Charlie Rose

esantoro  09/12/2009 04:38 PM Report

Whenever I hear Charlie interview Ivy League university presidents, I am reminded of an interview with Harold Pinter about a year ago. In that interview, Charlie suggested very naively that Pinter, with his great skill at expression, innuendo, and insight, should write a play that examines how America has gotten itself into its current economic, political, and social malaise.

Not only is such a broad scope not Pinter's forte, but such a play would have to give journalists like Charlie Rose, as well as a slew of other folks in the national spotlight, a very sound beating.

For a while now I have been entertaining myself with two ideas for just such plays as Mr. Rose seeks. One is entitled "The Pequod." Imagine Melville, Twain, DeLillo, Pynchon, Fitzgerald, Albee, Williams, Coover, Miller, O'Neil, Barth and others all thrown together with a healthy dash of Mel Brooks and Pinter. Shake, cap, and run the hell away as fast as you can for a four-hour romp that will leave you crying and pulling your hair out. It's a play about how national dysfunction is held together for nearly 240 years through myth, disinformed and misinformed history, deceit, stupidity, cruelty, inferiority, and a warped sense of national pride.

This one is the whole enchilada. While thinking through some of its parts, I conceived a precursor, a shorter 90-minute diddly. This one is titled "The Trial of Charlie Rose." Of course, this play isn't an attack on Charlie Rose the person, as few of us have ever met him or even know him (we might even like him); it is an attack on Charlie Rose the public persona who poses as a journalist eager, willing, and interested to ask the real questions that need to be asked. This persona is on trial because it is integral to keeping a rickety "Pequod" afloat -- through naiveté, pseudo-pomposity, fear, and an unquenchable desire to be liked.

Whenever I see Charlie interview Ivy League university presidents and their financial and corporate counterparts, I convulse in equal parts fear, joy, and loathing in the recognition that I have the perfect epigraph -- for both plays:

"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages [...] will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without suspecting that the system is inimical to their best interests."

- Rothschild Brothers' of London communiqué to associates in New York June 25, 1863

Is this the hidden agenda behind how our ostensibly prestigious universities select students in the maintenance of the status quo?

DrCSwartz  08/01/2009 03:26 PM Report

This is an interesting group of comments!

Charlie has always interruped guests. It's his way of making the show a conversation instead of a monologue. Get over it.

I teach economics at a large state university and I plan to use President Levin's opening comments to inspire and challenge my students on the first day of classes.

I worry when I hear Charlie say that the US has a comparative advantage in higher education. Erosion of the primary and secondary curricula have given higher education less and less to work with over time. My students have been taught "calculator" instead of arithmetic. If they can't multiply (and believe me, they can't), algebra and all of higher math is beyond of their reach. And as President Levin points out, several disciplines have become more quantitative over time.

Parents, teach your children well.

rivergorge  07/23/2009 10:04 PM Report

I agree with abein. Charlie Rose interrupts his guest far too many times. Charlie's ego gets in the way of good journalism too often on this show. Another example in this interview is when Levin tries to describe China in 2020-2030 and Charlie interrupts. Charlie seems to forget that his audience may not know what the guest is about to say, even though Charlie may think he does and does not need to hear further comment on the subject by the guest. Some guests, such as Levin, have far more to tell than there is time for and it would be best if Charlie could just open up the dialogue and let the guest develop the thread of conversation. Charlie also seems to have an insecure feeling towards some guests who are extremely knowledgeable, so he interogates them, as a prosecutor would, rather than facilitates good dialogue. Unfortunately, Charlie has as much to learn about himself as he does about how to conduct good TV journalism.

timj  07/19/2009 07:31 AM Report

Around 28:00 Mr. Levin indifferently talks about how wages will gradually rise in China and jobs will drift elsewhere in search of low wage workers. Isn't this called exploitation? Isn't it a large part of what has led to the current economic problems the U.S. faces? It doesn't seem to bother Mr. Levin who seems to be a cheerleader of the idea of capitalism at the expense of true democracy. In the U.S. we have allowed government to tilt completely towards the interests of multinational corporations at the expense of labor. Good middle class jobs have been shipped elsewhere and now the U.S. consumer can no longer sustain the current economic system. We must once again see ourselves first as citizens rather than investors.

riverrower  07/17/2009 05:24 PM Report

I wish Charlie mentioned how much Yale recieved from the stimulus package. I believe it was millions, so, of course Mr. Levin says "sign me up"!

abein  07/17/2009 09:41 AM Report

I wish Charlie did not interrupt this guest at critical points in the interview. For example, as Levin describes his conclusions about the Gawande article in the New Yorker about the disparities in health care costs in McAllen, Texas, Charlie interjected with "and Hawaii is the opposing example." In that article, Gawande describes the Mayo Clinic as an alternative approach and Hawaii is not even mentioned. Let the guest finish and hold the interviewer's contributions unless they add, not subtract!

ShalomFreedman  07/17/2009 04:06 AM Report

Is there a public affairs journalist with a broader, more intelligent understanding of the overall social , cultural, economic , political development of the United States and the world, than Charlie Rose? Is there one who would spend an hour with a personality like Richard Levin, who offers no wild entertainment or easy gimmick?

The conversation is a serious one, about higher education, about the work Levin has done at Yale, about his sense of the 'passion for some area of life' undergraduates should attain through their study, about the challenge of America's connecting with and communicating with the world, about the great importance and value of Education for maintaining America's place of primacy in the world.

Levin was intelligent, informative if not exciting. In surveying Yale's contacts with the world he focused on China, but at Charlie Rose's prodding gave a kind of world- wide summary. When he spoke of the Middle East he did not however, and here I speak of my own interest, touch about Yale's relations or absence of them with Israel.

On another matter it was interesting to learn that it is the top half of the top one percent which get to Yale. The I.Q.- ocracy , or perhaps the SAT- ocracy. Here I note that Levin wisely pointed out that a society like the vast American one can be in average less competent than many smaller societies while still having its edge through its top people being the very top. Richard Levin closed by saying that he believes America's diversity, freedom, openness and innovativeness will mean it still will have an 'edge' in the future. As they used to say 'Allevai'.

Zereshk  07/17/2009 12:54 AM Report

Having large and elite university members such as deans and chancellors should be a more frequent occurence on your shows. I may not agree necessarily with what all is said by your guest, e.g. Richard Levin, but the show is nevertheless quite informative. Please have more administrative academia guests.

tartufe  07/16/2009 01:24 PM Report

Inasmuch as most/many financial wise-guys came from ivy-league institutions one could wonder if academics trumps/excludes wisdom amongst most of them. Egregious Greed 101 has excelled far too long. Too clever by half. Their priceyness is a bogus indicator of quality; wheras George W is a more accurate indicator. Refunds are in due.

REMant  07/16/2009 01:18 PM Report

I confess I see little point to this interview, which I assume was done at the behest of the show, unless Yale's endowment or annual giving is in a lot worse shape than I think it is, tho it should be noted that college and university presidents these days do little other than fund-raising, and nothing much of what old-time presidents did. In this case it may be that he is looking for a little fiscal stimulus himself, but I thought they had already done that once.

There's no way to do adequate economics or any of the other so-called behavioral and social sciences without history. Berlin was, in fact, one of the great phonies of all time and wrong about nearly everything, which he had to admit to himself late in life after failing to write anything of real value. The idea is itself hedgehoggy, because Berlin's ruling idea was in favor of particularism and nearly everything he wrote says the same thing. In any case, I can't imagine an idea more hedgehoggy than J. B. Say's.

The elective system is bad, because most students are never going to be working in any academic field, and what they need is to understand the larger picture. History, well taught, is undoubtedly the best major currently available for that, and I'd go so far as to suggest that historians would have run this country's finances better, too. The next great need in colleges today is better counseling. The problem there, too, is not just that faculty don't do it, but that they, themselves, have such a limited perspective they are of little or no help to anyone.

And I doubt very much that any of the usual admissions criteria, tho they may predict college or even job success, end up having much to say about the quality of ppl being turned out, except perhaps negatively. I would agree, however, that America's colleges and universities may well be the country's best diplomacy, but I believe that Europe does a better job of that, and their institutions are not run as much like petty dictatorships.

The general problem I see with the Yale's of this world is the sense of election, self-righteousness and overweening egotism they propagate, which is a far cry from Timothy Dwight.

He is certainly right, too, that he is not a monetary economist, and so he does not know anything. Keynes was not "the great economist of the Depression." That laurel clearly belongs to his opposite number, Lionel Robbins. Keynes greatest achievement IMHO was in warning about the consequences of the Versailles peace treaty. Friedman, for his part, liked his book on money best. In fact, he was a great fan of the Nazis, (as was fellow Liberal Lloyd George,) boys and exotic dancers.

I have to shake my head when I hear ppl boasting about American this and that, and jabbering about will to power, as if they speaking of Yale a century ago.