Arthur Chu's Op-ed; Flight 370 Search Area Discounted
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for joining me here. Off the bat we begin with Veteran Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki and some news we have today because he now, according to the White House, may be, quote, "on thin ice." And now you have this growing list of Senate Democrats already having him in hot water. It seems like every hour there is another press release out. You have senators Al Franken, Kay Hagan, Martin Heinrich, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Udall, Tom Udall, John Walsh and Mark Warner all saying it's time for the secretary of Veterans Affairs to go. Along with the pressure of the investigation at the V.A., it is now widening after a scathing report that we brought to you right around this time yesterday. It says at least 1,700 veterans at just one hospital were never scheduled for an appointment. They were just not on the list, period. And then there were more allegations of mismanagement, sexual harassment, bullying by managers. Today, the demand for action went higher than the secretary. It went all the way to the Oval Office.</s>REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: I'm going to continue to reserve judgment on General Shinseki. You know, the question I ask myself is, is him resigning going to get us to the bottom of the problem? Is it going to help us find out what's really going on? And the answer I keep getting is no. But the real issue here is that the president is the one who should be held accountable.</s>BALDWIN: Well, in just a couple of minutes, we'll talk live with a veteran in Phoenix who says he warned Secretary Shinseki and Senator John McCain. Here's his letter to McCain. And we have McCain's response as well. Hear about these problems that he outlined, but he says no one listened. That's the issue. McCain's camp, though,</s>ARTHUR CHU, CONTRIBUTOR, "THE DAILY BEAST": Thank you.</s>BALDWIN: It was an incredible piece. A very real, very honest piece you wrote for "The Daily Beast." And here, you know, as you say this -- as you are a self-professed nerd, can you just explain to me why this shooting in particular hit you so strongly, so personally?</s>CHU: Well, it's the fact that this is kind of a script that we've all heard before. That, you know, I think every guy who's struggled with fitting into society, with feeling excluded, we kind of locate a lot of that in women. That we look at rejection by women as being this huge significant thing in our lives. And, I mean, I was inspired to write the piece mainly by this hash tag, this topic on Twitter, "yes all women," where a lot of women began just spontaneously sharing stories about how, no, mass shootings don't happen every day but this kind of language, this kind of logic of entitlement, men thinking they have the right to something from women and acting out in violence if they don't get it, that that's part of lots and lots of people's lives and we need to think about that and not turn away from it.</s>BALDWIN: Let me get right to that because it's interesting, I keep hearing you say "we." And in this piece you call yourself a coward. You say that you have known nerdy male stalkers. You say, yes, you have known</s>CHU: That's the - I mean that's the - the terrible thing is it's human nature when something is the way that it's always been or you've been taught it's the way it's always been. You look at it and you feel that it's terrible but you don't - you don't feel moved to take action. You know, it's the - as soon as we get the sense that it's normal, you know, the whole Kitty Geniveses (ph) story, it was the bystander affect. We get the sense it's not my job to deal with it and --</s>BALDWIN: The normal. When you say the normal, you're going beyond. You're saying the nerdy guy who not just fixates on some hot chick - forgive me but I'm just being real with you - and then stalks that person et cetera. You're saying that is accepted?</s>CHU: That it happens, yes.</s>BALDWIN: Yes.</s>CHU: It happens - it happens a lot. And, you know, I don't think anybody approves of it or likes it. But speaking just from my own experience, I know that we saw that happen, you know? Other people saw that happen. We all have stories of seeing - saying, something's not right about this situation or hearing accounts, something's not - is not right that's going on but it's not my business so I'll stay out of it. And that's how you get stories of horrible abuse, you know, child abuse, abuse of partners, stalking, harassment, that goes on for a long, long time. And all the signs are there and no one does anything and it's very frustrating.</s>BALDWIN: Yes. I want to - we'll get to your point at the very end of sort of this message to all of us and the responsibility to stop this. But you cite, Arthur, you cite these multiple examples in TV and pop culture of nerdy guys who lust after, you know, the hot chick. You point out Lewis from "Revenge of the Nerds." You point out Steve Urkel from "Family Matters." You say we are not Preston Meyers from "Can't Hardly Wait." We are not Seth Rogan in every Seth Rogan movie that he's been in. But, you know, then you can't blame Hollywood, Arthur Chu. No one, you know, makes nerds this - or the delusional Elliot Rodgers of the world. No one makes them watch the shows. That's just wrong of you. What do you say to those people?</s>CHU: I'm not - I'm not looking to blame. I'm not going to put anyone on trial. I don't think the point is to find out who's at fault. Hollywood isn't - you know, doesn't control our society. Our society controls Hollywood. All Hollywood does is amplify and reflect the messages that we send to producers that we want to hear. They tell us what we want to hear.</s>BALDWIN: And fill the theaters and make the money, right?</s>CHU: Yes. Yes. So it's a conversation we should have. We can't do it by banning movies or yelling at filmmakers, but we need to ask ourselves, you know, when I say I enjoy this movie and identify with it, what am I really saying? Is there other things that I need to address in my attitude instead of just, you know, assuming that it's a fantasy, so anything goes, you know?</s>BALDWIN: In the adjusting, and I just have to get this in, you end your piece with, "what did Elliot Rodger need? He didn't need to get laid. None of us nerdy, frustrated guys need to get laid. When I was a</s>CHU: That's the million dollar question, isn't it?</s>BALDWIN: Right.</s>CHU: There's no - there's no magic switch. There's no magic pill. I don't know how to help Elliot Rodger, if he could have been helped. But the first thing is to just listen. You know, listen to women and listen to their perspective instead of making it about you. The whole thing about Elliot Rodgers, he talked for 140 pages about himself, never even like named other people that supposedly he was so fixated on, these women that he was obsessed over, you know? It's -- it's striking.</s>BALDWIN: It's beyond striking, but, Arthur Chu, I loved your - I loved the genuineness and the candor in your piece. Folks, go to "Daily Beast" to read this. Arthur, thank you so much for coming on with me. Appreciate it.</s>CHU: Thank you.</s>BALDWIN: And now to this. Outrage and just absolute embarrassment. A couple of words to describe this devastating new development here in the hunt for this missing plane, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. You remember when Australian authorities said last month that they were quote/unquote very confident that pings picked up in the area of the southern Indian Ocean were, in fact, the missing plane's black boxes? About that. A U.S. Navy official telling CNN that the pings were not from the plane's black boxes at all. Authorities now believe the sound came from some other man made source unrelated to the jetliner. And if the blows here couldn't get any worse, you have now Australian authorities saying this search area in the Indian Ocean can now be discounted as the plane's final resting place. Translation, this underwater drone that scoured the ocean floor for weeks and weeks was a waste of time, money, and it searched the wrong area. CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest is joining me now. I tell you, when I read that word discounted this morning -</s>RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Whoa.</s>BALDWIN: Whoa, whoa, whoa.</s>QUEST: How - whoa.</s>BALDWIN: It's -- that's what they're saying.</s>QUEST: I'm taking you to task here. The -- they were working with the best information they had at the time. And, yes, of course Australia is now going to say that that's - that the plane isn't there because they've searched it and they've realized they were in the wrong place. But when they heard - well, let's go back. Let's have a reality check.</s>BALDWIN: Take me back. Take me back.</s>QUEST: When they - when they heard the pings, it was in the right vicinity of the seventh handshake. It was at the endurance limit of the aircraft's fuel supply. So it's not as if - that they - I mean they were searching in that area particularly for a reason. They then heard the pings which comported to a particular form. They then passed it on to the Australian Acoustic Center for Excellence who agrees. The manufacturer also agrees. To be sure, Brooke, there are some certain questions about the frequency, about the distances, but they've got nothing else to go on. Now you tell me, what would you have had them do?</s>BALDWIN: And they have families clamoring and wanting answers and so they search and they search and they search. Here's my next question then.</s>QUEST: It is -</s>BALDWIN: Here's my next question then. I mean are they - were they at least in the ballpark? Do we know that at least this plane is somewhere in this southern arc, this southern Indian Ocean?</s>BALDWIN: What's the answer though?</s>QUEST: Yes, they are still saying, absolutely -</s>BALDWIN: OK.</s>QUEST: They are still believing the Inmarsat data is good. The Australians are still saying that they believe it is in that vicinity. They've just got to work out where on the arc that it actually is. And that's why the search is going to be expanded. That's why they are biometrically - bathymetrically, I beg your pardon, going over the ground. That's why they're going to put it out to tender. But I think the level of Monday morning quarterbacking that now goes to this search that clearly was wrong and clearly was failed doesn't hold up bearing in mind the intensity to get the thing underway.</s>BALDWIN: OK. Just quickly, when does that new search begin?</s>QUEST: Bad news on that. They will be searching the ground for a few more months. They will then put it out to tender. The tender should be underway by maybe August or September. They'll be back in the water. And here's the really bad news. The Australians say it could take up to 12 months for a newly defined area to be searched.</s>BALDWIN: OK. Richard Quest, thank you. We'll wait until then, I suppose. Just ahead here, the number of Democrats calling on the Veteran Affairs secretary to resign is now rising by the hour. My next guest says he tried to warn Secretary Eric Shinseki and the senator from his own state, John McCain, about the problems a couple of years ago. You will hear from this man directly live coming up. Plus, Brad Pitt attacked on the red carpet by a man who apparently has this long history of incidents with stars. Who is that guy and what happened? Also ahead of tonight's very exciting premiere of the CNN TV series, "The Sixties," you are about to hear from the man playing LBJ on Broadway. I've seen it. It is awesome. "Breaking Bad's" own Bryan Cranston. Do not miss this CNN interview.