and would eventually would surrender in the event of the war. and what else happened here, alexander brian -- he had a sign out front, and it said brian's slave mart. the next year, this building became the school for freed blacks. james lynch came down. he was a missionary, and they went into this building. they found the actual bill of sales that they were selling the slaves on, turned them over and used them for paper for these students to write on. they marched from the first african baptist church 400 young black people to this building for it to become the first friedman's schools here in the city of savannah in 1865. >> next on booktv, ellis cose spoke about his latest book "the end of anger" at the "chicago tribune" printers row lit fest. he took questions from the lit fest audience.

this is about 45 minutes. [applause] >> thank you and, ellis welcome to chicago. he's a native son. ellis has a new book out and to put it in some context, 18 years ago, you wrote the "rage of a privileged class" which talked about african-american, middle class african-americans being and feeling in excruciating pain, i think, was the flays you got a new book just coming out the end of this month, "the end of anger." oh, they're feeling pretty good. so what happened. what changed? >> a lot changed. let me say since the book has come out it's interesting. you're right i did write a book about rage. and the fundamental point that one person after another made in that book -- and i conducted, you know, well over 100

interviews for it on very successful african-americans, the essential point one another made would be summed up with i don't care what credentials i have, how hardy work or what networks i try to get into, it's just not possible for me to get past the glass ceiling. it's just not possible for me to get to the top jobs and it's not possible for me to be the ceo for me to be the corporation or the president of this country, et cetera. so what's changed? [laughter] >> a couple of things changed. not too long after "rage" came out which was in -- i guess the big magazine expert came out in '93. the book came out in '94. you saw a small change in corporate america. a small group of interesting folks began to rise. you saw richard parson become head of time warner. you saw ken become head of

american express. you saw a sort of change in this calculus. of course, with the recent presidential election you saw something that many people of many colors felt would just never happen at least not in our lifetimes and that was the election of a president who identifies himself as african-american and the other thing that said and this is something that i found just interesting is that in the year since that book has come out, a new generation has come on the scene. and so a lot of the voices that are represented in "rage" are different than the voices that are represented in "the end of anger." let me say a couple words about that. 'cause even though i did for 100 interviews for "rage" i did even more for this book. in addition to interviews i mean, i conducted a couple of surveys. i did a survey of the black

alumni of harvard business school and fairly lengthy survey of 74 questions. and also a survey of a graduate for a better chance that sends people poor from urban areas to some of the best secondary schools and prep schools in the country. so we did two big surveys of these folks. and what i found stating as i'm beginning to look through the results of the surveys was the difference of how people were responding to questions about opportunity and access. as a function of generation. and i'm sure we'll go into this a little bit later but a short story is that those people who were under 40, and i have a system that i've organized where i call these people generation three people. the people who were under 40 responded quite differently to

those who were -- who were over 40 in terms of how much discrimination they perceived in the workplace, in terms of what kind of opportunities they felt were available for them personally. and just in terms of how difficult it was to make it in american society. and so once i saw this interesting sort of generational breakout in the data, we went back -- i had a small group of researchers. we went back and conducted over 130 follow-up interviews just with people who were in the survey. in addition to, oh, for 100 interviews that were conducted generally for the book. it was different methodology. but he asked what change the country changed in some ways but also we're looking at a different generation to some extent. >> so part of it is generational and part of it you say is the obama election kind of the capstone to the corporate gains that were made. >> there's that. >> one of the things that i had as a backdrop as i began the

research for this book were a series of studies. by gullop indicated there was a measurable increase in terms of optimism among african-americans. the most recent large poll was done recently this year and it was a "washington post" harvard poll and it continues to show that african-americans are significantly more optimistic, one, than they were 10 years ago but, two, significantly more optimistic than whites when it comes to looking at how people see the strength of this economy, how people engage prospects of the future and certainly how they see prospects for themselves and their prodigy. >> ron brownstein wrote about a "national journal" poll that said two-thirds of african-americans in the u.s. said that barack obama's policies would significantly

help their advancement. the number for whites was 21%. hispanics fell somewhere in the middle but there was quite a gap in -- >> there's a gap. and those numbers have gone down in terms of african-americans saying that obama's election creates more opportunities for african-americans. >> it's gone down. >> it's gone down a bit since his election. and certainly in my own survey, it's not as high as 70%. it's closer to around 30%, 40% who are saying that is going to help them but i also think that the obama election is not just -- there's not just one phenomenon that accounts for all this. i think that takes place against the backdrop of many things. it's certainly a huge event. and one that for at least many people of color and others as well indicates that things may be possible in this country. there are a lot of people thought weren't possible a few

years ago. it's an event which sort of i call it the final revolution in the series of things that happened but which caused a lot of people to sit back and say, wait a minute, let me rethink some fundamental assumptions that i've always made about where this country is and where it's possible for people to go. >> so what if he loses in 2012? >> well -- >> and the gain that you saw from his election in 2008, will there be a resumption of anger? >> well, obviously, first of all, i am very careful to say in the book that there's still a lot of angry people out there. that hasn't changed. there are a lot of angry people and naturally some of the most angry people are the tea party types and whatnot. so it's not just black people who are angry. so anger is not going to go away but i also think the fact that this presidency, even if he loses in 2012 won't go away. and the -- and the reassessment

that has begun to take place, at least in some minds won't stop, whether or not -- whether or not he wins. there will be a lot of disappointed people again of all colors if he loses. but i don't think it's going to change the fundamental way that people are beginning to look at what is possible in the political arena. >> is there a real divide in african-american thought or elite intellectual media thought and i mention this based on what cornell said who ripped obama is a black mascot of wall street ol garts and corporate plutocrats and now he's become head of the american killing machine and is proud of it. >> cornell is rather upset cornell is a little bit upset at any number of things having to do with obama. i know cornell. i haven't spoken to him about

this, his particular comments in this case. but he's consistently been a critic of obama along certain lines. and also ideologically they are in quite different places, cornell and barack obama. >> is this more than attention grabbing? >> well, i think it's always been a mistake to assume that any group as true african-americans are a true monolith and it's always a mistake that some people are going to think all the same way. we never have -- no other proof ever has there's been differences. i think what's changed to some extent is a willingness to air these differences publicly. and i think that clearly cornell west made the decision that he was quite ready and quite eager to go public with any number of

complaints about barack obama. and i actually think -- and some of his complaints were frivolous having to do with inauguration tickets and things like that. but i think it's actually, you know, that he feels free and other people feel free to criticize this president. no president should be above criticism even from a group that he happens to belong to. if you go back some time ago to the clarence thomas nomination, there was a consternation among much of the black leadership at that point when he was nominated about whether to criticize this guy or not, and whether people ought to just stay quiet in the hopes that he would be something that he hadn't demonstrated that he had any inclination to be. i don't think that's healthy. and so i can -- you know, whether or not i agree with all of cornell's criticism is beside the point. i think he has the right to criticize him and i don't think

it's anything bizarre about that. and i think it's something very healthy about it. >> i did talk to a number of people in chicago, black and white, i think, from the left who do complain who say that barack obama can go to egypt and give a speech or he can give a speech in the u.s. on the middle east and the world talks about the middle east for the next week. so why hasn't barack obama come to the west side of chicago or gone to detroit and talked about urban america? has he missed an opportunity, do you think, to put, you know, those issues which, i think, it's fair to say george bush ignored back on a higher plane? >> barack has a set of issues that a white president doesn't have and i can't look into his mind what he will do for a second term if, in fact, he gets a second term. barack tried to make a point,

which he saw as a teachable moment after skip gates got arrested in his house when he stepped outside of his house by the policeman in cambridge. i think barack said, okay, this is clearly a case of a cop overreacting, whatever the good professor said to him he was not creating a public disturbance. he was not a danger to anybody. he certainly didn't need to be in handcuffs. so let me say, you know, that -- let me use this moment to make some statements about police behavior when it comes to african-american communities and let me take this occasion to say that the police did something stupid. well, there was a firestorm of reaction to that and it broke down very much among racial lines. the vast majority of whites responded to that with dismay and anger and essentially saying the president shouldn't be getting involved in this kind of

stuff. one of the issues that this president has that clinton didn't have is the issue of being accused of showing favoritism to racial minorities. clinton didn't have that issue. if you look at the poe at, for instance, a tea party, that was poll done a year and a half ago at the "new york times" breaking down the tea party respondents. the vast majority of people who considered themselves a tea party were also agreeing that obama had given way too much attention to african-americans, the country had given way too much attention to african-americans, et cetera, et cetera. so it would be politically naive not to think that he doesn't have this going on in his head. she make some strong statements and should we have strong policies as regards serving poverty, of course he has. some people doesn't claim he does he has talked some other things. clearly, that's a major issue

and he'll deal with that as vigorously as he has. >> you mentioned the tea party and the tea party and conservativism will create some controversy. you say what it all adds up is to an america that is psychologically and politically divided in the most bizarre way. one america is celebrating the rise of a black president and the beginning of the end of racism while the other drowns in paranoia and racial fears. in one america anger is mellowing as the other explodes. in one america the future seems brighter than ever while in the other it is cloaked in gloom. one more bit, the biggest locus of anger seems not to be in the nation's black and brown communities but in the white heartland where numerous people are struggling to make sense of what seems to be a world turned upside down, a world they say as increasing alien, one from which they are growing ever more

estranged. >> yeah. you know, there's lots of basis for those observations, one being a poll of people what they think about. and i actually went out and spoke to tea party people in an attempt to get at what's really bugging these guys. and i found many of them essentially incoherent. it was like, well, who do you want to take america back from? the people in washington. what are you angry about? well, i had a store and people broke into my store and now america is not good for the common man. there was just a lot of incoherence. and part of what i draw from that is that these people have this outsize anger with things

they either cannot voice or are uncomfortable voicing. and we're looking at a country that demographically is changing. we're looking at a country which you have, obviously, as we've been talking for the last, what, 20 minutes where you have a person of color in the top job that people -- at least some people, most tea party people it seems again from the poll question whether he was actually born in the united states. why? well, i think they prefer to see america represented by a different kind of person. that they are more congenial with. they don't like this idea -- and again, this is my take but it's a take that's informed by data, you know, they don't like this idea that these folks who don't represent america back in the 1950s the way america looked back in the 1950s are taking

over as they see it. and so i think it's an attribution to, one, it's an exaggeration of how much is being taken over by whom. but, two, it's this sort of inchoate anger at this other kind of dynamic which also happens to encompass, you know, people coming over from the southern border, et cetera, which makes unsettles a lot of people and says to them, this america that is evolving is not the america that i knew and loved which apparently is the america of the 1950s. >> so what is going to ease that anger? i mean, you you a obama bring it up in 2008 during the primaries when he talked about bitter people clinging to their guns and religion and he got enormous blowback he may have lost texas

on, you know, that -- >> i don't think religion here. and large measure i don't think it's guns. i think the issue is that there are just a hardcore set of people who question everything about, you know, this presidency and the current direction of this country. and i'm not sure that is going to go away anytime soon. i mean, the -- i guess the positive spin on that is that these folks sort of stuck in this paradigm tend to be rather old so at some point they're going to give way to some other people. >> talk about growing up on the west side. you write in the book about the impact that rioting on the west side when you were a young person had on you. >> yeah. i mean, i am a chicagoan. i'm happy to be back for this weekend in chicago.

and i am a product of a particular part of chicago. and for me a fundamental part of my childhood was growing up in a neighborhood that was literally set aflame literally in 1966 as a result of a disturbance aggravated by the police and then in 1968, as a result of, of course, of the fascination of dr. martin luther king. i mean, i remember quite clearly as a very young person walking along madison street which was the main commercial corridor shortly after the riots and still being able to feel the heat of the flames, the fires that consumed several of the stores. there was one day during the 66 riots where we literally had to hit the floor because bullets were flying. we were fearful that something would happen so then that not

only shaped my view of what's happened in america at that time and, of course, as a preteen and teenager, it shapes your view of your community, your neighborhood but it also shaped my view of the press. and it's hard to think back that far in some sense. but that was --. >> each year it gets harder. >> each year it gets harder, yeah. i basically became a writer out of that and the short story, you know, is that i remember reading the newspapers of the time, even though i was a kid i did read the newspapers and i remember reading the newspapers at the time and thinking that the neighborhood it was being reported of it was full of thugs and crazy people was not really the neighborhood that i knew. and thinking that there was a

need or at least i perceived in my ignorance and arrogance, i suppose, a need for another voice that could inform the discussion. i went to high school at lane technical. at the time when i enrolled and i started in high school until the time i graduated, i actually -- i had sort of thought i would go into some kind of scientific field. i had originally thought -- my favorite subject was actually math. i thought it would be something related to math, a physicist or something like that. and the thing that made me change course was something that happened during my senior year. my senior year in high school named mrs. klinger and i always had these fights with my english teachers because i thought english was boring and i thought a large part of it at least as it was taught at lane tech at the time was answering questions

that i knew the answers to and it was a waste of time and i had a big battle with mrs. klinger when i was going to do the english assignments and i remember saying to her in the heat of these discussion. i don't see a point of these assignments. they're a waste of my time. i don't know why i should do this stuff and she said to me, well, okay, ellis, you're obviously a bright kid and the work you decide to do is fine so what are we going to do here? and i said well, it seems to me that the point of this class is to, one, you know, be able to make sure i have an understanding of the english language and two that i have research schools and i can make a coherent argument and why don't you test me on something. why don't you have me write something. fine, what are you going to write. why don't i write a history of

riots in america and she said, okay. and i went off and several weeks later come back -- i don't remember something like a 140 page manuscript and mrs. klinger takes it home. the next monday comes-up after class. she said, okay, ellis i'm going to give you an a for the course but i'm not really capable of evaluating this material. send this to a professional. i'm a kid from the projects. a professional what? send it to who? and she says well, send it to gwendolyn brooks. you know who she is. yeah, that's the laureate of illinois. send it to her. and a few months later i heard from gwendolyn brooks.

she called me in. to her office and she said, look, young man, i don't know what you intend to do with your life but you ought to be a writer. and that made something of an impression on me. [laughter] >> and from there that ended up totally redefining myself and as you know, i went on to become a columnist for the "chicago sun-times" at the age of 19. and my path was sort of set. >> clarence tells a wonderful store about how he got hired on the "chicago tribune" in the 1969 and the west side has gone up in flames and the "chicago tribune" looks around the newsroom who they could send to the west side and they knew nobody and so clarence got fired. >> i think i got in on some of that same energy. i mean, the beginning was the 1965 riot in watts.

i mean, you're talking about a time when for reasons we probably need not go into in depth, most major metropolitan newspapers saw no need to hire anybody black. and so most of them didn't have anybody black on the staff. and the "l.a. times" really noticed this when watts exploded in '65 and they're looking around the newsroom and they said can we send somebody out there who has something in this community and won't be in danger and the only person they could think to send out was a salesperson who they said, okay, you're now a journalist. go out and cover watts. [laughter] >> and what he wrote was what you would expect summon who has no journalism was. and there was a lot of stories from the "washington post" in '68 with the riots. same thing. one major newspaper -- and a few of them had one or two people but most of them had nobody. and so after that, there was

this sense where, my god, there's this huge story and this huge community. our reporters we have, one, don't understand it, two, aren't comfortable out there. we need to hire some people, you know, to do it. i was actually hired a little bit differently. one, i was a little bit too young to go out and cover that stuff as a full feldge reporter then but what i did get hired at as my first job was when i was 18 with the "chicago sun-times" was as a columnist for viewpoint for schools. and after doing that for however many months i got called into the then editors's office a guy named jim hoage and jim said, ellis i've been reading your

viewpoint for schools, what do you think on monday i give you a column for the real newspaper? and i sort of looked at him, again, fully competent 19-year-old, well, mr. hoage, that's what i wanted to do for sure. so i wasn't hired a direct result of a riot but certainly there was, i think, an awareness at that time in that era that newspapers were at their disadvantage by not having -- by having virtually no people of color on staff. >> we both watched this business get shaken to the core, the basic underpinnings of journalism now. if you were running into ellis cose coming out of the west side of chicago now, would you advice him to go into journalism. >> if i would run out of myself from the west side i would say the root is definitely. first of all, i don't know anybody who got hired quite the

way i did back then and i think it's a tribute to what i like to consider, you know, the vision of jim hoage who saw this young kid who was sort of eager and in some ways and ignorant, hey, we see something here. let's do something with that. the field itself is contracting be print is contracting. and the layoffs and the future is very uncertain so if i were advising -- and also the road to journalism is a little bit different. more and more the path of entry has become, you know, getting a graduate degree at medill university or going to columbia and getting a degree from there. you're finding at least more people at large institutions sell those kinds of credentials.

i think what i would say to a young person starting a journalism career today, it can be a hell of a field but there's so much uncertainty in it you have to be prepared to embrace that uncertainty if you're going to -- if you're going to embrace this career. >> if you have a question, by the way, i'd invite you to come up to the microphone. i'd be glad to take your questions for ellis. let me ask you one other question on that field because there's been a struggle to diversify newsrooms and i think now we've seen, you know, as those newsrooms have shrunk whether journalists and african-american journalists have been going into alternative fields. are you better off these days looking for a dot.com job or a newspaper or a "newsweek"? >> newspaper or "newsweek." those are very different jobs. what we're seeing in journalism is, one, contraction of mainstream journalism.

but, two, we're seeing very different tiers developing. there's lots of dot.com jobs they tend to pay one-half, one-third what many of the traditional jobs pay so these are jobs that are going to appeal to people who for the most part who are quite young and who are willing to work for quite a little money in the hopes they will be able to leverage this to something better in the future. i think it's a hard call for a lot of people going into this field because it's in flux. journalism was never a profession that you went into you had rich unless you had hopes of being a network anchor or something but it was a field that not too long ago particularly with the large publications you could depend on a good career and a very good salary. that's no longer the case. i think for people looking for

younga profession this is the place to go. >> question. maybe we should say thanks to photomart made in the usa for this and the audiovisual systems which is the microphone and stand. i didn't prepare to come here to know what you were talking about. i didn't read your books and i assumed it was about the black experience. i saw a psychiatrist named dr. earl sullivan some time ago in the '70s. >> okay. >> i'll never forget what he said early on. he said -- i said with regard to my having the history of mental problems and employment he grinned he said he's you're not black and compare to a woman i saw in the '80s she didn't tell me she was terminally ill with breast cancer and she died at 37 in 1986 and he's still living and he's 90. i can remember some books. i am getting to a question but i hope the words i use before don't overrule my questioning.

i recommend a book called sex murder and the meaning of life -- >> i'm not sure this is the forum for you to recommend books. either you have a question that's somewhere in there? >> well, i think -- >> i mean, if people want to hear your book recommendations i'm sure they can find you after the session. >> i use merriam webster if we don't use the same meanings of the words we use we're going to be in trouble. it's like speaking other languages. i don't believe in using words that make us more distant than we have to be i think we should go back to negro and caucasian. first of all it wouldn't be bad -- >> sir, your question? >> yes, it wouldn't be bad more people to be scientifically literate and black and white is like totally opposite. should we -- okay do you think it would be to talk us in a way to make us closer or black and white or for that matter the opposite sexes that makes us more different than similar? >> sure. okay. fine. do i think it would be better to

talk about us to bring us closer, of course now. the other question is what that way is and i don't think it's as simple as substitute neagree for black or caucasian for white. negro is just, obviously, a mispronunciation for negro which i'm not sure it's the route to do that. and in principle, absolutely. >> yes, sir. >> obama is good for white people and especially zionists who put him in power for israel. obama, under obama, white unemployment goes down while black unemployment goes up. or it stays the same. illinois has been noted in chicago reader to have 400 sun

dial towers except where obama cannot sleep except in jail. >> again, sir, is there a question there somewhere? >> considering how racism is embedded in the criminal justice system would you say blacks are deluded to think things are getting better when more than half of people in prisons are black? >> and actually i think that's a good question. actually, i think that's a good question. the bureau of labor statistics just last month released statistics which show that black employment is lower -- is higher, black employment, rather, is lower than it's been since the statistics have been kept. we are seeing a situation where in an economic sense african-americans have been

particularly hard hit by this current downturn in the recession. and also as the questioner indicates in the last 45 to 50 years we're seeing a huge uptick in the number of african-americans who have been incarcerated. and who are having to deal with the criminal justice system such that if current trends continue roughly one-third of african-american males will end up in the -- you know, incarcerated at some point. so i agree. those are national tragedies. the studies that i cite do not give any kind of objective assessment whether things are getting better or not. they're talking about people's attitudes and take on, one, the future by which definition is unknown. and, two, what they perceive as their options which for many people is broader than it has been.

i think that we as a society fought for a long time, at least many of us did, that if we could somehow get a handle on the issue of racial inequality, we will solve the issue of inequity and inequality in the society. i think in some respects, not all, but i think in respects we are beginning to get a handle on that issue and i think what we're finding is that the issue of inequality is much more complicated than many people thought it was. and that dealing with the decline of virulent racism which i think has measurely declined is not creating an equal opportunity society. >> you suggest in the book -- you break out generational challenges but suggest that african-americans are still more likely to have been preyed on by shady lenders, for instance. >> right. >> as you see the mortgage crisis now. i want to ask you about that and also when you talk about the end

of anger, is there a growing economic divide among african-americans, since people who have succeeded are feeling much better about racism but are those who haven't succeeded economically feeling a lot different? >> well, you touch on something that i alluded to before. an answer to that direct question, certainly those who are doing economically better feel a lot better about their options in life as a measure of my various surveys including mine. but even people who are doing not so well at all, if you ask a question, are african-americans better off now than they were 15 years ago, for instance, the vast majority of people across class lines say, of african-americans across class lines say, yes, they are so i just on one hand. and they asked the question, do you think your children will have a better life than you do? do you find poor people as

likely as well-to-do people to say, yes, i think they will. so i think -- so i think on one hand you do have a sense that the options and opportunities are not nearly as bleak simply as a function of race an they used to be. but clearly you also have people who make their personal assessment based on where they were. and where they are. i mean, among the studies that i didn't really referenced earlier acid a small sierra of people who were involved with a group called the fortune society, people who were recently out of prison or who had been diverted into programs to avoid going to prison and we asked them about their options in life. most of them not needless to say are unemployment. they are honest that they will have a hard time getting a job and so i don't think people will

have a grasp of society. and i have a chapter is that it's an example of how even policies that on their face are not explicitly racist in any particular way can end up disproportionately harming particular communities and i think we have, you know, a textbook example in the case of how various neighborhoods were targeted and how various groups were targeted in a way that ended up devastated those communities of people who happened to owned homes together and no one had to get together in a room to say we're going to target black people to do that. >> i want to talk about the education divide in the united states too. your sister-in-law was a founder of a charter school in chicago. the charter schools, many have done, including your sister-in-law's network have done very well and yet it's a

very controversial issue on an economic idea the idea of whether traditional schools wind up being shortchanged because of the emphasis on alternative schools? >> yeah. i don't think there's any question. and again, i cite some research to this effect in schools in boston and new york. i don't think there's any question that a charter school is well designed and that's an important stipulation because there's some pretty crummy charter schools also. but i think without question the charter school that's well designed, that has good leadership and dedication can do wonders in the communities where your typical public schools have not. they can take kids who a lot of schools have essentially given up on and get them oriented towards college. first of all, get them to believe they actually can go to college which is part of what

they need to do in certain areas and get them prepared for a life that they otherwise wouldn't have if they just stayed in their neighborhood schools. but the reality is that unless something radically changes in this country, the percentage of people going to charter schools is always going to be a relatively smaller percentage. and so the issue i see is not that one ought to get rid of these charter schools which in some cases are doing a tremendous job. but we really need to wrestle in a serious way with how we make public education better. >> it's not too far a leap to get to what's going on in wisconsin and ohio and indiana and i think it may go to some of the issues that you talk about the new anger. your sense of, you know, whether we have a growing divide between the government class and the rest of america? >> well, sure we do.

i mean, in the sense of guaranteed pensions and things like that, that taxpayers have to pay for. and that now as our economic times become less and less certain, certain taxpayers are less willing to pay for that. but i think that's overlaid with a lot of issues. every census since the last 5 that have been taken has found a greater divide between the top fifth quintile in terms of income and the lower fifth quintile. we're clearly becoming a society where those who have wealth are doing progressively better as those who have less wealth are doing worse. there's something screwed up with that picture. and i certainly don't have the answer to that but there's something screwed up about that picture that goes beyond issues of race. there's something fundamentally screwed up about that.

and i think we need to sort of figure out how to get that right. >> we're out of time. ellis cose, thank you very much. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an email at booktv@c-span.org. >> wildcard is the name of the book. the promise and peril of sarah palin. the author is mark joseph. mr. joseph, what do we learn new about sarah palin in your book? >> you know, i spend a chapter and a half on her religious background and the significance that this is the highest that somebody from pentecostal background has reached the heights of american power. i think that's one of the untold stories of the rise of sarah palin and not of the evangelical christian part of america but especially the pentecostal background of american politics. >> what's the significance of that background in your view?