Speaker 1: Pushkin heads up. In this episode, I interview an old
Speaker 1: school guy from New York who drops a lot of
Speaker 1: F bombs. Just so you're aware, say your name the
Speaker 1: way and Israeli would say it and say my name
Speaker 1: is Miliavital and Hebrew Schmimia Vital. My name is Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked
Speaker 1: and misunderstood. So far in season four, i've talked about
Speaker 1: grand themes, huge issues. This episode is about something very
Speaker 1: specific a word. The word I'm interested in is huspah.
Speaker 1: I decided I would like to examine the phenomen of houtspa.
Speaker 1: Since Millie is my neighbor and in Israeli, she has
Speaker 1: agreed to help this teach Guercia Malcolm how to say
Speaker 1: this word appropriately. First of all, are we doing are
Speaker 1: we doing that kind of thing in the throat that's
Speaker 1: so many the soft I think we have a closer
Speaker 1: to Arabic. It's deeper in the throat and there's a
Speaker 1: lot more contact of the soft palate. It's really deeper.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so so a softer not not a hole
Speaker 1: but a houtzpah. No, who the this okay, so this
Speaker 1: sound is right, Yeah, it is deep. But the vowel
Speaker 1: is not who. It's who who. Yeah. In Hebrew there's
Speaker 1: only there's no diphthongs, and there's no awe in there's
Speaker 1: no book and book right, there's only boo. So you
Speaker 1: understand what I'm talking to myself. For me, it's very clear,
Speaker 1: because sadly I worked on it so hard. But um, okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not hootspa. Yeah, just like it's not Millie,
Speaker 1: it's nearly eye. Oh, so it's who. It's the t who,
Speaker 1: not who who. Yes, that's better amount who. It strikes
Speaker 1: me that there is a lot of hootspa in the
Speaker 1: world at the moment, and that maybe it would be
Speaker 1: useful to find out something more about it. So I
Speaker 1: started with Millie and the first thing she told me
Speaker 1: is that there isn't one hootspa. There's actually two, the
Speaker 1: American version and the Israeli version. Hootspa I knew, but
Speaker 1: not this other one. Hoots spah not bad, but it's
Speaker 1: not a paw. Yeah, it's ba ba. It's a battle
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist sexually. And now you gotta have the
Speaker 1: spa to say you gotta say kind of yeah, you's
Speaker 1: hit the second syllable hoots, batspa. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: air coming out of the mouth, and he said so
Speaker 1: when uh. But in America, the accents on the first
Speaker 1: syllable yeah, right, hutzpah and houtzpah, and their world's apart,
Speaker 1: And maybe our hutzpah problem is that we've confused the two.
Speaker 1: When I was in Los Angeles a little while back,
Speaker 1: I went to see a Hollywood legend named Al Ruddy.
Speaker 1: Tall guy, lean close to ninety. He lives up in
Speaker 1: the canyons of Beverly Hills, one of those nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: houses perched on a hillside that looks like something off
Speaker 1: the set of a James Bond movie. I had a
Speaker 1: specific reason to go and see Ruddy, But Ruddy is
Speaker 1: the kind of person that when he starts talking, specific
Speaker 1: reasons go out the window. I was born in Canada. Also,
Speaker 1: now I know everything about you. I was born in Montreal.
Speaker 1: I knew I saw that. Yeah, I went to Montreal,
Speaker 1: and then my mother, my mother snuck over the border
Speaker 1: with divorced with three kids, suck over the border in
Speaker 1: New York. My mother said, when they asked a junior
Speaker 1: and junior highway you were born, saying, I don't know
Speaker 1: what you look like, a fucking morn, don't know where
Speaker 1: the fuck I'm born? You quit. Al Ruddy was the
Speaker 1: middle child. So I was the one that worked harder
Speaker 1: for everything I ever got because I had an older
Speaker 1: sister who was beautiful and my brother, who was the baby.
Speaker 1: I was a smug in the middle, right, So I
Speaker 1: was always working harder. But I decided and I learned
Speaker 1: it earlier, and it was it was actually a blessing,
Speaker 1: you know, As you know, I've better learned how to
Speaker 1: take care of myself. No one's gonna open the fucking
Speaker 1: doors for me anyway. I gotta do it. Al Ruddy
Speaker 1: Away the A Ruddy way meant going to Brooklyn Tech,
Speaker 1: then bouncing around working at a gas station, studying architecture
Speaker 1: at USC, and winding up with a job as a
Speaker 1: computer programmer at the Rand Corporation think tank in Santa Monica.
Speaker 1: While he's working at Rand, Ruddy meets an unemployed actor
Speaker 1: named Bernie Fine. So I tell Bernie, I'm not a
Speaker 1: right Bernie. What the fuck do they have to write
Speaker 1: a writer a half hour show? It's a one liner,
Speaker 1: it's a simplest format. The one act could break the
Speaker 1: high point, and he resolved an act too. So on
Speaker 1: the side, the two of them start to write a
Speaker 1: television pilot, a comedy set in a prison, not just
Speaker 1: any prison, a Nazi prisoner of war camp, and the
Speaker 1: comic leads are the head of the prison, Colonel Clink,
Speaker 1: and a prison guard, Sergeant Schultz, whose signature line is
Speaker 1: I know nothing, I see nothing, I hear nothing. Somehow,
Speaker 1: Ruddy gets the script to an agent named Mike Levey,
Speaker 1: and Levy gets them a pitch meeting with CBS. This
Speaker 1: was the midnighteen sixties, when CBS was known as a
Speaker 1: Tiffany Network. It was the most prestigious television broadcaster in
Speaker 1: the world, intellectual high class. Its president was the legendary
Speaker 1: William Paley. I'm sitting the officer William S. Paley, who
Speaker 1: fucking owns CBS the whole road. CBS guys and me
Speaker 1: and Mike's Michel discussed a show called Hogan's Zero, Bill
Speaker 1: Paley's across the Table, and Mikey says, I find the
Speaker 1: idea of Nazis doing comedy shows were totally rereprehensible. Mike Leavy.
Speaker 1: The agent looks over at Ruddy. You tell him, He blown,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to say is oh, I'll have
Speaker 1: him tell you abody. He points to me. I've never
Speaker 1: sold a fucking thing right, I acted out the whole
Speaker 1: show idiotic. I'm jumping up and down. I know nothing
Speaker 1: but machine guns, and Bill Paley starts lam. He can't
Speaker 1: stop laughing. I swear to christ Before I know it,
Speaker 1: the whole romas clapping on the other side. So I
Speaker 1: got through and I thought it was Bill Paley stands up.
Speaker 1: He says, I don't know if I can ever buy
Speaker 1: that show, but I said, I just want to command
Speaker 1: you that That's one of the funniest things I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: Hogan's Heroes runs for six seasons from nineteen sixty five
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy one. The show wins two Emmys, has
Speaker 1: a huge following, and makes CBS a fortune. Oh, I
Speaker 1: say nothing. I was not here. I did not even
Speaker 1: get up this morning. Now, since our topic is hutzpah,
Speaker 1: let us break this down. A computer programmer named Al Ruddy,
Speaker 1: who is Jewish, has his agent, who is Jewish, set
Speaker 1: up a meeting with Bill Paley, who is Jewish about
Speaker 1: a comedy starring two Nazis, and Paley says, I'm Jewish,
Speaker 1: I'm not interested. But then Ruddy, who is never sold
Speaker 1: a screenplay before in his life, convinces him it's actually
Speaker 1: a great idea. And by the way, the lead Nazi
Speaker 1: in Hogan's Heroes, Colonel Clenk, is played by Werner Klemperer,
Speaker 1: Jewish whose family fled Nazi Germany in nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: and the prison guard, Sergeant Schultz is played by John Banner,
Speaker 1: Jewish who fled Europe in nineteen thirty nine. The word
Speaker 1: hutzpah refers to audacity. This is audacious. Ruddy would go
Speaker 1: on to write The Longest Yard, starring Burt Reynolds, and
Speaker 1: Walker Texas Ranger starring Chuck Norris. He was one of
Speaker 1: the producers on the two thousand and four film Million
Speaker 1: Dollar Baby, which won a handful of oscars. I could
Speaker 1: go on and now, sitting with him in his kitchen
Speaker 1: as he wheeled his wheelchair back and forth to emphasize
Speaker 1: the highlight of each of his stories, I realized what
Speaker 1: Al Ruddy is. He is hutzpah. But this is a
Speaker 1: very specific kind of hutzpah. Right. Remember this show is
Speaker 1: being made only twenty years after the Nazis stopped terrorizing Europe.
Speaker 1: This camp, clink, this camp is a black page in
Speaker 1: a glorious history. As a third right, which I shall
Speaker 1: report when I get back to Berlin. Paley admired Ruddy
Speaker 1: for the way he behaves. He rewarded him. If you
Speaker 1: and Bernie Fine were not Jewish, could you have gotten
Speaker 1: away with it? It didn't didn't didn't even rent in
Speaker 1: my mind. And though says yeah, no, no one asks,
Speaker 1: no one knew that no one, there will never an issue.
Speaker 1: It's funny Ruddy didn't brazenly set out to violate social norms.
Speaker 1: It didn't occur to him that there was a social
Speaker 1: norm to violate. In America. This is what is meant
Speaker 1: by hutzpah, but not in Israel. Hootspah is a whole
Speaker 1: different matter. Hutzpah hootspah. See. Oh, you also don't say
Speaker 1: hutzpah like with us would have curled to it like
Speaker 1: a cute kind of hutzpah. It's hot spa, you see,
Speaker 1: like it's a spa, Like what a what an insult?
Speaker 1: It's it's edgy and bitter. It's not like she's got
Speaker 1: so much hutzpah. It's a totally different word. It has
Speaker 1: the connotation I would say is like it's a hot spot,
Speaker 1: like someone who's someone who has no care about anyone
Speaker 1: else's life or feelings, or like if your child is
Speaker 1: me is rude to you? If I say to Benjamin
Speaker 1: it's it's this is like as low as it gets,
Speaker 1: he actually wants like teared up when I said that,
Speaker 1: I could see his face like shocked. Yeah, he knows
Speaker 1: what it means, like no manners or no or no
Speaker 1: regard to someone else's feelings or condition. That would be
Speaker 1: the hotspah. Yeah, one word, two very different meanings, and
Speaker 1: we've been conflating the two. I'll get into the consequences
Speaker 1: when we come back. Let's do a second hutzpah case
Speaker 1: study involving an exact contemporary of Al Ruddies. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure i'd introduce my next guest. He's a businessman who
Speaker 1: leads a most colorful life. His name has been in
Speaker 1: the papers a great deal lately, and I just met
Speaker 1: him backstage. But make us to meet him further. Were
Speaker 1: we welcome, please, mister Joseph Colombo King. In the late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, Colombo began making the
Speaker 1: rounds of talk shows and news programs in New York City. Invariably,
Speaker 1: the interview would begin with the question of what Joseph
Speaker 1: Colombo did for a living, and invariably his answer would
Speaker 1: be the same. Here he is on the Dick Cavett
Speaker 1: Show in April of nineteen seventy one, Explain what you
Speaker 1: do for a living, as if I had never met you. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm a real estate salesman, and I own a piece
Speaker 1: of a funeral home, and and that wasn't meant to
Speaker 1: visas funny thick. You may have noticed, by the way,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of Dick Cavett in this season of
Speaker 1: Provisionist History. I love Dick Cavitt. Anything I can do
Speaker 1: to in a living, honestly and sincily, I hope so
Speaker 1: cause and a Floris and I own a piece of
Speaker 1: a cut room in New York that we cut material
Speaker 1: for dresses. Ah, yeah, it's a cut room. And with
Speaker 1: all these things put together, I in a liven yeah,
Speaker 1: and I work very hard at it, very honest. In Sincilia,
Speaker 1: Colombo's media tour was to promote an organization he had
Speaker 1: started called the Italian American Civil Rights League. Well, we
Speaker 1: believe that we ought escape goats. We have been labeled
Speaker 1: and stigmatized, and I maintain and I'll keep saying that
Speaker 1: it's each and every Italian American true the United States,
Speaker 1: that there is a conspiracy against I asked the writer
Speaker 1: Nick Paleggi about him. Maybe you remember Polleggi from our
Speaker 1: fourth of July episode earlier this season. Now, what was
Speaker 1: he like? From everything I hear and I've seen him
Speaker 1: speaking on occasion and living in rooms with him, he
Speaker 1: was as mild and calm and relaxed as you can imagine.
Speaker 1: He was like a dry goods salesman. Poleggie grew up
Speaker 1: with Colombo in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. He came up with this
Speaker 1: idea of the Italian American Civil Rights take their prebas foots,
Speaker 1: that Italians were being stigmatized by the mafia, that there
Speaker 1: was really no such thing as the mafia, but the
Speaker 1: media was going after Italian Americans and denying us a
Speaker 1: right place in the world, and we would be prejudiced
Speaker 1: against getting good jobs or because the New York Times
Speaker 1: couldn't stop writing the word mafia. Now, what was Joe
Speaker 1: Colombo's real job? Aside from running a funeral home and
Speaker 1: a cut shop and selling real estate, he was a
Speaker 1: big time mafia don. The Profacci family, old Ben Giuseppe
Speaker 1: Profaci dies in nineteen sixty two. Colombo takes over the organization.
Speaker 1: American Jews had The Anti Defamation League formed in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirteen to combat the long history of anti Semitism around
Speaker 1: the world. African Americans start the NAACP in nineteen o
Speaker 1: nine because black people were being openly and ruthlessly denied
Speaker 1: their civil rights. The Italian American Civil Rights League was
Speaker 1: started by a mobster upset that the media was calling
Speaker 1: him a mobster. In April of nineteen seventy, Colombo and
Speaker 1: a group of his associates started picketing the Manhattan headquarters
Speaker 1: of the FBI. That protest eventually grows to five thousand people.
Speaker 1: They come up with a logo in evoking Christopher Columbus,
Speaker 1: the greatest Italian immigrant of them all. By the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy they have forty five thousand dues paying members.
Speaker 1: They throw themselves a big benefit concert in Madison Square
Speaker 1: Garden starring of course, Frank Sinatra. They go after Alka
Speaker 1: Seltzer for their most famous TV commercial, in which an
Speaker 1: Italian man, overseen by his doting wife, eats one too
Speaker 1: many spicy meatballs. Sometimes you eat more than you should
Speaker 1: and when it's spicy. Besides, Mamma Mia, do you need
Speaker 1: Alka Seltzer? Italians eating meatballs, according to Joe Colombo, perpetuates
Speaker 1: harmful stereotypes about Italians. Momma, that's a spicy meat board.
Speaker 1: But here's my favorite story involving Joe Colombo. In the
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties, Johnny Carson was a king of late
Speaker 1: night TV and one of the most famous television personalities
Speaker 1: in the country. According to his former attorney Bushkin, Carson
Speaker 1: was out drinking one night at Jilli's, a bar in
Speaker 1: Manhattan run by a close friend of Frank Sinatra's, Jilly Rizzo.
Speaker 1: This is Bushkin telling the story on the ARTI Lang
Speaker 1: Show a few years ago. It was on I think
Speaker 1: fifty second and eighth right, a famous watering hole, and
Speaker 1: Johnny was in there one night with McMahon. Johnny being
Speaker 1: Johnny Carson, McMahon being his sidekick, Ed McMahon, and they
Speaker 1: try to pick up the wrong girls happened to be
Speaker 1: the wife and sister of a well known mafiosa type
Speaker 1: of character who was not sensitive about stuffing, not not happy,
Speaker 1: irritating say. Carson ends up being thrown down the stairs
Speaker 1: at Jilly's. He's so banged up there's no way he
Speaker 1: can go on television. Then he learns that the mobster
Speaker 1: in question has put out a contract on his life.
Speaker 1: What happened was they went looking for Johnny. Johnny hold
Speaker 1: up in the apartment at you n Plaza. He's hiding out.
Speaker 1: He takes the week off work. He's petrified. So what happens.
Speaker 1: Joe Columbo makes a deal with Carson's network, NBC. The
Speaker 1: Columbus Day Parade was about to come up. It was
Speaker 1: like three weeks away and no network who would agree
Speaker 1: to cover it then, because they knew it was the
Speaker 1: five Families of New York that were sponsoring this parade
Speaker 1: to make the Italian Americans look you know, So Carson's
Speaker 1: hiding out and a deal was struck. If NBC covers
Speaker 1: the parade, they let Carson go. So that year, NBC
Speaker 1: is the only network that covered the parade. Carson gets
Speaker 1: and what happens the following year, nineteen seventy one, when
Speaker 1: Joe Columbo stages the second, even more elaborate Columbus Day
Speaker 1: event intended to show the world that the Italian American
Speaker 1: community of New York is peaceful and law abiding. Someone
Speaker 1: shoots him. That's right. They had the first one to
Speaker 1: Columbus Circle. In the second one they shot Joe Colombo.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just insane. But you couldn't make this up,
Speaker 1: like oh at the grants too. They could have done
Speaker 1: it any location in the city besides Columbus Circle every day.
Speaker 1: But in the middle of a rally, of a rally
Speaker 1: intended to whitewash the Italian American community, somebody offs the
Speaker 1: guy trying to whitewash that. What I mean is this
Speaker 1: is hoodzpah all over the place. But it's not Al
Speaker 1: Ruddy's kind of hoods. But is it Having a Jewish
Speaker 1: actor play a Nazi prison guard who runs around saying
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Holocaust, I know nothing, I
Speaker 1: hear nothing, I see nothing in a primetime television sitcom
Speaker 1: is well, it's kind of amazing. But Joe Colombo, mob
Speaker 1: boss starting the Italian American Civil Rights League, this is
Speaker 1: hoodzpah on a whole other level. For goodness sake. At
Speaker 1: the time he was shot, Colombo was under federal indictment
Speaker 1: on charges of controlling a ten million dollar a year
Speaker 1: gambling syndicate. This is not audacity, this is shamelessness. The
Speaker 1: other kind of hutzpah hootsbah. In the Book of Genesis,
Speaker 1: there is a famous passage where the prophet Abraham speaks
Speaker 1: to God about the moral outrages in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Speaker 1: God wants to destroy both cities, but Abraham says, wait,
Speaker 1: what if there are fifty righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah?
Speaker 1: Will you really sweep those cities away and not spare
Speaker 1: them for the sake of those fifty righteous people. So
Speaker 1: the Lord says, okay, if you can find fifty righteous men,
Speaker 1: I will spare the cities. Abraham then says, what if
Speaker 1: there were only forty five righteous men? You wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to kill forty five perfectly innocent men for the sake
Speaker 1: of five at the margin, And God says, you're right,
Speaker 1: let's spake at forty five, to which Abraham responds, one,
Speaker 1: not thirty, I mean same logic. God says, okay, they
Speaker 1: keep going. In the end, Abraham gets him down to ten.
Speaker 1: Abraham is being very Israeli here. Israel is what is
Speaker 1: called a low power distance culture, meaning that it's a
Speaker 1: place where there is very little respect for hierarchy or
Speaker 1: formality in social interaction. France is the opposite kind of place,
Speaker 1: a high power distance culture. Nobody just calls up God
Speaker 1: directly in France. In France, Abraham would have had to
Speaker 1: file an application with the Department of Divine Communication, wait
Speaker 1: three months for an appointment, then presents some kind of
Speaker 1: formal legal writ on behalf of the Righteous of Gomorrah.
Speaker 1: Not in Israel. Here's another example of low power distance
Speaker 1: at work in Israel. It's the word new and you.
Speaker 1: New is what linguists call a reactive token, meaning a
Speaker 1: word used in conversation by the party that's doing the listening.
Speaker 1: Uh huh is a reactive token, so is really? The
Speaker 1: point of a reactive token is to signal involvement without
Speaker 1: claiming the floor from the speaker. I understand, I'm interested,
Speaker 1: keep going. But new is an unusual reactive token because
Speaker 1: it's not neutral. It's not I'm listening. It means hurry up,
Speaker 1: get to the point. New new Now is new polite
Speaker 1: In virtually all cultures in the world, of course, the
Speaker 1: answer would be no. New is not some gentle conversational nudge.
Speaker 1: It's a hijacking. The listener is interrupting the speaker in
Speaker 1: order to control the pace of the narrative. But in
Speaker 1: Israel this is not necessarily true. The Israeli linguist i
Speaker 1: Isle Maschler has written extensively on new. She says quote.
Speaker 1: By exhibiting their impatience with the movement towards the climax
Speaker 1: of a story to the point of taking the liberty
Speaker 1: of controlling the flow of another's discourse, hearers can show
Speaker 1: maximal involvement in the narrative, meaning we in Israel have
Speaker 1: no need to beat around the bush with neutral reactive tokens.
Speaker 1: We're a tiny country with zero power distance. What happens
Speaker 1: tell me I can't wait any longer. In Abraham's argument
Speaker 1: with God, Abraham talks God down very methodically, fifty righteous
Speaker 1: men to forty five to forty to thirty to twenty,
Speaker 1: and then ten and surely right around the forty mark,
Speaker 1: when it would have been obvious to any omniscient entity
Speaker 1: where Abraham was going. God must have interrupted. No, I
Speaker 1: love you, Abraham. You know that there is no need
Speaker 1: to drag this out. My friend Milly says that since
Speaker 1: coming to America, she has struggled with the transition to
Speaker 1: a land of excessive social nicety, like this past winter
Speaker 1: when she was dealing with her children's school. If I say,
Speaker 1: for example, you know, can we have less snow days?
Speaker 1: Like even if there's a snow day, like, can't you
Speaker 1: just leave the school open? I'm just asking. My husband
Speaker 1: says that spat like, you don't think about what their
Speaker 1: point of view is. You don't think about what the
Speaker 1: teachers have to do to get to school, you don't
Speaker 1: think about their safety, you don't think about the other
Speaker 1: kids about true, but I just want to know, like,
Speaker 1: why can't I just ask the question? So that's you know, Yes,
Speaker 1: Let's say you were in Israel and the same scenario.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyonse, there's no snow days in Israel. But
Speaker 1: suppose you're making the same request at the school and
Speaker 1: I am the principal of the school and you're asked,
Speaker 1: I would like you to ask me, as in ISRAELI
Speaker 1: ask me why the school can't stay open? More? Say
Speaker 1: excuse me? You know my kids at home. I don't
Speaker 1: have the time to take care of them. They need
Speaker 1: to be inside the school. You need to keep the
Speaker 1: school open so I can leave my kids there. And
Speaker 1: everybody else agrees with me. You want me to ask,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get twenty people who agree with me.
Speaker 1: Do you want to This is would be like not battle,
Speaker 1: and it would be very nice, by the way, and
Speaker 1: the principle in Israel would respond her, excuse me, I'm
Speaker 1: not working for you that I'm running a school. I
Speaker 1: have a long way to come from home. Driving in
Speaker 1: the snow is not easy, so please. And also there's
Speaker 1: also insurance and all things that you don't think about,
Speaker 1: so please, you know what, carmulator, After I put my
Speaker 1: own kids down and we'll talk on the phone, Okay,
Speaker 1: this would be the conversation. She wouldn't hate me. She
Speaker 1: would just like continue arguing with me and then she'll
Speaker 1: tell me to shut up. But she wouldn't like here.
Speaker 1: They don't even like answer my email. It's so embarrassing.
Speaker 1: So we have two very different scenarios here, HUDSPA that's
Speaker 1: already convincing Bill Pelly to greenlight Hogan's heroes, and Israeli
Speaker 1: would look at that and say, already's just being act
Speaker 1: So what but Joe Colombo starting the Italian American Civil
Speaker 1: Rights League. That is not Abraham arguing with God to
Speaker 1: save the righteous of Sodom and Gomorrah. That is not new.
Speaker 1: That is not why can't the schools stay open on
Speaker 1: a snow day? That is an affront. It's not the
Speaker 1: I do something and i'm you know, a dog has
Speaker 1: no hutzpah. A dog that's good. That was not bad,
Speaker 1: getting very close, very close. But the thing that's distinctive
Speaker 1: about this is the person who is completely unencumbered by
Speaker 1: shame exactly Well, shame has nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: They don't. They're so beyond shame. They don't even see
Speaker 1: they don't even see you to feel shame. It's their
Speaker 1: point of view, without any regard to anyone else's life,
Speaker 1: without regard to anyone else's life. Remember that not long
Speaker 1: after I spoke with miliavital there was a hearing in
Speaker 1: front of three federal judges at a courthouse in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: It was about the treatment of migrant children detained at
Speaker 1: the border. An issue was whether the conditions under which
Speaker 1: the children were being held violated a previous legal commitment
Speaker 1: made by the government to provide safe and sanitary conditions
Speaker 1: in detention centers. The Department of Justice sent an attorney,
Speaker 1: Sarah Fabian, to make the case that the government was
Speaker 1: in compliance with the safe and sanitary standard. Her principal
Speaker 1: argument was that the term safe and sanitary didn't have
Speaker 1: an explicit definition, and that's any number of things might
Speaker 1: fall under those categories. That's Fabian, and this is one
Speaker 1: of the judges. Marcia burzones, but sleep surely does, right.
Speaker 1: You can't be safe and sanitary or safe as a
Speaker 1: human being if you can't sleep well. And you send
Speaker 1: in your briefe it doesn't say anything about sleeping, so
Speaker 1: therefore there's nothing in here about being able to sleep.
Speaker 1: The children, it turned out, didn't have beds or blankets
Speaker 1: or in some cases even room to lie down. So
Speaker 1: Burson wonders, how is that not a violation of the
Speaker 1: agreement to provide decent living conditions? And Fabian answers, I
Speaker 1: think the concern there is your honored The court finding
Speaker 1: that sleep, for example, falls under is relevant to a
Speaker 1: fin of no safe and sanitary conditions is one thing,
Speaker 1: but the ultimate conclusion is safe in sanitary is a
Speaker 1: singular category in the agreement. You probably need to be
Speaker 1: a lawyer to understand what Fabian is saying, and I'm
Speaker 1: not a lawyer, so I'm going to have to guess.
Speaker 1: The government's argument goes like this, sleep is one thing
Speaker 1: safe in sanitary or another. If the agreement had meant
Speaker 1: for sleep to fall under the requirement of safe and sanitary,
Speaker 1: it would have said so. Then Judge William Fletcher chimes in,
Speaker 1: maybe sleep wasn't explicitly part of the safe and sedentary
Speaker 1: definition because it's too obvious. I mean, it may be
Speaker 1: that they don't get super thread counts Egyptian lenins. I
Speaker 1: get that, But the testimony that the district judge believed
Speaker 1: was it's really cold. The fact it gets colder when
Speaker 1: we complain about is being cold. We're sports to sleep
Speaker 1: crowded with the lights on all night long, and all
Speaker 1: you to put us on is the concrete floor with
Speaker 1: an aluminum blanket. I mean, no one would argue that
Speaker 1: this is secure in sanitary. Yeah, And I think what
Speaker 1: I'm arguing is that the way that the district cart
Speaker 1: reached the conclusion was to say these specific items, And
Speaker 1: I think I will acknowledge. I think sleep is the
Speaker 1: more difficult end of what I'm arguing. Sleep is the
Speaker 1: more difficult end of what I'm arguing. You think cold,
Speaker 1: all night long, lights on, all night out, sleep on
Speaker 1: the concrete, and you've got an aluminum foil blanket. I
Speaker 1: think I would I find that inconceivable that the government
Speaker 1: would say that that is safe in sanitary from sleep
Speaker 1: in blankets. The discussion moved on to toothpaste, toothbrushes, and soap.
Speaker 1: It wasn't you know, high class mild soap. It was
Speaker 1: soap and that sounds so that's part of safe in sanitary?
Speaker 1: Are you? Are you disagreeing with that? I'm What I'm
Speaker 1: disagreeing with is that the court, the court ultimately concluded
Speaker 1: these things. Yes, she was disagreeing with that. All of
Speaker 1: this went on for some time. I would encourage you
Speaker 1: to listen to the full hearing for yourself, since if
Speaker 1: you are an American, it was your government, paid for
Speaker 1: by your tax dollars, that was doing the arguing, and
Speaker 1: ask yourself, how did we come to this? There are
Speaker 1: a thousand answers, obviously, but maybe one of them is
Speaker 1: it Over of the years, our moral vocabulary has become impoverished,
Speaker 1: which is a problem because you cannot make sense of
Speaker 1: things that you cannot describe, and lumping together audacity and
Speaker 1: shamelessness creates a loophole large enough to drive a tank through.
Speaker 1: One last question, what happens when Hutzpah and Hutzpah go
Speaker 1: head to head when they meet each other in the
Speaker 1: field of battle. Well, it happened famously in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: Already at that point was working at Paramount Pictures. That
Speaker 1: was the era when Robert Evans was the head of
Speaker 1: production at Paramount and the studio was on maybe the
Speaker 1: greatest run of any studio ever, Love Story, Three Days
Speaker 1: of the Condor, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, on and on. Al Ruddy,
Speaker 1: in typical Al Ruddy fashion, had just talked himself into
Speaker 1: a big job there as a producer a reporter to
Speaker 1: do a piece on him. He asked, Ruddy, after you
Speaker 1: did Hogan's Heroes, what did you do next? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: that's all I are. That's it, he puts together. Can
Speaker 1: I off the right for a secon with you? He said?
Speaker 1: How the fuck did you get in here? I know,
Speaker 1: guys kick it in that gate who've been here twenty
Speaker 1: years kick, I say listen, neither off the rug. I
Speaker 1: had no idea what I've never developed us when you play,
Speaker 1: I did one half hour show. Okay, I'm the dumbest
Speaker 1: guy on this lot at the moment. I won't be
Speaker 1: for long, but just all right in the Artamy still
Speaker 1: with the houtzpah. Around this time, Paramount, almost by accident,
Speaker 1: got the film rights to a novel by a Rudder
Speaker 1: named Mario Puzzo. The novel was The Godfather. No One
Speaker 1: had high hopes for the movie since the mobster genre
Speaker 1: seem played out, so they gave it to the new
Speaker 1: guy Ruddy to produce, in hopes he could bring it
Speaker 1: in on time and under. Almost immediately, trouble began with
Speaker 1: the Godfather project, trouble from Joe Colombo because Colombo was
Speaker 1: not at all happy about the movie. They were death threats,
Speaker 1: union problems, shady guys followed Ruddy around the window of
Speaker 1: his car was smashed. The corporate headquarters of the company
Speaker 1: that owned Paramount had to be evacuated twice because of
Speaker 1: bomb threats, and then the Italian American Civil Rights League
Speaker 1: called up Ruddy's boss, Robert Evans. The League called Bob
Speaker 1: Evans up and threatened him. We don't want that movie made.
Speaker 1: That movie made, someone's going to get hot. So Bob
Speaker 1: called me, said, will you go to see the sky
Speaker 1: to your COLUMBI These got people are crazy. Ruddy calls
Speaker 1: up the Godfather's author Mario Puzo, says, come with me
Speaker 1: to meet Joe Colombo. He said, out, are you crazy?
Speaker 1: You don't understand I write about those people. I never
Speaker 1: want to be involved, and you'd be very careful evolved
Speaker 1: because these are not people you can talk with him. Bulshit,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get a lot of trouble. So an answer
Speaker 1: your question. I am not like not gonna go up.
Speaker 1: Tell him they don't even know me. So Ruddy says, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll do it myself. He goes to the offices of
Speaker 1: the Italian American Civil Rights League, meets up with Colombo
Speaker 1: and his guys Brooklyn and Brooklyn looks like half of
Speaker 1: them are on parole, you know, with a lump under
Speaker 1: the jacket. They tell him they don't want the movie made.
Speaker 1: It's bad for the Italians. Ruddy responds, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'll let you read the script. Come to the Paramount
Speaker 1: office in New York. Colombo shows up with three henchmen
Speaker 1: ruddy hands in the script. It's one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: five pages long. He puts on his friend Frank classes
Speaker 1: close the page, looks at for about five minute. What
Speaker 1: does this mean? Fade in? That's why the squeens black
Speaker 1: and the fan answer. I realized there's no way the
Speaker 1: guys corned page two. It's d is oh, I can't
Speaker 1: read with the glasses. A mafia boss is not going
Speaker 1: to work his way through one hundred and fifty five
Speaker 1: page script. The whole point of being a mafia boss
Speaker 1: is that you don't have to read things that are
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty five pages. Mafia bosses do not
Speaker 1: have to do the fine print, the letter of the law,
Speaker 1: or chapter and verse. Those are for the people who
Speaker 1: have chosen not to live a life of crime. Colombo
Speaker 1: hands the script to one of his henchmen, a guy
Speaker 1: named Caesar. But Caesar is not going to read it either,
Speaker 1: is he. Caesar is not in the business of giving notes.
Speaker 1: Caesar's muscle it is why me my script or over
Speaker 1: my dad. Finley dude gets pissed off. He grabs the
Speaker 1: script slitted out on my desk. Why do we like
Speaker 1: this guy? Yeah, I like it. That's a ducking script
Speaker 1: for So. I said, well, what are you what do
Speaker 1: you want? What are you living? He's a would you
Speaker 1: take the word mafia out of the movie. What Colombo
Speaker 1: doesn't realize because he hasn't read the script is it
Speaker 1: The word mafia is barely in the script. It only
Speaker 1: appears once. So I crossed the word mafia. Joe, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do this. I'm gonna take this out of the movie.
Speaker 1: He didn't know how many times it was easy to promise,
Speaker 1: shook his head. I made a deal that nobody could
Speaker 1: have made. No one would play. From that moment on,
Speaker 1: all trouble with the movies ceased. It's why The Godfather
Speaker 1: got made. Hutzpah is a bunch of violent mobsters threatening
Speaker 1: to shut down a movie because it depicts them as
Speaker 1: violent mobsters. Hutzpah is tricking them because they're too lazy
Speaker 1: to read the script. It's so difficult, Malcolm, I tongue
Speaker 1: all the time. It's not easy. It's not easy for
Speaker 1: you to be over here in this politeness. I'm basically
Speaker 1: living ten percent of my personality because I have to
Speaker 1: be I mean shot merely wants to be direct. She's
Speaker 1: not a bully, and I wonder can we even tell
Speaker 1: the difference anymore. It's not good. It's not good. It's
Speaker 1: it's a very extreme. I'm a desert person having to
Speaker 1: deal with Yahn. Religionous History is produced by Meila Bell
Speaker 1: and Jacob Smith with Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Speaker 1: Flawn Williams is our engineer. Fact checking by Beth Johnson.
Speaker 1: Original music by Luis Gara. Special thanks to Carl Migliori,
Speaker 1: Heada Fane, Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanegg and Jacob Weisberg. Relgionous
Speaker 1: History is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm
Speaker 1: Gladwa so we sit again. Me it's a flat elk okay.
Speaker 1: The tongue is flat. There's no l left left me
Speaker 1: so that's mealy and it's not avital, it's a vital.
Speaker 1: There's the other differences. Also the tea it doesn't have
Speaker 1: a sort of air to it, so it's not it's
Speaker 1: uh so do you hear are the difference or is
Speaker 1: it just me