And aisha harris. Whether this is a watershed moment, is this a begin og offa new normal, its honestly too soon to say. Yes. Is this progress . Yes. Is this the solution . No. Happens there is great films led by africanamerican actors, people of color, and thats great. In some ways, im almost looking beyond the academy. Im looking at the blockbusters that are coming. Thats more indicative of where the industry is headed. We con crude with jared cohen, president of jigsaw. The notice of toxicity of people being mean to each other is not new. Throughout history and every corner of the globe were experiencing things that are interesting where people derails a conversation. I think the main issue is we have to understand that the toxicity we experience online that has real world implication. Hitchens, the oscars and jared cohen when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Hockenberry this is one of those moments. You know what im talking about. Everyone has an opinion. Ive heard people this week say theyve set rules, are we going to talk about trump or not. Not. Jon stewart retired last year but is on the colbert show virtually every night which is blowing Jimmy Fallons ratings. Who cowe need to guide us in this time. We lost Christopher Hitchens in 2011 to cancer, but when he was alive, no president , monarch, politics, not even god was safe from his commentary, his historical wisdommizing. He was unequal with wit. He was a 60s socialist and Ardent Supporter of the invasion of iraq. No one wore the badge of contrarian as Christopher Hitchens as he once explained to charlie rose. Not Everyone Wants to always be an awkward cuss or out of step or against the stream, but if you do feel the consensus doesnt spook for you, if there is something about you mat makes you feel it would be worth being unpopular or marginal, for the chance to lead your own life and have a life instead of a career or job, then i can promise you it is worthwhile, yeah. Hockenberry with so what would hitch say about america in this age of donald trump . With me and hitches friends and colleagues from stanford, california, his widow carol blue hitchens, historian Douglas Brinkley is in austin, texas, and here in the studio are the novelists martin amis and journalist and author leslie cockburn. Welcome to all of you. Thank you. Controlcarol, you said upntil hs last moments he was engaged in the news. We could predict he would have something to say about whats going on right now. Yeah he probably would have something to say every time he wrote a column or came on tv and, sadly, we have to try to infer what he might have said and really only he could say it. But there you go. Intellectual forensics, thats what well call it. Douglas brinkley, he had a historical reference that nobody else had that could create a parallel. What do you think he would find as the most important or significant historical reference that would describe this time of donald trump . Well, he probably would have turned lacked to georg george ol who he loved so much. Orwells books are back in association. One of the consistency of Christopher Hitchens was his disdain of authoritarianism in any guise. He would go after whether Henry Kissinger or the catholic church, he did not care, if he smelled authoritarianism. So i think the moves of donald trump to suppress journalists would drive hitchens mad. But he would also see this as a grand opportunity, living in washington, d. C. , to lampoon trumps, you know, speakers that are coming in, people who are on television. He would have just loved to have warred with people like steve bannon or kellyanne conway, because he knew he would be able to devastate them. Nobody could have beat hitchens in a debate. He would have picked up freedom of the press, antiauthoritarianism would have questioned all of trumps seeming fascist tendencies. Although hockenberry although because trump is an opportunity to lambast traditional liberalism in washington, d. C. And because of the sort of contempt for the clintons that Christopher Hitchens had, in the election, its hard for me to know where he would have come down on this election. Leslie, what do you think . I think christopher would have been appalled by trump, but he also would have said, who gave us trump . Hillary clinton. I mean, christopher was not, as you know, a big supporter of Hillary Clinton. No. Hockenberry and i feel he would have said its because of the way they ran that campaign that we ended up with donald trump. I think h he would have laid a lot of responsibility at her feet. Hockenberry liberalism infuriated christopher, seemed to me. Just sort of the complacent liberalism of sort of the intellectual elite drove him crazy. What do you think he would say about the people who support donald trump versus the people who have contempt for him . I think he would be very active in the resistance. I think he would sense that this was, you know, a moment that has chosen him. I think he would have more or less ignored trump himself, and he would he thought bill clinton was a titanic barbarian. He would have jumped out of his shoes to see trump in his pomp. I think he would have gone for steve bannon. He would have honed in on steve bannon, who revealed himself yesterday as a semiliterate neurotic when he said every morning President Trump tells reince and i he means reince anme thats a gross ill literacy. The idea of hi being an intellectual is laughable. Hes another nuclea neurotic wi. Exactly. Christopher would have said look to the language. With trump, the incredible language. Negativity is whats coming out of trump and bannons mouths now. Look to the language and i think he would have learned a lot from that. I agree with you, martin, the idea that bannon is the intellectual heavyweight and idealogue of this kind of supranationalist wing to have Republican Party is laughable. Hockenberry what would he think of bannon, Doug Brinkley . As martin pointed out, its like swiss cheese filled with holes. Hitchens was deeply well read and a brilliant interpreter of modern life and bannon is sort of a Goldman Sachs hack, wanna be producer in hollywood who kind of stumbled on this policy in 9 11 a policy of raw american nationalism, thoughtless. Hitchens word against established religions in general, and so, the fact of bannon trying to play some kind of god donald trump, you know, the first lady reading the lords prayer at the florida rally the other way, those are things that would have irritated hitchens, but i do think he would have aimed for bannon for the intellectual poser and, also, leslie nailed it, too. Theres no way Christopher Hitchens would have voted for Hillary Clinton. Hockenberry what do you think his verdict on the state of the american system would be right now . Well, i think a couple of things. With one, remember christopher said the totalitarian is my enemy, not the person who tells you how to live or makes you pay taxes, its the person who wants to control how you think. So he would be very concerned of whats happening in those spicer press conferences, and whats coming out of bannon and miller and trump himself, this sort of controlling the thought process. It goes back way before orwell to tom payne who made it very clear that if you cant think, then liberty, you know, is a shadow that quits the horizon. So i think that looking at the numbers, he would have, for example, on the whole russia issue, i think he would have loved the putin bashing, loved it, but i think he would have not bought the notion that the russians through the election threw the election in any way. I think he would have said thats the responsibility of the hillary campaign. He would have looked at the numbers in michigan, for example, he would have said, they werent there on the ground, they didnt woo the unions, they didnt do their job. I think he would zero in on these threats to and trump have been making about the opposition party, and they said were going to do something about it, now, thats what would set off all the alarm bells. He would love being called the enemy. You see it on cable news, this sort of sanctimonious why are you calling me the enemy thing, im just a journalist. He would take it. He would just, oh, im the enemy, then . you would see the spirit come out. Hockenberry he would say i am the enemy. He would think it is a badge of honor for the press to be attacked in the way that it it. The question would be could the press in general, those who cover trump, live up to it. Its a high compliment theyre attacking the press. The question is will the press deserve it. Thats the salient question for us. I mean, the press itself has a job to do. When we say, what would hitch say, its because we miss him and admire him but its also because were asking the question of what is the press to do in this moment. What do you think, doug . Well, we had richard nixon, after all, and hitchens participated and all in that he loved to gossip about the nixon tapes and all the heinous things nixon said. But i think one of christophers most successful endeavors was calling Henry Kissinger a war criminal. That took brave riand he stayed on it with a steady drum beat. There is a book called the great shark hunt. The shark was richard nixon, and the press came and went after nixon and got him, and i think hitchens would be proud of investigative journalists, people like leslie who get out there, do stories, break news. Being in washington, d. C. , not new york, he would have been the grand man to hav of the party ad people coming to his place. Their apartment would have been the hub. It was the salon of washington a decade ago and i would still be now. It would be what is the press doing. He had the spirit to rise above and say look what theyre doing. He would have joined in solidarity with the press. When one journalist is shouted down by trump, all the other journalists, i am spartacus, they should all ask the same question. Theyve got to be confrontational with him because hes going to be confrontational with the press. That moment where he said, we caught them in a real beauty today, the press, and theyre going to pay for it that beauty was the crowds werent as big as they were for obama at his inauguration. It wasnt a beauty. Anything. If someone gets his sops middle name wrong, he calls it fake news. H he muddies the waters. Fake news is no longer usable through ambiguity now because, for trump, it means news i dont like. Hockenberry so, carol, does Christopher Hitchens, you proceed . Now the script of how we will he look back at his knowledge of orwell and the 20 century and fascists and dictators who came and went and he could quote chapter and verse like no one else and know where were head like nowhere else like no one else . I think youre right about that. I think he also, because i think we know trump doesnt really read, there are two movies i think he would be revisiting. Im certainly not the first to point out. The manchurian candidate. So imagine Angela Lansbury is bannon, though bannon is not half as clever as she was. Then also network, which i looked at it again recently, incredibly apt, and i think he would have been drawing on some of these movie references. In network, the problem was just the international corporatization of the media. Now we have it with the government, with the executive branch. You know, and i think, also, he would be really attacking the socalled republican holdouts, you know, the guys like mccain and, before that, you know, rubio, who disgraced himself. You know, who questioned tillerson, who had no business becoming secretary of state, and has, you know, International Commercial relations with russia. But then rubber stamped it. So i think he would be turning an eye to the congress and really going after members of the senate and the congress as well. Hockenberry tillerson would be a particular target, i think, of christopher. Douglas, wrap this up for us. I was going to say someone like scott pruitt, the head of the e. P. A. Who doesnt understand climate change, or water boarding, and the Trump Administration shrugging their shoulders its not really torture, it would inflamed him. Hockenberry what would hitch say . I think we have an, inc. Lynn. Thank you so much for that. Thank you. Im a. O. Scott of the New York Times filling in for charlie rose. The 89th Academy Awards will be held sunday in los angeles, jimmy kimmel will host the first time. Lala land leads the pack with 14 nominations. Barrygenicings moonlight and arrival follow with eight nominations apiece and joining me is David Edelstein chief film critic for new yorker magazine and commentator for cbs sunday morning. Aisha harris, culture writer for slate, and josh horowitz, mtv news corresponnt. Happy to have them at this tabl is it going to be a long night of lala land land. . If youre a beght man, yeah. Its a crowd pleaser. Its the closest thing, i think, to a movie that lets you forget your troubles until a bittersweet ending and enjoy a classical form done right. Seems to be a movie that nits wake quite polarizing, one of the things that surprised me since it first kind of emerged through the festival circuit in the fall is how people seem to be fighting about this movie. Its weirdly divisive. One of the objections to this movie has come from kind of jazz fan corners who say it gets jazz wrong and that there is kind of an unpleasant racial politics running underneath it. Also, among the other objections, are that ryan goes ling and emma stone cant sing or dance. Thats why i didnt like the movie. When i go to a movie musical i want to see you be really good at dancing or singing. But if yo you arent good at boh why aim going to see that musical . What would you want . I love a lot of people. I dont want to hear marnie nixons voice anymore. I can carry a tune better than ryan gosling, but he sounds Ryan Goslingesque when he sings. Hes not the great singer fred astaire was or dancer. But emma stone has a sweet voice. It doesnt have a lot of fullness but its on key and its here. Its what the movie is about. Its not everybody does this wow gene kelly number. The singing and dancing are extensions of their personality as in umbrellas. I think one of the criticisms i think has come up and i agree with is the music i think maybe its the musics fault, the music is not as memorable or very good. Astaire did not have that great a voice but he was singing berlin and gershwin, which to me the music here doesnt stick out. Nothing stuck with me with the exception of piano trill. But the lyrics, the music didnt sound that great. I think there are ear worms. All five or six are stuck in my brain. Its the irony were talking of lala land sit maybe plays least to musical afis aficionados bece its not fullthrowed singing and 20 numbers. There is only six or seven sodges in the film, a ver me, i0 minutes or so that kind of sold it to me and made me forgive some of its other lapses or flaws, and i think that has to do with movies and a kind of an idea of what movies can do and a way that a film can tell a story of something that didnt happen with as much emotion or more and conviction than it tells the story of what did happen, and that kind of idea and that openness to fantasy is, i think, something that maybe has been missing from a lot of hollywood and maybe why the academy in particular is so is so willing to so eager to anoint it and to anoint damian. Thats why i liked when you checked yourself when you said it was app escapist film and then said to the bittersweet ending. Actually its a toughminded movie about people who put ambition before you know, these are star are these people are meant to be together in the stars, and to demonstrate that, they go to a planetarium and, you know, i mean, if there is no other more clear way to say these people are fated to be together. Damian jazel i gave his exwife now a producing credit on the movie but they broke apart. I think he understands, as the last film he made pointed out that artists are often, you know, leaving, you know, the niceties of real life behind to perfect their craft. I think thats very much in the movie. That was whiplash, the story of the jazz let me say one more thing, his first film, guy madeline on a park bench, is a story of interracial romance and a wonderful black musician and there are long, searching jazz solos if that movie that i think would surprise a lot of people from lala land, also very abrasive at times. As well as a good old fashion song and dance number. So i think hes i think hes probably been blindsided by this sort of charge that hes kind of whitewashing jazz. And i think the broader issue we should remember about anything, this is how we do pop culture now. We love something only to tear it down. And lala land has be in the driver seat for so long, that it was kind of inevitable it would be picked apart in these ways and its just kind of the cyclical nature. Moonlight maybe hasnt had those chinks in the armor, but i think if youre out front as long as lala land is, youre subject to criticism. You have to point out the world has changed, at least in america. The election happened and i think some of that pushback is also coming because we dont want the cad pi to give into this escapist nature. We want it to more effectively confront that through another movie winning as opposed to lala land. This year, it is an unusually and refreshingly Diverse Group of nominees. I mean, one of the questions that comes up is is this a sign that the academy or that hollywood is changing, is making progress, is this kind of one of those moments of the progress we have so often. What do you make of that dimension of the politics . Do you agree that there is probably going to be probably three out of the four major acting categories are going to have winners who are people of color . I hate that as much as everybody else, but nonwhites, lets say. This will be the fir