I told him I was gonna wear a bow tie. It's like a silent
solidarity. And then he said, yeah, great, and then he texted
me said, don't actually, don't ask not what your country can do for
you, ask what you can do for your country. Mister gerbutschaf tear down
this wall. Read my lifts. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and
Rob Long. I'm James Lilacson. Today we talked to Kevin Williamson about how
everything's really better than you think, and Andrew Goodman, who's running for Congress.
So let's have ourselves a podcasting. Towns that have been forgotten and left
behind, were dead are coming alive again because of you all what we're doing
now. I've just got to keep it going, finish the job. Believe
me, you'll never get bored with when we never get bored. Welcome everybody.
This is the Ricoche Podcast, Episode number six hundred and thirty nine.
Wow, don't we get that far? Well? Why don't you join us
at rickechtet dot com and see exactly what the whole enterprise is all about?
And you too can be part of the most stimulating conversations and community on the
web. I'm James Leix, back after a two week hiatus spent elsewhere,
which we'll talk about it at the end of the show, but nobody cares.
I wouldn't. Well, no, actually I would. Maybe I'll make
up a whole bunch of stuff and make it sound really fast. I was
abroad, as rob said last week, and apparently this caused people on Twitter
to indicate that I'd had gender affirming surgery. Minnesota being the haven for that
that it is joined by Peter Robinson and Rob Long. Gentleman. Biden has
announced his reelection, and you gotta love this, uh, this statement,
this new phrase, Let's finish the job, because apparently it's gonna take eight
years to fundamentally transform America. What is the job exactly? I look that
base because it sounds like the country's not dead yet. Let's finish the job,
you know, Let's let's reach for the pillow, let's squeeze the IV
drip or whatever it is is. Let's finish this. Um. I'm surprised
that he lined up that many. I mean, you know, he's he
seems to be doing a pretty good job in the Democratic Party of getting reluctant
endorsements, or maybe even enthusiastic endorsements, because it helps to have Kamalay Harris
as your running mate. Anything her. Are you senting a Kennedy ground swell
here? That may that may derail Biden's efforts to have to remember two,
Robert Kennedy Junior is at nineteen percent in New Hampshire, I believe, And
there's some doubt now about whether Biden will even contest. It's all kind of
a mess. But what's clear is that nobody really wants Biden, but the
Democratic Party has convinced it's actually, that's not quite true. Let's finish the
job is to the rest of America, as rob just demonstrated, a preposterous
campaign slogan, but it's they seem to have decided to aim at the left
of the Democratic Party because what they think is, you know what, Biden
may simply be sleepwalking through life. But the people, however it gets done,
maybe it's Chuck Schumer, maybe it's AOC in the However it gets done,
the progressive agenda is advancing, and let's finish the job is directed at
them. They seem to have decided that this guy weekend at Bernie's else sid
is my favorite comparison now that the legend of Alfide Great, the great Spanish
leader, who was so great that they propped him up in the saddle after
he had died and still followed him into battle against the moors. That seems
to be what's going on here. But for the rest of the country,
this is just nobody. Nobody wants this. Nobody wants Trump either. As
far as I can that's not true. There's a kind of corresponding Trump no
matter what group in the on the right that reflects the progressive left. But
for ordinary Americans and there's still a majority, this is just bizarre. That's
all I've got. It's just bizarre. It's surreal. It's surreal. Yeah,
well, I mean sort of like I mean the definition of running on
fumes, right, I mean, the way it's supposed to go is that
there's a bunch of people in line who were, you know, could could
be contenders for the big job, and they're being told by the party elders,
hey, hey, hey, you wait your turn, You wait your
turn, you wait your turn, And there's a clamoring in the young lion
guts and just either guts the old lion at the in the primaries, or
UM sits there in glowers it hurts the whatever like that. This is how
it works in both parties. I would have a hard time thinking about who
are the young lions in the Democratic Party? The Democratic Party? Who are
the young who are the people in the Democratic Party? You're the own boy
four years? My god, that's gonna Who are those people who are in
UM? You know, the equivalent of Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety who thought,
you know what, this is my time? And you know, the
Clinton campaign in ninety two is actually one of the best political campaigns ever.
It was unbelievably smart and disciplined and managed to do a thing that was very
difficult to do at the time. And I feel like that's the I would
say this all the time about Democrats, like the The solution for Democrats is
so easy. Find yourself some southern moderate Democrats, make them governor of southern
states, which you can do even more so, even more possible now than
once before. And then those people will run for president and they will win.
That's kind of how it works. But they don't. They don't want
it. Used to it used to before the party got moved more to the
least right. See I mean, nowadays they're there are positions that they would
have to take that are absolutely, you know, antithetical to the wishes of
the modern democratic part pooh bas. I mean, if you're gonna if you're
gonna run in the South and and win in the South, you've got to
be a little bit or pretend to be conservative on some social social issues.
And that's a lot harder today than it used to be. Now you have
to embrace a panoply of things which are not just liberal versions of contentious issues,
but redefinitions of the way that they of the way society is ordered,
the way people think about things. So it's you know, may work the
ninety two but not now. I remember ninety two when Gore was put up
as the vice president, they called the ticket the double Bubba if you remember
that, making a reference to a kind of gum, as though al Gore
himself had had any bubba esque characteristics. Those days are gone. I can
name two members of the Democratic bench and they fit exactly the profile that Rob
just outlined governors of southern states. One is John, but I'm not sure
I can pronounce John Bell b E. L. John Bell Edwards is the
governor of Louisiana. Why does the rest of the Democratic Party ignore this man
who wins elections in Louisiana can somehow or other satisfy the Democratic establishment, the
liberals and the upstate Conservative Democrats. John Bell Edwards's pro life, so they
rule him out. Okay, there's another one. He's too young, but
keep an eye on him. Was more Westley Moore forty four years old now
in his what third or fourth month as governor of Maryland. African American graduate
of Oxford JOHNS. Hopkins Valley Forge Military Academy. Very impressive guy a little
but they're the point I'm trying to make is they are there. The system
does, even on the Democratic side, the system does work. Maybe a
little too slowly for them this time around. But Gavin K. Newsom would
be a better candidate than Joe Biden. Gavin Newson would be honest about honest
maybe the wrong word to use, but you'd have a real debate. There
would be a straightforward progressive agenda with somebody who has the energy and smarts to
pursue it. That's what I want. I want to clean debate, an
election that's a real choice. I mean, one of the problems we're going
to find is that the press is going to be even more enraging as it
covers for Biden's increasingly disassociated state. Right so, you know, he's you
know, he only has a couple press conference. I remember when when when
when if a president, if a Republican president, didn't have a press conference
once a week, they would talk about how why he was hiding that.
If you go with you Lexus Nexus headlines, the president seems to be hiding
from press. It's all Republicans who he's only had a press conference in up
the past month. Biden doesn't have them, and when he has them,
the questions are already prepared and his answers are already prepared. So which is
an interesting little thing. We've been told this happens all the time, has
been going on for quite some times. If that makes it better. The
president photographed with a piece of pay or in his hand, with the reporter's
picture, how to pronounce the name and what they're going to ask? As
if the idea that you could spontaneously ask Joe Biden a question out of the
blue about anything within his purview and he would be. It's it's alarming,
to say the least, and those tend to reinforce the narrative that perhaps the
fellow at the top is not at the top of his game. I'd like
to think that we have a guy that could just go out there and answer
these things without cheap role notes like this, and do so in a way
that wasn't just a total word cell that makes you win, says, we're
kind of used to right, right, and we have one. But unfortunately
he's his oxygen as being constricted at the moment by that other fellow. So
yeah, we're going into an election with octogenarians, with old men born in
the forties, I think, which is not a sign of robust vigor,
health and new spirits in the American public of ours. Hey, I interrupt
button. We'll be back right after this message. When it comes to cast
to getting the American Republic, though, there's a there's there's nobody like our
friend Kevin Williamson, and we're going to have him on now. Kevin the
national correspondent for The Dispatch, writes the weekly Wonderland news letter, and he's
penn more than a half dozen books, most recently Big white ghetto and the
smallest minority. Kevin, welcome back. Hey, what's up? Hey?
You know it's been a long time. Um, you know, I was
just thinking back the other day. You made half of America hate you with
the statement about the death penalty for bors, and you made the other half
hate you with the thing about getting you all and get out of your town.
It's been a while since we've had a really broad, polarizing comment from
Kevin Williamson around the same there's only two halves. Yeah, I know the
halves all right. So you were talking about Biden and his place in history
just a minute ago. I was listening in and over the Dispatch. We
have a book club we do with our readers, and we just did uh
Bill Bryson's book on nineteen twenty seven. And if I'm remembering my math here,
Um, Calvin Coolidge had only been out of office thirteen years when Joe
Biden was born. Oh my goodness, Oh my goodness. Yeah, I
think forty four one stars and bars. Oh my. So, um,
we're we're we're closer in history, or we're we're further away in history from
nine to eleven than he was from the presidency. Of Warren Harding. Wow.
Wow, that doesn't say what you need to say, isn't that?
In some way? I mean, I guess the coole my course is like,
as a conservative, a sort of out of it president who's only kind
of doing stuff for about five hours a day is an ideal president in many
ways, as as long as nothing happens, as long as they don't do
anything, as long as they have no agenda as is, they're just gonna
kind of we're for gridlocking it. Silent cow just kind of silent cow it
out right. Yeah, you know, I've got a got a piece in
the New York Post on Sunday that kind of kind of makes that that argument
that Biden's, you know, his best thing to do right now would be
to follow his instincts and take a nap and sort of, you know,
stay stay out of things, because you know, Biden has sort of two
two value propositions, right one that he was the return to normal guy after
Trump and all the Trump craziness, and that didn't really work out because,
believe it or not, Trump isn't the prime source of all the craziness in
our politics. He's, uh, he's more of a symptom of it than
a cause of it. You know, the sort of crazy angry partisanship and
social media driven tribalism and all that stuff was never was never going to go
away, so we don't have you know, return to kind of quiet and
comedy and all that stuff. The second um, you know, possible value
proposition from from Biden was that if not the president himself, then at least
members of his administration would be basically competent and that we could expect you know,
some sort of certainly left of center democratic but kind of you know,
reasonably competent, moderate ish, you know, steady hand on the tiller kind
of performance from them. And you know, with GDP growth at one point
one percent and real wage is still lower than they were on the day he
was elected president, and inflation running where it is. You know, we're
going into the season when people are gonna be taking summer vacations and what not,
with you know, airfares up ten percent over where they were before the
pandemic, hotel rooms up twenty percent, carbonal fees up fifty percent. That
sort of thing, um people are going to fairly or not. And I
think it's silly how much we associate the president with the economy. I know,
I've written and talked about this a lot. Every time to bring it
up, I have to just reinstate it that it's it's pure superstition to think
that the overall performance of something is complex as the US economy really depends on
the character of the person in the White House. But that's the kind of
you know, game he set up for himself and the way he's invited himself
to be judged, and I don't think that he's going to come up particularly
well in that judgment, which means that his you know, his best hope
is to get Trump or a Trump lat candidate against him in the general election
so that it can be another episode in you know, hysteria and negative partisanship.
But the president can dampen rude animal spirits. The president can set the
tone for energy policy, the president can set the tone for a novel lot
of things that do actually affect the way the economy is so and Biden certainly
makes some mistakes on that front, particularly on the energy front, which is
really really entertaining. You know, we talk about infrastructure, but the actual
infrastructure the country needs to build is things like fuel pipelines. You know,
I live in I live in Dallas, which a couple of years ago,
you couldn't buy gasoline in Dallas for a while because we had a big flood
down in Houston and it knocked out the one pipeline that really connects gasoline supplies
from the refiner he's down there to the rest of the state and throughout the
rest of the country. And when you've got that multi vulnerability in a place
like Texas, um, you know, when you're within driving distance of where
they actually make the gasoline, suggests that we've got some fragility in the system
that needs to be worked out through additional investments. But um, but gases
yesterday, we're talking about when they talk about infrastructure. But fossil fuels are
yesterday. And you know, and and Biden, who probably would have scoffed
at the idea of getting off of fossil fuels twenty thirty years ago because the
overwhelming majority of people thought it was ridiculous ideas now, of course just going
to sit back and think of England and let it happen, because the geist
of his party is demanding that we all get off of fossil fuels by twenty
thirty. The Pentagon, I believe, had some note that they were going
to go to all electric vehicles domestically by twenty would it possible? According to
Kevin Georgia. According to Kevin, Biden is closer to being a fossil fuels
himself than he is to the presidency of Warren Harding. Um. Okay,
So your recent piece, which I read, I loved m as I love
everything right, but this one, Um, I have a question about it.
So you you essentially are saying Americans are just wrong about the economy that
we are. We are deluding ourselves into thinking that things are bad when things
have never been better. Well, I would say things have never been better.
But if you compare the way the United States economy got through COVID and
the post COVID period, even with a lot of you know, bad decision
making to Washington, some some fairly bad policy about continuing emergency spending, especially
which has been a bad idea. It's really contributed to you inflation and some
other disruption. Yeah, we've done We've done pretty well. If you look
at things like growth and productivity, it's been solid. There's a sort of
myth we have that there was some great economic decline in the post war era
in the United States, which just really simply the case. If you look
at you know, US share of world GDP, it's about you know,
a quarter right now, which is where it was back in the nineteen nineties.
It's been higher and lower at various times. If you look at our
you know, productivity growth, if you look at the long term trend in
things like you know, wages and consumer purchasing power and even inflation, even
with the recent troubles with inflation, you know, we've had really pretty solid
performance for a long long time, and that's continued under presidencies and congresses of
different parties, sometimes with the radically different economic priorities. You know, we've
got just a really wonderfully, amazingly productive and resilient economy, which contributes to
having a productive and resilient society. And this kind of you know, bitching
and moaning and woe is us, and man, wouldn't it be great if
it was nineteen fifty two and we could all go work in a tire factory
again sort of stuff. It's just nonsense. You can have a nineteen fifty
standard of living if you want one right now on what you would make working
at seven to eleven. But nobody wants a nineteen fifty standard of living.
What they want is this illusion of you know, some kind of utopian post
war manufacturing and industrial golden age that wasn't all that great for the people who
actually lived in it. You know. I remember my my, my grandfather
worked for Phillips Petroleum, which was, you know, at the time,
considered a pretty good job. And he lived in Phillips, Texas, which
was a Phillips company town, and you know, lived in a house that
was probably eight hundred square feet something like that, you know, air conditioning,
that sort of thing, and and that was you know, kind of
that was the steady, kind of middle class manufacturing, industrial lifestyle. And
to a man who probably lived through the Depression, that was pretty good.
That was okay. Oh yeah, he was a girl during the depression.
Yeah, and you know nobody wants that. You know, these kids coming
out of college right now saying, you know, our grandparents, nati is
so good or our great grandparents, Oh go try it. Yeah, So,
Kevin, where does the bitching and moaning. Let me frame it did
a little different way. Here's what you'll hear over and over and over again.
One reason that kids are marrying later, One reason that the birth rate
is down is that you can't afford to raise a family on a single income
anymore. But that is that has to be in some basic way simply untrue.
Standards of living have continued to rise, and have risen dramatically from the
late fifties early sixties, when I still have childhood memories of my mother having
to wash cloth diapers because nobody had invented disposable I mean, clearly, at
the point you make we live better now than we did, then where does
the bitching and moaning come from? Yeah, well, let me have preface
this by saying this, the forthcoming lecture on why people should get married younger
and start families is coming to you from a fifty year old man with a
newborn baby. Yeah well, we want to get to that. I want
to hear. If anything would mellow Kevin Williamson, and I'm not sure anything
would, it would be a newborn. We want to get to that,
Kevin. Yeah, well, we won't talk about that too much anything,
but yeah, it certainly is the case that if you are twenty seven years
old, and you're a college graduate and you're making you know, some reasonable
but not outstanding income, and you want to get married and have some kids.
You're gonna have to give some stuff up. You know, you're not
going to have the same sort of lifestyle that you would if you were single.
Of course, there are some you know, there's some some good trade
offs there too, of course that I think that people maybe don't appreciate.
You guys probably all know Brian Kaplan, who wrote a wonderful book called Selfish
Reasons to Have More Children. He's an economist and a kind of pointy headed
libertarian, but but a very fun, fun writer. So, uh,
I think it's not really well. There's a couple of things going on.
One is anxiety about status, which is separate from anxiety about actual absolute economic
position. And I think a lot of that is driven by social media,
the fact that we have so much more immediate access to how other people live,
you know, what their lives look like, what sort of vacations they
take, what their consumption looks like, and we end up comparing ourselves to
people who aren't really our socioeconomic peers. The other is anxiety about change,
and I think This is the really important one. You know, if you
go back to the kind of middle Ages in the early Renaissance and you get
the beginnings of what will eventually become capitalism, where people start to have choice
about what kind of jobs they have and where they live and things like that,
their standards of living, you know, the real income, they're real
choices, they're real liberty economically, personally and politically, all increased radically,
and they're all very, very unhappy about it because all of these new opportunities
and benefits came with responsibilities and disruptions that they did like, and they had
to make choices that they didn't have to make before. And not everyone experiences
choice as this wonderful thing. Some people experience it is stress and anxiety.
And I think that's one of the problems we run into in kind of policy
making, is that that whole culture is dominated by people who are mostly pretty
high income, lots of opportunities in life, high performing, highly educated,
that kind of stuff, and they don't understand that people see what they see
as opportunity as anxiety. So we've been going through, you know, since
the end of the Cold War, something that we call for lack of a
better term globalization, and it also has left everyone economically better off in all
sorts of measurable ways. We've got more choices, higher incomes, better consumption,
we're better fed, better house we get better healthcare, you can travel
more, all that, all that sort of stuff. But what you don't
have is as much stability as we had before that. So, you know,
my father as an adult had essentially two jobs. You know, he
worked at one of them for twenty two years and the other one for twenty
one years or something like that, and then he retired. By the time
I was forty, I had had I don't know, sixteen jobs or something
like that for very short times. I recall one for three days I was
after forty. Yeah, I think I've had you know, thirty home addresses
or something like that, And which is great for people like me, you
know, we we kind of thrive on that, but not everyone wants that
kind of life. Some people would like would take the trade off of having
you know, less income, less wealth less flexibility, lower levels of consumption
if everything were quieter and more predictable and stable and guaranteed. And that's really
the source of a lot of our social tension I think is between a kind
of upper class of professionals who value choice and opportunity and flexibility versus a class
of people who are socioeconomically maybe just one or two degrees below them, or
just simply or it in a different way, who have a stronger preference for
stability and predictability and those sorts of things. Well, if we are going
through a sort of you know, economic transformation like we did in the sixteenth
century, Joe Biden might be the perfect man to lead us there, because
he remembers, well, I want to push back in a couple of things
that you said. They are one. The economy. Yeah, in general
stupendous, but of course it's a big country with a lot of moving parts
in a lot of places. I live in one of those cities that was
absolutely devastated by the lockdown, a self inflicted wound, a gunshot to both
feet and the forebrain, and consequently we have a dead downtown. Everybody got
used to staying home and working in their pajamas. Like San Francisco, you
have office occupancy rates that are nowhere. You've got a lot of leases coming
up. They're going to have to be renegotiated downward, which drives the property
taxes downward. When you could add a city like Chicago which also had the
emptying out, a seated like San Francisco, like Portland, which is going
through several self inflicted wounds at the same time, we have a real paradigm
shift about how American cities are organ And I don't think that's particularly stupendous.
I think it's breaking a model that worked, and the economic fallout is immediate.
I mean, where I once lived in a thriving ecosystem, small businesses,
it's now dead gone eighty percent of it. And you replicate that across
the country. That ain't good. So give me something hopeful to think about
about that if you first of all, let me tell you that it's worse
than you think. You lived in New York City for a long time,
and New York is great as long as two things work. One is the
subways and the others the police department. You know, if they've got crime
basically under control and the subways work, new York's a great place to live.
As soon as those things get screwed up, it's an unlovable place,
which is one of the reasons why I moved. But you know, the
cities really are screwed up right now in lots of ways. Every big city
in this country has got a lot of serious problems, and you would think
that this would create all sorts of political opportunities for conservative to libertarian sort of
market oriented reformist candidates. Ask you all a trivia question here. So here
in Dallas, we've got an election from air coming up. Anyone know who
the Republican candidate is in Dallas? Yeah, she doesn't matter. I thought
Dallas had gone to the left. Dallas is a very democratic city. Yeah,
certainly. But the truth is there isn't one. Isn't there one?
Our mayor here, Eric Johnson, who's an Okay mayor, and our elections
for mayor technically nonpartisan vidas thing, you're pretty progressive Democrat is running unopposed the
Republicans. And there is a Republican Party of Dallas County that's got all sorts
of officers and stuff. They haven't even put up candidate. So we are
the third largest city in Texas and the ninth largest city in the country.
Republicans aren't even in the race here. And this is a pattern that you
see all over the country where you've got Republicans, and I just use Republicans
as a kind of shorthand for people who aren't you know, crazy lefties right
simply refuse to enter the contest. And that is, um, you know,
it's a real problem because so I accuse Texas as an example. Republicans
are so doomed in the cities that you know in Texas, which is again
a pretty republican state, although not as republican as people sometimes think it is,
um the biggest city in Texas where Republicans reliably win any kind of election,
from you know, mayor's races to the majority of the vote in a
presidential race is my hometown Lubbock. Not fort Worth, Nope, not anymore.
Fort Worth currently has a Republican mayor. Tarrant County I think went for
Biden in twenty twenty. And wow, I do think Cruiz one Tarrant County
in his or. He didn't certainly didn't win the city of fort Worth.
And so Lubbock, Lubbock is what twelve people Okay, Right, So you've
got Houston, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin,
El Paso, all run by Democrats in the state that Republicans like me keep
fantasizing about moving to because it's sobably great in Texas except for the parts of
Texas where where the people are. And now we've got but a my laughing
it's to avoid crying. I suppose, well, Texas has a slightly larger
rural population, at least in terms of voter turnout. I think we're a
little more urban than the national average, but we still got enough people in
kind of exurban in rural areas you're charing for the vote that Republicans still do
kind of reasonably well here. But that's not going to last very long.
And it's not just you know, the cities themselves, but now the first
rings of suburbs around the cities. So if you look at say Harris County,
where Houston is, of course Republicans are doomed in the city of Houston.
They have been for a long time. But if you start looking at
the more Houston like of the suburbs, the more urban suburbs, Republicans are
competitive there anymore either. And it's not a surprise why, because they go
out and give speeches about how the cities suck and the people who live there
depraved, and that if you're you know, if your gold in life is
to graduate from high school, go to an Ivy League college, and work
for a Silicon Valley startup, which is something a lot of people want to
do. Republicans hate everything you've chose, and the whole their whole kind of
you know, public course is based on running down the sort of institutions that
a lot of people associate with upward mobility and a good kind of life,
and one of those institutions is American cities. You know, I will forever
be on Ted Cruz's case, not because he was criticizing Donald Trump, which
of course is a worthwhile thing to do, but for denouncing him as a
as the embodiment of New York values. Well, you went to Princeton,
your wife works for Goldman Sachs. Come on, you know you're not some
good old boy from Uvaldi, you know, haha, New York City people,
and this sort of how do you do anythink Republicans do with the cities
just has to really stop. First of all, because we need better cities.
But also there's simply not going to be a competitive political party if they're
intently dependent on exerban and rural areas. So Kevin um Well, I just
remember, I mean, I guess the first president I was really sort of
aware of, like, you know a a I was a young teenager,
was was Calvin Coolidge. Calvin Coolidge, um Eisenhower, like was Ronald Reagan?
Right? And one of the raps when Ronald Reagan was that he was
so dumb because he was so optimistic. Right, But the attitude from the
so the smart people then was like this guy, he's a he's an Indian.
Listen to what he talks, that like Sunday days are ahead, you
know, it's morning in America, that there's a memory of human said,
there's not one problem we face as a nation. That's someone in this country
isn't solving right now somewhere, which is I'm completely true. And then some
somehow, in the pastor of five ten years, um as the left has
been or the left part, left half of the country and left half of
media or whatever you want to call it, has become more and more entrenched
in the idea that things are really really terrible, things are really really awful,
not just in the economy with the wage with a you know, um
with the disparity and wealth gap, but also because we were assistant systemically racist
country and it's really no way you could possibly break out of that yoke.
And the counter argument from the other side has been, they're right, it
is terrible. We aren't we it's terrible and disastrous for other reasons, but
we're doomed. We don't have a country anymore. It's over um, and
they wonder why nobody likes them. They wonder why they're like struggling to like
get to barely forty nine percent for either any candidate. Yeah, had a
pretty good column about that week or so ago. It was about the debate
It over is a guy's name Dylan Mulvaney trans Yes, And her argument was
that, you know, Dylan Mulvaney seems like someone who's having fun, you
know, whereas ever, everyone who is exercised about this, you know,
seems sort of miserable and uh and terrible. And you know, if your
if your argument is everything sucks, we're all going to die, we're gonna
be overrun by dirty foreigners and the country's over and we're losing our republican all
this stuff. Now, everybody was assign up for that. Um. You
know, if you listen to the way Republicans talk, you would think that
people in Provo had to get up and you know, get in snowplows every
morning to drive the drag queens out of the way who were chasing their children
around. And it's just not really the way the country actually actually is.
And there's a lot to criticize about the United States. I mean, there's
a reason I've got the you know, Swiss Immigration office bookmark on my computer
and I'm you know, trying to figure out how to do those forms in
German. But there's there's some real troubles in this country. But I think
you're right. Things are almost never as bad as the kind of you know,
political entrepreneurs want you to think they are, because it's really easy to
sell stuff through you know, fear and loathing and terror and all that.
Um. But also, the problems we actually have aren't the problems that people
say that we have. I think it's only the case that when we do
point out a problem, though word, you know, a the problem doesn't
exist to be if it does exist, it's a good thing. And see,
you're a hater for not going along with the agenda. It's not a
matter of how many dry queens they have to get, you know, they
have to applow to get to where they have to be. It's the question
of is it meet right and proper in society to say, you know what,
this family friendly show here where they're talking in front of the little two
year olds and having them stuff the dollar bills? Do we can can we
say that's wrong? We can say that can't We can have an argument about
that. We can discuss it without saying that the republic is crumbling because there's
a lot of really ugly men in mask are out there moving around. But
it's not. It's not a completely irrelevant issue if you can tie it to
a larger you know, not top down commy agenda, but a larger reevaluation
and reconstruction of American sexual mores and gender theory and the rest of it.
I mean, it's of a piece of things that we can talk about and
it doesn't distract us from the ability to talk about other things. You know,
I wrote, I wrote, and I say a couple of years ago
that I was pretty proud of called consider the Moose, and my my beginning
argument is that we all spend a lot of time worrying about shark attacks,
but you're a lot more likely to be killed by a moose than by shark.
You know, moose are really aggressive, and there's a lot more of
them, and there are a lot more interactions with them, but they're just
not terrifying that way. And we tend to fixate on problems that have some
sort of exotic or dramatic character. So if you want to talk about your
trouble in American you know, sexual and family morice, yeah, you've got
a lot to talk about. But it starts with the divorce rate between nineteen
sixty five and nineteen ninety five being whatever it was, I'm insane number,
and the number of children being born out of wedlock and the rest of this,
and the normalization of all that. And I remember the debate about gay
marriage and people saying, well, this is just it for marriage. Well,
I mean, the sort of traditional version of marriage had been dead for
a generation by that point. I mean, the real mystery was why gay
people wanted to take up such a devace and devalued institution in the first place.
So while yeah, the kind of you know, drag queen story,
our sort of stuff is certainly not at the top of the list of place
stuff like to take my own kids, and I think is good for children.
I don't think that actually is where the real problem in our society is.
I think this is a small, dramatic thing that it's easy to get
excited about, but the real problem is that nine of the people who are
excited about it to have kids who have three different children by three different fathers,
and I've never even thought about getting married. I agree if I had
to choose, if I had to choose which one that I would fix,
which one that I could wave a magic wand it would be the destruction of
the American family and all the rest of it. But at the same time,
having said that, and having that my top priority for fixing American society,
when we had a little debate, when we had a signing of a
bill here at the Minnesota State Capital that would protect transgender people they could come
to the state and have their surgery if they couldn't where they were elsewhere.
Big celebration, right, and there's this there's this drag guy who's dancing on
the North Star, which is usually in the floor of the Capitol, and
it's usually roped off. You don't walk on it because of reverence. And
he's got ridiculous heels and some purple outfit and he's thrashing around and gyrating to
the applause of everybody else. And thankfully he didn't do what he did on
his Instagram page, which is to cover himself with blood and Hail Satan.
But I'm looking at Hail Satan covered with blood, guy in his fishnet and
his still letos dancing on the symbol of the state and this wonderful classical temple
of democracy, and thinking I would prefer this not to have happened. I
wish we hadn't gotten to the point where this sort of vimar ridiculousness is not
celebrated as stunning and brave. But that you know, what our Scandinavian forbears
might have thought, of course, is something you can only imagine. But
okay, if that's dead topic here, I don't want to rehash it,
but I want to push back in something you said earlier, because the people
in the comments, will globalization helps us all? I agree, we all
benefited for we got a lot of cheap stuff, and we got list we
had a lot of I mean, I got a television, said I probably
paid sixty eight bucks for that is better than the movie screens that I grew
up with as a kid. But I was on Amazon the other day trying
to find an espresso machine, and there's about one hundred and seventy eight espresso
machines that I could get in this price point, all from companies that don't
exist. There's some fake brand name full of consonants and balls that they stuck
on the front of the thing. And we're not better off for that.
I don't want to be like Bernie Sanders saying why do you need one hundred
and seventy eight espresso machines? You know, I'd be content with choice from
eighty one. But you look at that, and you look at also the
fact that we seem to be particularly vulnerable during the pandemic two things that China
made and we didn't. And we ask ourselves at the end of the day,
did we really benefit? But we did? But so much so that
let's do it again, Or isn't there a way that we can kind of
make cheap espresso machines here in America? And drugs and the rest of it
too. I mean, shouldn't we onshore some of this stuff back. No,
you should go to Williamson and buy yourself a proper espresso machine made in
Italy, like a civilized person would. Right, Well, that's my plan.
What's what brand would you suggest to the dilo? I have a mister
coffee myself. Oh oh, man of the people. Sure, I'm not
a man of the people. I don't like the people very much, but
I prefer coffee. And but also I have a you know, I've got
the hips your coffee shop down the street from me because I do live in
uh America and I can get my you know, Vegan Collachis or whatever it
is or selling down Kevin. I'm going to insist on this, but you,
being you, you can find somebody just to flip the question off if
you want to. You are fifty years old. You just said this,
and you have a newborn. Yeah what's that? Eleven months? Yeah?
Eleven months? First of all, congratulations, but but you have no idea
how shocked many of us were when we heard Kevin Kevin is really getting married
and that was and you didn't get us enough time to adjust to that idea
before Kevin is going to Kevin is going to be a father? Okay,
so one of the many appealing at You're kind of a Menkin in that your
grouchiness is actually appealing. I want to know, give us, give us,
give us, give us the top three list. What fatherhood? How
fatherhood has changed you, changed your thinking, changed your demeanor? What has
it done for you or to you? Kevin? You know I, um,
I think my grouchiness is exaggerated. Um No, I don't think so.
I don't think so. I was here from people who think that I'm
a really, you know, angry writer. I don't think I'm a particularly
angry writer. I think I compared I compared you with Menkin. Won't you
take that? No, I don't like Mankin. I think Mincin was.
I think Mencan was a genuine missing throw in a way that I'm not No,
You're not all right, and also that it was a stick at He's
towards the end of his career was stick I mean he has. He was
a wonderful, gefted writer in a lot of ways. Don't get me wrong,
Um, but I think you know, I think Mark Twain is more
cynical than than I was. Um Williamson compared itself to Mark Twain, not
exactly I'm talking about here, but um so no, um, you know,
being father, um it it's well, okay, it's actually it has
made me an angrier writer in some ways, or an angrier person, I
think in some ways, um, because it makes me a lot more attuned
to, um, the fact that there are a lot of children out there
who are relatively low priorities for their parents. Um as I certainly was.
Um. You know, I'll write about this, you know, one of
these days. But um, yeah, I think actually having ah, I'll
do a little Joonah Goldberg here. I think that, um, having a
dog makes you more I think, attuned to how people treat animals in the
world, and I think having a kid does the same thing on a much,
you know, deeper and more profound scale for thinking about how people are
treated. I want to preserve this clip and then send it to your child.
On his eighteenth birthday, when you were eleven months old, son,
your father compared you to a dog. Well, we have a very nice
year name pancake. And your father, by the way, was born during
the Nixon administration. It was yeah, just right before the big reelection.
But you put your elderliness in contact for him. Well, you know,
on the subject to political swings, I think about that a lot because you
think nineteen sixty eight, just a few years before I was born, it
seemed like the most left wing time in American history, and then seventy two
Nixon wins forty nine states. So you know, the idea that we are
at some kind of lost cause level of political insanity, I think is is
not defensible. So yeah, certainly, you know, having kids just makes
you softer in a lot of ways. It makes you just aware of their
kind of you know, vulnerability and dependence and all of that. It certainly
makes you grateful for things like healthcare, you know. So again, we
live in Dallas, as I mentioned, and Dallas is a great place for
medical care and that sort of thing. We had a little thing in the
see where we thought there might be a problem that turned out not to be
a problem. But they're like, well, we can give you, you
know, a fetal MRI, and we can do it two hours from now,
and it's going to cost four hundred bucks wow, or something like that.
It's just amazing the stuff that you can do. And yeah, so
you certainly learned to be grateful for those sorts of things. I wouldn't buy
an espresso machine from Amazon because a lot of they are manufactured things like that
tend to be terrible. But we'd like to buy baby formula and baby food
and all that kind of stuff. I can have it just delivered to your
home by the time. So um, yeah. We always jokingly stay peace
be upon him when the name Jeff Bezos is mentioned, because make life so
much easier for you kind of you know, bulk purchases. And that's right,
right, Well, we look forward to you giving the world an account
of the books that you have to read to your child, and how you
will agree or disagree with a little engine that could if you give a mouse
a cookie. All the rest of these things are fraught with lessons if for
life, and man, you believe how many books I bought for this,
you know, kid already right, bust out for toddlers, all right,
Kevin, here at the beginning of a wonderful, wonderful journey, and you're
gonna have a great deal of fun. It's gonna be over too soon.
So you know, we'll talk to you when your kids start moves away to
college. Which for you, I guarantee will seem like ninety minutes. Yeah,
but I'm gonna be seventy two years old. You won't have any idea
and I and you will. You will have mellowed so much. Kevin Williamson
for the Dispatch, Thanks for joining us to congratulations on that baby. Thank
you. I wonder if he's getting a lot of sleep. You know,
it's because they do tend to keep you up. I just remember when my
daughter was born. There was those moments where I would just be so exhausted
seeing my wife do everything that I just had to take a nap. But
luckily, in actually not luckily, in those days, it was hard for
me to fall asleep because I was snooping on sheets that were like iron,
not that they were like iron, but that they felt like it, or
that they were scratchy, or that they just came apart at the seams because
they were cheap. Nowadays, of course, you know, if I had
another kid again and I had to nap a little bit more than I do,
I would be content to know that Bolden Branch would take me where I
needed to go. And also, I gotta tell you this, it's getting
to be a little bit warmer here where you might be, not here forty
five flipping degrees and rainy and drizzly. I want to actually go back to
bed into my nice, cozy Bolden Branch sheets. I'm just getting hot where
you are. You're thinking, are these sheets caused me peril when it's hot
and I go to sleep? No? No, no, no, no
no. Boll And Branch. They're the betting experts and they make the highest
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you can hear more about that phab. There's ten thousand reviews of Bolden Branch
various places in the Internet and they're all five stars. So I've told you
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And again I have to report it's now been three weeks since I've told
you that my sheets are softer than they were the last time because I've been
away, but they were washed and they are in mentally even softer than they
were before. Keep in mind, Bolden Branch gives you a thirty night risk
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Exclusions apply. So he signed for details, and we thank Boldin Brands
for sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast. Now we welcome back Andrew Gutman. He
became known as the Brearley Dad after trying to get the parents of his daughter's
school to stand up for their children's education. He's stuck with the fight against
indoctor nation in schools, and he's running for Congress. How about that He's
not all taught, but somebody who's actually going to get into the lions,
Dan and do it needs to be done? Andrew, welcome back. Thank
you for having me. I gotta say, first of all, I love
minus pressol machine. I do not like I do not like Amazon. It's
the company that should not exist. We can talk about that or not.
And I think I disagree with everything that Kevin said, but of course I'm
I am now the politician that he is complaining about. So right, I
like an especial machine. Two, I do, I just I never All
the color coded cancils are are are something of a confusion to me because I
don't care as long as it's not the green one, because I know the
green one's going to be espresso or is going to be decaf, except when
it's not all right. You're running against Lois Frankel, Yes, in Florida
in District twenty two. Tell us about your opponent and what do you hope
to do to win? Well? First, I have to get through the
primary. So it's a long road. We've got a not too long us
as a primary. November's the election Lois has been. There's a sixth term
congresswoman who has been there forever. She is not well liked by the people
who like me. They want to get her out. They've never had what
I'm told is a viable candidate in district or district as a Republican. And
there's a lot of excitement that I can be that viable candidate. But you
know, I feel I'm running for the same reason I wrote the letter two
years ago that we've talked about in the show a bunch of times, and
I talk about all the time on take Back our Schools, on Ricochet,
which is I had a duty two years ago to write that letter to parents,
never expected it to go viral, and I feel the same sort of
duty now that this is the next step of the parents movement. People like
me, we call ourselves accidental activists, and we have to step up because
I don't think kind of what your last guest was talking about. I don't
think most people, and including most of our elected officials, fundamentally understand what
is going on in our school systems and what is at stake in this culture
war, and so I hope to bring that to Congress. So, Andrew,
I've got the twenty second Congressional district up on my screen right now.
We start just north of Boca Ratan. We go all the way up to
West Palm that takes in Lake Worth, Point in Beach, Delray Beach.
Does it take in Palm Beach itself? I'm not clear about that. The
challenge which has not become the fundraising capital of the Republican fundraising capital right in
the world. Okay, So you've got this little, long, narrow strip
of sand Palm Beach where there's some rich Republicans, but the rich rest,
well, the rest of that district is. First of all, everybody's pretty
rich who lives there. We've got one hundred percent urban it says, that
doesn't sound like Republican country. Really, we've got forty minorities, again,
not a Republican district. And then we've got the Cook partisan voting Index D
plus seven. Andrew, that's actually better than I thought. I've probably seen
D plus ten the last time I check, but maybe that's after I announced.
Okay, I mean, I just want you try to reform the New
York City schools. This is one impossible task. You moved to Florida,
you look around and say, let's do something else impossible here. What are
you doing? We have to try, We have to fight. Look,
the Santis won the county, which was the first time in three or four
decades at a Republican and won the county. Became very very close to winning
in this district. I think it was two or three points that he lost
by. This is possible. And with more and more people like myself coming
from New York and coming from other Blue states coming down here voting Republican.
It's also thirty percent independence, and I think that I can reach those independence
in a way that previous candidates had no shot at reaching. I'm Jewish.
It's one of the most Jewish districts in the country. We've never had in
recent memory a Jewish Republican candidate. We think this is doable. My political
consultants think this is doable. We're going to fight like hell to make this
happen. I mean, it's not easy. One more, I know Rob
wants to get get him. Can I just ask anything? Okay? So
here I used to feel and this is the quote. I used to feel
that I could name that I personally knew every conservative Jew in America, Norman
pot Hoortz, his son John, And that gets you to about eighty percent
of them, right, I mean a small community, isn't it You say
that being Jewish will help you, But isn't it overwhelming even in Florida.
Isn't the Jewish community overwhelmingly democratic? Yes? Yes, but they are.
One of the differences with the Jewish community in Florida versus New York is they're
pro Israel here, so that helps are not pro Israel in New York.
So you have that, and certainly I can speak to that. You know,
my family has been involved in a lot of work in Israel. I
think there is a realization on these culture, war and education issues. These
these grandparents, and you have a lot of retirees obviously in this district and
West Pump. These grandparents are seeing what is happening in their grandkids schools.
They don't like it. So we think there are some of them that are
that are reachable and that we can talk to. You know, if I
win the independence, it's thirty percent independence. I win the independence, and
I win. The Republicans, we win. We don't need a single Democrat.
That's the way the math works. But you know, I think we
can reach people that previous Republican candidates had absolutely no shot at reaching. Great
I Andrew, it's Roblong in New York, thank you for joining us.
So um, I haven't answered in my head to this question, but I
wonder wonder if it's the same one, Okay, whose campaign clearly Republican campaign?
Do you think is the close model where you kind of model yourself after?
I have no idea. I don't model myself after anybody. You know
what I'm saying. When you run, when you're running for office, you
want to look for a path, right, and you can see where other
people have. Maybe there are a lot of issues, right, they've crystallized
a few issues that really seem to resonate with people. Is there anyone that
you think, okay, well, that that proves that somebody with my message
can win in what is in fact, I currently held as a blue district.
Look, I think there are there are a number of outsider, you
know, political outsiders that have been successful that you can look to. I
think I'm somewhat I don't want to overstate my uniqueness, but I think I'm
reasonably unique in trying to do this. You know, a complete political outsider.
Um. You know, I was not a Republican. I was an
independent. I thought considered myself an independent my whole life. I'm a libertarian.
But I don't have what's your answer? I don't have an answer,
Um, Glenn youngcan Yeah. I thought he was more the Republican establishment that
embraced this parents movement. And I know a lot of people that were in
that parents movement in Virginia that really helped him. And yeah, but I
mean he for for for the Purple voters in Virginia, he crystallized something that
they have been feeling, which was that the schools that they're paying for.
Yeah, an education in general is off the rails, and there that is
an issue I think. I mean, I don't know your district, so
I don't know, but I feel like that's an issue that you I put
his way. I have a lot of friends who are liberals and Democrats,
and they will say things like I'm a really liberal Democrat. I am a
progressive liberal Democrat. But and then they will list one or two or three
or four or five or ten things sometimes which they differ on that current orthodoxy,
and I'm like, well, I got some bad news for You're you're
at the best, you're moderate, you're probably a conservative. No, no,
no, I'm a liberal. So I know a lot of those people
in New York. Yeah. Top three, the top three. The top
three issues are always education. It's a one, two or three, depending
on how old they are and how old their kids are. Yeah, yeah,
no, I think we reach you know. One of the things that
has been very frustrating to me since my letter happened and since the sort of
parents movement started, was that this became such a part as an issue.
And that's the world we live in. We live in this polarized world.
But this issue of education is should not be a partisan issue. They should
not be a right left, Republican democrat issue. Most of the parents out
there, when you talk to them, are not happy with the direction of
these schools. They're not happy with the anti meritocracy, and they're not happy
with what I would call some people criticize it the woke ideology, the gender
and strance stuff, especially as motivating people. And so the question is,
how do you reach those people. But if you can reach them, this
absolutely crosses over the eye and I think, you know, that's the opportunity.
So I think the education issue absolutely can motivate people in the center and
in the center left. Well, people who are listening to this podcast and
not seeing it on our little live zoom thing here don't know it. But
Andrew is in front of a bookcase with lots of books, which we assume
him, being a republican conservative, you will promptly ban and then burn at
the conclusion of our little conversation here. So good you can't see. The
bottom right section is all my critical race theory books I've read. It's like
the whole string of that because I had to understand the ideology that I'm talking
about. But no, we're not banning books. We're not banning. But
look, I really call myself a classical liberal rather than a conservative. I
mean I prefer that, I always have called that. I don't think there's
that much of a distinction these days between classical liberalism and conservatism, and we
need both those people. We need to explain it. We need to explain
that exactly what classic classical liberalism means and reclaim the word. Andrew will talk
to you again as the campaign goes on, and thanks for joining us,
your good luck and thank you very much for having me Andrew Gutman dot com
with that in the show notes for sure. Um, and good luck out
there in the shoe leather, knock knock it on doors. That's the most
important thing I will hold on. Here's how impressed I am. I want
everybody to know the Gutman has one tea and one end, two ends.
Oh my goodness. Okay, okay, so this is really important. And
she's been rung all over the internet, but we own all the different doname
names. So if you get it right, okay, okay, okay,
can I give you I know you gotta run, but I can I give
you one more model? Yes please? Um Alexandriacazio cortse She she unseated a
unseated uh establishment democrat. We've been there a long time. No one thought
she could do it. She marched around, she knocked on doors. I
mean, you gotta give her credit. She took she she took that seat.
She's a brilliant politician. Yeah, that's such a rumor. Rumored now
running for Senate in twenty four. No reason you can't steal the playbook of
people have been successful, even if you disagree with the great I guess this
means when you in we'll be seeing you in pro ch jacket. All said,
all right, thank you're crazy, but we love you for it.
Well, gentlemen, on the way out here. A few minutes a week
ago, I was in the dumpiest airport I've ever been in my life,
a place called Luton. Oh sure, Luton in England, north north of
London. It's not bad. It's just dumpy and it was cold. I
mean it's like they didn't turn the heat on. And I caught an easy
Jet, which is one of the ugliest airlines I've ever been on. It's
got this orange logo and this squashed Cooper black typeface, and you got to
pay for everything, including oxygen and water and the rest of it. But
in the other hand, it delivered me safely to Barcelona, which is where
I was. I was in England and then I was in Barcelon been to
Barcelona, I highly yeah, would advise anybody who has to attempt to make
a trip to that city, because if you are interested in work in urbanism,
in how places can look. It's just a revelation. As much as
I love American cities and as much I love car culture and all the rest
of it, and I have no breed, I have no beef for the
suburbs whatsoever. There is part of me that just sings at this density and
these stores and the shops and the trees and the universal height of the buildings.
And it's in its course. I mean, it's just it was just
a life of the thing. You know. I don't nobody cares. I
took a vacation. What I wanted to say is this I find. And
I found the same thing in England as well, that the idea that the
ugly American that they hate us coming over there, they still like us.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think so. They are still fascinated
with America. And they say they're a young man who is the topest for
restaurant waiter, and he he wanted to know about America. He wanted to
go, he wanted to go to Chicago, and he wanted what was my
favorite state? You know? And question before and in England, when I
was talking to some people who are incredibly civilized and and and they've you know,
they've been places, but they've never been to America. And we've sort
of conjured up this trip that they would take to take I was describing where
they should go, and you know, part of it as a whole Florida.
Why would I go to Florida because you learned something? And I realized,
you learned something about America. No matter where you go, get a
car, hit the highway, go to the diners, stay in the cheap
motels. And they were enthralled with the idea of America. And they still
believed in it. And for all of its strange craziness and the politicians they
don't like, and the things they don't understand, and the guns are always
mad about the guns. Um, we still hold a special place in the
hearts of a lot of people who around the world. And that is a
really stupid obvious thing to say, except that we forget it sometimes and think
that we're just constantly being poormouth by the by our intellectual betters. So that's
the only thing that I took away from the trip, aside from much I
love England, that that I wish to share anything else, gentlemen. While
I was away, I assume that you carried on we talked about you behind
your back of course. Okay, I'll have to go back and listen to
that one. What did you say? Well, wait, wait a minute,
you're Newton. You can't really say how much I loved England and then
leave us with Luton? Luton? Where else did you physically? Well?
Um, well, I went to London and then picked up my daughter and
went to Walberswick, which is this small town coastal town in Suffolk where I
go once a year where I have friends where we do some business stuff.
And I was also speaking at an arts festival, so that was fun.
You talk on the seat. Yes, well, they call up and asked
if I would like to do so, as I said, yes, absolutely,
and then they said what would you like to do? And I scrambled,
And since I've been listening to Herbert Marshall do a very bad radio show
in the fifties, I said, the British actors in American radio who defined
the idea of England for the American audience and the post war period, great
brilliant, come and do it. So then I had to come up with
something to prove my point. And I was going to be speaking at the
at the King Theater. Now, mind you, this arts festival scattered all
about Halesworth and the rest of the small little Suffolk town, so it's all
over the place. It's one of those things where they get a room here,
they get a room here at the old Multiri multi factory and pop,
pack you in here. So I was impressed here that I would be speaking
at the King Theater, expecting, as I did, some sort of you
know Edwardian place with Victorian with three leve cheers of balconies and some you know
musty you know back stage areas and the King. Well I get to the
King Theater and it turns out that it's a room in the d L.
King Auto Dealership. It's where they had the little conferences and they got together
for sales talks or presentations or whatever. Hi, cho up, I'm at
a dealership and Halesworth. But it was a good It was a you know,
a nice seating a lot of people could pack in, and they did
pack in its standing room only, and it was just absolutely marvelous. And
then we did work on our continuing effort to bring the writings in the television
shows of pigle inch back to his life. I step stay with their daughter
and her musician husband, and that was great. It's the Garden of England.
It's a small town. It's the growling sea at the edge of town,
just constantly pawing at the at the island and taking a few inches away
every millennium or whatever, running down the beach with a dog, seeing going
to the pub for an astonishing quiz night, Sitting next to a guy who
lives around the corner, who was in the last Star Wars, who was
in the solo Star Wars movie. He got he got stabbed. I didn't
want to bring it up. And his father was in the original House of
Cards in England. Ian Richardson was his father. Oh you're kidding, Wow,
Oh. Ian Richardson was a great actor, right serious, even though
we only know him for the House of Card. And so is Miles and
so you know in Miles's incredibly plumby voice and he's just the very picture of
a British actor, speaks like so and you know, and then you find
yourself and my favorite the we're sitting around with with Jan Etherton, who has
has been she writes a sitcom for BBC Radio with Joanna Lumley and Roger um
um Okay alum Okay and the comic actor. He's doing comedy work. He's
absolutely he's wonderful in this series and sore and the talk turns to musical theater,
as it does sometimes, because Dennis had written several privates on parade um
a whole bunch of Dennis's composer and the rest of it. And I mentioned
this theory that I'd heard been told was that my fair Lady is actually sort
of a double meaning because it's how he lies. I do little would pronounced
my fair mayfair, my fair mayfair, my fair lady. And I mentioned
that in Dennis says bollocks, and I said, well, that's what I
heard. Astrid picks up her phone and says, I know who to call,
and she calls the woman who was the seventh wife of the man who
wrote the lyrics for My Fair Lady, and she texts we were having a
conversation here. It turns out that that my fair Lady made me a play
in the words it's my fair lady, and the woman text bags almost immediately
absolute balos. So if anybody brings that up to me, I can say,
well, I was at a diner party. You know. We asked
it his seventh wife about it, and she was quite quite quite clear didn't
have So I mean, I go to this place and all these people are
brilliant, and they're all intelligence smart, and conversation is sparkling, and it's
just it's I mean, it's the greatest. It's it's my second home,
and I love it so much and I have such fun when I was there.
Now Barcelona, we stayed with the exchange students, with our old exchange
student and her parents one and so we got a granular molecular level tour of
eight eleven miles a day, walking through downtown Barcelona, through winding through the
old medieval areas, going to the Roman ruins, and of course you got
to see the gaudy church, which is ugly. It's fascinating. I think
it's an insectisoid alien nightmare, but it's fascinating. And so you spent a
lot of time. So just could be There's nothing I love more in life
than to walk around a city with my daughter and just soak it all in
the typeface of the buildings that the architecture, the history there's the manifestation of
the way it is that this minute, the way it manifests what was five
hundred years ago, that is my great joy into light in life and I
got to do it again and so I can die happy. I was sad
that I missed the podcast, but you know what, I think Barcelona a
little bit better and now I have to go. We'd like to thank you
all for listening. Bowl and Branch brought you this podcast. And you know,
get yourself. If you haven't, just do it, get the sheets.
You will sleep better for the rest of your life. And of course,
Rob, would you like to tell them that there's a five star review
waiting to be written on Apple podcast. There is. You can take a
minute to leave a five star review and Apple podcast and the benefit of that
is that the algorithm kicks in and more people can find the podcast. So
please do that for us. And speaking of people, of course, Ricochet
people meet in person in the real world in meat space as we used to
call it a horrible term. Go to ricochet dot com and you can check
the side panel. It'll tell you where and if or when there's a meetup
near you, or you can meet your feeble or Ricochetti. Gentlemen, pleas
would be back. Great to talk to you, and we'll see you in
the comments at Ricochet four point next week, Next week, fellows, next
week boys. Hello, I'm Dennis Neal and here's what's bugging me. The
media are burying some of the biggest scandals of our lifetime, and I'm here
to call them out on it and make fun of them for it. The
Twitter files and government censorship, the Biden documents, the Hunter laptop, the
lies of the FBI and the Russia Gate, host China spy balloons and toxic
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All that and more on What's Bugging Me Available for download and streaming every
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