We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinsky,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit fdr ls T,
make sure subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and to the premium version
of the Federalist dot com as well. I'm joined today by friend of the
show, Christopher Bedford. Seeing that fellow, I would common sense society.
How you doing, Chris, I'm excellent. I heard you've been offline most
of the week, which sounds I hear. It's nice when you're outline.
I've not been paying attention, okay, and it's been great. The water's
warm over there. Yeah, the grass is really greeting, right. A
bunch of errands in a deep clean in my house. Mm hmm. It's
stricken great. Even turned off my cell phone for a little while. That
seems dangerous. It's awesome. Well, here's the deal that when you turn
off your cell phone, you generally want to be with your wife. When
you do, it's like about her. Yeah, not a good idea.
No, you don't need to know you want to be reachable. She made
me put read receipts back on. Oh, I've never turned those on.
That's an invasion of my privacy. I've always thought so too, but she
explains to me that she gets irrationally angry assuming that I've read things that I
haven't and I'm ignoring her, so she wants to know. So no,
whether or not I've read, and actually I've turned them back on under duress,
mainly bec not because of her because other people. I don't really want
people that close up in my business knowing like what I've read or when I'm
typing or whatever. But it actually has gotten me out of a lot of
trouble. Have you seen those videos of there's sort of these viral tiktoks of
women, young women in particular, and I'm thinking of one very specific one,
but there was another one that went viral recently as well, basically saying
they're almost crying years on TikTok about how difficult work is and how burned out
they are. I believe that they were made for it. So it's a
really harsh reality in the mono world. So let me tell you how I
interpreted that. Chris saying women weren't made for work but now I know you
meant gen z. My first impression was air conditioning. They hate it.
Well, we can't even get started on that because it would be I would
get too angry at you. I know I would. But the videos are
actually really sad, and there's been some like very online discourse about conservatives kind
of piling on these young women. But Chris, actually that's why. Well,
because they sound like whiny, you know, snowflakes, and the cliche
context that we looked at millennials, for sure we got something. I mean
it sounds entitled like I actually understand the criticism. But there have been so
many technological changes. This is your conversation about phones. Maybe think about this.
I feel like this is one of my hottest takes. Within ten years
we will have a four day work week because phones are work and we need
phones for personal basically survival at this point, to know where your wife is,
to know where your kids are, to know all of the like.
The phone has been completely integrated into your personal life in ways that are now
that it would be like getting rid of cars, which they also want to
do, but it's the connective tissue for so many elements of modern life.
You know, Chris Moody only has a landline. That's incredible, it's insan
he's living the dream. But see, here's the thing. Is a reporter.
He was integrated doing a Matt Drudge podcast right now. Where in the
world is Matt Drudge type farm in San Diego? Right Sometimes theys some stuff
for the Washington Post, teaches journalism out and I think West Virginia you would
have worked with him at the Daily Caller. Yeah. We. I don't
know if I ever actually worked with him at the Daily Caller at the same
time, because he was there for like the first nine months or something and
I was there shortly after that. But we're all ran in the same circles.
So he right, the Dudge podcast is really interesting. But he's also
someone who could be grandfathered in right to that system who grew up with the
landline, knows what a landline is, and people born, you know,
twenty thirty years after Chris Moody don't even really have that option. I guess
you could like try to learn what a landline is and do that, but
yeah, I mean it will be like a luxury installation later on, as
opposed to coming free with your internet so if you were twenty or thirty years
down the road, all of your friends are using text message, all of
your friends are using Snapchat, Instagram, and so you would have to basically
completely extricate yourself from the normal like social technology, social fabric. And you
know, this isn't a be in the world, not of the world thing.
It's it's the practical kind of way that we communicate with one another,
and that would be virtually impossible for people twenty thirty years younger. That's what
I'm saying with It's very difficult. So this is what you have to be
the boss in order to. Like Lindsey Graham doesn't use email, my boss
isn't used slack or anything like that. But slack is terrible. That is
terrible. Yeah, it's something that you force on people who work for you.
But if you're in charge, you don't have to do it. I'm
not doing that. But so anyway, this is why I'm saying the dunking
one people. I really do think we'll have a four day work week because
a technology makes it so easy to be disconnected from a physical office, but
also because we are all I think starting to open our eyes up to how
exhausting, the extra time you spend on nights, early mornings and weekends,
even if you have Like I always use the example like even if you are,
you know, a teenager working at burger king, you when you have
your phone on you for personal reasons because you know you your parents need to
know who you are, You're texting your friends. Whatever. The possibility that
someone's going to call out of work and ask you to pick up a shift
the next day when your phone is with you, that's a psychological reality that
you are still tethered to work in a really real way. It'll be hard.
Like I feel bad for I haven't watched these TikTok videos, but I
get it. In the ten years or so of me employing the recent college
graduates of The Daily Caller, I saw a lot of people who really just
weren't built before the workplace. Like they did well in school, especially young
women, Like they did really well in school. They kind of knew what
they had to do. They got high moxers. Why so many of them
got hired. They interviewed well. They but when they got to like a
work environment where you had to kind of make your own way, like get
yelled at you know, a lot of demands on your time, text messages
at six thirty in the morning about headlines coming in, your editor calling you
at night after Some people the guys, really you got no choice, like
you got to go to work or you're a bum. But there was definitely
some people there, and I just thought like, oh man, what a
miserable life. You forced it on yourself, got under Christendom and gotten married.
See, I think these are like this is you're so unhappy and by
the way, you'll never be a great reporter. I think that's true of
some of the guys. But by the way, I could tell that to
the guys. Yeah, when guys stunk, I tell them then. And
they were early on. And there's a one of our friends who's done very
well on heel communications was an intern at the Daily Callar and I don't remember
saying this is early on in my career, before I got in trouble for
like being honest with female employees and telling them when they sucked. I said,
hey, you know, there's a lot of things you can do with
journalism. It's probably not it partially because of spelling. You have to be
able to do that. I have no recollection of this interaction. But she
says, yeah, that had a pretty profound impact on me, and I
left journalism and she ended up being extremely successful on Capitol Hill. But which
is a position that doesn't require spelling because Congressman can spell, nobody has to
spell. So but anyway, that like forced this on them. But how
can we get to a Forday work week? Like right now you've got people,
you got mass layoffs in journalism. I just think these are two different
things, and so I think there is absolutely a sense of fragility and entitlement.
I do also think there's that that exists separately from the psychological toll that
the intertwinement of personal and professional technology. I think that's a much more sympathetic
reason that we'll be moving in those directions. And I think the fact that
there are legitimate criticisms of the work ethic of younger people, including our own
generation, which didn't have to go fight in World Wars and had it pretty
good, and that's always going to create just differences, generational differences. You
and I have seen this. I mean, it's going to be it's cold
right now, but it'll be in the mid fifties high fifties. Later today,
you could swing down to Union Market, which is an overpriced place for
buying fancy local meats and great fish. Like it's all very good food,
but very expensive, and it'll be filled with young people working from home or
not. They're actually drinking with their friends, but their laptops are open.
They are giving neither their attention to their job nor to their friends, but
they are imbobing. You know, fine, I just with all these layoffs
happening, Okay, journalism is being particularly hard hit layoffs across the board.
LA Times, you know, rest in peace, and so I actually really
like the LA Times. So many people are bad and deserve to lose their
jobs, but this is not the time to be like, you know,
my phone makes me sad, even though it does, it really does.
Mental illness. Uh, my phone is making me mentally ill, and I
want to work less, like because there's there's just a hungry person who's going
to take your job, and a computer that's going to take your job,
and AI algorithm is going to take your job. Like now, if you
want to survive, you're going to need to compete with AI. Need to
compete with foreign You're gonna need to compete with your colleagues and you not you,
but like you know, the Royal. You may want to work four
days a week and feel like you deserve it, and maybe you do.
But what does someone who's gonna work six days a week and they're going to
take your job? Well, I think if you're working a four day week,
you're still working six days a week. That's all I mean is that
it'll be more formalized that people work Monday through Thursday and then are kind of
halfway on, halfway off Friday through Sunday, because that's basically what we do
now anyway, not us, but I mean there's a lot. That's a
lot of what white collar jobs are now. I took a big luxury when
I left to be an editor in chief to be to join the Federals.
A few years ago, I said I wasn't working on Sundays. This shocked
Ben the way he didn't understand that journalism though well on journalism, and he
also has this, uh, this kind of romantic attachment to the Sunday shows
that no one watches. I don't know anyone who watches that. He does
loves them. We have to do Sunday shows I'm like, no, no,
we don't need Chris on the Sunday. I don't that COVID happened right
after, so like the whole environment changed anyways. But it would take a
specific phone call from Sean or Molly or at the time Ben saying can you
write this piece for me to work on a Sunday. And that was a
luxury that was not afforded to me as editor when I was boss at the
Daylight Color. You work it every day. Journalism, Yeah, journalism is
different than a lot of other And it's not that there are a lot of
other careers that require work on Saturdays and Sundays too, so but yeah,
it takes me a pizza delivery driver. And remember that the radio would always
be talking on Thursday and Fridays like are you getting ready for the weekend?
And I was like why, that's when people ordered the most pizza. Yeah,
it was like the weekend I work. And I was a bartender and
a bouncer, Like I worked weekends. You had the Sunday brunch shift and
before I was in charge of the caller. Yeah, I worked the Sunday
brunch shifts and Saturday nights sometimes, so weekends are a luxury? Does our
border have turnstiles? And of it ropes? The Watchdot on Wall Street podcast
with Chris Markowski. Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the
economy and how it affects your wallet. Some Republicans are chouting a bill with
a limit of five thousand migrants per day. That's still one point eight million
per year. An amusement park doesn't let more people in when it hits capacity.
Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you
financially. Be informed. Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's interesting
because in the last week or so, we've learned that Congress is utterly incapable
of addressing any problem, and the executive branch is capable of They're going to
extend the extend because oh my gosh, okay, this happened just yesterday.
So we're taping this on Thursday Wednesday, as the House Speaker Mike Johnson is
being pressured to pass the Ukraine funding bill, Israel Taiwan. It's ninety what
is it? Ninety five billion? Dollars. Sixty billion dollars goes to Ukraine.
They ended up passing it without any border control measures because in the Senate,
Yes, in the Senate, because and now it's over to the House.
Because Mitch McConnell set James Langford up to be a useful idiot who would
create an untenable deal that would crash and burn. They knew it would crash
and burn. Everyone except for James Langford, this is my theory, knew
Chuck Schumer, Mitch itself. They knew, and Mitch set him up.
Mitch that they knew mayor for life, probably not senator for life at this
point, but they knew that this deal would not be acceptable to Conservatives.
And James Langford, I think, is one of the few people who thought
he could convince others to take up this bill. You go nobody. I
don't think Mitch McConnell thought seriously for a moment that he had enough Republican senators
to I don't think Chuck Schumer did either. No, I really Thinkruck James
Lanker is the only one. And I think Chuck Schumer knew that he didn't
have to sell this to just the stems. In the squad. Yeah,
because he never could have Like there wasn't there were enough provisions in there that
would have pissed off the squad that really does like want to replace America with
Guatemala. They wouldn't have allowed it. And he didn't even have to worry
for a second about defending any aspect of it. He just got to go
out there. Republicans are not serious about border security exactly, and Mitch mcconald
let him do it because Mitch mcconald just wants to pass Ukraine funding. And
now the pressures on Mike Johnson. I mean he's also got like apple sauce
brains at this point. Right, Well that's fair, but still is the
part of his brain that's lucid is all about Ukraine. What is strange?
It's like did you It's like Rosebud, you know, people just trying to
figure out, like what is what is the last you know, spark that's
going to exist in your mind. It's mind that's really done a lot of
things too. It is like Rosebud Ukraine, yes, and well so,
but this is what's kind of remarkable is they can't get this. They can't
do a single thing about the border the White House. When the White House
was tasked with security in the border in a non electioneer twenty twenty three,
they created an app that just funneled people into legal pathways and even then the
border will of course, because of that, the border became overwhelmed and overwhelmed,
and the optics were, like the levels of incompetence are staggering. I
think that's a deep quote, but like it's incredible. We cannot do things
as a country anymore. And to the crying, everything's broken. And think
of the challenges that we were just talking about with like AI, with technology
completely dramatically upending the daily lives of your average American. We can't even secure
the freaking border. We can't do that. We can't even pass like this
is maybe a hot take for a conservative, but like there has to be
like we can give some money to Ukraine, maybe not sixty billion dollars,
but we can't even do that because we can't even fund security on our own
border. We can't even pass asylum laws for security or board. We can't
even convince the President of the United States, who also has Apple sauce brain,
that there should be something done to secure the border seriously, and that
it should be done with some competence and some statesmanship and some like just courage.
We cannot function. We cannot function. Yeah, it's looking pretty rough.
And then they leaked this what is the I don't know, I people
were paying attention yesterday, but the Russian the Russian space guided missiles. Yes,
so if you've heard about that, it seems pretty clear to both of
us. I think we agree on this. That was an intentional leak to
put pressure on Mike Johnson to kill FISA reform section seven oh two reform and
to pass the Ukraine bill, or just to delay it. And now Mike
Lee's out there pointing out that simply delaying Pfizer reform will kicking the can will
mean that it's the intelligence apparatus still has all of these incredible powers on constitutional
collection. Yes, yeah, exactly, which I mean, I'm sure we
can trust some of the American intelligence services with having an even and fair hand
with Donald Trump and his campaign. PISER reform is mainstream and bipartisan. So
there's serious people Democrats and Republicans that want reform to section in seven to zero
two because it's extra constitutional obviously, so We've seen so many egregious abuses of
it to people on the right and the left that this is a mainstream Republican
and Democratic position in the same in a different way, by the way,
from that border bill. That border bill was not a mainstream position whatsoever except
for on the far left. That was Mitch McConnell and James Langford basically putting
the stamp of bipartisanship on something that was acceptable to the far left. New
York Times had a chart a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if
you saw this that showed where both parties voters had gone on immigration over the
last like fifteen or so years, and it showed Republicans basically staying the same
and Democrats getting dramatically more favorable to high levels of immigration. And that does
everything, And that's exactly the border bill was engineered to please. Was that
flank of the Democratic Party. Not even moderate Democrats if you went through a
year after that bill would be happy with what it did to the border.
It's a disaster, amasty bill. An it was the open border deal.
Yeah, yeah, so this is like all this is to say our ability
to function as a country. I don't think any of We don't need to
convince anybody of this, but wait till more airplane doors start ripping off.
Yeah, seriously, and with all of the tax payer money that that company
gets again, it just feels like everything is falling apart. And who stayed
with us a few weeks ago, who works with the America's nuclear arsenal and
a lot of that is kind of just maintaining things. And I just and
uh, my wife was asking him about some of the missile treaties that we
have and like the testing treaties, because she asked about testing and he was
like, well, we don't really test. We do like computer programs,
because where like we signed all these treats if we don't test anymore? Yeah,
And I asked them straight up, is there even anyone alive who could
build one of these weapons? Again? Yeah, it's like not really,
they're all gone. Like the skills we kind of forget this stuff, but
like the skills necessary to build our nuclear arsenal are dying or already dead.
It's been decades now. And it's kind of like when you look out at
the art, the public art and civic art and architecture and the sculptures and
the things that they're going to maybe put down Statuary Row and Richmond. We're
we can't even maintain our beautiful structures, and we struggle to maintain our technologies
forget about build new ones. And we like to look back with this this
kind of scorn, like, oh, look at these Look at the Europeans.
How do you lose knowledge? We have the Internet, we're producing we're
producing more bits of information every year than we're produced in the first thousands of
years of history combined. But we're losing it very quickly. We're losing that
actual know how and we take it off for granted, and it's We talked
a lot about this on the show last year when Baby Formula started to disappear,
and about how many cracks there actually are in the system, how how
much incompetence there is, how much laziness there is, how much just complete
lack of knowledge. How many people just kind of move forward within the constrains
of a bureaucratic system, pushing their button and pulling their lever, but don't
actually couldn't actually build the buttons or the levers. You know, there's a
piece and compact yesterday that I was reading about how collapse happens very suddenly,
and it was talking about just to kind of use the example of the ancient
regime in France and how what is central and controlling and dominant force and just
a steady hand. In Europe it had been for so long and then a
fight over taxes like quickly devolved and before you knew it, it was just
mass bloodshed and murder and radicalism all across Europe. Is a very destabilizing thing
happened very suddenly, and they were drying the connection to the relative peace and
harmony that it kind of existed broadly in the Middle East, particularly around Israel
for years, and just a lot of people who had interest in the stable
order. And then this October seven attack, and before you know it,
shipping is shut down and wars coming up between Iran and the United States,
and deterrence is dead, and no one really exactly is what to do,
and Blinken's out there throwing another press conference while Israel goes into another Hamas read
out to root them out of there, and the America is saying stop,
stop, stop, and no one's stopping, and Hutieser firing rockets and prices
are rising, and it's like, these are the kind of things that just
spin out of control very quickly, and you don't quite understand them until you
read the history books. Not unlike the defenestration of Prague in the Thirty Years
War, no one knew had started. You was watching you make your way
through sentence, and suddenly I saw your eyes burst and knew what was coming
immediately. You know, It's it's kind of an impossible hypothetical. I've always
felt that we're more like Rome in the sense that our decline would be gradual.
But again, with in a nuclear age, can decline be gradual or
doesn't? I mean, yeah, it's harder to For everything moves much more
quickly than it did in the Roman days. It does, it does at
the same time, even gradual, even Rome's gradual declient is marked by certain
eras of extreme street violence and things you can point to. And it's well
that murder may have taken like fifty years to be avenged, but holy smokes
like the complete breakdown and peaceable politics and uh right, But you don't necessarily
know you're in it until you know the end of the story. Oh I
know I'm in it. I'm positive we're in it. No, I mean,
you don't know if you're in the last chapter until it's been written.
That's sure, you could be halfway through. I just right. Don't get
those libs who are like, I don't want to have kids because of Global
Wan. First of all, fine, good, but I can't wait to
have kids and I know that we're in the collapse of civilization, like I
want more. So that's funny. It's funny because I wash gosh, because
I was just going to ask you if you saw the RFK Junior commercial during
the Super Bowl. Loved it? Yes, And it's so embarrassing that he
had to apologize to his family for that because I saw two of his cousins
who were attacking him. Why would you attack Why would you attack your own
cousin even if you hate him and disagree with him, Like I can't stand
those people who go on TV like Barack Obama's like African brother. That was
at least kind of funny because Obama was in the middle of my late brother's
keeper. Alik Obama is those same I think that's his daughter. No,
No, that's the he was in the middle of during my brother's keeper.
Campaign, and his like African brother was like hey, which was funny,
but like the Trump's sister who goes out there and attacks him, it's just
like super embarrassing. Oh his sister. The judge had privately said something to
his niece Mary Trump. The niece is Mary is the one who's always out
there. Yeah, h yapping away on him. Malik Obama, I was
right, it's so unseemly too, U. I really liked. I was
involved in an internet altercation with Deblasio's team that ended very poorly because Buckley Carlson,
the great brother of Tucker, he thought he was blind. He didn't
realize that he was copying the staff, and he said something like really offensive,
Like I was in I played football on rugby and was in a fraternity
and I've never heard this kind of level that just like comes naturally to boarding
school kids of griminess. Never in the locker room. I never heard that.
But he actually sent it to the staff and Tucker was obviously called upon
and he was in this like driving around in cars interview a few days later
to answer to it, and he just turned the interview and said, what
do you what do you want me to do? You asking me to condemn
my brother? Is that? And he put the guy on the defensive,
like is that of this questions going, I'm gonna condemn my brother, Get
out of here. He didn't go out there and say, like what Buckley
said was awesome. I'm glad that happened at all. So I just I
really like that attitude and things. No, I agree with that. I
don't understand these Kennedy cousins are out there, like how dare you misappropriate?
Like what your scumbag John F. Kennedy had some scummy things to him,
some weird things too. Yeah they all have they all did. Yeah they
had a bad dad. Yes, they did have a bad dad. And
he had to RFK Junior basically had to distance himself from the ad because it
was he still was at the top of his twel it is he can't coordinate
with the superback, so that was his rationale whatever. But the reason I
asked that is because on the kid's point, Mary and Williamson, who recently
dropped out, I think she did. I asked her this. I was
waiting to vote for her. I well asked her this on Federalist Radio Hour
because I had heard her mention it before about how many when she was going
around in Iowa and New Hampshire, and I think this was in the twenty
twenty election, how many young people put up their hands and said that they
didn't want to have kids because of the climate and the state of the country.
And to her that was like a profoundly sad reaction that absolutely nobody was
addressing. And again this gets to our point about how we are incapable and
we can't even see. We're so blind to the things that are right in
front of our faces. And the RFK Junior ad, which I thought was
just excellent and from a political standpoint, not even talking about a moral standpoint,
but politically tapping into that nostalgia and the American fashionability, iconic imagery of
the Kennedy family. I think it's really powerful. But I also think he's
one of the few people that on the left that is not blind to write
what's right in front of his face. And if you can do that,
you know, Maria doesn't have the Kennedy name and the cloud that comes with
that to something disagreeing, But she doesn't have that one guy's like, hey,
the medical establisher's lying to us. You know, other person's like,
there's healing power in crystals, and I'm at the first one, but I'm
not yet at the second one yet. But I mean the post of the
medical establishment is link was, which is so you know, he might.
I actually think some of his stuff is pretty out there on the medical establishment.
But yeah, a little bit, a little bit. But all that
is to say, when you package a resonant or let's say, a cocktail
of resonant observations about the world around us that nobody else is saying with that
sort of brand is extremely powerful. So that's a four day work week.
And I think R K Junior is going to really uh hurt Biden these Trumps.
I think he hears Biden more than he hears Trump. That's another hot
take. I don't think so. Yeah, I think when Trump, if
I was Trump booking at Arizona, which is like filled with people who think
the crystals can heal, you disagree because Arizona, the Arizona populism is not
going to be favorable to r F. K. Junior's big government populism.
And I think the more of a threat our FK Junior becomes electorally to both
Biden Trump. Trump is going to have a very powerful argument to make against
R. F. K. Junior about how he is basically a statist on
so many of these questions and that this one's saying, this is my hot
take, four day work week, and Trump is going to have some really
potent lines of attack against O R F K Junior that will hurt Biden a
status who will destroy the medical establishment. Well, that's the contradiction here,
that's a contradiction. I might go volunteer. You're going to be that that
does sound like you? That does Massachusetts cut Order sixty six? And what's
that? It means kill the Jedi the Star Wars triop. My wife is
making me watch the prequels to show our kid, and I haven't watched them
in a long time. You probably hate them. Yeah. I watched the
first run twenty five years ago, Pantos twelve when it came out in theaters.
And this was at a stage in my life when I was getting like
kind of like teased a lot in the bus, like reading Star Wars books,
and it turned out all the bullies were right, so it was the
super lame. Yeah, because I watched that movie. He was like Wow,
this is awful. And I didn't even go to see the next two
in the theaters. It just broke. It snapped me from a kid who
like had Star Wars T shirts and Star Wars books and Star Wars action figures
to a normal kid. So this is actually a fun piece of trivia about
me. And I don't like Star Wars at all anymore perfectly, I still
I respect people who love Star Wars. I think there's you know, good
arguments in favor of Star Wars. I just don't watch a lot of Star
Wars. Hasn't had ready good movies for a while. Yeah, Road One,
great solo sleeper. My boyfriend loves to walk around in a Han Solo
T shirt in the summer. Well, men shouldn't wear T shirts. They're
at the beach. You yeah, you're in favor of Callers. But the
trivia is I won. I opened it back of Doritos in the year two
thousand or two thousand and one, whenever Phantom Menace came out, and I
won eight No, No No twenty five years ago. Well whatever, I
won the Phantom Menace, like data, sweet Mistay. I was on my
front porch and I opened a back I got like this like huge package of
Phantom Menace things like a backpack and all kinds of other so I don't know,
put it in a time capsule to sell it to losers in twenty four
I actually don't know where it is, but yes, I wanted to Reado's
Phantom Menace sweepstake when I was like seven years old. Oh, I know
we have to go, but I'll conclude with this. I said something on
Twitter about the twenty fifth anniversary of Star Wars and like that wasn't a mean
person who responded like did the math, Like you're thirty seven, that's you're
like in your fifties. No, that's pretty pathetic, you know. On
a final note, this is a really weird thought. But you're gonna hate
this. You're really gonna hate this. Taylor Swift makes a lot of people
very happy. And I have come to I've had such a roller coaster,
had one of those in cell knee jerk reactions to seeing like a hot chick
marrying a Super Bowl guy. Did okay, so this is this was gonna
say, like sounds good. So as someone who's like person who's roughly her
age from the middle of the country, which she she's like thirty two something
like that, so she might be a little than that now, but anyway
kind of grew up with her. Like on a similar timeline, loved Taylor
Schwetbom. She first came out, she felt like the perfect American success story.
And then in some very sad ways she continued that that arc of being
a perfect American success story of moving to a city and becoming a brain dead
sort of millennial liberal. What that's the problem is that, like she's obviously
a very smart person, but so many smart especially millennial women who moved to
the big city. I think that the intellectual are brain Washington to think of
the intellectual thing to do is to become a conformist like millennial girl boss,
and that's she had that era. But she makes a lot of people happy.
Like her concerts just were massively successful really the course of the summer,
for no political reasons, but just because people thought the experience was fun and
they liked the music, and they weren't even thinking about politics when they were
there for the most part. And now she had that wonderful moment after the
super Bowl with Travis Kelcey and I was rooting against the Chiefs the whole time,
because I've been so annoyed, like many people with the NFL announcers obsessions
with Taylor Swift and it gets annoying. But I don't know, I'm just
kind of shocked to see such a big cultural moment that's not gay. That's
what I was going to say, Well, what do you mean by that?
I mean the basically all the things that are being forced on us in
all these different field good stories these days, Like you turn on TV,
it's like the best croissant made in France by this Nigerian guy, or like
the number one romance and like New Year's Eve kiss is like two dudes,
you mean it's an LGBT identity policy all just weird, weird identity politics and
like tax on kind of normal traditional things. And that's that's where I see
everywhere, which she mary the pop stars like yeah, that's like nineteen ninety
eight, which she has. She's like been an engine of that like identity
politics, obsession. Fact, I have had no concept of what Tailor Swift
thinks about anything. You should go read my piece about her. You need
to calm down. Music videos one of the highest traffic pieces that I've written.
I had no idea that people were gonna it was people are gonna respond
to it, but I think it They didn't like it, No, they
did like it, but well, at least it resonated with a good drink
of peel. A lot of people hated it, obviously, But anyway,
all I'm saying is I was also thinking about how that Christmas movie, The
Holdovers. There was a great Most McCarthy Christmas movie. There was a great
Eddie Murphy Christmas movie. All of this stuff came out. The Super Bowl
ads weren't super woke. If we need to reassure listeners and to end on
a dose of optimism, it does feel like cultural normacy exists in levels.
It wasn't just a few years ago. Nature might be healing, might be
and we don't know because the last chapter hasn't been written. It's just scabbing.
All were made. Yeah, it might be. There's no like.
All the advances are made. So they don't need to They don't need to
force us indoctrination. They don't need to repeat over and over again. Men
are women, women are men like they used to because SWIFTI is just repeat
it for them. Well, let's you ruined, you stamp, you stomped
all over my moment, your brief moment of OPTIMISMY wake up. Just trying
to leave everyone with a gift is just like stopped on it and through the
fire. It was a good super Bowl, its TV all right. Well.
Christopher Bedford, Senior Fellow over at the Common Sense Society, thanks for
joining us. Glad to be here. You've been listening to another edition of
the Federalist Radio Hour and Magicians Gape will be back soon with more. Until
then, be the lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.