WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 659 - Gloria Steinem / Kliph Nesteroff

Episode Date: November 30, 2015

American icon Gloria Steinem visits the garage to talk with Marc about her journey on the road as an activist and cultural leader. They discuss how the feminist movement has deepened throughout the years while the challenges facing the movement evolved. Plus, Kliph Nesteroff returns to celebrate the release of his long-in-the-making book about the history of comedy in America. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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How are you, what the fuckers, what the fuck buddies, what the fuckeneers, what the fucksters? What's happening? I am Mark Maron. This is WTF. This is my podcast. I'm back. I made it back. I made it back from Florida. I was there for Thanksgiving. How'd everyone do? Everybody okay? Let's say hi to some of the folks out there who are working in different environments. Shall we? I mean, it's hard for me to know where everyone's working, whether you're in labs or on the train or on a bike. And I know sometimes I go through a list of things I can't represent everyone, but I'm always surprised when I get an email like this.

Hey, Mark, I'm a huge fan. Not literally. My weight is acceptable. Writing to you from the Turkish side of the Syrian border. We have 12 hours of guard duty in the trenches every night. It's dead silent outside, freezing cold. It's just endless waiting under the rain and a haze of dust. WTF helps pass the time so fast. I laughed out loud a couple of times, which was not good as it gives away your position immediately. I just wanted you to know that your work reaches all the way over here and it's been an incredible source of emotional support for me. It's a mind-wrecking experience to be here during war. There isn't much to hold on to, and they make you abandon and forget everything back home.

Being forced to obey orders that you're ideologically and politically against takes a toll and drives you into an existential crisis and frustration. So I guess I wanted to say thank you. Anxiously waiting for new episodes here. Cheers. How could I know? You know, it's just amazing. I get so many emails, and I know you're all doing what you got to do or what you want to do, and I'm happy that you're enjoying the show.

I seriously am. Today on the show, I got up front. We're going to go with a little conversation I have with Cliff Nesteroff, the Cliff Nesteroff. I introduced you to Cliff Nesteroff a few years ago. He's a writer. He writes about show business. He's one of my favorite show business writers.

And now he has a book out called The Comedians, Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy. And it's has a book out called The Comedians, Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy. And it's a great book. When I talked to Cliff, I had not read the book, but I know Cliff and I know his writing. And I've read a lot of his writing. And now I'm in the book. I'm reading it. Spectacular. But if this is a history of comedy, it's a history written by the losers. A history of comedy. It's a history written by the losers. It's a deep, dark history of a showbiz that you may not know and about influences on contemporary comedy and show business in general that you may not be aware of. It's a beautiful book about beautiful losers and a few winners.

And nobody has a prose style quite like Cliff's. And Cliff and I will talk in a bit. And then after that, I had a relatively short conversation for our show here with Gloria Steinem. She's got her book out called My Life on the Road. It's available now. And we kind of talked about that almost exclusively. We're tight on time, man. Sometimes people come over here and We're tight on time, man. Sometimes people come

over here and they're tight on time, but we'll get into those talks in a minute. Let's just, let's kind of like regroup together. Let's take a beat and let's process what's happened to us. Okay. We're all home for Thanksgiving. Perhaps some of you not home, perhaps some of you with friends, perhaps some of you doing that thanksgiving away from family and try to make that okay perhaps some of you had people over that included family but i will say this got out in a nick of fucking time got out just under the wire all that stuff i said to you the monday before thanksgiving i honored the best i could myself i respected the fragility fragility of my mother and her boyfriend. And I tried to be tolerant and as loving as possible, which doesn't come that easy

to me. I hugged my mother a couple of times and I patted her on the back once and I said nice things to her. It was not as easy as it should be. I tolerated her boyfriend john who is um above and far like probably you know and i say this with a certain amount of uh humor but uh arguably the most annoying man i've ever met in my life and uh and i say that you know with respect in in a degree i understand he come from a comes from a different time where people needed to talk constantly i think there must have been a time he keeps he refers to this time a lot this uh you know back in the day and i'm starting to assume that back in the day people had a higher tolerance for people that just didn't listen and can't shut up i don't know but maybe there was a different time where that was where everybody was just

competing to be heard uh you know in in real time with no social networking just just a lot of men in hats talking quickly uh and probably about nothing some self-celebratory uh diatribe or rant or glorification of their place in the world and then there was very little listening and there was a lot of deals negotiated i think i think that there was a time in america where the only time that men stopped talking about themselves was to sell whatever wares they were involved in selling or talking to their boss or listening perhaps that was the only time they listened i don't know i didn't live in that time pow look out just coffee.coop is where that comes from yep i did just shit my pants so now i guess what i'm

saying is i hope everything went well with you and uh and i hope you're okay and i hope you're easing back into eating properly okay so cliff nesteroff did i tell you that story about shecky green this is a great story this is one of the first encounters I had with Cliff because I appreciated his writing when he wrote for the WFMU blog. And now I appreciate his wonderful book, The Comedians. But I appreciated him so much I had him on the show because I wanted to talk comedy with him. He's a great active mind.

But one of the first encounters I had, I'd read an article he wrote on the WFMU blog thing about Shecky Green. It was this great article about his depression, his drinking, his driving his car into the fountain at Caesars. There was some gunplay, almost gunplay, and Buddy Hackett was involved. Just the whole portrait portrait the whole dark portrait of Shecky Green and I had read that and it reminded me that I wanted to interview Shecky Green I may have told this story but most of you haven't heard it it reminded me that I'd reached out to Shecky Green once before I'd reached out I'd written an email to a website that looked like it hadn't been visited in decades like one of the the original websites, SheckyGreen.com maybe,

and I emailed the contact. I said, look, I do a radio show kind of thing. I want to interview Shecky. Is there any possible way I can do that? I would come to him. So like weeks later, I get an email back. Shecky's interested. This is his cell phone number.

Don't tell anybody. Like, you know, there's a premium on Shecky Green's cell phone number. So I kind of put it in the back of my head and I'd forgotten about it. And then I read Cliff's premium on Shecky Green's cell phone number so I kind of put it in the back of my head and I'd forgotten about it and then I read Cliff's piece about Shecky and it reminded me that I need to get in touch with Shecky that had this phone number so I call this phone number I go hi this is Mark Marin I'd written to Shecky Green is this Shecky Green written about doing an interview with Shecky and on the other end this guy goes no more interviews I'm not writing any I'm not doing

any more fucking interviews I'm like excuse me he's like did you write that piece and i'm like uh yeah no i didn't write he's like why the hell do they got nobody says anything about the charities about the good stuff i don't know where the hell he got his his stories his information where the hell did he get that shit i'm not doing any more interviews horrible conversation ahead so i email this contact to cliff and i say look you know i i just talked to uh to shecky green and i think he's referring to your piece he he wants to know where the hell you got your information where'd you get those stories and within an hour, Cliff writes back, he told me. It's very funny. And that was my first experience with Cliff,

and then I met him in Vancouver, and then I had him on the show, and the rest is history. This is my conversation with Cliff about the release of his new book, The Comedians, Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy. It's available now. It's a beautiful book.

So here's me and Cliff Nest. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category,

and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Death is in our air. Cast Creative. You can't just risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun. A new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply.

Nesteroth. Cliff. Hey. Nesteroth. Hey. Nesterov. Hey. What a, it seems just a few years ago, you were just a guy writing a blog that barely anybody read. Yes.

And I met you up in Vancouver. Yes. And we established who you were and we had you on this show. A comic that quit doing it. The last time I saw you, you were riding around your bike and you were like, I kind of wish I was doing comedy.

Well, I still have that impulse, that inclination. But now that I'm on this publicity blitz for the book, I get that gratification without having to do an act. Everybody expects the author, historian to be really boring. Uh-huh.

So I generally like kill because people assume a dullard who can't speak into a microphone is up there. And then I go up there and I tell things that are only like half funny and they get a huge laugh. So it's a very gratifying. To book audiences. So you're killing with book audiences. Killing with book audiences. And plus I'm getting more press than everybody I know who did stand-up at my level.

So that's kind of cool. Well, yeah, you won somehow. I won. And in Canada, there's this weird obsession with people that come to America and get press in America. And then suddenly in Canada, then they want to give you press. But only then.

So now I'm getting all this Canadian press too. So it's kind of fun. And I keep getting asked about my stand-up act from from canadian press but when i was doing stand-up in canada nobody ever was interested in talking about that but you were doing a shtick right you were doing the uh the character i was doing two shticks i was doing the character which was like an old comic character old comic character and that shtick was popular yeah and then i was doing my other shtick which was me in my own voice, and nobody liked it. Yeah.

So it was a weird thing. So you found your voice in this writing business because, like, I'm thrilled that you cited me in the book. I was happy to blurb the book, The Comedians, Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy. and the history of American comedy. Because I think that one thing people who read the book and people who have whatever expectations they may have on you, you have a morbid and, I would say, darkly perverse fascination with the parts of show business that get glossed over. Darkly perverse.

Not just perverse, but darkly perverse. Well, I think that is just uh inherently what's interesting about it you know and when i wrote this uh book i think what uh separates it from other history books a lot of historians think they need to include every single detail right in a linear chronological fashion right you know a bob hope biography will talk about his contract negotiations in 1939 he asked for 25 000 they only gave him $20,000. Who cares? Nobody cares. So with this book, I cut out all the shit that I thought was boring and kept all the stuff I thought was interesting. And so some things that may be considered by some people more historically

important may not be in there. Things that are less important but more interesting, like say Albert Brooks's comedian father dying on stage stage that's in there because that's an interesting story but in the grand scheme his father Harry Einstein is maybe not the most famous or influential comedian but you're able to find those guys that were pivotal that nobody really knows about I mean there's a lot of cats that you write about that who the hell is that guy and also you're able to track the roots of modern comedy I mean obviously they could go further back but in vaudeville's pretty far back, and that's really where it starts. Yeah, yeah.

They asked me, the publisher, Grove Press, which is one of the all-time legendary subversive publishers who published Naked Lunch, Tropic of Cancer, won all the censorship battles during the Beat Generation, and I'm thrilled to be with them. They asked me if I would write

a history of comedy that went back further to the days of vaudeville. And I had pitched a book about comedians in the mafia because I thought that was kind of the thing. Well, that's from that one story, right? That's right, the Alan Drake story. How many pages did you give them? How many did you write? It's about 400 pages.

This is about 400 pages. But this is, what, half of what you wrote? Three quarters of what you wrote? Oh, yeah, we cut out a ton. Yeah, of course. course now what are some of the things that why was certain things cut out you just couldn't make a book that big mostly it was for uh purposes of space yeah um a lot of the stuff was uh cut out for flow you know the narrative had to move uh quickly i don't like boring books so i wanted to make sure it's uh now if you were to go up a certain pace, you were to go beat for beat with the, with the personalities that led us to where we are now. Cause you go from vaudeville to now, you know,

what is it? Could you, could you sort of skip a rock through the people that you think that we arrived where we are now? Well, I don't know if I could skip a rock with the people. I sort of can, but it's more about, uh, uh, the mediums, you know. So it starts with vaudeville. Right. And I only really talk about the people that you would still know today. W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, who's even forgotten now, Milton Berle. The people that became the giants in the next generation or who I talk about in that first generation. And much of the book chronicles people's careers right before they become famous.

So there's lots in the book about Larry David, but the Larry David stuff ends in 1980. And there's lots in there about Lorne Michaels, but it ends in 1974. So I kind of chronicle all the stuff that we don't know about. But really, one of the themes of the book is struggle. So it's all about these people struggling and failing and making comments about how they're never going to make it and they should kill themselves. Because that is kind of something that we can all relate to, right? Or is it just me that can relate? Well, certainly a comic can relate to it.

Let's talk about Jackie Gleason because he's one of these guys that's sort of reputed to have an amazing appetite for all things fun. Right, right. Where did he start and what was his darkness? Jackie Gleason is interesting. His early career is interesting because he was managed by this guy named Willie Weber. Willie Weber was the grandfather of Stephen Weber from Wings.

Really? Yeah. And Willie Weber was also Don Rickles' first manager. Willie Weber had a reputation for taking on any comedian that nobody else would handle because they were shit.

So he handled Don Rickles at his start, Jackie Gleason at his start, and a bunch of obscure guys that nobody would know. This guy Mickey Shaughnessy, who was a Philadelphia stand-up comic who played police officers in movies all the time. This guy Pat Henry, who was like a Stephen Eadie opening act. But he handled Don Rickles early on and Jackie Gleason early on. Jackie Gleason was considered a terrible stand-up comic, but he got booked at this place called the Club 18 in New York,

which I write about in my book. In those days, if you were an insult comic, it was very dangerous because most of these clubs were owned by the mafia. Right. So if you insulted the wrong person, you could get hurt. So Jackie Gleason got booked at this place called the Club 18. And the Club 18 was an insult club owned by comedians. And its whole purpose was so that insult comedians could go and perform freely without fear of

getting murdered. Was it popular? It was very popular. It was the early 40s in New York on 52nd Street, which was known as Jazz Street, where all the jazz clubs were. Club 18. It had five insult comics roving the audience with wireless mics insulting everybody in the audience.

And one of them was Gleason? And Gleason became a substitute comedian there. When anybody else couldn't make it, they needed a fifth guy. Who were the other guys? Pat Harrington Sr., the father of the guy from One Day at a Time, a guy named Vince Curran, a guy named Frankie Hires, a guy named Jack White, who started it. They're all very, very obscure.

But Frankie Hires invented a catchphrase at Club 18 at the start of every show he would go into the audience preparing to insult everybody and say and away we go

yeah which might sound familiar if you ever watched the Jackie Gleason show Jackie Gleason stole that phrase and it became his catchphrase

that happens huh and Frankie Hires became a broken destitute and Jackie Gleason didn't care. Didn't help him at all. Not at all. Not at all. I don't know that people like, it's a weird thing. I mean, if that's all that guy had to go

on. That's true. That's true. You know, but it's interesting that there's always these questionable compromises of the soul. At the same time, Jackie Gleason became a gazillionaire. He could have at least given him a gig as a PA or something on a show, you know, just as a little handout. Nothing.

Did you find that's a recurring theme, the sort of weird heartlessness of people that step over other people to become successful? No, I didn't really find that as a theme, but theft, definitely a theme. This is one of the more interesting stories about vaudeville. In 1916, there was a company union called the national variety artists or vaudeville artists, which was to circumvent actual unions from entering vaudeville. So the vaudeville moguls created this company union,

NVA. And they had a thing called the protected material act. Cause everybody was saying, this guy's stealing my routine, this guy's stealing my routine. So it was the old thing, the old cliche about mailing a thing to yourself with a date stamped envelope. So they had this huge file at the NVA of every routine and joke in vaudeville that had been claimed by individuals. Now, at the end of the 20s, when the stock market crashed, vaudeville folded. Right.

At the end of the 20s, when the stock market crashed, Vaudeville folded. Right. And the National Vaudeville Artists Union was no more, but those filing cabinets were still there. So this comedy team, Olsen and Johnson, who are best known for a movie called Hell's a Poppin', went and took all the material and claimed it as their own, and then toured for the next 20 years on stolen material they had ripped off. And no one called them on it? People called them on it, but there was no recourse. There was no way to prove it or defend it anymore. called them on it, but there was no recourse.

There was no way to prove it or defend it anymore. They took the material. Oh, my God. Yeah. I was under the impression that there was a time, like, shortly after vaudeville, where guys knew that they were doing the same bit. Well, in a way, I mean, the thing is that in those days, material was generic. It was written generically. You didn't write from your point of view.

You told jokes like, did you hear the one about the guy and the lady walking down the street? So that's very easy to steal because it's not about you. In the 50s, when it was Lenny Bruce and Jonathan Winters and Mort Sahl, then it became very difficult to steal because a guy like Norm Crosby or Jack Carter,

if they're talking about Adlai Stevenson like Mort Sahl, it's not going to work. It's not going to translate. It's not going to translate. They're not going to get laughs. Isn't it interesting that the two types of comedies still coexist? Yes. I mean, that's sort of a fascinating thing that you have point of view guys or message guys or guys that are willing to take those risks emotionally, but you're always going to have just the joke guys.

And I think probably, what would you say? Would you say that they still do just as well or better they probably did better financially it's like today look at the top uh ranking comedians financially the amount that they get paid the level of fame the level of adulation does it equate to our favorite comedians not really right you know they're not pushing any boundaries not to say that a comedian has to push boundaries but their voice their point of view is is kind of like middle of the road sure it's a well it's entertainment product for the most people possible i mean that's a mainstream act yeah yeah if you're trying to do

you got it you want to succeed in show business you have to shoot for the middle and also like in the book you sort of track you know um the uh the race records and also you know black comedy sort of from its beginning yeah and then the evolution of that from minstrelsy through uh boy here comes the judge which is why am i saying me yeah all the way through to dick gregory and red fox red fox uh figures uh uh all over my book he's very very important one of the funniest guys ever lived i mean he's still popular with a contingent, but it's mostly because of Sanford and Son reruns. He does not get the credit

he deserves as a groundbreaker. And he had a club here in Hollywood. He was the first black club owner in Midtown Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills. The very first. He took over a club called the Slate Brothers Club, which is essential in the history

and trajectory of lenny bruce and don rickles and red fox took it over in 67 before when it was the slate brothers club it's where lenny bruce uh got fired for using the phrase cocksucker on stage where they pulled the plug on him and it was the first night of this club the slate brothers it was on las cienega and lenny Lenny Bruce was going to be the big star that they brought in he'd already been arrested so it was like big news item

to have this guy open the club and so the club was full of celebrities who had come to see Lenny Bruce for the first time but it was really loud

that night they wouldn't be quiet he went up there and nobody could hear him and he was furious so he called them a bunch of cocksuckers everybody went quiet

and the Slate Brothers fired him he had to do a late show that night at 10 p.m. at the same club. But now they had no comedian and a lineup around the block with a celebrity clientele. So they got on the phone. They were looking for an emergency replacement. That week, his first time in Los Angeles, Don Rickles was doing no business at Hollywood and Vine at a club called Zardy's with a Z. It was a jazz club.

Nobody was coming to see this guy, Don Rickles. So they phoned over there. They said, we need a comedian for 10 p.m. They said, oh, we'll send you this kid who flew in from Miami, Don Rickles. Don Rickles goes in at 10 p.m. The whole audience is celebrities. And he nails every single one of them with an insult.

He becomes the biggest thing in Los Angeles. So good story, Lenny Bruce saying cocksucker at the Slate Brothers Club made Don Rickles an entity here, and then he ended up in a Clark Gable movie because of that. That same venue is the club that Red Fox later bought. Red Fox started stand-up in the late

40s. I'm doing a show soon where I'm going to be projecting some rare images and clips. One of them is a variety piece I found when I was researching the book. It's from 1949 and it says friends always wondered how John Foxy Sanford

could afford a Cadillac on his meager stand-up salary. They found out Tuesday night when he was busted with two pounds of marijuana at a Newark New Jersey nightclub. So as early as the late 40s, Red Fox was kind of an underground subversive guy. And he was selling marijuana with Malcolm X before either of them were famous around Harlem.

They would break in at night to this dry cleaner's place and steal the suits and then sell the suits the next day on the roof of this building for a cut rate price. You know, he was always a sort of a hustler, subversive guy. And then throughout the 50s, I mean, he had performed in a comedy team with Slappy White, a guy named Johnny Otis, who's very important to rhythm and blues in Los Angeles, took Red Fox under his wing, let him rap all night long on his late night radio station. But the big and first important historical distinction for Red Fox Foxx happened in 1956. A guy named Dootsie Williams, who was a doo-wop mogul here in Los Angeles,

who had made a lot of money with a hit song called Earth Angel by the Penguins, was putting out all this rhythm and blues and doo-wop music, all this great black music. What is it? Earth Angel, Earth Angel. Yeah, exactly. He saw Redd Foxx at a place called the oasis club in south central los angeles he said red i'd like to record your act and put it out as an album and red fox was like you're crazy because then people won't come and see my act they'll own it that's ridiculous yeah and he said well i can give you 500 bucks and red fox said get out of here two days later uh red fox was broke and he shows up

at uh ducey williams's office and he says hey man what are we talking about recording that record yeah so they recorded the record and it was a weird novelty in 1956 a stand-up comedy record it had never been done before and this was the first party record it was the first party record it was the first stand-up record period really really ever ever before that there were novelty songs by stan freeberg spike jones there had been radio shows on 78 uh there had been like talk sing routines with music in the background burt williams 78s but nobody had just recorded their stand-up act so red fox did that in 1956 it became a huge underground hit with black record buyers. But because it was the black market, places like Dolphin Records in south central Los Angeles, the mainstream white record publications like Billboard and Cashbox ignored it,

and they didn't track the sales. But Dootsie Williams knew how much we're selling, so they recorded another one and another one and another one. What is there, like 10? Before any white comedian put out a comedy record red fox put out 10 lps and 4 eps 14 releases between 56 and 58 and then mort saul put one out in 58 shelly berman put one out in 59 and when you talk to those guys mort saul be like i was the first guy to do a comedy he was the first guy to do everything according to him

yeah according to him and so all these white comedians through history have taken credit for the comedy record boom that came in the early 60s which you still find in every thrift store yeah yeah but red fox is the reason uh his record sold so well that capital deca verve they saw that and they're like we got to get in on this and they started recording comedians and it created this huge craze but red fox 14 records released big sellers before anybody else and i think it's it's also like i think people forget just how how much comedy records sold i mean some of them sold a lot they were big fucking money well the famous one is the first family by von meter yeah which to this day you still see in every antique store every junk store every record store it's worthless

but when it came out in uh in 61 uh it was the best-selling record of all time did not end well for von meter it wasn't the best-selling comedy record the best-selling record of all time and that was about the jfk it was about jfk and his family yeah and uh and actually von meter is how i got into this shit because his story is insane it's a movie it's so crazy but the beats are what he does the huge record, and then Kennedy gets assassinated, and he's sort of left without an angle. Well, he wasn't even really much of a comedian to begin with, but he was from New England. He looked a little bit like JFK. They had the same haircut.

And so he was kind of recruited by these disc jockeys who said, let's do a JFK spoof on record. Yeah. And so he was. It became a huge sensation. said, let's do a JFK spoof on record. Yeah. And so he was. It became a huge sensation.

They sent him on a countrywide tour, but it was like sending an amateur comic on a countrywide tour and booking him in Carnegie Hall. So I found a review of his Carnegie Hall appearance, and the headline is, Meter Bombs. And the only positive thing they say is that his opening act,

Stanley Myron Handelman, was hilarious. Who'd that turn out to be? He ended up being a writer for Rodney Dangerfield and was on Johnny Carson in the 70s a million times. But yeah, so Von Meter kind of bombed. Then JFK dies, and now he has no act because his whole act was just impersonating JFK. He had this record that sold six million copies.

After the assassination, Cadence Records, who put it out, sent out a nationwide recall. All the LPs were recalled, and all of Vaughn Meter's engagements were cancelled. He was cancelled off the Joey Bishop show. He lived a long time though. He didn't die until 2000 or something, right? He didn't die until 2000. So what happened was, he tried to reinvent himself. Nobody wanted it. Nobody liked it.

He did another record for Verve. He did two other ones for Verve, actually. One was like a Christian themed one. He started doing a lot of Acid, a lot of Peyote. He used to buy his LSD off Paul Krasner in the late 60s. He started wandering the desert. He became a born-again Christian and reinvented himself as a country and western barroom piano player in Maine and then died. Okay, so that's the story. That was your portal in to what the type of stories that

fascinate you about comedy well because i used to go to thrift stores and i would find these records by guys like von meter and i go who the fuck is this guy and why is he in every record store because i've never heard of him never seen him on tv never seen him but i've never caught but still there's this sort of i i don't know if it's a morbid fascination, but in the same way that I'm, you know, like I am captivated and enthralled by Drew Friedman's work. Right. I am sort of, you know, I've sort of had a long kind of fascination with human anomalies of sorts, you know, circus freaks and that kind of stuff. That there's something about going into the comedy store and you feel a ghost of something. There's an electricity that seems to be, have a history to ghost of something there's a there's an electricity that

seems to be uh have a history to it and it's a dark electricity that not everybody's sensitive to it have you ever been able to really track that in your psyche what that is what that the compulsion to to being part of that or to or to to look into it is uh my compulsion to look into i mean i'm trying to find out what mine is i I like being part of it, and I like the idea. I can't quite put my finger on it, because it's not evil, but it's sort of a darkness of the human spirit that is at the core of some of the most

profoundly entertaining and significant comedy that we like. There's something like, when I was a kid, I had pictures of entertainers. They have tabloid pictures of people I didn't even know, like Fatty Artbuckle. It goes back to that, that there's something I can't quite grasp what it is. The vulnerability and the weird compulsions of people that are entertainers in their private lives is morbidly fascinating. Well, there's something very unnatural about it.

So it's probably even more fascinating for people who don't do it because they cannot imagine going up on stage. To me, I have trouble relating to people who say they would never want to go on a stage or that their biggest fear is going in front of an audience. I'm like, well, what's the big deal? What's wrong with you? Why would you not want to be the center of attention? Name some of the names of the people that you talked to for this book how many were there uh i think we rounded yeah to 200 for the uh for the press release uh-huh um but i mean i talked

to everybody and even over the course of the book it was interesting there's some people i didn't interview officially for the book but i got to spend time with like mel brooks yeah albert brooks fred willard um but yeah about 200 people a lot of them are very uh obscure a lot of them you know for different uh uh generations obviously it's easier for the more current people because they're all alive i talked to everybody who was still alive basically from the 40s and 50s uh like professor erwin corey, people of that ilk. And then moving into more modern generations, people like Richard Lewis. I talked to way too many comedy store people. From the 70s?

Yeah, there's only so many Argus Hamilton anecdotes one needs. But it's a huge book. It gets into the nitty gritty. We talk about stories that have not previously been told before, how Jack Benny was accused of plagiarism in his early years. And to circumvent the plagiarism accusations, he did some interesting things. He changed his name to Jack Benny for one. His name change was because he was tainted with these accusations of joke thievery.

And furthermore, when he was accused of stealing from certain comedians, what he did was he hired those comedians as writers to write for him, and he became Jack Benny. So a lot of kind of hidden history about our comedy heroes is in this book about how Milton Berle dressing up in drag on the Texaco Star Theater was inspired by the gay clubs that he frequented and studied the drag queens. While at the same time, a lot of comedians like this guy, Ray Bourbon, who was a gay comic, was getting arrested for dressing as a woman. Milton Berle was on the cover of Time magazine for dressing like a woman. So there's a lot of hidden history in there. I guess it depends on the venue. Well, not only that, it depends on your status within the business.

Ray Bourbon was very obscure, and he would dress in drag. He'd go up on stage, talk about being gay gay and he would get busted for obscenity simply for saying that he was gay um and one of the things he was thrown in jail for was the charge this was a crime in los angeles in the early 50s he was charged with impersonating a woman and thrown in prison for a month milton burl was impersonating a woman became the most popular and loved entertainer in show business. Well, great job, Cliff. Thank you very much. You fucking did it, man. Thank you, man. That guy's a thinker. He's a talker. He's a historian.

The Comedians, Drunk Thieves, Scoundrels in the History of American Comedy. It's available now wherever you get books. Be a great gift for comedy fans. So now let's get into, this is a very interesting show. Diverse. Gloria Steinem as a cultural icon and as somebody who I remember from my childhood. Because Ms. Magazine happened in the early 70s, right, mid-70s. I just remember her on television, on the news, on magazines.

When I was a kid, she made an impression on my brain. I'm not sure I knew exactly what that was about, but I remember when Ms. Magazine first appeared. I remember the Shirley Chisholm candidacy and her on the cover. I remember a lot of these things from, you know, the stuff that was pouring into my brain because I always gravitated towards, you know, counterculture and exciting stuff. I didn't know why, but that was where I wanted to live. So I remembered her from that. She came over here to the house and we had less than an hour. And I thought it savvy, maybe. Is that the word?

Do I want to call myself savvy and smart to sort of focus on the book, which is called My Life on the Road? It's available now, and you'll hear her tell me. She doesn't consider this a memoir. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. But I decided to keep it focused on the book because i yeah because we were you know that's you know she's had a big life and there's a lot of things to talk to gloria steinem about and i had less than an hour and i thought it was good and now uh let's go to my Gloria Steinem. It's crazy.

I mean, you've met presidents. Yeah. It's intense when you meet them because you bring so much to it in terms of your perception of them. But then there's something slightly, after the excitement, there's not a disappointment, but there's a realization that they're just people's there's not a disappointment but there's a

realization that they're just people it's a person yeah that's which is the good news yeah it is the good news um so you know i was born in 63 so in 1972 uh when i guess ms magazine started you were in my mind like all of that stuff in the late 60s and early 70s was just stuff on newsstands and stuff on TV. I remember my mother bringing me to a McGovern rally in Albuquerque. And I remember seeing your face. I remember the cover of the First Miss magazine. So it was all coming in.

And I knew it was a world I wanted to be involved in, but I was, you know, nine. But at nine, you're as smart as you're ever going to get. Is that true? I think so. I think so, too. You do gravitate towards something. You know, you feel something. I think you're already who you're as smart as you're ever going to get. Is that true? I think so. I think so, too. You do gravitate towards something. You know, you feel something. Yeah, I think you're already who you're going to be.

Give or take, right? I guess you can meet obstacles, but hopefully you evolve a little bit. I'm trying not to be emotionally nine at 52. But like when I read the book and I realized just I was embarrassed at because I come from a generation in the middle there that I missed most of the 60s, that it was all just sort of bits and pieces. It was images. I saw Nixon on television. I knew he was bad. But but I missed all of it.

I'm reading your book and I'm like, oh, my God, I'm a moron. Like, how am I not educated enough to even know this fairly contemporary history? No, you don't need to know all that. You have instincts that will tell you what is bullshit and what isn't. Right. Sure. And that will work when you read history. It will work when you're living in the present. Yeah.

It's okay. It is okay? Yeah. Because, like, there is part of me that, you know, when when like when you wrote this book, I mean, after, you know, having written as much as you have and having represented feminism for as long as you have. Was this book a way to sort of frame your entire life's work around a memoir in a way to sort of. No, it's not a memoir. It's a road book. Okay. I think it's two different things. Okay.

What's the difference? It's not all that. I'm not talking about love affairs, marriages, because they didn't happen on the road. Right. Did you write that book? I have occasionally put... Yes, right. No, I have.

And the reason my father is there is because he was such a gypsy and a traveler and probably gave me my tolerance for insecurity that is very helpful. And also a spirit of adventure and looking towards the new and having a certain amount of optimism. Yes, absolutely. But if you think about it, would Jack Kerouac have called his book a memoir? I don't know, but like, it's probably not. But I mean, but there seem to be moments, like you seem to use experiences that you sort of went back to in your life as pivotal moments in sort of constructing

the way you saw the world. And, you know, in looking back at your father's career or lack thereof, you were able to identify him in a positive way, identify with him, and see your own spirit within it. No, that's true. I really was harking back to what felt relevant to what I was saying about the road. my falling in love with political campaigning had a lot to do with my mother's habit of getting tears in her eyes whenever she heard the word Roosevelt. But you remember Roosevelt? I kind of, just very little. The impact of it. Yeah, I remember it through her words. And I remember Eleanor, of course, after the death of Roosevelt. Right. And as I read this book, I realized it's not about feminism.

It's about democracy. It's about America. It's about people. But wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You can't have democracy without feminism. Think about it. Yeah, absolutely.

So it's really all the same subject. Well, that's what, like, because I come to the book, you know, being, you know, someone who knows of you through some writing, but mostly through what you represent. But when reading the book, it is fundamentally about struggle and about people and about democracy working. And I, yes, agreed, you can't have democracy without feminism. Yeah, like you can't have it with racism and you can't have it. Exactly. Yeah, right. But initially, I think what it seems to me compelled you was the struggle of people.

Yes. It was understanding, how shall I say, it was understanding that I wasn't less important than anyone else, but I wasn't more important either. Right. It was very helpful to live in India for a while because that was suffused with that kind of spirit. It was only a decade or so after the independence of India.

So I realized that movements from the bottom up were possible. Right. And you didn't see it in America, really, that there was a lack of. I wasn't. I'm sure, obviously, it existed here. Yeah. But it wasn't available to me. I thought you had to fit into the current hierarchy. Right, which was... What did you see that as then, the current hierarchy?

Well, in my terms, or those terms that were addressed to me, it meant that I would go to college and get educated in order to be an educated mother. And I would marry, and my life from that time on would be decided by the needs of my husband and children. Not that a husband and I might state our needs equally. Right. That didn't exist. No. Well, it probably existed, but it wasn't in the culture, and I didn't hear it.

But the power of that, I guess, would be a patriarchal system, but also just what was taken for granted as the middle class at that time was so limited. as the middle class at that time was so limited. And it's hard for me to even picture, just because I grew up in a different time, that it was rarely questioned. And that was what you were up against. Well, it's still with us in ways. I mean, for instance, if a woman has children, it's harder for her to get a job

because she is considered distracted. If a man has children, it's easier for her to get a job because she is considered distracted if a man has children it's easier because he's considered responsible these judgments are so deeply ingrained in and but when you like I think what was fascinating about the book and about your experience in India because what you like what was exactly the thing that sort of turned your mind in India about the power of talking to people? It was the complete accident of walking through an area called Ram Nad, which was then very being destroyed by caste riots. And I had gone to see the ashram of a man named Vinoba Bhave, who was a disciple of Gandhi, who, of course, was no longer living.

And it happened that because the riots were going on, they had sent teams walking through this area in order to say to the people, we care about you, you're not abandoned by everyone outside. And they were fresh out of women. Right. So they needed a woman to become part of this team. And I said, you know, isn't it kind of crazy that it's an American woman? And they said, you know, it wouldn't be any more odd if you came from New Delhi.

So there I was with a sari, a cup, and a comb, period. Yeah. Walking through villages, being given food and shelter by the villagers, because as the Gandhi and I was with said, you know, if they if they want peace, they will support you and take care of you. And if they don't, there's nothing you can do anyway. The fact that just having human interaction, representation, and also sort of moving through, getting rid of the lies or the fear by telling people that things were going to be okay and that this was what was going on. You haven't been abandoned. People, of course, had taken shelter in their houses, in their compounds, in their huts and so for them to come out at night and sit around a kerosene lamp and even talk to each other uh because the rumors are always are frequently even worse than the reality here too now i don't know the reality is pretty bad yeah um and just to watch this process in which the point was that everybody got to tell their story everybody

listened yeah and came to some consensus and that was more important than the time spent right right right it was because you're engaged as well they i mean might not frame it that way like you know like this is going on a while or you know how do we get to the bottom it wasn't let's have a meeting for an hour no it was let's let's have a meeting and and find out what's really happening and uh support each other help each other confirm each other's reality it was about the goal not about the time right now how much about you know i know that your your relationship with your mother was was difficult because she had some mental illness, right? I don't think she had.

No? You know, even when she was in a mental hospital, I asked the doctors how they would diagnose her. And they said she had an anxiety neurosis. And I said, could you say her spirit was broken? And they said yes. So it wasn't exactly what you would call something that's in the dictionary. Right, right. Like an actual depressive state.

It was something environmental and internal that had to do with sadness. Yeah, sadness. I mean, everything she loved that was her own, her own talent, her own ability to tell her own story, to be a writer, to be a reporter. She had given up because she had had a nervous breakdown. She couldn't make it all work together. And then she had got hooked on early tranquilizers. That is, there was something called sodium pentothal, which was a very early tranquilizer. That's a heavy one.

Yeah. Yeah. And were you able to identify, when did you first sort of identify that she was heartbroken because of her inability to pursue her own self? How old were you when you sort of put that together? You know, it took me a long time because we tend to just accept how our parents are as inevitable. And I had not been born yet when she was being a newspaper reporter and doing what she loved. So it wasn't until she came out of hospital for the second time. And well, really, when I was seeing her there, and I suddenly

realized how alike we were. And I realized who she had been and who she still was inside. And did you identify some of the common insecurities and fears that you knew you had to transcend or overcome? No, I think I was still, to be frank, I think I was still in the I'm not going to be anything like my mother phase, which causes us to blame or at least attribute the problem to our parents because we don't want to admit it could happen to us too. So I wasn't quite there yet. I mean, I now realize that it's quite true. And if she had a mental illness, it was called patriarchy.

But, you know, and I'm just lucky that I'm able, that it's diminished somewhat and that I'm that before, you know, the Vietnam War and before all the sort of progressive and revolutionary activities and activism of that time, I mean, you were writing. You were writing magazine pieces. I mean, you saw this all unfold before the idea of feminism really took hold. before the idea of feminism really took hold. Well, I was doing what I think we often do, is that if we are in one somewhat marginalized group, we identify with every other marginalized group. Right. So I was working for Cesar Chavez and the farm workers as a volunteer.

I had, for instance, written a long interview in a profile of James Baldwin because I was in love with his writing. I didn't understand why exactly. I mean, you know, my part of it, I didn't understand. I just knew I was magnetized by that. And also with the struggle of anybody who seemed, you know, misrepresented or actually oppressed. Yeah, I think even now people accuse me of being a foul weather friend what does that mean that means that i'm right there in a crisis but when things are going well i may be hard to find why how do you take that well i recognize it yeah it's true it's true i think if things are going well you know know. You don't need me?

Right. I have to move on to where there's crisis. No, I mean, it's not quite that bad. No, no. Because I mean, I love to dance and make jokes and hang out and all of that, you know, which is all good stuff. But I have been accused of being a foul weather friend. But you need to go where the help is needed. That seems to be what you're compelled by.

I think also there were a lot of crises in my childhood. So I think I got into a kind of what they would now call crisis management. Sure. Right. Well, I mean, when you deal with a sort of erratic, slightly irresponsible father, and you're traveling constantly and you have no home, I would imagine that there is a certain amount of panic, and someone has to be the grown-up. Well, and also, I was his friend and his buddy, and part of being his friend and his buddy was,

as a child, going to open the door instead of him in case it was a bill collector. I mean, I can still, I think, recognize bill collectors. Right. And also there were some con games going on. Yes. You guys had sort of a racket going. That's true. And did you know, like, he was Jewish, right?

Yes. Your father was. Were you brought up with any religion? Not what people would call a religion, probably, although my mother kept telling me she tried to give me a Jewish identity. My father didn't care about it at all, and my mother loved her mother-in-law, adored her mother-in-law. So she kept telling me, against all evidence of my father,

that Jewish men made better husbands. She's hanging on to the dream. Right. Did you know your grandmother? Just a little bit. Yeah. And only thanks to feminist scholars who have done monographs about her have I come to realize, I mean, she died when I was about five, that what an important suffragist she was. Oh, really? So you have it in your genes? Maybe. And she had founded the first vocational high school in Toledo. And she also was elected as a member of the school board,

the first woman to be so elected, which I realized she did in a very smart way, because women were kept from voting because there were gangs of men and boys who would what we now call sexually harass them when they went to the polls. Yeah. And she organized women to vote together. Uh-huh. Go in a pack?

And so she won. Yes. If there are a lot of you, they're not going to bother you. And if they do bother you, you just keep moving. Right. Well, that sort of became a theme of what you talk about in organizing as well. Yes. Yeah. That with that, with the power of numbers and communication, that you are sort of an unstoppable force. Well, you're not 100%

unstoppable, but you're less stoppable. Let's put it that way. I like how you're wary to be too optimistic or unrealistic about the fight. But your father never spoke of his mother in these ways? You had to wait until some... Yeah. No, you know, families brag about their forebears in ways that are seen as admirable. forebears in ways that are seen as admirable. So I was told how wonderful it was that my grandmother had four sons, that she kept a kosher table, that she was an educator.

That was good. But not that she ran for school board on a coalition ticket with the anarchists and the socialists. That was not looked at. In the family mythology, that was the downside? You know, I don't know. I mean, I don't think it was concealed. It's just that it wasn't admired. Right, but it must have been a fairly, I mean,

I'd imagine your father had some memories of the kind of chaos of campaigning and being part of that. Yeah, probably, but he was not. I mean, I think that my father was rebelling against the super, not conformity, certainly, but security that his parents had provided because they were both immigrants. So it mattered to them a lot. But to my father, he was growing up in a completely quiet household with a ticking clock on the mantelpiece. Right. And he wanted adventure. So he didn't care if he graduated from the university or not. He was running all the dances, running the humor magazine. Right. You know, he was for day-to-day adventure.

And how did he influence, do you think, your concept of, if at all, your concept of masculinity or what men were or anything else? In retrospect, I realize I was very super hyper lucky in that way because he really was a nurturing father. And he was patient and he loved my company and he treated me like a buddy.

So I realized there were men who were kind and patient and treated you like a buddy. Some of them had places to live. But I think, you know, I'm grateful to him. Yeah, no, it seems to me that you sort of attribute a lot of your sort of spirit to his compulsion. And I'm still friends with my old lovers you know who were wonderful human beings oh really it's probably all well that's because of him attributable to him well

i thought that letter in the book from uh you know that kid who whose father was a doctor who knew your dad when when he passed was it's really touching i mean there were several points of the book where you know like i don't know i i don't know if it's my age or what but i get weepy very easily and there was like even though like the the taxi drivers that you know, like, I don't know, I don't know if it's my age or what, but I get weepy very easily. And there was like, even though like the taxi drivers that, you know, your sort of defense of your lifestyle is really about, you know, having the experience of engaging with people of all kinds, you know, sort of spontaneously. And, you know, the stuff you learned from taxi drivers was like, those are great stories. Well, I realized that I had to, and I have to say to you that it was only after I'd been

working on the book for a while that I realized that since I was writing an on-the-road book, perhaps I had to explain that I didn't drive. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how... Even though I later discovered that Jack Kerouac didn't drive either. Well, he had Neil Cassidy. Did you have Neil Cassidy to drive you around? No, no.

Who was Neil Cassidy? On campuses, I had a lot of Neil Cassidys to drive me. Right, sure. Sort of excited students. But the reason I love the way I travel is because the moment I leave my door, the journey begins. Right. I'm not isolated in a car by myself. I'm taking the subway to take a train or I'm getting in a taxi.

You're immediately in a communal situation. A taxi is really like somebody's house. They have their photographs up and so on and you end up in conversation. So your trip starts right away. Yeah. But how do you travel? So you don't take buses across country, though, do you? Well, I have occasionally taken buses and certainly trains, mostly by plane, though.

Right. And that has turned out to be great because the flight attendants are flying girlfriends. Right. turned out to be great because the flight attendants are flying girlfriends. Right. Because they have their own huge job problems over time. And they were organizing. In fact, they were the first group to take a discrimination case before the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission,

because they had to stop working at a certain age. They had to look a certain way. There was all kinds of... They were hyper-sexualized and objectified. And men couldn't be hired as flight attendants as they now are. So they were getting activist and politicized at the same time that I was wandering around taking planes. So literally, I had flying girlfriends.

Right. And also, you had those talk circles about issues that affected people's lives and women's lives. Yes. And sometimes we had them in the galley. And one woman said to me, leaving St. Louis, that she had had Phyllis Schlafly on her flight. And she said, I put her in the middle seat. Do you look at Phyllis Schlafly as your mortal enemy for life? No. No, I mean, like, because there are these, I have to assume that somebody who has been your antagonist in a way for what? For decades.

Have you talked to her? Have you ever had a talk circle with Phyllis Schaffer? No. I used to try to correct her facts, but she would just say, thank you very much, and then go on saying the same thing. Well, that's a standard in right-wing ideology. I think that she was kind of selected to be the lead person against the Equal Rights Amendment because the right-wing didn't have that many women. She actually was much more interested in military policy. That had been her concern beforehand. But do you think that, you know, didn't it go for most of your life and her resistance or her being an opponent of Equal Rights Amendment? How did you even, if you could have any empathy for her position, what the hell could it be?

I mean, how could a woman think that way? think that way? Well, I think if you have a system with pretty clear differences in power, then you create a situation in which to sell out your group that is the less powerful one will get you favors from the more powerful. And that's just the way it is. So there are always going to be some people who look like you and behave like them right uh and there's also internalized oppression as psychologists say you know it's possible that you really believe what you've been told all your life that your group is slightly less than dependent on well that's an interesting moment in the book about the the the black man who saw the black pilot and had a moment of like, why is he?

Yeah. Is that going to be all right? Can he do that? Yeah. No, I mean, because if we do what we see way more than what we're told. So we, too, have grown up in a world in which we haven't seen people who look like us, if the us is the less powerful group. Right. In positions of control or power.

us as the less powerful group in positions of control or power. And we, too, come to doubt whether it's really possible. Maybe we should go to a white doctor or a male doctor. The brainwashing is sort of deep. Yeah, we're subject to it, too. But with Schaafle, it was a power thing. I mean, she catered to favors and maintaining power within her party, and that was that. I think so. Although, apparently after, I'm trying to think what election it was, I think she'd been very instrumental in electing Reagan, and they still didn't give her a job in the administration.

I felt kind of sorry for her, actually. Really? She'd made all those cuts. I mean, if you're going to gonna sell out you might as well get something sold out your entire gender you you might as well at least get to sit with the with the president if you yeah that's that's uh and so but also i i have to say that that she was much more the window dressing and if you're thinking about the defeat of the equal rights amendment it was way more defeated by the insurance industry

because the insurance industry is one of the very few, maybe the last big, big, big industry that is governed and regulated by state legislatures, not by the federal government. Right. And therefore, they're very deep into state legislatures. In fact, at one point in the ERA struggle, I noticed that the most frequent occupation of a state legislature was insurance agent. And they didn't want to take sex out of

their actuarial tables, which they would have had to do. Because that would have... It would have cost them a lot of money. Right. So even now, even though thanks to Obamacare, there's been some small regulation of the insurance industry, if you are a woman who doesn't smoke, you may still pay more premium, higher premium than a man who does smoke on the theory that you live longer. Interesting. Insurance is a very sort of evil sort of business. Yeah, no, it is. A very powerful lobby, but a very evil business because they're in the business of making money, not helping people like they're playing the odds against you.

Yeah, well, they're they're trying to. Well, we understand. But I think part of the reason I came to believe we didn't have the democracy I thought we had was that in the state legislatures, including in every state, the Equal Rights Amendment had the majority support and majority opinion. Nonetheless, we would lose because of the economic interests in the state legislatures. But it seems that you do still have a faith in the power of the electorate, of people. No, I do. It takes a lot of organizing. It's not easy to, on the ground, defeat big money. But you can do it.

The voting booth is actually the last place, or the only place I can think of anyway, where the least powerful and the most powerful are equal. Right. And it is a private decision. That's what I like. I was talking to somebody about that, about the size of, because I talked to Michael Moore about the number of women who are going to be voting.

And he was talking specifically about that. And I was talking to some friends who were sort of cynical about it, about the wives of conservatives or the women who are in Christian organizations or whatever. But you don't know what they're going to vote when they go in there. They don't have to tell. No, that's true. That's true.

And actually, I once met a woman who told me that she was so tired of her husband canceling out her vote every year that she locked him in the bathroom. And so he couldn't vote. Right. With food. She put food in there, locked him in the bathroom. That's a't vote right voters she put food in there locked him in the bathroom oh that's a very it's only one such woman right very very intimate voter suppression well can we talk a little bit about some history in in in the evolution of of of modern feminism that you know you were instrumental in and how it sort of came out of the 60s and what was going on in the late 60s that created the environment

for activism to really take hold in this country. When did it start for you, where you started to realize that your agenda was what it was? Well, there was a very important part of the movement that came along a little bit earlier, say in the mid or early 60s, because of the Feminine Mystique, which was written by Betty Friedan, talking about women who were college-educated white women living in the suburbs and just not using their talents and had a right to be in the labor force. I thought that was absolutely true.

I just didn't think it applied to me because I was already in the labor force and not getting paid equally. Right, right. So for me, it was more the women who had been in or still were in the civil rights movement or in the anti-war movement and loved those movements with all of our hearts, but still were not making policy but coffee instead. Right. But still at that time, I guess it would be the left in terms of the fight against the

Vietnam War, raising awareness of the injustice of that war, and the sort of momentum of the civil rights movement. At some point, I imagine you were sitting in a talk circle with other women and said, well, I mean, we've got to be specific about this. And there must have been some resistance from the left. Yes, no, there was. I mean, at the time, it just seemed to us that we needed an additional movement. Right. But to some guys on the left, they felt we were being divisive because we were bringing up the subject of women's equality, which they didn't take seriously.

And then they asked you to go get their coffee. coffee so uh there's there's a a brilliant essay by robin morgan called goodbye to all that in which she says goodbye to the left uh-huh you know oh really yeah good goodbye to men who are uh rebelling for the moment and then going back to their father's business goodbye i don't know i mean it's wonderfully funny and when was that when was that written um oh gosh i'd have to at the very end of the 60s. But you wrote a piece in 69 called After Black Power, Women's Liberation. And did that

specifically speak to the momentum that had come through activism now had to be applied directly to the issues of equal rights? Yes, and also in my own life experience it was because I had gone to cover a hearing held in a church basement downtown in Manhattan by women who were protesting a state legislative hearing on liberalizing abortion laws. Roe v. Wade, before the Supreme Court ruling. So the legislature in Albany was supposed to decide, trying to decide whether to liberalize abortion laws.

And they had invited 14 men and one nun to testify. So these activist wonderful women said, wait a minute, let's hear from women who really had this experience. I went to cover that as a reporter for New York Magazine, and that was a moment of great revelation because I thought, wait a minute, you know, this is... We're not represented. Well, and if one in three women has needed an abortion

at some time in her lifetime, exactly why is it criminal and dangerous? Why? And you had your own experience with it. Yes, I did, From being in London on my way to India after I graduated from college. Yes. And then your experience of it and how that affected your life was that it was not some sort of dramatic, emotionally scarring or immoral thing. emotionally scarring or immoral thing?

No, not at all. Not at all. It was very clear to me that either I gave birth to someone else and gave up my life and went back and married the wrong man, a nice guy, but definitely the wrong man. It would have been bad for both of us. Or I gave birth to myself. And when did you frame it like that did you know that intuitively then I certainly knew it intuitively I don't know if I would have said it in quite those that way but it was uh you know I mean obviously the same act can be very negative if if somebody wants a child and and economically can't afford it or is being forbidden. But it's infused with the reasons why you are going through this.

And for me, it was very liberatory. Right, sure. you talk in the book a bit about, you know, campaigning a lot for Democratic candidates and that there was, you know, I just finished reading that part where, you know, no matter how emotional, you know, defeats or victories might have been along the course of doing that for McCarthy or Kennedy or Johnson as well, that when you were at that rally for Nixon, it seemed like that moment sort of indicated to you the future. Well, it did because so much had gone into it. You know, the murder of Martin Luther King, the murder of both Kennedys.

Both Kennedys. Both Kennedys. So the death of the future was very inundating for all of us. And we were in a huge kind of amphitheater or something in Florida. Yeah. And this rally for Nixon was just so much by rote and so machine-made and just overwhelming. It was like being under a steamroller. And I think the other journalists were feeling it, too. I could sense that, you know, because, for instance, they were singing the battle hymn

of the Republic. And I remember one of the other reporters saying they can't they can't sing that that's bobby's that's bobby's favorite hymn they can't sing that it was just a very emotional moment and that was uh 68 yeah and that was like the beginning of you know what four to how many years six years of just hell in a way but those were empowering times to for the opposition as well because when you had something to really fight against it became clearer to people that might know what the not know what the fight is to really push back well it's especially because the draft right you know

made so many people vulnerable that it built the movement in and of itself. And caused people to leave the country, caused people to, you know, I mean, all kinds of, caused some people to become violent in opposition to the war. Well, created the hippie movement, the SDS, right? All of it was built around the resistance of that war. Yes, right? All of it was built around the resistance of that war. Yes, right. And I had a kind of weird special attachment to that whole issue, because having lived in India for a couple of years, I had heard about Ho Chi Minh, and I had actually read his poetry. And I kept thinking, you know, aren't we on the wrong side here? I mean, you know, because it seemed to me that he wanted an autonomous, independent Vietnam

and that he was not going to lead to takeover by China. In fact, that he was quite, you know, he didn't want to be taken over by China either. But this was not a popular view, as you can understand. I mean, he was our enemy. But it did lead me to doing the first story I did for New York Magazine, which we were just then starting, which was about Ho Chi Minh in New York. Because I had heard from reporters who had interviewed him that he was very affectionate about New York

and that he had lived there as a young man. So since we were starting New York Magazine, I thought, okay, I'll research Ho Chi Minh in New York, which I think delighted Clay Felker just because it was outrageous. The editor. Yes, of New York Magazine. You can push some buttons.

Right. Yeah. And, you know, I did do this story, even though it got cut to shreds and was, you know, like a tenth of what I had written. Was there pushback? Was there a backlash to it? Did it cause controversy? You know, if it did, I wasn't really exactly privy to it, I don't think. You didn't have internet comment boards then. It led to surrealism in a real way because I remember trying to fact check about his time in New York with Ho Chi Minh and getting on the phone with the Western Union operator of that, you know, sending a wire.

Oh, so you were going to send a wire to Ho Chi Minh? I did, yeah. And she was saying, you know, do you have a street address in Hanoi, honey? And I was saying, no, I just, you know. Just Ho Chi Minh. Just the presidential palace will probably be in a... And what did you get? And, you know, then we're at war, and he's the leader of the other side.

Did he get back to you? No. But when did you really start feeling that feminism and the women's movement was really starting to pick up momentum? Well, when I started to two things happened one was that I couldn't get the editors I was then working for as a freelancer interested in this contagion of excitement called feminism that was, you know

they, I mean either they just weren't interested or if they were interested they would say, well, if we publish an article saying women are equal, then we'll have to publish one next to it saying they're not. False objectivity. Yes, in order to be objective. So it was pretty discouraging.

And at the same time, because I had written a little bit in New York Magazine about the movement, I was getting invitations to speak. Now, I had devoted, I mean, I was, what, in my late 30s, Is I guess by then and I had devoted all of my life to never speaking in public so just writing yeah just writing I mean I think in a way you choose to write because you don't want to talk yeah oh yeah go a little distance so but I realized that that was the only way to get the word out and fortunately I had I had a friend, Dorothy Pittman Hughes, who is still my friend. And she was running a child care center,

and she was married and had kids. So she had all these experiences that I did not have. And she's African American, and I'm European American or whatever we want to call ourselves. So in every way, it seemed like a good thing to do. I just couldn't go by myself, and it seemed like we would be a good pair. And it turned out to be amazing, even though people in New York were telling us we would be stoned to death in Dubuque.

When we got to the equivalent of Dubuque, there would just be hundreds, even thousands of people in a stadium. You could see that it was just catching fire, and I never would have known that if I hadn't traveled in that way. That there was this desire to have equal and fair representation and a voice.

Well, and just to speak your experience. Right. And you created an environment where they could do that. Yes. One of the good things about not wanting to talk is you leave a lot of time for discussion and for organizing. Right. And what did organizing look like then?

I mean, what was the primary, what were the initiatives? Well, it depended, you know, somebody would get up in the audience and say, you know, there's no childcare on this campus. And what it means is that the employees don't have it, the students don't have it. You know, why don't we demonstrate and try to get it? Or there's no health clinic for women that dispenses birth control or really deals with women. So maybe how can we pressure to get that? Or there were issues on campus that were universal issues, but you could organize around on campus. Now, if the students didn't go to class and demonstrated, nobody cared too much. Right.

But if, and to some extent, if the professors had an issue about trying to initiate new courses or trying to get tenure for a beloved professor who, you know. Right. And they protested it didn't do too much. And if the, what then would have been the clerical workers and people on the switchboard and so on wanted, needed better pay. And they, but when you did it together. Right. needed better pay. But when you did it together, then it actually worked because they might not care when the students didn't go to class,

but if now a phone call went around that campus for a day or two, they cared. So if we organized together, we could get something done. And to take action in a massive way that had an impact. Well, it didn't have to be massive. It just had to be enough people. Organized. Yeah. So they couldn't be expelled.

Right, right, right. And things would stop working. Right, right. Yeah. So, all right. Let's see. In the last 10 minutes or so that we have here, tell me about, like, because now there is a lot of, there's a kind of, I don't know if you would call it a redefinition or a renewed momentum to feminism, but definitely culturally there seems to be a resurgence of activism and consciousness.

And I guess, what do you think are the biggest issues now? Are they the same issues? Is there progress being made? You know, when you're out there talking to people around reproductive rights, obviously, and around fair pay and equal rights and that stuff. But how has it changed for better or for worse? I think it's deepened and widened. So when in the past we would have been

trying to name domestic violence, which didn't even have a name, and trying to reform police procedures and keep them from thinking

that their goal was to get the criminal and the victim back together again. That was their definition of success. We can work it out. Right.

She'll get used to it. Right. So, you know, there came to be better, a definition of domestic violence, better laws, educating the police departments, having shelters instead of a kind of safety system with just people who were willing to make a bedroom available to women and her kids who were in emergency, but actual shelters. So that continued and continues now.

And sexual assault as well. to redefine rape so that it was understood to be violence, not sex, and degrees of sexual assault, punishing that sexual assault of men, too. So that has continued, and now you see it in very specific ways, say sexual assault on campus or sexual assault in the military, using those definitions to really address what was invisible before. Right. And in terms of reproductive rights, is it an ongoing disappointment that it has become a state-by-state issue and not a national issue? Not exactly, because the so-called right-to-life groups abandoned Washington because they couldn't get what they want. They wanted a so-called human life amendment to the Constitution. They did get, they were successful

in restricting federal funds for poor women, so now the system greatly discriminates against poor women. Nonetheless, they couldn't outlaw abortion altogether as they wanted.

So that's a victory. So they, so now they, and also they discovered, I guess, to their shock that murdering abortion doctors and burning down bombing clinics didn't make them popular.

So instead now they're going to state legislatures, especially those controlled by right-wing forces, which is, you know, state legislatures in general are much more likely to be controlled by conservative forces even than Congress. are much more likely to be controlled by conservative forces even than Congress. And they kind of legislate or redistricting themselves into perpetuity. So, you know, if you've already got the insurance industry and people building prisons instead of giving money to universities and so on in control of a legislature, instead of giving money to universities and so on in control of a legislature, that's much more likely that they're going to be able to put such draconian, terrible restrictions, ridiculous restrictions on clinics that they will be able to close them down.

And that's what they're trying to do now. Right. And where do you stand on there? You know, there is how do you because you because in your career you've done satire. You've used humor. Listen, I love, I was so happy when I was being a comedy writer for Saturday Night, that was the week that was. I was in heaven. There's a power to it.

Yes. There is. Making people laugh. And learn and raising awareness in that way. Yeah. There is. Making people laugh. And learn and raising awareness through that way. Right. Now, how do you feel about the sensitivity, you know, around language, around what gets called political correctness, around the, you know, sort of, you know, hostile and, you know, the idea that certain language should be off limits in terms of whether it's sexist or the idea of rape jokes and this type of stuff.

Do you think that there's a point where there's an overreaction? Well, maybe, but political correctness is a term we invented to make fun of ourselves. Right. You know, but I think what it kind of boils down to is that outsiders are likely to be, should be aware of tender feelings when they use terminology that could be overgeneralizing or insulting. Right. But within that community that you're talking about, the humor is there. The question is, who has a right to say this? Who has the experience, the daily lived experience?

Right, right. And that's always the way it works within certain communities. Yeah, I mean, Jewish humor is great. Not everybody can do it. Yes, WASPs doing Jewish humor is not so great. But it's not illegal. It shouldn't be illegal. But if you're going to say something, you're going to take the hit so great. But it's not illegal. It shouldn't be illegal. But if you're going to say something, you're going to take the hit, maybe.

Yeah, right. Right. No, it's not about the law, but it is about acceptability and protest. And what do you think? How do you feel about the sort of like, it seems to me that in the 80s, there was a right-wing reaction to pornography. And now it seems to be the biggest business in the country in in a certain respect and and there is a full pornographication of of the world through the internet do you think that that is is destructive to to women to intimacy to yeah it is it is destructive i mean i think that we have successfully said uh rape not sex, it's violence. But what we haven't yet successfully said is that pornography is not erotica. Porn means female slaves. Eros has an idea of love and mutual pleasure and free choice. And I fear that pornography is taking over sex when in fact it's way more about domination.

And also about, it's completely devoid of story or poetry or anything else, and it does feed a certain compulsion. But there was sort of a subset of feminism that felt empowered if they were able to appropriate pornography or the sex industry, that it was somehow empowering. Well, but it usually turned into erotica. Right. I mean, yeah. It was quite different. It became niche and not general porn in a way.

It became niche and not general porn in a way. You know, it's hard to, I mean, you have to let everybody self-define. Sure. Because if somebody has been profoundly sexually abused as a child, it may have so entwined sexuality and pain that you can't get it unentwined you know and you may not know that and it you know that it takes a while so it is about you know respecting where where we are but in a wherever that is but in a general way nature tells us what's good for us by making it pleasurable and what's bad for us by making it painful. So it's important to disentangle those two things and also to say there is such a thing as erotica,

not to let pornography pretend to be the only form of sexuality, much less an acceptable form. I mean, it's really about domination and passivity. And what about in terms of, like, I feel that in the book and certainly talking to you that you feel there has been progress made on all fronts. Yeah, no, I, yes, it just not enough. Yeah. No, I, yes, it just not enough. Well, do you think there will ever be a national equal rights amendment? Yes, it's coming back, actually. There's a very good book by Jessica Newworth about the equal rights amendment and how it could and should think we already have it. They don't understand that, say, you know, we lost the lawsuit against Walmart because we didn't have it. And that's an education issue in terms of like I imagine that you're sort of propulsion to continue to go out there and talk to people.

I imagine that you meet a lot of, you know, not not necessarily ignorance, but just people who are consumed with their lives and may not be. That's true. It is an education issue, but it's also a power issue. Right. Because the fact that women are still paid unequally is contributing to the massive profits of a lot of corporations who don't want to pay women equally. But there's a lot of corporations who don't want to pay women equally. But there's a lot of barriers. For instance, in New York State, I don't know about California, but we had to get a piece of legislation, free speech legislation,

in order to protect people against getting fired if they told each other what they were earning. How crazy is that? It's the one thing we know, how much we're making. Then you had to go through those hoops just to get... Yes, you're right, so that nobody can get fired just for sharing the fact of their salary. The way the government... Do you believe democracy can and does or will again work properly?

Yes, because it worked before Columbus showed up, so maybe we can get back there. No, really, I mean, the consensus circles of governance that the Iroquois Confederacy and the six huge nations that covered much of America, it was a very sophisticated form of governance, which our constitution imitated, but unfortunately left out women and left in slavery. So we have a way to go to get back to the level of sophistication that was here in the first place. Well, it was great talking to you and I enjoyed the book and safe travels. Thank you so much. quite uh quite an overview i was proud of myself got a lot in and uh that's our show i hope you enjoyed that and uh i'll talk to you on uh on thursday okay go to wtfpod.com for all your wtf pod needs things to do things to. I'll play a little guitar. Boomer Lives! Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing.

With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre

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