Galley Girl: Questions for Bernard Goldberg

Bernard Goldberg has been on a spirited crusade against the left for three books now —the number one New York Times bestseller Bias, the bestselling Arrogance, and his latest book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. Goldberg, an Emmy-winning journalist, is a former correspondent on the CBS program 48 Hours. Galley Girl spoke by phone to him in Miami.

GG: You used to be a liberal. What happened?

BG: What happened? Liberals happened. I want to make a distinction between your run-of-the-mill liberals and the cultural elite liberals, who really speak for liberalism in America today. Most liberals obviously are decent people. They go to work every day, they care about their families, maybe they give money to charity. Fine. I have no problem whatsoever with anybody in that group. But the people who are speaking for liberals in the world of politics, the chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean; or the cultural liberals, like Michael Moore; the Hollywood elites who confuse intelligence with celebrity—they think because they’re famous, they’re also smart. I listen to them and I say, I don’t want to be part of that group anymore. Even when I agree with them, which is more often than you would think, I no longer want to be seen as being part of that group. It isn’t because of their politics, which I think are misguided; it’s because they come off as snobby and elitest. I think they look down their nose at ordinary Americans.

GG: How did you compile your list?

BG: I really think that there are a lot of people out there, liberals as well as conservatives, Democrats as well as Republicans, who say that this country has just gotten too angry in recent years, too nasty and certainly too vulgar. There’s this tendency to believe that this stuff just happens in societies—societies just evolve; nobody’s to blame. I don’t believe that. I think people are to blame. These aren’t the 100 worst people in America; they’re 100 people who in my view are screwing things up. And some of the names are there for fun. I mean, Courtney Love...

GG: You called her a “ho”! That’s serious.

BG: I called her a “ho.”

GG: What’s a “ho” as opposed to a whore?

BG: There’s a world of difference. You know the stuff that she’s done. I figured one word for Courtney Love ought to take care of it.

GG: Somehow, I’m not amazed that Howard Stern is on your list.

BG: The reason he’s on the list because he’s supposed to be a shock jock. Here’s the bad news: he doesn’t shock anybody anymore. Thanks to Howard...this kind of sludge just washes over us. And that’s the danger. That’s the serious part of the book. I’m not the Church Lady. I don’t care what people say in private; I don’t care what they do in private. But we’re talking about the public arena.

GG: But when you say that we’ve come a long way from “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” causing a big ruckus, that a lot of us miss that America, aren’t you causing the problem, too, with your own ranting at people?

BG: Ranting is your word. I would say this: I don’t call anybody a Nazi. I don’t call anybody a fascist. I don’t drop the F bomb on anybody. But I can give you a list as long as your arm of my friends on the left who do that all the time.

GG: You inveigh against rap music, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton. Don’t you worry about being called a racist?

BG: I’m glad you’re bringing that up. I write about race in this book with a great deal of sadness. When I was in high school and college in the ‘60s, the civil rights movement was the most important movement and the most moral movement of my time, and of the 20th century, for that matter. Martin Luther King, in my opinion, was one of the five most important, decent Americans since our founding as a nation. What happens after Martin Luther King gets assassinated? We get Jesse Jackson, we get Al Sharpton. If the implication is that you can’t write about Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton without worrying about being called a racist, well, we’ve got a big problem in this country.

GG: What if somebody said to you, are you feigning outrage to sell books?

BG: The answer is no. Anybody who knows me knows that I’m incapable—and I mean, like physically incapable—of writing stuff I don’t believe. My fingers won’t hit the keys.