19891980s NEWS
The Eleventh Hour - Show #186
Title: Conversation with Senator Moynihan
Guests: Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Original Broadcast Date: 4/25/89
Description:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, three-term senator and former Times Square shoe-shine boy, has been an outspoken advocate in the fight to bring New York's problems to the attention of Congress and the nation. He has primarily been known as a welfare reformer, but has expanded his interests to include drug policy, overcrowded courts, and alternative modes of transportation. In an one-on-one interview, Robert Lipsyte explores how the senator's New York upbringing and philosophy have affected his passion for his home state.
Title: Conversation with Senator Moynihan
Guests: Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Original Broadcast Date: 4/25/89
Description:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, three-term senator and former Times Square shoe-shine boy, has been an outspoken advocate in the fight to bring New York's problems to the attention of Congress and the nation. He has primarily been known as a welfare reformer, but has expanded his interests to include drug policy, overcrowded courts, and alternative modes of transportation. In an one-on-one interview, Robert Lipsyte explores how the senator's New York upbringing and philosophy have affected his passion for his home state.
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Funding for the program by announcer and overlay The Eleventh Hour graphic.
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The Eleventh Hour graphic and show opener
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Various black and white photo stills (and some color) of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as Host Robert Lipsyte narrates a bit of his life history.
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Host Robert Lipsyte in studio welcomes viewers to the program and introduces himself.
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Host Lipsyte talks about his guest and introduces Senior New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
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INTERVIEW.
Robert Lipsyte: telling us for years now back to the moynihan report, the pathological tangle of the black family. More recently, the tale of two cities as as New York is kind of pulling apart and other cities pulling apart between rich and poor, which is probably something that we saw, you're not going to say I told you so. But in a sense you have and and what did this evoke for you? What did you think about when you read about the beating? Daniel P Moynihan 3:23 Mostly, that we haven't been able to deal with this situation, we really haven't even wanted to define it. above what is distinctive about this time and makes it different from all other times of which there is any record is the the collapse of family structure. And this goes across ethnic racial lines, it doesn't go across class lines, family structure now defined social class in this country. I would think that in a majority of the health districts, New Yorkers, well, no this necessarily but your everybody lives in a Health District, they go back to the early 19th century, when we first began dealing with epidemiology, epidemics, you know, majority of our health districts, a majority of the children born are out of wedlock. That's an old fashioned term, but it's a state's a reality, which is that there's one person in the family, we've had a generation of single parent families growing, growing, growing, doubling every 15 years is about the rate. In the majority of the majority quote, it's been it's increased 10 times in the last quarter century. The single parent family is now beginning to give way to the no parent child that is particularly vicious. The impact of crack on on our species it will get to the Female of the Species whereas heresy heroine did was was a male thing. And so you have have had, you know, we will be back to the orphanage sir. And before the turn of this century, we will be reinventing an institution we began to phase out at the beginning of this century, Robert Lipsyte 5:24 the orphanage This is Jacob Riis's children of the poor these Daniel P Moynihan 5:28 Charles Loring Brace began to describe this in the called the the dangerous classes of New York and they were frightened the dangerous classes in New York, the young children who, who roamed in gangs and lived in cellar holes in the 1850s and 1860s. at the Children's Aid Society, which is 130 years old, God bless them, they're still at it. Robert Lipsyte 5:51 And you think this is coming back again, Daniel P Moynihan 5:53 it was it is coming back in a different form and a vastly greater proportion, what what Brace was dealing with, was the effects of, I'll just say, cholera, pneumonia, and alcohol. And about those equal proportions were producing Robert Lipsyte 6:11 that destroyed the parents, they they left the kids, Daniel P Moynihan 6:14 They died or became absolutely incapable. parents aren't today, what is different, the parents aren't there at the outset. That is what is different. I don't know of any time or place in the, in the history of us where this has happened. About 50 years ago, great. Russian emigre Malinovsky used to teach up at Columbia. And he came up with what he called the principle of legitimacy, which he offered as a universal rule from the first thing anthropologists had learned that was true everywhere, namely, that every in every human society no matter what technological level, or its social setting, or its climatological setting, it the rule was, for every child, there was a male adult, that that's my boy, and my girl. And this distinguishes us from other primates where the, you know, the male just impregnated disappears. Robert Lipsyte 7:23 do you see a clear line between those packs of boys running through Central Park, and a lack of a male, the word that that people are going to shrink from, of course, is illegitimate. I think I think the statistic you used was 67%. If we extrapolate perhaps 67% of those 32 boys who roam through Central Park might be quote, illegitimate, Daniel P Moynihan 7:52 well, any given, that might surprise you. But in the in the in the logs that woulbe be true, sure. Robert Lipsyte 7:58 What's the connection then, between the fact that they are single parent or no parent that they're quote, illegitimate Daniel P Moynihan 8:05 Never really, very satisfactorily put together the direct though when wills, what's your gut feeling? A male authority in the home tends to provide a norm of, of conformity to rules, you obey the rules at all and, and the rules are set down, you obey them, and then time comes when you set them down to and it doesn't mean that, that adolescence isn't a pretty turbulent time. But the turbulence takes much more gentle aspects to it. |
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INTERVIEW CONTINUES:
Robert Lipsyte Senator, let me interrupt you, because there must be more to this. Your father walked out when you were 13. And you've had an exemplary life and an exemplary career. Other things were going for you Daniel P Moynihan 13 is the grown up period. Robert Lipsyte You think that didn't matter anymore Daniel P Moynihan Well it mattered but and you know, there, there's no no general statistic which is automatically going to apply to every individual in the group. But in the main, with these correlations are there and when you find them anywhere in the world, and but nowhere on earth do you find this concentration, as you do now in American cities, it is a new condition of our cities. And it is what we have is a fairly stable and you know, well to do structure at the top, and then there's a freefall, and there's nothing there. And we've seen it coming and now it's come come well past the point anyone would ever have forecast if you had asked me when I started working on this about 30 years ago within the Kennedy administration. After Glazer and I Glazer and I wrote about the ethnic groups in New York City in different patterns. I thought it was I thought it was shocking that we had a minority illegitimacy ratio of 24%. In today in New York City, the majority illegitimacy, the ratio is 30%. So don't don't pick classes are grouped by Robert Lipsyte The majority, like you're talking about the white, and the minority may not be the majority. That's what the technical term and the minority is 67, two thirds. two out of every three Daniel P Moynihan the city, close to 80%. And more and more. Robert Lipsyte Now, 25 years ago, you told us why this could happen. Daniel P Moynihan No, I didn't. 25 years ago, Robert Lipsyte did I just read the morning. Daniel P Moynihan I had been able to show I was Assistant Secretary of Labor. Our job was to see the the fundamental importance of jobs and income stream. And I've been able to show that there was a very close connection between unemployment for males, or the opposite employment for males, and different sets of social troubles like no separation and welfare, things like that. And unemployment went up. Six months later, welfare would go up one point went down six months later, it would go down. So you know, that showed you what to do. Then suddenly, in the late 50s, early 60s, these connections there. statisticians call them correlations, they relate things one thing relates to another these correlations broke up and disappeared and went just the opposite direction and I said oh my Jesus, something is going on. We don't understand. I knew what was going on in the 40s and the 50s I can't explain the 60s something very different is happening to us. And I don't know what and and it it has gone has continued. And Bob either we get hold of this are we going to lose our city down in Washington Robert Lipsyte Now How can we get hold of this? I mean you It looks irreversible doesn't it? Daniel P Moynihan Can't can't believe that. That's mortal sin. That's called despair. You got it. You got to think that you got to think first of all, you have to know what the what you're dealing with. But there was a old fella used to be in very much. When I was a boy at City College. They were nobody liked him. He told me that one because he taught at Yale and too because he seemed like it sound like a Republican. And then William Graham Sumner is like a Republican, he was sure. But he used to have a rule. He said folk ways. In fact, used state ways do not change folk ways. pretty complicated thought for a moment state ways don't change folk ways, and Robert Lipsyte does that mean that your family Security Act that anything you do as a senator is not going to change patterns of culture in the inner city. Daniel P Moynihan It tells you don't think if you pass the law, you settle the subject will tell you that. I mean, it doesn't tell you you're obliged to try doesn't mean you're obliged to look for things, which make things worse. Give you a little example on in the 86 tax bill. And we started out in 85. Working on that tax legislation, I'm on finance and the one thing everybody had agreed on and that the United States had a policy of making families poor. We were literally taxing 7 million people into poverty. And we brought that up at the level of consciousness wills he said, we'll stop that but uh, one thing we will do if we do nothing else, you can work that way. But in the end, people at a very small circles, the small what Burke called the small platoons, you know, the parish Council and the school board and the school room, and the street corner and the candy store and the living room. And maybe that box over there that we're being watched on, we're going to have to get hold of ourselves. In a way sometimes people do sort of Reel back and say, My God, what are we doing? Stop it. There have been examples of this. If you might say where people were overpopulated. I'll give you an example. Maybe be maybe be helpful, maybe not the, but Ireland in 1800. Had twice the population it has today. And they were just heading for sort of, you know, biological ruin, couldn't support themselves. And they just stopped reproducing. They emigrated they stopped reproducing, and they did all these various things. And from the highest |
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INTERVIEW CONTINUES
Robert Lipsyte 14:50 wasn't there also a famine, the dead how that helped me that's something that's chilling to think that we're going to have to wait for a natural disaster or something Daniel P Moynihan 14:59 famine wasn't nearly as important as the decision to start married at age 35 and have 1.3 children? Robert Lipsyte 15:06 Well, let's, let's take that jump. I mean, are you suggesting that somehow we need in some ways to change those folk ways to redirect what's happening in the inner city? Daniel P Moynihan 15:22 We absolutely do. And and we have to do it, you know, the Americana issue of Proclamation. I mean, the this social structure and it's not ours is not the worst. We're right there and about about, you know, about average bad. I mean, it is across the nation. And there's, there's no, we can't look to other people for models of how to respond. Robert Lipsyte 15:46 This has never happened before in history. Daniel P Moynihan 15:49 Let me give you a thought. Which is that if you look at sort of social legislation, New York is a great leader in these things. workman's compensation, unemployment insurance, social retirement benefits, which Frances Perkins took down from Al Smith, or many to Franklin D, Roosevelt's Washington, and health care. Everyone of these issues first arose in Europe, and a response to place in Europe, and then a generation or two later, we adopted it here. Bismarck in Germany began retirement pensions for people aged 65 that about 1885 we got them in 1935. The British began unemployment insurance, Winston Churchill's Matter of fact. 1911 we got it in 1935. Health care came to most countries in the 30s and we get totally sick Robert Lipsyte 16:48 I get the picture we're on our own. Daniel P Moynihan 16:51 But this thing we're on our own Robert Lipsyte 16:53 now you're leading us into very perilous waters here 67% at least of what we kind of triage off is the underclass are what we call illegitimate without that father figure there's a kind of a morality or immorality if you will, but in any case a fearsome pack of of people perhaps no good to themselves certainly no good to society at large are growing. You feel are threatening statecraft is not going to solve it no models exist what what's your visceral feeling beyond being a senator being a man What Daniel P Moynihan 17:42 were you you know the your government has a role and we are we are trying to be intelligent about it and we finally took a quarter century to get the welfare system Child Welfare began as a widow's pension in the 1935 quarter century windows there is a young women with children who need need need need experience the world You can't leave out there alone. I mean, a million women and children in the city one million young, my god and heaven now but maybe we should go back and look at that 19th century. I like those people. Those of you know the Charles Loring braces, they're all Presbyterian ministers, good for them. And they said those Irish kids in in the five points mattered to them. They were never going to get them into the into a Presbyterian chapel. God knows but they still were children. And they mattered. They weren't going around picking up Presbyterian children from those cellar holes. They were they were immigrants and they were the kids of the the death rate among adults was so and I you know, you know what the orphan trains you know, they thought up tape, you know, out west, farmers need young help burn, you know, they're nice. And so they would put together these trains and they just go cross the Mississippi and Robert Lipsyte 19:05 could we do that again? Could we take those kids out? We are going to send them to camps to train them Daniel P Moynihan 19:13 We have to learn adoption and foster care and independent living. I've just I've passed a bill about three years ago |
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INTERVIEW CONTINUES:
Robert Lipsyte 19:21 wait a minute. Is this a racial overtone to this as well that did not exist really between prebyterians and Irish Daniel P Moynihan 19:30 and Catholics in the 19th century. There never was a line that was fierce, but they crossed it Robert Lipsyte 19:35 But well wait a minute. There There are there are a yuppie couples in this city, who would rather adopt an Indian Child or reach across to a Korean child, then to adopt a black child in the city that's got to tell you something about reaching down into the cellars Daniel P Moynihan 19:52 we need to learn to love each other a little more, and to accept each other a little Robert Lipsyte 19:58 that's beyond statecraft. Daniel P Moynihan 20:00 Well, sure, but it's not beyond an example. Can I just say to you one little thing of the madness of the things we have for our children in foster care, some of the Social Security Act, and I'm responsible for Social Security and in the Senate, and we take care of children up to age 18. And they live in foster homes, and they are paid, I mean, the foster parents are paid and there's an allowance and it can be there's some of these wonderful families will take in these kids. At age 18, you are out of foster care. And we tell an 18 year old girl in this city on her 18th birthday, well, that's it, you're on your own now go out and find a job on Wall Street and get yourself a nice apartment on the east side and, and find some nice friends and some dating circles. And so you know, more than half of them are back on welfare with children within two years time. We just dump them out. And I've got legislation that says, you know, that to provide transition. And, and it can be done, but you can't do it to 1000 people you can only do to one person at a time, that person has to have a name. Name has to be Bob. And he's leaving that house in Corona in Queens. And now Where is he going to a job? What job? What place for him of his boss? What is it, where's he gonna get a house, an apartment, a house, you have to do this one on one, mano a mano, Robert Lipsyte 21:31 and somebody has to care very much every step along the way better, or Daniel P Moynihan 21:35 we're going to find a city that you can't live in, or a city that begins to have walled you want to know something a little secret I've never said before in public. About 10 years ago, I'm on Public Works Committee as well in the Corps of Engineers and sort of wonder, like, many, they let me know that they had been approached by a real estate syndicate to buy Governors Island. And the idea was to take Governors Island, which is down just plot the battery in the in the harbor, and build luxury condo minier. For all the people who build live on Wall Street. I didn't say it, but I they're probably going to put a wall up at Wall Street. And so at the end of the day, they go out to their island. And on the weekend, they take a helicopter to the Hamptons, and the rest of the city doesn't exist. That's mentality. And it's more of it than when I was a boy in the city. 50 years ago. 50 years ago, I was a boy in this city, and it was a different city. And it was a better city. Infinitely, poorer, poorer. Everybody was out of work or you know, not everybody thought of worker factory, but you know that depression but it Robert Lipsyte 22:50 but there was a there's a there's a difference between being poor and being broke? |
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INTERVIEW CONTINUES:
Daniel P Moynihan 22:56 Yeah, they might even say, you know, you might even say nobody was poor. That's an awful lot. People didn't have any money. Robert Lipsyte 23:01 Yes, they were going to move on. But as you say, they got a job, they stopped being poor. The difference between the young investment banker beating in Central Park and the boys, they, they might have been from a different country. Daniel P Moynihan 23:15 They are from different countries. That's how separate we are. We have two cities. And they're more widely divided than they were when I was a kid growing up and shine shoes. I learned about Pearl Harbor from man whose shoes I was shining on Central Park West, just that corner up from the Museum of Natural History. I mean, and we all lived on the streets and that sense, but they were it was a piece of a kingdom. And we were even losing the memory of it now that's why I don't want to happen. Lose the memory of it and think oh, you know, this is your this is the human condition. It is not it what we are in today is an inhuman and and and regressed condition. I don't know why you say regressed. I mean, you know, people. Robert Lipsyte 24:04 You're not going back to something that we remember we're not even regressing is, it's kind of a futuristic horror. Daniel P Moynihan 24:10 Yeah. You got you got very good. Very nice. Yeah, this is Robert Lipsyte 24:15 just mantling during I mean, I've not got to lay blame entirely. But I mean, there was a dismantling of welfare during the Reagan years. That certainly accelerated this this process, didn't it? Daniel P Moynihan 24:29 Yeah, over the last quarter century, we have cut the benefits for women and children on welfare by about a third. If anybody told you a century, a quarter century going I got a plan. I'm going to cut this by a third you say well, you're, you're a nice guy. matter with you. But we do it just by letting inflation do it for us and paying no attention the governor in the legislature have to take it up a bit this year and good for them. But now we haven't paid attention to those things. We haven't won or we haven't wanted to admit. There's a million people on welfare women and children alone. Now, if we go on like this, the next century, we got to find people all over the world looking at us and saying, What's, what's the matter of those people? Why does not country work? We've been the country that, you know, look at us. Hey, look at us, you know that the American century is Time magazine proclaimed in 1945. The next one is not going to be the American Century. They're going to look down at US and Canada. Look at our neighbors in Canada. We don't think a lot about Canada. I do because our border in New York State. They don't let these things happen and let children grow up this way. And they don't understand people who do Robert Lipsyte 25:49 and it's hard to understand. Professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, thank you very much for giving us the professor politician. Another chilling insight into some things that have really shocked us and shocked the city. Thank you. This is the 11th hour. I'm Robert Lipsyte. |
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Wide shot of the studio, Lipsyte and Moynihan in bkgd, books by Moynihan displayed in foreground. Lipsyte thanks the Senator and interview concludes.
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Host Lipsyte announces the show and introduces himself. Show ends.
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Show credits over show graphics.
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Funding for the show by announcer and overlay the Eleventh Hour graphic.
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