South. In fact, for a while, I didn't know where I was going to set the story. I didn't know where my main characters lived until I went down to southernmost Louisiana to do a story about land loss there. Southern Louisiana is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Just stunning, stunning place, and is also losing the equivalent of about a football field worth of land every hour. Probably the worst climate disaster in the US and very rarely talked about. And so once I landed there and I sort of saw the effects of that, I knew where my novel had to be set.
- [20:55]
David Remnick
Did your reporting suggest to you that it's too late?
- [21:01]
Omar El Akkad
I'm not sure that anything I'VE ever reported on. And certainly I've reported on things that are far more dire than anything that's going on in the United States. I'm not sure I've ever had the sensation that it's too late.
- [21:15]
David Remnick
But you have a character that says at one point, even back then you could see it coming. Before the first bombs fell, everyone knew this country was getting ready to tear itself to shreds. You get the sense that you read a sentence like that, you read a quotation like that from one of your characters, and you sense a hopelessness. You sense either that or a warning that we're getting from a novel.
- [21:41]
Omar El Akkad
Yeah. And there's another line in the book that sort of makes the claim that hopelessness is no impediment to hope. And I think it has to do with the idea that if you exist on the unprivileged side of a whole manner of spectrums, that optimism for you is not optional, that it's a matter of survival. To abandon the idea of hope, the idea that we could turn this around or that we could make this better is to sort of be okay with the idea that you may live in a world whose power structures would rather you not exist. And this relates to race and religion and sexual orientation. A whole manner of ideas on which to be on the non privileged side means to have to deal with that.
- [22:38]
David Remnick
Omar, as a reporter and as a novelist, do you feel like an outsider in this country? When you're moving around the country, is it in your head that you're relating to most vividly to the outsiders who live here?
- [22:53]
Omar El Akkad
I feel like an outsider in almost every country I've ever lived in. The difference is in the United States, I've always felt that you can exist as an outsider, that one of the central privileges of living in this country is the right to be left alone. I'm Muslim, but I'm not particularly devout. And by old country standards, I'm probably lapsed. You know, I'm brown, but I don't know what that means. I never really felt brown until I came to this part of the world. So, yeah, of course I feel like an outsider, but I don't think that it's impossible to live in this country. And in fact, I think it might be the most possible in this country to live as an outsider and then still not have to sort of deal with what that means beyond what you want it to mean.
- [23:38]
David Remnick
This book was completed before Donald Trump even announced for the presidency, and yet it's being read. I think it's fair to say. And probably a lot of the questions you get at bookstores or appearances that you have or interviews like this have a lot to do with the political conditions of now. How do you view that? How do you view your novel in real time, in real political time?
- [24:01]
Omar El Akkad
You know, it's strange to me because I. I never intended to write a book about America. I wanted to write a book about the sort of universal language of suffering and the universal language of revenge. Like I said, almost everything in the book lives is a sort of analogy. And I mean, the timing of when it has come out has led to this very strange situation where people who have said nice things about it have often used the word timely, and people have said not so nice things tend to use the word opportunistic as though I wrote it on November 9th. But I certainly never set out to write a book about America. And I didn't set out to write a book about the future either. I mean, almost everything in this book happened to somebody.
- [24:47]
David Remnick
This is true. It's a book set in 2075, and yet there are drones, suicide bombers, detention centers, refugee camps, things that are extremely familiar to our year and historical experience.
- [25:03]
Omar El Akkad
Yeah, I mean, the sort of central trick in this book was to take these things, the conflicts that have defined the world in my lifetime, and recast them as being something very close to home, something from which it's difficult to look away. I mean, none of this stuff is. The reason I reject the label of science fiction is not because I despise science fiction. I love science fiction. I'm not. I don't feel talented enough to write it, but it's because this stuff has happened.
- [25:30]
David Remnick
Are you through with journalism? Are you through with war, with reporting in dangerous places? You've just had a baby Just a month ago, a few weeks ago.
- [25:42]
Omar El Akkad
I got my first sort of foreign assignment that could be called war reporting. I guess when I was fairly young, I was still in my early 20s, and I went into it thinking that this is the greatest thing any journalist could do. I had that sort of Hemingway, you know, early twenties cockiness about it. And of course, I got there and I despised it. For one thing, the stereotype of the sort of swashbuckling war reporter is just a fantasy. In reality, it's a number of fixers doing most of the work and not getting any recognition for it. I hope to continue doing journalism in the same vein of being able to tell stories that, had I not told them, would otherwise not get told. But the idea of deliberately seeking out War reporting, I think pretty well died with my early 20s.
- [26:38]
David Remnick
Omar, your coming of age both as a man and journalistically is the period of time is almost completely defined by the so called war on terror. And now you're an American, you're here, you're one of us. And how does that make you feel? What is your relationship to Americanness at this point?
- [26:59]
Omar El Akkad
I think there's a sensation or the sense here certainly that people who grew up in my part of the world, who grew up in North Africa or the Middle east, have come to despise the United States. And I don't think that's true. I think they've come to despise U.S. foreign policy. But I think if you went to any one of the major Middle Eastern capitals on any given day and started handing out green cards, you would get lineups for miles. And it has to do with this idea that the United States, for all its faults, and there are many, is still a place where you can come and think what you like and say what you like and do what you like, which is the exact opposite of what life in much of the Middle east is like. So I realize that I'm a brown guy who wrote a novel about Americans killing each other, and I realize what that's going to mean. But I'm not sure, for all its faults, that America is ever going to lose that sort of fundamental luster for me as being a place where you can just show up and be who you want to be.
- [28:12]
David Remnick
Omar, thank you so much.
- [28:13]
Omar El Akkad
Thank you.
- [28:18]
David Remnick
Omar El Akkad, the author of American War. Next week on the show, fiction editor Deborah Treisman talks with Paul Theroux. Theroux's written some of the great travel books of our time, but his new novel is a homecoming. It's set in the town where he grew up in a family very much like his own. And if you think your family is dysfunctional, his is really something. That's next week. Now, summer is just about here, and if you can't wait to get the kids out of the house and off to camp or something and out of your hair finally for just a while, you're in very good company. Joining us now is Parker Posey, who has a few words for us about Elliot.
- [29:10]
Parker Posey
Dear camp counselor, hello. I'm Ellie's mother. Elliot's father and I are thrilled that he will be spending his summer with you at Camp Chautauqua. As this is Elliot's first time at sleepaway camp, I wanted to let you know a few things about him. So that you will be prepared to look after him properly. For starters, Elliot does not like to be called El or Ellie. He prefers Elliot. He may insist that you refer to him as Claude Death or the Nightcrawler. Don't. That conversation won't end well. Elliot loves the outdoors and animals. Feel free to let him near any animal that is larger than his mouth. Generally, it is best to avoid making eye contact with Elliot. If you look directly at him, he will take it as a sign of aggression and charge at you. It is best not to let Elliot smell you. Elliot does not like to be surprised. Do not surprise him under any circumstances. If you do, he will be sure to surprise you later when you're sleeping. You don't want that. Trust me. I know Elliot will really love being a camper. Having said that, you should know that he has a pretty severe aversion to team SO sports, hiking, arts, crafts and other children. On the other hand, he loves chanting. Once he starts, he can't seem to stop. Elliot may bite you, but probably not. But he might. If he does happen to bite you, do not be alarmed. Just ignore him. Let your body go limp and wait it out. Whatever you do, do not resist. If you resist, he will bite down harder and start shaking his head from side to side in order to rip off as much flesh as. But probably not. But he might. If Elliot wants a hug, give it to him, but end it before he can really start grinding on you. Mourning is a particularly difficult time for Elliot. He tends to wake up at dawn, whereupon he usually launches directly into his morning rampage. Not my term. Doctor's term. That is why we always tie Elliot down at night. Finally, Elliot does not know that we are leaving him here today. When you are finished reading this note, please let me know that you understand by nodding to me. Great. Once I get your signal, I will nod slightly and then slowly start to back away. At that point, I want you to reach into the bag and pull out the candy bar that is inside it. Show the candy bar to Elliot. Wave it around. While he is distracted by the candy bar, I am going to make a run for it. If Elliot starts to run for me, I'll need you to tackle him so I can have a chance to get to my car. Okay? Great. We are very excited for Elliot in Camp Chautauqua. He can be a handful. He's a sweet kid. We know you'll really like him once you get to know him. Sincerely, Grace Eldridge. P.S. if you have any problems, please do not hesitate to contact the local Police. That usually scares him. Pretty good.
- [32:10]
Vincent Cunningham
Bunny doesn't have to work tomorrow.
- [32:15]
David Remnick
Bunny has a damn a few words about Elliot. That's a story that was published in the New Yorker by the comedian and writer Dimitri Martin, and it was performed for the Radio Hour by Parker Posey. When we return, it's heart to heart conversation with comedian Jarrod Carmichael. This is the the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
- [32:57]
Vincent Cunningham
And I'm Vincent Cunningham, a staff writer at the New Yorker. I've been following this comedian, Jerrod Carmichael for quite a while. He was in a movie that I liked, Neighbors. And then I saw a standup special of his, it's called Love at the Store. And that was back in 2014. And just this year, in March, he released a new one. It's called Eight. He's also just starting the third season of his NBC sitcom the Carmichael show, which is loosely based on his standup and also points to what is so great about his work. To me, it is a guy swimming through issues of race, politics, the social world with perfect ambivalence. Comedians these days, I find, tend to be very opinionated. They're almost sort of organs of social critique, and they feed really on strong opinions. This guy has no strong opinions, and that's what's so funny about him. It strikes me like everybody who does the stuff that you do, right, this film and TV or stand up specials, all this, these markers of success have these stories, right, of how they go from where they started to where they are. But it seems to me that you. This is part of your act.
- [34:17]
Jerrod Carmichael
Am I gonna forget where I came from? Of course I am. Like, almost immediately. Like, I don't even like the term give back to the community because it implies the community gave me shit in the first place, which they didn't. Community didn't give me shit. The community stole my bike. That's what the community did. Fuck the community. I don't know if you guys ever.
- [34:45]
Vincent Cunningham
When you go back home after all this success, right, you're going into the third season of a sitcom. Oh, yeah, you just had a new HBO special. I felt watching you sometimes that you have this, like, conflicted almost, like, is there a guilt that you feel about the change, this crazy change in your circumstances or like.
- [35:03]
Jerrod Carmichael
Or even the guilt in the acceptance of the change of circumstances? Like, how it's, like, immediately accepted and liked, you know, from being poor to not being poor or whatever, and then you feel guilty for how much you enjoy it.
- [35:20]
Vincent Cunningham
You know what I mean?
- [35:21]
Jerrod Carmichael
So it's like that conflict is interesting. That's why I talk about it and write about it, because it's a lot. So when I go home. When I go home, I actually. My happiest because I'm just around my family. I don't really do anything other than go eat with my family. Like, when I go home, I'm usually just in. I see friends and. And that's it.
- [35:44]
Vincent Cunningham
Is it weird? Like, is their relationship to you different? Does it strain those relationships?
- [35:53]
Jerrod Carmichael
I get away with a little bit more, you know, I get away, you know, a little bit more. As it turns out, if you redo your mom's kitchen, she'll cook whatever you want in it.
- [36:03]
Vincent Cunningham
Fair enough. Yeah.
- [36:04]
Jerrod Carmichael
So that type of stuff. But they still also treat me the same, you know, my brothers, you know, I mean, I love him so much. He's a big champion of my career. My sister's the most honest person in my life. You know, my dad is always cautious of everything. You know, any little thing. A friend of mine, a comedian friend, bought me a watch once and he was just like, what did he want for it? Like that I'm not. Right.
- [36:30]
Vincent Cunningham
He's not trying to like get me into it.
- [36:32]
Jerrod Carmichael
Yeah, yeah. In a gang. It was a nice gesture.
- [36:36]
Vincent Cunningham
Right.
- [36:37]
Jerrod Carmichael
But he's very. I'm glad he is. You gotta be cool.
- [36:39]
Vincent Cunningham
You need that person.
- [36:40]
Jerrod Carmichael
Yeah.
- [36:41]
Vincent Cunningham
So what was it like growing up in Winston Salem? I'm sure it's incredibly different from your life now in la. What was it like?
- [36:48]
Jerrod Carmichael
I mean, growing up in Winston Salem was. I had a really fun. I was just telling someone how like my existence was all black until high school. It was like. I really think that my elementary school was like this mission by the naacp. You know, I learned the Negro national anthem before the national anthem.
- [37:09]
Vincent Cunningham
Right.
- [37:09]
Jerrod Carmichael
Black History Month was just this year long thing, really. And then high school, I went to like this integrated high school and it was like, you kind of learn, oh, man. Culture, like just like a different side of things. And it was very interesting. So, like, I kind of used that curiosity to propel me into Los Angeles and into, you know, what the world is. My life is like this field trip, you know, and. But Winston Salem, just like these strong, very, you know, Christian loving, loyal people that I grew up around. That was, you know, it was a beautiful childhood.
- [37:47]
Vincent Cunningham
Is it kind of tight knit in terms of neighbors or, you know, everybody in the street kind of thing?
- [37:51]
Jerrod Carmichael
Yeah, yeah, we all like, you know, I'm from the hood So a lot of my social interactions are rooted in that. That's why Hollywood is so fun, because nobody fights you. You know, in my mind, everything's gonna lead to an actual fight, but people just. You get, like, a sassy email. Okay.
- [38:11]
Vincent Cunningham
This stuff reminds me of another aspect of your new special where you talk about this feeling of wanting to be a good black person.
- [38:19]
Jerrod Carmichael
It's hard. It's hard being a great black person. It's a lot of work. Like being. It's exhausting being black. It is, you know. Yeah, right. It's a lot of work, Right. Every day. Every day you wake up and it's an added element. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. I mean, sure, it looks fun.
- [38:56]
Vincent Cunningham
I thought that was so funny. Just because for me, right. I work for the New Yorker, and I feel there's a part of my brain that's tuned to this. Like, is what I'm doing a credit to my race?
- [39:05]
Jerrod Carmichael
Is it contributing this whole thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [39:07]
Vincent Cunningham
And I struggle with that. I just wonder how that. When you talk about that, does that show up in. Not just in terms of success, but does that show up in your work? Like, do you. Does that constrain the way you write jokes, or does it determine the kinds of jokes you write? Makes sense.
- [39:23]
Jerrod Carmichael
My obligation is always to truth first, right? So that's the biggest contribution we can give, you know, especially in the creative industry. Because a lot of times, you know, a black person tends to write aspirationally, you know, write what we think the picture should look like as opposed to the picture itself. The reason hip hop, you know, at its best, resonates with so many people because it's the rawest truth of both poverty and the celebration of wealth. And it's where we are in this moment. And it's honest. You know, I try to just stay in that pocket of truth, and then I think I really am contributing. But it is a conscious thing. You are aware of it because, I mean, especially when you see, you know, things that seem to plague people that look like you.
- [40:13]
Vincent Cunningham
Right.
- [40:13]
Jerrod Carmichael
You know, and you share these fears and you share these concerns. You know, I'm just. I'm as susceptible to being shot by the cops as, you know, my brother in North Carolina is my cousins, is my friends. You know, it's like, you don't forget what you look like and who you are and your place in America, but also, don't forget to be a human being first.
- [40:34]
Vincent Cunningham
Right.
- [40:35]
Jerrod Carmichael
Yeah.
- [40:36]
Vincent Cunningham
It seems like you're comfortable being in that place, I heard a story, I think you told it, about love at the store where Spike Lee was, like, pissed off by one of your jokes.
- [40:45]
Jerrod Carmichael
Oh, yeah. I don't even know who was directing. I'm not even sure if we're talking to each other right now because of that. Oh, he got mad at a few things. And I'm sure he would tell you he disagreed with a lot of the material. It was very strong.
- [40:58]
Vincent Cunningham
This was a Trayvon Martin joke in specifically.
- [41:00]
Jerrod Carmichael
Oh, yeah, because, well, he didn't understand the perspective that I was taking on it. And the other day, I was walking into my building and I walked past my guard and I had a hoodie on. And he didn't stop me. And I was concerned, very concerned. And I turned around, I talked to him, and I said, joe. His name is Joe. I said, joe, I just walked by you with a hoodie on. You didn't notice anything suspicious about that? And he said, no, Jarrod, you live in the building. And I said, I know, I know. And I pay a lot of money. Like, a lot of money, so that niggas like me in hoodies can't just waltz by you. So you know what I told him? I said, next time, stand your ground. That's what I told him. I told him to stand his ground. Don't groan. You have nothing to worry about. I gave him my gun. You have nothing to worry about. You guys felt. You guys went, oh, oh, really? Cause that Trayvon shit is really affecting your day to day. Your day to day. You wake up. You wake up, you have your cup of coffee, you do this to a picture of Trayvon and you start your day. Is that what you do? Cause you don't. Because you don't. Can I tell you the harsh reality? It was a challenge to others of how much they cared about, you know, And I get it. A lot of people hear. A lot of times, especially with my comedy, people hear certain words and they don't really listen. They hear the buzzword and they go like, I can't believe. And they, you know, they immediately take to Twitter because that's the new soapbox. You gotta. You take the Twitter and you disagree. You vehemently disagree with a thing that I said without really listening or. Or understanding the place that this person is in when they're saying these things. And Spike just had this immediate knee jerk reaction to not only that, but all these things that he was just like, no, he got first cut. And it was a completely different special than what you saw.
- [43:15]
Vincent Cunningham
Oh, wow. Yeah. He took that stuff out.
- [43:17]
Jerrod Carmichael
Yeah. Stuff out. Basically. He just took stuff out. Yeah.
- [43:20]
Vincent Cunningham
So you had to have an argument.
- [43:22]
Jerrod Carmichael
No, I mean, ultimately I, you know, got final cut and I just made the special that I wanted. But, you know, his version would have been completely different. I respect that. I really respect that. I respect the argument. And we had a couple great phone conversations. I went to Brooklyn, went to 40 acres, and we talked things out and some texts that are funny and that are, you know, funny in hindsight. And.
- [43:44]
Vincent Cunningham
Yeah, yeah, I've read. I think that you went to church as a kid. You grew up and going to church, like choirs and all that kind of stuff.
- [43:51]
Jerrod Carmichael
Yeah, my first interactions with microphones, like, my mom would. She was like an usher at the church. And when it was over, I used to stay and she would, like, hold me up to, like, microphones because I wanted to speak into it. I wanted to hear my voice, you know, echoing off the wall. It was. I'm infatuated. That's all I asked for for Christmas. Before I knew I wanted to be a comedian. I knew I wanted to do something with microphones.
- [44:14]
Vincent Cunningham
That guy has one.
- [44:15]
Jerrod Carmichael
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I wanted microphones.
- [44:18]
Vincent Cunningham
Yeah. But kind of thinking about church and kind of. I think of you as a sort of agnostic comedian. Right. Like, you just can't commit yourself in the same way that someone, like, wants to believe in God and can kind of almost intellectualize themselves in it, but can't cross the line. I wonder, like, what's your thing about religion now? Do you have. Do you still go to church?
- [44:38]
Jerrod Carmichael
I don't really go to church, but I consider myself Christian. I'm stronger spiritual beliefs than societal. Like a very strong, clear understanding of myself as a spiritual being and an acceptance of that as truth. And, you know, that's much clearer than whether or not I should recycle. That's muddier to me than my relationship with God. So. Yeah. That I'm the least agnostic when it comes to where people are usually the most.
- [45:11]
Vincent Cunningham
Right.
- [45:11]
Jerrod Carmichael
Yeah.
- [45:12]
Vincent Cunningham
Huh. That's interesting.
- [45:13]
Jerrod Carmichael
In LA is a funny. Yeah, it's funny. Cause nobody believes in God in la. Not nobody. It's a few of us. But.
- [45:20]
Vincent Cunningham
Yeah.
- [45:20]
Jerrod Carmichael
Yeah.
- [45:21]
Vincent Cunningham
But does that come up when you're thinking about your comedy? Do you ever. Do you think of it as an expression of some of the things you believe that aren't societal, the way you.
- [45:30]
Jerrod Carmichael
Do your work or view religion as such? Yeah.
- [45:34]
Vincent Cunningham
Does that show up in your work at all or is it dry?
- [45:36]
Jerrod Carmichael
I like to believe so. I mean, it's you know, I probably, I use language that my mom would disagree with, you know, but I like that it's a part of everything. I believe it's kind of, you know, in my fingerprint at this point.
- [45:52]
Vincent Cunningham
Right.
- [45:52]
Jerrod Carmichael
She gets mad.
- [45:53]
Vincent Cunningham
Yes, she does get mad.
- [45:54]
Jerrod Carmichael
Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah. She can't stand it. And she, you know, respectfully says that, I wish you wouldn't use these words sometimes. Not respectfully. And she yells at me and then I say, you know, come on, let's not be children about this.
- [46:10]
Vincent Cunningham
I'm sure that goes over great.
- [46:11]
Jerrod Carmichael
Oh yeah. Argument, the whole thing.
- [46:15]
Vincent Cunningham
I saved this for last because I hate the Donald Trump overcast of everything, but I feel like even in love at the store, it's pretty dark in its way. I think you've got this sort of bleak sensibility in your work.
- [46:27]
Jerrod Carmichael
You know what's funny? I realized that through reviews more than cause my attention. I'm like, I thought we were having fun. We were just expressing thoughts. I say a thing, I express it. And the people like, man, that was dark. I was like, oh, was it?
- [46:41]
Vincent Cunningham
Yeah.
- [46:42]
Jerrod Carmichael
I don't feel dark going into it. But obviously the material is very provocative in that sense. But yeah, what's important for me to say to you guys is that Trump's victory is in no way indicative of a loss for women. It's not, it's not a loss for women. Woman. It is, however, just another victory for men. Congratulations guys. We did it again. We did it again. We still got it. We still got it. Still crazy after all these years, you.
- [47:19]
David Remnick
Guys, look at us.
- [47:20]
Jerrod Carmichael
Come on. That's amazing, right? We've been dominating for how long now? Forever.
- [47:27]
Vincent Cunningham
There's a sort of, I, I just think this is my whatever. But it seems like there's always this question behind all of it. And I think that's the dark part. That's like, what is any of this anyway? That's like the thing that nobody, you know, we all kind of think about.
- [47:39]
Jerrod Carmichael
But you kind of like a natural skeptic. Yeah.
- [47:44]
Vincent Cunningham
But has Donald Trump. You taped eight after the election?
- [47:48]
Jerrod Carmichael
Yes. That was the thing I waited for.
- [47:50]
Vincent Cunningham
Uh huh.
- [47:51]
Jerrod Carmichael
I felt like I was like, you wanna see how the world is gonna change? So I was, I still wanted to wait and see what happened.
- [47:58]
Vincent Cunningham
Yeah.
- [48:00]
Jerrod Carmichael
What I really think Donald Trump is, is, you know, like in spy movies, you know, where, you know, they're surrounded by the infrared beams or whatever and they have like this mist that they spray and it lets you know where all of the wires and the beams are. That's what Donald Trump is to think American society. I think he let us know where boundaries are, where we stand as Americans. And so, you know, if there's any good that comes from it, it's that, you know, that we do. We are very aware. Boundaries and limits and as awake now as we've ever been.
- [48:33]
Vincent Cunningham
Yeah.
- [48:36]
David Remnick
Jerrod Carmichael, he has a sitcom on NBC called the Carmichael show and that's going into its third season. And he talked with the New Yorker's Vincent Cunningham. We're going to wrap up today with a little trip outside. The air is clear and it's just before dawn. And a writer named Ellen Bass, who's published a number of poems in the New Yorker, is taking her daily walk along the ocean near her home in Santa Cruz, California.
- [49:15]
Ellen Bass
Westcliffe Drive is a strange intersection of nature and city. So we have on the one side, the whole of the Pacific we've got beautiful cypress trees, and on the other side we have just a regular rose that people are driving up and down and houses right up against it. We've still got some rosy fingered dawn and a beautiful shining half moon. Oh, there's four seagulls just flying right across here. There's a surfer in the water and the whole of the Pacific. I've been walking here almost every day for about 30 years and every day is a different day. The ocean is really wild sometimes where it comes up over West Cliff Drive, so you can be walking along and have the spray hit you. Today it's pretty calm with just real nice, slow, perfect rollers crashing in. Oh, that surfer almost just got one here. The cliff here changes so fast. Even in terms of erosion, it's mudstone, which is, is layered. And as storms come and as the ocean keeps pounding into it, even just in the 30 years that I've been here, I've seen enormous change. They've had to actually move where the road is further in because where the road was is now in the ocean. And that's so thrilling, really, to be able to live in geological, tragic time. And right, right now, the sun is just peeking up above the hills down toward Monterey. We see it just coming up over the ridge. I was thinking that most people love or say they love variety and new things. And I think our clothes culture does act like that. We always want something new and different and better. But my family and close friends tease me a lot about how much I love repetition and how much I love to just do the same thing over and over in a kind of mule like way. And the first thing I thought about was this walk that I take every day on Westcliffe Drive. And so I wrote this poem, ode to Repetition. I like to take the same walk down the wide expanse of Woodrow to the ocean, and most days I turn left toward the lighthouse. The sea is always different. Some days dreamy waves, hardly waves, just a broad up undulation, in no hurry to arrive. Other days the surf's drunk, crashing into the cliffs like a car wreck. And when I get home, I like the same dishes stacked in the same cupboards and then unstacked and then stacked again. And the rhododendron, spring after spring, blossoming its pink ceremony. I could dwell in the kingdom of Coltrane, those rivers of breath through his horn as he forms each phrase of lush life over and over until I die. Once I was afraid of this, opening the curtains every morning only to close them again each night. You could despair in the fix town of your own life. But when I wake up to pee, I'm grateful. The toilet's in its usual place, the sink with its gift of water. I look out at the street, the halos of lampposts in the fog, or the moon rinsing the parked cars. When I get back in bed, I find the woman who's been sleeping, sleeping there each night for 30 years. Only she's not the same, her body more naked in its aging, its disorder, though I still come to her like a beggar. One morning one of us will rise bewildered without the other and open the curtains. There will be the same shaggy redwood in the neighbor's yard and the faultless stars going out one by one into the day.
- [54:34]
David Remnick
The poet Ellen Bass on Westcliffe Drive in Santa Cruz, California. She read her poem Ode to Repetition, which appears in her collection Like a Beggar. That's it for today, and thanks for listening. If you want to have the Radio Hour delivered to your inbox every week, sign up for our newsletter at listen carefully new yorker.com radionewsletter and with that, you'll get more political coverage, our fiction, podcasts, all kinds of good stuff. I'm David Remnick. See you next week.
- [55:08]
Jerrod Carmichael
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed.
- [55:15]
Parker Posey
By Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with.
- [55:17]
Jerrod Carmichael
Additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported.
- [55:21]
David Remnick
In part by the Tsarina Endowment Fund.