Renowned author, essayist and sometimes actor Fran Lebowitz believes tolerance is more achievable than universal love.
“We just need to leave each other alone,” she said during a phone call from her home in New York City. “The average person only likes to associate with people who like them. That’s what average means. But if you’re on a subway in New York, you will see a young woman wearing a scarf around her head, and next to her you’ll see a Hasidic Jew. If you press them and ask if they liked each other, they would probably say no, but they get on the train and off the train and won’t touch each other. There is no blood shed.”
Lebowitz will share more of her thoughts about life and the universe when the Park City Institute hosts a discussion and audience Q and A on Saturday, April 8, at the Eccles Center for the Performing Arts.
“I like to go out to places like Park City and have conversations because I don’t have to write a speech,” Lebowitz said in her trademark sardonic and deadpan delivery. “To me, the questions from the audiences is what I enjoy the most by far. The questions from the audience are great, because you’re talking about what the audience wants to talk about.”
Throughout the years of answering questions from audiences around the world, Lebowitz has learned the biggest difference between people is not so much the countries or states they live in, but whether or not they live in the city or the country.
“This is the big divide,” she said. “Either they love cities like I do or hate them. And the hatred of cities isn’t just about the noise or things like that. It’s the hatred of differences (of the people who live in them).”
These differences are one of the many reasons why Lebowitz likes cities.
“It’s just more fun,” she said. “Cities are harder to live in, no question. But the fact that it’s harder makes you tougher, faster and more confident.”
While the urban lifestyle may be one of the things Lebowitz will talk about during her visit to Park City, politics is always fair game.
“For someone my age, these people who call themselves Republicans aren’t even Republicans,” she said. “When I was young, you know who was a Republican? Nelson Rockefeller, who now would be considered a left-wing Democrat.”
Then there’s technology, namely computers and the internet, that have added to the divide.
“As you may or may not know I don’t have a computer,” she said. “I don’t have an iPhone, and I don’t have a microwave oven. If you told me you could text with a microwave oven, I would probably believe you.”
That said, Lebowitz knows the internet is the cause of many misunderstandings that have happened in the world.
“The Internet has changed the whole face of what people consider news, especially news,” she said. “And I can see many dangerous things about the internet. It enables lots of crazy and some dangerous stuff to spread like wildfire.”
One of those crazy ideas is now known as “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory that spread through the internet during the 2016 Presidential race, Lebowitz said.
A 28-year-old man from Salisbury, North Carolina, traveled to Washington, D.C., and fired some shots from an assault rifle into a pizza joint that reportedly had connections to Hillary Clinton, she said.
“He showed up with an assault rifle, which everyone in the country seems to have, to rescue children who were supposedly being trafficked out of the basement,” Lebowitz said. “When I first heard that, I just laughed, but apparently half the country thought this was true. I thought, even if you hate Hillary Clinton, there is no logic to this. It was all so laughable to me, except that it really happened.”
Even when something is proven to be false, the bad ideas continue, thanks to the internet, according to Lebowitz.
“We now live in a world where a huge percentage of people confronted with actual evidence that contradicts false claims will say the evidence is not true,” she said. “If you show them a picture, they’ll say, ‘That’s not true.’ You show them a (video) of them committing a crime, they’ll say, ‘That’s not true.’ I hope it does get better, but things can always get worse.”
Lebowitz said she hopes things will get better, but she hasn’t much faith.
“In order for things to turn around, it’s required that people need to do something they never do anymore, which is to change their minds,” she said. “Or listen. And, unfortunately, we’re not in a big listening phase.”
Because of Lebowitz’s perceptions of life, culture and politics, many people — fans and nonfans — have called her a “social commentator “— a label that she finds better than others.
“People call me much worse things,” she said with a chuckle. “It’s not inaccurate, and not insulting. Since some things are said about me that are inaccurate and many are insulting, I’ll go with that. But I’m certain many people who call me this don’t know what that is. And I suppose, right now, because of the internet, everyone is a social commentator.”
The last time Park City Institute brought Lebowitz to town was 2017, and she is looking forward to her return this Saturday.
“I think I stayed in Deer Valley, at a ski lodge, and it was beautiful,” she said. “I just hope I don’t get snowed in or snowed out.”