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01:00:00 0 |
WNET30
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01:01:47 107.63 |
Slate: The Eleventh Hour #188. Tale of 2 Cities. Rec: 4/26/89. Dir: Andrew Wilk
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01:02:13 133.18 |
Blank
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01:02:27 147.31 |
Funding for show by announcer and overlay the Eleventh Hour graphic.
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01:02:38 158.18 |
Eleventh Hour graphic and show opener.
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01:02:59 179.57 |
Show opens with Anthony Bouza, Bronx Police Commander in uniform, speaking to unseen reporter outdoors, quote: " Alcohol is probably my greatest ally. I'd hate to think what my police problems would be if all of these young men and women were not permanently narcotized by alcohol and were expressing their energies and frustrations in a more direct manner".
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01:03:21 201.22 |
Host Robert Lipsyte sitting at his desk in the studio welcomes viewers, introduces the show and himself.
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01:03:22 202.83 |
Lipsyte refers to the 2 cities in New York, "the rich and the poor", and how they met in Central Park. He talks about the vicious assault on a woman jogger in Central Park (4/19/89). He speaks of the statement (above) by Anthony Bouza and how his outspoken words derailed an apparent brilliant career in NY.
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01:03:41 221.88 |
Unseen, Robert Lipsyte introduces guests on tonight's program. Anthony Bouza via satellite in Former Bronx Police Commander and Minneapolis; Dr. Clemintine Pugh, Sociologist Lehman College; Pete Hamill, Columnist New York Post.
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01:04:04 244.36 |
Lipsyte sitting in studio across from Pugh and Lehman with Bouza on small tv screen.
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01:04:07 247.18 |
INTERVIEW - BOUZA
Robert Lipsyte: 12 years ago, you told us about a divided city you told us about feral youth. But somehow what's happened here seems even beyond that. These were not your narcotized kids. These were supposedly good kids running together in a spontaneous combustion. Were you surprised by any of this? Anthony Bouza Well, I don't think anyone ought to be obviously it's a it's a ghastly and horrifying tragedy. And we have to feel sympathy for the victim. And we have to feel a lot of abhorrence. For for for the criminals. They are monsters. But let's not forget that we never asked Where do these monsters come from? And let's not forget that if the victim had been black, the results might have been quite different. This has been a very important symbolic event as the Bernhard Goetz case was simply because it involves blood blacks and whites. I don't think we care very much what happens to the blacks, we have forgotten them as an underclass, and cast them aside. And now we reap the harvest. And it's a ghastly tragedy that this young woman has to become this symbol. Now you've used Robert Lipsyte Now you've used the word monsters. I mean, these were kids. These were boys. This was something that happened to them. Why do you call them monsters? Anthony Bouza Well, because I think the society has shaped them into monsters. I think if you go back to prenatal care, birth weight, the experiences we've got between before they even got into kindergarten, by the time they got into kindergarten, they don't know shapes, sizes, colors, letters. They have been brutalized and conditioned to violence, and we have shaped them into monsters we have created, we are just as responsible for the existence of this criminal class, whether it's in Washington in New York or anywhere else, as the German people were for the existence of the Nazi regime, and we refuse to dispense the kind of social justice necessary in terms of jobs in education. Let's destroy these monsters to be sure. But let's ask where do they come from? That's what America does not do. And that's why we have an overclass and an underclass and you have the streets of New York littered with human graffiti. You are feral children attacking the establishment. And then when whenever promising and talented young woman who happens to be white is assaulted by blacks. We all jump 20 feet in the air. There's nothing shocking about this event. Robert Lipsyte When you say destroying these monsters. What do you mean specifically? Anthony Bouza Well, I mean, we're gonna have to punish them, the demagogues are going to come out of the woodwork. Everybody's going to be talking about the chair and more prisoners of the judges, more cops, let's get after them. And nobody's ever going to worry about prenatal care, sex, education, abortion, birth, weight, and jobs in education and home. Let's find out who they are. Let's look into their lives. Robert Lipsyte Now, when you said all these things 10 12 20 years ago, it didn't make you popular as a policeman in New York did it? Anthony Bouza Well, I popularity is not something that worries me a lot. I am an immigrant. I was born in Spain. This is a great country. The way I try to pay my debt to this nation is is to call them as I see them. And I don't worry much about the results have been treated very kindly, and I'm not tempted to wallow in self pity. |
01:06:54 414.4 |
Host Lipsyte shot from behind is talking with Bouza through satellite looking at him on the small small tv screen
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01:07:17 437.24 |
Wide shot Host Lipsyte in the studio sitting across from two guests, Lehman and Pugh, Bouza is seen on tv screen next to them.
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01:07:23 443.71 |
INTERVIEW
Richard Lipsyte: people have wondered, why was that woman in the park in a dangerous dark part of the city? Clementine Pugh I happen to think that that is a ridiculous question. I think the question arises because we have allowed the city to become what it is, I think to ask a question like that is the same as blaming the victim. It's the kind of question that comes up when a woman is raped. And the notion is that she has been raped because she asked for it. After all, the city belongs to the people of New York. And I think that we are reaping a harvest. But I think we are reaping a harvest because we thought we could keep the city ghettoized. And as long as it we weren't, we were able to contain people in those ghettos and we didn't have to spill over. It was to be alright, I take serious exception to the notion of they are monsters. First of all, these are people that we're talking about. We don't know who they are the generalizations that are emerging from Mr. Bouza's discussion are appalling to me, that these are monsters. We're not talking about people who are non human. I'm not making any defense for the act that these youngsters have been involved in. But I think to the call the monsters at this point before we have evidence about why this was done, and we don't know, it's complex. Robert Lipsyte I'm the last one to speak for Tony Bouza. But I think in terms of monsters, he's talking about something that has been shaped by society, what they did was monstrous. Also, while I'm theoretically totally in agreement with what you're saying, Dr. Pugh about, we everyone's got a right to be everywhere in the city, it seems a little rhetorical. When it's quite clear that there are a lot of streets that I'm not going to walk on running or otherwise or inside a tank, because somehow the city has, if not changed. I've always been nervous in the city. And I've lived here all my life in parts. Pete, you've you've written about the city as well as anybody that I've ever read. has, has it changed? Has it changed for you? Pete Hamil It certainly has changed. I mean, in the last 30 years, it certainly changed enormously. If you just look at numbers in 1955 305 murders in the city of New York last year 1900. That's a six fold increase over a period of three decades. I think the presence of drugs is enormously different from the city that people my age lived in, in the 30s. The the overwhelming presence of television in people's lives, is another thing that's I think happened, the deterioration of certain values, particularly in the black community. I think the black church has gotten as has lost the kind of central position it had in black life. At one point when I was a kid in Brooklyn. The black churches were like, the core of much of black experience there. I think that's had an effect on it. I think also, the long avoidance of having to deal with the welfare situation in the city is really had an effect too. And so that 30 years ago, people said, This welfare system is not working. It's it's not a substitute for work. A lot of the establishment said, well, let's use welfare as a kind of bribe, keep everybody quiet. Leave it off on the side. And while we were doing that, something else was going on. Nobody paid any Robert Lipsyte Well there were a lot of ways to keep things quiet. And as Dr. Pugh talked about the the ghettoizing of the city was certainly part of it. And let's go back to the chief Bouza in in Minneapolis, because certainly you were one of the instruments of keeping things cool. That was that was your job up in the Bronx. And I think that you were one of the few people who really was willing well saw it. I was willing to talk about being part of an occupying army, weren't you? Anthony Bouza Absolutely. The police establishment in America is an army of occupation over the ghetto. One of its unstated missions is to keep the underclass in its place and invisible. That is becoming increasingly difficult and in fact, to the degree that they succeed to that degree, are they doing society at this service? I'm sorry that Dr. Pugh is appalled by my comments, but I do believe that the overclass is wreaking havoc on the underclass, with predictable consequences. And although obviously any of the accused are entitled to the presumption of innocence, whoever committed this crime is a monster and probably a member of the underclass and an underclass whose condition of life was shaped by the overclass. And until we begin to recognize that and deal with those issues. We're simply sweeping the problem under the rug and really, who is Dr. Pugh? Kidding? I mean, are all areas of the city alike? Sure, we have the right to go anywhere we like but but everybody on this day, if you were to make a pin map of New York City, and and put all of the problems whether it relates to welfare, violence, murder, or anything else on a pin map, you're going to see, oh, some areas of the city absolutely clustered with maps and other areas of the city not, you're talking about two societies separate and unequal, and divided. Interestingly enough, 21 years after the Kerner Commission said that we were becoming racially polarized, we're also becoming economically polarized. So I don't I think if we don't confront that problem whenever |
01:12:48 768.53 |
INTERVIEW CONTINUES
Clementine Pugh I don't I want to interrupt just a minute. But I certainly think that you're absolutely right that we have not paid attention to the Kerner Commission Report, which did predict that we were going to be two societies, one white and one black, and unequal. What I think is a problem, though, is the notion that you are saying that these are monsters, to say monsters is to say there's a different kind of human being. And I would this makes me piggyback on something that you said, Pete, that I also take exception to the notion that there's a mutant. I think when we start from that premise, I think we're probably playing into stereotypical images of people who are considered have always been considered other than human, the notion of the pack the notion of the savage, the notion that there is a monolithic group of people, African Americans who are being invited. I think it's also very interesting that there's a hyphenation and for most of our names. Alright, so I'm an African American Pete, you're probably an Irish American, but we'd like to think of the American part being the commonality. But when we get into a situation like this, it seems to me that this becomes suddenly another kind of problem other than an American problem. The African American family is not the only family which is deteriorating, American families are deteriorating. The Church does not have an influence not only on black people. The church has minimal influence on people in general, Robert Lipsyte but Dr. Pugh we are talking about specific people here that we know a little bit about that now. Tony Bouza talked about feral youth and those feral youth they were talking about, those were dangerous packs of kids moving through parts of the city and I've been caught up in some of those packs Anthony Bouza without remorse after arrest Robert Lipsyte Let me let me say something about these me, you know, these mutants that you're sparking about because mutants are changed, some are people that are changed and shaped by by whatever. And what happened here was these we've grown used to 12 and 13 year old kids with guns is working for drug cartels shooting 13 year old school girls on their way home while they are while they're doing their homework. This was not that these were boys who are not on drugs who are not involved in a crime at the moment. And something very terrible happened. Clementine Pugh And I agree with you. But I also agree, I hope you will agree that we don't know the answers to what happened. We don't I think we and I think that's the commonality. That's the we have to get together to try to figure out what has happened. But I think an indictment of these young people before there is a trial. Yeah, there are profiles of the youngsters in the New York Times today, Robert Lipsyte Dr. Pugh, that's why we're here is kind of trying to talk about some of these kids. And he talked about those kids without remorse. This seems different. Pete Hamil Well, well, you're not. I mean, the lack of remorse. I mean, I've covered enough homicide, certainly Chief Bouza has been around for more than I have, you'll see you began to see about 10 or 12 years ago, a weird phenomenon. Kids would be accused of the most horrendous crime, nothing would happen. Their faces were dead, their eyes were dead, they sit in the police station, they might wave at a photographer not covering your face with a newspaper like people did 30 years ago, because they didn't want the shame of what their neighbors would think that's a that's a mutation in human behavior is what I'm saying. Now, why it happened, I agree with you Unknown Speaker It's very important to make that distinction between the behavior, the monstrous Act, the monstrosity that act I have no exception to I have exception to the notion that people are being called Monster. Robert Lipsyte what you're saying is absolutely critical. These are people we have to find out what society what happened to make them explode in this monstrous way. Clementine Pugh Aren't we waiting a long time. I want to go back a little bit on a historical perspective. I remember the Klu Klux Klan. Were they wilding, were they a mute? Were they mutants? They launched they were never call that they were never called that. And they were out to get and kill? For no reason that you can remember I can remember was it was it a source of fun. I'm just trying to say that this is not a new phenomenon, that we have mutants, as you call them in a society and I just won't buy into that |
01:17:24 1044.49 |
INTERVIEW CONTINUES:
Pete Hamil the Klan had a specific social and political agenda Clementine Pugh to get rid of African Americans Pete Hamil And Jews and Catholics wasn't exclusively Robert Lipsyte Because we don't really think that these boys had a racial agenda. Do we? Clementine Pugh I don't think that there was a racial agenda. But I think we've escalated as we're looking at the problem. I think it's being made to appear as though there is a racial phenomenon. But now what Robert Lipsyte Anthony Bouza in Minneapolis Do you think there's a racial aspect to this? Anthony Bouza I of course, I think Dr. Pugh is doing the classical disservice to the discussion by by by trying to sort of waffle it away label those who come and racist. The reality is that the old racist here, I didn't interrupt you, madam. I would like these the courtesy of being doctors, the doctor Pugh if I may, I did not interrupt you. We are manufacturing successes in the Ivy League, the white. overclass knows how to manufacture successes. We are manufacturing failures and monsters with our policy, economics and social policies. Our unwillingness to debate the issue of these monsters, as as importantly, typified and exemplified by Dr. Pugh statement is exactly what is silencing us and keeping us from debating the issues. Where did these monsters come from? Well, how is what policies shaped them until we begin to talk about that, instead of fudging the issues making excuses and engaging in narrow evasions and, and and inferentially labeling those who say anything, as a racist, really does the greatest possible disservice to black Americans who are getting being screwed over by white society. These kids were shaped by white America and white Americans policies and the overclass and if we don't debate that, we're going to keep going down the tubes. Pete Hamil was right when I became a cop, 100 years ago, there was 8 million people in New York one murder a day. Last year, there were six a day, the population presumably has declined. Robert Lipsyte What does that mean? Does that mean Tony, Tony does that mean that the city is no longer safe? Anthony Bouza The city is disintegrating before your very eyes look out the window. It's, of course it isn't safe. Robert Lipsyte And when the jogger went to Central Park to report having been assaulted, the policeman there kind of brushed him off as if that wasn't really important enough to talk about didn't even take his name. Anthony Bouza Well, the status of the New York City Police Department is the subject of another discussion is let's just let it suffice to say it is in deep trouble. Clementine Pugh I'd like to respond to something that Mr. Bouza said first of all, I'm not waffling and second of all, I'm not calling any names such as racist, racist, although you may say that's inferred I did not. I am here to offer a perspective, which is other than your perspective. And I think there are places where rational people can disagree. That does not mean that I'm avoiding the issue. It does not mean that I don't see that there's a change in New York City. I've lived here all of my life also. So that I know that there's a change. I know that my mother who lives in Harlem cannot go to church, and an evening, there are no church services in the evening. I know that after dark, there are people who cannot come out of their homes. But I think to attribute that to monsters, there are also people in the communities that we're talking about, who are law abiding citizens who are just as terrified, who would take exception to the notion that you're referring to their children as monsters, that the dastardness off the act Anthony Bouza I'm referring to those who committed this crime as monsters? That's who I'm referring to, Robert Lipsyte I think we're falling into Pete Hamil It is certainly a monstrous act. I mean, Robert Lipsyte what about safety in the city. I mean, you've, you know, when the, what would shock the people in the middle class, white press and everything like that was, you know, a pack of young black youths on white but the point is that, as you pointed out, you know, black men and women have been fearful of crime all the time, and the lack of police protection. And you've written about it |
01:21:31 1291.33 |
INTERVIEW CONTINUES:
Pete Hamil statistics show that the average victim of black crime is a black woman about 21 years old. Black on Black crime is one of the great horrible facts of our existence right now. The numbers of crimes of blacks against whites is minuscule. When you look at the the population patterns of the city, it's really black on black crime. What what we're talking about here, though, is these are these young, very young kids question is what was that young woman doing in the park? It's what were they doing in the park. And if they were in the park, what motivated them to do this was breaks down almost every idea even on the street level, and I grew up on the streets, you know, in my neighborhood, if 10 People took turns on her with an unconscious woman's body, the gangsters would come and get us. This is unheard of behavior among New Yorkers. Now the opportunity is here, for a whole number of people, Dr. Pugh would probably have a better list, certainly than I would have to really study these kids, because finding out about these kids can't be limited to the criminal justice system. Cops are not equipped to find out what form these kids, defense lawyers and prosecutors are not equipped or interested in trying to find out what form them. But we must find out what is shaping these kids what those factors are, whether it's drugs or television of society, or the values that we're imparting another party if we don't, the 21st century in New York City is going to be a nightmare. It's bad enough right now. Clementine Pugh And Pete, I agree with you on that. I think it's very important to point out that the Kerner Commission Report indicted white racism. And since that point, we have been focusing on the victims. Nobody studies the people who prepare to weight the oppression. And I'm saying that if we're going to look at it, we have to look at it in a multifaceted, at least a dualistic way, we can't look only at one side and not at the other. AllRight? Pete Hamil Oh, I agree with that Clementine Pugh the reason that the society is myopic, and a historical and tends to put things aside until it moves into the majority culture is an important thing for white people to look at. Pete Hamil We also have to find out what the black middle class is doing when in terms of its responsibilities in this problem. Clementine Pugh But that's when you go with that when you go African on us rather than American. It is not a unique problem that has to be solved by the black middle class. And then you wrote an article Pete that I wanted to get to you on before we No no, the notion is that that problem has been created by the black middle class I'm not saying that oh, that's a black middle class has some special responsibility. They certainly have a responsibility Robert Lipsyte Let's stop. Tony Bouza, you're we're laughing at this, Anthony Bouza Why don't you guys spend a few minutes at a welfare hotel and watch the next group of monsters being raised and see what we're doing to them. Robert Lipsyte Now, when you keep using the word monsters, it seems like you're being provocative. We're talking about human beings, that something is being done to in this society. They weren't monsters when they were born. Were they? Anthony Bouza Well, I don't know. I think I think we a fellow in Chicago started trying to work with black kids and went to schools and then he decided that was too late. And then he went to Headstart program, and now he's working with pregnant teenage black young women. So maybe we have to think about prenatal care. The reality is our society is is a dualistic society and the overclass is sending its children to the ivy League's and the manufacturing excesses the overclass is consigning blacks to positions of such want and deprivation and unemployment and lack of education and opportunity, that it is manufacturing monsters and black males in America Robert Lipsyte You keep using that word. But but whatever we are, Tony, Tony, whenever we are, you know, whatever class, we're all imprisoned in this city together. You know, we had a we had a young man on the show Monday night who had gone wilding and talked about his dream, if he had money and the opportunity to get out of town. He doesn't want to live here anymore. I think a lot of people don't want to live here anymore. Clementine Pugh I think that's absolutely okay. I also think that the people who live in the inner cities, and there is an underclass living in the inner city, unless we are blind, we know that. But those people, many of them don't say I'm going home to the ghetto. I mean, they would like to see themselves living in a viable community, their problems are overwhelming, the problems are dismissed by and large. And I think it is significant to look at the kind of attention that this particular event is getting. Because it did happen to a white woman. I am not saying that to be racist. But I think you have to acknowledge the perception among many in the black community who would say that there are rapes committed upon black women almost every day, as I sit here, that would not get this kind of attention. Now I am I saying that it's not as heinous because it happened to a white woman. I'm not saying Robert Lipsyte I understand exactly what you're saying. What you are saying is that the white media jumped on it, because of what they saw is the vulnerability that the white man can no longer protect the white woman. And that was the great theory Pete Hamil I think, if it had been an exact duplicate of a black woman, a young black woman who had worked like hell gone to college had a job and a, you know, Salomon Brothers Robert Lipsyte We're out of time. And I hope I hope you're right. Pete Hamil And the horrendousness of this crime, it would have been in the Robert Lipsyte Thank you very much. Pete Hamil. Dr. Pugh, Chief Anthony Bouza. Thank you. Thank you very much for being with us. |
01:27:07 1627.92 |
Host Lipsyte thanks guests and interviews conclude.
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01:27:19 1639.17 |
Lipsyte gives his angry final but constructive thoughts on tonight's topic.
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01:28:35 1715.17 |
Host Lipsyte introduces the show and himself. Show ends.
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01:28:42 1722.69 |
Credits over Eleventh Hour graphics.
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01:29:01 1741.53 |
Funding by announcer and overlay The Eleventh Hour graphics.
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01:29:30 1770.27 |
Reel ends.
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