all right welcome to America this week I'm mat and I'm Walter Kern Walter how are you well I'm starting to I'm starting to return to a state of nature I I've been alone in this cabin while my wife's been away for I don't know a week and it's very very far out that's all I can tell you it's not near anything the road that comes to it I saw the game warden yesterday for this County and he was saying he didn't like coming down here because the road's too rough and so when the game warden won't visit that means you're all alone and now there's a mouse running around and it's one of the biggest mice I've ever seen it seems to be a mouse rat hybrid um the bear has been outside and at this time of year when things get cold in Montana everything that lives outside wants to come inside okay so you literally have to look at your feet when you open the door because anything that's within Striking Distance will run inside I mean um and and I'm in here and I'm not looking in the mirror and I'm eating strangely whatever is in the freezer I I think I've had four meals of just short ribs or lesser cuts of beef in the last few days without vegetables so so I'm I'm a little rough frankly you know that's great are you typing uh um all work and no play makes Jack a dll boy yet over and over again uh it's it's getting there except you know you got to realize that in The Shining his problem is that his family is with him yes uh he would have been just fine he would have been just fine he would have written three novels he would have written a trilogy but he had that he had that sort of worst of Both Worlds combination of isolation in a snowbound hotel and his family oh that's a piece of commentary about that movie that's probably never been uttered out loud before um I think it's essential yeah absolutely quit pressuring me yeah exactly I can handle the ghosts and Scatman CRS but you guys they hanging on my neck like impending doom exactly stop it exactly you're walking over my shoulder how am I supposed to get anything done damn it oh man uh well I'm sorry to hear that Walter and and you know obviously try to make sure you don't slip and fall so that Mouse doesn't uh eat your remains uh I don't want to come and discover him running in and out of the eye sockets of your uh disembodied head um but uh no but are you getting things done yeah a lot of little things but there's one main thing that I'm here to do and bad I'm getting done less so it's all right it's all good yeah um well we we discussed uh off off air what topic we should do this week I think we we're we're in agreement that the we had a kind of a major journalism Scandal this week maybe even a historic one and it's it's gone a little bit um under the radar or at least uh the competitors or and the normal media reporters aren't really touching it uh but it it involves 60 minutes which with a couple of exceptions has stayed fairly um free of Scandal in its lifetime I would say it's generally considered to be one of the ethical standards for the business right but Bill Whitaker gave an interview to uh vice president Harris and it was a recorded interview and they released a a teaser and there was also a clip on Face the Nation um and also the original broadcast right of uh over the weekend contained the first version of this answer well I'm confused as to whether it even aired on Sunday night uh I I've read that it was bumped for something um I see I only saw it in hindsight so I I did know I know that it it appeared in Face the Nation and I know that there was a teaser that released right so I didn't watch it live I watched the show later um but in the original version Whitaker who by the way sort of started off the interview with a an uncharacteristically tough question about the way she was made um the nominee uh he shifted to a question about Israel policy and asks basically why prime minister Netanyahu isn't listening or is appears not to be listening to the United States and we hear this answer the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of U many things including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region but it seems that okay let's and now then then what happened was they released so we hear that answer right so and it starts with well Bill let's remember that let's tag there yeah so the they subsequently release a new version of the interview and it's it's now up everywhere on YouTube um on this on their site and it's it's different so if we could go to number two uh and start it uh at 132 and we're going to go back in time a little bit like one question the the the prequest so you can get the sense of what the momentum of the interview was like been killed this war has to end we Supply Israel with billions of dollars in military aid and yet prime minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course the Biden Harris Administration has pressed him to agree to ceasefire he's resisted you urged him not to go into Lebanon he went in anyway does the US have no sway over prime minister Netanyahu the work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing Pursuit around making clear our principles but it seems that uh prime minister Netanyahu is not listening we are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end okay um so Walter why is this why is this unusual in journalism well first of all because it's I'm sorry just a preface it it could be one of two things neither of them great but one would be absolutely unprecedented and one would be merely a little bit slimy I guess would be the way to describe it um well well well uh go into detail on that first so when you do interviews with uh political figures they're often quite long uh and sometimes you will cut for size or you know for continuity reasons uh you don't you're not doing it at the behest of the camp pain usually or you shouldn't um but it's if it's the answer to the question to the original question it's not really unethical I mean it's a little weird it's in a gray area I would say right so if you ask that question why isn't Netanyahu listening and your original release says thing a and your second release says thing B but thing B was actually a response to that question that you caught um that's okay but if you take an answer to another question and you stick it in as the answer to this question that I I have never seen before and and what what's unusual about this is that they they completely took out the the first version well we don't know that we've never seen it before do know we do know that we've not caught anyone at doing it that's right had it had we not had a basis for comparison uh between their different versions we wouldn't have caught it this time either you know and and you got to realize 60 Minutes doesn't do two shots uh very often in these uh in these interviews meaning you don't get the two people in the same shot so you can't correlate with the response and the question yes and in other words in other words if there is a camera uh if there is a two shot of that question it reveals what she said because you know can you can see it in real time and you know what is a response to what but instead they they they flip back and forth between these one shots of of the person asking the question and the person answering it which almost by Design makes it impossible to to to know whether they are synchronous in time um right but we we always previously assume because news organizations they they really just wouldn't do it I mean but but but that technique allows for the shortening that you're talking about okay but but it would also rule out the substitution which is the case here and uh uh you know in other words the first respon you also don't expect the initial line of response to a question to be something that came in the middle of the response do you know what I mean uh in other words when somebody asks a question and then somebody says well Bill that's that implies that those are the first words out of their mouth in response to the question and that you're not hearing the middle of the answer okay now that it to to give the middle of the answer as the original um uh as the original response is it is in itself deceptive okay but but to just as switch it out is the is the novelty here um and and frankly to do it after it seem seems there was a lot of criticism uh o of her responses in general and maybe this one in particular is called saving somebody's bacon yeah could we see the the original response again because her her replies are so generic and forgettable that at first you'd go oh those were the same you have to pay close attention to know when various harism are are different but it seems that uh prime minister Netanyahu is not listening well Bill the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of U many things including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region so so the first what she even say there exactly I I think she's suggesting that the protests against netanyahu's government in Israel were the result of uh Biden Harris pressure or work of some kind that's that's my interpretation of it well Bill the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region well now I doubt my interpretation when you read it back um a fog comes over my mind when she speaks I guess and I guess she's talking about various U moves that Israel made that are less aggressive or deadly than it would have made had they not been applying pressure I don't know yeah okay so there there was apparently blowback about that answer [Music] um I'm not exactly sure uh why why because it doesn't seem like she's saying a whole lot um but again she says think that might that the blowback might have been just that that she doesn't really answer the question why isn't Israel listening to you why why do you seem to have no power over them um so and then so the second answer we are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end right it's it's can we see that though can we see sure because it's interesting to see the Magic by which they portray The Substitute thing as the authentic or the original is resisted you urged him not to go into Lebanon he went in anyway does the US have no sway over prime minister Netanyahu the work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing Pursuit around making clear our principles but it seems that prime minister is not listening we are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end okay so so it's possible she was talking about Ukraine right when she because she did not mention Israel specifically in the first part of the second answer it is possible I feel uncomfortable suggesting that because we don't have any evidence for this so just to be clear I I wrote to CBS I wrote to every right I wrote to Lance Frank the executive director of communications um I wrote to the CBS comm's person I to people from uh CBS corporate and basically said you guys haven't made a statement about this you know there's lots of speculation that this is not the answer to that question can you clear that up for us um was this just an edit or or what's the deal and you know nothing obviously uh and then there's there's the additional odd thing where there would be competitors at ABC or NBC or you know I don't know who else CNN right uh the where are the media writers who are saying what the [ __ ] is that right like you would you would think a media reporter would pounce on the chance to go after the icon of uh of your competitors's journalistic lineup when they do something like this because it look looks awfully bad to me I I I can't say that I've I can recall a thing like this I can't either um the person on uh X who originally uh noted this discrepancy or this this change um I I know did assert that that is the answer to another question about Ukraine um and I'll have to uh check on the evidence for that assertion but yeah I I actually sent that to CBS I said I said look people this is this is one of the things that's being said online um and you know you haven't given an answer to there were a couple of stories Fox did a story variety of all people of all Outlets did a story about this weird edit well so so their Fox is acting in the um tradition of uh taunting your competitors but but but CBS didn't and ABC didn't um and uh you know the only thing worse than news not being a business okay the news being a business is news not being a business and by that I mean when it just becomes joining ranks to to to save the states bacon and to work in the interests of uh you know a political party you you long for the days when they when the newspapers called each other out you know um and uh yet that hasn't happened here uh it's been left to people um on the internet and and a few people in the press to call it out uh but I can see now between the two answers why they would have wanted to substitute the second because the first answer implies powerlessness and paity well you know it in the past I think some of the things we've said have had some effects basically is the first answer and the second one is we won't stop pushing right right I mean the the first answer is just words words words happen in the region right I mean that's the answer and then the second one is something it ends with I I think what's what's the the last phrase win the war or something like that um uh for for this war to end so um moreis the second one begins as a vow to keep pushing and keep up the pressure whereas the first one is this kind of like uh you know well we did our best and that caused something to happen and and we got to underscore I don't really care about the answer I don't really care you know that neither yeah we're talk we're we're we're we're talking about form not content it here at this point because we're talking about whether they have the right to actively deceive you in new ways rather than just semi deceive you in traditional ways that you're used to for for time constraints and other things I mean there was a there was a Babylon B joke about this incident that said you know CBS uh gathers 167 hours of uh interview material in order to craft its one hour interview or whatever uh and that's really just satire but it actually doesn't capture the problem because just that this is extremely boiled down is not what we're talking about no boiling down happens all the time and look there's an there's an element there where this is this is a a place where probably the public doesn't know that the Press has always been able to put their thumb on the scale a little bit because you can dude they wouldn't do it if they weren't able to put their thumb on the scale you know of course they're not a mirror they're not I am a camera uh they always editorialize through editing you know editing is to editorialize it's one of Reasons I'm always loathed to talk to print media people basically because in in print you can really uh you you can really uh angle and spin things they can take a they can take a statement you made and make it seem that it occurred in an entirely different context than than when you made it and there's no way you know there's no way for the audience to tell um at least at least on the TV news you imagine that statements are the answer to the questions which just preceded them yes right and it's one thing to edit out the ums and AZ and stuff like that and not do it for another candidate because I've I've seen that before uh where people do editing that's a little bit just unkind you know there's cleaning up that goes on with with some quotes and well Matt we we we we've we've hemmed and hawed and we've stuttered and offered all the excuses that they aren't offering for themselves right right right when when the appearance finally if you really want to get down to it is they got caught red-handed playing the old three card Monty uh switching the balls and switching the cups yeah they pmed a card right in the middle of you know and you see it it's like uh you're not supposed it's not supposed to drop out of your hand uh when you know when they when you when you when you pom at one card supposed to come out not two right um and you know that this obviously happened and again for forget the politics of it for a second think about what this would mean if this became a regular thing and maybe it already is and we just don't know about it um but I you know I've around a number of interviews of presidential candidates at Rolling Stone even though I never did these interviews I saw how they put together you know the Rolling Stone official interview with Barack Obama Hillary Clinton whoever right um right and I've interviewed pres plenty of presidential candidates before uh and I I have never even heard of anything remotely like taking an answer from another place and putting it in you know in a new place so that would be a completely unprecedented thing if it were were to occur and and just slightly less bad than that would be to somehow take parts of an answer of the same answer if it were long and rearrange them yes rather than rather than rather than cut them yes I hate that l take take take the end of something and put it first take the middle of something and put it last Etc I hate it less but you know it causes me to reflect on how much I hate the whole thing here is the first serious interview with this candidate really it was the first semicon frontation uh you know traditional interview that she's given as a presidential candidate and it started off well by the way and it started off well and and part of the thing that bothers me most about this is that I applauded Bill Whitaker on first seeing the interview for bringing back sort of the good old days in a way um you know being tough following up uh asking the questions in the first place that I think are of most import and maintaining a kind of serious composure not gushing not acting like their friends oh Madam Secretary like that other one right yeah mares or or the Dana Bash one you know oh my God or or the one where they both talked about two three two whole Patty Special Sauce lettuce cheese Donald song together so here was something that looked like you know traditional journalism and was worthy of the American people's interest in this rather new figure even though she's been a kind of in the shadows vice president yeah let's take a look at that 60 minutes overtime this week on 60 Minutes we're following the presidential and vice presidential Democratic ticket both in Washington DC and here on the campaign trail in Wisconsin we spoke with vice president kamla Harris and with vice presidential hopeful Minnesota Governor Tim wals from the rule of law with only four weeks go until election day and mail-in ballots already being marked we watched as they campaign making their appeal to voters Harris otherwise could have met months ago during a more traditional election cycle was democracy best served by President Biden stepping down and basically handing you a nomination you didn't have to go through a primary process you didn't have to fight off other contenders that's not really the way our system was intended to work President Biden made a decision that I think history is going to show is rare among leaders which was to put country before self and I am proud to have earned the support of the vast majority of delegates and to have been elected the Democratic nominee I am proud to have received the endorsement of leaders around this country from every background and Walk of Life to fight in this election over the next month for our democracy but I think this truncated process is why people think or say they don't really know who you are look I've been in this race for 70 days it is without any question a short period of time which is why I'm traveling around our country from one state to the next to the next it is my responsibility to earn the vote and I'm going to work to do that three quarters of the okay so what's interesting here is that watching even that part let let's disregard the content which is important and does show that he asked a tough question out of the out of the gate but when I watched it in light of what we know about their tricks now you know it was sort of it was sort of like finding out out that your spouse is cheating and then yeah you start thinking about all these things you start thinking about other things I go well look at that in the two shots you can't see her face uh they're over they're just showing her hair so uh you don't know that when they show a response while he's asking if she's actually listening to the thing you are MH you know what I mean in other words as he asks the question and they show her facial responses which you imagine are really important because we're seeing whether she's threatened by the question we're seeing whether she's angry about it being asked whether she's happy that it was asked we're not sure that that response shot has anything to do with the mo with the actual asking of the question it could have come from anywhere it it could have and but but but it well you know at a certain point as the son of a lawyer once the witness lies all their testimony after that is presumed uh presumed fraudulent you po fruit of the poison tree and all that well that's that's the wrong metaphor and here we have the prosecutor and the one prosecutorial um interview she's done and I cannot tell you except for my accumulated childhood faith in the ticking clock of 60 minutes and the seriousness that it Vibes that anything there that they could fake wasn't yeah okay so I'm gonna I'm going to say something probably unpopular they've always done fake reverse shots right so you know the correspondent going you know right that they'll shoot a whole bunch of those after the interview uh so they can edit those things in so there's lots of things that are kind of artificial about how sit down interviews look and you know or they'll ask somebody to of course they always ask people to walk in right um sure and they make it look like it's organic right um and uh but I just can't get so I'm a little bit more forgiving about that kind of stuff but but but in other words how much time passed between his asking of the question and the answer that we got well we don't you see that's the thing now that now that this thing has happened we have to we don't know about any of those questions so now here's what I'm here's what I'm suggesting this format is dead this format required the good faith of the audience and the Integrity of the network okay and the producers and the editors without without without belief and Trust in the Integrity of The Producers what we get is an incredibly constructed sculpted and not necessarily in the right order um and perhaps even put together in uh various ways before we see it to to get it you know to get the product the way movies are edited and and one has to wonder if that kind of construct that kind of artifact that that kind of invention should even exist in a world where we where the Integrity of the people who make them is in question and I don't think it should I think this is the moment when the when the internet won in other words the very Crown Jewel of the te Tiffany Network itself CBS 60 Minutes being the jewel just revealed itself to be a synthetic diamond and after this and and and was and was only caught by virtue of this new medium social media which was able to demonstrate the deception before your very eyes and they're not answering so that suggests to me a knock out by the New Media because how do you go back yeah I I'm not not sure I mean trust wise it's going to be difficult right and this and this is going to be much harder for audiences uh than the previous 60 Minute Scandal which which impacted once you see how a magic trick works once the card falls out of the Palm as you suggested you can't watch the trick again right right it's true it's true it's going to be difficult probably only a certain segment of the population is going to is going to care about this and there's a clip I want to show because but you also have to understand the context for some of the criticism of this which is Donald Trump's refusal to be interviewed by 60 minutes right which was before this big deal you know why is he why is he hanging back from the you know you know the Star Chamber the real test of a serious candidate well he's got a pretty damn good excuse now yeah yeah and let's I mean we should look at this this is Jimmy Fallon's response to Trump complaining about this uh incident meanwhile today Trump complained that CBS edited kamla Harris's interview on 60 Minutes to make her look better Trump said it was clearly edited she didn't say say one thing about people eating pets in Ohio not one didn't even mention it and didn't Trump claimed it was editing but haris said it's just part of her amazing campaign strategy not being [Applause] 80 that's it that's it so there's your commentary on on editing a major presidential interview I I I'm a little bit speechless Matt it was a it was a wet Kleenex that had already started to tear which he presented what is the logic of saying he's complaining that it was edited deceptively edited okay that's trivial and that's irrelevant because she didn't say anything like about cats and dogs and anything ridiculous what do those two phenomena have to do with each other nothing and in fact it undermines itself because if Trump were to go on and say something about cats and dogs and 60 Minutes had edited it out he'd be the one screaming even if they had just edited it out right let alone done for him what they apparently did for her that would be theend end of journalism right if it were If This Were if this had been done I'm saying if this had been done to favor or Donald Trump or make him look good or you know save his butt in a particular area you know it said that Michigan is the one paying close attention to her statements about Israel and it's a state she now has to win and made might have been the place where she was most vulnerable with answer one if they had done this on behalf of Donald Trump I we would never hear the end of it it would have been proof of the end of democracy yeah it if they had cut out something controversial that he had said or and and this one wasn't like she she said some stupendous blunder or anything like that it was just uh kind of a non-answer and right know looked a little bit um what's the word I'm looking for uh unrehearsed unprepared I mean I don't know but yeah if they had cut out something to help to help Trump I think the the whole business would have been an uproar you you would see all those media rep writers from all those other organizations um you know leaping at the neck of CBS which as you say it's really depressing to have to wish that the news business be a business uh you know see them being so selective about their commercial interests uh is is just it's so bizarre we're and it also makes you wonder about the process that led to the correction okay well of course and I asked about that by the way too I asked CBS what what happened there did they just did they just declare oops in the you know sanctity of their own editing studio and change it around or was a phone call made and was it the result of pressure well Harris has made a statement so one of the only Outlets oddly enough to cover this was Variety in the controversy surrounding the edited response and aid for the Harris campaign told variety we do not control cbs's production decisions and refer questions to CBS so well that's fascinating okay right isn't it because it's a because it's a tcid admission that what happened happened she doesn't Ute the fact she merely says that if they're playing tricks down there they're their tricks not ours well shouldn't she be upset then I mean in other words they just damaged her campaign they just made it seem that a her first answer was incompetent and that she needs all this touching up to be presentable and they also you know uh they also gave a sense of possible collusion with her her so if they had done something like that that resulted in blowback against me on their own I'd be pretty pissed yeah absolutely if I mean you you'd be upset about editing decisions in a lot of cases um especially a presidential candidate I think they have expectations and and you would probably make some agreements before you entered the interview about how uh how what what their guidelines are going to be in terms of editing are you going to air the whole thing are you going to right selectively edit I mean do I have wrer first refusal on things like you know there there's different ways you can arrange the interview um but but but to keep calling this editing is in itself a little deceptive no that's true yeah you know it's it's it's called collage is what they usually call it you know if we're going to be if we're going to be specific um editing involves shortening tightening uh sharpening but representing the flow the order and the sanctity of the question answer uh unit this is something completely else it's called you know like I say collage or uh um mix and match I don't know how to mix and match yeah and and and and as I say it's almost a kind of fiction actually because because if the answer is the the great the great beat writer William buroughs calls it the cutup method you know he he' cut up a bunch of uh he put a bunch of words in you know in a bag and then pull them out at random and try to make uh or or sentences and try to make fiction out of them it's it's refrigerator magnet uh right or or reporting is what it is you know yeah let's move the refrigerator magnets around and she's not properly upset about it no because it made her look terrible because if as some are asserting right now there's this thin band of thinking people who are going to decide the election you know you have the you have the strong partisans on either side but you have the thoughtful Independence in the middle and they're going to make all the difference this is the exact kind of thing that upsets those people yeah yeah and and it also reduces hugely the press's moral Authority in making all these sweeping statements about Trump's lack of Integrity well that's that's and misinformation and disinformation like I never want to hear the word disinformation from CBS again right until they've cleared this up to my satisfaction well it's very it's very weird that they haven't issued a statement on already this is 4 days after uh I can't account for them not doing it except for the fact that they're not getting pressure to do it which is odd and I can account for it as guilt yeah it doesn't look great I can account for it as having done exactly what they're being accused of doing and not wanting to bring further attention to the fact so when we we first talked about this Walter we we both thought of different scan in the past uh that this reminded us of and the the the commonality in both of them is that sometimes a thing gets broken and it after that moment things are not really the same again even if audiences or or voters don't recognize the import of it uh at the time right um one of the thing one of the reasons I thought of this is because uh the last big Scandal actually is it really the only Scandal uh involving 60 Minutes uh was a big story involving a tobacco whistleblower named Jeffrey W wand and they turn it into a big movie made by Michael man that starred Russell Crow and alpacino alpacino plays LEL Bergman and the Crux of uh this drama is that Bergman works very hard to do the traditional investigative journalism work of coaxing out somebody who knows something and this process depends entirely on trust right like you in order to get a source to tell you something important and make a huge sacrifice uh they have to be able to know that you're going to deliver on the other end you know this person's going to lose their job they're going to go through all these different things and but they're doing it they want their story to get out now what happened with CBS is that all the bad things happened to The Source before the story came out and then CBS and not even CBS editorial but corporate blinked at the threat of litigation and we'll just show the scene this this in in this scene you're going to see Mike Wallace uh played by Christopher Plumber uh basically reass Bergman the investigative reporter that uh everything's going to be all right and then he goes on uh to meet with um I think it's Eric kuster and Don hwit uh who are at 60 minutes and they deliver the bad news but let's just watch don't worry we call the shots around here hello Debbie it's me I want you to check some filings and give me John Wilson's number bastard what now cluster's coming over the fact that they got Steven talaski to play cluster is hilarious Mike Don there has been so much soul searching about this wagon I've decided we should cut an alternate version of the show without his interview so what happened to m karelli is checking with outside Council first all that crap that's happening and hopefully we won't have to use the alternate but we should have it in the can I'm not touching my I'm afraid you are no I'm not we're doing this with or without you LOL if you like I can assign another producer to edit your show but since when has the uh Paragon of investigative journalism allowed lawyers to determine the news content on 60 Minutes it's an alternate version so what if we have an alternate version and I don't think her being cautious is so damn unreasonable so now if you will excuse me gentlemen Mr rather's been complaining about his chair sh again before you go this is good I discovered this SEC filing the sale of CBS Corporation to Westinghouse Corporation what I heard rumors not a rumor it's a sale if Tish can unload CBS for $81 a share at a westing house and then is suddenly threatened with a multi-billion dollar lawsuit from Brown and Williamson that could screw up the sale could it not and what are you implying implying quoting uh more vested interest persons who will profit from this merger M Helen caparell general counsel of CBS News 3.9 million Mr Eric cluster president of CBS News 1.4 million some of that is going to be hard for people to remember what that was all about but B basically Pacino is saying Pacino LOL Bergman in that scene is saying you're killing this important story because you're getting a payout uh in an in the coming sale of CBS and you want to know something interesting Matt just a detail CBS just got a new owner did you know that did they really no I didn't know that Larry Ellison of Oracle um uh he just took over with in a kind of in concert with some Associates and family members the national Amusement Company which is actually the parent company of Paramount Global and CBS how telling that the actual corporate entity that controls CBS is the national Amusement um that's just you know that's just a detail for the novelist in me but uh it is true that ownership of networks and uh you know media companies does play A Part as they just showed and it just does happen rarely it shouldn't well it shouldn't but what year is this movie late 90s I think I don't so Network the original satire of network news is 1976 and it turns on the Takeover of the company by uh a big pool of I think Middle Eastern finers or or Finance money and and thus leads to that huge speech by uh Ned Bey to Peter Finch about how the world you know there is there are no countries of whatever yeah yes and there is only money and there is only capital and shekels and dollars and rubles and so on in which he relieves Peter Finch of this illusion that they are doing anything else but serving whoever you know owns them and so on and so then in in in documentary form much later we get another version of network about a compromise that's made uh to to suit a new you know corporate and owner um yeah so so I mean Patty chvy with his cynicism about the whole industry was both uh correct and prophetic um but uh CBS I guess maybe felt it had redeemed Itself by allowing this movie to be made in which it sins were aired and yeah I I don't know I all I remember is I I when I watched that movie um and I I walked out of a theater in New York and it was pretty packed and there there were a couple of New Yorkers who were saying to themselves um one was saying to the other what was that about I don't even understand what the point was and right because only a journalist would feel that this was this major sin and betrayal and crime against nature to to not run this guy's interview right and and and what they're describing as something very I don't know how to explain it very subtle uh in the movie I think Bergman Pacino says something to the effect of what got broken in here doesn't get fixed and his point was every time we go out from now on to make a deal with somebody to do an interview with us they're not going to trust that we're going to deliver right on our side of the promise like you can't do the job right like you can't talk to somebody if you if you offer somebody like off the Record Privileges and then your boss breaks them right uh nobody's ever going to do an interview with with you again and in this case you make a series of promises to somebody who's under a tremendous amount of pressure and they and they end up not um delivering their side of it well you're never going to get that kind of person again or or it's it's going to be much harder uh and so that's it's a thing that that it started to happen in journalism right and there were a whole series of um kind of collapses where big corporations pressured companies to kill stories or reframe them there was the jakita banana thing uh if you remember that I mean there there was some there was some behavior in that that that was a little strange right from from the reporter's end but nothing compared to what the company was doing um but you know the essence of this problem is that we don't know what the deals are that are made before EXA happen and it can go the other way too and I know examples of it you know from my S professional life and you know scuttlebutt and I know them to be the fact when people have been promised anonymity uh and don't get it in other words in other words their promised anonymity it's not going to harm you at all to to tell the story about how this powerful person sexually harassed you right right and then there you are in the story named and your career say in Hollywood is dead yeah that I mean that's a you can't do that but it's been it has been done yeah and and that stuff used to be fatal to your career if you if you did something like that and now I don't know people just keep it's it's like uh Finding Nemo they just keep swimming just keep swimming you know but you know but but it was one of those movie lines to say what gets what got broken will never get fixed because in fact we live in the world increasingly of Amnesia and uh you know complete uh turn the page every 24 hours and people did keep trusting and they did keep giving controversial interviews and they did keep putting their uh reputation and even their livelihood out on a limb in order to tell the truth because frankly the whistleblowers have more Integrity than the people they go to and they are they are moved constantly by a desire to tell the truth that's why we still have a business Ma that's why you still exist particularly as an investigative reporter because even though people know about these betrayals and have seen The Insider they they are often moved by a desire to see Justice done that that isn't conquerable by their fear that they'll be betrayed that's true so and so the the whistleblowers the real ones continue to live on a sort of high moral plane mhm and the places that receive their testimony don't meet that all the time yeah no that's it's true and and whistleblowers don't have a choice that they the Press is really their only Avenue or Congress and um it's it's it's often their only solution to a a very serious personal problem so they're going to keep doing it it's just that equation has really changed uh and I guess you're right it's gotten more dangerous in other words to do it exactly um and uh and when you hold the fate and the the the the Safety and Security of another human being in your hand you have to take that responsibility incredibly seriously and yeah I think it was evidence of their seriousness that in this uh betrayal in this instance of betrayal they made a whole movie MH you know to remind themselves yeah no that's true that's true um not to make the show devolve into Matt and Walter's favorite movies but uh oh come on they're both good movies they're both great yeah they're both good movies um but the other one we we were thinking of is a quiz show and Walter do you want to tell people I mean the basically what the Scandal was or I mean I can I can recoup it but I I can't remember was it oh uh I don't remember it happened in the 1950s and I don't remember the the name of the show but uh it was1 sorry yeah 21 and and it was a show in which sort of like Jeopardy people were asked substantive questions you know about history and literature and events and so on and and have to get a right answer and this very popular son of a Columbia literature Professor named Mark voran Char the Professor was Mark VOR yeah yeah the professor was Mark V dor the son was named Charles Van Dorne and he was appealing kind of All American smart looked you know looked good and seemed bright just the flower of American uh middle this was this was the beginning of the kind of man managerial competence uh best in the brightest era right and and he was one of these people right and and he he started an epic run on 21 winning winning winning and it turned out in order to preserve this very popular uh figure on the show and to keep their ratings up and to extend his streak they started giving them the answers and and significantly they started giving him the answers so that he could end the Run of another character on the show who had been getting the answers named herb stem Le and Herb was the he wasn't handsome and upper class and well spoken and all these things he was uh I think from Brooklyn or queens and very much kind of a regular guy type um he's played by Jewish right yes exactly uh and they decided that you know uh that voran was the better leaning man and they basically dumped one for the other and uh this story is fascinating for a bunch of reasons number one it just killed the whole idea that there's anything real about you know these shows uh but the ending of the story when I went back and looked at it it's got a very interesting connection to our present that I that I had forgotten and uh this is the this is this the confession scene van Doran ends up testifying before Congress and uh this is RA finds who by the way is amazing in this movie uh and he delivers what he thinks is going to be um you know the confession that absolves him or or or unburdens him uh of his sins I would give almost anything I have to reverse the course of my life in the last year the past doesn't change for anyone but at least I can learn from the past I've learned a lot about life I've learned a lot about myself and about the responsibilities any man has to his fellow men I've learned a lot about Good and Evil they're not always what they appear to be I was involved deeply involved in a deception I have deceived my friends and I had millions of them I lied to the American people I lied about what I knew and then I lied about what I did not know in a I was like a child who refuses to admit a fact in the hope that it'll go away of course it did not go away I was scared scared to death I had no solid position no basis to stand on for myself there was one way out and that was simply to tell the truth it may sound TR to you but I've found myself again after a number of years I've been acting a role maybe all my life of thinking I've I've done more accomplished more produced more than I have I've had all the breaks I have stood on shoulders of life and I've never gotten down into the dirt to build to erect a foundation of my own so the senator start complimenting him thank you sir oh okay Mr voran I would like to join the chairman in commending you Congressman sorry for the soul searching fortitude displayed in your statement thank you sir thank you very much Mr van dor I just want to add my Kudos I have listened to many witnesses in both civil and criminal matters and yours is the most soul-searching confession I think I have heard in a long time all right so let's let's switch to the last comment by the last member of Congress and and it's a real this this really happened this is a congressman named Steven Doon and who's an armenian-american Congressman uh and he ends up jumping in and has a very different thing to say thank you sir Mr voran I'm also from New York a different part of New York I'm happy that you made the statement but I cannot agree with most of my colleagues see I don't think an adult of your intelligence ought to be commended for simply at long last telling the truth and anyway so that story had a major class element to it and kind of it had an ethnic element notice notice that the um the the reporter I I forget the name of the actor you know the darkhaired and I believe yeah um the guy Rob what's his name hang on a wait uh Rob Mara sorry yeah yeah but I I believe he's Jewish in this in yeah he's a congressional investigator in the movie right right and then you've got the The Armenian uh guy who fails to be Charmed by his sort of prep by by Charles Van's prep school I stole the you know I stole the pie from the kitchen I flew too high on borrowed Wings right right you know um so Robert Redford who directed the film and has really been a great director at times um represented in some ways what 60 Minutes does you know he he was kind of the high conscientious who held America to its own standards in this movie but I imagine that people who watch it now might have the same response that the person did at the screening of The Insider that you came out and go what was that about oh this guy got answers on a quiz show right you mean that the world wasn't threatened or you know no you know people weren't going to die and and that reminds me of this time when movies had this kind of and the movies themselves were this way they were much like Charles voran in other words they repeated that same expectation that if you sort of ritually scourged yourself a and showed your conscience a and apologized as the movie apologized then you would be forgiven though both of them had these kind of Bleak endings like this is when American innocence when was lost this is when the honor of the WASP establishment w was sacrificed for M lucer you know and and they remind me of those movies I used to watch as a kid and I have a real big point to make here about um McCarthyism uh and how you know people people sold out their friends and they um they hid their own beliefs and they turned on one another and they also showed lack of integrity and dishonor those movies about American over what appear now to be rather uh subtle moral crimes were a big deal once and they formed my selfhood and and they're one of the reasons I'm doing this show now because those movies and that notion that it was a great crime to offend against your own conscience against your own promises and to deceive in a way that uh kind of would cause the corruption o of Civil Life in the in the future those movies actually I bought them yeah no course I them yeah and so now when I see something like 60 Minutes in the name obviously I mean I I can't say what their motives were I can't say how it went down behind the scenes but let's just throw a general mantle over it as all these pristine liberal institutions and so conscientious that they actually used to participate in movies about their own sins just throw it all away because because Trump right yeah I go I go oh okay you know you're not you really will never get it back now because you've been doing it so consistently and so nakedly that it's no longer this oneoff You drama and you you've sacrificed everything and you've done it before people like Walter ker who were raised to believe that the the kind of you know old style British honor and so on and uh if you're and the bless a bleed if you're in front of an audience you can't you know responsibility not to lie to them I bought all that crap and I'm pissed yeah I'm pissed now you oh oh it was was it even true back then was it all a show back then where you all doing false van Doran style confessions and scourging your own uh you know lapses because you wanted forgiveness so you could go do more of them I mean we have to consider that maybe that's the case right I I it looks kind of phony now I gotta say despite the the Integrity of those movies as drama they looked corny to me because I mean that was a scene of of of actual uh intentional corniness on Charles voran oh yeah they were yeah right but I think that's what the movies themselves were doing they were there were mulas about mulas that were meant to convince you that they th th this layer of American um American Media journalism and so on had the ability to police itself and would but those ideas are completely absent now there's no there's no discussion about things like uh honor personal Integrity as if they mean anything you know like and I just participated in a very strange debate uh last night in in New York um with uh Lea Fong who did great and uh you know Brett Stevens and Jamie Kiri and we were debating should the US be the world policeman we talked about um we did that Tim O'Brien story last week and I was trying to make the point that when we armies fight dishonorable Wars right the difference between politicians and soldiers is that soldiers um it stains them forever to fight you know in a in a dis dishonorable war in a wrong War to to to be asked to kill for an abstract reason that doesn't make sense um is so it's it's strong on so many levels and it makes you weaker um as a country going forward because you just you lose moral Authority lose strength all these things and I feel like that was understood not that long ago and now all it is is just a series of calculations like is this intervention good because this will deter Iran or this you know we need to expand our influence more into this direction because you know that that will lessen uh Chinese influence I we just don't think about things like well what is what's the effect on people when we attack a country like Iraq that didn't actually do anything to us um I think I think it hurts a country to not think about these things well you know I absolutely agree but to get back to my point which I think relates to yours just now the American Elites used to justify their privilege or their power or their Authority on the grounds that they came from a class of people who grew up uh who who who grew up uh under a code of honor and that they were also capable when they offended against their own code or fell short of it of of criticizing themselves and uh and of confessing their sins and of doing better and that was the basically the license that allowed them to send people to war or get get a whistleblower uh to go uh to come out with the promise that they would be protected or U and so on I'm not an anti- elitist I'm an anti-is elite right this Elite has made an incredibly um solemn argument for it s over the decades and now it has thrown it all away and excused itself and written itself a pass for any any uh abreg of its own code because hey Donald Trump yeah and and this is the thing that's so frustrating about the Trump story Donald Trump he represents a lot of things that initially strike you right you know if if we're raised as we were to not want to lie not want to cheat people not want to go back on your word and do you know cheat on your wife a million things right there were lots of things and about Trump especially in the beginning when I first saw him that you know you I felt like I had I recoiled from but watching kind of as you talk about this the sort of political Elite gradually decide that it could just throw away left and right all of these Concepts that are so Central to what um you know trust and government is about right you know I everything from violating you know attorney CL privilege to aren't these the very people who you know to to refer back to our John sheer story aren't these the very people who attend the St Paul's School and uh are taught you know a a at 14 years old that um two wrongs don't make a right and are punished for little things like you know stealing an extra piece of candy from the kitchen and aren't all those movies about how you know in order to be Noble you must in order to to be nobility you must have nobility of soul and and and uh now apparently there was a there was a caveat or a a sort of a clause in all of those old um codes that if Donald Trump comes along you don't have to do it anymore and three wrongs make a right um and so on and uh you can exaggerate and you can deceive all in the name of a good thing see in all those movies from the McCarthy movies to quiz show The Insider the motive for traying your principles is always money okay and that's what's held up as the as the Fatal Temptation you you you you you you troduce your Noble profession for Mere Money you you or or to go on working in the McCarthy instance you know to keep your career in Hollywood you end somebody else's even by testifying false well what's weird is if they're betraying themselves not for money it PE anymore but for clout or for political um uh you know political solidarity uh or for this higher new uh uh good virtue that they've introduced to stop a dictator right you know yeah that's that's what they would claim is that we're doing this to to to prevent a dictator but it's okay so we're going to we're going to censor to stop a dictator we're going to you know cancel the primaries and you know cancel the primaries to stop a dictator we're going to uh uh have a uh Presidential nominee with no apparent process to her nomination that the public can see or could have participated in had it been able to see we're gonna we're gonna end up just like those those commanders who are sazed in the Vietnam War who say we have to burn the village to save the village yeah because that is always the uh logical end of a pro of a self-justifying process you know you go the thing I'm trying to save uh is not is not responding right to my attempts to save it you know they're not turning in their Viet Kong uh they're not uh they're not uh coming over to us they're not responding to us delivering food or our Aid programs we'll just have to destroy them because they're not worthy of our help anymore and today in this Atlantic endorsement of har God yeah I saw a very overt statement of that basically it's not worth treating these people as people anymore can we call that up just quickly we won't spend a ton of time on this but but um this is the uh the Atlantic did an endorsement of of KL Harris which is you know kind of expected but the endorsement itself was very strange um it's completely expected it yet yet they portrayed it as extraordinary only the fifth time they've ever you know uh endorsed a presidential candidate yeah so almost half the electorate supported Trump in 2016 and supported him again in 2020 the same split seems likely on November 5th Trump's support is fixed and impervious to argument so that was OD so so in other words we have no responsibility to make an argument to them or even to explain their support because it's just some kind of boneheaded irrational uh phenomena um that we we need not understand and we need not try to address yeah we we don't have to we don't have to think about explain what why they're for him we don't have to and and I think in some on some level this explains some of these tactics because we don't we we don't ow any fairness to to these people I don't think they also imply that it has no other motive but some kind of authoritarian lust or rage because they suggest that it has no reasonable basis oh you know if your Town's uh if your Town's industry went South to uh Mexico or abroad um that can't be the reason if if you're uh having difficulties keeping up with inflation that can't be the reason if you're afraid that your kids might go to war or even that there might be a nuclear war and you might die in it that can't be the reason right yeah y so it it just annihilates really the it annihilates the intellectual Humanity of that entire uh well it's not even the country not even a consideration for them so then they go down and this was amazing because I thought this was building up it starts off with Trump Trump's a monster and you know all the things we've read 5,000 times before it goes down to about the candidate we're endorsing and you you think it's going to be a long passage uh but basically it just says uh the Atlantic is a heterodox place for some of us KLA Harris's policy views are too Centrist while for others they're too liberal um they just Prov that they aren't a heterodox Place yeah the the proc we all agree on one thing but we have you know we don't we all love cupcakes but some of us love a little vanilla frosting and some like the chocolate yeah exactly uh then there's like a brief thing about how the the nomination process was flawed and and they say that she respects the law she's untainted by corruption let alone a felony record of or history of sexual assault so that's just again she's not Donald Trump she doesn't embarrass her compatriots with her language and behavior or pit them against one another she's not Donald Trump she doesn't Curry favor with dictators she won't abuse the power of the highest office in order to keep it she believes in democracy and then it just what do they suggest is the basis for all these mind reading assertions about what she will or won't do oh we don't have to explain that uh just say it that's all they're doing and and but to me the amazing thing was this discount this Dismount these and not any specific policy positions are the reason the Atlantic is endorsing her so it's just so they just proved the PO they just proved of themselves what they accused Trump supporters of doing they said Trump supporters don't have a reason reasonable basis for their support of trump and they applied it's all based on his personality or some kind of emotional bond and then they said but we over at the Atlantic support Harris not for any specific reason but because we like her she's not Trump yeah she's not Trump I mean who's the who's the impervious to argument type here and and and I like your heterodoxy we all agree on the same thing but we agree in different ways our that's our version of heterodoxy heterodoxy I thought they were going to say we actually have some people on staff who support Trump no yeah or don't vote I mean at least that you know something along those lines or Jill Stein or somebody wter I want to ask one sort of last serious question are are we out of date like maybe maybe we're looking at this the wrong way like maybe this is the new way of looking at things and worrying about these little these little moral issues and and all of that when what they're saying is in the grand scheme of things we have to now uh be fixated on you know are are we going to allow Trump to be president or are we going to not and um and that's the most important thing and all all these other concerns are are trivial and maybe maybe we're just looking at the wrong at it the wrong way maybe Humanity's evolved and this is this is the new morality I mean is is that possible we're not out of date we're out of Step we're out of cycle meaning that you know I I don't believe that history Moves In One Direction I do believe that it sort of cycles and revolves and Spirals and Rhymes and those things and and and we're we're out of we're out of sync with it um but we're also right okay because uh judging by their own standards they don't meet them okay yeah I mean they just endorsed someone on the basis that they would never abuse authority but we've already seen that candidate in many statements talk about abusing their authority over people's freedom of speech for example which we happen to hold uh dear uh they in other words none of what they say makes sense even even within the parameters of their own value system they do things like accuse people of uh unreasonable support and then say but our support is the good kind of unreasonable not based on policies what they basically just did there was completely excuse her for not for not stating what she stands for in any legible or intelligible way wait I thought you were the Atlantic I thought you were the people who required reason required examples required you know a a basis for your statements but you just said we don't need them not When Donald Trump is around you don't need them and not when the evil people who support Donald Trump are around but the Donald Trump fans I can tell you can give their reasons yeah no that's they actually can they don't answer to a person I just think he's funny and a great guy no they can't the Atlantic you are you are pissing on your betters the people who are attempting in some fashion to follow the line that you set back when and have now abandoned mysteriously in uh all under the mantle of saving our democracy which is I hate that possessive but uh uh but is not going to be there if if it gets saved in the way that you're prescribing well yeah I mean it's like what saving journalism by by collaging an interview instead of running it you know or but you know we already saw when Trump was first elected the New York Times literally do a kind of Manifesto about how they were going to save journalism by abandoning it by abandoning objectivity right right that that tired thing and so uh yeah we're out of Step but the truth is that the America that was imbued with the very values that these people preached and these movies we just showed uh espoused and so on is actually doing its best in some ways and those values now look conservative and and so they tend to have more resonance on the conservative side um and you just can't believe it because really you've revealed the fact that your ingroup was what was important to you not those seven principles on the wall that you kept uh Roman anzing about yeah it's really disillusioning that this whole era has been one continual disillusionment and this on one basic principle War Donald Trump and Cala Harris are distinguished and frankly there's an intelligence to the American people in that they are not just deciding the election on who's a good person because American people are smart enough and I'm smart enough to know none of them are okay I mean haven't you seen enough movies about politics including one with Robert Redford back when the candidate which was about kamla Harris right yes exactly yeah the candidate is a movie about a completely empty kind of good good-look person who well he's not completely empty but he's not allowed to really say anything and he doesn't know what he believes and at the end you he wins I think the nomination or he goes well what next right and and and and the answer that resounds in the in the audience's mind is he doesn't know because he doesn't stand for anything and the system that got him there was all just about you know Petty victory rather than achieving any higher goal and uh so so I'm only using the standards of the candidate and of quiz show and of all the other movies made by really high influential liberal thinkers to form my conscience and I'm going to say you have you have fallen short and I nobody likes anything less than a minister who uh yeah others and forgives himself constantly yep yeah and we'll see how this whole thing pans out but I I I think something significant happened with the 60 minutes I think we're going to look back at this and say that was a big moment um but it was a big moment because it also confirmed what has been supposedly one of Donald Trump's most outrageous uh you know lies or exaggerations it's fake news okay well if you are willing to be objective and look at the evidence in this case and not give them a pass because our democracy is threatened you have to say oh now I know not only that it's fake but the exact methods by which they fake it yeah yeah crazy it's a wizard of oddz moment it really is yep you know the curtain was pulled back absolutely so our story for this week uh is a classic one of the last stories that Tolstoy ever wrote called after the ball written in 1903 and published posthumously in 1911 and it's a short but very powerful uh beautiful dark story and it's it's got some relevance to today that's interesting I think so w you want to do the the summary of this sure but with the Proviso that I read this for the first time this morning sure I've read a lot of toll story but somehow I missed this one so I I I may I I haven't had time for some of the details to completely sink in and fix themselves but but it's a story that in a way is presented as evidence for an argument in other words there there's a young man and I forget the name of the narrator Ivan vasilovich I think yeah Ivon yeah Ivan okay Ivon who is having some kind of a a debate at the very beginning with with a friend and it's kind of a pre-revolutionary debate obviously it's in a Russia that is um consumed by politics and uh you know protor revolutionary sects and groups and uh somebody says at the beginning you know man is basically the creature of his environment and we can't change things for people we can't improve the human lot without uh creating a new environment you know which would be the argument of a kind of materialist revolutionary yeah and you and you say that a man cannot of himself understand what is good and evil that it is all environment that the environment swamps the man but I believe it is all chance take my own case he says right take my own case and so he then tells his story from a time which he specifies was before politics had kind of Taken hold of the Russian mind in a more traditional time uh you know of hierarchies and uh old values and it's and it's a very simple story he goes to a dance a kind that that's kind of high a very high society dance attended by uh military figures and and and Aristocrats and that type and he sees a beautiful uh woman across the room I forget what she's named um vinka I think hang on a sec let make sure sorry barinka yeah and she's beautiful and she's beautiful in a noble way she's tall and thin and Regal and even a bit bony he he says uh but she enchants him and he dances with her and loses almost loses Consciousness he's so Blissful and ecstatic and so admiring of her charms and her beauty so anyway the guy falls in love at the dance and he stands back and watches at one part when uh toward the end into the dance his beloved dances with her father who is a colonel an army colonel and he represents sort of the best of the military virtues in Russia he's just absolutely uh uh well- quaffed he has all these complicated mustaches yeah quickly describes his hair vink's father was very hand was a very handsome well-preserved old man he had good color uh mustaches curled in the style of Nicholas I and white white whiskers which met the mustaches his hair was combed onto his forehead and a bright smile like his daughter's was on his lips and in in his eyes wow no casual Fridays in 19th century mid 19th century Russia right you know you got to get your mustaches to meet your beard and comb your hair over your forehead and dress in your regimental you know dress uniform and you know so anyway our our narrator watches watches this Beauty dance with her father and he falls even more deeply in love with her he even sort of falls in love with the romance of zaris Russia because he sees this older gentleman perfectly turned out and dignified kind of fall to the ground while dancing the merera it is right and and she without hesitation you know just dances merrily around him and great F uh you know not trying to cover his little weakness um making light of it in a delightful way and he gets back up and they conclude their dance and now now our our narrator is not only in love with the woman he's in love with her father kind of he's in love with the the the aristocracy with from which she comes and the system in which they all live and then he goes home and that night he can't sleep he's just too smitten and too fantastically romantically stimulated so he decides to go walk the streets and while he's walking the streets he sees a commotion and down the street comes a horrible scene the scene of a a tartar deserter tartar being a Russian ethnic designation a sort of lower class man right usually from Crimea it might be from Crimea but right right who has an onlooker describes to him what's going on who has deserted the Armory and he is being paraded or moved through the streets it's night and he's being whipped by his fellow soldiers so horribly that his back looks almost inhuman it's just oozing red lacerated swollen flesh horrible this to see this this passage is amazing I'm sorry to interrupt it was something so many colored wet red unnatural that I could hardly believe it was a human body right right he's literally watching this man be tortured to death for this dishonor of deserting and then he sees the Father the colonel the father of this girl he's so he thinks his whole future depends on he's going to marry her I I think is the you know it's intimated that they're going to go on together but then he sees the father say why are you whipping him so gently let me show you how to do it yeah I'll show you to hit gently yeah yeah and get some new sticks by the way those old ones are sort of weak and you know uh and then he just gives this almost completely uh uh Savaged poor tartar the whipping of his life and this guy watches and sees it and sees the cruelty and he sees through let's gather the kind of horror of the system itself I mean where where the the noble and the dignified vent Primal lustful violence on the weak for small infractions just to keep up the discipline of the army or whatever it would be and he he he's horrified he's horrified he's crestfallen he's just ripped up inside and he can't ever see the daughter in the same way yeah because for some reason the daughter not you know instead of taking her side against the father he he sees it whole and sees that she's the product of this man and they're both the product of this system or this world and it is ugly sudden ly to him and then he turns to the person he's talking to in in the present in the story and says basically you know I was never the same and it was chance it was chance and you realize yes he couldn't he didn't have to go out that night he wouldn't have seen this he would never have known but his whole fate and Fortune which would have run on toward marriage to this woman and deeper and deeper love has been altered by an accidental choice to go out that night and then the contingent viewing of this horrible scene that wasn't supposed to be witnessed yeah and you wonder how much this is a stand in for his own life right because the the early scene with vinka and the mizerka and everything it it's very similar to the the scenes in anak corano where the Levan character is Enchanted by Young Kitty uh and you know that story turns out very differently it's you know he goes on to marry her and even though those books are critical of Russian Society in in their own way um they're also they also celebrate uh you know the conventions of aristocracy and everything um and render them in extraordinary detail as he always does but here there's this Direct moral switch right he he has the brief scene it's condensed and then it just shifts immediately to this scene of moral horror and he's just so skillful at how quickly this happens and with you know and how he's able to do it without um you know a pause in in in the pace of the pros and everything uh and he he he makes this point um and then but doesn't editorialize afterwards you're just left with this impression of these two two powerful scenes and and what does that do to a person in the end right um I think it's just a very beautifully rendered story about uh how once you see something you can't unsee it and and belief is the kind of about disillusion disillusion what we've been talking about today disenchantment exactly sometimes sometimes we choose a story almost at random but the hand of you know the hand of Fate uh intervenes to make it incredibly relevant and this story is relevant in so many ways to what we've just been talking about K himself was a born Aristocrat who basically came to identify with the peasantry and dressed as a peasant and was honored by the peasants as a hero um he basically saw through the corruption ultimately and the the the Masquerade that was the upper class in Russia and he adopted a kind of fundament you couldn't call it fundamentalist but a deep Christianity a deeply humble Christianity and an identification with the lower classes and it's all and he thought of was a c a little bit in by upper class Russian Society they they they thought that the old man had kind of lost it at the end oh yeah's he's like a he's like an heir to a billion dollar Fortune a Rockefeller who decides to go you know live on a commune or or he actually lived on his own estate uh he continued to live on his own estate but he let the kind of slaves basically the peasants um I don't know have H have have a way with it that they wouldn't be allowed to in other places you know right but but so he was disillusioned but he he creates this microcosmic story of seeing the the cruelty and the fact that these people who at the dance looked to him this guy at the dance looked at him like the the height of probity and self-discipline actually is letting his own ugly uh lusts for to cause suffering run Riot and so it is a little bit like what we talked about today seeing this class of people this American Elite which has tried to argue that it's its hold over our institutions is justified by its Creed by by by the by the austerity and rightness of its Creed and then when it breaks its own Creed you can't see them in the same way yeah but once you see the bad thing uh you can't unsee it you know I mean I I'm trying to think of them the moment that was that was like that for me I mean I I didn't have an experience like this but I don't know the first time I saw pictures of kids uh born after agent orange you know uh stuff like that right like you it's very hard to reconcile certain things in your mind after you after you see uh you know the results of certain parts of you know the American uh especially the this expansionist period of our history but that's even but that but but but what what what we're talking about today is even worse than that because it's one thing to see the horrible results of War it's another thing to see the to see the great gentlemen and thinkers who wage war go back backstage and I don't know beat a an animal right or beat a person and you go oh my God I was I was looking on with respect and awe to people because they held up some standard and I just watched them absolutely violate that standard themselves and and so you know we all know war is cruel but to see uh betrayal of of your own pretentions and Creed at this level is really upsetting because then you go who who Who's fit to lead me you might even agree that you should have leaders you might even agree that there should be a class that takes special responsibility because it has special values but when you realize that they're not around right now and they're not the people that you're currently led by where do you go it creates a panic and and and and you know the the punishment for this narrator is actually uh implied but not stated he's saying this happened a long time ago okay I never amounted to anything back before everybody talked about politics and he's talking about a woman who presumably he would have uh you know married but we realize that he's just talking to his buddy much later having this philosophical argument and he probably has never married right right he you know why is he just hanging out with the dudes uh I if you know many many years ago he had this wonderful uh opportunity to marry an aristocratic woman well he never married he never probably not just looked at her the same but all the members of his class that he might have married the same because for some reason he didn't carry on with the plan y that's true yeah and and it's he he's so subtle in the way he constructs that though he doesn't he doesn't rub it in your face he doesn't tell you exactly like what what didn't pan out for this character it's it's it's left just vague enough for you to figure it out uh or to you know imagine what happened to him uh but I think this is a remarkable story it's it's in this tradition of of Russian short stories where somebody at the beginning there you're sitting around having a conversation and then and then somebody plunges into a first firstperson story so it's really a third person story that becomes a firstperson story right um and you know there's there's a lot of great examples you know T wrote a book called The Torrance of spring or spring Torrance that is basically just one gigantic flashback um and TLS wrote another one we talked about the c or Sonata that was similar to this but I'm just so impressed this he died in 1904 I think so this was a year before he died and you most writers I don't think they they start to lose it well before the end right uh and he was writing just incredibly powerful taught stuff to the very end um which is I don't know I I I have so much respect for him on so many levels um but you know the these short stories they're there are a few others and there's another one called Al alosha the pot that was written I think the same year um among the most cleanest uh most powerful little stories that you'll you'll read one thing too is especially good at just to examine for a second the artistic virtues of the story is portraying idealism in a way that isn't corny you know the the the Romantic admiration the the the bracing feeling of being at a dance the the sense that he's surrounded by Beauty and nobility and life and spirit is all conveyed really well in other words Tolstoy for somebody who grew disenchanted is still in touch with what it's like to be enchanted in the first place you know and he's really able to channel that young admiration of a of another uh another human being a woman in this case and that feeling of being in the middle of a high and beautiful Society even though he's writing at the very end of his life and hasn't believed it for a long time no and he's like a little tiny you know Gandhi like figure at this point who ended up you know dead on a bench somewhere if I remember correctly uh he he was like a a train station yeah yeah um but yeah you he was he was still able to conjure this up at at that age uh is is really impressive and and the thing about the morality like he doesn't rub it in your face he just you feel what it's like most people know what it's like to be young and in love and and you know you you're so high in everything that's beautiful about life that you can't sleep and uh you know walking the streets and feeling so positive about everything but he he never says the word idealism or anything like that he just communicates what that feels like and then moves straight into this other experience and you know it's rendered so well that you you you feel it uh the way the way the character would have felt it um you know one thing I love about short stories versus novels is that almost from the beginning they trigger a series of guesses as to how they will go and how they will end you know in a novel that happens over and over with subplots and you know sub stories but in a in a short story you get this pure example of wondering from the beginning how it's going to end and what and having guesses that you remember along the way and then seeing the author sort of change or surprise you sometimes they don't surprise you but often they do and then your maybe best guess doesn't prove correct and a better one is and A better ending or a better resolution is achieved which causes admiration now since I just read this story I remember my stream of Consciousness in reading it and I thought it was going to be a story a kind of misogynous story about the woman um he he was going to catch her with another man he was going to see her you know outside of the uh flattering light and uh context of the dance and you know be kind of uh let down about her beauty or her own nobility but that it was her father who represents the who represents the system the family the society and and that he couldn't help it hold her responsible for it in a weird way you know in in an American version of this story you might go I'm going to go take her away from that awful father right right isn't that usually the American response you find out that the one you love has a terrible family and you go snat you hit the road yeah yeah exactly in this Tolstoy story she's part of that and she is the you know that is her blood that is her uh that is her Legacy and once you've lost faith in that the beauty of the individual disappears too because he was he was also falling in love with the trappings of society her her rank her connections well you realize in the story that who he was actually in love with was the father he was actually in love with the lineage and the um and the nobility and the prestige yeah and uh and it's funny be that you say that because he he did write other stories where it does turn out to be the the woman who deceives right um there was another story different but it was called the I think the devil is the way uh it's usually translated it's a story about an affair that um you know a noble young nobleman has with a surf girl and she basically tempts him to you know unver virtuous uh an unver virtuous end and there there are a few of stories like that TL had you know uh he had a pretty active libido I think I remember something there was a diary entry of his when he was like 76 or something he's like finally I've conquered the demon sex or something like that um but uh but that's I think that's one of the reasons why this story is so good is is that he doesn't go there uh and he he doesn't fixate on that and he he he does use this kind of transitive property right it's uh he falls in love with her but her beauty is kind of transferred to his whiskers and then his whiskers are beating the the Tatar in the street right and um and that that it compounds the the emotion of the whole thing well not and not to ruin it for people and I don't think I can because tollo is unru you know it it lives in the details lives in the clarity and the wholeness of the stories the uh the purity of them in a way but it's actually a story about mercy and I'll tell you why there are only really two events in the story that are unexpected one is that the father falls down at at the ball while dancing with his daughter and he accepts her mercy in not drawing attention to it and you know gets back up in other words he's willing to accept Mercy but he is not willing to show it in the end to the to the tartar deserter and that is the the nature of his crime the willingness to accept mercy and and have his face Saved but not to show it and to administer humiliation in you know in a surplus to this to his lesser that's really interesting I hadn't thought about that yeah well that leads me to one last sort of one last question I wanted to ask you about him because and I think it's relevant to that what do you think the the the particularly special quality of tolto is because well I'll tell you what my my opinion is in a second but I I think it relates to what you just said boy that's a hard question to ask because when I mean to answer when you read tol stoy he's not the deepest Phil philosopher you know he his philosophical points are often pretty simple um he's not the most gorgeous stylist it's it's a somewhat plain style it's kind of slightly slightly elevated plain style but pretty plain but he's comprehensive everything that's important to the story he puts in and he's also in especially in the shorter Works um efficient everything that doesn't he leaves out and so so he's straightforward he's pure he has the ability to um to uh uh create characters who are quite the opposite of himself and to uh illuminate states that are not ones that he's feeling while writing the story in other words you don't feel the story's rigged you know uh until the end you're not the guy's not secretly looking down on it and then it's confirmed and we sort of know you're surprised that such idealism could turn into such horror and disillusionment so I I would say in a weird way it's his it's his literalism yeah exactly and and so my feeling about him is that as you say he he's not this gorgeous stylist well he is it is gorgeous but it's not it's not um ostentatious right let's put it that way it's not ostentatious in the least yeah and and is and is full and his philosophical chops aren't a tenth of doovi say right right he he doesn't even really try or when he does try it actually doesn't come off that well I I think you know the the religious uh and he gets the details right that's for sure but the thing that's amazing to me is that he he renders something he he writes it and pretty straight Pros that I think almost any person could you know who's a competent writer could put together some of those sentences but uh at the end you're left with something that's powerful and often you just can't see where the power comes from and it's it's little things that I don't know may he he might not even be conscious of them right like he he it it just he knows instinctively where to what details to include like that little bit about the ju supposition of Mer Mercy versus not Mercy I had not even considered that but that is absolutely what's part of what's going on in the story that that makes the flip work so well and there's probably 18 other things in the story like that that if you really drill down into it um you know that's what makes it work but the if there's always something about great writers where it's more than just you know the words on the page or the you know the the fancy sentence or whatever it is it's bigger than the sum of its parts and I think he's sort of the ultimate example of somebody who who's able to pull off power that without the source of it being obvious does that make sense absolutely yeah he he you you go you walk these fairly straight roads and you look at life in a in a realistic way with him as you go through his story in common language not pretentiously common but sort of middling literal specific language and then you come to the end and suddenly you're in the middle of a mystery and you don't know how you got there you feel that something profound has happened but you didn't realize how it was happening you can't put back together exactly and reverse engineer when it happened but you feel it right and so so there are like magic tricks that you don't know while they're happening are being done by a magician because he's not calling attention to himself and he's not dressed in a you know evening wear and he doesn't have a beautiful assistant he's just doing something and then all of a sudden magic happens yeah yeah and I I I actually wonder I mean how much how much does is he even conscious of his own method you know I mean I I remember reading once that he before he started writing something serious he would he would sit down and read Dickens like that was part of his ritual is that he would go back and read you know Charles Dort or some some thing like that and I think he was just getting himself into a rhythm about something um but I don't know that he had you know he was sitting there analyzing his method the way a lot of other writers do like you know Nabokov or Rejoice or somebody like that who are very self-conscious about how they write I don't know that's just an observation but I if you were a movie director there wouldn't be a lot of special effects there wouldn't be a lot of lighting uh and other uh sort of tricks that you notice as you go along it would seem almost like a not a documentary but but a very straightforward conventional movie and then all of a sudden at the end you would have felt the most profound uh sense of Life its mystery uh or whatever and not been able to account for it um and I think he's the greatest novelist for that reason and I'll I'll say why he does what the novel does best which is just describe things and you know create characters and show what they're wearing and what render their dialogue and so on he does just that but he doesn't do what poetry does best you know he doesn't he's not not a bunch of Fandango of language and he doesn't even do what drama does best which is you know create uh tension you know tension and so on he does he uses the elements of the novel that are available to everyone if they write novels and that are really it's you know it's particular uh his particular domain and he does it better than anyone else yeah you get the poet yeah he doesn't pull in the Poetry he doesn't pull in the drama he doesn't you know uh get lyrical he doesn't pull in the philosophical uh long winded dovian you know uh meditations and yet he does all of the things that the novel is is made to do better than anyone else yeah you're you're in it and then you're you believe it so much that you don't notice the writing and then all a sudden you're you're just seeing all these things that are beh un these realities about life that are that are not visible daily right they're just suddenly you you see them and realize and understand them um it's just an amazing effect I don't know how it's still mysterious to me but beautiful and I have one more thought we've kept saying one more thought and it's all based on this short short story which is a tribute to his greatness his settings are more perfectly rendered than other people's settings you really know what it looks like you really know where he is you know what it feels like you know what the people are like you know how they dress you know what the weather is like he he is both exhaustive and efficient in rendering settings and they they don't happen in in a fairy land they don't happen in a kind of abstract Place uh you really know what it's like to go to a dance with Aristocrats or get lost in a a sled or you know there's a million things right yeah exactly yeah um anyway great story uh and oddly uh pertinent to today's uh topic and thanks everybody for hanging out we'll see you next week [Music] for e e