7. Do you feel great when someone attacks your political opponent?
8. Do you find yourself defending your political allies by pointing out that the other side does the same objectionable thing?
9. Have you ever decided to give up social media, only to fail within a few days?
10. Have you defended behavior in others that you would never accept in your own life?
11. Is the way you treat people online inconsistent with the way you treat people in person?
12. Have you often taken actions designed only to trigger the emotions of someone you disagree with?
13. Have you said things you would have been uncomfortable hearing someone else say five years ago?
14. Would your life be better without all the political arguments or comments on social media?
15. When answering these questions, did you use the importance of the political cause to justify your negative behavior?
16. Have you reevaluated your standards and are you supporting or defending actions or ideas that you would have never supported five years ago?
17. Do you definitely believe that all or most of the media sources on the (right/left) rarely tell the truth (knowingly or unknowingly), and that they are dangerous and perhaps should be shut down or regulated by the government?
If you answered YES 1–5 times, you might be approaching a problem. Your concern over important issues is admirable, but you’re crossing the line a bit too often.
If you answered YES 6–10 times, you have a problem. Politics dominates your life in a way it should not, and it’s changing who you are. Get a hobby. Something outside.
If you answered YES 11 or more times, most of the people you interact with don’t like you. They might not say it, but it’s true. Immediately burn your computer and throw your phone off a bridge that crosses a body of deep and treacherous water.
5
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So What Makes You an Expert?
In Gallup’s 2010 poll of the Most Admired People in the World, Pope Benedict and I tied for fourth place, barely trailing Nelson Mandela. In May that year I organized and hosted the Restoring Honor Rally on the Lincoln Memorial mall, which drew several hundred thousand people. Those who attended say that it was a life-changing event. But in another poll taken only a year later I was voted one of the most hated people in the country. About half of the country hated me.
That list the pope did not make.
I earned my place on both lists. I was passionate about my beliefs. At times I did and said controversial and ignorant things. I did my thinking out loud. I was convinced that “we” were right and “they” were wrong, and I knew how to get my message across. I was a radio guy doing television and I thought that if I could make people smile, if I could entertain them, I could draw a crowd and people would listen to the questions I was raising. How did I do that? I put on a pair of lederhosen and sang “Edelweiss.” I drew frantically on my blackboard. I gave ’em the old razzmatazz; a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down my pants. I did whatever it took to draw, entertain, and—I hoped—educate my audience. I did it all with a specific objective: I honestly believed that I could take those people who came for the circus and move them with my intellectual brilliance! I believed if I could make a strong factual case, people would listen to me and think about the points I was making. More important, I always said that I wasn’t a journalist but rather a guy who was trying to figure out what was happening and how we got there. I really believed that if I had enough facts, journalists who were watching every night would say “Wow, that is a good point. I hadn’t thought of it that way,” or “That can’t be right,” and follow up on it. Not my theories, but the FACTS I was presenting.
Yes, Obama wanted single-payer health care. He spoke about it openly before the election. Yes, he knew that the vast majority of Americans couldn’t keep their health insurance. The math spelled it all out. And don’t get me started on death panels. He knew about death panels because of the Complete Lives System, which spelled it all out. Written by Zeke Emanuel, the brother of the president’s chief of staff at the time. We are seeing them now in England with Charlie Gard and even here in Texas with the Advance Directives Act, which empowers hospital boards to condemn patients to death if they deem treatment would be futile. We are now seeing this in action in Sweden and in England. It is again not a crazy concept, it is merely math. Why can we not be honest about something that will affect all of us?
But I was wrong about one thing: Many people who came to my circus only wanted to see the dancing elephants. Not everyone, and I don’t think even anywhere close to approaching the majority. But there were a number of Americans who only wanted to hear the latest “outrage.” At the same time, the press didn’t care. They had made up their minds about the administration and those who questioned it. The more I tried to get people to listen to the warnings by upping the theatrics, the less inclined the “other side” was to hear or, better yet, really listen. The press had decided the truth. But they found that if they wanted to increase their click rates and Nielsen ratings, all they needed to do was talk smack about me, and the left, too, took sound bites, twisted them or left out context, and raised millions to fight their new monster. Presto, two Americas, neither one able to listen to the other. So, in the end, very few outside of the core audience actually heard the message. Everyone else, left and right, wanted me to feed their new and growing addiction: outrage.
And that realization in 2012 and again in 2016 was soul-crushing to me. As I have tried to speak to others in the press about this over the last five years, it has only made the despair worse. Can’t anyone see what is happening?
I have to admit, at the time, I felt justified. I often felt that I was watching someone strangling something I loved. That was emotionally terrorizing to me, and I discovered a lot of other people felt the same way. I was crying out for them to help me save it. They love this country as much as I do, they understand and appreciate the freedoms we have and saw them slowly disappearing. And I was outraged. So I spoke up loudly. I defended my beliefs.
Just as Jimmy Kimmel did in 2017–18. He believed in something and fought hard for it using his show. He even wept as I did. We both wept because what we spoke about hit too close to home and we were passionate about it. People on the left right now act like we did under Obama, and too many of us are treating them like they treated us. Those on the left can’t hear me say this because they automatically go to “How dare you say Trump is as bad as Obama?” And so the merry-go-round continues.
But for those on the left, try to see this from the other side. Because you and the press didn’t see Obama in the same light, you mocked, ridiculed, and called families who stood together and peacefully protested un-American, fake, abusive, unstable, revolutionaries, and terrorists.
Jimmy was applauded and made into a hero for his emotional rants. He was brave to be so outspoken. While I had a leftie photographer “set me up” to make it look as if I used Vicks to cry on TV, Jimmy was “groundbreaking.”
But was he accurate? This was what I wanted someone to do. Look at the facts—not the opinion or even the conclusion, but the facts. I refused to do to him what so many did to me, ridicule the messenger and dismiss the message. As it turns out, his talking points were misguided at best. You might claim he knowingly lied or distorted the facts; you can choose to believe he made an honest mistake or didn’t do enough homework; but the one thing we cannot do, if we are to survive as a republic, is ignore the message or the inaccuracies or truth it contains.
I’ve always led with my mistakes. I even went to so far as to install a private phone line to my studio so the White House could call and correct anything that was inaccurate. Only the White House had the number. They never called. However, they did come and meet with Roger Ailes to try to get me fired. He told them that he wouldn’t fire anyone for their opinion unless it was based on false or misleading facts. He asked them to prepare a list. A week late
r, the only thing the White House objected to was that I had said Van Jones had gone to prison, when in fact he had only gone to jail. I quickly corrected it on air, and reminded them that the problem I was concerned with was the fact that he was a self-declared communist who had said “green is the new red.” I thought the American people should know whether he still believed that, as he was now the president’s green jobs czar.
No matter the cause, the result was that I was a contributor to the outrage competition that has consumed this country and is now threatening to destroy our democracy. So yes, I take responsibility. In fact, I will happily take more than my fair share if others in the media will join me in deep self-reflection on their role. I don’t need the apology or to place blame, but I do think it is an important step toward humility, which will lead to our hearing each other clearly.
For those who want to hang on to their anger, understand that if Glenn Beck, Jimmy Kimmel, Obama, and Trump were all hit by a bus while re-creating the Abbey Road album cover, none of our problems would be gone. Our troubles were not caused by one man, one party, or even one generation. Nor will they be solved by the same. The moment we realize that no “one guy,” group, or party will solve our problems, this generation can begin the long journey of fixing things that the next will complete. In this book I’m going to guide you through a series of steps that, if we follow them, can lead to change. They aren’t exactly the same steps that I was taught in AA; don’t worry, they won’t require anyone to go to meetings, and you won’t get a coin to celebrate each year. But if we do follow them, there’s a good chance we’ll learn to be friends again—or at least cordial neighbors.
HOW OUTRAGE DISMANTLES CULTURE
Our problems are not about presidents or even about parties. Our problems center on the loss of what brought us together in the first place. Without “it,” we have no reason to come back together, and no chance to do so either.
When I decided to leave Fox News, “Can you imagine,” I said on one of my last shows there, “the difference we could have if we could put our differences aside, and put the past in the past and say, ‘Let’s learn from each other’?” Since that time I have tried my best to douse the anger and outrage that has divided this country. Some days I succeed and no one notices; sometimes I fail and it is all anyone notices. That is okay. I am doing the best I can to get it right. All part of my recovery process.
As I once told a reporter, “Obama made me a better man,” although I don’t think that was his intention. Because he was so radical, to me, it forced me to really look at who I was and what I believed. I learned so much about our founding, the documents, and volumes of sheer knowledge I would not even have looked for had he not been president. Since then, I have tried to find ways to bring the two sides together. It hasn’t been easy. I have been on this mission for at least the last five years, and until very recently I haven’t had much success finding partners to join me in this effort. But it hasn’t been completely hopeless. I began by looking toward anyone I could find who was even willing to have a conversation. Most would not, but as I have learned, it wasn’t just the willingness to really listen—they needed to sincerely be motivated to act.
6
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Samantha Bee
First, my apologies to Samantha Bee, as what follows is my perception of our relationship. She may have perceived all of this very differently. I do not mean offense by claiming we are friends, nor do I mean to hold myself up as some mentor or genius whom she had turned to for wisdom and advice. After all, I learned a ton from Samantha Bee and her journey over the last couple of years, and most of it was painful to me personally. Mostly because I see both the struggle of the good intent and the failure of the execution due to media blindness.
I believe Sam is a good person. I know there are many on the right who are shouting at me right now, but hear me out, because I believe in this case, I don’t have just an opinion, I have perspective. I have walked in her shoes; very few have.
When Sam first called me it was before the election of Donald Trump, and I knew all she wanted was someone from the right who might say some bad things about Trump. I wasn’t going to be a pawn for her agenda. I told her I would consider it after the election, but I would not make it about Donald Trump. She agreed.
I never thought I would hear from her again. But apparently, I was still an enigma to the left, or at least someone who they thought was fun to watch, who they thought was a guy who’d come over to their side. I hadn’t. I told her that if she wanted to come to Dallas, we could spend the time to do an interview, but it was to be a real conversation, as I was a real person and not a prop for her to use. To be honest, I had watched very little of her work, but it wasn’t as if she was building the first suspension bridge. She mocked almost everything I held dear—I knew this—but I have a sense of humor and I thought she was smart.
When her crew arrived the day before she did, I spoke a bit with her staff. Just enough to know that at least the staff had every intention of doing what they do best. I called her after her flight arrived around ten that night and told her that I no longer wanted to do the interview, as I just didn’t believe they were even capable of having a real conversation. I am not sure if it was her tone or her words, but something told me that there was more to her than a comedy hatchet.
The next day, sitting in my office, fifteen minutes into the interview, it sadly was going exactly as I had guessed it would. After I had answered one of the rhetorical comedy questions, I told her that I thought they had enough to make me look like an idiot and her like the champion who speared the evil giant. To which she responded honestly, “No, we don’t. I mean, that isn’t the intent, but if it were, we still wouldn’t have enough.” I laughed and turned to her producer and said, “Please, are you telling me that you don’t have enough to make me look ridiculous? He looked at her, honestly, and, smiling, and said, “Oh, yes. Really, we have more than enough.”
I loved that guy. He was honest.
Sam then said something unexpected. “Okay, but really that wasn’t my intent. And I don’t want to do that, but I don’t know how to do it any other way.”
I believed her. She then turned it over to me. “How do we do this right? Show me.”
It took only one question: “Can you tell me what you really care about, beyond politics?”
For ninety minutes we talked like actual human beings. A mom and a dad, an American-born man and a woman who had just become a U.S. citizen. Yes, we had different backgrounds, educations, and experiences, but we both cared deeply about many if not most of the same things. She even hated Woodrow Wilson almost as much as I did. And on that front, it wasn’t lip service—she really knew many of the reasons he was a monster. I really liked her, and I think she liked me.
Here is the part, as I recall it, that I have not shared before. Later, she came to my dressing room. We sat, just the two of us, one who had been in a Cat 5 political hurricane and one who was about to go into one. She told me that she was frightened because the election had changed everything for her. She thought so poorly of Donald Trump. It wasn’t political; she is a hard-core feminist. She truly thought he was a despicable guy. Agree or disagree, it was something that she deeply felt. She didn’t understand how people could dismiss his flaws. But what made her so human was that she understood the pain of the people in the middle of the country. She, unlike most in her shoes, knew the center of the country. She had traveled for the Daily Show, spending time in the little towns and state fairs in between the coasts, and really liked and admired those she had met. When she spoke about them it was warm and genuine.
She told me that she wasn’t even sure she could do the show now, or even wanted to; the election had changed her comedy into something deeply personal. I felt for her. I had been there.
Most people outside my audience don’t know this, but I used to be funny. In fact, early in my talk radio career, stations weren’t sure they wanted a funny, not-all-polit
ical show on before Rush. I traveled a ton and would do a forty-city “comedy tour” every year. But then we went into Iraq, which I had supported, and when I saw we really didn’t have a plan that would work, I soured; I began to understand the Patriot Act was anything but patriotic, I saw the Republicans betray everything they said they believed in, the economy collapsed, and I saw us “abandon the free market to save the free market.”
I, too, wanted hope and change. Just not from a guy who had been a good friend of Jeremiah Wright and an active member of his church. Things began to change for me, and I knew how to draw a crowd, how to make people laugh, but it was important to me to expose, and convince the country that many Americans were horribly and dangerously wrong. It became a mission. When that happens, your world changes.
I explained to her my journey, my mistakes and regret. I think, perhaps, for the first time she had a little understanding of me and what I had tried to do. Perhaps not. In fact, if she didn’t, it explains the path that she took.
I told her that her audience would cheer and grow the more she took on “the king.” The more she fed their outrage with her coverage, the more they would cheer. But in the end, even though she was not doing it for ratings but because she honestly had something to say and she thought it would help, she would do damage that she didn’t recognize at the time and would divide us even further, even if it wasn’t her intent. I tried to explain how I had really believed, and in some ways still believed, that I was acting as a pressure valve that was releasing steam that my own side needed released. What I hadn’t seen is that by making my own side laugh, I was inflicting deep wounds on the other half. These wounds she would also inflict, and she would, as time went by, regret them more and more. Because I believe she is a smart and deeply compassionate person who happens to be tasked with making “her tribe” laugh and at the same time being an activist for what she believes in. This is new territory for most, and people who can do it are paid a great deal of money and are encouraged by those who pay them and watch to “keep going,” “don’t give up,” and “get ’em.” You feel responsible to speak to power without fear . . . and the spiral down begins.