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Hundreds of Children Sickened by Severe Virus; Racially-Charged E-mail Prompts Hawks Sale; New Video Shows Ray Rice Punching Fiancee; Apple Could Unveil New iPhone Tomorrow

Aired September 08, 2014 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

A nasty respiratory virus has sickened hundreds of children. The enterovirus EVD-68 has even sent some children to intensive care. It started in the Midwest but has made it all the way to the southeast. Symptoms start out like a cold but escalate quickly.

Let's bring in Dr. William Schaffner from Vanderbilt University to help explain this virus. Welcome, Doctor.

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY (via telephone): Hi, Carol. Good to be with you.

COSTELLO: Nice to have you here.

Ten states have actually contacted the Centers for Disease Control and prevention for help in investigating clusters of this virus. Why can't they determine why this virus exists in certain places in the country and not in others?

SCHAFFNER: Well, it's a funny virus. Enteroviruses generally are a large family, they're active this time of the year and they crop up here and there in an unpredictable way. And this one is big, it's unusual because it causes these respiratory infections and it's severe enough so that it sends some children to the hospital. But they're all going to get better.

COSTELLO: I hope you're right. Well, the weird thing about this is this virus was first identified in the 60s and fewer than 100 cases reported at that time. But get this -- more than 30 children a day in Kansas City, Missouri, have gone to the hospital. Why is it so severe now?

SCHAFFNER: No kidding. This is a virus that likes to travel around among children this time of the year -- August, September. And it's a kind of an unusual member of this family because it causes so much respiratory infections and it's very easily transmittable. And then among the many who get sick, some get sick enough to be sent to be sent to the hospital but I'm going to say it again, they'll all get better. This is a virus that makes you sick and then leaves you alone. You get cured. COSTELLO: So it's not like pneumonia where you could die, right?

SCHAFFNER: Well, I hope that that doesn't happen to even a single child but the vast, vast majority are going to get better by themselves. They recover and then they'll be back to school, back to classes.

COSTELLO: Ok, so how can you prevent this? Like we had a graphic up that said have your kids wash your hands but it's not as simple as that, is it?

SCHAFFNER: That's just about all you can do, wash your hands, try to stay away from other sick kids. Those are the main lessons.

COSTELLO: All right. Wash your hands, kids. Dr. William Schaffner, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

SCHAFFNER: Thanks, Carol.

COSTELLO: You're welcome.

Still to come in the newsroom, an NBA owner was looking for ways to put fans in seats, now he's looking for a buyer for the team after a racially-offensive e-mail. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Bruce Levenson is putting his controlling share of the Atlanta Hawks up for sale after a racially-charged e-mail came to light. Levenson wrote the e-mail two years ago but it came out as part of an internal investigation launched by the Hawks in June into another matter.

Though Levenson has come under fire for his comments, one person who's not piling on is NBA legend, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He wrote a time.com op-ed piece entitled "Bruce Levenson isn't a racist, he's a businessman". Abdul-Jabbar says "He wasn't valuing white fans over blacks, he was trying to figure out a way to change what he thought what was white perception in Atlanta so he could sell more tickets. That would be his job."

Joining me now, Ellis Henican, columnist for "Newsday" and CNN political commentator Marc Lamont Hill -- welcome to both of you.

ELLIS HENICAN, COLUMNIST, "NEWSDAY": Welcome.

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Thank you.

COSTELLO: So I'm trying to get the e-mail so I can read our viewers directly what Bruce Levenson had to say. But basically he was saying there are too many black fans in the seats. He wanted to diversify his audience and maybe they should stop playing so much hip-hop music and maybe whites were afraid to come to the arena because there were so many black people there.

HILL: Right, because white people would never listen to hip-hop -- right.

HENICAN: I think we should get black fans by playing country.

HILL: There you go.

HENICAN: Get some Garth Brooks in there the blacks will come.

HILL: I get the distinction. And what he's essentially saying is he's not Donald Sterling. Few people are Donald Sterling. That's a super low bar of any sort. But that's not the only way to think about racism.

Do I think that Levenson hates black people or has ill intent toward black people? Probably not. He has what Imani Perry of Princeton University called post-intentional racism. He's buying into a system, he's enabling the system to exist despite the fact he may or may not have ill feelings toward black people. It doesn't excuse it.

COSTELLO: There's just a zero-tolerance policy in the NBA right now and you can't really say anything remotely sensitive. So as a businessman you would -- I'm just going from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's op- ed, right -- as a businessman, you would want to diversify your audience. So how does he talk about that -- Ellis?

HENICAN: Let's concede he's a dumb businessman of some sentiment. He played on an arena where you can't right now. Zero tolerance is terrific but unfortunately frequently, and I think this case a little bit, it stumbles into zero openness and zero willingness to talk and zero risky -- willingness to be risky about these things. The only way we're going to get through these issues in the long run is if we talk about them openly and we allow some give and take. We don't just clobber somebody at the first time they say something dumb because Marc, people are going to say dumb stuff.

HILL: People are going to say dumb things but when you have the ability to institutionalize your dumbness, to make your dumbness into policy, that's when it becomes problematic. He was attempting to rearrange the way the team approached things not just so that more white people would come but actually so that fewer black people would come. And to me that's something he concedes.

COSTELLO: Now, according to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, that's not what he was saying. He wasn't like -- he didn't want fewer black people to come to the game, he wants more whites.

HILL: He wanted a smaller proportion of black people but he also was saying things like "We gave lots of community seats away, we don't want them anymore" -- the church and community groups and such. And the truth is people come to Hawks games not because -- the only black people scaring away white people are the ones who play for the Hawks. The Hawks are not good. That's the problem.

But there's a core piece in it I think which is that he concedes that people who are coming who are racist should be there and that's the problem. He's saying yes, I know it's racist but I want to get them in any way. That's the problem for me. HENICAN: Here's the reality of (inaudible). It would be way better

if this weren't an issue at all -- right. In fact, though, race is all over this stuff. You know it's in the hearts of those sports fans; but black and white it's an issue. It's all over the city of Atlanta. I mean you know that from your time there as it is around New Orleans and New York and all the other places that we know.

If you're going to talk about it openly and get past it, don't we have to give people the room to say how are we going to deal with this? How am I going to get more middle aged white guys in here? The corporations are run by them. We want their money. That's not an inherently racist conversation.

HILL: Saying I want to target a demographic isn't inherently racist. But by saying things like -- he's saying the reason white people aren't coming is because of racism. And he's saying --

HENICAN: It could be part of it.

HILL: But he's saying that.

HENICAN: It could be part of it.

HILL: Right. So let's assume he's right -- that people don't want to see black people on the kiss cam and all these other assumptions.

(CROSSTALK)

HENICAN: Or not only. Or not only I mean the diverse -- listen, if we're in favor of diversity and I think most of us are, there has to be diversity. It doesn't work if you're only on one team or the other.

HILL: I get that. And if he said I want to diversify the audience I'd be ok. But he said some of the fans are racist, I want to do things to bring them in. That for me is a problem because he's saying racism is awful but how can we monetize it. Making money off of racism to me is fundamentally problematic in a private league.

HENICAN: I'm not for flying confederate flags. There's some stuff you shouldn't do but saying how can we make them more comfortable here?

HILL: How can we make white racists more comfortable here?

HENICAN: It's -- well, you know, the world is God's creatures come in a lot of different varieties. We don't have to love them all -- let's be honest.

HILL: And we don't have to tolerate all of it either. If someone says I'm not coming to the game because I don't want to look at black people kissing on the screen.

HENICAN: No, you can't do that.

HILL: Right. But that's what he's saying. So it rests upon some of the black people. We can watch them play on the court, none of these southern whites have a problem -- no one wants an all white basketball team.

HENICAN: No, no.

HILL: They don't have a problem with them playing but they don't want to see them kissing, they don't want to see them at the bar. And then it also rests upon danger stereotypes about black people -- the father and son piece of it, the fact that people come to the games late.

First of all Miami Heat fans come to the game late, too. They're just bad fans, no offense to the audience, they're just bad fans. It's not because they're black or white. They suck at being fans. They won the championship and they still didn't --

HENICAN: We're on the same page on that but you don't object to a couple of Garth Brooks songs in there, in the mix. A couple white people kissing, that's ok, right? Bring them on. Let them all kiss.

HILL: What troubles me is not that they want some Garth Brooks or some white people kissing, it's the fact that people find it disgusting.

HENICAN: Yes. That's terrible. That's terrible.

HILL: It's based on the assumption that black experience is particular and white experience is universal.

HENICAN: That's true. That's true. That is -- we're on the same page.

COSTELLO: We're going to have to end it there. Although I wish it could go on because I've been enjoying this argument between you two.

I want you to stick around because I have some disturbing video to show our viewers. Ray Rice, you remember Ray Rice with the lame suspension from the NFL? We have the entire incident from inside the elevator where he decked his then-fiancee. Wait until you see it. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: There is disturbing video out this morning of suspended NFL running back Ray Rice. I'm going to show it to you and, as I mentioned, it is disturbing. The video was posted by TMZ from inside an Atlantic City elevator the night Rice and his then-fiancee were involved in a domestic dispute.

All right. You see them going into the elevator. I'm just going to let you watch. It's insane.

All right, now here's the most disturbing part to me. So after Ray Rice decks his then-fiancee, he drags her unconscious out of the elevator. The doors closed. Darn, he says, so he drags her out, throws her face down on the floor and then he picks up her shoe and -- because I guess he wants the elevator doors to close, right? Doesn't pull down her skirt which is disturbing to me and at no point does it appear where he bends down and says baby, are you all right? it's just insane to me.

I want to bring back in Marc Lamont Hill, Ellis Henican and welcome Nischelle Turner as well to talk about this. Nischelle, your thoughts?

NISCHELLE TURNER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Well, it brings tears to my eyes watching it. I mean it's sickening, it's maddening. As a woman I'm disgusted and I feel disrespected. You know, we all kind of speculated and wanted to know because we saw that video from outside the elevator when the whole investigation into the domestic violence incident was going on.

But we hadn't seen the inside so when we heard two games we all thought it was light but now that you see what happened inside and you know that he was suspended for two games, I just want to scream.

HENICAN: Yes.

TURNER: Because I think that is ridiculous.

COSTELLO: And even though the NFL instituted new punishment for domestic violence, Ray Rice's suspension stands. I don't know how I can watch a game involving the Baltimore Ravens and watch him.

HILL: I absolutely can't right now. It's incredibly frustrating. Policy says what your priorities are. When someone gets caught with marijuana they're suspended for game after game after game, sometimes entire seasons. Something like this gets two games. It says -- what's interesting to me is the NFL either saw this video and thought --

TURNER: -- which they say they didn't.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: I'm going to read you --

HILL: If we believe them -- right.

COSTELLO: Let me read their statement and we can go on. This is from the NFL. "We requested from law enforcement any and all information about the incident, including the video from inside the elevator. That video was not made available to us and no one in our office has seen it until today."

HENICAN: But there's no justification for law enforcement not turning that over. There's no evidentiary reason they have to keep it. There is no publicity question that gets in the way. They should have immediately had that, right?

HILL: I agree. My only point is if the NFL is telling the truth -- and I have some doubt about it -- if the NFL is telling the truth then I have to ask the question how do you assign a two-game suspension without sufficient information into the very thing that was under debate which was what happened in the elevator?

HENICAN: What are you investigating? What are you investigating?

TURNER: And even if you talk to Ray Rice and his then-fiancee, now wife and they said to, you know --

HENICAN: That's depressing right there, by the way.

TURNER: -- that's another conversation for another day because that makes me so sad that she felt like she still needed to marry this man who treated her in such a way. We've seen it now. We've seen it flat out that you could actually marry someone who rears back like you are a grown man and knocks you out cold.

HILL: She apologized at the press conference for her role in it. I mean I always found that troublesome, right? But when I saw the video, I couldn't imagine what she was apologizing for. And the Ravens allowed it to happen.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: It's a complicated issue and sometimes abusers make victims out of those they abuse and they feel like they deserve it somehow. So, it's very complicated.

HENICAN: You do have to ask -- you have to ask the question, though, before we get away from this entirely is how much of the training and the culture of that game encourages and tolerate this is behavior. I'm not saying all players --

TURNER: I love the game of football. I don't want to blame football because I love the game.

HENICAN: It's not irrelevant though. Great game.

TURNER: I love the game of football and I think that's what saddens me about this as well. This is a man issue. This is a person issue. This is an "I can't control my anger" issue.

HILL: Right.

TURNER: And for me I just -- I feel like something more needs to be said. I know Roger Goodell and the NFL has come out today and said we didn't know about this. But my point is what did Ray Rice and his then-fiancee now wife tell you about this? What did they say that happened inside the elevator? And if they told you -- if he told you I knocked her out cold then it should have been more than two games. If he lied then he still needs to have more.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Where does the NFL go from here? Because Roger Goodell already said the two-game suspension would stand and from here on out it would be different with other players. But after America has seen this video, what should the NFL do now? HILL: They should increase the punishment now. Again -- as Nischelle

just said. If Ray Rice told him that he did that then the NFL has to tell that we made a mistake. Let the players --

COSTELLO: -- which Roger Goodell did say he made a mistake.

HILL: Yes. But I mean about the judgment. And if Ray Rice said something different than was on the tape and that's an opportunity to say "Hey you weren't forthcoming, you weren't honest, we hadn't seen the tape yet. Now that we see this two games doesn't stand."

COSTELLO: And not only that because we're excusing the team that he plays for. What about them?

HENICAN: Don't absolve the league so quickly. We asked these guys be tough, be mean, be horrible, treat the opponents like dirt and then we're surprised when some of them, not all of them, but some of them cross that line in their real lives? Listen, it's not an easy line but it's not irrelevant, Marc, it's not irrelevant.

HILL: I think it's a broader societal culture of violence against women that we need to eliminate. I don't want to blame the NFL but people make difference choices. Look at the Solange/Jay-Z video right. We encouraged all that stuff too, but when faced with the very same circumstance, Jay-Z made different decisions.

HENICAN: We have heroes and we have villains.

HILL: And we certainly saw a villain this morning.

HENICAN: Right.

COSTELLO: I have to wrap this up. Thanks to you all -- I appreciate it.

TURNER: We can talk brother.

COSTELLO: Ellis Henican, Marc Lamont Hill, Nischelle Turner -- thanks to all of you.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The countdown is on. Just check out Apple's Web site. In 26 hours, gadget lovers from around the world will be buzzing about the new iPhone 6 which, according to rumors, will finally make its long-awaited debut tomorrow. Of course, in typical Apple fashion, the tech giant is not confirming or denying all the gossip, but leaked images from sites like fang.com show what the iPhone 6 might look like. And Apple isn't just competing against all the hype created around online leaks and rumors, they'll have to win over those eyeing smart phones like the new Galaxy Note 4 which Samsung announced last week.

Joining me now for more, CNN tech analyst Brett Larson -- the pressure is on.

BRETT LARSON, CNN TECH ANALYST: The pressure on -- and how surprising that now Apple is in sort of the passenger seat here to build all of this excitement. All of these -- I've never seen so many leaked bits of information about an Apple product launch in --

COSTELLO: You think Apple is planting that?

LARSON: -- 15 years. I can't imagine that that's what's happening. I can't imagine that somehow someone in the factory got a couple of pictures out there. But I think they realize as we saw this Samsung announcement last week, they're competing with Samsung not just in the courtroom for this long stretch legal battle but for getting into people's pockets and getting in people's hands.

COSTELLO: So let's talk about the product itself because I noticed you have to cardboard cutouts.

LARSON: We have props. We have mad props today. We have some cardboard cutouts the intern made for us. This is the size of the screen. So this is the 5.5 inch, 4.7 inch is the expected size. You can see there -- if I hold it over my iPhone you can see that it is actually bigger than the existing iPhone screen.

COSTELLO: Turn it backwards.

LARSON: Oh, here, you can see it better if you look like that you can see it sticks out a little bit. So the bigger screen is definitely what people want. I mean that's -- Apple wowed with us their retina displays but then Samsung came out and gave us bigger displays that still fit in our pocket.

People joke about that phablet, the phone that's like as big as a tablet but you're not going to walk down the street and talk on a phone like this. And if you do I'm totally going to laugh at you and take pictures and shame you on Instagram. So there is definitely a limit at how big these smart phones can get before it's like well, I can't put that in my pocket. That's not possible.

COSTELLO: Well, it is fascinating to me that people want bigger screens because you would think that people would want smaller and smaller gadgets because it's more convenient but that's not true.

LARSON: Right. That's not the case at all. And they want -- you know, we're doing more and more -- that's captain obvious -- we're doing more and more with our smart phones. They have become entertainment devices. When we're on the bus we're watching videos, we're playing games on them. When we're stuck in traffic we're watching TV shows.

I mean there's all kinds of stuff that we're doing so it makes sense to have that bigger screen so it's going to be interesting to see the reaction from consumers when these products finally ship.

COSTELLO: So Samsung versus iPhone.

LARSON: Yes.

COSTELLO: So which --

LARSON: It's getting really difficult to say -- to point the finger. I mean people who have iPhones love their iPhones. Apple has done a great job locking you in their walled garden with iTunes, with all the music that you have, with the apps and everything. You can see they're holding on there to their market share.

People are switching, though, people are jumping ship so Apple does have to get people back. And look there's some exciting stuff that they're going to try and work into the new phone. We're hearing about wireless charging which I think would be phenomenal. We're hearing about this near-field communication, you know that contact-less payment like if you have E-Z Pass or the badge you use at work to get through a door. They might build that technology into the phone.

Not the first time we've seen that technology in a smart phone but often times when Apple does something it tends to catch on, you know. So we'll see what happens.

COSTELLO: I can't wait.

LARSON: I'm excited.

COSTELLO: I am, too. Brett Larson, thanks so much.

LARSON: Ok, Carol.

COSTELLO: Thank you -- thank you for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"@THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA" starts now.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN HOST: Taking aim at ISIS terrorists, President Obama gets set to outline his strategy. We're going to take a look at what you can expect --