this is, i think, the best narrative of this period, but it's a narrative which is unlike zen, alive to contradiction, alive to irony, alive to tragedy of a sort of classic kind. but obviously his book will not be assigned in many high schools unlike zen's. >> jackson, in the same piece of yours that i quoted earlier, you also say the public sphere is a mess. i'm wondering -- >> i saw that. >> to the degree that you still believe that, i'm wondering whether you think that either journalism or history, the profession of journalism and profession of historians can contribute to changing that. >> oh, shabsolutely. i mean, that's what gets me out of bed every morning. that this naive but persistent idea that if we do get it right, and by we i mean journalists and historians alike, then we can somehow contribute to a more vital public sphere, one where points of view are actively and intelligently debated and not merely dismissed or excluded because they don't fall into the current conventional wisdom. i'm not sure what the context of that sentence was. i'm sure that it had to do in part

it gives them a narrative. all the time that there were a lot of people in our profession who were dumping on the master narrative. i was never one of those people. not that we should have one narrative. unless we have a coherent narrative and it is all complexity and if it is all exceptions to this and exceptions to that, then people will be bored by it. only scholars will want to read about it. i was so happy when, you know, jackson wrote his wonderful book. "rebirth of a nation." this is, i think, the best narrative of the period. it is unlike zen, alive. tragedy of the classic kind. obviously, his book will not be assigned in many high schools. >> jackson, in the same piece of yours that i quoted earlier, you also say the public sphere is a mess. to the degree you still believe that, i wonder if you think journalism or history, the professional of journalism can contribute to changing that? >> absolutely. i mean that's what gets me out of bed every morning, i think. that this naive, but persistent idea that

and yet what we see is that we tend to create in the narrative of american history we tend to put people in certain groups or categories. and we generalize those categories. we can say that within any group of people there are exceptions to those rules. >> yes. >> and in the process of trying to make it a narrative flow that goes from point a to the end, we talk about the generalizations rather than the exceptions.

. >> i think president obama is framing a narrative. i don't think this election is going to be won on a record, i think it's going to be won on a narrative. they're framed, not based on facts, they're based on perception and feeling. if you're talking about the distance between the fact and a record, about an improving economy, versus the feeling of a populace that does not reflect the fact. you're not talking about the reality of the record, i think you're talking about the perception and the narrative. >> i think ultimately the engine of self-governance, democratic representation should link at some level. and the fact to me it seems the place where we get anchored to the bedrock of economic reality is the economy improving that's what all the political science models say about predepicting. >> but two challenges, one is that the 2008 campaign will become a fresh narrative as we work into this re-election campaign and that was about the possibility of what america can become under this particular president. and so even with shoring u

simply the narrative is not correct. from a physical point of view, if you take away the screens, the design is gone. i think that answers the question. >> thank you, mrs. eisenhower. >> let me ask you, let me start. we'll try to go through as many of these as we have time for. does the department have an estimated annual cost to main taint mmain -- maintain the memorial? >> no we do not. we have expect further information on testing they will do on the mesh panels. >> when do you assume you will have a ballpark figure for us? >> i don't know, sir. i cap get back to you. >> a lot of has been said about the processes here, i think the design process is going traditionally, certainly the selection process was different as you had in your word, the stream mrin pline process that with the short list of firms before you opened it up. can you tell me why you asked for portfolio from the firms and not actual designs as is normally done? >> the selection process is a qualifications based selection process, based on the brooks ac

and i keep -- and so i'm running these two narratives, the narrative arc of these two scientists trying to build something and the narrative arc of poisons as we try to understand them. and as a writer you're doing this complicated thing, i'm telling the story of arsenic, i'm telling the story of alexander getler who was the chemist, i'm telling the story of charles norris who was the crusading first medical examiner in new york city. when do i bring them together? you know, when does one illuminate the other? and how do i do this so that when i'm telling you how arsenic killed someone, the story doesn't just stop? it has to keep moving forward in their story. and that's a wonderful challenge for a writer. and when i finished the book and i thought, oh, my god, i head this work, right? you have this moment where right to the end of the book you're thinking, can i pull this off? can i weave all these strands together into this story and keep it moving forward? it's the most amazing feeling when you -- not that you then don't have to rewrite it multiple times, but that first realization t

taking a vast amount of material and telescoping it into a narrative which told the truth but which was moved fast, which an ordinary reader, not a specialist, this book is not a hardware book, it's not a specialist, it's written for the general public, which the ordinary reader would want to read and i found that -- for instance, the amount of reading i had to do was enormous on the cold war, on figures like stalin, who was he. and then you pick out the nugget of -- it's like panning for gold. you pan an awful lot of gravel just to get a fleck of gold. and the same thing is true, i wrote, for instance, a profile of general lamay who was the great opponent of this program. and the profile was much too long. spent a long time researching it. a long time writing it and then my editor and i agreed it was far too long. i had to tell the story -- it was about 35 or 40 pages, so i had to tell the same thing in nine pages, but you don't just cut. telescoping isn't cutting. you have to say the same thing in nine pages that you said before in 36 pages, and all of this took enormous amounts of ti

a meta narrative. and for my first book, a big part of the story they told was about what to make of this far right movement that was emerging in the early '60s. people like the john birch society and barry goldwater. i wanted on get more into that later. and the second book which i'm writing about the '65 to '72 period, it's what to make of these crazy hippies an anti-war activists. took on a very fascinating voice, one that was quite sympathetic actually. and "time" magazine took on its role in a confusing time of great cultural change as basically domesticating these strange things and how they came out of american vernacular. for example the idea that woodstock -- "time" magazine, "life" magazine loved woodstock. they considered it an excellent development. probably was a lot better than people burning down campuses. but they quoted someone saying the use of lsd is almost like a religious sacrament. so it kind of bundled it with america's religious traditions. and lo and behold, very soon campaigne

so often these people are out of a larger american narrative. we did a week-long specialty on pbs about this poverty. we want to start on a reservation. we were asking many of the women on the reservation, i recall asking them what about the great recession? what impact has the great recession had? they said, what recession? it is always this way, it is worse. he lived with this every day, so the great recession no impact on native americans because conditions were always that bad. i wanted to ask more about your story because he seemed to be the exception to the rule. he went to princeton, you are taught by cornell, by toni morrison. laureate. lnobel >> there is a range of experiences, very few of which we recognized as authentic. there is a range of tribal identities, too. in line, it takes the cake. my father was an austrian jewish holocaust refugee and my mother from in a reservation. my brother was very ambitious and the thing he and i had watched a risky business and decided we would go to princeton. and we did. i met and got to work with

and that is an empowering narrative of opportunity. that is perhaps more than anything else the key to american exceptionalism. and it is perhaps the key that is most under assault today here at home. and it may explain in part why we lack the confidence and the optimism and the strength to continue to advocate for free markets and free peoples abroad. without that advocacy, without that leadership, without the willingness to sacrifice and imprint one of two things will happen in this international system that is rapidly shifting after these great shocks. either there will be chaos, but of course chaos won't last. because history abhordes a vacuum. it is more likely that vacuum would then be filled by some who do not believe 18 balance of power that favors freedom. and at that time we would find ourselves in the worst of circumstances where we cannot protect our values and cannot protect our interests either. i'm optimistic, though. i believe that we will lead because i've seen the united states do it so many times before. at the end o

to narrative based on what facts of the day have been coming out i think it's an unfair treatment toy of trayvon, and we want justice for him, but also unfair to george zimmerman. >> up next, remembering the one and only mike wallace. z. >> lonely? >> yes, it's lonely. >> an old school journalist with a tough reputation. the legacy of newsman mike wallace next on "news watch." [ tom ] we invented the turbine business right here in schenectady. without the stuff that we make here, you wouldn't be able to walk in your house and flip on your lights. [ brad ] at ge we build turbines that pothe world. they go into power plants which take some form of energy, harness it, and turn it into more efficient electricity. [ ron ] when i was a kid i wanted to work with my hands, that was my thing. i really enjoy building turbines. it's nice to know that what you're building is gonna do something for the world. when people think of ge, they typically don't think about beer. a lot of people may not realize that the power needed to keep their budweiser cold and even to make their beer comes from turb

this is a driven narrative.ijacked a tragedy from us. >> sean: here is an important question. if the eyewitness was right, jacques, if he was right and trayvon in fact was on top of him and pounding his head and lacerations and the broken nose are consistent with what the eyewitness from the first night said, is there a possibility this is a legitimate self-defense claim? if that is true, what the eyewitness said? >> if that is true, there is a possibility. but the reason we are having this discussion is because it's not in court. and that is the issue that you are not addressing, or is not being addressed. that there is cume lative injustice and this feels to many this is the same old story. >> sean: but the interesting point that rich laurie made in a piece he put on nro. 4,000 african-american american kids up to the age of 24 a year are dying in the streets of america. 4,000 of them. and we don't see the activism, the accusation. >> we also don't see the press. we have don't see the same -- >> sean: but you

i want to do something with a narrative. and i started researching, this is about 1994 now. i was over at the air force association in arlington right near washington. and i was in their library, and they keep files on prominent air force figures. and someone said to me you ought to look up bernard shrever, so i asked about the file on bernard shrever and she handed it to me and i opened it up, and right there in the beginning of the file was a photograph of this general leaning up against a table with all of these missiles around him. it's in the book. that photograph. and i said, this guy looks interesting. so, when i got home, i asked some questions about him. he was well known -- famous within the air force but not outside, when i got home i looked him up in the phone book. he turned out to be living in retirement eight blocks from my house, so i called him and arranged to come over and talk to him and it began the first of 52 interviews with him. and then i realized that this man had stood at a pivotal point in the cold war. we look at the cold war as one long glacial p

there is a narrative that involves this technology. people started reading blogs. i think it's a self-serving narrative on the part of media barons because this happened before there was an internet. and what happened was newspapers were bought by companies that didn't specialize in media at all. and they had to show double digit profits every quarter. and how that played itself out was newspapers started dumbing themselves down and they started eating their seed corn. they started abrogating the very qualities that made them valuable to their constituencies, which was giving you something meaty to read and hold on to. the sun times, not to insult them, it's typical, it's barely a newspaper. it's a little scrap of a thing. and what's striking to bring it back to luce is that he provided a different model, a different business model. that he had a confidence that quality would out, that if he used the best paper, the best journalism, didn't cut corners and didn't write down to his readers, especially in the case of someone like fortune, which are collectors' items b

it's certainly a battle of narratives and who has a battle we 4r play into. america's ability to change and influence the world whether it's worth it to do it. but i think it feels to me a lot like the end of vietnam. these countries don't deserve our help. they're fighting against us as well as with us. our ideas and values aren't something they share. it's been too expensive and too hard to try to create positive change. while i'm actually sympathetic to a lot of the emotion behind that, because it is really hard, and failing and winning these kinds of war is confusing and contradictory and it's hard to tell when you're making progress. and very often you only know far in retrospect when the victors in the country you're trying to affect tell their story. if we allow ourselves to begin to believe those thing, that leads us to vice president biden's counterterrorism strategy. you just kill bad guys wherever you can find bad guy and don't try to send girl school, solve childhood nutrition, improve the quality of governance. in my reason, one of the reasons un

they do in fact have a -- have a -- have the ability to drive a narrative beyond the campaign's ability to really -- to do much about it. and in that respect i give romney a lot of credit, in that he was more effectively able to spin the media effectively to drive his narrative we were. you know, that's -- that was just the relate of the situation. >> well, romney has one more campaign under his belt. fair criticism or sour grapes? >> no. sour grapes. it sounded that way. by the way, it was also inarticulate. there was a fantastic column, snarky column, saying even the flag behind him when he spoke at gettysburg to announce the inevitable, was not ironed, because someone hasn't gotten around to ironing the flag. >> wow. we'll be back with more in just a moment. how are the news media reacting to the president's push for the buffet rule? >> one survey found that 2/3 of millionaires support this deal. >> just days away from tax day. president obama pushes his buffet rule to force the rich to pay more, but critics claim his plan is pure politics, and the press too baffled to dig for real d

>> well, in the narrative. >> in the narrative to the police officer? said go with that, that's exactly correct. >> you say you spoke to george zimmerman monday. how did he sound to you? as you know yesterday the people who were his attorneys came forward and thought he was maybe suffering from ptsd, they were concerned about his mental state. joe oliver, a friend of his, also has said that he's concerned he's suffering from ptsd. how did he seem to you? >> anderson, he sounded very lucid. he was clear and concise in the delivery of the talking points that he wanted me to share with the media and the public. >> do you know the new attorney? >> yes, mark o'mara. >> do you have an opinion about him? >> he's a preeminent lawyer in the central florida area and has an impeccable record. i just want to share that our team on this side, anderson, this is going to be -- you know, this is a new game, okay. they teed it up, they kicked the ball to us. okay. we took the ball and with mark as our quarterback on this team, on our team, we're going to take that ball

this is what the narrative was.ed him if i can go and, you know, restate that, he said stay with that. that's good. >> you had been -- >> also he -- excuse me, he also said that he was -- he shared with the officer that he was the one that was screaming for help. >> george zimmerman told you that it was he screaming for help? >> well, in the narrative. >> to the narrative to the police officer. >> he said go with that, that's exactly correct. >> you say you spoke to george zimmerman monday. how did he sound to you? as you know yesterday the people who were his attorneys came forward and thought he was maybe suffering from ptsd, they were concerned about his mental state. joe oliver, a friend of his, also has said that he's concerned he's suffering from ptsd. how did he seem to you? >> anderson, he seemed very lucid. he was clear and concise in the delivery of the talking points that he wanted me to share with the media and the public. >> do you know the new attorney? >> yes, mark o'mara. >> do you have an opinion ab

media pushes the narrative, narrative for the primary. narrative means just a storyline.ght. that is interesting. it won't say "narrative" anymore. we have a fun show tomorrow. we have five pictures of us five when we were five, tomorrow at 5:00. there is a great point about it. hope to see you tomorrow. >> bret: a one-time incident or the tip of the iceberg? new questions tonight in washington. this is "special report." ♪

media pushes the narrative, narrative for the primary. narrative means just a storyline.od, right. that is interesting. it won't say "narrative" anymore. we have a fun show tomorrow. we have five pictures of us five when we were five, tomorrow at 5:00. >>> welcome to "red eye." i'm greg gutfeld, host of the new pbs show. it is where i restore aging house boys in mint conditi

called exactly the same thing i think i agree entirely with peter's narrative i think it was something that went to roy and it happened in terms of going back to your previous question about the merits of security versus democracy and so on. the coup this year nobody ari. has been remarkably unsuccessful at securing clearing the territorial integrity of mali which is what they went for which is which was the original reason for their justification for that and you can you can see that because they can negotiate with the m.l.a. now the minute they have sought negotiation in the past as a way in which you can see war in the north and are licensed in north as part of been part of a long time which has been taking place sort of fifty years between. governments for accept this. so it is an accidental situation but. they failed in getting any security they can't negotiate and they won't be negotiated with and they can't be a negotiation in till there is a legitimate government that is able to actually get to the negotiating table and make some forms of concessions peter if you look at the re

and possibly got it more arms but i don't think that this is the direct consequence i think that narrative is that how from ok peter what do you think about that in washington it's an epiphenomenon i think not a direct result. certainly the the the the tensions in the north the grievances legitimate or not one can debate of the torah those are going problems but certainly there was a new amp it's a sport with outflow fires that's why the m.l.o. u.s. military commander. is was a for a colonel in the libyan army maybe he would have been sent anyway but the fact is he had the fighters that form the the tip of the spear here in the simulator and it's a military go ahead james jump and he did that he defected from the libyan military . hunger what he was doing in having been cased out by. government allied militia from from mali in two thousand and i was trying to encourage. members of the gadhafi military to come back to join them in a way and to bring with them. because which they. which they did and it's interesting to see that it was long before they actually fell ok after the benghazi upri

going to have a large undesirable effect and we've got one in mali is that a fair reading a fair narrative. well i think there's a great deal of truth in it the fact is for all his faults colonel gadhafi was more or less in his box in recent years and he kept by himself all sorts of undesirable actors once that regime collapsed some of these actors including some of the toerags who are now causing the problems in northern mali returned home bringing with them weapons and fighters and that has spread throughout the same hell region and we're going to be dealing with these outflows from libya in the next year or two several years cross the sub region ok if i can stay with you could this have been predicted should have been predicted i think you wrote about it before this happened i wrote about it over a year ago saying that these are second third order consequences that are inevitably going to flow so if you're going to intervene in libya you'd better have a contingency plan to deal with this for sure that was drowned out in the period of the conflict but even after the conflict the governme

this is where we try to reset the and narrative -- reset the narrative, the idea that america is. . it is not broke. our priorities are broken. there is a misplaced obsession with debt and deficits as the national emergency of our time. that has driven the story line inside the beltway. we did a story on how the austerity cost rules washington. it is a portrait of think tanks, philanthropists and others who have framed in a way so it is hard to tell an alternative story. that has shifted a little because of new voices and forces emerging from the 99% or what ever you want to call it. >> you had better have twitter and facebook involved in the project. >> we do, absolutely. we have all kinds of new media. i agree you need to use all of that. it has been a very powerful force. we use all of that at "the nation. " we have a correspondent right about this in a politically. at occupy wall street in new york a few miles from our office, one thing that struck our correspondent was how many young people came to the square and were caught up in conversations, talking to people and the genera

what is so amazing about this narrative and this story is that not only does my family who not know where the plantation is in escambia county, we now own that and there are members of my family currently living on it as free people who have property rights to a, codify and protected by the triet now how many countries in the world is it possible to have a group of people who were once leaves on a piece of property a few generations later own the property they were living on so this makes this place absolutely amazing. yes of course we notice that progress in the country by having a black family in the oval office. there are not many countries around the world you would see the subdominant cultures rise to that level and it's a few generations after the civil rights movement. so it's amazing to me and i am delighted to think about what is it about this country and our founding principles that allows someone like myself to be a descendant of slaves in front of a group of people like having your date ph.d. in front of the heritage foundation backdrop. to me it is an amazing narrative about

the vice president biden narrative is exactly the same as the supposed counter narrative from the romneypaign. here's what the vice president said today. >> governor romney, i think, is counting on collective amnesia of the american people. americans know, americans know that we can't go back to the future. back to a foreign policy that would have america go it alone, shout to the world, you're either with us or against us. lash out first and ask the hard questions later. if they get asked at all. governor romney's national security policies in our view, would return us to a past we moved hard beyond. >> the charge from the obama-biden campaign is mitt romney has george w. bush foreign policy agenda and take us back to that foreign policy. romney has 24 announced advisors on foreign policy. 17 of the 24 are george w. bush administration foreign policy people. the obama campaign sees that as a vulnerability. their narrative today, hitting mitt romney for being advised by these george bush people. the counter from the romney campaign? >> we have dan senoh, ambassador prosper -- >> two of t

it's two completely different narratives of what happened. hoodie wasn't relevant and not the race. we know what the two narratives are, neither one is the stand your ground law is relevant. you have zimmerman, tracking down the suspicious little black, the question is, did he have to retreat? no he's one doing the stalking. he's on the ground being beaten up by trayvon martin. they're there's no way retrieving while you're on the ground. stand your ground law -- you can't retreat if you're on the ground. it's not relevant. >> the police have to look at the facts. >> stand your ground law only applies -- it's relevant if someone had an opportunity to retreat and the law said that you don't have to retreat in either narrative is retreating an option. this is simple self-defense on at least george zimmerman's. >> that has to be the last word. i'm going to take a couple of your questions when we come back, plus the remarkable story of an american hero. and what that feels like. copd includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema. spiriva helps contro

media pushes the narrative, narrative for the primary. narrative means just a storyline.