BONUS: Jay McInerney & Ari Melber

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0:50Here's a basic reportable fact. The United States has soured on Trump's leadership after electing him. He's crashed to record low approval. Republicans bracing for election losses. Americans angry at this Trump economy, high prices, the gas crunch. Those are realities that can't just be spun or lied about. The war now hitting its seventh week. Most Americans oppose it as foreign policy. That's one layer. But they also view Trump as failing the leadership test to face this crisis with strength and resolve and steadiness. So. We're back in a familiar situation. And it involves something that most people actually usually avoid talking about lately.

1:32We don't talk about it in daily life. It's not a big theme in pop culture these days and certainly not in politics. I'm referring to 2020 when we had a sudden arrival of that covid pandemic and it upended our society. It cratered the economy. It caused over 1.2 million Americans to die. If you count it up, that's actually the deadliest disaster in our history. It was a time of spreading fear and then a slowly mounting rage from the government briefings to the grassroots recriminations. And while sometimes in our history, even quite terrible crises have burnished presidents. This one did not. You remember the pandemic exposed Donald Trump's failures as a leader, a truth teller or an empath.

2:24Political experts and Trump himself deemed covid and by definition, his response is a major factor in his loss. And it is rare for incumbent presidents to lose. So that repressed history is back in the news tonight as Trump falters with this war crisis. Of course, this crisis is more man-made, and yet we see the similar ticks of magical thinking, misleading claims of promised coming improvements just around the bend, plus confusion over basic facts and some lies, and then the scorn for the brave people who do risk the most. It's going to disappear. As of tomorrow, our public schools will be closed.

3:07Ease the guidelines and open things up. I hope we can do this by Easter. Supplies of face masks are running short all over the world. Can you assure New York that going into next week that they're going to have the ventilators that they're going to need? No, they should have had more ventilators at the time. The disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside? Our government still hasn't gotten it together to test people. When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people. You're going to find more cases.

3:41So I said to my people, slow the testing down. 70 ,000 cases a day, almost a thousand deaths. It went up from there. Now, just like some families tend to talk the least about their deepest shared traumas. Have you noticed Americans really often avoid the COVID topic these days? We lived it. We mourn the losses. What more is there to discuss? That's what some people say, and it's a very understandable feeling. Many people did their level best, even if the politicians failed. And sure, some lessons and hope emerged, but with all the lives lost and the businesses closed, people want to move on. And the author, Jay McInerney, is back with this new book about New York class, culture and COVID.

4:33See you on the other side. Art imitating a chapter of life many would rather forget. He's getting major profile treatment in today's New York Times, complete with a shot in front of a New York restaurant that his prose helped elevate into an iconic destination to this day. The Odeon, McInerney's writing, launched him from a once unknown fact checker to one of the most famous writers of his era back when writers were truly famous. He's the author of 11 books, joins us for that coveted moment in a literary rollout, book launch week. Welcome. Thanks, Ari. Great to see you. Good to be here. So many people turn away from the COVID era.

5:12What made you want to dive back in? Well, you know, at times I felt that way, too. I just thought, why did I take this on? What was I thinking? Because the New York that I write about is pretty much disappeared around March 20th, 2020. And, you know, I write about social New York. I write about, you know, the restaurants, the parties, the nightclubs, the the the premieres, the art gallery openings. And all of that suddenly was gone. And, you know, I mean, one thought I had was that, you know, this is this is a major catastrophe in the life of the city that has to be. I feel like it's my job to document these things.

5:54But at the same time, it was hard because almost all the things that I write about had disappeared. You know, I mean, just for instance, you can't write about people having affairs when all the hotels are closed.

6:18And the restaurants, hotels, everything was closed. But I felt it was important, and partly because of what you're saying, that nobody wants to talk about it necessarily. And there was a kind of collective amnesia, and yet this was a collective catastrophe. All of us experienced it. And I think that, I can't help thinking that's going to resonate with readers who go back and remember. You know, we all had those moments where we thought, how close do we get to somebody? And in the beginning, there were all those moments in New York where, like, should I go? You know, so-and-so is having a birthday party.

6:58Should I go? And 20 people cancel. And then the people who get there are nervous and feel irresponsible. But they want to go out. What happens to a city when you drain it of socializing? Well, it becomes a city of mostly of architecture, you know? I mean, I remember walking down Park Avenue and just seeing no one on the street, really. It was quite extraordinary. And I mean, it was the city from a different perspective. And I would have been happy to see that for a couple of days. But I didn't want to see it for nine months. And and yet I felt, you know, some somebody somebody should talk about it.

7:48Somebody should take it on as a subject. And that was me. That was you. And you're very ready to narrate what's going on. So we started with Young Jay. The clubs, nightlife, famously the cocaine. Now we get the wine club and the fancy upper crust of Manhattan, And still with a bit of a, you know, a satirical eye in one of these parts of the book, you have this exchange between these characters who've been, of course, living across several of your novels. I have my wine club tonight, says the protagonist, Russell. You're kidding. I don't kid about wine, he responds. Have you heard about the coronavirus?

8:27You even remind us of the language I would evolve because we don't call it that much more anymore. This is a small gathering, unlike the ones we've attended the last two nights. And I have a strong suspicion that the virus may be killed by expensive aged Burgundy. Tell us about what you're writing now and that class debate, if perhaps you've crossed over to the other side. No, I don't think I've crossed over. I'm still a hedonist. But my hedonism has changed course. Your palate has changed. Yeah, I no longer. You know, I was at the Odeon the other night, as you know. And I no longer go down to the bathroom to refresh myself.

9:14Understood. There's a passage in the book about Russell meeting Jean-Michel Basquiat down there. And something that actually happened to me. But I'm, yeah, I've become an endophile lover of wine. And it's a way of, as I said, of kind of channeling my hedonism. And I think, you know, let me ask you, is it is it a critique of saying this high life wall? People are literally in danger. Yeah, I mean, these the guys in the guys in this wine club are a little oblivious to because they're they're protected. They're shielded to some extent from from all of this. You know, people went out to them, you know, to the Hamptons and they were able to have a table with seats six feet, six feet apart.

10:08And with those crazy heaters that we, you know, that. Right. It was easier. It was easier with money with 45 seconds left. You also discussed Trump and the Bernie Sanders movement in the book. What were you getting at there? Well, I mean, the book takes place during the last election, not the disastrous recent one. But a lot of this book deals with the kids. And Russell and Korean's son is a volunteer for Bernie and a believer in Bernie. And his parents, on the other hand, are a little scared of Bernie, as older people are. But I felt like I felt like it was important at this point to start bringing the kids in.

10:52And they probably have the fresher and and more fun ideas than Russell and Kareem. Well, the part of the book I read, you get the feeling that the kids are more enlightened about equality. And what does it mean to move forward? And they're aware of both class and how things are divvied up. and yet their choices in alcohol and cuisine are perhaps even more annoying than their rich parents and you capture some of that nuance they say see you on the other side for us that'll be tomorrow the weeknight starts now if you're watching ari melber here with the great novelist jay mcinerney we're doing something different uh jay's hanging out we just did a television interview that's live tv do you get nervous no you were tired i really knew yeah well i've done you know I've been on the show before.

11:40He's been around. He's been around. And now, this is the real thing. So we're walking out of our great studio, and we're going to walk around New York, and we'll chat a little bit more about the book and anything else. Yeah, and we're going to find out how popular the taco stand is next door. Well, you know that place is always jumping. It's unbelievable. I don't know why. We've got some of our colleagues. Thanks. See you guys. We've got some colleagues who swear by it. See you. And others who are overrated, like many New York places. Yeah. And our consigliere here is going to be with us as well.

12:14Okay. Okay. Nice to see you. In the West Wing, this is the walk and talk right here. You know, this is like we're really... Something important's happening. How long did it take you? I didn't get to ask you this on TV. How long were you actually writing this installment? The characters already developed, so you've got a running start. It was kind of on and off, because sometimes I just throw out my hand and say, I don't know if I'm going to do that, or if I'm going to be able to do this. and other times I would just take time off and work on a memoir which I also wrote about the same you don't write continuously I would have thought you're like writing a couple days a week continuous you're saying you go back but sometimes I get stuck we're now going to go into it we're going into Times Square and I thought and I've never taken anybody else any other guests into Times Square and I just thought Well, Jay McInery...

13:07People like us don't usually come to Times Square. But you are New York, and this is New York, and this has changed so much here. We'll cheat over here. We're going to come with us. We're going to go... It is this busy all the time. We'll go somewhere. Where are we going to perch? I think we'll perch in the middle. But, you know, all right, so we'll take a look up, everybody. This is what it's really like all the time. If you've never been to New York, you kind of don't realize that it's really like that. Is Elmah still here? There's a saying in hip-hop, if someone's like, man, I can't believe you did that thing, and you go, no, I'm really like that.

13:44And Times Square is really like this. Oh, God, Times Square in 1980 was so gritty, dirty. I worked for a little while down the street at the New Yorker. How close is that to here? And I used to take the subway up from the village and walk a couple of blocks east. And Times Square was like peep shows. Yeah, it was like at night you took your life in your hands? Yeah, it was hookers, muggers. And that kind of reflected how much of the middle of New York. We got Elmo. Oh, good. We'll go over here and then we'll stop. We won't keep walking, Jay. We'll let you stop at some point. I'm glad we have Elmo.

14:24But, but no. So that was emblematic of how dangerous New York was. Times Square was synonymous with urban decay. It was like decrepit and dangerous. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, you know, first of all, you'd take the subway up. You'd hope the subway would come. When the subway did come, it was completely covered in graffiti. Right. You know, you'd get out at the subway station over there and, you know, You'd probably be accosted by a hooker, and you'd probably see some shady characters seeing how vulnerable you might or might not be, and you'd try to make your way to your office. It was not like this.

15:05It was something that's hard to appreciate for us who've come later, after the boom. When you were here then, was it like, oh, but it's going to rebound, it's going to be a big deal, or was it like, it's over? Well, when I first came to New York in late 79, That was the question. Is white flight going to continue? Is the drug epidemic going to get worse? Is crime going to get worse? It seemed like it could go either way at that point. And this is right after the bankruptcy crisis. Drop dead. Drop dead. Ford to City, drop dead. And so I really wasn't sure. But that was part of what was exciting.

15:48It was a very unpredictable time. And the good thing about it was that, you know, downtown, there were lots of decrepit areas where young people could go and pay very low rents. Well, do you know this book, The Creative Class? I don't know the book. It's Richard Florida. See, he knows all the novels, and I know some of the novels. So what you're saying is his theory. He argues in this book that really dynamic areas, New York and Soho and even the village, which was at the time affordable in the 70s, Lower East Side and obviously Brooklyn. Lower East Side. And he points to other neighborhoods and other places, Miami, Detroit, early on.

16:31Because they were left behind, they were affordable enough for what he calls the creators, the artists and the people who are challenging things. and was low stakes because you could actually move there and get by, especially if you were three or four to a place, and yet you're painting, and you might not sell any paintings. And he argues that that sparks those neighborhoods that then create a lot of value, which unfortunately sometimes not everyone gets to share it, and they get gentrified. Then get gentrified. When I came here, almost everything that was interesting was within walking distance of Washington Square Park.

17:05You had the Lower East Side music scene, you know, the invention of punk, CBGBs. CBGBs. All of that. And then you had, you know, the art gallery scene in East Village, the art gallery scene in Soho. All these guys were reinventing painting after it had been declared dead by conceptual art. And you had, you know, Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Two guys who are my neighbors that I used to see a lot. Basquiat tried to sell me a painting one night, about 2 in the morning, when he really needed some dope. And unfortunately, he won$500 worth painting, and I only had$30. And those sell for tens of millions of dollars today.

17:50Yeah, I could have retired very easily on that. Well, as Jay-Z said... What? It ain't hard to tell. The wisdom of J.D. It ain't hard to tell. I'm the new Jean-Michel. Surrounded by Warhol's my whole team bomb. Which reminds you how far the music has come into the art. All right, so we're going to let you get out of here. The final two questions. Again, the book we talked about, which is earlier in this video, of course, to you on the other side. The final two questions are, because I look at you as, I don't know if even people still use this term, a renaissance man. How do you stay with it? Will you tell us your age?

18:2871 71 How do you stay with it? And how do you stay writing? Because, if I may, and don't blush, you don't write for money. No. No. You don't write for work, for job. You write because you're 71 and you're still writing. So how do you stay with it and how do you stay writing? Well, I mean, I think just living in the city is one way that you, you know, I live in downtown New York and I go out every single day and every single night. You go out every night? Every night. If I'm not out on the town, then I'm spending a weekend in the Hamptons, you know, but. Bars. But I go out, I go, you know, I go to openings, I go to cremeers, I go to cocktail parties, I go to restaurants.

19:17And then the writing part? And I, you know, I go with my friends, but I meet people. So that's number one. And number two is I just, I love to write more than almost anything. And I just, you know, since I finished this novel, I was at loose ends. I got to get another project going really quick. So I will. I have and I will. By many measures, the economy is doing well. And stocks end the year up. If you put$10 ,000 in the overall market, say, at the beginning of last year, you'd have over$13 ,000 now, a year later. Bankers see even more gains come with Trump entering office, but many people don't live in that stock market economy.

20:04If you put aside retirement savings, 80 % of Americans do not trade stocks directly at all, ever. So they're not up, say, 30 % over the year. We know most voters said that prices and inflation were a hardship last month, and that includes people who voted for both Trump and Harris. This week, some Americans were even cheering on the horrific murder of UnitedHealthcare's CEO, citing cruel policies by greedy companies. And this goes beyond this week or this year or this inflation or this election or any recent political narrative. America has long been a rich country that still has brought economic suffering.

20:45The pandemic expanded economic problems for many. We all know that. And it forced people who'd recently held perfectly fine jobs into these food lines that I'm showing you now to remind you of that experience in the last five years. U.S. economic inequality, meanwhile, has skyrocketed over the last 30 years. A gap that has the rich getting richer. Well, many people struggle, even if they work hard or harder than they have over the course of their whole careers. These problems are real. For a lot of people, they're more urgent than what we call politics, even as they drive anger at the systems and the elites, which then courses through our politics in all sorts of ways.

21:24The shifts also come in this current period of rapid technological change, which is upending not only the job market and destabilizing one's steady careers, but also is almost constantly transmitting these social media images from the super wealthy or people who want us to think they're super wealthy, which we and the younger generation just see day in and day out. is this a supersized version of America's past struggles with greed, with the Gilded Age, with the financial crashes, with the 80s boom-bust cycle, which famously glamorized wealth? Remember the banker Gordon Gekko proclaiming, quote, greed is good, a speech that was offered as an Oliver Stone-style critique, but that many celebrated and took literally.

22:10the point is ladies and gentlemen that greed for lack of a better word is good greed is right greed works greed clarifies cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit greed in all of its forms greed for life for money for love knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. Is that true, though? Many Americans for many years have felt this new gilded age is a kind of trap. And as billionaires line up demanding to shape this new administration, and many cheer them on, others are objecting to this as quite obviously cruel capitalist overkill. And the social commentary and art about this greed era from the 80s is very relevant now from the Wall Street movie I mentioned to Jay McInerney's novels about New York in that time, like Bright Lights, Big City later turned into a film which resonates.

23:13A New York Times essay noting just this year that those works by McInerney captured a certain transition between art and money, the reign of the chaotic bohemian creatively, and the religion of the leveraged buyout. Now, all kinds of excess can flourish without cap, or this type of greed, of course, but those forces clearly drive a type of decadence and selfishness that is familiar today. I know you're not following what I'm saying anyway, right? That's OK. That doesn't matter. The real question is this. Was all this legal? Absolutely not. But we were making more money than we knew what to do with.

23:54The new greed era. We're joined by Jay McInerney, author of 11 books, including the novel Bright Lights, Big City, which was seen as that rare book that defines an era sold over a million copies. Welcome back. Thank you. Nice to be here. Are we in a new greed era? Are you getting any 80s flashbacks? Well, you know, when I was listening to you earlier, I thought, you know, one of the things that the Gordon Gekko's of the world would think is that we're doing it even better now. We're doing it bigger. You know, there's something when you look back at the 80s, the supposed era of greed and excess, that seems kind of quaint, you know?

24:36I mean, just for instance, at the beginning, in 1980, the Dow started out under 1 ,000 points. And by 10 years later, it was only, it was still under 3 ,000. You look at the numbers today, and they're staggering compared, even allowing for inflation and adjusting dollar values. I mean, 44 ,000 something today, I believe. I mean, it's, you know, and talk about income inequality. It's much more extreme now than it was in the 80s when we started to glorify Wall Street players and gamblers and so on. Here's the yawning wealth distribution, as you mentioned. And so that only takes, that's only back to the 90s on the top 1 % versus the other 50%.

25:28And the stock point I mentioned, CNBC checked. If you go to the top 10 % of Americans, they basically have all the individual stocks. I think we have this 87%, 1 % on half. So this whole system is driving something that's only for the top for the most part. Well, yeah. I mean, you look at CEO compensation, it's now for S &P 500 company CEOs, 290 times that of their average worker. In 65, it was 20 times the multiple of the average worker. and uh it's i was i was i was in a restaurant just the other day and and a couple of couple of guys were were just were sitting at the next table and and one one was asking how much the other one had made today and uh it was it was you know one of those those bumps um in the in the down he said a few million um and i just thought wow this is casual dinner conversation few million today.

26:36That's different than the bumps in your book. Yes. Well, we did bumps off the tables in restaurants, but we didn't talk about$3 million in gains. And so there's a whole culture to this, and social media is transmitting it in ways that we don't even fully understand yet. What was movies and novels has become this daily thing. But we have a few more moments of that pop culture view of the 80s greed and excess. Let's take a look. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

27:22Hey, fellas, look what I found in my pocket. Look, a year's salary right here. What do you call them? Fun coupons. You know what? Debbie! Your feet right on the floor.

27:39You write about people and how people feel through these things. And New York, of course, has been an epicenter for this, and it's the financial center. What do you see today where it is celebrated? And unlike the 80s, there's more fusion. The billionaires are running for office. They're in the cabinet and they're part of what at least part of the country is worshipping. Is there ever a comeuppance for that? Certainly not recently. You know, the lesson would seem to be the opposite. And, you know, when now that now that Musk has teamed up with Trump and Ramaswamy. But I think that the, you know, in New York City, the most recent example I've seen, I think the signature artwork of our time is Maurizio Catalan's Comedian.