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CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley
The Truth Network Radio
January 10, 2021 1:08 pm

CBS Sunday Morning,

CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley

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January 10, 2021 1:08 pm

Lee Cowan looks back at this week's tumultuous events in Washington, D.C. Martha Teichner presents a history of the U.S. Capitol Building. David Martin reviews the security response to Wednesday's attack on the Capitol. Mo Rocca explores the traditions of presidential transitions. Dr. Jon LaPook visits with his father-in-law, legendary TV producer Norman Lear. Rita Braver celebrates the 100th anniversary of Scholastic Publications. and contributor Josh Seftel and his mother, Pat, discuss trying to make an appointment online for a COVID vaccination.

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I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday morning. Journalism, it's been said, is the first rough draft of history. It's still far too early to say how history will judge the momentous events of this past week. But it's not too early for us to attempt our own first draft of just what happened.

Lee Cowan will start things off. These people are not going to take it any longer. What a day it was. They don't get to steal it from us. But a week it's been, and it's all still unfolding. That's inconceivable that what we've experienced in the past week could happen in Japan or Canada or Germany or even the UK or France today.

So why is it happening in the United States? We are protesting for our freedom right now. And what does this week say about where we go from here?

Ahead on Sunday morning. The whole world really is watching the unfolding story of the attack on the United States Capitol. Seth Stone will be looking at what they see. It was not just Americans glued to our TVs, but allies. It definitely didn't occur to us that this was playing out in the temple of democracy. And adversaries.

There are some problems in democracy. Each with a unique view. Coming up on Sunday morning, how the rest of the world saw this. Then we turn from events in Washington to visit with Norman Lear, the celebrated producer of some of our most beloved television shows. Not to mention the father-in-law of our own Dr. John Lapook. The very first script from All in the Family. Oh, for crying out loud.

At the age of 98, the producer who changed the face of television is still going strong. What makes you tick? I have six children and four grandchildren. They all make me tick.

Having finished this sentence and heard me say, make me tick, makes me tick. Good morning. Good morning. We spend two weeks at home with Norman Lear, later on Sunday morning. Martha Teichner has the story of the building known as the People's House. Rita Braver asks if the Capitol riot could become a learning experience for our children. Plus stories from Mo Rocca and David Martin. Thoughts from New York Times columnist Charles Blow and Steve Hartman, all on this Sunday morning, the 10th of January, 2021. We'll be right back. The first draft of history is always of necessity incomplete, but we know enough already about what happened last week to make our own attempt at an early account.

Our cover story is reported by Lee Cowan. We were normal, good, law-abiding citizens, and you guys did this to us. We can now add January 6th, 2021 to that very short list of dates in American history that will live forever in infamy. Shots fired! Shots fired!

Just how will history record this day? This is our country. This is our house. Was it a riot? Domestic terrorism? An insurrection? Well, we came this far.

What do you say? Our best hope is that it's at least a turning point. The symbol of our democracy shuddered under the pounding.

Those watching at home shuddered too. Confederate flags, nooses, body armor, zip ties for handcuffs. What we're seeing are a small number of extremists. The images prompted president-elect Joe Biden to use a word we rarely hear from our leaders, certainly not about ourselves. It borders on sedition. Since election day, it's as if there had been a pot of political stew left on the stove to burn, simmering with conspiracy theories about the election. In Philadelphia, they keep the votes of dead people secret. Delusions not just glowing in the underbelly of the internet, but from the White House. We can't have an election stolen like this. And many members of Congress too. We know that this has really been a stolen election. I've seen the evidence. They don't get to steal it from us.

They don't get to tell us we didn't see what we saw. A lot of these folks have been hearing for months now that the election has been stolen from them. They heard that it was going to be stolen from them before election night. Renee DiResta is a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory that in part studies the use of misinformation online.

Donald Trump won this election. They had been fed a consistent, misleading, false narrative alongside calls from the more extreme elements that said, we have to do something about this. The idea that that was just going to somehow stay as some online message board commentary is just wildly naive. Because it had real world consequences.

There is no distinction anymore between online and offline. All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats, which is what they're doing, and stolen by the fake. With just hours before Joe Biden's victory was set to be certified. We will never give up. We will never concede. Came a battle cry.

You don't concede when there's theft involved. Up on Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had lost too. Georgia's runoff election this past week would soon leave him in the minority. And yet this election were overturned.

He was prepared to accept by mere allegations from the losing side. What the president couldn't. Our democracy would enter a death spiral.

I object. Still, eight Republican senators and 139 Republican House members were still intent on stalling the inevitable, announcing they would object to the certification of Joe Biden as the winner. What does it say to the nearly half the country that believes this election was rigged if we vote not even to consider the claims of illegality and fraud in this election? Outside, the tidal wave of denial began pouring down Pennsylvania Avenue. It crashed onto the steps of the Capitol and seeped all the way to the doors of the House chamber itself. Guns were drawn, representatives fled, people died. Including U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, a 12-year veteran of the force.

Scores of arrests have been made in the wake of the mayhem and the FBI promises there will be more. It is into the teeth of that America the next administration is about to walk. Nobody looks at this country and says, I wish my government worked like that. Ian Bremmer is a geopolitical strategist of sorts.

He founded the Eurasia Group, which advises clients on political risk. In 1989, when the wall came down, we won the Cold War because people around the world looked to the United States as an example of good governance. You can't say that today. This past week, he says, was just the latest tarnish on our reputation. Anyone that thinks that we are suddenly going to be welcomed back as America's, America's the global policeman, we're the architect of global trade, we're the architect of global trade, we're the cheerleader of global values.

We have squandered that legacy. The Senate will come to order. Congress did resume its constitutional duties that night. To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, you did not win.

Presided over by the outgoing vice president. There were calls for restraint heading into the all-night session. The best way we can show respect for the voters who were upset is by telling them the truth.

We brought this hell upon ourselves. With their halls and offices around them laying in ruin, some of those who had objected to certifying the election changed their minds. Others didn't.

Didn't matter. The votes for president... By 3 46 a.m., the counting... Joseph R Biden Jr. Was over. Of the state of Delaware has received 306 votes. In the days that followed, whispers of declaring Mr. Trump unfit for office turned into actual discussions about invoking the 25th Amendment. House Democrats drafted an article of impeachment against the president that could be acted on as early as tomorrow. He must be removed from office. By Friday, Twitter had banned the president. His more than 88 million followers will have to find him somewhere else.

Facebook and Instagram blocked him too. Those watching the collapse from inside the White House urged the president to publicly grasp a reality that some are still not sure he necessarily believes. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power. That did not, apparently, include attending his rival's inaugural. He announced he would pass on that. The vice president is welcome to come.

We'd be honored to have him there. While Mr. Trump seemed to accept that he'd lost the battle, he still insisted the war is far from over. To all of my wonderful supporters, I know you are disappointed, but I also want you to know that our incredible journey is only just beginning. Abraham Lincoln once talked of the choice between rule and ruin. That was tested this past week. But unity isn't some kind of unicorn. You might remember a moment after 9-11, when the Capitol was spared an attack. Democrats stood next to Republicans and spontaneously broke into a chorus of God bless America. Whatever acrimony existed, whatever perceived sins had been committed, melted under a common purpose, to defend democracy. That was two decades ago. Hardly ancient history.

At least, we hope. The United States Capitol has long stood as the very symbol of democracy and self-rule. Martha Teichner takes us within its walls. After the mob had been removed, this is what the Capitol looked like. As if it were glowing from within, instantly recognizable, shining on a hill. I consider it the most beautiful building in America.

CBS's Major Garrett. The Capitol is lit up not just to aid law enforcement in the removal of these insurrectionists, but also to look the way it does, to be a shining light, but also to be a symbol to the country. It will endure. It is a building Americans take personally, regard with wonder, awe. Which is why the nation watched in shock as some terrible line was crossed on Wednesday.

That's right. We own it. That picture of police protecting lawmakers. They're pointing their guns at the door every president since Woodrow Wilson has entered. The president of the United States.

To deliver the State of the Union address. It is a building weighted with the accumulated history of our country. The U.S. Capitol is amongst the most architecturally significant buildings in the entire world.

In fact, it is the symbol of Western democracy. Brett Blanton is the 12th architect of the Capitol, responsible for preserving and maintaining it. When the founding fathers were looking to build a Capitol, what did they want to achieve with the structure? They were looking for something that is to represent our form of democracy.

George Washington wrote that it ought to be upon a scale far superior to anything in this country. Washington presided as the cornerstone was laid on September 18th, 1793. According to newspaper accounts, at the southeast corner of the building. Congress began meeting there in 1800. Built by indentured servants and enslaved people, it wouldn't be finished until 1826. In part because the British burned it in August of 1814 during the War of 1812. We had burned the Parliament House of Canada and the Governor's House of Canada.

So they were just basically coming back and returning the favor, if you will. Bill Allen is historian emeritus for the architect of the Capitol. The Senate is a stage, the House is a stage, the outside of the Capitol is a stage. The whole building is a stage. And upon these stages, these various stages, the trauma of our country is played out.

Some of it's petty, some of it's noble, some of it's funny, some of it's sad. By the 1850s, the building had to be expanded. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in 1861, the new dome was still under construction. In spite of criticism, Lincoln kept building during the Civil War, saying, if people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the union shall go on. The backdrop for inaugurations since Andrew Jackson's in 1829. The Capitol has been under construction or reconstruction almost constantly.

Have you encountered any surprises? One big surprise is we can't find the original cornerstone. And yes, it's laid by George Washington.

They have several areas of speculation and they've done investigations, but we don't know the exact location. Nearly a million square feet, 600 plus rooms, miles of corridors, art everywhere. The Capitol is meant to impress. Do you have a favorite place in the building? Statutory Hall.

Why? It's its own museum of history because you have statues, two per state are commissioned and you get to see throughout history who the states feel represented them. Plus in there, that's the location of the original house and on the floor are placards of where the famous house members such as Abraham Lincoln, where their desks were. It was in Statuary Hall that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lay in state last September on the catafalque constructed for Lincoln's casket.

Lincoln himself lay in the rotunda. Only 38 Americans have been granted what is seen as the nation's highest honor in death. Among them, former presidents, unknown soldiers, eminent members of Congress, religious and civil rights leaders. The two Capitol policemen killed here in 1998 by a crazed gunman.

So, hallowed ground, defiled on Wednesday, but not for the first time. The Capitol has always been a magnet for people wishing to air grievances. In 1835, somebody tried to assassinate President Andrew Jackson as he left the building.

In 1856, a pro-slavery congressman from South Carolina just about killed Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist, as he sat in the Senate chamber. All members of a Puerto Rican Tarot Society were captured by guards and police. In 1954, Puerto Rican nationalists shot up the House of Representatives, wounding five. There have been bombings. And, of course, on 9-11, the fourth plane, the one passengers forced down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, was headed for the Capitol.

Before COVID, before Wednesday's attack, an estimated three to five million people visited the Capitol each year. A fence went up around it on Thursday, for the time being, shutting the doors of the people's house to the people, but only for the time being. If you think about it, the Capitol is a very resilient structure. It's been built. It's been burnt. It's been rebuilt. It's been expanded. It's been built. It's been built. It's been burnt. It's been rebuilt. It's been expanded. It's been restored. And all of that is the monument for the American people and our form of representing Republicans.

It has stood the test of time. How could a mob successfully attack the United States Capitol in the first place? What explains such a security failure?

David Martin is on the case. An angry mob running roughshod and unchecked through the Capitol and onto the floor of the United States Senate, a scene as once unthinkable as airplanes crashing into buildings. They could have blown the building up. They could have killed us all. They could have destroyed the government.

We dodged a major bullet yesterday. The barriers erected and manned by the Capitol Police were little more than speed bumps to the angry mob. They had these pathetic little barricades up beforehand, and what they should have done is had much more robust capabilities well in advance of the 6th of January. Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security during the George W. Bush administration, says the Capitol Police bear primary responsibility. This strikes me as having been a real dereliction by the Capitol Police. But simple dereliction doesn't explain this statement by D.C. Police Chief Robert Conte. There was no intelligence that suggested there would be a breach of the U.S. Capitol. In fact, social media was full of storm the Capitol rhetoric, including a tweet from President Trump predicting it will be wild.

The hoaxes and the lies. And then there was the rally outside the White House, where the president and his ally, Rudy Giuliani, riled up the crowd. Let's have trial by combat. If you read the newspaper, you knew that there was a serious possibility of a threat against the Capitol.

Let's go wild. Bring your guns. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that that suggests a serious threat to the integrity of the Capitol. This was not a failure to connect the dots, but a failure to believe the dots. Whether they underestimated the threat or believed because they were Trump supporters, they weren't going to be a problem, that was a very serious error and can never be allowed to be repeated. Was this cultural bias? If it's Black Lives Matter, there's a real threat of violence here.

But if it's just almost all white Trump supporters, no problem. Well, certainly that's a legitimate question to ask. They need to ask questions about whether there was conscious or unconscious bias or even some political spin for some of the people in the Capitol Police. Democratic Congressman James Clyburn offered a more sinister explanation. Somebody on the inside of those buildings were complicit in this.

The need for answers is urgent. There are already social media calls for more attacks surrounding the inauguration. The president is vowing, we will not be silenced. And one of his supporters warned, many of us will return on January 19th carrying our weapons.

Buckle up. I'm afraid we're going to see some very scary activity over the next weeks and months. Turns out the ugly and violent events at the Capitol this past week echo ugly and violent chapters of America's past.

We have thoughts from New York Times columnist, Charles Blow, whose new book is called The Devil You Know. There are many historical precedents for the way white supremacy responds when that perceived supremacy is threatened. One example unfolded during Reconstruction. At the end of the Civil War, several Southern states were majority black and several others were within striking distance of being majority black. Then the ratification of the 15th Amendment gave black men the right to vote, which in turn made some of the electorates majority black. This was a serious threat to absolute white power. So white supremacists banded together in Mississippi, a black power center during Reconstruction, and formed the Red Shirts, a group of vigilantes who used pressure, intimidation, and violence to prevent black people from voting.

What they couldn't achieve numerically at the ballot, they would achieve through terror in the community. Their efforts worked so well that Red Shirt groups soon sprang up in other Southern states. After their success, Mississippi called the Constitutional Convention in 1890 to severely restrict black suffrage and write white supremacy into the DNA of the state.

State after state across the South followed the Mississippi example, establishing Jim Crow as the code of the region for more than 60 years. I came to know these facts academically as an act of scholarship, but I couldn't fathom living through such a period. That was until this election, which provided a modicum of similarity to that period over a century ago. Donald Trump tried to intimidate voters before and during the election, then sought to erase legal ballots after they were cast. He attacked large cities and swing states, those with a large percentage of black people, as corrupt. And with his legal challenges expired, his efforts culminated in a deadly insurrection in Washington, his loyalists exploding in violence in support of his attempted coup.

Make no mistake, the red hats marauding through the halls of the United States Capitol were a throwback to the Red Shirts terrorizing the Southern countryside. As my friend Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, wrote, not only is white supremacy the greatest threat to democracy, democracy is the greatest threat to white supremacy. Because when democracy works, white supremacists will always reflexively be rattled, whether in the 19th century or the 21st.

We like to think people around the world look to the United States as a model of democracy. Here's Seth Doan with a sampling of what they're seeing and saying now. Translating and interpreting those events unfolding on Capitol Hill took place in real time on television broadcasts around the world.

They shouted pro-Trump slogans and waved US flags. In India, reporter Smita Sharma says at first she almost mistook the scenes for some new fictional TV series. Actually it looked like I was watching maybe a mismatch of a Homeland season nine with a designated survivor new series on Netflix. You couldn't believe what you were seeing?

It was difficult to believe. A country of more than 1.3 billion people, India has an interest in this story. It's the world's most populous democracy. At the end of the day, we still look up to America for at least being a leader of the democratic principles.

And if it is weakened internally, then a lot of the other countries would find it even more justified to carry on and move away from democratic principles. For us, it's very easy to understand a politician that does not recognize losing. Ana Paula Odorica is a journalist in Mexico, a country whose populist president has not publicly condemned the assault on Capitol Hill. What is not easy to understand is the enablers, having senators questioning these results and having so many Americans speaking about fraud. It broke the image that people have of a kind of picture-perfect Washington and all these rituals that unfold, you know, with military precision.

American writer Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy, was watching from her home near Warsaw, Poland. All of us are used to seeing demonstrations on the mall. What was different about this demonstration, if you can call it that, was that it was a demonstration against American democracy itself. Her new book looks at anti-democratic trends, sometimes fueled by conspiracy theories and the lure of nationalism, populism and authoritarianism. One of the ways in which the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Venezuelans and others use photographs of America is to try and shore up their own regime. The message from authoritarian states from those powers is, look at democracy, this is just too messy?

Yes. Putin, Xi, Maduro, they tell their people, you don't want to live in a democracy. Democracies are shambolic. Democracies are chaotic. What happened in Washington really showed that there are some problems with democracy and it is showing weakness, said Hu Xijin. He's editor-in-chief of China's Global Times, part of the state-backed media run by the ruling Communist Party. You have penned and released stinging editorials that Global Times has really jumped on this story. Why? Are the words too harsh, Hu asked? Can you give me an example? In one editorial you say, capital mob represents an internal collapse of the U.S. political systems.

That's pretty harsh. I do not think America is collapsing, he said, but the Capitol Hill incident has shown collapse within the U.S. political system. The U.S. Capitol Hill incident has shown collapse within the U.S. political system. This headline in a Kenyan paper taunts, who is the banana republic now? Anne Applebaum says the democratic world should be setting an example for those in other countries who were pushing for basic rights.

The right to vote, the right to have a judge in a court who's independent from politics. All those things that we take for granted and they work so hard for may become harder to obtain. Is the U.S. any less trustworthy than it was before?

I don't think so because of the reaction. Leah Quartapelle is a member of Italy's parliament and serves on the foreign affairs committee. The entire system reacted also to preserve rule of law, democracy, will of the people. She was encouraged to see the U.S. Congress get right back to work that same night, demonstrating that in a democracy it's the institution itself that wields the most power. In democracy, things can go wrong.

Sometimes they go badly wrong, but they can be corrected, which is something that never happens in any other part of the world that is not a democracy. This is The Takeout with Major Garrett. This week, Stephen Law, ally of Mitch McConnell and one of Washington's biggest midterm money men. List for me the two Senate races where you think Republicans have the best chance of taking a Democratic seat away. Nevada, New Hampshire. Not Georgia. Well, Georgia is right up there, but New Hampshire is a surprise.

In New Hampshire, people really just kind of don't like Maggie Hassan. For more from this week's conversation, follow The Takeout with Major Garrett on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Intelligence Matters with former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell. Bridge Colby is co-founder and principal of the Marathon Initiative, a project focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition. The United States put our mind to something we can usually figure it out. What people are saying and what we kind of know analytically and empirically is our strategic situation, our military situation is not being matched up with what we're doing.

Follow Intelligence Matters wherever you get your podcasts. President Trump has 10 days left as a lame duck president. Mo Rocca takes a closer look at lame ducks past. In just six short months, I will be officially a lame duck. I have no intention of becoming a lame duck president. He will be a lame duck. It's a harmless, almost funny sounding term to describe the two and a half month stretch between the general election and an outgoing president's departure. The term itself, lame duck, that's kind of odd, right?

Yeah. I mean, lame duck, I gather, goes back to a time when there were British businessmen who had become bankrupt. It then got attached to politicians who weren't going to be in office very long. The lame duck label migrated to American politics and was used here to describe outgoing President Calvin Coolidge. But as presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin points out, a lame duck still has wings.

They still have every power that they ever had before. There's the power to issue headline-making pardons and the power to help or hinder a smooth handoff to the next commander in chief. So many other countries do not have that peaceful transition of power.

It's been the hallmark of our democracy since good old George Washington. To many people, the 78 days between November 3rd and January 20th of this year are feeling more like 78 years, which raises the question, why is this period so long? Originally, the purpose of the waiting period was to give time for the new president to get from wherever they were to Washington, D.C. And that purpose seems to be less necessary today, given modern transportation. But 2020 isn't the first tumultuous transition. After Abraham Lincoln's election in November 1860, he had to wait four months. Back then, inauguration wasn't until March, before President James Buchanan vacated the premises. I can't even imagine what it was like during the period of time between Buchanan and Lincoln. Lincoln's elected president, and then within the matter of weeks after that, seven states secede from the union. During the Great Depression, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt waited to take the reins from lame duck Herbert Hoover, the country itself was on life support.

It's hard to imagine. I mean, Franklin Roosevelt really did not know in January and February and March whether the government could collapse before he even had a chance to put his own programs into use. Hoover had suffered a humiliating defeat. What was that ride to the Capitol like? On Inauguration Day in 1933. From all accounts, the ride between Hoover and Roosevelt was very frosty, as they say. But Hoover did ride in the car. Absolutely.

So it may not have been, you know, the most friendly of transitions, but they were trying to work together. And that ride is just one of the traditions we've come to expect during the transition season. Those rituals, few of them are mandated by law.

They're not in the Constitution. You know, a concession speech, a congratulatory call. Absolutely. And these were just traditions that developed.

When you think about it, the word transition period just conjures up something bureaucratic. Thank you very much. Hey, listen, you guys. But it's really something more than that. I just called Governor Clinton over in Little Rock and offered my congratulations. Goodwin says the concession speech has long been a vital step in consoling supporters.

So I can't stand here tonight and say it doesn't hurt. And helping them move on. The people of the United States have made their choice. And of course, I accept that decision.

But I have to admit, not with the same enthusiasm that I accepted the decision four years ago. And these people are filled with emotion. And he has to take them from that moment to that next moment of acceptance. That's a signal to the country because there's supporters all over the country that have to make that same transition. Typically during this time, the outgoing president hosts the incoming one.

So that's part of the healing. The outgoing president invites the family of the new president to come in and tour the mansion. It's going to be the home of the new person. And all of those moments, those are visual and emotional signs to the country at large, to the supporters who are disappointed, who have lost the election, to the new people coming in that they're not going to gloat because these two people are able to get together than we can too. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. This presidential transition period has been bereft of all these rituals.

For only the fifth time in American history, the outgoing chief executive won't attend his successor's inauguration. History's going to look back at this transition period, even as it is now, I think, with very troubled eyes. And I think it's a real loss for him, for his legacy, and for the country, most importantly. Could the political chaos we've just witnessed possibly become a learning experience for kids? A question Rita Braver is putting to the leading children's publisher, now marking its 100th anniversary. With the horror of what happened at the U.S. Capitol this past week still sinking in, there is an important question. How to explain it to America's children? Kids want to understand it. The Capitol is a symbol.

It's very important to them. And so Dick Robinson, president and CEO of Scholastic, says his editors immediately started posting stories for students on the websites of Scholastic magazines. In fourth grade, we'll explain it one way.

In eighth grade, we'll explain it another way. In fact, Scholastic, the largest publisher of children's magazines and books in the world, is just marking its 100th anniversary of helping children make sense of things. Our real personality is being in the lives of kids in school, helping them learn millions and millions of kids. He is, incredibly, only the second person to lead the company in its 100-year history. The first was his dad, Robbie Robinson, who, fresh out of Dartmouth, started publishing a current events magazine for students near his home just outside Pittsburgh. Magazines were becoming the mass medium of the time. And you saw the enrollment projections for high school post-World War I were just going up like that. As I understand it, when your father started, he actually worked out of his mother's sewing room. Yes, he did.

Yes. But within two years, the Scholastic was being shipped all across the country. This one is the very first issue which shows a female hurdler, which was very forward-looking at that time. Magazines going directly into classrooms. A thousand schools at the beginning, and then it got to be 5,000 schools, and then 10,000 schools.

But it took a long time to build this. Teachers were soon asking for a variety of magazines, geared to different areas and ages. There are now more than 30, available both in print and online. A kid's-eye view of American culture and history. And they have always covered difficult and even controversial topics. This was 1948, still the era of segregation. During Brotherhood Week, we had an African-American young man with two other white young men, which led to the banning of Scholastic in several Southern states. And Robinson says Scholastic has already heard from parents who say the attack on the Capitol should not be discussed in the classroom. But we don't hold back from that.

It's our role to make sure that we do address these important questions. Scholastic has a proud history. In 1923, at the suggestion of teachers and principals, the company began giving art and writing awards to promising high school students, a list that includes many who would become bold-faced names.

And Scholastic has another impressive roster. Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Faster than a speeding waistband. Captain Underpants, all based on books published by Scholastic.

The company got into the book business back in the 1940s. So a book lover's paradise down here, huh? Yeah, these are all the books we published in the last three years. We call them tricolors.

Just three years here. And each color tells me what year it is. And each color tells me what year it is. Dimoso Weber-Bay is Scholastic's senior librarian. Have you ever figured out how many books have been published under the Scholastic Impermature?

It's a good question. The library has about 200,000 records. Wow.

Yeah. Scholastic published the now beloved Clifford the Big Red Dog in 1963, after it was rejected by nine other publishers. And the hugely popular Baby-Sitters Club series started in 1986, written by a Scholastic employee who saw a need for preteen books. That I read religiously every month when I was getting my Scholastic book form. I knew one book was going to be the new Baby-Sitters Club book.

So then what am I going to spend the balance of my money on? Like many of us, Weber-Bay remembers filling out those order forms for the school book clubs that Scholastic first launched in 1948. The company makes money, but kids get to choose their own low-cost books shipped directly to their schools, even during the pandemic. It makes me so happy that they are excited about books and that there are ways for them to get access to books. Fourth grade teacher Carrie Ann Reeves of Daniel Webster Elementary School in New O'Shele, New York is personally delivering book club orders to her students. And Scholastic book fairs are going on, socially distanced at schools like Browns Chapel Elementary in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The books are discounted, plus schools get a portion of the proceeds. The company says its products are available in 90 percent of American schools, without any serious competition. Basically no one's crazy enough to do what you do.

I would say that's a very practical response. Scholastic is a publicly held company. So in your average year, what kind of revenues are we talking about?

About 1.5 billion. That's good. Dick Robinson and his family are majority shareholders in Scholastic. He worked his way up and has run the company since the 1970s. He's now 83. And as for his successor, You haven't picked out that person yet?

That's a matter I probably should discuss with myself and then with you later. And Robinson says the company's mission for the next 100 years is the same as it's always been, even in difficult times like last week's assault on the U.S. Capitol. Over the years, people have turned to us in important moments like this to explain things to kids and give them a pathway to understand it and feel better about themselves and their society because of their understanding. Here I am and we had a terrific meeting tonight at the lodge, Edith. Oh gee, guess how long I'm gonna live?

Look at this, I'm only home a minute and she's threatening me. Half a century has passed since producer Norman Lear created the hit CBS show, All in the Family, a show title that our Dr. John Lapook can definitely identify with. It's another day, how about it?

Another day to wake up and look around and see life. Even at breakfast, Norman Lear, always the producer, knows how things should stack up. Onion underneath the smoked salmon. Does it matter whether the onion is underneath the smoked salmon or on top?

It matters a very great deal because the onion has a tendency to break apart and fall off. The salmon holds it down. Norman Lear revealed this culinary secret to me because I'm his son-in-law, having married his daughter, Kate Lear. Tomorrow is the day I've been waiting for and I can't wait. After recently quarantining for 14 days, Kate and I spent the next two weeks with Norman in his Los Angeles home.

And I am so happy and grateful you're here. Hugging him up as much as possible and making a home movie like no other. Three of them I wear all the time.

One of them just kind of hangs around keeping the others company. Here in his screening room are the leather-bound scripts from the groundbreaking situation comedies he co-produced. The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, Maude, Good Times, and, of course, All in the Family. The very first script from All in the Family. Oh, for crying out loud. Boy, the way Glenn Miller played.

Songs that made the hit parade. The series starred Carole O'Connor and Jean Stapleton. I thought it would be nice for a change. Just remember, I hate change.

As the narrow-minded, working-class loudmouth and his kind-hearted, adoring wife. I ain't over the hill. Well, you can certainly see the top of it. All in the Family premiered 50 years ago this month, ran nine seasons on CBS, and was number one in the ratings for five consecutive years. There was an expression about water cooler moments where people met at the water cooler and talked, and on a Monday, they talked about Saturday's show, All in the Family. One, two, three. There were people on either side of the political spectrum who saw something in it for them.

Yes, I like to think what they saw was the foolishness of the human condition. Norman's insistence at breakfast that the onion must always go under, never over, the smoked salmon tickled the memory of pure foolishness from the show. Hold it, hold it, hold it. What are you doing here? Why? What about the other foot? To make no sock on it.

I'll get to it. This is reminding me of a sock and a shoe and a sock and a shoe or a sock and a sock and a shoe and a shoe. One of the greatest gifts in my entertainment career. Don't you know that the whole world puts on a sock and a sock and a shoe and a shoe? A classic scene Carol O'Connor and Rob Reiner had improvised during a rehearsal.

I like to take care of one foot at a time. To be able to laugh in a rehearsal at something you hadn't expected, and then to stand to the side or behind an audience laughing and watch them, their bodies, couple a hundred people as one when something makes them laugh. I don't think I've ever seen a more spiritual moment than an audience in a belly laugh.

My way with a sock and a shoe on one foot, I can hop around and stay dry. The soundtrack of my life has been laughter. And laughter for you is a kind of medicine, isn't it? Well, I happen to believe it has everything to do with a long life. And Norman Lear has lived quite a long and remarkable life. He was born 98 years ago in Hartford, Connecticut. When he was nine, his father went to prison for selling fake bonds, and his mother sent him to live with his grandparents.

During World War II, Norman flew 52 combat missions over Germany and Italy. My tail gunner passed. And I'm the last member of the crew. I don't want to hurt you, Dad.

No, you're not going to hurt me. One thing that's amazing that I've noticed over the years is you're just as interested in people who are absolutely not well known. Because I fell in love as a young man with a statement, each man is my superior in that I may learn from him. That philosophy led Norman, a lifelong liberal, into a pen pal friendship with President Ronald Reagan.

Right now, this country is so divided. What's the lesson in that relationship you had with him for us today? We are in this lifetime together. And maybe it's possible to appreciate the other guy for the way his mind works, even when he's not working your way.

He is fascinated with everybody he meets, and I think that has built a very, very rich life. How's the lockdown been for you? Are you staying sane? Yes, I am insane. What makes you tick?

I have six children and four grandchildren. They all make me tick. Having finished this sentence and heard me say, make me tick, makes me tick.

I like the way my shoes and socks are feeling, makes me tick. So the pandemic comes along and that does what to your life? Well, the first thing it does is imprison me.

I'm ashamed of everything I just said. Because I wake up in this beautiful home, married to this lovely woman, and what the hell am I complaining about? But I have the hunger to go to the office. I have the hunger to see the people I work with. I mean, there's no business like show business. Like no business I know. Everything about it is appealing.

Everything the traffic will allow. And for Norman, pandemic or not, the show must go on. I talked to our cast of One Day at a Time last night and...

He's still producing, still pitching shows to networks with his partner, Brent Miller. Crazy as we're talking on a Zoom now, how little... We haven't really been together. Well, at least we can get together with masks. Norman's wife of nearly 35 years, Lynn Davis Lear, has suggested he might slow down a bit. Oh, God, yes. But that's just not possible. He's not the retiring type.

He loves that office and he's got what, six shows possibly coming up. I mean, it's crazy. And as with many of us, following the rules of the pandemic can be a challenge. Oh, I could not be more amazed at my boundless stupidity at times. Happy birthday to you. Consider his 98th birthday party last July, when family members were keeping a safe distance from each other. And they bring me the cake and, of course, there were candles on the cake. But this fool went...

This easily is the best birthday in 98 years. Sadly, I had to toss the cake. Looking back, do you have any regrets? I don't believe in regrets.

And looking forward, Norman Lear says he doesn't want to miss a thing. When they're thinking about death, I don't mind the going. It's the leaving that is the problem for me. Going, who knows what's out there, that it can't be all bad.

But leaving, I can't think of anything good about leaving. How the birth of a daughter became the birth of a friendship is our story for the last year has been a blur. She has treated hundreds of COVID patients here at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

But she says one patient stands above. From the very beginning, Monique was special to me. 28-year-old Monique Jones came to the hospital deathly ill from COVID and six months pregnant. The baby was priority over her.

She was very happy with her, and she was very happy with her. Eventually, Monique had to be intubated, but Kaitlyn still talked to her, prayed over her, countless hours. And when doctors decided the only hope for mother and child was an emergency C-section, Kaitlyn made a promise. I was like, if Monique makes it, we're going to throw her the biggest baby shower there is to have. A promise she joyfully kept when Zamaira arrived. All two pounds, five ounces of her baby.

I just started crying as soon as I saw everything, like this couldn't be for me. Kaitlyn raised thousands of dollars from friends, family, and co-workers. And even though her favorite patients are now out of the hospital, Kaitlyn still visits regularly, asked to.

She's the godmother and Monique's new best friend. I never really felt that special to somebody. I really needed somebody to help me.

I never really felt that special to somebody, I really needed somebody like her. It's important, especially after such a god-awful week, to know that while all this was happening, so was this. While chaos reigned in Washington, compassion ruled in this corner of the heartland and across the country because the soul of America can't be ransacked.

And the solution to what ails us sure as heck isn't under a dome. It's not a matter of politics, it's just a matter of loving people. That's what we need. The days that I feel like I can't go anymore, through those hard days when I don't think my patient's going to make it, that I just know there's another Monique that needs us. And there's your battle cry, America, for an uprising of kindness. Coming up next weekend, with just days until she becomes vice president, I'll be talking with Kamala Harris. We'll also catch up with actress Ellen Burstyn, get a history lesson from Mo Rocca, and more. I'm Jane Pauley. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. And I'll see you in the next one.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-01-28 22:25:31 / 2023-01-28 22:44:46 / 19

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