Drunk History (2013) s05e06 Episode Script
Underdogs
1 We're gonna call this "Mr.
Rogers' Neighborhood.
" We got the puppets, we got The Land of Make-Believe and he saved PBS.
(Laughter) Ida Tarbell takes down the richest man in the world.
(Imitating typewriter) Now I'm really starting to feel wasted.
Maya Lin designed the Vietnam War Memorial.
She's a young Asian woman? I'm not gonna give you any money.
(Groans, laughs) (Patriotic music) No, I learned English from a lot of PBS stuff.
I came to America when I was three, turning four, so it was those shows that were like, "This is how you say this.
This is the word of the day.
This is the letter.
This is the number.
" And you're like, okay, I'm catching on to how people saying things.
What about Teletubbies? What the fuck were they teaching? Holy shit, I have no idea.
(Imitating Teletubby) - (Laughs) - That was a terrifying I can't That was just an acid dream.
I don't do drugs, but now I'm like, maybe I should just to watch the Teletubbies.
Hello, this is Solomon Georgio and today we're gonna be talking about Mr.
Fred Rogers.
Mmm! - Cheers.
- Won't you be my neighbor? Won't you be my neighbor? - I would be your neighbor.
- Aww.
So it starts in 1951.
Fred McFeely Rogers, he watches children's TV for the first time and for the most part, it's just slapstick.
Guys throwing pies in each other's faces, just being pranked and whatever nonsense is happening.
He was like, well this is just garbage.
This is hot garbage, what are we watching? And he's like, I wanna do this but I wanna do it for the kids.
And he actually got a job at NBC.
But they were like, we gotta do commercials.
Cigarettes, alcohol, alcohol made out of cigarettes.
- Yeah.
- All that fun stuff.
- Let's make the kids like this.
- Yeah.
(Laughs) And he just got fed up, was like, this is not good enough for me.
I gotta fucking go back to PTburgh, fuck off Pennsylvania and see how I can what I can do.
I can't believe Mr.
Rogers would swear.
Oh, I'm pretty sure he was like, gosh darn, flim flarn, ding dang, goobly gock.
We gotta go back to PTBurghy H-E double hockey sticks.
(Laughs) Pennsyl-vania.
They they get back to Pittsburgh and he starts working with WQED.
He gets an opportunity to have his own show.
And he's like, oh, that sounds wonderful.
Do you have any money? And they're like (Laughs) No.
So figure that out.
And he's like, oh, great.
We gotta do something with this tight, tight budget.
Maybe we should just do puppets.
Puppets are tight.
Everybody loves puppets.
Then he's like, all right, we're gonna call this "Mr.
Rogers' Neighborhood.
" We got the puppets, we got The Land of Make-Believe, We got Mr.
McFeely, the ooh the the weird (laughs) postman that I named after my middle name.
And we're gonna make kids feel special.
And he does that.
And they started broadcasting on the Public Broadcasting Station.
And guess what he deals with again? What? Financial problems.
Shit.
He can't hide from them.
They're everywhere.
He's like, all right, I need to do a fund raiser.
I I guess I'll do a fundraiser in Boston.
That's a good place for fundraisers to happen.
And surprisingly, out of nowhere, 10,000 people just show up.
10,000? 10,000 people.
And that piqued the interest of our president at the time, Mr.
Lyndon B.
Johnson, who, honestly, dope as hell.
He goes, hey, I'm gonna set up the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
You get to have $20 million.
So Lyndon B.
Johnson's like, peace.
And then Richard Nixon Showed up and he was like aww, the Vietnam War is happening.
I'm gonna cut the funding.
But (clears throat) before Nixon could take all that money away, they had to have a Senate Committee hearing led by Rhode Island Senator John Pastore.
This is when Mr.
Rogers slides in Like part of me is like likes to imagine Mr.
Rogers just moonwalking into the Committee.
Mm-hmm.
Right? (Both laughing) Mr.
Rogers was like, this is what we do.
We look at kids and go hey, you are legit a person and you have an importance in this world.
Also, your imagination is a brilliant thing that you have going on in your head.
And we should develop it in this great, insane way.
He he spoke the words of a song that he wrote.
It's about what to do when you're mad.
He's like, "Well, what do you do when you're mad? "You wanna punch a wall? "You wanna rip your mama's hair out? "You wanna kick your kid sister in the face? "Well, how about you just sing this precious, little song instead?" And John looked at him and was like, (Sighs) I am a rough, hard, armadillo of a human man but you gave me goose bumps.
You gave me spine chills.
They were like, we get it.
What you do is wonderful.
You deserve this $20 million.
We were dumb for even bringing you here, Mr.
Rogers.
That day, PBS was legit saved, they weren't losing any funding.
They were like, you are legit the greatest thing to ever happen to television.
You're doing such a great job.
Kids are the best and you're the best and never stop.
If it wasn't for what Mr.
Rogers did that day, there would've been no "Sesame Street," there would've been no "Lamb Chop's Play-Along," there would've been no "Reading Rainbow.
" It just the list goes on and on and on and on.
He left behind several decades of some of the best children's television programming ever in the history of not only television but the whole world.
BOTH: Humanity.
BOTH: To PBS! To Mr.
Rogers.
And the good of humanity.
Amen.
(Squeals) Well, cheers.
Do you have a specific cheers you wanna do? No.
This is your cheers.
Hey, this is to dogs.
- No.
- No? Let's cheers to all the underdogs that we ever knew to knowing that they're gonna win.
Right? Do we I'm so glad we shit on my cheers.
BOTH: To underdogs.
Hello, I'm Jon Gabrus And today, we'll be talking about Ida Tarbell.
Cheers.
Ida Tarbell's story begins in 1872.
Her father Franklin Tarbell was an oilman.
And a young Ida Tarbell is seeing her father being absolutely bullied by robber baron J.
D.
Rockefeller.
So Rockefeller's going through all of the Northeast, just buying out all these small, little refineries until Franklin Tarbell's like, not happening, bro.
Ida is like, nah, nah.
- Nah, she's like, nah.
- Nah.
She's like, nah, son.
And Rockefeller's like, Mr.
Tarbell, I'm gonna make things very difficult for you.
But Franklin Tarbell, he stood there proud.
Oh I'm gonna get a fucking belch on deck right now.
Get on that.
(Burps) Excuse me.
There's gonna be plenty more where that came from.
Rockefeller's going to all these railroad owners saying like, hey, man, if you charge me less for more oil which I could bring you all these little dudes are gonna bring you less oil.
Fuck them over, and in the long run, they sell to Uncle Rockefeller.
He ends up owning 85% of the oil.
This made Rockefeller the richest man in the world.
Franklin's like, fuckin' Rockefeller.
He boned us all.
We'll never eat again.
My whole livelihood is shot because of this guy.
Poor Ida is watching this all happen around her.
And, like, if you're watching that, you're watching the superhero origin story.
Like, this is where young Ida Tarbell, holding in one hand a Barbie Doll and the other hand a pen.
Well I know what I need to do.
So (Burps) She's hired as a staff writer for "McClure's Magazine" and Mark Mark Twain was a fan of her writing.
And Mark is like, look, I think what you do is great.
And she's like oh, thank you.
She's like I I wanna do something about Standard Oil.
These motherfuckers have been fucking with my family since the get-go, you know? Mark Twain is telling Ida Tarbell, let me introduce you to some of these guys I've been talking to.
Um, so Mark Twain introduces her to Henry Rogers.
And she's like, I'd love to talk to him.
He is high up at Standard Oil.
And (Laughs) Uh, Franklin Ro Wait, hold on.
So Rockefeller All right, hold on.
I'll back this up.
I'll get this information out.
Now I'm really starting to feel wasted.
Mission accomplished, everyone.
(Laughs) So Mark Twain is like he's setting Ida Tarbell up with an interview.
Oh, hey, what are you doing, huh? Blah, blah, blah.
And Rogers is thinking, a woman is speaking to me.
Even if her job is to currently speak to me in this moment, I'm still gonna misread this as attraction.
Let me put on the pussy show.
And then he starts over-revealing information.
And he he's telling her, uh, oh, hey, take a look at these documents.
Yeah, look at this, huh? Isn't this cool? Look at all the kinda cool stuff we're doing at Rockefe Yeah, this is going on.
Hey, yeah, uh, exclusive information that not everyone has.
Oh, you wanna take a look? Yeah, you can look at court documents.
Take a look at this.
And then Ida's going, you know, nice try, shithead.
You're dead, you're dead, you're dead.
Now we're in Now we're in, uh Ida Tarbell's montage moment.
You know, she spends the next two years organizing court court documents, research, interviews, this anything she can get her hands on to start building a narrative.
Ida got down behind her fucking typewriter at that moment, it was just (Imitating typewriter) Yes, uh, ohh (Imitating typewriter) Rockefeller is a (Blows raspberry) (Imitating typewriter) A money monster.
A hypocrite.
Rockefeller is a L-I-V-I-N-G M-U-M-M-Y AKA, Rockefeller is a living mummy.
A-K-L-I-I-V-G-N-Y la, la, la.
So she ends up publishing a 19-piece article called "The History of Standard Oil.
" People are reading this going, like, has anyone caught that McClure's thing about that J.
D.
Rockefeller dude we were all worshipping for so long? Turns out, might be a bit of a scumbag.
Upon further investigation, I think this dude is bad news.
He's a bad hombre.
Her little article little article well that's the most misogynistic thing you can do is call a woman's article a little article.
(Laughs) No, she writes a fucking article that President Teddy Roosevelt reads and he's like, has any one else been reading this Ida Tarbell series? This fucking Rockefeller guy is fucking me with his monopoly.
Guys, I've been working on this thing called, like, the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Feel like it might work in this situation.
Teddy, you bring up a couple of valid points.
We could do something about this.
So in 1911, the Supreme Court says that the monopoly of Standard Oil is illegal and you must break down into two companies.
So a woman who was unable to even vote was able, via just writing to take down the richest man in the world Man, that is so cool.
They fucking shut Standard Oil down.
Well they let Standard Oil turn into two small, bullshit companies who would never make any money Called Exxon Mobile and Chevron.
Two companies that didn't do anything.
So looks like journalism wins in the long run again.
(Laughs) - Ready? - Okay.
Hi, I'm Jennie Pierson.
Okay.
Hi, I'm Jennie Pierson and today, we'll be talking about today? Hi, I'm Jennie Pierson and today, we're talking about Maya Lin.
Cheers.
So it's 1980 and the people at the Vietnam War Memorial Fund are like, I got an idea, let's have a competition to see who can design the best Vietnam War Memorial.
(Burps, laughs) Sorry.
You're okay.
So they get 1,500 submissions to this contest.
They're walking by, they're like, that one's too tall.
I think this one is a little too political, thank you very much.
And this one is too disgusting.
Then they they walk up to one, wow, this is fucking beautiful.
Right, guys? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're we get this.
We love it.
We love it.
Let's this one.
This is it! This is the one! We love this one! Whose is it? Reveal the winner.
And they're like, okay, are you ready for this? It is a 20-year-old college student named Maya Lin.
And they're like, what? It's just a college student? That's crazy.
Cut to Yale and Maya Lin is sitting in her architecture class.
And they're like, sorry to interrupt your class, but is Maya Lin here? We have something to tell her.
And he's like, whatever, fine.
Maya! Maya! And she's like, huh? I I'm over here.
Uhh! And they're like, you won the contest for the Vietnam War Memorial.
We're making your sculpture.
Can you imagine? Um and Maya was just like, guess what? I won.
I won! I guess I'm drunker right now than I thought I'd be.
I'm sorry.
You're don't be sorry.
- Okay.
- You're doing so good.
I thought I would be more normal at this point.
You're fine.
Okay.
So all of these war veterans are saying this memorial has no military symbolism, there's no weaponry, we don't get it.
It's a black gash of shame.
And we are not on board with this.
Ross Perot, he was gonna donate $160,000 to the building of this memorial.
He walks up to them and he's like, hold on.
This is a woman? And she's Asian? She's a young, Asian woman? I'm not gonna give you any money to build this thing if you don't stop (Laughs) I don't know Hold on.
You better pick someone else.
I'm pissed, I'm pissed, I'm pissed.
I'm running for president in 12 years.
Fuck you guys.
I'm pulling my funding.
The committee that had chosen her, they heard all of the this backlash.
And they went to Maya and they were like, okay, so listen, a lot of people are pissed off.
We have a couple of compromises.
We'd we'd like to put more military symbolism into it.
We'd we'd like to have a bronze a bronze statue of a solider carrying an American flag um, placed in the center of your of your memorial.
Uh, and then also, what if we paint the black marble white? How does that sound? And Maya is like, hell no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Not in a million years.
And they were like, fuck.
(Laughs) All right, you know what? Let's bring it to Congress, bitch.
We're bringing it to Co no, that's dumb.
(Laughs) (Both laughing) Um, okay.
What do I wanna say next? Okay.
So at this Congressional hearing, politicians, veterans all testifying against her.
I don't like that it's the color black! I don't like that it's abstract! I don't get it! What is minimalism? I don't like that it looks like a pee sign a pee sign? (Laughs) I don't like that this looks like a peace sign because those damn hippies are always flashing a peace sign at me and I don't like it! The chairman is like, all right, we've heard all this shitty stuff.
Maya, you wanna come up here? Maya gets up there and she's like, okay, guys, this memorial should rise up out of the earth like a wound that can be healed.
This is supposed to feel personal so families and friends of people who have died can come to the memorial and feel the loss of their loved ones as if it was a gravesite.
It's not a political statement.
It's just a sense of togetherness and community.
And the chairman is like, I get it.
I wanna feel sorrow, too.
Everybody just wants to feel something.
And okay, we're gonna do it.
We're gonna do it.
We're gonna do it.
(Uplifting music) So this memorial goes up.
And when it went up, there was, like, this big celebration for it.
And 10,000 veterans marched to the wall in commemoration.
But they were like, you know, this is gonna be shitty, right? This is gonna be crap.
This is gonna be, like, just dumb and we're not gonna care.
And they get up to the memorial.
The granite is sort of reflective.
So what happens is the Veterans would walk up and they would see themselves reflected in the names of the fallen soldiers.
And it was a very emotional experience.
And they were like, whoa.
This is beautiful.
Maya was, like, watching all of this shit go down.
And she was like, I fucking told you.
I told you you would cry.
See all these people crying? I told you they would cry.
- Yeah.
- She probably wasn't that mad.
Maya was able to see this outcome and say, oh, this really did have a really cool impact on everybody.
So Maya Lin goes from this B student at Yale to one of the most prominent architects and artists of our time.
So Maya Lin's design style made a difference.
On all the memorials going forward.
It all became more abstract after that.
She really influenced a lot of designers and architects and artists.
So in 2016, President Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Obama was like, uhh, good job.
I love your work.
Hope to see more of it.
And he kissed her on right on the lips.
(Both laugh) (Kissing sounds) I just made a fool of myself right now.
(Patriotic music)
Rogers' Neighborhood.
" We got the puppets, we got The Land of Make-Believe and he saved PBS.
(Laughter) Ida Tarbell takes down the richest man in the world.
(Imitating typewriter) Now I'm really starting to feel wasted.
Maya Lin designed the Vietnam War Memorial.
She's a young Asian woman? I'm not gonna give you any money.
(Groans, laughs) (Patriotic music) No, I learned English from a lot of PBS stuff.
I came to America when I was three, turning four, so it was those shows that were like, "This is how you say this.
This is the word of the day.
This is the letter.
This is the number.
" And you're like, okay, I'm catching on to how people saying things.
What about Teletubbies? What the fuck were they teaching? Holy shit, I have no idea.
(Imitating Teletubby) - (Laughs) - That was a terrifying I can't That was just an acid dream.
I don't do drugs, but now I'm like, maybe I should just to watch the Teletubbies.
Hello, this is Solomon Georgio and today we're gonna be talking about Mr.
Fred Rogers.
Mmm! - Cheers.
- Won't you be my neighbor? Won't you be my neighbor? - I would be your neighbor.
- Aww.
So it starts in 1951.
Fred McFeely Rogers, he watches children's TV for the first time and for the most part, it's just slapstick.
Guys throwing pies in each other's faces, just being pranked and whatever nonsense is happening.
He was like, well this is just garbage.
This is hot garbage, what are we watching? And he's like, I wanna do this but I wanna do it for the kids.
And he actually got a job at NBC.
But they were like, we gotta do commercials.
Cigarettes, alcohol, alcohol made out of cigarettes.
- Yeah.
- All that fun stuff.
- Let's make the kids like this.
- Yeah.
(Laughs) And he just got fed up, was like, this is not good enough for me.
I gotta fucking go back to PTburgh, fuck off Pennsylvania and see how I can what I can do.
I can't believe Mr.
Rogers would swear.
Oh, I'm pretty sure he was like, gosh darn, flim flarn, ding dang, goobly gock.
We gotta go back to PTBurghy H-E double hockey sticks.
(Laughs) Pennsyl-vania.
They they get back to Pittsburgh and he starts working with WQED.
He gets an opportunity to have his own show.
And he's like, oh, that sounds wonderful.
Do you have any money? And they're like (Laughs) No.
So figure that out.
And he's like, oh, great.
We gotta do something with this tight, tight budget.
Maybe we should just do puppets.
Puppets are tight.
Everybody loves puppets.
Then he's like, all right, we're gonna call this "Mr.
Rogers' Neighborhood.
" We got the puppets, we got The Land of Make-Believe, We got Mr.
McFeely, the ooh the the weird (laughs) postman that I named after my middle name.
And we're gonna make kids feel special.
And he does that.
And they started broadcasting on the Public Broadcasting Station.
And guess what he deals with again? What? Financial problems.
Shit.
He can't hide from them.
They're everywhere.
He's like, all right, I need to do a fund raiser.
I I guess I'll do a fundraiser in Boston.
That's a good place for fundraisers to happen.
And surprisingly, out of nowhere, 10,000 people just show up.
10,000? 10,000 people.
And that piqued the interest of our president at the time, Mr.
Lyndon B.
Johnson, who, honestly, dope as hell.
He goes, hey, I'm gonna set up the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
You get to have $20 million.
So Lyndon B.
Johnson's like, peace.
And then Richard Nixon Showed up and he was like aww, the Vietnam War is happening.
I'm gonna cut the funding.
But (clears throat) before Nixon could take all that money away, they had to have a Senate Committee hearing led by Rhode Island Senator John Pastore.
This is when Mr.
Rogers slides in Like part of me is like likes to imagine Mr.
Rogers just moonwalking into the Committee.
Mm-hmm.
Right? (Both laughing) Mr.
Rogers was like, this is what we do.
We look at kids and go hey, you are legit a person and you have an importance in this world.
Also, your imagination is a brilliant thing that you have going on in your head.
And we should develop it in this great, insane way.
He he spoke the words of a song that he wrote.
It's about what to do when you're mad.
He's like, "Well, what do you do when you're mad? "You wanna punch a wall? "You wanna rip your mama's hair out? "You wanna kick your kid sister in the face? "Well, how about you just sing this precious, little song instead?" And John looked at him and was like, (Sighs) I am a rough, hard, armadillo of a human man but you gave me goose bumps.
You gave me spine chills.
They were like, we get it.
What you do is wonderful.
You deserve this $20 million.
We were dumb for even bringing you here, Mr.
Rogers.
That day, PBS was legit saved, they weren't losing any funding.
They were like, you are legit the greatest thing to ever happen to television.
You're doing such a great job.
Kids are the best and you're the best and never stop.
If it wasn't for what Mr.
Rogers did that day, there would've been no "Sesame Street," there would've been no "Lamb Chop's Play-Along," there would've been no "Reading Rainbow.
" It just the list goes on and on and on and on.
He left behind several decades of some of the best children's television programming ever in the history of not only television but the whole world.
BOTH: Humanity.
BOTH: To PBS! To Mr.
Rogers.
And the good of humanity.
Amen.
(Squeals) Well, cheers.
Do you have a specific cheers you wanna do? No.
This is your cheers.
Hey, this is to dogs.
- No.
- No? Let's cheers to all the underdogs that we ever knew to knowing that they're gonna win.
Right? Do we I'm so glad we shit on my cheers.
BOTH: To underdogs.
Hello, I'm Jon Gabrus And today, we'll be talking about Ida Tarbell.
Cheers.
Ida Tarbell's story begins in 1872.
Her father Franklin Tarbell was an oilman.
And a young Ida Tarbell is seeing her father being absolutely bullied by robber baron J.
D.
Rockefeller.
So Rockefeller's going through all of the Northeast, just buying out all these small, little refineries until Franklin Tarbell's like, not happening, bro.
Ida is like, nah, nah.
- Nah, she's like, nah.
- Nah.
She's like, nah, son.
And Rockefeller's like, Mr.
Tarbell, I'm gonna make things very difficult for you.
But Franklin Tarbell, he stood there proud.
Oh I'm gonna get a fucking belch on deck right now.
Get on that.
(Burps) Excuse me.
There's gonna be plenty more where that came from.
Rockefeller's going to all these railroad owners saying like, hey, man, if you charge me less for more oil which I could bring you all these little dudes are gonna bring you less oil.
Fuck them over, and in the long run, they sell to Uncle Rockefeller.
He ends up owning 85% of the oil.
This made Rockefeller the richest man in the world.
Franklin's like, fuckin' Rockefeller.
He boned us all.
We'll never eat again.
My whole livelihood is shot because of this guy.
Poor Ida is watching this all happen around her.
And, like, if you're watching that, you're watching the superhero origin story.
Like, this is where young Ida Tarbell, holding in one hand a Barbie Doll and the other hand a pen.
Well I know what I need to do.
So (Burps) She's hired as a staff writer for "McClure's Magazine" and Mark Mark Twain was a fan of her writing.
And Mark is like, look, I think what you do is great.
And she's like oh, thank you.
She's like I I wanna do something about Standard Oil.
These motherfuckers have been fucking with my family since the get-go, you know? Mark Twain is telling Ida Tarbell, let me introduce you to some of these guys I've been talking to.
Um, so Mark Twain introduces her to Henry Rogers.
And she's like, I'd love to talk to him.
He is high up at Standard Oil.
And (Laughs) Uh, Franklin Ro Wait, hold on.
So Rockefeller All right, hold on.
I'll back this up.
I'll get this information out.
Now I'm really starting to feel wasted.
Mission accomplished, everyone.
(Laughs) So Mark Twain is like he's setting Ida Tarbell up with an interview.
Oh, hey, what are you doing, huh? Blah, blah, blah.
And Rogers is thinking, a woman is speaking to me.
Even if her job is to currently speak to me in this moment, I'm still gonna misread this as attraction.
Let me put on the pussy show.
And then he starts over-revealing information.
And he he's telling her, uh, oh, hey, take a look at these documents.
Yeah, look at this, huh? Isn't this cool? Look at all the kinda cool stuff we're doing at Rockefe Yeah, this is going on.
Hey, yeah, uh, exclusive information that not everyone has.
Oh, you wanna take a look? Yeah, you can look at court documents.
Take a look at this.
And then Ida's going, you know, nice try, shithead.
You're dead, you're dead, you're dead.
Now we're in Now we're in, uh Ida Tarbell's montage moment.
You know, she spends the next two years organizing court court documents, research, interviews, this anything she can get her hands on to start building a narrative.
Ida got down behind her fucking typewriter at that moment, it was just (Imitating typewriter) Yes, uh, ohh (Imitating typewriter) Rockefeller is a (Blows raspberry) (Imitating typewriter) A money monster.
A hypocrite.
Rockefeller is a L-I-V-I-N-G M-U-M-M-Y AKA, Rockefeller is a living mummy.
A-K-L-I-I-V-G-N-Y la, la, la.
So she ends up publishing a 19-piece article called "The History of Standard Oil.
" People are reading this going, like, has anyone caught that McClure's thing about that J.
D.
Rockefeller dude we were all worshipping for so long? Turns out, might be a bit of a scumbag.
Upon further investigation, I think this dude is bad news.
He's a bad hombre.
Her little article little article well that's the most misogynistic thing you can do is call a woman's article a little article.
(Laughs) No, she writes a fucking article that President Teddy Roosevelt reads and he's like, has any one else been reading this Ida Tarbell series? This fucking Rockefeller guy is fucking me with his monopoly.
Guys, I've been working on this thing called, like, the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Feel like it might work in this situation.
Teddy, you bring up a couple of valid points.
We could do something about this.
So in 1911, the Supreme Court says that the monopoly of Standard Oil is illegal and you must break down into two companies.
So a woman who was unable to even vote was able, via just writing to take down the richest man in the world Man, that is so cool.
They fucking shut Standard Oil down.
Well they let Standard Oil turn into two small, bullshit companies who would never make any money Called Exxon Mobile and Chevron.
Two companies that didn't do anything.
So looks like journalism wins in the long run again.
(Laughs) - Ready? - Okay.
Hi, I'm Jennie Pierson.
Okay.
Hi, I'm Jennie Pierson and today, we'll be talking about today? Hi, I'm Jennie Pierson and today, we're talking about Maya Lin.
Cheers.
So it's 1980 and the people at the Vietnam War Memorial Fund are like, I got an idea, let's have a competition to see who can design the best Vietnam War Memorial.
(Burps, laughs) Sorry.
You're okay.
So they get 1,500 submissions to this contest.
They're walking by, they're like, that one's too tall.
I think this one is a little too political, thank you very much.
And this one is too disgusting.
Then they they walk up to one, wow, this is fucking beautiful.
Right, guys? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're we get this.
We love it.
We love it.
Let's this one.
This is it! This is the one! We love this one! Whose is it? Reveal the winner.
And they're like, okay, are you ready for this? It is a 20-year-old college student named Maya Lin.
And they're like, what? It's just a college student? That's crazy.
Cut to Yale and Maya Lin is sitting in her architecture class.
And they're like, sorry to interrupt your class, but is Maya Lin here? We have something to tell her.
And he's like, whatever, fine.
Maya! Maya! And she's like, huh? I I'm over here.
Uhh! And they're like, you won the contest for the Vietnam War Memorial.
We're making your sculpture.
Can you imagine? Um and Maya was just like, guess what? I won.
I won! I guess I'm drunker right now than I thought I'd be.
I'm sorry.
You're don't be sorry.
- Okay.
- You're doing so good.
I thought I would be more normal at this point.
You're fine.
Okay.
So all of these war veterans are saying this memorial has no military symbolism, there's no weaponry, we don't get it.
It's a black gash of shame.
And we are not on board with this.
Ross Perot, he was gonna donate $160,000 to the building of this memorial.
He walks up to them and he's like, hold on.
This is a woman? And she's Asian? She's a young, Asian woman? I'm not gonna give you any money to build this thing if you don't stop (Laughs) I don't know Hold on.
You better pick someone else.
I'm pissed, I'm pissed, I'm pissed.
I'm running for president in 12 years.
Fuck you guys.
I'm pulling my funding.
The committee that had chosen her, they heard all of the this backlash.
And they went to Maya and they were like, okay, so listen, a lot of people are pissed off.
We have a couple of compromises.
We'd we'd like to put more military symbolism into it.
We'd we'd like to have a bronze a bronze statue of a solider carrying an American flag um, placed in the center of your of your memorial.
Uh, and then also, what if we paint the black marble white? How does that sound? And Maya is like, hell no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Not in a million years.
And they were like, fuck.
(Laughs) All right, you know what? Let's bring it to Congress, bitch.
We're bringing it to Co no, that's dumb.
(Laughs) (Both laughing) Um, okay.
What do I wanna say next? Okay.
So at this Congressional hearing, politicians, veterans all testifying against her.
I don't like that it's the color black! I don't like that it's abstract! I don't get it! What is minimalism? I don't like that it looks like a pee sign a pee sign? (Laughs) I don't like that this looks like a peace sign because those damn hippies are always flashing a peace sign at me and I don't like it! The chairman is like, all right, we've heard all this shitty stuff.
Maya, you wanna come up here? Maya gets up there and she's like, okay, guys, this memorial should rise up out of the earth like a wound that can be healed.
This is supposed to feel personal so families and friends of people who have died can come to the memorial and feel the loss of their loved ones as if it was a gravesite.
It's not a political statement.
It's just a sense of togetherness and community.
And the chairman is like, I get it.
I wanna feel sorrow, too.
Everybody just wants to feel something.
And okay, we're gonna do it.
We're gonna do it.
We're gonna do it.
(Uplifting music) So this memorial goes up.
And when it went up, there was, like, this big celebration for it.
And 10,000 veterans marched to the wall in commemoration.
But they were like, you know, this is gonna be shitty, right? This is gonna be crap.
This is gonna be, like, just dumb and we're not gonna care.
And they get up to the memorial.
The granite is sort of reflective.
So what happens is the Veterans would walk up and they would see themselves reflected in the names of the fallen soldiers.
And it was a very emotional experience.
And they were like, whoa.
This is beautiful.
Maya was, like, watching all of this shit go down.
And she was like, I fucking told you.
I told you you would cry.
See all these people crying? I told you they would cry.
- Yeah.
- She probably wasn't that mad.
Maya was able to see this outcome and say, oh, this really did have a really cool impact on everybody.
So Maya Lin goes from this B student at Yale to one of the most prominent architects and artists of our time.
So Maya Lin's design style made a difference.
On all the memorials going forward.
It all became more abstract after that.
She really influenced a lot of designers and architects and artists.
So in 2016, President Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Obama was like, uhh, good job.
I love your work.
Hope to see more of it.
And he kissed her on right on the lips.
(Both laugh) (Kissing sounds) I just made a fool of myself right now.
(Patriotic music)