NYC Legend Fran Lebowitz Gives Her Take on 2020 Politics

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: The writer and cultural critic Fran Lebowitz is known for her bold and witty observations of American life. And her interview with our Walter Isaacson is no different. From President Trump and the Democratic candidates, to the impact of technology on today’s culture, she gives her take on the currents of 2020. They also talk about her coming of age in 1970s New York and the struggle to get a job, to find her passion, and eventually interviewing the famous pop artist Andy Warhol.

WALTER ISAACSON: Fran, welcome to the show.

FRAN LEBOWITZ, WRITER AND SOCIAL COMMENTATOR: Thank you.

ISAACSON: You grew up in New Jersey in a family that sold furniture and stuff. Did they ever want you to go in the business?

LEBOWITZ: No. I mean, this was — I was born in 1950, the end of 1950, so I’m not as old as you maybe, adding. I’m a year younger than you think I am. My father owned a little shop, and he was an upholsterer. If I had been a boy — there was no idea in my father’s mind that a girl could do that. Now there are women upholsterers, but — and I’m — that was the upside of being a girl in the 1950s. There were not many, but one of the upsides was, no one expected you to be an upholsterer.

(LAUGHTER)

LEBOWITZ: And so, no, there was no idea that I would do that.

ISAACSON: Were they a little bit baffled when you kind of went into the humor business?

LEBOWITZ: They were generally — well, to the sense that they paid attention to something like that — I mean, people have asked me, did your parents want you to be a writer? And I would say, no. Did they object to you being a writer? No. What did they want you to be? A wife. There was no idea that I would work. I mean, my mother worked. She was a decorator, and she worked in my father’s shop, the idea you might have to work to earn money, but — and they never really talked to me about my future. The only thing I remember my mother specifically saying about my future was one night, when we were doing the dishes, which is one of the jobs of being a girl, was, she said, you know, Fran, you should marry a college professor, because you like to read so much, that, if you married a professor, you would always live in a place where there are a lot of books, I mean, not that you might be a college professor. There was tremendous pressure for me to do well in school. That was extremely important.

ISAACSON: But you get kicked out of high school.

LEBOWITZ: That’s right, and they never forgave me.

ISAACSON: How did that happen?

LEBOWITZ: I was in public school, where you really couldn’t get kicked out for sleeping, which is basically what I was doing. But they did tell my parents — or my mother — when we said our parents, we meant our mother, because our fathers were not involved in our upbringing the way that they are now at all. And they told my mother, she’s failing everything, which I was. If you want her to go to college, which was their only desire for me, she’s going to have to go to private school, which they could not really afford. But, at great personal and financial sacrifice, they found a private school. Private schools when I was that age were all, like, girl schools or boy schools. There were two schools where I grew up. Neither took Jews. One was for, like, smart WASPs, and one was for stupid WASPs. But none were for Jews of any sort. So the nearest school was like 20 miles away. I went to that school for like five minutes, and then I got expelled. People always think I did something glamorous. I was just not their cup of tea.

ISAACSON: Sort of excessive surliness or something?

LEBOWITZ: Yes, I think that’s probably — what my mother used to call that look on your face, because we didn’t talk back to our parents the way that — it was called talking back, because we were basically afraid of them. I don’t mean in terror. I don’t mean my parents were physically abusive. But, basically, we were afraid of adults. They were in charge of everything. We never had the idea that kids have now, that what our parents had was ours. I never felt like the house that I grew up house, I thought it was my house, but I didn’t think I owned it. Also, our parents didn’t have the same desire to be friends with us that my — my friends who are parents, which are not most of my friends — but they want to be friends with their children. My mother used to specifically say, I’m not your friend, I’m your mother, in case I would imagine that she was my friend.

ISAACSON: So you get to Manhattan. How does that happen?

LEBOWITZ: I always wanted to live in New York, even though I enjoyed my childhood, my young childhood. I lived in a very pretty little town. There was a good library in the town. Once you got a bicycle, which I got at the age of 10, you could go wherever you wanted. No one ever thought anything bad would happen to you. Nothing bad ever did happen. So, there’s a lot of freedom that children don’t have now anywhere. But I – – like, for my birthday, they would always ask, what do you want to do for your birthday? And I always said, I want to go to New York. I want to go to the Museum of Modern Art, which I was obsessed with from the very first time I went there. And so I just thought, I’m going to live in New York when I grow up. I guess I imagined I would go to New York after I graduated from college. But since I didn’t go to college, I got there early.

ISAACSON: And you got there driving a taxicab?

LEBOWITZ: I didn’t get there driving a cab.

(LAUGHTER)

ISAACSON: No.

LEBOWITZ: I had a — I came to New York, I didn’t know one single person, not a single person. And I didn’t have a high school diploma. And I didn’t have the one skill that girls needed to get a job, which was I didn’t know how to type. And I deliberately did not take a typing class, because I didn’t want to know how to type, because I didn’t want to type. And so, hence, I now don’t have a computer or phone because I don’t know how to type. But there were a million bad jobs in New York in like 1970, a million. You could get one — so I went by “The Village Voice” every day. I worked, like, at least five, sometimes six days a week, but I never worked Wednesdays, because Wednesdays, “The Voice” came out. And I would go to Sheridan Square, get “The Voice,” to look for a new bad job, which you could always get. And these were the kind of jobs that paid you that day in cash, which is something I really needed. So I wanted to drive a cab, because I thought there were no girls driving cabs. There were a few hippies at the time. There was a rumor of a woman cab driver. I never saw her. Because you could do whatever you wanted. So there were three shifts. There were big fleet garages, not like now. You could just come in if you had a cab. I had to get a license. You could just come in at the beginning of any shift. There was always a cab available. At the end of the shift, you had money in your hand. So I never — the thing that has never changed with me is my unbelievable sloth, so I never worked one minute longer than I had to.

ISAACSON: Have we lost a sense of the virtue of sloth?

LEBOWITZ: I don’t think it was ever considered a virtue. It’s incredibly looked down upon, being lazy. I mean, I know a few other lazy people. I don’t know anyone as lazy as I am. And when people often say, like, why didn’t you do it this way, I go, I’m lazy. I don’t want to. I used to — when I first started working when I was a kid, I would, like, stop doing one bad job. I think this is a horrible job. Let me try another job. And it didn’t take long for me to realize, Fran, you hate to work. Let’s face it, you hate to work. Now, there are a couple of jobs I have always wanted to have. These jobs are also very difficult jobs, but they’re so out of my reach that I can say–

ISAACSON: Like what?

LEBOWITZ: Oh, my childhood idol was Leonard Bernstein. And I — like, I would think I would love to be an orchestra conductor, even though there were no women orchestra conductors. And, of course, I never could have been one. And I also have always felt, although I feel I could be a Supreme Court judge — I think I could be an excellent Supreme Court judge, because I never understand — I follow the court not assiduously, but to some extent. These are the simplest questions there are. Is this constitutional? Why does it take them more than two minutes? No.

(LAUGHTER)

LEBOWITZ: Also, I’m like — I make snap judgments. I would be very fast. I’m very judgmental. I never have any trouble figuring these things out. Plus, the big advantage they have is, they have writers. There are clerks who write for them. They just have to, like — so I thought, I’m available for this. And you do not have to be a lawyer to be on the Supreme Court, and I’m already not a lawyer.

ISAACSON: How did you end up with Warhol, Andy Warhol and “Interview” magazine?

LEBOWITZ: It really had nothing to do with Andy. It had more to do with the fact that he had a magazine. And I was writing for a smaller magazine. At the time I started writing for “Interview,” I don’t think 5,000 people read it. In fact, I’m certain they did not. I was writing for an even smaller magazine. A friend of mine was writing for “Interview.” So I asked him to get me an appointment, so I could — there to see if I could write there. There were — and that how I started writing there. It didn’t have anything to do with Andy.

ISAACSON: Explain to me Andy Warhol. What was he like?

LEBOWITZ: Well, that’s a pretty broad question.

(LAUGHTER)

LEBOWITZ: I mean, I never liked Andy. He never liked me.

ISAACSON: You all hung together a lot, though, right?

LEBOWITZ: Well, it wasn’t like — these worlds were so small then that, if you were around these scenes, you saw the same people. Like, I probably saw Andy every night of my life for 10 years, not once by design, OK? So — and that was true of a lot of other people. I always say now the entire art world used to be able to fit in one restaurant. It also used to be called the art world, and now it’s called the art market. And that is the huge change in that world. But, truthfully, the people that I knew when I was young, you just saw them constantly because you were in the same kind of scene. There were people who deliberately saw Andy. But I was not one of them. And there were people he deliberately saw, but I was not one of them. But I saw him probably every single night of my life for many years.

ISAACSON: This was like the scene of Studio 54.

(CROSSTALK)

LEBOWITZ: This was way before Studio 54.

ISAACSON: Yes.

LEBOWITZ: But, yes, also during Studio 54, which didn’t last that long. Now I can’t remember, but I think it was less than two years until they went to jail.

ISAACSON: Oh.

LEBOWITZ: I don’t mean Andy went to jail, but Steve and Ian went to jail. So, these — especially in retrospect, especially the people who were young, this seems like it was some huge long era. Everything used to take less time. Think of how short World War II was compared to what’s going on now. Think — now everything takes forever. In the era that’s supposed to be an era of speed, it seems to me everything is much slower. Like, wars to take like this. Now they just — generations come and go, and we’re in the same war.

ISAACSON: So, back then, there were artists and there were rich people, and, suddenly, they each wanted to become each other or something, right?

LEBOWITZ: Well, now everyone is an artist. So, I mean, not everyone is rich. Everyone is an artist. People use the word art now so unironically. I’m — like, to me, this is the world going backwards, the world becoming more and more corny, more and more square. Everyone says they’re an artist. People refer to the most mundane kind of chores as their art. People — the word creative is a noun. So, that’s pretty striking to me. There were always rich people. And, truthfully, the history of art is also the history of wealth. That’s who can pay for it. But now there are more rich people. They are richer. They are stupidly rich. And so now they determine — you know, you could say, in a way, that the art of the Renaissance was determined by rich people. And that is true. But it doesn’t make the present-day artists the artists of the Renaissance.

(LAUGHTER)

ISAACSON: You’re sort of famous for observational humor. And the field has been left somewhat open to you by the fact that nobody observes things anymore. They’re all on cell phones.

LEBOWITZ: This, to me, is the greatest gift I have ever received. I can’t believe everyone just gave it up, because I don’t have a phone, I don’t have any of these things, and I’m in the street a lot. I walk a lot. And I’m around the town a lot. And I — it seems to me I’m the only person that’s not looking down. And, hence, when I talk to my friends, all of whom live in New York, about certain things, they never have noticed a thing. I will say, can you believe they took down that building on the corner? No. When did they do that? Didn’t you notice that? No. But you live two blocks away. It doesn’t matter. Also, if you’re on the phone, if you’re looking at the phone, that’s where you are. So, it’s not just New York. It’s geography in general that’s been dispensed with, because that means you’re always in the place you want to be, which is, apparently, dealing with yourself. So, I mean, I look around me on the subway very often. I used to read over the shoulder of people reading newspapers, which people used to become furious at this. I always found that hilarious, as if you’re reading their newspaper was going to take the print away from them. But I look at so many people’s phones, and I noticed that the majority of people that I’m looking at their phones are playing games. I’m talking about adults. They’re playing games. Games. Adults. This cannot be good for the country. They’re playing games. And they’re watching television shows or — but I think, like, people, go what do you do on the subway? I can’t read on a moving thing. It makes me feel sick. I’m watching my fellow human, and it’s not encouraging.

ISAACSON: In the ’80s in New York with “Spy” magazine and all, Trump was sort of a running joke. What did you think of him, and can you imagine how this happened?

LEBOWITZ: I mean, I never paid any attention to Donald Trump. I thought — I mean, he was a joke. I was so wrong about this election. I know a lot of people were wrong, but I was, like, unbelievably, emphatically wrong. I spent the year going around the country telling literally thousands of people, zero chance. I was serene. I can’t tell you how serene I was. I never saw the television show that he had. I heard of it, but I never saw it. But even if I had seen it, I don’t think it would have ever occurred to me that people thought it was real. A friend of mine said to me before the election, you know, Trump could win. I said, don’t be ridiculous. She said, well, you don’t understand the country because you don’t watch reality television. I thought, that’s ridiculous. People in New York didn’t even think he was a real estate developer. He was literally beneath contempt. No one paid any attention to him at all. People ask me, have you ever met him? I couldn’t even remember. I mean, who would pay attention to this guy? New York City voted 9-1 for Hillary Clinton, 9-1. I can’t imagine what else you could get New York City to agree on like that, 9-1.

ISAACSON: Give me your take, if you would, on the Democratic field.

LEBOWITZ: If they called me and said, Fran, we’re going to let you choose the Democratic candidate, I would choose Elizabeth Warren. I would choose her because she is very clearly and by far the smartest. Being smart is the number one important thing for a president. I don’t — I mean, it’s the American hatred of the intellectual — not that she’s particularly an intellectual, but is the American hatred of intelligence — do you not understand, this is a very hard job? So it’s a very hard job and requires someone very smart. She’s very smart. There’s people in that field of candidates — like, I still don’t know who Tom Steyer is. I still don’t know who he is. I know he’s rich. I see him on TV all the time. But I don’t know, like — I don’t know when it became the idea that, I’m rich, I should be the president. It’s like, these things are unrelated, by the way. I loved Julian Castro at the very beginning. I think he — I didn’t like the way that he talked to Joe Biden that time. I thought it was very — I thought, how stupid could you be? Do you know how many old people vote? Don’t make fun of someone for being old. It’s not fair.

ISAACSON: But you have made fun of Biden and Sanders for being old.

LEBOWITZ: No, I haven’t made fun of them for being old. I said they’re too old to be the president.

ISAACSON: OK.

LEBOWITZ: OK? They’re too old to be the president.

(CROSSTALK)

ISAACSON: — take away their keys?

LEBOWITZ: Yes. I said, they’re too old to drive. OK? If they were your father, you would be conspiring with your siblings, we got to get dad’s keys. Look, I went through this with my parents. You never can get them, by the way. If people — if your parents live in a place, other than New York, where you need to have a car, forget it. You’re never going to get these keys. I think we should have laws about this, by the way, because it’s very dangerous for the old people and for the other people who might be around them. Joe Biden, I never liked him, because, A, I did — never forgot the Anita Hill hearings. I didn’t need to be reminded of them during the Kavanaugh hearings. I remembered them. I was appalled by that. I also — no one ever mentions he turned Delaware into a cesspool of usury. Democrats never mention this. If a Republican had done that, I think there’d be a lot of remarks about it. Bernie Sanders, I never liked a lot. I think he’s a phony. I think he is a total phony. And I also think, what kind of persons leaves New York when they’re 18?

(LAUGHTER)

LEBOWITZ: To me, that disqualifies him. It’s OK if you’re old, 78. Say if you’re 78, you might think, you know, I just can’t take New York anymore. I’m old. I should move to Vermont, but not when you’re 18.

(LAUGHTER)

ISAACSON: Buttigieg?

LEBOWITZ: I really dislike Pete Buttigieg. A, he reminds me of Clinton. And whenever I say this to people, who — I never liked Clinton. He’s very calculating. I can see he’s very calculating. He’s very measured. Those kind of people, I never feel — although I don’t feel he has the — one thing that Clinton did have, I really believe, was his empathy for other people. I don’t see that in Buttigieg. But the most important thing about Buttigieg is, he was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. There are more people in my building than in South Bend, Indiana. He could be the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He could not be the president of my condo board. He could not take it.

ISAACSON: You used to write in the ’70s and ’80s a couple of great books and stuff. You kind of moved away from writing, become more of a conversationalist, performer, and everything else. Do you think you will ever get back to writing?

LEBOWITZ: Well, it’s always been my hope. I mean, I didn’t really move away from writing. It’s just that, as we said before, I’m very lazy. Talking is very easy. Writing is very hard. Writing is so hard. I mean, writing is very hard for me. But it is actually hard. As you know, it’s hard to write. It’s very hard. I have always thought that — I mean, the only job I could ever think of that was harder than writing was mining.

(LAUGHTER)

LEBOWITZ: And so, I always felt sorry for miners. I still do. Coal miners now — I was unaware of these mica miners, some of whom are like 6 years old. This is much harder. I’m not saying it is not harder. But other than mining, which I believe everyone knows is hard, writing is really hard, and talking is really easy. And so — but I do — I have two half-books finished. My publisher refused the idea that I had, which is, I have two half-books that are unrelated, but two halves. It’s a whole book.

ISAACSON: You could stitch them together?

LEBOWITZ: No, he didn’t like that idea.

ISAACSON: No?

LEBOWITZ: I guess I do always think I will finish a book. I would like to. I also buy lottery tickets. So, who knows?

(LAUGHTER)

ISAACSON: Fran, thank you so much.

LEBOWITZ: Oh, thank you.

ISAACSON: Great.

LEBOWITZ: Thank you.