– Larry Elder goes toe-to-toe with Piers Morgan (WND, Jan 19, 2013):
Author Larry Elder, who recently released “Dear Father, Dear Son,” has tamed Piers Morgan, the leftist CNN host who has released tirade after tirade in recent interviews on the issue of gun control.
Elder, on Morgan’s show last night to discuss his book, explained the significance of having fathers in homes, noting the high crime rate in Chicago, where 75 percent of black children are born into homes without a father.
“This book that I’ve written, ‘Dear Father, Dear Son,’ is by far the most important book I’ve ever written because it’s about the centrality of fathers,” Elder said.
“The face of gun violence in this country, as horrific as Sandy Hook was, is not Newtown. It is Chicago, where 500 people last year were shot,” he said.
“Chicago is a city with about a third black, a third white and a third Hispanic. However, 75 percent of murders in Chicago were committed by blacks, usually against other blacks, most of them gang-related.
“The question is why do these boys join these gangs, and the answer is they have no fathers in the house.”
Morgan, who just a day earlier had ranted against conservatives Dana Loesch and Scottie Hughes, crumpling his notes and saying their statements made him “sick,” challenged Elder that is it guns that are the problem, not an cultural influence.
“I dispute that this is the reason,” Morgan said.
Elder responded that multiple studies have documented the influence of fathers, and even left-leaning leaders such as Kwasi Mfume and Jesse Jackson have confirmed the absence of fathers is a problem in black households.
Morgan has established a reputation on the issue of gun control as throwing, as one commentary wrote, a “hissy fit.”
Kelsey Osterman on the Red Alert Politics blog concluded, “Apparently the facts don’t matter at all to Morgan and his personal vendetta. But when his logic is so convoluted, all he can do is crumple his notes and throw them in a hissy fit.”
Morgan also berated Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro on the topic of guns, and when Larry Pratt, of Gun Owners of America, appeared, “he went off on Mr. Pratt in a way that rarely occurs outside some of the more rugged reality shows on television,” said a New York Times blog.
“You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?” Morgan blasted.
“Mr. Pratt did not take the bait, calmly continuing to elucidate his argument,” the Times reported. Said Pratt, “You seem to prefer being a victim to being able to prevail over the criminal element. I don’t know why you want to be the criminal’s friend.”
“It was a bit of a moment, watching a talk show host losing it talking to one of his guests,” the report said.
Craig Medred at the Alaska Dispatch said, “CNN talking head Piers Morgan is delusional. There is no other way to describe a transplanted Brit who thinks gun control in America will somehow make the good, old U.S. of A. into some sort of clone of Merry Old England.”
He continued, “The homicide rate in Alaska, where guns are everywhere, is 4 per 100,000; in New York City, where the mayor is trying to get rid of guns, the rate is 6.4 per 100,000 – more than 50 percent higher. Gun control doesn’t necessarily work at all.”
He noted that the homicide rate for Detroit is 48.2 per 100,000.
In a recent WND column, Elder originally wrote that the “face of gun violence is not Sandy Hook. It is Chicago.”
“In 2012, President Barack Obama’s adopted hometown had 506 murders, including more than 60 children. Philadelphia, a city that local television newscasters frequently call ‘Killadelphia,’ saw 331 killed last year. In Detroit, 386 people were murdered,” Elder wrote.
“Since 1966, there have been 90 school shootings in the U.S., with 231 fatalities. Yes, Sandy Hook shocked us. But the odds of a child being killed at a school shooting are longer than the odds of being struck by lightning,” he said.
“Of the 11,000 to 12,000 gun murders each year, more than half involve both black killers and black victims, mostly in urban areas and mostly gang-related. The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is not auto accidents or accidental drowning, but homicide.”
The cause? Elder believes it is a “fatherless culture.”
“Dads disappeared. Or, more precisely, to use Bill Cosby’s term, the number of ‘unwed fathers’ exploded,” he explained.
“In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote ‘The Negro Family: A Case for National Action.’ At the time, 25 percent of blacks children were born out of wedlock, a number Moynihan called alarming. Fast forward to the present: 72 percent of black children are now born out of wedlock. In fact, 36 percent of white children are born out of wedlock. Of Hispanic children, 53 percent are born outside of marriage.”
Elder’s book, “Dear Father, Dear Son,” is a personal memoir of his troubled – one might even say tortured – relationship with his father and the astonishing outcome that develops when Elder, at long last, confronts him.
Says Elder: “A man’s relationship with his father – every boy, every man lucky enough to have a father in his life has to figure that out. My own father? I thought I knew him – even though he seldom talked about himself. And what I knew I hated – really, really hated. Cold, ill-tempered, thin-skinned, my father always seemed on the brink of erupting. Scared to death of him, I kept telling myself to find the courage to ‘stand up to him.’ When I was fifteen, I did.” After that, said Elder,
“We did not speak to each other for ten years.
“And then we did – for eight hours.”
The result can’t be described. It has to be experienced.
As reflected in the book’s subtitle – “Two Lives … Eight Hours” – one extraordinary, all-day conversation between Elder and his long-estranged father utterly transformed their relationship. It is no exaggeration to say the book will likewise transform readers.
Indeed, calling it “stunning,” Burt Boyar, co-author of the bestselling autobiography on Sammy Davis, Jr., says of “Dear Father, Dear Son”: “Above all it is a wonderful read. I am tempted to call it a page-turner but in my case I hated to turn every page because that meant I was getting closer to the end and I did not want it to end. … The book is filled with emotion. It is, of course, a handbook for life. I guess it is that above all things. Any kid who reads it and follows the advice of how to live his life just has to come out well.”
“Dear Father, Dear Son” is the story of one man discovering a son he never really knew. And of the son finding a man, a friend, a father who had really been there all along.
Elder, a “firebrand libertarian” according to Daily Variety, has been the subject of profiles by both CBS’ “60 Minutes” and ABC’s “20/20.” His previous best-selling books – “The 10 Things You Can’t Say in America,” “Showdown: Confronting Bias, Lies and the Special Interests That Divide America” and “What’s Race Got to Do with It? Why it’s Time to Stop the Stupidest Argument in America” – all have met with critical acclaim.