>> of this week on "q&a," charles blow, the visual op-ed columnist for the "new york times." >> your biography it starts with this. he is the visual op-ed columnist for the "national geographic" -- "new york times" since 2008. he features charts as the form of opinion journalism. what is that about? >> it is pretty much as it says. i am in numbers guy. i am a trend-spotter. i use charts to visualize the trends. i use those charts in my opinion pieces. i kind of build and opinion out

of the charts. i do not decide i will talk about the subject and then go out for the data. i search for the data first on something interesting something that agrees with an opinion that i have. sometimes i find something that would surprise my readers. >> i started reading you on saturdays. there is always a big chart on there. when was it decided that they wanted you to do this? >> i started almost three years ago. i left "the times" to become the art director for n"national geographic." i never left washington. i commuted from brooklyn to washington.

i was single with three kids. i had three nannies. it was an untenable situation. i said i could not do it anymore. they told me i could work from home. the executive editor at the time kept harassing me the entire time i was away saying i had to come back to "the times." we had lunch. he said to think about things i would like to do if i were to return. one thing i always liked was to have a feature on the op-ed page called op-charts. i had always wanted to do it. a figured there were doing it all with freelancers. why not have someone on the stock to do that? that was the genesis of it. >> how did you get into being a

graphics specialist? >> complete happenstance. my aspiration cents high-school was to be the governor of louisiana. i met the governor when i was a junior in high school. it was right after he had said the famous quote about the only way he could not be reelected was being caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. he walked into the room. i had never seen anyone with that much confidence. we were studying the governors of louisiana. they were these over the top characters. they're having the best time of their lives. i would love to be the governor of louisiana. in college i majored in english and pre-law. i went to the university of louisiana. one of my english professors

like my riding. he asked what i would do if i did not go to law school with an english degree. i said i did not know. i was a freshman at 10 not thought that far. -- and had not thought that far. he suggested majoring in journalism. if you do not go to law school if you can at least have a trade and work as a journalist. in journalism school, they made a spic a concentration. i wish i had more noble reasons and wanting to party all the time but one of mine was visual communications. -- they made us pick a concentration. i chose that concentration because of an interest in art. >> i want to go back to your comments about edwin edwards.

how much time did he spend in prison? >> i am not sure. >> he is out now. what was it about that part of his life? >> they are not punished as much as you would expect them to be for being out loss -- outlaws. there is a certain mystique about flouting the law and the catch me if you can mentality. my town's claim to fame is it was the place that bonnie and clyde were killed. this idea of not necessarily separating the good and bad in the ways we generally do it and kind of idolizing and making heroes of villains seems to be a

louisiana thing. >> compare that to new york city. >> very different, actually. one thing about coming to new york that i thought was interesting is that they were similar in some ways. my neighborhood feels like a small town. i grew to one dry cleaners. everybody knows you. it feels like my tiny town. in the sense of law and order it is very detached in a way. it is not a community-driven. the politics are not necessarily as community-driven as you would find in a small town. >> you wrote on june 12, 2010,

that aside from the people who live in my building, i know the names of only one person who lives on my block. >> go back to the beginning of that when you say you are social with names but socially awkward. >> i guess i should figure that out. i have two minds about myself.

there is a very outgoing guy who's never shy but in small settings i can be a bit awkward because i do not do the small talk thing very well. people expect the person they see on television, this gregarious personality. in these intimate situations with relative strangers, i am not really that person. >> you are a single father with three children. how old are they? >> the oldest is 17. the twins are 13. >> what is it like raising three kids like that? >> card.

-- hard. it is a struggle. with this job and every job i have had it is demanding on my time. i have been doing it 15 years. i have figured out how to juggle it, how to plan to make it work out. >> you are at dinner with your three kids. you are talking about the world. what are the basic things you want them to know about this live? >> my biggest thing is i want them to be good people. i do not push them to news. i want them to be centered, focused, and good human beings, good citizens of the city, the country, and the world. i want them to be open to

opportunities and challenges. i feel if i can interview them with those basic skills -- if i can give them those basic skills, the rest will fall in place. >> what is their reaction to having a dad is published in the "new york times"? >> they are not faced or impressed by it. in some cases they are irritated by it. sometimes i cannot take them to school because i have a television appearance. they will go sit in the greenroom have to get up an hour and a half earlier. they are not impressed. i had in turn at the new york times. they said that they could hire me but wanted me to go out and

experiment and make mistakes somewhere else. that is the best advice i have ever gotten. i left there when i graduated and got a job at the "detroit news." i interviewed. it was snowing. i got there at night. i saw the beautiful buildings. it was a great city full of people. i did not realize until the day i started work that all the buildings were empty. it was a very different city than i was expecting. i learned to love detroit. there's a certain greediness -- grittyness about it and a spirit to overcome. there are a lot of great people there. and did not like the weather. i stayed 1.5 winters and had to

leave. the job was graphics artist. that was the job title. at grambling, part of the mass, major was that you learn reporting and editing like everyone else. i was the co-editor of the college newspaper. i started a magazine. when i got to detroit my goal was to figure out a way to married that reporting with what they wanted me to do in graphics. i told them that if something happened, i was going. they said that was fine with them. whenever i was feeling burned out or someone was shot, i was there on the scene so that i could visually tell that story. that became a valuable skill. not a lot of people were doing that in that space at the time. >> why did you pick grambling in

the first place a historic black college? >> it was close to where i grew up. it is where my mother also went to college and where a couple of my brothers went to college. it was not my first choice. i had a wanderlust and wanted to get far away from my tiny space. i had been accepted a couple of places and even had full scholarships. my mother cannot imagine her youngest son being far away. she talked and talked until i relented and said okay.

i found it to be an amazing experience in one way. i think this is true of many historical black colleges. it removes the idea of race from education because if you do not succeed, there is no way to blame it on anything else other than your own inability to succeed. having that experience is very interesting. if you do not get elected to the student council, is because we do not like you. there is no extra reason. there is a kind of freedom that comes as part of that. i really enjoyed that. >> you finished rather well, magna cum laud. where did you get the interest in learning? >> my mother is an amazing woman.

she became a single parent after many years of marriage. i was about five years old and had four other -- older brothers. all my life i can remember my mother going to school. she went back to finish her degree. after that, she took courses at night to get her master's degree. i can remember sitting in the back of classrooms when she could not find anybody to keep me. i would be drawing in she would be taking notes. that is the idea of the ability to transform a life. that has been instilled in me from the time i can remember her. she never watched television other than the news "wheel of fortune," and sometimes "jeopardy." we were very poor but she never gave up the subscription to the newspaper that she read from front to back. the idea of her having an

appetite for knowledge and constantly wanting to improve herself and to meet seeing how that plays out in a life made it part of my life. >> what kind of profession did she have? >> she was a schoolteacher. >> is she still alive? >> yes, she is. she was kind of a secretary when i was very young. she kept going to school and became a schoolteacher. eventually she became an administrator. after retirement, she has just been elected to the school board in her parish in louisiana. >> where are your four brothers? >> two are in louisiana. one is in texas and one is in mississippi. they do not believe in going past the mason-dixon line. >> what do they think of their

brother up here? >> we do not talk about it much. we make jokes and have fun. my oldest brother calls me often. he is a big obama supporter. he says to take it easy on his president, whatever that means. he will say not to be so critical or he will offer suggestions for columns. i listened. i think they are proud. they are happy for me as i am happy for them. they are amazing people in their own right. >> in three years of writing this column, which one has struck the biggest nerve? >> one was a column on the team -- dating. i had no idea it would strike

such a nerve with people. i just marked something that other people had marked in other ways. it was called "the demise of dating." it is the first time the data showed that high school seniors had a shift in dating. another was a relatively recent one about the acceptance of gays in society. it was the first time the acceptance of gays relations had crossed the mark. it was the first time that more men found it more acceptable than women. i explored why that could be. the political things get

whatever buzz they get. a lot of them have had some level of controversy. i think our job is to be provocative to make people think. >> what day of the week do you decide what you are going to write? >> any day of the week it comes to me, i will take it. i am listening all week long. i am following data. i cannot make any one send out a survey or publish a study. i am at the whim of what happens. i am constantly monitoring and checking. >> which pollster for you is the most reliable? >> there are a lot of great outfits. some are more regular polling

operations that are bigger. they publish something daily. that is great for me because i am looking for volume. the pure research center publishes regularly. they will do several week. that is great for me. the other polling operations do not have the money or information to do it that often. they do produce great material. >> if you look today, i think you would find a rasmussen poll showing obama 48% positive. what would get a reaction from you? >> there are certain polls that "the times" does not use. i think rasmussen is one of

them. it's probably is methodology. i am not sure about that. in terms of methodology, they like live interview polls. if they use robocalling, you do not know who is answering the phone. they do not like internet polling. there are valid reasons. there are some you can look at for reference and then try to find another that calls live. there are some we do not use. >> is there a sample base you will not use? if they only have 500 people called on the phone is that different from 1200? >> you want over 1000. when you look at who is called, and hopefully they have broken

it down by race, age ideology. you wanted to be somewhat rep. it is not always perfect. you wanted to be a close representative of the public at large. if you see real skew, you should take into account. if you are going to use it, say there is a skew in the sample if you can. >> what kind of shape is louisiana in today after louisiana and other things that have hit the state? -- after katrina and other things that have hit the state? >> i visit my local area that is north louisiana. it was not really affected by the hurricane. this year was the first time i had been back to new orleans.

a kind of wanted to remember it the way i remember it. when i was there, there were two things that were striking to me. you could not see the damage from the airport to the hotel. i could not make myself go on one of these tours. i stayed in the french quarter. this is a certain change in the vitality and fabric of the city. the french quarter has always been kind of a raucous place along bourbon street. it is trustee. it began to feel more like vegas than new orleans that we can. i could not put my finger on the change. i think was the enormous displacement of the local population.

there were not necessarily the people who would visit bourbon street on a regular basis, but they were the people you would have seen on the street. in the shops, it just felt like a fabric was different. i think it is unfortunate. it was a special place. part of what made it special was that it was poor people who lived there. those are the people who have the fewest options about returning and rebuilding their lives. >> how much you still want to be governor of louisiana? >> not at all. once i figured out of politics is a messy thing i give up on that. when you are a kid you study politics in a classroom setting. i was president of my class from

63 to 12th grade and also my freshman and junior years in college. the idealism wears off. you see what it means to run for a big office. money becomes a factor. all of the dirtiest that you have to be involved in, all the have dirty hands you have to shake to become a politician -- it loses its luster quickly. i now tell people all the time i do not trust any politician ever. you have to do so many things to be a politician that are unsavory that it is hard for me to trust anybody 100%. >> louisiana then detroit. what happened in detroit?

>> when i was there, it was already a hollow city. they elected a black mayor. there were riots. there was a flight out of the city. >> the riots were in 1967. i think it was mayor cavanaugh. he was white. the black mayor came after that. >> the city never recovered from that period and continued to decline. when i was there if you could not buy a refrigerator in the city. there were no appliance stores in the city. you have to go outside the city. >> why? >> everything was fleeing the city. there was virtually no commerce

left in the city of detroit. you had little mom and pop shops, a few chains, only a handful of a grocery stores. and remember we would have to drive out of the city to do real crusher shopping. -- to do real grocery shopping. the was very little there to support the social structure of the city. it has only gotten worse with the recession. now you see images of the place and it looks like warsaw. it is an incredible kind of amazing american city. >> the three children have our 17 and 13. where were they born? perhaps the oldest was born right outside detroit.

my ex-wife did not want him to be born in detroit. the other two were born here in new york city. >> when did you become the single father? >> that was 11 years ago. >> if you were talking to another single father, what kind of device would you give them? how hard is it? >> it is very hard. it is hard in ways -- there are a lot of women that do this all the time. i do not want to suggest that it is worse for me because i am a guy. people do it all the time. it is a different experience. your friends are different. my mother could have lost any of her friends to keep me wyetwhen she had to do something. i would not ask my friends to keep them. nin do not necessarily think in that way.

-- men do not necessarily think in that way. it is a very weird experience to be in a store shopping for a little girl's underwear. it is very strange. it is these little moments in a life that make you understand how different you are even among those who are different. >> what is the hardest part about it? >> the hardest part is what a lot of people experience in these shoes. you never feel like you are doing anything 100%. i never feel like i can give 100% to work. i never feel i have done all i can do at home. there is stress involved in that. it never seems to go away.

>> how do you fix a little girl's hair? [laughter] >> it is a process. it requires a lot of equipment. i keep it in a tackle box. i went to the hardware store and said i needed something to put all of her stuff in. it was perfect. it is a process. >> how does she like to wear her hair? >> in a way that makes it hard. she is old enough that she does herself for the most part. that is great. she does not do a lot of fancy things. she is an athlete and sweats of the time. she is very basic now, so that is perfect. >> louisiana, detroit, and now new york city.

how many months were you at "national geographic"? >> i want to say a year and nine months. >> is there anything about that magazine that you found unusual or interesting? >> it is an amazing place. on some level, they are doing god's work. they're doing something that no one else has the ability to do or the financing to do. it is amazing. i used to say it was the only place that i would leave "the times" to go. i have always been in allwe of the visual impact of that magazine. there you understand what it takes to put it together.

it is a very long process. you go to a meeting and plan a store that will not show up for year-and-a-half. it is a very long process. you become very intimate with the information. that can be its own kind of stress. you have so many opportunities to go back and change. you can change it to the point where you are making work to make yourself busy. >> did you get a sense of its future? it has lost some circulation in recent years. >> i am not an expert on that. what i did sense was that there was a strong international presence for the magazine. i think it may have been growing in that. it was still a premium product in other countries. here you can get it cheaply but

there you could not. some combination of "national geographic" and "international geographic" and a web product could be very viable. i think they have an opportunity. >> january 23, 2009. that is right after the inauguration you had a headline on your column that said "no more excuses?" you wrote that blacks descended on washington --

the new " james cliburn -- the n you quote james cliburne. help us out. >> i think captured the sentiments of people that everything had changed with the election of obama. we're seeing that is the farthest from the truth. we're moving into an area in the national consciousness that we have not been in before. people want it to be true that many things have changed. the foacts remain stubborn.

family life has not changed. economic issues of gun worse for people. the recession did not have much to do with obama, but it is becoming his issue. you see the reactions people are having around the issue of race whether or not certain actions can be categorized as racist. whether or not bringing a breeze makes the accuser the racist thing curve -- whether or not bringing up race makes the accuser the racist. these things remain a problem. when people start to say things like no one has an excuse anymore for anything, that is not true. it is problematic to make other people think that is true.

that said there is a lot of personal responsibility that people have to take. the polls show that people are beginning to take that. one poll showed that it was the first time that african- americans fought their own issues were more their own fault because of the impact of racism. that is a big move forward in thinking. because of obama the way that other people perceive you change as well. we have to get enough space and negotiate those issues. >> you wrote on february 19 of this year that it is time for us to stop lying to ourselves about this country.

the charts show what? >> there are measures like in comecome well-being, food insecurity. there are seven or eight of them. in most of the categories, we were among the worst of the worst when compared to 33 other industrialized countries. people do not generally think of us that way. we have this mindset that because we are the biggest economy and have the strongest military -- we do have some of the most inventive people.

the ipad come internet, facebook come from the united states. there are large portions of the population not doing well at all. until we acknowledge there is a gap between those succeeding and the people who live on the lower rungs we cannot say we are number one because we are falling backward on some of these things. >> said the republicans have submitted a draconian budget.

>> there are so many areas where it makes no sense to cut particularly education and the well-being of young people. there are a lot of cuts that go directly to food stability for poor people and young people in particular. i wrote another column about cuts that would have a direct impact on infant mortality. we're now number one in that among those 33 industrialized countries. that does not plan for a future where you want to reemerge as number one in terms of a strong population with healthy people who are strong and capable. it does not take a lot of math to deal with these other emerging economies. china is a big emerging economy. they have so many more people

than we have. if you just take the top 10% of their students and assume those are honor students, they have more on our students than we have students. we cannot make the education cuts. we need to reinforce education. we need all of them. we cannot cut the pell grants because we need the graduates of high-school to go to college because we need them. we do not have disposable people. we want to move beyond the concept that we want to penalize people who had children maybe they could not afford. maybe if we did not need everybody to compete with what is happening in india, maybe we

could afford to do that. but we cannot afford to be punitive at this point. >> you started off the column that it is time for us to stop lying to ourselves about this country. how hard is it to right the first sentence for your columns? >> it has gotten a lot easier. it was hard at first. i am looking for something that grabs you, something simple clear contains a thought and some forward momentum makes you want to read the rest of the column. >> on on -- august 27, 2010 -- do you write your own headlines? >> yes, i do. >> the headline is "i had a nightmare." glenn beck is the intra-king --

anti-king. >> it is a plate on dr. king's "i have a dream" speech. he spent a lot of time trying to coopt and may still be doing this. i turned into programs were he would give marching orders to protesters. there is a point to which the consummate some of the nonsense, but enough. that also was a bridge too far for me. >> do you watch him regularly?

>> not a regular thing. >>i do think there is a certain entertainment value. they are provocative and shocking because it makes them a lot of money. i even have a hard time believing they believe all the things they say. to each his own. i do not have to take part in that and watch it. i would discourage everybody from watching it. if you want to be entertained go ahead. >> how often do you did in to the conservative talk-show host world? >> i tried to follow them on social networking to see what the headlines are and what people are saying. i will check the bigger websites from time to time, particularly if there is something in the news i think they will be

weighing in on. i want to see what they are saying. sometimes there is fair stuff. i publish my e-mail address on all of my columns because i do get a lot of an edited -- unedited commentary from people on the right. i weed out the obviously offensive things. some people make interesting point. i think it is important for people in positions like mine to have in your open -- to have an ear open to opposing views. >> what is it like to have your column run against others?

if there is a huge following they beat up on them. they beat up on the "new york times'" as being the antichrist. >> i do not pay attention. i think the newsroom may pay more attention because they're striving to be objective. i am on the opinion side. i have an opinion. you have one. it does not bother me. >i live in park slope brooklyn. i go into the office as often as needed. if i can work from home, i will do it. >> how often do you get ideas for columns outside of a pole or survey? if you do, where do they come from? >> i have ideas all the time and things and would like to read

about that cannot find data to support so i do not write about it. i follow pop culture a lot. there are a lot of things there i would love to write about. i am not a political nerd at heart. i have a broad range of interests. it is just that some of them built to light for that space and some do not have data to support them. >> this is a column from february. it says that obama gets his groove back.

you were making that point a year ago. how does that compare today? >> a lot of the changes and vigor come in spurts and then disappears. it is interesting because you do not know why that is. you do not know who you are getting for the remarks. the person we're getting now is incredibly quiet nearleerily so. there is quite a bit happening. you rarely hear from him directly. north africa and the middle east is incredibly unstable. you have the situation in japan the situation in wisconsin. it is the president that said

in 2007 that if there is an attack on collective bargaining i will put on my boots and be right there with you. he is not only not there, you barely heard from him on the subject. you do not know who you are going to get. when he is on, he is great. he can be a very galvanizing figure. i think sometimes he and his inner circle calculate for him to hold back and you get this person. >> who would be the strongest opponent for 2012? >> it is an interesting question. the energy in the midterms is coming from the tea party. it is hard to figure out at this point to 80 party candidate would be.

-- to figure out who a tea party can it would be. they would call it romney a rhino. huckabee is saying he is not running. the palins of the world are interesting personalities. in the polling, she is not doing well. i do not think people see her as a candid it as much as an interesting personality for the cause. it is interesting to figure out if mr. romney became the candidate if he would have the tea party or if a tea party candidate is elected willable. this next column is about

michelle obama. since you wrote that, she went to spain for a five-day trip to a luxury resort. when you talk about fearlessness, if she has withdrawn on what her political views are. would you write the same column today? >> i do think on the

fearlessness part that she is operating on the same calculus as the president. it is better to say little or nothing even while being attacked. it is a more graceful, stately position but the attacks on her at this point are intense. i wrote this last weekend about attacks on her childhood obesity campaign. you would think it would be a slam-dunk issue. people have revved up the attacks on the first lady. her position has been to sidestep it all. >> in the column you wrote on

march 12, you get a nice position. then you have a big chart showing the state'ss. what got your attention on this? why do you trust them? >> they are greek polling group. we have trusted them for a long time. i use them all the time. what caught my attention was being from the south and was already familiar -- i was

already familiar that the states that tend to be the most conservative also tend to have the biggest issues with obesity in general and childhood obesity and the accompanying problems that brings along. i want to point out that they have the most to gain from dealing with this issue. >> it shows on the chart the percentage of obese children in 2007. mississippi is on the bottom at 44.4% compared to a state like south the canada -- south dakota where it is only 28.4%. do you do the graphics? >> i do the graphics. that is the fun part. once i have figured out what i want to write, it is not hard to do.

the challenge for me is finding a subject that sings a sexy topic the one that people will want to read. it brings something new to the table an analysis that only i can deliver to the subject. that is the hard part. you could write three of these things a day. finding something that is great is not so easy. >> somebody comes to you for advice. you are talking to some kids. you were president of your class for eight years through high school and college. you were a good student. you had a mother that put her thumb on you the whole time and told you to do this and that. you become on higa columnist at the

"new york times." how can they get it done? >> i do not know how i got it done. i did not set out to do this. it feels like everything that has happened in my life has been part skill determination, and look. being in the right place at the right time. i do talk to kids of the time. i say to find something that you love. whatever your job is at that moment, do that job 150%. i find that people want to came out -- game out their whole

lives. maybe that works. in my life, that is not the way i have played it. i have played it by trying to be the best of is doing -- to the best at what i was doing at that moment. >> what happened to your dad? >> he still lives in louisiana only about 20 miles from my mom. they are very close. he is always at my mom's house. she still does his taxes. they are a sweet old couple bickering back and forth and getting along. they are cute. >> how long have they not been married? >> they have not been together since i was 5. i am not sure when the actual divorce was. it was not a thing. >> charles blow, columnist for the "new york times." we thank you for your time. [captions copyright national

cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> for a copy of this program called. for free transcripts or to give us your comments, and visit us on-line. the programs are also available as c-span podcasts. >> coming up, prime minister's questions with david cameron on the safety of nuclear power plants in the u.k. then and interview with possible gop presidential former pennsylvania senator. rick santorum. then a look at geraldine

ferraro's acceptance speech at the 1984 convention. tomorrow, a look ahead at what congress will be working on this week. also a discussion on u.s. involvement in libya and terrorism fears with a former cia covert operations officer. later, a look at congressional funding for the national flood insurance program with ben mckay. that is live at 7:00 a.m. here on c-span. monday, president obama is going to deliver a speech on libya from the national defense university in washington. he will give an update on the situation there including the actions the u.s. has taken with allies and partners and the transition to nato command and control. that is the president's speech on libya monday night live here

on c-span. >> as protests continued in the middle east and as nato starts to take control of operations in libya, find latest from the u.n. security council administration and reaction from world leaders. the library is searchable on your computer any time. watch what you want, when you want. >> we had to act so quickly on saturday. it was not possible to bring forth as much arab support as would have been welcomed. the clear support is there from the secretary general of the arab nations. i also had a meeting with the saudi foreign minister. i believe support in the arab world for saving lives in libya is very strong. >> now from