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>> next, alec baldwin on funding for the arts. then the president obama meets with participants of the wounded warrior project soldier ride. tomorrow, anita mcbride and

comille johnson and tipper gore examine the roles of the first lady and and romney play in this year's presidential election. dan brian discusses how much time and effort goes into a -- congressional investigation. live at 7:00 eastern on c-span. >> the soldiers started telling me that the united states government was wasting tens of billions of dollars on totally mismanaged development and logistics contracts. >>douglas wissing. >> i was in one meeting where

teh brigade commander , this is not long after president obama toko office and the state department was saying, we'll give you a bunch of money. win hearts and mind. the colenol said don't send me more money. i need people. on may 6, look for our q&a interview with robert caro. his biography of the 36 president. >> on monday, alec baldwin spoke at the national press club.

alec baldwin is also an animal rights activist in supporter of people for the ethical treatment of animals. he is on the board of directors for several political activists the group's including the creative coalition and people for the american way. this is about one hour. >> good afternoon and welcome to the national press club. i'm the 100 1/5 president of the national press club. we are the world's leading -- 105th president of the national press club.

for more information about the national press club, please visit our website at www.press.org. to donate to our programs offered to the public furor national press club journal institute, please visit www.press.org/instutute. i would like to welcome our speaker and those of you attending today's event. if you hear a plot from our audience, please note that members of the general public are attending. it is not necessarily a lack of journalistic objectivity. i would also like to welcome our c-span audience and our public radio audiences. half hour lunches are also featured on our member-produced podcasts. you can follow the action on twitter. after our guest speaker concludes, we will have a question and answer segment. i'll ask as many questions as time permits. it is time to introduce our had guessed. i would ask you to stand up as your name is announced. from the right, take michael's, -- kay michaels, mary, reuters, eldorado pictures, americans for the arts, alison fitzgerald, i'm going to stick our speaker

for just a moment, hardin communications, and members organize this luncheon, american for the arts, mark, nicky, bob, msnbc. [applause] our guest today is an award winning actor, producer, director, and author. if he has to run the big

screen, on television, and on broadway. alec baldwin has won two emmy awards and a number of screen actors guild awards for play the self-absorption jack donague. he has hosted saturday that live there record of 16 times and is a frequent flyer and american airlines fan. [laughter] a native of long island, he began his career in soap operas in the early 1980's before moving on to broadway. his nose -- his most notable films include "the hunt for red october," "pearl harbor," and "the aviator." he is in washington this week, working with the committee. he is also a board member of the people for the american way and a strong supporter of the animal rights group, peta. he lives in new york city, has one daughter, and was recently

engaged. he can now at national press club luncheon speaker to that list of accomplishments. mr. baldwin is a well-known political activist. perhaps that accounts for spending some of his college years right here at george washington university. he is been mentioned as a candidate for public office. this might be the right place to make that announcement. mr. baldwin. [applause] >> thank you very much and to everyone at the national press club and to all of you for having me here as your desk -- as your guest.

i am here, once again, as their guest for the arts advocacy day work that is being done on capitol hill. tonight is the lecture. and the dinner to follow. before we get to that, actually, let's talk about words with friends. i know that is precisely what you want to talk about. it is not lost on me that while i was being admonish for using my phone while we were parked at the gate, i think some dear friend of mine, some colleague of yours from fox news, went deeply and boundless the admiring, mentioned i was using my phone while we were on the runway about to take off and had to taxi back, which is not true. while i was at the plan and we're part of the day, i was using my phone and then i was asked to leave the plane. i just wanted to say that it was an amazing moment because it seemed like a scene from a really smart movie, like michael mann movie where you

expect smart writing and great acting. but not like some crazy, hyped up tv show. i was using my phone and i was asked to leave the plane. i wanted to tell you this, it was this amazing moment, because it seemed like a scene from a really smart movie, like michael mann, where you would expect smart writing and great acting. not like some crazy, hyped up tv show. [laughter] it was a crazy moment where i had registered allow complaint about this woman who i thought had singled me out and a very young asian-american woman, breathtakingly beautiful, very serene, i was sitting on the plane and she walked up to me and said -- mr. baldwin, gather your things and come with me please. it had this narcotic effect on me. she just spoke require lee, very calmly, and they threw me off the plane. [applause] -- [laughter] mr. waldman, kindly collector things and come with me, please. there were seven or other eight people sending twitter messages about it at the time this was happening. [laughter] i want to thank everyone out there who made note of the fact that so many people were on twitter at the moment i was being kicked off.

not my day. bad luck for me, that day, but that is ok. i am here as a guest of americans for the arts. i have been coming down here since 1990. the origin of this work for me was with the creative coalition that was formed by the former head of hbo, michael fukes. he wanted to bring together a bunch of entertainment industry

professionals to kind of focus their work and advocacy and public policy, comping the space, he hit them office space and a budget, a modest budget of staff from hbo. they went out and raise money. the name of the game back then was for us to learn more about how to effectively advocate our issue, be it in albany or here in washington. this that when i look at the photograph of ron silver, this is a photograph of us together in one of our earlier trips, steve collins and i, with susan sarandon, half the people in the photograph oregon. but silver was someone who was a great mentor for me. he came down on the train and spoke with me it succinctly and effectively about what i was going to say, for they were going to say, but the battery of answers would be, substantially what we want to do. issues like gun control, reproductive rights, federal funding for the arts, and so forth. they would come down here. i have come down here intermittently since then to speak to members of congress,

first to thank supporters in the house and the senate who have worked to gain federal funding for the arts, and not admonish, but not to shame, but more it is to encourage and cajole some of our opponents who still do not believe that there is a role for the federal government in funding the arts. i do not mean that in terms of individual grants. as many of you know, the neh is out of the individual grants business -- any a -- nea is out of the individual grants business.

when i started doing this work, it was the day of karen finley and mapplethorpe jumping up and down, screaming during the early clinton years. be well up getting an appropriation in 1994, when nuking rich and the crowd took over. ms. roberts helped us to term what they called the corn for porn swap. some deal was made with conservative republicans in the house to get some kind of an agricultural subsidy, which allowed them to back off in support of federal funding of the arts at a certain price. that back room deal between nea between and agriculture subsidy became known as the corn for porn swap, in the days of mapplethorpe. since then, a tremendous amount

has changed. on a variety of levels. the government is out of the individual grant present -- business. the money dropped precipitously for a while. however, the numbers are still problematic, as far as i am concerned. you have an appropriation now $147 million. when i first started coming down here, the statistics i have available online were for 1992, which was $175 million. the internet, which never ceases to amaze me, took me quickly to a website where you could take the index to adjust for inflation. i programmed in $175 million, which said they would be $238 million. if that is what it would be today and we are at $147 million, we are around $90 million less. make no mistake, we are less in actual federal subsidies for the arts in a country that has grown to 320 million people.

at least the ones that we can count, these days. at least the ones we bother counting in this country, these days. i am someone who is set on the record as saying that the parts are beyond essential. everywhere that i go, and i just got back from rome, i see that dichotomy. i see that strange dissonance between some european economies -- go to greece, of course, and the italians are very uncomfortable about their economy right now. you see what we have the they do not have. the american economy is still a very strong economy. the american economy is still a great and strong economy. when we falter is when we do not get it right in terms of balancing budgets and priorities, which is a different conversation.

when you go to italy and they have a weak economy, but they have an artistic heritage that puts us to shame. go to paris, go to london. even when you are in new york -- and this city as well, and when i give these remarks i talked about the artistic heritage of this country as embodied by this city. i can conclude by saying that nothing makes you love this country more than when you come to washington. it has nothing to do with the rhetoric of any of the people on the hill today. none of them, republican or democrats. the rhetoric of political leadership is irrelevant in terms of creating real love for this country. it only creates discussed, the stain, disappointment, and heartbreak. but if you walk around

washington, d.c., you see the great artistic heritage of our country. our country is embodied in this town and in this great, great city where i went to college for three years. it is so funny that i lived in new york and years ago i used to live in washington and i would go to new york. i took a course on politics, culture. the great line of kennedy, a southern efficiency and northern hospitality. [laughter] and i remember that i lived in the old washington, d.c.. when they were burning the shah of iran in effigy in lafayette park. now if you lit a match there, you would get shot. the shut down pennsylvania

avenue. i remember that it was thought to be in union station. i remember going to school here and i did not have the money to fly. they used to have a train the give-and-take, the last one out of union station was a local at 9:30. it stopped in delaware, new jersey -- you would swear to job -- swear to god it stopped in st. louis, it was so long. it was the slowest train you have ever been done in your lifetime. [laughter] it was like $36 roundtrip. you would leave union station. sometimes i would get a ride there. if i missed the train, i was dead. he would sit in union station and go on from there to new york, sophisticated, glamorous, wealthy, cosmic -- cosmopolitan new york and go to that godforsaken sinkhole, penn station. [laughter]

you go from one of the great train stations in this country to probably the worst train station in this country. the worst. it was erected on the grounds of what had once been a great train station, as many people here know. the old mckinn, meade, and white structure, torn down, a controversy around the world. from all corners of the world, which gives birth to the historical preservation law in new york. but in new york there is a lot of great architecture. not let washington -- not like washington. much of the art in new york is done in public spaces behind a door that you have to pay a fee to access. great art in london, spain, all over europe, singular to me. it is hard to leave rome, the

city itself is a work of art. being inside the work of art that is the expense of an entire city. in this country -- when you are over there you -- i only have to live words for you today, but they have the art thing down. they spend a lot of money over there and they get a lot of tourists. because they have preserved that heritage and they have made our account. they have raised their children to believe that our counts. when you come over here we have what they do not have. the potential. typically, we have a great humming, hissing, steaming 12 cylinder economy and we do not get the art thing right all the time. i think we send the wrong signal. that art is not important enough for government to spend money on. i would spend $1 billion each on the nea and neh. i would spend a lot of money on government -- government money on art and so forth.

my host here this year said that he would settle for $1 per u.s. citizen. just ask them to rack their brains around one but -- $1. it would still be more than double the appropriation now. i could go on and on. i want to finish by saying that we have heroes, friends, comrades, whenever you want to call them, here in the house and senate. i and our seemingly never- ending journey in keeping america focused on the arts and arts education, i would like to take a moment to thank louise slaughter, from new york and the rochester buffalo area. and congressman norman dix. both of them are stalwarts on the democratic side of the house. on the republican side, equally as stalwart, i was here when kevin spacey was the speaker and i came to testify with him

before the congress. the testimony was canceled and we did not wind of doing it, but representative richard hannah, who has been a good friend to the arts and our movement, a republican from the utica area of new york. representative chris gibson, also from central new york, the saratoga springs area. those are two, we would call, freshman moderates. yes, hannah from utica, gibson from saratoga springs. those are two moderate freshmen who are with us. the stalwarts that we have in the house are mike simpson, who i met with last year, probably the boise area of idaho, and rep shock, from peoria, ill..

they have both been longtime friends of ours. people who are not, as we say in new york, meshpuken, in the group here, the republican study group, which i think you had mentioned to me -- who was the founder? philip crane, the former member, who wanted all federal funding taken out. congressman paul byrd, from michigan, hoping somehow -- hopefully i will be able to get a game of words going with tim wallboard. we will try to get him on our side. on the senate side, we have

senator tom udall, from new mexico, who has always been good with us on this issue. a first term senator who has been spearheading efforts to get other senators to support funding increases for the nea. tom harkin was chairman of the health committee on labour and pension. he has been placing a spotlight on the decline in arts education programs in gate -- grades k-12. republicans who are our heroes and friends, tom cochran, whom i met with last year, he has been great with us in the arts, as well as susan collins, from

maine. tom coburn is the one we run going to mention today as being not as wonderful as we would like to be on the issue of the arts. and i wanted to mention that we have a couple of -- is this the one right here? we have a list -- it is all oklahoma. in the state of oklahoma, in march of 2001 the oklahoma visual arts coalition received a grant of $15,000. that was in march of 2001. may of 2001 in oklahoma city, all five of these grantees are in oklahoma city, but the way.

2011. the oklahoma visual arts coalition was march of 2011. in may was a different theater in oklahoma. the oklahoma council of the arts, which is more of an umbrella organization in the community, gave $773,000 for the national endowment for the arts in oklahoma. july 2011, the oklahoma visual arts again got $25,000. the oklahoma historical society in july got $20,000. i wanted to mention that we always find it -- not enjoyable, but necessary to point out to these folks that these are participants in their own districts, or statewide, in the senate, the nba is bringing some wonderful, wonderful arts related programming and events. shows, what have you, and educational opportunities, what have you, under the umbrella of the national endowment for the arts. i wanted to go on by saying that i, in my own life, my path with art, sometimes people think that when you do what i do for

a living, that you live in the art lounge. that you are behind a velvet rope with art people. that is not necessarily true. i work in a business where the longer i am in the business the purely artistic aspects of my business and treat me much more than the glamour and what is very often the purview of the stars and actors. design, directing, cinematography, editing, musical composition -- everything that comes into play in great filmmaking is far more interesting to me now, drawing more attention now. but the artistic experience of my life comes to me the same way that it comes to you. i go out my door and i try to identify some experience, artistically, that is attractive to me, then i have to go buy a ticket for a.

i can afford to buy a ticket for it. i can go see what ever want, whenever i want. i have been very blessed by that. but a lot of people cannot. i have been working with my foundation that i set up a few years ago to funnel some tributaries of my own income to the arts and funding. right now i made this agreement with capital one bank. i have this agreement with them. becoming a spokesperson with a bank at the time of a banking collapse. [laughter] the agenda since moment of the occupy wall street moment was not -- the genesis moment of the occupy wall street moment was not a goal i had in mind with my career. i assure you. [laughter] we were talking about on-camera promotional opportunities and i decided to avail myself for two

reasons. one, i was on a television show every week. i figured now was the time. when i am off tv, i will be off tv for a while. once it went into syndication it became clear that audiences are probably sick of me now, so they cannot get any sicker of me -- i might be wrong about that, by the way. so, figured i would do this campaign for them. i follow all of those proceeds towards and arts foundation. we earned a specific amount of money from them over 18 months. we are doing another round with them now. [applause] i only mention that because it must have been the smartest move in my life. they have been great partners for me. they have helped me to shape content and they have been wonderful, wonderful partners for me to have helped me to publicize the money being given to arts related organizations. i say this because what i have

discovered as i have gotten older, because i am older now, having just turned 54, there are things that i did that satisfied me and came more into focus. a few other things that i could have done that i would have been very happy doing that are not at all what i am doing now. i have a great opportunity to be the on-air announcers for the new york philharmonic and i have been doing that for the last three seasons with them. when you all -- when you are with them, you are in the dark lounge. alan gilbert, and a bunch of people who -- [unintelligible] at the philadelphia symphony, they are calling him charlie. you are in there with a pretty heavy crowd.

when i am around these people in the art world, the classically trained music group of opera and so forth, it has been so thrilling for me. you just do not know how amazing it has been for me. i will close with this. arts administration. retiring as the executive director, his wife carmen and i have become dear friends. daniel is taking over for him. he came up from australia. i realize that to raise the money for the staff of the philharmonic, when that group of men and women perform that music and that building with off the ground for that hour and a half, that two hours, you feel that life is really worth living when those people are playing this beautiful music. tens of thousands, hundreds of

thousands of hours are put into mastering those instruments and studying the classical repertoire and they give you this beautiful art form. there are a lot of people on the other side of the building that make that happen. raise that money, sell those tickets, coordinate those schedules. arts administration, i would like to see more programs in arts administration. what is it, 1% of everyone who picks up a violin gets into a esteemed orchestra. the other 99% teach or play something that is not for the boston or the cleveland, the big five, if you will, in san francisco, utah, or dallas. they do not get there. for many people, just as i have realized that there are ancillary jobs and other parts of my own field i might have worked in and been just as happy, i realize that that is true in the classical music world as well, as one example. there are other things i could

have done. there are times when i would think would trade places with them for a year any day. knowing what he knows, doing what he does, existing how he exists with these great artists is very thrilling. i think that that dream much encapsulates my mission today. my mission is to try to remind people that art is many, many things. we all have our own opinions of what we define as art. the one i would hope that we could all agree on, or maybe one day we could convince each other to agree on is that art is essential for us to continue to be a great country. we have to make art essential by and our own lives and the

lives of our children. thank you. [applause] >> is there one area of the arts that is most affected by lack of funding? >> i would like to say half- hour comedy on nbc on thursday. [laughter] that is a very threatened, so they tell me. i would say -- that is a tough question for me to answer, because i have never done or even read about a survey of what the x-ray of the art world is or what the cat scans of the art world will tell us right now, but i think they are all suffering equally. i have friends of mine who --

monica works with my company, people that work with me in my life, what i do, they see the same thing. whenever i leave the job and do these exit interviews, they ask what the job was like and they say that working for you is more like working for a congressman that an actor. there is so little glamour is more like raising money for people. the request for me to raise money for people in the arts and their organizations is equal across the board. if it is not this museum or this gallery, it is this poetry reading or something across the board. i think that of all of them, the not-for-profit theater, the public, the roundabout, new york, all these great institutions are struggling very hard. when times are strong, what do they want to do? they want the money for their

reserve. they want to get another $50 million in debt reserve, because they will dip into it on a rainy day. i will cross a line here to include literature in terms of art. my friends who are complaining the loudest, who have seen the most despondent, the most genuinely despondent are people in the world of publishing. books are just all going online and the whole book world seems to be kind of melting down. >> do you think that lawmakers would be more generous if the money were designated for a vacation and not organizations or projects? >> i do not know. they got rid of the individual grants, which i think was a mistake. to me that spoke to freedom of expression. they set up a mechanism for a

while where if you were given a grant and it was proven to be obscene, you were taken to court in your local jurisdiction and obscenity laws were jet -- violated, you have to pay the money back. i thought that that struck me as odd. i mean, i do not want the government to fund obscene art, but the number of things proven to be obscene that were found n by the, nea, i cannot think of any. where it was applied was a minuscule amount. this idea that the government wants to fund certain aspects of the government with a type of work, but preemptively hamstring that in some way where they say to the artist we will give you some money to do a project, but make sure that when you do it, that you give us a general idea and if it is obscene, you have to give us the money back and pay us back the money. i thought, would be do that in all aspects of government? with these opponents go to the

justice department? if you do not get a content -- a conviction, we will get your salary back. we could get insane with this kind of preemptive safeguarding. these are freedom of expression issues. i do not like the word, a culture war, because it is a hot-button word, but we have allowed people to really cave on the issue of freedom of expression in the arts. we have allowed people to get so intimidated about what it means and what it can lead to that a lot of people have backed off defending that concept. >> how do you defend the need for funding the arts alongside the need for funding jobs and local education? >> i am so brad -- so glad you brought that up. as most people who are advocates no, arts spending is a stimulus for economic

development in the areas where that money flows. where you are in a place this well-heeled, like manhattan, with rich people giving millions and millions of dollars to the lincoln center's of the world, the metropolitan museums of art and so forth, all kinds of parts performing arts and visual arts institutions, that private giving is enormous and incalculable. but those institutions get federal money as well. they qualify for federal money because tourists are coming to those city -- cities and spending a lot of moaning on parking and hotels. arts spending stimulates economic activity. i went down at the request of the dallas performing arts center.

they asked me to come down hit there and do one of these conversations with programs. i was down there and they were telling me how -- if i understood the woman correctly, she said to me that they had feared -- i do not mean to be cute about this, but american had -- american airlines, headquarters in chicago, the people in dallas believe that one of the reasons that lost out on the consideration of having a major corporate hub there like that was because they did not have a concentrated arts center. a distinctive, monolithic arts center, like you have in lincoln center. they're doing something about that now. where the opera house school is, where they named their famous graduates, they told me they were going to close down some enormous section of in a

lane freeway and rip it up and build a garden and unify this structure into their own lincoln center. billions of dollars being spent over the next couple of decades. certainly, they have the money down there, i would imagine. it was interesting to me how the arts as business, where federal funding for the arts goes is an improvement. and incontrovertible trigger for economic activity in the area where the funds are sent. >> how has twitter change>> howr life as a celebrity? this personal fan interaction have real value? >> let me answer the question on twitter, if i may. [laughter] i have a note -- an interview with the woman -- is she here? from "newsweek"? there she is. what is your name, again?

[inaudible] >> sandra, my spoke with, and i think there was rough with her today. i told her the good thing about twitter was that it enabled me to bypass people like you. [laughter] what could be better than that? i can speak to my fans directly and instantaneously. granted, the primary issue is that i am not a good writer, but twitter for me is a work in progress. i do like that it allows you to communicate on a limited number of fields with your friends. using it for promotion, to create a hub for your colleagues and fellows in a certain area. kicking and elbow into opponents, politically, what have you. it is childish and i am guilty of that as well. but i do enjoy getting to be able to speak to people directly and bypass all of you in this room. [laughter]

>> you said if every entertainment show went off the air tomorrow, what difference would it make? media in the u.s. is dull. what would you like to see on television? >> i think we will start seeing is pure pay-per-view packaging a television. a lot of people in the world are saying i am paying for a cable package that i do not want. you are making me pay $69, $125 per month to have a triple package bundle of my internet, phone, and cable, and i mean i suppose if you have that more economic resources to do not read the bill as carefully as you might, but more and more those people are saying -- what

am i paying for? 500 channels and there's nothing on. it is not that there's nothing on, but it is what you want. we are getting much closer now to the age of ala carte television. that will really come a profoundly changed television. >> you were upset with "today," for camping and outside your door. would you really have given them an interview if they had called? >> i remember watching morning programming before i became purely a radio person in the morning. i would watch shows in the morning, like "good morning america," "the today show," i

would watch the shows and i remembered for the end of her tenure, it was a special halloween episode, katie couric came down dressed in a kind of marilyn monroe get up. a kind of revealing dress, blond wig. she and the staff, they did a musical rendition of diamonds are a girl's best friend. katie couric came down a staircase with jules verne. she was lip-synching that diamonds are a girl's best friend. that was the day i turned it off and never watched it again. [applause] i just did not need to see people doing lip-synching to diamonds are a girl's best friend at 7:30 in the morning. [applause] those shows to struggle in

having to battle with each other for audience. from my standpoint, and i do not want to belabor this, but that obsession and interest of people in the personal lives of my business is strange. it is odd, some people. benchmarks in their life. when i realized was what has happened is many years ago, and forgive me if i have already said this, but we met recently, and you had people trying to get scoops on the stars. they wanted to know who was pregnant, who is sick, dying, a closet homosexual.

studios had an obligation and a vested interest in managing the flow of that information until one day they said -- why are we killing ourselves and a level cynicism that the studio heads had. we said let's go the of the way completely and way -- it is a very new world that we live in. i signed a contract with a major studio and had to go to work. on that contract there is a writer that is very lengthy.

all the press we are obligated to do. it is a contractual and it is a mockery. and i think the term, for me, and expected more from the today show. >> you not think that something aurora villa action on their -- will require legal action on their behalf was newsworthy? >> the woman who was stalking

the is one to go to court in may. i spoke to the district attorney and ask them to not talk about doing in and i have been fortunate enough that i will say that i have a tsunami of fooemails and channels who s a friend of a friend of mine. someone from my met in the two years since them in >> is frightened. i have material on have to into

the -- what i have done. it takes hair raising trends. >> are you leaving "30 rock?" >> i know, in the sense of the show, we all signed for it for six years. i signed an extension and we got all these prizes and awards. we all had the feeling we were on something to season one and two, three, and four were great. the ratings have never been great. but online ratings have very high for us. r and hulu. we are the beneficiaries of that technology. in season five really did not feel great. it felt pretty crappy.

like we had run out of gas. when it came to the seventh season, because of syndication, it felt like and i said no. i was like -- i want the media -- meteor or to hit this building right now and put us out of our misery, because i cannot do this another day. our writers are the greatest sitcom writers on television. lot of it is more acute than funny. there is a network who they're monolithic lineup is one sex joke after another. which works. it is popular. they are printing money over there.

everybody loved the writing and everybody agreedand we all agree that they would do it for a couple more years. i would have done it next year and the year after that, but the truth is that nbc is in a stricken and needs to start over and. they have their pride. the roberts family, like anybody else, they are competitive. and they do not want nbc to stay in this predicament. i mentioned this to someone else. working for nbc and he did not interact with her on the full. -- tina that well. loren , the ball rolling for me.

that got that going. the silver lining was to work for nbc, which had think is the greatest of the three networks in the long term there are olympics coverage of their parishes and an end in this tough place now, like everyone that works there, we would like to see them get out of the predicament they are in. unfortunately, to do so it means they will probably have to cancel most of the current shows. >> do you feel -- still hot -- do you still fly american airlines? >> no. [laughter] next question.

[laughter] >> i will look for the tweet on the one. you all were a student at george washington university and ran for student association president. what did you learn in that situation? >> draw neatly. >> graphic design and chief electoral politics. and i was on the hill for jerry, a congressman back then from the third congressional district. i did not see him very much because we worked, and with eight hours per week, while hours per week, most of these in terms of a worked with were all mythical alcoholics in training.

every day they would have these parties that were in all the house and head senate ellis buildings what are you all going to do after work? we have sorted all the files and everything. what are you going to do out there where it? a -- what are you going to do after work? shampoo. >> and vanessa -- the national worked with understood the dynamic between food and and say hello to the q-tip people for me. [laughter] we did a bit of that. i also had someone say to me -- do you want to work on a project over than opening constituent mail?

this was 1977, 78. he said he had a project for me -- no greater love, the organization honoring returning vietnam veterans. thank you. they said we are going to put you in charge. we need to select the best of vietnam veteran. you are going to whopper, pastors and priests and community leaders and ask them for submissions. i come in and say i have my report for you. the guy says, come on over and the guy says, come on over and have a meeting