Extended interview: Fran Lebowitz and more

[Music] hi there I'm Tracy Smith and here comes the sun a closer look at some of the people places and things we bring you every weekend on Sunday morning author Fran Lebowitz seems to have something to say about almost everything and everyone we wanted to find out why she's so driven and asked our Mo raka to go along for the ride I was on a plane and the guy sitting next to me was on his phone the whole time and I said what is he doing he was playing a game where it looked to me like he was murdering fruit a killing fruit he do when he's not doing this I'm hoping that one day I'm not wheeled into surgery and this guy is like my surgery you know as always an extended version of their conversation is coming up later in the show it's very interesting to me that companies care so much about their employees I would think if I was an employee of a company I would really just rather pay me more okay just pay me more I don't care how you address me so much I don't care the atmosphere in no way do I imagine that people own corporations care about their employees there's zero possibility if that's the case and I don't know why people don't see that the South Bronx means many things to many people to Congressman Richie Torres it's home which is where John Dickerson caught up with him this is the poorest District in the country what does that mean more than half the residents in the South Bronx pay more than half their income toward their rent and that's before you factor in the cost of food and transportation and utilities and prescription drugs at just 33 years old Richie Torres represents the 15th in Congress it's all just ahead we'll be right back her sardonic sensibilities have endured over the decades as an author speaker and even Netflix show host one opinions on Fruit Ninja Hemingway and smoking in public she's got them here's morocca with Fran Leibowitz did you have strong opinions as a child I did but no one cared about them so who did you give them to well I tried to tell them to my parents but when I was a child I had to go to sleep my bedtime was 7 30. until I was like 13. so I once said to my mother why did you make me go to bed so early when I was like 12 years old and my mother said to tell you the truth by 7 30 I just couldn't listen to anymore most writers write for a living Fran Leibowitz talks yes yes and at a recent appearance at Connecticut's Ridgefield Playhouse she weighed in on everything from marathons here's what I would run 26 miles if there was a German soldier behind me with a gun two costumes for pets dogs don't need clothing forage to her own legendary lack of productivity I am such a slow writer I could write in my own blood without hurting myself foreign for half a century this is my favorite thing to do this is why I write from her days writing for Andy warhol's interview magazine in the 1970s to her two best-selling collections of comic essays repackaged into a single volume ladies and gentlemen the one and only friend Lebowitz to a Netflix series directed by her friend Martin Scorsese people want to challenge themselves I find real life challenging enough which brought her distinctly analog sensibility to a decidedly digital platform though technology has always sort of baffled her I was on a plane and the guy sitting next to me was on his phone the whole time and I said what is he doing he was playing a game where it looked to me like he was murdering fruit a killing fruit they do when he's not doing this I'm hoping that one day I'm not wheeled into surgery and this guy is like my surgeon you know we met libowitz at the famed Argosy Bookshop in Manhattan I never left Hemingway there's in my opinion really such a thing as too much apart from a children's book in 1994 she hasn't published a volume of new writing in 40 years I must have all of these books but audiences don't seem to mind and yes she's got something to say about audiences every single thing they're Standing Ovation there is over enthusiasm on the part of the audience you know who has absolutely no way to judge the thing to begin with I went to the ballet maybe now 10 years ago and I was shocked by the audience so the second the first answer put their foot on the stage the audience erupted in cheers I was shocked by this okay it used to be if barishnikov managed to hang in the air for maybe say a full 15 minutes they'd be like okay so the audience is you know who are they applauding them so Liebowitz grew up in Morristown New Jersey where the reception to her wasn't exactly warm our parents did not pay the kind of attention to us that people pay attention to the children now they felt that their job was to instruct us like I would say to my mother can I please have an apple my mother would say may I please have an apple well she was right I would say may I please have an apple she would say no okay so that was trial to the 1950s not just mine liebowitz's Scholastic record was not without its blemishes I was expelled from high school for what the Headmaster sent a letter and the letter just basically said she is a bad influence on the other girls and is usurping my power perhaps a certain revolutionary wardrobe Choice was to blame there was a Halloween party you know where you wore costume and I had a friend who I don't know where they got it they had a Castro mask and it was really good it really looked like Fidel Castro and I went with a cigar to this girl school for Halloween dressed as Fidel Castro in the 60s and was suspended for this in fact Leibowitz who is gay has never been particularly radical sometimes kids come up between the street and thank you thank you for fighting for a ride I didn't fight for your rights I didn't fight for my rights I just tried to avoid these problems that's what I did you know I didn't thank you for fighting for gay marriage I never thought forget marriage we never heard of it like it's these two words together didn't exist and who wanted it not me you know I'm not against it I'm glad you have it if you want it but no thanks Leibowitz has been a vocal advocate for rights of a different sort Fran Lebowitz is a writer and a die-hard defender of the right to smoke I know that cigarette smoke annoys people other people's cigarette smoke annoys me but there are no other laws in this country about annoyance I mean this is supposed to be you know you know you're not entitled not to be annoyed here's the thing it's an addiction it is not however a character flaw it is not a sign of immorality it is just a bad habit fact is it's a vice that gives Fran Leibowitz pleasure speaking of which are people having enough pleasure these days you know I don't know but I will tell you this if you're not having fun now you will never have fun so if you're not having fun in your 20s by the time you're my age I will be long dead you know but try to remember that France said I should have had fun in my 20s [Music] as you can clearly tell Fran Lebowitz is rarely at a loss for words which is why we'll bring you more of her conversation with Mo raka in just a few minutes but up next the personal mission of young Bronx Congressman Richie Torres the evolution of Richie Torres is a remarkable one today you'll find him roaming the halls of Congress but he started out as a shy kid from the South Bronx John Dickerson met up with him there to discuss change in his hometown in Washington and in himself the 15th congressional district in New York South Bronx has a number of distinctions it's home to Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Zoo it's one of the most democratic districts in the country good to see you how are you that's our thing and something else this is the poorest District in the country what does that mean more than half the residents in the South Bronx pay more than half their income toward their rent and that's before you factor in the cost of food and transportation and utilities and prescription drugs at just 33 years old Richie Torres represents the 15th in Congress we can deliver real people results that are going to affect their lives for him the issues that Joe Biden has staked his presidency on reducing inequality overhauling the social safety net are not as abstract as the build-back better term used to describe them for Torres they're personal apartment 2A and so the SEC that second floor window so that's the window you looked out of and what are you looking out that window thinking when you're growing up thinking that there's a whole world of opportunities waiting for me and that might seem like a bold thought given that Torres grew up in chronically underfunded public housing in the Bronx I'm someone who grew up with a whole range of challenges right I've had family members entangle with the criminal justice system I've had to face housing and security and food insecurity but the one constant that I had in my life was a stable affordable home Richie Torres and his sister and twin brother were raised by their single mother there were moments when we could not afford to have three meals a day you know my mother would Lurch from one low wage job to the next and so our income varied widely and what kind of jobs did she have mechanic food server just a whole range of low-wage jobs mechanic car mechanic yeah the motivations that would drive a future Congressman were all around him as a teenager he helped care for his grandmother after she was widowed and in declining Health but he learned he could only do so much what was that experience like painful it's um painful to see people you love who were the leaders of your family the strong matriarchs of your family struggle in their final years and become Shadows of their former selves and it's part of the reason I feel so strongly about Home Care I want for every Elder in America what I would want from my own grandmother in high school he was captain of the law team leading his school to win New York City's moot Court championship he entered New York University full of promise but faced a personal crisis that cut his studies short I was hoping that I would graduate and go on to law school or go on to become a teacher but during the latter years of my High School time and then touring my early college Years I came to struggle with depression and so I I dropped out there were moments when I thought of taking my own life because I felt as if the world around me had collapsed Torres saw therapy started taking an antidepressant and found his way back by immersing himself in local politics he ran for the New York City Council despite calling himself an introvert I would have to drink one glass of wine before every speech he won becoming the youngest member ever to win a City Council seat we uncover evidence after six years Torres ran for congress becoming the first gay afro-latino representative the most important lesson that my mother taught me is never forget where you come from he has the idealism of Youth but recognizes politics has limits some moral debates for example are distractions so I'm a Democratic candidate out there somewhere and my Republican opponent is mischaracterizing critical race Theory do I answer those mischaracterizations or do I talk about prescription drug costs with the bulk of my remarks I would focus on prescription drug costs because if you conduct your campaign on the terms set by your opponents then you're going to lose moderates must win or Democrats will lose the majority I'm in a deep blue District I'm in one of the most democratic districts in America and so I'm respectful and mindful of the perspectives of members who are on the front lines who are in purple districts and who have a feel for swing voters much more than I do let's rebuild America we talk about it a lot and half a loaf is better than no loaf which might mean whittling down social policy legislation to win the vote of moderate Democratic senator Joe manchin as a progressive why put all this Blood Sweat and Tears into electing Democrats and marching and speaking passionately about these issues if a West Virginia senator is going to call the tune for what the party believes in I refuse to allow Progressive Purity to be the enemy of progress in the real world and for me and for the district that I represent an expanded child tax credit Home Care affordable prescription drugs child care all of these represent progress Torres will be able to see the results when he visits his mom who still lives in the apartment of his youth how will the lives of the people who live here improve if President Biden's legislation gets signed we're finally going to have the opportunity to bring public housing into a state of good repair so none of it is sexy none of this is but we're going to replace elevators so that disabled residents are no longer prisoners in their own homes we're going to replace boilers so that people have consistent heat and hot water in the winter we're going to bring people closer to the ideal of safeties in affordable housing for Richie Torres it's key to giving the next kid like him some reason to look out the window and Hope when people ask me how my mother raised three children on minimum wage I describe it as Mission Impossible but there are mothers who pull it off who manage to remain hopeful in the face of real deprivation and it's in some sense a miracle and it's that Triumph of hope that inspires me and sustains me every day you think human nature is bad human nature is bad that's why they call it human nature Not Human Art as promised more from author Fran Leibowitz after the break and most of those tempted once again here's morocca with Fran Lebowitz you think human nature is bad yeah this is surely not an opinion human nature is bad that's why they call it human nature Not Human Art most people tempted with certain things will give into that Temptation and most of those tempted first of all most of those 10 things most people don't get tempted with so they don't get tried and they don't know how they would act you know but if you've been tried if someone's waving money at you you know or something else that you desire um and you say no then you know but that's not many people it does seem to me by the way very adolescent or even pre-adolescent this concern of what other people think all the time I mean the the upside of being old you know is that you don't care and that's the only upside I'm not recommending it but not that you have a choice I remember the first time I heard the phrase trigger warning which I think now is out of style already but I mean companies right it's part of their policy to issue trigger warnings or the equivalent I I know it's very interesting to me um that companies care so much about their employees I would think if I was an employee of a company I would really just rather pay me more okay just pay me more I don't care how you address me so much I don't care the atmosphere in no way do I imagine that people own corporations care about their employees there's zero possibility that that's the case and I don't know why people don't see that starting I would say in the early 90s corporations started borrowing the language of poets and they started talking about their vision and their mission and you know their environment and you know it was shocking to me that people bought this all businesses are the same it doesn't matter whether it's a lemonade stand you know or Amazon a business is an entity the single purpose of which is to make a profit period so when you think about your past is there a particular time that you tend to go to more than others is it your childhood is it when you first came to New York no I I no I I can't think of any particular time that I think about more frequently uh I mean I grew up in a small town we were not allowed to stay in the house in other words get out right so most of the mothers you know of the era in the class that I was in Middle Class you know people their mothers didn't work so the mothers didn't feel guilty not spending enough time with you they spend more than enough time with you so that if I like on a Saturday was like lingering over lunch for one second my mother would look up and go get out of the house get out of the house so that like they didn't want us in the house get out of the house where they don't care children were brought up pretty much alike and also everyone's parents were allowed to yell at you oh right other parents could yell at you oh and did because you can't do that today oh are you going to jail you can't even you can't even slightly suggest that perhaps they might not want you can't do that at all so um but if you were did something wrong you know and it could be another part of town that mother would call your mother who may she may not even have known and tell your mother you know you were seen doing this and your mother would thank her and then when you got home you would get punished for doing this wrong thing and she would thanks The Other Woman for said Thank you for telling me what a horrible child I have not that I didn't know and so uh our parents didn't know a lot of things about us we never would have told them they also I mean they just weren't that interested in us my father used to say I work hard all day I don't come home so I can listen to your theories the only thing I remember my mother ever saying to me about my future was when I was like 14 and we were doing dishes which seemed to be like you know non-stop she said to me you know you should marry a college professor because you like to read so much if you married a professor you would always live in a place where there are a lot of books I I happen to have been by the way not that you asked an excellent honor I I have no doubt I would say if there was a Nobel Prize for being a daughter I would get it but you could never I could never make up for not having gone to college and I could never make up for not having gotten married and had grandchildren I thought that the pandemic might be a time when people would sort of think more about AIDS and there might even be some sort of Reckoning about what happened and how all those victims were treated it doesn't seem to have happened because everyone's dead that's why and that is something that is very hard to explain to people because there's no context for it there is no context for what it was like to be gated I tell you what angers me it angers me a lot when I read something that a young writer writes where they describe someone you know who say you know was 30 in 1970 or something like that as being in the closet this was everyone this was everyone because I mean well we used to use that term you know gay people but we meant uh pretended to be straight to us to other gay people not to straight people you couldn't have a job you could not have a job gay bars in New York were 100 owned by the mafia they were all owned by the mafia why because the gay bars were illegal they were illegal because illegal to be gay and the cops in every neighborhood which they used to have like neighborhood cops uh they knew where the gay bars were okay and so they didn't rate them because they were paid off but when they would periodically there would be a rate of raids of gay bars just like periodically they would be arresting hookers because the streets were full of hookers and they would do this always during election year because someone running for something was going to run on this I'm going to clean up the streets you know I'm going to clean up the hookers and I'm going to clean up the gay bars and and when this would happen and they would arrest everyone the next day the names of every single person arrested would be in the paper and as soon as that happened every single person named in that story would lose her job a hundred percent of people would lose their jobs okay and that didn't matter whether your job was you know you were selling shoes at Bloomingdale's or you were a heart surgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital you know it made no difference you were fired and that was the reason you were fired so when AIDS first happened you could pretend not to be gay but you can't pretend not to be dead I really believe I know this would is not a very popular way of putting this without AIDS I don't think you'd have gay marriage I don't think you've had all these things because it pushed everything into the public when people say oh covet it's like AIDS I say it's nothing like Age first of all people care about covet and they did right away I'm Tracy Smith thanks for joining us we'll see you next time on Here Comes the Sun [Music] foreign

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 113,946

Keywords: CBS News, video, full episode, here comes the sun, the venerable voice of fran lebowitz, fran leobwitz, ritchie torres, politician, bronx

Id: LYxOvyxEDDs

Length: 23min 37sec (1417 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2023