Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season one, seventy four,
Speaker 1: Episode two of der Days Like Guys, production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. This is a podcast where we take a
Speaker 1: deep dive into America's shared consciousness. It's Tuesday, March second.
Speaker 1: My name is Jack O'Brien. A K du brings my
Speaker 1: sperm count down right down. Never go to Poundtown because
Speaker 1: it's so down. Due brings the Western sperm count down
Speaker 1: like children of Men. We're all going down down. That
Speaker 1: is courtesy of Abstrustle, the official dickhead. There's so many
Speaker 1: on Twitter. What an honor to have the official the
Speaker 1: blue check mark of dickheads. Uh providing a K S
Speaker 1: and yeah that was I'm I'm shocked it didn't occur
Speaker 1: to us when we were talking about the West's lowering
Speaker 1: sperm count. That uh, Mountain dew is probably the culprit.
Speaker 1: I am thrilled to be joined as always by my
Speaker 1: co host, Mr Miles Grab. Don't go chaste, Sympomo. Please
Speaker 1: stick to the people and the pos that you used to.
Speaker 1: I know that Joe gonna fuck around and find how Cuomo,
Speaker 1: you're just moving too fast? What's outdoor dining? Thank you
Speaker 1: to the Interdimensional technician for that one, because yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of governors are just ready to fucking I don't know,
Speaker 1: set the clock back to January or some ship. So that,
Speaker 1: uh is a little frightening. I mean I think a
Speaker 1: poet once said that. Uh. I think the T. S.
Speaker 1: Eliot or the guy who wrote The Great Guests, but
Speaker 1: one of them said that America has no second acts.
Speaker 1: American life has no second acts. And I think America
Speaker 1: fucking around and finding out as it doesn't have the
Speaker 1: find out part. They just funk around and then everybody
Speaker 1: looks the other way while they find out. Yeah, it's it.
Speaker 1: We're people just ignore the finding out. We're not finding out.
Speaker 1: We're not finding out. We're not finding out. We're not
Speaker 1: finding out. I don't know they're not finding out at
Speaker 1: all of them. Uh. Well, we are thrilled to have
Speaker 1: in our third seat one of the classic guests, the hilarious,
Speaker 1: that talented Chelsea Webber Smith. Happy to be here. I
Speaker 1: don't have a song to have you, happy to be
Speaker 1: here to have you. We are going to speak like
Speaker 1: this the whole time. Uh, what what's new in your world? Chelsea?
Speaker 1: What is new in my world? Um? I've prepared a
Speaker 1: couple of rants for you guys when the time comes
Speaker 1: when I get to have my personal time. So until then,
Speaker 1: as usual, I'm going on walks. I the most important
Speaker 1: event in my life as I found a yearbook from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy and I've been really like figuring out the
Speaker 1: relationships between the different characters in this yearbook. And you know,
Speaker 1: the queen be finding out who her boyfriend is. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of information in this book and looking them
Speaker 1: up on social media. So just another quarantine, uh, projects
Speaker 1: it's a yearbook with the inscriptions there are no Um
Speaker 1: it was I figured out that it was like a
Speaker 1: teacher's or the assistant principle. Some old asked, dude, how
Speaker 1: this nineteen seventy yearbook from uh, New Mexico got on
Speaker 1: the ground in West Seattle. Is very cool mystery, but
Speaker 1: otherwise tragically there are no inscriptions. You're getting the interpersonal
Speaker 1: information from just like your book. Yeah, and I mean
Speaker 1: they're they're writing up like, you know, she was the
Speaker 1: town princess. I don't remember the name, she's the town
Speaker 1: princess going, you know, going steady with you know whoever,
Speaker 1: and uh, you can really trace uh sort of the
Speaker 1: social scene that was happening there, and we've got this
Speaker 1: amazing emo kid who had like an original swoop and
Speaker 1: which wasn't really a popular hairstyle, I don't think in
Speaker 1: oh yeah it was feathered and or it was just
Speaker 1: yeah it was all. But yeah, this kid was like
Speaker 1: the you know, the school newspaper editor and went on
Speaker 1: to have this amazing quote that was like he wanted
Speaker 1: to be a psychology major. I looked them up in
Speaker 1: the newspaper, all these old newspapers. Yeah, it was so
Speaker 1: fun and uh, you know he said something like I
Speaker 1: should have gotten it, but he said something like he
Speaker 1: was going to be a psychology major. So he was
Speaker 1: interviewed in the newspaper for that and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: I love watch people, and you know, I can really
Speaker 1: understand people by watching them, but I'm different. No one
Speaker 1: can understand me. I was like, man, it's because he
Speaker 1: was presaging the dawn of reality television, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? That's what like how I say, like I
Speaker 1: like to watch people and learn through trash TV. I'm
Speaker 1: this person, y'all in this person. Well I think I
Speaker 1: did you know, I did a pretty I've been watching
Speaker 1: a lot of catfish, so I did a pretty intensive
Speaker 1: dive into this. Guess what, gay writer, gay author, beautiful
Speaker 1: just a great a great uh bot arc for for
Speaker 1: our EMO kids. So that's really all I've been This
Speaker 1: sounds like this sounds like a spinoff show from Starley Kind,
Speaker 1: which is a random yearbook, and then start putting the
Speaker 1: pieces together and then verify with the people you can
Speaker 1: track down. That was what I was hoping to do,
Speaker 1: but so far nobody's I was like, just be great
Speaker 1: podcasts and then well here I'll throw you on a
Speaker 1: someone from like one of my high school I'm sure
Speaker 1: all those talk to you. What, um, what is there
Speaker 1: anything surprising like about the styles or like who what
Speaker 1: people were into at that time. I mean, it's pretty.
Speaker 1: It's pretty boring, you know. It feels like, yeah, it's pretty.
Speaker 1: It's like very fifties, even though it's inteventy. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like prim and proper. But there's like
Speaker 1: some there's Oh, there's a great part where they talk
Speaker 1: about going to an orphanage to like do some sort
Speaker 1: of volunteer work. Um, I don't know which group it was.
Speaker 1: It was some sort of you know, and after school group.
Speaker 1: But all they did they went to this orphanage, and
Speaker 1: all the little section said was that they gave orphans
Speaker 1: a stuffed mouse, and it seemed to be a singular
Speaker 1: stuffed mouse. It was mouse, it wasn't mice. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if there was just a singular a mouse
Speaker 1: orphan Nigen give mouse. That was pretty much the article.
Speaker 1: It's bizarre. I feel like the stuff I read about
Speaker 1: the six season seventies. Um, when people are doing like
Speaker 1: myf debunking, it's usually that the kind of kind of
Speaker 1: what you just alluded to, that it's like more square
Speaker 1: and more like nineteen fifties than the popular imagination remembers,
Speaker 1: because everybody was focused on like hippies and the anti
Speaker 1: war movement and then like disco and like those things
Speaker 1: were sort of uh subcultures that were on the outskirts
Speaker 1: and everybody else like a lot of the other people
Speaker 1: just had like, uh, the same haircut, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: the number one song during the Vietnam War period. The
Speaker 1: best illustration of this that I can think of is
Speaker 1: it was not anything by Credence Clearwater Revival. It was Honey, Honey, Sugar, Sugar,
Speaker 1: You Are My Candy Girl by the Archies by by
Speaker 1: by Archie as a mused issue. So yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: looking back, what the myths will bus is like, Look,
Speaker 1: only some of us were eating ass and into Q
Speaker 1: and on, not everyone. It wasn't just that ass eating
Speaker 1: conspiracy fest. Okay, some people have work to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, but see it all depends and see that's
Speaker 1: where we start getting into nuance. But I think overall this,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'll tell my kid, this is not a
Speaker 1: good outfit for your twenties dress up day. Right, Yeah, yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: all right, Chelsea, we're gonna get to know you a
Speaker 1: little bit better in a moment. First couple of things
Speaker 1: we're talking about today. Uh, we're gonna talk about America's
Speaker 1: two facedness being all over the place. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about Trump's speck appearance, which was kind of kind of quiet, subdued.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about GAB continuing our right wing social media
Speaker 1: deep dive, but but there's not that much depth. That's
Speaker 1: just a pretty shallow. This place is not good at
Speaker 1: being a social network. We'll talk about the right wing
Speaker 1: outrage in defense of the muppets, uh, and why that
Speaker 1: is completely bullshit because the right actually hates the muppets
Speaker 1: and have for a long time. We'll talk about what
Speaker 1: could be the future of New York City, a future
Speaker 1: that would make me have to move there. It sounds amazing. Um,
Speaker 1: talk about zombies, We'll talk about the new postal trucks,
Speaker 1: and we will talk about a good old fashioned American
Speaker 1: moral panic. Kind of a pathetic one, but we do
Speaker 1: have to talk about it because Chelsea is here. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But before we get to any of that, Chelsea, we
Speaker 1: like to ask our guest, Uh, what is something from
Speaker 1: your search history that is revealing about who you are,
Speaker 1: what you're up to. Well, um, I hope you guys
Speaker 1: can relate to the because it will be more fun.
Speaker 1: But my most recent interesting one is c k Y Videos.
Speaker 1: Do you guys remember c k Y the DVD somewhere
Speaker 1: my garage right now? Less you? Yeah, So we're working
Speaker 1: on an episode. Um And in case people don't know,
Speaker 1: I host a podcast called American Hysteria. Covers moral panics,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, urban legends, fantastical thinking, but through um a
Speaker 1: lens of sort of cultural criticism and uh sociology and stuff.
Speaker 1: So not do these things exist, but sort of how
Speaker 1: does our culture produce these and then how do they
Speaker 1: affect the culture? So anyway, the way that c K
Speaker 1: y UM, which were a series of skate videos um
Speaker 1: by the now famous Jackass Crew. Um that's the most
Speaker 1: simple way to put it. But we're doing a episode
Speaker 1: about influencers right now and the culture of like branding
Speaker 1: people essentially um. And immediately I was like, what isn't like,
Speaker 1: what's an earlier influence and served like pre internet, And
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, it's sponsored skating And you guys
Speaker 1: probably remember like how cool it was to be a
Speaker 1: sponsored skater and like the late nineties that was like
Speaker 1: that was the Twitter verified check mark, it was open
Speaker 1: way more doors, it was the top. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: like and you know, there weren't that many for a while,
Speaker 1: and then um, the kind of like influencer micro influencer
Speaker 1: thing happened. And so I've just been really diving into
Speaker 1: the history of marketing skateboarding and the idea of like
Speaker 1: authenticity being so important in branding and how there was
Speaker 1: kind of like back then there was nothing as authentic
Speaker 1: as being just like a fucking skateboarder, you know, because
Speaker 1: it was just middle fingers and weed and uh, it
Speaker 1: was shoes that would hide your weed. Yeah, just the
Speaker 1: biggest shoes. It's basically like the platform shoe of the
Speaker 1: masculine world. Platform, Yeah, the pro platform. But so that
Speaker 1: that's kind of revealing about at least what I've been doing.
Speaker 1: And so I've just gotten to go back and I
Speaker 1: was a I was a skater um in my day,
Speaker 1: and just to kind of go back and and remember
Speaker 1: just like pushing, like having someone push someone in a
Speaker 1: shopping cart and launching them into a bush, and just
Speaker 1: like pranks at the mall and how skate culture and
Speaker 1: prank culture kind of has led us to a really
Speaker 1: different thing. But if you think about like the YouTube
Speaker 1: TikTok houses, like these sponsored skaters were just getting like
Speaker 1: hauled around the country and just being showered with cash
Speaker 1: like ten grand a month, and just I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's so similar to these weird mc mansion's full
Speaker 1: of tick talkers. You know, it's just like the wranglers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of what it was. It was like
Speaker 1: crankout videos. Crank out like the most incendiary. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, the nineties were so bad.
Speaker 1: People cannot imagine. And you know, it's not like I
Speaker 1: was perfect in So it's just sort of like, really,
Speaker 1: it's been just a really fun and fascinating dive back
Speaker 1: into this really um offensive masculine culture that kind of
Speaker 1: is mirrored and like what like Logan Paul I would say,
Speaker 1: it's like some kind of a continuation of of Jack
Speaker 1: Ascid and skate pranks. But that's been, Uh, that's my
Speaker 1: big fun time lately. It's just watching old Scape videos.
Speaker 1: The c k Y video has definitely had like a
Speaker 1: panic in like a Christian Catholic mother set, you know,
Speaker 1: because there was like there was like Pentagram iconography and
Speaker 1: some of this stuff and it stood for camp kill
Speaker 1: yourself and like on top of it, it was giving
Speaker 1: every idiot teenager like the idea to break their wrists
Speaker 1: at a local parking lot in a shopping cart that
Speaker 1: you pushed off a loading dock with no sense of
Speaker 1: what gravity is. Um, So like yeah, I remember people
Speaker 1: will be like, oh, like like a c k YEA
Speaker 1: was like oh you have that, like oh that's sick,
Speaker 1: like blah blah blah, But yeah c k Y two K.
Speaker 1: I still I still have that ship somewhere because I
Speaker 1: was like, yo, Mike Ballelli beats up three dudes in
Speaker 1: it outside of seven eleven. In this one, people were
Speaker 1: like what because it almost it was like a you.
Speaker 1: It was like YouTube on a mixtape. You got skating,
Speaker 1: you got skating, you got pranks, maybe some weird toxic
Speaker 1: masculinity in the form of like misogynistic tropes or whatever,
Speaker 1: like dick jokes and fighting engage jokes, lots of jokes,
Speaker 1: lots of racism like stuff that you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: like the stuff at least to put on the boards,
Speaker 1: even like print on boards was just like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember there was like a Chico benez deck that
Speaker 1: was like of a like a dude selling like oranges
Speaker 1: like out an off ramp or something out of a
Speaker 1: shopping cart and people it's as sick as deck right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just a really different. It was a shock. It
Speaker 1: was a really big shock culture time. For sure. Well
Speaker 1: we have that, but it's just transformed a lot. So
Speaker 1: it was named after a band, I guess, and one
Speaker 1: of the drummer for the band was Jesse mar Jarra,
Speaker 1: who is I guess Bam mar Jarre's older brother. So
Speaker 1: it's it also has that like sort of how a
Speaker 1: scene develops in like a small town sort of vibe
Speaker 1: to it, and then suddenly, like Johnny Knoxville's shooting himself
Speaker 1: in the chest point blank range. Like I just watched
Speaker 1: a video of Johnny Knoxville just just shooting himself in
Speaker 1: the chest, and he's like, yeah, I didn't know, like
Speaker 1: this is the cheapest bulletproof vest I could find, and
Speaker 1: she's just like, what the fuck? What were we watching?
Speaker 1: And those guys like Johnny Knoxville was already part of
Speaker 1: that scene like from the start, or did he kind
Speaker 1: of jump on it once it He wasn't part of
Speaker 1: the why he came, Like c K was its own thing,
Speaker 1: and then it started got it blended. I don't through,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's when I'm I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: when Spike Jones just mary the two groups together to
Speaker 1: make Jackass, but I know Spike Jones was the next
Speaker 1: he was involved in it. Yeah, And he was like
Speaker 1: really responsible for like weaving in skate culture into like
Speaker 1: music videos like Best Boys and all kinds of like
Speaker 1: you know, everything. He was doing commercials and stuff, just
Speaker 1: like weaving in skateboarding until it became this like really
Speaker 1: common trend and enriched zooms essentially, yea, authenticity is so
Speaker 1: important and yet like they just pulled that in and
Speaker 1: made it inauthentic and yeah, yeah, I uh. Robert Evans
Speaker 1: on a recent episode of Bastards with Jamie loft Us
Speaker 1: about the Man No Sphere uh and that sort of
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity sort of like the Alpha and now there's
Speaker 1: a Sigma Mail and all that ship. It's really good episode.
Speaker 1: But they there's a theory they talked about that capitalism
Speaker 1: is basically a really smart um ai that has like
Speaker 1: basically reached the singularity because it just immediately incorporates and
Speaker 1: like always makes the right like move to counter whatever
Speaker 1: attacks it and like incorporates it into into its grid
Speaker 1: or you know logic basically, which makes a lot of sense. Well,
Speaker 1: and you know it was, I mean, we'll we have
Speaker 1: we're covering this in our episode coming up. But it's
Speaker 1: uh a lot of influencer marketing. As we know, it
Speaker 1: was actually designed by Freud's nephew, and uh, it's very Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys know about him, Edward Burnet's,
Speaker 1: but it's we're going to get into that, and it's
Speaker 1: just really Freudian like the way that advertising evolved is
Speaker 1: super entwined with psychotherapy, which is just so creepy. Culture.
Speaker 1: It insists on having unhappy people for it to thrive. Like,
Speaker 1: if you're fully realized and self actualized, you might not
Speaker 1: need to reach for these products to be like this
Speaker 1: constant spend cycle of the advertiser dangling the thing and
Speaker 1: the lifestyle they think you want and say, if you
Speaker 1: buy this, then you could be this. And I think
Speaker 1: that's the other part is like it also benefits, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: this consumer culture capitalism to have as many unhappy people
Speaker 1: as well, because you know, happy people don't buy as
Speaker 1: much crap. Yeah, and then the unhappy people create great
Speaker 1: art that they can then uh incorporate into the capitalists
Speaker 1: uh slipstream. Right. Yeah, it's a it's a great system
Speaker 1: they've designed, uh or that's designed. Yeah, it certainly works.
Speaker 1: The other loud thing just some lot of people know
Speaker 1: knows about Spike Jones. You know that. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've heard the Spiegel catalog. He's that he isn't
Speaker 1: he comes from this His name is Sam Spiegel or
Speaker 1: whatever Spiegel um and he changed it to Jones because
Speaker 1: it was like a very very famous mail order catalog
Speaker 1: that was like, you know, huge and like the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, so you know, gotta gotta change the name
Speaker 1: around so they don't know you. You know, you're a
Speaker 1: rich boy Spike. Wow, that's cool. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: And isn't he with Sofia Coppola. It's like, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: all wonderful. I love it. I love it. Was his
Speaker 1: character Giovanni Ribisi in Lost in Translation is his character.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, but that's interesting that like he's been part
Speaker 1: of a marketing dynasty because I didn't know that. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to weave that in thank you. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: nepotism and marketing the two defining forces of America. Um,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, uh, and we'll be right
Speaker 1: back to get your over it and under it. And
Speaker 1: we're back and Chelsea, we like to ask our guests,
Speaker 1: as you know, what is something that you think is underrated.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna expand on this much because I have
Speaker 1: much more to say about the next question. But I'm
Speaker 1: very into Hacky Sack again. Um. And it's and I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you know what it's like been brought up
Speaker 1: because of watching all these skate videos, I think. And
Speaker 1: my friend got me a Hackey sack and that was
Speaker 1: something I used to do a lot in middle and
Speaker 1: high school. Um, and uh, we actually I did want
Speaker 1: to tell you guys this. We snuck through. We had
Speaker 1: a club called the Hack Club, and of course we
Speaker 1: smoked a lot of weed, and so we made these
Speaker 1: shirts that said, um, the Hat Club, but it said
Speaker 1: th HC really big um and then it said Shorewood's Finest.
Speaker 1: Fire it up and it snuck through somehow. The administration
Speaker 1: didn't figure it out until it was too late and
Speaker 1: we had proliferated these all over the school. It was
Speaker 1: really cool. So Hackey sack is my one of my
Speaker 1: truest passions and people think it's so stupid. I don't
Speaker 1: know why. I think it's super cool. Uh. And what
Speaker 1: is something you think is overrated? Well? This is this
Speaker 1: goes back to what we were talking about before. But um,
Speaker 1: brand activism. Um is something I've been thinking about a lot.
Speaker 1: And you know, part of our episode focuses on the
Speaker 1: Kendall Jenner PEPSI scandal um that we all remember. I'm sure, um,
Speaker 1: but got me thinking as I'm watching all of this
Speaker 1: stuff unfold on Twitter and for people who don't know,
Speaker 1: I am non binary. UM, I use the then pronouns
Speaker 1: and so this week has been real fun for me.
Speaker 1: So but you know, it's it's like watching, um, watching
Speaker 1: things happen like the potato folks now who are not gendered, um,
Speaker 1: and you know that that whole thing of like oh well,
Speaker 1: like I mean a lot of people were piste off
Speaker 1: and thought it was, you know, super stupid and everything.
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, it's nice, it's nice, you know,
Speaker 1: but for me, it doesn't feel authentic necessarily. And I
Speaker 1: know that uh sixty four this is really important. I
Speaker 1: think six of millennials and this is you know, polls
Speaker 1: are weird, but this is sort of what companies are
Speaker 1: banking on. Is this particular study that says six of
Speaker 1: millennials will buy from brands that their values align right.
Speaker 1: So it's like there's a huge amount of money in
Speaker 1: in being part of movements the way PEPSI tried to
Speaker 1: sort of exploit the Black Lives Matter protests and everything. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think what's so interesting is like I didn't
Speaker 1: ask for the potato heads to not have genders. I mean,
Speaker 1: what they're they're one potatoes too. You can switch their
Speaker 1: parts already, so like you can put you can put
Speaker 1: the high heels on with the little bowl or hat.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. But like I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: there was like an outcry from trans and non binary
Speaker 1: people to do away with the genders of the potatoes. Um,
Speaker 1: And yet now all of the hate is like falling
Speaker 1: back on, like as if we demanded this and were
Speaker 1: totally unreasonable. So it's this like like they get to
Speaker 1: look good and then we get to like carry the
Speaker 1: brunt as ridiculous as that, maybe from whomever decides to
Speaker 1: think that that's a horrible or ridiculous or you know,
Speaker 1: the left is going too far again thing, But it's
Speaker 1: like the left did did did we demand that? Or
Speaker 1: was that just an opportunity that they saw to market to.
Speaker 1: I think it's just it's open for attacks from the
Speaker 1: right and the you know, the culture war context, because
Speaker 1: if you're progressive and you are actually caring about these things,
Speaker 1: you will say like, oh, that's a little that's regressive
Speaker 1: or that's aggressive to have this thing just sort of
Speaker 1: delineated as a binary or whatever. Considering that progressive people
Speaker 1: say and generally like genders are construct is everybody still
Speaker 1: with me? Okay, so then therefore let's look at these things.
Speaker 1: But I think because they know that to be part
Speaker 1: of like progressive culture, that it's like, of course they
Speaker 1: wanted this because everything is gonna It's like, look, there's
Speaker 1: between like yeah, like talking about things on how to
Speaker 1: move forward and trying to paint someone as like a
Speaker 1: you know, maybe there was someone who had a campaign
Speaker 1: against the potato heads, but I there's certainly larger battles
Speaker 1: for me to pick the pro And also a lot
Speaker 1: of trance people use mr or missus like it's not
Speaker 1: it's such a strange. It's just really and I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously potatoes also don't inherently have genders. I think that
Speaker 1: they're like self whatever, I don't know. Science isn't my thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go. But you know, and of course, like
Speaker 1: another important thing is, like I'm speaking for myself, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that there's lots of queer, you know, gender non
Speaker 1: people that think that that's wonderful. And it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's great. But what's great about it is not Hasbro
Speaker 1: or whatever the company is. It's it's the fact that
Speaker 1: they're reflecting back to us, our own culture through an
Speaker 1: unfortunate medium. But nonetheless we can say, okay, like this
Speaker 1: is the direction culture is going, even if it's messy
Speaker 1: and stupid and shitty and embarrassing and launches us into
Speaker 1: like the spotlight. I mean, we're gonna talk about the
Speaker 1: mumpets and it's kind of you know, it's it's like
Speaker 1: a similar type of thing. But yeah, I think brand
Speaker 1: activism is uh, you know, I mean it's overrated because
Speaker 1: a lot of I think more progressive sort of centrist
Speaker 1: might might see that and think that that's just it's
Speaker 1: just so wonderful, you know, where whereas I'm seeing tweets
Speaker 1: that are just horrible about you know, and then Oreos
Speaker 1: tweets you know, trans people exist, and it's like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: thank you. You know, it's like, Nibisco, what's your policy
Speaker 1: in terms of your eployees if they needed life affirming
Speaker 1: gender reassignments for do you do you kick in on that?
Speaker 1: You know, no, there's no there's no paid leave or
Speaker 1: anything like that. But the oreoke, well, here that's the difference.
Speaker 1: That wasn't Nibiscos saying that that was the cookie talking.
Speaker 1: They're gonna take that up with the cookie. I don't
Speaker 1: think the cookie has benefits or hr so I don't know.
Speaker 1: I I feel like the it's interesting to you the
Speaker 1: potato head thing on a continuing with the pepsi ad
Speaker 1: because I feel like the pepsi Ad was an example
Speaker 1: of the brand trying to appeal to people who have
Speaker 1: progressive politics and it's just like failed miserably because they
Speaker 1: first of all, it was just poor, like horribly handled,
Speaker 1: but also, uh, it's just a more subtle thing to
Speaker 1: do that, whereas the I do wonder like I would
Speaker 1: love to see a marketing material leak like they had
Speaker 1: with the logo design for pepsi where they were just
Speaker 1: like posed for twenty million dollars by people who are
Speaker 1: just like throwing out how to use photoshop. Yeah, who
Speaker 1: knew how to use photoshop. But I wonder if this
Speaker 1: is part of the calculus at this point, that because
Speaker 1: the right is just so reliable in its outrage and
Speaker 1: you know exactly what is going to happen when you
Speaker 1: do something that is even remotely progressive in any way
Speaker 1: that the right is going there's going to be an outrage. Uh,
Speaker 1: that is incredibly reliable and that automatically pits you against,
Speaker 1: so it it's like a safer bet to do something
Speaker 1: that's designed to outrage the right and be safe as
Speaker 1: opposed to like trying to do whatever the funk the
Speaker 1: pepsi ad was trying to do. Yeah, I think there's
Speaker 1: or it's like it's just genius troll marketing. It's like
Speaker 1: watch but nobody give a funk about potato Head. We're
Speaker 1: gonna do this thing. It's going to outrage the right.
Speaker 1: Every renews outlets going to cover it and without paying.
Speaker 1: Now even people have heard, well, Hasbro's on the right
Speaker 1: side of the woke wars and that's all they had
Speaker 1: to do was just pist off the right um, and
Speaker 1: that's that seems That also seems very like a very
Speaker 1: feasible marketing plan to save money on on your ad
Speaker 1: Bucks because you see it done with other stuff too,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, it's normally just like some sensational product
Speaker 1: they used to get blocks to be like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: a log that smells like beef, but like this ship
Speaker 1: they can get everywhere, like just past of toy blogs
Speaker 1: or food blogs by making by entering the culture wars
Speaker 1: and be like and we're right, and honestly the people
Speaker 1: on the right, they just talk shit. What would I
Speaker 1: still see them drinking Kruig and wearing Nike. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I want I want somebody from the marketing world. Uh,
Speaker 1: if anybody, if any it is like GNG works in
Speaker 1: marketing and knows, like I bet there's a term for
Speaker 1: this whatever is like basically right wing croll baking. It's
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be so euphemistic. You'll be like organic
Speaker 1: societal reconciliation strategies. Oh all right, let's get into some news.
Speaker 1: America is. I mean, we've talked about double standards all
Speaker 1: over the place, but Miles, you you had kind of
Speaker 1: written up a couple of places where you're seeing America's
Speaker 1: double face all over the place. Just so yeah, if
Speaker 1: it's not, if it aint double face, it doesn't belong
Speaker 1: in your face or whatever the Carl's Junior thing is.
Speaker 1: But it's just this whole okay, Like I'm you know,
Speaker 1: like everything. If you're an aware person who's progressive, you'll
Speaker 1: find someone to be so outraged in this country without
Speaker 1: without even trying. Um. The first thing was, Hey, I
Speaker 1: was just reading this thing about how these proud boys
Speaker 1: they're being arrested, some of them are going to be
Speaker 1: on conspiracy charges which carry just really lengthy sentences and
Speaker 1: reading some of the actual descriptions of the people that
Speaker 1: were charged. Um, you know, one guy was roaming, was
Speaker 1: prowling around with a fucking axe handle and like threatening
Speaker 1: to take out police. Okay, and this guy didn't get shot.
Speaker 1: He'd gotten people's phases. You see him in video. Um,
Speaker 1: nothing happened. It wasn't, you know, the only person that
Speaker 1: there's only one person shot and killed by police like
Speaker 1: sort of in like the main sort of melee of it,
Speaker 1: and the quote unquote security around the capitol look more
Speaker 1: like you know, frosh orientation at a university. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like a welcome wagon exactly, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: really like Yo, who are you? What's going on? Who
Speaker 1: are you? What the you doing here? So then cut
Speaker 1: to the George Floyd trial is about to kick off
Speaker 1: in Minnesota. They have already barricaded the courthouse and shut
Speaker 1: down the street where the court is for a trial
Speaker 1: that starts in one week. In one week, they're about
Speaker 1: to start the trial, and they have already fortified the
Speaker 1: place of factory because they know they're wrong. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean, and the visuals of something like you
Speaker 1: can get a lot of intel that or watch the
Speaker 1: news that these people are going to storm the capital.
Speaker 1: You could prepare because whatever, you know, because it's white supremacy,
Speaker 1: will little rock whatever something like this. People outraged because
Speaker 1: of an injustice that's being committed, and now you're like,
Speaker 1: get the fucking steal wire out the tanks. Everything called
Speaker 1: a you know, called Goku from Dragon Ball, so he
Speaker 1: could fucking handle these people. I don't know what, Like,
Speaker 1: it's so next level. So that was just like the
Speaker 1: first thing that was really jarring to see. It's just
Speaker 1: sort of this the duality of like two situations where
Speaker 1: municipal buildings are protected or not protected, and like what
Speaker 1: the outcomes are possible? Like or are possible? And the
Speaker 1: other thing that came out of the Minneapolis thing is
Speaker 1: the city was gonna hire social media influencers during the
Speaker 1: George Floyd trial to reach out to communities of color
Speaker 1: with city approved message jing to talk about the case
Speaker 1: and people like what the funk is that they said?
Speaker 1: Last Friday, the council unanimously approved a public and safety
Speaker 1: communication plan tied to the upcoming trials, which paid two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars per person uh to six influencers in the
Speaker 1: city's Black, mong Latino, Native American, and Somali communities. They
Speaker 1: scrapped that because everyone was like, what the funk are
Speaker 1: you talking about. They said it was just to like
Speaker 1: get information into the communities. Either way, city funded messaging
Speaker 1: around one of the most significant trials around racial injustice
Speaker 1: being pumped into communities is deeply problematic. So good for
Speaker 1: them for figuring that out. These are people who are
Speaker 1: probably going to be covering the story anyways, So by
Speaker 1: adding a paycheck to it and like it being the
Speaker 1: official city like like the unofficial official city approved messaging, Uh,
Speaker 1: it just feels like, yeah, I mean that's like can
Speaker 1: you imagine It's like, y'all, is Derek Chauvin invited to
Speaker 1: the cookout? Like, no, get the funk out, Like that's
Speaker 1: the kind of insidious ship that I can just you know,
Speaker 1: not that it's gonna be that fucked up, but in
Speaker 1: a way just as offensive. Um, the next one is
Speaker 1: just about how Biden is handling Saudi Arabia, specifically mohammedd
Speaker 1: Been Salmon. Okay, we were we were talking about an
Speaker 1: American national Jamaha, Shoji was cut up and tortured, murdered
Speaker 1: on the okay of mohammedd Been Salmon. Trump is just like,
Speaker 1: let it rock, and we're like, of course he's gonna
Speaker 1: let it rock. But at the same time, I think
Speaker 1: we we can't really trick ourselves too much because the
Speaker 1: U S and Saudi Arabia, Like, it's I don't know
Speaker 1: when there's gonna be any kind of reckoning of this
Speaker 1: relationship that clearly did some damage. But you know, when
Speaker 1: you look at what Biden was saying and doing, for example,
Speaker 1: on we talked about this strike in Syria against Irani
Speaker 1: and back facilities and what was going on there. But
Speaker 1: there's this need to try and get the nuclear deal done,
Speaker 1: to try and have Iran come back to the table.
Speaker 1: They're already being crippled with sanctions, but they're saying release
Speaker 1: the sanctions as a you know, a show of goodwill
Speaker 1: and then we can begin negotiat because right now you're
Speaker 1: just killing us and then just demanding more, and so
Speaker 1: you have to kind of see from our standpoint too,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, if this is gonna be a fight
Speaker 1: to the death, then we'll fucking knuckle up. Like that's
Speaker 1: just how human nature works. Sanctions are violence are I mean,
Speaker 1: and a lack of resources getting to people that need it.
Speaker 1: So Mohammed been someone kills an American. Joe Biden calls
Speaker 1: it Mohammed Bin Salman's dad. The king first to be like,
Speaker 1: so here's the thing. You know, we're gonna make it hot,
Speaker 1: I think, but we're not gonna do anything. And you're
Speaker 1: just seeing the way two things are being handled, right
Speaker 1: because on one side, I get there. There's a lot
Speaker 1: to just to talk about and parsed through the United
Speaker 1: States Saudi relationship as it relates to petro dollars, how
Speaker 1: they helped us, uh make keep the dollar as like
Speaker 1: the standard when it talks when we're talking about trading petroleum,
Speaker 1: because that's a huge issue too, on top of being
Speaker 1: a strategic ally on the region. But the whole thing,
Speaker 1: whether it's white supremacy or autocratic regimes like the United States,
Speaker 1: it's like they're so inconsistent and we ignore the bullshit
Speaker 1: depending on like if it's white supremacy, the US is
Speaker 1: gonna handle it. We have to go down the checklist.
Speaker 1: What do the people who are perpetrating look like and
Speaker 1: what do the victims look like if it comes to
Speaker 1: autocrats with a pension for human rights violations, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: how much are they spending on arms with us? What
Speaker 1: can they do for us? And also what do the
Speaker 1: victims look like? Because I think one thing is for
Speaker 1: certain that if the victims are anonymous or faceless and
Speaker 1: don't look camera ready, they can die in droves and
Speaker 1: the needle won't move in this country. And that's the
Speaker 1: same thing with unarmed people of color being killed by police,
Speaker 1: or maybe the people that are being killed in Yemen
Speaker 1: by Saudi Arabia. There's just this whole thing of like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not it's not a it's not because
Speaker 1: see Jamaha Shoji wasn't part of an elite class so
Speaker 1: had connections to it. So that already changes the game,
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, you know, the
Speaker 1: United States will always there's not It's it's hard to
Speaker 1: say it's always moving consistently in one direction on an
Speaker 1: issue unless it's taxes. That's the only thing I can
Speaker 1: really think of. On the other hand, uh, nobody likes
Speaker 1: to have their parents called by the teacher. That's always scary. Uh,
Speaker 1: So NBS must have been really nervous when he heard
Speaker 1: that phone call was happening. Um just locked up more
Speaker 1: of his cousins or something. But yeah, just the handling
Speaker 1: of you know, the other thing is Joe Biden called
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia a pariah state when he was running for office.
Speaker 1: Where's that energy joke? But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I don't know. But at the same time, name a
Speaker 1: single U S president that really fucking puffed their chest
Speaker 1: up at Saudi Arabia. You know, it's it's a whole
Speaker 1: other thing. And you know, in our relationship to Iran
Speaker 1: was similar, but ship changed because when they're when the
Speaker 1: shop uh you know, was fell out of power, and
Speaker 1: now we had someone in like anti American theo, like
Speaker 1: a theocratic class move into power, then that immediately shifted relationship.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the thing that the Biden administration
Speaker 1: says out loud, Well, we don't want to say, we
Speaker 1: don't want get too hot because we need them there
Speaker 1: because then if they totally turn anti America, then it's
Speaker 1: going to be some kind of a very similar thing
Speaker 1: that's played out with other quote unquote allies in the region.
Speaker 1: Right put it simply, you know, the US has three,
Speaker 1: like not many options. When it comes to saud Arabia,
Speaker 1: they either go they say okay, we're done here sanctions
Speaker 1: that is going to completely push them away, and now
Speaker 1: you have a country that used to be this place
Speaker 1: that you could launch all your scary war machines from
Speaker 1: to scare the other people in the region from that's gone,
Speaker 1: and then you turn that into an enemy. The other
Speaker 1: is just to do what has been happening, which is
Speaker 1: to just look the other way and be like, well,
Speaker 1: thanks for the half past collaboration on some like anti
Speaker 1: terror stuff we do. And then also, i mean think
Speaker 1: about it, like they didn't say anything after nine eleven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's like if you just lookury history of
Speaker 1: that relationship at pretty pretty wild. It's the same thing
Speaker 1: like when it comes to those strategic allies and just
Speaker 1: these partners, we have the same thing. Like in Israel
Speaker 1: in twos an American national was there was died of
Speaker 1: a sum as the UN called it a summary execution.
Speaker 1: We're being part of a flotilla to help like refugees,
Speaker 1: but again that didn't I don't think there's a single
Speaker 1: person unless you're really interested in this area of of
Speaker 1: like the world that would that would have heard that
Speaker 1: in the US because that's the other part, because it's
Speaker 1: all like the other things, all tied to capital, so
Speaker 1: it's all fun up right. Um well, speaking of all
Speaker 1: fucked up sepack happened last weekend. Uh, Trump had his
Speaker 1: if his going on on the phone on Fox News
Speaker 1: for a whole evening talking about the legacy of Rush
Speaker 1: Limbaugh didn't count as his official coming out coming back
Speaker 1: into the media spotlight. This certainly did. He had the
Speaker 1: keynote or like the final climactic speech at Speck, and
Speaker 1: you know, the next morning, Monday morning, barely on the
Speaker 1: front page of Fox News or Drudge. I don't know, Like,
Speaker 1: I think part of the problem for him is that
Speaker 1: he doesn't have any new messaging, like because personally, like
Speaker 1: he can't he can't move on from losing the election
Speaker 1: and that can't move on from Hillary, yeah exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also not having Twitter. Yeah, you know, just just
Speaker 1: night and day after that one like one action that
Speaker 1: also could have happened a really long time ago. But
Speaker 1: that's and I think it's like that there does seem
Speaker 1: to be a movement on in terms of like people
Speaker 1: he gotta he's still at job approval with the attendees
Speaker 1: of Speck, but only sixty eight percent said they want
Speaker 1: him to run again in even though he basically announced
Speaker 1: he was going to during his speech and also announced
Speaker 1: that he's staying with the Republican Party. But I just
Speaker 1: don't think I think there's some movement in this, like
Speaker 1: as it becomes more and more of an accepted reality
Speaker 1: that he lost, uh, and you can't really there's no
Speaker 1: evidence that there was cheating, like even now like Newsmax
Speaker 1: can't even say that the voting machines were were rigged.
Speaker 1: So it's like, I just think he's playing a weaker
Speaker 1: and weaker hand as as long as he stays on
Speaker 1: this current note, which I don't know if his uh
Speaker 1: sucking like whole where his you know, sense of self goes,
Speaker 1: is going to allow him to move on from an
Speaker 1: l like that. So I just they have some kind
Speaker 1: of agreement, you know, for him to say I'm staying
Speaker 1: with the party sounds like something I would have negotiated
Speaker 1: if I was the RNC, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: And like what the terms of that is, which is okay,
Speaker 1: we'll continue to try and fucking protect you, um, but
Speaker 1: like just stop saying wild ship because the other thing
Speaker 1: too is like out of seapack. There were a few
Speaker 1: different you like Rick Scott, who I was surprised at
Speaker 1: Center of Florida. He was like, Biden one, fair and square. Uh,
Speaker 1: just so we know, I'm just gonna say that out
Speaker 1: loud here at sea pack. But then there are other
Speaker 1: Republican politicians too, were saying like we're we're past Trump, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: he's part of the Republican Party, but the party can't anymore,
Speaker 1: no longer be about one person because that actually affects
Speaker 1: the ability of every other candidate to be elected. And
Speaker 1: I think maybe that's like the one thing they're taking
Speaker 1: from this is just like just we got to allow
Speaker 1: the party to be amorphous enough that their first thing
Speaker 1: isn't it's whatever Donald Trump is, because that's their that's
Speaker 1: their that's their brand issue at the moment. And of
Speaker 1: course there's like a lot of talk of splitting the
Speaker 1: party now, which feels like such a reality. It's so
Speaker 1: hard for me to imagine i mean, a Trump ever
Speaker 1: winning again, but be just sort of like maybe I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say that because that's like some ship, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. It just feels like I don't. I I
Speaker 1: don't see a pathway to success. I mean, do you
Speaker 1: guys agree with that? Or do you think I'm being naive?
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to see right now. But he's
Speaker 1: I think he's still the most dangerous candidate on either
Speaker 1: side because he's got this massive base that is impervious
Speaker 1: to pulling and fats and he's the he's now the
Speaker 1: default candidate who gets to benefit from the anyone but
Speaker 1: the guy in office, uh vote. And I feel like
Speaker 1: that's a scary world because he has such massive name
Speaker 1: recognition um and all he has to do is like
Speaker 1: find new talking points, and like, I feel like we're
Speaker 1: at a very low tied moment right now because he
Speaker 1: has been unable to move on from losing, and everybody
Speaker 1: knows he lawin so he just looks kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But to to again to only like yeah, yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, I I can I will
Speaker 1: never say never when when it comes to him and
Speaker 1: his plan, he's going to cause a lot more problems,
Speaker 1: you know, Like there there's a lot more potential I
Speaker 1: think for violence and sort of like commanding different actions
Speaker 1: because it's like, you know, it's like cognitive dissonance. People
Speaker 1: are never going to give up. I mean people do,
Speaker 1: but the hardcore ones, it would cause so much distress
Speaker 1: to try to change that stance after, you know, the
Speaker 1: last five years of their lives being dedicated to this
Speaker 1: charismatic leader. It's it's really really hard. But that we
Speaker 1: saw him lose by so much, it would be really
Speaker 1: like you said, he'd have to revise talking points, but
Speaker 1: it would it would all hinge again on like you said,
Speaker 1: like not Hillary or not Joe Biden. But I don't.
Speaker 1: I just don't see it unless there's some bombshell. But
Speaker 1: you know, Hillary was just so there's so much tied
Speaker 1: in with her, and Biden is just kind of like
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, I think the one thing is SPA.
Speaker 1: They definitely the masks are all gone. Now they're all gone.
Speaker 1: They have no masks anymore. The State times a fucking
Speaker 1: Nazi room, yeah, or one of those rude symbols that think, right,
Speaker 1: there's no other explace there are another actions. How many
Speaker 1: people did that pass through? Yeah, it doesn't I'll say this,
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what they intended or didn't and if
Speaker 1: that was an accident, because run Nazi stage or not,
Speaker 1: They're They're entire schedule and speaking events were filled with
Speaker 1: anti democratic want to be autocracy, like how do we
Speaker 1: fuck over our Essentially you distill it down like how
Speaker 1: do we win elections when we can't win elections? Or
Speaker 1: like how do wig wig elections? Because all the clock
Speaker 1: is ticking and if we're gonna be a part of this,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to switch our entire system of governance
Speaker 1: in this country for us to be able to have
Speaker 1: a shot at ruling. So with that, democrats really need
Speaker 1: to be like, oh I saw that over the weekend, assholes,
Speaker 1: and I'm not dealing with any of y'all were This
Speaker 1: is just so you know that if I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a quote unquote representative democracy, but if you have
Speaker 1: one party who's out to be like, oh yeah, we're
Speaker 1: we're the we're here for not this, like we're actually
Speaker 1: here to try and nickel and dime the local constitutions
Speaker 1: and laws for it to be essentially this minority ruled
Speaker 1: autocracy or whatever. Whose president you gotta fucking deal with
Speaker 1: them like that rather than being like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's just there. There's a lot. There's a
Speaker 1: lot going on on that side. It's like, no, dude, there,
Speaker 1: this is what it is, So now you have to
Speaker 1: actually address the threat properly. Yeah. The one messaging that
Speaker 1: seemed to be consistent top to bottom was like trying
Speaker 1: to fight back against mail in voting and uh, only
Speaker 1: sick people or people like, hey, you have to go
Speaker 1: through all these steps to legally vote by mail, which
Speaker 1: you know obviously benefits the Republican Party, um, which is why.
Speaker 1: But they don't want people to jump through hoops to
Speaker 1: buy a gun, right yeah, yeah, oh that's too much.
Speaker 1: That's too much. But if you vote, we all look,
Speaker 1: we can all agree you need to be able bodied, uh,
Speaker 1: be able to walk, have a job that will let
Speaker 1: you off that the like. No, but that's how that's
Speaker 1: how so transparent this ship is. And I wish the
Speaker 1: like everyone who is responsible for like reporting it like
Speaker 1: on a massive scale, and then a leadership level would
Speaker 1: be like, we have to really talk about what this
Speaker 1: is objectively and they can go and try and part
Speaker 1: like mince their words and ship like what we're looking
Speaker 1: at is this, this is what it is. There's a
Speaker 1: legacy of this. This is not new, this is it's
Speaker 1: been every voting has been an issue in every civil
Speaker 1: rights movement, even if it's like quiet, right, it's been,
Speaker 1: it's always been. Why wouldn't it be a focal point
Speaker 1: and why wouldn't it be something that is an obsession
Speaker 1: because it is the expression of the people which can
Speaker 1: be manipulated and has been since and before probably you know,
Speaker 1: with with landowners and all that bullshit. But like, it's
Speaker 1: not I just don't think it's it's not surprising, and
Speaker 1: it's just as everything is is just now quiet and
Speaker 1: insidious and not quite so loud as it maybe was before.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, I feel like it's it is louder,
Speaker 1: right because like you feel like the vote Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Act in sixty four, like that helped white people be like, okay,
Speaker 1: we have to deracialize a lot of star racism because
Speaker 1: that didn't work. You see what happened? Do we overplayed
Speaker 1: that hand and now they have more rights than we
Speaker 1: wanted them to have, so that a lot of school choice,
Speaker 1: ship and all this other stuff started coming out because
Speaker 1: they couldn't. They had they had to let go of
Speaker 1: those words. They've now fully like it's like they're coming
Speaker 1: back around to it in like a very less elegant
Speaker 1: way where it's like the most charged dog whistle language
Speaker 1: that like at least school choice might confuse somebody, right,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, because it sounds like freedom, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But the other ship that they're saying is so like
Speaker 1: on on its nose. You're like, are y'all even try
Speaker 1: like have you learned or you're just being like this
Speaker 1: is now they've completely are like no, we're just relying
Speaker 1: on our worst habits and instincts now, and that's all this,
Speaker 1: that's all it was too, but now in a way
Speaker 1: that we don't even know how to finesse appearing in public. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean dog whistling from a stage that looks like
Speaker 1: a Nazi ruin whistling, Right, it's kind of dog even
Speaker 1: with like school choice, like you said, that is such
Speaker 1: a dog whistle of tax exemption like back to And
Speaker 1: it's just so weird how we don't talk about the
Speaker 1: moral majority and the fact that like abortion was like
Speaker 1: a created, manufactured period, like it was a manufactured outrage.
Speaker 1: Evangelicals didn't care. In fact, they more supported it because
Speaker 1: they hated Catholics. But it was like, you know, it
Speaker 1: was the tax exemption was they didn't want to desegregate
Speaker 1: their schools, but they didn't want to lose their tax exemption.
Speaker 1: So they were able to mobilize a conservative Christian vote
Speaker 1: for the first time in a really long time through abortion.
Speaker 1: But it was all hiding the fact that they wanted
Speaker 1: to not have to desegregate their schools. And this is
Speaker 1: in the seventies eighties, and that's hidden. It's a hidden thing,
Speaker 1: and it's covered by school choice, tax exemption, religious freedom,
Speaker 1: all these sort of things that we still hear, but
Speaker 1: that used to be an issue of segregation. And like
Speaker 1: Bob Jones University, you couldn't date interracially until the year
Speaker 1: two thousand and they still kept their tax exemption. They
Speaker 1: used Reagan to try to do what I mean, this
Speaker 1: is like it's not the same thing as voting, but
Speaker 1: it's like we're talking about it's like these dog whistles
Speaker 1: have such history and you may not know it, but
Speaker 1: it still can like trigger. He's sort of like ingrained
Speaker 1: dis ingrained ship. We all have the Boston the desaggregation
Speaker 1: of Boston public schools and the just incredible amounts of
Speaker 1: rioting and violence and just open war in the streets
Speaker 1: that happened around that is one of those stories that
Speaker 1: everybody should go read if you haven't, um, because it's
Speaker 1: like one of those ones where I heard it in
Speaker 1: my thirties and I was like that, how is this
Speaker 1: one of the how is this not one of like
Speaker 1: an entire section of US history? But it's because it
Speaker 1: deal and they like to. Yeah, any anything that makes
Speaker 1: that issue at the forefront of US history they liked.
Speaker 1: It's just so uncomfortable. It just makes me so uncomfortable. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: let's take one more break and we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: And we're back. Uh, And I wanna talk about to
Speaker 1: pop culture icons that are being challenged by Republicans and
Speaker 1: Democrats on the From the Republican side, Donald Trump Jr.
Speaker 1: Is mad, He is t owed man. Uh. The Muppets
Speaker 1: have now this is a quote from him, The Muppets
Speaker 1: have now been canceled. Apparently the Muppets have now been canceled.
Speaker 1: There's nothing these psychos won't destroy. Liberalism is a disease
Speaker 1: the and then he reiterated that over the weekend at
Speaker 1: sepack Um. This is all based around a disclaimer. Brief
Speaker 1: disclaimer that has been added to the beginning of some
Speaker 1: of the episodes of The Muppet Show that was just
Speaker 1: added to Disney Plus because some of them have extremely
Speaker 1: racist puppet characters that are still in the shild that's
Speaker 1: what you're saying about. They said, hey, y'all, were there's
Speaker 1: some wild as racist puppets in here. We're sorry, just
Speaker 1: so you know, And he's like that that equals cancelation somehow,
Speaker 1: that exactly. But that's true. Awareness equals cancelation, awareness accountability,
Speaker 1: because it's not canceled, it's accountability. That's what it is.
Speaker 1: It's so black and white to them. It's like something's
Speaker 1: either got to bad, period. So it's like if there's
Speaker 1: a critique, then it's as if it is entirely bad
Speaker 1: versus just like here's a bad thing. Here's you know,
Speaker 1: the Muppets saying we're sorry about this. This isn't good.
Speaker 1: But it's still even on there, which whatever you can
Speaker 1: say about that, but I you know, it's still they're
Speaker 1: giving sort of an acknowledgement and it's just whatever, guys,
Speaker 1: such a fucking doink. Yeah, but I mean it's across
Speaker 1: the board. Also sorry. One episode features Johnny Cash perform
Speaker 1: in front of a giant Confederate flag, and they left
Speaker 1: that in there. They're disclaimer. These stereotypes were wrong then
Speaker 1: and are wrong now. Rather then remove this content, we
Speaker 1: want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learned from it, and
Speaker 1: sparked conversation to create a more inclusive future together. Um.
Speaker 1: Fox just uh latched onto this non story, using it
Speaker 1: as yet more evidence of cancel culture. One of the
Speaker 1: hosts on Fox and Friends that I don't remember the
Speaker 1: Muppets ever being offensive. Here we are again with cancel culture. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in an interview with Tom Cotton, they asked him
Speaker 1: about it, because why ask a sitting US senator a
Speaker 1: nonpuppet based question in the middle of the pandemic um
Speaker 1: and the the amazing thing I write. Jam points out
Speaker 1: that if anyone's been trying to cancel the Muppets, it's conservatives,
Speaker 1: like for a long time. Uh. When their newest movie,
Speaker 1: The Muppets came out in eleven, Fox News aired the
Speaker 1: segment are liberals trying to brainwash your kids against capitalism?
Speaker 1: Because the villain of the Muppets was a sleazy oil
Speaker 1: executive creatively named text Richmond. Um. But uh yeah. One
Speaker 1: of the hosts of on Fox questioned why the filmmakers
Speaker 1: couldn't simply have made the villain be someone from the
Speaker 1: Obama administration and I quote, I just wish liberals could
Speaker 1: leave little kids alone. Why couldn't the muppets have the
Speaker 1: evil person be the Obama administration? So the entire Obama administration.
Speaker 1: Then in two thousand fifteen, Uh, this was a real
Speaker 1: headline on Breitbart, Miss Piggy comes out as pro abortion.
Speaker 1: This was because Miss Piggy was given an award for
Speaker 1: some reason, and when asked if she was pro choice,
Speaker 1: she responded, I am pro everything, which again not really
Speaker 1: a program like it's yeah, it's uh, that's that's the
Speaker 1: most both sides the ship, you could say, Miss Piggy, yea.
Speaker 1: And with everybody, every but the one million moms. I
Speaker 1: can'tnot believe they still exist. I didn't know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they launched a boycott of the Puppets ABC show, which
Speaker 1: was more adult oriented, But I mean, come on, um,
Speaker 1: so it's double standard. Yeah, find a new angle, asshole. Uh,
Speaker 1: well you know that Sesame Street. Obviously, we we did
Speaker 1: an episode called Children's Programming about public education in Sesame
Speaker 1: Street was super Jim Henson obviously influenced and it was
Speaker 1: just a bunch of radical people getting together to try
Speaker 1: to make uh television specifically for children of color to
Speaker 1: see some reflection of their own experiences. And it was
Speaker 1: really radical. And there were things called like hidden curriculum,
Speaker 1: like there were black psychologists working on this show to
Speaker 1: sort of just give like just a little bit back
Speaker 1: to to two children who weren't white. And uh, it
Speaker 1: was huge. It was outrageous. I mean there was the
Speaker 1: pushback was enormous. It was banned in different states literally
Speaker 1: because they said things like Mississippi is not ready for
Speaker 1: this diverse of a cast. So it's like, I know
Speaker 1: it's not the Muppets, but it's Muppets adjacent, so it's
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, it's just uh there the Muppets. Jim
Speaker 1: Henson was always I mean he's a hippie. You know,
Speaker 1: he was always and you know he's always been kind
Speaker 1: of an anti capitalist and anti whatever, pro everything, yeah,
Speaker 1: not pro everything, Yeah, you don't say that. No. Uh.
Speaker 1: And finally, uh, while we have you, Chelsea, I do
Speaker 1: want to talk about this latest video game Panic, which
Speaker 1: seems like it's a headline from ten years before this
Speaker 1: show started. Um but an Illinois Democrat wants to fight
Speaker 1: crime with a video game. Band which video game? You
Speaker 1: may ask Grand Theft Auto? Of course, Okay, the Grand
Speaker 1: Theft Auto come back in some way like did it
Speaker 1: become mobile? So it's just literally from however many years ago,
Speaker 1: we had the same fucking Grand Theft Auto game over
Speaker 1: like three consoles now PS three, PS four, and that's
Speaker 1: just on PS five. I'm sick of ground. Definitely look
Speaker 1: at that motherfucker anymore. I don't know. I've shot down
Speaker 1: a lot of helicopters with a lot of launchers and
Speaker 1: haven't done that yet. And you get on the train
Speaker 1: and they can't catch you because you want to train
Speaker 1: tracks and the AI and the cops is stupidest. They
Speaker 1: never they can never touch you. Then you can like
Speaker 1: borrow yourself in a store and wait in the five
Speaker 1: star stitch. Yeah right, and then you're out. What's the
Speaker 1: logic though, of why is this person in the year
Speaker 1: of our Lord now thinking like we gotta get hold
Speaker 1: on Have guys seen Grand Theft Auto. There's been a
Speaker 1: rise in car theft and carjacking by the last year,
Speaker 1: which uh literally nobody is surprised by because the economy
Speaker 1: has completely shipped the bed, and also everybody's wearing masks around.
Speaker 1: People are like, yeah, of course, it's like we're honestly
Speaker 1: that we could have told you. Yeah. So this is
Speaker 1: out of Illinois, where Colonel David Bird of the Illinois
Speaker 1: State Police uh blamed it on there's a social media
Speaker 1: aspect of it. Uh. He said, kids steel cars and
Speaker 1: evade police in order to impress their friends. Presumably there
Speaker 1: was like a single instance of that that made the
Speaker 1: local news. Uh. And then one of their local politicians said,
Speaker 1: this carjacking is something out of a video game, and
Speaker 1: that was all he needed to try and propose this bill.
Speaker 1: It would include a one dollar fine for those who
Speaker 1: sell or rent these games, again proving that it was
Speaker 1: designed in two thousand. You can rent these games. I'll
Speaker 1: shut down this Blockbuster, I tell you. Yeah. The panic
Speaker 1: is such a bipartisan event, you know, it's so and
Speaker 1: it's so many times, like Democrats and Republicans, it will
Speaker 1: be like the one thing that they unite over is
Speaker 1: some kind of moral panic. And h it's like Columbine.
Speaker 1: This happened during Columbine, all the shooting video games, and
Speaker 1: I mean it's happened every time, every time, every time,
Speaker 1: anything bad happens, it's because it's the teens. One. You
Speaker 1: can blame the teens, and then you can blame this
Speaker 1: thing that actually has nothing to do with it, so
Speaker 1: then you don't have to deal with systemic issues. You
Speaker 1: can just point to this fucking dumbass thing. It's more
Speaker 1: fun to blame, that's for sure. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: so much more cinematic than than systemic poverty. Parents are
Speaker 1: different things. Parents who are a big part of your
Speaker 1: audience or voter base are already the inherently suspicious of
Speaker 1: their kids. So you know, I've met enough parents are like,
Speaker 1: you know, not enough parents growing up who are like,
Speaker 1: just are dying for this sort of ship because exists.
Speaker 1: These moral panics are half born out of a you
Speaker 1: don't you actually don't want to address the real issue
Speaker 1: of a given thing, And the other one is you're
Speaker 1: so out of touch that you just connected the first
Speaker 1: dot and you're like, yeah, that's what it was. It's
Speaker 1: this game. So you're saying there's a lot of crimes
Speaker 1: of grand theft auto, that we're experiencing a lot of
Speaker 1: charges of grand theft auto. Yeah, oh my god, there's
Speaker 1: a game called grand theft auto. That's what we have
Speaker 1: to go after the last big grand theft auto release
Speaker 1: was Um, they did see an uptick uptick of sales
Speaker 1: during the pandemic, but they sold far more games in
Speaker 1: previous years in which there was not a surgeon cardjacking.
Speaker 1: So there is also a case that's being made that uh,
Speaker 1: this is predominantly like young people doing the car theft
Speaker 1: and carjacking. Uh, except it's completely based on just once
Speaker 1: again proof proof that the people interpreting crime statistics shouldn't
Speaker 1: be the police because they do the the worst job
Speaker 1: of it. Um. So the cops painted this picture of
Speaker 1: roving juvenile gangs instagramming their joy rides. But of the
Speaker 1: one thousand, four hundred and sixteen carjackings the reported in Chicago,
Speaker 1: only one hundred eighty eight people were arrested. A hundred
Speaker 1: and six of them were kids. So if you're taking
Speaker 1: that as a overall sample of all d carjackings, uh,
Speaker 1: you would have some evidence. But it could be that
Speaker 1: kids aren't as good at car theft and are more
Speaker 1: likely to post it on social media. Maybe uh this
Speaker 1: like a time Yes, yeah, they're just getting popped the
Speaker 1: first time, right, and then you learn after that one.
Speaker 1: But like the idea too of just trying to be
Speaker 1: like they're doing it to be on Instagram, like these
Speaker 1: are crimes of swag, not crimes of survival. Nobody steals
Speaker 1: a fucking car for the thrill. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: maybe they just watch New Jersey Drive or bad movie
Speaker 1: from the nineties or some ship. But like there's you
Speaker 1: do it because you need to make money, and that's
Speaker 1: how you're going to make money, because you're For many people,
Speaker 1: you're only financial recourse is extra legal activity because there
Speaker 1: are no there's no way for you to survive anymore.
Speaker 1: But let's not talk about what the options are for
Speaker 1: these people. Let's say these teams are throwing on a
Speaker 1: filter to look like a little kitty cat and then
Speaker 1: taking your tesla. It's just it's out of control. To
Speaker 1: your point, was another thing besides Grand Theft auto sales
Speaker 1: UH that have gone up in the last year, which
Speaker 1: again Grand Theft auto sales picked up a little bit,
Speaker 1: not UH didn't sell as many copies as previous years. UH.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, unemployment in Illinois has gone up
Speaker 1: by a whopping six d seventy UH and Illinois's unemployment
Speaker 1: offices have been closed for the entire year, meaning people
Speaker 1: who lack access to online services or running into technical
Speaker 1: problems are pretty much fucked. Um. So yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: all to avoid a real fucking problem. And I mean
Speaker 1: the racial dynamics aside of this story, Like it's it's
Speaker 1: so simple. I mean, like you, you don't need to
Speaker 1: be a fucking detective to be like, wait, people usually
Speaker 1: people steal because you don't have. Oh, there's an uptake
Speaker 1: uptick in people who don't have That's probably what is.
Speaker 1: And also grand theft auto. Trust me, the people who
Speaker 1: bought that it's motherfucker's like me who got suckered into
Speaker 1: buying it for the fucking third time. It's not new
Speaker 1: people of getting into grant that auto. It's like, funk,
Speaker 1: I don't have it on this console. I guess I
Speaker 1: gotta give rock Star more fucking money for this game.
Speaker 1: That's I mean. I would love to see the statistic
Speaker 1: on the number of newcomers to g T A five
Speaker 1: uh in those numbers, but that's more of a gamer
Speaker 1: statistic I would like to see. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: exactly what happened with UH with as I mentioned, like
Speaker 1: Columbine and in the school shootings into this last decade
Speaker 1: is the exact same thing. It was the shooting video games,
Speaker 1: and that was you know, so we didn't have to
Speaker 1: deal with guns, and that was Democrats and Republicans. It's
Speaker 1: just this way to have a flashy, you know, sleight
Speaker 1: of hand. I think of it as a sleight of hand.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how intentional it is or how
Speaker 1: much these people are just you know, fucking stupid and
Speaker 1: totally out of touch, like you said, and how much
Speaker 1: of it could be not I don't want to say
Speaker 1: a conspiracy, but you know, I think there's something to that.
Speaker 1: And especially when you're trying to get reelected, your platform
Speaker 1: is going to be a lot more flashy and interesting
Speaker 1: to people if the story is you know, the teens
Speaker 1: aren't all right, versus we have massive unemployment and poverty.
Speaker 1: It's not I'm surprised Republicans didn't blame the uprisings on
Speaker 1: NBA two K like that by that logic talking about
Speaker 1: like look at the problem also at like you know,
Speaker 1: it's tops we have too many these assholes. We're not
Speaker 1: there to actually change outcomes for people. They're just there
Speaker 1: to win office and stay in office and that's it.
Speaker 1: That's it. I mean, this is an example of somebody
Speaker 1: being bad at uh showing the like politically, you know,
Speaker 1: shrewd and calculating thing. Uh. And but I think there's
Speaker 1: plenty of examples that we're not talking about because they
Speaker 1: don't necessarily cross our radar and such a don't like
Speaker 1: splat against our radar the way this one would. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it's this seems to be a
Speaker 1: good uh indicator of what the underlying logic is in
Speaker 1: in Congress. Definitely, Chelsea. It has been such a pleasure
Speaker 1: having you as always being on. Thank you guys. It's
Speaker 1: so much fun. Where can people find you and follow you? Well,
Speaker 1: you can go and listen to our show American Hysteria
Speaker 1: on pretty much any podcast app, or you can follow
Speaker 1: us at a mayor Hysteria on Twitter or American Hysteria
Speaker 1: Podcast on Instagram. And is there a tweet or some
Speaker 1: of the work of social media you've been enjoying. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of buried the lead, but I
Speaker 1: think just for me it was Oreos trands people exist.
Speaker 1: I just I just want to say, think, when was
Speaker 1: that so brave? UM? Got a few days ago, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It was like during the potato folks coming
Speaker 1: out as as trans um. But that's that's just been
Speaker 1: a memorable, memorable one for me. M Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 1: I think that was right after their tweet about Fred
Speaker 1: Hampton Jr. Yeah exactly. Yeah, they're like, and you imagine though,
Speaker 1: why is it that when they connect poor people of
Speaker 1: color and poor white people, think outcomes change for these
Speaker 1: civil rights leaders anyway? Get the new double stuffed orioles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's some people do not want anybody to know,
Speaker 1: which is odd because like you could just be like, hi,
Speaker 1: everything the people that got never every The way the
Speaker 1: way we win is together our new our new rainbow
Speaker 1: coalition OREO where you open it up and it's a rainbow.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, just it's coming. Don't tell them the words. Miles,
Speaker 1: Where can people find you? What's the tweet you've been enjoying?
Speaker 1: Oh Man Twitter, Instagram, Miles of Gray also other podcast
Speaker 1: for twey day fiance we were chatting ninety day. Uh
Speaker 1: tweet I like from Reductress because it's just so absurd,
Speaker 1: but somehow, like I it's resonating with me. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: a photo of like to two people talking. One person
Speaker 1: is just like sort of clearly listening to the other speak,
Speaker 1: but was sort of like a like vacant eyes, and
Speaker 1: the text reads how to pretend you were listening by answering,
Speaker 1: hey Marca Reina in a neutral tone, Hey Marcarina, Hey
Speaker 1: can you believe that ship? Jack? Hey Macarina? Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew you, I knew you're on my side. Hey Macarana,
Speaker 1: I mean, hey Macarina, I want I once I was
Speaker 1: caught by my friends way too late after that song
Speaker 1: was no longer cool, just very drunk on a dance
Speaker 1: floor doing the macarino Um. Was not my proudest moment.
Speaker 1: Hey Macarina, Hey Macarina. Indeed, Marcarina, you can find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien a couple of tweets
Speaker 1: I've been enjoying. Aaron Chack tweeted, yeah, the moon is
Speaker 1: full full of shit. Um, it was a very nice,
Speaker 1: full moment. Over the weekend, shout out to the moviment um,
Speaker 1: and Mike Kin tweeted it would be crazy if every
Speaker 1: oncoming headlight you saw in the freeway was its own
Speaker 1: person with their own life. But thank god that's not
Speaker 1: the case. Uh. Find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're
Speaker 1: at the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook
Speaker 1: fan page and a website, Daily zeitgeist dot com, where
Speaker 1: we post our episodes and our footnotes. We link off
Speaker 1: to the information that we talked about in today's episode,
Speaker 1: as well as a song that we recommend you check out. Miles,
Speaker 1: what song are people checking out today? Oh, they're gonna
Speaker 1: check out Look. You need some you need some good drumming.
Speaker 1: You want some naia being the drumming. Uh, if you
Speaker 1: really funk with the reggae sounds, get into that. But
Speaker 1: this track is called Lamb's Bread Collie and it's Lamb's
Speaker 1: l A MBS bread v r e A d Collie
Speaker 1: c L l I E like colleague pug uh and
Speaker 1: the the artist is Cedric I'm Brooks and the Light
Speaker 1: of Saba and it's just like look I was that
Speaker 1: was saying off, Mike. I got some musical equipment. I've
Speaker 1: been going through some old records and things and you
Speaker 1: don't want to sample. I was really looking at This
Speaker 1: album is great because it's got a lot of deep
Speaker 1: grooves in it um. But this is for anybody who
Speaker 1: just you know, needs a little heavy, heavy sound to
Speaker 1: start your week. This will help you, but also you know,
Speaker 1: very enlightened. All right. Well, The Daily Ze Guy's a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. That's gonna do it for
Speaker 1: this morning. We are back this afternoon to tell you
Speaker 1: what's trending and we'll talk to you all then. Bye bye,