Guest: Juan Hernandez, Tim Cavanaugh, Rosa Brooks, Chris Epting
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, "THE SITUATION": I’ve got one of those bumper stickers on my fridge, and I really do, actually. Awesome. I’m the envy of my neighborhood. Thanks, Joe.
And thanks to you at home for tuning in. It’s good to have you back with us now that “Idol” fever has passed.
Tonight courtroom outrage. A convicted child molester dodges a jail sentence because the judge says he’s too short to survive in prison. He might get molested, irony of ironies. So he walks free. We’ll tell you how it happened.
Also ahead the latest Gore-Clinton ticket. It’s deja vu all over again. Some desperate Democrats say Al Gore and Hillary Clinton are the last best hope of their party. Which one of them gets to be president? That’s the just the first of many questions.
And you don’t have to be a sports fan to know this is completely bananas. We’ll tell you why some football coaches could be suspended for being too successful.
But first, a dramatic moment from George W. Bush and Tony Blair’s White House news conference on Iraq earlier this evening. The president admitting his tough talk in the early days of the war was a mistake.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You spoke about missteps and mistakes in Iraq. Could I ask both of you which missteps and mistakes of your own you most regret?
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Saying “bring its on.” Kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe a little more sophisticated manner, you know, “wanted dead or alive,” that kind of talk.
I think the biggest mistake that’s happened so far, at least from our country’s involvement in Iraq, is Abu Ghraib. We’ve been paying for that for a long period of time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: The president ought to be apologizing for spending American lives trying to bring democracy to a country that doesn’t want it and never will. But apologizing for saying mean things about our enemies, to people who hate America? No apology necessary. You never need to apologize for that if you’re president, and he shouldn’t have.
But the big story of the day is immigration. The Senate voted 62-36 today in favor of a bill that would create a guest worker program and put more than 10 million illegal aliens on the road to citizenship. The House, meanwhile, passed a much tougher bill in December with no amnesty provision at all. While lawmakers battle over the bills, illegal immigrants continue to stream over our border. What is the solution?
Joining me to talk about that, Juan Hernandez. He’s a former advisor to Mexican President Vicente Fox. He’s also the author of “The New American Pioneers: Why are We Afraid of Mexican Immigrants?” He joins us tonight from Fort Worth, Texas.
Juan Hernandez, thanks for coming on.
JUAN HERNANDEZ, AUTHOR, “THE NEW AMERICAN PIONEERS”: Thank you for inviting me again, Tucker.
CARLSON: So as we’ve just mentioned, and the country’s been watching, the Senate has reached consensus on a bill. This country, as we said last night, working hard to achieve comprehensive immigration reform.
Mexican President Vicente Fox said today, when he spoke before Utah lawmakers in Utah, he said comprehensive reform is in the interest of both nations. In other words good for you, U.S. Senate, for doing this.
My question, though, what is Mexico’s comprehensive reform? What is Mexico doing right now to make this problem better right now, specifically?
HERNANDEZ: Well, I will tell you specifically, but first of all, let me rejoice, please. There are millions of us in the United States that have marched. There are millions of people that have been wanting for immigration reform. And today we won not the war, but we have won a battle. And it is great that the Senate did pass overwhelmingly in favor of not criminalizing these people but legalizing them. Even, as you’ve said, for those who have been here for five years to even be able to become U.S. citizens.
CARLSON: No question, the Senate is doing the bidding of the Mexican government and big business. You’re absolutely right. So I can see why you’re happy about it.
HERNANDEZ: Mexico—Mexico has its own problems. The United States is doing—the Senate is doing what the U.S. citizens want. The immense majority, 75 percent of U.S. citizens, do want these good people to be legalized.
CARLSON: OK, so the Mexican president shows up on our soil and starts lecturing us about the need for comprehensive immigration reform. And again my question stands: what is Mexico doing to bring about that comprehensive reform?
HERNANDEZ: Well, Mexico is doing a whole lot of things. Mexico is trying to, after 71 years of having—I mean, that’s longer than communism, of having one party winning over and over and over with all kinds of corruption. Mexico now has a democracy. Mexico has been paying the loans that it has to the United States in advance. Mexico’s microeconomics have been very stable.
Every six years in Mexico, if you remember, there have been either a nationalization of the banks or the peso had been devalued. And for the first time there’s been a very, very stable Mexico, and I think that’s good for United States. It’s good for Mexican people and for the American continent.
CARLSON: It ultimately will be. But you still have half a million Mexicans leaving the country every year for work here. That’s still a bad sign.
The Mexican president said today, and I’m quoting now—and this was offensive. I think you’ll agree. “Mexico does not promote nor support undocumented migration,” said Vicente Fox. That is absolutely false. We know for a bunch of different reasons. The most obvious, the Mexican government, as you know, printed pamphlets to instruct illegal immigrants how to get over to this country, the guide for the Mexican migrant, they were called. We did a story on them here.
How can he look into the eyes of Americans and say something so completely false?
HERNANDEZ: Let me tell you a secret, Tucker. I participated in creating those sheets of paper. Let me tell you, when I worked for Vicente.
CARLSON: Wow.
HERNANDEZ: Why? Because the idea was to save lives. Not to promote in any way that people come as undocumented. But if someone has been promoting it we have been promoting it in the United States. We have been asking people to come up here for 20 years, ever since the amnesty of ‘86.
Now it’s time that we create a new program. And by the way, once this gets over to the House, I hope they will not only legalize undocumented, they will create a program so that we’re not in this mess 20 years from now.
CARLSON: What about—the “New York Times” had a really interesting piece today, where they quoted a number of Mexican intellectuals who said actually, a tighter border, a wall, even, between the two countries might be a good thing because keeping Mexican immigrants in Mexico might force the government of Mexico to create jobs. What do you think of that?
HERNANDEZ: Yes, Mexico needs to create jobs. Vicente Fox had hoped the nation would grow at 7 percent or so. It’s only been growing five percent. We need a stronger Mexico.
But you know, why don’t we do what Europe has done? Europe has done a lot of things that maybe we disagree with, but they did create a fund. They created a European fund that all the countries could access if they were in need, for example Spain. Now Spain is able to compete and able to participate with the rest of the union.
If we created a fund for Canada, the United States and Mexico for loans, we don’t have to give away money, then small communities in Mexico could access those funds, could be able to create jobs.
CARLSON: I get it.
HERNANDEZ: And be able to increase business with the United States.
CARLSON: When the mafia does it, it’s called blackmail. When Mexico does it, it’s called empowerment. Right, right. Give us money. Give us loans or we’re going to send more illegal aliens into your country. I get it. I like that idea.
HERNANDEZ: Now, people complain about the remittance that’s going to Mexico, $20 billion.
CARLSON: Twenty billion a year. That’s right.
HERNANDEZ: They spent—that’s right. In this country, we could have not created—the United States is one of the most giving countries in the world, no, the most giving country in the world. I love that we are so giving.
But you know what? We couldn’t have created a better program to help our partners to the south by letting the undocumented work up here and send money home to their needy family members. We don’t have to send money home. Let’s work with Mexico so that they can develop. It will only help us also.
CARLSON: That’s an amazingly brazen suggestion, and I give you credit for chutzpah, I have to say. Juan Hernandez. And for good manners. Thanks a lot for coming on.
HERNANDEZ: Thank you, Tucker.
CARLSON: We turn now to a radical proposal to fix our broken borders:
ignore them. An op-ed in the “L.A. Times” suggests the best way to control illegal immigration is to let any North American with an I.D. cross our borders any time for any reason.
Here’s a quote from the piece: “Let’s allow the North American Free Trade Agreement to live up to its promise and permit citizens of Canada, the United States and Mexico to move and work freely among the three countries.”
The op-ed goes on to suggest, “That may sound crazy, and you can be the judge of that.” Here to explain his idea, the man who wrote the op-ed in question, Tim Cavanaugh. He’s an editor for “Reason” magazine, the excellent libertarian magazine. He joins us tonight from San Francisco.
Tim Cavanaugh, thanks for coming on.
TIM CAVANAUGH, EDITOR, “REASON” MAGAZINE: Thanks for having me, Tucker. Good to be here.
CARLSON: This is—this is a pretty libertarian position. I disagree with it, but I take it seriously. You say this in your piece.
You say there are two objections to your idea, to an open border policy:
national security and economics. One is specious, you say. The other is based on ignorance of the way free markets work.
I would suggest, though, that there’s a third reason people might oppose an open border policy, and that’s culture. When you have an unregulated flow of people into your country, your country changes. The nature of your country changes. You don’t have to be a xenophobe or a racist or a bigot to recognize that that’s true. And shouldn’t a country have control over its composition and therefore, over its culture?
CAVANAUGH: Well, are you saying that Mexicans are uniquely inassimilable in the United States or are you saying that in the 200 years that our country has—in the 230 years, whatever, that our country has been around that there hasn’t been a huge amount of Mexican influence in this country?
CARLSON: There has been and I think it’s been positive. And I’m not saying that Mexicans are uniquely unable to assimilate. But there’s a lot of evidence they do assimilate less quickly than other groups.
CAVANAUGH: I would dispute that.
CARLSON: I’m not sure there’s even that much to dispute. I mean, there’s a whole separate argument. But I mean, the fact that $20 billion a year goes from the United States, illegal aliens here and immigrants here, back to Mexico, unprecedented. I mean, Italian immigrants weren’t sending $20 billion, you know, back to Italy in the 20th Century.
CAVANAUGH: Well, that’s actually—you know, I don’t know what the adjusted figures were for back then. But that’s actually not true. Remittances have always been a huge part of the immigrant experience. And in fact, as noted in that article, in the years 1880 to 1920, 25 percent of European immigrants eventually resettled in their home countries.
CARLSON: Right.
CAVANAUGH: Just went home because they had done what they wanted to do here and they ended up going home. And that’s in an era when you had to get in the hold of a steamship to get across the Atlantic Ocean.
CARLSON: Right. That’s right. Immigration has never been at levels than it’s at now, however, and that’s provable.
Now look, the point remains the same in any era, in any time. Don’t the citizens of the country have a right to determine who’s in that country? And I think the answer is yes, they do.
CAVANAUGH: Yes, yes, but I think this should be agreed upon. It worked for Europe. And if you look at the differential back at 1985 between Greece and France or something. If I had been French in 1985 and you told me we were going to have a completely visaless exchange between our countries and a common currency, I’d have said, “Sacre bleu, I’m never going to go with that.”
CARLSON: Right.
CAVANAUGH: But, you know, it certainly worked out for them.
CARSON: Well, I don’t know. You know, it’s a brand new experiment. We don’t know how it’s worked out. And by the way, it’s confined to Europe, so that’s a little bit different.
You also—you make the point that, look, people are going sneak in because they can’t get in legally. Right. You say it’s a mere possibility...
CAVANAUGH: And beyond that, we’re wasting our security dollars because we’re chasing all of these people who are swimming across the Rio Grande just to work, when if you had all of these people going through a regular checkpoint, a regular entry and exit, you would know that anybody who’s sneaking across the border is up to no good. You’d be able to allocate your resources more intelligently.
CARLSON: Right. I don’t think that’s a stupid point, but your first point is a wrong point. It’s not nearly impossible to get here legally. There were between 700,000 and 900,000 people granted legal citizenship in this country last year.
CAVANAUGH: Yes, and getting—getting a work visa to come up here, and All of the complications. I mean, I’m married to a U.S. citizen but a foreign-born U.S. citizen, and it ain’t no picnic ever dealing with immigration.
CARLSON: No. But a lot of people do it legally, and so isn’t it insulting to those people that other people don’t even bother to try?
CAVANAUGH: Those people, this is a country that’s right on our border, though. I’m not talking about allowing people from China to do it or allowing people from Saudi Arabia to do it. I’m saying we have a unique situation with Mexico.
And we have the trade agreement, and as Ronald Reagan himself envisioned in 1979 before he became president, he gave a speech talking about the possibility that people among our three countries might be free to just come and go.
CARLSON: Right.
CAVANAUGH: And I’d emphasize something: people don’t just come. They also go. And you know, 1910 to 1920 the immigration situation with Mexican workers coming into the United States was about 50 percent of them were going home on a regular basis.
CARLSON: And whether or not that’s a good thing is a whole separate question. I’m not sure that it is. We are out of time.
Anyway, Tim Cavanaugh. I appreciate your coming on. Thank you.
CAVANAUGH: Nice to talking to you. Thanks.
CARLSON: Still to come, the NAACP doesn’t like what some people are saying about the accuser in the Duke rape case. Its solution: get a judge to issue a gag order. We’ll tell you more about this latest battle for free speech in North Carolina. Plus shocking new information about the accuser’s credibility of lack of it.
Also one of the biggest business scandals in American history comes to a spectacular close in Texas today. Did former Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling make our top five list of white collar criminals? We’ll tell you when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Still ahead, is an Al Gore-Hillary Clinton presidential ticket a winner for Democrats? It’s pretty funny, in any case.
Plus, breaking news in the manhunt for the most wanted couple in America. Stay tuned.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Welcome back. Now the latest developments in the Duke rape case.
The NAACP in North Carolina is reportedly seeking a gag order trying designed to prevent attorneys for the accused Duke lacrosse players from speaking publicly at all about the case. But will a gag order silence questions about the accuser’s diminished credibility? Will it help prosecutor-run-amok Mike Nifong fill the many holes in his case? Probably not but for answers anyway, we welcome former prosecutor and current MSNBC analyst, Susan Filan. She joins us tonight from Stamford, Connecticut.
Susan, welcome.
SUSAN FILAN, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Hey, Tucker.
CARLSON: So what you think of this? The idea that, you know, I don’t like what they’re saying about the accuser in this case. They shouldn’t be allowed to talk. Let’s get a gag order. I mean, if that’s not an abridgement of free speech, what is?
FILAN: Look, I think in general courts do issue gag orders, but it’s usually to gag the parties. And it’s usually made by one of the parties, either by the defense who thinks the prosecutor is talking too much or by the prosecutor who thinks the defense is talking too much.
I’ve really not ever heard of somebody who doesn’t—what we saw in legal terms—have standing to raise this argument. The NAACP isn’t a party to this case. They’re not her lawyer. They don’t represent her. They haven’t filed on her behalf. So it’s incredibly, procedurally bizarre. But as to the merits and substance of it, this case probably, in fairness, should have been gagged at some level a long time ago. It is way too late to stop the Duke debate now.
CARLSON: It’s also a shame that it’s the NAACP getting involved. Because the implication that this is a civil rights case. It doesn’t as far as I can tell.
I mean, at best we have one lacrosse player, someone at the party possibly saying something ugly, making an ugly racial remark. That doesn’t make the accuser Rosa Parks. It’s a shame when the NAACP steps in, because it breaks the case down along racial lines, and that’s just not good for anyone.
SUSAN FILAN: But I think the feeling is that were this white, white woman accusing three African-American males, it would be handled completely differently than an African-American woman accusing what you call Caucasian men .
And I think that there is, you know, unfortunately a racial poison that’s been injected into this case from early on.
CARLSON: Well, whether or not that’s true, and I don’t think it is. But let’s just say it was. It doesn’t mean this woman is telling the truth. And in fact when it was revealed, and it will be, that she has made this up, that this attack did not take place. I am firmly convinced of that. You know, it makes the people that support her look like morons.
And speaking of her credibility, there’s late breaking news tonight from the Associated Press in Durham, saying that lawyers for one of the accused lacrosse players have filed a motion, demanding that Mike Nifong give them more information than he’s gotten, more evidence thee have over those 1,300 pages. They say there’s more. And they come to that conclusion because, in those 1,300 pages, there’s only one example, in instance, where authorities ask the accuser what the alleged attackers look like.
Here’s the line. It’s from a cop, a Durham police investigator named B.W. Hymen. He says, “I asked the accuser’s questions trying to follow up on a better description of the suspects. She was unable to remember anything further.” She doesn’t even know what they look like.
FILAN: Right. Well, look, I mean, we have heard conflicting stories about her demeanor shortly after the alleged attacks. Some people thought she was intoxicated. Some people thought she was hysterical and perhaps in shock.
There is a phenomenon with someone who has genuinely been viciously attacked that memory blanks immediately thereafter. And it isn’t always possible right after an attack to get a description. And it may be that the timing of when they interviewed her wasn’t good and she wasn’t able to put herself together.
I know, Tucker, that you think that she’s completely lying and that’s why she wasn’t able to come up with a description. That is one explanation, but there’s another explanation.
CARLSON: She might have mental disabilities. We know from her parents that she was hospitalized from some kind of mental disorder. I’m not even attacking her. I’m just—it doesn’t add up that this actually happened, so I’m trying to think of explanations for what’s going on in her head.
FILAN: People with mental disabilities can have been raped and people with mental disabilities can prosecute and testify favorably in their own case. I know that you just don’t think she’s telling truth. And so whether she’s lying because she has mental defects or what...
CARLSON: Well, she said she was raped by 40 guys, then 10 guys, then four guys. Now three guys.
FILAN: No, no, no, no, no.
CARLSON: And one of them had a mustache.
FILAN: No, no, no, no, no. She said 20 and then she said three, which isn’t great. She also said four at one point and the guy has a mustache. But let’s get to this quickly, this motion filed.
The defense is claiming that Nifong has not given up all the information that he has and according to this court filing there is only one instance of her being asked what these guys looked like. There must be more. You would think there must be more. What if Nifong is holding back evidence? Is that a big deal?
FILAN: Yes, yes. It is a big deal. If you’re going to convict somebody you’ve got to do it fair and square. You’ve got to do it by the rules.
I don’t know that he’s actually holding stuff back but if he is, if he’s got stuff and he’s not exposing it, I’ll tell you why it’s the huge deal. One, it violates the rule of court in North Carolina.
And two, he said on the record in open court, I’ve given you everything I have.” And the reason that’s such a big deal is because we’ve been critical of what he said to media, and we’ve defended it by saying, well, it wasn’t a statement in court where he is duty bound to be ethical and honest.
CARLSON: Yes.
FILAN: Well, when he speaks in court, let me tell you, had he says it had better be gospel. But that’s, you know, the will of the congressman.
CARLSON: Well, I wouldn’t—in the case of Mike Nifong I wouldn’t bet your mortgage on it. Susan Filan, thanks a lot.
FILAN: Thank you, Tucker.
CARLSON: Still to come, would an Al Gore-Hillary Clinton presidential ticket mean victory to the Democrats in ‘08? And who will be the president in that equation? We’ll debate that desperate scenario in just a minute.
Plus, there’s no happy ending to this short story. We’ll tell you about a 5’1” convicted sex offender who managed to avoid prison time. How did he do it? Find out when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Tonight, the long awaited return of THE SITUATION “Crime Blotter”.
First up, a couple accused of a horrifying rape and murder, a crime they videotaped, they’re finally in custody tonight in Missouri. Richard Davis and Dena Riley and charged with first degree murder, kidnapping, two counts of forcible sodomy and forcible rape in the death of Marsha Spicer. The pair also linked to a second killing.
In Nebraska, a judge sentenced a sex offender to probation rather than jail because she said she believes that at just over five feet tall, he is too short to survive behind bars. Someone could molest him. Richard Thompson was ordered never to be alone with anyone younger than 18 and told to throw out his porn collection. That’s about it.
And finally the case of marijuana muffins has been solved. A young man was caught on tape delivering the pot-laced pastries to a Dallas high school teachers lounge last week. Eighteen staff members wound up in the hospital. Now two teenagers, Joseph Robert Tellini and Ian McConnell Walker have been charged with several counts of assaulting a public servant.
But now we move to the biggest crime story of the day, the convictions of former Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. After six days of deliberations, a federal jury in Houston found Lay and Skilling guilty of one of the biggest business scandals in American history.
The pair will be sentenced in September, at which time Lay could get 45 years in prison, Skilling 185 years. Their fate marks the latest chapter in the arresting annals of white collar crime and greed. In today’s “Top Five”, we round up a few other high society convicts who once believed they were above the law.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARLSON (voice-over): Sure it takes a sharp business mind to reach the top of the corporate ladder. But sometimes even a financial genius can’t figure out that crime does not pay, until it’s too late.
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER MAYOR OF NEW YORK: They’re cheating and lying and stealing.
CARLSON: As one of New York’s top real estate magnates, billionaire Leona Helmsley was crowned by the tabloids the queen of mean. She used to think only little people pay taxes until the IRS proved her wrong.
LEONA HELMSLEY, FORMER REAL ESTATE MAGNATE: I’m not good with figures. I never had anything to do with figures.
CARLSON: In 1989 Leona was convicted of tax evasion and served 18 months behind bars with a lot of other little people.
He once boasted about his $30 million New York apartment and his $6,000 shower curtains. But former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski’s life on Easy Street ended when he went on trial for pilfering more than $400 million from his company’s coffers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This has nothing to do with business. This was people stealing money.
CARLSON: Last fall it was curtains for Kozlowski’s freedom. He’s now serving an eight-year prison sentence.
His slick reputation as a Wall Street gambler inspired a Hollywood catch phrase.
MICHAEL DOUGLAS, ACTOR: Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.
CARLSON: In the mid-’80s, Ivan Boesky amassed a $200 million fortune
by supposedly better on corporate takeovers.
IVAN BOESKY, FORMER TRADER: I don’t feel like a gambler. And I hope you don’t think I look like one.
CARLSON: In fact, Boesky’s luck ran out in 1987 when he was sent to jail for three years and fined $100 million for insider trading.
This former junk bond kind was dethroned in 1990 when he pled guilty to stock market fraud and tax evasion. Michael Milken served 22 months bin bars and dished out $900 million in fines. Today Milken is an L.A. businessman and a philanthropist with a fortun estimated wealth of $300 million. Sometimes greed is good, apparently.
MICHAEL MILKEN, FORMER JUNK BOND TRADER: That’s my point.
CARLSON: She’s done the time but the maven of better living is still dealing with the crime.
MARTHA STEWART, FOUNDER, MARTHA STEWART LIVING OMNIMEDIA: I must reclaim my good life.
CARLSON: After serving five months in prison for inside trader, Martha Stewart’s legal problems are far from over. She must now face a civil lawsuit, stemming from her 2001 illegal sale of ImClone pharmaceutical shares. Legal analysts say it could lead to another embarrassing trial for Stewart and her company, Omnimedia. That’s not a good thing.
STEWART: It’s time to get it all behind us.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CARLSON: Still ahead, a case of good sportsmanship gone bad. We’ll tell you about an outrageous new rule that has Connecticut football coaches on edge and furious. THE SITUATION is keeping score, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Still to come, would a former vice president and a former first lady make a winning ticket in 2008? Don’t laugh.
Plus, where can you find Madonna’s bra, Einstein’s brain and George Washington’s teeth, and were they wood? We’ll tell you in just a minute. But first, here’s what else is going on in the world tonight.
(NEWSBREAK)
CARLSON: Welcome back. Feminism may be good in theory but could a female president actually hurt this country? Well, according to my next guest maybe so, since feminized democracies may be no match for states ran my men who tend to be primitive and aggressive.
Rosa Brooks is the author of a recent “L.A. Times” column entitled “Girlie States Versus Knuckle Draggers”. She’s also a professor at the University of Virginia Law School. She joins us tonight from Charlottesville, Virginia.
Rosa Brooks, welcome.
ROSA BROOKS, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA LAW SCHOOL: Hi, Tucker. It’s an honor to be here on your bowtie-less show.
CARLSON: It’s an honor to have you here, Rosa. Thank you.
So your thesis is that lots of countries, particularly those in Asia and South Asia, have a disproportionately large number of men because of infanticide and abortion and that these coming generations of countries with lots and lots of men in them are going to be more warlike and therefore more threatening to countries like ours, which have a lot of women in charge. Is that right?
BROOKS: Almost impossible to predict anything with confidence. But what we do know is that historically, when you have surplus men—I don’t want to hurt your feelings by saying there’s any such thing as surplus men. But when you’ve got too many men relative to the number of reproductive age women you tend to have high levels of crime, social conflict that can spill outwards pretty easily.
CARLSON: So basically, you don’t want women at the helm of the United States, though, because tend to be passive and kind and reconciliation oriented. They’re not—they’re no match for the warlike, for instance, of China.
BROOKS: Tucker, you ought to meet my mother. I actually don’t agree with that. Thanks Francis Fukuyama’s argument. I don’t actually think that that’s necessarily true. I think that throughout history there have been plenty of examples of mean, nasty, warlike women.
CARLSON: Outside of the home?
BROOKS: You bet. Margaret Thatcher is an example.
CARLSON: Yes, that’s true. But...
BROOKS: The empress dowager of China.
CARLSON: Yes. Those are two out of world history. But most women I know are less bellicose.
BROOKS: You know some nice women. I know some really mean ones. You ought to see me when I’m mad.
CARLSON: I believe that. But isn’t this—look, OK, let’s just start at the very beginning.
BROOKS: OK.
CARLSON: This imbalance is the result of a lot of things but mostly abortion made possible by ultrasounds.
BROOKS: Yes.
CARLSON: So people in a lot of cultures don’t prize girls the way they prize boys and so they kill off the girls. Isn’t this a pretty good argument against abortion for sex selection? Why aren’t feminists saying more about that?
BROOKS: I personally think that sex—that the desire to have a child of either sex is a pretty rotten reason for abortion. I think that there are good reasons. There are very compelling reasons for people to have abortions. That’s not one of them.
CARLSON: OK. So—but why not—why not an outcry about this? I mean, why aren’t women’s groups up in arms about the fact that millions upon millions of female babies are aborted in China and India every year?
BROOKS: You know, I think that they are. And I think that the governments of China and India are finally catching on that this is actually a pretty big problem, that’s going to be a pretty big problem for them.
None of these governments want to face a situation in which you have these huge groups of unattached young man floating around. The problem is, it’s just extremely tough to police. There are all kinds of black market, if you will, ultrasound providers who will tell you to sex of a fetus. And then who’s to know why you go off and get an abortion? It’s incredibly hard to police.
CARLSON: Sure. So are most crimes. I mean, right, so is dealing heroin is pretty hard to police, but we police it because we think it is bad. So the real reason, as you know, is no one wants to say boo about this, because they don’t want to jeopardize the sacred right to abortion.
BROOKS: I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think that’s right, Tucker. I think that—I think that what’s driving the slow response to this is more than it’s just taken awhile for governments and women’s groups to figure out how severe this problem is and play catch-up.
I think that people are taking it pretty seriously. I think that they need to take it pretty seriously. I don’t think that we have done enough thinking in this country about what the implications are going to be in the long run if this trend develops. I don’t think they need to do much more about that.
But I think people are finally starting to take it seriously. I don’t think it has anything to do with anxiety about abortion rights.
CARLSON: So you point out in the piece, finally, that this trend, you know, top heavy—societies with too many men in the east match up against, in the west, societies where women are actually outperforming men. Fifty-eight percent of college freshmen, you point out, are women.
BROOKS: Yes.
CARLSON: Women are, you know, rising to the top of all these different companies. Does it kind of remind you that we do need men?
BROOKS: We do need men. We do need men. I need one. He takes out the garbage. If he didn’t do that, nobody would ever take out the garbage at my house.
Men are terrific. We need them for all sorts of things, not only taking out the garbage. No, I think that one of the things that...
CARLSON: Name three other things.
BROOKS: Name three? Can I name only two? I think that one of the things, actually, that these two opposing parallel trends actually illustrate is that it’s bad news to have too many men. It’s also bad news to have too few men.
You have as many and as severe problems that pop up in societies that have a shortage of men or a shortage of men who are as skilled as the women as you do in societies where there are too many men. No question about it. Ideally you want to have both, and you want to have playing important social roles. You don’t want to have an imbalance either way.
CARLSON: I’m for that. We agree for once. Rosa Brooks. Thanks a lot for coming on.
BROOKS: Pleasure to be here, Tucker.
CARLSON: We turn now to a man who is anything but girlie, except for his gelled hair and finely manicured goatee. He is “The Outsider,” ESPN Radio and HBO Boxing host Max Kellerman.
Max, welcome.
MAX KELLERMAN, ESPN RADIO: I just quoted Fukuyama on ESPN radio, Tucker.
CARLSON: There was silence in the control room. “Fuki” who? What team does he play for?
KELLERMAN: Had to do with Barry Bonds and the end of history and all kinds of—you know.
CARLSON: You must confuse the hell of out them, Max.
All right. First up there’s been plenty of talk about Hillary Clinton and Al Gore running for president in 2008. What if the two joined forces, though, and ran on the same ticket?
It’s an idea being floated in an upcoming edition of “Vanity Fair” magazine, and some people think it might just be the Democratic Party’s best chance to win back the White House. Of course, the plan could only work if Hillary is willing to settle for vice president.
Hey, Max, I have such mixed feelings about this. On the one hand this would just be a godsend for cable news. I mean, we would have jobs forever if this happened, because it would be such a compelling election.
On the other hand what a sad statement about the Democratic Party, to you know, bring back Al Gore and Hillary Clinton? That’s like, I don’t know, the Republicans running Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan again. You know what I mean? It’s sad.
KELLERMAN: Yes, it is. I’m under the impression that I’m here arguing that it would not be a good ticket.
CARLSON: Hit me with it.
KELLERMAN: I’m prepared to argue, if you—look. This is about casting. That’s what general elections are always about, presidential elections. If you go back to at least 1960 the best way to predict the outcome of the election is show a 5-year-old both candidates and say who’s going to win? They’ll be able to tell you. It’s all about casting.
Unfortunately, for Gore and Hillary, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, in this cast, the casting is very good if it’s still pictures. The daddy of this country, and in this case the vice president would be like the mommy. They look very much like those roles. Unfortunately for them...
CARLSON: Wait, wait. Stop right there. Who would be the president and who would be the vice president?
KELLERMAN: Well, you’re saying Gore president and Hillary vice president. That’s what you just said. I’m taking that thesis, that premise.
CARLSON: The feminists would never allow that ever, ever. Talk about, you know, misogyny embodied. You know what I mean?
KELLERMAN: Sure. But even the other way the problem is there are moving pictures and sound. And so, you know, in the last 100 years you cannot be as wooden as either one of these two candidates. Certainly you can’t put two completely wooden candidates on the same ticket. It’s masochistic.
CARLSON: Yes. But it’s the best they’ve got, which is what I love.
KELLERMAN: You know, unfortunately, you’re right.
CARLSON: I know, I know. That’s why it’s such a great story.
Well, there’s no better way to kill the competitive spirit, speaking of elections, than to punish players for scoring too many points. A high school athletic committee in Connecticut has decided to suspend football coaches—suspend them—when they let their teams rout the competition by more than 50 points. The coach of the offending team will have to sit out the next game.
A committee spokesman says that spanking the competition is unsportsmanlike and completely unnecessary. I think losing by a huge margin builds character. Max agrees with the new policy and thinks football ought to be a no-contact sport.
Max, come on. Come to your senses. There is something educational about just getting really beaten into the ground. I mean, it’s good for you to get stomped on every once in awhile. And it’s bad for you to be told not to try too hard.
KELLERMAN: Listen, I’m a Yankees’ fan. I wish the Yankees would go 162-0 during the regular season and sweep the playoffs.
However, what they’re talking about here is unsportsmanlike conduct. And there’s all sports of rules in various sports especially football about unsportsmanlike conduct.
You can’t score a touchdown and show up the competition. You can be finalized on the field. And so this is in that vein, really.
I think 50 points is actually probably too few. I would rather see, if think are going to make a mercy rule after seven touchdowns the game is over. You know, that team now wins, whoever’s up for seven touchdowns. I don’t understand why you have suspend the coach for making its more points than you like. Why not just call the game at that point?
CARLSON: No, but it’s so useful, though. It’s so useful to know that you’re not just bad, you’re really bad. You weren’t just beaten. You were annihilated. You never forget that, and it inspires you to work harder.
KELLERMAN: But seven touchdowns lets you know you’re annihilated. I mean, 50 points does like you know you’re annihilated. Really, the point of sports at this level is—it’s competition. What’s competition about? To see who’s better.
CARLSON: Right.
KELLERMAN: Do you really need to know once it’s been established who’s better by what margin they’re better? I mean, it’s a lot. It’s a lot.
CARLSON: Think of the lesson here. If things are going really badly for you, Mommy steps in and tells the bad guy, the mean guy who’s bullying you, to throw it off. That’s not preparation for real life, when Mommy doesn’t step in and save you.
KELLERMAN: I think it’s overly—who they’re really targeting here is overly ambitious high school coaches who are perhaps trying to advance their careers by exploiting what’s going on. And they think if they run up the score, it makes them look better. When in fact, it always makes them look worse.
CARLSON: I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does at all. I mean, I don’t know. As long as they’re polite when they do it. I mean, there’s a way to crush an opponent graciously.
KELLERMAN: And you know, there was—and I’m blanking on which player in the NBA who was not considered a team player a couple years ago. I wish I could remember who it was. Who was going for a triple-double, meaning double digits in points, rebounds and assists. And it was Ricky Davis.
And he threw up a shot to intentionally miss so he could grab the rebound and he could get his triple-double and then scored, I think. The point is, and everyone said that’s really—it’s not sportsmanlike. It’s not good. It defeats the purpose of what a triple-double really represents, which is that you’re a team player.
And this is sort of the same thing. You’re running up the points to make yourself look good. And...
CARLSON: You lost me. I’ve never heard of a triple-double.
KELLERMAN: Don’t admit that publicly.
CARLSON: He stepped over the line, that Ricky whatever his name was.
KELLERMAN: Ricky Davis.
CARLSON: Max Kellerman, have a great weekend.
KELLERMAN: You, too.
CARLSON: Still to come, looking to get away this Memorial Day? How about a gander at Madonna’s bra? Or a quick view of Albert Einstein’s brain, the actual brain? Two of America’s weirdest attractions when THE SITUATION returns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial kickoff of the summer vacation season. Millions of Americans are getting set to hit the road, gas prices be damned. But anyone can go to the beach.
My next guest suggests you check out some of America’s stranger attractions, things like Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the “Wizard of Oz”, Madonna’s bra, Einstein’s brain. My next guest wrote the book on them, literally. He is Chris Epting, and he joins us tonight from Burbank, California.
Chris, welcome.
CHRIS EPTING, AUTHOR, “THE RUBY SLIPPERS”: How are you doing, Tucker?
CARLSON: I’m doing great. It’s a terrific book of every weird possible museum and sort of strange attraction in the entire country. I just want to run through a few of these. I wasn’t aware you could actually see Madonna’s bra. Where do you see that?
EPTING: At Frederick’s of Hollywood, the famous lingerie shop. There’s a bra museum, a lingerie museum in there. And they’ve got one of her famous stage bras from, I think, the early 1980’s, along with Ethyl Merman’s bra and a bra that Tony Curtis wore in “Some Like it Hot” and some other things, too.
So again, a lot of people know the store but don’t know that if you go into the store into the back, you find this, you know, strange little interesting museum.
CARLSON: So it’s free? You can see Madonna’s bra for free? There’s something.
EPTING: Yes. A lot of these places are free. I try and find sort of roadside oddities and things where if you’re traveling you can pull off to the side of the road or go one or two blocks out of your way and, you know, see something a little extra that you hadn’t planned on.
CARLSON: You’ve got literally hundreds of them, including the location of George Washington’s teeth. By the way, were they wood?
EPTING: One of my—no, they’re not. A lot of people think they were. They’re actually hippopotamus ivory and gold. And the original set for them was mule’s teeth. But you know, wood was kind of a myth. I think there was a prototype made in wood. But they never actually gave him wooden teeth.
CARLSON: So where are they?
EPTING: They’re at the Museum of Dentistry in Baltimore, which also has lots of other weird dental artifacts. I think there are no other real famous teeth like that, but you know, old tools and things that sort of helped define the science.
And as weird as it sounds it actually is a really interesting place.
CARLSON: It sounds terrific. Now a lot of people claim to have the world’s largest ball of twine. It’s a pretty common boast as you know. You found the actually largest ball of twine. Where is it?
EPTING: Believe it or not there are two of them. The one in the book in Kansas is the one we’re looking at right now. That’s the largest ball of twine made by a community. It trumped the one in Minnesota. Believe it or not, there’s one in Minnesota that was the largest made by a single man.
So you know, funny how these things sort of...
CARLSON: That’s a key distinction. Yes.
EPTING: Yes, it is. That’s important. That is the biggest one.
CARLSON: Einstein’s brain. His actual gray matter. Where is it?
EPTING: Einstein’s brain. You can’t go see it. It’s at the Princeton Hospital. I put it in the book more to kind of let people know that it still exists. I mean, hopefully at some point—oddly enough in Princeton, there aren’t a lot of tributes to Einstein. You think there would be a plaque at his house or something like that.
But the brain still exists. He earmarked it for science. It’s still there. Hopefully, the Princeton Museum will let us get a gander at it some time.
CARLSON: And Harry and Sally’s table. Explain that.
EPTING: Yes. Well, you know, people don’t realize a lot of location shots of famous movies are in this country. At Katz’s Deli in the East Village in New York City you can see the actual table where Meg Ryan did some of her finest acting, in “When Harry Met Sally”. And they kind of have a sign there that says, you know, you’re sitting at the table where, you know, Meg Ryan made movie history. I grew up near there.
CARLSON: Amazing. And tell me quick, of all the places you’ve been, I think this is your eighth book—you’re probably better traveled than any other American—what is your favorites place to go to?
EPTING: You know, I’m a big baseball fan. I love the Babe Ruth Birthplace Museum in Baltimore, to go and look and see the bed where Babe Ruth was born I think is really thrilling, as well as where he played his first baseball game, was played in Hoboken, New Jersey.
CARLSON: Boy, Baltimore. A lot going on in Baltimore. Chris Epting, “The Ruby Slippers, Madonna’s Bra and Einstein’s Brain: The Locations of America’s Pop Culture Artifacts”. Excellent book. Thanks a lot for joining us.
EPTING: Thank you, Tucker.
CARLSON: Still ahead, Mexican defender Juan Hernandez, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and “American Idol” refugee William Hung. What do these three compelling figures have in common? Find out when THE SITUATION continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Welcome back. Willie Geist has split. No idea where he went, so we’re going to take this opportunity to do our voicemail segment, as we do every Thursday. You’ve been calling all week and leaving long, interesting, sometimes drunken messages on our machine. Here are a few of them.
First up.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
CALLER: Jack from Las Vegas. I was watching that smiling weasel Juan Hernandez, and I believe I’ve got a way to solve the energy crisis. If we can somehow tap the oil reserves in Mr. Hernandez’s hair I think the energy crisis could be over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Juan Hernandez. You couldn’t make Juan Hernandez up. My friend. My friend, we are friends. There is a way we could—he’s so fantastic. He’s the Al Sharpton of illegal immigration. There’s something about to guy that just charms me even though there’s not a word that has ever emerged from his mouth that I agree with. I just—I can’t help but like the guy.
Next up.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
CALLER: This is Joe in Athens, Georgia. I’d like to know who made the foolishness of electing that mayor of New Orleans once again. You know how many people he hurt? What a bunch of idiots.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
CARLSON: It’s actually unbelievable. I mean, when you hire a mayor it’s not just to cut ribbons in front of bank buildings when they open. It’s actually to do something, particularly in moments of crisis.
So New Orleans gets hit by Hurricane Katrina, and this guy starts crying and hides under his desk. Doesn’t evacuate the city, has a full breakdown in public view, totally unable to manage the place.
Then finally when, you know, the federal government comes in and starts to restore order he gets on television and starts talking about how he’s heard from God that there ought to be a chocolate city.
Imagine—imagine if this were any other place but New Orleans. That guy would be led away by men with nets. But somehow he gets reelected. I don’t know. It hasn’t shaken my faith in representative government, but it’s come pretty close, I have to say. I really don’t know how to explain it. It’s really a shame.
Next up.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
CALLER: This is Maude from Moline, Illinois. My friend and I want to make William Hung feel a little better with our own version of his favorite song.
(singing) Don’t tell my heart, my achy breaky heart. I just don’t think it’d understand. And if you break my heart, my achy breaky heart...
(END AUDIO CLIP)
CARLSON: Maude, did you really just sing “Achy Breaky Heart” into our answering machine? Maude, Maude, time for a hobby. No, that was actually—that was good.
We’ve gotten a lot of e-mail this week about William Hung, who was on the show just the other day. A lot of it has made the point that we were mean to him. And I just want to say for the record, I like to guy. I didn’t mean to mock him. But put yourself in my position. William Hung comes on our show, did what he does on our show. You’d have to play the clip, as we’re going to play it now. Here it is. William Hung. Look at that. He’s trying, oh, and he sneezes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAM HUNG, “AMERICAN IDOL” WANNABE (singing): My achy breaky heart. I just don’t think it’d understand. And if you tell my heart, my achy breaky heart...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: That clip is going to live on in our archives to be played every week as long as this show’s on the air. That’s my promise to you.
That’s THE SITUATION for tonight. Thanks for watching. Have a great Memorial Day weekend. We’ll see you back here Tuesday. Good night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HUNG (singing): My achy breaky heart. I just don’t think it’d understand. And if you tell my heart my achy breaky heart, he might grow up and kill this man.
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