CBS Sunday Morning correspondent and television personality Mo Rocca.
Photo Credit: Thom Kaine
Feb. 18, 2015 – Chat with funny newsman Mo Rocca for an hour, and you’ll learn some things. He’s a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt, carries some ill-will towards fondue, and his father would not let him watch Laverne & Shirley. You’ll also get his take on voting in America, and the seemingly blurred lines between “fake” and “real” news.
A former correspondent with Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show and current correspondent with the CBS Sunday Morning show, Rocca will engage and entertain lawyers and judges through a moderated Q&A at the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Annual Meeting and Conference, June 25-26, 2015, at the Grand Geneva Resort and Spa in Lake Geneva.
NYC-based, Washington, D.C.-born Rocca, a Harvard grad, also hosts the hit Cooking Channel series My Grandmother’s Ravioli, where he uncovers treasured family recipes from grandparents across the country. He’s also a frequent panelist on NPR’s hit radio show, Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me, and host of The Henry Ford Innovation Nation, a new CBS series that celebrates the investor’s spirit and showcases innovative ideas.
Rocca, who served as a Tonight Show with Jay Leno correspondent during the 2008 presidential election, has a keen interest in politics and history. In 2012, Rocca starred in a feature-length PBS documentary, Electoral Dysfunction, which explores voting in America.
He interviewed activists, experts, election administrators (and third-graders) for a nonpartisan look at the Electoral College and voting laws. The film won the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award, which recognizes outstanding efforts to foster public understanding of law. So why invite Rocca to the State Bar’s Annual Meeting and Conference?
Because he’s funny, he’s smart, and he’s engaging. Rocca has his finger on the pulse of American journalism, politics, and pop culture, and he uses a unique brand of humor to deliver his perspectives and ideas. He’s also a fervent presidential history buff. And if that’s not enough, he can name the capital city of every country in the world.
As a preview to Rocca’s AMC appearance, State Bar Legal Writer Joe Forward chatted with him to discuss some serious and offbeat topics. It’s just a sampling of the upcoming event, but members should “expect the unexpected” with Rocca’s Q&A in June.
Q: Hey Mo, what did you do today?
It was a typically fun day for me. I was invited to be a guest programmer for Turner Classic Movies, so I sat down with Robert Osborne, who hosts the show. Sometimes they have guests who help intro movies and discuss what they like about them. They let me choose four movies. I taped the introductions today, and the show will air in April. I have been gunning for this for a long time so it was pretty exciting for me.
Q: You’re involved in a lot of projects. What do you like most about the work you are doing?
I like stuff where I can learn. I love projects where I get paid to get smarter, that’s always fun. CBS Sunday Morning is sort of like going back to college and taking only electives. One week it might be the history of the pencil, the next week it’s the life of hockey great Bobby Orr, the next week it’s the assassination of President James Garfield. It’s like doing a book report every time I have an assignment. You learn things that maybe you should have learned before but now you’re learning on the job.
More about the AMC
In addition to Mo Rocca, the State Bar is proud to announce Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, as a featured speaker at the 2015 AMC at the Grand Geneva Resort & Spa in Lake Geneva, June 25 and 26.
Check out the 2015 AMC website, and mark your calendars so you’re sure to catch the plenary sessions, the hottest CLE topics, exciting social activities and endless opportunities to connect with hundreds of Wisconsin judges, lawyers, and legal professionals. And go ahead and leave your suit and tie at home.
Wondering what the 2015 AMC is about? On the schedule – in addition to the two exciting plenary speakers – are parties, yoga, the legal expo, continental breakfasts and networking luncheons, the annual Member Recognition Celebration, and the presidential swearing-in ceremony and celebration.
Attend your choice of dozens of high-quality CLE sessions and get up to 11 CLE and 6.5 EPR credits at the conference. An additional 2 CLE/EPR credits are available at the free pre-conference CLE program on Wednesday afternoon, June 24.
Wherever I go, I like interviewing people and having conversations with them. And that’s really why I pitched my cooking show. I go off and meet with grandmas and grandpas in different parts of the country and cook with them and just hear their life story.
Q: What do you like talking about at these speaking engagements?
I like talking about American history. I know the capital of every country in the world, so I like being asked about that. I like state facts, so I will probably learn a bunch of Wisconsin state facts. This will be a good excuse for me to learn a lot about Wisconsin.
Does Wisconsin have a good state fair? Is Wisconsin’s state fair as good as Iowa’s state fair? I did an interview with Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson, and she was a really big champion of the Iowa State Fair. What about Minnesota’s? You know, Minnesota has the Butter Queen. [Editor’s note: Forward informed Mo that Wisconsin’s State Fair was excellent, as well as the fair’s well-known Original Cream Puff].
Q: What do you know about Wisconsin?
I know Wisconsin has towns with great names, but I’ve only been to Milwaukee. I’d like to visit Eau Claire and Fond du Lac. I know Milwaukee has some great architecture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I also know Milwaukee has an airport, and the airport has a bookstore. I remember reading that O’Hare is such a terrible airport and somebody said, ‘you should use Milwaukee’s airport, it’s really user-friendly and they have a bookstore.’
Q: So will you fly into Milwaukee, then?
Well, I guess I have to. I also know the show Laverne & Shirley took place in Milwaukee. My parents were old-fashioned strict. Once there was an episode and Shirley had a stomach ache and then Laverne said ‘you might be pregnant,’ and the idea that she could be pregnant out of wedlock really upset my father, so I wasn’t able to watch Laverne & Shirley anymore. Truth be told, I didn’t really love Laverne & Shirley. I did like Happy Days, though, another Milwaukee-based show.
I know that Milwaukee has an auditorium where The Beatles performed during their first trip to the United States. It’s one of the few places they performed, and the auditorium is not even that big but it’s almost perfect acoustically. I have a whole file of Wisconsin knowledge. I’m dusting it off as we speak right now.
Q: You’ll be speaking to attorneys and judges with different political views. How do you prepare for that?
I’ve heard that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is someone who is not a polarizing figure at all. I know if there’s a group of people who are politically opposed, right down the middle, half on one side, half on the other, Scott Walker can bring them all together. I’ll probably read about Scott Walker. Apparently, we all need to be reading about Scott Walker, because people in Iowa like him.
Q: You worked on The Daily Show, with satirical or “fake” news bits and commentary on politics and the media. You also worked for NBC news. Are the lines between satire and news blurred? How do viewers know what’s true or not?
It’s been happening for a while – the blurring of the line between news and entertainment. I kind of have mixed feelings about it. I don’t know that there was ever an objective press, so it’s probably a good thing that there are a lot of different outlets. Unfortunately, now there seem to be whole channels dedicated just to opinions. I’m the only person from The Daily Show to end up working for an actual news organization, and it’s kind of interesting seeing it from that side.
I think my old pal Jon Stewart would agree that the worst thing of all is that there’s less and less actual reporting going on. You have shows about the opinions that people have about the opinions that other people have opinions on. At some point, there has to be someone on the ground who is doing actual reporting, and there seems to be less and less of that. That’s kind of a distressing thing. It’s obviously not good for the public.
The proliferation of satire is a very good thing, getting people thinking about the disparity between what a politician says and does. It’s both funny and troubling. Certainly when I was on The Daily Show – and the show still does it – that’s the stuff that we really mined for.
Q: What did you learn through your work on the PBS documentary, Electoral Dysfunction?
It was sort of my journey to understand voting in America, and voter ID laws, which is a big hot button issue, and how the U.S. has a very messy voting history. The Constitution does not indeed guarantee the right to vote and that has trickled down to us today, and has manifested itself in a lot of different ways. We have 13,000 different voting districts in America.
Often times, there’s different hours, rules, and voter ID requirements – it kind of makes for a crazy quilt. That’s something that would be of interest to lawyers I’m sure.
Q: I saw a segment from the documentary, where you talk about the Electoral College system with third graders. What can third graders teach us?
That was not a stunt. That was the real thing. Those kids were not rehearsed. Third graders and kids in general have an unadulterated sense of fairness. Obviously, kids lack a lot in wisdom. But when it comes to fairness, man, they kinda get it. They haven’t yet been corrupted. The Electoral College doesn’t make a lot of sense to most third-graders.
Q: How do you feel about political ads? How can viewers know what is fact or fiction? Should there be more regulation on the way ads portray issues and candidates?
It seems like there’s always going to be a way to get around it because of a combination of less real journalism and less resources. Frankly, we lost something when broadcast networks decided that news organizations needed to be profit centers. The original deal was the FCC gave over the airwaves and said look, you get to use these airwaves but you are also going to do a public service for this country by delivering the news – that somehow got lost.
I would say even to my own bosses that it should be enforced by the government. Less reporting means that if you are running in a race, you can make outlandish claims and there aren’t the resources available to actually have somebody come in and play referee, which is what the press should be doing. It’s very troubling.
I have found that the world of politics and the world of celebrity are sort of the same thing. If you say something enough over and over again, you just wear people down and they accept it. You can be the candidate that constantly says “the children, the children.” And then maybe your policies are actually really bad for children, but if you keep saying you care about children, eventually you just wear people down and they believe you.
Q: Mo, you are a likeable guy. When you interview people, you get them to open up with your interview style. Do you have any advice for lawyers on how they can be more likeable in the eyes of clients or juries?
I can tell you what I do, and it took me a long time to figure this out. Listening is the biggest key. I find that when I sit down for an interview, that the person I’m interviewing has a look in their eyes where they are just spouting talking points and then, five or six minutes in, I’ll see something shift. They realize I’m actually listening to what they are saying, and then everything changes and the talking points melt away. I always feel like that’s a victory. People, and I’m talking about famous people here, are so used to being interviewed by people who aren’t really listening.
Charles Kuralt, who started CBS Sunday Morning, once told a producer that I’m close with, and she passed this on to me: Charles always said it's okay to like the person you are interviewing. Unless you are talking to a war criminal, you can be sympathetic. There’s this stupid rule in reporting that says you have to talk about the thing they don’t want to talk about, because that’s how you will prove it’s a fair interview. But sometimes you’ll get much more if you don’t put someone on the spot.
I also make myself vulnerable in a way, and maybe that’s on purpose. When I’m in an editing session watching the interview, I don’t like when the editor cleans up my stumbles. I like the rough edges. I don’t like everything being perfect. It’s not how people are. People can relate to others who have flaws just like them. Maybe lawyers should be more vulnerable, so that the juries will feel badly for them.
Q: I hear you are a presidential history buff. Who is your favorite president?
I’m a big Teddy Roosevelt fan. He was an asthmatic child who grew up to become our most robust president. I think that a lot of our more successful presidents were a little bit crazy, and I think Teddy Roosevelt is one of these people.
When I read Edmund Morris’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, which won the Pulitzer Prize, I wanted to kill myself by the time I got to page 25 because the guy does more in a page than I do in a year. Then you realize he was super human, and in fact he was bipolar, he had these manic waves of activity that you could never compete with. So you let go and realize he’s on a whole other level. Anyone who can mobilize a country without a war on the clock is an extraordinary person. It’s much easier when you have a war. Then you get anybody to do anything. Teddy Roosevelt is tops with me, I’m a big fan of his.
Q: If you could ask anybody anything, who would it be and what would you ask them?
Since we are on the subject of Wisconsin, a cheese state, I’d ask somebody about the proper way to eat fondue, and what precautions I should I take. I had a college roommate who had a horrible fondue accident, with terrible burns. I’m not sure exactly why it happened. One of my best friends was engaged to the guy and she really helped him through his horrible fondue burns and then he dumped her. I’ve always had a very conflicted relationship with fondue because of that.
Q: What’s your favorite movie with a lawyer in it?
I love 12 Angry Men with Henry Fonda and Jack Klugman, but I don’t think you ever see the lawyers, we only see the jurors. What’s that movie with Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino? [Forward: Devil’s Advocate]. I never saw that. Inherit the Wind was a good one.
Don't Miss Mo's Fun and Informative Talk at AMC!
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