>> if you know any film producers let them know. to answer your first question about what was going on, there was actually the haitian revolution and the ideology of the black rebels there and a tremendous impact on the french revolution. there was a group called the society of friends of the blacks who played a major role in the revolution and they were conversant and in touch with the rebels in haiti. by about 1808 or 1810, by the time this revolution was occurring britain had become the number one anti-slavery empire empire in the world. they would search ships on the high seas to prevent them from slave trading because brittany and no longer had any slave colonies. france had lost its colonies and america was not isolated because they were huge slave plantations and complexes and in jamaica and brazil which totally dwarfed what was going on here. new orleans was on the periphery of the slavery -- the second question was about the

fascinating question of freed blacks in new orleans who occupied obviously a privileged position in society and the question of whether they would have sided with the whites or with the slaves. .. sugar planting is the basis of

the society and so there's no similar soul-searching among the population of places i can tell. rather, there's an effort to make history. and so some philosophers have speculated on this issue. so could the planters even conceive of what it happened? did they even understand the slave quarters or did they really believe they were just crazed criminals? i think there's a possibility they didn't understand humanity of the place. save action committee idea of politically engaged, to come her like black men standing up for their freedom, waiting to fight and die it undermines the ideology that forms the basis that slaves were not people. so i think the minute they start to think about the politics for the humanity of their sleeves, it's just a no go topic area for them because if they start to think about that, the entire ideology which forms the base of their life and livelihood falls apart. how do the planters think about

plans? it is about the same as an expensive car today. the difference between it was how this plays for seven or eight years. you could double your money if you are sugar planter within eight years. it's tremendously profitable. it's hard in the face of all that money and in the face of all that history. i think it was hard for the planters to realize or understand what was going on in the slave quarters were indeed deal with some of the more lessons. did i answer all of your questions? yes. >> a major part of your book is about the misha of the event and history. you know, one thing that was interesting to me was a native

new orleanians and after hurricane katrina, a lot of residents of this neighborhood that didn't flood, one of the first things you heard on the media was that in contrast to what happened at the superdome, new orleans and have always gotten along well. you heard it over and over again and there's never racial problem in new orleans. if i commend the broader broader question of is it a cultural thing or the broader context of history, have you looked at how certain events are reported and become part of the culture and folklore, even if there is an adversarial relationship versus one word is pushed aside and not discussed any more click >> i talked a little bit about a fascinating exploration of the topic here he comes up with the theory that are three ways in which the man becomes violent. the first is an illiterate population does not write down what they did or why. and so because the slave did not record their thoughts with your

teeth, in some sense those thoughts will be forever lost and go through efforts to reclaim her try to figure out what they were thinking or saying. the second is the process that archives are created. when someone decides these documents are worth daemon keeping and saving in these documents are not. so the diary should have been kept or put in a bank or preserved in the courthouse. probably not. the third moment is when we returned to those archives, i think that oftentimes people write stories for very explicit purposes then certainly for the past 200 years those political purposes do not include exhuming i think 100 heads on pikes doesn't resonate with their image of what it is to be american. people had trouble dealing with better conceiving how we should

write about that aware that what he and important moment in her tree. and so i think -- or at least i hope that now my generation, which grew up after the civil rights movement in an age where we have looking at things differently or at least i hope we do. and so did with a fresh eye. and i think that -- i certainly hope that will be true and that will start to uncover and bring out and learn many more moments of our story that has gone untold. >> if there's no further questions, i want to thank daniel for an enlightening presentation. danielle, thank you very much. [applause] >> to find out more about daniel rasmussen and his book, visit its website, daniel rasmussen.net. >> next, ron reagan, son of

ronald reagan accounts is life and political career. ronald reagan died on june 5th , 2004 at the age of 93 would've been 100 on february 6, 2011. ron reagan laments his father at politics & prose books are in washington d.c. it's just under an hour. [applause] >> thank you, mike. can you make? thank you again, mike. please to be here for this very unlikely event actually. not that i don't do remains at things as they call all the time the politics & prose, i'm the unlikely part of this because i never really intended to do anything like that. i'm 52 years old. i manage to get the release of a century without ever considering i would do something like this. but a less than a year ago, it was february 6th last year i

was talking to my mother on the occasion of my father's 99th birthday when of course the 100th birthday came up. can you believe daddy is going to be 100 she says to me? she calls him daddy of course to her kids still. and i'm singing to her job, boy, isn't that something. this just incredible. and i'm thinking please, not another aircraft carrier. last night please don't make me go to the dedication of a bridge or something like that. but then i got to thinking about that 100 years. 100 years is a long time. that 100 years is a particularly long time and momentous time. it was a different world that he came from, my father, which may explain some of his peculiarities that we in this family notice often. nothing grand, nothing strange, nothing creepy really.

not at all creepy in fact. but he wasn't not that, my father. it's almost too good some of the time i had to say. never gossiped about anybody, never once. like most men he never blustered. most men can be counted on occasion to say i'm going to kick that son of a gun -- not my father. not once. never raised his voice really. he did once almost not the make dieter over what they said if keyes. i don't know what he was upset about, but he never yelled or anything like that. as a soft-spoken sort of guy. he he wanted to make you feel bad because the something wrong, his tone would acquire this gravitas and he would actually start became slower and slower and softer and softer and finally your whining, as they say in the book, sounded like gerbils squeaking after a while.

but i was conscious of the fact when i started. and my father has this sort of scarcely reachable court to him. the 90% of all of us thought in public that the president of the united states, governor actor and all of that, which he sees what you you get. same guy at the table as would be delivering a street of the union address. at 90% is absolutely consistent, absolutely trustworthy, count on it all day long. but there was this 10% metaphorically speaking that he held very close. and everybody and his family, those of us who knew him very well were aware of this 10%, were aware there was a part of it. even my mother, that you couldn't always appreciate very, very private part of him. and that was the part of him that i determined to go looking for because that was the part of

and that was the most inaccessible. i was the most mysterious, the ethnic map. not the 90%. that was just right out there. 10%. where did that come from? what was that all about? so i went looking and i determined that that married to the 100 years was telling me something. the 10% had to be forming it fills in his early years, way back in tampico and dixon and mondale and all these other talents he lived in. now i have to say that if you're going to write a story about your own father, it certainly helps if you had a pulitzer prize-winning biographer tailoring him around for 14 years taking notes. a lot of your researchers already done. so i relied on many of the books that authority than what none for facts and dates and figures and things like that. but of course those people have

accomplished being a pulitzer prize-winning biographer who jailed him for 14 years. but they didn't grow up with him. they were looking at them from the outside and looking at them from the inside. very many people who know much more about policies and politics than i do. i did make the city of him. i didn't cover him while he was in the white house. but i grew up with him. i knew him since i was this big. people remember him as president. people remember him for the challenger disaster may be present state of the union address or assassination attempts and then click add. i remember him going way back when you take me up over his head and finally to bed at night, making a propeller sound that he would do under the doorways and into the bad. and finally he was in me a little song and need to sleep there. that's my memory of him. but still, he was mysterious.

still he was something of an enigma. so off i go looking. i didn't stop at just his child either. i was somewhat interested in the family history as well. so i went out way back to ireland, all the way back to thomas o'regan who came down out of the coast mountains or maybe was not till down mountains. nobody's quite sure. they listed both when they talk about him. varitek girl named marker for free and they lived in a little hubble called the list outside the valley marine, which may be a town in ireland you've heard of if you followed my father. the list is they really lived in there is no do with anymore because dumas was just a collection of wobble and output in mud and sticks to you and me. decius knocked back into the church after a while. these were poor irish people. these were peasants really. beyond nothing. they were landless laborers.

then the average potato famine came. the irish potato famine. the population of ireland today has not recovered fully from the potato famine of the late 1840s. there still aren't as many people living in ireland today as there were in 1845 with faith. so right in the middle of this to report -- literally dirt poor is the reagan -- the o'regan family at that point. thomas and margaret die. michael reagan is the only child in the family. my great, great grandfather -- grandfather, he learned to read somehow. he was the only one who wasn't illiterate and he became a soap maker and then moved the family to england. and here's some of the other pieces of original research i can claim to be very proud of. i got a little e-mail from ancestry.com. i don't know if you know ancestry.com is the genealogical

website and i signed up for it years ago. now available, the 1851 british census. 1851? removed in 1849 to britain first 11 south london. maybe they're in the senses. maybe michael o'regan and his bride are in the senses. check out their irish peasants, living in a slug. nobody counts as people. peasants, living in a slug. nobody counts as people. very efficient and 310 as it turns out as people. very efficient and pretend as it turns out and of course it turns out they did count those people. there is michael reagan, and now michael reagan. po file off. he's still a soap maker, living with a bunch of other poor irish youths from southwest of ireland. and on bentley street in south london. i know he's going to marry catherine mulcahey while he's there. and i wonder, is she in senses. and sure enough there's

catherine mulcahey living kitty corner across the street on bentley for michael reagan. so they must've met right there. she's a gardener, living with again a poor young irish people from the poor southwest including one young woman is identified as a heather picker. we don't see too many heather picker these days. so this is where this sort of family that he came from. michael reagan comes to america. he has some children, one of which is john michael, reagan now for the first time who beget jack reagan, john edwards reagan and that's my father's father. so what did i find when i started looking at my father, getting past all the family? well, we think of him i think i do as a sort of big strapping confident kind of guy, not afraid of anything. what was your name? but when he was a little boy, it

turns out he was undersized as a youth. his family moved around a lot. he was the new kid in school perennially. he was picked on by bullies, chose a must for games on the playground and he spent a lot of his time alone. he spent a lot of his time in places like the attic of a rental house in galesburg where they lived, where the previous owner had left strange artifacts, as he thought, up in the attic. but he would spend his time up in the dusty sunbeams and the attic, going through all these, you know, stuffed birds and things in strange plants, many of which had come from the west. i think there he began to form this impression of the west as a wide-open landscape. an incentive for roaming the landscape as an undersized kids would be picked on by bullies

come he saw himself going to figure in the landscape. he could do heroic things he thought and his mother encouraged him in this. when he was born she called him perfectly wonderful and she never changed her opinion of him. he was always her perfectly wonderful ronald. to his father, when he saw him being born dead and he makes a of a lot of noise for a fat little bit of a dutch man, doesn't he? that's how he became dutch to everybody but his mother. his mother called him ronald and everybody else called him -- when he was young. so dutch is this little kid, training new streams of this life ahead, where he will be a hero and he will roam this wide-open landscape, being the guy in the white hat who writes them and saves the day. he's compassionate every material because he's satisfied to a certain extent alone, being solitary. but the chinese 15, he has found perhaps the perfect job for him.

and he called it the best job he ever had. he was a lifeguard on the banks of the rock river, lowell park, just north of dixon, illinois where the family had moved by that time. he had taken some lifeguarding classes at the local ymca, distinguished himself as a phenomenally talented swimmer and he studied artificial restoration of these things. he went on to little part dr. ed grable and his dad drove them down. and they took a look at this skinny kid, 15 years old, just completed his sophomore year in high school and he wants to be our lifeguard at this big beach, where lots of people come. i mean, hundreds of people in the summer would be there. i looked at them if they do now, i don't know. he may have taken classes at the y, but he's going to have to die than nancy's people, you know. jack could give the boy a chance. and he did.

seven years, 77 people pulled out of that river. if i did the math correctly, that would come to about 11a summer, which would work out to about one person -- one might date every 10 days or so in that river. imagine being a 15-year-old were 17-year-old or 20 world for that matter. what you do for her summer job? well, every 10 days or so they save somebody's life. now some people say sure he goes into the river and not to be too impressive. well i did it for the first time among the rock river in illinois flows into the mississippi. it is a major river. it is a powerful river. you get caught up in the current and you don't know how to swim. you're in trouble. you're heading down the stream in a hurry. someone want to get you out of the trouble. well, guess who that was for

seven years? she learned -- as i said, she was the perfect job for him because he was at the same time the focus of attention, the man of the hour when things went wrong he was the one everybody turn to. and yet at the same time he could remain solitary. you have to be removed as the lifeguard. you can't be off off schmoozing at the concession stand or hanging out with your buddies. you've got to be watching, paying attention and giving he is nearsighted he's really got to be paying attention. so we stand for is the cost is little time at this river in trying to figure out who's going to get in trouble and where the whole time. he was like and keeping the planet to aligned. he was keeping the universe in order by pulling those people out of the river, telling people for chaos. and my father couldn't stand

chaos. he liked his world orderly. elected orderly so he would be freed to turn the strengths of peaceful tranquility. so he would dive into these rivers and pull people out. now almost nobody ever thinks him for doing this. he learned a lot about human nature. no man with lincoln for being rescued. he is to do a little imitation because after he would do a rescue, his father jack actually told him he complained, nobody ever thinks me. jack set out to you, catalog, a stump, carve a notch for every person you rescued. and so he would. 77 matches on the earth weblog eventually. he is to imitate people coming up in a man who he rescued. he pulled them out of the river and said there isn't really any trouble out there at all really. and he would keep carving the notch on his blog.

okay, carve, carve. one man did think -- the only man who ever thanked him. this was a giant of a man who arrived at the river was somebody beating him because he was totally lost. he was six-foot five, 360 -- he was huge to your my father tell it. my father thought, how am i going to get them out of the river if he gets in trouble out there? he darty told me when i was little that there were some techniques they didn't teach you at the ymca for rescuing people. some of which involved hitting him with a right cross to a job in order to use it to them so you could safely get them back to the shore because a drowning man, i drowning anybody who kill their rescuer. i mean, you're frantic out there. again, 15 your boy has to go rescue full-grown men were

bigger and stronger and i desperately terrified, calling it anything to stay on top of the water. now he's confronted with the guy who is five times the size. what is he going to do? sure enough he gets into the water and start paddling out and get in the current him down the stream he goes and does a drowning people do. he stands up vertically and thought that the water with his big arms and a big hand. in into the water goes my father, thinking all the time this may be the last time i do this. the sky would take me to the bottom and will roll around the river bottom to sterling job strain. but he said as soon as he reached the man and put his hand on him, the man instantly relaxed and let them do whatever he wanted because he had been led around all his life.

as soon as he thought the human tetchy thought i'd say was safe and he simply relaxed. that was the only man who ever thanked him. he did get some notoriety for doing this. the first time he got his fame in the paper was a rescue. he closed out the part at 930 club. used to do this on hot summer nights. he'd been there since 10:00 in the morning. i want to go home, the people wanted to stay because it was hot. so you would start taking pebbles and flicking them into the water and sure enough people would go what was that? what was that. just the old river. they come out this time of night. [laughter] so this night the river rat have done their job and he was at the concession stand, hoping at grego close out there and all of a sudden three people, two young men and come out of the

darkness. help, help. a friend is knocked down and one of their friends who wasn't as strong of a swimmer at the thought went under. but now it's 9:30, 10:00 at night and there is a man out there that river whose drowning. so off my father goes towards the river, listening now because he can't see the man. remember he is nearsighted and he's got to get rid of his glasses. so he's listening for the sound of the man struggling out there. where do i need to go in order to find him? plunges into the darkness, since. next day's headlines as dixons evening telegraph. james prater snatched from the jaws of death. five card ronald dutch reagan had engaged in quite a struggle before he was able to subdue him and bring him to shore, pulling one arm against the current,

dragging them onto the log, perform artificial respiration for a couple of minutes to revive him after which time it was determined he was okay and they sent him home. but he had his name in the paper and he was probably pretty happy about that. other than that may be in the lateness of the hour, the rescue would've seemed rather routine, just another day on the rock river. my father was a storyteller. his great opus was himself. he created a narrative, a template for his life. it wasn't that a was making up a story about himself that he would pretend to live out. he was creating a think a template engine line and trying to live up to it. he wanted to be a hero, but he didn't want to be just seen as a hero. he wanted to really be a hero. knowing your storyteller of were sometimes editing is required.

i discovered that some of my father's early stories that i heard as a child that there was editing the to focus a little more coming usually focus on him. the iconic story from his youth is one winter night, 1922, he comes home from the y or maybe with the library where he also spent a lot of time reading or any coming up and up and towards his home in dixon and he notices as he approaches the front door there's a dark shape. he discovers his own father belching up corn whiskey. now he's been dimly aware that his father was given to some drinking. i think that's exaggerated but he did drink his parents would have roused about this. because his mother was quite

pious and didn't approve of the drink and carousing with the boys and speakeasies and things like that. so he heard the phrase before, but he always pulled the covers over his head and tried to ignore the whole thing. in this iconic moment, he is having his coming-of-age experience. and so he said while he was tempted to step over his father and simply coincided fix and sell something to even to bed he knew he couldn't leave him in the snow. and then installing he grabs his coat collar over the threshold and somehow muscles do not as steep narrow angled stairway and puts them into bed and breathes not a word to his mother when she hit home as if she would. i went back and looked at the threshold of the staircase and thought about little dutch and couldn't have weighed 100 pounds. his early jackson went out at 180 or so.

he didn't drag anybody anywhere. he certainly didn't write about the stairs. they've no doubt he found passed out talk on the doorstep and i have no doubt he grabbed his coat and probably gave him a shake, but would have been nice if i was jack woke up and jack staggered to his feet and jack being jack probably had a few pithy things to say at that point, profaned probably as well. but that was the story because that would be a distraction. the folks at the young man who's having his coming-of-age moment, giving jack lyons would just not work. the to hit the cutting room floor there. and he would do things like this. he had a tendency, sort of skipping through a lot of stuff, but he had a tendency to engage in a certain amount of denial. he was very talented at denial when he needed to be, sometimes

to a rather humorous effect. my wife and i went in washington while he was president for a company named him to some of that. i can't remember what it was, but we ran the presidential motorcade in the big armored limo coming back from whenever it is and there were people lining the streets, waving and all that. at this point in his life he decided what america really needed was revival of the thumbs-up gesture. so he's been traveling around the country homes have been people in a gesture of her suited a man so well i have to say. as we were driving back, he was thumbs-up in people people the window of the car. we reach a certain point in seven youngish man, maybe in his 30s or so somehow got under the sawhorses of the police paper broke to the surface and i don't know how it got so close to the car, but there he was, maybe a body length or two from the presidential limousine on my fathers side of the car.

he was promoting a different hand gesture. and he had an entirely different we sit in my father's direction. you couldn't hear him through the bulletproof glass, but i believe the word beginning another in ending and another are word was being deployed as well at the time. my mother i can brother takes a solid and without missing a beat he says he sees, i think it's catching on. [laughter] that was my dad. now, i suppose i should say because you probably heard about some of this, you are at about the present controversy, which is apparently erupted with the publications of this book. my brother took it upon himself to help me sell copies of the book. so i owe him a teeny mac note i guess. and he did it without even reading the book, too. that's a good of a brother he is.

now the centers around the question of alzheimer's. my father died of alzheimer's of course. he was diagnosed several years have you left office. i say two things in the book that relate to this in any way. one, i admit it great to his presidency, 83, 84, then it would occasionally begin noticing things that seemed a hitch in the pdf is what i characterized it as. nothing you can really characterize in any specific way and not anything that somebody who didn't grow up in a house with him would've noticed. i mean come on you are that attuned to somebody, any change in there with him for their body language, the way they tell a story, anything is going to tip you off and maybe they're under the weather or having a bad day or something. so i mentioned that i did have concerns that one time.

i don't put a name to them. i don't diagnose him with alzheimer's at the time. they simply mention these concerns. i have to say he was in his mid-70s, the oldest president ever elect it. he was losing his hearing and hated to wear hearing aids, so that makes you a little, you know. and he'd been shot and nearly killed by that time, which will take a little wind out of your sails. the lead all sorts of things to worry about and this is the sort of background worry there. i say later in one chapter in which we do with any of this, there was one sentence that specifically links president the alzheimer's and it is a deduction based on when he was diagnosed and what we now know about alzheimer's disease, which is that it is the process that extends for years, even decades before identifiable, observable symptoms are present. i mean, if i'm getting alzheimer's in my 70s, you can

look at my brain right now and tell her. there would be changes going on right now. it seems to me the question is whether the disease was present in him during his president he seems to be academic to me. would almost have to be. that is not to say however that he suffered from dementia while he was in office. dementia is a symptom which usually only shows up in the latter stages. i saw no signs of dementia in him while he was president of the united states of iowa due to that in a book. i heard all sorts of things on the list rubert in this book. i been answering questions for the last week and a half. people say yes, but you say and i say no i didn't. show me where i say it. they can't because they didn't read the book in there making this stuff up. so i'm pretty much explain exactly what my side of the controversy is. i don't know if he had

alzheimer's for sure when he was in office. they think that the likelihood of the disease was present. i did not see signs of dementia, nor do i say that i did. and that's about it as far as that goes. this is not a political book, by the way. i've no interest in doing a political history. it is a book primarily about his early life, his formative years. it's an attempt by a son to find his father, to look in the distant past as it were for his father's rather elusive character. in the last chapter i bring you up to date -- someone up to date in the white house into the end of his life which is determined that was the way to win the boat, to jump ahead and so that's what i did. and you can't do that without mentioning alzheimer's of words. since i mention that, i knew it had to do with the forthrightly and as honestly as they could.

and so i did. but that's what i have to say about it. i will take any questions you might have. i would happy to entertain your questions. i guess that's the microphone if you want to or you can shout out from where you are. [applause] >> thank you. one of the things you mentioned was an incredible wit, which i had an occasion to witness and has been so photogenic, there was an occasional white house we had to go through stacks of photographs with vips to identify them and there wasn't a single shot in which he wasn't on camera. >> and lucky to. his drivers license. the guy could not take a bad picture. >> that's not my question. it has to do with religion. i haven't read your whole book.

i've read a few of the first chapters of which you mentioned his catholic/protestant mother, father, that sort of thing. >> was an on-again off-again cat take and nelle was a disciple of christ. >> is a son, did he emulate what is. within the terms of winning him to fight later on in life vis-à-vis you in the children? and hunted religion -- i mean, he wasn't a card or with religion i sleep, but he was in a george washington that never talked about it in public. so i think you're a signature overview on the whole issue. >> welcome his general feeling was it wasn't a private kind of thing. he wasn't ashamed of it. he was quite open and of course would go to the religious right may need to to win a election. but he did not go burn the house like some holy roller.

we didn't have that covered answer anything. he was a regular church goer when he was governor of california and before that. when he got to d.c. here come he felt a little awkward going to church because he knew it would disrupt things and could potentially be a threat to other people. we've seen that happen sometimes to politicians. he did, i would say, follow after his parents in that nelle, a disciple of christ, their doctrine is that you do not try and conduct needs young people, children into your religion because they're not old enough to appreciate it. they can make a decision for themselves and you need to do that. he took that attitude with me, although i don't think he was entirely happy about it. i announced when i was 12 years old as i relate in the book that i was not going to church anymore. i have the same ring tone, by the way. [laughter] one day he came in to get me to go to church. come on, picture soon on.

i'm not going. i'm not going to pretend anymore. and he was pretty upset about it, but hurt more. i could see he was very worried, but he wasn't going to wrestle me into church. that going to work. put me in half nelson, take me to the altar they are for any kind of exorcism. but i knew he wasn't going to give up. he wasn't going to roll over to that. one day he came home to find a pastor or church church in the living room waiting there to have a talk with me, don bouma was his name, later became not the pastor of our church when he was tending to his flock on occasion with his pants around his ankles. but you know, he was a good regular guy he is to play football for ucla. and so use this pic and bag and he was going to convince me to come back to church.

but within a few minutes i realized, i can have this argument with him. i was a little worried at first because he is a professional. i thought no, i can hold my own here. after a few more minutes he gave up and we ended up talking about football. i could tell my father was disappointed that when he left i was still an atheist. >> that he didn't feel the need to commune with god before making decisions? >> certainly not in an exhibitionistic type away. >> no, i think he would pray quietly at times for guidance. i know that after he was shot, he believed that god dashes god had spared him. but he didn't see that as a kind of mandate, like you're so special. this is a responsibility he saw to do good from there on out with as much as i disagree about, he really meant well in our was doing the best he could for the country.

i can vouch for that. >> thank you very much. >> if your mother has read your book, how would she react to a? >> well, she has read the book when all this kerfuffle came up, i thought it better ask her what she wants me to say about this, you know, so i called her up and i said they're going to ask me. would you want me to tell them? people are describing sentiments to you and i do want to do that to myself. she said you tell them i read it, i loved it, it made me cry and i'm very proud of you. such a mom thing to say. [applause] yes, ma'am. >> i particularly loved hearing you, the voice of reason on air america the past few years. >> you haven't been around her dinner table. [laughter] at home there. >> so, if anything brewing on any chance we can hear you again

nationally on radio? >> it is possible, although there has been talk radio with my publisher about maybe doing another book, which i very much like to do. i rather liked that process as opposed to the daily grind of the three-hour show. temperamentally i have to say i'm not as well-suited to radio radio as they would be to something like this it seems to me. i'm not a yeller and there's a lot of that going around. you do these go to resume to these radio satellite tour is where you sit on the phone and they keep throwing the host that you from this time in that town. so we got to tampa, florida. you might want to avoid the tent in jack show for at least a period i'm going to some language that might offend some. so i'm sorry. within one minute of getting manned air, tend had called me

and ass, threat to kick my ass, told me he wasn't going to buy my book unless he needed something textured to wipe his ass which. i said can i speak to jack? and this just went on. this was all he said to me the whole time. i figure a small, pathetic man. and it turned out to you as well, i won't say. he's just what you'd expect to discover the labor. >> thank you. i appreciate that. >> used to work for bill foster, democrat from illinois 14th district. you can imagine for a democrat. but with a picture of your god and he said not that he didn't like your dad, but if he had to

pay homage to your dad was a proper form to do it. what that is about drought, which he -- how do you win with a minor republican parties about your dad and constantly to emulate electoral success in the personality more than anything else. with a book or death for policy positions are things that you think you know him and you just think he wouldn't say that or he wouldn't do that. does this make you not? to dismiss? how do you react to that click >> it can be annoying at times. i'll admit that. but it comes with the territory. i understand why they're doing it. i mean, who else do they have? they are going to go to like nixon or something like that. harding? hoover? dear pretty much stuck with ronald reagan, which is not the bad. i do note that many of those people not only didn't know him, but probably never even met him and yet there's aching for him.

i am very reluctant to speak for my father in any specific political sense. i don't know what he would feel about today's issues. you know, he left the scene a long time ago and presumably his aching would've evolved along with the times. so i don't get into well, he'd want taxes to be lower or he'd want to repeal the health care plan or anything like that. i don't know what he would feel. i feel confident in saying what the level of hatred all he was a civil manner and gentlemen and i think a lot of stuff, particularly stuff direct it at the white house, the nonsense and all that stuff, he would just find that beneath the dignity of our country. there are a couple of things i could probably -- i think you'd be stressed by the recent effort because that was such a big thing for him and on jon kyl and some of those people were trying to hold a.

i think he probably pinched somebody's head off and you know what down their neck for lee over that. i mean, he would find it awful. and the only other issue, which i was tempted to put in the book, though they editor said you can't have any politics in africa will be the entire discussion of any subject you have and i would be the torture issue. my father called it a point in the meant that. that kind of cowardice and moral turpitude was part of his dirt dirt. but that is my personal opinion. yes, sir. >> you explain his political evolution because apparently it was a roosevelt democrat. >> he was a roosevelt democrat on the 13th district is a republican. his family were real outliers. jack and sub four were democrats and republican county and they were reared in all sorts of ways actually. not where the disturbing weird, but just different. they were very theatrical people

i may rather stoic tightlipped farm country. they love to put on plays and stuff and they were quite flamboyant. they were kind of bohemians in a way. he was a big fan. he was reluctant to mention this, but dixon was a time where black teeple weren't allowed to spend the night, were not welcome to spend the night in a hotel, any hotel and expand during the 1920s and 1930s. but that wasn't the case. one day i related in the book where he and dixon on the way back from playing sunday summer and they point to a hotel. and there were two black players on the team. and the hotel manager says the outcome we've got room for your team, except for two black layers. in the coach, mack mackenzie was his name, a task kingston said will go to another hotel.

no hotel in town as a manager is going to take these two black bears. they said fine, we'll sleep on the bus. well, my father at this point intervenes and says, you know, i'll tell you what, so everybody doesn't have to sleep on the bus, why don't you put me in a cab with my two friends and will go to my folks house. and then you know, what are your folks going to say when your folks show up at two black players? nothing. jack didn't care. checked in with the family seat of birth of a nation when it opened. damned if i'm going to let anybody in my family that because it's about the claim against the blacks he says. and i'm not going to forget it. were not going to that. so they were different. >> was it is time that ge that changed him? for goldwater? >> it was before that. he had become a conservative

probably by the early 50s, late 40s or early 50s. >> he voted for ike, didn't he? >> as coming for truman first but then he voted for a cleaner. i think it was really the meetings he had with some writers during when he was president of the screen actors guild in one meeting in particular are one of the writers informed him that if given a choice between the american constitution and the soviet constitution, that he would choose the soviet. can this so shop my father i think it's that we've got a real menace here, you know, and i got to enlist in the fight against this. the fascist asserted brief overview. i don't really get into that part of his career until i go back further and earlier, but that's my understanding. yes, ma'am. >> thank you so much. you have inherited your fathers gift for humor and speechifying,

if that is the word. and you may not know the answer to this, but after the recent tragedies in tucson, i have heard conversations about had there been a move meant as some kind after the attempt on your fathers i to do something to change the gun -- >> he didn't have to bring skill. >> right, but there was conversation that had your dad perhaps been a bit more involved to do something to correct the gun laws for the administration and i just wondered if there ever been any talk in your family is just a necessity with the of that. >> not too much. i grew up with guns. when i was six years old my father presented me with a 22

caliber rifle, which i kept in my room with bullet. i knew at age six. he explained to me this is not a toy. you never play with this. when friends come over, don't play with this like it is a toy. we put up there. you have toy guns. play with that. and never, ever point a real god anybody if it's loaded. forget if it's loaded or not. whatever, you never point a gun at somebody. assume that it loaded. the guns were a tool for him. he didn't fetishize guns the way so many people do now. all they can think about what they think about the constitution of the united states take it to carry my gun. it guarantees me the right to carry my gun. my gun, my gun, my gun. it's like. if you had a fab time, you wouldn't need the gun so bad. [laughter] i mean, come on. get a grip on your whatever.

so i can't -- i don't know exactly what might've happened. he was obviously sympathetic to the second amendment. he is a gun owner, but he didn't seem to fetishize it the way so many people do now. i hope that answers that someone at lease. >> her father grew up in a time when divorce was an issue. he's the first divorced president. could you talk about his narrative. >> it to marriages, went to jane wyman and went to my mother last did 53 years until he died. the period of time and this is heavily covered in the book, but the period of time in the late 40s when he was divorced from jane wyman and his film career, post-world war ii was beginning to go down. this was a rough, rough time for him.

sometime he divorced in a plane in a charity softball game, shatters his femur and is laid up on crutches and in a cast in hanging out at his mother's house for a long period of time. he recovers in time to go to england to do the hasty heart, with patricia neal and richard toddy steals the movie from him. so meanwhile, jane wyman is about to collect an academy award for johnny belinda. so he's just feeling like i'm beat up and nothing is going right around 1949 or so. so that was that. on. i don't think he ever would've filed for divorce in health. he wouldn't have, however desperately unhappy. and i don't know how unhappy that was. but he never would've asked for divorce. she did anything she was moving on with her career and saw him maybe as a liability at that point. hollywood is like. i don't want to be hanging out with somebody who was lower on the totem pole than me.

even if i have to be married and have children, i don't want to do that. anyway, that's pretty much all i have to say about that marriage. anybody else? >> we have time for one or two more. [inaudible] >> jets. >> yes, you are on now. >> obviously your mother let your dad dearly. and so, she was portrayed always has been somewhat of a very strong person. what endpoints is your mom have by your dad? which you aspire his decisions on things happening politically? >> she was not a political person. so the idea that she was sort of pulling the strings behind the scenes and getting them to sign this bill are not that well,

didn't happen. she encouraged him certainly towards rapprochement with gorbachev. she and i talked about the aids crisis was apparent the administration is dragging their feet and they were doing enough. so we kind of teamed up with them on that. but mostly she had a great antenna for other people's agendas that may conflict with him. talking to people who worked with him. so personnel issues where where she would make her feelings known more than politics or policies or anything like that. that was, you know, don regan for instance hung up on her twice and that was the end of time. [laughter] >> would these be private things or things discussed in private quarters? >> both. again, she and i talked about the aids crisis together. but mostly that would be to

attack. >> will finish with the last question. >> hi, i'm so happy to be here to meet you finally. i just have a short story and that is i was very much against her father's presidency and not a fan at all. i was working at an army navy club at the time when he was president. and even during that time i kind of slowly saw the part being turned into basically a homeless shelter, something which myself and others can did with his policy that week. there was one day that they closed off high street and i was up on my lunch break and i was the only person in there was no cars and i'm standing there in a scarlet coat in the garage slowly opened and the limo with mouse or did the pope mobile kind of size comes out.

your father and i will be about four feet away when he turned on my street going the way. and he looked to me and i looked at him. such excitement. and that wonderful charm and it's really difficult not to like. that was my little brush with mr. reagan. your mac you could spend five minutes with them to not like him. many people tried. they would come in a meeting or group thinking i'm not going to like him. and you know, they would leave 15 minutes later. he's a great guy. you know, i still don't agree with him, but he's a good guy. and i felt the same way. you know, we argued about the vietnam war of course and i was very young. we used to argue about environmental issues sometimes, but, you know, we would stay friends and sometimes he wouldn't bother to argue. one story in weekend go do a book signing i guess. i'm riding horses with him wednesday at camp david and he

had a view of nature which is that he loves being in nature, loved being outdoors, but he kind of felt that man had dominion over nature and was man's responsibility to manage the will and. they're riding on horseback there's a storm that is unobtrusive as deadlines and stuff scattered on the ground underneath these trees are the walks by. he turns me to nsaid that may be nature to some people, but i think we can do better. [laughter] and i just thought what the. >> i can see how republicans continued -- >> well again -- >> and we all acknowledge admire your courage, too. >> well, thank you all. [applause]