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At some point I'll disappear for thirty
seven seconds to go get it. We'll

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time you ask not what your country
can do for you, ask what you

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can do for your country. Mister
Gerbuschoff, tear down this wall. Read

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my lips. It's the Rickorsche Podcast. I'm James Liviacs with Rob Long and

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Peter Robinson. That's the first and
some time, and we're gonna have a

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lot of fun talking to Barton Swain
from the Wall Street Journals about Joe Biden's

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iron grip and some other stuff.
Lots of it. So Let's Abrise was

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a podcast this issue. We'll destroy
New York City. We get in ten

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thousand migrants a month. I said
it last year when we had fifteen thousand.

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I'm telling you now when I went
to two thousand, the city we

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knew with about the loose Welcome everybody
to the Ricoche Podcast, number six hundred

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and fifty seven, and James,
I'm like in Minneapolis, I was.

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I was not here for six fifty
six because I was at the State Fair,

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the great Minnesota get together, swept
together when in the daytime it's absolutely

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fantastic and the twilight comes and the
lightspop on it. It's magical eleven It

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gets to be about eleven o'clock at
night and all the miscreans try to storm

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the gate and there's gunfire. But
that's another day and another story. Happy

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to be here back with Peter and
Rob for the first time in some time.

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Peter Howard things Howard things in California. This feels like a family reunion.

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Well, it depends on the family, doesn't it. Are there certain

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things we shouldn't talk about? And
I was much fonder of the two of

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you, it turns out, than
I would have guessed. Absence. It's

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called absence or abscess. And Rob, good to hear you two New York.

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I was just here this morning hearing
an angry TikTok rant. And I

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know, I repeat myself from a
New York mother who is not pleased at

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all that her child has to present
in just a huge trench of documentations to

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get her kid in the school.
But all of the migrant children are waved

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right in instantaneously. And so you're
there in the New York that mayor Adam

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says is going to be lost or
gone, And so of course you have

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all the people on the right saying
well, you know, we reap yourself

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is what you're voted for. I
have no sympathy whatsoever. Go enjoy your

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dystopian hell. What is it like? Because I've seen the film outside the

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Rosevelt Hotel where I stayed once.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's closed.

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Anyway, we should just say yeah, so it was it was.

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It was closed owned I believe by
a Pakistani hotel group too, So they're

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getting the nice amount of cash from
the from the city. So what is

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it? What is it like?
Do you notice or you just live in

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a in a migrants, No,
I don't most migrants. I notice the

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normal, you know, the normal
New York City chaos. But I also

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noticed there's a little bit there's a
lot more more addicts on the street,

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mostly because I love the village,
and they can every now and then,

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like uh once every eight weeks,
the neighbors around Washington Square Park complaint screaming

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and and they clear it cleared out. But that's pretty much where people can

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score your drugs. So if you're
looking to score drugs, James, that's

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where you want to go. There. Well, north that the corn Yeah,

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that was the epicenter in in uh
yeah, panic, panic and Needle

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Parker Panic Needle Park was actually seventy
second seal. Yeah, you go up

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there, it's like, uh so, so that's and then every eight weeks

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it's it's gonna it'll it'll die down
because the parents have just arrived because it's

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NYU bas basically ny you kind of
de facto owns Washington Square Park. They're

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there, they they were given it
for a lot of other concessions, and

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so, you know, and then
every now and then people complain. The

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the migrant thing is interesting because I
just have to say that I thought the

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the the little trolling jokes kind of
thing that people like Rona Santist did sending

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you know, migrants up to Martha's
vineyard. We're kind of cute, but

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basically, what's you know, a
lot of energy for nothing. But I

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think you have to say that the
ground swell of rage in New York City

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and New York State, but between
the mayor and the governor and the elected

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representatives in Congress is precisely because the
problem that they got to philosophize and theorize

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about came home and you know,
you have one hundred plus thousand migrants in

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New York City in a city,
woulds going to stretch budgetarily always it's gonna

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and you you passed a law promising
them all sorts of things you now can't

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get out of because you just never
thought would come right, You never thought

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be here. It's one thing's Sanctuary
City New York City's like okay, fine,

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Like, how are you can gonna
know? Like you're not gonna get

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all the way up here? Well, wait a minute, and then does

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the plaque on the statue of Liberty
face towards the ocean or towards the city?

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Because if it faces towards the ocean, I can give them a break

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that they haven't seen it. But
if it faces towards the city, they

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ought to have been able to see. And the legal promise that it contains,

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they know all that. And of
course the problem here is not the

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illegal. The word legal does not
apply here. And so you may find

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that the what I thought to be
the silly little you know. I mean,

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I was in favor of it.
I applauded it, but I just

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kind of shrugged and let me on
and ho hum. That's stuff that,

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like Rodney Santis did, actually has
managed to galvanize a whole portion of the

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country that just kind of didn't care
because it was happening down there in the

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places where we are gonna go,
and you know, and they and they

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spent past quarters saying crazy things like, well, New York City doesn't have

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the resources that Brownsville, Texas has, which is hilarious. Right, So

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now you're starting to see people like
Mayor Adams say we gotta do something.

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Hey, what's going on? And
that is probably good for the country.

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By the way, I just checked
you said correctly. I'm fairly enough.

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I think that New York City is
always stretched for resources, or that the

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budget is always stretched, but may
I note that that is because they choose

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to run the city that way.
Here is the size of the twenty twenty

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four budget for New York City.
One city population about eight million people,

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one hundred and seven billion dollars.
Here is the budget for the state of

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Florida, an entire state, what
is it twenty five million people now or

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actually, now that's a little high, and in an event, an entire

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state one hundred and sixteen billion dollars. New York City spends so much money,

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so lavishly that it has a budget
that's ninety five percent as big as

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the budget of the entire state of
Florida. This is right, But Peter,

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beyond the city do you have to
you have to understand, I mean,

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where does that money go. It
goes for the fantastically well maintained,

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clean and efficient subway system that at
the envy of the world. It goes

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for infrastructure so that the bridge to
themselves are never a crumble. It goes

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for all kinds of every you go
to New York City, you see it's

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worse than that spend you It's worse
than that. It's the state that hope

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runs the subway, pays for it, and it's the state that runs the

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infrastructure. A lot of that stuff
is like for the deputy assistant to the

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chairman of the subcommittee of the Diversity
school Board, controlling authority or whatever.

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Right. A lot of it is
crap, that is for sure. But

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the point is that they can't mean
you want you can make decisions about how

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you want to spend your money,
and you can spend it luxuriously if you

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want, and you can waste it
if you want on yourselves. Right,

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So the city can tax everybody and
then spend it on some nonsense thing.

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And then that's you know, that's
not the right way to be, but

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it's nothing wrong with it when you
add to it one hundred thousand plus and

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growing number of people who've arrived here
with nothing and then have a right to

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all sorts of things that some of
the city citizen city residents don't have a

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right too because you passed a law
in a grandstanding you know, well,

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virtue signaling well a series of of
of movements that you thought would never ever

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you promises you never ever have to
keep, and now you've got to keep

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them. You know this. I
hope people watching this are enjoying it because

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you you you don't get this kind
of You just don't get this kind of

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symmetry. This is fantastic. It
rarely happens in life, at least in

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my lifetime. That's something so obvious. Happens exactly the way he predicted,

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and this is it. And I
think it's good for the country because it

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is time now for people all over
the country to realize that border security and

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border policy is central to the future
and that we cannot have You cannot have

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a welfare state and open borders.
You can only have one or the other.

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You have both, you go broke. And that's what's happened in New

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York City, and that's partly what
happens in California. Rogers long. When

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you're really conservative, you're just beautiful
at these things are good object lessons.

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The University of West Virginia, for
example, is cutting a whole bunch of

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programs, but as people have noticed, they're cutting the things that are useful.

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They're keeping these social sciences and they're
keeping the aspirations stay perfectly intact.

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So the people who are on the
liberal side, who are inclined to support

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education of this nature, are appalled, and they're the ones who are making

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the complaints. In New York you
have the liberals who are making the complaints

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about this. And I mean a
part of you wants to say, look,

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you don't get to have these issues. These have been our issues.

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We've been talking about them. But
on the other hand, if this is

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what it takes to get the issue
to the table, then I'm then fine

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as long as we can then agree
and move forward, and if they want

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to take credit for it down the
road, I don't care. As long

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as we have changed. This morning, I was listening to the BBC IS

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show called hard Talk, in which
they had a Swedish politician of the of

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the liberal leftist stripe who was talking
about the need they have organized crime,

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huge amounts of organized crime, and
it's connected to the immigration, and he

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was talking about how they're going to
crack down to that and solve address the

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problem of integration of the of the
integration of these immigrants into Swedish society.

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And he was attacked by the host
for using the language of the far right

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Swedish Social Democrats, who themselves have
been talking about it into merely to bring

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these things, to use these terms
to this British guy was to validate practically

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Nazism, whereas in Sweden the left
now is having to come around and say,

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hm, taking you know, maybe
we should start to take up these

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terms before indeed the really bad guys
get to take them. But when it

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comes to looking at stuff at other
you know, other countries of the cultures,

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it's yeah, you know, you
can, you can you can go

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on and buy streaming service, or
you can watch television from other countries,

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00:10:54,200 --> 00:10:56,960
or sometimes if you want to save
a little money, and we all want

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to save a little money. You
know, you can figure out a way

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to watch the shows in other countries
themselves, And you think, wait,

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00:11:01,720 --> 00:11:05,919
a matter, how how do I
do that? A lot of you spend

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a lot of money on streaming services, right Netflix and Disney Plus and Prime

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and you name it. But but
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than you actually suspect. You don't
see all of them? Can they give

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you different shows depending on what country
you're in. So what you see on

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even though it's not on Netflix in the

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these things just vanish and where are they?

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You don't even need to pay extra

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Ricochet to learn more, and we
thank Express vpn for sponsoring this the Ricochet

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Podcast. Now we welcome to the
show. Barton Swain the author of the

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speechwriter of Brief Education on politics.
He has a regular column in That Wall

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Street journalmate newspaper you might have heard
about. He reviews books on a range

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of topics, and earlier this week
he penned an excellent op ed titled Joe

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Biden's Iron grip on his party.
Barton. Welcome Barton. You're on with

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00:13:01,159 --> 00:13:05,720
three three writers. And you may
think that we ask you on to talk

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00:13:05,720 --> 00:13:09,559
about politics, discuss your recent columns
and so forth. The truth is we

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have news for you. Between your
book reviews and your op eds, you're

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00:13:15,240 --> 00:13:18,679
doing too much work. Yeah,
kid, you need to slow down.

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You're making the rest of us look
bad. I have seven pieces do this

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00:13:22,960 --> 00:13:26,600
week. Thank you, very seven
pieces do this week. Seven. I'll

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00:13:26,639 --> 00:13:28,360
talk to Barton about what it's like
to be a productive member of society,

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00:13:28,360 --> 00:13:31,360
and the rest of you can stare
at your blank page. Okay, listen,

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you wrote a piece your latest op
ed. I think it's your latest,

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00:13:35,200 --> 00:13:39,240
and I haven't looked at today's paper. You wrote a piece about Joe

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Biden's iron grip on the Democratic Party, in which Rob is going to resist

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this a little bit. But it
was I thought, just a beautiful piece

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of angry what aboutism? And Rob
is so sick of what aboutism or claims

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to be. But would you play
please make the case for us that you

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made in that column. Well,
I like what about is him? The

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piece was a it was it was
the product of a long standing annoyance that

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I have had since like twenty seventeen, when I started reading in the New

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York Times, in the Washington Post, article after article about Donald Trump's grip

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on the Republican Party, his iron
grip. Conversely, various Republican officeholders fealty

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to Donald Trump. And I remember
reading this and well, I should I

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should point out that at the time
I was working at the at the Weekly

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Standard, and so so my views
were colored by that, And I thought,

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Gee, it doesn't feel to me
like much of an iron grip,

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and I don't see a lot of
fealty at the Weekly Standard. But you

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know that that was his own,
its own thing. So uh. I

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remember thinking as I would read these
pieces that I'm not a huge fan of

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Donald Trump, but he is the
head of his party. He is the

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president of the United States, so
you would expect, you know, Republicans

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to to, you know, bend
their views somewhat to whatever he wanted to

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talk about. Granted it was done
in many cases in unseemly ways, but

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that's the nature of politics. So
that was in my mind for a long

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time. And every time I would
read one of these pieces with the word

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fealty particularly, was like one of
those words that you had to learn at

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that point and then and then suddenly
everybody was using it, you know,

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and then uh fast forwards. It
occurred to me recently that like on the

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Democratic side, there's virtually no criticism. What criticism there is is expressed in

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the vaguest possible terms. And you
know, in a piece I just pointed

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out to things, but there are
others. One his obvious mental decline,

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and the other is to pull out
from Afghanistan. On the Republican side,

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if those things had been true of
any Republican president, I think I'm right

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in saying there would be maybe not
uproar and demands for resignation, but at

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least, you know, significant criticism. And I just do not see that

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on the Democratic side. So that's
that's basically that where my annoyance came from.

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So not only if so fealty is
the word for Trump, but it's

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a kind of omerta for Biden.
They all have to take this their behaving

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as though there's an oath of silence. They're not allowed to see what's in

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front of everybody else's eyes. Yeah, yeah, Rob, will now tell

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you why you're mistaken to engage in
words, No, I don't know if

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I don't know, if you're mistaken. I just think that I mean,

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if you're you know, as a
as a Conservative'm not a Republican, but

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I'm a conservative. I like,
you know, free trade ish stuff.

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I didn't really think we needed to
renegotiate NAFTA, and if we were going

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to renegotiate it, we shouldn't renegotiate
it with the big labor unions at the

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table setting the terms. I felt
like, we, you know, if

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we're gonna go into a trade dispute
with China, as Trump did, we

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should you know, stick to our
guns and not give up on the first

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day the important stuff like intellectual property
rules. So I, you know,

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I can criticize Trump from a conservative
point of view. I thought maybe he

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should have built the wall. He
said he was gonna and he didn't,

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didn't even come close, and he
wasn't a serious person. So I was

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arguing from him because I had,
uh, you know, conservatively, if

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I want a conservative president. It
feels to me like the Democrats, at

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least the liberal Democrats, are getting
everything they want from this puppet president.

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Right. It's like he's the Emperor
pu Yee in Manchuria and the administrations filled

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with Obama loyalists. They seem to
like be unaware or unalarmed by the incredible

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collapse and polls. It's almost like, I mean, I was at a

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dinner party last week, a bunch
of right wingers and me, Peter,

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So you don't say that. And
no, the only thing we could think

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of was we could spend weird fantasies
about what happens as they sort of carry

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this old man through the convention and
then replace him and set every after a

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labor day, which they can do
in democratic party rules. I'm solving two

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problems at once, the Biden problem
and then the problem b which is the

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Kamala Harris problem. But nobody thought
that he wasn't gonna Nobody, no point

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did we think that he was going
to get replaced. Because he seems to

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be doing everything the liberals want.
I mean, it's not fair or not.

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I mean, I think it is
fair. And if we could distinguish,

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maybe we should distinguish between policy on
the one hand and political follies on

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the other. So, like,
you know, Trump did a lot of

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things that conservatives like. Yeah,
and he didn't get criticism from conservatives for

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doing those things. He did get
criticism for being a clown, uh,

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you know, saying idiotic things,
mainly saying idiotic things. Actually, so

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on Biden doesn't well I was going
to say, he doesn't say idiotic things.

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He doesn't mean necessarily but when he
speaks, yeah, the sort of

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idiotic things. But there are a
lot of sort of political follies on coming

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from the president, the current president
and his administration. And but so even

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on this is, to your point, rob one, one policy issue that

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there's no pushback on with the student
loan forgiveness. I rank democrats said,

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including Nancy Pelosi, said no,
the president doesn't have that power. He

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does it. Okay, he doesn't
have that. He does have that power.

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Silence, No one said anything.
It's a mystery to me. And

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I think I think a lot of
people on the right, not necessarily in

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this sort of political media class,
right, but just ordinary folks, they

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look at the democratic side and they
sort of admire it. They sort of

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why can't we get behind our guide
and just and stop arguing it's I don't

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know whether to admire it or to
be just outraged by it. Yeah,

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well that's the problem of politics is
like, what we want to say to

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them, Republicans want to say each
other is why can't we get behind our

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unfit candidate the way they've gotten behind
their unfit candidates. Are these parties just

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dead? Should we just are they
just out of gas? It just seems

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to me like I look at the
Republican leaders, the Democratic leaders, and

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I just think you all should just
go home. You should be replaced by

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younger, more energetic people who are
insane. Yeah, I don't know.

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We talk about parties has always,
uh, it sort of leaves me cold.

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I take this sort of Disraeli view
of parties and think that they're all

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they are is organized opinion. Opinions
are going to organize themselves somehow, and

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in our country they organize themselves into
two big groups, and they can be

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led by idiots or not. But
I don't think the parties are going away

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or anything like that. The the
the age issue is really kind of perplexing,

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and I don't I don't understand it. People. I've heard different theories.

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I don't know. I don't know
what's which are true. But it

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stands to reason that some of them
will have to go soon whether we get

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a better crop. I have no
idea. So Barton, could hear shrewd

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observer that you are This is the
this is the way I've begun to think

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about it, although I resist it
because it seems to sort of creepy crawly

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two grassy Knollie, as Bill Buckley
would have said, two sort of conspiratorial.

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But the deal that has been made
within the Democratic Party, the deal

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to which I was about to say, Joe Biden is a party, but

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he's gone. He's not a party
to anything anymore. But to deal to

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which Nancy, the deal to which
the sentient Democrats, including old figures such

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as Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders.
But above all, the deal is as

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follows. We are working a slow
I don't want to use the word revolution,

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but it is a revolution. It's
a kind of constitutional revolution, transformation,

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transformation in which we are asserting the
policy agenda of about the progressive policy

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of agenda of actually only about fifteen
percent of the country. We are formalizing

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the power of the deep state.
And all this is possible because we have

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reduced the President of the United States
to the status of a mere figurehead.

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Now that's fine for us. And
if we get another US the technocrats,

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the progressives, if we get another
four years of this, we will be

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able to make changes in the country
that are effectively permanent or extremely very extremely

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hard to roll back the Green Agenda, all of that, and that seems

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to me to be roughly what's going
on. Biden is now sinking in the

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polls. Even Trump is beating Biden. So this grand scheme of theirs that

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we that if that Biden can win
against Trump, maybe not, but he

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can't even win against Trump. Maybe, so we'll see whether they get shaken

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up enough to try to do something
about it. But the general idea that

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they subvert in slow motion the Constitution, Article two of which tells us we

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need an executive and that the executive
power is vested in one human being.

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We now have a situation in which
nobody really knows where the executive power is

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00:24:10,039 --> 00:24:14,759
vested. The press, the incuriosity
of the press on exactly who's running the

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00:24:14,759 --> 00:24:18,799
White House, how decisions get made
in this White House where the president is

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apparently only awake and alert for four
or five hours a day in any event,

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So we got this. It's a
kind of slow motion revolution. Taking

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00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:33,519
place, and in the interest of
that revolution, they're all willing to clam

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00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:36,839
up. That's the price they're willing
to pay. Tell me, I'm mad,

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You're not mad. Look, in
my view, something happened in twenty

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00:24:45,799 --> 00:24:52,000
sixteen, and that was that the
American left hit the jackpot. They didn't

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00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:56,440
know it, and they they didn't
feel it was the jackpot, but it

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was. They got what they wanted, which what I'm I mean by that

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00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:07,079
is as an inheritance I think of
even early twentieth century progressivism and certainly sort

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of modern revolutionary leftism. They never
really believed in the old liberal idea of

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00:25:15,680 --> 00:25:22,359
different points of view coming together forming
compromises, i e. The entire the

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system that our entire republic is based
on, with different interests showing themselves in

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00:25:26,039 --> 00:25:33,440
Congress and so forth. They always
were technocratic in their outlook, and technocrats

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00:25:33,759 --> 00:25:37,319
see a thing that needs to be
done, and they think that they should

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00:25:37,319 --> 00:25:42,759
be empowered to do it like now. And so when Trump first was nominated

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and then was elected, that was
I think in the American leftist liberal progressives

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mind, all the excuse they would
ever need to completely ignore and dismiss any

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00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:08,240
legitimacy coming from the other side,
and I it has grown that they've become

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00:26:10,519 --> 00:26:17,680
more openly dismissive of the right and
anything coming from the Republican Party. And

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now I just don't think that they
care. There's a there's a great line

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00:26:22,759 --> 00:26:30,799
in Casablanca where the Peter Lore character
asks the Bogart character do you despise me?

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And Bogart says, and if I've
thought about you, I might,

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And that's perfect. You know.
It's like they can't even be bothered to

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00:26:41,279 --> 00:26:48,599
despise the right, and so I
just don't think that they feel obliged in

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00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:56,359
any way to acknowledge any shortcoming,
any any mistakes that Biden makes. And

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I also think that that is why
they sort of secretly want Trump to stay

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00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:07,599
in politics, right. They're divided
about it, but they want him to

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be the nominee. And I think
that they even want him to be president

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00:27:11,599 --> 00:27:14,440
again, although they would never admit
that. Yeah, I kind of agree

356
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:18,039
with that. I mean, yeah, I think I think I agree with

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00:27:18,079 --> 00:27:22,480
that. There's also this other thing
going on, which is that nobody wants

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00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:25,440
to be the guy who elected Donald
Trump on the left, right, So

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00:27:25,519 --> 00:27:30,680
if you run against the incumbent,
you're the guy. Right. You know,

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everybody knows that Ralph Nader elected George
W. Bush probably right, So

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you don't want to be that guy. What you're waiting for, I think

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00:27:38,720 --> 00:27:42,119
is sort of party leadership. If
you're if you're I mean, you know

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00:27:42,319 --> 00:27:45,960
the Gavin Newsom is doing a really
good job of running for president without running

364
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:48,920
for president. Right, he's just
kind of like announcing his availability and showbiz

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00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:52,400
we would call this person. You
know, they are circling the studio in

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00:27:52,519 --> 00:27:57,200
makeup. They are ready right understudy
is how's his health today? They are

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ready to go. If you're a
Gretchen Whitmer, you might be feeling the

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00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:03,720
same thing, right, I mean, it's not like, I mean,

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I don't think the Democrats have a
very big bench. That's the legacy of

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Obama. He's sort of destroyed their
bench. But on the other hand,

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00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:10,720
they don't. It's not like they
don't have nobody. They got somebody,

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but nobody wants to be the guy
because you are terrified of this other outcome.

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Half of you are terrified if you're
a Democrat, and the other half

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think have constructed a house of cards
in a sort of a mental landscape,

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which means it will be a good
thing. That's who we want. That's

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00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:27,480
who we want. That's who we
want. Don't they have ambition? I

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00:28:27,519 --> 00:28:33,720
mean I was I always thought politicians
are just endlessly ambitious, right, they

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00:28:33,799 --> 00:28:36,920
want what happened? You know?
Why are you so scared all of a

379
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:38,960
sudden? Yeah, of course there
are dangers, but you guys are the

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00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:45,480
most self serving, narcissistic, ambitious
people on earth. Right, But they

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00:28:45,519 --> 00:28:49,599
somehow became they somehow became the bureaucrats
they've empowered, haven't they. They said

382
00:28:49,759 --> 00:28:55,000
they like it. They don't really
like the getting a car and you go

383
00:28:55,039 --> 00:28:57,440
to your office and people like kind
of bound scrape and use a separate elevator,

384
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:00,480
and it's kind of nice, and
it's like you can't do anything anyway.

385
00:29:00,559 --> 00:29:07,839
And so maybe maybe there's something really
reassuring about having this ancient ossified bag

386
00:29:07,839 --> 00:29:11,160
of bones in the oval office and
this like monster dragon on the outside,

387
00:29:11,759 --> 00:29:15,680
and it's kind of keeps everything.
Everybody in line, right, I mean,

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00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:19,279
Republicans are in line. And it
took how many Republicans have dodged the

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00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:26,559
even Mike Pence, I mean arguably
someone that his boss, the President of

390
00:29:26,559 --> 00:29:32,279
the United States, he said they
should hang and even he won't name him.

391
00:29:32,359 --> 00:29:36,599
In a Wall Street Journal editory,
he refers to a leading presidential candidate.

392
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:44,160
I mean, the weird, cowardice
and unique disease that's I said affected

393
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:45,480
both these parties. That's I guess
that's why I'm saying. It's like,

394
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:48,599
how can this last? I mean, no, monetary systems don't last,

395
00:29:48,599 --> 00:29:52,640
political parties don't lat. These things
don't last. They almost always refreshed.

396
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:56,279
Are we at a period where they're
going to be refreshed or is it more

397
00:29:56,400 --> 00:29:59,680
like, well, we'll just be
filled with different people, because it doesn't

398
00:29:59,680 --> 00:30:02,640
seem like about to be filled with
different people. Yeah, there is sort

399
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:08,799
of this pathology in both parties in
which the worst, the worst thing on

400
00:30:08,799 --> 00:30:14,160
earth is to be blamed or criticized
for anything. So like, I really

401
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:18,039
saw it in a in a sort
of gruesome way during the pandemic when I'm

402
00:30:18,119 --> 00:30:22,880
we're just following the science, like
it's it's those guys over there telling us

403
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:26,240
what. We have no capacity to
make any decisions. So look, don't

404
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:29,960
don't yell at us. We we
we don't. We We just believe in

405
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:33,839
science, Okay, And you see
that across across the board in all sorts

406
00:30:33,839 --> 00:30:40,440
of ways, and and it may
be that what what our politics is headed

407
00:30:40,480 --> 00:30:45,319
to is just to have this sort
of debilitated figurehead off in an attic somewhere

408
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:48,880
that we call the president, and
sure you can get mad at him if

409
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:52,720
you want, but we're doing what
we want. And when you get mad,

410
00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:56,960
you know somebody, somebody's fault,
and that that's the that's the dynamic

411
00:30:57,000 --> 00:31:03,599
with the administrative state. You know, we don't actually make decisions. It's

412
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:07,720
all the regulators at the EPA and
so on, and there's no accountability.

413
00:31:07,759 --> 00:31:11,119
There's not only no accountability, there
doesn't seem to be a demand for accountability.

414
00:31:11,440 --> 00:31:15,559
If we had a national, nationwide
movement that wanted to interrogate every aspect

415
00:31:15,599 --> 00:31:19,400
of the coronavirus handling, maybe we
would learn something. Maybe there would be

416
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:22,880
some people who would do the sensible
thing and performer ritual disemboweling of themselves,

417
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:26,720
you know, in the old Japanese
style, and be shamed and be drummed

418
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:30,200
out. Rob has spoken about one
of the things that bothers him about the

419
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:34,680
two thousand and eight financial crisis.
There wasn't enough bankers jumping out of windows,

420
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:38,240
paraded around in hairshoots humiliated for what
they did, we just went on.

421
00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:42,119
So there's no institutional accountability at a
time when we seem to have no

422
00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:48,079
faith whatsoever in any of our institutions, they having failed us spectacularly in all

423
00:31:48,079 --> 00:31:52,480
the way. So it breeds.
It seems sort of a passivity in the

424
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:55,519
electorate, which, as you spoke
before about the gift that Donald Trump was

425
00:31:55,599 --> 00:31:57,880
in twenty sixteen, is an excellent
opportunity for this other, for this great

426
00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:02,079
force to I'm in and flood.
But when it comes to nobody having the

427
00:32:02,079 --> 00:32:06,559
temerity to go up against the old
bag of bones in the attic, is

428
00:32:06,559 --> 00:32:13,039
it because now we are sort of
post American institution and figuring that if the

429
00:32:13,079 --> 00:32:16,759
Democrats find a way to plug Gavin
Knewsom in, that's fine. And Newsom

430
00:32:16,839 --> 00:32:21,359
thinks that he doesn't have to go
through the usual processes, that he can

431
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:23,599
just be plugged in, that that's
fine. And so we come up with,

432
00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:27,920
you know, what began as a
fairly rigorous way to run a country

433
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:30,480
ends up with a year of four
emperors. Not a question so much as

434
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:34,680
a speech. But I'm sure you
can probably speech though you can pull something

435
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:37,559
out of it that can be answered
to it you may say anything you wish.

436
00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:45,720
Barton. Yeah, well it's all
very depressing, Thank you very much.

437
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:47,400
That's Parton's way. We can read
him in the Wall Street. I'm

438
00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:53,400
sorry, Gone, Yeah, this
is actually one reason I sort of I

439
00:32:53,440 --> 00:33:00,960
have an eccentric fear of AI.
I mean eccentric in the sense that it's

440
00:33:00,039 --> 00:33:05,279
not a fear that that is shared
by other people. But I think that

441
00:33:05,279 --> 00:33:12,960
that AI is the perfect avenue to
avoid all accountability forever and completely right,

442
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:17,559
because you know, the algorithm said
to do it, and it's not our

443
00:33:17,599 --> 00:33:24,720
fault. So God only knows what
government folly could be excused by an algorithm.

444
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:29,519
Barton, I have two questions for
you. The second one concerns you,

445
00:33:29,599 --> 00:33:32,119
but the first one is returning us
to Donald Trump in the State of

446
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:38,640
the country. You said, but
did not follow up on, that you

447
00:33:38,759 --> 00:33:45,319
thought the Democrats or at least the
Progressive secretly want Donald Trump to become president

448
00:33:45,359 --> 00:33:50,000
again. That is an idea that
had simply not crossed my mind. Could

449
00:33:50,039 --> 00:33:53,759
you explain that? Well, you
know, people want things without knowing that

450
00:33:53,799 --> 00:34:02,400
they want them. Yes, the
know it's more fun. For one thing,

451
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:07,199
It's just generally more fun in a
lot of ways to be in the

452
00:34:07,239 --> 00:34:12,880
opposition, and it is in power. In your power, you have to

453
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:16,480
defend everything, and you have to
make excuses for your mistakes, and you

454
00:34:16,519 --> 00:34:24,559
have to, you know, spin
everything. And when you are in in

455
00:34:24,639 --> 00:34:30,280
opposition, you get to you get
no accountability and you get to criticize everything.

456
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:40,599
And look, if there's one thing
that unites all progressives and liberals,

457
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:45,800
it is the need to be outraged. They love it and they always have

458
00:34:46,559 --> 00:34:52,119
and I think that at the end
of the Obama's second term, the things

459
00:34:52,159 --> 00:34:57,360
to be outraged about were really small, you know, we were talking about

460
00:34:57,360 --> 00:35:04,679
like transgender bathrooms and stuff like that. Right just just wasn't satisfying. And

461
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:09,960
when Trump got elected, it was
like, oh, man, carry us

462
00:35:10,119 --> 00:35:15,000
a long way. And I think
they had a blast, loved it.

463
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:27,079
Are you kidding him? It was
just the smartest sport of outrage and every

464
00:35:27,159 --> 00:35:32,440
day and now with Biden being a
complete embarrassment, it's it's just not fun.

465
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:37,079
So yeah, I think that they'd
be happy with it. The right

466
00:35:37,159 --> 00:35:40,679
is prone to its daily outrageous too, though. I mean, if you

467
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:45,519
hang around Twitter long enough, you
see that we have our own version of

468
00:35:45,599 --> 00:35:49,599
the thing that we just simply cannot
believe now in the case of you know,

469
00:35:50,199 --> 00:35:52,440
the Trump years, it was something
that Trump said her in all caps

470
00:35:52,559 --> 00:35:54,119
rant, or it was this that
or the other thing. It wasn't necessarily

471
00:35:54,159 --> 00:35:58,960
always a policy issue. But we
have those two and maybe for good reason,

472
00:35:59,559 --> 00:36:02,559
because there is a lot going on
on a daily basis that we ought

473
00:36:02,639 --> 00:36:07,719
to be outraged about and not lose
our ability to do so. I think

474
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:14,880
what distinguishes right and left and in
this way is that the left cannot concede

475
00:36:14,920 --> 00:36:21,920
that anything is good, right,
very bad at all times. And and

476
00:36:21,920 --> 00:36:27,679
and the right is is fully capable
of acknowledging distinguishing between the good and the

477
00:36:27,719 --> 00:36:32,480
bad, which is, you know, the proper way to live. So

478
00:36:32,559 --> 00:36:37,280
but yeah, we we do have
our our our need for outrage. I

479
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:45,679
guess, although I would caution against
uh looking at Twitter for any reason at

480
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:52,880
all. That's very wise. So
Barton my second here's my second question.

481
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:59,400
This is a question about Barton Swain. The journalism business model has collapsed.

482
00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:04,480
All journalists who want to make a
career of it need a constant presence on

483
00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:09,280
Twitter. They've got to get a
television contract with Fox News. They need

484
00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:15,840
to establish a substack. And you're
not doing any of this. There you

485
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:20,119
are seated at home in South Carolina. By the way, they also need

486
00:37:20,159 --> 00:37:24,159
to be in Washington. There,
you are seated in South Carolina, and

487
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:32,880
you're a newspaperman. You're a newspaperman. Furthermore, you take books so seriously

488
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:38,400
that you wrote one brilliant book,
so beautifully written. As a fellow writer,

489
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:43,760
I'm forced to hate you. You
wrote one, and you review books,

490
00:37:44,039 --> 00:37:47,119
and you take the ideas in those
books seriously, and you even comment

491
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:54,159
on how well they're put together.
Art and Swain you are. You are

492
00:37:54,199 --> 00:38:00,280
a nineteenth century man. What the
hell do you think you're doing? Go

493
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:07,719
on, go on. You're putting
your faith in newspapers and the written word.

494
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:14,280
Well, yeah, that's a that's
a topic, uh, the written

495
00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:20,159
word. I heard this interview with
your old friend Peter teal years ago in

496
00:38:20,199 --> 00:38:25,199
which he said that if anytime he's
interviewing, uh, someone you know,

497
00:38:25,280 --> 00:38:29,199
for a for a position or something, he says, tell me of you

498
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:34,760
that you hold that nobody else holds. You know, that that would be

499
00:38:35,199 --> 00:38:38,119
that would be widely panned if if
anybody knew you held it. And he

500
00:38:38,199 --> 00:38:40,760
said, usually, you know,
they come out with things that a lot

501
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:44,440
of people actually believe, you know, racism is a bad or something.

502
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:47,920
If I had to answer that question, it would be that there is a

503
00:38:49,079 --> 00:38:54,280
future in newspapers, which is probably
actually probably that's the dumbest view ever.

504
00:38:54,599 --> 00:39:00,079
But and when I say papers,
I mean I mean print papers. And

505
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:05,119
that is just because when you I'll
put it this way. From time to

506
00:39:05,159 --> 00:39:07,880
time I tell people that they say
what do you do? And I say,

507
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:08,800
I work for the Wall Street Journal
And they say, you know,

508
00:39:09,199 --> 00:39:13,440
so so you write for them?
I say yes, and they say like

509
00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:19,199
online and I say no, I
mean in the print paper and they say,

510
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:22,320
oh wow, oh okay. And
so what I what I glean from

511
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:28,840
that reaction is that people when people
see something in print, they think,

512
00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:35,960
well, somebody took the time to
edit this into shape and uh, and

513
00:39:36,159 --> 00:39:42,599
spend the capital necessary to deliver it
somewhere on actual paper, So it must

514
00:39:42,639 --> 00:39:47,519
be important. And when you encounter
something online and you know that it's only

515
00:39:47,599 --> 00:39:52,840
online, it may be excellent,
and often it is excellent, but you

516
00:39:52,920 --> 00:40:00,639
also know that all somebody had to
do is type it into an application and

517
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:07,639
hit you know, post, and
that's it. And so I think that

518
00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:16,440
over time there print print papers will
come back print magazines and papers. The

519
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:23,960
demand will slowly, slowly re emerge. So I have some I have some

520
00:40:24,119 --> 00:40:29,199
very bad news for you, because
I get the Wall Street Journal and delivered

521
00:40:29,239 --> 00:40:31,280
to my door every day, and
if it's something that I'm doing, I

522
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:36,719
guarantee you it's not on its a
way to becoming a trend. I'm usually

523
00:40:36,760 --> 00:40:39,719
the guy turning off the lights.
Yeah, yeah, so Barton, Tom

524
00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:44,519
Wolfe told me the story that he
was working at the New York Herald Tribune

525
00:40:45,199 --> 00:40:50,320
when John Kennedy was killed and they
listened to it in the newsroom on the

526
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:54,039
radio. I think there was a
television they watched Cronkite pronounced Kennedy dead,

527
00:40:54,960 --> 00:41:00,880
and Tom had this sinking feeling that
he was witnessing the death of news papers.

528
00:41:00,079 --> 00:41:07,400
Here was a major event that had
taken place, and it was broadcast

529
00:41:07,519 --> 00:41:15,199
rather than And then as he walked
home to his apartment, there were lines

530
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:20,159
around the block at every news stand
for the evening edition newspapers, right,

531
00:41:20,519 --> 00:41:25,920
because it wasn't real until people had
read it in print. Still valid,

532
00:41:27,159 --> 00:41:36,280
Still valid, Marton, Yeah,
yeah, I think that's still valid,

533
00:41:36,880 --> 00:41:40,800
all right. Maybe not for the
immediacy, you know, the web takes

534
00:41:40,800 --> 00:41:46,519
care of the immediacy. But if
you if you really want to know something,

535
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:54,239
everybody knows that you have to Not
everybody admits, but everybody knows you

536
00:41:54,280 --> 00:41:59,239
have to read it on a physical
thing. It may be a mental take.

537
00:41:59,360 --> 00:42:05,960
Just with me, but I cannot
remember anything I've read online more than

538
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:10,000
six months ago. Nothing, It's
all just a blur. I can remember

539
00:42:10,079 --> 00:42:19,360
things that I read in Commentary magazine
in nineteen ninety six and be able more

540
00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:22,320
or less to find it on the
page. I mean, it's not a

541
00:42:23,039 --> 00:42:29,079
memory. But you know, you
oftentimes you remember things that well from long

542
00:42:29,119 --> 00:42:31,199
ago, and yeah, you consulted. Maybe it's not exactly you know,

543
00:42:31,239 --> 00:42:35,639
the way you remember it, but
you do remember it. No clue what

544
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:40,599
I read last year online. So
there's hope. There's hope, depends as

545
00:42:40,639 --> 00:42:45,800
there is. I agree. Walter
Kern American Writers has started his own little

546
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:51,239
newspaper with somebody else who's name escapes
me, and it comes out periodically,

547
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:53,880
and it's an attempt to revive the
newspaper as it used to be a community

548
00:42:53,920 --> 00:42:59,199
sort of conversation. It's not online
that paper, No, it's not.

549
00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:00,480
No, it is printed. It's
like the way things used to be we're

550
00:43:00,519 --> 00:43:02,400
going to cut down a tree,
We're gonna pulp it, We're gonna ship

551
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:05,920
it here, we're gonna spell it
full of ink, and then it's going

552
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:07,880
to run through this enormous machine.
It's going to be mechanically folded, put

553
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:10,760
it into trucks, dropped off its
street corners, and urchins will deliver it

554
00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:14,159
to your door, which is still
kind of how we do it here at

555
00:43:14,159 --> 00:43:16,159
the newspaper where I am. But
we all know where print is going.

556
00:43:16,519 --> 00:43:21,559
We all have seen where the line
is going, and it's writing a demographic

557
00:43:21,559 --> 00:43:22,840
down into the graveyard, and we
have to figure out how to get new

558
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:28,000
people and eyeballs to use those wretched
terms to the website, where everything,

559
00:43:28,079 --> 00:43:30,679
as you point out correctly is digital
and weightless, it doesn't have the same

560
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:34,760
thing, the same heft. So
the question is whether or not we can

561
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:37,519
keep the shells of the institutions alive
long enough to repopulate them with people who

562
00:43:37,559 --> 00:43:40,840
realize that there is something there,
and also to do it in a way

563
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:45,199
that seems counterintuitive. The Wall Street
Journal is a great newspaper. It's broad

564
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:49,480
is it has depth, that has
intelligence and trust its audience, and it's

565
00:43:49,519 --> 00:43:51,679
got a lot of stuff in it. I go to the UK and I

566
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:54,559
see the Telegraph and I just marvel
at this huge saddle blanket that I can

567
00:43:54,639 --> 00:43:59,199
unfurl. It's got all kinds of
stories and the serendipity of going to here

568
00:43:59,280 --> 00:44:00,519
to there and find something on the
jump and the rest of it is an

569
00:44:00,559 --> 00:44:04,840
experience that cannot be reproduced on the
web or you're just simply a flea on

570
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:07,519
a hot plate. So a last
question, then, do you think that

571
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:14,519
that the newspaper industry as we know
today has to shutters and die and then

572
00:44:14,559 --> 00:44:17,599
something comes out of the ashes,
or can we slow the decline and repopulate

573
00:44:17,639 --> 00:44:22,960
it. That's that's my last that's
my last sermon masquerading as a question.

574
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:28,880
I don't know is the answer,
but okay, yeah I don't either,

575
00:44:29,079 --> 00:44:35,559
really don't. But I think that
So I've always wondered if there's if there's

576
00:44:35,599 --> 00:44:38,519
a way to if one business model, and I don't maybe this has been

577
00:44:38,559 --> 00:44:44,239
tried, is to charge. This
would work only at a local level,

578
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:51,360
I think, but that but that's
that's where that's where newspapers that they're going

579
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:53,559
to be revived would need to be
revived, and that's the local papers.

580
00:44:53,559 --> 00:44:58,360
So people know what this school board
is doing or whatever is. There is

581
00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:04,599
one business model to arge for the
online sub but to get the paper for

582
00:45:04,639 --> 00:45:09,559
free. So maybe delivery would be
a problem. But on any newstand,

583
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:13,920
the actual paper would be free.
But if you want to see it,

584
00:45:14,000 --> 00:45:16,159
you know, if you like the
instantaneousness and all of the rest of it,

585
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:20,280
you want it on your phone,
your desktop, You're gonna have to

586
00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:24,039
pay and pay a lot. So
these outlets are going to have to experiment

587
00:45:24,079 --> 00:45:30,679
with different, different business models.
But I think that just the demand for

588
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:34,280
news hasn't gone down. I have
a little wrinkle on that to suggest I

589
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:37,320
personally would be willing to pay not
to have the New York Times delivered.

590
00:45:38,079 --> 00:45:42,280
Just a thought for you there,
Bertie, or we switched our model to

591
00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:46,480
a dog wasteed disposal envelope system and
then give the newspaper for free. Well,

592
00:45:47,079 --> 00:45:52,880
I stopped my New York Times print
subscription only because the art section.

593
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:55,000
You know, I have kids in
the house. Come on, I don't

594
00:45:55,039 --> 00:46:02,360
want born lying around. Well,
I still get it because I love doing

595
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:08,360
the Crossroad puzzle on paper. And
that's that. So so I I well,

596
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:10,360
well, a question before before we
go, because I know we gotta,

597
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:13,760
we gotta let you go. And
I keep asking the same question,

598
00:46:13,800 --> 00:46:16,239
but it seems to me like there's
a market opportunity. Right, Well,

599
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:21,039
you look at the where where is
there? Where is there no one in

600
00:46:21,159 --> 00:46:27,119
politics everyone has has basically the same
thing. This is great, big center,

601
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:30,079
right, This is great, big
kind of shrugging center there. You

602
00:46:30,119 --> 00:46:34,119
know, the pro life pro choice
movement is pretty much abortion is pretty much

603
00:46:34,119 --> 00:46:37,320
a great example of that that.
Americans are kind of clustered in a very

604
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:43,360
very very big, fat center,
and they are looking for a party to

605
00:46:43,440 --> 00:46:45,840
speak to that and need a party
seems to be doing that right. Half

606
00:46:46,039 --> 00:46:50,400
the Republicans are saying things like life
begins the conception, they don't like that,

607
00:46:50,639 --> 00:46:52,039
and the Democrats are saying you should
be able to have an abortion the

608
00:46:52,199 --> 00:46:58,400
you know, second year of birth
of life. Right. Essentially, isn't

609
00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:04,679
that emblematic of politics in general?
I mean, isn't somebody gonna gonna jump

610
00:47:04,719 --> 00:47:07,719
on this? Does does it seem
like? I mean, I don't,

611
00:47:07,840 --> 00:47:13,119
I guess I'm just I'm looking at
economically, there's a market, there are

612
00:47:13,119 --> 00:47:15,599
buyers out there. Yeah, yeah, I mean with with the with the

613
00:47:15,639 --> 00:47:22,239
example of abortion, there's this difference. Uh that people don't want to talk

614
00:47:22,239 --> 00:47:25,199
about abortion. That's true. Most
people are in the middle. But they

615
00:47:25,239 --> 00:47:29,360
also don't like to talk about it. They don't like to debate it,

616
00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:34,559
they don't want to argue about it, and so and so that that that

617
00:47:34,679 --> 00:47:37,599
leaves that leaves a hole in the
middle for people who do want to argue

618
00:47:37,599 --> 00:47:42,679
about it to get in to take
all the action. But I mean,

619
00:47:42,760 --> 00:47:46,559
I think on economic issues, the
market is there, and you know,

620
00:47:46,639 --> 00:47:52,159
it's a it's a it's a matter
of reforming the institutions, particularly Congress,

621
00:47:52,639 --> 00:48:04,039
to to actually make these debates real
and simply use their offices as juve all

622
00:48:04,079 --> 00:48:10,159
evince as platforms for a national audience. So we just need to to figure

623
00:48:10,199 --> 00:48:15,800
out a way to make our institutions, particularly Congress, functioning the way they

624
00:48:15,800 --> 00:48:20,440
were intended. That'll be great.
Let's reform our institutions and make them work.

625
00:48:20,719 --> 00:48:23,719
I think we can probably get that
done by the end of the month,

626
00:48:24,039 --> 00:48:30,840
and we redouble our efforts. Great
prescriptions and great ideas you can find

627
00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:32,840
them at the Wall Street Journal.
Under Barton's Ways is a byline also that

628
00:48:34,039 --> 00:48:37,039
the author of the speech, writer
of brief education on Politics and the latest

629
00:48:37,039 --> 00:48:39,400
pieces Joe Biden's iron grip on his
party. As you can tell by this

630
00:48:39,480 --> 00:48:44,719
wide ranging conversations, He's adept in
a variety of arena and we thank him

631
00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:47,280
for coming and we look forward to
having you on again. Gentlemen, Thank

632
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:52,960
you, Thanks Marton. All right, take care man the next time.

633
00:48:52,039 --> 00:48:54,960
Perhaps if you're going to quote Peter
Lorrie, I think you have to do

634
00:48:55,000 --> 00:49:00,760
it in a Peter Lorrie voice.
Yes, I think you do a nice,

635
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:05,119
nice Peter. It's right the lie, you know, I always thought

636
00:49:05,119 --> 00:49:07,760
the line was you just I know
you despise me, Rick, but it's

637
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:10,519
not. It's a what did I
think? Well, in any case,

638
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:15,039
Laurie was great. I love Peter
Laurie in that movie. And I was

639
00:49:15,079 --> 00:49:19,360
just thinking about Casablanca the other day, what an American treasure it is,

640
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:22,440
and how the fact that it was
just a wrote studio product that just became

641
00:49:22,480 --> 00:49:29,320
inhabited by the best people who could
possibly do any of those roles, and

642
00:49:29,360 --> 00:49:31,440
how they never managed to do it
again. And they kept trying, didn't

643
00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:36,199
they. I mean, Robbie would
know better than I. But they when

644
00:49:36,199 --> 00:49:38,119
something works, they turn around and
say, well, let's do that again.

645
00:49:39,079 --> 00:49:43,280
As we seeded diminishing effects with the
Marvel world. But we don't see

646
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:45,800
that is with you know, when
a conservative movie hits, the studios don't

647
00:49:45,880 --> 00:49:49,360
say, hey, what was a
little lightning in a bottle that they captured

648
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:51,840
there? Let's see if we can
do some of that before we go.

649
00:49:51,920 --> 00:49:55,719
Then a brief account of how our
things in the entertainment industry right now.

650
00:49:57,840 --> 00:50:00,039
You are keeping your eye in the
strike in the summer box. I'm on

651
00:50:00,159 --> 00:50:04,480
strike. Has anybody learned anything or
does anybody know anything? Or is it

652
00:50:04,519 --> 00:50:06,480
still know? No, nobody does
anything learned anything. I mean, I

653
00:50:06,519 --> 00:50:09,559
think the it's coming down to two
big issues. And you know, it

654
00:50:09,599 --> 00:50:15,960
depends on you know, it depends
on it depends on how how the market

655
00:50:15,079 --> 00:50:22,559
reacts to the continued shutdown, depends
on what happens when everybody realizes that if

656
00:50:22,559 --> 00:50:28,400
you backdate from summer twenty twenty four, you figure that your movies have to

657
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:31,440
be either in production or finished in
post production right now, and they're not.

658
00:50:31,559 --> 00:50:37,639
So, you know, the long
term, the tail effect of a

659
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:42,000
strike is continues and lingers, and
you know you're seeing I think a lot

660
00:50:42,079 --> 00:50:45,599
of sort of what they call M
and a activity. Well, I think

661
00:50:45,679 --> 00:50:50,079
less M and a and more breaking
up is going to be happening, and

662
00:50:50,119 --> 00:50:53,880
that's going to be great. The
future of show business is going to be

663
00:50:54,800 --> 00:50:59,800
not six big companies, but twenty
seven thousand little companies, because that's what

664
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:05,679
show business the most efficient. And
I think we're also seeing things like the

665
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:10,480
as you mentioned, you mentioned a
movie that did very well this summer.

666
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:15,920
I think it's maybe the third biggest
movie is called Sound of Freedom, and

667
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:17,960
it was I happen to know a
lot about a movie because a good friend

668
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:21,760
of mine wrote it. I'm writing
a piece about up for commentary and I'm

669
00:51:22,079 --> 00:51:25,079
doing Martini shot about it next week
next week. Probably the guy who wrote

670
00:51:25,079 --> 00:51:35,360
it is a believing Catholic, a
practicing Roman Catholic, as is the dog.

671
00:51:35,400 --> 00:51:37,840
I don't, I don't. I
don't know whether Jim Caviezels are Roman

672
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:43,119
Catholic specifically, but you know,
okay, I know he's devout. I

673
00:51:43,159 --> 00:51:49,719
don't know if he's the archives.
There's a little little weirdly okay. Uh.

674
00:51:49,760 --> 00:51:52,039
And so they made a movie,
and they're gonna make about two hundrellion

675
00:51:52,039 --> 00:51:55,760
dollars domestically this year, which is
a lot. Uh. And the distributor

676
00:51:55,840 --> 00:52:00,760
Angels' notice that James is or that
Rob is a little uncertain about the religion,

677
00:52:00,800 --> 00:52:02,679
but he knows exactly how much money. Yeah, well, I know

678
00:52:02,679 --> 00:52:07,320
he's Catholic, but I mean I
do know people I know some Catholics in

679
00:52:07,840 --> 00:52:15,760
that know him that that are not
Roman Catholic. They differ. So there's

680
00:52:15,760 --> 00:52:19,360
that and uh and but the movie
itself is just a really really great thriller,

681
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:22,360
and it's a true story, and
the guy it's based on, who's

682
00:52:22,400 --> 00:52:25,559
a real person, is also a
believing Catholic. There really is nothing particularly

683
00:52:25,559 --> 00:52:30,360
faith based about the Sound of Freedom. The next movie they're making, or

684
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:35,480
this Maide is coming out of March, is called The Cabrini and the trailer

685
00:52:35,719 --> 00:52:43,320
looks spectacular about Mother Cabrini, who
was very sort of first American Saint.

686
00:52:43,320 --> 00:52:45,599
I think, Peter, why am
I doing this Roman Catholic stuff, Peter,

687
00:52:45,599 --> 00:52:51,480
you should be jumping in so there. But my friend who wrote it,

688
00:52:51,599 --> 00:52:54,199
Rod Barr, who's a wonderful,
wonderful writer, said he's not sure

689
00:52:54,360 --> 00:53:02,400
that these big companies could even release
some movie like that and afford it.

690
00:53:02,400 --> 00:53:07,440
It's just too risky and small.
So we're a movie that did really well

691
00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:08,880
in the movie theater, by the
way, two hundred million dollars, which

692
00:53:08,920 --> 00:53:14,039
is pretty good in movie theater.
When the conventional wisdom was no only big

693
00:53:14,079 --> 00:53:16,880
movies with marvels, whatever could be
in the movie in the movie theaters,

694
00:53:17,360 --> 00:53:22,119
there'd be no way for them to
release it to the larger public because it

695
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:25,400
had to start in a certain place, kind of following the old Tyler Perry

696
00:53:25,960 --> 00:53:30,239
model, which as you start small
with a small audience, you and you

697
00:53:30,280 --> 00:53:34,719
grow the audience, and a big
company like Disney simply just can't wrap your

698
00:53:34,719 --> 00:53:39,440
head around it, which creates a
huge opportunity for people to make real movies

699
00:53:39,599 --> 00:53:44,159
that are good and can go in
the movie theater and make hundreds and hundreds

700
00:53:44,159 --> 00:53:46,119
of months. And there's space for
that now because companies like Disney have just

701
00:53:47,079 --> 00:53:52,280
poisoned their brand. Manesque before we
go. I mean, I had I

702
00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:57,679
grew up with a great fellow feeling
for for you know, Uncle Walt in

703
00:53:57,719 --> 00:54:00,280
the house every Sunday night, and
then I kind of sort of fell away

704
00:54:00,280 --> 00:54:02,119
when I grew up. But then
I had a child, and all of

705
00:54:02,199 --> 00:54:07,599
a sudden, I'm rediscovering this great
backstory of the catalog of American wonderfulness and

706
00:54:08,039 --> 00:54:12,920
learning about that, and enjoying going
to Disney World and marveling at the efficient

707
00:54:13,039 --> 00:54:16,599
machine, the money extraction machine that
this is, while still finding myself in

708
00:54:16,639 --> 00:54:21,599
a dark room somewhere in a little
off of Main Street spaghetti place, watching

709
00:54:22,239 --> 00:54:25,280
watching Flowers and Trees, one of
their earlier color numbers, and just you

710
00:54:25,320 --> 00:54:30,559
know, just enjoying the whole Disney
thing. And now it's just weird to

711
00:54:30,599 --> 00:54:35,679
me, not just the whole place, it's just it's just got a whiff

712
00:54:35,800 --> 00:54:39,000
about it that I just don't like, and I don't think a lot about

713
00:54:39,039 --> 00:54:43,360
it. But if that's if that's
hit me, who was a you know,

714
00:54:43,400 --> 00:54:45,320
a Disney fan, not a supern
You know, I'm not going to

715
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:46,400
go there in the mouse hears and
propose to my wife in front of the

716
00:54:46,400 --> 00:54:50,320
Magic Kingdom. But I love the
place and everything about it, And now

717
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:54,239
I'm just I don't care if they
sunder and fall into the ocean. Well,

718
00:54:54,280 --> 00:54:57,880
I mean that may be true,
all that could be true. I'm

719
00:54:57,920 --> 00:55:01,199
just making a business argument, which
is that these big companies have big channels

720
00:55:01,199 --> 00:55:06,119
and they can only do big things
in a big way, and they really

721
00:55:06,159 --> 00:55:08,079
rearrange themselves for that. I mean, I mean, we're using I'm using

722
00:55:08,119 --> 00:55:10,199
disease an example, but you could
say the same thing about so and you

723
00:55:10,239 --> 00:55:13,800
can say the same thing about comcasts. You say the same thing about Warner

724
00:55:13,800 --> 00:55:17,280
Brother's Discovery. They're just too big
and they think that's going to that adds,

725
00:55:17,360 --> 00:55:22,039
gives them efficiencies, but I think
it really doesn't. In a way,

726
00:55:22,039 --> 00:55:25,920
it opens up the market to a
lot of movie makers, like the

727
00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:30,559
people who made Sound Freedom and Gabrini, to do like incredible movies. Looks

728
00:55:30,559 --> 00:55:31,960
not a Freedom is just a really
good thriller you can want. You can

729
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:37,199
go in and eat your popcorn and
watch a hero do something heroic and saves

730
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:39,920
children, and then you know,
you cheer and you walk out, and

731
00:55:42,320 --> 00:55:45,000
that that's a business argument. And
you may be right about the other argument,

732
00:55:45,039 --> 00:55:49,800
but it's not. It isn't as
if there's some very exact, exact

733
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:55,519
parallel here in Silicon Valley sequoia of
venture capital became too big. If you're

734
00:55:55,519 --> 00:56:00,760
managing billions and billions of dollars,
you can only do really big deals,

735
00:56:00,440 --> 00:56:04,920
and those are not where the returns
are. The returns are these little upstart

736
00:56:04,960 --> 00:56:07,639
companies that you want to get them
in. They're same same kind of thing.

737
00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:12,840
If you're big. If you're managing
huge amounts of money, then the

738
00:56:12,920 --> 00:56:17,480
executives can very easily convince themselves they
need big bets, and that means things

739
00:56:17,519 --> 00:56:22,119
that aren't as risk they need to
deploy anyway. You get the pictures same

740
00:56:22,079 --> 00:56:24,840
here. Yes, that's true.
You I mean you need size because you

741
00:56:24,880 --> 00:56:29,239
need financial resources to do some things. Although I still don't understand why digital

742
00:56:29,239 --> 00:56:31,079
movies cost so much. I mean, it's not like you have to build

743
00:56:31,159 --> 00:56:35,840
the sets physically. But if there
were three things you would ask me twenty

744
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:37,960
years ago that I absolutely would love
for the rest of my entire life,

745
00:56:38,079 --> 00:56:43,079
besides the Disney catalog, it would
be Star Wars because I grew up with

746
00:56:43,119 --> 00:56:45,599
it and I will love it even
though they did stupid things with it.

747
00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:47,320
It would be Marveled because I grew
up with the cartoons and my god,

748
00:56:47,360 --> 00:56:50,960
I love that Iron Man and the
fourth thing was so great. And it

749
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:53,519
would be Pixar because it was the
genius home of storytelling, the likes of

750
00:56:53,559 --> 00:56:57,960
which we hadn't seen in our entire
lives. And what now happens. I

751
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:02,639
look at Disney Plus on my bill, which is Pixar, Marvel and Star

752
00:57:02,679 --> 00:57:07,039
Wars, and I went eh,
and I canceled it. I did too,

753
00:57:07,239 --> 00:57:09,719
just a couple of months ago.
It was exactly because they happening.

754
00:57:10,039 --> 00:57:15,000
They had leached out every element of
goodwill and interest that I had through a

755
00:57:15,039 --> 00:57:21,119
combination of ideological, emotional storytelling decisions
that had nothing to do with the size.

756
00:57:21,159 --> 00:57:25,599
And my point to that is this
the golden era of Hollywood's There wasn't

757
00:57:25,639 --> 00:57:30,320
any such but in the studio system
they had size. But they also had

758
00:57:30,760 --> 00:57:35,920
a certain way of looking at the
audience and the culture and their role in

759
00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:40,320
it that enabled them to turn stuff
out. It wasn't all Casablanca, but

760
00:57:40,360 --> 00:57:45,239
the stuff below it was watchable,
and part of it I almost sound like

761
00:57:45,239 --> 00:57:47,480
Peter and Robinson there. It was
watchable, and you would go to the

762
00:57:47,480 --> 00:57:52,760
theater and sit there for the newsreel
and the cartoon and the short feature and

763
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:55,840
the programmer and the big thing,
and that was your night. And that

764
00:57:55,920 --> 00:58:00,320
was big. And they owned the
theaters and they owned the actors, and

765
00:58:00,440 --> 00:58:05,119
Bigness worked because of the culture and
the attitudes of the people who were running

766
00:58:05,159 --> 00:58:07,000
the show. Says me, what
do I know, Well, I mean,

767
00:58:07,039 --> 00:58:12,000
I think that's I think it's partially
true. They didn't own the theaters

768
00:58:12,000 --> 00:58:15,760
in the thirties, they were bought
busted, and they couldn't block book and

769
00:58:15,800 --> 00:58:17,880
they owned the actors. But that
was like the actors like that because they

770
00:58:17,920 --> 00:58:22,039
got these giant fact contracts and they
had to do certain certain movies, but

771
00:58:22,280 --> 00:58:25,639
they put the two things that were
different. One is they made tons of

772
00:58:25,679 --> 00:58:30,119
movies. They made tons of pictures, like the Paramount released fifty pictures a

773
00:58:30,199 --> 00:58:38,679
year and then not including b movies. And they were terrible, terrible investments.

774
00:58:39,480 --> 00:58:45,559
So nobody in a Wall Street thought
of investing in these crazy companies.

775
00:58:45,599 --> 00:58:51,000
They were run by people, and
there was cash flow business and individuals got

776
00:58:51,119 --> 00:58:53,199
very, very rich, but shareholders
there weren't any. They didn't They didn't

777
00:58:53,199 --> 00:58:58,920
really start getting interested in show business
until the sixties. And every single acquisition,

778
00:58:59,000 --> 00:59:01,320
major acquisition of a company, of
a large company, of a studio,

779
00:59:01,400 --> 00:59:07,320
and it in tears. There isn't
one that hasn't yet. So the

780
00:59:07,400 --> 00:59:12,559
reality is that show business were The
argument you're making that they were big was

781
00:59:12,599 --> 00:59:16,400
like, but they were small,
and they had a bunch of little little

782
00:59:16,519 --> 00:59:22,440
contraptions within it, and decisions were
not they were not vertically integrated, and

783
00:59:22,679 --> 00:59:27,559
they made so many movies that there
was no top down supervision of the movies.

784
00:59:27,559 --> 00:59:30,199
There's no marketing department that read a
script before they made it. It

785
00:59:30,239 --> 00:59:32,960
was all kind of It was show
business the way it's supposed to be,

786
00:59:34,400 --> 00:59:38,679
and it totally worked. And I
think what's broken about it now is that

787
00:59:38,719 --> 00:59:43,480
you have a bunch of people who
think that if only I was in charge

788
00:59:43,519 --> 00:59:49,519
of everything, then I wouldn't make
any mistakes. And that is just not

789
00:59:49,639 --> 00:59:52,480
efficient way to run a movie studio
or a TV studio. It's just isn't

790
00:59:52,639 --> 00:59:55,199
like you gotta like make some room
for some mistakes, which means vertical integration

791
00:59:55,239 --> 01:00:01,320
is a disaster. And it used
to be a law that financial interests and

792
01:00:01,360 --> 01:00:06,000
occasion rules that Nixon put into place
in the early seventies because he wanted to

793
01:00:06,000 --> 01:00:08,320
punish the TV networks, so he
said that you can't own any TV shows

794
01:00:08,679 --> 01:00:12,880
and then there was deregulation, which
I'm in favor of the de regulation of

795
01:00:12,880 --> 01:00:15,840
it, but that doesn't mean that
just because you're not regulated from doing something,

796
01:00:15,880 --> 01:00:17,719
you should do it. And everyone
thought, oh, you know what,

797
01:00:17,920 --> 01:00:22,800
So so you have this bizarre moment
where because of low interest rates,

798
01:00:22,960 --> 01:00:30,159
Netflix could go to Ball Street and
raise billions of dollars in debt, make

799
01:00:30,239 --> 01:00:34,800
a lot of TV shows and movies
and put them on their servers, and

800
01:00:34,840 --> 01:00:38,920
no one is watching them. The
number one show on Netflix this summer is

801
01:00:38,960 --> 01:00:45,360
a USA TV rerun series called Suits, Suits, and every said, well,

802
01:00:45,400 --> 01:00:46,480
that's because Megan Markle's in it.
Well was you know? She was

803
01:00:46,519 --> 01:00:50,360
in Suits four years ago, and
two years ago and one year ago she

804
01:00:50,480 --> 01:00:52,440
was not. People didn't just discover
this summer that she was in Suits.

805
01:00:52,440 --> 01:00:55,039
They're watching Suits because Suits is a
pretty good show. It's light, it's

806
01:00:55,119 --> 01:00:58,960
fun, it's interesting. You can
watch an hour of it if you were

807
01:00:59,280 --> 01:01:04,440
if you're a yearholder of Netflix,
and the number one show on that network

808
01:01:04,519 --> 01:01:08,599
is an almost ten year old rerun. I mean, what is that telling

809
01:01:08,639 --> 01:01:12,199
you? It's telling me that we
should end this before I get on a

810
01:01:12,239 --> 01:01:15,880
big, long story about how actually
I found myself spending most of my time

811
01:01:15,960 --> 01:01:20,519
on YouTube. The serendiity angle of
which and the fastness and the turnover and

812
01:01:20,559 --> 01:01:23,400
the connectivity of it once google notes
which you like is terrifying, and the

813
01:01:23,480 --> 01:01:28,280
quantity of commercials is absolutely off putting. But on the other hand, Wow,

814
01:01:28,440 --> 01:01:30,920
the things that you find and the
things that you hear here so ladies

815
01:01:30,960 --> 01:01:35,880
and gentlemen listening to this podcast if
you haven't already, cancel that stupid streaming

816
01:01:35,920 --> 01:01:38,840
subscription and spend the money on Ricochet, where you will find a community that

817
01:01:38,960 --> 01:01:43,760
is welcoming and interesting and fascinating.
The member feed, which you don't have

818
01:01:43,800 --> 01:01:45,320
access to unless you remember, is
you know, really where a lot of

819
01:01:45,320 --> 01:01:51,119
the great stuff happens. And by
great stuff I mean conversations that go all

820
01:01:51,119 --> 01:01:53,360
over the road. Rob Long of
course would usually in this spot tell you

821
01:01:53,400 --> 01:01:57,760
about the meetups to come. But
you know the thing about Ricochet meetups about

822
01:01:57,800 --> 01:02:00,480
people getting together in real meat space
as we used to not call it,

823
01:02:00,800 --> 01:02:04,159
can be found at ricochet dot com
as well. If you go to look

824
01:02:04,199 --> 01:02:07,239
at the panel that says meetups,
see if there's one coming into your area,

825
01:02:07,320 --> 01:02:08,960
or join and start one of your
own and wants the Ricochet people come

826
01:02:09,000 --> 01:02:13,480
to you. Give us those five
stars at Apple Review if you wouldn't mind

827
01:02:13,559 --> 01:02:16,079
so much the podcast, help the
show get a little bit more traction,

828
01:02:16,320 --> 01:02:20,719
join, of course, goes without
saying and tell us what you thought of

829
01:02:20,719 --> 01:02:23,199
the show in the comments, and
we'll see everybody, I usually say at

830
01:02:23,280 --> 01:02:28,119
Ricochet four point Oh. But here's
the thing. Thanks, to you.

831
01:02:28,519 --> 01:02:32,400
Thanks to sponsors like an Express VPN, we have invested in something coming,

832
01:02:32,840 --> 01:02:38,119
something good, something wonderful. I'm
not in twenty twenty ten when Dave Bowman

833
01:02:38,159 --> 01:02:42,920
appears from the grave and they ask
it wonderful, very wonderful. Too bad

834
01:02:42,960 --> 01:02:46,119
they didn't have Peter Laurie for that
role. Sending wonderful ric We'll see everybody

835
01:02:46,119 --> 01:02:50,960
in the comments, said Ricochet.
Four for now, point out next week,

836
01:02:51,000 --> 01:02:58,519
guys, next week to tell us
Ricochet join the conversation.