Frank Bruni | The Age of Grievance

I'm rich grea Walt a member of the free libraries foundations board of directors and I'm delighted to be here with you tonight you know it's been incredible to witness the growth of the free libraries author event series over these past 30 years what first started out as a small offering of lectures is now a robust lineup of events with ACC claimed novelist historians and public figures and tonight is no exception these discussions connect Inspire and challenge us addressing timely issues in the public Civic and human human Humanities through in-person events right here in this Auditorium and online archives of podcasts and videos the author's events program reaches millions of people worldwide this makes this series The Single largest provider of electronic content produced and distributed by the Free Library of Philadelphia I'd like to take the time to especially thank all of you our members who are with us tonight as a member of the pepper Society myself I hope I can encourage many of you to continue to join us in supporting the Free Library so many enriching programs including this award-winning author series are made possible through your generous support you can find more information about becoming a member and donating in tonight's program and now it's my great honor to introduce our guests this evening a journalist at the New York Times for more than 25 years Frank bruny has been the paper Rome bureau chief head restaurant kinic White House correspondent and staff rider for its Sunday magazine among other positions his best-selling books include ambling into history the unlikely Odyssey of George W Bush born round the secret history of a full-time eater where you go is not who you'll be an antidote to the college admissions Mania and the beauty of dusk a memoir about adjusting to suddenly losing sight in his right eye also currently a professor of public policy at Duke University and the writer of a popular weekly times newsletter bruny forly worked as a Pulitzer priz nominated writer for the Detroit Free Press in the age of grievance bruny examines the ways in which the blame game has come to Define American politics and culture joining bruny on the stage this evening is Karen heler heler is the former National features writer and current contributor to The Washington Post was formerly a Metro and features columnist for the Philadelphia inquire and was a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in commentary we're so pleased to have them both with with us this evening so please join me in welcoming Karen heler and Frank bruny to the Free Library stage thank you rich thank you for that introduction that's lovely um welcome everyone uh thanks so much for joining us uh we're all fellow Franco files wow I never I never heard it like that before I coined that that's you can uh I'm patenting it the parisians in the audience May beg to differ but well you could be a Frank ofile two ways anyway um we're so lucky to have you here big fans of of your all of you um to be here you've had such a beautiful career um being the chief restaurant critic of the New York Times and Rome Bureau I think you mean incoherent career no I think this is great um you're great at cocktail parties probably you can speak about almost anything a little bit I drink a lot um anyway he's up been an uped columnist he still contributes quite frequently to the times and what's nice about it is you get to be paid for your grievances right and people have to read them and he has a fabulous newsletter if you don't subscribe um I really encourage you to do so it's just terrific um anyway we live in a time of many riches not only literal wealth but amazing advancements in health technology bread coffee beer athleisure Footwear daily comfort and ease sock Weare sock Weare yeah and yet How We complain We complain and you write that we are experiencing the oppression Olympics the idea that my situation even though we have great socks my situation is so much worse than yours um I want to understand how you saw that we got to this point you write that the United States is a nation born of grievance in the Revolt of Royal subjects un willing to accept a deal that our legal system that grievance can be good but how did we get to this point well I mean that's that's the question that the book tries to answer I mean there are many answers to that I mean we could talk about social media we could talk about and we will tonight I know we could talk about the country's turn from a sort of trademark optimism to a whole new American pessimism which I think is very concerning and new um there are a whole lot of ways but what has happened to the word grievance because you brought up correctly That We're a nation born of grievance grievances is a word that appears in the First Amendment if you go back to the late 1700s early 1800s when people spoke of grievances it was uh a term that usually meant just causes urgent causes now if you left this Auditorium tonight and you did a Google search of grievance and where it has appeared in the last 24 hours of the last week you would find it almost always as used um in a as a pejorative in a negative context and that's a tell and and what that says is that we have become so incessant in our complaints so indiscriminate in our complaints we've jumbled the sorts of things we must complain about as a matter of fundamental Justice with stuff that we needn't complain about but that bespeaks a certain sort of spoiledness and narcissism we've jumbled it all together in a way that I think makes constructive discourse almost impossible and completely paralyzes our political debates yeah um you write that almost no cultural event no bit of news no topic of national conversation is roped off from grievance by which I mean a complaint or concern that should or could be a modest point of dispute negotiable with business-like diction and business-like decorum but is blown up widely out of proportion I I want to say that I tweeted about this event and some somebody was grieved yes and said so some very unkind things about the two of us and I don't think we've we've met you know like welcome to my inbox yeah right you know and he was one of those guys like bu 089 so you don't even know if it's a bot or whatever well tell me what would with the Genesis of that you could create a whole wonderful book from this what was was there a when did you first noticed that this was sort of fomenting was it a slow burn or was there a specific I think we've all been noticing it for you know better than a decade now um I mean when I put the language to it I actually wish I could take credit for the phrase the age of grievance um whether it's a good one or bad one but um after I wrote my last book which was referred to the beauty of dusk which was about a kind of personal medical ordeal Odyssey um I had had a great experience with my editor at Avid Reader press I'll give a shout out to Avid Reader press and we thought we should do another book together and he's a regular reader of my newsletter and other things I write um and he wrote he sent me an email one day and he said I think it was right after I had um made fun of Jenny Thomas's text messages um to the White House about how this election was being stolen um and it had a lot of capital letters and wow did it have a lot of exclamation points right um and the theme of it was she it was this what what came through in her in her text messages was how oppressed she felt um how cheated she felt and I'm like let stop for a minute Jenny jny Thomas right you know just want to make sure we're talking me what you know the free win ofo wasn't big enough you know I love that this audience got that reference thank you thank you this is a yeah um and I think it was after that newsletter um my editor Ben Lunen wrote me an email and the sum of it was I think you should write a book called the age of grievance um and I wrote back and I said I think we need to make sure we the same thing before we proceed um but in that phrase I started thinking about it and I thought that really is a great distillation and summary of this sort of culture of complaint we live in of this culture that fetishizes victimization and makes people want to come into the Public Square and say I'm a victim Chris Rock said something very brilliant in his most recent um standup selective outrage he was talking about he was listing the top ways in which people want to be noticed right and it was mixture of jokes and serious things and I think he said you know way number three by being a victim you know and then he said and he said it very well I would encourage people watching selective outrage he said there are many real victims Among Us and they deserve our recognition Na and they deserve our empathy and they deserve our assistance and help and he said but there's so many people claiming victimization in situations where it is not warranted he said we basically have an emergency room full of people with paper cuts a brilliant and I I quote him in the book because frankly that's the whole book and so now you've heard that phrase and we can all go home right so paper I love that anation of paper cut um so did you have a Moment of clarity or frustration you're your editor had this idea but did you say oh yeah yeah I've got a I mean you've written columns on this so was there a Tipping Point was there just a moment that you say yes there's a book here there's um I don't know what the Tipping Point was but will tell you there was hesitation um and there's hesitation in me even as I sit here with you um whom I respect and thank for doing this in a friendly face and even though I assume it's a mostly friendly audience but I guess we'll find out as the evening goes on um my hesitation because I think there's something really difficult about having this conversation that I tried really hard in the book to get right but I don't know if I did um which is it's really important to recognize and talk about as I do in the book that this impulse um to Define Yourself by how you've been wronged um to shout about how you've been wronged as loudly as possible with the idea that they who shout the loudest and use the most hyperbolic language win the day um this impulse to name who's wrong you and and and chart a revenge against that person or those people this exists across the political spectrum and I felt it was very important not only to talk front and center about the magum movement and what happened on January 6th which I refer to as the grievance prom and I think that's I think that's what it was um but it also but it also exists on the left and it's important to call that out too my hesitation and to me the great challenge in having these conversations is while it is a panp partisan phenomenon that does not mean it's equivalent on the right and the left I believe it poses a much greater Danger on the right right now it is on the right that you see the preponderance of organized political violence it is on the right that you see the per evasive and profound election denialism at a scale that you don't see on the left so I mostly had hesitation because I wanted to be very fair-minded and to call this out in all the places that exists without doing a sort of fasal bothsidesism or implying any false equivalents right right um you know you talk about how people have started to vote not so much for a candidate but against one you know rather than having um you know a real belief that this person can represent you and contain you know your values and whatever we're kind of negative voting and I i' like you to read about um this pessimism about America's promise okay all right I have to put on my eyes and hopefully I have the right page bookmarked um wait is this my copy I hope so it's 77 it's page what 77 mhm I thought I oh there it is okay okay American Dream American exceptionalism land of opportunity endless Frontier Manifest Destiny those were the pretty phases that pretty phrases that I grew up with words that appeared not only in political ads but also in history lessons and elevated analyses of the American psyche we welcomed newcomers or at least didn't tightly seal our borders because we weren't as worried as other countries might be about having enough to go around we were always making more we were always making better we were inventors expanders explorers putting the first man on the moon wasn't just a matter of bragging rights though it was indeed that and we bragged plenty about it it was also an act of self-de an affirmation of American identity we stretched the parameters of the navigable Universe the way we stretch the parameters of everything else that perspective obviously was a romanticized one achieved through a selective reading of the past it discounted the experiences of many black Americans it minimized the degree to which they and other minorities were shut out from all this inventing all this expanding all this exploring it mingled self- congratulatory Fiction with fact and it probably imprinted itself more strongly on me than on some of my peers because of my particular family history my father's parents were uneducated immigrants who found in the United States what they left southern Italy for more material Comfort greater economic stability and and a more expansive future for their children including my father who got a scholarship to an Ivy League school went on to earn an MBA and became a senior partner in one of the country's biggest accounting accounting firms he put a heated inground pool in the backyard he put me and my three siblings in private schools he put our mother in a mink and he pinched and he pinched himself all the while it was nonetheless true that the idea of the United States as an unrivaled engine of social mobility and Generator of wealth held Sway With many Americans who expected their children to to do better than they done and their children's children to do even better that was the mythology anyway I don't detect that optimism around me anymore I see a crisis of confidence I see retrenchment I see manifestations of and metaphors for our lost bravado that are so on the nose they could be a playwright's invention take our fitful and baguer attempt to get back to the moon in the late summer and fall of 2022 although Neil Armstrong an American had made that giant leap for mankind more than a half century earlier in 1969 NASA struggled to send an unmanned spacecraft moonward that vessel the Orion rolled out to its Launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 17th 2022 but only after a series of delays caused by problems discovered during pre-flight tests people then gathered on August 29th to watch Orion rocket into space but NASA canceled the launch at the last minute due to a faulty engine temperature reading on September 3rd the launch was canceled yet again this time the culprit was a leak during fueling not until November 16th would or takeoff it was as if we just couldn't divy Gravity the way we used to thank you that was wonderful um so this pessimism it's seeped in you sort of see it in your book you you talk a lot about see it in all these aspects and what do you think has fueled so many so much of this well part of it is a is a reaction to actual circumstances I mean in an age when we kind of invent a lot of problems and indulge a lot of um false news or whatever you want to call it um you know we we have seen a a we don't see we don't we don't have the social Med nobility we used to we're living we're living in a period there are other periods in the past when it's been severe but we are living in a particular period of exaggerated income income inequality um that's part of it part of it is also we're kind of a mature civilization I don't want to that makes it sound like we're grown-ups we're not acting like grown-ups I'm immature in the different sense um and I think at a certain point the American Pro promise promise of better more bigger um it it kind of bumps up against the limits of of the universe so to speak um but I think the best illustration of just how much the American psychology has changed um for decades now I think it goes back to the 70s I pinpointed in the book um the Gallup organization has several times a year three or four times a year um taken a very particular poll that asks Americans if they are generally satisfied with the country and with their lives in the country um up until 2004 um that the the answerers that would go above 50% sometimes above 60% it would go below it would go like this it was constantly changing but always returning at various times above 50% since 2004 never have more have 50% or more Americans answered that they're generally satisfied for 20 years running we can't get to a majority of Americans in that Gallup survey saying that they generally satisfied and more often than not the number is below 40% or below 30% right after January 6th 2021 it was 11% that's 20 years of sustained negative assessments of sustained negative thinking and that has taken a toll right well I I personally think we over poll that's the other thing you react to the poll you know well particularly an election year um and we are fixated on what's wrong and I and I I want to talk a little bit about includes the media yeah oh yes we'll get to that in a second but anger is something we all have right people it's a natural emotion you know all you have to do is get behind a wheel and a car and you're running late right and you're you're mad at people but I wonder why anger has become such a dominant force in in the American dialogue and what contributed to all of this because we were raised most of us are raised in a certain way to be polite you can go to places and you're slighted you talking about the Chris Rock comment of paper cuts but ultimately we know life it's pretty good but now it's just this anger and this righteousness and the feeling of wronged and you talk about first the polling and feeling that the American experiment is gone kind of off the tracks but why is anger become such um it's so acceptable and and most of us were not raised to you know raise our voices to to you know well we didn't have Twitter but um to to tell to people you don't know how horrible they are what what contributed to all of this I don't know may maybe children are being raised differently now um I mean it's interesting you said Angry behind the wheel of the car I mean we're living in a moment where so we've had road rage for a long time right we're now living with sure yeah we're now living with air rage restaurant rage retail rage um it's like gone well Way Beyond what happens on a crowded on a crowded freeway um I mean there are a lot of reasons I think social media is a big part of it people have seen on social media that the more uh Furious they are the more negatively impassion they are um the more viral their posts go the more they're shared Etc and that becomes that that that creates an incentive structure for anger and for its you know upsizing into rage um politicians have seen that they've exploited that and they've modeled that right um you know you sometimes when people were saying over recent weeks you know when they were looking at um I mean the campus protests are a complicated subject which we often don't treat um uh that way which bothers me but looking at some of the protests that have clearly gone off the rails that have dipped into violence and you know I've seen commentators say you know where do these young people get the sense that confrontation of this sort is appropriate that these sort of provocations work and I'm thinking I don't know US Congress like right I mean I'm joking but it's but it's serious I remember this made me this made so much sense but it made me so sad I remember shortly after the Supreme Court overturned roie Wade um I was sitting with a prominent Democratic politician whom I will not name um because it was an off the reccord uh encounter and I don't think I'm breaking that here and this politician said well and this politician is known for uh his her or their measured tone and for being a conciliator oh so was it Bernie Sanders go ahead it was not him and it was not it was not Elizabeth Warren um and this politician said you know um Donald Trump and and his allies do such a good job of making people angry and whipping them into ever greater Fury and getting to the polls this could be really good for us now we can make our voters as angry right now tactically I thought it was a very smart statement you know and as someone who uh fervently advocates for Reproductive Rights I was on his side but it just made me really sad as a kind of reflection of the times that he was excited about the opportunity to sew and reap anger that that actually W that that was the smart move was really disturbing and of course it becomes it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and a self-feeding loop or whatever that right phrase is right so so we might as well get into it um uh you call Trump cast himself as a both a martyr and a messiah he was a grudge made flesh grievance became president and you talk about us being in the grievance Olympics and he may be the Gold Medal winner in this oh yeah he's like the Michael Phelps of the grievance Olympics why does this play so well I mean tell me we have social media why it it's just when you stand back from it you just you know if somebody showed well we're not not we're not standing back from it I mean you just said the crucial thing too few of us are are standing back from it too few of us are pausing and saying before we begin shouting or before we just kind of um accept that everybody else is shouting too few of us say what is this doing to us where are we going um is there a different way like this is costing us so very much and the the part of the book that's most important to me are the chapters and pages that look at that you know at how it's degraded our country um but you know I I don't think I don't think we're reflective in the right way but there are a lot of there are a lot of streams um that come to this Confluence um we've become a much more self-centric narcissistic people you know we've gone from self-actualization to self-care to all of this attention on how do I make me better um and I don't hear the same amount of attention being given or passion being lavished on the collective good um I think social media divides us I think media in general and the internet divides us I mean you go back to when you and I were growing up and if you wanted to watch TV news your choices were ABC NBC CBS were depending on where you lived maybe there was a PBS channel that that did that that was it right and it was maybe half an hour maybe one hour um and so they tried to do general interest stuff and they were Bound for many decades by the fairness Doctrine on and on compare that to the cable news Universe of today where you get to tune in to exactly what you want to hear to the exclusion of all other viewpoints which of course only ends up not just confirming what you believe but aify it I think it is so telling so scary and so important to go back to why did Fox News settle with dominian voting systems for $ 7875 million right by far a record why did they do that because things were going to go worse if it came to a trial they did that because in Discovery it was shown that top Fox News anchors top Fox News Executives knew and were talking with one another about the fact that they were putting these lies on the air about rigged voting machines and a Corruption of the voting process but what they were saying to one another was if we don't air this our audience will just go over to one American news or some other station that will Air it so we have to give them what they're looking for lest we disappoint them even if it's not the truth right now that is most extreme example but versions of that happen throughout the media Universe because we have this whole new ability to curate the facts we receive which often aren't facts the information we get um and we and each one of us is living in a different version of reality from the person to our left and the person to our right that is an enormous enormous problem and a great Wellspring of anger right now that's true and and I mean I I I know people people who will say like all Republicans are horrible people and I'm going you you really want to say that you know um we don't do this professionally that's that's an absurdity if you change that to somebody's skin color right yeah think about that I mean you just reminded me of one thing speaking of anger and grievance there was a terrific story I think Jane mayor did it in the The New Yorker years ago about how rert Murdoch bought the rights to NFL because he was Australian he didn't care about American football but because he knew the anger and the attachment to watching sports they would already have this sort of fevered you know how men can get sorry making a generalization men can get I guess women can too but um get riled up watching sports and he knew that that was going to be a secret so you made me think about that that that was one of the building blocks of Fox News was owning the NFL rights need I don't care what it cost because I know we're going to have it passioned um I want to just flip this a little bit and talk talk about victimhood which to me is so fascinating because um I'm looking around the room and most of us are a similar age and you grew up with profiles and courage and the idea of being brave and you think of John F Kennedy or George H W bush and people who served in wars and the idea of being a victim you know was just heresy I mean nor afron famously said never be the victim of your own story and now we have somebody like Donald Trump but other people as well who grew up with everything and yet paints himself as a victim and I still cannot wrap my head around how this became attractive politically no but I mean you bring up the right thing v v victimhood has become a kind of political con currency like never before and you're right I mean it's the Cornerstone of his entire political identity um it works I mean this is a sort of like he is both the result of a mindset and he is the accelerant and the multiplier of a mind ET but it worked for him because there were all of these people in America who felt like victims um and he was basically saying I'm your symbol um you feel like victims and you've identified your victimizers and guess what those are the people who say who say I have no business doing this who look down on me who speak of me in the most mocking and derogatory ways and so by getting behind me you're getting back at them this was his political pitch on some level from the very beginning and kind of distilled it perfectly about a year and a quarter ago when kicking off this current campaign he said I am your retribution what that meant was your ultimate revenge against all of those Elites who are oppressing you is to saddle them with me again you know it's just extraordinary I mean again if you went in the way back machine really say victimhood you know um that was not something we this isn't the first time though as I mentioned in the book what's interesting is it went away for a while and then it came back but if you go back and you look at a lot of the cultural conversation in the late 80s and the early 90s and I document this at some length it sounds so much like today it just has a different vocabulary so Robert Bourke at the time was envey against radical egalitarianism when you hear him Define that you realize he's talking about what we now call wokeism right um the same tensions existed then but then they kind of broke for a while and now they're back in even more um intense exacerbated form um so I wanted the wonderful point I want to talk about something you WR about the US is an Envy engine it's sort of a nation of the have everything and we see that Bravo a whole Channel you know um that's dedicated devoted to people who seem to have everything and they want everything but can't right and you know we can blame social media obviously but it again an accelerant it wouldn't work if it there was an audience for anyway um there just seem to be so many ways to be Miser annoyed and angered and I would love if you would read about these sort of microclimates of privilege yeah I think something has happened in our service economy that is a piece of this puzzle um when I was a teenager in the late 1970s and early 1980s okay you can do the arithmetic I'm 59 um when I was a teenager in the late 1970s and early 1980s and went to the big concerts of major performers different sections of seating had different prices but they fell into a few General categories a person's proximity to the stage often had less to do with her financial reserves than with how quickly and heroically she' acted to get her tickets I once showed up at the box office of what of what was then called The Hartford Civic Center at 3 in the morning in Pitch Darkness to be in place when tickets for a queen concert went on sale several hours later that was the shest path to the best seats my friends and I ended up in the eighth row where I caught Freddy Mercury's tambourine when he threw it into the crowd at the concl usion of the band's final song and there was something egalitarian about it but the seating maps for various stops on Taylor Swift's 2023 tour revealed scores and scores of price tags tailored with extreme specificity to the precise desirability of the vantage point the highest ones were many thousands of dollars above the lowest ones a family of four or five posting photos of themselves among other ecstatic swifties as Showtime neared was in some cases announcing to the world its ability to drop $10,000 or more on one night's entertainment but while the price range for Swift exceeded the price range for a garden variety Superstar the exacting tiering of the experience was a common phenomenon in the world of live music when I was a teenager School essentially came in two sizes public or private now private is the starting point with many costly but broadly applied add-ons the tutors for special subjects the separate tutor for standardized exams the individual sports coach the independent College admissions consultant who for a hefty fee does more plotting and pacifying than the counselors already on the school staff are able to when I was a teenager you were Posh if you belong to a private gym versus say the YMCA the brand of that gym and the level of your membership weren't relevant now Planet Fitness and Equinox are solar systems of pampering apart and at some of the equinoxes of the Galaxy different clients pay significantly different sums for personal trainers in accordance with that AB whisperer's determined gradation of expertise those clients can also pay a sear charge for a better locker room a sirar charge for certain other sanctums and none of that is unnoticed by or unnoticeable to the other customers its noticeables is perhaps part of of the point aspiration and perspiration go together the emphasis of the American economy may have changed over the years from manufacturing to services but one product we make in abundance is distinctions that's that's terrific yeah I think we've always had these cast systems obviously I mean you know there was actually people came over and vat in steerage and people came over in boats and worse than that but I think we're all Winslet and Leo were in different size that's right and there was slavery but now we're also made aware and you you see sort of the the degradation or the privilege is the point right it's crazy I mean we have done this sort of like fine grain tearing of the service economy think about the airport you know think about I I I begin that chapter that that passage appears in Imagining the Joneses and the Johnson's going to Disney World and how from the moment they arrive at the airport to the moment they get to the amusement park every aspect of their experience is different the Joneses have paid at every juncture to just glide through everything and the Johnson's are on long lines I mean if you go to an amusement park today there are these people who while you're sweating in the sun um waiting hours for Space Mountain are zooming to the front because they've paid for some I think it's called the genie pass right there was no Genie pass when I was growing up and I think it is it is one of the the existence of this sort of tearing these sort of microclimates of exclusivity and privilege I think are really potent engines of envy that explain some of the anger we're talking about yeah and another thing is that everyone has a take right you know um everyone has an opinion on everything like I the minute that Taylor I've never had an opinion never you get paid that's a great thing um or you know I've read so many takes on Taylor Swift or B it's like we over analyze things to death but I I it's sort of a you know an array of an exhausting array of beefs but before we get to questions I want to have a little bit of hope I'm sure some of these questions about some of the remedies for this that you mention in the book um if you could share with um I'd be glad to thank you but I also want to say um Taylor Swift gives me hope seriously um if you look at how and what a phenomenon her concert tour became and if you look if you think about how many people you knew who were going to it and if you think about how interested um diverse diverse people were in being kind of fluent in Taylor Swift um she's a phenomenally talented human being but that was about so much more than her Talent what I saw in that was such just such a fierce desire to have a common conversation to have something we could all talk about she was our sort of she was a sort of water cooler show that no longer exists and I saw I mean I mean I I hear 60-year-olds I hear six-year-olds talking about Taylor Swift and in their desire to talk about her and in the joy which they talk about her part of what I hear is this real yearning to once again be kind of reading from a common Playbook to be having a shared conversation so I think there's a lot of Hope in that um how do we get to that shared conversation I think there are all sorts of things we can do across many different fronts of of of life that we're just not committing to um there are political reforms um that would that would we we need we need to do away with J Jerry mandering we need to think about the way our primaries are set up and how they reward um how they reward extremist candidates there was a great story in the New York Times with the last three weeks some of you will probably remember it better than I do and I can't remember the precise timing which looked at what has happened in Michigan over the last five years in terms of uh in terms of pushing back against Jerry mandering in terms of making the state more representative and not a model for minority Rule and all of those things happened because of of Citizen movements and because of the passion and persistence of Voters themselves that needs to happen in more States that's a really really hopeful story um we need to do things in terms of the way when it whether it comes to how we spend government money how we design cities we need to incentivize people from diverse backgrounds crossing paths rather than doing what's happening now which is being sorted ever more narrowly um into enclaves that never interact with each other we can incentivize those things with certain kinds of government action certain kinds of spending we're in a library right I write about libraries in the book because I think they're one of the last bastions where you actually if you go to a library you run into a lot of people who don't look exactly like you who aren't the same age who don't make the same amount of money it is tragic how few environments like that exist but we can invest in public buildings public spaces there's a great book I'm going to mispronounce his last name there's a reason I write in don't do TV because I can't pronounce anything um but Eric kleinenberg a great book a couple years ago called palaces for the people and it's all about the power of investing in public spaces and public structures that's another thing we could do last thing I'll say um many politicians have talked about a national service program people kind of think that's never going to happen because because if we made it compulsory it would never happen you can have a national service program that is not compulsory but that has such elegant incentives built in that in fact you get a critical mass of people to do it um we need to we need to think more about that than we have that's great and one last thing then we'll go to questions is about humility you end with that that's so can you talk a little bit about that yeah I think part of what we're experiencing is a crisis of humility the idea too many people believe that they are right and everybody else is wrong that is unhumble um too many people think the world society politics should conform precisely to their liking that is not the way life works and that's unhumble I mentioned January 6th before the grievance prom um when you look at that day what we saw was was violent it was frenzy it was Savage I think above all it was unhumble because those people were basically saying if the country voted differently from us well then that's the wrong way and we're going to and we're going to get the result that is the right result by any means necessary but as many of them couldn't fathom that a majority of people in the country would vote differently than they had and therefore it must be a lie it must be rigged that is profoundly unhumble um this is a little off topic but would you mind sharing just one story about your [Applause] dog oh my gosh I had to pick thank you for that um uh not all of you know this but uh I I spend an inordinate amount of syllables in my newsletter on my dog um and she's very photogenic don't you think um uh I don't think I've ever written this but she has this wonderful habit which only lasts about five minutes when she's very happy and excited when we play fetch with her favorite rope ring she goes and she fetches it and then as she's bringing it out she bringing it back she takes several pauses to throw it in the air to herself and to catch it again um and then she's and then and then in her Joy she falls to the Earth and she does sideways somersaults and if there's a neighbor watching they always say oh my gosh that means she's rolling in you've got to stop her but she's not she's just joyously doing somersaults she's like Simone biles or something hi uh so uh first off it was a fantastic talk I really appreciate it I was born in 1998 I'm of the younger generation that's here and I thought that it was interesting you talking about how since I think 2004 people's satisfaction with the country is has been steadily decreasing I think something that me and my friends think about a lot is that our generation hasn't really had like a rallying event whether that be a war or kind of like National experience and it was interesting you talking about Taylor Swift's tour is this kind of like most recent phenomena that really rallies a group of people I was curious if you found in looking back that what has rallied people most often are those types of like National tragic events whether that be a war or attack or something like that or if there are other pieces of Pop Culture that you've seen over time that really unites the country in this kind of like common conversation um thank you I don't know that I have an answer to all of that but I have an observation that kind of fits into your question and maybe is a partial answer um you know you go back to uh September 11th to 911 right um and you definitely saw the country rally after that um and you saw a period several weeks maybe even more than a month when George W bush who was then president when his approval ratings were above 85% I think there was even a polar to R above 90% I would make I would bet a lot of money that in our lifetimes we're never going to see American president have an approval rating over 65% maybe not even over 60 because we've become so so much more um unyieldingly partisan and tribal um when the covid pandemic came along in the beginning we were calling it The Corona virus pandemic um it was clear at the start and there was a lot that wasn't clear but it was clear that this was you know a global P that it was a pandemic that it was Global that the magnitude was was immense and that this was something that could threaten everyone and do do extraordinary damage that would be long lasting I waited for people not to come together in in quite the way they did after 911 but I waited for and kind of expected to see okay okay we're going to we're going to see some at least pale echo of that sort of national solidarity and in fact if if anything became like a partisanship accelerent um and I think it's a good indication of how much has changed I'm not sure given how politically tribal we've become given how ruthlessly sorted we've been by the internet and social media um given the example the examples that our politicians are setting which are not good examples I'm not sure one of those sorts of events you refer to would do today what it has done historically and that makes me really sad yeah I thought I thought January 6th had the potential because both Republicans and Democrats were threatened Mike Pence was and that didn't happen that's that's that's an even better example No in fact immediately it became dueling narratives right thank you Frank for being here just a quick question which is you you mentioned about aifi media um you said you're not a TV guy but you know I assume you're at least trying to get on Fox at least to promote the book right so wait what you say should go on Fox yeah exactly you should I haven't gone on Fox they ask you they haven't asked me so I haven't had that moral dilemma but in the but but that's what I was going to if you were asked you know would you go and how do you think you'd be treated on on a right-wing media uh ecosystem um that's a great question if asked I would go and I will tell you why I would go I mean would I like to sell more books sure I'm a human being I want to interrupt to say that he's number six on the New York Times bestseller [Applause] list um but yes I'd like to sell more books because I uh you know I have utility bills and Regan needs her Gourmet kibble right um I would go on Fox for the same reason I believe that pip budha judge goes on Fox or that Rana goes on Fox um I don't think we're served by not speaking to the people who disagree with us in fact I think when we avoid speaking with the people who disagree with us um we just ensure that they will continue to see us in caricature and vilify us and assume that we want to have nothing to do with them and are not interested in a potentially productive conversation even if the odds of that are slim um how would I be treated I don't know um but I would I would say the same things I said here tonight you know I would I would certainly say that I have criticisms of the left and they're abundant in the book but I would certainly say that I think the right right now has more to answer answer for and I would feel free to bring up the dominan voting system suit and at that point my guess is we go to commercial break and the segment would be over he is going on Bill Maher who's getting more conservative by the week so this is sort of an unformed question I I'm crazy about you I'm crazy about rean um I should have brought Regan no you know she came to Philadelphia Philadelphia once for like just a kind of vacation weekend she's very good in the hotel and I have beautiful pictures of her on the Rocky Steps I do no I do now I've totally forgotten what I was going to say um that was that was the strategy that was my thought and she was praising you so I'm a retired Presbyterian Minister and if I were still in the Pulpit you would be in my sermon next Sunday on humility um that that column in the New York Times was incredible and you often were in my sermons when I was preaching um but I'm also an English major and so um I'm I'm wondering what your next book would be so I see your last chapter are okay what are my Solutions or my thoughts but if you would write a whole book um you're teaching now and words are so important and the thing I love about your newsletter are sentences the sentences you have in the newsletters and so the sentences of humility like how do we teach ourselves again to speak in a way um that is Invitational um that listens uh you know if if you were like you're probably already writing your next book but I'd like your next book to be like on humility and I'm just saying it's well it's it's it's um it's funny you say that I've have not committed to my next book I do have a fairly developed idea but I will tell you um that about six months ago um I said to my agent the the the thing on humility you read in the times was from the book it was words from the book and I said to my agent you know as I wrote the book The chapter that meant the most to me was the final one on humility and I really wanted to kind of sit and stay with that longer I think my next book should be on humility and she said no one will buy it next idea um oh that's so funny so maybe I should go back to her but I was on team humility until I was slapped down um but you know I think just to give you a slightly more serious on answer and then to move on I think some of the things that we don't teach adequately in school um are in fact vessels for humility I think when you when you teach history in the proper way you are teaching people to be humble you are you are reminding them that their Moment In Time exists in a much larger context and is informed by everything that came before when you teach citizenship and civic duty in a correct way you're teaching humility so I I would like to see us get back to some of those things which sound like some kerin kind of fussy wish list but I think they're really fundamental to Civic Health um I I I want to ask you about a grievance that's gotten a lot of attention recently um the president apparently isn't real happy with the New York Times and I wonder if you talk a little bit about that so you're you're talking about well I mean the president is unhappy with isn't unhappy with the New York Times for a number of reasons so seriously what exactly well there was a wide reported story that the times was mad at the president they were mad that about access yeah about access that he wouldn't do an exclusive interview with the times Well actually now I mean I'm not I I should say here um I write regularly for the times I'm not on staff and even when I was on staff I'm not privy to the discussions and the details at the highest levels and I don't speak for the news organization um my my my understanding of what happened there is they were complaining on sure it was out of self-interest I'm sure they wanted the interview to be with the times but they were complaining more widely about the lack of media interviews Biden has done period um about the fact that he ranks near the bottom of recent presidents if not at the bottom in terms of doing press conferences in terms of doing interviews with um independent large uh you know most the most venerable news organizations and they're right about that um and I think they are right to bring that up and their right to press about that uh as a matter of democracy not as as a matter of time self-interest um so if the president's unhappy with the times because they're saying you're not being transparent and interacting enough with the media I'm going to take the times aside there is it everything does it mean we should all go out and vote for Donald Trump not my opinion um but I think it's a legitimate thing to bring up and I think it's important I thought you were going to go somewhere else with this question um there's been a lot of debate since the beginning of the week when Joe Khan the executive edit of the times given interviewed a semafor um and the question seemed to be like are you uh abetting a possible Victory by Donald Trump and thus essentially doing an unpatriotic um thing by covering Biden critically um and he was saying no and I'm on his side with that too again not because I'm worried for my job or whatever um we can't we will have no credibility and no voice when we criticize a politician be it Donald Trump or any other politician if we openly sugarcoat and censor ourselves in the interests of a given outcome I believe in terms of things I write I believe that when I occasionally um weigh in on Joe Biden's age and say that it is not ideal for him as a candidate right now that it's hurting him um and that it is giving vote some voters pause I get readers emailing me saying how dare you do you want another four years of Trump no I don't but I'm also I'm not paid to work for either campaign and I believe I'll have more credibility when I weigh it in against something if I'm honest about the about the shortcomings as well as the virtues of the person I may end up voting for um I thought that's where you were going to go and I wish people would understand that journalists are not campaign AIDS and if they start becoming campaign AIDs that is not going to lead anywhere good thank you very much for your remarks you've done a great job of describing the uniqueness of American politics and grievance in America today has grievance fantastici to other countries um I'm going to answer because I know we're going to run out of time I'm going to answer that in one word brexit but yes I mean throughout Western democracies but you know I mean G we we had an e we had an echo of January 6th in Brazil in fact we had something happen that was exactly the same almost I mean pretty much exactly the same um in in many Western European countries and central European countries you see the very same tensions you see here between a magti populism driven by grievance um and and other forces so yeah this is this goes beyond the United States I think we are the most intense and fascinating laboratory for grievance we're number one yeah we're number one um but no I mean for reasons we should sort of be proud of this is a country that makes Grand promises right that's part of what's so special about it but with grand promises comes um the the very real possibility for disappointment right um and I think that's part of what we're seeing here um our our very kind of aspirations and ideals become a problem when we fall short of them it doesn't mean we shouldn't have them and it certainly doesn't mean we shouldn't keep striving toward them but it is one of the explanations for why I think we're so quick to feel frustrated um and so quick to feel short changed because our country promises so much okay um this goes back to the question about was there some big event that should have brought us together and I what came to mind for me was the 2008 mortgage crisis where what what happened was that you know the country was on a on the brink and they bailed out the rich people you know the bankers which kind of needed to happen but then didn't help the regular homeowners who were underwater and you know you couldn't refinance because you couldn't you know show that you you know you couldn't refinance to lower your mortgage rates so I think I feel like that generated a lot of resentment and anger that set aside like oh those people and everybody else has left behind so I'm just wondering yeah if you feel like that's contributed to the that was early early days of the beginning of the resentment agree agree entirely and I I I talk about 2008 in the book you're absolutely right um and you described it exactly perfectly I mean remember 2008 is what begat the Tea Party party and in some sense the Tea Party is what begat the mega movement and I say that in a way like we may and certainly manifestations these days and a portion of the magga movement that that strikes many of us as absolutely Bonkers and reprehensible but if we're trying to understand how it got there and the full Movement we need to acknowledge what you just acknowledged it didn't emerge from just Madness there are econom there's socioeconomic reasons there are the way the government responded to a crisis reasons there are real reasons why that ended up being and if we were a little bit better about understanding and acknowledging that we might have a better respon a better and more productive constructive response to it that could lead us to a healthier moment thank you thank thank you Frank Rooney thank you all for coming [Applause]

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Length: 56min 32sec (3392 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2024