“There’s this sudden fear that the next guy coming up the ladder is going to ruin it for everyone else who has made it.“
Daniel Okrent is the prize-winning author of six books, most recently The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America. He was also the corporate Editor-at-Large at Time Inc., and was the first public editor of The New York Times.
His career began at seven years old, when he wrote a letter to the editor that was surprisingly published. Daniel was a baseball writer at first, later publishing a book on the history of Rockefeller Center.
Daniel’s latest book covers the false science of eugenics, a set of practices aimed to “improve” the genetic quality of the human population. “It seems to me that we as a species need somebody to look down on. I don’t know why that’s the case.” Daniel also discusses the blanket term “whiteness” and how its expansion seems to be based on familiarity with a race or culture.
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SPEAKER
Daniel Okrent
Author
The Guarded Gate
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darsie: (00:08)
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Salt Talks. My name is John Darsie. I'm the managing director of Salt, which is a global thought leadership forum at the intersection of finance, technology, and public policy. Salt Talks, as you know, if you've tuned into them previously, are a series of digital interviews we've been doing during this work-from-home period with some of the world's foremost investors, creators, and thinkers.
John Darsie: (00:30)
And what we're really trying to do during these Salt Talks is replicate the experience that we provide at our global conference series, The Salt Conference, in which we aim to provide our audience a window into the mind of subject matter experts as well as provide a platform for what we think are ideas that are shaping the future, as well as interesting stories.
John Darsie: (00:47)
And we're very excited today to welcome Daniel Okrent today to Salt Talks. Daniel is the prize-winning author of six fantastic books on a very diverse set of topics. In fact, Publishers Weekly called him one of our most interesting and eclectic writers of nonfiction over the last 25 years. His most recent book, which was published in May of 2019 is called The Guarded Gate, and it's a story about bigotry, eugenics, and the law that kept two generations of Jews, Italians, and, and other European immigrants out of America. It started about eugenics and morphed into a book more broadly about immigration. I know Anthony and Daniel will talk at length about that book as well as some of his previous books.
John Darsie: (01:30)
And prior to The Guarded Gate, Daniel published the Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition in 2011, which was cited by the American Historical Association as the year's best book on American History. Prior to that, he wrote the Great Fortune, which is the epic of Rockefeller Center, talking about all the inner workings of how Rockefeller Center got built. That book was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in History.
John Darsie: (01:57)
Among his many jobs in publishing, Daniel was the corporate editor at large of Time Inc. He was also the first public editor of the New York Times. Daniel served on the board of Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery for 12 years, including a four-year term from 2003 to 2007 as the chairman, and he remains a board member of The Skyscraper Museum and the Authors Guild.
John Darsie: (02:18)
Daniel is a native of Detroit and a graduate of the University of Michigan. Go Blue! He now lives half the year in New York on the Upper West Side and the other half on Cape Cod with his wife, where he's currently residing right now. They have two children that are grown, and his wife is also a well-known poet.
John Darsie: (02:36)
A reminder to our audience that if you have any questions for Daniel during today's Salt Talk, you can post them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your video screen. And with that, I'll turn it over to Anthony Scaramucci, who's the founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm, to conduct today's interview.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:54)
Daniel, it's great to have you on. The first thing I have to do is I have to give a shout out to Sol Gittleman, the course professor from Tufts who watches these Salt Talks, so Sol, we're waving to you. I got your book from Sol. I went up to see him. He's living up in, I guess it's the Winchester area in an assisted living place with his wife, Robin. And he mentioned your book to me about a year ago. Maybe eight, nine months ago, I read the book, and obviously, then reached out to you.
Anthony Scaramucci: (03:23)
I thought it was one of the more fascinating books that I've read about that genre of time in American history, 1915 to 1935. I learned a lot about that book. My Italian grandparents were immigrating. My two grandmothers and one of my grandfathers, 1921 and 1923, respectfully. And then my dad's father was actually born here in the United States in 1895, so they had a little bit different experience in the immigration.
Anthony Scaramucci: (03:55)
But before we go into that book and your other books, I would love you to tell our listeners and viewers how you became a writer. What was it about your personal background that guided you in that direction from your time in college?
Daniel Okrent: (04:12)
Well, to tell the truth, I can take it back before my time in college. But first, thank you, Anthony, for inviting me to do this. It's a pleasure to be here. And hi, Sol. How are you? When I was seven years old, my father's oldest friend, who was involved in politics and to some degree journalism, he was a godfather to me. And he urged me to write a letter to the editor to the Detroit News, our local newspaper. And he said, "If you want to get it published, be sure to begin with, I am seven years old, but I have this opinion."
Daniel Okrent: (04:46)
SO I wrote this, signed it, and it appeared in the paper three days later. And I saw my name there, and it said underneath it, Danny because I was called Danny Okrent. And I said, "My God, my name's in the paper. I'm going to be a writer." It really goes back as far as that. But I got serious about it when I was in college doing journalism. Then I worked in the book publishing business.
Daniel Okrent: (05:08)
When you're an editor in the book publishing business, what you really want to do sometimes is be on the other side of the desk. And after nine years in book publishing, I switched, and I decided I'll try to be a writer, which meant four or five years of barely making mortgage payments, but then it worked out.
Anthony Scaramucci: (05:25)
Well, and then you went on to become an author. I mean, you're a phenomenal nonfiction author. And so you converted from journalism, which is a tough enough job, into actually writing books, which I know is a super tough job. When did you make that transition?
Daniel Okrent: (05:42)
When I began writing, I took the advice of a friend who said, "If you want to make it as a freelance writer, you'd better have a subject that you're really good at so people will come to you to write about that subject." And the thing that I knew better than anything else was baseball, so I became a baseball writer, and I did pretty well. I was published a lot, Esquire Magazine and Sports Illustrated. And I did a couple of books about baseball.
Daniel Okrent: (06:04)
But again, following that friend's advice, once you've established yourself on your subject, you can then switch to any subject you wish because you've shown that you can make it as a writer. So around 1990, '95, when I was in my 40s, I was working as a magazine editor, but thinking about leaving, making that change, and to turning full-time to writing, which I finally did in 1998.
Anthony Scaramucci: (06:27)
Daniel, what is your team? Which is it, Detroit Tigers or-
Daniel Okrent: (06:30)
No, the Chicago Cubs.
Anthony Scaramucci: (06:32)
Chicago Cubs, alright. There you go. Well, congratulations. You finally got one. It's awesome.
Daniel Okrent: (06:35)
Finally, yeah.
Anthony Scaramucci: (06:37)
You were also the George Washington of the modern rotisserie scoring system for fantasy baseball. See, a lot of people don't know that about you as well, which is equally fascinating. I interrupted. I didn't mean to, but I just wanted to hear. I'm a huge baseball fanatic.
Daniel Okrent: (06:50)
No, no, no, not at all. I just found that when our kids were graduating from high school, the opportunity to have the freedom to live where we want and to make my own schedule really played into my long-term wish to write for a living. So I left the magazine business in 2001, but I had begun working on the Rockefeller Center book, Great Fortune, about in 1997, I think. So I date my career-
Anthony Scaramucci: (07:16)
Why that, though, Daniel? Why did you pick that subject?
Daniel Okrent: (07:20)
Well, again, I don't have a good reason. I have a silly reason. It was somebody else's idea. I was called by a publisher I knew slightly. We had lunch. It was a very nice lunch. It was back in the days when I'd actually have a drink at lunch, and a beautiful afternoon in an outdoor garden behind a restaurant in the village. And I said to her, "I'm really not looking for a book to write. I've got this job and others."
Daniel Okrent: (07:45)
She said, "Well, I want you to write a history of the Rockefeller Center." And I said, "It's a deal." My agent, who was sitting at the table, said, "You never should do such a thing."
Daniel Okrent: (07:53)
When I was the editor of Life Magazine, and when I was corporate editor at large, my office looked at Rockefeller Center. I was in the Time and Life building at 6th Avenue and 50th Street on the West Side, and I saw that place and walked through it every day, and I lived it for a variety of reasons. So the opportunity to learn more about it and have somebody pay me to do that was something I couldn't pass up.
Anthony Scaramucci: (08:16)
And, boy, I thought that was a phenomenal book. I read your books in reverse order. Well, I read The Guarded Gate, then The Last Call, and then I found ... Somebody had mentioned to me that you had written the book on Rockefeller Center. I thought that book was amazing. Let's touch on Rockefeller Center for a second because it almost didn't happen, as we both know, based on your book. And yet, this was a phenomenal experiment by John D. Rockefeller Jr. Tell us a little bit about the idea behind Rockefeller Center and what it means to the city of New York.
Daniel Okrent: (08:49)
Well, it was an accident. John D. Rockefeller Jr., who had never done anything resembling property development, but was an extremely generous philanthropist even beyond his father, really his entire career was philanthropy. He acquired a ground lease to the land that is now Rockefeller Center from Columbia University so that the Metropolitan Opera Company could build an opera house there. And then the opera company, as they're preparing to build an opera house, suddenly the market crashes in 1929. And they go to Rockefeller and say, "Well, we can't really afford it," even though these were some of the richest people in New York, "So would you build the opera house as well?"
Daniel Okrent: (09:28)
And he said, "It was at that moment I decided I could either work for them or I could work for myself. And I decided to do it alone." And he had this 99-year lease on three blocks of Midtown Manhattan that absolutely had become worth almost nothing, but he was committed to it. And he had deep enough pockets that he could stick with it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (09:48)
It's an amazing story. So he built this beautiful complex, and he put a lot of people to work in that complex. And obviously, as we both know, it's the real heartbeat of Midtown Manhattan.
Daniel Okrent: (10:00)
Right.
Anthony Scaramucci: (10:02)
And tell us-
Daniel Okrent: (10:03)
Go ahead.
Anthony Scaramucci: (10:03)
No, no, I was just tying it back to the book for one second and get your insight here. But it didn't look like it was going to be successful in the beginning. Right? I mean, it looked like he had-
Daniel Okrent: (10:14)
It was a calamity. It was the Depression, it was the Depression. And the only way they could get people to move into it, they were the primary means of acquiring tenants, first, everything that the Rockefellers were involved in. Standard Oil of New Jersey moved into it. Rockefeller Foundation moved into it. Everything that had the name Rockefeller connected moved in. So that occupied about 1% of the space.
Daniel Okrent: (10:38)
And then they made deals with anybody who wanted to get the contract to build the place had to commit to a lease as well. "So I'm trying to decide between Westinghouse and Otis for the elevators. Which one is going to take up the most space in my building?" Westinghouse said, "We'll do it." Then he signs up Westinghouse.
Daniel Okrent: (10:55)
I should say it's not John D, Rockefeller Jr. Himself, as you know, but a man named John R. Todd, Christie Todd Whitman's grandfather, who really was the genius who did the work. He was the real developer.
Anthony Scaramucci: (11:07)
It's an amazing story. And also David Sarnoff, the legendary David Sarnoff takes 30 Rock for the Radio Corporation of America, which goes on to become NBC. And if you walk those storied halls, which I have because I've done television there, you can hear the voices of Howdy Doody, and Captain Kangaroo, and Johnny Carson, and Jack Paar. Well, that's an amazing book. I want to recommend it to the people that are listening. But I want to transition back to your latest book, which I think is very timely given the election coming up. And it's called The Guarded Gate, and it is about immigration.
Anthony Scaramucci: (11:43)
And, boy, I thought we were having a tough time with immigration in 2015 to 2020 until I read your book, Daniel, and recognized that it was probably worse 1915 to 1935, considerably worse. So let's talk about eugenics and that false science of eugenics. And let's talk about where the zeitgeist of America was at the time of They Guarded Gate.
Daniel Okrent: (12:09)
Well, the movement to keep out immigrants from eastern and southern Europe begins in 1896. And a piece of legislation is passed that would require a literacy test for people coming into the country. And it was clear to the people who wrote that, in fact, they listed the countries, that people from these countries were less likely to be literate, and we could keep them out that way.
Daniel Okrent: (12:31)
But that was vetoed, that bill, in 1897 by Grover Cleveland. It was passed again under William Howard Taft, vetoed again. Passed again early in Wilson's tenure, vetoed again. And then finally in 1917, there were enough votes to override another Wilson veto because the anti-immigrants had changed the story. After being accused of racial and religious ethnic prejudice, they came upon this nonsense science called eugenics.
Daniel Okrent: (13:00)
Eugenics begins in the United Kingdom in the aftermath of Darwin. It's a distortion of Darwin, but even then, the idea of matching up the best women and the best men to marry each other, they might produce better babies as the term was used throughout this period for contests at state fairs. But what the anti-immigrationists did was they decided to apply it to ethnic groups.
Daniel Okrent: (13:29)
The lead publicist for this movement was a New Yorker named Madison Grant, who wrote a book published in 1915 called The Passing of the Great Race. And he posited that there were three European races, and they were a hierarchy. And at the very top were the Nordics who were bold, and strong, and confident, and smart, and they should run the world. And they're the people from Scandinavia and from the British Isles.
Daniel Okrent: (13:55)
Then there are the Alpines from France and Austria. They're artisans, and we need them in our culture. And at the very bottom are the Mediterraneans, the Italians, and the Greeks, and the Turks. And he actually writes at one point in the book, and he said, "As we now know from the science of eugenics," which wasn't science, "any intermarriage between any of these two groups, the offspring will revert to the lower form. Therefore, if a Nordic marries an Alpine, their children will be Alpines. If an Alpine marries a Mediterranean, their children will be Mediterraneans. And if any of the three European groups marries a Jew, their children will be Jews." This is a horrifying thought published by our leading publishing companies and embraced by two generations of American politicians.
Anthony Scaramucci: (14:45)
Let's go to the culture. What were they fearing?
Daniel Okrent: (14:48)
Well, to take a term from today, displacement. They were fearing displacement. I think the first fear is just the fear of the unknown. But this goes back, Anthony, as far as before the Republic is born. In the 1750s, there was a newspaper editor in Philadelphia who was writing screeds about keeping the Germans out of Pennsylvania because they're going to destroy our culture and our language. That was Benjamin Franklin who wrote that.
Daniel Okrent: (15:17)
So it really, really goes back. It comes up every couple of generations in America that there's this sudden fear that the next guy coming up the ladder is going to ruin things for those of us who have already made it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (15:30)
So in your opinion, the anti-immigrant sentiment today, is it worse? How is it different? Is it under there's a displacement issue? Clearly, that's why I brought that up. How would you describe today versus 85, 90 years ago, or 100 years ago?
Daniel Okrent: (15:48)
Well, I think there's a very strong similarity, which is to say that we are not deciding whom to allow into the country based on that person's quality as an individual. We're doing it on the basis of where they come from, what ethnic group they belong to. So it just says Italians, Greeks, Romanians, Poles, Jews. They were the ones who were ... They used the expression of a well-known politician in America from the shithole countries of the day.
Daniel Okrent: (16:16)
Now, the same thing is being applied to people Arab nations and from Central America and Mexico. If you're deciding to keep somebody out because they're from Honduras, that's like keeping somebody out because they're from Italy rather than do I want this person in the country. And that sounds very, very similar.
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:38)
No, I thought that was a fascinating part of the book, and I'm interested in your reaction because Teddy Roosevelt wrote legislation saying that Italians, for immigration purposes, were to be treated as non-Caucasian. I remember my grandfather being sore about that. Jews and Italians were considered, back then, nonwhite. I think we've gotten whiter over the last hundred years if that makes any sense to you. And so I guess, can you talk a little bit about that evolution of the expanding definition of whiteness in the United States?
Daniel Okrent: (17:16)
Well, it's a matter of familiarity, and it's a shame that we have to use a color to define it. But, in fact, you're right, that's how it was determined at the time. The notion that somebody is beneath you on the ladder begins to fall apart when that person climbs up the ladder and is succeeding.
Daniel Okrent: (17:37)
So as we saw, Italians, and Greeks, and the Eastern European Jews make it in American society. The question is, are they pulling up the ladder so that nobody else can come behind them, or are they extending the ladder because they're glad that they've made it? And they made it in the eyes of the people who would rather keep them out because they've gotten educated, and they've worked hard, and they've become good American citizens. It's really not any more complicated than that.
Anthony Scaramucci: (18:04)
There's an American History book called These Truths by Lepore.
Daniel Okrent: (18:09)
Jill Lepore, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Anthony Scaramucci: (18:10)
Jill Lepore. And she was also a Tufts grad. It's another book that Sol recommended me. Did you read that book or not?
Daniel Okrent: (18:16)
Yes, I did. I know Jill quite well. Yeah.
Anthony Scaramucci: (18:17)
Okay. So I want to emphasize these books and ask you an opinion now because I'm going to intersect the two books because her book is really about the truth of what happened in America. We get a story in social studies about America's greatness, and obviously, we both love America. I can tell from your writing that you love America as much as I do. But we also know that there's an underbelly of America. There's a seething in America. There's this discontent in America.
Anthony Scaramucci: (18:45)
And so my question to you, has that always been the case in America? Is it worse now? Is it better now? Or how can we make it better?
Daniel Okrent: (18:56)
I don't know that it's any worse now than it has been in the past because the same principles are operative, in which one is to come up with excuses not just to demean the lower group, but in the process, to exalt the group you belong to. It seems that we, as a species, Anthony, need to have somebody to look down on. I don't know why that is the case.
Daniel Okrent: (19:24)
I think it's probably more toxic today because of the communications culture that we have so that we can see in an instant the nature of the hatred that exists. Some people say, "Has this president, has he made this country that has more haters in it, more anti-Catholics, more anti-Semites, anti-black?" I said, "No, I don't think he has. He's just given the opportunity to come out of the closet. And in a world of Facebook and Twitter, it's very easy for vile and poison to pour into the culture at large.
Anthony Scaramucci: (19:59)
Well, we took the village idiot, and we turned him into a global idiot through the use of the social media. They can sit in their basement, and they have this huge microphone now to speak to the rest of us. I mean, not to go into politics, I try to stay away from politics on these talks. But one of the reasons why I disavowed my relationship with the president, and no longer gave him my support, had to do with this story because he told four congresswomen, also known as the squad, to go back to the countries that they originally came from, three of which were born here in the United States. One was a naturalized citizen, all four democratically elected to our Congress.
Anthony Scaramucci: (20:41)
And so they told my grandparents that. They said, "Go back to the country you came from." You write about it. You write about the NINA movement for the Irish and the Italians. No Italians or Irish need apply in these storefronts. My grandmother was subjected to that. And so I want to ask you this question. We're still subjecting people to this. Is there a panacea? Is there something that we ... Your book is clearly something for intellectuals to read and become more aware of this and become more psychologically minded of it. I'm just talking about from the social construction, Daniel, based on your life experience, is there anything that we can do to make this better? Or is this a permanent syndrome for us?
Daniel Okrent: (21:24)
There comes a time, I think, in every bad moment in American history where there's a swing in the other direction. The 1924 Immigration Law, which is the one that effectively kept Southern and Eastern European immigrants out of America for 40 years, it falls apart in 1965 at the same time that the Civil Rights Movement was happening.
Daniel Okrent: (21:46)
Coming out of World War II and beginning to understand the country better, and the black quest for rights becoming visible, that informed a larger expression of that same moment. In 1965, the passage of the Hart-Celler Act, which revoked the 1924 law, opened the gates to an incredible immigration that we have benefited from enormously.
Daniel Okrent: (22:13)
Now, I'm not suggesting that anybody who wants to come should be allowed in. I think that what we had for many years was not a quota, but a quotient, a limit to the number of people. And it was a lottery. Anybody could come. Anybody could try, and I think that we're going to get back to that. We're going to get back to that when this president is no longer president, let's not talk about politics.
Anthony Scaramucci: (22:39)
I didn't mean to bring up the politics. I just wanted to explain how you-
Daniel Okrent: (22:42)
No, I'm trying to go with you on it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (22:44)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was trying to explain how your book moved me. We're going to let John Darsie, who you can see. He was an early immigrant of the United States because he wears that gray-haired wig of his great-grandfather. See the picture behind him? He's one of those ... Anyway, we can talk about that later. We'll talk about that offline.
Anthony Scaramucci: (23:03)
But I want to get to prohibition for one second, and then I'm going to open up to John Darsie and questions from our audience. The prohibition book was also phenomenal. And when I finished the book, the only thing I could think of was hypocrisy. That's the only thing I could think of. I closed the book. I said, "Wow! We are sanctimonious and righteous, but yet, on a Saturday night, we're all living it up." It was very hypocritical.
Anthony Scaramucci: (23:32)
So number one, what's your favorite drink? You mentioned you were having a drink at the restaurant there before you wrote the Rockefeller Center book. But what's your favorite drink?
Daniel Okrent: (23:41)
I'm a brown goods, I'm a bourbon drinker in the winter, and I'm a gin drinker in the summer. And I can drink my gin in any number of different combinations.
Anthony Scaramucci: (23:49)
Okay, there you go. Okay, so I like a good Negroni. I like a gin and tonic. I'm a gin drinker myself, but I've also discovered Tito's Vodka as I've gotten older, which is a good one with lemonade. But here we are, a country that was so Christian ideologically based that we literally got a Constitutional Amendment passed to ban drinking, yet we were all drinking, so go ahead. I mean, on that before I turn it over to Darsie.
Daniel Okrent: (24:18)
Yeah. Think of it this way ... Just to that, Anthony, there are only two things in the Constitution that limit the rights of individuals. The Constitution limits the powers of government, the two things that limit it. And the 13th Amendment says you can't own slaves, and the 18th Amendment says you ant have a glass of beer. The notion of equating these two things alone shows you how insane it was.
Anthony Scaramucci: (24:42)
Well, how did it get reversed? Roosevelt, right, Franklin Roosevelt, basically, right?
Daniel Okrent: (24:47)
Well, it got reversed because there was a sudden need for tax revenue. In 1929, the crash comes in. Income tax collections drop by 30%. There are no capital gains collections at all between 1929 and 1932. Somebody says, "Where can we get the money to run the government?" Well, Geez. You remember that alcohol tax? And like so many things in American life, money turned it around.
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:11)
I just want to comment, in the age of global warming, it would have been very hard to drive those trucks over the Great Lakes from Canada to bring all that booze into the United States.
Daniel Okrent: (25:19)
Exactly.
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:21)
It would have been on motorboats this time. I got to turn it over to John. We have great audience participation here, lots of questions, Daniel. I could talk to you for hours, but I got to turn it over to George Washington. So go ahead, George.
John Darsie: (25:34)
Alright. Don't hold it against me.
Daniel Okrent: (25:36)
Well, before we hear, don't hold it against you, John, I mean, if you do go back that far, it's worth pointing out that the term that people whose families have been here since the 18th century used to describe themselves during this period was Native Americans.
John Darsie: (25:50)
Well, there you go. I actually don't go back that far.
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:53)
I'm using that on our next Salt Talk, Okrent. Thank you for bringing that up. Thank you.
John Darsie: (25:56)
It's all just part of Anthony's shtick. My family emigrated from Scotland in the 1800s, actually to New York, but I was raised in North Carolina, so I'm really just a redneck that Anthony likes to call a wasp.
John Darsie: (26:10)
Anyways, getting back on topic, you talk in the book a little bit, and I've seen some interviews that you did about The Guarded Gate where you talk about science and about how science was used as a pretense for creating these immigration quotas. Science was a pretense for the Holocaust and things of that nature. But today, we use science as an argument for addressing things like climate change or related to the pandemic and public health issues.
John Darsie: (26:38)
Fundamentally, how do we make sure that science doesn't get politicized and protect the sanctity of science in our society?
Daniel Okrent: (26:47)
I don't know how to do that. If we knew how to do that, we wouldn't be in this terrible dilemma right now with 170,000 Americans needlessly dead. The ability to denigrate science, it shocks me. I mean, certainly, for the last 50 years, this country has respected science, and I think it goes back further than that.
Daniel Okrent: (27:10)
Now, in connection to what I'm writing about in my book, sometimes science turns out not to be science. And this was a very difficult thing for me to conjure with. Science only knows what it knows today. It doesn't know what's going to happen tomorrow. It can imagine and project, but it doesn't know for sure. And until things can be disproven, then sometimes people aren't going to accept them as real. Nothing I can do about it.
John Darsie: (27:36)
Right. So it's a fundamental challenge that we have to be rigorous about addressing the truth behind science and not allow it to be distorted.
Daniel Okrent: (27:44)
Yeah, exactly.
John Darsie: (27:44)
We have a question from one of our viewers talking about The Guarded Gate refers to immigration from the outside, but there's also internal barriers that act as guarded gates within our society to immigrants, restrictive zoning policies, nimbyism, in general, by both liberal and conservative politicians. How do we address those types of internal guarded gates with our society, or do you have a prescription for it? Or how do you observe those phenomenons that have existed ranging back from the beginning of the 20th century through today?
Daniel Okrent: (28:17)
What I can do is recommend two books that address this directly. The first by Richard Rothstein, and it's called The Color of Law. It was published several years ago, and it describes how, by law, by acts of Congress, and by presidential action, black Americans were kept ghettoized by policy. And they are continuing to be victimized by what happened to their parents and their grandparents. It's required reading, I think.
Daniel Okrent: (28:47)
Equally, a brand new book about to come out called One Billion Americans by the exceptionally astute political commentator, Matthew Yglesias, points out how we can get past this. And one of his ways of getting past it is to expand the society. We need more Americans. We need more Americans mixing with other Americans. And then he goes into a very persuasive argument about why that would be very powerful in improving the lives of all Americans, both those here today, and those we're going to create soon.
John Darsie: (29:19)
What's the next wave of people that we look down on? So we talked about the evolution of whiteness. It didn't use to include Jews and Italians. And now we look down on the Central American immigrants that are becoming so ingrained in our society. They'll eventually be such an important part of the electorate that they can't be ignored. What's the next evolution of that whiteness and how we discriminate against people?
Daniel Okrent: (29:46)
My fear is that it'll be directed toward Africa, both Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa. There was quite a substantial immigration from Africa after the law was changed in 1965. And we see the scientists, and the football players, and the politicians who came out of that and have really added to American life, but it wasn't attended to much by the haters during that period.
Daniel Okrent: (30:13)
And I think if we can get past this period, we hope we can get past that one too, but that would be the obvious ... Those would be the people who would obviously be the next targets, I think.
John Darsie: (30:23)
Right. I want to pivot a little bit to your time in journalism. So you served as the first public editor of the New York Times, a role in which you were asked to, without guidance from the paper itself, or without a few or a favor, critique the paper's work. It's a role that we're familiar with now, but you were a pioneer in that space. How did you critique the New York Times' performance during that period as a public editor, and how would you critique the modern media in the way it's covered the Trump presidency?
Daniel Okrent: (30:52)
Well, you got a few hours? Then I could go into great detail on it. I learned an important thing, John, when I was the public editor during the 2004 election. I got a call one day from a reader. I guess it was an email from a reader who said, "It's clear to me," the reader said, "that the Times is in the pocket for George Bush because there's a picture of George Bush in color page one, three columns, above the fold, looking happy, and strong, and confident. And that's clearly you're favoring that candidate."
Daniel Okrent: (31:23)
And I asked the reader, "Who was on the front page of yesterday's paper?" And he said, "I don't know." And I said, "Well, it was John Kerry in an equally happy and positive context."
Daniel Okrent: (31:37)
This has only gotten worse. Too many of us are seeking out the news that conforms to our view of the world. If it conforms to the view of our world, it's true. If it does not, it's either fake news, or it's biased in some other fashion. And this has only gotten worse. It's gotten worse in every aspect of the media as we get fractionated.
Daniel Okrent: (32:01)
Liberals watch MSNBC. Conservatives watch Fox. Who reads the Times? Who reads the Journal? We don't have a common set of information. We aren't hearing the same things. And how you can build a society when we don't have that in common is hard to imagine.
Anthony Scaramucci: (32:21)
But we're arguing about the facts now, right? So we can't even have a proper debate because we're getting different facts from different channels.
Daniel Okrent: (32:29)
Yeah, and so-called facts. There was a time when-
John Darsie: (32:32)
It's like eugenics. It's like the point you made about eugenics.
Daniel Okrent: (32:36)
There was a time that if Walter Kronkite said something, America thought, "Oh, yeah. That's probably true." There were three national sources of news, the three network news shows. Now, let me find the news that pleases me the most, and that's not news. That's propaganda.
John Darsie: (32:54)
How does the New York Times, for example ... And they've been criticized in certain corners of the media for covering some of Trump's shenanigans ad nauseum and giving the attention to him that he seeks by some of the behavior that he engages in. He pardoned Susan B. Anthony to distract from things that are going on at the Democratic National Convention or to distract from the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report. How do you balance the reporting on the president, he's the president of the United States, things that he does and says probably deserves some level of attention, but how do you make sure that the right stories get covered?
Daniel Okrent: (33:33)
There's no way of making certain that the right stories are getting covered. But as you said, John, you have to cover what the president does, or even what the leading candidate of one of our two major political parties does.
Daniel Okrent: (33:43)
Back in the 2016 campaign, Trump was saying outrageous things, and he was saying it to these huge crowds, and people were complaining. Why are you giving him so much television time? Well, he's a candidate for president. We can't help that. He's making the agenda.
Daniel Okrent: (33:58)
Now, it's incumbent on the new media to call him on falsehoods and to show that there's another side to the story. But I do think that we could all get carried away in one direction or the other.
John Darsie: (34:12)
I want to switch gears once again. Like I talked about in the intro, you're a man of eclectic taste. You started out as a baseball writer before writing these fascinating books about a variety of different topics. But you, as Anthony mentioned, were the father of the rotisserie scoring system for fantasy baseball. How did you develop that love of the game, and how did you come up with that rotisserie style of scoring for fantasy baseball?
John Darsie: (34:37)
I asked you about your fantasy team before we went live, and you said you quit that about 10 years ago, about 10 years after you quit smoking. So what's the genesis of your fantasy baseball fascination? How'd you come up with all of that?
Daniel Okrent: (34:50)
Well, at times, I thought fantasy baseball was more dangerous to my health than smoking was, certainly it was to my pocketbook. I was terrible at it. The idea came to me in 1980, and it was really the first real fantasy sport at all. This shows how stupid we were, rotisserie was our trademarked name. People would always call it rotisserie, or if they didn't, they'd have to pay us a royalty for whatever they produced under that name. And then, of course, somebody came up with the generic name, fantasy, and we disappeared, but that's fine.
Daniel Okrent: (35:19)
It just came to me because it was the winter of 1979, 1980, and I was missing baseball. I was simply bereft of baseball, and I started thinking about getting engaged in the game, missing the back scores. And boom, then my colleagues and I, we were in the Times, and we were on the Today Show. We were on CBS Morning News. Word got out, and this is why I'm a fabulously wealthy man today because everybody who plays the game pays me for the privilege.
Anthony Scaramucci: (35:51)
Do you remember Strat-O-Matic Baseball?
Daniel Okrent: (35:53)
I played it endlessly as a kid.
Anthony Scaramucci: (35:56)
Yeah, so the legendary Hal Richman is a native of the town I grew up in. And so at the age of seven, I learned Strat-O-Matic Baseball. And in 2008, I bought a piece of the company. It was obviously the precursor to-
Daniel Okrent: (36:13)
Absolutely.
Anthony Scaramucci: (36:14)
I'm a big baseball aficionado, so I own a piece of the Mets. I own a piece of Strat-O-Matic Baseball. You remember-
Daniel Okrent: (36:19)
Well, the piece of Strat-O-Matic Baseball is more valuable than a piece of the Mets.
Anthony Scaramucci: (36:24)
Actually, no. I mean, think about it. There's a couple of hedge fund managers that are bidding for the Mets, not Strat-O-Matic Baseball.
Daniel Okrent: (36:30)
I know, I know. You know what I'm saying.
Anthony Scaramucci: (36:32)
I do. I do. In terms of the literary significance of Strat-O-Matic Baseball, I tell children, "Learn Strat-O-Matic Baseball, you can manage money because there's a lot of statistical insight in that game."
Anthony Scaramucci: (36:46)
I don't mean to interrupt you, John, but I have to ask this question. Baseball has a future, Daniel?
Daniel Okrent: (36:54)
I sure hope so. It's so hard watching now. I can't watch because seeing the empty seats, it's not right. It's just off. I can listen on the radio and even accept the fake fan noise because it is a familiar thing that's coming to me over the airwaves. The sound with the ball and the bat, and the crown noise, the announcer, if you connect to baseball, you want this in your life forever. And I'm just hopeful that future generations will feel the way that you and I do.
Anthony Scaramucci: (37:28)
Are we going to seven innings?
Daniel Okrent: (37:30)
Oh, I hope not. I mean, there are some things in this, clearly. One of the things that is sneaking into baseball under the guise of COVID protection is the end of pitchers batting in the National League. This is how they're getting rid of the DH. They're also getting rid of extra inning baseball as we know it with this new man on second when the inning starts.
Daniel Okrent: (37:56)
There are going to be a lot of changes. Whenever you have a crisis, and this is true, I'm sure, in your world, in finance, in politics. Whenever there's a crisis, other things change because attention is elsewhere. And that's going to happen with baseball.
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:08)
Yeah. Well, we had the crisis that led to us being able to drink alcohol again.
Daniel Okrent: (38:13)
There you go. Exactly.
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:14)
John, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead. I'm sorry.
John Darsie: (38:16)
Stealing my thunder here, Anthony. Come on.
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:18)
I'm sorry about that. Go ahead.
John Darsie: (38:19)
We have one more question from the audience, and then we'll let you go, Daniel, back to your hammock there in beautiful Cape Cod. How come there's been no mention of your hit play, Old Jews Telling Jokes? And is there some value to the connection to humor when dealing with ideas around the acceptance of immigrants and the problems in our society?
Daniel Okrent: (38:39)
My colleague Peter Gethers, with whom I wrote Old Jews Telling Jokes, Peter and I learned by working on this show, which was a hit. This is the way that everybody deals the tragedy and sorrow. Make fun of it. It's the only way of making it tolerable. And so very quickly, one quick old Jew joke about Mr. Grossman goes to the doctor. He's a very old man. He said, "Doctor, doctor, I can't pee. "And he said, "Well, how old are you, Mr. Grossman?" He said, "I'm 94." He says, "Ah, you've peed enough." That's how he dealt with it.
John Darsie: (39:19)
Alright. Well, it was a pleasure having you on, Daniel. Anthony is a big fan of your books. I need to read all of them, still, but I started in preparation for this talk, but it's been fascinating to hear your perspectives. And Anthony, if you have any final word for Daniel before we let him go.
Anthony Scaramucci: (39:36)
Well, listen, I just think that you're identifying a strand as is Lepore in her book, Jill in her book, about America that we need to all understand. And we have to face that reality and work towards progressing and improving America. And so, very, very grateful for you writing those books. Before we do let you go, though, are you writing something now that you can discuss, Daniel, or not?
Daniel Okrent: (40:03)
I'm thinking about something. It's a story of old New York, about the family that was the second-largest landowning family in New York after the Asters. And nobody has ever heard of them. And it's a story of who they were, and why they disappeared. It's pretty interesting stuff.
Anthony Scaramucci: (40:20)
Alright, well, I'll look forward to reading that as well.
Daniel Okrent: (40:23)
Stay tuned.
Anthony Scaramucci: (40:24)
And I wish you a great rest of the summer. And let's stay in touch, please. And hopefully, when we get back to our live events, Daniel, we can have you come to one of our live events. I think you would enjoy it.
Daniel Okrent: (40:34)
Thank you very much, Anthony. This was a pleasure. And thank you, John, too.
John Darsie: (40:37)
Thank you, Daniel.