The Mailers do Hannity and Colmes
Once I heard that Norman Mailer and his son, John, were going to do Hannity and Colmes, I had to see how that interview went. I have the transcript, and some things pop out at me.
#1: HANNITY: As we continue on “Hannity & Colmes,” the always outspoken author, Norman Mailer, has collaborated on a new book with his son, John Buffalo Mailer, titled “The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America.” Norman Mailer and his son John join us now.
Let me just get it out of the way. I know, Bush is awful, he’s terrible, he lied. Let me guess: you probably want to impeach him, right?
NORMAN MAILER, CO-AUTHOR, “THE BIG EMPTY”: I don’t care. He’s not worth impeaching.
HANNITY: Really?
N. MAILER: Yes. He’ll become a martyr if he’s impeached. I’d as soon see him flounder along.
#2: HANNITY: You agree with your dad a lot?
JOHN BUFFALO MAILER, CO-AUTHOR, “THE BIG EMPTY”: On a lot of things, absolutely.
HANNITY: Oh, boy. Well, don’t worry; we’ll fix you. We’ll Hannitize you. Insufferable, he. You said — you called our president, George W. Bush, the enemy. Do you think George Bush is your enemy? A question that he is obsessed with, as though he doesn’t understand the terms of Democratic Debate being multi-sided. Do you consider Clinton the enemy, a#hole?
N. MAILER: Yes. He’s my spiritual enemy. I’ll give you — I can give you 82 examples, and I’m 83. I’ll come up with 83, tonight maybe more.
To begin with, he wrecks the American language. We’re a democracy and democracy depends on language growing. I say this over and over and over.
One of the reasons the English got through all their falls and the loss of their empire, all their disasters, their strikes, their difficulties, their wars through the years was they had Shakespeare to fall back on. And they speak well in England. They do.
#3: HANNITY: You are a smart man; you’re a brilliant author. Politics, there’s a lot that I don’t agree with, but you go as far to say, your philosophy is we’ve got to live with terror. You went on and you made a statement about our country, the only reason we went to war — if I could find it here — was to boost the ego of white American males?
You know, Norman, those comments while we are at war, while troops are in harm’s way, while he is the commander in chief Groan, do you not see the outrage in that?
N. MAILER: Yes, I do. So what?
HANNITY: So that’s what you want to do?
N. MAILER: You know, you have the right in a democracy to make people angry.
HANNITY: You do.
N. MAILER: You have the right to speak your mind.
HANNITY: You have the right to be wrong.
N. MAILER: You have the right to be wrong. And I can be wrong and I can be right. I was not mocking the soldiers. I was a soldier, after all, along with a good many other people.
HANNITY: You’re undermining them, though. You’re undermining their leader. Groan.
N. MAILER: No, I’m not undermining them. Bush is undermining them.
#4: HANNITY: People said Reagan couldn’t…
N. MAILER: I thought I’d get my 30 seconds.
HANNITY: Reagan said it’s the evil empire.
COLMES: Hold on. It’s my turn to talk. Let me get John in here. Holy Cow! Alan Colmes is in the studio???
#5: N. MAILER: Can I get a sentence finished? One of the reasons they’re stupid is because they’re made stupid. They’re encouraged in their stupidity. When you have a president who speaks only in cliches — only in cliches — to the public — I’m sure he’s a little brighter in private — but when he speaks only in cliches to the public, he’s rendering the people stupid.
COLMES: You also say in the book…
N. MAILER: One last thought.
COLMES: Yes.
N. MAILER: And a democracy depends upon people getting brighter all the time. Democracies are delicate. They’re not just ipso facto and just go on and on.
COLMES: You the say the purpose of the right in America is to keep the majority as stupid as possible, as they run into less opposition by having stupid people. You basically put that squarely in the right’s province, that they’re the ones who are doing this.
N. MAILER: Yes. Yes. Well, they’re determined to keep us stupid. […]
HANNITY: Get away from the government schools and take the vouchers that Republicans are offering so you can have some competition and free market capitalism.
N. MAILER: Come on. I’m not here to debate things…
HANNITY: No, because I’m going to beat you in that debate.
COLMES: … me he would win. He actually admits that he beats me every night. Ba De Dum
#6: HANNITY: I’ve got less than a minute. I’m going to tell you something. You say 52 percent of this country is stupid.
N. MAILER: That’s my number.
HANNITY: All of you — all you liberals thought Reagan was stupid.
Reagan did the impossible; he brought the wall down. He ended the — the Soviet regime. The world is a better, safe place.
N. MAILER: You going to take up all my minutes?
HANNITY: I’m going to tell you something right now. George Bush is doing the same thing. You’re going to be proven wrong from the prism of history.
N. MAILER: I wasn’t proven wrong the last time.
HANNITY: Reagan…
N. MAILER: Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments.
HANNITY: Darn right he did.
N. MAILER: We bankrupted the Soviet Union. We didn’t defeat them.
HANNITY: We beat them.
N. MAILER: And look at the mess they’re in now. We didn’t beat them.
We bankrupted them.
HANNITY: They’re better off than what they were under — sure, they are.
Two superpowers. One bankrupted before the other one. And so it goes, and to the Reagan fetishist, the question: how do you propose we bankrupt Iran? Or, more importantly al Qaeda, for that matter?