tv Tavis Smiley PBS May 2, 2014 12:00am-12:31am PDT
12:00 am
tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. first the conversation with sylvia long merrick -- sylvia longmire about her new tome. she's a former law first met officer and special agent peerage you spend much of her career examining border security. then we will turn to a conversation with him a award-winning actor harry hamlin. extraordinarythe roup of actors and abc's. -- abc's "mad men." . we are glad you have joined us. those conversations coming up right now.
12:01 am
12:02 am
security has written a new home titled "border insecurity, why big money, fences, and drones aren't making us safer." good to have you on the program. how important after all these ,ears of debate, still ongoing to challenge the conventional wisdom about this issue? becausevery frustrating we have poured so many billions of dollars into securing our borders. there is so much rhetoric on both sides of the political aisle. here we are almost 11 years after the creation of the department of homeland security. we still have tons and tons of illegal drugs coming across the border. we have tons of illegal immigrants coming across the border with no real way to manage that at a nonlaw enforcement level, yet we are still almost in the same place as where restarted. tavis: let me start with some of the myths that still exists. the honors.ou do talk about some of the myths that exist about border
12:03 am
insecurity. we have didn't -- we have been debating this for years now. >> some people believe that if you completely wall off the fence from san diego down to brownsville in south texas, that will magically stop everybody from coming across. that is one of the biggest myths of all. you have drug cartels coming up with the most innovative strategies every single day to get drugs either around it, over 165 border tunnels have been discovered just in the last decade. they are launching drugs over the fence using a catapult, sliding packages between the fence and shaping them so they can go through the tunnels. then you have another myth regarding illegal immigration, one of the biggest controversies we have going on right now, that terroristsers and and illegal immigrants can be
12:04 am
categorized together at the same vel of threat, and that is not the case. you have hundreds of thousands of people coming here to the u.s. every single day they do not pose a threat to national security, yet we believe that it is a one-size-fits-all strategy where we can just go after everybody in the same way and that will suddenly make the border more secure. that is not really a smart strategy. nobody wouldk argue against border security, but why does everything begin and end with offense, whether it is practical or not? i'm just trying to get a sense with where restarted with the idea that he fence was the answer. >> if you take a look at the way the fence has progressed over the years, where it started and where it is now, it does have a purpose. there are certain sectors where the fence is effective, and even the border patrol will tell you, the fence is not designed to stop anybody, it is designed to slow people down long enough for the border patrol to respond. arizona anduthern
12:05 am
that sector is locked down. there is nothing coming and going there. but what happens is that without a full fence, you have just a final effect where the fence moves both the drug smugglers and migrants to unfenced parts of the border and they continue to flow across, kind of like the flow of water. a lot of those individuals are being funneled into places that are extremely dangerous and often deadly. so the fence works in some places to keep certain communities safe because it violent druglarly smugglers array from communities, but is not stopping the flow that people are still coming across. about >> are talking three issues, big money, fences, and drones. us say drones are making safer. that scares me in part because i keep hearing politicians in washington suggest that drones are now the answer to everything. >> drones are very useful. all border technology is useful
12:06 am
as long as it is employed in a smart way. we've had drones along the border for several years, used in the caribbean for drug operations and also on the northern border. however, the government accountability office has hit customs and border protection heart in the last few years because they are not utilizing them effectively. they were allowing other agencies to use them for different missions and not really keeping track and prioritizing how they are being used. the capabilities they have our outstanding. however, it is a human this management problem, we are not being efficient and effective with how they are being used. they could be utilized a lot better. >> what are the ways in which we are most unwisely spending taxpayer dollars in this fight? >> one of the answers i have seen in the various bills being proposed to congress for securing the border is to hire
12:07 am
more border patrol agents, to send 20,000 more agents. double the border patrol agent's that are on the border, an additional $46 billion of spending on various technological platforms. if you go to any conference that deals with border security and you go into the expo hall, and i talk about that a little bit in the book. the technology is out there. the solutions are out there. the money is out there to spend on it, but we are just throwing money instead of looking at where are the biggest threats, why are we not prioritizing our threats and putting the people where they are most needed, and looking at smarter technology solutions. $1 billion we spent in just five years to put together a virtual border fence of towers and cameras and sensors, and it was ultimately scrapped because customs and border protection did not have the management in place to manage the contracts,
12:08 am
so boeing just kind of took it and ran away with it. we have the ability, we have the technology. we are not being smart and strategic about making it a smart border in where we are spending the money. tavis: we are talking about what represents an imminent threat in a less imminent threat. when you talk about spending money on threats, how are you defining the word threat? >> we have three groups of people coming across the border. members who are associates of terrorist groups coming here to raise money. and you have criminals and violent drug smugglers and gangs that support the cartels, and then you have immigrants. two out of those three represent a significant national security threat, the terrorists and the smugglers. and you have this enormous group of people that outnumbers the first two groups of people. out of the three, it is the only group that can be managed at -- as a legislative and policy issue. i don't know what the answer to
12:09 am
immigration reform is. a bookd, i could write and make a lot of money. but that's the only group that can be managed at the policy level. if you could find a way to remove the illegal immigration problems from the law enforcement level, that list -- livesay tremendous burden from our men and women who are working -- lifts a tremendous burden from those living -- working in horrible condition sometimes. the trulyuld focus on bad people who are coming here to harm us and no longer have to worry about interdicting economic migrants, that would be a much better use of our limited resources. >> why is it those three groups that the only one that seems to get the focus of our attention in any meaningful way is that third group? >> i come from an immigrant family myself and my family came here from cuba in the 1960's.
12:10 am
i have a personal connection. my family came in a different way. my family was eligible for asylum because they were coming from a communist country. now we are looking at a doubling and tripling every year of immigrants coming not trust from mexico but from central, asking for asylum. economic issued has changed so much in just the last 10 years. it's emotional big -- because we have such a large immigrant community that is here. they formed such an enormous part of our economy and national culture. there is a lot of heated emotion involved in, we belong here, we work hard and we are trying to earn our place in the united states. then you have another side of the base saying you broke the rules, you came here without permission, and that's not fair and you need to go through the regular process and get online with everybody else. just a lot of emotions surrounding it right now. ,> talk about the subtitle
12:11 am
talking about the issue just becomeabout how it has such a political football. can you imagine when the issue will not be a political football? it seems to me that it that they can ever be imagined, it will only happen if there is an alliance that can be built between the left and the right in washington to focus on those first two things. it seems to me on the first two things, there is no debate. makes you would be surprised. tavis: do we want to catch terrorists and stop drug smugglers? especially onon, the issue of the drug smugglers, there's a huge debate on whether it even poses a national security threat. if you look at the last seven state of the union addresses some of both republican and democrat presidents, not once since the violence flared up in mexico in roughly 2004-2005, and
12:12 am
when the former president came into office, from 2007 on, not one mention of mexico or the drug war in his single state of the union address. if you look at border security, it is only a direct reference to immigration reform. i look at the state of the union addresses where the president outlines the legislative and national priorities, talking about the economy, iran, and china. not a mention of our neighbor, one of our biggest allies and third-largest trading partner. no mention of the slaughter going on related to drug use and drug abuse every single day and our drug demand here. that is part of the debate, how big of a problem is it? i don't think washington is acknowledging that it is spilling over into the southwest border and how it is affecting residents disproportionally who live on the southwest border. you talk to ranchers, border sheriffs, you have people him
12:13 am
and not just immigrants but drug smugglers tearing up private property and trespassing every single day. that cost us a lot of money. tavis: you are telling me the smugglers and the terrorist and immigrants, you are not hoping that anything is going to be done in washington in the short term? >> take a look at our own natural -- national history. there's a time when the italians, the irish were viewed as second and third class citizens, and maybe that's where we are right now. maybe it will take another 5, 10, 20 years for the latino community in the united states is growing. it is a very large voice that's going to be heard, one way or another. asked the new text from sylvia longmire is called order dronesy, why fences and are not making us safer. good to have you on. coming up next, a conversation with harry hamlin.
12:14 am
we will talk to him in a moment. stay with us. tavis: harry hamlin has the distinction of being into groundbreaking in me winning tv steer -- series, l.a. law starting back in 1986, and now "mad men." not a bad track record, mr. hamlin. season,w in its final seven episodes this year and seven episodes in 2015. >> this agency is too dependent on creative personalities. people speaking about this agency, they should be speaking about our media department. we need to invest in a computer. we need to tell our clients we are thinking about the future, not creative hijinks. genius.s a he's costing us a fortune. >> you hate him.
12:15 am
>> i don't. >> this is a financial decision. >> obviously it's not. sizablew don draws a salary and has a partnership stake. that cost more than a computer. about jim. me more >> i find out more about him every time i get another script. when i was hired to do the job, i was hired for one day only. they wouldn't give me a copy of the script and they didn't tell me the guy name or what he did. [laughter] it was very unusual for me. i don't usually work that way. but i think the day they asked me to come in was a thursday. andirst i said to my wife my agent, i'm not accustomed to going in for a day and not knowing anything about the character. i think i'm going to skip this one, even though it is "mad men." my wife said no, you've got to
12:16 am
go in. what are you doing next thursday? hamm'snd get jon autograph. so i went in, and the night before they did give me some pages. guys name wase jim, but i didn't know the last name. now he has kind of grown like a fungus into a main character on the show. tavis: when you walked in i was going to tell you how much i love your glasses. bex i think they might have gotten me the job, actually. it's just one of those things that happens with age, you know, you need to wear glasses. the day i went in to read with matt weiner, i couldn't see anything, so i put my glasses on. see something in this guy for the jim cutler character. it is not the role that i originally went into read for. tavis: i have heard actors tell
12:17 am
that story before. they went in for one thing and ended up getting something else. sometimes you go in for one thing and you end up getting cast as something else. what do you make of that? >> it's a crazy business. you never know from one minute to the next what you're going to be doing. that's what i love about it. there's no predicting what can happen in this business. in this case i went into read for the swing boss, one or two days work. then i got the call that i didn't get the part. i thought, there goes "mad men." three months later i get the call to come in and play this guy. works, he isweiner a particular kind of genius going on there. he knows what he wants and he can get it. he knows instantly whether
12:18 am
something is right or wrong. tavis: you broke through something with matt that others have not. i have met him a few times through the years. is, he doesn't necessarily like to hire actors who have well-known faces. i mean, you are the sexiest man alive. [laughter] >> ancient history there. tavis: everybody knows his face. he is a creative genius, but i take it that he wants to work with people we don't necessarily recognize so readily, and yet here comes harry hamlin getting the part. >> i was shocked by that. i knew that he didn't usually use people with a profile. so i was surprised that i was called in the first time. months later the casting director told me the story about that. they told me they had actually
12:19 am
snuck me in, that somehow my name wasn't on the list when i was originally called up and they kind of got me in under false pretenses. i walk through the door and once i was in the room, there was nothing they could do about it. it kind of went around the back door. tavis: i kind of said it is a joke, but there is something serious with this notion of you having been listed as the sexiest man alive. was that an advantage or something you had to overcome years later? in retrospect, how do you process having gotten that label? >> i think anybody would be crazy to say they didn't want it, in the long run, it is what it is. you know, it happened. it is a curious thing that happened. there are a bunch of us that it happened to.
12:20 am
we don't get together to celebrate. [laughter] dinnerthere is no annual to celebrate the sexiest man alive? >> it would be kind of a fun night, actually. tavis: can you imagine the paparazzi outside that restaurant if all the sexiest men alive would meet somewhere? no, we all get typecast as one thing or another. it comes along with the territory as an actor. if you do a great job in one thing, people look at you in that way. it's hard to break out of that. we go into this business with our eyes wide open. certain things come along with it, like paparazzi. how can you complain, because you did a job well and now people want to take our picture. so i try to be as nice as i can when i am approached on the street or whatever with people.
12:21 am
when i see that happening, i go, ok, it's kind of a badge of honor. can be intrusive, sometimes. >> certainly it can't. now there are some laws emerging that are protecting kids in that respect. i don't understand people who go, leave me alone. tavis: speaking of kids, you took some time off in your career and devoted to raising your kids. i'm not going to say it is unheard of, but for a guy to do that is pretty -- >> what i said is, i'm not leaving town. it's not like i was leaving the business. ifkids were born and i said there is a job here in l a n i can get home and night and put my kids to bed, i will do it. it just so happened that at that moment the business left l.a. and went to toronto, vancouver,
12:22 am
sydney, australia. louisiana, where ever. i have a lot of opportunities to go away and do jobs during that time, but i said no, i'm going to stay at home, and that limited the field tremendously. but i have to say i have probably put my kids to bed every night 99% of the time. tavis: was there ever a fear that the opportunity to be seen by us might not come around again because you had been in hiding for so long? >> that is a fear that we live with daily. are you kidding me? we go into this with our eyes wide open. we call it being between jobs, but really it's being unemployed. tavis: in between jobs sounds much nicer, doesn't it? better than i'm unemployed. [laughter] >> that's true. but i knew that was a possibility. and when i called my agent a
12:23 am
couple of years ago, my kids were older now. they actually preferred to go to bed alone. i called my agent and said let's see what's out there. i want to put myself back in the ring. i thought i would be perfectly familyo be a dad on abc or nickelodeon or something like that. that was like i won the lottery, i did curb your enthusiasm and shameless. my son is back on shameless now. he emerged after the last moment of the last episode, we all thought he was dead. steve is alive. that means i can come back on the show. madmen.hameless, you have been good to us. it occurs to me that this medium
12:24 am
has been good to you. you have had so much success on this screen. >> i have. careers have their ups and downs , all careers do, and we know that going in. i started out in feature films. for one reason or another i did the l.a. law series. to this day it remains the best script i've ever read. the pilot script for lal -- l.a. law, hands down, is still the best thing i ever read. the reason for that is the writers were able to create a and that had a serious side a comedic side that blended perfectly together. so you spent your 42 minutes on television laughing half the time and being emotionally involved half of the time in the drama of it. i don't know anyone who has been able to accomplish that since with such precision.
12:25 am
in his last season, seven episodes this year and seven episodes in 2015. we will see harry hamlin do his thing in the final season as jim cutler. good to see you. that's our show for tonight. thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with the grammy-winning comedy duo cheech and chong. that's next time. we will see you then.
12:26 am
12:30 am
travel to california's announcermojave desertest"... where construction of the world's largest solar thermal farm is pitting renewable energy against threatened tortoises... then to ohio, to investigate the complexities surrounding the controversial practice of fracking... and in missouri, join up with college students as they compete to build state-of-the-art homes... man: one, two, three. go. announcer: ...powered entirely by the sun. "quest." america's energy future. major funding for "quest" is provided by
91 Views
Uploaded by TV Archive on