YouSaid · the spoken record

Steve Brill

lines on the record
76
first
2018-11-01
most recent
2018-11-01
sittings or episodes
1
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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

  1. “There are others who've done that process at Yale Law School. Legendary others, you know, including one president of the United States.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “And Clay Felker, the legendary founder and editor of New York magazine, loved the piece. And really liked the idea of this kid who was commuting from law school that I actually wasn't commuting that much. We write magazine articles and I just took off writing feature articles for New York magazine and kind of never looked back.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I was in law school at the time, and I said, sure. And I wrote one piece which was a piece that drew on the work I had done in New York City for the government, which exposed the black market in handguns. There were four states in the South that were responsible for 90 plus percent of all the handguns that were seized from criminals in New York City. And I wrote about that black market, and that was considered a pretty big deal then. It's a pretty big deal. It's still a problem now.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “But yeah, I always liked writing and I like the fact that I could control what I was doing and have an impact. And it was just sort of the luck of the draw that when Lindsay left office, his press secretary at the time was Tom Morgan. It was a highly regarded magazine writer and editor. And he went to work for New York magazine. As a senior editor, and he said, you know, hey kid, you want to try to write some stuff for New York Magazine?”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “It always interested me, and I'd been a good writer. You know, I'd gone through the phase that we all went through of thinking that I was, you know, Jimmy Breslin or Pete Hammel. Yes. You know, and then I sort of got over that phase in style.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “When I was in college and law school, I sort of teetered on the edge. While I was in college, I'd written two or three pieces that I just mailed in that made it onto the op-ed page of the New York Times. So that made me think I was this great. And had you always been.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “But a lot of the others did pretty well. And I feel really good about the fact that in many instances where I've had one journalism enterprise that they work for, and then I start a new one, a lot of them are happy to come back. And the ones that don't, it's typically because they've advanced so far in their careers that I wasn't able to hire them back. It would be hard to hire Jill Abramson back from the New York Times.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Some had PTSD. I'm kind of making it up. I'm cleaning it up a little for you. No, no, you're actually in some cases you're overstating it, in some cases you're understating it.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I said, Well, why would I remember you? He says, Don't you remember the merchants protective program? Don't you remember? Detective who was assigned to I said, That's you. He said, yeah, you know, and I owe you my entire career. And I said, well, why do I owe you? He said, Because you were so nasty and so arrogant, and you thought you knew so much and you were just so terrible that I'd come home at night and I'd complain to my wife that this first year Yale law student was bossing me around and I couldn't take it anymore and she said well why don't you go to law school? Why don't you try to make something of yourself? And I enrolled in law school because of you, and that's got me where I am today. So thank you.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “So it was a five or six, there were five or six neighborhoods, and the police department assigned this young detective to me who I was supposed to work with to get this program going. And I remember I don't remember much about it, except that 20 years later, 25 years later, I'm running the Core TV cable network. And this guy comes on who had been the police commissioner of New York and was now head of the customs bureau. Of the federal government, he comes on for an interview, I'm on court TV, and as was my habit, if someone was coming on for the first time, I would go up to the studio, and after they came off the set, I would thank them. And I went up to him, and I thanked him. And he said, you don't remember me, do you?”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Small retail businesses on a story of boulevard, you know, all places you know 23rd Street, in other words, not Fifth Avenue, but basic middle class retail place.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, this is actually pretty funny, and I'm in pretty embarrassing and you need to have a capacity for self-awareness, which I've gradually gained over the years. So here's the Ray Kelly story. Once I started working for Lindsay or after you had run for president, he had another year as mayor when I was an assistant to the mayor and I was a first year law student. And I was put in charge of liaison with the police department and with issues like gun control and anti-crime programs and stuff like that. And I had gotten this idea from my experience working in my father's liquor store that small retail establishments, especially liquor stores because they weren't allowed to take any credit cards at the time, were constantly being held up. And if they had hold up alarms, it would really help a small businessman who couldn't really afford to have hold-up alarms at those times. So we came up with something called the Merchants Protective Program, which installed Holdup Alarms.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “If you call 911, which by the way Lindsay launched the first 911 system anywhere in the country, if you call 911 to the police show up, I mean, they're a basic things that people expect, and there isn't a liberal or conservative way to do that, and they want a mayor to be a real manager and be responsible. And he did not exude that.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I think I've thought about this a lot. I think he made the basic mistake that politicians can make, especially if the politician is an executive and not a legislator, which is that management and the nuts and bolts really count. And as you know, with all respect, I think that was a mistake that the Obama administration made in rolling out the Affordable Care Act, that it was great policy, great vision, and at least the beginning, the execution wasn't so hot and people weren't paying attention to that. Well, with Lindsay, that was writ large because what people care about in a mayor is does the garbage get collected, does the snow get plowed?”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “When I was working for Lindsay in the Florida primary in nineteen seventy two, which was, I think, the first primary, there was an Arizona caucus and a Florida primary in 72. And Lindsay had switched parties, and he was running, he was running to the left of McGovern. And I was the junior speechwriter. I was a senior in college, and I had just abandoned New Haven. I was basically a gopher and a research person for the other speechwriters who were Jeff Greenfield, Bob Schrum and Sandy Berger, who became absolutely one of the best friends I've ever had. He passed away. Last year, I think, and that was quite. A group of talented people to learn from.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Actually, a senior in high school. No, I'm a senior in college. I'm sorry. When I was a senior in college, I started working on his campaign when I was a sophomore in college. I worked on his mayoral campaign. And then they kind of liked me, so they made me an assistant to the mayor and I commuted between New Haven and New York. And there were two kids who were literally kids who were working for Lindsay at the time. Jeff Katzenberg and me. Both”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “They've gotten that money many times back from me. So I decided, well, that sounds like the place for me. And the first year I absolutely hated it, but I could never tell my parents that I hated it because I had insisted on going. And one thing led to another and I ended up at Yale, also on financial aid and then Yale Law School, which I went to really because my stuff was in New Haven and my parents thought I should have more than a BA. I was working for John Lindsay at the time. Yeah. When he was mayor”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Four, which is where I went. I went to PS104 Element So next came Hotchkiss, which looked really great, but they said that the financial aid kids I knew that I'd have to partake in the limited aid that prep schools were starting to give in those days. The financial aid kids had to wait on tables, and the kids who were paying the full freight didn't. So I didn't like that. Then I got to this place called Deerfield. veteran legendary old headmaster who'd been headmaster since if you can believe it I think 1901 this is 1964 when I'm applying said that their financial aid policy which they had just evolved they had just decided they wanted to take people who aren't rich in was that my parents who were with me they should just write him a check at the end of the year for whatever they felt that they could afford”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Two sisters, Haroldo than I was, who were in Farakaway high school. And I didn't want to go to Farquay High School. But I wanted to go on an airplane. And we got to take the shot out of Boston, went up to Andover. And the admissions director at Andover had the temerity to look me in the eye and say, you sure you could do the schoolwork here. And here I was this straight 100 or 98 student at junior high school, 198 in Queens. How could anybody even ask me that? So I decided I didn't like that.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Well, it turns out there's a love joy's guide to prep schools. And I picked all the schools that had a star and an asterisk next to them. I have no idea what that meant, but it sort of implied that those were the best ones. So Andover was first on my list, and the advantage of Andover was that I had to fly there. And my parents took me up on an airplane, the advantage of that was that I'd never been on an airplane. And those of us who now live on airplanes.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I just didn't like it. I just didn't like the schools and I was ambitious. I don't quite know what drove me then. And the reason I decided I wanted to interview at prep schools was the first one that I picked. What happened was there was something called Lovejoy's College Guy that you may remember. Yeah.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “And I realized that prep school was something you could go to that was like college. You lived on a nice campus. The athletic facilities were all great. And I fancied myself a baseball player and a swimmer. And I decided to apply to prep school because that would get me out of Farakaway earlier than if I went off to college.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Totally ridiculous. So I was home for six or eight weeks and I was reading books and this is 1964 in fact I remember it was the night of the New Hampshire primary which was then in March of 64 and that's not a Brookmeny and I was really interested in politics and I had gotten this biography of President Kennedy, the late President Kennedy and it had obviously been started before he was killed and it said that he'd gone to a prep school. I didn't even know what that was and it said that he went to this place called Chote and I asked my parents what it was and they didn't know and I sort of dug around a little bit. You couldn't exactly Google Chote then. Yes. But somehow one thing led to another.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “So it was Ken, and one day I was going, I was enrolled in a junior high school in Queens, and I was a terrible basketball player. And we were playing basketball, and I went up for a rebound and came down and landed on my knee and broke my knee. And the New York City public school system at the time had a regulation that you couldn't go to school with a cane or with crutches. You had to stay home, which was fine with me. Yeah. So I was home.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “It was two subway fares. The only place that was. And my father owned the small liquor store in Manhattan, and I used to work there on weekends from the time I was like eight or nine. And I was very interested in politics and very much inspired.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “The book is complicated because, in fact, I have lived the American dream, and as I thought about it, I realized that I was sort of part of something that was great, but that ended up in many ways boomeranging the country. I started out growing up in Farakaway, Queens, which as you well know is as far as you can get from Manhattan.”

    2018-11-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 282 — Steve Brill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source