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The New Yorker Radio Hour
Senator Elizabeth Warren, and How to Pick a Great Cartoon
00:55:15
Elizabeth Warren on the future of the Democratic Party, the pianist Chilly Gonzales, and the cartoon editor Bob Mankoff.
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A
That's great. Oh, God. A toast joke. Toast. Is toast on your list of cliches? I have recently put it on no Toast Radio.
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No Toast Radio.
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You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour.
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Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Not that you asked, but my favorite part of the week may be when Bob Mankoff, who's been the New Yorker's Cartoon editor for 20 odd years, comes down the hallway bringing a basket full of 50 or 75 cartoons to the office. And together we go through them and we weed out about 15 or so that might go into the magazine. You might not believe it, but it's pretty hard work. This is great. You're taking them both. That's great. That's what I'm saying. I know. Since this is the end, and I know you've asked for this many times, here's a list of all the clich. Okay, let's try the G's. Gallows, Garden of Eden, Gates of Hell, Genie in the Lamp, Guy in Stocks. I gotta work on them a little bit. These are good. Do you think we could get through an entire cartoon meeting without any of these cartoons? No, that would be impossible. Just pass the fucking cartoons. Come on. Two bears are having a cup of coffee in a diner. One says, my husband's snoring kept me up all winter. It's a little bit of a hibernation joke. Yeah. Two penguins chatting. One says, I've got my own place now, but I still rely on my parents to regurgitate my meals.
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D
That's funny, that's funny, that's funny.
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Nothing like a puke joke. Okay, this I don't understand at all. I mean, do you see right away that it's cross country skiing? That's the only thing? Yeah, I think so. Monster looks like Ugolino. No, it's from Goya's Saturn who eats his children. Ah, I thought it was Ugolino from Dante's Inferno, but you know. Well, I defer to your erudition, even though it's wrong. I cannot believe I make a living doing this. Someone's in a hospital bed dying as usual, and the doctor says the patient appears to be suffering from mild food induced coma. Have you ever had that? No, no, I've been able to process food my entire life. It takes a while to kick in, but this should do nothing.
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And that's Amy Kerr as well.
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I like this one, too. Small batch banking, I think. Amy Kurzweil just sold two cartoons. Yes, Amy. Now, Bob, do You think you'll be able to have the energy to come in again next week? Well, I may be In a food ind. That's Bob Mankoff, the New Yorker's cartoon editor for 20 years. In a couple of weeks, he's actually stepping down from that position, but he'll still be lurking around the magazine. He's compiling an encyclopedia of New Yorker cartoons and working with me on a couple of other projects. I just hope he'll be doing more cartoons of his own, because Bob Mankoff has always been one of the greats. The Democratic Party, it's got to be said, is at its lowest point in generations on the state level, the national level, in Congress, and it's all divided up into factions with different points of view on how to rebuild. Certainly one of the strongest figures to emerge in recent years, someone admired throughout most of the party, is Elizabeth Warren. As the senior senator from Massachusetts holding Ted Kennedy's old seat, she's been pushing a progressive economic agenda for the future, and she seemed to relish getting into it with Donald Trump on Twitter, first when he was a candidate and now that he's president. Warren has written a book called this Fight Is Our the Battle to Save America's Middle Class. And I sat down with her earlier this week. Senator Warren, it's not quite 100 days.
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Not quite.
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Not quite. But we'll get there very, very soon. And I want to begin, of all things, with a statistic. Every one of the 493 wealthiest counties, mainly urban, voted for Hillary Clinton. The remaining 2,623 counties, largely small towns, suburbs, rural areas, voted for Donald Trump. Which tells us what?
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C
I think it tells us there's a lot of trouble out there in America and that America is dividing again along economic lines. But. But I'm going to make a pitch here that that's not the most crucial number to look at. It's not the question about who can pick up 52% of the vote or 54% of the vote. For me, what this is really about is how we have this whole set of economic statistics that tell us the world is doing great. Rising gdp, the stock market is breaking one record after another, unemployment is down. But in fact, those statistics have giant blind spots in them. There was a time when they didn't, when rising GDP meant everybody was getting richer. When we had in America, where, you know, if those at the top were getting richer, so were those in the middle and so were those at the bottom. In fact, can I do a statistic on that one Please, let me pull off to that. 90% of all people in America get about 70% of all the income growth from 1930. In other words, pie's getting bigger and we're all getting more to eat right then 1980 to 2016. Time period. 2. What changes? Ronald Reagan? Trickled down economics, cut taxes for those at the top. That leaves less money for investment in education, in infrastructure, in basic research. Deregulate the banks, let them run wild. And what happens 1980 to 2016? GDP keeps going up. In other words, our country continues to get richer. But the 90%, how much did they get of the new income growth then? And the answer? Nothing.
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Now, what you're saying was certainly part of the vocabulary of Bernie Sanders, and to some extent, the vocabulary eventually, at least if not often enough, of Hillary Clinton. And yet the other guy won. The other guy won, at least in the Electoral College where it counts. And what bewitches liberals all the time, myself included very often, is this notion that somehow that people are not necessarily voting their interests. What was Donald Trump's appeal in the election, as you look back at it? And it took you by surprise as much as it took anybody by surprise. Why did he win? How did he form a populism that appealed to exactly the people that you're talking about? In large part, and he outdistanced the Democrats.
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C
So the first thing that Donald Trump started with was an acknowledgement that this economy is not working for a lot of people. He didn't happy face the numbers. He didn't say eight more years of what you've had. He said, this economy is not working for you. And I get that. And then he made a very solemn promise, I will make this economy work for you. I know how to do that. I understand about a rigged game because I've been on the other. That was Donald Trump's promise.
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A
In fact, you almost titled one of your books the System Is Rigged, which became a phrase of his.
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C
Yeah, no, and in fact, I used kindred spirits. Well, except we divide rather sharply in two places. The first is that Donald Trump told a story about what went wrong. And his story is blame it on everybody else. The other, blame the other on immigrants, blame it on African Americans, blame it on Latinos, blame it on people who don't look like you. Blame it on people who don't worship like you. That was the core of Donald Trump's message. But the second part is, were you.
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Surprised that it took hold the way it did?
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C
You know, look, you probably need a pundit for that. Sort of thing. But the truth is for somebody to get up and say, yeah, I get it, this economy is not working, that part didn't surprise me at all. One of the things I try to talk about a lot in this book is the lived experience of America. What it's like when you work hard, you play by the rules and just always keep slipping behind. The thing now for Donald Trump, and I think this is going to be thei think this is a transition moment, is that it's not just what Donald Trump says, it's what Donald Trump does that's going to matter.
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Senator Warren, at some point politically, Donald Trump is going to have to make good on some of these promises, not to bankers, but rather to the middle class or the working poor. And can't just do it on anecdote, can't just say here are 300 jobs at Carrier air conditioning or coal mines are not coming back in the sense that he means it. A great deal of the old manufacturing base is not coming back. In what way do you think he plans to deliver and can he deliver in his policy terms?
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I'll give him a way he can deliver. Right now he can deliver. He said all during the campaign that he was in favor of breaking up the big banks, that he was in favor of Glass Steagall. Shoot. I've got my Glass Steagall bill. I've been working on this for a long time and I've got my co sponsors, I got John McCain, John McCain is with me as my co sponsor and Maria Cantwell and Angus King. We've got people who will do this. Donald, come on. I'll bring the Democrats, you bring some Republicans. Let's make this happen. There are things that he could do. If he's willing to get out there and make it happen. Shoot, he could do it on tax reform. On tax reform, you could actually stitch up the loopholes and use that money right here for our kids. I'll give you one example on that, one example on that. I graduated from a commuter college that cost $50 a semester. I graduated in an America where student loans were subsid, that is kids were paying less than banks were paying in order to get money to go to school. Why? Because America believed that if you were willing to work hard and you were willing to come through that door, by golly, you ought to have a chance to get an education today. Today the federal government is making billions of dollars in profits off the backs of our kids. I proposed a bill that said let's cut the interest rate on student loans. And the way we'll pay for it is let's stitch up one of loopholes for billionaires. That's just a straight. Where do you want to spend your money? Do you want to spend it on tax loopholes for billionaires or do you want to spend it on young people who are trying to get an education? Donald Trump could jump on that. Come on.
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How do you negotiate with President Trump without getting rolled, without having the Romney effect?
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The answer is he wants an audience. Give him an audience. Whenever you're negotiating with Donald Trump, if we got a lot of America already on our side, I think that's how you get his attention and get to a good result.
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What's the experience being in a room with him and talking with him? Are you talking to a responsive being?
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I've never been over there. You expect to get an invitation not soon.
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Senator, taxes have become the next big fight or one of the next big fights. And I want to ask you, as someone who has a profound academic background in economics, if you had Donald Trump's taxes, what would you be looking for? Oh, how would you analyze them? What would you zero in on?
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So I want to know what he's hiding. Think about it this way. He has been willing to take what a lot of people would think are a whole lot of punches over his taxes, but the fact that he won't reveal them and he quite openly said, oh, yeah, I don't pay any taxes or haven't paid any taxes at points in the past, that means I'm just smart. Okay, so both of those. That means that's not what he's hiding. He's not hiding that. What is he hiding? Is he hiding his business ties? We know from little bits and pieces of outside sources that he has ties to some pretty shady folks around the world. Is that what he's hiding? What is it that would be revealed? Who has he borrowed money from? Who does he still owe money to? Because there are a lot of people, I think, in this country who would say, wow, if he owes money to Russian oligarchs, It makes me really uneasy when he's making decisions about the future of our country.
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Senator, I wonder if you think that there is adequate evidence yet accumulated to be suspicious that in any way the Trump circle or Trump himself had colluded with Russia in a way that should cause great alarm.
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Oh, okay. So let's be clear about what we know for sure. Our intelligence community has concluded that Russia hacked into American systems in order to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
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Now, have you seen evidence of that that I have not?
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Yes, you have.
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And it's convincing to you?
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Yes. The second thing is that we know that there is an active and ongoing investigation by the FBI of the relationship between Trump, the Trump campaign and Russia. And third, we know that Flynn, a high level Trump adviser, had to resign because of his close ties and connections and what he'd said with Russia. Now, to me, those three things are enough to say we need a full independent investigation. And get to the bottom.
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You had a conversation with your husband in 2016 about running for president. You obviously came to the conclusion that you were not going to run for president. I wonder about that conversation. Was Hillary Clinton just too much of an obstacle in that race or were there? And what other factors entered into your thinking?
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So I talk about this in the book, about how people, people had started asking me after I'd been a senator for what felt like about an hour and a half.
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That's about how long it took for Barack Obama to get those questions.
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And I really thought, and I said in the book, you know, really, I felt like somebody needed a little more time.
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Now you've had it.
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But, you know, ultimately I decided not to run. But now what matters.
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Why?
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Well, part of it is, like I said, experience. Part of it is I really love the work I'm doing. I love being a senator, and I'm getting better at it. You know, I'm finding the places where I can make a difference. And sometimes it's a difference, like being able to get the disaster relief for Massachusetts fishermen who got cheated out of it. And sometimes it's making a difference, like reducing the number of opioids that are in circulation around the country. Sometimes it's a difference, like oversight, like Wells Fargo.
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But I have to tell you, I had an interview with President Obama the day after he met with Trump in the White House after the election. I wouldn't say he was in a fantastic mood and maybe he wasn't thinking as clearly as he usually does. But I said, okay, now Hillary Clinton is likely gone. You're gone. What's the Democratic bench? And he said, well, it's Kamala Harris who had not spent one day in the Senate yet. And then he said, and oh, there's that mayor from South Bend, Indiana, whose name he couldn't recall. And then it kind of dwindled off. He didn't say anything else. A lot of people look to you as a possibility in 2020. What's your early thinking about it? Do you rule yourself out, or do you keep that possibility alive?
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Look, I'm not running for president. I'm running for Senate in 2018 in Massachusetts. But let me be clear. I think it's a mistake even to frame the question that way. I'll just be blunt. Donald Trump has not finished his first hundred days, and he's already delivered one punch to this nation after another. I am focused on what Donald Trump is likely to do before the end of the day today, what he does this week and next week and the week after. No, I'm dead serious about this. This is not about. We can just put it all aside and start thinking about getting together a presidential race.
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Somebody's got, you know, how long it takes to run for president, what's involved in it?
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No, what we've got to be thinking about is the fight right now. You know, I named the book this Fight is Our Fight. Not because we need to fight it later on, but because we need to fight it today. Look, if we hadn't been out there fighting, 24 million people would have lost their health care coverage that would have sailed through the United States Congress and been signed into law by Donald Trump.
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Do you think that's a closed question, or is that going to be fought again and again and again?
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It may be fought again and again, again and again, but I'll tell you, fighting it changed this world. Remember, this is changed the world had.
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How do you mean? It gave the possibility that you could win.
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So that's exactly right. And that's why I talk about getting people into the fight and how to get people into the fight. Remember where we were on health care? The House had passed the repeal of Obamacare, what 60 plus times Senate was ready to go. And Donald Trump said on the stump over and over and over on day one, he would repeal Obamacare. So he gets sworn in and we start getting active on our side, we start organizing, we start talking about it, we start pushing the notion instead of just repeal, and then maybe they'll throw a few crumbs of health care our way. Uh, you gotta repeal and replace, not repeal and run. Repeal and replace. Even Donald Trump eventually picked up that phrase. Well, once they had to repeal and replace, who knew? It was complicated. As Donald Trump said, they got their feet tangled up and more and more people had time to engage and started looking at what the plan was at. The 24 million people who would be pitched off at whether or not there was really going to be protection on preexisting conditions. And on and on. People got more engaged and when they got more engaged, that changed the dynamic in Washington. No, Democrats didn't have a single vote more in the House or in the Senate. Here was the difference. That bill was stopped. I get it. It was stopped because for one group of Republicans, it was not brutal enough. But here's the deal. The rest of the Republicans would not follow them over that cliff. The rest of the Republicans looked around them and listened to America. The people who were showing up at rallies and at office hours and who were making calls and who were coming to town halls and. And that is when the world shifted. The world shifted. And that is why it is imperative that we get in these fights. There is power in these fights.
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How do you see the Democratic Party changing as a result of this last election? And are we seeing a profound political realignment going on? What shape is it taking, in your view?
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So I think the country has changed. This is the point I make right at the end of the book about democracy, about the women's March, about making our voices heard and about the importance of the fight. And I think that's changing the Democratic Party. This is where the energy in our party is right now. This is where our new ideas are coming from. This is where our willingness to plant our feet and punch back comes from. I think that's where the Democratic Party is.
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But do you think that energy will expand and radiate out of the urban centers and the wealthier blue parts of the country? Is that possible?
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Oh, what an awful way to ask the question.
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Tell me what you think.
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Lordy, Lordy, are we sitting in a fancy building in New York? Would you describe that? Excuse me. It's much of the rest of America that feels the anger and has taken the brunt of what, 35 years ago.
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But that's not where they vote down here. Absolutely, I agree with you, but that's not where the vote was.
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It's. Look, there have been a lot of issues on the table for a long time now, and Democrats have not been good at getting out and both talking about the economic issues and even more importantly, fighting over the economic issues.
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So fair enough. So I hear this all the time, and I hear it as a magazine editor. You hear it in many, many multiples, more as Senate or somebody's recognizable on the street. People are upset. They feel they're living in a kind of strange science fiction existence with Donald Trump on their TV screens every day, but they don't know what to do. They don't have jobs as an investigative reporter or as a senator or as A political activist. So somebody who's got, you know, their life is encompassed by private life and their jobs and their day to day getting along and getting by, what do they do?
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I'm actually fundamentally optimistic. Here's the thing about being active, being an activist. It's not like there's just a cup of activism. And once you've used up your cup of activism, that's it, you're done for the year. It's that doing something prompts you to do something else. Being engaged prompts you to get more engaged. Doing something prompts your sister to do something, your mom to do something. So what can you do? First thing is join up with some others. There are a lot of organizations now nationally that reach all across the country and some good local ones. But they magnify voices, they make sure that we stay energized and they make sure that we sharpen our message and come in on the point that's being fought right this minute. So. So join a group. Second, commit to make a difference every single day. One phone call a day, one phone call a day, one email a day. It's enough to get your voice in the game. I've watched it in the United States Senate. I have watched my colleagues say, God, we've got a lot of calls today. Whoa. The switchboards were still going at 7 o' clock last night.
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It has an effect.
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And at 8 o' clock last last night, you bet it has an effect. Does it have all the effect I want? No. Betsy DeVos still got confirmed to be Secretary of Education. Yeah, I get it. We're going to lose a lot of these fights, but boy, being in the fight changes the world.
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Senator Warren, thank you so much.
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Thank you.
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Senator Elizabeth Warren. Her book this Fight Is Our Fight. The Battle to Save America's Middle Class is out now. You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Gregory Pardlo published his first book of poems in 2007, and his second book, Digest, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015. Now he's at work on a collection of essays about his charismatic and complicated father. Pardlo Sr. Was one of the few black air traffic controllers in the 1970s. And Gregory knew from an early age that his dad's job wasn't just a job. It was more like a calling.
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When I was very little, my mother and I used to visit my father in the tower. I remember late at night looking out over the runways, and at times my father would give me the microphone and allow me to speak to the pilots who were coming in in my very little boy voice. I would repeat whatever it was he, he told me. And the pilots got a kick out of that. We'd spend the night, my mother and I, we had our sleeping bags and we'd sleep on the floor. And he would get me up to point something out. And there would be a Cessna, like a twin engine plane or something. And the way that the plane was landing in the wind and you could see the, the kind of, the fragility of these planes. It was almost like when I watched my father work, he seemed to be on stage in some ways. He was always a performer. So controlling air traffic was a form of public speaking as far as he was concerned.
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When Gregory Pardlo was 12, his father and thousands of other members of the professional air traffic controllers organization PATCO went on strike. And that became a devastating turning point for organized labor in America. This has been a highly emotional day for the air traffic controllers. Plain and simply. This was the day when rhetoric turned to reality.
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It was Monday, August 3, 1981. My father, Gregory Anthony Pardlo Sr. And I walked the picket line outside of Newark International Airport. I had a picket sign that I carried very proudly and quite vigorously. I do remember people were throwing food at us from the highway, from cars. And it shocked me because I was so convinced that we were on the right side of history. I found myself very often at my father's side, looking up at him and being full of wonder at the possibilities of taking on the United States government, taking on the President of the United States.
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This morning at 7:00am the union representing.
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Those who man America's air traffic control.
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Facilities called a strike.
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So President Reagan came out in the Rose Garden the morning of the strike. There is a law against federal employees striking, but that law was rarely invoked. And so while the union members understood that this was an illegal strike, there still wasn't any expectation that anyone would go as far as terminating their jobs. That just didn't seem like a possibility.
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It is for this reason that I must tell those who fail to report for duty this morning they are in.
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Violation of the law. And if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited.
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Their jobs and will be terminated.
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So when the President came out and announced that they were criminals and they were going to be prosecuted, the response had two points to the fork. And one was, we will hunt you down and put you in jail. And the other was, you will lose the Only job for which you are uniquely trained. Before he died, I asked my father what it was like to work inside the control tower because I knew I wanted to write about it. And this is what he told me. Think of each plane as an idea that pops into your head. They're all important ideas, but some aren't as pressing as others. Regardless, you have to keep all of them in mind. You can have more than a dozen ideas in mind at one time and you have to make sure that they stay distinct. Let's say Teddy Pendergrass might be one idea, for example, or funnel cake, aluminum siding, potholes, the Dagobah system, Bimini. Okay, that would be only six aircrafts. We're keeping it real simple. Somehow you have to keep them all located in your mind while you're handing some off, exchanging their information with other controllers. More than anything else, the one rule is spacing. The one true element of the universe. Emptiness, incremental negations. Putting nothings between somethings. That's what makes order out of the chaos. After the President's ultimatum, my grandfather implored, practically begged my father to go back to work. But at that point, you know, egos are at stake.
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All of those in favor of returning.
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To work, reputations are at stake. And my father was the kind of man who was very particular about his reputation.
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All of those opposed to returning to work and staying out for as long as it takes to get a job. Fair and equitable contract signify by saying yes.
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B
I remember being at home and looking for my father to come home the first night of the strike. But I knew by the evening that my father was being pursued by the U.S. marshals. There was a moment when two federal marshals came to the door of my house. And the memory that sticks with me is the way one of them opened his jacket and revealed both his badge and his gun at the same time. I'd like to think I said something smart or sarcastic to them, but I probably didn't. And for a long time we were kind of in this shock and the mood of my family, you know, here we are, this comfortably middle class family with an in ground swimming pool in the back and we literally had a picket fence and we couldn't pay the light bill, we couldn't pay the electricity, we couldn't pay. And I remember we put a, a cooler out in the snow where we kept our milk and cheese and butter. Even then, I have to admit it struck me as romantic and that we were facing as a family, we were facing this adversity together and that somehow it would all work out. I wanted to be like my father. When I started writing, I was pretending I was play acting at being my father. What I did not see until I was an adult was that after the strike he masked what I can presume to be shame now he masked with drugs, cocaine in particular. So where he was this ebullient, vivacious character, full of life, a lot of that was drug induced. Reality took a long time to sink in because my parents never told me that the strike was over. In a final way, looking back on it, I understand how defeated he actually was. But at the time it just. I think I. I processed it as my father's in survival mode. My father is still fighting the good fight. The first job he had was as a night watchman. And I remember he despised that uniform. But his stubbornness, his sense of denial, his refusal to admit defeat can also be read as a kind of, of grit and perseverance. And in my life I can certainly see, you know, certainly as, as a writer, my refusal to accept rejection has served me well. That youthful belief that everything's going to work.
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Gregory Pardlo says there is a whimsy and disregard for what is polite in his poetry. And that he says comes from his father. He recently wrote about his father's role in the Patco strike for new yorker.com. so before we go, here he is reading a poem about fathers and Sons.
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At 13, I asked my father for a tattoo. I might as well have asked for a bar mitzvah. He said I had no right to alter the body he gave me. Aping what little of Marx I'd learned from the sisters down the street. I said I was a man because I could claim my body and the value of its labor. This meant I could adorn it or dispose of it as I chose. Tattoos, my father said, are like children. Have one, you'll want another. I knew there was a connection between the decorated body and reproduction. This is why I wanted a tattoo. Yet, I reasoned, not in so many words. His analogy only held in the case of possession. That is, I possess my body but cannot possess my children. His laughter was my first lesson in the human Ponzi scheme of paternalism. The self electing indenture to the promise of material inheritance. Men claiming a hollow authority because simply their fathers had claimed a hollow authority. Knowing I had little idea as to what my proposed tattoo might resemble, my father sent me to my room to sketch it using the pastels he had given me for Christmas. Based on his critique. He said he would consider my request, but he'd already taken the shine from my swagger. How can I beautify what I do not possess and call it anything but graffiti? Chris Rock says, my first job is to keep my daughter off the pole. Whether or not I agree with him, I get his point. As a father myself, I now see every mutinous claim of independence as the first step toward my sweet peas falling in with a bad crowd. Richard Pryor says, we're bound to fuck up our kids one way or another. My father would split the difference. I made you, he'd say. I can unmake you and make another one just like you.
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Gregory Pardlo reading Problema 4 from his book of Collected Poems Digest. Just ahead, the many faces of the mild mannered Canadian who calls himself Chilly Gonzalez. That's coming up on the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The New Yorker's Andrew Marantz writes about all sorts of things here at the magazine. Politics, media, technology and any combination of those things. But every once in a while he takes a break from all of that to write about something a little simpler. Pop music.
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So I was sort of clicking around YouTube and I found this guy, Chilli Gonzalez. Okay, great. So, hi, I am Andrew Marantz. And who are you?
- [39:12]
D
I'm Chilli Gonzalez. I'm a pianist, composer and entertainer. And I'm Canadian, proud Canadian, living in Europe's last liberal democracy, Germany.
- [39:25]
F
He was both a musician and also kind of a critic of pop music, but he also kind of knew the entire Western musical canon. He's someone who has touched a lot of the music that you might have heard on the radio, but you might not have ever known his name. He has worked with Drake and Feist and Daft Punk. When it came to his own music, it was like he was experimenting with a thousand different things. You know, he made these kind of really fun pop hooky rock songs. He made these rap songs that it was unclear whether he was even taking them seriously or whether they were a total joke.
- [40:11]
D
I'm self created. I took my inner Larry David and exaggerated it. Plus I Want to Be.
- [40:17]
F
He did these kind of little Eric Satie like piano experiments. He, he had this clear instrumental talent and a clear breadth in his musical knowledge, but it was almost like he didn't know where to apply himself with those talents. It wasn't really like commercially finding its audience for me.
- [40:44]
D
I was always faced with a choice that I now realize was a false Choice. People sort of said, your music can be serious, but then you have this other side that's very playful and funny and sarcastic. And it seemed like people were constantly telling me to pick a side, which is the thing, I guess I was always fighting against this idea of the polite pianist, the humble. The humble musician. And I thought, well, most musicians I know are a very strange cocktail of megalomania and insecurity anyway. So I thought, well, let's just turn that into the story.
- [41:16]
F
So eventually, he just made an album called Solo Piano, which was just him playing the piano. Very sort of structurally simple, but melodically really dense and really interesting compositions. And that kind of got a cult following. And one of the people who really loved that album was Drake, the super famous rapper who apparently especially liked this one song called the Tourist, because on Drake's mixtape, so Far Gone, he just played the Tourist without crediting it. He just played it.
- [42:02]
D
My ego was so tickled by the fact that Drake knew who I was and liked my song enough to use it. But then the other part of my ego was very frustrated that I hadn't been named or given a full shout out or any credit.
- [42:14]
F
What was your next move? I mean, did you do like a Meek Mill kind of move and make a diss record about him? Or how did you get credit or attention from him to acknowledge that that was your song?
- [42:24]
D
Well, he was hosting the Junos, which are, dare I say, Canada's Grammys. You can say it. And afterwards, he invited me to the studio and I ended up playing the Outro to Marvin's Room, which is one of my favorite Drake songs, and has like, you know, a full 90 seconds of piano right at the end of the piece. And that actually happened on a little crappy synthesizer they had there. And I thought I was maybe showing it could be something like this. Once you rent me my Steinway piano and we effectively do this. Little did I know that when I was just sort of showing what it might be, they were all doing that thing that you imagine they do in rap studios. Like, I'll try not to distort the mic here, but I finished and it was like, pause. And then, whoa. And I'm like, that was the reaction. I was like, but those are just some ideas. And they're like, no, no, that's it. And that's what you hear on Marvin's Room today. Hello, this is Chilli Gonzalez with another pop music masterclass for Eins Live Radio. And today we're talking about the gigantic hit from my fellow Canadian, Can't Feel My Face by the Weeknd.
- [44:13]
F
So in addition to making his own music and helping other people make their music, he also does this thing called Pop Music Masterclass, which is this series of videos where he sort of sits down at a piano and like, shows you how a pop song works and what makes it so effective. He refers to himself as a musical humanist, by which he means that he can sort of hear references to classical music or to Tin Pan Alley music or to whatever, and kind of draw on his encyclopedic musical knowledge and musical training to almost explain why pop music is so effective.
- [44:48]
D
So I figure all these musical tools that were used by great composers, they travel through time and they end up in pop songs today. It doesn't mean that Taylor Swift knows necessarily that she's using, you know, musical symmetry, but instinctively she kind of feels that as a satisfying musical tool for her song. And inadvertently is connected to. To when Mozart used it. And inadvertently is connected to when 50s ballads were using arpeggios and connected to in the Mood, you know, connected to Hotel California and all these songs that use arpeggios. So to me, it's just better to focus on what we have in common between musical styles. That's what musical humanism is, you know?
- [45:33]
A
You know, so we ain't really never.
- [45:35]
B
Had no old money.
- [45:36]
C
I asked him.
- [45:36]
F
Him to pick a song on the charts that he wanted to break down and analyze and. And he picked the song Bad and Bougie by Migos.
- [45:51]
D
So I've really been thinking about this song since it kind of broke through. I thought, well, why this one? Why now? In a way? And I think it's probably due to just the very. The very opening of this song. And I think it paints a visual picture. The first line is raindrops, right? And what I love is that when he says the word raindrops, it's instantly coupled with this sort of high tinkly sound, which is some kind of synthesizer, but not so dissimilar from a piano, right? Goes. And that's basically embodying the raindrops. You know, what. What would have been considered word painting in the golden age of romantic music. And often raindrops and. And things like that, these sort of images of water got used a lot in impressionistic music. So this kind of Debussy, Maurice Revelle, 1920s Parisian classical music, which is very tinkly. And so it made me think of that right away, you know. But just to get back to this, you have this very, very classic structure of three plus One sort of stating a theme three times and then sort of tying a bow on it. You have it, you know, it repeats and then there's a chord change and a note change. So there's this Beethoven symphony. I think it's the fifth that has this sort of fanfare based on a. Like an alpine horn call. And it goes like something like this. So it's these groups of three and then sort of you tie the bow on it and. You know, one of the. One of the painful songs I ever had to learn as a child was Chariots of Fire, which uses this technique. What a saccharine piece of garbage this is, isn't it? I mean, really three times and then really tie the bow on it, you know. But anyway, if you want to turn that into something more Migos friendly, then you would just put it into a minor key and it'll become a bit more gangsta. Like this, this.
- [48:27]
F
It's almost like for most of his career as a solo performer, he was kind of burdened by the breadth and depth of his knowledge. And he just knew so many different musical moves he could make and was kind of. Of constantly trying to do all of them at once. But I feel like he's reached that point in his career where he knows what a musical humanist is. In practice, it's just someone who shows up, listens to the music, has a well of knowledge to respond to it, and knows what the music needs.
- [49:04]
A
That's pianist, composer and producer, producer. Chilli Gonzalez speaking with the New Yorker's Andrew Marantz. Now, before we go, I want to take a few minutes to check in with a man of many talents, Paul Muldoon. Paul is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, the author of more than 30 collections. He's a professor at Princeton University, and he was for many years at the BBC in Belfast. And I know Paul because he's been my colleague, the poetry editor for the New Yorker for the past decade. So I figured it was worth seeing what he's paying attention to lately. What have you got? You've got a few morsels for us around town.
- [49:51]
E
These are very much morsels or more so, in fact, I think would be the place to begin with this first one. And that is two manifestations of the great Georges Seurat. And over at the Metropolitan Museum we have Seurat's Circus Sideshow. Try saying that after a gin and tonic. And this is of course, a really brilliant exhibition. It gives the background to this painting with the kind of the hinterland of the painting, as it were. From the many, many works of art that through the 19th century had focused on the circus and on vir. Various sideshows in the French tradition, of course, and beyond. It's a beautifully constructed exhibition.
- [50:43]
A
This is the painter that I was most fascinated when I was a little kid and my grandmother would take me to the Met on the sheer handiwork of doing all those dots. Look at that painting.
- [50:54]
E
It's absolutely brilliant. And he painted so few paintings, actually. It's extraordinary that his reputation rests on so few paintings. Related to that in some way, in a not perhaps obvious way, is the New Selected Poems of Robert Lowell.
- [51:11]
A
Paul, why was a New Selected Poems necessary for Robert Lowell? And what does this new edition add?
- [51:18]
E
Well, you know, it is Robert Lowell's centenary year. This is 1917, the year he was born. Lowell is much in the air at the moment, but actually, frankly, he's been somewhat out of favor.
- [51:33]
A
He's not taught much.
- [51:35]
E
Who knows what's taught these days? I mean, a few years ago I asked my students who purport to be interested in poetry whether or not they'd read Life studies. There were 10 of them, I believe.
- [51:47]
A
A great collection of laws.
- [51:49]
E
One of them had heard of Life Studies. None of them had read it. And I suppose I'm astonished to think that that's possible. But Robert Lowell himself, I think, is making a comeback. And one of the poems I absolutely adore by Robert Lowell, which is not, alas, in this collection, is the Drinker, which ends up with this image of two cops on horseback clop through the April rain to check the parking meter violations, their oilskins yellow as forsythia. A beautiful, beautiful image that connects him with the visual art there.
- [52:32]
A
And, Paul, you've got a third, I'll bet you know.
- [52:34]
E
Number three is a little item called no Particular Place To Go.
- [52:40]
A
Riding along in my automobile My baby.
- [52:44]
C
Beside me at the wheel I stole.
- [52:47]
A
A kiss at the turn of a mile My curiosity running wild Cruising and playing the radio with no particular place to go.
- [52:58]
E
You know, I was very sad, as I'm sure you were and so many were, to see the passing of the extraordinary Chuck Berry, a man I had the privilege of seeing. I don't know if you ever saw.
- [53:11]
A
I did, 20 years ago. So he was a mere stripling of 70 at that time.
- [53:16]
E
A mere youth. I saw him about 10 years ago in his club out in St. Louis.
- [53:22]
A
Oh, lucky you.
- [53:23]
E
And you know, he was still. His duck walk was not exactly.
- [53:28]
B
It was more like a goose.
- [53:30]
E
Still, what a character You've played in.
- [53:32]
A
Bands you play Chuck Berry songs.
- [53:35]
E
I would love to be able to play anything involving more than four chords.
- [53:41]
A
That's already jazz, as the read said.
- [53:44]
E
But you know, I would hesitate, particularly in your presence, David, to describe myself as a guitar player.
- [54:00]
B
Well, thank you so much.
- [54:01]
A
Wonderful to see you.
- [54:02]
E
It's a pleasure. Thank you so much.
- [54:11]
A
Paul Muldoon, the New Yorker's poetry editor. And that's it for today. Next week I'll speak with CNN's president and the former head of NBC, Jeff Zuckerberg, about the ups and downs he's had with Donald Trump. Till then, have a great week.
- [54:39]
C
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnick. Now Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfield, Michael Lerouw and Stephen Valentino, with help from Susan Morrison, Emma Allen and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.