Browse content similar to 02/11/2012. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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Tonight, four days before the US elections, we hold a mirror up to | :00:17. | :00:21. | |
the cultural life of America, reflected in print, on screen and | :00:21. | :00:26. | |
in sound. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney say their favourite | :00:26. | :00:30. | |
family viewing is the sitcom Modern Family, but that benign view of | :00:30. | :00:35. | |
life in America, isn't the whole story. Tom Wolfe's new novel, Back | :00:35. | :00:42. | |
to Blood, rips apart the idea that the US is a racial melting pot. | :00:42. | :00:47. | |
Conservative commentator, Dinesh D'Souza, rips into President Obama, | :00:47. | :00:51. | |
in his feature-length documentary. Obama is a radical communist. | :00:52. | :00:56. | |
think he's a Marxist. While the Sundance Grand Jury prize went to a | :00:56. | :01:00. | |
film that condemned the country's called war on drugs as a disastrous | :01:00. | :01:04. | |
failure. We watch American imports by the box set, but do prime time | :01:04. | :01:07. | |
shows influence the way Americans vote? | :01:07. | :01:13. | |
Remember this voice? Come with me, down memory lane. Radio 4 releases | :01:13. | :01:18. | |
more than 900 episodes of Alistair Cooke's Letters From America. How | :01:18. | :01:27. | |
did he shape our view of the United States. | :01:27. | :01:32. | |
My transatlantic guests are the writer and broadcaster, Lindsay | :01:32. | :01:34. | |
Johns, Sarah Churchwell Professor of American Literature at the | :01:34. | :01:38. | |
university of east aingia, and the novelist, Lionel Shriver. We begin | :01:38. | :01:41. | |
with a new novel from Tom Wolfe, only his fourth in a career that | :01:41. | :01:47. | |
began in the early 1960s, Back to Blood is set in contemporary Miami. | :01:47. | :01:52. | |
A city, seen through Wolfe's eyes, is a racial vortex n which Russians, | :01:52. | :01:58. | |
Haitians, black, white Americans, collide furiously. | :01:58. | :02:03. | |
It's 25 years since pioneering journalist, Tom Wolfe, cemented his | :02:03. | :02:09. | |
reputation with his debut novel the Bonfire of the Vanties, a satire on | :02:09. | :02:14. | |
race in 80s New York. Which was made into a film starring Bruce | :02:14. | :02:20. | |
well lisence and Tom Hanks. Now, in Back to Blood, his first | :02:20. | :02:25. | |
novel in eight years, Wolfe picks up on similar themes, casting his | :02:25. | :02:29. | |
eye over another city transformed by immigration, where crime and | :02:29. | :02:34. | |
racial resentments are rife. The book, inspired by visits to Miami, | :02:34. | :02:40. | |
over the space of five years, a shadowing of former myamy Herald | :02:40. | :02:43. | |
Reporter, features a diverse cast of character, including a black | :02:44. | :02:50. | |
police chief, a Haitian professor, Russian oligarchs, and a Cuban cop, | :02:50. | :02:53. | |
Nestor Camacho, whose daring rescue of an illegal immigrant from the | :02:53. | :02:58. | |
mast of a yacht, makes him headline news. He look up, the man on the | :02:58. | :03:02. | |
mast is no more than ten feet above him. He's looking him right in the | :03:02. | :03:10. | |
face. What an expression. The cornered animal, the do you know | :03:10. | :03:16. | |
rat, drenched, dirty and exhausted, panting, barely able to utter a cry | :03:16. | :03:21. | |
for miraculous salvation. Another strand of narrative sees Wolfe | :03:21. | :03:26. | |
returning to a theme close to his heart, the contemporary art world. | :03:26. | :03:30. | |
And centres on the gift to the city museum of an apparently impressive | :03:30. | :03:37. | |
collection of paintings. The fools had put $500 million into a world- | :03:37. | :03:43. | |
class cultural destination now worth precisely nothing! They all | :03:43. | :03:50. | |
become world-class jokes, utterly lamebrained, unbelievably gullible | :03:50. | :03:56. | |
culture-strivers. The horse laugh would resound round the world. | :03:56. | :04:01. | |
Wolfe is now in his 80s, but does this tale of Miami vice prove that | :04:01. | :04:08. | |
the great man of letters still has his finger on the pulse of America. | :04:08. | :04:12. | |
All people, all people, everywhere, have but one last thing on their | :04:12. | :04:22. | |
minds -- Back to Blood, all people, everywhere, you have no choice but, | :04:22. | :04:31. | |
black to blood! Obviously the biggest story in this book is about | :04:31. | :04:35. | |
race and the fault line, do you think he has it right? I think it | :04:35. | :04:38. | |
was absolutely superb, I loved it. Tom Wolfe is somebody who really | :04:38. | :04:43. | |
does have his finger on the pulse. As far as I'm concerned America is | :04:43. | :04:48. | |
a cauldron of racial insanity. When I was reading novel, I could almost | :04:48. | :04:52. | |
feel Tom Wolfe stirring that pot. Do you know of Miami? I do, it is a | :04:53. | :04:57. | |
very sexy city, it is sultry, he has company turd it beautifully. | :04:57. | :05:04. | |
Even down to talking -- Captured it beautifully. Even talking about the | :05:04. | :05:09. | |
creole? I loved it, the Haitian character: what I really enjoyed | :05:09. | :05:18. | |
about the novel, the politics of shade, the pygmantocracy, the way | :05:18. | :05:22. | |
the aesthetic ideals came out. The Haitian professor don't want his | :05:22. | :05:27. | |
son speaking crole, that is the lingo of the people of Haiti, but | :05:27. | :05:32. | |
the Haitian professor doesn't want it, it is pure self-hate. Straight | :05:32. | :05:39. | |
out of Fanog. All the characters, Russians, Haitians, anglo-s, are | :05:39. | :05:45. | |
they characters Ormeauity ofs? think they are -- motiffs? I think | :05:45. | :05:49. | |
they are bigotted stereotypes, I don't think there is a character in | :05:49. | :05:52. | |
the book, aside from Tom Wolfe. If you wanted to save everybody in the | :05:53. | :05:56. | |
audience �20, read more of that text. That would unsell the book | :05:56. | :06:02. | |
faster than anything. I mean, you can review one of my books any time, | :06:02. | :06:07. | |
because you obviously give everyone the benefit of the doubt. But, boy, | :06:07. | :06:13. | |
I honestly found this book so bad as to be unreadable. It is gimmicky, | :06:13. | :06:17. | |
it is boring, it is repetitive, it uses the same line over and over | :06:17. | :06:22. | |
again. It has these stupid little punctuation marks, you could see it | :06:22. | :06:28. | |
on the page, all the colons, instead of using ittalalics for | :06:29. | :06:34. | |
thoughts. I -- italics for thought. I think it is an embarrassment. And | :06:34. | :06:40. | |
a big shame for Tom Wolfe to be spending his life like this. I love | :06:40. | :06:47. | |
his earlier work. Bonfire of the Vanties and Man in Full, there was | :06:47. | :06:52. | |
a tremendous sense of energy. Did you get that sense? There is energy | :06:52. | :06:56. | |
in the book, it is like talking to someone on cocaine, boring, and I | :06:56. | :07:02. | |
have to agree with Lionel on this one, it is overwrought, hyperbolic, | :07:02. | :07:05. | |
hyperactive, hypertension, hypertroughied. Everything about it | :07:05. | :07:14. | |
is so over the top. It was the novel novelistic equivalent of a | :07:14. | :07:18. | |
car crash. What is exploding is the language, the words erupt into | :07:18. | :07:24. | |
sleeks, and cat calls, and explanation marks and -- | :07:24. | :07:29. | |
exclammation marks and question marks. I couldn't stand it. I have | :07:29. | :07:37. | |
to disagree, I loved the Latin vocabulary, there is the | :07:37. | :07:47. | |
:07:47. | :07:47. | ||
monsvenerace. The monspubice comes open. There is onomatopaya, it is | :07:47. | :07:53. | |
hard after the fourth or fifth time. I know that he's a big fan of | :07:53. | :07:58. | |
Balzac. The big theme, power, money, class, especially race, you know | :07:58. | :08:03. | |
what, he also functions with the little character. I cared about | :08:03. | :08:07. | |
Nestor, and the Haitian professor, and the Russian oligarch. He says | :08:07. | :08:10. | |
outrageous things about race, but you don't think it is a problem? | :08:10. | :08:15. | |
Far from it, I welcome it. I'm tired of all this post-racial Obama | :08:15. | :08:19. | |
BS. I think it is wonderful, as far as I'm concerned, America is one of | :08:19. | :08:23. | |
the most racially polarised societies I have ever been to. It | :08:23. | :08:28. | |
is wonderful he tells the truth. Nobody is disputing this, he's | :08:28. | :08:31. | |
animating stereotypes to say, guess what, this is a racist country. Who | :08:31. | :08:35. | |
was in doubt about that? Nobody rational is in doubt about that. | :08:35. | :08:38. | |
The fact that he has these character, each of some | :08:38. | :08:42. | |
representing a type. The wasps who are just gestures towards the | :08:42. | :08:46. | |
schools they attended, that is all you need to know about it. All | :08:46. | :08:56. | |
:08:56. | :08:56. | ||
about John Smith is going to Yale. I read it as an elogy of the dying | :08:56. | :09:04. | |
genus, the wasp. The Latinos in the ascendancy. It is almost a goodbye | :09:04. | :09:08. | |
to the Anglo-Saxon white Protestant class. It is a scream of fear that | :09:08. | :09:14. | |
the wasp is dying. He didn't, funnily enough, he paid scant | :09:14. | :09:18. | |
attention to the wasp character, he was more interested in other | :09:18. | :09:23. | |
characters. In the Miami Herald. seemed to think newspapers held a | :09:23. | :09:29. | |
lot of power and that was Wu break the story. He was living in the -- | :09:29. | :09:34. | |
he was going to break a story. He was living in a bubble. Can we go | :09:34. | :09:37. | |
on to another area where he takes a pop, he loves to take a pop, that | :09:37. | :09:41. | |
is in the art market. In a sense he definitely has a point there, maybe | :09:41. | :09:45. | |
an obvious point, but he has a point there? He has been making the | :09:45. | :09:49. | |
point over and over again, I don't think this advances his point any | :09:49. | :09:52. | |
further. The jokes are really lame, they are really crude, he makes the | :09:52. | :09:58. | |
same joke over and over again. You think OK, she don't know who | :09:58. | :10:05. | |
Sheigal is or what an aura is. There is an argument that says that | :10:05. | :10:08. | |
the Magdalena character a nurse and highly trained, would knot know a | :10:08. | :10:11. | |
lot of the stuff that Tom Wolfe says she doesn't know, for example | :10:11. | :10:16. | |
what is "cutting-edge", did you feel there was a reductive nature | :10:16. | :10:21. | |
to the female characters? I can see a little bit of what you are saying, | :10:21. | :10:25. | |
I found he decks trously weaves a lot of the plot lines together, in | :10:25. | :10:35. | |
:10:35. | :10:35. | ||
a very good way. I found the plot wandering and unfocused. I found | :10:35. | :10:40. | |
the characters that I cared about them. I cared about the Haitian's | :10:40. | :10:43. | |
daughter, I thought that was an excellent case, OK the argument is | :10:43. | :10:47. | |
made that he's an octogenarian, maybe his powers are declining, I | :10:47. | :10:50. | |
didn't think so. The fact that he could get into that character's | :10:50. | :10:55. | |
mind and explore the shade-based politics, I thought that was | :10:55. | :11:00. | |
fascinating. Will he remembered more as an essayist, and Bonfire of | :11:00. | :11:06. | |
the Vanties, is there room for people like him now? Well, sure. | :11:06. | :11:11. | |
Tom Wolfe created what was called the "new journalism", we are still | :11:11. | :11:15. | |
writing it. In a way he really changed the culture, opened up a | :11:15. | :11:19. | |
whole new way of writing about reality. I feel protective of him, | :11:19. | :11:25. | |
believe it or not, just because I think this is rubbish, and the | :11:25. | :11:30. | |
earlier stuff is really great. Everybody should read that. I grew | :11:30. | :11:37. | |
up on Radical Chic, all that is fantastic. Go back to basics with | :11:37. | :11:42. | |
him. And that's where he's best at. Two feature-length documentaries | :11:42. | :11:46. | |
have been trying to tell Americans two very different stories over the | :11:46. | :11:53. | |
last two months. First 2016, Obama's America, presented by the | :11:53. | :11:58. | |
conservative writer, Dinesh D'Souza, Dell was into the President's past | :11:58. | :12:04. | |
-- delves into his past and talks about the what the future would | :12:04. | :12:08. | |
hold were Obama to be re-elected. It has taken more than $30 million | :12:08. | :12:13. | |
at the box-office, making it the second-most popular political | :12:13. | :12:18. | |
documentary of all time. Obama came out of nowhere. Dinesh D'Souza's | :12:18. | :12:23. | |
lock into the future of the USA under a second Obama administration, | :12:23. | :12:26. | |
depicts a President at odds with his own country. He doesn't really | :12:26. | :12:29. | |
like the United States. But, on the other hand, he's President of the | :12:30. | :12:36. | |
United States. Using his own book, the Roots of Obama's Rage, and | :12:36. | :12:42. | |
Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father, D'Souza tries to relate | :12:42. | :12:45. | |
his current policies to the people who influenced him in the past. | :12:45. | :12:51. | |
a long time I said between the two greys -- I sat between the two | :12:51. | :12:56. | |
graves, the pain I felt was my father's questions, and my | :12:56. | :13:02. | |
struggles of my brothers and my birthday. He says that it is his | :13:02. | :13:07. | |
Cologne yummism that has led him to reduce the power and influence of | :13:07. | :13:10. | |
America. Theoretically there is nothing to stop a Government taxing | :13:10. | :13:14. | |
100% of income, so long as the people get benefits from the | :13:14. | :13:19. | |
Government, commensurate with their income, which is taxed. Obama is a | :13:19. | :13:24. | |
radical communist. I think he's a Marxist. Do you really believe he's | :13:24. | :13:28. | |
a welfare thug and Muslim? He's acting like it. The film attempts | :13:28. | :13:32. | |
to link the President with communism, anti-American, and even | :13:32. | :13:37. | |
terrorismism. It will clearly chime with a certain section of public | :13:37. | :13:41. | |
opinion, can a polemic like this sway a larger section of the | :13:41. | :13:47. | |
American electorate? Dinesh D'Souza starts out which | :13:47. | :13:51. | |
setting himself up as in parallel with Barack Obama, they are both | :13:51. | :13:55. | |
the immigrant to America. Were you intrigued at the beginning? I was, | :13:56. | :14:02. | |
I was invited in. And I think that because D'Souza is an Indian | :14:02. | :14:06. | |
American, it is a very clever approach. Here I am, you know, I'm | :14:07. | :14:12. | |
also a minority. But I'm the good minority and he's the bad minority. | :14:12. | :14:19. | |
I'm the real American convert and Obama is now the enemy within. He's | :14:19. | :14:23. | |
the Trojan horse, and he's trying to destroy the country I have come | :14:23. | :14:28. | |
to love. It is very clever, in a way. But it started out, and then | :14:28. | :14:31. | |
the arguments build, and then he goes to some strange places, | :14:31. | :14:36. | |
doesn't he, for his evidence? enjoyed the fact that he went to | :14:37. | :14:40. | |
Indonesia, Honolulu, he put Obama in a geographical international | :14:40. | :14:45. | |
context, but, to be honest with you, after the first 20 minutes it | :14:45. | :14:50. | |
degenerated completely into an anti-Obama tirade, it was a | :14:50. | :14:58. | |
pernicious polemic, it was a tendenshious pieces, there was the | :14:58. | :15:02. | |
mobile phone doing the interview, let me let you in on the secret. | :15:02. | :15:07. | |
Inciting all the people, the founding fathers of Obama's beings, | :15:07. | :15:13. | |
Bill Ayer, Edward Saied, Jeramiah Wright, this was the evidence he | :15:13. | :15:21. | |
had, that what Obama was out to do was undermine America. It is the | :15:21. | :15:23. | |
Manchurian candidate, purporting to be non-fiction. When he ends the | :15:23. | :15:27. | |
film and saying when Obama says it is time to change America, what he | :15:27. | :15:34. | |
means is he wants to change it into this post-apock lift liptic | :15:34. | :15:40. | |
landscape -- post-apocalyptic landscape. He likes to drag people | :15:41. | :15:46. | |
in if as trigger points. There is a psychologist who never met Obama, | :15:46. | :15:50. | |
who talks about how an abandoned son might feel like. The real | :15:50. | :15:53. | |
evidence is Obama senior himself, it is not evidence, but that is the | :15:53. | :15:57. | |
real story. He basically makes up this story that he says that this | :15:57. | :16:02. | |
is what Barack Obama senior taught his son to think, and now this is | :16:02. | :16:06. | |
what his son must think, though he never actually lived with him. Now | :16:06. | :16:09. | |
he's this robot who has been programmed. The whole reason he has | :16:09. | :16:13. | |
run for President is to destroy the country by building up debt. He | :16:13. | :16:18. | |
brings in the former controller general of America, who says it is | :16:18. | :16:26. | |
true the debt is sky rocketing and points out it started with George W | :16:26. | :16:33. | |
Bush, and he said when Obama is do done with it, that is his nefarious | :16:33. | :16:38. | |
plan, and ignores that. We are not at a point when we don't have to go | :16:38. | :16:43. | |
back and look at Obama's childhood, we have an entire term to look at. | :16:43. | :16:47. | |
We know what he wants to do, because he has been doing it. The | :16:47. | :16:53. | |
fact that this film distorts say what he has done with Iran, | :16:53. | :16:58. | |
according to D'Souza, Obama's just letting Iran get the bomb. No | :16:58. | :17:02. | |
problem. It is pure scaremongering. The sanctions have been incredibly | :17:02. | :17:08. | |
effective. I agree with everything that has been said. There is one | :17:08. | :17:12. | |
redeeming feature, there is a comic gem of a line, they go and speak to | :17:12. | :17:15. | |
the granny, and say the speaking fee is a goat, and they brought | :17:15. | :17:19. | |
three, just in Kay. They also went to see Obama's half brother George. | :17:19. | :17:24. | |
We can show a clip of this. This is an extraordinary interview when | :17:24. | :17:28. | |
Dinesh D'Souza, and Obama's half brother Josh who won't play the | :17:28. | :17:33. | |
game. Recently President Obama spoke, he was quoting from the | :17:33. | :17:40. | |
famous story of Cain and Able, and we are our brother's keeper. My | :17:40. | :17:46. | |
question is you are his brother, is he your keeper? Go ask him, he's | :17:46. | :17:50. | |
other issues to deal with. He's taking care of the world. What | :17:50. | :17:55. | |
about at home? He's taking care of me, I'm part of the world. When he | :17:55. | :17:58. | |
fights for global warming he helps you, there is less carbon in the | :17:58. | :18:02. | |
world and you can breathe more easily. He doesn't have to help you | :18:02. | :18:07. | |
directly. No. I think that Dinesh D'Souza | :18:07. | :18:12. | |
kept it in, lots of people want to go pursue that agenda would have | :18:12. | :18:18. | |
put it on the cutting room floor. What a beautiful slapdown. It has | :18:18. | :18:24. | |
made $33 million, the only one that made more was Fahrenheit 101. It is | :18:24. | :18:29. | |
being promoted in one section of America, but Rupert Murdoch urged | :18:29. | :18:35. | |
everybody to watch it, I find that surprising? I find it terrifying. | :18:35. | :18:39. | |
It is showing we are in a political climate that nobody is having | :18:39. | :18:43. | |
recourse to fact. There was no reason or logic, it was purely | :18:43. | :18:49. | |
emotion, and that is paranoia. It is a thesis that Richard Hofstedder | :18:49. | :18:54. | |
wrote in 1964, there are passages from that essay. It is as if | :18:54. | :18:58. | |
D'Souza set out to show the truth, this is about pure paranoia. That | :18:58. | :19:05. | |
is what it is about. When you look at some of American television, | :19:05. | :19:09. | |
Glenn Beck and some things on Fox, that is where the roots? Compared | :19:09. | :19:13. | |
to that this is mild. Because he's smarter, it is strategic. He's | :19:13. | :19:16. | |
presenting himself as the rational intellectual, that is one of the | :19:16. | :19:19. | |
reasons why he kept that scene in there. He's presenting himself as | :19:19. | :19:23. | |
the good guy, willing to listen and go down the world. And completely | :19:23. | :19:26. | |
falls down at the end. There is a bizarre scene at the end, where he | :19:26. | :19:29. | |
says this is what the world will look like, the future of America, | :19:29. | :19:33. | |
there is this frame that is a little Indian boy, and so that | :19:33. | :19:36. | |
seems to be, speaking of the enemy within, the threat seems to be | :19:36. | :19:40. | |
somebody who looks a lot like Dinesh D'Souza, it is really, | :19:40. | :19:43. | |
really strange. It is very scary when you have the kids singing at | :19:43. | :19:49. | |
the end, it is almost like demonic. Everything in this documentary is | :19:49. | :19:54. | |
trying to delegitimise Obama's presidency. I was glad I saw t I | :19:54. | :19:59. | |
wouldn't have normally gone to see it. And the fact is, Americans like | :19:59. | :20:04. | |
us do not get exposed to the other side and visa versa. The only | :20:04. | :20:08. | |
people who will pay to go and see this film, are already card- | :20:08. | :20:11. | |
carrying members. It won't affect the election. | :20:11. | :20:17. | |
Next we turn to a film by the documentary maker Eugene Jarecki, | :20:17. | :20:21. | |
which won the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It | :20:21. | :20:24. | |
examining the relationship between drugs and the law in America. | :20:24. | :20:29. | |
The House I Live In takes its name from the 1946 Oscar-winning short | :20:29. | :20:34. | |
film starring Frank Sinatra, made to oppose anti-semitism and | :20:34. | :20:38. | |
prejudice in post-war America. It is a pointed gesture as Jarecki | :20:38. | :20:42. | |
follow the consequences of the war on drugs. Launched by Richard Nixon | :20:42. | :20:47. | |
in 1971. 40 years on he depicts an American divided along racial lines | :20:47. | :20:52. | |
and in denial. As I started to ask around, I found | :20:52. | :20:55. | |
if people knew anything about the war on drugs, they thought I was | :20:55. | :21:00. | |
talking about something in a foreign country. Yet surprisingly | :21:00. | :21:03. | |
very few seemed to have an idea about a war going on in their own | :21:03. | :21:08. | |
country. I haven't heard the term "we're on drugs", sin the 1980s. | :21:08. | :21:14. | |
Using his own history as a starting point. He interviews a family | :21:14. | :21:18. | |
friend and former housekeeper who looked after him to the detriment | :21:18. | :21:22. | |
of her own family, in particular her son, who fell victim to drugs. | :21:22. | :21:26. | |
It is devastating what happened to my son with drugs, I would love to | :21:26. | :21:30. | |
change that. Jarecki uncovers disparities in the criminal justice | :21:30. | :21:36. | |
system, which impose lengthy jail sentences for drug-related crimes, | :21:36. | :21:39. | |
and appears to have a disproportionate effect on the | :21:39. | :21:44. | |
African-American community. A long time ago we made drugs into this | :21:44. | :21:48. | |
huge thing, and we have made it so illegal, I think sometimes we have | :21:48. | :21:53. | |
people doing a whole lot of time for not very much crime. More | :21:53. | :21:57. | |
disturbingly, some interviewees suggest that sinister forces have a | :21:57. | :22:00. | |
vested interest in keeping the war on drugs alive. The thing with the | :22:00. | :22:04. | |
law on drugs is, and the question we have to ask is, not why is it | :22:04. | :22:08. | |
failure, why given that it seems to be a failure, why is it persisting. | :22:08. | :22:13. | |
I'm beginning to think, maybe it is a success. What if it is a success, | :22:13. | :22:18. | |
by keeping police forces busy. What if it is a success by keeping | :22:18. | :22:21. | |
private jails thriving. Maybe it is a success on different terms than | :22:21. | :22:28. | |
the publicly stated ones. Sarah, in that film, incredibly | :22:28. | :22:32. | |
simple statistic, 5% of the world's population is in America, 25% of | :22:32. | :22:38. | |
the world's prison population in America, and 500,000 people in for | :22:38. | :22:41. | |
non-violent drug crimes. It patently doesn't work, had you | :22:41. | :22:44. | |
heard these argument before? I had heard some of them. The way he | :22:44. | :22:47. | |
connected all the dot was extraordinarily. This was one of | :22:47. | :22:51. | |
the best documentaries I have ever seen in my life, bar none, it | :22:51. | :22:54. | |
should be mandatory viewing, not just any American, but anyone who | :22:54. | :22:57. | |
wants to understand how America works, but how the interconnections | :22:57. | :23:01. | |
of the criminal justice, the economy, drugs, race, how it all | :23:01. | :23:07. | |
tuely ties up. One of the spwes interviewees is the writer David | :23:07. | :23:14. | |
Sigh -- interviewees is the writer David Simon who wrote The Wire, I | :23:14. | :23:18. | |
finished the departmentry thinking of him for President, he's the only | :23:18. | :23:23. | |
one that understands the way the world work. You have a cogent | :23:23. | :23:27. | |
expression of how the drug trade works on the streets, from the | :23:27. | :23:32. | |
father of a drug user who is now in jail himself in Florida. He talks | :23:32. | :23:37. | |
about the street where the drug dealer gives the kid 10 cents to | :23:37. | :23:42. | |
get the water and keep the change, then it was time to make their own | :23:42. | :23:48. | |
money. That was cogent, chilling and easy? It is powerful, and | :23:48. | :23:53. | |
humblinging, as someone who spend a lot of time mentoring people in | :23:53. | :23:57. | |
Peckham, the lack of role models. Anthony Johnson, and they | :23:57. | :24:00. | |
introduced his father, and he was in jail, and the father broke down. | :24:00. | :24:04. | |
It get you there. It is so poignant. At the same time, it was a | :24:04. | :24:07. | |
brilliant documentary, but I never once got the sense that I'm being | :24:07. | :24:12. | |
bashed over the head. It wasn't "worthy". It was done with a real | :24:12. | :24:16. | |
deftness and lightness of touch. What was interesting as well, is | :24:17. | :24:21. | |
what Jarecki was saying, is when Nixon brought in the war on drugs, | :24:21. | :24:24. | |
actually, the balance was for treatment over incarceration, | :24:24. | :24:29. | |
people forget that? I didn't rather that. For me, the most startling, I | :24:30. | :24:34. | |
knew the statistic, but one million African-Americans incarcerated in I | :24:34. | :24:40. | |
will ja. There was an early 1990s lyric, "crack cocaine degenerate | :24:40. | :24:47. | |
the black folk", when the documentary put it in a stark | :24:47. | :24:52. | |
narrative. Race is there, it starts with the nanny and coming back to | :24:52. | :24:56. | |
her at the end. The personal story that sparked this and Jarecki found | :24:56. | :25:00. | |
himself, the idea is the nanny, they leave, they go to New York, | :25:00. | :25:04. | |
they want to take nanny with them, they offer double the money, and | :25:04. | :25:09. | |
she thinks she's doing the right thing for the family, but it isn't. | :25:09. | :25:13. | |
Did you think the story needed to be there for Jarecki? Not really, | :25:13. | :25:17. | |
it makes a nice point of entry for the film maker, but the story | :25:17. | :25:22. | |
itself is so big that you don't need that in. It is a decorative in. | :25:22. | :25:27. | |
I'm not sure I agree, she makes the story about him. It makes this | :25:27. | :25:29. | |
question about responsibility and guilt. If this is all something | :25:30. | :25:33. | |
that is happening to other people. He becomes partly responsible for | :25:33. | :25:36. | |
this, because he was chosen over her son, and her son died as a | :25:36. | :25:41. | |
result of that choice. It was her having to go away to look after the | :25:41. | :25:47. | |
white kid? One of the things I like about what he puts together is | :25:47. | :25:52. | |
sympathy with, especially, the Small drug dealers. Because what | :25:52. | :25:56. | |
they are doing, perparticipating in the economy that is available to | :25:56. | :26:01. | |
them. The only one. There are no jobs in these areas. There are no | :26:01. | :26:06. | |
factories. So the drug dealers are actually the entrepeneur. They are | :26:06. | :26:09. | |
the real Americans. They are enterprising. They work very hard. | :26:09. | :26:12. | |
The other enterprising people are the police officers, who get extra | :26:12. | :26:17. | |
pay for the amount of lifts they do. It is easy to do 50 marijuana pick- | :26:17. | :26:23. | |
ups for arrest, but difficult to get one murder charge. Everyone is | :26:23. | :26:27. | |
working on drugs and it is perpetuating it. I'm usually | :26:27. | :26:32. | |
socially conservative, if you forgive the pun, it is an | :26:32. | :26:36. | |
emotionally charged documentary, seeing this documentary I was very | :26:36. | :26:42. | |
challenged. In Britain it is very different to the states, it was so | :26:42. | :26:45. | |
hard-hitting, but at the same time, nisly balanced. What do you think, | :26:45. | :26:49. | |
if you were -- Nicely balanced. What do you think, if you were | :26:49. | :26:53. | |
watching it as an American in America, do you think there is any | :26:53. | :26:58. | |
space for change? No, that is what is so utterly dismaying about the | :26:58. | :27:03. | |
work, it is dead on, incredibly persuasive, and preaching to a | :27:03. | :27:07. | |
brick wall. Nothing will ever change. Nobody is ever going to | :27:07. | :27:15. | |
just go for treatment, or much less decriminalise recreational drugs in | :27:15. | :27:20. | |
in the United States. It will never happen. It is the one thing that | :27:20. | :27:25. | |
politicians will never support. What Simon from the Wire said, it | :27:25. | :27:29. | |
don't look to politicians, you guys, American citizens have to do | :27:29. | :27:35. | |
something? Absolutely. Two things that gave me a modicum of hope. | :27:35. | :27:40. | |
Agree it is mostly desperate. One in a cynical way, it shows that | :27:40. | :27:44. | |
white people are falling into the trap, because they are not being | :27:45. | :27:49. | |
incarcerated at much higher rates because they are taking crystal | :27:49. | :27:53. | |
meth. It is working-class and they are poor. David Simon makes the | :27:53. | :27:57. | |
point that it is cheaper to kill the poorest 15% because it is more | :27:57. | :28:02. | |
effective. What I'm wondering is once white people get caught in the | :28:02. | :28:06. | |
trap it will make white people take notice. All these people, | :28:06. | :28:10. | |
incarcerated, away from their families, no chance of turning a | :28:10. | :28:14. | |
buck for their families, contributing nothing, and costing | :28:14. | :28:20. | |
an absolute fortune? They are not, the prisons are for-profit, it is | :28:20. | :28:25. | |
an inventive to incarcerate individuals. It is four money. | :28:25. | :28:30. | |
hope it is clear I'm not defending it, it is not that it is expensive, | :28:30. | :28:34. | |
it is generating profit. You even have a corrections officer who says | :28:34. | :28:39. | |
I was porn to be a corrections officer, I'm a law and order -- I | :28:39. | :28:43. | |
was born to be a corrections officer, and I'm all law and order, | :28:43. | :28:47. | |
but saying it doesn't work. That is in cinemas in November, it is | :28:47. | :28:51. | |
extraordinary, try to get to see it. American programmes have long been | :28:51. | :28:56. | |
the staple for British TV, some US imports have been the most highly | :28:56. | :29:01. | |
acclaimed on our screens. As well as influencing our view of America, | :29:01. | :29:05. | |
they reflect and refrabgt elements of America back to itself. We have | :29:05. | :29:08. | |
been watching documentaries that examine the velgs relationship | :29:08. | :29:12. | |
between the programmes Americans watch, the sitcom, and the social | :29:12. | :29:15. | |
and political views they hold. would you do if one of your | :29:15. | :29:18. | |
children came to you and said they were gay? You can't separate what | :29:18. | :29:22. | |
happens in marriage and in families from how it affects everything in | :29:22. | :29:26. | |
American life. Debates about family values have | :29:26. | :29:30. | |
come to dominate presidential election campaigns. Issues such as | :29:30. | :29:34. | |
gay marriage and abortion, which polarise the electorate, are | :29:34. | :29:37. | |
reflected in American television drama and comedy, as well as on the | :29:37. | :29:43. | |
news channel. In Family Guy, what sitcom says about America now, | :29:43. | :29:47. | |
which aired last Saturday on BBC Two, we ask whether sitcoms, in | :29:47. | :29:51. | |
particular, show us another side of American public opinion. In the | :29:51. | :29:54. | |
last decade, the proportion of gay couples raising children has | :29:54. | :29:58. | |
doubled. One in four of them are now doing it. In this episode of | :29:58. | :30:08. | |
Modern Family, Mitch and Cambring home their newly-adopted baby. | :30:08. | :30:13. | |
barely sat slept, it is all women in the orfanage, maybe she can't | :30:13. | :30:18. | |
fall asleep unless she feels a woman's shape. So here. What the | :30:18. | :30:22. | |
hell is that supposed to mean. America in prime time, a four-part | :30:22. | :30:27. | |
series from PBS, broadcast by the BBC next year, looks at the history | :30:27. | :30:30. | |
of American television, through the evolution of four distinct | :30:31. | :30:35. | |
character types. The independent woman, the man of the house, the | :30:35. | :30:40. | |
misfit, and the Crusader, in the context of the political and | :30:40. | :30:47. | |
cultural zeitgeist. The writers and producers of hit prime time series, | :30:47. | :30:50. | |
have consistently used television as a sounding board of big issues, | :30:50. | :30:56. | |
not just on niche channel, but commercial networks like NBC and | :30:56. | :31:03. | |
CBS. I was watching Mash at five or six years old. It was all about war | :31:03. | :31:09. | |
and people dying, and I wonder how I interm preted it. I'll take him | :31:09. | :31:17. | |
first -- Intrp preted it first. I'll take him first. Hawk Eye | :31:17. | :31:25. | |
didn't want people to die. What's he doing ahead of my buddy? Dying. | :31:25. | :31:28. | |
Does American television reflect changing public opinion more | :31:28. | :31:32. | |
accurately than other cultural barometer, or is it, itself, in the | :31:32. | :31:36. | |
vanguard of change? What do you think, there are | :31:36. | :31:41. | |
certain things that seem to be tackled a lot, and are just common | :31:41. | :31:44. | |
place in American television, like gay dads and so forth, it is always | :31:44. | :31:49. | |
in the context not of interracial. It is never black and white, is it? | :31:49. | :31:53. | |
You are never going to get, in Modern Family it wouldn't have | :31:53. | :31:57. | |
worked if one of them was black, the networks wouldn't have run it? | :31:58. | :32:01. | |
American television right now is strangely segregated, it is partly | :32:01. | :32:08. | |
the product of the advent of cable. When you have literally thousands | :32:08. | :32:13. | |
of channels available, you can cater to niche audiences, that | :32:13. | :32:17. | |
includes racial niche audiences. There are dozens of all-Spanish | :32:17. | :32:24. | |
channels. They don't need to watch shows in English about white people. | :32:24. | :32:29. | |
A lot of them won't. So why try to cater to that audience by just | :32:29. | :32:32. | |
adding a Spanish person. Interesting, though, isn't it. The | :32:32. | :32:37. | |
idea there is a British idea that the families congregate around the | :32:37. | :32:40. | |
television for mass viewing, you are saying really it is very | :32:40. | :32:44. | |
separated in America now. You don't see the shows that reflect anything | :32:44. | :32:49. | |
other than that? These documentaries brought home to me | :32:49. | :32:55. | |
the phrase "sundown separation", never the Twain shall meet, the | :32:56. | :33:00. | |
Cosby Show, Girlfriends, the friendsesque equivalent, but for a | :33:00. | :33:03. | |
black audience. Completely different world and tragic. One of | :33:03. | :33:08. | |
documentaries, and I can't remember which one it was, they were saying | :33:08. | :33:13. | |
it is incredibly unusual on television to see an African- | :33:13. | :33:16. | |
American woman and a white woman kissing on television. You could | :33:16. | :33:23. | |
feel the frisson when she said it. We We can't overstate the case here, | :33:24. | :33:28. | |
The Cosby Show was unbelievably popular with white America and as | :33:28. | :33:32. | |
with black, that was why it was such a landmark programme. It is | :33:32. | :33:36. | |
only latterly, with the advent of this niche targeting audiences that | :33:36. | :33:45. | |
you can do this. It clearly has some dillitorous effects, one thing | :33:45. | :33:47. | |
mainstream television did, is it meant you had to find ways to | :33:47. | :33:52. | |
create a more collective vision of what an American family or career | :33:52. | :33:55. | |
might have looked like. There is collective vision. What happened | :33:55. | :34:03. | |
with cable is it released the medium from the grip of very | :34:03. | :34:06. | |
conservative networks. And their stupid policies about having | :34:06. | :34:11. | |
married couples in two different betdz, and also it released them | :34:11. | :34:18. | |
from federal laws about what kind of language you can use. And how | :34:18. | :34:22. | |
much nudity. The medium has just taken off. I think this American | :34:22. | :34:26. | |
prime time series does a very good job of documenting that really | :34:26. | :34:31. | |
television has overtaken feature film in excellence. But what about | :34:31. | :34:38. | |
in terms of reflecting how people feel and will vote, the sitcom The | :34:38. | :34:41. | |
Middle, which looks entirely at a family through the resomething he | :34:41. | :34:45. | |
is, what did you think of that. It seems to be pretty popular? | :34:45. | :34:53. | |
seems to be. It is hitting a similar demographic that Roseanne, | :34:53. | :35:00. | |
without the acidity and that of Roseanne. Both of these | :35:00. | :35:05. | |
documentaries interview RoseanneBarr, she was great. She | :35:05. | :35:09. | |
comes in and says the TV presented this world in which every girl was | :35:09. | :35:15. | |
thin and blonde and capitulating, she said she didn't want to show | :35:15. | :35:20. | |
that world, she wanted to punch the world out of the stereotype. They | :35:20. | :35:24. | |
showed wonderful clips about her version of working-class America | :35:24. | :35:32. | |
was showing a truth. The The Middle isn't doing that, it is Anwar know | :35:32. | :35:37. | |
dine version where everything is OK -- anodyne version where everything | :35:37. | :35:46. | |
is OK. The Wire, I wouldn't have stressed the the terrible Americans | :35:46. | :35:55. | |
and the segregated TV, the TV is so great, and it is doing things that | :35:55. | :36:02. | |
people use never to do on TV before, look at The Wire. That is | :36:02. | :36:05. | |
performing a social service, preflecting the country back on | :36:05. | :36:11. | |
theself, in much the same way as The House I Live in. Is it art | :36:11. | :36:15. | |
imitating life or the other way, it is a curious fusion of the two. | :36:15. | :36:20. | |
Talking about David Simon running for President, but The Wire, | :36:20. | :36:24. | |
politicians should be watching it to see what is going on? David | :36:24. | :36:28. | |
Simon knows what he's talking about, he was a beat reporter on this | :36:28. | :36:32. | |
stuff for ten years. Before we finish this, let's talk about the | :36:32. | :36:38. | |
role of animation, it seems animation of way out there. So you | :36:38. | :36:44. | |
have South Park, you have Family Guy, and the Simpsons, saying a lot | :36:44. | :36:48. | |
of things before. No cow is too sacred, they are ripping into | :36:48. | :36:52. | |
everything. It was really refreshing. We don't get it here. | :36:52. | :36:58. | |
We haven't got that fabulous sat tie, that fabulous needle help | :36:58. | :37:04. | |
sharp thing? And yet we have the sense of irony, we give people the | :37:04. | :37:08. | |
Simpsons and all sorts of things, it is fairly advanced and our | :37:08. | :37:12. | |
television shows that, even though British people say we have no irony. | :37:12. | :37:17. | |
America in Prime Time will be on in the new year. As part of Radio 4 | :37:17. | :37:26. | |
aers's celebration of 90 years of transmissions, the BBC has put 9 | :37:26. | :37:30. | |
unhundred episodes of Alistair Cooke's Letters From America on- | :37:30. | :37:36. | |
line. It was first broadcast in March in 1946, and ran to a total | :37:37. | :37:42. | |
of 2,896 installment. Come with me, down memory lane. You are, I | :37:42. | :37:49. | |
imagine yourself to be, in the passenger seat of a 1933 model A | :37:49. | :37:53. | |
Ford. In the driver's seat would be me. Alistair Cooke was born in | :37:53. | :37:59. | |
Salford, the son of a Methodist lay preacher, he won a skorlship to | :38:00. | :38:05. | |
Cambridge, and went to stud -- scholarship to Cambridge and went | :38:05. | :38:14. | |
on to study at Yale and Harvard, he proposed to the BC an and broadcast | :38:14. | :38:20. | |
called An American Letter, bringing the two countries together in | :38:20. | :38:23. | |
understanding and affection. I want to tell you what it is like to come | :38:23. | :38:28. | |
back to the United States after a sobering month in Britain. And say | :38:28. | :38:34. | |
what daily life looks like and feels like by comparison. Cooke's | :38:34. | :38:37. | |
meticulous observations transformed America for his listeners. He | :38:37. | :38:42. | |
didn't peddle his own opinions. Over 58 years he witnessed history | :38:42. | :38:47. | |
in the make, including the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in | :38:47. | :38:53. | |
1968. There were flashes and the button eyes of Kennedy turned to | :38:53. | :38:58. | |
Cinders, she was slapping a young man, saying listen lady, I'm hurt | :38:58. | :39:02. | |
too. There was a huddle of clothings and staring out of it was | :39:02. | :39:07. | |
the face of Bobby Kennedy, like the stone face of a child lying on a | :39:07. | :39:11. | |
Cathedral tomb. Cooke's last letter was broadcast on Friday 20th of | :39:11. | :39:16. | |
February 2004. The year of the 5 5tr United States presidential | :39:16. | :39:22. | |
election. -- 5th United States presidential election. Hence the 15 | :39:22. | :39:29. | |
out of the 17 primaries won by the Massachusetts candidate John Kerry, | :39:29. | :39:34. | |
who since the campaign's beginning has sounded an odd and lonely boast, | :39:34. | :39:39. | |
"George Bush must be driven from the White House, and I'm the man to | :39:39. | :39:46. | |
do it". It is so interesting listening to his first and last one, | :39:46. | :39:50. | |
even saying ow the cadance in his voice has change -- how the cadance | :39:50. | :39:57. | |
in his voice has changed. He has that avun later Bonn hom me, it is | :39:57. | :40:07. | |
:40:07. | :40:09. | ||
the buet -- avuncula bonhomie. He has seldom been bettered. It is a | :40:09. | :40:13. | |
very poetic prose, a modern given. Did you used to listen to him? | :40:13. | :40:19. | |
voice of my Sunday mornings. He's never pompus, he strips away all | :40:19. | :40:26. | |
the verbage, and the obvuscation, it is limb pid prose, but it is | :40:26. | :40:31. | |
lovely. Did it feel like 15 minutes? It felt more like 20 | :40:31. | :40:37. | |
sometimes. I found myself getting a little impatient. I think it is | :40:37. | :40:41. | |
partly an era thing. In today's terms 15 minutes is a very, very | :40:41. | :40:46. | |
long time to be attending to something. Especially if it is just | :40:46. | :40:56. | |
:40:56. | :40:56. | ||
voice. We wouldn't chose to do a 20-minute essay voice now. He's | :40:56. | :41:02. | |
also very digressive. He has a form that repeats frequently, that he | :41:02. | :41:08. | |
comes at a subject from out here, and circles in on it. It's very | :41:08. | :41:14. | |
artful. But it is leisurely. I started, once I had gone through a | :41:15. | :41:18. | |
few of them, was like, look, get to the point. I never found it, the | :41:18. | :41:22. | |
skill is to hide the skill, he does it so well. Sarah? I like the idea | :41:22. | :41:27. | |
of thinking about him as a modern Gibon, it hadn't occurred to me. I | :41:27. | :41:31. | |
was thinking about the 8th grade social studies and history teacher | :41:31. | :41:35. | |
I wish I had. I wasn't impatient with the leisurely nature of it, | :41:35. | :41:39. | |
admire the artfulness, I kept wanting him to tell me something I | :41:39. | :41:42. | |
didn't know. That might be just because I teach this stuff and I | :41:42. | :41:46. | |
work with it. For other people less familiar with when he explains how | :41:46. | :41:50. | |
the Supreme Court works, but he does that really well and really | :41:50. | :41:53. | |
cogently. At the time when he was probably at his height, we didn't | :41:53. | :41:57. | |
have this global internet. And people were listening for things | :41:57. | :42:01. | |
they didn't hear or know about? still think people could benefit | :42:01. | :42:04. | |
from it T it is very educationally, if you want to understand how the | :42:04. | :42:07. | |
system and the country work, he really does understand it. He's | :42:07. | :42:12. | |
very good at conveying it. should plug the website, the | :42:12. | :42:18. | |
website theself is very well put together. It isies toe -- easy to | :42:18. | :42:28. | |
dip in and out. You can go to things separated by theme, by time. | :42:28. | :42:33. | |
Particular events, you can look up the 9/11 broad ka. For the casual - | :42:33. | :42:39. | |
- broadcast. For the casual dandier it is great. That is a shout out to | :42:39. | :42:43. | |
the web teams who created it. A link to the website and details of | :42:43. | :42:45. | |
everything we have discuss tonight are on the website. My thanks to | :42:45. | :42:54. | |
Sarah, Lionel and Lindsay. Next week Jo Whiley will be here with a | :42:54. | :43:01. | |
show about books and Mick Jagger. Before we go, American presidential | :43:01. | :43:04. | |
candidates have picked up an instrument to would the electorate. | :43:04. | :43:08. | |
Even if they don't, it seems there is always a whizzkid on hand to set | :43:08. | :43:12. | |
their words to music. # Hey I just met you | :43:12. | :43:16. | |
# This is crazy # Here's my number | :43:16. | :43:21. | |
# So call me maybe # It's hard to look right | :43:21. | :43:24. | |
# At you babe # Here's my number | :43:24. | :43:34. | |
:43:34. | :43:34. | ||
# So call me maybe I love you back! I love you Obama. | :43:35. | :43:39. | |
I want to make sure people know precisely why I'm running for | :43:39. | :43:44. | |
President, and the answer is simple. # What's up gangster | :43:44. | :43:47. | |
# I love people # I was born and raised here | :43:47. | :43:51. | |
# I love this state # I love cars | :43:51. | :43:53. |