and getting a book off the shelf is going to be altered by the web. you'll still be able to do that, but the internet provides the opportunity for someone in kansas to get ahold of a really arcane, narrow book that resides some place in england within seconds over the web. and the idea that google had in the first place was to make every single book in the world universeally accessible. and they wanted to do that by scanning every book that exists in the world. it's a very ambitious project. they really wanted to create the world's biggest online library, and what i mean by library is online you don't have to actually go some place. it would reside on the web. so it was a very ambitious project, and they started scanning books, and then they realized they ran into a bunch of legal issues, copyright and antitrust. >> host: what was google's

original motive? >> guest: it's really along the lines of their whole mission which is for users of the internet to access any information they want, video, books, music now, now music, maps, anything that -- any information that travels over the web. and the project was nothing but very, very ambitious. it was, again, to create, to scan every single book in the world. and i think some people estimate there may be 60 million books in the world residing in different libraries, and i think that's around the number the library of congress has. >> host: was there a profit motive? >> guest: oh, certainly. and that's where it gets interesting. it intersects legal concerns and regulatory issues, and it intersects commerce. and there's certainly a commercial aspect of it. on the one hand, on the most basic level google and internet

companies benefit from people being online. where can i get a copy of catcher in the rye, if you make those searches and do it, particularly if you do it through the google search engine, that's good for google, that's good for internet commerce, it's good for whoever's going to sell that book like amazon or microsoft or yahoo! or the next big web company that's going to sell a book. so there's certainly a commercial interest involved, and google benefits from both the search part of it, and it will benefit also from the distribution of these books. they haven't started yet, but they want to print these books, they're going to scan them first, and then they're going to print them and sell them to you too. that's when the commercial interests came in and said, hey, stop. we've got some major concerns over this settlement you've struck with authors and publishers because you, google,

are going to have first dibs and much more control than we think is fair. so that's the commercial aspect of it, and that, again, intersects with with some of the regulatory reviews taking place right now in washington at the department of justice and at the u.s. copyright office, and they're asking some really hard questions about how does this new web model fit into some of our regulatory prisms and understanding how does this new web strategy by google to both make information accessible and to distribute, how does that create competition concerns? and how do you balance that with what is what's really a very legitimate public interest which is to make information accessible either for free or for cheap? and, you know, that's a public good. so it's a really interesting, difficult question in many ways that washington regulators are facing. >> host: and we will talk about that. first, though, when did google start this project, when did the

lawsuits start, how many of these 60 million books have been scanned? >> guest: okay, great. well, let's start from the beginning. google would say it started in 1996 when the founders had, you know, tossed around the idea of, you know, why don't we start digitizing books, and library collections, and how would that process go about? it was intre gal to the -- integral to the formation behind their search engine prioritizing search links and results. when it really started in earnest, i would say, is around 2002 when google started talking to university libraries like the university of michigan and other big library associations about starting to scan books, and they began in about 2002. >> host: who did -- >> guest: google did. >> host: they started the scanning? >> guest: they started

scanning -- >> host: in mountain view? >> guest: in mountain view with their technology. they partnered up with libraries because it took much longer for libraries to scan on their own, and google was saying might take you a thousand years will take us six. so let us do it for you, let us put be it on the web, the benefits are enormous for people to access. so they started scanning both copyrighted books that were out of print -- and that's the big debate right now -- and they started scanning public do main books, those are books not protected under copyright, so they were printed before 1923 and then -- which is completely legitimate and fine to do -- and then they also started scanning books that they partnered up with or they had agreements to scan directly with publishers and authors. so they were just doing this on their own. and then what happened was some

of these private interests, the authors and publishers' groups said -- >> host: the american association of publishers, the authors guild -- >> guest: exactly. the the two big titans said, wait, what are you doing? you didn't ask permission, and you're violating copyright laws. so that was the first big obstacle that they faced, and what happened is they got together along with a lot of other groups, and they filed the first class action lawsuit against google. so for a series, for a period of about three years google and these parties fought out what should the rules be on copyright and digitizing these books, in other words, making these books accessible online? really interesting, vexing questions arose over copyright laws, what is fair use on the web? how to deal particularly with books that are out of print and books where we don't know where

the authors are or who they are even. those books are called orphan works, they're the books of -- they're titles where either the owner of the rights of that book has not been found or come forward or is just simply unknown. and there are big questions on how do you, you know, what is fair use of those kinds of, of those titles and to put those online? the u.s. copyright office said what google was doing was a flat-out violation of copyright law and a lot of critics, library associations, other authors and publishers said, indeed, google you've got to stop. you're accessing our works, you're scanning them and putting up a good 20% of that book online in your search program called google book search. and by doing that, you are essentially -- without our permission and without us benefiting -- using our works. so that's when the class action

lawsuits arose. what happened after that, that was 2005, is they came up with a settlement in 2008. and all of this, mind you, was really kind of quiet. people weren't really paying that much attention, at least the mainstream wasn't paying that much attention because it seemed sort of like a side project to what google was doing, google's main business is search, it was going into all kinds of other interesting areas like mobile technology, and their project on books seemed kind of small. but what we realized through the course of all this is that it intersects so many different parts of society, consumer use of books, the commercial aspects as you mentioned, peter, and regulatory issues that deal with competition and copyright. so when they kim up with their set -- came up with their settlement in 2008, the other groups piped in -- notably some other library groups and competitors like microsoft, amazon -- and they said, hey, this is definitely not fair,

this settlement voilts copyright laws, and the way that it's written could edge out the potentialover any other -- of any other internet commerce company like amazon, yahoo!, whoever may be the next e book reader/developer company to get a piece of this action. so it became a big commercial concern, and that's really when silicon valley and the rest of the internet corporate community realized this is not just a pet project, this could have really big dollar ramifications. and that's when they piped up and said, you know, complained to justice. a lot of these critics, and the department of justice started their own review in 2008 to see if this was a fair case and in, indeed, it was anticompetitive or not. >> host: okay. so if you go to google book search -- >> guest: yes. >> host: what do you find there? >> guest: you find ten million books already scanned.

>> host: ten million. >> guest: right. >> host: all previously scanned? >> guest: two million are books that google has contracted with authors or publishers or the rights holders to publish and to the put online, the remainder -- so that's about, what, six left, six million, the majority of the remainder i should say is are these disputed out-of-print, copyrighted, protected books that are part of the dispute. so as much as google and the other parties of the settlement say that it's just out-of-print copies, that's still 60% of all the books they have online, and it's still about 60% of all the books that exist in the world according to some estimates, so this is not a small thing, the dispute of these particular books that are out of print and copyright protected. and these kind of books, it's not going to be the latest twilight series because that's

in print, it's not going to be jane austen because that's still copyrighted and in print. it's going to be numerous books that you probably have on your book shelf now, but also -- >> host: what about new books? >> guest: new books would be in print. >> host: could a simon and chuter or harpercollins make a deal? >> guest: oh, absolutely. >> host: separate from this agreement? >> guest: exactly. it's a complicated issue in that the agreement only covers about 60% of all the books that exist in the world today. this is according to some estimates, google and some of the the parties would probably back that as well. but there are other books, other agreements that are taking place on the side between google and simon & schuster, for example, to put these books online. so they're already working out their own private deals as well with. so, yes, like the latest book

from, you know, twilight -- >> host: sarah palin's new book. >> guest: exactly. google could be negotiating with her publishers right now or her directly on putting that online, putting about 20% of the book for readers to look at and see if they want to buy it, and soon what google plans to do is have a button that says if you want to buy this book or print this book, press here, and that could be a google application. >> host: and would these publishers today on new books, again, might they be also making side deals with microsoft or amazon? >> guest: absolutely. absolutely, sure. and that's happening. >> host: so this would not be exclusive to google. >> guest: no, exactly. it's not exclusive to google currently with books coming out or in the print cycle. there are hundreds of books that are still in -- >> host: are those copyright protected or would you be able to find those on google book search? >> guest: they're not copyright protected because it's pre-1923,

but they are still in print. i should say they are copyright protected in that their rights holders, the publishers that have rights to these books that are printing them currently are the rights holders, so they are copyright protected, but those books are not part of this settlement. the kind of books that you find under the settlement are research books, for example. so if -- i'll make an example. like, my father wrote his dissertation at the university of washington on duck farming, it's a particular clam farm. he has a masters in fisheries science, and his masters thesis resides at the university of washington, 1967 or '68 is when he published it -- >> host: not a lot of demand for that? >> guest: i'm sorry, dad, but a few hundred people have read it, maybe more. that's the kind can of book that -- kind of book that's out of print, it's been printed once, it's in the library at the university of washington, and this is the kind of book that

google would work with the university of washington library to get access to, to scan and then to eventually offer for print or whatever, however you wanted to receive it. and that's the other portion that's quite interesting about this is that the book world is changing so much that we don't know how people are going to access their books. it may be on your phone, it may be on the kindle reader or your laptop, it could be in a completely new format that we don't know, and that's why a lot of the competitors to google and a lot of antitrust experts are very concerned about exactly how this is written because it could affect the way we says books in the future and a market that could be worth -- a very is lucrative market on online reading. >> host: what's the importance, cecilia kang, of 193? >> guest: you know, i don't know the significance of 1923.

i think that might be -- i don't want to speculate, but i'll say that that is the cutoff year for what is determined as copyright fair use. that year. anything before that is not protected by copyright. >> host: okay. before that mark twain was writing. >> guest: right. >> host: where does he fall into this google book settlement? >> guest: sure. so if you go to your local bookstore, you'll probably see that penguin, i don't know exactly, simon & schuster or somebody, is still printing that book. so it's actually in print and does not fall under the settlement. these are only for books that are not being printed anymore. so it could be that, that that book by an author in the 1940s like, that was really never well known or addressed -- i'm trying to think, john steinbeck, for example. that's post-1923, i believe. he might have written something that was not a huge hit like

some of his other big title. the les, and that book is out of print now. but who is to protect that book, and who can, you know, have rights over that is part of what is at issue in this case. >> host: cecilia kang is the tech reporter and writes a progress on technical issues, intel communications issues for "the washington post". we're talking about the google book settlement, and there was just some action taken in new york on this just recently. what is, what is the status of where we stand? >> guest: sure. well, it looks like -- it was late friday, last friday when google and the the parties involved in their class action lawsuit from 2005 that they first tried to resolve a year ago, they submitted a revised version of their settlement on their 2008 settlement to a new york, a judge in new york for the u.s. district court of the southern district of new york who is determining whether to

the approve the settlement or not. >> host: and that's denny chin. >> guest: that's right. denny chin in that court. and he -- so he received the comments or the revised settlement, and it would seem that this settlement might be the end of all of this but, no, not by a long shot. there's going to be some significant regulatory hurdles that google and the authors guild and the association of american publishers will still have to clear. and that is that the justice department will still have to review this revised settlement, and as well as the public. the public gets a chance to weigh in and tell judge denny chin we like this or we don't. and you can pretty much expect there's going to be a lot of criticism because we're already hearing it from competitors and from organizations like the internet archives. they are all saying that there are some key issues that are still not addressed, and those key issues still have to do with

control. i think that's the best way to describe it. the control over particularly these orphan works i referred to before, and orphan works are books that are out there that doesn't have really an owner that we know of or that has been found. and these books are, google would still have first rights to, and anybody -- and if google decided, for example, to start scanning a book, an orphan work and distributing that orphan work and then a party spoke up and said, hey, actually we are the descendants of so and so and we have rights to this book, that party according to the revised settlement could not sue google for it rights. so there is a clause that would protect google from liability over copyright infringement of those orphan works. and critics of the whole settlement say that's still not fair, that doesn't, that gives google too much leeway, too much

scope to do what they want with this, and it gives them too much of a commercial edge over competitors because those rights don't exist with competitors. competitors k like, you know, amazon's the most obvious one, they are not legally protected from being sued by rights holders. so that's a big issue, and that's an issue that the justice department brought up two months ago when they released comment onset element. >> host: okay. who's on what side? >> guest: sure. great question. there are lots of sides, peter, that's why it's become so interesting and confusing in some ways. there is, there's google on their own in some ways who has this ambition, again can, to create the world's biggest library. what's happened now is the authors guild and the american -- the association of american publishers, big groups, have now moved into their corner because -- >> host: into the google corner. >> guest: into the google corner because they have a settlement in place that they want to be approved by judge denny chin, so

they can move toward, they can -- forward, they can make some money off this, they can create this big library that everybody agrees could benefit the public and could benefit these companies commercially. so now they've moved into this camp. then there are authors' groups that don't belong in that camp, there are internet public interest groups, there are competitors including yahoo!, microsoft, amazon, and there are antitrust attorneys that are part of this organization called the open book alliance, and they formed one of the co-founders is gary' back who, ironically, once of the big antitrust busters of microsoft in the late '90s, and now he's on their side in this case. they are very much on the other side saying there's so much wrong with this and not to mention the exclusive legal protection that google has, but also there is, there is a big concern that they have that,

that the default is that with the settlement is that every book can be included, every out-of-print, copyright-protected book would be included in this settlement. so if you're an author of one of these books and you don't want to be part of it, you have to proactively go in to, and inform the companies that you want to opt out. and that is something that a lot of public interest groups say is always a difficult clause because it takes a certain amount of onus on a person to do that. what if people don't even know? it could be a confusing process, so for them to proactively opt out is an issue of concern, and it was a concern also with the justice department. they found that could be not good for the public interest. so they are the open book alliance along with, which includes companies that are competitors of google as well as public interest groups are saying there's a lot of concerns as this deal's working right

now. and then somewhere in the middle are the regulators that are trying to make sense of this all, and they're trying to make sense of how to create rules or to at least guide the parties in this discussion in a way that will set fair rules of the road for the future, really, of digital online, digital commerce of books and content and also will protect consumer, but without being overly burdensome. so they have a very difficult job in the middle as well and a delicate balancing act. >> host: department of justice, u.s. copyright office both very active on this case. >> guest: that's right. >> host: from what you've seen so far, what are their biggest concerns? >> guest: i think the biggest concerns are the legal protections that google will get for these orphan works and the opt-out clause. and those concerns generally can be summed up as we still feel like google has too much

control. i think that's the general gist of it because for the department of justice they're looking at this through the prism of antitrust. their antitrust division is watching this to see if it's competitive or not, if it's an anticompetitive deal. how could this potentially -- and they're asking questions about the future really. how could this potentially edge out competitors later on, how could this give google an unfair slice of the pie, of the licensing fee pie in the future? google made quite a few concessions that justice likes according to some sources that i have that are pretty familiar with the negotiations right now between google and the parties and justice. and what they do like is that they've appointed an independent body, a fiduciary as they're calling it to oversee the the licensing, the collection of licensing fees for these orphan works. they like that, that's a good thing. and these will be distributed to

those orphan works can still be accessed and distributed by third parties. google still, though, will probably get a bigger -- what remains unclear, i should say, is whether google still gets an unfair share of those licensing fees for the distribution of those works, even if third parties are involved. so let me put those in real-world terms. if you're trying to look for one of these orphan works and you look for xyz book, you see the scan and decide, okay, i want to buy it, so you have options on the side. and this is something that doesn't exist now, it may exist in the future. some buttons you might want to tap that says, you know, buy it on amazon, buy it on google, buy it on whatever it may be, it's unclear right now how the monetary distribution will fall in that important second part of the equation that i'm -- >> host: the actual purchase. >> guest: exactly. the actual purchase. and these are the sort of complicated questions that will, that come up to play at the

justice department but looking at it through a competition lens. and what they want to make sure, basically, is that google doesn't buy the way that the settlement is written, the 377 pages, the way that it's written gives google a clear dominant foothold in this market. that, again, is so new, it's burgeoning, but it's going to be huge. >> host: is there a difference, cecilia kang, in how the bush justice department is treating this as oppose today the obama justice justice department. >> host: it was the obama justice department that tight up in the first place. >> host: the bush -- >> guest: the obama administration. oftentimes things have happened at staff level where they're looking at different issues, but as far as us knowing of a formal review, that happened during the obama administration. and i would say general, the way that -- this is not a direct

answer to your question, but the way that the obama administration is approaching antitrust appears to be different. they appear to be very interested in issues revolving around technology, the technology industry both at the justice department and the federal trade commission. and that's a tricky thing. i wrote a story for the paper on sunday about how some regulatory interests in the high-tech sector has really engaged washington and silicon valley more than it really ever has been. but gerntion it's a delicate balance. google will tell you and other companies, too, that you don't want to be overly burdensome with rules or regulations that would hamper innovation, that could potentially set rules that could be outdated so terribly quickly because the web moves and changes so quickly. so there's a delicate balance right now that's trying to be struck right now, and that actually is across several agencies. it's at the federal trade

commission, it's at the justice department, it's at the federal communications commission who which right now is grappling with some very controversial rules on how internet service providers can treat content, the web content over their networks. so i would say the obama administration in general is definitely willing to take a stab at it and figure out how, you know, they're seeing cracks in the foundation, i should say, where of the internet economy where there are concerns of competition being hampered, there are concerns that new players, that new company in that garage in, you know, silicon valley or elsewhere may not actually make it to see daylight because the big telecom players, the big tech companies -- and google's a big company now too -- could be

setting some really big precedents and some really big deals that could completely change competition down the road. and it's a difficult regulatory mission to the try to predict the future. and in some ways that's what the obama administration's trying -- has to do when it deals with internet policy. >> host: and is this a case where regulation is not keeping up with technology or technology has changed and regulation is behind 10, 20 years? >> guest: i think so only in that, you know, nobody really knew that google was doing this, and we all knew. it was actually secret for a while, it was secret from about 2002 until, for a couple years, they even say so. but they were doing it quietly, and nobody was really following. and then at that time, you know, everybody was using amazon, a lot of consumers were using amazon to buy books on the web, but during that time the kindle came out. all these game-changing gadgets and applications, and it's just

now that we're all grasping that they all fit in this ecosystem and this universe of convergence on the web where media, content, information and the way that we says that information and how we distribute it is posing all these vexing questions because it all resides on the web. and this is an example because i would say they started this in 2002, and it took until 2008 for the administration, the justice department to really start a review of this and figure out if this is anticompetitive, and the copyright office didn't really pipe in until this last year on this where this is an issue of, you know, some pretty clear copyright concerns. >> host: what about the congress? >> guest: so congress had a hearing on this earlier this year, and that's where a member of the copyright office spoke and voiced her concerns. they, a lot of people think that that's where this settlement

should be, should fall. and what i mean by that is congress, there's a lot of effort for congress to establish clear legislation on online, online book commerce and online book copyright. there is definitely a push for that. you're not hearing that right now so much particularly because this case is moving into this, the u.s. district court in new york. so it looks like this may be resolved between two private parties, and actually that's why, that's actually the crux of the concern by create ijs is that -- critics is that this case could be precedent-setting, and it's between private parties. this should not, that's what critics would say, between private parties that would set the rules of the road for how you says a book online -- access a book online, how you read a book online be it on your mobile phone or whatever in the future, how much you pay for it. these are big questions that

arise that are being revolve inside this one case, and that's a good way to think about b the criticism. >> host: are we in the comment period right now? >> guest: not yet. we haven't heard from the judge yet unless he's commented while you and i are taping, but he will -- what's going to happen next is he will open up for public comment, and then justice has a chance to sound in, chime in on their own reaction to the revised settlement -- >> host: and anybody else. >> guest: absolutely. and that's public comment period, for sure. and judge chin is expected early in 2010, so january/february framework, that he will conduct a hearing that will ultimately determine to accept or to reject the settlement. >> host: and if people want to comment, do you know where they can go? >> guest: i believe it will be at the new york, the u.s. district court of the southern district court of new york, judge denny chin, but i'll have it on my web site.

>> host: and what is your web site? >> guest: sure. it's called posttech, and it's on "the washington post" web site. you can navigate through the post technology page, but go to washington post.com/post tech. and i'm also on twitter. >> host: what is your -- >> guest: cecilia kang. >> host: cecilia kang of "the washington post," thank you for the update on the google book settlement. >> guest: thank you so much. >> cecilia kang a technology reporter for "the washington post" where she writes the post tech column. for more information on the google book search settlement, visit googlebooksettlement.com. >> that's ag mess. 17 years old. she was a thoroughbred/arab cross. wonderful, wonderful horse. my mother bred horses, so i've

always liked horses, ride agnes every day. i tend to gipt around 6:30 -- get up around 6:30, and my co-editor, jeffrey sinclair, up in oregon city he puts the site up, the new material up about 7:30. so we crack in about 6:30 and discuss, you know, what stories might go up on the site. probably accumulated them over the previous day, and we talk about what's going on and what people seem to be interested in, what the big events are, and then jeffrey gets the site up somewhere between about 6:30 and 8, so it's a busy time. i'm an early morning guy anyway. you know, i do do counterpunch material, i do a column for the nation, the one i've been doing since 1984. i do that every second tuesday. do a syndicated column. then we're usually working on a couple of books for counterpunch

press. those are the birds which really, the dog, the cat and the bird actually write everything for me, but we try and keep quiet about that. do you want to give dictation here? do you want to write the column for me? come on, sit down. here, come here. sit, sit. good buy. good boy. now, your miserable life as a dog. want to give me the fist chanter? -- first chapter? some writers like no noise. i like animals because they don't criticize -- animals always do. that as soon as you start talking for radio, they drown you out. [laughter] so anyway, that take thes me through the morning, you know, editing for the counterpunch books that we're doing, you know, two or three books projects. but in the middle of all this, you know, because i like to garden and i have horses and, you know, i'm always running around building things, so life

kind of lurches forward through the day. this is a building which we call the side house which e with put up -- we put up about three, four years ago. rammed earth is a very old technique. like many writers, i like to think about things other than writing, and i like to build. this is a square building going into a dome done by my friend and neighbor, greg smith. i don't like to write in the evening unless i have to do something for england and, of course, you know, england is eight hours from here forward and, you know, if you're going to get something onto someone's desk by 8 in the morning, you can do it until late at night. but that's the shape of my day. it's not particularly monk-like in its seclusion. i spend a lot of time gabbing on the telephone to three or four people, you know, to alia up in olympia, washington, who also

does the editing on the books. our business operations are run right here in petrolia by becky grant and david wheeler. incredible efficiency, of course. counterpunch books. we started thinking we were publishing stuff in the news letter and the web that we wanted to keep in more permanent form. our web stuff on the counterpunch side doesn't go away. it's all around the back side of mars, you know, in the vast sort of black hole of old internet communications. probably all ending up in some government archive, and god help the people who have to go through it. but we felt we wanted to put them in hard covers, and we began with a book called the politics of anti-semitism because we'd done a whole bunch of articles about this idea if you're critical of israel, you're an antisemite which is absolute nonsense. we do our books in association with ak press who are a bunch of

pretty well-organized anarchists down in oakland, and ak looks after a lot of the book -- looks after the book shop distribution. we also sell the books on our web site or, you know, people write in, and we just send them right from the office here in petrolia. it was natural for us to do it, and then we got just into books that we like, you know? again, it's not that expensive. if you can sell them and you have a web site on which you can advertise them all the time, so weave done five or six books. the latest is end times which is out this month actually done by myself and jeffrey st. claire, my co-author. we've got a book, how the irish invented slang, which i think will be very important because it shows that much of american slang comes from irish including

words like poker and jazz. it's a really whole hidden part of american language and etymology. if you look at h.l. men ken, he says three words from irish, you know, in american today is complete nonsense, you know? millions and millions of irish people came to america speaking irish. the words didn't go away, b they just transmuted into american. but danny is the first person who's really gone through it methodically and shown how, you know, many of the most common words in the american language in slang are straight, pretty much straight irish, gaelic. so we've got landau's book introduced by gorvy call the and basically the politics of the bush administration, we have not been shy to criticize the bush administration as before we weren't shy to criticize the clinton administration.

so we did a dime's worth of difference basically saying there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties which got a lot of democrats pretty mad. so we occupy a definite site. i wouldn't want to say in each because that seems to me very small, but i think we figure pretty large on when people say there must be more to life than the democratic party even though we loathe the republicans, there's counterpunch saying, come over here, and you can learn a lot about the world. that's really what we're all about. i started listening to the sound of my father getting up at 5:30 in the morning on an underwood typewriter just like the one i've got here clacking away and, you know, that was a different era. i grew up with hot metal type in newspapers, and my dad who was a writer, great writer -- we're going to publish his memoirs again soon b in counterpunch, i, claude -- you know, it was one

telephone line to the outside world in southern ireland in the middle '50s. he'd finish riding his articles, and then he'd jump on his bike and ride 3 miles to the town. in fact, the only time he ever really got mad another me in my childhood is when i got fed up with him riding into town instead of reading me a book, and i let down the air in his tires. he said any other father would have beat you. [laughter] 1930 until almost the day he died, 1980, i must have typed about, i don't know, four or five million words on would be of those -- words on one of those machines as, indeed, most writers of my generation did. the only person that still does, i think, is ralph nader. i told him i had an underwood 10, he got incredibly excited. he wanted to cannibalize it for his. i wouldn't do that. so that was my work habits and,

you know, for writing books and editing and all that, and, you know, i remember i wrote columns in new york until 1984. when i had, when i sent an article to new new edge, i'd have to get on the subway in manhattan in the middle of the night and go town to the telex office riding on the aa train, the d train all the way down -- take the a train all the way to the south end of manhattan. and then i moved to key west for a while, and that just about -- in the early '80s when the fax machine was coming in. thank god for the fax. and then we went fax and for example. so it got easier to be a columnist outside new york actually. and then, of course, you know, i really only went online, you know, in the -- god, it must have been -- no, 1998 or 9. i was late to the game actually. jeffrey st. claire, you know, my

co-editor, well, it was obvious we had to do it. so i put the typewriter away, it was the underwood 10 or electric ibm, and i thought, i'll have you out in a little bit. i haven't got the the poor old things out. feel kind of treacherous about it. and here i am with a mac, you know, with a laptop. i'm a hunt-and-peck guy, you see? two to three fingers. no rippling around pej joes with all ten fingers for me. just hammering away at the keys. people used to laugh at me because i used to wear the imagery, wear the characters off the keys here because i hit them hard. >> we're at the national press club's author night, and we're here with jason killian meek, author of hollywood on the

potomac. you talk about los angeles and the beltway and the connection between presidents and celebrities. do you want to tell us background about your book? >> sure. washington and hollywood have a love affair going. it's been a long-time love affair between the two cities. one has fame, one has power, and one wants what the other one has. and, you know, when i went into this book, there's a lot of talk about president obama coming to washington and really attracting lots of celebrity attention and having all sorts of people from everyone from jlo to george clooney to the white house, and i found out through this book that really this has been going on for a very long time. i have the first, the first photo in the book, actually, is of charlie chaplain from 1918 standing on pennsylvania avenue stumping for world war i bonds. so if you start with charlie chaplain, our first film star, and go all the way up until oprah winfrey and obama, you'll find that hollywood and

washington have always been involved with one another in some way, shape, or form. >> we're lucky to have a couple photos from the book, and it looks like this crosses party line, this goes republican and democrat, and we'll start with richard nixon and sammy davis jr. >> well, absolutely. this is, you know, any photo with richard nixon is comical, you know, when you have a hollywood star standing next to richard nixon. he was never really comfortable in front of the camera, so he had this sort of fascination of being surrounded by celebrities, and this particular picture has historic significance because samny davis jr., you know, was disinvited from kennedy's inauguration who produced the show by frank sinatra. it was his interracial marriage that was at stake, so politically they decided that wasn't going to be the best thing for the country to see. >> you say sinatra declared jfk

an honorary member of the rat pack, correct? >> yes. sinatra did do that. jfk was one of our most charismatic presidents, i think you'd have to count him even more so than, say, a ronald reagan who was an actor. and, you know, he was not only a member of the rat pack, but peter love ard, who's on the cover, was in the rat pack and married into the kennedy family, and it was really considered the first marriage of politics and hollywood. >> i want to go back to sammy davis jr. very quickly because you said that sammy davis jr. was the first african-american to sleep in the white house, correct? >> well, that's correct. nixon rolled out the red carpet for sammy davis jr. in sort of a way to have a little dig at kennedy because he wasn't at kennedy's inaugural. so he invited sammy davis jr. into the white house, set him up at the queen's bedroom and really kind of made it a night to remember. and that became, as far as the research that i pulled up at the

library in the national archives, the first african-american to be a guest at the white house. >> we've got three more here, let's go to the next one, and it's pretty iconic, and i think most folks have seen this one. this is richard nixon and elvis presley. >> sure. again, a great photo of elvis and nixon, the most-requested photo from the national archives which out of -- when you think that everything that the national archives keeps in storage, this is the one that people want to see the most over the years. >> now, is it true that elvis had asked richard nixon to allow him to carry a badge of some sort? i've heard this story many times. >> he did. he was very concerned of the hippie culture at the time and wanted, he actually rolled his limousine right up to the west gate at the white house and asked the guard to see nixon and wanted to be made a federal martial at large to help with the drug problem of young people. of course, he was turned away but only for a few hours because when the word got to nixon that

this kind of incredible request had taken place at the west gate, nixon reconsidered and said, hmm, i think, you know, bring him over, let's do this. he called up his directer of narcotics and had a badge sent over, and that day elvis presley became a federal agent at large. >> let's go to the next one here. and we have the late michael jackson with ronald reagan and nancy reagan. >> well, you know, this photo in some ways inspired this whole book because when i was 16, i wasn't very interested in watching the news every night, like most 16-year-olds maybe, but i remember one night watching ronald reagan and michael jackson with his sequinned glove walking out of the white house on nbc news, and i was shocked. i thought it was the most bizarre thing i'd ever seen in my life, and that kind of put an idea in my mind, gee, what is this sort of taking place here when these stars are visiting our elected officials? what are they doing, you know,

why are they there, and what are they accomplishing, if anything? >> what are they accomplishing? >> well, it depends on why they're there, but i think certainly in the end you have celebrities and actors, entertainers who are americans, after all, and they really want to influence policy and decisions, or in the case of michael jackson, it was a great pr publicity stunt. >> this last one i really like, and it's totally bizarre. it's andy warhol and president jimmy carter, and it looks like a warhol portrait of carter, correct? >> that's correct. you know, andy warhol painted these portraits of, limited-edition portraits of jimmy carter, and the carter presidential campaign basically traded them for political donations around the country. you know, it was a wise thing to do at the time politically speaking because the country had just gone through watergate, and really they were very distrustful of anyone from washington or anything that

represented washington, and i don't think you can get any farther away from washington than andy warhol. so this actually was tremendously effective for carter in raising money. it actually was credited, he credited it himself as being one of the financial turn arounds of his entire presidential campaign, selling these andy warhol prints. >> now, your day job you're a political strategist. do you ever tell your clients to invoke a celebrity endorsement? >> no, i really stay away from that. but, you know, in -- we live sort of in the age where obama and oprah were a team, and mike huckabee and chuck norris were a team. so it doesn't matter whether you're democrat or republican, i think both sides are very involved with hollywood and celebrity. >> jason killian meath, thank you so much. >> i say my job at fox news is to keep company materials because it really is, and i say that to young people. every once in a while fox will send me out to talk to a college

campus somewhere. i'd rather go to kandahar, quite frankly. [laughter] and i'll say to young people i keep company with, and i know i've conjured up in the mind of a young person the image of somebody wearing a span connection suit -- spandex suit and a cape, but that's not the definition of a hero. the definition of a hero is a person who has put themself at risk for the benefit of others, and that's what i -- that's basically all i do. i know that some of my colleagues at fox news don't, don't -- and the rest of the so-called mainstream media -- don't get that. i tell them every once in a while that, you know, the military and the media have a lot in common, they both take casualties. [laughter] they do. i mean, in the military we all know what that is, in the media it's when they fall off their egos and land on their iqs. [laughter] so both the military and the media rely on feedback.

in the military the feedback is the enemy advancing or is he in the wire? or are they retreating? that's feedback. the effectiveness of what you do. the effectiveness of what we do in broadcasting, in the media more broadly, is measured by whether people buy your books or whether people watch your shows or whether they listen to you on the radio. it's all called ratings. we also get our feedback now, most of the time, on literally by e-mail. i mean, people -- we actually look at this stuff that comes n. i brought with me one of the e-mails i received while i was covering the troops overseas. i was on a rooftop in iraq, i was on with "hannity & colmes". i'm standing next to one of those who had been in a gunfight, and i've said on the air ground combat is the worst

experience a human being can can have, and combs actually debated me about it as though he knew something about it. and so in the aftermath -- and here i'm standing next to one of these hard-charging young americans who had been in that gunfight, and right afterwards we go cold on this show, but we keep the satellite up, and i start seeing the e-mails who are coming in from people watching that segment. this is an actual honest -- this is feedback in the media. quote, colonel north on tonight's "hannity & colmes" you said ground combat is the worst experience a human can have. this is not true. the worst experience any human can have is spending time with my mother-in-law. [laughter] my best friend -- this is a -- this is really -- my best friend spent two years in iraq, did a tour of duty in afghanistan, he lost his right hand in fallujah. he's met my mother-in-law. i just called him. he agrees with me, says it's not even a close call. jim in san diego.

[laughter] that's feed bank in the media. now, there's a picture for you. [laughter] and let me just, if i may, relate what i do to where i'm going. to i'm leaving tomorrow to go to afghanistan, i'll be out there embedded with u.s. forces on the ground and, in some cases, co-located with afghan national army and afghan national police. and i wanted to give you so you understand my perspective. i am a son of the greatest generation. back many years ago when i worked for another network, tom brokaw's office was right next to mine up on the eighth floor of the same building we're in today. and tom brokaw had just written that book, the greatest generation, and my mom and dad were part of it. in fact, the cover of that book could easily have been my mom and dad. there's a soldier's trousers and a beautiful woman's legs, and that was my mom. and i've looked back carefully at not only what was in his book, but at that generation as

it influenced me as a young person growing up, and that is the message i've got for you. that's the message of this great museum. the message is the legacy that had been left for the next generation. that's why this museum is such an important part of who we are as a people in america. and that's why that legacy that was handed off to my brothers and me influenced all of us, every one of us served in the military. not because we're more patriotic than the next door neighbor, but it was part of who we are, it was part of who my parents were. every one of my uncles served in world war ii. the media today is full of stories about how desperate the situation is in afghanistan. i mean, i brought with me four or five different newspapers all of which have a story either on page one or on -- about how bad things are in afghanistan. you could take the word afghanistan out of the article, and two years ago the word would have been iraq.

well, guess what? they won the war in iraq, soldiers, sailers, airmen, guardsmen and marines of the united states of america won that war. and yet you would not know that from the media because as soon as the war turned around, they stopped covering it. and today all the bad news is coming out of afghanistan. i'd like to remind young people who didn't have that blessing that i did of growing up in, with parents from the greatest generation that in world war ii -- and i went back and checked because i knew i was going to be here tonight -- i went back and checked on this day in 1942 the operation, the first american offensive of world war ii. remember, pearl harbor had been bombed seven months before. america lost every single battle it was in up until june, the bat battle of midway. every single battle was a disaster. by june when the midway is won, there's a naval battle and a

naval/air battle, by june tens of thousands of americans were dead not just at pearl harbor, but all across the pacific ocean. americans were dying on the beaches who were landed with the canadians and the brits in the famous raid. you'd had a disaster going on in north africa, and it was a total reversal of everything everybody thought was going to happen. it was terrible news. the battle for guadal canal was 20 days old today the in 1942. twenty days along. when they landed at guadal canal, they expected at max a 30-day battle. it was still going on six months later. there was absolutely no one who forecast that america could be put this that kind of a situation and yet at the end of the day 16-and-a-half million men and women serving in

uniform, the nation mobilizes, and we win the war. and make no doubt about it, it would not have happened had the united states not gotten b into the war. europe would have been ruled by hitler and stalin, they would have parceled it up, and japan would have run asia. now, when you look at the way the news is being covered today and the disparaging things that are said routinely by my colleagues from the mainstream media about those who serve in the armed forces or those who support our armed forces, that's the new dirty word in america, contractor. the media's figured out that the american people aren't going to do to these sailers, soldiers, airmen, guardsmen and marines what they did to my generation from vietnam. they're not going to stand for it. and that hasn't stopped politicians from denigrating

them. we all know of certain politicians in washington -- i'm trying not to be the partisan here, mr. president, i don't want to be partisan -- but we know that a certain illinois senator whose nickname is dick -- [laughter] excuse me, i'm just quoting him, he likened those who serve in our armed forces to those who served stalin and hitler. and it was immediately jumped on, and some of these town halls that are happening now made them look like picnics, so he stopped doing it. "the new york times" and the washington compost -- [laughter] described them, and this, again, is how they started out, nothing but poor kids from mississippi, texas, and alabama. god knows why they picked those three states. who couldn't get a decent job or health insurance so they joined the military because that's all we offered them. now, i'm not bragging or complaining. this is my 16th trip to cover this war.

okay? i spend months in the field with these youngsters. that's not the description of the youngsters -- somehow magically these near do wells and misfits don't show up in the units i've covered, and i've only covered 45 units in this war. that book out there, not one of those photographs is staged, not one of those inches of hundreds of miles of footage that i've shot were set up, it's all the real thing. >> this was a portion of a booktv program. you can view the entire program and many other booktv programs online. go to booktv.org, type the name of the author or book into the search area in the upper left-hand corner of the page. select the watch link. now you can view the entire program. you might also explore the recently on booktv box or the featured video box to find recent and featured programs.