and eleanor had always been interested in young people, but because of this very warm relationship with joel, she became officially involved in causes of young people and international student work and ways of trying to get young people as part of the political process. ..

>> from the georgia tech bookstore in atlanta, this is just over an hour. >> many thanks are having here to talk about my new book, "rude democracy: civility and incivility in american politics." i look forward to hearing your questions and having some discussions. in civility is a very hot topic right now in american politics, and i have looked at from a political perspective but also more cultural perspective to try to make some arguments. i think will be constructed and try to improve public discourse. i had a few arguments that i will make an backup a little bit and tell you why i wrote the book. in civility is a very painful thing in american politics, and i think in daily life. but it's certainly not nothing new. so were the arguments that want to make is the historical one that while incivility is painful

for us and it feels like a struggle right now, it's depressing how it can be debilitating to some people, makes them not want to be involved in politics, it's asserting nothing new in american politics. and i want to export the historical perspective and remind people of some of our ups and downs that come to civility in america. also, i want to talk about passion in politics because we have a lot of it right now. especially during an election season. i want to talk about the balance between passion and civility, and that we can keep the kind of passion that we are seeing now in american politics whether democratic party or the tea party, or whatever your preference. we have a lot of feeling and emotion right now in america but i think it can be brought around to a more civil discourse. i'd like to talk about that. then there are some solutions to the kind of struggles, problems we see in the area general, political instability. so i will discuss those as well near the end. the reason i wrote this book was

because of my undergraduate, my college students, not just you at georgia tech about around the country or as part of a political scientist, and i found that many, many students, while they are extremely bright and wonderful future for us, they have a real profound discomfort in talking about anything difficult. politics, religion, important social issues. a lot of students that i've taught over the years in higher education are very worried about getting in a fight, we got some kind of passionate discussion where things will get out of hand or where they will be welcomed, where they will say something offensive or something that might cause trouble. so i guess the particularly is a lot of students, and a lot of undergraduate students i've taught over the last 20 some odd just don't do great about argument. they don't like it. it's uncomfortable. it's worrisome. and they try to avoid it because

they are afraid it might lead to unhappiness or destruction or instability. so i found this troubling throughout my career as an academic him as a teacher, and also as a campus leader. and academy to reflect on whether i was any good at making arguments back when i was in college, if i ever changed my mind, if i ever thought out people who disagreed with me, if i ever worried about things turning uncivil as we talk about politics, and taking it to a higher level. i wondered whether america as a nation knows how to argue about politics in a civil, productive fashion, or whether it ever did. and i think the answer to all these questions is a resounding no, and our political discourse which is mostly lit and hysterical and unknowing. and many times dangers. so it feels dangerous to us. so there's incivility all around us. of course, it's the instability in the mass media, the c. we all

swim in, and the nightly news that bothers us most because it feels very much, the internet we can control a little bit which side to go on, which cites we don't. at the television or the cable news instability tends to really bother us to our talk about that later. i said i would talk about history a little bit, and i'm very interested and instability has manifested itself over the generation that american politics. it has been a constant sometimes it is more troubling than others. it does take different forms in different eras. in 18th century in the days of our founding fathers, instability was absolutely a presence. we glory in some of it, you know, the original tea party for example, which was kind of an exciting passionate moment, some might argue it was an uncivil moment in american politics. but a lot of what happened in 18th century was very troubling as well. that kind of mudslinging that you see in american politics

today can -- can't hold a candle to what went on in 18th, 19th century. just a general level of hatred and disdain that that was present in a lot of political campaigns. in the 1830s, the famous visitor from france came to the united states, made a pretty grand tour of the eastern states and trying to understand american democracy in its early stages, how it worked, what look like. he found a lot of things beloved monarch and i highly recommend democracy in america, someone most important books we have on a mac and the mac in politics. but he did coin the phrase tyranny is a majority. he was talking about how many people are silenced by worrisome talk, and even instability. so he was very concerned that the tyranny and majority and local community or even at a grand is stale -- scale might

hurt. he noticed that he found it very troubling part of american political culture. i think it's interesting to us today, so many decades later, that they were already there in a new company pretty much brand-new american democracy. without some very low points with regard to stability in american politics and i think you can probably name some of those decade or time periods. the one i chose for the cover of my book is from the 1850s. so these are some very dark period of the united states just before the civil war. it's an incident on the floor of the u.s. senate, senator charles sumner, from massachusetts, had given a speech. is an abolitionist. he gives a speech against slavery and there were some attacks and there but it was kind of in impassive speech

against slavery. he had really angered a congressman from south carolina who did come over to the floor of the senate to the senate chamber to try to beat him to death with the king. this was not the only incident like this in the u.s. senate, the u.s. congress and the 19th century. this happened even asked anyone and it's captured in this beautiful lithograph that i use for my cover. so it's marked in american history that way, but there were some bench clearing brawls and congress. there were some real moments of -- dose of this size. there were a lot of moments of incivility, and they were not so uncommon. they are recorded and remembered. there have been so many periods in the united states come in so many periods of incivility. but with regards to the president, we talk a lot about that in political science, have the president is viewed come how he is talked about, proceed. there's a lot of incivility directed to the president right

now but it's not the first time. fdr, as a lot of you know, was labeled a socialist a fascist, and on instability and discourse, with targeted at him. certainly reagan was painted in some very uncivil ways. george w. bush, and the list goes on. i don't think any president has escaped the pretty brutal instability and hatred in his time. i think the historical argument is pretty clear. historians though i don't think have made it big as impact as they should. even though a lot of us know, well, there was instability throughout history, still bothers us when we face a day today. the history, matters for contacts but it doesn't seem to matter in helping us cope with what's around us. incivility is harmful in a lot of ways and that's not something i talk about extensively in the book because i think we all understand it. we understand the social

discomfort that comes about with incivility. i often, when i teach about media and politics, public opinion, often use a very famous article from the 20th century from columbia. they were among the first social scientists study the mass media and its effect on political culture. they wrote beautifully on a variety of topics. in 1948 when writing about radio, if you believe because television was not the technology by then, writing about radio, they were worried among other things about what they called a debilitating effect of political discourse. the fact that when we watch a lot of political today on television, when you are really deep in political talk and you get all the time, you witness it all the time, you watch it all

the time, it starts to make you think that you are participating in politics when you haven't moved off the couch. they saw this as a very famous reason, social science, they call it an architect in dysfunction. they met just what i said, in the book, for people who watch it, listen to too much start to replace dealing with known. they think they have a lot of information is what counts in terms of acting politics. i've had a few people in my life say that they were political animals. and i find it interesting when i hear it. sometimes when people say they are political it means they participate in rallies. they write letters to the editors. they write letters to their congressmen. they go to town meetings, but many times people tell me they are a political animal, it just means that they watch a lot of cnn, and they read about

politics and in no a lot about politics. that's exactly what social scientists were talking in the 1940s and were worried about him is that people would do their viewership as kind of a political participation pics i would take this one step further, since i wrote about civility these days, and argue not only does a lot of exposure to this kind of media content whether it is mudslinging and incivility and general talk that seems to be name calling and not politically constructive talks, that it has that dysfunction effect and the ability to from acting. but it also can be pressured. i think that the only social scientist right, they were onto something about civility as well. that part of what makes, that watching all of this, the incivility we see on television and the name calling, start to alienate people from politics. that's their bottom line.

one of my colleagues at the university of texas, a terrific scholar of political culture and somebody who has been a very keen observer of the political scene, he and i were on a panel about a month ago in washington. we were talking a civility and incivility, and both of us agreed that incivility has been kind of a constant in american political life. doctor hart wondered, why is that? it must be attractive to us. everybody talks about how much they hate incivility, how ugly it is, how horrible, how debilitating it is. but the truth is that must be something about it that we like because incivility, name-calling, mudslinging, it works. negative advertising works and political scientists have chemistry that very well. that's what you see so much of it during the campaign season. but dr. hart had a few reasons why he thinks incivility is a

kind of constant new american politics. and i think usually on target here at 41 it's a dramatic. we look for things that are exciting. this is a world where we need ever-increasing amounts of stimulation from media, whether it's the internet or cable television, our daily lives and the community around us. it's dramatic and engaging in he argued it diabolic, two-sided usually. it is one side against the other, one person only one hit against another person. and that's very comforting to us in a world that's full of great and a world that is very multifaceted, and very complex. you see that kind of one on one, rochon, lack why, see that face off in the fact that given how messy the world is the fact that there are few issues that have

to sides. another thing he argues is incivility is social. it feels antisocial on one level but it really is social. it is about human interaction even if the interaction is ugly at times. related to that he argued that incivility is gentrified come violets are arrested he said, it's something, it's kind of an accessible way to have a really big fight. it sure does something that is a misdemeanor or a felony, put another way. and find it very primal. it helps us to blow off steam and is a comfort in that way. we all have a lot of steam to blow off, at least if you can believe what you see on tv about the midterm elections in 2010. so part of my book is about these matters, and again, how

incivility has manifested itself in different segments of american politics. i do have a few ideas in my book of how we can get ourselves out of this hole. i do think there's a certain amount of incivility that is present in american politics, no matter what. this kind of aid effectiveness to incivility as my colleague argued. but i do argue in the book that we need to think more about how we educate our students, not in just in higher education but also in the state of the system and how we can start to build a culture of argument among our young people. i do think our politics and the people who are so effective at slinging mud helps create, not created on their own unilaterally, but helps to create a culture of instability on the kind of like to lay for our people people when you start working on the next generation.

in particular, we need to start getting students even as her as elementary and middle school that kind of tools for toolkits that they need to become good at argument. to learn how to to be passionate about an issue, be educated about it, and have fun arguing about it without getting to the point of being uncivil. is takes passionate it takes training and it takes work and it takes a lot of patients. one of the reasons you see the kind of instability you see on television and the name-calling is because people think it's very quick and efficient to just go for the jugular and start to label people. while actually building a substantive argument, listening to the other side, trying to rebut, trying to marshal evidence, that takes a lot more work and takes drink it i don't mean to make a sound daunting. i'm not talking about training to be a legislator or anything like that. that was sort of elementary and middle school. talking more about things as simple as debate.

you know, teaching the basic rules of how you make an argument, how you marshal evidence, how you respond to an argument, how in argument develops over time. and are thankfully so many wonderful teachers that debate in forensics who have tried to put with a curriculum together, even for very young children and allow them -- there is a question of how is nspc day a typical teacher, whether elementary, middle school or high school finds time in a curriculum with a lot of pressure and a lot of pressing going on to also add this other element, to try to teach children to debate, to argue, to argue with substance, to be compelling. i'm not saying it's easy. but i will say that it should be our priority, that i can't think of a better thing to do in high

school physics or, high school physics or history or whatever it's a place. i can't think of a better thing than to try to teach young people how to make arguments and how to listen. there's a wonderful program, some of you have heard on national public radio, called stories for -- is an organization and an initiative, to try to get americans to do a better job in listening to each other, create a culture of listing, a culture of power, a culture where we learn to interact with each other again in this highly mediated world come and try to build the community back a. and i think that that's the other side of teaching children how to debate, had to make arguments, how to be compelling as also to relearn as a culture how we listen to each other and how we tolerate and how we gain the patients and the stamina to do this. so there are wonderful foundations, projects, initiatives all over the nation that are coming at this question

from different angles. but they would need to pull it together and i think our k-12 system is one place where we can put the higher education also has a huge responsibility with regard to teaching civility, getting students these kind of tools for argument, learned how to make arguments. and higher education where the advantage of a captive audience but we can require courses not in public speaking, which has its place, but in argumentation which is harder and is more intense, and it has a bigger payoff than public speaking which again, while important, is not getting at what i'm getting at, which is the past citizenship. i'm often asked when i give a talk about civility about journalists because everybody wants to blame either politicians who are slinging mud and negative advertising, our various capable broadcasters who they think are responsible for

this tremendous boost in incivility and the american discourse, and there's something to do that. it's. i think -- but i think we can try to put too much blame on those, onto those folks. instead of looking back at ourselves and our own david lives, and what it is we are drawn to and how much work we are putting into in being citizens as well. and there are some very good models in the american mass media tend to get overlooked and perhaps poor viewership, but i think a lot of public broadcast is trying to raise the level of substantive debate. and again, through projects like story course of trying to under score the importance of listing. a lot of the models on television that way again, to try to focus on substantive discourse in politics instead of more name-calling and the more

entertaining stuff, it is going to a lot of people. i think one of the struggles that be have today, media executives, is how it is you keep people engaged in politics, keep them interested, but also keep a sensitive, passionate without getting anywhere near incivility. and so broadcasters are expanding with different formats and things to do but we have not seen this huge surge of imagination that would probably need to see in american mass media to help in this project that we are all really quite a bit of part of. so those are my ideas about civility, about how we got here, about what we might do as a nation. there's no question that educators have a lot of responsibly, journalist, politics itself, statesmen, and it's an issue of generational cohorts. you know, i don't think a lot of us who are accustomed to are

going to change so quickly. so that's why so much of my work is focused on young people. college and much, much younger because i think they can help us try to make a change that we need, even if a little incivility will always be a part of american politics. so thanks very much for having me, and look forward to discussing it with you. any ideas? yes. [inaudible] >> i guess i'm not as pessimistic about the older generation as you were. i think there's an interesting group of technology base at heart for, not public discourse,

but certainly for policy-based discussions, to encourage dialogue, and this is beyond what you made about clear argumentation come in being able to make a case passionately, but also to listen, to be able to go beyond making that argument for a case to getting actually listening and making solutions based on common interest in having a solution that is workable, so people can -- i talk about the dialogue and that kind of tools, that are represented, online tools that they know about. >> maybe if you explained. >> tools for visually representing and encouraging people to thoroughly explain what they mean is, but also to ask people, they are based on the principle of curiosity about what the other people's meaning is as well. and so you have got usually a

facilitated discussion as well, in which there are certain conventions of the discussion, what you mean by that for example, what do you mean a particular term. because people are talking past each other when they're using big words, for example, or identify who are the stakeholders that can be some disagreement on that. these discussions take place over time. these are very much, these are not reactions to an news article out there on cnn. these are very much often face to face that will continue in cyberspace, perhaps. but they are much more balanced discussions. and yet these are the kinds of discussions people, they can be using to come to certain kinds of policy agreements and so forth. they can be used in education. it's very encouraging what they're teaching it in the georgia tech strategic plan on

not just technological education or technical education partnership, but just the kind of thing you're talking about. >> i think that's a wonderful point. made all hope is not lost. people of our age, but yeah, the new technology, things like social networking have got to be, or it's not going to work. we live in a kind of age where computers is a presence in our lives, and needs to be worked into any new or profound way of thinking about political discourse. for example, whether it's in college or with younger children, i do think that young people today, and i include children i know very well, and have a great need for self representation in media. i think that's clear, and that's why things like social networking and facebook and youtube are so popular.

it's a neat, it is i can't get something they find incredibly fun and engaging but i think, take for example, in middle school. they middle school curriculum, and it's a debate where worked into that, teaching a debate and having effective today, i do think that students should film each other doing this and react to and circulate it, and hopefully people can figure out to do that and school communities. and i think that two that they will find even more thrilling, to not only do the debate, in the old-fashioned interpersonal, interacting with another human being into space, a physical space, but also seen himself do it, having other people see it, not in real-time. getting reaction to it later. and again, using technology to go to the culture of origin. if we pull on some of the

tendencies we see on people today, in this project and some very creative ways, so, you know, i'm amazed at how many people are already on this and thinking about it. and just hope that a lot of teachers out there, and certainly college professors, citizens and communities want to do this as part of a school setting can look on the winning ticket vantage of all possibilities there are for teaching argument and really learn to enjoy it. because i do think arguing is fun, and it's part of what is attractive about these kind of wild cable shows. people are drawn to it. we just have to now make it more substantive, more sale and more constructive. but the passion part is great. the motion part in the excitement of it is promising. >> when i first moved to atlanta

a few years ago i had a car with only an am radio so i was forced to listen to talk radio. back in those days, things on both sides, yet both sides sides of the argument. and even rare occasion i get someone in going ballistic about reagan or something like that. but generally it was very mattered, you know, well mannered. then when clinton got elected it's like part of it was cnn had been here for a whole decade or more common in fox news came in. i'm not blaming everything on fox news, but things just seemed to ratchet up or it was just suddenly come it almost seemed as though people are outraged that after 12 years of republicans having held the presidency, the idea of democrats, especially someone like bill clinton, just cause people to go overboard. this has just been ratcheted up and up to what seems to me like people seem to think that they are trying to stop armageddon from happening, what you think

is because obama is a socialist and he's going to take all the money from rich people, or if you think the republican party is the part of the rich people and they will destroy the middle class and everything. and is it just -- my question is i guess, do you see another generation -- i guess more pessimistic about our generation, he does it gets ratings. i mean, i think fox news the last go-round at the top three shows per something like that. i forget what it was, but anyways, they just control cable news ratings these days. it is because they must be think what people want to hear. and i'm just wondering if a similar example would be a lot of younger evangelical christians aren't so any hard and fast place within other public same-sex marriage and things like that. do you see in terms of and political discourse coming from a new generation coming in, and

somehow rating shifting's or something? >> that's a great point. i think, you know, i'm not sure what it was the clinton or the clinton years, but they are conflated with or they coincide with just a profound change in the media and the structure. i think what was going on then in the late 90s and the early 2000s is the rise of the internet and a 24/7 news cycle with americans still feels like a part of daily life, for even people who remember when they were news broadcasts, only three networks and that sort of thing. but i think that's probably part of it. something happened in clinical culture during the clinton years, increasing polarization without question, but combined with a 24/7 news cycle, the kind of options for blather and negativity that were opened to us with the internet, are evolving at the same time. you bring up an interesting point which is, i don't know,

there's a kind of urgency in political discourse right now. you started to feel that you said ramp up in the '90s during the clinton administration. it is certainly wrapped up now exposure during an election season. but it is very much connected with a 24/7 news cycle and our constant need for something new. for it to get refreshed, if you will, all the time, and keep it moving, keep it moving forward. i'm not necessarily in a constructive way but in a way that is interesting to us because we're bored a lot. we want to see things that breaks through and says, that's what the worrisome part of incivility that we see right now. there are so many avenues for it, so many ways for disparate. there are so many ways to express it anonymously, you know, through blogs and the sort of thing that allow people to be pretty hateful and uncivil, not

having to look another person in the eye. but also it's that urgency. we are in a crisis. how may times do you hear that in the media, the left or the right come out incredibly bad, how we are at the rock-bottom. and i encourage people if you haven't that a lot of american history, to start with the 1850s. and the kind of incivility that we saw that americans saw back then. it's the kind of incivility that led to the most or it is american history which was the civil war, and all of its causes and outcomes. so we are still doing better than they were in the 1850s. we look tremendously civilized compared to them. but again, it doesn't make it more fun for us and now. maybe it makes it -- your point is great about it feels like kind of a linear increase in urgency and crisis.

that makes the whole thing even more troubling. and it feels like it's hard to get away from, to. you can't in these days the we media are all around us and the fact that so many of our professions demand constant use of the internet, it feels also inescapable. i think a lot about my time in airports. i just cannot get away from a television screen. i would just like a quiet place to read a book, read the paper. but i don't know if other people don't want that, or it's just that the people who run airports think that we need constant stimulation in urgency and connectedness. so anyway, thanks for the comment.

>> so, when you talk about the majority, i was thinking about voter turnout, and for many years anytime there was a national election, i would usually read or hear a story about how incivility turns off a lot of voters and a direct result is low voter turnout. people measure usually in presidential elections. so during the '70s and '80s and '90s, it seemed like that was true. it was good evidence. you could look or at turnout in those years and say less than 50% of the people vote, good evidence that incivility turn off a lot of people. but the thing i'm wondering about is, in the three elections in the 2000s, if i'm not mistaken, have turned out to be historically high, especially

2000. so with that happening i thought okay, have we gotten used to the incivility? or less people getting turned off by it? i've also kept in mind what you said, while it seems that now, i've always heard it was -- i don't know whether incivility is as big a problem as participation as we think. i just wonder if you have any thoughts about that. >> that is a great question. certainly voter turnout has been a question of clinical science without question. but it is, too, voter turnout is not great. it's over half the population, but it's not particularly hide. we're hoping for a 2000 with all the excitement and kind of a very close race, or close most of the race and exciting primary season. we thought there would be tremendous increase in voter

turnout. and it wasn't quite, but i guess that i feel the voter turnout is not a deal and all. it's very, very important, obviously we can have and -- a democracy based on the lessons of a lot of people are turning out. but i think that turnout could still even get higher with a lot of incivility. i think incivility drives a lot of people to the polls, and i guess i don't think the turnout, even if it's high, it would necessarily be something that would make us a great democracy. or there's evidence of a great democracy. so i think it's successful but i don't know that turnout would reflects a much of what's going on with regard to political culture. and elections are few and far between. i feel as though campaign are starting earlier and earlier,

and certainly there's more money being spent. but there's a lot of time that's not -- that is between elections. we talk but they are not necessarily who's going to get elected, who is and who isn't. i think there's a fear of -- i think it's my but i don't think it would necessarily give us any great clues to either why instability looks what does, why it's bothering so much, or what they can do about it. but it didn't make me think that american politics and bipartisanship is something we've talked about, the last few years. it's something that this president hoped we would see more of. but it's something that i've been on the decline for quite a while in washington that a lot of you have read about. and the thing that worries political scientist is they see the population, the voting population are not nearly as

polarized as you would think by watching television, cable news, or cruising around on the internet. in fact, most people are moderates. they lean one way or the other but the kind of polarization that is modeled to us on television come in the media doesn't tend to fit what's really going on with regard to people's clinical attitudes and the social beliefs. so this gap between what you see represented and how people feel around you is pretty great, at least as far as the survey data tell us that social science. so that's something that is worrisome. it reminds me a little bit, open to debate but many researchers have argued that extensive exposure to things like local news to television makes you think the world is scarier and more dangerous and represents them more crime there is. that's a nice peril of what's going on now with all this

exposure to hatred, incivility, lack of bipartisanship. it tends to make you think that that must be how it is, even if i'm not seeing crazy, flamboyant, and civil debates in the workplace over politics. that's the way most of the world must be because that's what i see happening all around me in the mass media. but thanks so much for that question. that's a terrific one. >> i the only person i think any audience under the age of, say, 30. i see my generation not caring. i mean, we just don't care. most of them probably wish we could care but we got a new reason to, we'll have any reason, we stay out of the way, keep our heads down and hope for the best. i think a lot of it boils down to, we are saddled with enormous debt loads and enormous problems with our finances.

maybe not in reality, a sort of sense that were put upon this generation that people expect us to shoulder the burden and somehow the magic. and i think pressure gets to a lot of us and we drop out of the thing. but at the same time i think the voter turnout increases could be attributed to the idea that there's more early voting going on, there's more people -- tuesday is a terrible day to have an election to be altered by friends of all the work is a tuesday, are you people crazy? take australia for instance. have a good number of friends there. i had a roommate from there, and he could never get over the fact that we don't have all weekend and it's not mandatory. once you're 18 in australiaustralia you go vote or you get arrested, created. unless you're like dying of the plague or something. this boils down to, once you're able to vote from your cell

phone, you know, how some kind of sort of secure authentication system so that people are always crying voter fraud will frankly shut up, then you have a system wherein you can have people, convenient, quick, not limited by, it's like i can take five minutes from my work which i may not be able to get off and go to a polling place and just say okay, i'm going to vote. and if i have questions, i can check on these people. have the time i go to vote i know the main candidates are. i know who the main issues are. big on this guy is standing up for commission of, like, education or some judge that i'd never heard his name before, never seen any advertising, and i don't watch cable television on the television really. but i mean even on the internet, you don't see any coverage of those local people in local

elections. it just doesn't exist. >> you make a number of excellent points. and i think we are at same the beginning of technology and social networking, electronic technology. i'm sure in the next presidential election will see all kinds of new ways that information about candidates gets delivered more directly. and you're right, everybody wants, the cell phone, their portable devices clearly, with regard to giving people information, getting engaged, getting them connected. so i think it would be hard to project was common with regard to political, but i think we'll see some of that. i agree with you about young people. it's been hard for me as a teacher, as a political scientist, to get a lot of students interested in the nitty-gritty of public policy. what's in a health care bill,

one of the energy options. even these long wars and military engagements that we are involved in seem very, just part of your life now and it's very alienating because he feel like they are never going to end and will never be out of that country or political struggle. but one of the i think real point of enlightenment is that i found over the past four or five years, especially young people on campuses, is there is a genuine and profound and extremely exciting interest in the environment. and go green. anything that has to do with recycling, saving energy, making for a better planet, protection of rain forests, of animal population species, and i found in my work as a teacher that i've learned so much excitement on the part of young people

about these issues. and so much direct engagement that i've tried to use that as way to get them interested and although less exciting, kind of les us, you know, obviously interesting things that may be a little more boring like tax policy. so that gave me a lot of hope, and there's a lot of terrific people, leaders out there who are responsible for the tremendous increase of young people come interest of young people have in environmental issues. so i mean, don't you think that's possible, that's an avenue that we can use and try to broaden people political interest. even their interest in things like who they vote for for a local judge. it's mind numbingly boring when you're standing up for election day, but things that interest the environment, something that went to grab onto as an aperture, to the people through,

thinking more about political issues to what you think about that? >> i think copyright laws would be more interesting, but i'm a computer science major so it's more relevant in my immediate career options. whether or not exporting code to a potential country is illegal or not will be something that is more relevant to me and my peers, my direct peers than speeders but you feel it on campus and you feel the great interest. >> i go to georgia state for one thing, which is not a unified campus atmosphere as there is at tech. most people are commuters. they come, they go, and they don't -- i also have a degree at this point in liberal arts, and the issue there is also different. i don't think, there certainly and issue for the environment. i think the ways to get people mobilize i think are many and varied, and i don't think, i think environment is important but i don't think you'll be the

sole magic bullet for mobilizing my generation. >> i gave a talk about the book last week at a university, and one of the students said during the q&a, i really want to do something in the world. i want to get involved. i don't even know where to start. and i thought that was very interesting because it was obvious where you started was the local democratic party, the local republican party, or this or that cause. and it seemed pretty accessible, but it was interpersonal networks. it was asking around, looking at signs that were up in the student union, that sort of place. that sort of thing. i think because there's so much stimulation that comes from an options, the media are so incredibly interesting. even your own laptop, that he think that there is his dedication that is talked about earlier where a lot of students

to have the passion, who want to get involved in something, they are not even sure how to break into that. so i had a few ideas for the students, but it's pretty worrisome. this is not a big city where i was. it wouldn't be that difficult for a short person to find their way in, but this person was highly intelligent come was feeling a little bit overwhelmed and not sure how to get into this, this clinical discourse, political activity. >> another thing that is problematic is the idea of going to a rally is doable, but we are going to school, we are doing all of that kind of thing. at the same time, i don't remember the last time there was a fight. i look at my parents come in the mid '50s, and they grew up in a time when people were firebombing schools and things.

and there were, i mean, i again see this through the media lens and i'm sure was less excited than that. but there were major riots. you don't see a major right in birmingham. you see riots and sever cisco over the gay population. you had riots in l.a. in the '90s over police brutality or the issues being more competent than that. i don't think, it's a question of stomaching commune, i think my year group is ready to stomach that if it comes down to it, but i think it seems to be so many issues, and everyone wants a piece of their time. and that the major parties are so large and so varied, that just going down to the office, like okay, i agree with you on this, this, and this, but not

these issues. how do you deal with me at that point? how do you say okay, you know, and then say in australia or britain, well, maybe not britain but in other countries we have parliamentary system and you can say okay, i'm going to find a place exactly right for me and go into the office and be all gung ho about and then go out to rallies on the weekend when my $35 workweek permits me to do that. i think the political culture is different enough that we can't really love to other modern democratic, wealthy the democratic countries. we have to come up with their own particular homegrown solution, which i think it's something that i do agree with the quote unquote tea party that we had to homegrown that. because we can't say okay come up with going to take any route on this because we don't have the same political culture, we don't have the same issues. we sit quote unquote to the right of which are not totally

convinced that america really sits to the right of anything a lot of the time it. i've run into a lot of quote unquote bible thumpers were told into -- into this or that or the other. and to me it feels like there's a certain, i think there's a certain quality that my generation fuels we can't be thrilled very effectively. until we hammered out i'm not sure any of this will be solved. >> i think that's an excellent point. but, you know, there's a lot of effort has been going on into this and this is something i talk to my students about quite a bit, is to get involved in politics or any cause, you have to go to some night meetings fix you have to get, you have to i sing of your physical self and away from your media, from your laptop, camera devices. you will have to look up and

engage other people directly and interpersonally. i think that's what's going on with the tea party right now. one of the reasons it's so exciting for other people is the actual coming out, with other people in a group, to rallies at night, in the outdoors. designated a 19th century quality too and thought that what they are doing right now. and you saw some of that during the during the presidency. you saw the huge turnout and excitement of that at rallies for obama and for sarah palin. but i think that's what the tea party, kind of a hunger for interpersonal interaction. even if in a setting of big crowds, that my students at least, college students, are not accustomed to. they are not accustomed to being on the street outside with people, added around some kind of cause or political belief. occasionally, but certainly not

kind of irregular part of their existence. or a town meeting. it anything further from what college students do every day that a new england town meeting. it's not something that's in their cultural grasp, or in their toolkit or in their imagination. and so i think that's a part of it, that we can bring back in addition to using technology at the most sophisticated levels. i think it's both things. i do think we've come to a point where we have overrun or designee for interpersonal communication dialogue. so thanks. >> i'm 61 and i grew up with dan rather and walter cronkite i have a really hard time with fox because i was used to the

ultimate and professionalism of walter cronkite and dan rather was also very professional. at all the anchors of abc, nbc and cbs were professional. and so when i -- i only get basically cnn and fox. and i really am disappointed when i watch it, especially when they get very insulting about environmental and, you know, and i had a talk with young people. i like to talk to young people because they keep me abreast of what's actually going on. there's too much to keep up with. and they said they are in the business of entertaining to keep their ratings up and calling people idiots and environmentalists and stupid people. we don't know what they are talking about.

and how does one overcome, you know, 30, 40 years of passionate actually 50 years of watching walter cronkite and dan rather and barbara, and then have what we see for news on fox and cnn and the snippets of information. and it's information overload. do we actually have to note every bad thing that is happening in the world? you know, it's like we're going to be existentially depressed if it keeps up. so what are your comments on that? >> those are some interesting questions. the rise of journalism which is what we call the sort of looks like one-sided and not sort of evenhanded and professional like you saw was someone like walter cronkite. that's part of the struggle as

american journalism right now. back when we had people like edward r. murrow our walter cronkite dominating the news business, they had a pretty good sense of what they were as a profession. there was not as much pressure. it was not a 24/7 new cycle. that was not the kind of economic pressure that news organizations are facing today. so it was easier in some ways. now the competition is so tough and the profit margins so small that there's a surge in american journalism for the thing that would be exciting, the thing that will keep you engaged right in your eyeballs. would have come up with is this journalism. you know, it can be entertaining. they can be helpful. it can be propelling, but overall i'm with you. if it's not particularly constructive, it's not particularly impressive, and it doesn't lift up our political

engagement. it doesn't help us solve the physical problems which is what politics is all about. i will say that when there was this sort of walter cronkite and a few others, wise old mines that control the way it looked, that probably wasn't ideal it appeared there were a lot of people left out of that conversatconversation, and i appointed you that weren't represented. and maybe not as the democratic as we think him while we like to celebrate. it was authoritative. walter cronkite being the most trusted man in america for so long. that was good and bad. it was good in that he was the cost of professional, and it was kind of a calm and stability without question. on the other hand, unicom is kind of a narrow successive. a lot of people, have you pointed perspectives were not represented by that news broadcast.

i'm with you that it was incredibly simple. that i cannot argue with, so thanks. >> report on things like kennedy affairs, now we have from gary hart on, you know, constant surveillance to see the president are up to anything that may be are not exactly civil in their personal lives. >> that's right. >> i agree with you that probably we didn't get as many viewpoints that we are getting today, but when it degenerate into name-calling like calling people idiots on fox, and stuff like that, that's not really good -- let's see, role models. >> and it doesn't lead to more constructive political discourse that would help us solve problems, whether health care,

social security, energy, water, transportation, education. take your pick of social problems. and again, that's what it's all about is try to develop the kind of civil constructive discourse so we can climb our way out of at least some of these struggles. >> well, i noticed about a year ago, if i had money i would have gone, bill moyers and other journalists were calling for, not maybe complete reversal, but more so, more professional real journalism than sensationalism. they had covered his outdoor summer. i don't remember. and i think bill maher is right up there with walter cronkite in terms of being professional and really being sincere. one of the things that i