is stanley crouch, author and columnist for the "new york daily news." . >> this week on "q&a," our guest is stanley crouch, author and columnist for the "new york daily news." >> stanley crouch, we have not talked in a while. what have you been up to? >> just trying to adjust to the blogs and the websites that are supposedly bringing in to the experience of print. i think that's garbage.

but for the time being, it's taking up a lot of space in the world of writing. >> you still do a column. >> it is still being printed. i write for some websites and for the "daily beast." it lives up to its name. >> what do you think of the blogs? >> i think they are garbage. what they really turned out to be is -- if we were unfortunate enough to have a recording of what people talked about when they had ham radio, when that was the trend, those conversations would be as interesting as much of what you see on blogs. people do not know what they are talking about most of the time. americans always have a lot of time to waste, and the internet is proof of the fact of how much time we have to waste, because the sheer intensity that people bring to it, it is kind of like if people have the misfortune to read the mail that i get, they would conclude one thing

-- literacy is supremely important because if people could not express themselves in words, they would harm themselves or harm someone else. >> going back to your columns last year -- >> that is what i believe. it's the nature of american democracy, it will win out in the long run. it takes a long time, though. one of the reasons people became so frustrated in the united

states is they misunderstand totalitarian philosophy. they'd think because the chinese are -- now we're going to do this. when you run everything, you can say that. but when you have people to make decisions, it takes a long time to get enough of them to agree to do something or to better policy that is already in place. >> you also said -- >> and then you said, "happy holidays." [laughter] >> we are at a position where

the chinese, i think, are actually the great hope for the united states, because i think they will put some much pressure on us in terms of international competition that we will have to address the importance of actually having a first-class public education, we will have to develop the minds of our population, because as i have said many times and will continue to say, a nation's population is its greatest natural resource. and i think that america has, over the last 30 or 40 years,

has accepted a level of ongoing incompetence because it costs a lot of money. but on the world stage, it is not going to work much longer. >> this is something we recorded in 1996. you said then that you were a radical titan. does that work for you today? >> i think so. i think i am more that than i was then. >> what do you mean by radical? >> i have a basic disdain for the republicans and for the democrats, for the right and for the left. so i try to not align myself with either one because i do not trust either one. history teaches us that anything can be corrupting, anything can be done in an incorrect way,

anybody can follow a failed policy. and so to automatically assume that somebody on the left is correct or someone on the right is correct, i think that is naive. but the republicans have convinced me of one thing over the last year or two, and that is -- when you sell out to lunatics purely for the votes, then you endanger the quality of the system at large. what has happened is once the republicans sold out to the religious right, to meet, once

they did that, and took positions they did not really believe them because they thought it would play well to the anti-abortion people, to the religious -- the religion in school people, all of those people who have problems with modern life, once they began -- the trick is this. you cannot -- if you have a mob of people screaming for blood, and you say, we should get blood, and they say yes, and you keep saying it. but after a while, you realize that you have a bunch of lunatics who want to tear something up, and if too many of them have gathered, they will stop following you and you have to start following them. that has happened to the republican party repeatedly. >> how many books have you written? >> i do not know. i cannot say off the top of my

head. my favorite book is my novel, "don't the moon look lonesome?" it's a jazz novel, i think you would like that. it is about an interracial couple and the problems they have in the united states and the complexity of the culture playing itself out in the lives of these people and their friends. >> when did you write it? >> 10 years ago. i feel very satisfied with that book. >> where did you get the idea for it? >> i got it in a strange way. i intended to write a very different book than the one i ended up writing. i was going to write a book about the trouble with this white jazz singer and this

black guy who played saxophone. they were going to break up. it was going to be like a short 15-20 page story, but the woman kept saying, you should come over here. you should leave them along and come over here. the woman who became the protagonist, and i gave up and let her have her way, and she took over the book and became the protagonists. >> this could be about your own life. >> in some sense, any novel is about your own life but it doesn't have to be about the specifics of your life but what you understand about what is going on around you. >> how long have you been in new york city? >> since 1975. >> and the last time i remember taking a picture, we were in your house on 11th street. >> you have probably enshrined

it now. >> there were lots of cds. >> i am not living there now. i was awakened at about 3:30 a.m. with some screams telling me the building was on fire. there was actually smoke, and i had a good experience, because i stayed inside the house with all this water coming through the ceiling and everything, because i was concerned about my computer.

i said to one of the firemen, i said, i am a writer, i'm afraid my hard drive might get burned. he said, don't worry, we will take care of it. i go next door and he comes in later with my hard drive and said, you are stanley crouch? i read some of your books. he said, here is your hard drive. and i thought, finally being a writer paid off. >> was your house destroyed? >> basically, yes. >> what caused it? >> they do not know. the insurance company was looking for anything for an excuse not to pay for it. when they could not find out

what started the fire, i was convinced that nobody knew, because they went over and over this. >> i want to go to politics. a couple of weeks ago in chicago, tavis smiley had another one of his events and an old friend of yours, cornell west, was on there. i am going to run a little bit of what he's saying to get you to react to it. >> in the age of obama, there is a lot of confusion. to have a black face in a high place easily leads us to forget so many people stuck in the basement of the house. we get obsessed with the breaking through on the top and we forget about the least of these, so we put pressure on our brother, loving pressure, but we already see that any president is under tremendous pressures from the strong, the oligarchs, various people at the top that could easily push obama in such a way that he tilts too

much toward the strong and does not focus the way he ought on the week, on the poor, on working people. that is why we are here today. [applause] we don't have ask permission from anybody to talk about black suffering and black misery. we love who we want to love. and we love other folk whether they love us or not. >> what do you think? >> that's kind of what he normally says. the first thing is, see, i don't really separate black issues, so-called, from american issues. in other words, i feel that if black people are basically not

doing well in the public education system, well then, that is a problem for the country at large. it is not a black problem. and when it is only discussed as a black problem, it reduces the significance of it. we are in a period when we actually need every qualified person to do a good job at what they do. and so you cannot say -- i had discussions with republicans 20 years ago in washington, saying, the way that you guys are going at it, if you are fighting a war, you would think that you could send people into west point and not have any basic training, and try to win. you cannot do that.

you have to train your troops. it was interesting -- that was the first time they ever thought, apparently, that there was a relationship between the running of the country and the quality of the education to the populace. i was saying this -- you've got to compete with people for whom quality is number one, because they are behind. so the japanese and chinese, they cannot pretend that they can come and compete with us with an inferior product. but we have decided in some strange way that we do not need to have a quality product that the name america used to mean. so when you take a position that black suffering, blacks' social problems are separate from the comfort -- that country at large, or you give the impression of a special interest

-- i do not believe that so- called black american problems are that. anything that is done, that creates higher quality students, higher-quality products, those things affect the country at large and are good for everybody. >> we were talking about president obama. how would you rate his performance so far? >> all i think he -- the first thing is, no one who has that job actually understands what is going on. they can read a stack of stuff every day and they put people in who they think they can listen to, who do we need to pay

attention to on cable television? brian lamb. ok, put him on the list. that is how it goes. you know and i know the president cannot figure out the savings and loans crisis, he cannot figure out the middle east, he cannot figure out afghanistan, he cannot figure out how to handle the ecology -- that is too much for any one person to understand. but barack obama is good at giving the impression that he does in fact understand. he is also good at giving the truly american sense that if this is not going to work, we're going to do something else. the glory of the american system is based on the fact that you can improvise beyond the bad decisions. abraham lincoln did not

understand the civil war until 1863, and after gettysburg it became clear. this is what i'm supposed to be doing. he had many thousands of men being killed, and he was probably the brightest man in the united states at the time. if he did not understand it in 1863 -- until 1863, you know a guy in the 21st century does not understand all the problems. >> what is he doing well and what is he not? >> personally, he is a little nicer a guy that he has to be, given his opposition. if i were in his position, i would go toward lyndon johnson than abraham lincoln or fdr. well, fdr, too. both made a decision at some point.

you think you can stay here, but i am not going to let you. you are not. i think he has begun that. >> what grade would you give him on the healthcare bill? >> c +. a friend of mine was talking to one of the senators involved in the passing of the bills in washington recently and he said, of course the bill is going to pass. it doesn't have any teeth in it but that is the way it is. that is how the game works in washington. in this case, we are getting a health care bill. it does not have any teeth in it, but as paul berman said to me, the most important thing is that now you can move -- once

it is there, you can improve it. now it is in a position where it can be improved. i was fairly astounded by the intractability of the republican party. >> you write a lot about the people who represent some of the republicans, on both sides. >> they are comedians. >> sean hannity and bill o'reilly. ann coulter. >> she is truly funny. >> why do you say they are comedians? >> they do not have any respect for the truth.

it does not make any difference to them. see, the thing that is great about that is, when he's caught, he says basically, oh, i'm an entertainer. i don't see why these people are getting upset with me. i wake up in the morning and i think of something and i go to the studio and i start talking. i go in front of the camera and i start talking. he's a different kind of a guy. >> you have written about a couple of msnbc -- joe scarborough. >> he is very important because he recognizes some of the problems. he is a conservative who says he does not believe that

conservative republicans should let other voices that are irrational take over the discussion. i thought that was a -- the first thing was, saying one thing like that. i don't consider that very brave of a proposition. had he not said it, his job would have been safe. it was safe all along. >> back in november 2009, you wrote this -- >> you alluded to this earlier, but expound on that. >> i think that we are caught in an unusual situation in

which the reality of life is periodically disappointing but the usual american way of disappointment is to pretend that it is not theirs. what is happening in the celebrity culture, if you take all of these minor men and women, and you make them into these huge figures, right, who are doing things like all forming in a cartoon, like "avatar," and you make these people important and so they act important. what i mean is -- she is in a vehicle that is basically not a

vehicle. you can take these minor genres, these minor talents, you can put a lot of money around them and advertise them a lot and have people believing that they are important. the problem is that what used to be a normal entertainment approach to the selling of a product has invaded our politics. when they put out that book about nixon winning the presidency, and they talk about the making of nixon, the selling of a president and how they had to make it look, what kind of photographs he had to have made of him, all of these

things, those were hollywood devices. it didn't have anything to do with politics one of the things about john ford's movie with spencer tracy about washington politics, the fun that is made of the original nixon checkers' speech, you have this guy that is basically a dumb guy sitting with his family and stuff on my couch, saying he is an all- american guy, and he would be a good representative. he does not know anything. but what ford recognized at that point was that entertainment had taken over american politics. it does not mean that politicians in any country where they can be elected will not use as much that they find that works from the world of

entertainment in a campaign. but when the campaign begins -- becomes more entertainment and less information about your ideas, then you end up with people like rush limbaugh, glenn beck, sean hannity -- their basic interest is in whipping people up. they are interested in getting people whipped up. >> you found humor in what rachel maddow said. >> i think rachel maddow is one of the most brilliant people you will see on television, with the exception of c-span. what she does brilliantly, she actually will find footage of

you saying the opposite -- footage of you on monday saying the opposite of what you said on thursday. this is what you said last week. now the interesting thing to me is that she can do it and she had -- and it has no impact. what i mean is you cannot do what sarah palin did during the campaign -- i was born in 1945 and not paying attention to presidential elections in 1960. but during that period, you could not be found guilty of an abuse of power as governor, be on the ticket, and then come out at a press conference and say, i am very glad that the investigating committee exonerated me of all charges of

abuse of power. that is not what they did. this is what they actually said. what struck me at that point is that things have so shifted that now you can actually be caught absolutely in a lie, be running for the white house, and get away with it. and that is the big difference now. people act as though the truth is just an opinion. >> let me show you what you said in our booknotes discussion. >> i recognize that we have enormous problems. we have to rebuild the public schools.

we have to put a collar on street crime. we've got to get americans to recognize that we're going into another period where things are not necessarily going to be as secure as they were in the past, but that is an inevitability connected to the technological innovations of the period. we have to maintain morale based on the human capacity to deal with problems. i think that is the fundamental power of american democracy, is that we can get the job done. corporate greed, sexism, racism -- all of those things are in the mix. the founding fathers recognized that you have to have an instrument that will allow you to right the wrongs of the past

or present. >> did you know what was coming? [laughter] >> i had no idea where we would be now. what i mean is, the specifics of what fox news became at that time, i had no idea. >> you also predicted -- while not specifically, but 9/11, what impact did that have on you? >> the thing is, for a short period of time, maybe a month, new yorkers completely reversed the way that they dealt with each other. people would step on your foot and keep walking and that kind of thing. they were basically rude. but after the unification of the disaster, the imposed disaster of 9/11, it was as though new york city went to charm school. but then one night i was half a block from my house, and i heard this guy screaming with

enormous intensity, saying, with some words i cannot use here, i don't know how you got a driver's license but i ought to get out of my car and put my foot in your blah blah blah and your kids and everything, and i thought, new york is back to normal. anything can survive, even our obnoxiousism.

>> where were you on the iraq war in 2003? >> what did i think about the invasion? i was not that -- i wasn't completely convinced. nor was i -- did i automatically assume that things could go as badly as they did go, or that information could be as manipulated by the white house as it was, nor was i at all prepared to be -- to see the enormity of money, a cash cow that was created in the middle

east, where all of these people made all of that money. i was not ready for that. i was shocked by that. >> going back to that clip in 1996, were you thinking of a wall street crash? did that not surprise you? >> it did not really surprise me, because of the way that the previous scandal that involved one of the bushes. we got into this mess, savings and loan, things turned around, then someone came up with the idea that we can be taxed and everybody get their money back. what fascinated me them was the way that a number of guys on the right actually think.

now theoretically there should be no government intervention. they think that the market should be free of the government, but every time they have a problem, they come with both hands -- not one hand, they come with both hands, saying, give us some money. we are in trouble. i have found it to be extraordinary that the republican party seems to be absolutely at ease with all of this. that you can say, we don't want big government on one hand, and then say, well, we need nearly a trillion dollars to straighten these companies out that are too big to fail. once they get the money, then they say, you have spent too much money. >> you sound like a disappointed republican.

>> i don't know. >> have you ever been a republican? >> no. i guess i resent the democrats but i am basically neither. fundamentally i don't trust either of them. i don't think that americans should trust political parties. i think you should be skeptical all of them or both of them. you should be skeptical of both parties. they should look very closely at what is being presented and they should not allow the name republican or democrat to bring about automatic allegiance. i think automatic allegiance is

one of the worst things that can happen in the united states, because people need to spend more time looking at what actually happens. i told you this before. that is one of the keys to the ongoing interest that people have had in c-span for all of these years. they can find the time to find out what was actually said. i remember when i used to look at the news and said, that is what they say he said. oh, he is coming on the c-span. now i will find out what he actually said. everything has to be truncated because there's so much information. but if you can actually get a real sense of what actually happened, it gives you a stronger position from which to make the decision. i think that too many decisions are made on faith. when you see guys get on

television whether a guy like ann coulter or glenn beck, and they actually will say things that make you think that they believe that barack obama was not born an american citizen. the first problem is this -- we know that is bunk, because if the rnc could not have figured that out last year, if they could actually lose to someone not born in the united states and he could end up in the white house, then they need another job. >> speaking of barack obama, you said in one of your columns a connect between barack obama and one of the other loves of your life.

>> right. >> explain that. >> in the jazz band, because it is improvised, everyone relies on everybody else. in a certain sense, if you are playing and you come up with a series of ideas, and everybody in the band goes your way, at that moment. if somebody else takes it over, then you go with them. what i mean is that you have this ongoing, in the moment set of decisions within a forum that has a set of aesthetic goals, that is sometimes determined in motion and sometimes determined beforehand.

now that is about as close artistically as you can get to the constitution and the whole idea of the passage of laws, the changing of laws, the improvement of laws, the root of those things are very similar to what happens in a jazz band. barack obama is clearly intelligent enough to understand jazz. the question, though, is whether he has enough taste to understand it. he doesn't have a problem with intelligence. he has no problem with intelligence. i doubt that there has been anybody since the 1900's who we could actually say is innately smarter than he, but that has nothing to do with art. you have a taste for something or not. i think that barack obama is a

rhythm-and-blues guy. and that is just the way it goes. one day he might wake up and look out the window and realize that he and neil armstrong were born on the same day and that must mean something. if it hits him, it will be good for the country. >> a good place to segue to another one of your favorite subject. i have known two children named after byrd, one is charlie, and other parker. you been working on a biography of charlie parker since 1982. when is it coming out?

>> volume one should be out within the next year. >> who was he? >> he was a person who was oppression to many people who had to deal with him. he had a self-destructive appetite and a very irresponsible person. >> what did he do? >> he added another style to jazz and he also could play -- i mean he was a perfect musician. it is that simple. he played the alto saxophone. as the leader of the modern jazz quintet said about him, he could play it. if he wanted to play the tune, he could play it. he lived from 1920-1955.

>> did you ever know him? >> i might have seen him but i do not recall it. >> why have you taken all these years writing a biography? >> he is a fascinating guy. in those years that he lived, they were interesting and important years in american life. i think that he represents the tension between narcissistic irresponsibility and aesthetic clarity, because he was so overwhelmingly effective. but he was a wild person. >> some political columnists will talk about the politics and then throw in a baseball column. you throw in a jazz column. are political writers frustrated because they cannot

write about that first and foremost? >> oh, no. most people don't know about anything other than politics. when they are away at the top end, it doesn't make any difference. >> david broder writes a baseball column all the time. george will wrote a book. >> but the other thing, you're talking like a guy like george will, he is not -- he is in another class. you could not say, well, we had george will and then we have rush limbaugh.

george and i are good friends. we will leave it at that. i have great respect for him. >> back to charlie parker, is there anything political about him? did you find a political connection? >> he was not a guy that had much interest in politics and other than the fact that he was put up by the racism of the period like everybody else was. what i mean is, i have yet to

see any black people who lived during that era who said, things were fine and dandy. i have not met them yet. they may be out there somewhere. >> you find that fine and dandy anywhere now? >> probably not. but the other thing is, fine and dandy might be overrated, like everything else. what i mean this -- my orientation is more blues- influenced, in that i expect things to go wrong. i don't expect to be overwhelmed by them going wrong, but i am the kind of person who i believe it is like playing baseball. when you go to bat, the odds are against you getting to first base every time you go to bat. life basically treat you like the pitcher does.

now if you hit the ball, well, good luck. but life is strange and, it seems to me, a different pitcher who has a very high average for striking people out. >> go back to charlie parker. why do you like him? >> i like his audacity. i like the fact that he had many different sides to his personality. he was a great mimic and a funny guy. he had an extraordinary sense of humor. now some of the things that he did and thought were funny were not that funny to the people to

whom he was doing them, but when you look back at them -- >> and you know that barack obama's book was "the audacity of hope." >> he is doing the best that he can. the thing i like about him is his focus on being the president of the united states. i was recently reading on some website, where some black writer pointed out that barack obama's job -- the job of the president is to uplift the black community. in other words, he should do it, but he should not make it part -- that should not be part of his agenda. he started thinking about "them." but it should not be seen as a separate thing from thinking about the united states.

barack obama is smart enough to know that if it gives the impression that he has a special interest in a particular community of people who say that he looks like them, then he will have problems with that. >> what did you learn? you referred to the constitution of this country -- where did you learn about the constitution? and i want to go back to your pomona days. >> i learned about it from reading it. >> you only have 1.5 years of college. >> that is true. i dropped out. i am not a finished intellectual. i'm still developing. >> how did you talk pomona into giving you tenure? i read that somewhere. >> there again -- fortunately, you see, it was not said on c-span as a fact.

>> they did hire you to teach. >> i taught theater, i taught history of jazz, and i taught literature. >> when you talk about teaching those seven years, it brought me to another column that you wrote, because you were an academic. >> were you one of those? >> no, i don't think that i was. in fact, i know that i wasn't.

i was referring to this guy who taught theater and film, named todd boyd, unbelievable. not really unbelievable, but an example of the american academy. >> but you got everything. you got politics, is there anything you are upbeat about? >> i am not downbeat about it. it is to me, it is important -- if you or i or anybody else goes to a doctor, it is not doing us a favor if he tells us that we are in perfect health

when he knows there is a problem that we have. my contention in telling people that there are certain problems in american life, does not suggest that i think the whole house is about to fall down. >> here is a column from a couple of months ago. >> right, i was talking to a young woman not long ago. she was trying to explain to me that women should be able to look hot if they want to look hot. and i said, well, but why does looking hot have to look like a

whore? that is what i don't understand. i don't see why a fine actress has to have her hemline up about 6 inches below the vagina. i don't know why that is. i don't know what that means. except that these actresses have accepted the idea that this woman is exposed -- a female chauvinist pig saying that women have bought into the playboy ethos and that is why they were going to strip bars and dressing like hookers and all of that, that they accepted that idea that that was their idealization of the sexual norm. >> where will this country be in 50 years? you indicated 14 years ago -- >> the first thing is, we will

have a much better public education system, because i don't think we will be able to maintain the quality of american life with a substandard education system. i think that it will improve, not because of any vision but because of necessity. i think the world competition is going to demand it of us and that is going to do a lot for us. >> what else? >> i think that what i am hoping is that these various special interest groups will lose interest in what i call special- interest pr. if you have a homosexual in something, they have to be an

exemplary homosexual, and all of that is ok, except that it does not have much to do with human reality. for i'm hoping that we will get to a point at which a criminal represents criminals. you know, you take a big dope dealer like mickey barnes in new york, he did not represent black people. he represented dope dealers. and ted bundy does not represent white guys from the midwest, he represents serial killers. that is who these people are. as long as we can get off of the failing to do the pr job, we will be closer to getting where we needed to go. >> stanley crouch, we are out of time. a book on charlie parker coming out. thank you. >> thank you for having me, brian. [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> for a dvd copy of this program, call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and- a.org. "q&a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts. >> monday on "washington journal" the discussion on home foreclosures in the u.s. with diana olick. gene karpinski talks about the climate change bill and the next

election. we will talk with the author of "obama zombies," jason mattera. then live to oklahoma city for a remembrance ceremony marking 15 years since the bombing of the federal building. speakers include the current governor and jan an appalling tunnel. that will be -- janet to nepal a ton of -- janet napolitano. that will be just before 10:00 on c-span. coming up, a look at the british election debate. then a speech by jordan's king abdallah.

>> the british election is may 6. next we will look at the major political party broadcast. in the u.k. paid political advertisements are not allowed on television. under the law the bbc is required to air on their main national television and radio channels. here's a look at what the labor party released on monday. >> my father always said -- do not give up. he was so right. not too far back this country essentially faced the worst economic crisis since the

depression of the 1930's. a scary time. not just for us, but for the entire world. then there was the g-20 summit. gordon brown led the way with a plan to guide us back to recovery. yet there were some that opposed the measures. the conservatives were against the action of labor to help families and businesses. they proposed action that would wreck the economy. the markets were running scared. there are real signs that we are on the right road.

and i really do not think that now is the time to change direction. all around the world economists are saying we need to see it through. conservatives say they know better. they want to take us on a different path. things are still fragile. which is why now was not the time to go off in different directions. let's continue using our experience in the global community to support the economy. getting british families and businesses back on our feet again. >> we have been through tough times by staying on the right road we can make britain the country that we wanted to be.