bill cosby, what a disappointment he was to me. all he wanted to talk about was kids, stay in school. you have a great opportunity opening up for you. don't blow it. really knuckle down and enjoy all the resources you've got, learn from them. i thought he's no fun. he sounds just like my grandparents. but then flash forward 40 years

later when i am a parent myself now everybody think how much i was able to teach bill cosby on all those years. i was not expecting this as you will constantly hear some intrusive black people reject the cosby. know, they don't. bill cosby expresses a voice that all of us have heard and their families. very much a part of our communities but it's not news when he of african-americans who believe in strong families working hard, staying in school, et cetera, et cetera. at the same time there's work to be done. i've followed cosby's progress and it seemed him do a lot of good work in spurring grassroots involvement around the country but it doesn't make news because who cares about kids who are succeeding? finally surprising theme number four. this is the most recent. quiet but dramatic cultural quakes i call it, when the earth

shakes all the sudden and things change in ways you never expected them to happen. many predicted an african-american president, for example. same-sex marriage being legally and there is states. legalize marijuana. all these things are going to come some day, but not in our lifetimes, children. that's a science-fiction stuff but all of a sudden the last decade all kinds of stuff has been happening. maybe not the wheel was right about the tipping point communities. it's no wonder that pat buchanan and other people are so upset by what's going on with the culture. william f. buckley, definition of a conservative, relentlessly yelling halt. progress has way of not listening to halt. so this is the origins of cultural diversity as i called,

and numerous other changes have happened. but i love my book came about partly because of another daniel patrick moynihan quote in a memorandum back in 2003. he said, the central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics that determines the success of a society. let me read that again. the central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics that determines the success of a society. the central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself. i have seen that happen in terms of the civil rights movement when i was in high school, the debate was going on in washington and the conservatives were saying that you can change the law but you can't change peoples minds. dr. king said, in order to change people's minds you've got to lay the groundwork by changing the law.

we saw what has happened. i don't know exactly how long but it didn't take very long before it was hard on anybody who supported the jim crow laws. i found this to be true socially when i was first hired by the "chicago tribune," and i was part of what i call the right generation. i came out of college in 1969, and it was a time in which we had something like 400 of civil disturbances, a.k.a. urban riots across the country, and almost all of the newspapers, radio, tv stations had little or no journalists of color. in fact, we were, in those days, we were not people of color. we were colored people, or negro as in 47 negroes were arrested trying to register to vote today. and then we became black.

a great transformation. that was when, you've got to understand, the guy the ecb for you now, imagine you with a a lot more hair, chop sideburns, love beads around my neck. i the picture on my facebook page in fact for memories sake. there were bell bottom pants, et cetera, items back from the time. there was concern was given an offer by the tribune, the tribune by the way in 1969 and the tribune had hired their first black reporter in the newsroom in 1967. we were founded in 1847. in fact, the tribune's first major project in those days, we had a washington group from 1855, i hasten to tell everybody, and the chief

sponsor, a big founding member of this new party called the republican, and he was a big promoter of abraham lincoln. after doing a favor for black folks that paper didn't hide the first black reporter for 120 years. after 122 years, clarence page shows up and, you know, and several editors said, you know, we would like to hire that page fellow but he might be a little militant for the tribune your some of you may rumor militant was a word that a black person spoke his mind, you know. but anyway, i heard this story later that one of the executives said, i've got an idea. let's ask joe, a wonderful journalist who was the first black journalist in the

newsroom, a former chicago cop and that's another story, wonderful as i tell joe, he needs to write his own biography. a terrific story. they went over and said to joe, this page fellow, have you met him? yeah, i met him. well, we were wondering, we think about giving him an offer but we thought he might be a little militant. show with a sweeping gesture looked around the room and says, you know, maybe this newsroom could use of few militancy. i was hired the next day. so that active good faith i went to busch brothers and bought a suit. i know of a culture. i know about assimilation. i know about individuality. i know about political correctness. i learned these many things firsthand from my time here in

the news business and independent business, and over the last -- pundit business. over the last few years i've seen our society more and more in need of folks who can help us all to make sense of what's going on. because it's one thing to be supplies of information. it's another thing to give an interpretation to it and help people to think about something they might not have thought about before. to mind if i do a little reading? just quickly. i was thinking about, when one goes off to book reading, one is supposed to read something. i was thinking about what really grabbed me right now, and i was going back to june of 1991. i just moved to washington and that at the news one day that

thurgood marshall is not to give his last news conference, and, well, it wasn't built that way but we all knew it would be his last one because he was about to retire. because of ill health are at the same time we knew that waiting in the wings was a young african-american judge named clarence thomas, and that was the big story at the time. i had just gotten into town. one quick thing about the report and if you've got, if you're a columnist and make your site you can go meet people that you've always admired from afar. have always admired thurgood marshall on a number of levels, this man is walking history. swing with a jump in a cab and went over there. i'm the youngest journalist in the room. but this is the city of bright young things in journalism. young folks who come out of j. school interest internships and they're all, my buddy henry

allen, retired "washington post" reporter, described years ago as the young folks of washington. that are so serious and eager to get the big story. they were all to find out he thinks about clarence thomas. i'm in the crowd of reporters are all finding a gazillion different ways to ask the same question. the best answer came from thurgood marshall the very first time he was asked what he thought of the popular clarence thomas, then appointed to the supreme court. marshall would come in the room, moving very slowly, short of breath, and sat there wheezing listening to the questions and all this when he was asked about plans thomas. he says, old man told me that it makes a difference whether you got a white snake or a black snake. they both a bite. that was his answer.

thank you. i mean, that was the way he was answering questions all the way around it and finally this is kind of all law and i said, mr. justice, how do you want to be remembered? the looked up at me across the crowd and said, well, let me read this to you. that was my lead. how do you want to be rupert, i asked supreme court justice thurgood marshall, holding my question over the heads of reporters at his farewell press conference. squinting in my direction he appeared to be amused and irritated as reflected for a microsecond and muttered in his gravelly voice, and he did what he could with what he had. it would make an appropriate epitaph. whether you loved what he did or had. marshall gave it all he had come and get you to feel neutral about it. those who argue that marshall should be replaced another

african-american miss the more important point. justice marshall value was not that he was of color, it was in his conscience. the web of justice, a great national safety net, marshall was a last remaining anchor at the end of that synthesized most with people to powerless and caused it to unpopular for politicians to touch. he embodied what oliver wendell holmes was talk about when he said quote the life of the law has not been logic. it has been experience, unquote. he understood the hard luck cases because he had been one of them and often had defended him. marshall brought to the court his experience as wanted something dignity of second class citizenship at a time when skin color kept him out of most restaurants, hotels, and the maryland law school he wanted to attend your belated graduated top of his class at washington most black college university. he argued more cases before the supreme court and his fellow

justices had, 32, of which he won 29. he was only sitting justice who defended a convict who had been sentenced to death, and he knew the meaning of rough justice, being the only justice to found a defense lawyer one of his clients had been lynched before marshals train arrived in the texas down with the suspect was to be tried. he was accused of liberal activism. if so, he leaves behind a cork guilty of conservative activism, reversing for important earlier court decisions the same week marshall announced his departure. the new court seemed discontent to le let the day pass without stripping away another right. this was a court that allowed coerced confessions, warrantless searches of bus passengers, censorship of adult only nude dancers, victim impact statements to part the motions of juries of defending the death penalty. the danger in these decisions is in the line of thinking may

represent a couple ronald reagan promised to get government off people's back, the court is something state powers expand at the expense of individual rights. showed little appreciation for why we have warrants in the first place. the court that justifies or allows victim impact statements in the commendable regard for the rights of victims or their survivors were willing to testify to the callous regard of victims who for whatever reason did not testify. and the court could use some coerced confession of some harmless error apparently sees little harm and its encouragement of sloppy police work like asked of the dropping i suspect down a staircase, accidentally. marshall most powerful parting shot came in the dissent he lobbed into the court victim impact decision on the date of his retirement announcement. quote power and that reason is the new currency of this court's

decision-making. unquote. today the decision charts and unmistakable course, cast aside today are those condemned today's society's ultimate building, tomorrow's victims may be minority, women or the indigent. inevitably, this campaign to resurrect yesterdays spirited dissent will squander the authority and legitimacy of this court as the protector of the powerless. i dissent. the rank of marshall's decision will go through the halls of justice long after the man has less. a lonely voice, a tempered sound legal logic with the warm flesh and blood of human experience. it doesn't matter whether you're right or left when your abundant. leaders want to know where you stand. this is what i found -- when you're a pundit. the worst think it is wishy-washy.

i've had to sometimes sit down and think a word i really stand on this? then be as close possible. i'm a wishy-washy kind of guy. on the other hand, but it's hard for people to bounce off of their opinion if they ask what your opinion is. what i like most is when i get a note from somebody who says i almost never agree with what you got to say. at least i know i appreciate wasting. and also, i also learned early on when you're with somebody who sent you a piece of hate mail one week, writes something they agree with you the next day, and it's a love letter. so i don't take it personal. i think that's important. i think we are public figures dealing with public issues, got reflect with responsibility. with that in mind i think all of you from the public for coming in tonight, and i welcome your questions and comments. thank you very much. [applause] >> right over here. thank you. no, which the mic.

or i can bring the mic to him. thank you. >> my question is just apropos where you ended, that how do colonists get picked though to write? i mean, the showbiz side of it. so, for example, my favorite columnist i loved weight is charles krauthammer, because if i'm crossing through the word communist, who's right and who's wrong and all that, there's not very much substance but he's very popular. spink i probably like him more than you do. i admire him so much. i actually admire his ability to make an argument. it will i admire george will. because the argument is something i don't agree, i can argue so i don't agree with the

like to see how he makes his argument because i learned from the. i know who i am competing with so speak what i present my opinion. like i said, 30 years of columns, i've got to find some columns here on the other side. >> how does an editor judge economy, i'm looking i say the showbiz side of his in and out. that's just precious inches right there. spent very good question. in fact, i was 60 what do i want to be a columnist. as i say, it took me 20 years to be an overnight success. i attended to the late great jean fiscal said. i was with him and roger ebert went on to some high school kids and the first question was i didn't get to be a movie critic.

and jean said the best answer is find another willing to give you a column. willing to make you a critic. that's the way columnist get picked, so to speak. you may want to be a columnist and it's a matter of what's happened repeatedly, something want to be a columnist. to write an op-ed piece, or two or three come and present that to an editor and said i want to do this all the time it. erma bombeck was an ohio housewife. this is her title and building so speak when she came to a newspaper i interned at the late great dayton herald. with some humorous i think editors -- letter to the editor. the editor just loved her comments come just to let us go and esther to do some essays for the paper that became a column and she became one of the most successful colonists in america.

i used to read erma bombeck and say, boy, i would love to do the kind of column. where does she find all that the letters material? years later i became a parent and i found out. by ben, as my wife knows, the singer got the pulitzer, but we were like what, about six, seven months of expectation. when i won the pulitzer and i said to him, i never thought the pulitzer could be anti-climatic. but as i became a parent i became such a i found a wealth of nature and also found, my kid came in and said, you get the mail bag's the. it's important for the call is to know because you can be the smartest guy or gal in or but if you don't touch the readers come if you don't connect with them, or get about it. so that shows you how she got started. other people, i've had a friend of mine, make a long story

short, a friend of mine got promoted and became head of the editorial board and took the the linc an instead, how about you write a column of? funny you should mention that, jack. so anyway, we all get stored one way or the other. after got the pulitzer i thought i was justified because he was an interest in me having a column that i said let me have a column and you got a deal. so it worked out, and i did both. now i just do the column mostly, and also voice to show what do they call them? video blogging. this is the here and now. you don't just write a column. you've got to tweak it, facebook could, then do a video blog. but all these things roll up together. anyway, go right ahead. >> i really enjoyed your talk

tonight, and i really enjoy when you're o on the sunday morning talk shows. >> thank you. >> especially because you're calm and collected and articulate speech usually just before breakfast. but seriously, thank you. >> i wanted to know when you started appearing on these shows, and about what you're experiences are like? >> well, thank you. i always wait to hear the inevitable question, much john maclachlan really like? i will say as i've said to john, and he appreciated this, inside that grumpy extra, there's a grumpy interior. but once you crack through that, there's a heart of gold. i owe the guy so much for the opportunities that he brought to me, exposed me to not only a large national audience but also

at the time when my kid was in fifth grade i got lampooned in mad magazine with the rest of the mclaughlin group. that gives you bragging rights in the fifth grade. when i first started doing tv, actually i was an essayist for the "newshour." menus our with everybody, judy woodruff, et cetera. the essays were great, wonderful show. talk about calm. let us reason together. this is intellectual television. marvelous and respected writers. of course, that had to go away. tv respecting virus that never happened up in case at the same time i begin the maclachlan group which i always set to political this court what mud

wresting us to the elliptic spirit that was great about it was it opened up what our exposure to a much broader audience but people say how do you keep your temper and demeanor et cetera in the middle with all the cacophony? eyesight that i used to work in television. one thing i know about broadcast is he a bunch of people talking at once. there's only one microphone. so everybody's voice hits the mark the same time, people can hear anybody. you've got to learn to work quiet moments. i learned that during the video essays. who here enjoys cbs's sunday mornings, little nature met at the end of? isn't a wonderful? one of my favorite moments on television. you don't hear anybody talking. it's just a camera looking at the birds and the fish angier nature's sounds.

some people in television really appreciate sound, and that's -- but anyway, i'm sounding much too high and mighty about this. like woody allen said, timing is everything, or something like this. >> thanthank you very much. it was an interesting. i'm a numbers guy, and -- >> oh, you're the mathematician, all right spent my question is headed, when you look at journalism and to talk a lot about perception and culture and the way people think and feel, often times it doesn't necessarily sit with how things are in terms of economic indicators or poles or things like that. for example, violent crime has

been dropping tremendous over the last 20 or 30 years, but people are scared to let the kids play in the front yards. >> that's right. >> i'm curious about your view on journalism and the responsibility to report things as they are as reality on numbers and fax tend to be versus what tends to happen with a lot of opinions and fear stoking and things like that. >> that's right. you brought up something that's what my great pet peeves and challenges in life because as i've said, pages law of politics is that politics is 90% perception. have to come up with the 90% i don't know. it's the feeling you get after a while, that as you say, crime rates can be plummeting. if people don't feel safe it doesn't matter. on the other hand, if they do feel safe, it doesn't matter what the crime rate is. i basically did a couple of

columns about moms, and one dad come in the cincinnati area who have been prosecuted for linda kids play on the outside. do you know those stories? there was one woman died in florida, another woman also down south. something that you can tell a lot about people when you tell them that you let your kid go ride the metro by themselves, nine or 10 years old, and do they get sadly action in shock, or do they not? that's the to kind of people we have in this society. there is a woman who let her son write the new york subway by himself at age nine and got so tired of the shocked looks and all the stuff that she started amortization, free range children, is what she calls it. that's what she calls a, free range kids. those kids were allowed to play like those of us who remember

the '50s used to, i'd never. as long as you home before sundown, that's all that mattered. if you weren't home before sundown, my mother and dad with panic but i was the only child. but it was idea of just roaming around the neighborhood or going off and catching the bus ride downtown by yourself. this is all perceptions because we have the crime rate, as i say, has been dropping overall nationally since the mid '90s, and i do have a column in my book about the superpredator. remember the superpredator? go back to the early '90s, lots of stories in the media about this new breed of juvenile delinquent that was more violent than ever and those testimony on capitol hill over this, came up with the term.

he came up with the term and legislation was passed as part of a swapping of his incarceration explosion still today, and it was a column i wrote was how he regretted coming up with that term. because it stuck and contribute to a congressional panic and all these new laws were passed, but to travel to nail the super predators, and it turned out about the same time he was testifying the crime rate will start to go down, including among the juveniles, et cetera. but this could give people enough of an impression that it means more than all these numbers do. it means something now because there is a new conservative liberal coalition which have also written about to reduce the incarceration explosion, that we've got all these nonviolent offenders that are jamming up our prisons and running a state

budgets so much so that even texas now has taken the lead on finding alternative sentencing and releasing nonviolent offenders. rick perry looks the other way. you have to know texas politics to know how this works. a texas democrat is more conservative than an illinois republican. this is true, ladies and gentlemen. another thing about the great diversity of our country. in texas, the legislature has taken the lead on reducing the prison population, and it's happening in georgia and florida, places where, not soft on crime states but the numbers are finally catching up to the reality. are should say reality is catching up to the numbers. how many years has that taken? ever since the crack wars of the 1980s we've had this push to lock them up and throw away the

key. so this is still something that really determines politics even now. we look at, i was reading a fascinating essay last night, it showed how the wire, the great hbo series predicted isis. a remarkable parallel when you look at the wire is all about the drug wars in baltimore and how at one point they were called the powers, the public housing towers were torn down and this good, social good resulted in the drug traffickers turf being scattered and whole new round of wars as they begin to carve out their turf. that's exactly what happened in chicago because the homicide explosion we have now. we have the world's biggest public housing development, and that has led to this terrible problem of the homicides now.

in baltimore they have had something like, well, it parallels to help isis informed out of dispersal of the various tribal and political groups before. the way drug wars have broken out here, and these have come about unusual of a certain reality of shifting the people who are, well, the statistics. in iraq they reduce the violence and thought we've got good governance and i'll lick, this problem is going to go away. it turned out that the perceptions of those iraqis who happened to be sunni was they were being frozen out by the maliki government which was dominated by shia and we have this tribal war going on which has now erupted in isis among other things. ices is partly displaced sunnis

as well as other people. so this i has happened all over the planet partly because a lot of us felt asleep in math class. so again i appreciate your keeping what we call precision journalism, which means actually finding a miracle data that backs up the assumptions that one as and not just going with the impressions people have. at the same time though, elections tend to swing on impressions. if people don't feel safe, and they will vote for those policies that make them feel safe and vice versa. thank you very much for your question. sort about my long-winded oration. about halfway to the answer i think, there's a column in debt. i keep talking and imposing a column in my head. but thank you. >> i have a quick one. after the in migration, actually

i think it was the second inauguration i was down with a tour group and taking through a home at the metro card was filled up at that point and i was sitting next to a large african-american family went in and kids and we got chatting and the question that came up was, do we think that this is, that this participation that people of color had in the election and the effect, the way it took that election, do we think that this is kind of, centered around obama? is it centric obama or have we seen the awakening of a sleeping giant? >> that's a very good question. that's a very good question, raise the other day by gary young, a columnist for the british guardian. he's an american but he lives a lot. is talking about obama's current

troubles with his approval ratings and the democrats, democrats plural, problem going into the midterm election, but once again republicans are fired up and democrats are kind of disarray is the word but less than enthusiastic we say. instead of maybe in ferguson, missouri. they don't have there local elections until springtime which is another story. gary young was talking to me about, people talk about is barack obama interested in the job? is he too detached and office? young was saying it's not so much he's detached as the impression he gives of being detached, that folks question his own enthusiasm about the job

and the task at hand. that's the way he does. you don't call him the professor for nothing. he's always been rather, well, cool and aloof, and that was a virtue during his first election campaign. no drama obama. now people on the left are saying give us some drama. they won't let him alone. the more important point that young was making was obama does not have a movement behind him. i council to agree. i was saying this back in 2008. remember how rudy giuliani watauga obama the committee organizer. yeah, committee organizer. come to chicago. community organizers are what make politics move. getting people out and organize around a certain cause. of course, we know in 2009 you have the tea party movement which was a tremendous example of community organizing, grassroots organizing efforts.

helped along by some tasty to lobbyists. regardless, there were lots of liberals out there -- some case treat lobbyists. the question of why, to go back to will rogers. i belong to no organized party. i'm a democrat, right? was satisfied with it's basically true. there's something marvelous about liberals, they love to debate and discuss, and conservatives love doctrine. here it is. you waiver and you are a rhino. colin powell, you're a rhino. how dare you have moderate views. sometimes these are the folks who brag about the party of lincoln. read some stuff about lincoln. this guy today would be a radical. he was a radical republican back then, or actually not as radical

as frederick douglass. lincoln wanted to do anything to save the union. if that meant shipping blacks to library, fine. frederick douglass was the radical. he wanted in slate, big black folks the right to vote, blah, blah, blah. medical id. that's why allow the excitement of politics in political history. but today i think, i was saying when obama got elected that this is a combination of the wheel and energies of many people who pulled together into a strong movement, and the genius of a young man named david axelrod who just happens to have been an intern of -- thank you. i just have to drop it into every conversation in washington, and still proud of him. and quite often here since he went back to the hallowed halls of the university of chicago,

i've often said, why aren't you at the white house when obama need you? but as gary young was saying there was not that progressive movement behind obama that, say -- i'm thinking of ted cruz or -- i want is a rand paul but it's never clear day today whether he's with the movement or not or which movement he is with, but you get the idea though. i've been quite impressed with paul ryan. i've talked to him several times as he met with black and hispanic grassroots organizations. he's the closest to jack kemp these days. jack kemp is my kind of republican. he was a guy who believed in working with grassroots people and getting out, and before you start talking, listen, listen to people, find out what they want and how can the party responded

to that with an alternate idea what the other party. i would love to see a return of healthy debate, we are always from that yet. but in the meantime we've got the upcoming midterms. i don't see democrats pulling together. this goes back to the fragmentation of our society. i used to hate machine politics. i we were the first mayor daley, richard the first as we called it in chicago. he used to say it's not a machine, it's an organization, right? but i see what is organized politics did. today -- welcome back in those days television replaced the mission. somebody said tv is mayor daley's favorite precinct captain. today, the internet has replaced the mission. a special on the republican side. it also happens on the democratic side to if you're a member of the house, you don't have to go to the party lives anymore. if you have any charisma to face the president and good political advisers you can go on the web

and do your own ads, et cetera come and raise money. barack obama single-handedly undid this post-watergate reforms because he could raise more money on the web and the matching funds could provide from the federal government. and so this has been a state of our politics but what did that lead to? party organization breaks down, no more hierarchy, this faction and that faction running around doing their own thing. it can lead to gridlock on capitol hill. it can lead to chaos at election time. i think things will settle down. i'm optimistic by looking back through history, the tea party for example, i see as today's version of third parties we seen on the right and left in the past, and hl mencken famously said third parties are like honey bees, they staying and then they die. a user takes one or two election

cycles. the second election cycle for the tea party. i will be anxious to see how well they did after 2016 but for certificate through 2014. i hope somewhere knowable but i answered your question. that was an interesting journey, wasn't it? i go from one point to another but it all comes together in the end. how are we doing on time? [inaudible] >> okay. thank you very much. ladies and gentlemen thank you very much once again, the likes to meet you all. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction author a book you would like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail to booktv at c-span.org, tweet us at booktv our post on our wall facebook.com/booktv.

>> please tell me how did you get to the place where you are seriously not all right? >> i served in the army and then at the state department as a foreign service officer for about 25 years and i served during that period of time in kosovo, rwanda, afghanistan, iraq and darfur. does fight wars over period of about 10 years committed to do a good job of taking care of myself between those times. so i developed a really series case of post-traumatic stress disorder and so myself one day out in the desert with a pistol in my hand ready to kill myself. serendipitously i was interrupted in the act, and the book is a story of how i got to the point and i got myself home. >> you wasn't hard as in the demand especially to write this book? >> i think being in a matter of having been in the to really made no difference. it was hard to write the book because it's difficult to stand in front of people and say, my

mind was in such bad shape that is ready to kill myself. but the struggle is a story of hope that no matter how bad is good, there is a way home. that's what hope people take away from it that there is a better way. >> i was thinking more that with the military culture, the more, you know, you've got to be strong, you can show that you are weak, if that contributed to how bad it out for you and your ability to seek help and then you're going to talk about it? >> the first half, absolutely. there's a huge statement in america but specifically in the military about asking for help for mental health disorders. i was very much afraid when as in afghanistan, as in an airborne unit and i just assumed everyone would think i was weak and broken. the choice for me was asked for

help or put the men and women's lives that i had been sent there to lead in great danger. i had no choice. i asked for help and eventually brought all my people home alive. >> do you have any suggestions for the system as it is growing operating in terms of veterans coming back and their need for greater mental health assistance of? >> i absolutely do. we need to double the side -- size of the mental health committee in the trendy. we have far too few social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists. and we all need to stop thinking about mental health care as being anything different than health care. it's just health care. we have to break the stigma of asking for a. if you need help don't get it. we need to support people who do. >> while i had become any thoughts on the aids panel from last year? >> .com think i do i do have thoughts about the da.

you can get really tremendously good care at the va but it's a huge bureaucracy and the proxy doesn't work sometimes. if you can break through the lines committee to break through the bureaucracy and get to the health care, it's good. the problem is the bureaucracy, getting in the door and the bureaucracy on the benefit side of getting your benefits. really logjam there. i think both secretary shinseki and secretary mcdonald have done admiral work in breaking to the but is likely to happen overnight as secretary shinseki learned. we're making good progress but there still a long way to go. >> any plans to keep writing? >> absolutely. i run a nonprofit writing program called ephedrine project and we give no cause writing workshops for veterans, for servicemen and for the family members. so i teach as often as i possibly can all around the country.