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The First Amendment and a free people. A weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world. The program is produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University. The host of the program is the institute's director Dr. Bernard Rubin. With me today is Robert G Kaiser of The Washington Post who all of you know as having written the book The Entitled rush of the people and the power. It's amazingly fine book one of the books that ought to be on everybody's shelf as we try to unscrew that that bottle of mystery which is called Russia right. Written in a very readable way and in a very direct manner tells us about the Russians at least it helped me. He is also the author of a new book co-author of a new book with John Lawler who works for Newsweek magazine
called Great American dreams a portrait of the way we are which is just been published by Harper and Row. It's an interesting thesis that this book is based upon and I'd like to question you about it first. You and your colleague John Lowell were in Los Vegas Nevada covering a Teamsters conference when the idea hit you that maybe you ought to tap the rich mainstream of Americans that flows in and out of the place that entertainment place and ask them about what they think of America. That's the premise. Are you still agree that that premise is is a good one and I know that the book has all the results of it. But would you pick Las Vegas again. It's interesting problem in the in the ideal and abstract world we would. Las Vegas is clearly a perfectly sensible place to try to find a
large cross-section of middle class Americans is the most popular resort in America. It's the biggest convention center in America. It's a stop on the cross-country tour that many families take. You couldn't get a statistically defensible cross-section by random choice in Las Vegas but with some selective choice which is what we did we. There's nothing scientific about our approach here. We're sure and still sure that we found a reasonable cross-section of the American middle class. As a practical matter given the reception that we've had from several critics. It may have been might have been smarter to do it in Disneyland say because a lot of people think that they understand they have a very strong image of what is Las Vegas and they think it's a piece of junk on the American landscape and they're not interested in a book that starts from the premise that you can really find America in Las Vegas. I'm prepared to defend it with you now or with anybody else at any other time. But it really has put off people in a way that I'm afraid is going to affect the reception of the book unfairly and unduly.
Well I'm not exactly critical of Los Vegas but I'm saying if you accept that it was done in Los Vegas and the people that you've talked to made it to Los Vegas that was their dream in the first place to somehow occupy their time for a month or a year or a week in Las Vegas. I think that's curious the book in a more accurate sense if we accept that premise that we're in Las Vegas then we can talk about the great American dream of those who made it to Las Vegas would that be. Well no because of this convention factor and the because of the driving factor we are some of the most insane people in this park. For my money are people who came to Las Vegas because they had to. They came on business and they and several of them would point out you know I would never have met you were never to come here had it not been for this convention that I had to attend. The list of who goes now for conventions is fast. It's the Political Science Association the Booksellers Association the neurosurgeons as Asian. It's a real cross-section because they get a very good bargain on conventions so I moreover you had people that we found in camping grounds who were
just passing through who were not gamblers or the you know lusting after the silly life in Las Vegas. Moreover of 30 percent of interviews in the book are conducted outside of Las Vegas so I have no problem about defending the cross-section. Now a lot of the book's contents deal with the concept of America as seen by the media and by the establishment if you will. And you and your colleague John Lowell say that the media and the establishment are wrong. You're not talking about the 5 percent a very rich know the 40 percent of the relatively poor you're talking about that great middle class of America. And one of the things you say about the middle class is that they're tremendously optimistic. And that is one illustration. They love their television programs I can buy that part. They have been so attuned to relative junk food that now they crave it. But you also say that they love their automobile.
I think that given facts that are later and about the crisis in the automobile industry isn't this isn't this dream very adaptable. IN OTHER WORDS CANNOT people dream about small automobiles as well as large automobiles. Oh very much so you know why. To me one of the most startling statistics in the market today is that in California in the last six months of last year of the no season for six months of this year 50 percent of the cars sold were foreign made. I think that the Japanese designers particularly and the Europeans too have found ways to satisfy the American unpractical desires that they associate with automobiles very effectively and I mean it's it's one of the great failures of American industry in our time that 960 imported cars are about seven or eight percent of the American market and this year they're going to be 22 percent and Detroit is stood by and watched this happen they claim that they've been responding. But anybody who's driven a vaguer vs.. Toyota knows that a Vega was a lousy machine and it didn't satisfy the
very instant cravings that we found people talking about. Some of them in the book that people associate with cars cars are certainly much more than a way to get to the job. There's a whole sexual overlay on cars Mort Sahl used to say he had by mail transmission his car because how else was going to get sexual satisfaction. But there's something in that certainly there but there's the whole freedom independence thing you can get in your car and go anywhere anytime and Americans really care about that. You imply that Americans based on your survey are individualistic in the mass if that is an anachronism. That's right. That they they have certain individual foibles like the small crowd of people that most have their wives painted in the nude and hung over in the living room to get photographed in the nude in very leering SST poses. But you also say that in general the Americans are still very optimistic. Would you comment on that.
Yes I'm sorry we got away from that height. One of the reasons that the media and the politicians misunderstand the country and particularly this great dominant middle class that was the subject of our book is that we in the media and the politicians practice in politics assume that we are at the center of everybody's attention and that what we do is of importance to everybody. And we certainly discovered in writing great American dreams that that isn't the case that people are very happy to be entertained. For example on television either by Mork and Mindy or by Walter Cronkite. But from a perception of an ordinary Joe and Jane sitting around their breakfast table there isn't much difference Mork and Mindy and Walter Cronkite are about equally removed from their daily lives and the subject matter on both programs are equally removed from their daily lives. Americans and I think Mr. Jefferson probably very pleased to discover this 200 years later. Americans really do live without government or at least they feel they do.
I suspect if we did it scientifically you'd find that people don't understand how important government is in their lives they don't see it directly but most Americans regard the political process and the world political process as something very far removed from them so that when the news is gloomy this effects people and the pollsters can pick it up with certain kinds of questions. But it doesn't get we discovered. We think we've discovered it doesn't get to the central concerns that happened around that breakfast table that it's very easy for an American to feel optimistic about his own life and pessimistic about the state of the economy or the future of the country. When questions are asked in a grand way about subjects that are far removed from the breakfast table you can get a lot of pessimism. This is what Patrick Goodell did for President Carter this was the origin of the malaise in the nation argument that the president broke last summer I think he was all wet because I mean you've got to get to the small questions about your family your neighborhood your job. And there the optimism is still very strong in the polls and very strong indeed in our interviews.
People just have this indomitable notion that things are good and are likely to get better. And it's up to me to make them better and it's in my power to make them better. This is you know the old basic American dream the Horatio Alger business. It's really nonsense for a lot of people and I'd listen to people say this I said well look just examine carefully your own life you're kidding yourself you're not going anywhere. But they still believe it. And there are enough examples around that somehow reconfirm this. Well there is a danger and a good part of this. The danger is that if the media are as you suggested I think you're right aloof from or separate from the mainstream of American thinking then they have got to get closer not to cater to this cloak or common man who's constrained on his own backyard and his lawnmower but rather to make him concerned and make him interested in something beyond Walter Cronkite or mark and Mindy Mork and Mindy. It seems this is more of a problem for Walter Cronkite than it is for the
producers of Mork and Mindy. Very much so. My sense of I think there's been a lot of progress in television is the extraordinary success of 60 Minutes is telling us something I'm not sure we're getting the message. But real situations that people can identify with and real people who are newsmakers for one reason or another who can be somehow revealed more than the usual degree on 60 Minutes. That's you know that's now drawing the biggest audience of the let's go let's stop at 60 Minutes for a moment. I agree with you. If we look at the historic run of 60 Minutes in the main It has been a very adventurous program now it's being followed by things like 20 20 on another network and so on. But my own impression is that 60 Minutes got that label. It's people behind it got very conservative. And it is no longer the hard hitting program story by story or program by program that it was maybe it is the good Colonel who
has temporarily won a case. Which constrains the Meteora British Colonel Herbert case suing them for for alleged defamation of his his reputation. But I've noticed since the herbage case at least that we cannot say 60 Minutes is as blunt and direct and as I say adventurous as before this is my own personal impression frankly not a regular of myself but I and this may be so although I did happen to see it recently with a terrific piece of exactly the kind of journalism I think you're talking about about a black schoolteacher in Paterson. I think New Jersey who had been running decided not to run for the city council and just after so I did want to do that I got arrested on a kidnapping charge that was trumped up to serve some time in jail. It was an exposé of modern American big city racism that was really terrific stuff and it wasn't and we didn't it didn't step on any toes obviously in the sense that you're implying but it's the kind of investigatory
journalism that people do relate to because it's something that happened in a town on a small scale in a situation that ordinary people can identify with. And I think that's when where the media fails is drawing the links between that your breakfast table and the real world. And I agree I think that the individual stories on 60 Minutes and other similar programs have been outstanding let's just take a look at the general level of this middle America that you're talking about it is optimistic it is. What do you say about it's being conservative. Well it's it's interesting in the conservative and liberal are are lousy terms to apply to America there. They're essentially European terms I've decided and they don't really capture our diversities. But there's certainly no belief in middle class America none at all with any that's got any footing that any radical transformation of the organization of either society or the economic structure of society would be better for them.
It's I cover the Senate for The Washington Post now and watch in pain personal pain every time a tax reform bill comes along and gets clobbered it gets clobbered for good democratic reasons it gets clobbered because Americans don't want tax reform. And I believe this now and the reason they don't want it is that they're assuming that next month they're going to be rich. And that tax loophole is going to benefit them so they want to be there when they arrive. And there is this indomitable feeling that somehow it's all going to work out and it's all going to work out to my advantage and I believe the way it is because this is the this is the system that pays off big. When you strike it. Now that doesn't mean though that if offered a sensible plan of national health insurance that these people would be against it I sensed in the polls tend to confirm that people want a national health insurance plan that's supposed to be a liberal idea. In fact judging by the experiences of other societies it's just a sensible idea and it doesn't have to. Be anything seen as anything more than that. One of the really
frustrating facts about middle class America from our experience is the degree to which its members deny the size of poor America. Most of the people we talk to if we got on to these subjects and asked about poor Americans they thought the white people tended to think that they were predominantly brown and black which is wrong. And then they tended to think everybody that the size of the poor population was maybe 5 or 10 percent of the total. It's fact it's 25 million by the official poverty line statistic and it's certainly twice that in the real world. So you get a situation where. Members of the middle class. So many of whom came from the working class and who feel that in their own lifetimes either their parents or they have made enormous progress. They tend to exaggerate the degree to which others have come along and they tend to exaggerate the size of their own class. They they tend to feel that they are the real Americans or a few people up on top and there are a few people on the bottom and there's us. The result is that Americans who might in a political
sense if they understood that there still were 50 million poor people be more inclined to support programs or ideas that might get some more of those people out of poverty because they don't see that there are 50 million poor people therefore don't see a need to do anything for them I think that's a real political problem in regard to getting middle America going on any cause. On a subject that it must deal with such as energy or foreign policy or race relations or how to deal with poverty or social security in this particular election period I'm sort of classifying the candidates and I won't identify any of the candidates but one I would think would be Huckleberry Finn in his initial outburst and so on. Another would be raggedy Endy representing American themes without saying very much. The third would be that John Carradine part actors fine actors like that he used to do a lot of movies in which they played Shakespearean actors lost in
the hinterland somewhere remembering their old part on Broadway in some play like or Tello very stentorian without reaching anybody. Now if if this characterization has some validity who is going to make this great middle class move. Well I guess what's most interesting to me after this experience of writing this book is that. Probably the basic fact is that a lot of people are going to be moved. Period. Fifty four point six percent of the adults voted in 76 this could easily be the first election American history that has less than half of the adult population participating. It's gone down every quadrennial election is based there was a little blip 48 was very low as I recall that went back up in 52 but but certainly since 60 it's been going down steadily. And I think that's probably the place to start if you want to understand what's going on in the country. After that I
have the feeling that politics reaches such a ghost so shallowly into the society that the outcome particularly of an election in the sort of conditions of 1980 is really going to depend on circumstances perhaps at the very last minute both in terms of the primaries that will be important in deciding the Garter again of the canned contest round you know the campus and in the general election. And we see it right now. The time that we're making this program the Iranian crisis is unresolved at this stage the president seems to benefit enormously because he looks like a leader. Well he's still got to get out of this mess and he may not look like a leader when it's over who knows. But I have been covering the salt debate in Washington all year and the number of times Salt's prospects have gone up and down and up and down makes me feel that we're dealing in such a volatile and voluble climate that it's such a small audience for the SALT talks. TYRRELL Yes but that's really about a four for the whole game I mean it's the tide of a study is perhaps for an important issue but
but really all these issues don't don't get very deep. Isn't this a good ground for a demagogue if things turn bad we'll say and we have long lines at the gas stations and perhaps long lines at the grocery stores a little bit later that a demagogue can come along and say in effect they haven't told you. Those who claim to be responsible now I give you the complete answer. I think that's a pessimistic view of Americans which I probably would have shared before I wrote The Great American Dreamz I'm now much more optimistic about the basic sense of ordinary people. People aren't going to be fooled. People are much more street smart than we ever give them credit but they've never been tested the American public the trouble as you know ever been tested by a really good Democrat. Tested by God but they've never been. The middle class has never been deprived it's always been an upwardly mobile largely expansive middle class. It has never been contracted and it's never been denied
certain things. For example our urban transportation interurban transportation is chaotic and very little is being done about it. Suppose that accelerated and people in Houston couldn't get to work. Would they not. A little less optimistic perhaps even opposite for sure and there's plenty of room for trouble here but whether they then would also go in turn to some fraud of a political type who would promise easy results I think Americans if nothing else really understand that there are not easy answers to these problems of inflation and energy and other basic. Now that's an optimistic statement. Robert G. Kaiser can you defend that. Well this is comes from the experience of talking to a lot of people are you. The president keeps saying that they don't understand that basic I mean yet there's a very interesting puzzle which remains a puzzle to me in this in the polls about asking that I ask people Do they believe that the energy crisis is real and when this started what a year and a half two years ago 20 percent
15 percent believe that it was real and now it's up to 35 or 40 percent and this is in Washington this is seen as a great victory. I suspect that if you argue that today 65 percent of the public don't believe the energy crisis is real you are misunderstanding the poll. What you're hearing really is the opinion. And this is a hunch on my part although I've heard it some too. You're hearing the opinion that the energy crisis as defined for us and presented to us by our media and our television commentators and our politicians isn't of the real energy crisis that there's whatever's going on isn't what they're telling us is going on. That's a good skeptical attitude it's probably right and it isn't quite so discouraging as the other results are but I may be kidding myself about this I can't be sure but I think you're absolutely right that there hasn't been a test and it's going to be fascinating to see if we get one how we react on a different subject. How fair civil liberties with great middle class America in terms of your speculation you really didn't deal with that in a direct manner. But I'm
interested how fair civil liberties how fair is media liberties how fares the relationships between groups as you see it having just written great American dreams. I think it's a really tricky issue because it still remains true I'm told that if you go around with a bill of rights and pretend it's a poll people come out against the Bill of Rights. But as a matter of fact I found a lot of interesting signs. Certainly tolerance has gone up very substantially in American life. Tolerance for homosexuals say tolerance for kids I mean remember that member of the terrible tensions in the 60s when kids came home with beards and started smoking pot and there really was a crisis and generational relationships in the society I think we came through that the kids still insist on being very different than their parents but the parents have come to terms with that in a very heartening way. So I do think that there are polls that confirm this we have one at the Washington Post recently that indices of
tolerance to the degree it can be measured we come out as a more tolerant people. Including the black white Hispanic white white relation you get better answers on things like Would you be upset if a black person moved in next door or if your son wanted to bring home a black friend to dinner and stuff like that which I don't know how significant those questions are but but those do show more tolerance now. I find it interesting Lee as a reporter for the now famous Washington Post if I go around the country just identify myself as Bob Kaiser from The Washington Post I often encounter quite odd and very respectful Jiyu are the ones did in next in our area. It was really terrific boy. Only in America and that kind of exclamation there does seem to be a very healthy respect for the for the independence of the media but still a fun general polls. Reporters score low in trust and probably deserved to off. I don't know but I disagree
mixed bag but it's not it's not discouraging to me that I don't see any revival of early 50s narrow mindedness in America on the contrary I think that this tolerance things is quite heartening. Then you would say that the black leaders extrapolating from previous remarks probably off base as they publicly read their condition of black people in this country. They seem to be exaggerating in contrast to what you are saying. I take the position that. It's more a class than a race issue. They're complaining about that the real dilemma and potentially the real tragedy of American life now is that we're so willing and able to forget about the poor predominantly. A disproportionate number of them are black. A lot of black people are still getting screwed in American society because there are members of the poor class of American life who are forgotten and being ignored. I don't dismiss at all this evidence of racism and racist feelings but I do think that this is more a
class phenomenon. It has been charged by some media critics and media people and politicians that the media cannot read signals in the United States they cannot see what's coming up and they keep missing the big events. Is this true in your view or not. Well it depends what sort of big events we're talking about. Like Watts or something similar to that that comes along. It's interesting what we did miss in the last 20 years you can make a long list from the anti-war movement to the race rights. But Jimmy Carter I think still that the easy thing for journalists to do is to follow conventional patterns of behavior report stories the way they always have and report and write and broadcast for each other. But you know we at The Post are trying very hard others are trying very hard to break out of some of those things. I really you know my sense after writing this book is that there are no big surprises coming in the
next two years for the American public that I'm ready for what's going to happen maybe out of come back in two years and you can test me. Maybe you ought to do a book called Great American dreams in Washington D.C. You know that when you go out with your colleague John Lowell and see what people in the nation's capital feel certainly they they would have. Similarity of view wouldn't they. The people who live in the suburbs of Washington work for the federal government they might epitomize this think of Washington as a as it as a pit in my eyes it's a little it's a little giddy at the moment. I bought a house in an old neighborhood in downtown Washington one thousand seventy three for fifty six thousand dollars and I'm told that it's now worth two hundred fifty thousand dollars I can't believe that. But this is happening all over town we've had an incredible inflation everybody feels rich in Washington. And in fact everybody is rich by national standards the civil service salaries are create this enormous upper middle class in Washington which is disproportionate. I think the country has a real problem with the fact that the daily lives of Washington
decision makers both governmental and media and others hangers on are so much easier and rosier than the average daily life that people forget that it still can be damn hard to get by out there. I think that's a serious problem. But you could you could certainly fight great American dreamers in Washington. What is your next assignment. When you cover the campaign I'm going to spend this year running around the country and trying to figure out what's going on in this election and also trying to write about those people that aren't paying attention that aren't participating and maybe we can get you back Robert G Kaiser and ask you for some more commentary as you reflect upon the next year's work. I recommend great American Dreamz a portrait of the way we are by Robert G Kaiser and John Lowell and for this edition I say thank you. Robert G Kaiser This is Bernard Ruben. Thank you very much. He was. The First Amendment and a free people a weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world.
The engineer for this broadcast was Michael Garrison. The program is produced by Greg Fitzgerald. This broadcast is produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication after Boston University the trust solely responsible for its content. This is the station program exchange.
Series
The First Amendment
Episode
The Great American Dream
Producing Organization
WGBH Educational Foundation
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-46254m3h
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Description
Series Description
"The First Amendment is a weekly talk show hosted by Dr. Bernard Rubin, the director of the Institute for Democratic Communication at Boston University. Each episode features a conversation that examines civil liberties in the media in the 1970s. "
Description
Robert Kaiser
Created Date
1979-12-11
Genres
Talk Show
Topics
Social Issues
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:28:50
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Credits
Producing Organization: WGBH Educational Foundation
Production Unit: Radio
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 80-0165-02-06-001 (WGBH Item ID)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Generation: Master
Duration: 00:28:35
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Citations
Chicago: “The First Amendment; The Great American Dream,” 1979-12-11, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-46254m3h.
MLA: “The First Amendment; The Great American Dream.” 1979-12-11. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-46254m3h>.
APA: The First Amendment; The Great American Dream. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-46254m3h