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CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley
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September 1, 2019 10:30 am

CBS Sunday Morning

CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley

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September 1, 2019 10:30 am

Lee Cowan is in for Jane. Made in U.S.A.: Bringing manufacuring jobs back to the homeland; The new face of labor; Gen. James Mattis; Valerie Harper; Dolly Parton;

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Dream, design, and build with Tough Shed. Good morning. Jane Pauley is off today. I'm Lee Cowan, and this is Sunday morning. Another mass shooting in Texas and the uncertain path of Hurricane Dorian are dominating the headlines this Labor Day weekend.

We'll have the latest on both those stories in just a moment. Then it's on to the economy and the question, is there a future for products made in the USA? At least one manufacturer believes the answer is yes, as John Blackstone reports in our cover story. Bayard Winthrop started a clothing company with one goal in mind. To bring back American manufacturing jobs one sweatshirt at a time. But we're told it's too expensive to make stuff. Yeah, it's not.

I would argue there is cost to trying to make things in distant, distant places. What it takes to make it in America later on Sunday morning. She's one of the legends of country music who knows a little something about working 9 to 5. Her name is Dolly Parton, and she's talking this morning to Tony DeCopel. After all the hits, the movies, even a theme park. Dolly Parton says she's still the same woman who moved to Nashville to be a star.

I wake up every day with new dreams and new ambitions. Dolly Parton, the crossover queen of country, later on Sunday morning. The big power player in the labor movement these days just might surprise you. With Leslie Stahl, we'll be paying her a visit. You know, sometimes I can't help but sing.

With a group of people, it's just the thing to bring everyone together. But don't be fooled by her playfulness. If you say union leader to most people, they still, I think, have in their mind the image of a cigar chomping George Meany. And when you meet Sarah Nelson, she clearly doesn't fit that image. She's been called the most powerful labor leader in the country.

It's Sarah Nelson, later on Sunday morning. Combat ready are two words to describe James Mattis, a retired Marine officer and former Secretary of Defense. This morning, he's also ready and willing to look back on his days at the Pentagon's helm with our David Martin.

James Mattis had met Donald Trump only once when he was picked to be Secretary of Defense. Did you intend to serve a full four years? Of course. You only made it halfway. Well, that's fair. But there comes a time when you have to look at it and say, are you aligned with the person you're working with? Mattis's first television interview since he resigned.

He's an unusual president, our president is. Later on Sunday morning. We'll also mark the passing of that beloved upstairs neighbor, actress Valerie Harper, and more, all coming up when our Sunday Morning podcast continues. There's been a lot of talk about products made in the USA recently, and we thought this Labor Day weekend was the perfect time to check in on one entrepreneur's mission to bring back that label and at least some of those jobs.

Our cover story is reported by John Blackstone. Here we are in Middlesex, North Carolina, and this is a knitwear plant. Six years ago, this apparel manufacturer in rural North Carolina was ready to close until Bayard Winthrop helped buy the company. You know, we've spent nationally much of the last 40 years moving manufacturing overseas to chase cheap labor and lower environmental standards and lower regulations. In 1980, almost 80 percent of the clothing bought here was made in America.

Today, it's around three percent. Winthrop says, well, globalization and trade deals made goods cheaper. They also brought decades of layoffs and plant closures. Manufacturing plants are moving to where the workers are cheap.

We just can't compete with those prices. I'm a free trade person, but I also am a believer in saying, wait a second, you cannot gut a bunch of communities in the U.S. and move to Bangladesh and then import all those goods back again and sell them at the local dollar store to all these people that now no longer have jobs. Sound familiar? We are living through the greatest jobs theft in the history of the world. President Trump is by no means the first to campaign on bringing back manufacturing jobs.

There will be a giant sucking sound going south. There will be no more nap to sell out to the American workers. 1.2 million new manufacturing jobs right here in America.

I think if they don't make a deal, it's going to be very bad for China. President Trump's answer has been tariffs and trade wars. But back in 2012 in San Francisco, Bayard Winthrop set about bringing back manufacturing jobs the old-fashioned way, by creating them. Winthrop's previous experience had been on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, but he started his own clothing company with a big name, American Giant, and an even bigger goal, making everything from start to finish in the United States. Like a few other clothing companies trying to manufacture in the U.S., there's a big challenge. All those closed factories have left a threadbare infrastructure for actually making apparel, like American Giant's flannel shirt. This was an art that had almost died in America?

It had effectively died. I mean we actually had to bring one of the great yarn dyers effectively out of retirement to come back and help deliver this program. Creating work meant creating a supply chain involving multiple steps. We followed the chain for American Giant's hoodie and learned the jobs are not what they used to be. The seeds of Winthrop's big idea are found on farms like this one in Enfield, North Carolina, where cotton is planted in the spring.

Well, I need some asphate this morning, right quick, please. Grower Jerry Hamill is looking for help, but says few are up to the job. The labor force here, the ones that will work, are working and some are not going to work. It makes no difference what they are offered, what kind of money, what kind of benefits.

They just are not going to work. So each season, Hamill hires men from Mexico on temporary worker visas. Come fall, they'll pick the cotton and transfer it to the local gin, which removes the seeds. The next stop is Parkdale Mills in Gaffney, South Carolina, where raw cotton is cleaned and spun into yarn.

Parkdale Mills has more in common with Silicon Valley than it does with the mills seen in the 1979 movie Norma Rae. I think you better try to speed it up some if you can. I'm going as fast as I can. Yeah, well they're watching me. I come into your mill, I expect to see Sally Field and I see robots instead. You know, to stay in business today, you have to automate.

Andy Warlick is its CEO. We couldn't survive competing against the world if we weren't automated. Probably have more robots here than we have employees, but the employees are well trained to operate those robots and it's been the key to our survival. In the 1960s, a mill like this would have employed 2,000 workers. Today, about 125 work here, producing about 2 million pounds of yarn a week. It's then knitted into fabric and sent a few miles away to Carolina Cottonworks, where it's dyed and dried. What's happening is the wire on the rolls on the machine.

They're a series of hook wire on the rolls. Founder Paige Ashby and sons Hunter and Brian started working with Winthrop in 2013 after realizing he wasn't the typical client. It contradicted the conventional thinking of taking cost out and offering something cheaper than everybody else and on top of everything else he's going to make it a couple hundred miles from here in North Carolina. My response was this is the guy we've been dreaming about.

Where has he been for the past 15 years? For the final stop, the finished fabric goes to the knitwear plant Winthrop helped buy, Eagle Sportswear, where it's cut and sewn into actual clothing. The sweatshirt is so complicated, there's so many parts, that each modular line is only making a part of the sweatshirt. To improve productivity, Winthrop replaced the traditional assembly lines with groups of sewers working in teams. They get extra pay for exceeding daily quotas.

This is an example right here of a three-woman modular sew line. There's a readout over the day. There's a readout over here, which those numbers basically are telling you that our expectation for this team is 73 units at this point in the day. They're at 90. Their efficiency is at 123 percent. You make more money?

Yeah, there's more money on dibs. Thelma Aguilar has worked here 21 years. So you try to be very efficient? Yeah, we try every day.

So I'm holding you up from keeping your, meeting your goal there? Yeah. You have to pay these people a good deal more than you would if they were sewing in China, Vietnam.

Yeah, I would just argue that's a good thing, right? Keeping this final step here in the U.S., Winthrop says adds as much as $17 to the total cost of the hoodie. To reduce overhead, American Giant sells almost entirely online with only two stores. So the final price tag for the hoodie we've followed from the cotton fields, to the gin, to the mill, to the dyer, to the knitwear plant, to the store, is no bargain. $108. Sweatshirt, it's $108. You want to pay $108 for a sweatshirt?

What we really want to do with this particular item is make something that you are going to have for decades. In this era of fast fashion, Winthrop may seem out of step. But despite its lofty price tag, his hoodie has been selling well ever since the digital magazine slate called it the greatest hoodie ever made. The article came out and within 24 hours we'd sold everything we'd ever made. Bayard Winthrop wants to inspire other companies to manufacture here. For him, the made in U.S.A. label creates both jobs and pride. So are you selling an idea, an image, as much as clothing? I think we're selling a value system. Stand for some things that matter. Stand for American manufacturing. Stand for the people that are making stuff. And when we buy things, when we do it consciously, when we do it with an eye towards understanding how these little votes that we make have an impact attached to them, we'll be better off. Great to see you.

My favorite customer. With Labor Day now just a few hours away, we're about to watch a union power player at work. Wesley Stahl of 60 Minutes takes us to the picket line. Tell me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like. That woman dancing around the picket line is Sarah Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants.

Don't be fooled by her playfulness. She's been called the most powerful labor leader in the country. What is the labor movement waiting for? Her steeliness came through in a speech she gave, a call to arms really, to the AFL-CIO in January in the midst of the government shutdown. End this shutdown with a general strike. The last time there was a general strike in the United States was 1946.

In this case, Nelson was calling on all 12 million members of the AFL-CIO to walk out en masse. We have real power as workers. If we decide not to participate in this economy, it stops. Everything stops. But what you said came as a surprise to most people.

This was an extraordinary moment. 400,000 people are forced to come to work without pay. And the people that I represent are going to work in an increasingly unsafe condition.

What is the labor movement waiting for? By unsafe, she was referring to how the government shutdown was putting stress on airport screeners and others working without pay. Layers of security that were put in place after 9-11, when the TSA was created, are not there. No one will get out of this unscathed if we do not stop this shutdown. If it is unsafe, we will refuse to work those flights.

Can you do that? We have that right. We have that right today. Well, when you put it in the terms that you did and that you are right now, there's an implicit threat. You're going to shut down the whole economy.

Yes. After her call for a strike... There were a handful of air traffic controllers who said, I can't. I'm too stressed. I'm too tired.

I can't medically do my job. And the plane stopped. And we said, do we have your attention now, Leader McConnell? And a few hours later, we had a resolution. We have reached a deal to end the shutdown. America's longest government shutdown came to an end, and Sarah Nelson became a hero.

But she's fortunate. In one of the biggest strikes involving aviation workers, labor lost. If you go back to PATCO, I don't know how old you were at PATCO. Well, third grade.

You were in third grade, and I was covering the White House. Political observers feel that Mr. Reagan has been just plain lucky, drawing as his first butt with labor a clearly illegal walkout. It was 1981 when PATCO, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, led a strike of its 11,000 members for better pay.

Our position has to be irreversible. There is a law and an oath that they signed. So President Reagan fired them all. Since then, union membership has declined from 20 percent of all American workers to only 10 percent. The PATCO strike had a devastating impact on the labor movement in 1981. Not just air traffic controllers who lost their jobs, but the whole labor movement was dispirited by it. Professor Joe McCartan teaches labor history at Georgetown University. He says Sarah Nelson brings something new and inspiring to the union movement.

If you say union leader to most people, they still, I think, have in their mind the image of a cigar-chomping George Meany. And when you meet Sarah Nelson, she clearly doesn't fit that image. You have quite a collection of airplanes. Well, we represent flight attendants at 20 airlines. She became a flight attendant 24 years ago when a college friend sold her on the idea. Once she started, she moved all over the country, flying out of Washington, Chicago, and Boston. One of the planes that went into the 9-11 towers flew out of Boston.

Yes. Could you have been on one of those planes? I flew Flight 175 a week earlier, and I was friends with everyone on the plane. So this is Michael Tureau and Amy King, and they were on Flight 175, and good friends.

And I keep them next to me every day. We were taught up to that point that if there's a hijacker on board, that we are supposed to appease the hijacker, try to keep the hijacker calm, do what they say. That was part of training? That was part of training. That was in our handbook. But the flight attendants on 9-11 didn't follow the handbook.

They fought back. They decided instantaneously to do that. And so our role changed even before we were told that it should change. Almost everything about what it means to be a flight attendant has changed. It wasn't so long ago that stewardesses couldn't be more than 32 years old, had to be under a specific weight, and couldn't get married. Sexism. This is a huge issue for people in your line of work. Our profession was objectified and sexualized by airline marketing.

This is what was sold. You can fly me morning, afternoon, or night. Just say when. I'm Judy, and I was born to fly.

Fly me! An ad like that today? Well, it's unthinkable. But Nelson says not all the changes in her industry have been for the better. What are you saying about how crammed in we are now?

If you're in a window seat, and the seat in front of you has reclined backward, you can't get out. Those seats have been shrinking. They've been getting closer together and smaller, and packing more people in. And there are fewer attendants than there used to be? The airlines are staffing at the federal minimums today, and prior to 9-11, they were staffing 25 and 50 percent over on a regular basis.

So let me get this straight. More people on each plane, in a tighter configuration, and fewer flight attendants? More people, more responsibilities, and fewer flight attendants. Which brings us to the Boeing 737 MAX jet that crashed on the plane. The Boeing 737 MAX jet that crashed in both Indonesia and Ethiopia, killing hundreds, and leading to the plane's grounding, and to congressional hearings.

These accidents should never have happened. Both hero pilot Sully Sullenberger and Sarah Nelson were called to testify. I am here today because the public looks to flight attendants when it comes to aviation safety. The evidence was mounting, and action was being taken around the world.

It was astounding. Does your union have the power to keep that plane? Planes don't take off without pilots, but they also don't take off without flight attendants. If we believe that a condition is not safe, we're not going to fly it.

Hey, listen, can you get your homework out and take a look? When she's not calling for strikes or grounding airplanes, Sarah Nelson raises her rambunctious son, Jack, along with her husband, David. But union duties often intrude. I have to make a call real quick to one of our negotiators, okay? The FAA administrator wants to meet with me now.

Oh, it's about Boeing. You're a working mother. Yeah.

Yeah. You have a big job, and you're like all the other working mothers around the country, having to do that balance thing. My son is nine years old. I often have to explain to him why I'm going to be gone, or why I might not be home before he goes to bed, or why I might have to leave before he wakes up in the morning. I think you think about your job in very idealistic terms. I think about it as my calling. She certainly has a way of revving up her troops. At times, she's like a cheerleader. So what is this thing where you break into song?

What is that? You know, sometimes I can't help but sing. We go together like ram-a-lam-a-lam-a-ka-ding-a-dee-ding-a-dum. Remember.

With a group of people, it's just the thing to bring everyone together. Ching-ching, ching-a-dee-ching, she-ba. Whoa. So I'm a little out of practice. You are no George Meany.

That's all I can say. The age of George Meany is long gone. Now, as Professor McCartin says, American labor may be heading in a whole new direction. I believe it's highly likely that the next leader of the AFL-CIO will be a woman. Will it be Sarah? Quite possibly.

She certainly put herself in the conversation. Okay. The big question. Becoming the head of the AFL-CIO, do you want that job? I'm open to that, and I'm open to the idea that we can really rebuild this labor movement. Are you ready to stand up to management? Because they're going to do everything they can to keep the labor movement down.

Well, the rules in this country have been written for Wall Street, and it's going to stay that way until we force it to go the other way. This land is your land. People need to understand that this is our country, and this is our work, and we should be respected for it and paid for it.

Solidarity forever! As a Marine, James Mattis was always combat ready. And as President Trump's first Secretary of Defense, he was front and center in many policy debates. This morning, in his first television interview since his resignation, Mattis reflects on his 68 eventful years with our David Martin.

James Mattis served more than 40 years in the Marines, much of it commanding troops in battle. But he almost didn't make it to boot camp. I fell onto the ice, and I was on my way, coming down that ridgeline much faster than I ever anticipated. It was the dead of winter 1971, and he very nearly fell to his death from that ridge outside his hometown of Richland, Washington. The next thing I knew, I woke up, and there was blood all over the ice.

America's enemies almost caught an early break. Well, yeah, but I assure you that I was a pretty average Marine. There were a lot of other Marines who could have taken my place and done just as well as me.

Now retired from the Marines and no longer Donald Trump's Defense Secretary, he's back where he grew up, a stone's throw from the Columbia River. The river was a big part of our lives. Not a day in the summer went by, and we wouldn't be in the river swimming it. What else did you do? We'd go hunting in the fall, we'd go camping in the summer.

This is heaven on earth. And were you just free to roam as a kid? Very much so.

Very much. I started hitchhiking when I was about 13, and just kept right on going. And ended up in jail more than once. I'd been in a few scrapes along the way.

What kind of scrapes? Partying too much one night underage in college, and spent some time in jail, and also got in a few too many fights along the way when I was out hitchhiking around the American West. So you got into the Marine Corps with a police record? Yes, I did. Along with fellow Marine Bing West, he's written an autobiography called Call Sign Chaos. That stands for, Colonel has another outstanding suggestion. His staff's wry response to his frequent brainstorms.

As in, oh my God, what's he going to think up next? That's probably a pretty apt description of how they looked at the chaos I brought. That chaos was inflicted on the enemy, beginning with the Iraqi army in the first Gulf War, which is where I first met him. Have you been in combat?

No, I have not. Do you worry about how you're going to react? No, I have the easiest job in the battalion commanding it.

The men, I have no doubt about them and they'll carry me right along, no doubt at all. You weren't about to admit to me that you had any doubts on the eve of battle, did you? We got the word that we were going to lose hundreds, killed and wounded. Mattis was taking a force of 1,200 men into the teeth of Iraqi minefields and artillery. I remember thinking at the time that this Lieutenant Colonel, nobody's ever heard of, has got to decide which of these Marines go first. That's the tough part, deciding who's going to lead the assaults. How do you steel yourself to make those life and death decisions?

I made it clear that no commander was to report to me their casualties unless they could no longer continue the fight. I'd grieve later. In four days of fighting, Mattis didn't lose a single Marine and his men rolled into Kuwait City, cheered as liberators. Victory would never again come so easily. There's a million things that can go right or wrong.

We'll see how many come out on our side. After 9-11, he led a force of 4,000 Marines into southern Afghanistan, setting up an outpost called Rino. It was the deepest air assault ever conducted by the Marines. But Mattis wanted to go deeper. We were restricted by higher headquarters. We were limited in what offensive operations we could do. Was that frustrating?

I couldn't understand the timidity and why it was taking so long. Where was Osama bin Laden when you were at Rino? Osama bin Laden was still in Afghanistan. Bin Laden was 400 miles away in the Tora Bora Mountains. And Mattis had the helicopters to get there. We would basically block the escape routes and then we would move up the two valleys.

We were very confident that we had a good fix on him. And as we pushed up those valleys, he would have to move and at that point we'd kill him. It was the Bush administration's best chance to get America's worst enemy. But the order never came. We in the military missed the opportunity, Mattis writes.

Are you willing to say now that you could have gotten him? You can never give that kind of certainty, but he'd have had a hell of a time getting out if we'd gotten those troops in. Mattis left Afghanistan to take command of a Marine division and a mission he never saw coming, the invasion of Iraq. I was somewhat flabbergasted. I didn't think Saddam could do much in terms of threatening us.

There was a problem there, but I thought it could be solved other than us invading them. Mattis' co-author, Bing West, shot this video as the Marines rumbled toward Baghdad. Speed. We had to move quickly. Any enemy given enough time can adapt to a circumstance. If you don't keep the tempo up, then they can dig in their heels.

And then you start paying more of the price. His Marines famously toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein, but nine months later, found themselves engulfed by an insurgency. Move it, hurry! The enemy was rising everywhere. The tribes had gotten furious.

Anyone reading a history book knows what's going to happen at this point. There's going to be violence, and we didn't have enough troops to contain it. Mattis was in the thick of it, with 29 gunners, drivers, radio operators, and aides who moved with him around the battlefield.

And 17 of those 29 lads would be killed or wounded over the next four months, to give you an idea of just how bad it was. And I'm a general. I'm not in the toughest fighting. The toughest fighting was in the terrorist stronghold of Fallujah, which Mattis was ordered to liberate.

Fire! He thought it was a mistake to use so much firepower in a city of 300,000. So you went into Fallujah, what, against your better judgment? You've got to do it. I mean, that's why they're called orders.

They're not called likes. You don't have to like it. You were ordered to do it. In the midst of the battle, the images of urban combat became too much for the Bush administration, and Mattis was ordered to call it off. I could not fathom why we'd been ordered to attack in the way we were in the first place, or why we would stop deep inside the city and then pull back. The impact of such incoherence, Mattis writes, cannot be overstated.

Dizzying is the appropriate word. How does it feel to be told, uh-oh, never mind? You've got to have confidence that what you're doing is right. And if it's right to break the back of the terrorists, then do it.

Just do it. Do it as well as you can. Protect the innocent to the degree you can. But don't get wobbly when the going gets tough.

And the Bush administration got wobbly. Yes. With Fallujah still in enemy hands, Mattis went into the city to confront face-to-face one of the sheikhs who backed the terrorists. I simply made certain my carbine was laying across my lap, and I just reached down and I thumbed it over onto burst fire so that he'd hear it. And he said, do I look like a terrorist?

And I leaned forward at him and I looked at him and I said, well, yes, as a matter of fact, you do. Exploits like that earned Mattis a nickname, Mad Dog. It's not one that I've ever grown fond of, no matter how many times it's used.

Why not? It has the idea incorporated into it of just someone who's thoughtless, someone who's simply abrasive or aggressive for aggressive sake. This is decisive battles. His aggressiveness is informed by a personal library that once contained 7,000 books. Are those 7,000 books you read? I'll bet I read about 90 percent of them. I wouldn't claim I read all of them, but by and large, I don't get a book unless I'm going to read it.

And underlined it, as he did with the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and stoic philosopher. I would carry copies of this in my rucksack when I was overseas, because if something wasn't going well, you pull that out and say, don't feel sorry for yourself. You're not a victim. You choose the kind of way you're going to react to this. For all his reading, Mattis can sometimes sound trigger happy. In 2005, he told an audience, it's a lot of fun to fight. It's fun to shoot some people. I like brawling.

It came across to most of the country as sounding a little bloodthirsty. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not tormented by saying we'll stand up for freedom.

I remember running into you while you were still dealing with the aftermath of that. Yes. And you said, it's the only pressure if you feel it. Yeah. Marcus Aurelius. When have you felt pressure?

I put pressure on myself, but I don't feel pressure from others. To be combat ready on the battlefield is one thing. To deal with the challenges of Washington is another. David Martin continues his conversation with former Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Before James Mattis parted ways with President Trump, he was ousted by President Obama. How did it end with you and the Obama administration? Well, it ended with me leaving office early. Mattis was a four-star general in command of all U.S. forces in the Middle East. You were relieved of command? I was detached early and replaced early. So the president essentially had lost confidence in you?

I believe so. I won't speak for the president. According to Leon Panetta, who was Secretary of Defense at the time, the Obama White House regarded Mattis as too eager for a military confrontation with Iran. Iran had been caught plotting to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. by blowing up this popular Georgetown restaurant. As far as Mattis was concerned, Iran had intended to commit an act of war. What would have been the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9-11? They were going to do it with a bomb. And so you can imagine what it would have been, what the carnage would have looked like. I believed we had to respond forcefully, Mattis writes in his book, Call Sign Chaos. My military options would raise the costs for this attack beyond anything Iran's leaders could pay. But the Obama administration treated it simply as a crime.

Arresting a low-level courier and sending him to prison for 25 years. My traction inside the White House was eroding, Mattis writes. The White House was wary of my command and increasingly distrusted me.

In December of 2012, he was forced into retirement. Do you think your government service was done? Oh, I was quite certain it was done. But the surprise election of Donald Trump changed all that. The president-elect met Mattis only once.

All I can say is he is the real deal. But that was enough. I'm proud to formally announce today my intention to nominate General James Matt Dogg Mattis.

As the next secretary of defense. Did you intend to serve a full four years? Of course.

You only made it halfway. Well, that's fair. But there comes a time when you have to look at it and say, are you aligned with the person you're working with? This is his first television interview about his resignation. You resigned the day after the president announced that the U.S. was pulling all its troops out of Syria. Yes. Did that decision have anything to do with your... Absolutely, it did. But what about the decision to withdraw from Syria?

I disagree with it. Because? Because we need to maintain enough influence there that we don't see the same thing that happened when we withdrew from Iraq. Mattis believed a sudden pullout would undermine the campaign against ISIS and betray allies who were fighting alongside the Americans. In his resignation letter, he wrote, my views on treating allies with respect are strongly held. This was how I saw the strength of America, that we keep our alliances together and keep them tight. And if I wasn't the right person to do this, then the president needed someone more aligned with his views.

This is a blunt letter. I was honest and forthright with him about where it was that I was parting ways. Mattis had planned to stay on for two months, but the president decided to replace him immediately and twisted the knife by tweeting, when President Obama ingloriously fired Jim Mattis, I gave him a second chance. Have you ever talked to the president since? No. That was your last conversation with him?

It was. As for other differences Mattis had with the president, I will not speak ill of a sitting president. I'm not going to do it. But he will say this. He's an unusual president, our president is. And I think that, especially with the just the rabid nature of politics today, we've got to be careful, we could tear this country apart.

For about $20, you can buy a Mattis for president t-shirt or mad dog if you prefer. Hey, how's it going? Good to see you. Okay, you still look like Santa Claus. Ho, ho, ho. The way he works a local bar. Man, you're looking good.

Is as smooth as any politician. This is my favorite place to come to see friends, you know? We have a lot of friends. You've got a lot of them here.

This bar was where he used a fake ID to buy his first underage drink. Back where I belong, you know? He's not campaigning, but the topic comes up.

When you get ready to run, I'll help you. Oh, Jesus, Terry. I got more people asking me to do it. No, I don't. You don't want to?

Terry, it would be like a five-year jail sentence. For now, Mattis is teaching at Stanford and serving on the boards of corporations, and repeating to himself one of the lessons all his reading of history taught him. You just have a role to play for a little while, so play it well, but don't let it go to your head. We lost a member of the CBS family. Actress Valerie Harper, best known for her role as Rhoda on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, died after a long battle with cancer. It may have been Mary Tyler Moore's show, but it was Valerie Harper who became America's favorite upstairs neighbor. So, you're Rhoda Morgenstern, and I'm Mary Richards. Hello.

Get out of my apartment. She quickly made Rhoda Morgenstern a household name. She had it all, a frank wit, I don't know why I'm putting this in my mouth.

I should just apply it directly to my hips. A kooky wardrobe, and a brash New York style that never seemed to offend. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm another person in the room. My name is Rhoda Morgenstern.

The role earned Harper four Emmys and a Golden Globe, plus a slot in TV history. Hey, taxi! Hey! Hey, taxi! Hey, taxi! When Rhoda finally got married on her own spin-off show, the episode became a TV event, one of the highest rated of its time.

By the authority vested in me by the state of New York, I now pronounce you married. Over the course of her more than 60-year career, Harper was active on Broadway and in the movies too. I'm Caroline, your regular waitress.

Oh, my turn, sorry. She was working pretty steadily even after 2013, when she announced she had a rare form of brain cancer. Doctors told her back then she only had months to live. I know a lot of you feel like you know me, that you are part of the Morgenstern family, and I feel I know you too.

And so I owed you the truth at the same time with everybody else. She went on an episode of The Doctors where she explained living with the knowledge of death was actually a great gift. More than anything, I'm living in the moment.

I really want Americans and all of us to be less afraid of death and know that it's a passage, but that don't go to the funeral before the day of the funeral. She made it to 80, the same age Mary Tyler Moore was when she died in 2017. Their friend and co-star Ed Asner, who's nearly 90 himself, said of Harper on Twitter, her brilliance burst through and shined its light upon all of us. Good night, beautiful, he said.

I'll see you soon. It's Sunday morning on CBS, and here again is Lee Cowan. Islands in the Stream, her duet with Kenny Rogers, has helped make Dolly Parton a legend of country music. Not to mention another well-known song of hers with a message that is pretty appropriate for Labor Day, a message she shares with Tony DeCopel of CBS This Morning. We've all been singing along with Dolly for decades. But if you want to know the truth about Dolly Parton, know this, she works way more than just nine to five. Even with a half century of music behind her, the glitzy, big-haired queen of country glamour is still added. 24-7.

Still writing her legacy, one song at a time. It's my therapy, my little guitars, my friend. When I'm in that zone, I call it my god zone.

I just love that time. So please don't even mention the R-word to this 73-year-old. Yeah, people always say that, why don't you retire? I say, and do what?

What does that even mean? Sit on your pile of money and awards. I don't care. I always count my blessings more than I count my money. I don't work for money, never did. I just wanted, it was the arts, it was the job.

I love the work and I've done well and I'm thankful for it. Dolly's open about nearly everything, including her cosmetic surgery. But as she sings in her song, Backwoods Barbie, don't be fooled by thinking that the goods are not all there. It is true that I look artificial, but I believe that I'm totally real. And my look is really based on a country girl's idea of glam. I wasn't naturally pretty, so I make the most of anything I've got.

Hold on a second. I'm telling you, I'm not. You were not naturally pretty?

No. I've seen the pictures, Dolly. I'm sorry. You should have seen me this morning before I got ready to see you. But I'm serious though. I'm not like a natural beauty, but I can enhance it. Whatever, whatever it takes, I do. I try to make the most of everything. It's hard to argue with the results.

What are you doing? It's time to go on stage. If you need a reminder, Parton has sold more than a hundred million albums, won a shelf full of Grammys and written thousands of songs, including That's Right. I Will Always Love You was a 1974 hit for Parton.

And a 1992 sensation for Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard. Does it ever bother you that people think that's a Whitney Houston song? No, I always say she can have the credit as long as I get my cash. It's a good line, and Dolly Parton is full of them. When other people want to make a joke or make a comment, you make the comment better than they ever could. Well, I guess some of that is true. Well, I guess some of that is kind of always just, you know what they're thinking, so you want to do it too. But I'm also funny.

Should we do a couple of them for the fans? Oh, I guess. OK, Dolly, how long does it take for you to do your hair? I wouldn't know.

I'm never there. Dolly, are they real? They're real expensive.

They're real big. How do you want people to remember you a hundred years from now? I want them to say, God, don't she look good for her age? You do have them down.

I do. Humor was a help where Parton grew up, the fourth of 12 children in rural Tennessee. I wrote a song years ago called In the Good Old Days When Times Were Bad. And it said, no amount of money could buy from me the memories that I have of them.

But no amount of money could pay me to go back and live through it again. Music made everything a little brighter. When I started writing these songs, my mom was real impressed with how I could write and write these songs at such an early age. And she would say, oh, honey, go get that guitar.

I want you to sing them. And she'd say to people, I want you to hear this song this little thing wrote. And so I thought, oh, I'm getting a whole lot of attention now.

So I think that kind of encouraged it. But also, I love the sound of that music. I love the sound of the instruments. I love being able to create something.

And it gave me a little space and a little world of my own that I could just live in and be creative in. How early did you realize this is more than just a dream? This is going to be my profession.

This is a job. I guess I was about 10 years old. First time that my uncle took me to sing in front of an audience. And it was when they kept clapping and clapping after I had finished my song that I thought that, you know, I felt something. I thought, you know, I was scared. I was nervous. I'm a country little kid.

But when I got that applause and got that feeling is when I thought, this is what I think I'm going to do. In my Tennessee mountain home Life is a strange place to stay She moved to Nashville, and soon she was singing before a national audience on the Porter Wagner Show. One night after a performance, she met a young fan. And I remember this little red-headed girl with green eyes, prettiest little thing. And I said, well, what's your name? And she said, Jolene. I said, well, I love that name. All the way back to the bus, I was doing Jolene, Jolene, Jolene. So I wouldn't forget the name.

Your beauty is beyond compare with flaming locks of urban hair. She gave the name to another redhead she knew, a bank teller who flirted with her husband Carl. The song helped launch part in solo career, and don't worry, she is still happily married.

But as she jumped from country to pop to Hollywood, the couple never did get around to having children. Is that a regret? No, absolutely not. Was it at some point? It wasn't meant to be. And I don't regret it. I never regretted it. I mean, it was a choice.

So you make your choices. You make your sacrifices. And I never looked back. I knew early on that I was going to walk that road till God told me to stop. And I'm still walking it.

And he ain't said nothing to me about quitting yet. In fact, she's going back for more, including a sequel to her classic 1980 film, Nine to Five. If you touch that bone, I'm going to jerky clean out of the wall. Her character, Dora Lee, got the best of an abusive male boss, and in the eyes of some became a feminist hero.

Dora Lee, let me loose her. I'm calling for help. No, I don't want you to call for help. Is that a word, feminist, that you apply to yourself? Well, I guess I am, but I don't think of it like they do. I'm just a feminine girl.

I'm a working girl. I think we all should be treated with respect. And if we do a good job, we should get paid for it. So I'm all about that. Dolly Parton has written more than 3,000 songs. She says her favorite is this one, A Coat of Many Colors, the story of a poor kid from the Great Smoky Mountains who learned early on what really matters. I'm Lee Cowan.

Thank you for listening, and please join us again next Sunday morning. 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. Georgia's 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.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-01-27 21:30:39 / 2023-01-27 21:50:02 / 19

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