YouSaid · the spoken record

Howard Wolfson

lines on the record: 81
first: 2018-12-17
most recent: 2018-12-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“to have every day yeah every day and i think trump is very much of the belief you got to win every day yeah not only and now it's not just every day Now it's every hour Because of Twitter and social media”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's true. But I think he his training in New York has taught him that you want to be in the conversation and ideally you want to be controlling the direction of the conversation. And I know I followed with interest the press strategy of the Obama administration because, of course, you always follow with interest the press strategy if you're me of any administration. And I know some people argued, I think you sort of suggested, you know, we've got to play the long game here. It's not about winning every day. Right.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Enormously, this is a guy who mastered the New York City media environment, and he understood that if you could be in the paper every day controlling the story or being part of the story, you were three quarters of the way towards your goal. And he is like that as president. I think he wakes up every day. And instinctively understands that his goal for that day is to control the conversation. Now, he doesn't always do it in ways that benefit him. And he's obviously not the most disciplined. And I'm not sure that”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's an excitement about the New York City media market that I have not encountered in any other jurisdiction or any other geography in America. And I think it makes those of us who've worked here a little bit sharper maybe. You have to be on your toes a little bit more. I love the New York Post. I get up every morning and I read the New York Post. First thing I read.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I do feel somewhat blessed to have grown up politically in a period where we had these really amazing newspapers that are still around and still in many ways amazing, robustly covering the life of the city. Yeah.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel I have not always been happy with how the New York papers and New York media and especially the New York tabloids have covered me or covered the people I've worked for.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think that's true. You had some sense of what it was that reporters wanted, how you could be helpful to them or not, depending on the circumstance.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Indirectly, by working for Congressman Anita Lowey, who was my Congresswoman. From Westchester. I worked for her in Washington, but it was really a thrill to work for your hometown member. I'd worked for a couple of members before her, a couple of congress members before her, one from Indiana. Right. One from California, but when you work for your hometown member, it's a sort of a special affinity. And she's an extraordinary person. Still there?”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hamilton obviously is full of brilliant songs and brilliant lines, but the one that resonated the most with me is I want to be in the room where it happens.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, you know, I used to wait outside the executive for the executive session of the Fairfax City Council to end, and you would try to buttonhole people and find out what went on. And at some point it occurred to me, wouldn't it be more fun to be in the room?”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I was a journalist actually briefly. I was a reporter at a weekly newspaper in northern Virginia, which I really enjoyed. But at some point, I realized that I would rather be the person in the room than covering the people in the room. The classic. Yeah.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We do a lot of work here at the Bloomberg Foundation with mayors and with cities. Mike was a mayor. He believes in sort of municipal leadership. Yeah. And one of the theories of our case is that leadership really matters, that the difference between a city that is successful and a city that is unsuccessful could be the difference between a great mayor and a bad one. And it's not always the case that great people are replaced by equally great people. And Harold Washington was a great man. And sometimes when great men leave the stage, the losses really felt acutely.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you know, because you helped elect him. What he meant to people across Chicago and certainly in the Hyde Park community.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember very vividly the day that Harold Washington died and seeing people just breaking down and crying on the streets in Hyde Park.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was lucky to apply when I did. I was lucky to get in. I was very lucky to graduate. But as you know, both from your time there and from what you're doing now, it's a tremendous institution.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After an extended visit So that was one reason. And the other, quite frankly, it was the best school I got into. When I applied to Chicago, the acceptance rate was about 35%. And now it says you know eight or something less than 10%”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Couple of reasons one, my mother's father, my grandfather was from Chicago, and he had gone to the University of Chicago. He had to withdraw during the Depression, and he never graduated. And it was really a dream of his, I think, to see a child or a grandchild go to school and eventually come out of it with a diploma, which I managed to scrape by with after an experience.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was not. I see. Okay. I withdraw that thing. He's not been overly critical of Mike. But the phrases like that have echoes in history and they're not good ones. And as I said, I think it's a worrisome time. Having said that, as I said, I think that there was a... A real reaction to a lot of this on the part of the American people in the last midterms. You had historic turnout and you had 40 seats flipping in the House, which given the gerrymandering and the redistricting was a lot of seats. We were pretty much close to maxing out.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do. I feel like we're living through history again, not in ways that we would have necessarily imagined or certainly hoped for. And I am enormously hopeful based on the results of the last election. But I am worried about the larger set of circumstances that a lot of us find ourselves in and see around us. I mean, if you look at the Western world, there's a lot of turmoil and a lot of anger and a lot of unrest and tumult It's a worrisome time.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there are people all sort of came from east of Germany, Poland and Russia. And I have a very early memory of them talking about the Holocaust and what it meant to them that they were corresponding with relatives in the old country, if you will, with some frequency. And then all of a sudden the letters stop. And that was obviously a pretty telling indication that something terrible was happening and had happened. So I sort of felt like there was this life that had been touched by history. It was all fairly, in some sense it was very modest and ordinary. These were not people who were congressmen or mayors or presidents. But I think I learned pretty early on that circumstances can really impact what happens to people. You've come in and involved in that.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They themselves were not immigrants, but they were the children of immigrants. And when I would go to my father's parents, who I saw very regularly, they were very involved in my life. I was really, really blessed to have four amazing grandparents that were very involved in my upbringing. I lived with my mother's parents until I was five with my mother. And then I saw my father's parents pretty much weekly. Every time I would go over there, they would be sitting in the living room reading a book and they would recommend the book to me or they would talk about what was in the book. They'd be reading the paper. We'd always talk about what was in the paper. And it felt as if the life that they had led was kind of touched by history. At least that's the stories that they told. And not always happily. There was a lot of conversation in my father's house of the Holocaust and the impact of the Holocaust.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father really imbued me with a love of history and reading. His parents did not graduate from college, but they were voracious readers.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But her parents were people of means, and they were supportive. I'm sure that they were helpful to her on a monthly basis, not to create a life of luxury, but to help with necessities. And they also paid for my education. So I went to a private school here in New York, Fieldston, and then they also paid for my college at the University of Chicago. I kind of had this little bit of a dual existence where, as I said, my immediate circumstances were fairly modest. But I was also very well aware that there was real wealth in the world. My grandparents had money and kids that I went to high school with certainly had money. And so it was an interesting kind of dual existence in that sense.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my immediate circumstances financially were fairly modest. My mom and I lived in a pretty modest apartment in Yonkers at a time when Yonkers itself was fairly...”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think she thought that she had much other choice. It was just the two of us really alone in the apartment a lot of the time, and I am sure that she did everything she could to will herself around towards mothering because the alternative was pretty grim”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of the, I think, the misconception, and you have talked a lot about this and you know a lot about this, but my sense is a lot of the misconception people have around depression is that it is a constant thing. And if something is constant, it's easier to detect. In my mom's case, I remember lots of laughter, lots of happy days, lots of energy and energetic activity that on any given day you would think there's no way that this is somebody who struggles with depression, but there were other periods where none of that was the case. I think she. Really did everything she could to overcome it in order to be a mother to a single mother to me.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've thought about that the times that maybe you see glimpses of a parent struggling and what that does to a kid. I became more aware of it as I got older. I don't know how aware I was of it when I was actually living in the home as a child or as a teenager. But certainly as I grew older I became very much aware that she struggled with depression.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember a lot of nights when my mom was on the phone with parents of the kids she was teaching, walking them through ways to improve the lives of their children. And she taught in the Bronx. She taught at a couple of schools in the Bronx. One of them was in the South Bronx and as difficult as it was to teach in New York City in the 70s and the 80s. It was even more difficult to teach in the South Bronx. But it was really...”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She did. She taught New York. And she did. She taught in New York City in the 70s and the 80s when that was not the easiest time to be a teacher in New York City. And she taught special education. She was very dedicated to those kids.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. A lot of books and a lot of talk of history and politics in my family, both my media family and my extended family. But as involved as my father was, I was the only child of a single mother. And my mom did an awful lot of raising me.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, my parents were both teachers and they were divorced when I was pretty young. I saw my father regularly. He was definitely involved in my life throughout my life.”
2018-12-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 295 — Howard Wolfson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source