Jan. 29, 2016 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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| One of the reasons I like doing long-form interviews is that I can really focus in on important issues with my guests. | ||
| In many cases, the issues are inextricably connected, making it easy to go from topic to topic. | ||
| If we're talking about political correctness, that's a pretty easy jump to free speech, which is then another easy jump to the regressive left. | ||
| Sometimes these jumps just appear when I'm not looking for them, and that's usually when the conversations get really good. | ||
| It's the spaces where you have to think that are the breeding ground to spark new ideas. | ||
| My guest this week is civil rights attorney and legal expert Areva Martin. | ||
| I've done the Dr. Drew show on HLN several times with Areva and always find her to be incisive, thought-provoking, and passionate. | ||
| While we've appeared together several times, this will be the first time we really get to flesh out some ideas in a long-form way without worrying about a commercial break. | ||
| Areva and I are going to dive into a ton of hot topics and big ideas this week. | ||
| We're going to discuss everything from the Black Lives Matter movement, to the war on drugs, to the Oscars So White controversy. | ||
| As a Harvard educated black woman who founded and manages her own very successful law firm, I don't think I could find a better person to tackle so many important issues with than Areva. | ||
| You see what just happened there? | ||
| I just played some identity politics, didn't I? | ||
| Areva happens to be black and happens to be a woman, but in reality, how is that important to our conversation? | ||
| Actually, I don't really think it is. | ||
| I assume some of her views are based on her own personal experiences, but what I care about are her ideas, not the color of her skin or her gender. | ||
| We really have to get over the idea that by looking at someone you can figure out what they're all about. | ||
| I literally could not care less about someone's skin color, their religion, or their sexuality. | ||
| What I care about is their ideas. | ||
| What do they believe? | ||
| Why do they believe it? | ||
| Are they right? | ||
| Are they wrong? | ||
| What kind of world are they trying to create? | ||
| That is simply all that matters to me. | ||
| There are black conservatives out there. | ||
| There are Mexican libertarians. | ||
| There are lesbian Christians. | ||
| And there are cisgendered, blue-haired, video game-playing, bisexual Quakers. | ||
| And if you care about all those labels more than the ideas that the people themselves believe in, then you are actually part of the problem. | ||
| If you truly care about minorities, then you have to care about minorities within those minorities. | ||
| If you truly care about diversity, then you have to acknowledge diversity within diversity itself. | ||
| We should be defined by what we believe, not prejudged by people's assumptions. | ||
| As a wise man once said, when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. | ||
| My guest this week is a civil rights attorney, legal expert, and you may have seen us on Dr. Drew's couch together. | ||
| Areva Martin, welcome to the show. | ||
| Good to be here! | ||
| You know, from sitting next to each other to sitting across from each other. | ||
| Yeah, this is, it seems that we're going to be adversaries because we're usually on a couch right next to each other. | ||
| We get some leg touch. | ||
| Yeah, and that helps with some of the crazies that come on that show and really make it difficult for people, I think, like you and I who have Really intelligent and smart things to say. | ||
| Yeah, wow, we're building each other up just as we start here. | ||
| But that's exactly why I wanted to have you on the show, because we've been on Dr. Drew a couple times together, and I always find, you know, you're extremely passionate and you know your stuff. | ||
| And I find there's so many people in television, especially in cable news and on the cable channels, that are just yelling and screaming about stuff, but aren't really experts in anything. | ||
| I can tell you, and not to brag about my background, but you know, when you think of an expert, you really want the person to have some credentials that really make them an expert. | ||
| And I can't tell you how many times on these shows I've sat next to someone and I'm having a conversation and I want to go, you know what, I'm sorry, it's fifth grade. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It just drives me crazy. | ||
| But yes, there's been this proliferation of quote-unquote experts because there's so many shows and it seems like if you are willing to say something so outrageous and to say it very loudly, you can get booked on a show. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's what we see pretty routinely on a lot of these shows. | ||
| Yeah and that is again I mean that's why I love working with you because not only do you know your shit but you get right to it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Sometimes I'm sitting next to you and I'm thinking man if I just had that kind of just incisive way of going at it so we're gonna get into some some pretty deep issues. | ||
| Yeah well I've been working on TV for a while and I've had to perfect the soundbite because oftentimes you got 30 seconds. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I tell you, I start checking the news at five. | ||
| I read seven, eight newspapers throughout the day, and I'll get a call, and it's some complex issue that I've got to go on and talk to millions of viewers to make them understand, sometimes very technical legal stuff. | ||
| And the reality is, what's happening in a courtroom in a difficult case, say a murder trial, Doesn't really play well when you're trying to reduce it to a 30 second soundbite. | ||
| So you got to get kind of skilled at how to bring that very complex information to really digestible television viewers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's exactly why I like doing the long form interview because now we have an hour or maybe a little bit more even to really get into some stuff, really exchange some ideas. | ||
| So important because some of these topics are so big you can literally spend all day talking about, but yet you've got to reduce it to a soundbite. | ||
| So yeah. | ||
| I love long form conversations. | ||
| All right, then we're in the right spot. | ||
| But before we get to the issues, I want to do a little bit on your history. | ||
| So you are, you're from St. | ||
| Louis originally, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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St. | |
| Louis, right next to Ferguson, Missouri. | ||
| So when we were all eyes on Ferguson with the Mike Brown shooting, it was really personal for me because not only did I grow up in that community, I knew so many of the people that were involved on the front lines doing the protest. | ||
| So when that happened, happened when that explosion in that community | ||
| occurred really personally for me. | ||
| So yes, from St. Louis and went to college in Chicago, University of Chicago, love Chicago, | ||
| glad I'm not there this weekend though given the blizzard that's been just ravishing the country. | ||
| >>>BRIAN LEHRER: Yeah, you moved the right direction. | ||
| >>>JUDITH HARRIS: I moved it right, to the sunshine. | ||
| And then went on to Harvard. | ||
| So I lived in Cambridge. | ||
| Unfortunately the Patriots aren't going to the Super Bowl, that's another story. | ||
|
unidentified
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That was a rough ending for them yesterday. | |
| And my husband's like, "How can you be a Patriot fan?" | ||
| Well, I was there, you know, kind of like the Patriots. | ||
| But anyhow, yeah, so I went to Harvard. | ||
| Then I actually worked in a corporate law firm. | ||
| I worked on Wall Street. | ||
| And I was in this major corporate law firm representing big Fortune 500 companies and doing a lot of corporate law. | ||
| And I just got tired. | ||
| It didn't fit with my background, didn't fit with, you know, who I had grown up to be and the people that had influenced me. | ||
| So I left. | ||
| I left this really, really, really, really, really, really, really good job. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Are you saying the corporate lawyers make a lot of money? | ||
| Is that what you're telling me? | ||
| I'm saying I left a good job with a lot of money and a lot of perks and an office like on the 40th floor, big. | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| So imagine me calling St. | ||
| Louis. | ||
| And the family that's like just over the moon with happiness that first-generation college graduate, first-generation Harvard lawyer, big corporate law firm and now I'm leaving to go work with one other lawyer in this tiny little office on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Give up this huge salary. | ||
| It didn't go over too well. | ||
| You must have felt incredible pressure because you had sort of accomplished a lot, not that advanced of an age. | ||
| And then you say, all right, I'm going to step away from that. | ||
| But isn't that sort of what it's all about, really? | ||
| What life is all about? | ||
| I think it is. | ||
| And I think folks who find the most happiness in their careers is because they've taken a risk and they really follow their instincts. | ||
| They follow their intuition. | ||
| They don't do what's on the kind of the path that's been laid out for them. | ||
| And if you go to Harvard and you're in the top of your class, Your path is supposed to be either you become a Supreme Court clerk, and you go on to be a judge, or you go and you run a corporate law firm. | ||
| You start off as an associate, you become a partner, and you make a ton of money. | ||
| And that's a great life, and I have lots of friends that do that, so I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that life. | ||
| They throw good parties. | ||
| They have great lifestyles. | ||
| But it just wasn't who I was at my core. | ||
| I wanted to have more control over who I represented. | ||
| I wanted to represent little people. | ||
| I wanted to be involved in issues that really mattered to me. | ||
| And I just wanted something different for my career. | ||
| So I had no husband. | ||
| Had no mortgage and no kids, so you can walk away from a big job like that when you don't have all of those responsibilities. | ||
| Yeah, and now you have a husband. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| You have a law firm that you run with your husband, correct? | ||
| Three kids, yes. | ||
| And you have three kids and all this stuff, so you're doing a lot of stuff. | ||
| Yeah, I'm doing a lot of stuff. | ||
| But I'm happy about it. | ||
| And about seven years ago, I decided I wanted to step away from my courtroom practice. | ||
| I was a trial lawyer. | ||
| And I wanted to have a greater impact. | ||
| And I had this amazing case. | ||
| Amazing because I was representing these great families. | ||
| Horrible thing had happened to them. | ||
| Their kids had been... | ||
| abuse in the classroom some non-verbal autistic kids abuse in the classroom by this just criminal teacher really and they called me from Las Vegas and asked me to come and represent them and I did that and Dr. Phil was very interested in their story and invited my clients and then me as a result of representing them on to his show and I got there. | ||
| I loved having an opportunity to raise awareness about an issue I cared about and break down, you know, what had happened legally and why this teacher was being prosecuted. | ||
| And that began my TV career, and I've been working in TV ever since that one appearance on Dr. Phil. | ||
| Yeah, and even that, we're going to get to this a little later, but even having a case involving autism, you've written a book about autism. | ||
| Your son has autism. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I don't like saying is autistic, because it seems very defining versus has autism. | ||
| It's just a piece of who he is. | ||
| So even that right there is a nice way to start your adventure, sort of, because it was something that was very important to you. | ||
| Yeah, and you're right. | ||
| I did write a book because I was frustrated. | ||
| I didn't like what was out there. | ||
| It was too hard to figure out how do you get the best education? | ||
| How do you get the best health care? | ||
| And I said, this is crazy. | ||
| I'm a Harvard training lawyer and I'm having such a difficult time. | ||
| What about the mom who has four or five kids at home, maybe working two jobs, | ||
| and doesn't have the time to sit on the Internet all day, like I did, and search for this information. | ||
| So I wrote a book called "The Everyday Advocate," | ||
| "Standing Up for Your Child with Autism and Other Special Needs," | ||
| to really bring a lot of the information that I had learned as a parent and as an advocate and as a lawyer | ||
| into one place that a parent, a professional, could go and get the help that they needed for their child | ||
| or grandchild or whatever. | ||
| So really just try to make that journey a little easier for parents. | ||
| Okay, all right. | ||
| Well, we're going to dive a little deeper into that in a bit, but let's knock out some issues. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| So you already brought up the first thing that I want to discuss with you, which is Black Lives Matter. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, as you said, you're from St. | ||
| Louis, right next to Ferguson. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You know this area. | ||
| A couple weeks ago, I had Larry Elder on, who is a... Okay. | ||
| Uh-oh, the eye roll already. | ||
| Was that side eye or eye roll? | ||
| Well, I've been on his radio show. | ||
| We've debated these issues a lot. | ||
| I don't understand Larry, to be honest with you. | ||
| Bright guy, lawyer, turned talk show host, radio talk show host. | ||
| But his views are the most extreme views. | ||
| I can't even imagine where he got them from. | ||
| So I don't want to make this about him. | ||
| It's not necessary. | ||
| But the reason I mention it is because why I like doing the show is I want to talk to people that believe one thing and somebody that believes something else. | ||
| So that's a great place for us to start because basically his take, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but to paraphrase him, was he felt that there really is no more systemic racism in the United States and that That really the struggle for the black community is because of the breakdown of the family. | ||
| So if you want to address that a little bit and then we can dive right into really the... Yeah, that's just absolutely stupid. | ||
| I could be more articulate about it, but I'm just gonna say that's just stupid. | ||
| To say there's no longer systemic racism just ignores so much data, so many statistics, so many reports. | ||
| It ignores the facts. | ||
| It ignores the reality. | ||
| And conservatives like Larry like to deflect from those issues because if they can blame it on the family, if they can blame it on the victims, then they don't have to accept any responsibility. | ||
| But the reality is The criminal justice system, let's just start there. | ||
| Disproportionate number of African Americans and Latinos, but particularly blacks, who are incarcerated, who have longer sentences, who are treated differently, everything from driving while black, so who are racially profiled even when they drive their cars. | ||
| And we've seen so many examples of this from high profile people like Chris Rock. | ||
| James Blake, the tennis player, who all have had some negative experience. | ||
| The President, Eric Holder, when he was Attorney General, talked about him and his brother being stopped in Washington. | ||
| Didn't Danny Glover, something happen with Danny Glover, he couldn't get a cab or something? | ||
| I don't think we can identify a black man, and really I'm serious, whether they're high-profile celebrity, professional, or just a guy on the street that hasn't had some negative experience with the police simply because of their race. | ||
| So when folks like Larry talk about, you know, we're post-racial society, their facts are off. | ||
| They're just wrong. | ||
| So what would you say about the family part, though? | ||
| Because it seems to me that, as I say on the show all the time, two things can be true at once. | ||
| So everything that you've said there fully makes sense to me. | ||
| But also that the breakdown of the family in general, black, white, Asian, green, is a problem that we have. | ||
| Well, I don't know what he means when he says the breakdown of the family. | ||
| I think families have changed. | ||
| So let's talk about two gay individuals who are now parents because they can get married, they can adopt a kid. | ||
| Right, conservatives don't go too deep on that. | ||
| Well, okay, but the reality is the family today isn't the family of the 1950s. | ||
| So when they say the breakdown of the family, what family are they talking about? | ||
| Single moms are as common as two-family households. | ||
| And are we to say that that's a better family structure? | ||
| So I'm not sure even I buy into that assertion that there's been some breakdown. | ||
| I will agree there's been an evolution and families look very different today, interracial families. | ||
| Couldn't exist 40, 50 years ago. | ||
| Is that the breakdown of the family? | ||
| Because now you and I could be married and have kids? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is that no longer... You're married, I'm gay. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| That could be the new thing, you know? | ||
| But you and I could decide to have a child together, right? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Even though we're not married? | ||
| In vitro. | ||
| I mean, there's so many ways that families are created. | ||
| So when they say the breakdown, what are they talking about? | ||
| So I don't buy into that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good. | |
| That's why I had you here. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So let's dive really into Black Lives Matter as a movement. | ||
| What do you make of the general movement itself? | ||
| Do you feel that it's hitting the right tone? | ||
| I'm going to say this and I'm going to get Just slaughtered on social media. | ||
| The Twitter people are ready. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| Somehow I've become like the spokesperson for Black Lives Matter even though, you know, they haven't enlisted me, they haven't called me on the phone and asked me to do it. | ||
| But I find myself trying to give some context. | ||
| I think what Black Lives Matter has done has been nothing short of brilliant. | ||
| The issue of race and race politics in this country are very complex. | ||
| And all hands on deck. | ||
| So I play a role as a civil rights attorney that represents families who have been the victims of any kind of police violence or they've had their rights violated, their constitutional rights. | ||
| So I step in as a lawyer and I represent those people. | ||
| But then I have this platform. | ||
| I get to talk on television every week about these high-profile cases. | ||
| So I get to lend my voice to that. | ||
| Then there are these people who go out and they march and they protest. | ||
| And look, as a result of that, so folks in the courtroom, folks using their platform on television, folks like Al Sharpton using his voice, and then these protesters. | ||
| So now the issue of police profiling, police shootings of African Americans, it's been elevated to this national level. | ||
| Black Lives Matter have had audiences with Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders. | ||
| It's come up in the presidential debate. | ||
| And I think we've got to give those protesters some credit for that, because but for their activism, this issue would not have become a part of the national dialogue that we're having about how do we make communities safer. | ||
| Yeah, what did you make of the instance when the two protesters went up to Bernie's podium and basically grabbed the mic from him and he sort of let them do it? | ||
| Because a lot of people felt that that was like, you know, I talk about identity politics a lot, and that my problem with identity politics is I find everyone has to figure out who's the most aggrieved, so Bernie is an ally, obviously. | ||
| Of the Black Lives Matter movement. | ||
| He's an ally of the other, always. | ||
| But if everyone is always looking out just for themselves, then you have the right, in your mind, to grab the mic away from him, even though he's as left as it's going to get in politics in America. | ||
| Now, to say that I support what Black Lives Matter has done in terms of elevating this conversation to a national level doesn't mean I agree with everything that they do. | ||
| Would I like for them to approach Bernie differently? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did I feel good about watching him try to figure out, what do I do? | ||
| Do I call security? | ||
| Do I have them escorted away? | ||
| And then kind of what's unfair about that? | ||
| He didn't have Secret Service protection. | ||
| The reality is they wouldn't have even gotten Near that microphone or stage, had that been Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump or any of the other candidates that have— I don't think Trump has Secret Service, but he has plenty of security guards. | ||
| Well, he has plenty of security. | ||
| So the reality is Bernie, in allowing himself to be open, kind of left himself open to these hyper-protesters. | ||
| I didn't like that. | ||
| Bottom line, I didn't like that, but it doesn't, to me, take away from the overall efforts that they've had and the successes that they've had. | ||
| But I do think that we have to get comfortable with this concept of disruption. | ||
| And that's what I think is so upsetting to a lot of people, even African-Americans, | ||
| even traditional African-American civil rights leaders, they want Black Lives Matter to fit into this box. | ||
| They want them to follow the mode of the 1950s and 1960s protesters. | ||
| And they're like, hell no! | ||
| That's not who we are. | ||
| We're not looking for Martin Luther King to come and save us and to lead us. | ||
| This is a movement of the people, from the people, and it's being done totally different. | ||
| So they're not looking to Organized in a way that John Lewis and a lot of those civil rights leaders did. | ||
| And I think that's a little unsettling for people. | ||
| They don't get it. | ||
| Yeah, so that's an interesting sort of generational struggle because obviously John Lewis and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and many other people Did things at different levels, some on the ground, some via speaking and all that. | ||
| And I find that this movement hasn't quite figured out what it is yet. | ||
| But I think your point is that that's part of the magic. | ||
| That's the part of this new paradigm that literally you can go on Twitter and organize a thousand people to show up at a rally. | ||
| And sometimes at that rally, and my daughter has been, so there was a big rally last year after Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, and she says, Mom, some people had this sign, some people had that sign, there was really no organization. | ||
| I'm not even sure if people knew why they were there, but it caught fire on Facebook, it caught fire on Twitter, and thousands of people showed up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I says, well, you have to get used to that. | ||
| That's a part of the unorganized nature of it is what makes it special and what makes it unique. | ||
| And yes, some people were there for gay rights. | ||
| Some people were there for human rights. | ||
| Some people were there for sex trafficking. | ||
| Some people were there for police brutality. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I said, but they were all people who were at the end of the day just trying to make Their lives, their communities, the people they care about have a better quality of life. | ||
| So for that I have to applaud. | ||
| So interestingly there could be sort of this could be the genesis of something sort of much bigger because when you take all those people and again this is where my thing with identity politics is sort of interesting because everyone's got their issue. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| And yet they're coming together so that's good in itself. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I'm afraid that it allows for a lot of issues to then just jump on top of each other when some of these things aren't necessarily But what's the alternative? | ||
| And that's what I say to people. | ||
| Okay, if you don't like how Black Lives Matter has addressed this police brutality issue, which, by the way, you have to give them some credit for all of the legislation that's happening at the federal level and state by state. | ||
| Requiring body cams. | ||
| California just passed a law now that says a special prosecutor has to be appointed if there is a police shooting. | ||
| So, we have seen the fruits of their labor. | ||
| And I say to people, give me an alternative. | ||
| What, in your world view, or if you could wave a magic wand, how would it look? | ||
| Yeah, I don't think you're asking me specifically. | ||
| No, I'm with you. | ||
| I find there, philosophically, there's something to me that seems a little dangerous of everyone sort of jumping on these social justice things. | ||
| But I do hear you. | ||
| I do hear you. | ||
| I don't see anyone else, and the Black Lives Matter protesters that you talk about, Generation, they said, Al Sharpton and some of these other civil rights movements, | ||
| leaders, what they do is fine. | ||
| But they really are about grassroots. | ||
| They're about local people, indigenous leadership, so people in their own communities standing | ||
| up and demanding that they get a voice at the table when decisions are being made, like | ||
| who's going to be the police chief, who's going to be the district attorney. | ||
| Now, what I would say is what I hope to see, and I was disappointed in the midterm elections last time, how do we translate all of this social activism into electoral politics? | ||
| How do we get those thousands of people that showed up for a rally, how do we get them to vote in the 2016 election and beyond? | ||
| Yeah, and you talk a lot about local politics. | ||
| So I can, backing up for a sec, I can give you an example where I think it's a bit of a problem. | ||
| So for example, what we're seeing on college campuses right now with free speech. | ||
| Now I get that the thrust of what they're doing, they're standing up for social justice and they want equality. | ||
| We're not just talking about the black community, the gay community, whoever it is. | ||
| So I understand the idea there. | ||
| But then when you see the instances like at Yale where they're shouting down this professor and that they're demanding professors be fired, it seems to me that we've created a situation here where the students are now dictating the policy, which seems a little backwards. | ||
| And I know that there's a lot of people in academia that are really afraid of where this is headed. | ||
| They're 18. | ||
| They're 19. | ||
| And think about what should you be doing at college? | ||
| I think what those students are doing is... Well, you should be exchanging ideas, but not demanding that professors be fired. | ||
| Well, why not? | ||
| If the professors are racist and the professors are not sensitive to the issue of inclusion and diversity, why not demand that they be fired? | ||
| Did you feel that that professor at Yale, he was the dean of that college, and his wife had written a letter about the Halloween costumes. | ||
| I mean, to me it was just, you know, if they don't want to... Okay, here's the problem for me. | ||
| In any Transition. | ||
| Any time you're trying to transform an organization that has had systemic racial inequality and injustices for decades, is somebody going to be sacrificed that perhaps really wasn't the person? | ||
| Are they going to be scapegoated? | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Yeah, but why is a university like the University of Missouri, that all predominantly black football team, if they hadn't stood up and stood with the guy Jonathan Butler who went on the hunger strike, if they hadn't stood up with those students, I doubt If Jonathan was still on that hunger strike, I'd be dead by now. | ||
| I doubt if that university responded. | ||
| But why is a public university like Missouri, like 7%, 5%, such a low percentage of African American students, why does it take us to get to the point where the students have to shout | ||
| down the professors for the universities to look at themselves and say, "There's | ||
| something wrong with this picture. | ||
| It's not reflective of the community where this school is." | ||
| And you remember that University of Missouri president, he's in his parade and he was so | ||
| arrogant and he wouldn't even address those students. So did he did he end up stepping down? Yeah, | ||
| they forced him out. Absolutely. | ||
| So interestingly, the Missouri and the Yale ones, which happened basically at the same time, I see as two, what to me, the Yale thing was far worse. | ||
| The Missouri thing, yeah, had the mostly black football team not got involved, then nothing would have happened. | ||
| So I do hear that. | ||
| But even in that instance, you know, there was that professor or part-time professor, that woman who came out and got caught on camera saying, we need some muscle here. | ||
| And then that is a free speech issue. | ||
| So I guess that goes to your earlier point, which is you can be for a movement, and that doesn't mean you agree with every tactic. | ||
| Every tactic. | ||
| Some of the tactics are not well thought out. | ||
| But again, that's why I said they're 18, they're 19. | ||
| This is their first, some of their first experience with any kind of unrest or any kind of protest. | ||
| So I wouldn't expect their thoughts to be as developed or their tactics to be as developed as, you know, somebody is 30 or 40 or beyond. | ||
| So I think we have to just accept that these are teenagers just kind of finding their way and young adults who are finding their way on some pretty complex issues. | ||
| But I think more importantly for me is, if I'm a university president, why Why aren't I being more proactive on these issues? | ||
| Why aren't I addressing issues of diversity and inclusion before it bubbles up and now I have the kind of protest that we've seen on campuses across this country? | ||
| So I just don't think a lot of these folks are being very smart about the issue of diversity and inclusion. | ||
| And we could segue into the Oscars as a very good example Yeah. | ||
| Of that. | ||
| Let me throw in one other thing, and then we'll go Oscar. | ||
| But this is exactly why I wanted to talk about this, because I think that basically the bulk of the sane people in the middle of this country pretty much see these things in a similar way. | ||
| But even just what we're doing right now, it shows that there are different ways of looking at it. | ||
| It doesn't mean someone else is racist, or someone else is automatically a bigot, or something, and we're so used to using those words. | ||
| So that's why I wanted to unfurl some of this. | ||
| But sometimes, unfortunately, we can't sit down. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And have this kind of dialogue because those words that you use just shuts the conversation down. | ||
| Yeah, so one other piece on this, and then we'll move to the Oscars, is my guest last week, Michael Shermer, who's a thinker and a skeptic, he made an interesting point about the college thing where he said to me, you know, if these kids at Yale, if at this point what they're protesting about is Halloween costumes that might offend them, Then that actually shows great progress in society because of the things that they would have had to protest 30 years ago. | ||
| And I thought that actually gave me a little bit of, it was a nice feeling to sort of take away from this, that it doesn't mean that problems don't exist, but it means that we actually have moved forward in society. | ||
| And we don't, I think sometimes we don't stop and acknowledge that enough. | ||
| And I think Obama did a great job of that when they had the march on the John Pettus Bridge at Selma. | ||
| And he says, as much work as there is to do on this question of race in America, we cannot lose sight of the tremendous progress that has been made. | ||
| So I would agree with Michael on that point that yes, they weren't protesting because | ||
| they couldn't eat in the same cafeteria or drink from the same water fountain as the | ||
| white students. | ||
| Now the issues of race, and they've changed, they are. | ||
| They're more subtle. | ||
| They're more in some ways insidious because they're not overt. | ||
| So the colored only signs made it real clear what our mission was. | ||
| There wasn't much dispute about that. | ||
| But now, you're right, because even again, African Americans are often divided on this question. | ||
| And I've sat on Drew's couch with some conservative African Americans who say, like Larry, What are they complaining about? | ||
| They're in the college, work hard, get good grades, and everything will work out. | ||
| So people aren't speaking from one voice on this issue of race because it's complex. | ||
| Yeah, so I know I said last thing, but I'm going to throw in one more, just jumping on that. | ||
| What do you make in general of black conservatives? | ||
| Because I'm friends with a few black conservatives. | ||
| David Webb, who's a Sirius XM host, who is a Fox News contributor, is a good friend of mine. | ||
| We work together at Sirius. | ||
| And I know that he, I know him extremely well. | ||
| And I, you know, we've had drinks together, we've had dinner together. | ||
| I know that he believes what he's saying. | ||
| And when I see what people say about him, you know, Uncle Tom and just, we could go through the, | ||
| Yep. | ||
| The list of things that people say. | ||
| What do you make of people like that? | ||
| Well, first of all, I think David and any black Republican conservative, | ||
| however they identify themselves, they're perfectly within their right | ||
| to have the opinions that they have about race and politics and to identify with the GOP party | ||
| or the independent party or whatever party. | ||
| So I don't come from a place that because you're black you have to agree with everything that I believe in or because you're gay or There's no monolithic thought in any of these communities that people have different points of views. | ||
| And I like a conversation where all of those points of views have an opportunity to present themselves and to be a part of the conversation. | ||
| I don't think that because David or Larry or any of those conservatives have their view about the family, That that view is any less significant than my view. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because I don't see it the way they see it. | ||
| It doesn't mean that their points aren't important. | ||
| So I like debating those guys. | ||
| I like talking to those guys. | ||
| And I think it's a mistake to try to shut their speech down or to try to silence them. | ||
| Yeah, I feel the same way. | ||
| Some people call these lefties, these super progressives. | ||
| Yeah, I'm not thrilled with those guys either, but that's a whole other topic. | ||
| This is a perfect segue now to the Oscars So White situation, because Fox News had Stacey Dash on, who is black, and she was saying, sort of to the black community, she was just like, get over it. | ||
| That this is not an important thing. | ||
| You do know that we have decided that we will take a deal and give You guys, Stacey and we will take Adele. | ||
| We think that's a fair trade. | ||
| You want basically our number one white person right now. | ||
| Yes, we love Adele. | ||
| Stacey, you can take Stacey. | ||
| She was in one movie I think in 1995, Clueless. | ||
| That's what we're getting? | ||
| Could we get a draft picked? | ||
| We want Adele. | ||
| Everyone wants Adele. | ||
| That was trending on black Twitter. | ||
| The power of social media. | ||
| Stacey's entitled to her opinions. | ||
| I don't necessarily put Stacey in this category. | ||
| I don't know her personally, but there are people. | ||
| Of every race, every persuasion that have branded themselves as we started this conversation as experts. | ||
| They like the attention that they get from saying outlandish things. | ||
| They like to be provocative on topics. | ||
| I don't know if this is her, like I said, I don't know her personally, but I do know | ||
| because I sit in this chair and I sit on these shows, you know, four or five times a week | ||
| and some of these folks, I know that they're intentionally trying to be provocative, but | ||
| she may believe that African Americans should get over it. | ||
| I say again to her, she's misguided in her thoughts and her statements and you have to | ||
| look at the history. | ||
| None of this happens in a vacuum. | ||
| And for those folks who say, well, what about the NAACP Image Awards? | ||
| They're all black. | ||
| And what about BET? | ||
| It's all black. | ||
| Why are white actors complaining about that? | ||
| And I say, well, look at the history. | ||
| Why is there an NAACP? | ||
| Why are there NAACP image awards? | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, I look, I have no problem with her saying whatever she, if she believes it, look, even if she's just saying it to say it, cause she's on television, that's part of the game at some level, as you're saying. | ||
| And if she believes it, then she believes it. | ||
| I thought the one part that was a little odious really was that she said that we shouldn't have a black history month, which every, It's part of our culture, everything. | ||
| We should have a Black History Month and we should have a Latino History Month. | ||
| And see, that's the problem. | ||
| Are we going to do away with everything that identifies or celebrates someone's culture? | ||
| Let's start with Columbus Day. | ||
| All right, so Oscar's so white, so here we go. | ||
| So there is a big brouhaha right now. | ||
| We got a hashtag on Twitter going. | ||
| And a lot of the black community is not happy about this. | ||
| I should say right up front that Chris Rock, the guy who's gonna host the thing, who said he's still gonna host it, is black. | ||
| The president of the Academy is black. | ||
| But I think 94% of the voters are white. | ||
| I hope I'm getting that right. | ||
| Well, it's 94% of the Academy's white. | ||
| 77% of the voters are white males. | ||
| So, okay, so there are some numbers. | ||
| Now, I also saw some numbers that were, that since 2000, that pretty much it's been about, that the black community in America is about 10%, or about 12%, and they've gotten about 10% of the nominations. | ||
| So that, since 2000, that it basically works out. | ||
| So I'm just throwing out some numbers to start. | ||
| How do you feel about this? | ||
| That again, I love protests. | ||
| Let me just start there. | ||
| You can tell that about me because it works. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So Shura Boone Isaacs came out and said change needs to happen, but it needs to happen faster. | ||
| She was frustrated. | ||
| She was heartbroken. | ||
| Jada Pinkett Smith did her Facebook video to her seven million viewers. | ||
| And we had Spike Lee make his statement. | ||
| And guess what happened? | ||
| There was an emergency meeting on the agenda was this issue of diversity for the Academy. | ||
| And out of that emergency meeting came some commitments that were pretty significant, like we are going to diversify our membership by 2020. | ||
| We're going to add more women. | ||
| We're going to add more minorities. | ||
| And we're going to make the issue of diversity a bigger issue for the Academy. | ||
| And it makes sense. | ||
| You know, I didn't tell you this. | ||
| I went to Harvard for law school, but my major in college was economics. | ||
| So some of this stuff just boils down to money. | ||
| Yeah, I thought you were going to say you wanted to be an actress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| I'm an economics major. | ||
| So look at the facts here. | ||
| Last year, they said the ratings down 16% and a lot of that was attributed to last year when there were no black nominees and that hashtag trended. | ||
| Oscars so white. | ||
| The Oscars, Cheryl, they got a job to do. | ||
| At the end of the day, they got to sell a television program to a network And the network has to bring in sponsors and advertisers, and they're going to make a lot of money. | ||
| So imagine if that 16% grew to 25% because high-profile African-Americans like Spike Lee and Will Smith and Marlon Wayans and Jada Pinkett Smith all said, I'm not going to watch. | ||
| I'm not attending, and I'm not watching. | ||
| And to that point, if there were more black people nominated, it's not like suddenly white people would be like, I'm not watching this because there were some more black nominees. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| But do you think there's a little risk, though, in that this is, forgetting the politics side of it, and we know there's plenty of politics in Hollywood, but that these are subjective awards, so it is possible, do you think it is possible, I should say, that the people voted and they just happened to, the votes just worked out? | ||
| No, that's bullshit, Dave. | ||
| You just don't think that that's a possibility? | ||
| No, that's not possible. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| Because what we're hearing is that the memberships, they get to watch whatever movies they choose to watch. | ||
| So if I'm a 78-year-old white guy, Okay, and I've got all these movies to watch. | ||
| What are the chances that I'm going to watch Straight Outta Compton? | ||
| It's just not likely. | ||
| And here's what African-Americans want, and I've heard- So that's interesting. | ||
| So that's almost, you would say that's sort of racist by omission. | ||
| It's more of a cultural bias. | ||
| That's why diversity matters. | ||
| And someone says, well, we don't want affirmative action for the awards. | ||
| No, we don't want affirmative action. | ||
| We just want The Academy to reflect the reality of moviegoers. | ||
| So 46% of all tickets sold at the box office are from minorities. | ||
| So, if the people buying your product, by and large, all we're saying is let the Academy reflect those people. | ||
| And at the end of the day, if an African American or a Latino decides that Straight Outta Compton isn't a movie that they want to vote for to be Best Picture of the Year, okay. | ||
| We can live with that. | ||
| We're not asking that it get any special treatment. | ||
| All we're asking for is diversity, so that at least there's some confidence that the process is fair, even the playing field. | ||
| Don't give us any greater advantages. | ||
| You know, Viola Davis says it best, the difference between black women in TV and white women Other opportunities. | ||
| So we're really just talking about opportunities. | ||
| And Spike Lee, I think, was spot on saying, this happens way before we get to the award seasons. | ||
| This is happening in the C-suites at studios because when we look at who can green light projects, that's where we've got to start. | ||
| There's no diversity. | ||
| There's no African. | ||
| I think he told me that, I think he said there's one African American that has the power to green light a project. | ||
| So it starts with, Like a major studio project. | ||
| A major studio, yes. | ||
| Obviously not independent films, but it starts with the number of, and Whoopi Goldberg talked about this on The View as a director and an executive producer, is that the black Directors and writers and producers, they cannot get their projects through mainstream studios. | ||
| And when they do, their budgets are smaller and the opportunities for success on those projects. | ||
| But just again, I'm going to go back to my economics. | ||
| Right, so yeah, go to that. | ||
| You have Straight Outta Compton making $200 million. | ||
| You have Ride Along 3 pushing Star Wars out of the top slot. | ||
| I think somebody ought to take note. | ||
| The bean counters, the accountants, the money people ought to be taking note of that and ought to do what TV has done to recognize, hey, there's some money in these urban movies. | ||
| And that to me, that's the interesting part, because if I know one thing about now living in L.A. | ||
| and being part of Hollywood or whatever this is, is that this town I think basically is just run by people want to make money, that it's a capitalistic town. | ||
| It's not like, so your argument though would prove if they said, all right, guys, we're looking at the numbers here. | ||
| 46% of the people that are coming to movies are minorities. | ||
| Then we should be trying to increase that percentage of the pie. | ||
| It's not going to come at the cost necessarily of your white viewers that I think the town would be, would go for that because they want to make money. | ||
| But I think that's the fear, Dave. | ||
| You hit on something really important, and we're seeing that in the presidential election. | ||
| This fear that if I make way for you, African-American minority, somehow that means there's no way for me. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So your success comes at my expense. | ||
| And this is also what you should have learned, I'm sure you have, about this town is very relationship-driven. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So if I don't have that relationship with you, I'm not necessarily even going to get in the room to have the meeting. | ||
| And again, to Spike Lee's point, if we don't have more diversity in the top jobs, in upper-level management, in the decision-making positions, then maybe I'm never even in the conversation. | ||
| Yeah, you know, it's funny, I saw our friend Larry Elder, who we've now mentioned a few times here, I saw he was tweeting at Spike and basically was saying, come on Spike, you've made, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. | ||
| You're selling your mansion in New York for 35 million bucks. | ||
| It's a little disingenuous for you. | ||
| Now, I think I know what you're going to say to this, but I think it's interesting that it's good at least that any community is having those internal Yeah, but again, look how ridiculous that argument is. | ||
| You can sit here and say, Reva, come on, your son has autism, so when you're standing up fighting for more autistics or services for people with autism, that's just about enriching your own son's life. | ||
| Oftentimes, it's people's own personal experiences that causes them to become advocates or activists. | ||
| And it is because of Spike Lee's position inside the movie industry that he has the | ||
| voice and the credibility to speak to it. | ||
| I surely don't have any credible voice about making a movie. | ||
| I've never made a damn movie, so who wants to hear from me about that? | ||
| You want to make a movie? | ||
| No, I don't want to make a movie. | ||
| I want to talk about the folks that make movies. | ||
| I enjoy that better. | ||
| But I think his argument is disingenuous, and I think Spike Lee is in the best position. | ||
| And he's been on this point. | ||
| He's not new to this party. | ||
| If you look at the history of Spike Lee, and Spike Lee will tell you lots of projects he didn't get because he's always been outspoken about this issue of race and diversity and inclusion. | ||
| And yes, he's made a lot of money, and make more of it. | ||
| Right, and very unironically, Spike is fighting the same fight in reality that a lot of his movies were about fighting. | ||
| It's not like he's coming out of nowhere with this. | ||
| And he's hired, and this is a statistic I didn't even know until he got this honorary Oscar himself, he's hired more African-American actors than any studio bar none. | ||
| So here's one guy who has not had, you know, a slew of blockbuster movies, but yet he has made it a point to hire more African-American actors. | ||
| And he accepted that award with Sam Jackson and Denzel Washington, top actors, black, white, green, no matter what. | ||
| And they were there because they've been in so many of his movies. | ||
| You know, it just hit me as we're talking about this that it's so sad that so much has to be, you know, framed within the racial lens because we haven't gotten it there yet. | ||
| Because I've had Jackie Harry on my show, who was the first black woman to ever win an Emmy. | ||
| And I remember watching 227 when I was like, I was probably 10 or 12. | ||
| And I remember thinking, this woman is absolutely hysterical. | ||
| I didn't look at her and think, oh, there's a black woman making me laugh. | ||
| I just thought, this woman is hysterical. | ||
| And I guess, you know, talent ultimately is what has to reach the top. | ||
| But that doesn't mean that some of these systemic things can't be... | ||
| Yeah, and again, that's for people, we're not talking per se about affirmative action, but people, I think, get that wrong. | ||
| We're not asking that you lower the standards, we're asking that you even the playing field, and that's a very big difference. | ||
| What would you say to the people, I've seen this bubble up a little bit lately, that people are saying, well if you look at the Latino community, their numbers in America versus their nominations, or the Asian community really, | ||
| that they never get nominated basically. | ||
| So I see a lot of people saying, well, the black community is fighting the wrong fight here. | ||
| They're fighting something that makes everyone else go, ah, you're fighting about Oscars. | ||
| Nobody cares about Oscars. | ||
| While the Latino community is way less represented in-- | ||
| That is a fantastic question. | ||
| And I-- - I knew I'd get one right. | ||
| I knew I'd get one. | ||
| Look at the history. | ||
| What do black people do? | ||
| We break the damn doors down so everybody else, the gays, the Latinos, the Asians, women can walk through the door. | ||
| So watch what happens. | ||
| When diversity happens, it's not going to just be about black actors. | ||
| It's going to be about diverse actors. | ||
| It's going to be Latinos, Asians, people with disabilities. | ||
| They will all benefit. | ||
| Somebody has to lead on this. | ||
| And if you look historically, it's been African Americans who've been willing, even though you're right, disproportionately our numbers are much smaller than Latinos. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But we have a much more organized and developed system of protesting and raising | ||
| issues of racial inequality in this country than Latinos and Asians. And | ||
| trust me when we break the doors down nobody else is saying oh my god they broke | ||
| that damn door down. | ||
| I don't want to walk through it. Watch everybody run through that door. | ||
| So I would say to Latinos, Asians, stand up with us. | ||
| We all benefit from this. | ||
| We're not saying that it's all black actors. | ||
| I'm a woman. | ||
| I want to see more females. | ||
| I'm a disability rights advocate. | ||
| I want to see more individuals with disabilities. | ||
| Portrayed in movies and television. | ||
| So I think nothing but good from any marginalized group comes from the efforts of what we see happening on this Oscars So White. | ||
| Yeah, in a way, it shows the strength of the black community, actually, because because a lot of what we care about culturally and the music we listen to and and all of that stuff comes from the black community. | ||
| So it's like, in a way, the black community has to lead on this for the other minorities. | ||
| So it does kind of make sense. | ||
| And for those folks that say, oh my God, you know, this is a bunch of millionaires fighting about a gold statue, who cares? | ||
| The Oscars are a very important institution and the entertainment industry, particularly in a state like California, is huge. | ||
| And again, if we're buying 46% of the tickets at the box office, this is an issue that we need to be aware of. | ||
| Does it mean that we don't care about hunger? | ||
| Does it mean that we don't care about poverty and the fact that, you know, One out of three black kids live in poverty? | ||
| No! | ||
| And our capacity is large enough that we can fight the fight on poverty as well as address issues at the Oscars. | ||
| I don't see them as mutually exclusive at all. | ||
| Yeah, all right, well let's go with the poverty thing for a little bit because one of the things that I've seen lately is that a lot of numbers are showing that the black community has not gotten any better economically under the seven years of Obama. | ||
| And people felt he wanted to sort of be a post-racial president. | ||
| I don't think we've quite got there. | ||
| Not necessarily his fault. | ||
| But what can the black community do to get those numbers? | ||
| Well, I don't necessarily agree with those statistics. | ||
| Depending on what you read, the economy overall is much better under Obama. | ||
| Millions more health insurance. | ||
| Well, I've read that the economy itself is, but that the black community is still behind in that sort of regrowth. | ||
| The black community has made some gains under Obama. | ||
| So again, I disagree with and I reject those statistics that say blacks are worse off under Obama than they were under George Bush. | ||
| Hello? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| Do we still have a ways to go in this country? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Are we still disproportionately impacted by a criminal justice system? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Are we still lagging behind in wages? | ||
| Asset accumulation, absolutely. | ||
| So there is a lot of work to be done, but that doesn't dismiss the great work that President Obama has done on health care. | ||
| Look at the jobs rate, the unemployment rate, lower than it's been in a decade. | ||
| So I think we have to celebrate those advances that have been made and keep fighting, overcoming Hundreds of years of systemic racism. | ||
| Obviously, what we are now seeing doesn't happen overnight. | ||
| It is a long and entrenched fight that is, I think, what we learned, more intractable than perhaps what we thought. | ||
| I don't think anyone thought that Obama's legacy, you know, the hope, we were all high on hope eight years ago. | ||
| We were high. | ||
| It felt like we were high. | ||
| We were high on hope. | ||
| And no one could have predicted that the rancor and the adversarial nature of what he has faced, particularly in these last three years, I know I couldn't imagine. | ||
| Yeah, and some of that, and it's hard to say, is that racial? | ||
| Is that that our system is just warped? | ||
| Would the Republicans have been more willing to work with the white president? | ||
| I hate bringing everything down to that point. | ||
| There may be some element of it. | ||
| I don't think we really know. | ||
| I don't think we know. | ||
| Yeah, I don't think we can ever And again, I get so beat up about this, but it's just what I know, just historically. | ||
| I'm a student of history. | ||
| Race matters in this country, no matter whether you're the president of the United States or you're the president of the Oscars. | ||
| The fact that we're still fighting these battles have to tell us that race still matters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| All right, well let's get, how about we get away from race? | ||
| Let's get away from race. | ||
| It's just, it's such a shame that we have to spend so much time talking about it, but that, that is the point, I suppose. | ||
| So let's talk about politics, because I know you're big in the politics thing, too. | ||
| You are supporting Hillary. | ||
| I am supporting Hillary Clinton. | ||
| I'm also supporting a slew of progressive and some female, mostly female candidates. | ||
| I'm a big proponent of inclusion, not just for race, for women, for LGBTs, for Latinos. | ||
| I just think this country works better, our state, our city, our county, when we have diverse voices. | ||
| So I support a lot of candidates at the local, state, and national level that Don't look like traditional candidates. | ||
| So what do you make of the Hillary campaign? | ||
| Because I'm not sure who I'm supporting at this point. | ||
| I'm really at this point I see myself as a real centrist and I'm just not sure. | ||
| Now it seems to me that Hillary and Bernie are way better than any Republican. | ||
| Their debates have been about substance. | ||
| You know, they've really, even with the gun thing, you know, Hillary's trying to pin Bernie as the gun guy. | ||
| Meanwhile, he got a D minus from the NRA. | ||
| But so it's really been about substance, the Republicans, it's drunk and silliness. | ||
| We can talk about that too. | ||
| But one thing I have seen with Hillary is that, to me, this campaign, because of the email stuff, And Benghazi, which finally that's going away. | ||
| But whatever it is, there hasn't been a point where it's been like a run. | ||
| Like a nice month-long run where this is about really feeling good. | ||
| And maybe that's the media doesn't like her. | ||
| I don't think the media really likes her. | ||
| Something. | ||
| But how do you feel about the campaign in general? | ||
| So here's what I think. | ||
| I think the Trump and the outsider voices that have dominated the news media isn't just impacting GOP and the Republicans. | ||
| It's also impacting Dems as well. | ||
| And Bernie is lining up as that outside voice. | ||
| And Hillary, of course, is the mainstream establishment candidate. | ||
| When you listen to what Bernie and Hillary are saying, knowing what we now know about Obama, Bernie's policies, they just don't have a snowball chance in hell of ever coming to fruition. | ||
| He's talking about a 90% tax rate on the rich. | ||
| Hello, do all those rich guys in Congress and Senate are going to vote for a 90% tax rate on themselves? | ||
| Wait, I have to jump in because I know people are going to be yelling at you over that because I've mentioned that and people have said to me, what he's saying is that it would be a progressive tax. | ||
| So it's not that you're being taxed fully on the 90%. | ||
| You know, it hits certain marks. | ||
| Try any tax increase on the rich. | ||
| It doesn't play well to Congress. | ||
| Because most of those guys are rich guys. | ||
| He's talking about eliminating Obamacare. | ||
| A single source. | ||
| Single payer source health care system. | ||
| We couldn't get that voted in even when the Congress was controlled by Dems. | ||
| So I like his fire. | ||
| I like his progressive politics. | ||
| But I'm a pragmatist at heart. | ||
| And I just don't think any of those things he could get accomplished. | ||
| And we don't need eight more years of not being able to get anything accomplished. | ||
| What I like about Hillary Is she setting me on fire? | ||
| Am I as high as I was eight years ago? | ||
| No. | ||
| You don't have that tingle up your leg? | ||
| I don't have any of that. | ||
| But at the core of me, I like getting stuff done. | ||
| I think the woman can get shit done. | ||
| And you talk about the Benghazi and the emails. | ||
| To me, the crowning joy of her campaign was sitting at those hearings for 11 hours. | ||
| By far her best moment. | ||
| The way they attacked her, it would have taken Mother Teresa herself to restrain some of these junior, just got to Congress five days ago, don't know where the bathroom is, people yelling at her about the most ridiculous and unimportant details, and she just sat there. | ||
| So, I'm with you 100%. | ||
| Not only was it her best moment— That, to me, was like, you should be the president just for that— I posted a really funny Vine. | ||
| Did you see there was a moment where she did this little thing? | ||
| Oh, she was so like— And kind of looked away. | ||
| It was like, drop the mic. | ||
| I mean, it was like, vote— That's the kind of level-headed toughness that you need in office. | ||
| And that's what, to me, Bernie— When Bernie is doing all that, I'm like, dude, okay, you've got to bring it down a notch. | ||
| You're yelling. | ||
| I can't really understand you. | ||
| You're making me—you're giving me a headache. | ||
| So it's interesting because I know, so a lot of my audience loves Bernie and I've said several times that in my heart, I like Bernie the best. | ||
| I like the ideas the best. | ||
| But I also, because I consider myself a pragmatist, when he's saying these things, sometimes I see what he'll, he tweets these really lofty things about, you know, it's all about changing the system. | ||
| I'm all for changing the system and getting money out of politics and all those things. | ||
| But we just had Obama try to change the system pretty intensely, too. | ||
| And we were all higher than high seven years ago, right? | ||
| So that's why, at this point, I sort of think I'm mostly begrudgingly supporting Hillary. | ||
| You have to, because here's the problem with that. | ||
| And I tried to tell people this with Obama. | ||
| Nobody would listen to me then, either. | ||
| Nobody listens to me. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| That's why my clients pay me a thousand dollars. | ||
| We have a two-party system. | ||
| And the president is here. | ||
| He can do nothing, she can do nothing without the Congress and the Senate. | ||
| You cannot have been more charismatic than Obama. | ||
| The guy is like swag on steroids. | ||
| But that doesn't mean anything in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And that's the problem with all these people following Trump. | ||
| Trump is not going to be a dictator. | ||
| We don't have a dictatorship in our government. | ||
| Our government is about, it's a collaborative, and if you're not Able, one, to understand that, and then two, to navigate that, you get nothing done. | ||
| So that's the crazy part, and where it goes to, and this I think is probably a through-line of everything we've said here, is that education is the most important part. | ||
| We have three branches of government. | ||
| People forget that. | ||
| We have a judicial branch. | ||
| They decide what's legal. | ||
| We have a legislative branch. | ||
| They decide to make laws. | ||
| That makes the laws. | ||
| All these immigration policies these GOP candidates are talking about, they're going to build a wall and they're going to... | ||
| How exactly are you going to do that? | ||
| So that to me is the most dangerous part. | ||
| Let's talk about Trump for a second. | ||
| Because I saw him say a week ago or two weeks ago, he said something like, when I'm president, you know, they're going to put Merry Christmas back on Starbucks cups or something like that. | ||
| Now I get it. | ||
| It's just a stupid, he's just throwing stupid red meat out to some morons. | ||
| But even that, it shows a inclination to not even really understand what the role of the president is. | ||
| And they've dumbed it down, if you watch those GOP debates. | ||
| When Ben Carson said, see, my mother, she used to drive a car until the car wouldn't drive anymore. | ||
| Then she would take her pennies and she'd buy a new car. | ||
| Is that somehow supposed to translate to economic policy of the world? | ||
| $2,000 a month, her car and her pennies? | ||
| Dude! | ||
|
unidentified
|
The thing he said on ICE is... Oh, yeah. | |
| They said—one of the questions was like, well, you can't bomb these vehicles because they have civilians. | ||
| Well, just tell them if they ride in a car, they're going to get bombed, so they shouldn't get in a car. | ||
| So that's the piece. | ||
| Yeah, that's the piece. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, look— That's not a policy on ISIS. | |
| That is stupidity. | ||
| And that's the piece that goes across both sides, because, so you hear that, right? | ||
| You hear Ben Carson, and it's like, you clearly know nothing about foreign policy. | ||
| Like, he just uses a couple buzzwords, caliphate, jihad, like, he just puts a couple words together. | ||
| But then I'll hear Bernie talk about it, and I'm not for war, I'm certainly not for nation building and all that stuff, but I hear him say, well, you know, we're gonna have to work with our allies to do this, but he also will say, I'm never for war. | ||
| Which means that there's no threat of anything too, so it's like both sides are playing us. | ||
| That's the scary part and that's what I think the worst thing about the Trump reality show is it has dummied down the conversation so that we're starting to believe that these blusterous, you know, blowhorns can go in with these simplistic solutions to these complex I mean, the problems are so complex. | ||
| So, his whole Muslim policy, do you know that the people who are fighting ISIS the most are Muslims? | ||
| So, when you insult the Muslim community, you're insulting our – see, but if you don't know anything about foreign policy, you don't know that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And now what's really scaring me is they're saying when Trump becomes a GOP nominee, he's got to now somehow figure out how to reverse himself. | ||
| You know, he's insulted African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, just about every group that you need to win the general election in this country. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So now he's got to walk that back. | ||
| How do you walk that back? | ||
| And here's his dilemma. | ||
| If he walks it back, those white Lower middle class men, mostly, who are supporting him. | ||
| They're going to be pissed. | ||
| They're going to be pissed because the reason they like him is because he's standing up to make America great, i.e. | ||
| white again. | ||
| So how do you embrace the immigrant population and the Muslim population without alienating your base? | ||
| And that's the stupidity of the GOP party to me. | ||
| Yeah, you know, it's interesting. | ||
| This is where I've been very critical of the left, because I think that the progressives, because their intentions usually are very good, but their knee-jerk response is to yell bigot or racist or homophobe or sexist or whatever it is at everybody, that in a way they've enabled Trump. | ||
| Because they've silenced so many centrists and so many liberals that I think they've enabled, well, then Trump just comes in with answers. | ||
| Instead of saying, instead of a real debate where we say, what are we really doing with immigration right now? | ||
| What are we really doing about refugees and migrants? | ||
| Trump just comes in and says, I'm banning everybody. | ||
| And then that sounds good. | ||
| So I partly do blame our side of the aisle on that. | ||
| Well, it sounds good to that narrow group of people that he plays to. | ||
| But one of the things I find most interesting about the GOP election, remember after Mitt Romney lost, they went and did this exhaustive audit. | ||
| How did we lose? | ||
| Let's dissect. | ||
| Let's analyze and figure out what happened. | ||
| And what they concluded was they did not garner enough votes from the minority voters, particularly Latinos, and that they had to become the party of inclusion. | ||
| And so, and all their big money donors said, we're no longer supporting any of these kooks. | ||
| We want candidates that can win. | ||
| We're going to put our money behind candidates that can win, and we're going to go out and become the party of inclusion. | ||
| And they've done the exact opposite. | ||
| Frontrunners, not runner, runners, have made the concept of inclusion like a joke. | ||
| Yeah, and that's clearly why Trump is, the party is against Trump. | ||
| All right, so one last thing before we wrap up. | ||
| I do wanna talk a little bit about your son and your activism with autism | ||
| and the things that you've written and things like that. | ||
| So we hear a lot about autism. | ||
| I don't think people really understand what it is or how many people are now affected by autism. | ||
| Not only the kids that have it, but the families and all that. | ||
| So in just a couple minutes, can we just do like Autism 101? | ||
| Yeah, quickly. | ||
| So autism is a neurological disorder. | ||
| It impacts Three major areas. | ||
| Your communication, your ability to learn, so your cognition, and then your social skills. | ||
| 1 in 64 children, some say that number is understated, could be as high as 1 in 34, 1 in 35, but the CDC number is 1 in 64 children have autism. | ||
| Boys four times more likely than girls to have autism. | ||
| So it impacts The fastest growing childhood disorder in America. | ||
| Probably not possible for you to not have a friend, a co-worker, a family member, or someone in your circle that's been impacted by autism. | ||
| One of my best friends? | ||
| It's a spectrum disorder, so that means you meet one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. | ||
| Because every child, every adult is impacted differently from some very high-functioning folks who You might have heard the term Asperger's Disorder. | ||
| Folks like Bill Gates allegedly have Asperger's Disorder. | ||
| To people who are so low-functioning, that term low-functioning, and I don't mean it in a pejorative way, but who have no verbal skills, have to be in some kind of group home or very restrictive environment. | ||
| A huge, huge push was made in the last decade to address issues of adequate diagnosis and intervention. | ||
| Again, statistically, African-Americans, Latinos, diagnosed two to four years later than their typical peers, really difficult time accessing services. | ||
| Now, the focus and the push is on the aging out. | ||
| So, a lot of the kids that were diagnosed 10 years ago, 20 years ago, are becoming teens and young adults. | ||
| So, the question of college, employment, and independent living. | ||
| So, there's been kind of a shift in the community, or there's slowly The shift is happening to focus on what do we do with this population of teens and young adults. | ||
| Yeah, so if people want to find out more, where can we find you? | ||
| You can find out more about my work at RevaMartin.com and then the nonprofit that I started, Special Needs Network, SpecialNeedsNetwork.org. | ||
| All right, well, it's been an absolute pleasure. | ||
| We did the long form thing. | ||
| Yes, we did. | ||
| I mean, I literally didn't pick up my notes once, so that is a good sign. | ||
| Great conversation. | ||
| Yeah, good talk, good talk. | ||
| All right, so I want to thank Areva Martin, and you can check out more of her work, as she just said, at arevamartin.com, and we will do it again next week. |
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