Airdate: March 26, 2025
Mark Rosenberg: You can start out with such dislike, but
then you can find out that you have some shared elements in common, and you can
come to understand and know a person more fully and that seemed to me such a
remarkable experience.
Julie Rose: Hey, it's Julie. Welcome to Uncomfy, a show
about sticking with moments that challenge us. And you're probably thinking,
"Why would anyone choose to be uncomfortable?" We're wired to avoid
discomfort. But I know from personal experience, and you probably do too, that
sometimes a little discomfort has benefits if we can manage to stay open and
curious about it. And that is what we're here to explore. So, let's get Uncomfy.
Julie Rose: Have you ever bailed on a meeting or a party
because you knew someone you really, really did not like was going to be there?
Well, I want you to meet Mark Rosenberg. The story he's about to tell is part
of a longer saga we covered last week on my other podcast, Top of Mind, but
this one piece of the puzzle is so perfectly Uncomfy and so improbable
that we're going to explore it a little bit more here today. So, the first
thing you need to know is this:
Mark Rosenberg: I was furious at this man. How could he
have the nerve to do this in public? How could he live with himself, taking
this position? I thought we were enemies. Mortal enemies.
Julie Rose: He's talking about the late Congressman Jay
Dickey, Republican from Arkansas. Their feud started in the 1990s. Mark
Rosenberg at the time was head of a branch at the Centers for Disease Control
that was just starting to fund research to look at rising rates of gun violence
and what could be done to prevent those deaths.
It was Rosenberg's whole life's work, and Congressman Jay
Dickey was a huge duck hunter and lifelong NRA member, so he was leading the
charge to stop Rosenberg and ban the CDC from funding gun violence research. If
you've heard of the Dickey Amendment, that's Jay Dickey. So, this all came to a
head at a congressional budget hearing in the spring of 1996. Jay Dickey went
for the jugular. Rosenberg was humiliated. Things were not looking good for the
CDC's gun violence research efforts.
Mark Rosenberg: And I just thought, how could there be
such an evil man who would stop our efforts to save lives?
Julie Rose: So you walk away from that meeting and what,
what are you thinking then about what comes next?
Mark Rosenberg: I was thinking, "How do we go on
from here? How do we pick up the pieces and continue?" And I'd been told
by my bosses at CDC, they said, "Rosenberg, don't you ever, ever talk to
that congressman again. It'll be like throwing a match on gasoline." They
said, "Don't do that. Do you understand?" And I said, "Yes, I, I
get it. I understand."
But then after a couple of weeks, CDC got a request from Jay
Dickey's staffer, and he said, "We want to go over the data that Dr.
Rosenberg presented at the congressional hearing," and so the bosses at
CDC said, "Okay, you can go and talk to the legislative assistant about
the data, but do not talk to the congressman. You get it?" "Yes,
sir." "You really understand?" "Yes, sir." So I went
up and I met the staffer, and we had a really good conversation. I am biased to
appreciate people who want to understand the science, who want to understand
the data, who want to look at that. And so I thought, "This is good. Um,
let's actually go through it. He wants to understand the problem. We're both
trying to understand the problem," and we actually had a very good talk.
It was very good. And at the end of an hour, we were ready to leave, and he
said to me, "Oh, by the way, the congressman is in his office, and he
wants to say hello to you." And I gulped. I said to myself, "Oh, (BLEEP) this is really bad. This is terrible. If I go in and talk to him,
I'll get fired. If I don't talk to him, I'll make it worse. He'll get more
angry because I'll be rude. What should I do?" And I decided the best
thing would be to say hello, but don't say anything more than that. Just go in
and say hello. So, I bit my tongue, and I went in and said, "Hello,"
and I noticed on his wall that instead of the usual testimonials to how great
he was, he had pictures, pictures of his family, pictures of his kids, and we
started talking about his kids and his family and then he asked me about my
kids and my family, and we actually spent a fair amount of time just talking
about our kids, and we found out that some of our kids, one of each of us had a
kid with similar problems, similar issues, and it was a good feeling to have
that shared. And the next thing I knew, he had invited my son to come visit
Congress and go on a tour and meet with him in his office. Not only my son, but
his whole class.
And I was touched by that act of kindness and caring. And then
he asked me, "Could I help his daughter who had just moved to Atlanta,
could I help her get a job?" And I did. And then he asked me some other
things, he did other things for me, and we started to talk, and we actually
started to get to know each other this way.
Julie Rose: You were different, right? Describe for me
some of the ways in which you were really quite an odd couple.
Mark Rosenberg: The two of us? Oh, my gosh. Were we
different? Jay was from a very, very small, rural town in Arkansas, Pine Bluff,
Arkansas, which most people have never heard of, much less been to, and he grew
up, um, as a lifelong NRA member, and he was a Republican, and he was a born-again
Christian who believed very strongly in his Christian faith, and I was this
curly haired, over-educated Jewish kid from the Northeast. We couldn't have
been more different, really. And the more we talked, we got to actually like
each other and understand each other, and that was really an important step.
Julie Rose: Yeah. It's, um, how did that happen? Like,
did he engineer that? It's just so improbable, you know, given how he had
behaved toward you in public and how, you know, how you felt as a result of
that. What do you think was going on there?
Mark Rosenberg: I found out later that Jay did arrange
that because he said when he meets someone with whom he disagrees strongly, he
wants to talk to that person to find out why they disagree. He wants to talk to
that person more than he wants to talk to the average person, not less. So, he
wanted to understand where I was coming from and what I was thinking about, but
it evolved very naturally. But what was striking to me is that you can start
out with such dislike, really strong dislike from a person, but then you can find
out that you have some shared elements in common: values, children, some of
your experiences that are shared, some of your views that are shared, and you
can come to understand and know a person more fully than initial exposure would
allow, and that seemed to me such a remarkable experience. I'd like to settle
on the, on the evolution of your friendship for just a moment if I can ask a
few more questions. Um, so initially, you have this warm encounter, surprising,
in his office a couple of weeks after that hearing, he offers to take your,
your kid's class on this tour and then he calls in a favor, and you help his
daughter get a job in Atlanta, and this is playing out over the course of a
year? A couple of years? I mean, are you, like, frequently calling one another
or sort of what was the nature of that? Just sort of, you know, initially it
was kind of just professional courtesy kinds of things? Just kind of paint that
picture for me a little bit more of how, how that friendship came about. I
think those first steps happened in the first year, and, um, there were more
things. I mean, we got closer, we talked more, and at first our conversations
weren't around guns.
Julie Rose: Why were you, why were you going to see him
in that way? Were you hoping to bring up guns at some point with him? Change
his mind?
Mark Rosenberg: I liked him, I liked him a lot, and it
grew on me, and I think Jay is a very, was a very kind, caring person, um,
deeply committed to his family and his children and to children in general, and
I appreciated that, and we could be honest with each other. But I think there
was a genuine sense of caring about each other that grew, and it continued to
grow.
And once we could trust
each other, we could learn from each other, and I think Jay learned about the
public health approach and how science and understanding could help solve
problems, and he was really impressed by the potential of science to help us.
And Jay taught me a very important lesson. He said, "Mark, you've got to
realize that people have been told that you are out to take away all their guns
and that that's the end result of the work you're doing is that they will all
lose their guns." And he said, "Mark, you've got to understand what a
threat it is, even if it's not true, they're told that you're threatening them.
So, every time you talk about guns, you have to start, not end up, but start by
letting them know that you're not out to take their guns and that you're not
interested in infringing on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. You've got to
start with that." And that was a really, really important lesson for me. And
I think learning about the potential of science to solve problems was an
important step for Jay. And...
Julie Rose: And you started to do that, then? That
changed your approach?
Mark Rosenberg: Absolutely. Absolutely, and I still
think it's such an important thing of what we do. We live in such polarized,
hyperpolarized times that people don't want to even listen to what the other
side is saying. People who advocate for gun rights think that the enemy is the
group of people advocating for gun control, and it goes both ways. People who
advocate for gun safety often see the people on the other side as their enemy,
the NRA and all the members of the NRA and gun owners, they see as the enemy.
And it is such a destructive, counterproductive, serious mistake. People on
both sides forget that the real problem is that our kids are being killed. Guns
are now the leading cause of death for young people from 1 to 19. The leading
cause of death. It's a horrendous problem. Our children are killed at school.
Our husbands, our fathers, our wives, our daughters are killed at school or at
churches or at shopping malls or at work. That's the problem. We're losing
people that we love, and if we can see what the problem is and put aside
some of our distrust of the people we're talking to, we can start to make
progress. And so, Jay and I got together, and we wrote an op-ed,and we said,
"If we do research, if we continue to do the research, we can find
solutions to this problem."
Julie Rose: And that's what Jay Dickey lamented. Like,
he, he had wanted to maintain the research. Is that what you're saying? He had
always wanted to see the research happen?
Mark Rosenberg: Not in the very beginning, but once we
started talking and once he listened more and saw the results of the research,
he came to want it, continued and saw the importance of it, and he thought that
what was happening in terms of gun violence, school shootings, mass shootings
were increasing. He thought that that was a horrendous thing and that that
needed to be stopped because that was taking away our kids.
It was taking away our children. So, yes, even before he
publicly acknowledged this in 2012, in that op-ed we wrote together, he was
starting to think that this was a mistake to stop the research, and we were
starting to talk about how could we get it restarted. And unfortunately Jay
died in 2017, and they had a very big funeral for him. It was attended by 500
people. The governor was there, the senators, all the congressmen from
Arkansas, every member of the congressional delegation was there. His family
asked me to give the eulogy, and, for me, that was a very special event and
very meaningful and very moving event for me. And, uh, I'm sure people thought,
"Strange that this person from Pine Bluff would have this Jewish person
come and give the eulogy at his funeral," um, but it meant a lot to me,
and I still feel very close to his family. His wife, Betty, became interested
in taking on Jay's work to get the research funding restarted.
That next year after Jay died, Betty said, "I'll work with
you. Let's go together." She said, "Jay had big shoes to fill, but
let's try to do this together." And the federal funding for gun violence
prevention research was restored for the first time after a drought of nearly
20 years. There's a whole new generation of folks doing this research, and I
wish I could show this to Jay. Um, I think he would be absolutely delighted
about this. I think one of the worst aspects of this current atmosphere of
distrust, disinformation, and hyperpolarization is that a lot of people say,
"We're never gonna solve this problem." They give in to fatalism.
They say, "There's 400 million guns in the United States. We're never
gonna be able to make them all safe. We're never gonna be able to protect
kids." That's not true. We can, and we can learn how to do it. We can
learn how to do it in a way that's acceptable to both gun rights advocates and
gun safety proponents. We can find them. We know some of these. We need to test
them. Others we need to discover and do the research, but there's a way out of
this, and I think things are starting to change. I think at state levels,
they're starting to collect data, do information. At a federal level, we're
starting to collect information that can help us discover new ways to intervene.
This is a solvable problem, and if there's any message to people,
I would say, "Don't give up hope. We can get both sides to
agree. We can get both sides to think together, talk together, work together.
If Jay Dickey and I could come to talk and become friends, we could do this in
this country on a larger scale. We can make progress. We can save our families.
We can save our communities. I think there's nothing more important, we'd all
agree, um, so let's get down to it. Let's start doing it."
Julie Rose: Mark Rosenberg, thank you so much for
sharing your story.
Mark Rosenberg: Thanks, Julie. It's been a pleasure.
Julie Rose: And thank you for getting Uncomfy with us
today. There is a lot more to the story of how Mark Rosenberg and Jay Dickey's
relationship first led to a 20-year freeze on federal funding for gun violence
research and then to getting that funding restarted. We go into all of that
detail, plus talk to members of Jay Dickey's family and a couple of gun
violence researchers who've been affected by their feud-turned-friendship on
the latest episode of Top of Mind with Julie Rose, that's my other podcast. Look
for it on your favorite podcast app. Do you have any former foes you're now
friends with? I'd love to hear about it. Email uncomfy@byu.edu or connect with
us on social media.
Uncomfy is a BYUradio podcast. Samuel Benson produces it, and the team includes James Hoopes, Isabella Sosa, and Sam Payne. Our theme music was composed by Kelsey Nay. I'm Julie Rose. Can't wait to get Uncomfy with you again next week.
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