>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> good evening. i'm kurt andersen, filling in for charlie rose, who is on assignment. we begin the program with a look at the ongoing unrest in the middle east with jeffrey

goldberg. he is a national correspondent for "the atlantic" and a columnist for "bloomberg view." he joins me from washington, d.c. jeffrey, welcome. >> thank you. >> so if we can go back to what started this latest unraveling of things in israel and the west bank, so some palestinian thugs kidnapped and murdered these three young israelis on their way back from the west bank. then, some, apparently, it jewish thugs kidnapped and murdered horrifically this young palestinian in jerusalem in retaliation. terrible, horrific, inexcusable as these are, is this the thing that is going to start a war between israel and gaza then? >> well, things have been

slipping out of control for a little while, especially since the kidnapping of the three teenagers, the three israeli teenagers. i am not so sure that this is not going to wrap up in a couple of days. anything is possible. these things have a way of sort of slipping out of control, as you know from the previous 39 hamas-israel wars over the past 30 years, but on the other hand, both of these parties did not seem to want to slip towards this, and hamas, in particular, is in a pretty bad spot. they lost their support in egypt when morsi was overthrown. hamas's muslim brotherhood branch in gaza, and the new government under sisi, they're going to have a very difficult time. when you are a terrorist

organization, and your stock and trade is rockets, you do not want to fire too many of those if you cannot get resupplied. first, we do not know how many they have in gaza, but they are in a tough position. they are pretty friendless in the region, so i would not be surprised if both parties find a way to sort of bring this to a close. on the other hand, in gaza right now, you have a very unusual situation where hamas is, and this is all relative, hamas is a more moderate party compared to islam and jihad, which is also firing rockets, and there are some salafists, so they went to get out of this spiral with israel and understand a have certain credibility expectations that they have to meet with their own supporters, and being vigorous in bombing israel, so this can go in any direction in the next couple of days. >> a few days ago and certainly

last week, both sides, hamas and israel, they were talking de-escalation, and they were trying to keep seemingly a lid on it on both sides. that has not happened. at least there has been as collation. whether it will spend out of control, we will see, but hamas has admitted whereas in the past they have seen they were not responsible for rockets, and in this case, they have said, no, no, we have shot some rockets. >> the rockets are reaching apparently -- all of this is confusing because it is happening as we speak, but the rockets are reaching the tel aviv area, which is obviously the center of israel, & rents are going off even in jerusalem, which is pretty far from gaza, so, yes, hamas seems to be engaged. one of the things about all middle east conflicts, maybe about all conflict in general, when it goes kinetic, the sort

of pentagon shorthand, when it goes live and people are firing at each other, all plans go out of the window, so we do not know which way it is going to go. i will say this for the israeli side. the good thing, or let's put it this way, the ad thing about benjamin netanyahu is that he does not do anything, but the good thing is also that he does not do anything, so the bad side of that is, obviously, we saw the peace process collapsed, perhaps in large part, and this is the american view, that he would not make the moves necessary to get this process moving forward. the other truth of netanyahu is he is very, very reluctant to go to war, and his predecessor, ehud olmert, launched some wars, and the netanyahu years, and it has been several years now, has been noticeably quiet because he has been very, very reluctant as far as widening the aperture

here, to go all out against hamas. he is, of course, under pressure from his right, from, let's say, more militant parties and coalitions to go and give hamas the same middle east rhetoric, give them the deathblow, strike hard, but so far, he seems to be resisting. there have been only minor call ups of troops, and there is no suggestion he wants to go down this road. >> so you have got -- not that they are necessarily strategically or morally equivalent, but you have this interesting your image, where hamas in gaza has jihad, and going towards it's more militant side, and these forces that they do not control or do not entirely control or can't keep a lid on over there, they have to do some things, and then you have got netanyahu, again, a guy

from the right who has this coalition with forces to his right who he has to show he is tough and hartline, so are they in an equivalent position to have to saber rattle and bluster and shoot some rockets and move some brigades in? we are prepared to be tough? >> yes, i think you're onto something there. in a sense -- maybe this is a universal observation, but everyone has politics. even terrorist groups have politics. hamas is the titular leadership of gaza, and they have constituencies, and they have a base and people to the right and to the left, and they have to please people in the same way that israeli politicians or any politician around the world has to please their constituency, so, yes, they are not fully in

control of the agenda, and i think certainly on the israeli side, you see people to the right calling for a total war in the belief that there is a military solution, a permanent military solution to the problem of hamas rockets, and the interesting thing on the israeli side though is that the mood, from what i understand -- i have not been there in quite a bit, but in the last few days, the mood has shifted towards a kind of -- there is a soul-searching moment going on because of the murder, the revenge murder of this palestinian youth by a gang of who we apparently think of as racist ligands of some sort. it was a despicable murder essentially in reaction. there is a good degree of shock

it seems that jewish kids from jerusalem would kidnap a palestinian kid and torture him and burn him alive, is what i think happened, and politically, that has forced the prime minister to come out, to his credit, this is a despicable, horrible thing, and terrorism is terrorism, no matter who is the target. the government is working on that problem. it is kind of militant language about hamas which has been muted by this sort of crisis of conscience, if you will will sto. >> because some of the militant hardline language they came after the murder of the three israeli teenagers may be whipped up the feelings such that these young people decided, ok, we are going to go kill one. >> right, right. >> how much -- the fact that this palestinian kid who was murdered, apparently burned

alive, was in east jerusalem, essentially in israel -- that changes the calculus, right, in terms of the soul-searching that jewish israelis feel? the anger that the 20 odd percent of israel that are arabs feel? >> to the credit of mahmoud abbas, the president, when i said earlier that these kids were not settlers, it is true they lived in communities inside israel, but they worse eddying on the west bank, part of the religious community that is sort of the base of the settlement movement, and so the palestinians -- and the president in particular, they condemned the kidnapping and murder in absolute terms, so i do not necessarily think that israel really is are more shock or arab israelis are more

shocked. there was another wrinkle here and that he had will american citizenship, and that brought the u.s. and in a bigger way and probably more attention to the issue. i think the crime was so shocking, just as the kidnapping of the three kids at the bus stop was so shocking. precisely where it happened doesn't have as much salience, but it is easier to relate to that, and people know where this happened. it is not a remote corner. these teenagers dying, and teenagers going to the street and doing all sorts of militant things. i think that has a lot of adults feeling like this situation is spinning out of control. >> and since there have been protests in arab communities now around israel that are not common or usual, as i understand it, that that changes -- is that a short-term horror being

expressed and tempers flaring, or has this calculus changed somehow? >> it happened in the second uprising, as well. we're talking about arab citizens of israel blocking streets and throwing rocks may be. one of the things different about those situations, those are isreali citizens. you do not have the military involved. so far, they have been -- maybe because i have covered some really bad ones over there that these do not seem as traumatic, and most of the communities are protesting in other ways if they are protesting at all, but, again, this is a huge challenge to the political leadership of the country. i mean, it is quite one thing to say on the west bank, which is under military control, the army going in and suppressing demonstrations or riots, to the israeli public is one thing, and when you have citizens of the state or of an arab background

doing that, it undermines the public's confidence in the government's ability to handle complicated and stressful situations, so there is a political aspect to this, as well. >> in terms of the political aspect, one of the members, a significant member of netanyahu's coalition, the minister, lieberman, has left the coalition? as a result? >> a political divorce, if you will, from netanyahu. >> and netanyahu not being tough enough, i guess, in gaza and on hamas? >> yes. >> is he going to come back when this blows over, as you are suggesting it will, or is this a new, important change in the regime, in the israeli government? >> though, everyone knows in israel he politics that everyone has designs on the prime

minister's chair. he is a credible candidate for the prime minister's job if netanyahu sinks further in the polls, so a lot of this is opportunistic. he is a pretty clever politician. he has also been playing a very strange role. on the one hand, he has been asking for more severe attacks on hamas. on the other hand, he has been in the last month, let's say, kinder about or more understanding about the peace process than netanyahu at times, and he has made all of these very sympathetic noises in the direction of president obama, who, of course, is in a tenuous relationship with netanyahu, so he has been playing -- doing all of these kinds of weird moves or clever moves. it would not be the first time in israel he politics or other politics, but they kind of have one through-line, which is wherever netanyahu goes, lieberman seems to be moving in

another direction, so i just tend to think that he sees some opportunities down the road to try to get the number one job, and as we know in israel, they have dominated politics for a long time now, but for various reasons, he seems vulnerable, and he has maintained the quiet and maintained the status quo for some time, but this week is obviously a challenge to the idea that the status quo can be maintained forever or ad infinitum. >> speaking of president obama, he published in the last day an article that he has written, apparently. >> it was written for him i think it's probably fair to say. >> as presidents do. restating what has been said american presidents forever, we love you, we are at your back, we are giving you all of this money, we support through

coordination, but we, of course, a two state solution is the only hope, ultimately, he says in this article he signed. what is the point of that? why go there and not give a speech but do the next best thing, i guess? what is he angling for there? >> it might be for the limited in its ambitious, this op-ed he wrote for one of israel's smallest newspapers, but it is known as being one of the left newspapers. president obama, whose sympathies obviously lie with what you would call the israeli centerleft and left, to signal to them that i am not abandoning your cause, which is the two state solution and pushing netanyahu towards a two state solution. i am not abandoning you. i am paying attention.

we appreciate that you, the centerleft bloc in israel -- i appreciate, in other words, president obama speaking, that you have not demonized me as anti-israel, and here are my bona fides, and to let you know how pro-israel i am, and the choke up this is it was probably the most pro-israel peace published overnight, because it really reflects mainstream bipartisan american thinking about israel. it does not break much new ground. dog whistle is not exactly the right term, but signaling to the israeli centerleft that i am with you emotionally and spiritually and i have not given up, even though the peace process totally collapse and it appears i have given up. i am not giving up on this process. >> speaking of the peace process, which the united states and secretary of state cary

invested lots of time and energy and capital and wish one this in over the last year, you interviewed -- i guess -- the first interview with the martin indyk, our negotiator on that, talk about his take in that interview about why he believed it just could not get done this time. >> there are two contradictory streams of thought coming out for some time, the last couple of months. one is the more calibrated it is everyone's fault line, and there is good evidence to show that it is the palestinians fall as much as it is the israelis fault, but when you listen -- and martin indyk in the interview we did just the other day, martin was very careful to say, you know, look, i think blame is shared equally, not with america, by the way, and this is the administration's argument.

we wanted to do this more than either party, so they are sort of blending both parties for that. but what you hear when you actually go a little bit deeper is a broad feeling in the administration that israel has the more powerful of the two individuals, having more to give, particularly signaling to the palestinians, look, we know the west bank is going to be your state, so therefore, we are going to stop settling in it. doing all sorts of things over the past month that signaled to the palestinians or at the very least gave them an excuse to pull out of negotiations. >> by saying we're going to start these processes at we're going to expand settlements? >> right. this is really complicated because it starts with an administration mistake four years ago when the administration abandoned a complete settlement freeze. i do not want to go down this road because it is very complicated, but it is one thing

to talk about settlements that are deep in the heart of the west bank and another to talk about settlements that are bordering suburban tel aviv or suburban jerusalem, that what happened was the american position is if you guys, meaning the israelis, wanted to do this and really wanted to be helpful, you would not be so provocative and putting out tenders for settlement and building settlements. the average palestinian looks at the settlement. i am not talking about radical palestinians and hamas. the average palestinian sees the development of settlements on land that they have been told is going to be part of their state and say, wait a second. on the one hand, you say you are negotiating in good faith, and on the other hand, you are eating up more of our land. i think that is the american position on that which is consistent with the palestinian position, which is that it is not helpful, and what martin has said, and what others have said, mahmoud abbas and the palestinian authority basically checked out of this process months ago.

even to the point where they had new ideas and could not even get a response. >> checked out of the process, stops talking, ok, i am done here. once israel was making these unhelpful gestures in expanding the settlements, but one of the things that interested me that martin said to you, and it did not exactly make news, but perhaps it should have, and i would like to ask you about it, he said that maybe netanyahu, it seemed to him, for them to come to a place, a conception clays where martin indyk thought that maybe they are in the neighborhood of really making a deal. he did not tell you what those situations were. what do you suppose or what led you to believe they were? >> there was no force behind

them. i think in times of borders in terms of shifting some settlements closer to israel so that palestinians have more, i do not think jerusalem, the issue of jerusalem, really came up in a deep, significant way, but on matters of security and the jordan river valley, and certainly on the percentage of land that the palestinians would be getting as in the west bank, i think there were some important shifts. this goes back to the point about the palestinian president. you can make the argument that if the palestinian president, mahmoud abbas, was more interested in continuing these negotiations, he would have understood at netanyahu is throwing out the chum or throwing some bones to his right by saying, you can build more apartments in ask settlement, but in the meantime, he was shifting in some deeper ways on

some of the more consequential issues, and that is where i think the americans, the american negotiators, are frustrated with him, because he would not acknowledge that actually, in fact, and then netanyahu was moving away from some long-held ideological beliefs. >> now, mahmoud abbas, as martin indyk said, at his age, look at all that i have done, this is what i get -- >> right. >> netanyahu, his poll numbers are not good. the sharks in israel are circling. do you, jeffrey goldberg, have a view where two years from now you have a different palestinian authority, maybe they managed to keep the reconciliation with hamas, that there is a peacemaking partner on the other

side? is there any -- as you see, i am sort of struggling for glimmers of hope. oh, different players. >> because you are american. >> exactly. they can do it, one or two years in? >> this is the problem, and perhaps we will look back on this year as a tragic year for the following reason. president obama, i interviewed him on the peace process a few months ago, and one of the things that stuck in my mind, mahmoud abbas coming is sort of talking to israelis when he does this and said that mahmoud abbas is one of the most moderate leaders you're going to get, and i think that might be true. the problem on the other side is this. netanyahu is the only politician in israel at the moment, i think, who could deliver 70% of the israeli population to a difficult piece compromise. if he had the willingness or the fortitude. i mean, both of these guys have

not shown, obviously, a willingness or the willingness for political risk that, you know, a lot of us would like to see. >> the thing that ariel sharon before he died, when he was miraculously moderating hope of israel, the politics, he said, and it seems an inarguable truth universally acknowledged is that for israel to remain a democratic jewish state, it must make peace with the palestinians, which requires a palestinian state. >> right. there has been polling on this. i think some pretty good polling. the majority of israelis are still for a two state solution. i think a lot of israelis don't believe it might be possible because the palestinians to not want it. what they want is all of mandatory british palestine. but the majority of israelis seem to be aware that this is the demographic and demographic

challenge, and i think there is a minority, maybe 15% to 20% come in that range, where if it is a choice between a democracy of one man and one vote or all of the west bank arabs and all of the jews in israel, or a jewish-dominated state, they will go for the jewish-dominated state. obviously, these are the people more affiliated with the right wing movement, but it is a small minority still, and i think most israelis have not moved from this. >> now, israel and palestine are not the only places in the middle east that are looking dicey and unpleasant. >> they look much better, actually, than most places. >> iraq, a couple of weeks ago, it looked like, alright, everyone decided that maliki, the prime minister, should go. the dysfunction in washington. on the other hand, this two

militants for al qaeda that took about one third of the country a few weeks ago, seems to be standing in place now and not heading for baghdad. is that just now a status quo that we should worry about? is that going anywhere anytime soon, do you think? >> oh, no, we should be in a cold panic about this, and the funny thing is the israel palestine dispute is from the american national security perspective a relatively minor problem compared to this problem. this problem, the reestablishment, if you will, of the caliphate is a big problem. obviously, iraq is not being put back together again. it might not the iraqi and two or three years time, but it will be three countries, and one

hopes, again, from the american national security perspective that it is not three countries, so the idea of having isis in control of a large swath of territory is not a sustainable notion. >> the american interest now, looking a move or two ahead, and saying, ok, our goal should be to get the tribal leaders we worked with years ago to crush isis and make sure it is a sunni stand we can deal with? >> this is the problem, is that somebody is going to have to crush isis eventually, whether it is shia, whether it is moderate sunni, or whether it is outside forces, because this is an assumption built on the history of afghanistan among other places. eventually, and maybe sooner than eventually, groups like isis, which, as you pointed out, is considered by al qaeda a bit too much.

you know what question mark we have got to go back to killing the western infidels, and so, what was the afghanistan war about? the afghanistan war was about denying safe havens where groups like al qaeda and al qaeda-affiliated groups can plot and plan and devise strategies and figure out ways to build bombs. it is not unrelated, by the way. the tsa in the last few days has more stringent rules about your cell phone. there is a reason for that. there is a reason for that, and part of that is based in yemen, where there is a really good al qaeda bomb maker, but the more free space, the more ungoverned space that al qaeda has to develop its plans and plots without being molested by either shia or moderate sunni or whoever else, that is not a tenable situation for the united states or for anyone in the west, and so something has got to give on this question because for the same reason that barack

obama supported the invasion and occupation of afghanistan in order to deny al qaeda a safe haven, you can have an al qaeda style safe haven in that region between iraq and syria. >> but -- and while that is a given in terms of american national interest, that does not necessarily argue for saying we must keep iraq together in its current form. >> no. >> right? >> no, no. by the way, i am a sort of partisan of kurdish nationalism. the kurds, who represent about 20% or so of iraq, non-arab, muslim, ethnic group has basically said, we are out of here, all but, and they've built a state over the past 20 years, very successfully, and in the last few weeks, obviously, they seized kirkuk, which is common

to them, their jerusalem, and they are not giving it back. they have oil. they are looking at keeping it permanently. to support them in the interest of justice and peace, and the kurds have been oppressed for dozens and dozens of years, but kurdistan could also be an american ally, sitting on top of that isis stated or whatever you call it, so these things are coming apart, and sometimes there is a bit of unreality coming out of washington. in terms of analysis, people are talking you just have to work the political process in iraq, and if this one becomes a speaker of the iraqi parliament, then we will put that one in as president. i think we are kind of past that, and, by the way, a lot of us have learned that just because you want to organize an arab state in a certain way because it seems like the best thing for the arabs and for us, it does not mean that the arabs

involved are going to agree. remember, the shia, al-maliki being a shia politician, has had quite enough over the past 20 or 30 years of sunni domination and have no particular vision or dream of pluralism in the way that we do, so i do not think it is very hopeful, so the main goal of american foreign policy would be to make sure that there is no spillover effect, that isis and related groups in iraq and syria to not find ways to harm us and our interests rectally. >> you can look at this whole region and say, ok, the united states was not able to force israel and the palestinians to make peace. we have been unable so far to get al-maliki out of iraq and replaced by some more inclusive shiite leader, presumably. >> we can even make our, i guess, the guy who was secretary

of state said we are behind, general sisi, and now i guess president sisi. >> president sisi, yes. >> any more tyrannical -- >> that guy makes mubarak look like the governor of vermont. >> so we look at that, and do we say, well, all of these things are not possible, so we did not manage to make any of them go the way we wish, or has the obama administration played its cards, its bad cards that it was dealt aptly? >> i think both things are correct. it is funny when you were doing that, when you were giving that recitation. all of the people we have seemed unable to influence in the middle east, sounding like something coming from inside the administration. the administration has a somewhat realistic view of america -- the limits on the american ability to shape

outcomes in the broader middle east. they have probably a much better or sober sense of that than the previous administration, the bush administration. on the other hand, you can have that feeling that you are powerless to change anything, you can have that feeling to a point where you don't try to change anything at all and were you don't try to shape outcomes to any degree. it's obviously -- i mean, the president has a very good point when he says, if i had gone to syria three years ago to try to shape the opposition, to try to arm it, we still would have had assad in power in people running around with weapons. he may be right about that, but he may be wrong, and so -- >> he would also say, presumably, the one place where i cannot be accused of under reaching, where i really went off and it is when i had john kerry go off and try to have

he's in palestine and israel, and look where that got me. >> that -- to me, i am a little bit curious about the decision-making over the last six or nine months, the way it was deployed. there are people inside the government that knew that iraq was coming apart at the seams. we probably, in retrospect, should have spent more attention to that, and iraq and serious have obviously become one war, but yes. i suppose if you could say the israelis, we are their closest ally. the palestinians get hundreds of millions of dollars from us and their pro-western government, and we cannot get them to do anything. how are we going to get shia militants in iraq? how are we going to get sunni militants in iraq to listen to our arguments? and i think this is the point that people make about leadership. on the one hand, people are arguing in the foreign-policy

community that the president has to step up and leave and try to shape this region and try to create outcomes that are beneficial to the united states and beneficial to our friends. on the other hand, the president knows full well that the average american is completely uninterested, and not even uninterested but completely wary. new adventures in the middle east, they look at the middle east as a cesspool and say, really? you are going to get the shia and the sunni in iraq to like each other? it seems a little unrealistic, so i think the white house take some comfort in that. >> jeffrey goldberg, always conspiring to keep you employed, it was great talking to you. >> thank you. ♪

>> we continue this evening with the writer chuck klosterman, an author who is a writer of pretty much everything, cultural criticism, and he is the ethical columnist for the new york times magazine. his most recent collection of essays is called "i wear the black hat: grappling with villains," and it was just published in paperback, and i am pleased to have him at this table. mr. klosterman, thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> this really is an age of

villains in many ways, the golden age of television, the tony sopranos, the guy in "the wire," everyone is a villain we love. why is villainy at this level of culture right now? >> villains have changed. there are ideas create you started to see it in films really in the 1970's, and there was a stretch where jack nicholson had all of these roles, like "the godfather," and dennis hopper, and then in the early 1990's, it was the backbone of hip-hop, or metal, or if you had a relationship to a gangster.

you needed to be perceived as that even if you weren't, and then in television, it really kind of happened in the 1990's, and you mentioned tony soprano. i remember when "the sopranos" came out, and david chase was saying he was uncertain whether people would accept a main character who actually murders people. would they accept this person? not only did they accept it, they loved it. they love this person, and now if you're making a sophisticated television show, if you're making the high-end hbo or fx shows, it almost demand that your character is in some ways villainous. and if there is a drug dealer in it, is he heroic? don draper, i think the role of "mad men," they have tried to

sort of penalize him for his problematic behavior, and yet i do not know if the audience feels that way. >> in your history of the rise of the villain, you left out some of you talk about in the book, which is darth vader. he is the great, modern err villain. >> yes. in some ways, it was almost the genesis for this book. i do not write too much about "star wars," and i wanted to write about the interesting thing that happened during the maturation process of somebody's life. it seems to shift. i was talking to my editor about this, and by chance, his four-year-old or five-year-old son had just watched "star wars," as you might expect --

>> and you were four or five when it came out. >> i saw it in the movie theater, and the movie theater was a long way from the farm, and i saw these around the general same age, and talking about his son, i kind of had this theory, talking about when you are a little guy, the character you love is luke skywalker, who is totally heroic trait if you are playing "star wars" on the playground, even if you had not seen the movie and more playing, and then you move to junior high or maybe six grade or ninth grade, whatever the case will be, it moves to han solo, who seems bad but is fundamentally still good, which is how elementary school students want to feel, especially guys. they want to have the perception of being dangerous, but they still want to be the person they

were as a kid. then you become an adult, and maybe you watch "star wars" again, and it seems like a different movie. you see some flaws in it, but you understand what it succeeds, and you start to conclude, or at least i did, that the most interesting character -- really the only essential one is darth vader, and i think that is because as you age and as you mature, you start seeing the idea of heroism almost as not an impossible dream but something outside of our life, that there are certain people who do heroic things, but they are not us. but in your subconscious, in the back of your mind, you kind of worry what you might be capable of. >> your dark side? >> you know you have the potential to do terrible things, even if you do not act on them, even if you do not blow up planets. you think, if my back was

against the wall, how would i really react? who what i really care about when push comes to shove? and i think now when people see a villain, especially in fiction, the word they use is that the villain is more interesting. actually, it seems more real, that people feel a closer relationship to problematic people then sort of the untouchable, heroic one. >> and that is why we like the walter white manifestation. >> yes, "breaking bad" -- i'm going to introduce a character who isn't possible not to like. he is a teacher who has cancer, and he is worried about his family, and then over time, i am going to turn him into this terrible "scarface" type of character, and do they say, this problematic character is too much for me to root for, and it lasts for a long time for some people.

>> you have talked about villains outside of fiction, and kanye west, who you have as a duo, and you say about lebron james, the nba free-agent right now, you don't really like him as a figure, but you want him to succeed, whereas kanye west, you like him, but you want him to fail. >> yes. >> explain. >> i am not a fan of lebron james as a player so much, and that is one of the things about sports. you are almost arbitrarily able to choose who to root for, but lebron james is one of the greatest players of his generation, and his utility was greatness, so if his greatness were to fade, if you were to begin to fail as a player, almost everything about him even after a. i do not root for him, but i

want them to be great. and his greatness is enough to overcome some sort of objective field. kanye west, is, i think, and amazing musician. i often feel that in the popular culture, there is always a certain figure who is sort of outside what everyone else is doing, even though they are kind of working on the same channel. in film, i think anderson is like this. what he is doing is different. and, the, another, and the guy who wrote "my struggle." in music, kanye west. >> you don't mean adolf hilter? you mean the norwegian? >> yes. "my struggle."

and in music, kanye west, he is not really making straight up experimental work, and he is doing the same thing everyone else is doing, but it feels different because in the culture -- >> he is huge, but he is a little indy? >> it is that his creativity is also based in his personality. like the merits of his music is also sort of supported by this character. and because of that, i would be very fascinated to see what would happen if he made a record -- that if he made an album both musically and aesthetically seemed to relate to no one, and then it would be just kind of his character and i'm trying to support this hemorrhaging vehicle. it would be fascinating. >> because it would not be just a record, it would be him in

some way. >> i believe if you like a musician, you want to hear their best work, but if you love a musician, you become intrigued with the lowest points in their career. i love the band kyss, and i am intrigued by their 1979 to 1982 period aware there is absolutely no one like them, and i like the band oasis, and i am fascinated by their popularity and how it disappeared, and kanye west, i really think that if he made a record that was terrible, it would be fascinating. >> bill clinton you write about in this book as a kind of, i guess, lovable villain in terms of the things he did and the sexual things he did and was impeached for -- no, he was impeached for lying. >> i was already working in newspapers at that time, so part of the reason i wanted to write about that is it was such a

vivid memory. it was a period -- when the monica lewinsky stuff happened before the internet was a central part of everyone's life, so i was working at the beacon journal, and everyone in the newsroom was reading the ap wire on their computer. like the starr report was being unveiled, and it is just a fascinating thing. all of these people involved in that problem. though clinton and monica, but also hillary and kenneth starr and linda tripp. it is a five sided problem, and the person who came out of that scenario the best was bill clinton, even though he did what is the most at least superficially, probably in reality the most unethical act. he cheated on his wife with someone who was a subordinate, someone who was too young, who did not realize what was happening, lied about it to the public, almost every aspect of

that relationship -- it would be seen as morally reprehensible, and yet, by the end of all of this -- i remember, it was the week before christmas. 1999. >> or 1998. >> it happened in 1998. it was just before christmas. he had his highest approval rating ever. >> as he was being impeached. >> yes, and at the time, it was said that, you see, the american people are more sophisticated than the media. they know it is no big deal. it was something more complicated than that. it is not just about sexism. it was something about the way he presented himself that may -- i mean, villainy is almost a bad word, but his behavior almost validated the pre-existing notion of who he was. >> and a handsome guy, then and now, was part of that, and that he admitted he was lying, but he

never talked about the gritty details. >> when you read his autobiography, it is like a thousand page book, and the number of times that monica lewinsky is mentioned is less than the number of times he mentions football, like a minor blip. he never talked about that. i always think that over time the people who say the least end up coming off the best. as i was writing these essays, and i was trying to see what was the unifying thing that was interesting, and it seems to be this. it seemed to be that very often the person who is the villain is a person who knows the most and cares the least. they seem to have the best understanding of how the world works and how the world can be manipulated and sort of what is at stake and how other people are going to feel about this, but they are the most detached from what their actions actually end up impacting or changing.

it is like a distance between an understanding of the world and caring about the world. >> an interesting thing about america, especially where you and i grew up in the west, it is so much about being nice, and niceness is the thing. america -- in many ways, your book convinced me -- has, in these days, the last while, embraced villainy as a way almost to compensate for the fact that we are also darned nice all of the time. is that a fair read? >> that is possible. i guess i do not know if i would implicitly argue that, but i can understand what you are saying. ok, being from north dakota, like north dakota nice or minnesota nice, the idea that people -- in a way, it is almost a criticism. people are superficially nice and there is not real kindness. i often felt like that.

>> that niceness comes from a real place. >> well, population size can only be so much. my hometown is 500 people. a lot are interconnected in a way you're not going to see in other places. >> that it would be remembered. >> although it would include people, too. to a sense that i think personality wise that is more uniform across the country than we assume. when i moved to new york, one thing i realized immediately, if you acted like you did not know where you were, four people would try to give you directions because they also came from somewhere else. now, that is a form of niceness you probably would not see in fargo. i think if you are in downtown fargo looking like you are lost,

they will say hi to you, but they will walk by. they will not want to engage with you. but which is nicer? is it nice to have everybody say hello or to give you help? >> thanks. thank you for joining us. we will see you next time. ♪

>> live from pier 3 in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west," where we cover innovation, technology and the future of business. i am emily chang. amazon ups the ante in its digital book dispute, proposing authors get to keep 100% of the proceeds from digital book sales. but has shut says not so fast. many authors are speaking out against it. we will tell you have a stalemate is impacting the businesses of both companies. some of the biggest names in technology and media are in sun valley idaho for the annual allen and come me summit that kicks off today.