tom brokaw with tim russert is closest friends gets this very well and tim russert gets this very well but i respect on for coming the next 9 yards to talk about with the enough about me correspondents' dinner. it is next of lot of gray areas. >> we just had a 15 day government shutdown and came close to defaulting and washington doesn't work. people don't talk to each other tip o'neill and ronald reagan are not getting drinks. yacht i got a fatah. where was interconnected washington during the shutdown? were they concerned we would default? or did they know what would happen all the time? >> that is a great question. if you looked at what drove the shutdown will get ted cruz. he has taken a big great deal of oxygen with this conversation. [laughter] he has very deftly taken advantage of the world we have allowed to grow up which is someone who does not care about accomplishing anything in the senate. does not care about being on a committee or the respect of his colleagues but he seems to be caring about running for president, a five to percent of c-span viewers the, the c-span rating

filming for so long, i felt that, unfortunately, i had to throw out interviews that we did with tom brokawdukakis, and others, because i wanted the boys to reflect for themselves about their experience, so the path of what we're going to do with the film actually changed in the course of making it. >> where did you go to boys state and what was the impact? >> i went in 1993 in new jersey. the programs, at least in my experience, going, and now attending several of them for my filming,and initial the programs are different in every state and they are different depending on what is happening in the country. what we see in the beginning of "follow the leader" is really a --tilled, wartime mentality and wartime mentality almost of perpetual war, if you will, at the time in 2006, and my feeling in starting their was that ok, different types of news are permeate the american landscape, and over the next few years that these boys grow up, we will see changes in some of them, and we will have different reactions. >> what have you found that the american legion boys nation part of this -- i know th

i had to throw back interviews like i did with tom brokaw and others.anted the boys to reflect for themselves about their experience and the path oh of what we're going with film changed. >> where did you go to boise state and what was the impact on you? >> i went to boise state in 1993. i wouldn't really say that the impact was -- >> where? >> in new jersey. >> new jersey. okay. >> i think the programs in my experience going and attending the research, the programs are different in every state. they're different depending on what's happening in the country. so whate with see in the beginning of follow the leader is really a sort of distilled wartime mentality. like a wartime mentality. almost perpetual war, if you will, at the time in 2006. that the country was undergoing at the time. and my feeling in starting there was that, okay, you know different types of news are beginning to permeate the american landscape. and over the next few years with these boys come of age and grow up, we're going to see the changes in some of them and they'll have differe

i've had three chances-- floyd, then carol, and i was once in an elevator with tom brokaw, and i blewed her emily dickinson... - oh, come on! - named her emily dickinson. - lemon, a word. hang on. recent breakup, fanny pack, cat? quick. who is the lead character on ncis? - special agent jethro gibbs. - in your office, now. - what's the point, jack? i'm done.

here's my time with tom brokaw. ♪ >> carson: sunday i was flipping around there's news everywhere. nd consumes its news in general. >> what mr. brokaw thinks is that you shouldn't call me mr. brokaw. you can call me tom because then i feel like i have to cash in my social security number when you call me mr. brokaw. we spend more time deciding what kind of a flat screen television set we're going to buy then we do about where we get our news. and the information that we'll act on based on where we are getting it. some of my earliest memories are of men in uniform. my father worked on a army base. and i saw soldiers pass through on their way to war. i was four-years-old, so to me the soldiers looked grown up. i realized later most of them were not men, not yet. ♪ >> carson: 50 years of journalism. you've seen some things. how did you narrow down the things you wanted to show in "the brokaw files?" >> well, i think part of the idea here is that because we are living in a time of change at warped speed. that it's useful for society to pause for a moment, reflect of what we've been thro

>> what i tell them is that ken burns and tom brokaw told a story of the battles of the fighting war, but that no one over these 70 years has told the story of the rest of america. roosevelt's great arsenal democracy, extraordinary, ordinary people who became the most lethal force from mass reduction that i guess the greatest mobilization since the building of the paramids, the great wall of china, that story has never really been told and what we get to do is go back and revisit that history and catch those lost conversations and untold stories that were left lingering. >> and i know you've become -- you're not just popular at the park. you've become popular across the nation. i hear you're doing the show in hollywood, how is that? >> that's today. that developed today and i'm just learning. i just had my first rehearsal. >> are you nervous? >> i -- it's -- oddly enough i was much more nervous before i got onto the stage and in that walk through, the initial rehearsal, he is so comfortable that i lose all the nervousness. until i figured -- until i had to come face you. >> oh, no, th

and i see your colleague, tom brokaw. that's what i wanted to get into. i love politics.g? i see the katrina response. i see people talking about fema. i read about president bush and his budget cuts. that gets my juices going. >> and in prison, he's discovered a captive audience for his brand of political punditry. >> i have a subscription to "usa today" and i have a line. i let everybody read it. i write little comments. you'd be surprised, we discuss things in here. everything in prison is not just violence or gangs. we discuss issues. people are surprised the conversations we have in here, you know what i'm saying? >> he tried out some spin in response to an unexpected line of questioning from our producer on the pin-ups decorating his cell. >> are these all your girlfriends? >> in another lifetime. most of them come out of "xxl" magazine. minority based magazines. kind of like "maxim." but sided toward the hip hop minority community. get tired of looking at gray walls all day. they're not nude, they're all clothed, albeit scantily. >> they're very artistic, marcus. i

. >> this is nbc "nightly news" with tom brokaw. >> good evening. the speaker nor senator dole will give. so tonight much of the government remains shut down. >> tom brokaw, all over our show today, really fun. the government shutdown of 1995 and 1996 was a 21-day standoff over republican plans to cut medicare spending. some republicans like senator ted cruz of texas long have been arguing that republicans didn't actually pay a political price for that back then. in this week they got some support. a bunch of polling data from 1995 and 1996 together, they found that bill clinton's approval rating didn't actually spike in the months after the shutdown. also found that newt gingrich's numbers didn't really get much worse than they already were and house republicans only lost a net total of three seats in the 1996 election. so the shutdown they argue was basically a wash. but that misses the bigger picture. the shutdown of 1995 was actually the most dramatic in a series of events that reshaped american politics, that created clear and deep geographic a

he was part of the greatest generation as you noted by tom brokaw.he fought bravely and new guinea in world war ii and represented his country proudly. he was a captain in the army. -- my son is a captain in the army. my nephew is an army ranger. it is for them that i rise today. make no mistake -- the other side today says they want to support these things but they don't. is politicalit posturing. they don't want to mitigate the pain because that might somehow hurt their ability to try to extract whatever they can politically. our constituents don't live and land.cal rhetoric they live in the land where the rubber meets the road. be really clear -- you have an opportunity on the other side of the aisle to find the veteran programs. you will be held accountable for that or it you vote no, that's where the rubber meets the road. you will be responsible for denying them these benefits. mr. speaker, i yield back the balance of my time. >> the gentleman from georgia is recognized. >> at this time, i am pleased to yield to the distinguished democratic whi

tom brokaw is someone who gets this in a big way. he lives in new york, he has been quite an activist against the white house correspondent dinner and the incredible grotesque spectacles, quite outspoken in the last few years. tom brokaw who i have gone to know, one of his books does very well. tim russert's best are very well. i respect tom for going the next nine years and talking about the enough about me category of what the correspondence represent, someone i have come to admire but a lot of people, it is always mixed, there are a lot of gray areas. >> we had a 15 day government shutdown. we have seen close to defaulting and a common reading of that is washington doesn't work, people don't talk to each other. to tony land ronald reagan aren't getting drinks, so where was hopelessly interconnected washington during the government shutdown? were they concerned we were going to default? do they know what was going to happen? >> great question. these -- this world -- if you look at what drove the shutdown, what ted cruz as an exampl