Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20140528

Situation in ukraine. Par chen co has some form of legitimacy but him being able to put together a policy to bring together the various segments of ukrainian of the ukrainian and get a National Consensus which is needed in particular to undertake the very difficult Economic Reforms i think we are going to have to wait and see. It is too much early to declare this crisis over and certainly much too early for washington, brussels, or the government in can i ever to have victory. We include with cartoonist roz chast. Cant we talk about something more pleasant. One of the main reasons i write and draw is because i am so afraid if i dont it is all going to be forgotten, you know, and it does feel that way sometimes if i dont draw it, if i dont write it down. Life and people. Yes. Just everything, just everything. Time just kind of goes on like that. Ruthlessly. Ruthlessly. And i wrote this and drew this to remember my parents, really. A look at ukraine and a conversation with roz chast when we continue. Funding for charlie rose is provided by the theres a saying around here you stand behind what you say. Around here, we dont make excuses, we make commitments. And when you cant live up to them, you own up and make it right. Some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where its needed most. But i know youll still find it, when you know where to look. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Good evening, im David Remnick anything for charlie rose who is on assignment, we begin with the elections in ukraine, pro western billionaire for check co was elected president by a large margin on sunday. The vote comes three months after a protest pro moscow removed yanukovych from office. It is seen a critical step for restoring order in Eastern Ukraine, he pledged to bring peace to the Ukrainian Land and ease tensions with russia which has been accused of backing the separatist movement there. Russian president Vladimir Putin expressed the support saturday saying he would respect any choice made by the ukrainian people. Joining me now from washington is Victoria Nuland. She is the assistant secretary of state for european and eurasian affairs, welcome. Thank you, david for having me. So, tell me, there is this election in ukraine has important, for ukrainians but what about u. S. Russian repopulations which has been in a ditch for months now. You are right, david it was a spectacular day for the people of ukraine who went out in force to choose a new president and to say to their government and to the world that they want a future that is unified, that is democratic, that is process sphrows and that is rooted in europe. In terms of the u. S. Russia relationship, i think time will tell. The president of russia says he will respect the results and work with the elected president so if that is in fact the case and the things begin to deescalate in ukraine it would be a good thing not just for the ukraine but u. S. Russia relations and russia relations with the rest of the word. Time will tell. Has putin found his limit here . He snatched away crimea, that seems not even in question anymore. And now there seems to be at least to some extent a retreat has he taken from this situation what he wanted from it and obviously his popularity has shot up through the roof. He won in his terms, has he not. First of all i dont think it is wise for anybody to try to get inside the head of president putin given what happened just in the last four months. Let me take opposition to one thing you said about crimea, neither the United States nor ththe europeans for most of the civilized world have recognized what russia did in crimea. We still respect the full sovereignty and territorial integrity of ukraine and as part of the sanctions that we have imposed on russia we imposed harsh sanctions on those running crimea and on the economic relationship with crimea and that will continue. With regard to where putin goes from here as i said, i think we just dont know yet. It will depends very much on whether he decides the to reach out to president elect porchenko and whether he is interested in deescalating we have now seen Russian Troops that were on the border surrounding ukraine begin to move back to their bases. That is a good thing. But we have also seen continued destabilization in Eastern Ukraine just in the last couple of days which is worry. What kind of destabilization do you see and do you expect it to continue. Well, we saw a separatist attack on the airport in donetsk which has resulted in very severe fighting over the last couple of days and many, many casualties, that was an attack to try to take the airport using very sophisticated weaponry of the kind that easily could have been provided are the outside. We also have seen an effort that the ukraine krans were able to interdict to ship high tech weaponry from crimea to the eastern donetsk and on election day we saw considerable intimidation of election workers, the smashing of electorial boxes and Cyber Attacks on the Central Election Commission of the kind that generally would require outside support so worrying, worrying, but very much a mixed picture now. Ukraine has a new lecter who is known as the chocolate king, he has made over a billion dollars. He is known as an oligarch to use the shorthand of the region but also gained enormous respect with a lot of voters because of his support of the midon demonstrations but we know. One thing that plagued ukraine since the fall of communism and the soviet union in 1971 is the complete failure of its Political Class on all sides, and a level of corruption that is remarkable. Why is this guy any different. Well, you are absolutely right that corruption has been a cancer on ukraine and the people of the midon went out for a number of reasons, first and foremost because president yanukovych promised to take them to europe and reneged, and equally importantly it is because they felt ripped off by their leadership. They felt like the money of the state was going into official pockets rather than being used to for their benefit and so they are demanding now of president elect poroshenko in fact he ran on a platform of clean government so he will have to deliver as part of the imf package, the monetary support to ukraine, the ukrainians have begun to pass the legislative basis they need to clean up corruption. Things like transparency in public procurement, but president elect poroshenko will not only have to talk the talk but walk the walk. He is talking about things like e governance so we will see. But as you said she somebody who has a long career, not only in business but also in politics and ukraine but very early in the midon struggle he picked sides and stood with the people of the midon and actually interposed himself physically at certain key moments to call for nonviolence. He stood on a front loader at one point when pokes were shooting at each other and said stop. This is not the way we behave. So he has put his own physical security on the line for the ukraine and it is going to be a tough job. But even during the orange revolution in 2004, we saw heroic action but uh chen co and others followed by brand owes disappointmenting and widespread corruption again. Why is this going to be any different and. Shouldnt there be an accounting of all the western money that has come from the imf and elsewhere before more money goes into the ukraine and more support. Well there certainly will be an accounting and one of the things the imf have done this time as a result of the experience, including its negative experience in 2004 and 2010 is it is doling tout money in relatively small tranches attack to real reform so again president elect poroshenko will have to demonstrate that he is ready to change the way ukraine has done business, not only for the imf but for all of the people who went out to vote for him. And that is going to be the number one thing that people of all generations in the ukraine are going to expect and particularly the Younger Generation that led this midon effort, they are just sick of the country being ripped off and they are going to hold him to account. I think we would agree that Vladimir Putin is the main culprit in all of this, particularly in the destabilization of Eastern Ukraine, the snatching up of crimea, but when we lock back at this prolonged episode, what lessons can the west learn about itself and the u. S. In particular about the way we played this . Was the eu, for example, bluffing when it was trying to draw ukraine into, toward the eu. Well, i dont think the eu was bluffing, i think the eus offer of ukraine to association and visa free travel and no barriers, no Tariff Barriers was a very generous one i think what we all underestimated, even though we were talking about it and thinking about it, was the ability of the Russian Federation to exact its own economic retribution of the, on the ukraine so what we really needed was the imf economic reform package and support package moving in conjunction with the association in the fall, so that the ukrainian economy would have had a safety net, because what happened was at the end of the day the russians will say we will crush your economy if you join europe and there wasnt a sufficient western alternative for the ukraine. And that certainly one Lesson Learned. Another Lesson Learned is we really dont need economically necessarily to force a country like ukraine to choose. It should have a strong relationship with europe and also maintain a lot of its historic trade to russia and if we can do this right, ukraine could actually become a through put for better, cheaper trade between europe, ukraine and russia and everybody could conceivably benefit but we needed to have that conversation in a more rick rouse way, i think. Part of your job as an analyst and diplomat is to try to see the world as Vladimir Putin sees it and he sees it now with enormous resentment. He sees it as a generation long humiliation of russia, of nato enlargement when he had been promised otherwise. You know the litany of complaints directed at the west and the United States. Does he not have a point on any of his litany of resentments i would say. Well, president putin and many in his circle and generation certainly have persuaded themselves that they have a narrative of grievance with the Transatlantic Community and the west but, david, i have to tell you i lived and worked through that diplomatic period from 1991 when is owe yet union fell apart and, and i will tell you all of washington, berlin, paris, london, rome, worked tire lesley to try to offer russia throughout those years an opportunity to knit itself into this community. For example the nato russia sounding act where we committed that nato nations would sit with russia together to talk about all of our major security concerns. That was an opportunity for russia to really work coequally with nato, but instead they used it as a place to argue and as a place to complain, rather than to try to build together. So i think there were many, many missed opportunities on russias side to work collaboratively with us as we worked with each other. So, you know, i just regret that because i think we may have had a very different russia today if president putin and other leaders had taken advantage of some of the opportunities that we had on the table. Vladimir putin, one last question, Vladimir Putin could be president for another decade. Is there anything conceivably that will turn him back in another direction or do you think there is much more xenophobic, conservative and kind of highly conservative moralism he has been creating as a state ideology will be relaxed with the media that is tightened up and censorship that has been exhorted is there any conceivable notion in your mind that Vladimir Putin will go the other direction and liberal lies before he liberalizes before he leaves office or are we not destined for a really bad road for the next decade. Well, i think as president putin continues on the road that he is on, which is to isolation, isolate his own country and create barriers for particularly younger people to interact with the rest of the world, and to continue on the current economic path he is on, which is to raise, Tariff Barriers through things like the Customs Union rather doing what the rest of us are doing which is trying to have free trade agreements and lower them and if he doesnt diversify his economy, he is not going to be able to continue to produce for the russian people. His compact with them in his first term was you leave the politics to me and i will put a chicken in every pot so to speak. I will grow the economy and you will get to go to ikea and ralph to greece envoy addition indication vacation but what he produced in the first term is stagnant and on the verge of recession and a lot of temporary patriotic fervor but not a lot of new opportunities for the russian people and just look what happened when he started talking about closing down twitter, even his Prime Minister said that is crazy and the next generation of russians dont want to be cut off. So i think if we stay unified in continuing to offer him a way to work with us if he will live by the International Rules of the road but at the same time being firm in terms of costs and sanctions if he continues to be predatory visavis his neighbors this is part of his litany of complaint when we had the iraq war in our past and we talk about International Law and the sanctity of borders he doesnt believe us. Why should he. Well, the incidents he raises are very, very different from circumstances where you have had years and years and years of u. N. Security council revolutions years and years of diplomacy to try to settle disputes. As compared to what he did in crimea, which wa was was deciden about three weeks notice that it was russias and he was going to take it. So, again, there is a tie log to be had, we want to have it, we want to start with russia and ukraine resetting their relationship in the wake of these elections, but it really is a question of whether putin is ready for that or not. Victoria nuland, thank you very much. Thank you, david. We continue our conversation about ukraine with a distinguished panel, joining from washington is fiona hill, senior fellow and direct of the of the center on the United States and europe at the brookings institution. Here in new york, steve kotkin, he is director of russian studies at princeton university, and tomogram, tom, graham, a manager editor of kiss kissinger and associate where he focuses on europe and eurasian affairs. You were just listening to Victoria Nuland give her analysis of the ukrainian election, what did you think . I think the washington is having trouble figuring out the extent to which ukraine is our issue or somebody elses issue. Certainly the vision of, the division of labor on europe with this was must haved and the cord, muffed and the relationship with europe was one of the difficulties which she commented on in the infamous phone conversation that was tapped by the russians. So you could include from her statement this is really a ukrainian issue more than anything else. And if you look at what is at stake in the u. S. In having a policy here that is coherent, compared to what is at stake for the u. S. And many other things going on, it is not clear that balance is on the side of doing more. On the other hand, of course, for the ukrainians, for the people of the region for the civilian population, everything is at stake. Let me see if i understand. You think the United States muffed the policy, visavis ukraine. It was the coordination with europe over what to do, and so the europeans dont seemed inclined toward further expansion, lets be honest. They have trouble swallowing they they already admitted. There are some questions about whether admitting romania and bulgaria retrospectively made sense, since of course they violated most of the structured that were required for admission and then you have the fact that the currency, the common currency didnt turn out the way they anticipated, and so the appetite for further eastern expansion was minimal. And so why, while they were talking to the ukraine, while they were promising some sort of partnership association, the words were vague, the propositions were vague while they were going through that ritual at the time was unclear. And the u. S. s coordination of that work by the eu was not 100 percent. The u. S. Was, instead, getting close to the opposition in ukraine, the self declared opposition, yanukovych, which the figures of the establishment that you criticized properly in the introduction to the segment. So us and europe were not coordinating, europe looked like it was doing something that it didnt fully believe in. The u. S. Was getting very close to people who if, it is not clear why we were getting so close to them in the opposition because they didnt represent the interests of the protesters, at least from the protesters point of view. We had a winner, tomogram, tom, graham, the porochenko, the chocolate king is now the president of ukraine and he was pro protesters and showed some courage on the midon but also an oligarch where corruption is issue number one, 2 and 3. As well as democracy. Is this completely good news . Well, it is not completely good news. I mean first the good news is that there is someone who has thousand been collected elected that can represent at least a part of the ukraine before the international community, in negotiations with the russians, but i think we need to look at this election i think more objectively. You know, first, we had a turnout of 60 percent, i at this, according to the official figures, of what was billed as a historical election. That is not really a spectacular turnout under the circumstances. Even if the people who went to the polls. Except in the United States. Even when we have historic elections sometimes we can get close to 60 percent but, you know, in europe and elsewhere, you would have looked for something more in the seventies. For an election, particularly one that is supposed to have this import for the future of the ukraine and look at the different provinces n the eastern provinces and this is not including donetsk is around 50 percent, in the west, it was in the seventies. So what this demonstrates is that there continues to be a significant split with enormous intimidation and and the war. Well, donetsk we are not talking about, we are talking about competent frost. Protost and the situations on the ground is somewhat different but this is reflective of the long, Longstanding Division between the east and west on political on political orientation. You add to that not only the oligarchs but the ol oligarchs h the Paramilitary Forces now, so we have a very difficult situation in the ukraine, poroshenko has some form of legitimacy but to be able to put together a policy to bring together the various segments of ukrainian of the ukrainian and produce a National Consensus which is now needed in particular to undertake the very difficult Economic Reforms, i think we are going have to wait and see. It is much too early to declare this crisis over and it certainly is much too early for washington, brussels, or the government in can i ever to declare victory. What should the u. S. Be in the business of doing for ukraine to foster political advance in the ukraine this is it possible for us to act effectively in that place when we have so many interests all over the world and domestic problems . Look, there is a very difficult thing to do and we have, you know, what is very much an attention deficit. We are focused on the ukraine now because it is in the news. Some spectacular developments have occurred. There is violence. But we havent paid a great deal of attention, as stephen mentioned over the past 20, 25 years. We really dont have the type of understanding we immediate of ukraine as a society, as a political problem. In fact, to be effective on the ground, we dont have the ukrainian expertise we need in the government or i would argue in a broader Expert Community in the United States. Why not . Because ukraine has whenever been a top priority for the United States. I remember when a country is a top priority the way the soviet union was during the cold war we put the resources in and actual firepower and thinking through those issues. And no matter how difficult it was to get access to the source are you saying the thinking of the expertise in the government when it comes to russia and ukraine has become second rate. With. Well, i think we spend less time on it. We have fewer resources. It is hot at the top of the agenda for the administration and at the top of the agenda for Foreign Policy for probably ten, 15 years or more. There was a brief period of extreme interest in russia right after the collapse of the soviet union, when we had this idea that russia was going to move in a democratic, free market direction and we had a major role to play in that, but once it became clear sort of towards the end of the 1990s that that wasnt russias future, certainly not near term future you saw people lose a lot of interest in russia. Fiona hill, part of the grievance of Vladimir Putin, a long list of grievances is his reading of exactly that, of the last generation of usrussia relationships and the way he has been discussing it almost from the moment he came to office but nevermore ferociously than now is a litany of slights, instances where the United States overplayed its hand, treated russia with the back of its hand, whether it has to do with nato expansion or economic advice. This has become a Vladimir Putin that is deeply resentful of the United States and you write about it very, very effectively in your new book, mr. Putin. Please tell us about that and what we should expect to see after the ukrainian elections, after this has calmed down a bit, is this going to go on and on . Well, we certainly are going into this for the long haul. This is one of the long games we are going to be playing for some time, and just what tom has already said about the neglect in many respects of russia and the United States, and elsewhere in europe has been something that is really rankled the kind of things that really get to buck up these comments russia is a second rate regional power, just the very idea, you know, that the best brains that used to look at the soviet union and the cold war have been diverted to other things, and the rest of us who are still looking at russia getting very long in the tooth like the three of us together with you, david, where we are in many respects a generation that have been working on this for a long time and it is very hard to see the next generation, because just simply the interest of not being there and giving them positions, and now for putin the thing that frankly he set out to reverse. When he came into the president situate, back in 1990, 2,000 he made this big speech saying he was going to put the russian state back where it belonged, which is foremost in the minds of people, and back in europe as a great power, he didnt want russia to become a second fiddle, a second colon, he made that comment many times, and i think he does in the poll in that regard this idea that russia was just going to be one of these new european powers that was on a trajectory to become just another player when putin set back to restore the, putin setback to restore the economy and the nation he talks about russia being one of just one of three big sovereign powers with the United States and china. Russia being one of those plate, unique world civilizations, not just like any old nation state and really what he has done with the annexation of crimea is demand that we Pay Attention and make it very clear that we are going to be paying attention ifl he has his way to russia for a long time and ukraine in many respects is the main game but also a sideshow in the fight that russia is going to be back not just as a regional player but one that demands global attention and this is really what putin is setting out to do at this juncture. As you are sitting in maldo va, if you are sitting in estonia, lithuania, latvia, are you a lot more nervous now than you were six months ago . Certainly than you were six months ago, i think the last time everybody was very nervous was in 2008, around the wall with georgia, where putin suddenly intended to get everyones attention there too, if you recall back to august 2008, there was a lot of concern that today was tblisi and there was a flurry of activity and then it seemed that putin took a step back. In many respects that is because he wasnt pushed any further with georgia and ukraine, ukraine sort of stepped back and became occupy uhed in its own problem and he didnt have to take any action there but what we have seen again is the ratcheting back of the heat, a lot of concern expressed in the balance tick states about the russian population there, that was something that was a big feature in the 1990s, that set the stage again and certainly if you are sitting in maldo va and about to sigh sign one of these Association Agreements with europe formally i in in june, at the end of june, we are going to see all of these points again, along with georgia, they will sign the Association Agreement you are worried about what is going to happen to your territorial integrity. Because putin is playing with the leadership for some time with the break away republics of maldo va too, threatening the prospect of being fully independent or also a part of russia. Is th the adventure this ukre a cover for how badly things are going in the russian economy . The people who have more to fear from putin over the last sixmonth live in russia. The problem of but fin is a russian problem. There has been unfortunately developments developments in russia that are tremendously detrimental to russian interests, for the russian state interests, the russian middle class interests. The russian people who work hard and have entrepreneurial talent. What are those developments. Those developments include further stagnation of the economy, deepening of the favoritism and corruption of who can acquire property or who can obtain loans. Brain drain, because of pressure on the university system, tightening over the internet, whereas before they were content to control the state television and almost all the television is state. The internet space was much livelier and freer, certainly compared to china, and there has been a tightening in that direction as you know. And you have written about. So these are all ominous for the people of russia. The people of maldo va have their own problems. A quarter of the moll doll van population doesnt live in moldova because the place is a basket case of corruption. Under more than a generation of poor elites. Maybe things have gotten better rently in moldova under the current relationship but that is not felt by the Current Population of moldovans who work in italy or portugal or elsewhere. Lets talk about the ukraine. Lets talk a little bit about the ukraine. The ukrainian economy, it is hard to measure because of course there are no real prices in the soviet union and as Exchange Rate fluctuation with the ukrainian and soviet currency, it is inexact but thee ukrainian economy is definitely smaller than it was in 1991 when they broke away from the soviet union, they have shrunk. Correct. The ukrainian economy is under 200 billion gdp by any measurement. The russian economy is more than 2 trillion. And you can talk about the corruption in the russian economy, which is horrific, you can talk about the lack of diversification, it is horrific. But russias economy has expanded about 11 times the size of the ukraines economy when the russian population is only three times the size of the ukrainian population. So something really awful has happened in the ukraine. The political establishment has done zero, zero structural economic reform. Now do you have any confidence in poroshenko to do anything . Poroshenko is clearly well intentioned right now, he is clearly talking about ukraine. He is clearly a ukrainian patriot and stands for ukrainian sovereignty and going after properly the armed vigilant at thes and games in the east who sees airports and other buildings but he needs of course a Political Program. Because you cant just retake the airport, half of which is destroyed when you retake it. You have got to build. There was an imf program for ukraine that was also conditional in 2008. Whichian, who just lost the election negotiated. It was 16, 17 billion. There was a 15, 16 img program in 2010 and poroshenko was part of the negotiating team. Both of those were canceled because the Ukrainian Government failed to live up to its pledges of the conditions that it had accepted. So there is no guarantee that yet another multibillion dollars 15 or 16 billiondollar imf conditional program will be met by the kind of difficult choices, that is poroshenkos challenge. He not only needs a Political Program but a political instrument in which to immr. Empty any find of Political Program he might decide on. The problem you have is the lack of this political structure, of real political parties, of instruments that you can use to effect any type of policy in the ukraine, so it is great to articulate, enunciate a policy but how are you going to bring together the people to actually implement that . And thats been one of the challenges at places like ukraine and elsewhere have had over the past 20, 25 years. Do you think the u. S. Sanctions and western sanctions against russia influenced the flow of events in a good way . Were they effective . Well, i dont think dramatically. I have a somewhat different view than the conventional wisdom on putin because i do believe that his aim from the very beginning have been limited. He is not really i think if you look at his history, a big risk taker, it is calculated risk. The goal for putin, the goal for russia is to still have a ukraine that is in some way not pro western, that can still be brought in to some type of economic and political entity thathat is testimony nateed by moscow, you dont want part of ukraine. You need all of ukraine for putins longterm ambitions. And so i think what really caused putin the take a step back rhetorically and perhaps even politically, to deescalate over the past couple of weeks has been the threat of widespread violence in Eastern Ukraine. I mean he has positioned himself as a great russian patriot, somebody who is prepared to send in the troops to defends ethnic russians and russian speakers. Putin is smart enough to realize this wasnt going to be crimea all over again, he would extend Russian Forces into what would have been hostile territory, and the Russian Military hasnt operated well in hostile territory in recent in recent years. So i think that, with the possibility of sanctions played a role in the modification, the deescalation we have seen at this point but as i said this crisis is far from over. I actually agree with what tom said here and i think when we look forward, we really have to factor russia in as part of finding a solution for ukraine. If you look at the ukrainian economy and of course steve has already told us what a poor shape it is in, the impetus for reform and for restructuring can only come in conjunction not just request the European Union and with the United States and the imf and the world bank but my factoring in russia, particularly in Eastern Ukraine. The old heavy industrial money factor effect of the ukraine that were formally dominated by the defense i have were very much tied into russia, directly not just a question of the subsidization of gas from russia into the ukraine, it was tying the economics together and with a lot of money factoring and economic processes, the markets, nearly all of ukrainian manufacture goes to russia it is highly unlikely anybody else will take on all of these enterprises and probably when you look down the line you are seeing between the range of 5 billion to 10 billion depending on how you factor this in of orders coming into the russia economy directly from the russia. The entire market for the chocolate that the president was selling within russia itself is it is likely unlikely that consumers elsewhere in europe are going to buy the president s chocolate so we will have to think very clearly about how russia plays into this and putin is all about that one of his biggest complaints about the European Unions Association Agreement was the ukraine being taken out of russias economic he kept signaling for many months that he wanted to sort of sit down at the table and have a discussion about this, about how this was going to be work out between his grand alliance for a Eurasian Union and the block to the east, these discussions about ukraine also moving and diverting and reorienting some of its trade partners towards europe. So we are going to have to market russia in and i think putin is taking some hard calculations here. He doesnt want to see ukraine go totally off the edge but have considerable influence. He is trying to calculate now how much he can work with poroshenko and also looking to the future in how that relationship is going to pan out. Cot kins, he 0 naah hill, tom graham, thank you, than thanks r the discussion. Thank you. Thank you, david. Thank you. We continue with the new yorker cartoonist roz chast she just published a graphic memoir called cant we talk about something more pleasant. Of the New York Times calls it a family portrait with all of the intimacy and emotional power of a conventional pros memoir, i am pleased to have her at this table and i am pleased to always have her at the new yorker, roz chast. Roz, you grew up in brooklyn but wrong it was the brooklyn of modern hipsters and a sid dick brooklyn, hsasidic brooklyn. I hated the brooklyn in which i true up. And that may have a lot to do with where i grew up and how i grew up. It was very, very different, it was not the hipster brooklyn, it was not even the sort of Brooklyn Heights brooklyn, it was just, i think of it as deep brooklyn. It is the neighborhoods of six story apartment houses with lobbies with plastic flowers that always smelled sort of funny and people having very weird fight where, you know, occasionally a Television Set would get thrown out the window, and it was just not, not really very encouraging place to grow up. And when you were a kid, how were you spending your time . Were you burrowing into comic books and old new yorkers . How did you you learn what you eventually became. I drew a lot, read a lot of books. The worst thing is when someone asked me to go outside . No. I really dont. Lets stay in, because you know, play names, we can draw, we make up fake cookbooks, we can look at books and they would look at me like, you want to go outside . And your parents were doing what . They were teachers. My mother was an assistant principal my father was a teacher. And what high school . Lafayette high school, taught french and spanish. Which is a huge high school in brooklyn. Yes. I think you once toll me one of the students was louis scott. Louis gossett, jr. , yes. And my father was very, very proud of this. Yes he carried his picture in his wallet. We went back stage and he remembered my father and it was wonderful. Who were your parents like . Because they are the foundation of this book. They are they are maturation and they are growing older and you having to cope with that is the book. What were they like when they were young and vital. I never i never knew them as young and vital that is part of the problem. I only got to know them when they were sort of old and cranky or crankier. They were very devoted to one another. They were very much children of a certain time. They were both born in 1912. They graduated from college into the depression. They their parents were poor. And i think that formed them a lot. How so. Well, i think that they never really took anything for granted. They didnt really they werent like typical parents of the fifties or sixties with this sort of, you know, america is great and jean lets go out and buy a new car every couple of years and stoves and place mats and, you know, it was more like, we just have to hang on very tightly to what we have, because it could all disappear in one second. At what point, roz, did you get the idea that you could make a living or make an artistic life by becoming a cartoonist . This is not exactly a growing world in the United States. I mean, ages ago there used to be a lot of places where you could sell cartoons. Yes. And conceivably if you have a lot of talent you could make sort of a living and thats kind of shrunk and it shrank a long time ago. The new yorker and a couple of other places on the margins and thats it. Yes. And how did you get started and who did you level love to read and who were your influences as a cartoonist. I never really thought i would be able to make a living as a cartoonist. I saw if i were really lucky i would be able to sometimes occasionally get some of my work published maybe in the Village Voice. I never thought that i would wind up working for the new yorker. Did the new yorker seem too square when you were younger . I didnt really think of them as square. I just thought that what i was doing was sort of so oddball. This is like mean 78, i didnt see anything that was really that much like it and i thought my work probably had more in common with the stuff i was seeing in the Village Voice or national lampoon. They had the funny pages. Right. With a lot of just more experimental eyeball stuff, stuff that wasnt really conventional and yet it wasnt underground, it was just something else. So i remember very distinctly your first cartoon that feebly finally did get accepted by the new yorker, in the late seventies, tell us about that. It was a cartoon called Little Things, and when i first came to the new yorker, i called them up and i found out when their dropoff date was and thats when cartoonist write in a portfolio of cartoons and i pretty much put everything i had. I had around 60 cartoons, i didnt know if it is too few, too many, i had no idea, and lee lorenz told me the next week they would buy Little Things which surprised me, because that was probably the most personal and weirdest of the whole lot. It was kind of, the kind of doodles you do or that i do in private with you just are making little shapes and you kind of like just hack at it. You know, just like a little doodle yo you would do for yourself. And so, yes, it surprised me that they took fantasy island, that is what happens, but really what happens is that there are around 40 of us on staff or sort of staff and we each turn in what we call the batch and that is anywhere it could be like six or seven or ten or 12 cartoons every week and then there is an art meeting, i guess, i mean, i have never been to it. Do they tell you . No, i dont want to know. And an editor narrows it down and sits down with right. And then we can only take so many because of a given issue only has 15 or 20 cartoons. Exactly. So that is the dark side. The good side is that you have you have a there is a dark side. But the good part of it is that you are drawing every week or almost every week and i think just that process, if you love to do it eventually what you want to write about, what you want to draw about start to emerge. This book is something completely it is as ambitious as a novel in its way and it seemed way beyond the boundaries of anything that you have ever done. What was your ambition for this book . What did you want for it . Really, i wanted to remember the experience and i wanted to remember my parents. I feel like one of the main things that i reasons why i write and i draw is because im so afraid if i dont it is all going to be forgotten, you know, and it does feel that way sometimes if i dont draw it, if i dont write it down, everything, everything, because it does, time just kind of just goes on like that. Ruthlessly. Ruthlessly. And i wrote this and drew this to remember my parents, really. For what reason . In other words, they did not seem, they did not seem to live big lives, almost aggress civil small lives, aggressively small lives. They are not veteran of great wars or the survivors of the great tragedies of the 20th century. What about them other than the fact. That they were your parents wanted memorializing in a serious sense why did you go about going writing a book about their aging and their deaths. Well, i guess also it was such an intense experience to go through from the beginning of realizing that i had to get more actively involved in taking care of them and not knowing at all how to do that or how it would play out or what was raider of me or anything really about it, nothing. They were quite old before they really started to age in a serious way. Yes, yes, i would say they were. In their late eighties, maybe. I mean, they probably held it together or my benefit, you know, to be nice to me. They didnt want to be a burden, but at a certain point, i think that we all sort of have to realize that things are changing and it wasnt going to always stay like that. And it didnt seem funny at all at the time . No, no. Although there were little bits of things that were funny inbetween, like the oven mitt story, i mean, i had started to go out to brooklyn again to visit my parents. And just noticing the disorder and the grime and just being, you know, when you are away from something for a really long time and you come back to it you can see it more clearly and it is like, oh, my god, why dont they ever replace the oven mitts, this is the oven mitts they had since junior high, it called 2. 99 and then i looked at it and it was not only like burnt and disgusting but also patched. I mean who patches oven mitts . And then i realizes that it was patched with fabric from a skirt that i had made myself in seventh grade in Home Economics class and that just like sent me over the edge but that was sort of funny. I mean, that did seem sort of funny and i came home and i drew it up. In the last 20 years there has been a big trend in the direction of graphic novels, there is also chris wear and dan class 7 and many others. Is that something that interests you . Did it influence the way you went about doing this book. I feel very happy that these books and from home, the beck novel have been so popular, because i feel like in some ways they paved they opened doors, you know, it is like, oh, this is an interesting way to tell the story. This can be done, but the way i wanted to tell this, i really didnt know whether it was going to hang together, because it is different. It does have some standalone pieces in it. It is not, you know, panel after panel after panel, it has some writing in it and it has some photographs in it. It has the drawings at the end of my mother, it has a couple of my mothers poems. I mean, she wrote poetry, and i had to figure out a way to put it together so that there was this narrative, that it wasnt just like a scrapbook or like hodgepodge or something. When people ask you about this all the time but where do you get your ideas for the cartoons week to week if you have to be sending in 12, 15 of them . It is pretty tough. Well, sometimes i have no idea where they come from. They just come out of the air. Sometimes it is something somebody says that is funny or, you know, i get other ideas from that, but there is one cartoon that i can tell you exactly where it came from. It is a cartoon called when moms dance, and, you know, if you have ever had teenagers you know that there is almost nothing more disgusting to them than the sight of an adult human body and if you really want to put the cherry on top of that sundae, all you have to do is move that body a little bit. A parental body. Parental, move do, a little funky dance. You have to do this a little bit. Oh, yes. Just like that. Yes. Throwing, kids are throwing up all over the world. They are. People under a certain age, they are like barfing and my daughter was doing her homework and she was listening to some music on the boom box and i wanted to see, she is 16, wanted to see whether she was paying attention and so i kind of came in and did this little funky dance and she looked up and she said, mom, stop. You are hurting me. And i asked her if i could use it and you asked permission . Yes, i asked permission. Do you always ask permission . If it is this close, i do. Yes. Roz you are working side by side with a lot of cartoonists that work on genres, two people on an island, two people in a bar two, penguins in a bar and also the tombstone genre and you have particularly terrific one. I love that genre, as you probably know. This one is tuned in, tuned on, dropped out, dropped in, worked out, saved up, dropped dead. And that is the story of life. Thats story of life. Roz, thanks very much. Thank you. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org sempra. This is nightly Business Report with Tyler Mathisen and susie gharib. Brought to you in part by. Thestreet. Com, featuring Herb Greenberg who reminds investors that risk is real with Herb Greenbergs reality check researching stocks in terms of risk. You can learn more at thestreet. Com reality check. New height, investors are back from the beach and in an optimistic mood sending the s p 500 to a record close. The head of charles schwab, one of the nations largest vestment advisers, tells people who they can do their money. And astrazeneca, and the story is far from over. And power