their professional careers but have done extremely well given what they were up against, which was a neighborhood of severe poverty and serious drug problems. none of them have touched drugs which is a huge thing in their favor, that they have not gone the way of their moms but said to themselves, we want something better for our lives. >> deborah hicks, where do you think you were successful, and where would you do things different? >> i think i think we were very successful, and intimacy, a super successful class, seven girls who were attaching themselves to school, loving literature, books. i think the biggest challenge i faced was just

about the time that my class finished i had to leave to come back to my home state and found my nonprofit. the biggest difficulty was not being able to finish the class when the girls were entering adolescence. that is why when i found my new initiative, i made sure we were serving girls in the middle school years. most vulnerable and trying to define who they are and what they want to be in life that is something i learned from the class in cincinnati that i brought back. >> people are interested in your nonprofit, the website? >> carolina page .org. partnership appalachian girls education.

you can find stuff on the website. you can go to a story's page on the website and watch digital stories, meet the girls. we we would love people to go check out the website and meet these amazing appalachian girls. >> when you go back and involve these local girls, are you treated with suspicion as a harvard do-gooder, in a sense? >> in the mountains we have an expression, from here but not from here. i am at this stage both are from here and a not from here. i rent an old farmhouse from some farmers out of madison county. when i am there i am a from

here. when i go to the page program, i am kind of a not from here. i i don't sound like an appalachian girl anymore. i have become more of a professor and researcher. the part of me is always a from here, it does not leave you. you are always the same girl you were when you were a child. >> we have been talking with author, educational scholar, deborah hicks about her book "the road out: a teacher's odyssey in poor america." ..

>> coming up next, mark edmundson, author of "why football matters." he talks about the contributions football has made and continues to make to american culture. he argues for american boys, played football how they learned about faith, patriotism and t. work. professor edmundson spoke at the university of virginia bookstore in charlottesville, virginia. [inaudible conversations]

>> thank you very much for being here and thanks to the gentleman from cvn who drove all the way down washington to record this event and record your adulation is or diversions or whatever it is your half after i finish talking, which really shouldn't be too terribly long. so why do we have here? we have a book called "why football matters" and it is written by an english professor, be it, mark edmundson. it is my 10th book in most of my books have to do with education as this one does in those other boats. but it nevertheless is in the scope of what i'm doing. i next book is about ideals called self and soul and if all goes smoothly, they'll be published by harvard university press at this time next year. with any luck, i will see you back here again will talk not about football or insular early

about football, but about ideals. so what kind of a book is this? what kind of creature do we have in front of us? this is a hybrid, a memoir first of all and it talks about two years of my life. when i was a junior in high school in senior in high school and during that time i played my two years of rather undistinguished football for the mighty mustangs of medford, massachusetts. so it's about my life straight now. and that was an interesting, difficult and ultimately pretty rewarding. for me. as i said, the book is a hybrid about something else as well. it is also about for paul and the qualities of education that one can derive from playing the game. so every chapter is devoted to equality that football supposedly dispenses. there is a chapter on your encourage, loyalty, all kinds of good things, then it we are

enamored with it. so i sort of tries analytical on one hand. the best way to talk to you. why did i write this book? for whom did i rate this book? i have three answers. the first answer is i wrote it down for myself. this is a very important year in midlife. 1968, 69, three years really. 1970 and its difficult year. he wasn't about playing football. in my house it was a very difficult, tragic event and i was the death of my younger sister, barbara and who died when i was a sophomore in high school. she died here she had a series of starts in the time she was

three years old and by the time she died she had at the six or eight of these strokes and finally went to the hospital and return no more. we knew this was coming. another, my brother, father and i am about the blow is absolutely staggering to us all. it was a poleaxed flow. it was a poleaxed blow to everyone that we all take it differently. my father was a gambler, hard-working man who worked two jobs and a sample bill told me not too long ago, the reason your dad worked two jobs, he worked one to pay the bills and the other to pay his gambling debts. the reason my dad had gambling debts because of my uncle told me, you would never leave when he was ahead. he would always give the other guys a chance when their money back. not a strategy that i recommend unto you. my brother was a brilliant, smart, capable kid. he was jan, nine, 10 years old.

he's continued to do really good things. he's a successful businessman of boston and also somebody interested in politics and has been very successful, but that may be just a little too much. keep watching him. he's younger than i am. the one who had at the hardest is my mother. she wanted a girl ever since she had been married. this is her girl. everything was going to be wonderful with barbara. my mother had the fondest hopes and the fondest wishes for barbara. when she died, my mother was just overwhelmed. what my mother did you that i found rather amazing and i couldn't perceive it then and this is part of my reason for reading the book. she hung on. she got up early morning. she made us practice pitch he packed a lunch for me and philip and my father. she did the laundry. she did the wash. she cleaned the house and she

kept it together and you could tell what she really wanted and needed to do was break down completely on some level. other theater pass a crucifix in the bedroom and she would whisper and may eventually hurt her and all she said was for jesus, help you. and this went on day after day after day. as to me, what was i doing? i was doing badly in school. i was socially a non-entity at best. i was barely a presence anywhere in the world it seems to me. but i did decide for whatever reason took a while for football. i was not a good football player. my main contribution was that i didn't screw up in a major way. i screwed up in some minor ways. you'll read about a night during which for football players ran out in large school windows. three players broke the windows on one watch. i watched. so i didn't screw up.

that was my contribution. you know, by the time i graduated from high school, i could see in retrospect -- i could see in retrospect that my family had come through. we were pulled together if only marginally and we were all going to be okay. so i wrote this for myself to think about that period. i voted as a tribute to another for which she had done and my father too easily could have disappeared and never come back. but he kept showing up in a kept doing good things. so i also wrote for my children and my nieces and nephews so that they could see what it was their grandparents have achieved in order to give my brother a life and so they could appreciate that gift, which they didn't see directly really. it was very real and very strong. so the book is first of all a memoir and a visitation of a period in my life that i think was determine it for me. the writer who says, you know,

for power is the single time is off in childhood. that is when you want to go back to childhood. the kind of intensity and perception. for more analytic people, former critical people, the time his adolescence because that is when he developed a critical perspective. you break away a bit from the world is your appearance and teachers and priests and you begin to see things rather fresh. this is my period. this is my. tonight though back and i've written about it one other book. chip tucker said to me, teaching about the same years. he said you have about 50 years ago. i looks like we can write a book, two books. i have 100 years ago. so i want to give you a flavor of the dimension of the book, just a little bit. this is just the very beginning and it talks about really to kind of world before the fall, before things got really harsh and really bad.

it goes like this. i grew up watching football with a father. 31 or six years old, maybe seven. i watch sunday games in our cramped apartment on main street in massachusetts. he was 1958, 1959. rerouted for the new york giants. my father loves getting ready for the game. he pushed the chair into the middle of the living room, sat down and test today. tenuous have to work and get a side table where you want today. he placed the smokes, camels, not filters on a tabletop along with matches and mastery. this agrees, mike cashel tray he called it. who could say why. my father was always on the move. he worked two jobs, but that restaurants. we got home from the second one at the chuck wagon before he regained a little bit of sleep around sunday, game day, calm down a day. my father julie loved the new york giants.

he loved patton and cabbage robust elliott marjah lasky and career and sometimes even loved sam hoff. all wiki looked forward to sunday afternoon when the giants came online. king dad share center of plays sad. my my father was ready to watch the game. behold. there was one more thing. his chocolate bar. every friday payday when my mother shocked, she bought my father king-size hershey's chocolate bar with almonds. my father relish that candy bar. he slowly, deliberately save arena through the course of the game. he took a nibble, chewed delicately, stared off into space have worked with sweet gratitude. at the chocolate bar. he gave orders. i went to get his hershey bar and hershey bar and sat down by his feet and waited for the kids to begin. then came the music company and

a felting typing for the massive body of our black-and-white team. my father who had a wonderfully clear, played the flute, began to sing in harmony. football is about to begin. to my mother who was working in the kitchen, cleaning up the sunday dinner, which my father had code, issued one of the favorite lines. he said in a tone of tenderness, they are playing our song. and then we watched football or at least we tried. the picture was black-and-white and reception sometimes miserable. cert games i had to stand up and monkey with the antennae. my father gave the command. no, no. flat them out. straight up straight out. no, no, 3:00. not done the clock, three clock. i favor the years, my father looked to see the next play. sometimes his nose nearly christmas screen. i think ill just have to hold it there. a human hand wrapped tightly sometimes improve the picture

printed from stems from the desert to cloudy day your home. so there i would stand hand on the area, staring into the screen, tilting my head on the subset down again into the action with my glasses sliding on the break my nose. that's a little better my father would say. that is almost good. but mostly i was spared the acrobatics and contortions. mostly my father or my sat and watched the ball together. through football my father explained the world to me. my father believed in almost no one. he disliked politicians. he called john f. kennedy who has been our senator blackjack. he never went to church, never up in the bible and never said a word about god. he thought his bosses were fools. in time he came to love johnny caution and richard nixon and when i was a small boy, football players reveal that was ones my father left. election ground and yelled burton. there comes a little vignette

now that i'll talk to you again for a while and i will talk together. i guess if i wanted my sons and my nieces and nephew to remember my father by one little story, this might be it. the football watching meant a lot to me one day my father showed that it might mean something to him, too. i thought it was usually generous with his chocolate bar in anytime during the game i was free to ask my dad, can i have a piece? you know i didn't care for the almonds in the bar so he crafted me a piece of your chocolate. i could ask again, especially the giants are doing especially well for jim brown was running his thoroughbred race up and down the field. and i have better not ask three times. one saturday morning, the day before game day, i kraft sock footed into the pantry and from the barna top shelf. i slid it down, smell the intoxicating scent of chocolate.

my father told me the whole town of hershey, pennsylvania smelled that way and i wanted to go there and get a dose. then i broke a piece of pure chocolate between it all minute dispatch. why this is so bad? my father always give me peace of chocolate during the game. come to think of it, my father almost always allotted two pieces of almond fruit during the football game. by sunday morning of game day coming to chocolate bars no longer a chocolate bar. is a collection of chocolate covered almonds in a secured wrapper. the chocolate covered almonds were not attractive. it would be, sharp edged. they looked like lack rocks. game time came. the game began to my father for whatever reason did not call for his chocolate bar. my father loved to call for his amenities. when i hear the christmas carol about old king: ali called for his pipe and called for his bull in a similar story, i think of

him. he's doing this to torture me? did he know? when he was angry, my fathers did not hold that. he roared, if i didn't scream fast enough he delivered the wac. i had been tempted to recite by chocolate and receive absolution for it. but by 2:00 when i was kneeling in front of the priest at the compassion of sacred heart, a chocolate bar was still semi-intact and might've been passable. even i recognize that there is a certain absurd way to bless me father for i have sinned. my last confession was one week ago. since then i applied three times, sworn twice, the almonds out of my father's chocolate bar. i have time to father called for his bar. i went to its hiding place and jury down, open the wrapper in late the wreckage out. then i walked to the living room. i put the remains before my father with both of my hands. he looked without a word and

placed it on the tray and it smokes, ashtray, cigarettes. as the second half of kate g-golf he popped in in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. the second half when on. my father consuming his chocolate covered almonds, intent on the game, but i'm usually quiet. most of the time his word overwhelmed the announcers. it was usually landside pic to read. i sat in silence, waiting for the storm. early in the fourth quarter, the giants will delete and jim brown terrorizing the eagles and redskins, my father made his move. he had dropped down from my face my face. if this really and i jumped the cheerful run to my room. with a hand open in front of me was a bitter chocolate, a nice but completely almond tree. you missed to piece my father

said. [laughter] so that's the memoir. that's me. the book is also than a certain way for my students and for students in general good as some of you know, my colleagues here, i am a book learning guy. i think most good as people are conjured by clear and directly out of the reading of books. but i agree with plato, the best book on education ever written, the republic that if you only have an intellectual education, it is insufficient. later as guardians and philosopher king also has the souls of warriors, strong and resilient and charged with the most, a i'll be coming back to. plato's guardians could be what they modulate themselves hungry for the first.

so it seems to me that it's important to start talking and persuasive than critical terms about what an athletic education might be all about and how it might dovetail with an intellectual education. so when the book i want to talk about quality sleep the acquisition of character. i really had an opportunity to acquire character. i was so terribly bad at it at the most basic kinds of football activities took me days and weeks and planning and reflection in vision and revision. it took me two and a half weeks simply to learn how to run in my path. i would get out there everyday and everyday i would feel like i am locked in a closet. i am chained to. i cannot move and everybody else was flying around. you guys see you can't live in your pass on the scrimmage field. i have an idea.

you are the idea. the next thing you know you have blood coming out of your nose and looking at the sky and the sky is beautiful, but blood does not help. so i had to learn to run through my pad and i worked on it and worked on it. i've repeated and repeated and finally like a bolt from the blue, like a voice of yahweh, the coach said fun, stop that. run for your pads. you had to push your muscle against the pats to get where you're going. somehow that just put with me. it works. so there's a lot of definitions to character. character is that which is held or revered by an individual, that which is not pronounced, not expressed, but you sense that behind you. my sense of character in this book is maybe a little bit more. my sense of your is the process

of setting goals and working towards it very slowly, learning what you can, developing as you can and finally reaching a goal only to see that you have further and further to go. character is about practice. crack is, practice, practice. character is a repetition to get it ready. there is no doubt about this all through the book i'm thinking about not only the writing of this vote, but the other nine books to come. i feel as though a lot of what i learned about writing books that are strangely enough on the football field. i learned how to improvise, provide and fail so many times he thought this was just impossible. above me was the voice, run through your pads. somewhere in my head, for every book, some kind of voice is likely to come through and say it is not really about what you think it is about. 10 degrees and you'll be fine.

but you get to hear that voice because you sweat so darn much in the process that you open yourself up to it out of sheer need and sheer exhaustion. i'm not saying there's another way to learn, but it was my way and i think all kinds of sports, all kinds of difficult activities provide this possibility for education. one of the things that you read the reviews of the book, i have. emerson had this great item. sometimes i walk out of my book and see the night at the sense of design, the sky in those moments of rhapsody, i can forget that i have been rebuked. [laughter] i don't forget any of her of that. some of my reviews take the time to read my book or some of it, think that this is an outside endorsement of football.

i'm the oldest professor. i'm ambivalent about everything. you know what i mean? nobel prize. so there's a degree of criticism and it seems to me that character is a wonderful quality. there's no doubt about it. but at the same time, practice is based upon repetition and you don't sigmund freud v. on the pleasure principle to study the something deadening about repetition. but if you do it over and over and over again can be threatened to become something like a machine. he tried to become something like a machine. there is a french theorist of laughter, of jokes who says the funniest thing in the world, at least to him is when a person turns into something machinelike. he laughs uproariously. i wish he had lived long enough to see an sl and nba players interviewed on espn.

because i've got those place. i love what they do. a of repetition, repetition of a repetition has turned into a do with the coach says. i love my city. whereas my. that sort of thing is the downside of any kind of pursuit after her. subversive to be a lot to say words that are antagonistic to the development of character. but it is true. too much character alive inspiration and some of the work or if things that we can have and do in life. so i wanted to put forward visions of these qualities. i think football and many other sports can instill character, courage, loyalty. i wanted to show the upside and downside. i wanted to show that anchorage you can achieve an ability to turn it on and turn it off. you can express your passions on the field and flip the switch, but always waiting if achilles.

the warrior is simply not a battle and one had to retreat sand and turns to the noble hector and says do not talk to me about terms. i am so enraged with you that i could eat your flesh. that's the way of abuse do not have a human. but who wins? the kiwis wins. maybe by turning yourself into bbc put yourself in a more likely position to win. this complex questions that have to be asked about any activity and it seems to be football is a rich place to be asking those kinds -- these kinds of questions. i am for the game. i'm an advocate. there is no doubt about that. but there's this steady stream of critical reflection of the game through the book. so to audiences. myself and my family. my students, students to be in people who want to learn to develop themselves not only intellectually, but through sports and the discovery and mistakes such as they should.

third audience. for whom did i rate this book? bells, whistles, whatever you have been a third manner of speaking, i wrote this book for i hope to just flash a mirror in the direction of the united states of america. not that it's always too eager to book in that mirror, but when i heard the line by the journalist mary mcgrory that baseball is what we worry. ceballos opry have become. i was very just about that and i want you think about the ways in which football may reflect the american cultural state. i found myself coming away with lots of lots of questions. i found myself coming away with lots and lots of question. i did some writing about football and religion. and we'll because sure, but it's a complex subject. there are signs of religion, christianity in particular. prayer before the game. i just spent a lovely day with the virginia cavaliers and before they went into the field, can't bless them all, they said

they are father in unison with the coach of the center. and then they went out and try to bust the slain for the kids from pittsburgh. now it's a complicated question. it is easy may be to imagine jesus or keep it light or the apostles in baseball. in baseball you have lots of christian terminology. the sacrifice, the save, going home, have been. right? i cannot imagine the most waiver to jesus disciples sitting up or saturday afternoon or a fun afternoon, right? what is going on there? how many times do you forgive a transgressor? many, many, many times. when someone slaps you across the face, what do you do? to turn the other cheek. tell that to the coach. he sat you across the face.

i turned the other cheek, coach and put up on the bench. [laughter] and yet, we profess football is completely compatible with christianity as we understand it. really, is this possibly true? how could it be? another question that comes up is raised. 70% of the players who play in the national football league the national football league and the goodtime college football are african-american. they go up there and they read against each other on saturday and a four -- it's really hard to find a word for this. entertainment, edification, fascination, all of which is largely white american audience, it in a way that i hope a somewhat provocative, but not definitive i attached this process to an amazing thing that all of you who have read will recall. this is the scene of the battle royal. in the battle royal, our narrator who will become the

invisible man and the invisible man ends up at a banquet where he thinks he is going to give a speech on niekro self-reliance. that's what he calls it. and said he finds himself in the middle of the ring with a blindfold on the under 10 other african-american guys and they began wailing each other wildly. all the way crannies of the town who promise to listen to the other fine speech that they're in the same and watch. this is the best entertainment they've had in a long, long time. they beat the stuffing out of fire near rader. after that -- after that, the boys say hey, bills, money all over the place. it's on the green carpet and may run for the green carpet. guess where? the green carpet has been electrified. they are shocked and in pain, but they keep going for the money. you could say this is in a

completely fair version of what happened on saturday and sunday afternoons. there is a racial component. there is the financial reward and there's no electronic football players make tremendous amounts of money. they lived like kings. well, two thirds of them have financial troubles the year after they leave the game. nfl camino at the players call it. nfl stands for not for long. you are there, gone, your money is gone. he walked with a limp and you can't always remember that play what you would like to remember. and yet, football is one of the places in america where black people and why people get together on pretty much equal terms. they become friends with each other in ways they often do in other parts of our culture.

it is hugely enriching. anglo-americans have that opportunity to make contact with other people. and also what they do on saturday and sunday, all the players, black and white, beautiful to me. it involves enormous expenditures. it's a different name. football is the way of thinking about america. it provokes a lot of questions. upon religion. football and race. symbiotic relationship to the military. always the soldiers standing out there. i was the soldiers marching across the field and may be a soldier picks up a little clamor by virtue of the football and may be football picks up a little bit of true or at least plausible bravery by the way of association military. but maybe young people will find

some football like grammar. probably not. they are at least going to not get that salary. it's a complicated world and football reflects america in its perplexities, in its strength and also some of it is disturbing qualities. it seems to be race, religion, gender elections, all of those things come to life on the foot all field and i will say they are easily solvable. they are complex, but they really do make you think. so three dimensions. three audiences. myself and a family. you can read over our shoulders if you'd like it is of interest. my students and i would like to see develop not only their minds which they do very impressive in which i love to be a part of, but also to develop a part of themselves that plato talked about all of the time that we probably don't talk about enough. and that is the tomato excite,

the tough side, beside that looks for achievement, distinction, victory and is resilient and able to take losses. i would like to see that site developed and i think a self-aware or immersion in sports is one of the ways. not the only way, but one of the ways that can be developed. third dimension. i wrote it as a client of a letter to america about what i think is revealed by the staggeringly beautiful, staggeringly dangerous and terrible day. crucial word, another crucial word, the last thing i will say, football if i had to title the book again and didn't care for soldier care for soldiers make copies at all, i would say football is a foghorn. farm economy is a word that is made famous by plato and then taken out in a famous piece, famous if you live in an english

department can't plato's pharmacy. a farmer column is a poison and an elixir. football can be an elixir. it can make you strong and give you courage and develop your character. it can develop loyalty, which will serve you brilliantly but around the world. it can be a poison and that it can get you into behavior. guys, messed up a-alpha male, alcohol, there will be trouble. courage can turn into brutality. somebody's brave on the field can't turn it off in that fashion in the next thing you know it's all over the news. he is sitting in front of a police van, a judge or a magistrate explained why he had her and why he hopes will never do it again. football is a farmer. it is an elixir and a poison. what i tried to do in my book by

virtue of making us to dimension self-conscious, perceptible to the reader, put readers in a position where they could grasp the good and beware of the bad and in so doing give themselves at least a second hand and may be a first hand what i'm still grateful for it despite my many ambivalent as professorial in nature and that is a football education. so, thank you. [applause] so now we can talk. i've been talking about this book for the last two months since its been out. this is my last roundup, so i look forward to hearing some things and learning some things. any questions or observations or anything you have to be more than grateful for. >> you may well look at it in the book.

idea back to you think you've learned different things -- [inaudible] >> i may be prejudiced in my own behalf, but i think that i would have learned much less because i had to run the game in slow motion. if nobody has to tell me how to mentor my past, i would've never had to figure it out. if i have been able to jam my head into other peoples midsections without a second, i would've never had to figure out what you're brutality may be. so there is a line that i really like, though i can't always find a and it is that that inspires what that thing delights among the things most difficult but not impossible. you know, it was very difficult, but it was an impossible. so jamie fascination.

there is actually a passage in the book weren't talking about how much better i would have been if i had had the wherewithal to the required what my parents ill afford or get some sports classes. people would tell me come you must get sports classes. you'd be really good if you have sports glasses. or like my sister used to call me the all-pro linebacker. but i never listen to them. i kind of thought out what i football life would have been like if they manage to acquire. there is a little parenthetical, one of my favorite of the book that for whatever it's worth addicott in the sports classes i would've never written this book or anything like it. it is the guy at the end of the line. the guy. the guy at the beginning to think this is how it is. then he gets kicked out of heaven. steve, yeah. >> i would like to follow up --

[inaudible] it felt to me -- i felt that annual football was to you. i am curious, what was it that made you think i haven't really put about it so i need to not do it again. >> i had the same feeling you did. i wrote an essay about football, education about football. it got a lot of attention and a lot of editors called me and said we expand this into a book? first thing is now, been there, done that. and then, just for fun i sat down and i wrote a page. amanda paige was 10 feet 10 pages were 10100 pages are 150. apparently there was still some oil left on there and what i thought was that old well. what would justify that

drilling? was justified, the first thing was the first account, this moment of adolescence is a big deal for me. i need to write this from the 25th year. football may have been kind of a base for me they gave me the wherewithal to get interested in matters intellectual. i thought football was something i was leaving behind only base out of which a certain kind of development arose. so what i thought was an exclusion to them that the kind of marriage of two strong tendencies in my life. and that is the sort of enemy did me. also, i could see that the game of football stood in some kind of really fascinating relationship now in american culture in a way that when we were boys you could write about

baseball and about how to does baseball and how we let ourselves and how great baseball was. now it's a little more complicated because football does not show us as bright, shining angels. i saw a i saw a glut of cultural content in their native want to walk away from all of the cultural content. i knew was going to get to think about religion and also to things that were fascinating to me. yeah, please. >> now we know that football causes dramatic raid injury. i am thinking about what your family -- [inaudible] that had tbi. i mean, it is a terrible death. [inaudible] >> i am not sure. it seems to me and i think based

on the tenor of your question, there are certain people who in their 20s know that there are possibilities in life that involve great risk. responsibilities also involve great rewards, that involve financial rewards, that involve her with an intensity and joy, camaraderie and they choose those risks. they know more now about what they are getting into there's no doubt about that. that day so far our choices are going to make. doctors made the same choices. at the same time, and you may feel a stretch in the little bit here, maybe five. headlong romantic poets who decide like shelley that i'm going to land i'm going to land stopped to never stop inside the four and 30.

painters like jackson pollock who drink themselves half into a go on and on, and make those kinds of choices. i'm sorry? rock musicians, yeah, make those all the time to jimi and janis and all the rest. they knew the road they were going down. they look at the venice intensity -- they lived with enormous intensity and i don't inhabit any other way. people who join the navy seals, green berets, they know their life may be curtailed at any moment or they may be terribly wounded at any moment, yet they make that choice. i don't know how much you want to take that away from people. if you say to certain habits of money people, you can't play, you can't go headlong, you can't go until you stop and say you never stop because i make you sit and take a timeout. what happens to those people, maybe they don't want to become

well mannered college professors like me or actuarial support a war years, but maybe they decided it is necessary to express themselves by going and punching somebody's life. are they express themselves by sitting at the end of barring drinking until they can see the wall anymore. or maybe they decide the depression has been able to gain. people have this urge and his question. i think it's a valid question. how much of the expression we would want to prohibit. another lots of nfl players are in very bad place and we assume they are in bad shape because of the trauma they have undergone. when i was a boy, my dad said to me, you can hurt yourself badly when you go out there and that was in 1968. everybody knows. everybody knows. i wonder how much alcohol, i wonder how much of uncertain

behavior has to do with it. i'm distressed about it and i think we may reach a tipping point. i've come closer to the site. we may say culturally enough. i'm personally not air. i would like people to have the choice if they were not reckless at least dangerous until there lives with some kind of meaning. when i see them do it, i stand there and all and admiration for what they have done. i recognize there's another side to it, but that is where ibm on it. yeah. >> i wonder -- football has become more popular as television technology has improved and we can actually zoom in on the horrible violence that used to be invisible watching him as little, blurry, black-and-white screen. it should cease to be two guys running against each other.

and now we see up close and repeated endlessly, sometimes frightening brutality and a heart stopping an advert acrobatics that result when someone gets knocked and has this leg twisted in a horrifying way for someone like the teacher you can fit in the small tobacconist wife is never the same average game. this is what we want to see. >> this is what we want to see in this brings up the question of fan. do you know what i mean? i think that there are lots of different registers of watching the law and being fans, right? i mean, defeo shakespeare that groundlings only the jokes. the middle-class only the plot. the refined understood the poetry and the other poets in the audience just stood there with their mouths agape because of how amazing it was.

i am not comparing with the remainder shakespearian football. but i think people get different kinds of pleasure from watching that game. some of it is atavistic pleasure. some of it may be sadistic pleasure. for some of it is a pleasure seeing people do brave and beautiful things and taking risks. i am not celebrated by that. i don't see much courage around me in the world and here are these people doing things that are to be extremely brave and may be they will find them to be foolhardy. but people who are undergoing if you've read the book, he's injured all the time. he also will tell you page after page is never been so happy. he's having the time of his life. there's never been so much joy in his existence. i think some people see that and they say how can i do something like that? how could i be worthy of that

kind of spectatorship, the kind of viewership. when people watch shakespeare, they come back and say coming in now, maybe a better rewrite that page. whatever i do a good enough because there's something out there that's really wonderful. that is not completely -- metaphors don't go on all four of each others could shakespeare, a ball, i ultimately prefer shakespeare. but they do in some ways eliminate each other. i am distressed by. but overall, that is still where ibm. yes. >> it's been 45 minutes and we haven't heard the word jaffer said. -- jefferson. [inaudible]

[laughter] >> e-mail, jeffersons say? any name and everything. -- anything and everything. what did henry james senior say? a man of many handles. it is close. idea of not [inaudible] if we doubt forever, there would be flattering remarks about the iroquois and lacrosse or something. i don't know what our founder would say. i think he would probably say to me honestly that the business at the university was preparing young men and now young women for the life of scholarship and commerce and law and medicine and frugality should be pushed to the side. i will be honest with you. by going like this, i could

transform division i college athletics and make it all intramural. i would do it in a second. i go to the games and watch them. if i could, i would. i can collect it and i'm still not going to do it. i mean, the idea that a college becomes an entertainment mecca. football, basketball, not something to be comfortable with it. he's a fairly austere person, at least in one dimension of his life and the transgressive, racially really strange and distressed jaffer said. we talked a little bit about him. he is just too complicated. i think the official face of jefferson is this over jefferson is this over and might make individual to what mixture and add it to a city would support me, to any kind to our intellectual act to be feared.

we've got it. it is here that got to do something. we've got to have some kind of si. >> have some more show to fill up we cannot leave it go. anybody else? all quiet on the football front. yes, all right. >> what do you say? it is a different conversation, what do you say about the players who really have no other choice in life but to play a game that they may enjoy, but they know darn well they could get very hurt because that is one way out of their life circumstance. let's say that gato, to maybe make a stand for themselves and make a living and a profession and a career.

yet, here we are throwing them into the iraqis, very violent game. so if that's so fair? >> well, no, i don't think it is. but it is also a matter for social policy. i admire many things about our president, but i wish he would say the word poverty board and he would talk more about the relationship between education and poverty and building really good schools and really challenging neighborhoods. and i wish that there was more of a sense amongst some of the minority communities that the white house can be through education if you strive for it. but if the school down the street is inadequate, that's very difficult. ultimately that is a question for social policy and i support the policy that brings the best possible education in every neighborhood and doesn't allow our money to be spent on the enjoyment of the 1% to pay 15%

tax. we could just borrow a little of that and make it a good school so there would be more chase. there is also a cultural world out there where people say to young people, particularly in certain groups, foot always the best thing to be. basketball, baseball. there has got to be for thought among parents whose eight, you know, phd in english is not bad either. a medical degree. that is pretty great. you can use the great things there. if everybody around you says football, baseball, basketball, i don't think that's a good beginning. some people should be same law, medicine, art, art, art. i hope there is more. >> you know, the ncaa campaign players go on --

[inaudible] [inaudible] >> well, i think that one of the things i try to do in my book and the thing the good coaches do is say look around the room. last year in this room there were a lot of good football players. three of them got drafted into the nfl. two of them made it. one of them would last more than five years. a lot of kids out here who are as good as seemingly as he

appeared so that is something that is has to be forward to all players. at the same time, couldn't we say the same thing to a room full of poets? the chances that you're making it are very, very large to a roomful of actuaries, a roomful of painters, a room full of playwrights. you are probably not going to make it. there comes a climatic moment when you try for the 10th time to get your book published and it doesn't get published. you knew what you were getting into. you tried. it didn't work. now let's hope you have plan b. one of my sons is a rock guitarist. one of my sons is a fiction writer. unfamiliar with this particular difficulty. i pray for them and hope for them, but i don't see them as all that different. you know, people try to do things that are really hard and maybe impossible and they get the chance to do them and span at a certain point you look on your wall and there's no more money and you can't find anymore

so so you got to leave the casino. a lot of us have had to leave the casino for one thing or another. i don't think the situation is unique. it is painful because the dilutions have often been said by other people. there's also people who are saying no, no, no. look around you. see how many people donate it to the nfl and then see what happens in the game and when they get out of the game. 30 for 30, documentaries on espn. that is all they talk about. anyway, thank you so much for coming. [applause] don't kill the camera. this is very important. steve cushman, here it is. the red list he will be reading right here a week from tomorrow. this is absolutely fabulous. sad, wise and beautiful.

come here and listen to them. get this book. it is a deep and wonderful piece of work. i strongly recommend it. [applause]

>> so, your relationship with irving kristol with ivanov did there it is. was it a friendship quiet >> it was largely in the mail.

i would send him a script kiddie with emmaus comment. armstrong williams, who's an african-american conservative guy, far more active right now i think that mr. grisly. he came out to california and was my own staff conservative advisor. mr. gray threw a scare from the beginning of the show and perhaps six or seven episodes started. >> what his people for the american way? >> it could be a daughter -- >> is there someone watching you on tv? you're watching me on tv i'm doing an interview. i'll call you back. he is here. bye.

i have five daughters. you could find this interesting. >> five daughters, one son. >> this is one of my daughters from the twin. they will be 20 next week. >> are those your youngest? >> those are my youngest. my oldest is 68. >> in your 92? how is your health? >> my hope is pretty good. >> the american way, how did that come about? >> i was watching the beginning beginning -- there was an influx of television ministries -- jerry falwell, pat robertson, jimmy swaggart, at saturday. and that's a mixture of politics and religion, i thought not my america. and that is exactly what i did

as a psa, a public service announcement. i put a camera on a working guy who said he and his family, his wife and kids talk about politics all the time. ..