i do not think -- it is not like walter whitman the 20th century columnist for the oracle telling me what to think. we're not like that. we are not these people of great stature but conversations you started. you here about it for weeks and weeks. c-span: back in 2014 2014 you told the story about how you became a conservative. run that and have you follow it. >> i am a native new yorker. he he grew up here. my family was somewhat left-wing. a place called a beer were hippies we go to be. [laughter] they took out their wallets threw it in the garbage can and set it on fire. to show how much they care about money and material things. i saw the money burning. and that was my 1st step over to the right. [laughter] c-span: how much did your parents care about money? >> guest: that was at redeemer church, the church of new york. at 1st they violently objected -- objected. c-span: are they still alive? >> guest: very healthy and very alive. truncated, but the event was it enough. they were in some sense 1950 intellectuals culturally conservative politically liberal, sort of centrist cold w

was famously a delegate, i think, in north dakota who stood up on a chair and yelled "down with walter whitman." a few hours later there are republican delegates on the floor with -- shouting at rockefeller, "you lousy lover." i mean, it was that intense. it was a culture war. c-span: what did that mean, by the way "you lousy lover"? >> guest: ing it was a reference that he had divorced his first wife and married a woman who in the popular press was portrayed as having, quote, abandoned her children in order to marry him. c-span: what were the suckers about the divorce -- the circumstances about the divorce can and the remarriage to happy rockefeller, and is what's her full name? >> guest: margaretafidler married to james murphy. exactly when the relationship began is murky. i believe it began earlier than has been suggested until now -- c-span: what does that mean? >> guest: the mid 1950s. most accounts suggested the 1958 campaign when she worked in rockefeller's gubernatorial campaign. but in any event the marriage -- one of the things i discovered in the course of researching this book was