all right. good evening, everyone. welcome to politics and prose i'm brad graham, the co-owner of the bookstore along with my wife, lissa muscatine. we're delighted to have with us this evening. these two fine gentlemen, we have veteran here, lanny jones, who will be talking about his his new book, celebrity nation how america evolved a culture of fans and followers. and, you know, as a former top editor of people and, also of money magazine, lanny has known his share of celebrities and been involved with the coverage of many, many others. he also has proven himself adept at writing previous books with his first book, 40 years ago.

great expectations about the baby boom generation. he actually coined the term baby boomer. here he is, the inventor of the term he he also wrote a well-read c.v. biography of william clark lewis and clark expeditionary fame and his new book lanny looks at dozens of famous explores the differences between being a celebrity and being a hero and observes observes how our preoccupation these days with celebrities has eclipsed the attention we give or should be giving to true heroes, examining the factors that make someone a celebrity. nowadays lanny reflects on what our obsession with famous individual is and the oversupply of celebrities means american culture. in fact, the opening sentence of his book is american culture is

consumed by celebrity, and he'll have a lot more to say about that in a minute. now, in conversation with him evening is evan thomas, who is a pretty prominent himself having enjoyed two remarkable cool simultaneity his careers as both an accomplished journalist with time and newsweek magazine's and a first rate historian among his impressive books are, biographies of edward bennett williams, robert kennedy, john paul jones. dwight eisenhower. richard nixon and sandra day o'connor. and he's got a new book coming out just next week called road to surrender, which is a narrative about the last of world war two in japan. and i guess also because he likes to get out of washington now and then he's taught writing and journalism at harvard and princeton and on top of

everything else. so please join me in welcoming lanny jones and evan thomas thomas. thank you, brad is now politics and prose the greatest bookstore of all. yes. so, lanny, tell us about your book. oh, i've well let's see here. before i do that, let me thank you for for a grander ground and give me some tough questions and thanks, brad, for for inviting and thank all of you here. now, the weather was so good. i can't wait. there's more of this outside somewhere. i have so many friends here and some and also some writers and editors. i wanted to say a few words to sort of stir the pot about the sort of basic themes in my book. and then we're going to get to the data gretel. and so i, like many of you, i used to think that celebrity culture wasn't a an intriguing diversion and musing. so professor but not harmful.

it is a source of gossip and funny stories but that was before the celebrity stayed morphed into a vast profit generating enterprise i like to think of as a celebrity industrial complex and magazines paper, where i write from the start or its initiators. and eventually that's beneficiaries. but then it's bradby on anybody's control. i mean, now just to jump ahead a little bit, i was just looking i finished the but i know it has but the celebrities keep generating an interest in this and may i'll make a set of the last couple of weeks we saw the white house white house correspondents dinner what used to be known the nerd prom. remember and right now, of course, dominated by their celebrity presence while they get eyeballs under their covers. and to help marketers, we're going to get that later. and we saw all the time 100 gala

that on tv, too. and we the metropolitan museum gala in new york and that was it used to be sort of about art or maybe fashion, but now it's simply about celebrity presence, red showing. it's showing their legs showing that handsome physiques moving on. and that's that's what it is. and we saw the royal coronation. and i did not know too many coronation year where the news coverage was dominated by celebrities. but here we had lionel richie and i was the other one, katy perry. and there were all televised, all packed with celebrities. what it give them? well, it gave them coverage and maybe a certain kind of authenticity, if you call it that word, celebrities, which i don't really think so. i have a thought experiment that brad will appreciate if the thought experiment have was what if there were no celebrities? what would you what would

change? well, all the events are just mentioned or change and also the bestseller list would change dramatically. and you could take the bestseller list almost any way and about half them are movie stars or some variation on the and for a now to do about aggravators out of a requirement of the job and the biographies are very predictable i write about this they have a certain sequence and a certain pattern. so suffice it to say somewhere and they've biography there's an apology years later their parents but sometimes are other people so how bad does it get if there's no celebrities? well, you can tell then what i am bentham the new york times had an article a week or so ago about a mountain lion that was roaming going in the hills outside of los, and that was our and the headline referred to it as fat paper. we're fascinated by that

mountain lion because there we're seeing it. and they call it, of course, celebrity lion. that for me was a new category and for some reason reminds me less recently we're now having the hollywood writers strike and or what happened the last time there was a writers strike it led to the invention of reality television and while there were there was one says one zero was on pbs and was called an american family, the loud family and then they have 100, 100 more reality shows that have been invented and each one produces a swarm, sort of minor celebrities are still with us. our so so now we're trying to figure out what to write. and i have a choices. i had personal anecdotes from people i had met, you know, stars were committing i was committing celebrity journalism. but that's not quite.

and that was just you know, that was out of and gossipy and i wanted something more than interesting. we're going to ask all of you. and then i wrote about the history of celebrity, which has a long has to be going on to write about alexander the. and we could talk about that and then and then relationship of celebrity technology. what's your interest? maybe and currently it's become a sub and an status called celebrity status and happily it led to some fascinating studies that i read and and i make good use of our hope there in the book as a brand new fair. me so there were many famous. i'm rambling on too long. lainey tell us about you have a great story in there that i want to share with us about your, i guess your first encounter with celebrity. well, malcolm of all. oh, how did that happen? i well, i was i was student and the college newspaper editor

said malcolm x is going to be this a 1963 and sir malcolm x is going to be on campus when you go interview him. and i was terrified because i had read about them. i knew about him. i'd read in the newspapers. he was a terrorist and he wasn't going to like to be a preppy ivy league kid and that's how i had arrived. so that's our world. and so i went in and sat down with malcolm and it was complete opposite of everything i expected. and this leads to one of my, my lessons that the book which is if you think you know celebrities who and malcolm was poor for so now he was generous whether it's time he was kind to us he tried to explain his philosophy to us it did not compromise one bit but it was fun and elaborate and it just filled me with admiration and so he laughed. i and that night he went home to greenwich village, where alex haley lived and went down and

worked with alex on the autobiography of malcolm. i hope it still sells here because that was a wonderful book and so that was so in your job of people. you are apt to sort of ask you, are you partly to blame all this because you were in the glory days of people he was that he was the editor, the managing editor. what we started the ball rolling and are we used to say that we were not response our for the acts of our imitators and there were plenty but yeah it was out of life our we tried to actually celebrity was not a word we used when the magazine started i remember being surprised when i heard there were i think i knew what they meant but it was something like a movie star we had movie stars, politicians, athletes and we had ordinary people who had down here our accents. and that's what we thought we were writing about. but somehow what happened was that when we put a celebrity on

the cover, the events on our covers of people were were people j park, a martha mitchell. that's what the time of watergate. and they are bon bon bon. one after another and as editor told me later, nobody was smart enough to know. we didn't know what we're doing. but we finally figured out a tv star named carlos. remember kojak was on that show. i was on the of bare chested and it went through the roof. so the next thing, you know, august or hey, maybe there's something about television. so we put another tv star, a cover that went through roof. and so we were publicizing stars, had name recognition and face, you know, this ladder, you know, farrah fawcett and and all the tv shows to develop norman lear and. so that's where their momentum sort of came from. there's a you have a story about a really interesting focus group early on that you that you hold.

tell us about. yeah tell us about that. yeah. well, when i became the editor where i started groups to find out what people wanted, write about and and they were sort of okay but a focus group moderator read it out warm up the with an easy question you know to get them used to talking and so she would say who are you? and then i saw a couple of these groups. and then she stopped asking, who are your heroes? and i went to her and said, well, how come you don't ask them? here was senator moore. and she said, because they can't think of them. and then that's when i had sort of a eureka moment. that was an idea that sort of tied together some of the points that i could make about the celebrities and and the war that they were foisting upon and and in our attention span, we only have so much bandwidth and so paperwork, thinking less about who are heroes and, who are that

admired. and they were thinking more about who was on abc last night. and so you could sort of see this happening before your eyes, so to speak, that the national attention goes. let's let's do a little definition hero. what's the difference being a hero and a celebrity? well, the differences between jimi is between heroes about well, he does accomplishments and heroes as a big act. and that's usually selfless celebrity is about reputation, not accomplishment. and it's about a big face. and so. i have a list of them that my book i to read about to a boy but i have a list of of the distinctions between heroes and celebrities and it's it's a it's a it's a disturbing and and i'd say it's still playing out now. i mean, i'm sure that focus group leader would have trouble getting people name that heroes i mean it's definitely one of the words that we use these days is performer that everybody's

politicians are already performing. they're putting on an as opposed to doing something. yeah, exactly. and that is something came out of what what the hell happened. they perform as the virtues of a performance became dominant and that's what they have that's all they have and that's what they turn to. and because it got attention, it's the old saying that there is no offers tomorrow. so business people said there's no such thing as bad publicity because it gets their name out there. and so if you get your name and you get heard, you're the loudest voice in the room that's going to work and but it has to do with what you have to sell or your expertise or know how. or in the case of a politician, your public service or even your policies. well, i know, as you mentioned, the tele was shirtless. one thing i noticed some of these early celebrities for celebrities like they become

celebrities by taking their clothes off basically. right. i like getting naked or doing sex tapes. yeah, maybe a little more as i call it. one thing that happened and i noticed as i, i didn't realize it said how much of it was my fault. a lot more than i would like, because my sample of people magazine and as far as two years there exactly one person of color on the main cover. and this is, you know, 120 covers or something. and while i was out across, it didn't sell. and so because it was basically appealing to over to smaller group, then typically go out there dropped the magazine and i somewhat ashamed of that and i think we're sort of better and i tried to i tried later in my editor chapter compensated for that with a cover story called hollywood blackout and that's another story you had an interesting interview in with robert putnam, the bowling alone. tell us about that. oh, i don't know how many. yeah, there's a book out came

out ten, more than ten years ago called bowling alone. and this is a professor and at harvard and now i'm robert putnam and the thesis the book is people are turning away from community activities. and so they stopped joining the bowling. they've stopped drawing in the junior, they've stopped joining the board education, they've stopped voting. i found a correlation. i'm jumping around a lot about a correlation between. the degree of absorption, celebrity have and converse of how much do they are active politically. and it turns out. the more that i care about celebrities, the less likely they are to vote. and this is this is what the what academic researchers helped me understand. but i go back to putnam. so he's talking about why did this happen and he doesn't really know he blames

television. but then you get into the problem of and this part came out i think originally by 1996 and then he's done a edition about two years ago with a no preference and so on. but, but he blames but the issue of correlation and causation is not really resolved. so doesn't know what causes what and and in my mind and that's still sort of a problem but in my in my analysis of has the underlying problem it has to do with a rise the rise of the internet and the rise of social media, the invention of the of the iphone in 2006. you know, and there's example after example you can get of what was happening then. like, for example, i just give you one do remember the famous world of malfunction. this was when when i think it was a halftime of a super bowl and janet jackson was dancing with justin timberlake and

somehow half of the blouse voters kind of got ripped off. and when hours we thought were at fault, that was but it became much shared on the internet that a guy named gerard came. so you and i can make something, make some money out of this. and he started youtube because of that one episode that he started to youtube. incredible. yeah. little acorns, mighty oaks. so tell us a little bit to go back time. people have always been fast by by celebrity in ancient greeks were but what what was that what was the difference i mean there was you talk about luminosity and there's these shimmering figures the gods why was that different from today different when was definitely the greeks the ancient which is very similar. i think that a couple of points here. and the reason i have not talked about this, but the origins of

the word celebrate have to do with reverence. and it was used in the intensive care services. and so the church they the catholic church priest was a celebrant. and they celebrated a mass and a widow at one time would celebrate her husband's and so that was a slightly more recent. and the time of the greeks they the greeks idolized their gods but they were the key thing about the gods is that there were they were not mortals. and so only when the someone like alexander the great and had his face on a coin that suddenly there was an image they could also worship and he was still alive. and so that's when the idea began that the that we had that the greeks anyway had for their gods transferred word to true to mortals. and eventually the more image got around. we started with the image on a coin and then you had

illustrated books and and the age of revolution and napoleon, and so on. i could go on about what technologies, but at photography and it becomes about here in washington, chapter v and when they were taking pictures of people you could put up under above your fireplace, it could be either a family member who you revered or it could be abraham lincoln. and but eventually it became celebrities. and the politicians like lost out. let's go back little bit about your own experience on the trail. celebrities tell us, you some pretty interesting guests. i think they're in the business. when you go out and talk to somebody tell us about elizabeth taylor. oh, well, she was i really, really, really wanted to interview her because i had heard about all of all of my life. and i've i find i finally did. and and i had this all those inappropriate reverence towards her and i got to her house in

bel air. i was carrying to tape in case one broke and i had a bouquet of lavender orchids because that lavender i knew was her color. and so i had all that stuff. and i found some some. so i went open the door and. she opened the door and i was so startled. i dropped everything on the floor and brought a tape recorder. i don't know what the flowers. but it turned out and instead of being this sort of glamor god that hours this back then to me she was a quite a serious and funny humorous woman who was working hard on raising money for for hiv and and various forms of pediatric aids. and that's what she wanted to talk about. and she did very well, very persuasively. and so i kind of it was like malcolm x, i walked out of the room with a completely impression, a little bit the same as a princess, the famous princess diana. right. went to see how did it what were

the circumstances got you in to see? well, princess di. well, people magazine to put on an event that would give us some publicity. so we got big is the most famous woman in the world to cooperate and see and charles were then separated and blotted out divorced and so i went and met her. our kensington palace. and she was also she was sitting here was not highfalutin. i mean, she was a woman. i and funny and girl and she even i'm so i liked her for that so we had a good talk and i said, why are you talking to me about? and she said, well, i'm trying to improve my image. and last week i had coffee. mr. murdoch. mr. murdoch. yeah, and this leads to one other story. so she finally came to chicago that is begala and tony bennett's son and but the question was, was going to dance

with her and. and as i bravely raised my hand and said, i volunteer to be the first. and so they went to the palace and they said well, there are some conditions and that's word. what were the conditions and the conditions? you had to be married. you had to be a happily married. yes. you you to be a good dancer. and i said, but, yeah, i'm a great dancer and you have to be six feet tall. oh, that's nice to to say did not get to dance with diana. you know so diana and and elizabeth taylor seem like reasonably normal people but you have a lot of interesting stuff in there about what celebrity does to celebrity, the narcissism, the yeah, we can be talk to us a little about that. yeah. well, this yeah there's the celebrities are at risk when they become a celebrity and the

first one is something that are the medical term has acquired saturation of narcissism as well as in and and no there's not pill for that and so therefore work your way out of it once you enter and a result and it's there is but they think everyone is going to take care of them got to got to where they don't that i'm going to do whatever they want and by end the the the the upshot of that is that it's bad for their health and that the longevity of celebrities is significantly lower less that of ordinary citizens and and particularly for female celebrities. they they on the average and by the way these are all it these academics studies i've i've read about and and read more there's years less. wow it's one of those less than the average woman.

so what is doing the men. well i think we all know it's it's often you know it's drugs and so the depths of you know there's serious odds and there's so many there's a long list. i stopped them down because there were so many. and yet kids don't seem to get the message you have some amazing polls and were they ask young people what do you to be when you grow up and it used to be general president fireman whatever what is it now? well, what do they want? why now would they ask kids both in the us and in england? where i've seen that started isn't power. they say, what do you want to be when you grow up? and they say, i want to be famous? what else? what i want to do? and then what was number two? to work for a famous person and so that was the sort of the the totem they were looking at 43% of all the english people surveyed wanted to be the assistant. to god know i know i know. and this plays out in various ways.

it affects self esteem, you know, for young people at at in college i was sort of responsible buying and purchasing that comes later somewhat where the social and i talk about that long term so you want find some light at the end of the tunnel you do find you know as you did with elizabeth taylor and princess day, some of them do some celebrities do try to do good they use their celebrity for good. yeah this used to be somewhat of a joke and and i paper remember we would say well you know a celebrity without a cause is like a woodpecker without a tree. and so and they did that because they knew it was good pr. but when you see it happening not lot, but more often now is genuine people are using their fame you know for, public benefit and and the ones i keep thinking about i know roger federer raises money for poor sports are all over in south africa and then i think about

ressa you know won the nobel and say that made starters of celebrities so she started as a journalist then a reporter but for her work the philippines and thunberg and people of that nature you do see it happening more so i'm hopeful and some nba players are given money to help kids and so stuff like that isn't corrigendum. but what you want to have happen is for the media then to get on there get on the program help and help with that and don't necessarily because the basic conspiracy that's out there is between who have a product to sell and media or who can deliver their audience and eyeballs and are celebrities who are happy to benefit at the end of this and they are celebrity worshipers and so a sort of hard to break through their set of money making scheme that is going on to it's very medium and

celebrities and willing public so now we live the age of a i and where is that where is that going to take celebrity worship the that you can make this stuff up i think we're all watching this play out i mean in my book i talk about a sort of an out a computer created person who is on instagram a family name level michaela and she has millions of followers. so it completely they well let's take a look and see probably have video and she has our stories our friends we ask those questions or so on but she's she's real she's a fiction and that people are take it for granted that she is real and i find that a little bit disturbing and it's only going to get worse now where there's with the air it gets more sophisticated it's going to get more of yeah, more sophisticated and. take a look at if you have a social media account, a look at

little michaela sometimes there's a scene in there where somebody says the image, i wish you were real. i'd hug you. yeah, but as you think about it, they won't be able to tell whether. they know. so i know it's sad. yeah, let me let me go back to your days as a, as an editor of people again too, because interested in what it's like to manage these celebrities. you know, you want to report on them. you want to have them in your magazine but they want control i assume when you're dealing with age i know i know walk us through that and tell a little bit about what that was like dealing with celebrities as well. it's changed a lot about our celebrities and their agents. and one reason that you must enjoy writing about history is, because most of the people are dead and don't have agents who are demanding a different writer and a demand and their control over, their photographer. let me put it this way. after i wrote a book about the kennedys, i wrote about a book about somebody been dead for 200

years. well, i did the same thing. i wrote a book about william clark because he'd been gone for a while, too. and it was a relief because so many demands are placed upon the journalist to give up control and to give up authenticity and basically today we call it misinformation and to enter to live in a world of misinformation. and so it was sad. i called up the editors of paper all those hours, this book, and said, can i come talk to you about about problem of what's it like delaware set up it is now and and they denied the whole thing they just didn't want to talk about it. they said, no, i don't know what they'll do. think that they just use photos that are around the wire services or something. yeah, but i can i picture you struggling with these these who do want to control it and you know. yeah. yeah. was a struggle but i wish i could say. it wasn't, i mean, the people we did not yield.

we did not pay money for stories, you know, we had no different from other countries in other countries they often do pay money, right. don't don't that i think a fairly routine i think somewhat routine now even here. i think. but where's the worth of fan magazines and such, you know, and so so we did not yield on doctor's points, but a dead man that way if we wanted to get a story about somebody we created what we called a swan and instead putting one reporter on it. we put 15 reporters on it and they would interview everybody in a person's and then read between all of that. you would get us to a reasonable fact of the person so the when you're doing this, where tempted to go out there and do it yourself. you did it a few times. i know, but would you was there was there a desire to get from behind the editor's desk and and talk to these people do that happen on a regular and now never i hardly ever happened

first of all the other reporters were better than i am. i'm i'm better of writing about it. and criticizing that. i'm an editor. that's interesting. so you didn't feel the temptation so much to do this? you didn't. there were some people i really to meet. i wanted to meet elizabeth taylor, one of them a princess diana. i very much wanted to meet jacqueline onassis and never did so. so you see we're sort of someone i never did meet and i regretted that. so what was the worst you made as an editor? well, one account them there was the infamous mistake was one late night and i was really late sometime after midnight and all the fact checkers had gone to bed and i was closing a story about an actor named abe vigoda. you guys remember abe? he was on it was in the godfather and he plays a gangster named tessio and he was also on a tv show. think barney miller. and so was writing about it.

and i thought, god, he's dead. and so i they didn't sell. so i just sort they late abe abe vigoda well the story came out abe was very much alive. he kind of preferred the rumors of his death, greatly exaggerated and called a press conference posing in a casket. with a copy of paper magazine in his hands and he then went on to live about 36 more years. i think he did that by do just fine. i know but the show is reflection and i had later on that is that if someone has been out of the limelight for a while and been a celebrity, you think they must be dead somewhere. that that was that was what was happening. mental i think it made, you know, it must be dead. haven't heard anything about him in years. now, what do they take to drink?

i mean, when they're when they're when it goes away, it's just they're dead. i mean, yeah, that ceased to exist. yeah. yeah. so if you were going to do it, if you were going to be the editor of people today, what the hell would you do? i mean, you got to make money. is there another way to do this? well, i probably do it again. i mean, honestly, i would i would do many more stories on people of color, on women and notably, because more of us are out of that before. and i, i would want to improve on that record. well, that's the one thing i would do, jeff and i do not too much else. i mean, the reporters were very good. the editors were good. they did they did hard work. the culture is doing that now, though. you see many more people of color on tv shows. yeah. i mean, that's happening now, it's probably less of a problem now. but when i was the editor, there was an issue. or did you talk about it? did that even come up at meetings? yeah. yeah, it did come. but if i could do something about it when i became the head

editor and so when i went out, my wife, sarah and i went through the video awards one year and we were sitting up above the audience at the oscars and. i saw there's people standing in the aisles and they were very well dressed and there were all, all white protestants and i said of somebody, so who who are those? and they said, well, they're the same fellows. and so i was a safe a safe fellow means that if somebody gets up to go to the loo or, gets up to pick up and avoid the seatbelt trousers and and sits in their seat. so when the camera pans over, they're, it's always happily found. so i went home and i went back to new york and the next year i said, let's find out. how many how many african-americans are nominated for oscars? they say, fellows while family and friends of members of the academy and it turned out that year there were 169 people

nominated for academy awards, and only one of them was black and so we did a cover story that was called hollywood blackout, and it completely bombed. but basically, i didn't care because i was was the right thing to do. and it started something i mean, i think that that story may have bombed, but my memory this is that was part of the beginning of an awareness that it took 15 more years. it took a long time later until the oscars. so so movement started but that up there was a weirdly long gap and there's no i mean i'm just ah this sounds like sour grapes but it wasn't taken as seriously as it might have been were ahead of your time. that's all i think so. i think so. i and so if you were trying to if you teaching and you were teaching kids what, the hell would you tell them you imagine you're eighth grade teacher and these kids are obsessed with celebrity. what would that what would you tell. oh, man, i would tell them to to

think about what what this person has accomplished and what is admirable about this person. and then look closely at that and not take it for granted. i think that's one of the. and what do what do they care about other people? and do you is it about me or? is it about. well, i think i would i would say something like that. you would do a better job of a turtle. i that's a pretty big cultural issue. okay. let's take some more questions up there with our two microphones here. there's a microphone there. sorry. and far away. yeah. thanks so much for that talk. that was fascinating you mentioned the of celebrities sort of supplanting that of and i want to ask about another group that i feel has supplanted which is experts where you have many people on social media taking advice about which causes to support or even things like medical information from the celebrities that they follow

rather than from, you know, the policy experts or from journalists who are reporting about it. and so i was wondering if you have any thoughts about that sort of phenomenon and how we might be able to get people to thank you for saying that you must seen the same study i did maybe two weeks ago from the night foundation and polling results created by the gallup, which was looked at people and asked them a poll to people, what are your sources of information? who do you turn to to find out something? and it turned out who they turn to was celebrities. and it's often then the well, what kind of celebrities? wow. then it was late night tv host, sometimes news broadcast. then it was. then it was a whole list, then it committee ends. sometimes the affiliates. and where do these people

propagate this information is on. so on social media and that's why they get up. and so i don't know. i think i agree with you and think it's a real issue for society, too, to have more credible sources of information. and i, i wish there were more. yeah. yes, please. yeah. hi. thank you very much. i think the topic is really fascinating. when you were talking about heroes pros and celeb and kind of the lack, um, i for one personally thought one of the most shameful examples recently of a true hero john mccain. yes who was. taken down in, in many ways the

president of the united states and there wasn't any consequence on the part of people who should have in estimation stood up shouting loudly that was a shameful thing do when there was a true in this who was being being talked about and and and minimized as such let alone being totally eliminated of of any importance because had done something that he believed in about rather i totally agree and i talk about about the president and mccain and my partner i mentioned that very story in the quotes and only thing it reminds me of is that further is that

one of the characteristics of celebrities these days is that they are also in the old days they are defiant they are fired. they are they the norm. and they do that. and so when the president did that he was defying the normal behavior and we see this again and again and it goes way back, i mean, it goes to in i think i get the zappers. i gather oscar wilde and and sarah bernhardt, the actor was saying or jenny land was saying go see it was last. fire but it's been so and we say it now you know it's too often women with madonna and we just had with billy alice we say it with kim kardashian and we say it with paris hilton there and they were making pornographic films and and and they all sort trade on the art of finance as a way to attention transgressive to be transgressive, graphic,

transgressive. and they get eyeballs. yes. you know, there's a on on your point about senator and trump there's, a famous pollster named frank luntz that you probably heard of, and frank luntz supposed to be the great political expert he knows all he has his finger right on on the finger tip of the american pulse. and he he had a focus group after trump said this about mccain and luntz said, oh, after this trump is finished, oh, we thought that about 200 episodes later, you know, where is rally round. are you? i just had to go ahead. go ahead. go ahead. okay. i'm sorry also i do have anything or address about how certain celebrities suffer a a total a consequence their behavior and others and i mean even in certain of of a matt or

a you know people like this and then others don't suffer the consequence of the behavior and and certain i mean a lot of them sort of implausibly come back. don't tell. i mean, i'm so sure about matt lauer but they but so many of the of the television people, you know, they go away for a while and then they come back. i mean, brother tucker tucker carlson and and the other people from fox who have sort of factual mistreatment, maybe they even eventually have kind of bounced back. and i found that fine. i mean, some of them fun. yeah. and i fine. find that funny weird. but it's about it. it's a narrative of behavior, which is that they're redemption narrative in american life, which is that you commit, sends you fall, you collapse, you apologize, and then you rise again. and the public accepts you that

that was a people magazine formula. as i recall, the redemption story, right? yeah. the redemption story. there was a guy in north western state and the redemption story and he said that dominos their coverage or people magazine gives people and i said, oh, really? and i said well, that sounds like a lot of news. and he said, there's 20% i counted. and that a tough assignment to go through all these paper magazines to figure out what's how, what percentage, why, redemption stories. there was a lot. yes. so i'm wondering the celebrity hollywood and and writ large has now totally infected washington, too, with what you've you know, you talk about the the white house correspondents. yeah. you know plus the media culture has to make stars out of

politicians. and we obviously have, you know, the prime example. yeah. trump he i mean, there was a symbiotic relationship. i'm just wondering now on the national stage sort of the the presidential level, if any any candidate from whichever can succeed down if they don't have this star power, if they don't this this celebrity. yeah. because i mean, you obviously if it you know if we in a couple of years if it's a you know if it's biden trump uh, you know, biden does have a little of a deficit on, you know, on the celebrity but he's he has, uh, up to point managed to, to succeed based on other qualities. but even sort of looking farther down the road mean are we sort of in this, um, on this rail

where you got to have someone who's a, you, a big, you know, you know, a star. yeah. you know, whether they are not really whether they're an actual star, but they have to have this super, uh, and, or what is certainly true it doesn't always work. and the, and the most recent election there was herschel walker who ran for senate or yes and and lost and then they the dr. oz who had a lot of celebrity and he also lost so but they got that far and they got they'll get pretty far just on that basis and that and with no necessarily any experience in public service or any policies that anybody care about. yeah i mean trump you know, i mean no one knew him outside of new york until he got on a

celebrity apprentice. it's celebrity apprentice. and and people watched that for eight or ten years. i never saw an episode of. but, you know tens of millions of people, apparently watched it. and and it yeah, it created it's weird. i know. i agree. next next next. how are you? i am actually a young filmmaker working on a project right now in west virginia. and a lot of the stories that i hear from local celebrities in quotation are very good but they're not necessarily true. and it's pretty obvious in some cases when they're not true. so as somebody who interviewed elizabeth taylor, somebody who's interviewed all these, you know, stalwarts of the 20th century, to what degree do you have a right, a duty as a as a journalist or as writer or as a storyteller, even to expect them

to demand the truth out of your out of your you know subject, even if the truth is something that. well, think it destroys the story, at least. and that is, you know, the or journalism world i grew up in, there was a 100% and we had to complete obligation to to fact check, to present the facts. so it's sad that this is up for debate, you know. well, yeah, yeah, yeah. it's a tough sort of a framing question. i mean, if you let the viewer that these guys are telling tall tales, if people if the audience accept that they are fable, these are fables these are these are legends and not necessarily a fact. yeah. if it's framed properly. think that's it's frame that's somebody's business deceptive that's if it's a chef. yeah i mean some of best journalists i mean, even mark twain who was a journalist, he would. yeah, yeah. kind of hype up the story and certain people would say that a

lot of journalism is that way. yeah i mean it's there's huge debate historians about how reliable stories are this goes back to the citizens you know how how how reliable are these these anecdotes? i mean, i was i was just communicating with military historian and people when people talk about battle being in battle, they're making it up all the because one thing they're traumatized they oh i was just reading when they wrote a book about the battle of midway and he interviewed 14 american pilots who had died bombed on the japanese carriers. and he asked each one to write show do a diet diagram of where the japanese carriers. were it like they fought 14 different battles. and, you know, barely out is a journalist. lenny, you've lived on the air

fringes and you're to a university community for most of your working life. i believe. and so, you know, a good many academe at princeton and observed others all over the place do do any of them think of rise to the. point where we could call them a celebrity. i mean robert putnam is is well known in some circles, but i don't think i don't think he's a example. or are there some people you can think of that you've known over the years? paper, i think are one celebrities, people, professors who are celebrity professors of celebrities of celebrity. rob, i'm going to have to i probably can't think of one or two, but but but not to america. there are some coming. george is charismatic. there are a few professors who have kind of a way about. yeah, you actually you in the early days of people i remember the professors appeared in your

pages. we talked about some of them. yeah, we did. and we were there often writing stories on them, but that that ages ended we reviewed, i mean, robert frank was his translator of the odyssey and eliot but that wasn't happened now. i mean, there were public intellectuals, as they were known, public intellectuals of those. now, i think one of. yeah. you mean then, but that's all i mean, we were this is actually a question we i think i work for news and i remember some of the older editors said we have to be aspiration about raising up the public. our readers make our readers try a little harder, be better educated, read more, read shakespeare. there was sort of an aspirational goal with our readers. i think that's gone. yeah. yes. and and a aspect of that is science. science experts and the science

experts are being ridiculed these days. as a result, probably a large part of the pandemic and. what i find really sad because people were talking about it or trial and error, people don't accept that the scientific methodology and so, you know, it's one step, you know, two steps forward and one step back. and they accept that at all. and i wish that there was often commented upon and displayed in the media, but you watch the national news. what i am seeing are all celebrity. celebrity, you know, dominated the news. and then in a token story on a hurricane. well, yeah, people want to believe in something. and if they don't believe in institutions, if they don't believe in their church or the military or the school or whatever, if that's all been knocked down, they're going to believe in something. they're going to believe in madonna or they're going to believe in, you know, some rock star. they want to believe. yeah. now, so and another with regard

the most recent, uh, rise of influencers that we've seen a lot of times, these are people who may not be as or as recognizable the old school celebrity, but still are wielding a lot of influence and particular early when they're sort of showing off their lifestyle, that's often very intermix with their product promotions. and so i was wondering if you consider in the book the impact that this has on consumerism, where you have these people who are celebrities in a sense and they're both, uh, sort of selling their lifestyle but then also um, often very little disclosure trying to sell products from their sponsors. i know i know influencers, so-called influencers. what do we, what do you of influencers. influencers. well, you know they're on the

payroll, you know, and that that's not often discussed and it should be i mean, i simply agree that i agree with your premise that. it's a it's an issue. the influencers are everywhere. and not labor that don't wear a badge that says what y'all who pay me to wear their sport jacket. that's a nobody would pay me but. but as sort of the yeah and that's in motion and it's not a happy situation what do you think alvin i remember watching a video of this is sort of normal of a college kid who was went to college and he made a video of his daily life. and i up in the morning and i took a shower and i brush my teeth and it was all kind of boring. but people watching him and then he got the idea if i put certain products on the camera, somebody will pay me for that. yeah. and by the he wore he was just dumb, nerdy harvard freshman and after a while he's making $100,000 a year.

you know, and the other thing that happens that, people become vulnerable to a fall when they do this. and so in a cancer culture that if you are paid by people to represent adidas tennis shoes or to represent, you know, subway or hot dogs, and if you make some kind of vulgar comment, any nature you lose, a contractor collapses, everything falls down. and so adidas has something like $1.3 billion worth of unsold shoes bearing the brand, kanye west. so it's weird the price by the kid i just mentioned was loneliness. he later wrote about it that he a lot of money, but he's not having any friends because he was spending all of his as an influencer in front of a camera so and you notice in the in the shots there are no people there's just him you know there's not normal college kid right or action so i, i think

loneliness had something to do with surgeon general's report, you know, saying loneliness wasn't a recurrent american disease, that something to do with the points we're making earlier that robert putnam supports that people are just bowling alone and they're not out there with their bowling with a you know, i've read something all of us that during the covid thing teenage girls especially being alone while loneliness was was was well right and this had an affirmation and comparisons they could normally we're not there. yeah any other questions. well thank you very much. okay, thank you. i'll sha

thank you all very much. and i should say that most people have said to me today,