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All episodes now streaming on Paramount+, and return CBS fall. That sounds like fun. Obviously, murder's not fun. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday Morning. To be or not to be. All the world's a stage.
It's Greek to me. You don't have to be a literary scholar to recognize those famous lines. Words that still resonate more than 400 years after William Shakespeare wrote them. But why?
Why are we still so tantalized, intrigued, even intimidated by the bard's work? On this Tony's Sunday Morning, our Mo Rocca will look for answers. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was not exactly your average teenager. When you were 13, you had an imaginary boyfriend.
You found out about that. They met at the theater. My older brother took me to see my first Shakespeare, and I immediately decided Hamlet was my boyfriend, not realizing he may be the worst boyfriend in the world.
Why we love and fear Shakespeare ahead on Sunday Morning. Of course, the Tony Awards are tonight here on CBS. And speaking of the stage, from designing women to hacks, Jean Smart has been a fixture in American entertainment since the 80s. Now she's on Broadway and talking with Tracy Smith. Come on Isabelle, aren't you happy?
This summer, Jean Smart is a powerhouse on Broadway as a brave, battered woman. But even she says it'll take some getting used to. It's going to be a whole different animal doing a one-woman show.
And backstage, it'll be very lonely. I'm sitting in my dressing room going, I thought you were particularly good last night. Oh, really? Thank you. Thank you. I thought you were very funny. Oh, no, no.
Jean Smart stands alone later on Sunday Morning. With nearly 50 million albums sold and concert tours still selling out, the Doobie Brothers remain a music phenomenon after more than five decades. The band looks back and ahead with Jim Axlrod. The Doobie Brothers are well into their sixth decade together. The music that we've all made, this band has made, it's pretty amazing. It's a very cool thing. You know what else is cool for the band? Being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
To be a Doobie, what's that mean to you? There's some magic here. The Doobie Brothers, coming up on Sunday Morning. Robert Costa will talk with Carla Hayden, the longtime Librarian of Congress fired by President Trump last month. Commentary from former New York Times columnist Charles Blow, and more on this Tony's Sunday Morning, June 8th, 2025.
We'll be back in a minute. In our highly charged times, many libraries nationwide are facing pressure about how they run and what's on their shelves. That includes the Library of Congress, whose longtime leader, Dr. Carla Hayden, was fired by President Trump last month. She speaks with our Robert Costa. It begins on Thursday, May 8th, 2025. Carla, comma.
And that's what was so confusing, because as many of us have experienced, we get fake emails or people are calling you and different things like that. Since I appeared before you last summer, the library has advanced key initiatives of importance to... Last month, Carla Hayden was nearing the end of her 10-year term as Librarian of Congress. Appointed by President Barack Obama, Hayden was the 14th Librarian of Congress since 1802. She was a history maker.
So help me God. The first woman and first black person to hold the job. Thank you. Then, on May 8th, Hayden received an email. On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, her position was terminated, effective immediately. I was never notified beforehand and after. No one's reached out to you from the White House? No one has talked to me directly at all from the White House. No one's given you a phone call from the administration?
No. I've received no communication directly, except for that one email, Carla. That's it. That's the only communication... It ends with one missive that's electronic. That's it.
That was it. There have never been any issues between you and President Trump. There's never been a feud. Or any other administration... This wasn't personal in any way.
No, no. I don't think it was personal. Do you think it was about power?
I don't know what it was about, frankly. Hayden's firing is seen by many as part of a broader story. President Trump has been pushing out leaders at cultural institutions and is targeting public media and universities for spending cuts. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about... At Washington, D.C.'s Martin Luther King Jr. Library... Fight for libraries.
Hayden's supporters gathered last weekend for a town hall meeting. The firing of our distinguished, esteemed Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden, make it clear to us that the freedom to read, the freedom to learn, the freedom to express ourselves is under attack. We are simply going to be bold. There are librarians, academics, activists, many people in America who are often seen as the quiet types. They're being loud.
They're being loud, I think, and it's so humbling to have that outpouring of support. But what is really, I think, part of this feeling is that it's part of a larger seeming effort to diminish opportunities for the general public to have free access to information and inspiration. We like to say as librarians, free people read freely. And so there's been an effort recently to quelch that.
White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt has addressed Hayden's dismissal. We felt she did not fit the needs of the American people. There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children. Did you feel the White House was smearing you in some way by saying you're putting inappropriate books out there for children? When I heard those comments, I was concerned that there might not have been as much of an awareness of what the Library of Congress does. The library's primary function is to fulfill research requests from members of Congress.
It is not a lending library for the general public. The White House Press Secretary, using the term DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, when you hear that as one of the most prominent black women in the United States, what do you hear? It's been puzzling in many ways to think about being inclusive as a negative. What's that all about? I don't know, because when you think about diversity, you can put it to its lowest level. It's wonderful to have options when you go and get ice cream, you know.
This one likes strawberry, this one likes pistachio, and I would stay with the chocolate, I must say. While Hayden, who's 72, is no longer at the Library of Congress, this library has the feel of home. We met her at Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library, which she led for over two decades. You're still Dr. Hayden of Pratt Library. That never leaves.
Well, they call me Doc. Hayden's lifetime of reading was sparked by this library book, Bright April, the story of a black girl and her family. It was like, oh my gosh, this is me. You saw yourself in the book. You see yourself, and that's why it's so important for young people to see themselves or to read about experiences that they're having, because it validates you, because you're seeing it in a book. Somebody took the time, somebody cared enough. That's what librarians are fighting for, that people will be able to say, here's a book about our family.
We have a family that might, other people might not be able to tell us about, or we have a family that might, other people might think is a little different, or here's a book that talks about someone that's just like you. And because it's in a book, it's been published, it means that it's real and it's important. For Carla Hayden, libraries do more than convene people in buildings. They convene Americans around our founding values, and she points to Freedom to Read, the 1953 statement by the American Library Association, as a guiding light. The Freedom to Read is essential to democracy. That's what the ALA statement says, and it adds, it's continuously under attack.
Is it under attack today? Democracy is under attack. Democracies are not to be taken for granted, and the institutions that support democracy should not be taken for granted. And so that's what the concern is about libraries and museums, it's part of a fabric. Think of it as an infrastructure that holds up.
The libraries have been called one of the pillars of democracy, that you have these institutions in every community that allow anyone to come in and access knowledge. It's very satisfying to be able to look at a bad guy and go, we never forgot you. An all-new season of FBI True, streaming now on Paramount+. My body has been in fight or flight every second. The Showtime original series Couples Therapy is now streaming on Paramount+. What are you avoiding? Watch four new couples as they face new crossroads. Why are you so scared of monogamy?
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That was one hot ticket. Dentelle Washington starring in this season's Broadway adaptation of Othello. The show is just the latest example of how remarkably relevant William Shakespeare remains, even today. Yet, 400 years after his death, Mo Rocca asks why some wonder if Shakespeare's popularity is much ado about nothing. To be or not to be.
I know what you're thinking. Shakespeare. Is this one of those take your medicine, eat your spinach, good for you stories I should watch, but really don't want to watch? That is the question.
Well, fear not. Ira Glass, creator and host of the popular public radio program This American Life, has felt your pain since high school. It was hard to read in school. It seemed like, oh, that's what smart people like.
I feel like, oh, there must be something here. And then, in 2014, Glass attended a production of King Lear in New York's Central Park. After you saw the play, you tweeted out, Shakespeare, not good, no stakes, not relatable. I think I'm realizing Shakespeare sucks. Yeah, I thought it was obvious that it was a joke, but people did not take it as a joke. Was the backlash immediate? Yes, the backlash was immediate. But I think that's the problem with Shakespeare.
I think if you dare to say anything bad about it, you feel like, oh, I must be dumb. If Shakespeare saw a lot of his productions, he would say he sucked. I don't think Shakespeare would ever have been able in his own time to put a four-hour hamlet on his stage. And that's from someone who has devoted her career to Shakespeare.
Farah Karim Cooper, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., says Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet spoke directly to her. I think as a Pakistani-American teenager, I couldn't believe that Shakespeare actually understood my family, because my grandmother had an arranged marriage. And then my mother was told she has to marry someone that they choose. And she's like, no, I'm marrying this man. And she married my dad, who was a sea captain.
So I was like, how does he know about Pakistani families? Romeo. Oh, Romeo.
Wherefore art thou Romeo? It seems that Shakespeare, born in 1564, also knew about teenage girls growing up in Washington, D.C. When you were 13, you had an imaginary boyfriend. You found out about that.
Maureen Dowd is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times. When I was 13, my older brother took me to see my first Shakespeare. And I immediately decided Hamlet was my boyfriend, not realizing he may be the worst boyfriend in the world. Then I began studying Shakespeare in school and completely fell in love. And completely fell in love with his work. Two years ago, Dowd went back to school and received her master's degree in English literature from Columbia University, where she focused on Shakespeare. What I love about Shakespeare is he deals in primary colors. He is about revenge and murder and treachery.
That's actually exactly how I program my Netflix algorithm. So to me, he's very modern. We interviewed Dowd at the Folger. Opened in 1932, the Folger was a gift to the nation from businessman Henry Folger and his wife Emily. Recently renovated at a cost of $80 million, the library holds the world's largest collection of what are known as first folios. These are the earliest printed compilations of 36 of Shakespeare's plays.
It's a transition from Shakespeare on the stage to Shakespeare on the page. Librarian Greg Prickman. If you were going to sell a couple of them in the gift shop, how much would they go for? The most at this point is still $10 million.
That's the highest amount. Without these folios, his plays may very well have been lost. Maureen Dowd says it's fitting that the Folger is located in the nation's capital. Outside in the garden, there's a silvery statue of Puck from Midsummer Night's Dream and the line, Lord, what fools these mortals be, and it faces the capital. And there's never been a more apt description of politics in Washington than that. In fact, Dowd says Shakespeare was a cultural father figure to America's earliest leaders. The founding fathers were very steeped in Shakespeare. Thomas Jefferson advised people to read Shakespeare from the time it got dark till the time they went to bed. John Adams read Shakespeare to better understand the dark side of power and how to protect against it.
The founding fathers definitely used it to form the republic. Dowd herself cites the Bard in her new collection, Notorious, just as she has in her column ever since 1995 when Bill Clinton was president. Clinton just is such a classic Shakespeare character because he just had this tragic flaw of recklessness. She compared Vice President Dick Cheney to Iago, preying on the insecurities of George W. Bush's Othello. Barack Obama to Hamlet for his hesitancy and indecisiveness. As for Joe Biden? If Joe Biden had read King Lear, he would have realized the dangers of the gerontocracy.
And you really should not cling to power and suffocate the younger people who are coming along. And then there's the current commander in chief. Donald Trump reminds me of several different plays. He's kind of like late Lear howling at the moon.
He's also like Julius Caesar in a republic, but trying to grab the crown and think of himself as an emperor. This is my first copy of Shakespeare, and he gave it to me when I was nine years old. And in the front, he wrote to Patrick, may you find much joy in these words, love, dad. Actor Patrick Page was introduced to Shakespeare by his father, also an actor.
I'll drown my book. Since 2017, Page has been performing his one man show, All the Devils Are Here, How Shakespeare Invented the Villain. Their tragedy is not that they are evil. Their tragedy is that hand in hand, they choose evil. Why are Shakespeare's villains so enduring? I think because we're all interested in the darkness in ourselves. Shakespeare gives these villains true motivations, true inner lives, true backstories.
Page has an understanding of Shakespeare as deep as his voice. Why I can smile and murder whilst I smile. What does it sound like when you giggle?
Was that a giggle? Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it when one cannot repent? In his show, Page explores the villainy of characters who still speak to us today. Well, hello, beautiful. For example, both Heath Ledger's Joker.
Well, my little pretty, I can cause accidents too. And the Wicked Witch of the West, he says, are descended from Shakespeare's deformed with evil, Richard III. Walter White in Breaking Bad, of course, is very much like Macbeth. There's a point in the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad. Well, we know that famous speech from Macbeth tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Tomorrow. As terrifying as these characters are, Maureen Dowd says there's nothing to be afraid of when it comes to Shakespeare. And with Shakespeare, there are always more layers.
I mean, it's a constant source of amazement because Shakespeare was the best entertainer of all time, I would say. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying.
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I'll probably be a dead end with an abortion clinic on it. On the heels of her award-winning star turn in the comedy series Hacks, Jean Smart is taking on a very different role on a much different stage. A one-woman show on Broadway, which is where Tracy Smith caught up with her. It's going to be a whole different animal doing a one-woman show.
And backstage, it'll be very lonely. I'm sitting in my dressing room going, I thought you were particularly good last night. Oh, really? Thank you.
Thank you. I thought you were very funny. Oh, no, no. Oh, no, seriously. You nailed that joke in Act Two.
See, I could just watch this for an hour. If you like watching Jean Smart on screen. Come on, Isabelle, aren't you happy?
Seeing her perform in person is truly a whole other level. Anyway, she marches me to this brand new building, has me sign up for a library card. She tells me she's a friend of the library. I didn't know her libraries had friends. In the new Broadway play, Call Me Izzy, Call Me Izzy, Jean Smart is a naive but brilliant woman trapped in a violent marriage. She has a talent for writing that she needs to hide from her abusive husband. So late at night, after Ferd's gone to sleep, sneak into the bathroom. So she spends her nights pouring out her soul, writing poetry on scraps of toilet paper.
And so we flicked the lightning bug in eye, while as she glimmers star-like in the black, I wish on her my man would say goodbye and send my floodlight lightning flooding back. I've never done a one-woman show, so yes, it's mildly terrifying. More than mildly, because there's no one else on stage to bail you out if you screw up. She tells me that according to Professor... In the preview we saw, she didn't screw up, not once. On days when the trailer gets too small. As she transformed into a woman whose only escape from her dreary life is in books.
What should I read first? I've lived here in Mansfield all my life. Mansfield's a pretty old town since 1843. Before she brought Izzy to Broadway, Smart fine-tuned the character in a Burbank, California studio last month with the help of the playwright Jamie Wax. Fruit of the Loom.
I always thought that was a pretty flowery name for cheap cotton growers. Full disclosure, Jamie is a CBS News colleague with a really fascinating side gig. This moment is a long time coming. Long time coming.
How long? I mean total idea of basing a play on my aunt and her voice and starting the work on it, uh, 35 years. 35 years ago, Jean Smart was a rising TV star, but her showbiz life really began on the stage.
The Seattle native spent years doing theater after college and she was 32 when she moved to Los Angeles for her TV debut. So all that reminds me of this story. These friends of my parents are not very sophisticated, bless their hearts. And one night they went to this real fancy restaurant and they ordered quiche off the menu. Only they called it a quickie. Can you imagine? Oh, you're joking.
I'm not. It was a hoot. Designing women was a big hit for CBS and for Smart personally. And I'll say it again.
And I'll say amen. In 1986, when actor Richard Gilliland guest starred on the show as Annie Potts boyfriend, lightning struck on the set. When you first saw Richard, did you know? Apparently, cause we were never apart from that day. As Dixie Carter used to say, got to have me some of that.
They were married in 1987 and two years later, when she was pregnant with their first child, they worked it into the designing women's script. Well that youngin could be anything. Wow. She could be the next leader of the free world.
Well, that's right. She could. But she also could work at a carwash. Wow.
A carwash. She left the show after five years and went on to do even more award-winning work. But nothing's hit quite as big as her current streaming series, the dark comedy Hacks. It's going to be hard to work together if we can't communicate. We don't work together.
You work for me. Smart plays a legendary Las Vegas comic opposite Hannah Einbinder as her long-suffering head writer. Oh good, my ride's here. Wait, you're leaving me here?
Yep. Audiences love it. So do Emmy voters. And the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series goes to Jean Smart. But Emmy night 2022 was bittersweet, coming just six months and a day after her husband died unexpectedly of a heart condition at age 71. I would not be here without him, without his kind of putting his career on the back burner so that I could take advantage of all the wonderful opportunities that I've had. Smart was suddenly a single mom.
One of their two sons was still young enough to live at home. And it all happened just as she was wrapping up Hacks' first season with only five days left to shoot. I had one one rough day where we were doing a funeral scene and I thought, I don't know if I can do this. But I took an Ativan.
These people are exhausted. It's exhausting to lose a loved one. And just like the determined women she plays, she powered through. You, sir, how did you know Dennis? He was my cousin. Oh, I'm sorry for your loss. Thank you.
So what was the drunkest you ever saw him? Now at 73, Smart seems unstoppable. The question is where she goes from here. When you look at the at the broad future, are you, what do you think? Well, looking at the future at my age now isn't as fun as it used to be. Yeah. Do I wish all of this had happened 20 years ago?
Absolutely. I felt like I could have made a lot more use out of that career boost 20 years ago. Because there's so many parts now I simply can't play just because of my age. So that's very frustrating. You know, but I am extraordinarily grateful for all the amazing things that have been coming my way.
And I can't explain it. A residency in Massachusetts in Urbana, Massachusetts. We do know that she'll be on stage as Izzy until late summer. And in the fall, she'll turn back into Deborah Vance from Hacks.
And after that, maybe Jean Smart will just be Jean. I also look forward to doing for a little while anyway, nothing. I call that just getting to be a person. I mean, I mean, this is lovely, this interview. But you know, sometimes you just go, oh, I have another interview. I get so tired of the sound of my own voice. I can understand that. People are going to get so sick of me. Oh, no.
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This is the best. And a bloody good time. Almost forgot the best part. It's the first great action comedy of the year. Let the magic happen. That's good.
Looking forward to it. Nova Kane, rated R, now streaming on Paramount+. That's the unmistakable sound of the legendary Doobie Brothers. More than 50 years on, they've got a new album, a new tour.
And this morning, they're talking with Jim Axelrod. In a Nashville rehearsal studio, the Doobie Brothers are getting ready for another summer tour. More than 50 years in, and 48 million albums sold, they still want to be sure they sound sharp.
Even on hits like Long Train Running, they've played thousands of times. It was 1973 when co-founder Tom Johnston wrote down words for this riff they'd been jamming to for years in bars and clubs. The words that everybody knows now, how long did it take for you to get those words down on paper? I would like to say it was a labor of love, but it wasn't.
It was about 20 minutes in the bathroom. Using the tile to sing with. Which tells us something when it comes to the Doobie Brothers. Songwriting, as much as their hits are a triumph of technique and theory, as Michael McDonald shared with us a few years back. I actually wrote this part of it in my car on the way to a gig. And I wasn't sure what it was, but I heard the harmonic interval, and I finally figured out what it was as a minor one. Major four, one, yeah.
Sometimes, says Patrick Simmons, who wrote the band's first number one hit, Black Water. It's a lot less complicated. Maybe not all of it can be explained as technical. It sounds like there needs to be a little magic. Accidents happened.
A lot of things kind of fall out of the sky and hit you in the head. But you can't argue with their methods. This week, Johnston, McDonald and Simmons will be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. What do you make of these three guys? They're songwriters. There's a reason for the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction. John McPhee's been a member of the Doobies for the last 38 years. I'm a writer, and I've had songs nominated for Grammys. I'm a member of the band. I'm not included in the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction. That's how good these guys are. I was looking at the list of other groups, musicians who have been inducted.
Lennon and McCartney, you've got Elton John and Bernie Toppin, Holland Dozier Holland. It's a list of giants. I think we all feel honored by it. When we started doing this many years ago, nobody was thinking about anything like that. Does recognition like this matter? To be in the company of those people you mentioned, this is what matters. To think that you would ever be counted among them in any category would be too much to wish for. The Songwriters Hall of Fame is a long way from the house on 12th Street in San Jose, where Simmons and Johnston started the band.
When we started out doing this, we were just trying to pay rent and put gas in your Volkswagen and get around. At biker bars like the Chateau Liberté, they honed their hard-driving Southern rock sound, a style that softened when Johnston left the band in the late 70s and McDonald joined, bringing with him a more mellow feel that propelled the band to their multi-platinum selling album Minute by Minute in 1978. If the changes in personnel, sound and style created strains and riffs among some of the doobies as younger men, a historic 50th anniversary tour in 2021, when these four united to play together for the first time, seemed to melt them away.
Michael came to do a few shows with us and stuck around. Somebody told me as I was getting ready to have a conversation with you guys, somebody said, they're getting along as well as ever. They're enjoying being together as much as they ever have.
I think they said they were getting along in age or something. We all appreciate it more as time goes by, how lucky we are and all the good things that are part of the band. And you suddenly realize, I've just got to keep doing this as long as I can keep doing this.
Because it's still the most joyful thing you can do. Absolutely. And it's that hour, two hours that we get on stage where we actually feel like we're in our 20s again. The rest of the day, we pretty much feel 75.
Five. That feeling sparked a new studio album, Walk This Road, and another Doobie's milestone. Simmons, Johnston and McDonald all recording together in the studio for the first time ever. You gotta walk this road with me. Originally it was kind of like, hey, you guys are doing this first album together in a long time.
You've been together over the years, 50 years, and you walk this road together. Let's write a song about that. We've all made mistakes. We all have things that we wish we'd made some different choices at times than the choices we made.
You go back on that and you go, gosh, hopefully I learned something. Redemption. Unity.
Cohesion. Not just good themes, but Hall of Fame worthy ones. Relevant for the Doobie brothers and for all of us. Hey, we all live on this one tiny little blue ball. We're all walking down the same road just by virtue of that. And we're going to have to learn to get along with each other and listen to each other. This could be the start of something really good. Worth a chuckle perhaps. As the Doobie brothers ponder, more than 50 years to get. Everybody say hello. How long is this going to go on? It's anybody's guess. We're 70s down and a whole different sense now. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
We're going to get along. Opinion this morning from former New York Times columnist Charles Blow with thoughts about our nation's newest federal holiday, Juneteenth. Last month, I visited Emancipation Park in Houston, a park established in 1872 by the formerly enslaved as a space to celebrate Juneteenth, the day in 1865 that the news of emancipation was proclaimed in Galveston, Texas. Raymond Manning, the board chair of the park's Conservancy, told me that his corporate sponsors had grown skittish about supporting Juneteenth related activities and anything with words like culture, heritage or black history. Words nearly impossible to omit in this park.
This, for Manning, is a bit of a whiplash. Four years ago, in the wake of the massive protests following the killing of George Floyd and in a Senate riven by partisanship, the bill to make Juneteenth a national holiday passed unanimously. A year before that, in the closing months of his reelection bid, Donald Trump himself had proposed making it a national holiday in his so-called platinum plan for black America. In fact, in 2019, Trump's statement commemorating Juneteenth ended by saying that, on Juneteenth, we pay tribute to the indomitable spirit of African Americans. Now, the mood in the country has shifted. Pluralism and racial justice have been demoted in the zeitgeist as Trump has returned to office on a mission to purge the government and much of society of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. This has spurred an erasure of black history and black symbols in some quarters, a phenomenon that I call the great blackout. From an executive order condemning the direction of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture to the National Park Service removing but being forced to restore Harriet Tubman's image and quote to a page about the Underground Railroad. There are, unfortunately, countless examples. That chill is having a dampening effect on the upcoming observation of Juneteenth far beyond Emancipation Park as multiple cities have canceled Juneteenth celebrations altogether. In this sad new reality, America's youngest national holiday is now caught in the crossfire of America's raging culture wars. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning.
