Speaker 1: Pushkin heads up. In this episode, I interview an old
Speaker 1: school guy from New York who drops a lot of
Speaker 1: f bombs. Just so you're aware, say your name the
Speaker 1: way in Israeli would say Melia Vital and say my
Speaker 1: name is Millia Vital in hebrewal, my name is Malcolm Glodwell.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked
Speaker 1: and misunderstood. So far in season four, i've talked about
Speaker 1: grand themes, huge issues. This episode is about something very
Speaker 1: specific a word. The word I'm interested in is hutzpah.
Speaker 1: I decided I would like to examine the phenomenon of footspot.
Speaker 1: Since Millie is my neighbor and in Israeli, she has
Speaker 1: agreed to help this teach Coushia Malcolm how to say
Speaker 1: this word appropriately. First of all, are we doing are
Speaker 1: we doing that kind of thing in the throat that
Speaker 1: so many the gutt do I have to the.
Speaker 2: Soft I think we have a closer to Arabic. It's
Speaker 2: deeper in the throat and there's a lot more contact
Speaker 2: of the soft palate.
Speaker 1: It's really deeper. Yeah, so so softer, not not a
Speaker 1: whole but footspa.
Speaker 2: No, who the this. Okay, So the sound is right,
Speaker 2: it is deep, but the vowel is not whole. It's
Speaker 2: who who.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In Hebrew there's only I A E O. There's no diphthongs,
Speaker 2: and there's no awe in there's no book and book right,
Speaker 2: there's only woo. So you understand what I'm talking to myself.
Speaker 2: For me, it's very clear, because sadly I worked on
Speaker 2: it so hard. But okay, so it's not hootspa. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just like it's not Milli, it's meally Meali e oh ooh,
Speaker 2: so it's who. H's the team who, not who who? Yes,
Speaker 2: that's better enough. Who.
Speaker 1: It strikes me that there is a lot of Hootspa
Speaker 1: in the world at the moment, and that maybe it
Speaker 1: would be useful to find out something more about it.
Speaker 1: So I started with Millie and the first thing she
Speaker 1: told me is that there isn't one hood spot. There's
Speaker 1: actually two, the American version and the Israeli version. Hootspa
Speaker 1: I knew, but not this other one.
Speaker 2: Hoots Spa not bad, but it's not a paw.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's baa.
Speaker 2: It's a bottle that doesn't exist sexually in England. Now
Speaker 2: you've got to have the say, you gotta say certain Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's hit the second syllable.
Speaker 1: Bats it.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of air coming out of the mouth.
Speaker 1: And he said, why so when? Uh? But in America,
Speaker 1: the accidents on the first syllable yeah hots right, huts
Speaker 1: ba and huts ba and they are worlds apart and
Speaker 1: maybe our hoods. But problem is that we've confused the two.
Speaker 1: When I was in Los Angeles a little while back,
Speaker 1: I went to see a Hollywood legend named Al Ruddy.
Speaker 1: Tall guy, lean close to ninety. He lives up in
Speaker 1: the canyons of Beverly Hills, one of those nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: houses perched on a hillside that looks like something off
Speaker 1: the set of a James Bond movie. I had a
Speaker 1: specific reason to go and see Ruddy, But Ruddy is
Speaker 1: the kind of person that when he starts talking, specific
Speaker 1: reasons go out the window.
Speaker 3: I was born in Canada. Also, now that I know
Speaker 3: everything about you, I was born in Montreal. I know.
Speaker 1: I saw that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I went to Montreal and then my mother, my
Speaker 3: mother snuck over the border with she divorced with three kids.
Speaker 3: We stuck over the border in New York. My mother
Speaker 3: said when they asked you junior and Junior highway you
Speaker 3: were born, saying, oh, no, what do you look like?
Speaker 3: A fucking mor I don't know where the fuck I'm born?
Speaker 3: You quit.
Speaker 1: Already was the middle child.
Speaker 3: So I was the one that worked harder for everything.
Speaker 3: I avercat because I had an oldest sister who was beautiful,
Speaker 3: and my brother, who was the baby. I was a
Speaker 3: schmuck in the middle, right, So I was always working harder.
Speaker 3: But I decided, and I learned it early, and it
Speaker 3: was it was actually a blessing, you know. I said,
Speaker 3: you know, I better learn how to take care of myself.
Speaker 3: No one's going to open the fucking doors for me anyone.
Speaker 3: I gotta do it.
Speaker 1: Al Ruddy way, we all right away meant going to
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Tech, then bouncing around working at a gas station,
Speaker 1: studying architecture at USC, and winding up with a job
Speaker 1: as a computer programmer at the Rand Corporation think tank
Speaker 1: in Santa Monica. While he's working at Rand, Ruddy meets
Speaker 1: an unemployed actor named Bernie Fine.
Speaker 3: So I tell Bernie, why don't I'm not Bernie? What
Speaker 3: the fuck they have they're not to write at a
Speaker 3: half hour show it's a one liner. It's the simplest
Speaker 3: format that the one act could break the high point
Speaker 3: and he resolve in an act too.
Speaker 1: So on the side, the two of them start to
Speaker 1: write a television pilot, a comedy set in a prison,
Speaker 1: not just any prison, a Nazi prisoner of war camp,
Speaker 1: and the comic leads are the head of the prison,
Speaker 1: Colonel Klink, and a prison guard, Sergeant Schultz, whose signature
Speaker 1: line is I know nothing, I see nothing, I hear nothing. Somehow,
Speaker 1: Ruddy gets the script to an agent named Mike Levy,
Speaker 1: and Levy gets them a pitch meeting with CBS. This
Speaker 1: was the mid nine teen sixties when CBS was known
Speaker 1: as a Tiffany Network. It was the most prestigious television
Speaker 1: broadcaster in the world, intellectual high class. Its president was
Speaker 1: the legendary William Paley.
Speaker 3: I'm sitting opposite William S. Paley, who fucking owns CBS.
Speaker 3: The whole room, CBS guys and me and Mike is
Speaker 3: that Mike discussed a show called Hogan's Heroes, Bill Pelley's
Speaker 3: across the table, and Mikey says, I find the idea
Speaker 3: of Nazis doing comedies. Those were totally reprehensible.
Speaker 1: Mike Leavy, the agent looks over at Ruddy.
Speaker 3: You tell him he blown away. Don't know what to
Speaker 3: say is oh, I'll have him tell you about it.
Speaker 3: He points to me. I never saw a fucking thing, right,
Speaker 3: I acted out the whole show idiotic. I'm jumping up
Speaker 3: and down. I know nothing but machine guns, and Bill
Speaker 3: Paley starts like he can't stop laughing. I swear to
Speaker 3: cross before I know it, the Paul romas clapping on
Speaker 3: the other side, So he got through and I thought
Speaker 3: it was Bill Pelly stands up. He says, I don't
Speaker 3: know if I can ever buy that show, but I said,
Speaker 3: I just want to commend you that that's one of
Speaker 3: the funniest things I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: Hogan's Heroes runs for six seasons from nineteen sixty five
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy one. The show wins two Emmys, has
Speaker 1: a huge following, and makes CBS a fortune.
Speaker 3: Oh, I say nothing. I was not here. I did
Speaker 3: not even get up this morning.
Speaker 1: Now, since our topic is hutzba, let us break this down.
Speaker 1: A computer programmer named al Ruddy, who is Jewish, has
Speaker 1: his agent, who is Jewish, set up a meeting with
Speaker 1: Bill Paley, who is Jewish about a comedy starring two Nazis,
Speaker 1: and Paley says, I'm Jewish, I'm not interested. But then Ruddy,
Speaker 1: who is never who sold a screenplay before in his life,
Speaker 1: convinces him it's actually a great idea. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the lead Nazi in Hogan's Heroes, Colonel Klink, is played
Speaker 1: by Werner Klemperer, Jewish whose family fled Nazi Germany in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, and the prison guard, Sergeant Schultz is
Speaker 1: played by John Banner, Jewish who fled Europe in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine. The word hutzpa refers to audacity. This is audacious.
Speaker 1: Ruddy would go on to write The Longest Yard, starring
Speaker 1: Burt Reynolds, and Walker Texas Ranger starring Chuck Norris. He
Speaker 1: was one of the producers on the two thousand and
Speaker 1: four film Million Dollar Baby, which won a handful of oscars.
Speaker 1: I could go on and now, sitting with him in
Speaker 1: his kitchen as he wheeled his wheelchair back and forth
Speaker 1: to emphasize the highlight of each of his stories, I
Speaker 1: realized what Al Ruddy is. He is hutzpa. But this
Speaker 1: is a very specific kind of hutzpa.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Remember this show is being made only twenty years after
Speaker 1: the Nazis stopped terrorizing Europe.
Speaker 3: This camp clink, this camp is a black page in
Speaker 3: the glorious history.
Speaker 4: Is a sad right, which I shall report when I
Speaker 4: get back to Berlin.
Speaker 1: Paley admired Ruddy for the way he behaves. He rewarded him.
Speaker 1: If you and Bernie Fine were not Jewish, could you
Speaker 1: have gotten away with it?
Speaker 3: Didn't that to It didn't even enter my mind in
Speaker 3: those says yeah, no, and no one asks. No one
Speaker 3: knew that, no one, There was never an issue.
Speaker 1: It's funny Ruddy didn't brazenly set out to violate social norms.
Speaker 1: It didn't occur to him that there was a social
Speaker 1: norm to violate. In America. This is what is meant
Speaker 1: by hutzba, but not in Israel. Houts ba is a
Speaker 1: whole different matter.
Speaker 2: Hutzpa.
Speaker 1: Hootspa.
Speaker 2: Oh, you also don't say hutzpa like with this sort
Speaker 2: of curl to it, like a cute kind of hootspa.
Speaker 2: It's hot spot, you say, like it's a hot spot,
Speaker 2: like what a what an insult? It's it's edgy and bitter.
Speaker 2: It's not like she's got so much hootspot. That's a
Speaker 2: totally different word. It has the connotation I would say
Speaker 2: is like it's a hot spot, like someone who's someone
Speaker 2: who has no care about anyone else's life or feelings,
Speaker 2: or like if your child is rude to you. If
Speaker 2: I say to Benjamin it's it's this is like as
Speaker 2: low as it gets. He actually wants like teared up
Speaker 2: when I said that, I could see his face like shocked. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he knows what it means, like no manners or no
Speaker 2: or no regard to someone else's feelings or condition. That
Speaker 2: would be the spa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one word, two very different meanings, and we've been
Speaker 1: conflating the two. I'll get into the consequences when we
Speaker 1: come back. Let's do a second Hutzpa k study involving
Speaker 1: an exact contemporary of Al Ruddies.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure how to introduce my next guest. He's
Speaker 5: a businessman with leads the most colorful life. His name
Speaker 5: has been in the paper, is a great deal lately,
Speaker 5: and I just met him backstage, but I'm anxious to
Speaker 5: meet him further. We welcome, please, mister Joseph COLUMBOO.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen sixties, and early nineteen seventies, Colombo
Speaker 1: began making the rounds of talk shows and news programs
Speaker 1: in New York City. Invariably, the interview would begin with
Speaker 1: the question of what Joseph Columbo did for a living,
Speaker 1: and invariably his answer would be the same. Here he
Speaker 1: is on the Dick Cavit Show in April of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, explain.
Speaker 5: What you do for a living, as if I had
Speaker 5: never met you.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm a real estate salesman, and I own a
Speaker 6: piece of a funeral home, and and that wasn't meant
Speaker 6: to be now, funny, Vick.
Speaker 1: You may have noticed, by the way, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of Dick Caviot in this season of Provision is History.
Speaker 1: I love Dick Cabot.
Speaker 6: And anything I can do to iron a living, honestly
Speaker 6: and sincerely, I hope so cause and an a florist,
Speaker 6: and I own a piece of a cut room in
Speaker 6: New York that we cut material for dresses.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a cut room. And with all these things
Speaker 6: put together, I iron eleven. Yeah, and I worked very
Speaker 6: hard at it, very honest and sincely.
Speaker 1: Colombo's media tour was to promote an organization he had
Speaker 1: started called the Italian American Civil Rights League.
Speaker 6: Well, we believe that we are escape goats. We have
Speaker 6: been labeled and stigmatized, and I maintain and I'll keep
Speaker 6: saying that it's each and every Italian American throu the
Speaker 6: United States that there is a conspiracy against.
Speaker 1: I asked the writer Nick Peleggie about him. Maybe you
Speaker 1: remember Pelgi from our fourth of July episode earlier this season,
Speaker 1: and what was he like?
Speaker 7: From everything I hear and I've seen him speak on
Speaker 7: occasion and live in rooms with him, he was as
Speaker 7: mild and calm and relaxed as you can imagine. He
Speaker 7: was like a dry good salesman.
Speaker 1: Pledge grew up with Colombo in benson Hurst, Brooklyn.
Speaker 7: He came up with this idea of the Italian American
Speaker 7: Civil Rights League. There are prebus was that Italians were
Speaker 7: being stigmatized by the mafia, that there was really no
Speaker 7: such thing as the mafia, but the media was going
Speaker 7: after Italian Americans and denying us our right place in
Speaker 7: the world, and we would be prejudiced against getting good
Speaker 7: jobs or because the New York Times couldn't stop writing
Speaker 7: the word mafia.
Speaker 1: Now, what was Joe Colombo's real job. Aside from running
Speaker 1: a funeral home and a cut shop and selling real estate,
Speaker 1: he was a big time mafia don the Profaci family.
Speaker 1: Old man Giuseppe Prafacci dies in nineteen sixty two. Colombo
Speaker 1: takes over the organization. American Jews had The Anti Defamation
Speaker 1: League formed in nineteen thirteen to combat the long history
Speaker 1: of antisemitism around the world. African Americans start the NAACP
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh nine because black people were being openly
Speaker 1: and ruthlessly deny their civil rights. The Italian American Civil
Speaker 1: Rights League was started by a mobster upset that the
Speaker 1: media was calling him a mobster. In April of nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: Columbo and a group of his associates started picketing the
Speaker 1: Manhattan headquarters of the FBI. That protest eventually grows to
Speaker 1: five thousand people. They come up with a logo in
Speaker 1: evoking Christopher Columbus, the greatest Italian immigrant of them all.
Speaker 1: By the summer of nineteen seventy they have forty five
Speaker 1: thousand dues paying members. They throw themselves a big benefit
Speaker 1: concert in Madison Square Garden, starring, of course, Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 1: They go after Alka Seltzer for their most famous TV commercial,
Speaker 1: in which an Italian man, overseen by his doting wife,
Speaker 1: eats one too many spicy meatballs.
Speaker 7: Sometimes you eat more than you should and when it's spicy.
Speaker 5: Besides, Mamma Mia, do you need alca seltzer as.
Speaker 1: Italians eating meatballs, according to Joe Colombo, perpetuates harmful stereotypes
Speaker 1: about Italians.
Speaker 3: Mom of me, that's a spicy meat board.
Speaker 1: Here's my favorite story involving Joe Colombo. In the late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, Johnny Carson was the king of late night
Speaker 1: TV and one of the most famous television personalities in
Speaker 1: the country. According to his former attorney Bushkin, Carson was
Speaker 1: out drinking one night at Jilly's, a bar in Manhattan
Speaker 1: run by a close friend of Frank Sinatra's Jilly Rizzo.
Speaker 1: This is Bushkin telling the story on the Artie Lang
Speaker 1: Show a few years ago.
Speaker 8: It was on I think fifty second and eighth, a
Speaker 8: famous watering hole, and Johnny was in there one night
Speaker 8: with McMahon.
Speaker 1: Johnny being Johnny Carson, McMahon being his sidekick, Ed McMahon.
Speaker 8: And they try to pick up the wrong girls happened
Speaker 8: to be the wife and sister of a well known
Speaker 8: mafioso type of character.
Speaker 3: Who was not sensitive about stuff, like.
Speaker 1: Not happy, irritated, you might say. Carson ends up being
Speaker 1: thrown down the stairs at Jilly's. He's so banged up
Speaker 1: there's no way he can go on television. Then he
Speaker 1: learns that the mobster in question has put out a
Speaker 1: contract on his life.
Speaker 8: What happened was they went looking for Johnny. Johnny holed
Speaker 8: up in the apartment at U N Plaza.
Speaker 1: He's hiding out. He takes the week off work. He's petrified.
Speaker 1: So what happens Joe Colombo makes a deal with Carson's network, NBC.
Speaker 8: The Columbus Day Parade was about to come up. It
Speaker 8: was like three weeks away and no network who would
Speaker 8: agree to cover it then, because they knew it was
Speaker 8: the five families of New York that were sponsoring this
Speaker 8: parade to make the Italian Americans look, you know. So
Speaker 8: Carson's hiding out and a deal was struck. If NBC
Speaker 8: covers the parade, they let Carson go. So that year,
Speaker 8: NBC is the only network that covered the parade.
Speaker 3: Carson gets.
Speaker 1: Oh, and what happens the following year, nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: when Joe Columbo stages the second, even more elaborate Columbus
Speaker 1: Day event, intended to show the world that the Italian
Speaker 1: American community of New York is peaceful and law abiding.
Speaker 1: Someone shoots him.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 7: They had the first one a Columbus Circle. In the
Speaker 7: second one, he shot Joe Colombo. I mean, it's just insane.
Speaker 1: But you couldn't make this up, like oh at the
Speaker 1: grants too.
Speaker 7: They could have done at any location in the city
Speaker 7: besides Columbus Circle.
Speaker 3: But in the middle of a rally.
Speaker 1: Of a rally intended to whitewash the Italian American community,
Speaker 1: somebody offs the guy trying to whitewash that. What I
Speaker 1: mean is this is hootsba all over the place. But
Speaker 1: it's not Al Ruddy's kind of hoods. But is it
Speaker 1: Having a Jewish actor play a Nazi prison guard who
Speaker 1: runs around saying in the middle of the Holocaust, I
Speaker 1: know nothing, I hear nothing, I see nothing in a
Speaker 1: primetime television sitcom is well, it's kind of amazing. But
Speaker 1: Joe Colombo, mob boss starting the Italian American Civil Rights League,
Speaker 1: this is hutsba on a whole other level. For goodness sake,
Speaker 1: At the time he was shot, Colombo was under federal
Speaker 1: indictment on charges of controlling a ten million dollar a
Speaker 1: year gambling syndicate. This is not audacity, This is shamelessness,
Speaker 1: the other kind of hutzba hutzpah. In the Book of Genesis,
Speaker 1: there is a famous passage where the prophet Abraham speaks
Speaker 1: to God about the moral outrages in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Speaker 1: God wants to destroy both cities, but Abraham says, wait,
Speaker 1: what if there are fifty righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah?
Speaker 1: Will you really sweep those cities away and not spare
Speaker 1: them for the sake of those fifty righteous people. So
Speaker 1: the Lord says, okay, if you can find fifty righteous men,
Speaker 1: I will spare the cities. Abraham then says, what if
Speaker 1: there are only forty five righteous men? You wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to kill forty five perfectly innocent men for the sake
Speaker 1: of five at the margin, and God says, you're right,
Speaker 1: let's sake it forty five, to which Abraham responds, why
Speaker 1: not thirty? I mean same logic. God says, okay, they
Speaker 1: keep going. In the end, Abraham gets him down to ten.
Speaker 1: Abraham is being very Israeli. Here, Israel is what is
Speaker 1: called a low power distance culture, meaning that it's a
Speaker 1: place where there is very little respect for hierarchy or
Speaker 1: formality in social interaction. France is the opposite kind of place,
Speaker 1: a high power distance culture. Nobody just calls up God
Speaker 1: directly in France. In France, Abraham would have had to
Speaker 1: file an application with the Department of Divine Communication, wait
Speaker 1: three months for an appointment, then present some kind of
Speaker 1: formal legal writ on behalf of the righteous of Gomorrah.
Speaker 1: Not in Israel. Here's another example of low power distance
Speaker 1: at work in Israel. It's the word new n you.
Speaker 1: New is what linguists call a reactive token, word used
Speaker 1: in conversation by the party that's doing the listening. Uh
Speaker 1: huh is a reactive token, so is really? The point
Speaker 1: of a reactive token is to signal involvement without claiming
Speaker 1: the floor from the speaker. I understand, I'm interested, keep going.
Speaker 1: But new is an unusual reactive token because it's not neutral.
Speaker 1: It's not I'm listening. It means hurry up, get to
Speaker 1: the point. New new now is new polite in virtually
Speaker 1: all cultures in the world. Of course, the answer would
Speaker 1: be No. New is not some gentle conversational nudge. It's
Speaker 1: a hijacking. The listener is interrupting the speaker in order
Speaker 1: to control the pace of the narrative. But in Israel
Speaker 1: this is not necessarily true. The Israeli linguist Isle Maschler
Speaker 1: has written extensively on new. She says quote. By exhibiting
Speaker 1: their impatience with the movement towards the climax of a story,
Speaker 1: to the point of taking the liberty of controlling the
Speaker 1: flow of another's discourse, hearers can show maximal involvement in
Speaker 1: the narrative, meaning we in Israel have no need to
Speaker 1: beat around the bush with neutral reactive tokens. We're a
Speaker 1: tiny country with zero power distance. What happens tell me
Speaker 1: I can't wait any longer. In Abraham's argument with God,
Speaker 1: Abraham talks God down very methodically, fifty righteous men to
Speaker 1: forty five to forty to thirty to twenty, and then ten,
Speaker 1: and surely, right around the forty mark, when it would
Speaker 1: have been obvious to any omniscient entity where Abraham was going.
Speaker 1: God must have interrupted. No, I love you, Abraham, you
Speaker 1: know that there is no need to drag.
Speaker 3: This out.
Speaker 1: My friend Milly says that since coming to America, she
Speaker 1: has struggled with the transition to a land of excessive
Speaker 1: social nicety, like this past winter when she was dealing
Speaker 1: with her children's school.
Speaker 2: If I say, for example, you know, can we have
Speaker 2: less snow days? Like even if there's a snow day, like,
Speaker 2: can't you just leave the school open? I'm just asking.
Speaker 2: My husband says, that's hot spot, Like you don't think
Speaker 2: about what their point of view is. You don't think
Speaker 2: about what the teachers have to do to get to school,
Speaker 2: you don't think about their safety, you don't think about
Speaker 2: the other kids. I'm not true, but I just want
Speaker 2: to know the like why can't I just ask the question?
Speaker 1: So that's you know, Yes, Let's say you were in
Speaker 1: Israel and the same scenario. I mean, I realize it's
Speaker 1: not snow days in Israel. But suppose you're making the
Speaker 1: same request at the school and I am the principal
Speaker 1: of the school and you're asked, I would like you
Speaker 1: to ask me, as an ISRAELI ask me why the
Speaker 1: school can't stay over more?
Speaker 2: Say excuse me, you know my kids at home, I
Speaker 2: don't have the time to take care of them. They
Speaker 2: need to be inside the school. You need to keep
Speaker 2: the school open so I can leave my kids there.
Speaker 2: And everybody else agrees with me. You want me to ask,
Speaker 2: I'm going to get twenty people who agree with me.
Speaker 2: Do you want to This would be like not and
Speaker 2: this would be very nice, by the way.
Speaker 1: And the principle in Israel would respond her.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, I'm not working for you. I'm running a school.
Speaker 2: I have a long way to come from home. Driving
Speaker 2: in the snow is not easy, so please. And also
Speaker 2: there's also insurance and all things that you don't think about,
Speaker 2: So please, you know what, call me later after I
Speaker 2: put my own kids down, and we'll talk on the phone. Okay,
Speaker 2: this would be the conversation. She wouldn't hate me. She
Speaker 2: would just like continue arguing with me, and then she'll
Speaker 2: tell me to shut up. But you wouldn't like here.
Speaker 2: They don't even like answer my email.
Speaker 1: It's so embarrassing. So we have two very different scenarios here, HOOTSPA.
Speaker 1: That's already convincing Bill Pelly to green light Hogan's heroes,
Speaker 1: and Israeli would look at that and say, already's just
Speaker 1: being direct. So what But Joe Colombo starting the Italian
Speaker 1: American Civil Rights League. That is not Abraham arguing with
Speaker 1: God to save the righteous of Sodom and Gomorrah. That
Speaker 1: is not new. That is not why can't the schools
Speaker 1: stay open on a snow day? That is an uffront.
Speaker 1: It's not the I do something and i'm you know,
Speaker 1: a dog has no who's ba right, a dog that's good?
Speaker 2: That was not bad, getting very close, very close.
Speaker 1: But the thing that's distinctive about this is the person
Speaker 1: who is completely unencumbered by shame exactly.
Speaker 2: Well, shame has nothing to do with it. They don't.
Speaker 2: They're so beyond shame. They don't even see they don't
Speaker 2: even see you to feel shame. It's their point of view,
Speaker 2: without any regard to anyone.
Speaker 1: Else's life, without regard to anyone else's life. Remember that,
Speaker 1: not long after I spoke with Milli Avatol, there was
Speaker 1: a hearing in front of three federal judges at a
Speaker 1: courthouse in San Francisco. It was about the treatment of
Speaker 1: migrant children detained at the border. At issue was whether
Speaker 1: the conditions under which the children were being held violated
Speaker 1: a previous legal commitment made by the government to provide
Speaker 1: safe and sanitary conditions in detention centers. The Department of
Speaker 1: Justice sent an attorney, Sarah Fabian, to make the case
Speaker 1: that the government was in compliance with the safe and
Speaker 1: sanitary standard. Her principal argument was that the term safe
Speaker 1: and sanitary didn't have an explicit definition.
Speaker 4: And that's any number of things might fall under those categories.
Speaker 1: That's Fabian, And this is one of the judges, Marcia Burzon.
Speaker 9: Yes, but sleep surely does. Right. You can't be safe
Speaker 9: and sanitary or safe as a human being if you
Speaker 9: can't sleep well. An you sent in your breeze, it
Speaker 9: doesn't say anything about sleeping, so therefore there's nothing in
Speaker 9: here about being able to sleep.
Speaker 1: The children, it turned out, didn't have beds or blankets
Speaker 1: or in some cases even room to lie down. So
Speaker 1: Burzon wonders, how is that not a violation of the
Speaker 1: agreement to provide decent living conditions?
Speaker 4: And Fabian answers, I think the concern there is, your honor.
Speaker 4: The court finding that sleep, for example, falls under is
Speaker 4: relevant to a finding of no safe and sanitary conditions.
Speaker 4: It is one thing, but the ultimate conclusion is safe
Speaker 4: and sanitary is a singular category in the agreement.
Speaker 1: You probably need to be a lawyer to understand what
Speaker 1: Fabian is saying. And I'm not a lawyer, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to have to guess. The government's argument goes like
Speaker 1: this sleep is one thing safe and sanitary or another.
Speaker 1: If the agreement had meant for sleep to fall under
Speaker 1: the requirement of safe and sanitary, it would have said so.
Speaker 1: Then Judge William Fletcher chimes in, maybe sleep wasn't explicitly
Speaker 1: part of the safe and sanitary definition because it's too obvious.
Speaker 10: I mean, it may be that they don't get super
Speaker 10: thread counts Egyptian linens. I get that, but the testimony
Speaker 10: that the district judge believed was it's really cold. In fact,
Speaker 10: it gets colder when we complain about is being cold.
Speaker 10: We're sports to sleep crowded with the lights on all
Speaker 10: night long, and all you to put us on is
Speaker 10: the concrete floor with an aluminum Lincoln. I mean, no
Speaker 10: one would argue that this is secure and sanitary.
Speaker 4: Yer, And I think what I'm arguing is that the
Speaker 4: way that the district cart reached the conclusion was to
Speaker 4: say these these specific items, and I think I will acknowledge.
Speaker 4: I think sleep is the more difficult end of what
Speaker 4: I'm arguing.
Speaker 1: Sleep is the more difficult end of what I'm arguing.
Speaker 10: You think cold all night long, lights on all night,
Speaker 10: now sleep on the concrete, and you got an aluminum
Speaker 10: foil blanket. I think I find that inconceivable that the
Speaker 10: government would say that that is safe and sanitary.
Speaker 1: From sleeping blankets. The discussion moved on to toothpaste, toothbrushes,
Speaker 1: and soap.
Speaker 10: It wasn't you know, a high class milled soap. It
Speaker 10: was soap, and that sounds all that's part of safe
Speaker 10: and sanitary?
Speaker 3: Are are you disagreeing with that?
Speaker 4: I'm What I'm disagreeing with is that the court ultimately
Speaker 4: concluded these things.
Speaker 1: Yes, she was disagreeing with that. All of this went
Speaker 1: on for some time. I would encourage you to listen
Speaker 1: to the full hearing for yourself, since if you are
Speaker 1: an American, it was your government, paid for by your
Speaker 1: tax dollars, that was doing the arguing, and ask yourself
Speaker 1: how did it come to this? There are a thousand answers, obviously,
Speaker 1: but maybe one of them is it. Over the years,
Speaker 1: our moral vocabulary has become impoverished, which is a problem
Speaker 1: because you cannot make sense of things that you cannot describe,
Speaker 1: and lumping together audacity and shamelessness creates a loophole large
Speaker 1: enough to drive a tank through. One last question, what
Speaker 1: happens when Hutsba and huts Bah go head to head
Speaker 1: when they meet each other in the field of battle? Well,
Speaker 1: it happened famously in nineteen seventy. Already at that point
Speaker 1: was working at Paramount Pictures. That was the era when
Speaker 1: Robert Evans was the head of production at Paramount, and
Speaker 1: the studio was on maybe the greatest run of any
Speaker 1: studio ever, Love Story, Three Days of the Condor, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown,
Speaker 1: on and on. Already, in typical Alreaddy fashion, had just
Speaker 1: talked himself into a big job there as a producer
Speaker 1: a reporter to do a piece on him. He asked, Ruddy,
Speaker 1: after you did Hogan's Heroes, what did you do next?
Speaker 3: Oh? No, that's all I did. That's it. He puts
Speaker 3: the pedal. Can I go off the rekler for a
Speaker 3: second with you? He said, how the fuck did you
Speaker 3: get in here? I know guys can't get in that
Speaker 3: gate who been here twenty years? Kick in? I said, listen,
Speaker 3: neither were off the rugged. I had no idea what
Speaker 3: the fector. I've never developed a screenplay. I did one
Speaker 3: half hour show. Okay, I'm the dumbest guy on this
Speaker 3: lot at the moment. I won't be for long, but
Speaker 3: just don't write in the art of me.
Speaker 1: Still with the Hootspa. Around this time, Paramount, almost by accident,
Speaker 1: got the film rights to a novel by a writer
Speaker 1: named Mario Puzo. The novel was The Godfather. No One
Speaker 1: had high hopes for the movie since the mobster genre
Speaker 1: scene played out, so they gave it to the new
Speaker 1: guy ready to produce, in hopes he could bring it
Speaker 1: in on time and underby. Almost immediately, trouble began with
Speaker 1: the Godfather project, trouble from Joe Colombo because Colombo was
Speaker 1: not at all happy about the movie. They were death threats,
Speaker 1: union problems, shady guys followed Ruddy around the window of
Speaker 1: his car was smashed. The corporate headquarters of the company
Speaker 1: that owned Paramount had to be evacuated twice because of
Speaker 1: bomb threats, and then the Italian American Civil Rights League
Speaker 1: called up Ruddy's boss, Robert Evans.
Speaker 3: The Lee called Bob Evans up and threatened him, we
Speaker 3: didn't want that movie. He made if that movie made,
Speaker 3: someone's gonna get height. So Bob called me, will you
Speaker 3: go see the sky to your columb These people are crazy.
Speaker 1: Ruddy calls up the Godfather's author Mario Puzzo, says, come
Speaker 1: with me to meet Joe Colombo.
Speaker 3: He said, out, are you crazy? You don't understand I
Speaker 3: write about those people. I never want to be involved,
Speaker 3: and you'd be very careful, he evolved, because these are
Speaker 3: not people you can tour with. The bullshit you're gonna
Speaker 3: get in a lot of trouble. So to answer your question,
Speaker 3: I am not like I'm gonna go up tell him
Speaker 3: you don't even know me.
Speaker 1: So Ruddy says, okay, I'll do it myself. He goes
Speaker 1: to the offices of the Italian American Civil Rights League,
Speaker 1: meets up with Colombo and his guys Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: To Brooklyn, looks like half of them are on parole,
Speaker 3: you know, with the lump under of the jacket.
Speaker 1: They tell him they don't want the movie made. It's
Speaker 1: bad for the Italians. Ruddy responds, you know what, I'll
Speaker 1: let you read the script. Come to the Paramount office
Speaker 1: in New York. Colombo shows up with three henchmen. Ruddy
Speaker 1: hands in the script. It's one hundred and fifty five
Speaker 1: pages long.
Speaker 3: He puts on thervent flank. My classes goes the page.
Speaker 3: When his sister looks at for about five minutes, what
Speaker 3: does this mean? Fade in as well. The screen's black
Speaker 3: and event I said, I raise, there's no way the
Speaker 3: guy's going to page Oh, I can't read with these glasses.
Speaker 1: I'm mafia boss is not going to work his way
Speaker 1: through one hundred and fifty five page script. The whole
Speaker 1: point of being a mafia boss is that you don't
Speaker 1: have to read things that are one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: five pages. Mafia bossays, do not have to do the
Speaker 1: fine print, the letter of the law, or chapter and verse.
Speaker 1: Those are for the people who have chosen not to
Speaker 1: live a life of crime. Colombo hands the script to
Speaker 1: one of his henchmen, a guy named Caesar. But Caesar's
Speaker 1: not going to read it either, is he. Caesar's not
Speaker 1: in the business of giving notes. Caesar's muscle.
Speaker 3: Here's why me, but my script or over my desk. Finally,
Speaker 3: Jill gets pissed Offiqus slester it on my desk? Do
Speaker 3: we like this guy? Yeah? I like her? That's just
Speaker 3: a really fuck, it's print for So, I said, well,
Speaker 3: what do you what do you want? Where do you live?
Speaker 3: He said, would you take the word mafia out of
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 1: What Colombo doesn't realize because he hasn't read the script,
Speaker 1: is it the word mafia is barely in the script.
Speaker 1: It only appears once.
Speaker 3: So I crossed the word mafia. I said, Joe, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna do this. I'm gonna take this out of the movie.
Speaker 3: He didn't know how many times it was ill is
Speaker 3: he to promise? Shook his hand. I made a deal
Speaker 3: that nobody could have made. No one read this way plan.
Speaker 1: From that moment on, all trouble with the movie ceased.
Speaker 1: It's why The Godfather got made. Hoots Ba is a
Speaker 1: bunch of violent mobsters threatening to shut down a movie
Speaker 1: because it depicts them as violent mobsters. HUTSBA is tricking
Speaker 1: them because they're too lazy to read the script.
Speaker 2: It's so difficult, Malcolm, I'd bite my tongue all the time.
Speaker 1: It's not easy. It's not easy for you to be
Speaker 1: over here in this politeness.
Speaker 2: I'm basically living ten percent of my personality because I
Speaker 2: have to be i'man.
Speaker 1: Mealy wants to be direct she's not a bully, and
Speaker 1: I wonder can we even tell the difference anymore?
Speaker 3: It's not good.
Speaker 2: It's not good. It's it's a very thick street. I'm
Speaker 2: a desert person having to deal with yah snow.
Speaker 1: Revisionous History is produced by Mela Bell and Jacob Smith
Speaker 1: with Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton. Flon Williams
Speaker 1: is our engineer. Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music
Speaker 1: by Luis Gara. Special thanks to Carl Migliori, heater Feine,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Maya Knigg and Jacob Weisberg. Revisious History is
Speaker 1: brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Godlaw, so
Speaker 1: wait say again me me Melli.
Speaker 2: It's a flat elka. If the tongue is flat, the
Speaker 2: snow all l.
Speaker 3: MILLI.
Speaker 2: So that's melli and it's not avial. It's a vital vital.
Speaker 2: There's the other difference is also the ta. It doesn't
Speaker 2: have a sort of air to it, so it's not it's.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: So do you hear the difference or is it just
Speaker 2: me