The New Yorker Radio Hour - Episode 31: Larry Wilmore on Presidential Comedians, and James O’Keefe’s Blunder

Episode Date: May 20, 2016

David Remnick speaks to the comedian Larry Wilmore about performing at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where he now-infamously referred to the President using the N-word. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer explains how James O’Keefe, the undercover conservative activist, foiled his own mission. And a retired soldier leaves Iraq for truly unfamiliar territory: a small Northeastern liberal-arts college. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

When they have that revelation, it's making sure pretty huge. How does this work as a national story? From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remney. ...heating up, and recently, the topic of race has entered into campaign news. For a closer look, please welcome our black course. our black correspondent, Larry Wilmore.

Larry, thank you so much for joining. Larry. Okay, please welcome our senior black correspondent. How you done? Glad to be here. Thank you, Larry. The senior black correspondent on The Daily Show was a role Larry Wilmore was almost born to play.

He's got a keen eye finding comedy in White America's difficulty when it talks about race and somehow always seems to make an ass of itself. Last year he became host of his own show, The Nightly Show, with Larry Wilmore. So he was a natural choice this year to appear at the White House Correspondence Dinner

at the very last of Obama's presidency. But his remarks there somehow caused a lot of concern among people who thought that in speaking too familiarly to the president, Wilmore had crossed the line. You were the speaker, the comedian, at the last White House correspondent center for President Obama. Speaker slash comedian, yes.

Tough gig. Tough gig. I think you told me before that you had had 80 jokes all set to go. Sure, yeah. And you had thrown out, God knows how many.

Yeah, we started with a lot more and, you know, you cut down, you cut down, cut down, cut down, we ended up with about that much and then I was editing as it was going along too. That's got to be. Nerve-wracking.

And why are you editing? What's happening? Well, once you realized the temperature of the room. What was the moment that you did and what was the temperature? I think it was the Wolf Blitcher joke. I think it was a Wolf Blitcher joke

where I said, okay, I don't know if these people are on my train right now. So what was the joke? What was the Wolf Blitzer joke? It was connected to the joke before. So I did a joke about Obama enjoying his last year in office. Saw you hanging out with NBA players like Steph Curry, Golden State Warriors. That was cool. That was cool, yeah.

You know, it kind of makes sense, too, because both of you, like, raining down bombs on people from long distances, right? And Obama gave it at least a fake laugh on that one. You know, one of those things, which I didn't see at the time. saw later, you know, which is fine, you know? I mean, that's, he's supposed to do that. He's such a good sport, right? So the follow-up is, and speaking of drones, how's Wolf Blitzer still on television?

You know, it's, you know. He looked mortified. Yes. And pissed. Yes. It came across as a statement of fact that I was taking a pause from the comedy routine and just stating this, like, this hard, cold opinion, which it wasn't at all. The most controversial and electrifying moment, without a doubt,

was at the end. So walk us through what you did at the end of the speech and the thought process that went into it and then also Obama's reaction. Okay, so that was something that I thought of maybe a month earlier. I just kind of wanted to have a moment where I kind of summed up what his presidency really meant to me. And I've made jokes saying, I vote for him because he was black and all that stuff, but there is meaning behind that joke. It's a proud moment that can't fully be expressed in words. And one of the manifestations of that feeling, is pointing out to people, and it's ironic because I'm the same major as the president, is that in our lifetime a black man couldn't be a quarterback.

You know, people thought, what, a black man lead white people? That's impossible, you know, for a whole host of reasons that everyone agreed on. And not so long ago. Yes, that's my point. It happened in my lifetime. This is not something my parents told me. And then to see this man, you know, as I said, to live in your time as the president, where black man is the leader of the free world.

And actually, when I wrote that part down it, you know, It was so emotional. I was like crying and I wrote it down, you know, because it meant so much to me. And, you know, the last part was just something that came out of a burst of inspiration. I just thought it was something that I just had to express that way. Words alone do me, no justice. So, Mr. President, I'm going to keep it 100. Yo, Barry, you did it, my niggum.

To me, that was having a private moment in public. And how did the room? How did you feel the room reacting? I had no idea. I had like an out-of-body experience at that point, you know. And then you walked over to your right and you get a hug from the president of the United States and he says what to you. And he kind of beat his chest too. That's right.

That's right. That's right. his own blackness and race, has been an adventure, a very complicated performance in many ways. Now that it's coming to an end, how do you look back on it, how you think about it? Yeah, it's an interesting way to put it, because the first incident was before he was elected, we had to answer charges about the Reverend Wright and those sort of things. And he gave that, I thought, a very great speech on race and spoke directly about it. and in his first year, the Skip Gates thing was the first time he kind of addressed something and had the beer summit.

It was when Henry Lewis Gates, the Harvard professor, was caught breaking into his own house. Exactly, exactly. But that was kind of an awkward moment. It didn't seem like that was a moment that was truly owned or truly choreographed. Well, it was just weird. Why are we having a beer summit over this? It just seemed odd, you know. It did seem unplanned and unscripted.

And there's actually a moment in the press conference where Obama's first asked about Gates's arrest, and I wanted to listen to that with you. I think it's a pretty good example of Obama's off-the-cuff sense of humor. The guy forgot his keys. Jimmy'd his way to get into the house. There was a report called into the police station

that there might be a burglary taking place. So far, so good. Right? I mean, if I was trying to jigger into, well, I guess this is my house now, It probably wouldn't happen. But let's say my old house in Chicago. Here I'd get shut.

That's an amazing hard joke there. At a press conference. Yes. And first of all, and the president should know, brothers should never be trying to jimmy or jigger their ways into homes. That right there is a mistake. But what, that was an... Show the key.

Show the key. I'm jiggering right now. Sorry, brother. You should not be jiggering. jiggering your way into the house. But what an amazing joke about him trying to break into the White House. That's a pretty good joke, actually. But you've talked about him as a comedian, and you pretty admiringly, what skills does

he have and how much of it derives just from the cherry sits in? He has an incredible sense of timing. He's very likable. He learned how to pause. Comedians used to have accessories on stage like a drink or cigar and that type of thing, and that was to allow the audience to laugh. George Burns would take his puff of a cigar, so you would laugh, not because of he wanted to smoke a cigar on stage. That's where Groucho had the cigar, right? So Obama uses his

smile and his charm as his cigar, if you will, you know, and he's very good at it. He knows how to pause and wait, and the audience gets to think along with him, you know, and gets to enjoy kind of sharing a moment with him. What's interesting, though, is that when he's talking about policy, I don't think it works as well. You know, when he's... How so? Well, he has a very deliberate approach, especially when he's speaking... Yes, when he's speaking extemporaneously, and I think that works against him. I think he would be better served if he was more succinct and more direct in some ways. It's almost like when he's talking, it's like he's talking to be quoted.

When I've had the opportunity to. Very lawyerly language. Well, yeah. When you interview him, when you transcribe an Obama interview, they're full written paragraphs. And it's not just because he's prepped. It's that's the way he is. Yeah, he's writing his essay as he's talking to you. Yeah, and he's self-revising in his head.

Yeah. Nothing undeliberate pops out. Yeah, I remember I did a joke a couple years ago. I was like, Obama just takes too long to talk. I mean, if you just asked him what he had for breakfast, he'd be like, well, for breakfast. there was some sort of decorative plate. I'm hungry. Give me an egg.

Yes, if you have a Bush, it's like eggs. You know, it's just that good. Some kind of sausage. It's like, great. That's all we wanted to know. Thank you, Mr. Bush. Who's the least funny president you can remember? One of my time, it had to have been Nixon.

I mean, arguably, the funniest thing he ever did was he was laughing and said, Soccer to me. But he was like, it was unintentionally funny. Gerald Ford, I know I'm going back so far. Gerald Ford was funny, but he didn't know why he was funny. Jimmy Carter wasn't very funny. Ronald Reagan was very funny. Why?

He was a performer. He was an actor. He knew how to deliver a joke, you know, and he was charming. Reagan had charm, and charm goes a long way. Reagan was funny on purpose. by accident. He was both. Obama's never unintentionally funny, which is interesting, because many presidents are usually unintentionally funny. I can't remember him being unintentionally funny. I think the only possible thing I can think it was when he tried to bowl that time when he was running for office.

That wasn't good. Yeah, that's the only unintentional funny thing I can think about Obama, but there's not a lot of that, which is kind of weird, you know, you would think there'd be more. So now you've got a presidential race where you've got Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican, and you've got Hillary Clinton, who's close to that, and Bernie Sanders still hanging in there. Right. And you've got a show to do every night. Yes.

And what does that present for you? Gold. In Trump's case, maybe fools gold. But in all seriousness, do you think that Trump, or Trumpism, is the outcome of eight years of Obama? How do you link them together? Yeah, some of that is that. I mean, presidencies are either a continuation of the previous one or a referendum on the previous one.

You know, the Trump presidency is certainly a referendum. I call it the unblackening, you know, Obama leaving the White House. I mean, because here's a man who spent a lot of his time and resources and capital trying to question the legitimacy of this black man who is the president of the United States, you know, which I found very insulting. And now he says, make America great again, and a lot of people are following that. And that phrase means what to you? It's just very problematic, you know. First of all, it assumes that America is not great, which I don't agree with, you know, but it appeals to this narrative that Obama has ruined the country in some way,

that he's taken away the thing that made America special, you know, his time in office. And I find that part very offensive, you know. But, you know, you've been around New York long enough. You kind of go back and forth between L.A. and New York. And you know that Trump in the 80s and 90s was kind of a figure on. In our ego sphere, he was a kind of comic business figure, and he was complicit in the comedy almost. Completely. There was a sense that he knew just how ridiculous he was, and in order to keep his head above water and his name on buildings, this is the role he played.

How did that get from that point to this point? God, it's a great question. Who knows? I mean, I call him the leader of the upper crass, is what I say, you know. It's this movement that only wishes to speak directly from the id and handle issues as shallowly as possible. And he uses political correctness as a way in that I'm not going to be politically correct and then he says something. He uses it as an excuse to insult people, which is not, that's not how you talk about political correctness. I mean, I would agree that sometimes our language can be too careful, but you don't break that down as an excuse to call John McCain a war.

hero a loser? Because I don't like people that get captured. That's your reason to break down political correctness. It doesn't make sense. But I've got to tell you, when that happened, when the John McCain moment happened, this is now months and months ago, I thought to myself, well, he's cooked. Yeah, he's cooked. And then there would be another one

two weeks later, and another one two weeks later, and his percentages only grew and grew and grew and now he's another one. Amazing. Which tells you what? It tells you that the country is, you know, the quick answer to this through a lot of people. I was watching Rob Reiner. Do you understand how fungus works. Do you? I don't. I don't get it. It just keeps growing. I mean, you try to attack it

any way you want, and that fungus just keeps going, right? I don't understand why that happens, you know. Now, how do you face the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency, comedically speaking? Hillary is another person who's funny in spite of herself. You know, I've never seen Hillary funny on purpose, but she's very funny, not on purpose. So she offers a lot of comedic, which of course, you have the first husband possibility, too. I mean, there's so much comedic material on that side. So on both sides, there's, look, I have a lot to look forward to no matter what happens, you know, as a comedian, but in completely different ways. You've talked about how you felt in January 20th, 2009, which is the first inauguration of Barack Obama. Right. And for all I know you were there, I don't know,

I was. I was there in my family. With a lot of coats. With a lot of coats. How are you going to feel January 20th coming up? Man, that's a good question. I think, yeah, wow. I think I'll probably be a little misty, you know. Definitely the end of an era to see the last black president, you know, go away. Well, this is it. Keep it 100. Are you going to see another black president in your lifetime or mine?

I always thought it'll be more like Haley's comment or Alex Haley's comment, if you will. I don't know. You know, I'll be lucky if I see it streaking across the sky again. who knows. It would be nice. But, you know, we'll see. We'll see. Larry, thank you. Thank you. Larry Wilmore, host of The Nightly Show.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour coming up in a minute, a kind of fish-out-of-water story. A veteran from Texas, hardened by years of combat in Iraq, who found himself among kids half his age at an artsy liberal arts college. I said, is it a good school? He said, yeah. I said, done. Let's apply. And then I said, well, where the hell is Vassar at? I was like, I've never heard of that. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. James O'Keefe is a conservative activist known for his undercover videos that have embarrassed NPR, ACORN, Planned Parenthood.

He recently had an operation go awry, and it exposed some of his working methods. It all started with a phone call. New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer takes it from there. The phone call came into the Open Society Foundation. Now that's George Soros' group, which funds a lot of progressive causes. And it came to an employee named Dana Garrity. It was, I believe, March 16th. It was pretty quiet, and I was just kind of hunkering down and getting through my work

when I noticed that my phone was ringing. And a number I wasn't familiar with popped up, and so I let it go to voicemail. Hi, you have reached Dana Garrity with the Eurasia program at the Open Society Foundation. I'm not available right now, so please leave a message and I'll get back to you shortly. Hey, Dana, my name is Victor Keshe. It was a call from a Victor Keshe, who apparently was a Hungarian American citizen who worked for a foundation. I'm representing a foundation that would like to get involved with you guys. So it was a bit kind of suspicious about that, because when you call you identify the actual foundation you work for.

Fighting European values and some other issues. I'm an American citizen, but. dual citizenship, Hungarian-American, who wants to aid and give me a call back when you can. Thank you. And then there was a pause, and he kind of stated under his breath to not talk until he hung up the phone. And I heard him begin to discuss in a very different tone, actually, with his colleagues about what had just happened, what he wanted them to do, what their plan was going forward. What needs to happen is someone other than me needs to make a hundred phone calls. Evidently, Victor Keshe thought that he'd already hung up the phone and what Dana Garrity could hear was a group of men talking with him as they began to plot something for nearly

10 minutes. Keep in mind, the quality is not that good because they're not actually talking into the phone. They don't realize they're being recorded. So Dana Garrity is a 28-year-old operations specialist who's overseeing pro-democracy programs in Eurasia for the Open Society Foundations. And evidently, the man who identified himself as Victor Cash is trying to

explain who she is to the rest of the group. Victor Cash wants Dana to call him back. Probably going to call her back. Now, if she doesn't call back, Kesh says, he can create other points of entry to get people in positions like Dana. Even if she had. It's important to know that he's not targeting

the president of the foundation, he's looking for points of entry with relatively low-level employees from whom he can work his way in and work his way up. So what is going on here? And who is Victor Keshe? The voicemail actually contains a number of clues. And if you follow them, the person you get to is James O'Keefe, a conservative activist who is infamous for doing secret videos that seek to embarrass liberal groups like NPR, Planned Parenthood, and his most successful operation, so far was his take-town of Acorn, a liberal political organizing group. Scenario. A young woman pretending to be a prostitute and a man pretending to run for Congress one day, walk into Acorn's Baltimore headquarters and speak with two of the employees who run

the facility. As soon as the tape came out, it created a sensation in the media, particularly in the right-wing media, and not long after, Congress voted to cut off all federal funding to ACORN, and the group soon after collapsed. Four ACORN employees have been fired. Their new cause on Capitol Hill for hearings into ACORN, and ACORN has been dropped from participating in the census next year. It now appears that James O'Keefe's latest target is the Open Society Foundations and their creator, George Soros. As the voicemail continues, we hear James O'Keefe speaking with the other people in the room,

about some kind of questionable money operation. Getting a meeting through a foundation would be a good denial in companies in this case because Soros' people don't want to help take money from a group like that. He seems to be saying that they want to set up a compromising situation in which they entrap someone at the Soros Foundation into taking some money

under dubious kinds of circumstances. But he's saying that probably the Soros Foundation won't take money from something obvious like a corporation that's registered in the British Virgin Islands. Instead, what he's looking for is something that seems like a plausible way to sort of set the Soros people up.

He suggested that other liberal targets that they might go after would be crass enough to take that kind of money. Hillary would. Hillary would. Chelsea would. I don't think the Open Society would, he says. The Open Society foundations were founded by George,

Soros, he is a liberal hedge fund billionaire who is one of the largest funders of democratic and liberal politics in America, and he has become almost a boogeyman to some people on the right. So why did Victor Keshe state twice that he's a Hungarian American? And this kind of small detail seems key too. I think maybe the reason, I mean, this is just pure speculation, but perhaps the reason he chose a Hungarian identity is because George Soros is also of Hungarian descent and is a Hungarian American. So it seems almost designed to hook them in. At this point, the voicemail continues and it gets a little weirder. What they're talking about, it seems, is importing an

orthopedic surgeon from England who's visiting the country and is going to come up to where this sting is supposed to take place, evidently in New York, and help them out on it. So this fellow from England is very technical, and he's not going to have any problem with the cameras. He's very technical, I'm sure he's not going to have any problem with the cameras. He's a very talented guy, they say, and so he'll be able to pull it off. When I first called James O'Keefe asking if he had any idea who Victor Kesh was, he acted like he was mystified. He said, Victor Kesh? And then he said he had no interest in discussing this or talking about any investigations or operations that were, as he put it, real or imagined.

But when I kept reporting and made clear to him that I actually had a copy of the tape of his phone call, he then decided to put the best face on it and publicly confess. We had a plan to go undercover into the Soros Foundation to expose their questionable activities. We posed as a Hungarian investor named Victor and eventually, connected with Dana Garrity, a program specialist at the foundation. We were hoping for a meeting. She called us back and left a message. Hi, I'm McFair. This is Dana Garrity giving you a call back. I got your voice now. But the Soros people were able to thwart our plan. So this time, O'Keefe got caught trying to sting

George Soros, one of the most important funders and players on the liberal side of American politics. He said he had to fold the operation, and he apologized to his support. for the embarrassment. But in the end, he also noted that he's got many more operations that are still ongoing. And he's also got, he says, dozens and dozens of other operatives out there in the field looking for the next get. What needs to happen is someone other than me needs to make 100 phone calls like that. For the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm Jane Mayer. This weekend, young people all across the country are going to graduate with as much pomp in circumstances.

they can muster. One of those graduates is a guy named David Carroll. Carol is a long-serving veteran of the Army, a former tank commander who retired and then applied to Vassar College. Now Vassar is like the quintessential small, artsy, liberal northeastern school, and going there was almost a lark the way David Carroll tells it. When he got there, he befriended one of his professors Hwa Shoo, who's also a contributor to the New Yorker. Typical Vassar student, that's a almost an oxymoron because the campus prize itself in being really diverse, really welcoming, really open-minded, pretty liberal slash progressive campus vibe, a lot of interest in social justice. It's very, very gay friendly. My name's David Carroll. I'm 35 years old, and I'm a senior

of Vassar College. Before that, before I come into Vassar College, I was in the Army for 11 and a half years and spent four years deployed to Iraq as a 19-kilot tank committee. You know a great weekend, and we have six more presentations on Tuesday. You know, I am a Republican, and I'm a Texas Republican. In fall of 2013, Dave Carroll was one of three veterans who enroll in my freshman writing class. It's part of the posse veterans program at Vassar College. But what did you know about Vassar? I knew nothing about Vassar.

Nothing. A buddy of mine said, hey, man, he called me one day. He's like, hey, you know, Vassar College is looking for veterans. You should apply. I said, is it a good school? He said, yeah. I said, done. Let's apply.

And then I said, well, where the hell is Vassar at? And I was like, I've never heard of that. So I googled it and looked at the library. And I was like, looks good. Let's try that. Let's go to a woman's college full of Democrats. Awesome. Actually, Vassar went co-ed in 1969, but the reputation lingers on.

I've always wondered this. Like I've told you in the past, I didn't really know that we had this program before showing up that first day. And, you know, like you get pictures of all your students. And I remember pruning out the pictures for your class and I'm walking to school. And I look down and I see a guy who's like my age, head shaved. But I remember you were also wearing a T-shirt with like the GOP elephant on it. Yeah. Did you do that on purpose?

Oh, yeah, you got to represent. You know, can't just let all the liberals think they're getting over on everybody. You know, if I'm the guy with the Republican shirt on whenever the teachers print out their little things, you know, at least then they know that they're going to have to address that issue at some point, you know, and it forces them, to be honest, a little bit more so. It totally worked for me. I mean, what was your impression of Vassar Kids when you started? I was impressed.

I was impressed. It took a good, almost a whole first year just to be able to articulate my thoughts the way that they did. So in the military, the more I cuss, the faster I get promoted. So that was, you know, that's just how you talked. So it was just a different language. So you had to learn a different language when you came here just so that you could be able to get your point across. So my first impression of these students were, holy sht, these kids are smart. I remember having to remind Dave and the other veterans that they were smart too,

just in a different way, maybe a little rough around the edges. But I wondered if he was ever bothered with being around so many young college students. You know, so it wasn't so much dealing with 18 and 19 year olds at college here because I dealt with 18 and 19 year olds all the time. There was a little bit difference where I couldn't just scream at them and make them do push-ups. You know, I wish I could have done that a few times. But there's times where I walk there and I just hear a really ignorant conversation of, you know, just not ignorant, just, you know, no.

experience, no life experience conversation going on somewhere. And, you know, and I just think, eh, you know, what it's like to be 19 again and try to figure it out. I was doing an independent study with Dave and, you know, we just sort of, there was no actual final assignment. So I just said, look, you've mentioned in the past wanting to write about your experiences, just write me, you know, five or six pages and, and, uh, and that'll be it. I mean, I have files and files of just stuff that, you know, just because I don't sleep well sometimes, you know, so whenever I'm thinking about it, I just go try to ride it just to get it down and out. He sent me a document. It was one of the most disturbing things I've ever read.

Yeah, I mean, I've revisited a lot just in my own mind. You know, it plays all the time in my own mind. And part of it was because I think he was aware of how disturbing it was. You know, I have tons and tons of just gibberish written, but so far they've just been going into a a file on my computer that says veteran shit. This was just an account of combat, of life as a soldier, of destruction that was unlike anything I'd ever read or seen. You know, you have highlights that you look back on your life. Some of my highlights are just happen to be really horrible things happening.

And when he turned the paper in, he included this note. Don't worry, man, I'm not a monster anymore. Ha ha. I've come to grips with my past. It's hard to tell my story of specifically. Because the first thing most of them think is he likes killing. I wonder if he still wants to. War is a different place.

Those actions are acceptable there. I have boxes full of metals from acting like that. They're all in my attic to be seen again whenever I move. I'm not proud of a lot of things I did while I was deployed, but I'm damn sure not ashamed of any of them. Most of the people I know now in my life know I was in the army, but few of them know what you know now. If this paper has to be seen by anyone other than you, let me know so I can write you something else.

This is for your eyes only. See you next semester. Typically when I meet with students, I can kind of rely on being older than them to have a tiny bit more wisdom than them. With these guys, there was no age difference and their life experiences were really different from mine. I didn't feel like I had that much to offer other than just as someone who's willing to listen to them and take them seriously. What was the experience actually like? Of being in a tank?

Yeah. So it's, I wouldn't say it's miserable, but it's pretty miserable, and it's incredibly hot. So whenever you're, you know, in August in Iraq, it's 110 outside, it's 125 in the tank. You know, so it gets to be miserable. And after times, there's a lot of times where you did 24-hour ops,

so you went out there and set for 24 hours in one spot and just kind of scanned. And after a while, it would feel like your brain is literally melting because it was just so unbearable. So over 11 years, you were in Iraq for like four and a half years? No, four. Four years. How many firefighters were you involved in? A lot.

A lot. I would say that I pulled the triggers, you know, round about. 300 times. I think the best I can gauge IEDs that went off on my vehicle or near my vehicle is 32. Like what do you do to kind of keep it together? Are you just sort of anticipating the next rush? Yeah, you're just anticipating the next rush because it can happen at any second. Kind of just sit in there and just talk and listen to the radio. What were you listening to? Like puddle of mud, let the bodies hit the floor. Let the bodies hit the floor. It was on somebody's iPod, but

let the bodies hit the floor, man. You listen to that and just wait for the kickoff. You just be in the tunnel waiting for him to call your name. Like you would just listen to that one song over and over? That was the theme of it. You know, so if you had to put a theme song to the war in Iraq, it would be that. Everybody had their own taste, but in my tank it was nasty, heavy metal. Do you still listen to those songs now?

No, no, I can't listen to them anymore. You know, up until this point, I felt like I had a pretty good, understanding of him. And what really shocked me about what he sent me was just how it seemed as though he actually would have wanted to go back. So I missed the adrenaline of it. It's the fear, the excitement, the pain. If you get to engage with the enemy at close range, it's like the best challenge that you can have in your life. And then on the other side of that is when it doesn't go right and it's really bad. So then you can go into the rest of your life knowing that it'll never ever be as worse as war, but there's also a little bit of it that you're never going to feel

again, that you're going to miss. I think what troubled me was the honesty, was his recognition that this was a part of who he was. I just felt really humbled, and I also just felt in awe that this guy had done all of these things, and now he was, now I was somehow responsible for him. I remember going to your office the first semester and just looking around in your office and be like, oh, yeah, this is the exact same, you know, you got the West Coast vibe on it, but, you know, this is the exact same stuff that I have. You know, I was like, this is awesome because it's just random 90s things thrown in there, you know, just like you had a MasterPee doll. One thing that I think is really important to note is that these guys weren't the types of surrounding swap war stories. In fact, Dave told us that before coming to Vassar, he'd been part of a veterans group at his previous school, and he had put up a sign on the first day that said only one war story per day. He just wasn't really the type who wanted to live in the past.

When I interviewed Dave, one of the producers I worked with asked if he could read a copy of Dave's essay, if he'd be willing to share it. Dave basically said, no, you haven't earned the right yet. And that got me thinking. you just said that like someone you don't know needs to like earn the right to access your stories why did you think

I deserve to read I mean I know I assigned you something but like Master P doll in your room dude you know I mean it doesn't take a whole lot you know it just has to be somebody that you can connect with that you know it's not just going to be that's

that's open-minded enough to see those things and say well that's really not who he is That's just some of the things that has, you know, he's been involved in. It's all because of the Master P doll. It all rolls around the Master P doll. It's crazy that you, I barely remember that I have that doll in my, I mean, it's because I have so much in my office. But, I mean, did you think, though, when we started, like, our class that I would end up earning that right?

No, because you were, I think you were the first professor that I had. I think you were the very, very first class that I'd taken at Vassar. You know, so then here comes, you know, the stereotypical Northeast professor, you know. And I was like, oh, well, this guy. And after, you know, the third or fourth class, I think that's when I was like, hey, man, this guy gets it. You know, you understands what's, you know, all of this kind of looks like a little bit. That first month, all three you guys had a lot of challenges and you would come talk to me and I would feel really bad. But then after a while, I was like, I can't just, feeling bad doesn't really do anything.

I just can't, I can't just, like, have pity for these guys. And none of us want that. We just don't know what we're doing. Like, how do you think being here has changed your sense of, like, politics or just sort of how you see the world? So, I've always had a moderate, conservative viewpoint, always. And, you know, I just think that as far as, What's really changed me from being here is knowing that the left and the right aren't that far off. But almost every single person that's here could be just categorized in the middle.

You know, I don't think it matters if you got an elephant or the donkey on your shirt. I don't think it really matters. So at the end of this month, Dave and his fellow liberal North the Eastern 20-somethings would be walking as part of Vassar's 2016 graduating class. He himself doesn't seem particularly interested in this ritual, but his mom and grammar are coming all the way to Poughkeepsie, and they're so proud they really want to see him cross that stage. We've talked about what he might do in the future. He's mentioned the possibility of getting NBA, maybe law school.

You know, I've thought maybe he should write a book. So as far as I've gotten now, I bought a house near Fort Worth, so that I have the possibility to go to A&M law. So I thought, try to go to law school and see where that leads me. So Dave's got a lot of options. But in a way, I don't think he's that different from a lot of the 20-somethings he'll be walking with. They've acquired a lot of knowledge.

They've learned a lot about themselves. But at this point, they don't really know what they want to do next. It's just that I want to go spend some time in my pool and float underneath the shade for a few years and figure out what I want to do with life. So I really don't know yet. David Carroll, a U.S. Army veteran and a newly minted graduate of Vassar College talking with the New Yorker's Hua Shu. Speaking of graduation, we're going to hear now a commencement speech for the graduates of the future. This is To the Class of 2050 by Jen Spiral.

Of 2050, faculty, alumni, family, and friends. I remember when I sat where you sit today. The year was 2020. The fires from the impact still smoldered in their craters. Madonna's dance, dance, boom, boom, had just hit the airwaves. Athesia was bigger than ever, and it seemed like everyone I knew was either dead or enslaved by the tall ones. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. A couple of friends were talking about combing the wreckage for survivors,

and a couple of other friends were talking about combing the wreckage for food. Meanwhile, my boyfriend was begging me to come with him to Chicago to do improv. I didn't know where to start. I had no money, no flint, and no plan. Sure, I had a bachelor's degree in English, but what was that going to do with that? Plus, like many survivors, I no longer had skin on my face or my hands. Luckily, it didn't take me long to learn that there's only one thing you have to worry about. And that's following your passion.

If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. Maybe you're passionate about making spears or cudgels or daggers to fend off our oversized invaders. Perhaps you're more interested in nunchucks or spikes or clamps. Whatever it is, simply follow your interest and have at it. If you take away anything from this speech, let it be this. Success doesn't mean having a big house or fancy corner office. There's only one true measure of success, and that's how close you can get to deciphering the Maya and hieroglyph that will show humanity how to defeat the tall ones.

When I was your age, I had big plans. I was going to find the glyph, I was going to decode it, and free my fellow humans from our tragic captivity. But then, you know what happened? I fell in love with long-form journalism. I met the love of my life at USC. We had two beautiful children, and eventually being humanity's savior fell by the wayside.

Do I have regrets? Sometimes, the tall ones tore my husband and my children apart in front of my eyes. As I listened to their screams, did I wish that I put in a little more glyph time? Sure, I made mistakes. That's called being human. Remember, life is 10% what happens to you, 10% how you respond to it, and 80% how good your reflexes are when the tall ones come at your throat with their pinchers. Today, you guys are going to be awarded diplomas. You've earned it.

Remember that a diploma is just a piece of paper. What really matters is what you do with that piece of paper, and I strongly recommend burning it to ward off the tall ones, for they fear an open flame. Thank you, and good luck. Words of wisdom for apocalyptic times. That was to the class of 2050 by Jen Spira, performed for us by Rachel Dratch.

I'm David Remnick. You're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Lena Dunham is the creator of girls, our preeminent show about 20-somethings. But she herself just turned 30.

Dunham is also a die-hard supporter of Hillary Clinton, so there's lots to talk about. I don't mind the idea of having somebody who's a member of the establishment, because guess what, the government is an establishment and there needs to be somebody who understands how to navigate it. But also, if all I wanted was a female in the White House, why wouldn't I have been running around behind, you know,

Sarah Palin fixing her skirts? That's next time on the New Yorker Radio Hour. A presidential election is a moment when we choose not so much a politician, but a leader, or ideally so. And every so often, the choice between candidates looks like a choice between entirely different definitions of leadership. Leadership is even an obsession. It's an entire industry with God knows how many books published on the subject. And a couple of months ago, the New Yorkers Josh Rothman started thinking about this obsession and what it tells us. us. I got really fascinated by the question of what leadership was, and I started out by reading a lot of leadership books. Of all the books I read, the most interesting was an anthology edited by an English professor named Elizabeth Salmon, who teaches at the United States Military Academy at West Point. When I first got here, I used to see a fellow who works in landscaping here, and we'd pass almost every day, and I'd wave to him on his mower, and he'd wave to me. And then one day he stopped, and he said, what's your function? What do you do here?

And I said, and this was early on, and I said, well, I teach English, and that's really how I thought of it. She teaches English at a place where everyone wears a uniform and calls her ma'am. Ma'am, section formed, missing one, Cadet Silverman. Thank you. Take seats. Each of her students, each cadet, is training to be a military leader. As I was here longer and had a greater connection with lieutenants and captains and now even a few majors who are my former students, I realized the role that those, that studying English, plays in their lives. They will write and say, I was thinking about my reading of Coriolanus or of Henry

the 5th or Richard the 2nd before a mission when I was going to tell my soldiers what we had to do and how I believed in them. Another example would be actually one of my current colleagues who flew Kiowa helicopters in Afghanistan. And we had talked for a long time about Antoine to St. Exupori's writings. And he said, obviously, the aircraft that St. Exupri flew were so different from mine. And yet, he would read what Exupri has to say about personal responsibility and responsibility to one's fellow pilots. And that really struck a chord with my former student when he found himself in Afghanistan.

St. Exupery isn't included in Samud's anthology, but she does include a lot of surprising stuff. The book has a lot of poetry. It has diary entries. It has some pieces you'd expect, Machiavelli or Klaus Fitz, classic writers on leadership. But it also has writings by Virginia Woolf and even Zadie Smith. It really seems like Samut is determined to look at leadership from every possible angle. Every day, just in the course of my job, I had to keep asking myself, what does good leadership look like? And we're required to write evaluations all the time, and those evaluations ask you to talk about their leadership potential. And at first I thought, how do I know what their leadership? I don't know. I know whether they can scan a line of poetry or I know whether they understand Shakespeare, but I don't know if they're going to be good leaders or not. What does that mean? I'm cadet, Brian Silverman. I'm from outside of Philadelphia.

Samet introduced me to a student of hers, a senior who's sitting internet, national relations. When Brian's done at West Point in a few months, he'll go to Fort Benning for boot camp. So I'll be an infantry officer for four years before transitioning into military intelligence, and I'll be posting to Fort Campbell, Kentucky with the 101st Airborne Division. Are you excited? Yeah, absolutely. Brian told me that he'd gone to a Quaker school throughout his childhood, and that part of the reason he decided to go to West Point was because he'd read The Chosen, a novel by Haim Putak, which crystallized his belief in simple service and commitment

commitment to values. Samitt says he's already a leader among his peers. There are certain cadets who even as freshmen sort of show this, I don't know, this particular facility for maybe they're very attuned to the other people around them, what their preoccupations are, a certain attentiveness, that focus and that kind of tenacity. I think those are important elements as well. And Samet sees her literature class as a place where those leaderly qualities in Brian and other cadets can grow. I think that reflection and careful study that the classroom encourages helps. It helps with self-awareness. It helps with an awareness of others. But I also think there's sort of

an element of lock or chance involved in it all. I mean, if you're placed in a particular circumstance at a particular moment, perhaps all of those faculties, perhaps all of whatever it is you've been thinking about and you didn't realize it was leadership, then suddenly becomes an opportunity to show this. I asked Brian about how he was learning to be a leader at West Point, and he told me a kind of story that I wasn't expecting to hear. Yeah, I guess I'll say this even though it's sort of a professionally embarrassing moment for me. One of the capstone experiences at West Point is something called CLDT, which stands for cadet leadership development training, field exercises. for, you know, a period of seven, eight days, something like that. Blank rounds, executing a whole wide variety of missions.

When I asked Brian if he was in charge of other cadets during that time, he clarified. He wasn't in charge of them, he said. He was responsible for them. I had done really well. I had been very diligent. The missions that I had been in charge of as the platoon leader were successful. My patrols were good. But there I was.

on the last night, literally hours from finishing this huge graduation requirement, which a lot of cadets sort of think of as the bane of their existence. And I was cleaning my weapon, and still I really don't understand how this happened, but there was a round inside the chamber. I was doing a functions test. The point is I had a negligent discharge. I had a negligent discharge of my weapon. And this is one of the most catastrophic things that can occur because it shows that you don't have control of your most important tool and more that your negligence has risked the lives potentially of the people around you.

In a patrol base in the middle of the night, you know, you give away your position. Everyone around you could die. Now, what makes this a leadership story is what Brian did next. He walked over to the person in command and told him what had happened. He faced the consequences. And he sat me down and gave me one of the, like, hardest hitting talks that I have ever had. He and the NCOs that were around him explained to me that, you know, even though I had done well, a mistake like this, it would destroy my career, but far more importantly,

risk the lives of the people around me. And I think the reason that this was so important, the reason that it was so impactful, was that at no other time in my experience as a cadet, had the real army deployment at no point had they felt more real. You know, I looked someone else in the eyes who had been there and had them tell me, you made this error, this is unacceptable, you need to fix this. Still, I think about it all the time. And I found myself thinking about Brian's story too. When pundits and politicians talk about leadership, a lot of times they seem to be talking about something different, about who's in charge, who's the toughest, or alternatively, who's to blame. There's a disdiscence. There's a difference.

disconnect between the real-life leadership that Brian's talking about and the spectacle of leadership that we watch on television. I think that's what Samet was trying to puzzle out when she was putting together her anthology. The narrative of crisis is very seductive. In this vacuum of leadership, I'm your next leader. So if there's no vacuum, then you don't need me. And so there's this idea that we, I think people imagine leadership as something they can see. And you can see it in a crisis because someone, has to rush in and do something very dramatic. But I think a lot of good leadership happens silently.

It happens not in moments of crisis. That's my concern about this romance of crisis, because you need people to lead when things are going fine or okay or before they collapse. And yet that's not a particularly romantic kind of leadership. It's not a particularly appealing kind of leadership. In the military, it's the difference between peacetime leadership and leadership in war. Yeah. And what I try to emphasize with my students is that peacetime leadership is just as important. And you don't win medals for it. I mean, it's hard to measure leaders by all of the actions they didn't take.

And yet, in the long run, that's often what really matters. But it's such a hard thing conceptually to get excited about. I really learned something from Sammon and Brian about leadership. If you watch political debates on TV, they seem to, focus exclusively on the qualities of wartime leadership. They're so often about being aggressive, tough, and intimidating. You never see the other half, the peacetime half of leadership. It's ironic, I think, that if you want to learn about peacetime leadership, you have to turn off the television and go to the United States Military Academy at West Point. And I love Samund's definition of

leadership, that leaders are responsible, restrained, attentive, focused, concerned, even a little frightened of the consequences of their actions, that they've been tempered by real-world experience that's left them compassionate and self-aware, and that those qualities make it possible for them to be creative, ambitious, and daring when there really is a crisis. Josh Rothman of the New Yorker.

He spoke with Elizabeth Samet, a professor of English at West Point. At New YorkerRadio.org, you can sign up for our newsletter and we'll let you know what's on the show in all of our podcasts, fiction and poetry and poverty, politics, lots of good stuff. That's it for this week, though. We'll be back next week with Lena Dunham and Baratunda Thurston, who talks about working on and leaving the Daily show. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining me. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music

was composed and performed by Merrill Garvis of Tuneiards with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. This episode was produced by Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Rianon, Rianon, Julie Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Owen Agnew, Alex Barron, Becky Cooper, Matt Fiddler, Trey K., Rick Kwan, and Josh Rogerson. Special thanks this week to Andy Lancet, the director of archives at New York Public Radio. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.