In this new column, T brings together two people for the very first time — to see what happens.
“Could you continue to caress my ankle while we do this?” They’ve only just been introduced, but the opinionated TV personality and best-selling author Chelsea Handler has already draped her legs over the lap of Leon Wieseltier, the award-winning cultural critic and former longtime literary editor at The New Republic. Their meeting, on a chilly February afternoon in New York, was an experiment to see what might happen when two seemingly dissimilar public figures sit down for a frank discussion about the state of the union. Thanks to the instantly flirty state of their union, topics spanned the inauthenticity of unconditional love, the grotesque fun house of the American presidential race and the danger of self-censorship — which both of them are determined to avoid: Handler on her still-untitled, “60 Minutes”-style docu-series and talk show, which premieres on Netflix next month, and Wieseltier in the new essay-driven magazine he’s founding with Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs. Wieseltier shifted slightly on the couch to be closer to Handler, they locked eyes and cackled, and she started in with an easy question.
Chelsea Handler: Do you believe in God?
Leon Wieseltier: Oh, come on. That’s complicated.
Handler: Well, do you?
Wieseltier: Not exactly. I do believe, however, that the materialist analysis of life can’t account for our darkest or highest moments. Genetics and social class — things that are supposed to determine who we are — can’t account for acts of courage, kindness and love.
Handler: I think only hedonists believe in God, in the same way that I think only hedonists have babies.
Wieseltier: You might be right. The physical might actually be our only avenue of access to the spiritual. The bedroom is where we find out about ourselves, and where we can aspire to transcend ourselves.
Handler: When I say only hedonists have children, I’m talking about the pleasure of having somebody love you unconditionally. That energy is the pinnacle of goodness and feeling.
Wieseltier: Though I will tell you that I’ve come to the conclusion that unconditional love only exists, and should only exist, between parents and children.
Handler: And with dogs.
Wieseltier: Wait, what were we — what I wanted to say was that conditional love, for the rest of us, is actually higher than unconditional love. There’s a poem by Pablo Neruda, in which he says something like, “I love you so much, I don’t care who you are.” I read that, and I thought, “I would find that insulting.” I want to know that if you love me, it’s because you think I’ve earned it.
Handler: And that if you do something really stupid, that love could go away — which is especially true of celebrities and people in the public eye. I do think, though, that we live in a time when sensitivity is so high that we sometimes miss the point: that to be able to have open and honest conversations, we have to take political correctness down a few notches.
Wieseltier: I agree. A democratic society is designed for the giving and taking of offense, and if you have the privilege of living in one, you should thicken your skin — instead of what’s happening now, with fear and self-absorption hiding behind all kinds of grievances that inhibit other people from speaking. The nice thing about everybody speaking their mind is that social opprobrium will do its work. If you say something really disgusting, you will be vilified.
Handler: And yet the more people say disgusting things, the more common it becomes.
Wieseltier: One of the things about your work —
Handler: You use that term loosely, as do I.
Wieseltier: — is that it’s one of the signs that we live in a free society.
Handler: Sure, but nowadays you can’t even wear a Halloween costume to a college party for fear that it will offend somebody on campus. The whole point of college is to find out where you stand in the world.
Wieseltier: Who taught these kids that every morning when they wake up the world is going to affirm them? It’s not the job of the world to affirm us. My favorite is when Americans say, “It’s just my opinion,” which really means, “I don’t have an answer to the objection you’ve just made, so I want to stop the conversation.” I feel very uncomfortable without controversy. If the stakes are high about important questions — matters of life and death or the future of the culture — it’s inevitable. You have to argue ferociously. I don’t believe that civility is a virtue in intellectual exchange. I don’t understand the cult of niceness.
Handler: When I say, “That person was so stupid,” the retort is usually, “Well, they were really nice.” They better be nice! What, are you going to be stupid and mean? I get really mad when people don’t read.
Wieseltier: Most of them don’t have the time because they’re too busy iShooting up. It’s genuinely frightening. And yet, while fear has to be dignified and recognized, it can’t have the last word. One of the responsibilities of the media right now should not be to stoke the fear, but to analyze it and find ways for people to master it, emotionally and intellectually.
Handler: When you look at the scary state of this country, it’s insane how things that began as jokes keep going, like the Kardashians. They weren’t supposed to last this long. And now this Trump thing, where everyone said, “Oh, he’ll be out, he’ll be out, he’ll be out” — he’s still not out.
Wieseltier: At the beginning of the Trump campaign, there were those of us who thought, “Let the media do its job. If they just report on him correctly, people will be disgusted.” They reported on him correctly and his numbers kept rising. Someone asked me if I thought he was a fascist, and I said, “He says fascistic things, but to call him a fascist imputes too great a degree of intellectual coherence to him.” There is no belief system there. I mean, he’s not wrong: He’s pre-wrong.
Handler: What do you think is going to happen?
Wieseltier: I think that it’s almost certain that Clinton will get the nomination, but I’m getting exceedingly nervous about her ability to beat that monster Trump. She’s not very nimble and nobody loves her.
Handler: I get so annoyed when people say nobody loves Hillary Clinton. I don’t need to love her! I’m not hanging out with her.
Wieseltier: I tell my 13-year-old son that presidential elections are lesser-evil exercises. I have never once voted happily. You look at who’s running, and you pick the least bad. And in her case, if she gets elected, the country’s not going to go to hell. She’s a rational, sound human being who does her homework. But she’s not going to do anything bold and brave. Anyway, it’s important to remember that politics is not all there is in life, even now. Dickens had this wonderful phrase, “the attraction of repulsion,” meaning that something is so awful you can’t stop watching. It’s like, every time I come across Donny and Marie Osmond on TV, I freeze, because I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
Handler: I do believe what I’m seeing, and that’s called a brother and a sister who are madly in love. [Laughter.]
Wieseltier: Even though political humor has been one of the primary cultural expressions of our time, sometimes humor that isn’t political is such a relief.
Handler: It’s important for me to infuse humor into everything that I possibly can, and who cares if I’m divisive.
Wieseltier: I once wrote an article taking a controversial position, and after it came out, as a consequence of my view, I received human feces in the mail. I opened up the package, and there was a note: “RE: your article about Nicaragua.” I have to say, I had a good laugh.
Handler: And a good lunch.
Wieseltier: Chelsea, please. We were having a serious conversation.
Handler: What can I say, Leon? Sometimes you swim above the water, sometimes you swim on the seafloor.
Wieseltier: Which is sort of what America’s doing right now.
Photographs by Marcelo Krasilcic. Wieseltier Hair: Fernando Torrent at L’atalier NYC using Philip B. This interview has been condensed and edited.
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