Speaker 1: Are we going.
Speaker 2: We're going, let's go gold like punditry right, doing politics right.
Speaker 1: No, I think we should be as far away from
Speaker 1: as possible act. I mean, I mean everybody does everybody
Speaker 1: does that like we only we're the only people who
Speaker 1: do us right. So the more we do us, the better.
Speaker 2: That is fantastic. It's the IDEs of May. And this
Speaker 2: is pop culture. But start again, well I start again?
Speaker 2: Is it because I said pop culture and not?
Speaker 1: That's funny?
Speaker 2: And that's because I have this in my head and
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about it. So I'm not going
Speaker 2: to start again. Glove culture May John pod Hornets talking here.
Speaker 2: I'm looking here. You're not seeing him, but I'm seeing
Speaker 2: in I believe in Princeton, New Jersey, in Manhattan, Oh,
Speaker 2: in Manhattan, wearing a very nice striped shirt, and lie,
Speaker 2: I like it. I'm enjoying it. And in his aria
Speaker 2: in northwestern DC. Northwest DC, we don't say northwestern. See
Speaker 2: is Jonah Goldberg?
Speaker 1: Hi Jonah? Hello John.
Speaker 2: I just want to say before we start that, I
Speaker 2: just I spent about an hour reading the dispatches New
Speaker 2: Acquisitions Scotus Blogs live blog of the Supreme Court proceedings
Speaker 2: today May fifteenth, and it was absolutely fascinating. It was great.
Speaker 2: I read it. I wasn't doing it, I wasn't following
Speaker 2: it live. I actually read it after after the blog
Speaker 2: had finished, and therefore was able to sort of read
Speaker 2: it chronologically to see where the argument was going and
Speaker 2: how things were. It was lively, It was funny, interesting, good,
Speaker 2: juicy details from Sarah Esker on the fact that Neil
Speaker 2: Gorson's has a gigantic moose's head in his office and
Speaker 2: Amy Cony Barrett has some kind of anyway, So.
Speaker 1: What part of pop culture?
Speaker 2: John, Yes, we're gonna so this is what we're going
Speaker 2: to see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is gonna be the right Yeah, because
Speaker 1: my question is my question is do you believe that
Speaker 1: what you just said counts as pop cultures?
Speaker 2: I think anything that I say counts as pop culture
Speaker 2: because you.
Speaker 1: Know what, I think it might have identified the problem.
Speaker 2: Okay, now, okay, we have been doing this podcast. I
Speaker 2: believe we're trying to figure out twelve years. Thirteen years.
Speaker 2: You did it for a year before I joined with
Speaker 2: mark Stein, and then mark Stein went off as mark
Speaker 2: Stein is inclined to do, and I came on and
Speaker 2: we have been having this conversation monthly in front of people,
Speaker 2: and we have conversations not in front of people for decades,
Speaker 2: and why it was monthly May we used to do
Speaker 2: it every two week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: Okay, So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Do we still do it? I still do it. We
Speaker 1: do it twice a month though.
Speaker 2: No, we don't, but we could. But here's the thing.
Speaker 2: I'm worried, and I keep expressing my worry that we're
Speaker 2: running out of gas, that we have had the conversations
Speaker 2: right now that we're constantly defaulting to.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's true topics, but I think that is. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I can let John make the case before you get there.
Speaker 2: I don't have a case, you know. I just keep thinking,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, have we had this exact conversation before
Speaker 2: about the episode of The Odd Couple when Felix and
Speaker 2: Oscar each tell the story of or how they first
Speaker 2: four different how they first met shows, or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Have Have we done this before? Have we told our
Speaker 2: anecdotes before? Have we talked about it? And we have
Speaker 2: talked about because let's face it, we're not consumers of
Speaker 2: the kind of pop culture that we once were when
Speaker 2: we started right, We're not going to the movies as
Speaker 2: much as we used to. We don't watch broadcast television.
Speaker 1: This is this is our memory care facility here, that's
Speaker 1: what this is. Everybody, half podcast, half early on set
Speaker 1: kind of therapy.
Speaker 2: I mean, if people knew the kinds of things that
Speaker 2: I send to you guys offline from Facebook as a
Speaker 2: result of Facebook, Like, do you think those people would do.
Speaker 1: You think they would be surprised? Is that what you're No,
Speaker 1: I don't, okay.
Speaker 2: But it would just show the depth that what is
Speaker 2: an interest to me that can't be of interest to
Speaker 2: anybody else on the planet Earth, which is like what
Speaker 2: we're the highest rated shows in nineteen sixty seven in.
Speaker 1: The discuss absolutely let me let me just say that Red.
Speaker 2: Skelton's Variety Show was the second highest rated television program
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven. And let's just guess how many
Speaker 2: people listening to my voice right now know the name
Speaker 2: Red Skeleton.
Speaker 3: Well, thirty of this audience, eighty percent of this audience,
Speaker 3: because they're also pretty much in the same old agean we.
Speaker 2: Are, okay, all right, of average Americans?
Speaker 1: I once, yeah, I think that's a part of the
Speaker 1: pop culture umbrella would include TikTok Uh, and TikTok is
Speaker 1: a great place to watch TV if you don't want
Speaker 1: to see TV. For instance, I mentioned a while back
Speaker 1: that I hadn't seen that show Gilded Age, but I
Speaker 1: actually went into TikTok and I said Gilded Age, and
Speaker 1: there's like four like terrific scenes in it, and in
Speaker 1: the whole series, I think, and I saw, I saw
Speaker 1: them all, so I feel like I've seen the Guilded Age.
Speaker 1: There's also some weird dude, John, who is I think
Speaker 1: in some way probably has the other half of the
Speaker 1: amulet you carry around your neck, who is uploading the
Speaker 1: themes and title sequences to every night of primetime television
Speaker 1: from the seventies on. And he's very melogous. It's Wednesday
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three on NBC, and here's what you're watching.
Speaker 1: And then he shows you what you were watching on NBC.
Speaker 1: Sign severy three to me. Eventually, when the two of
Speaker 1: you meet, it's going to be like, you know, he's murder.
Speaker 1: He could write, well, he does that one too, he
Speaker 1: could you. I would not be surprised if you were
Speaker 1: once contacted by his doctor, because there you're a kidney match.
Speaker 1: Put it that way, there's something very close to it.
Speaker 1: So there's all sorts of there's also what we sometimes do,
Speaker 1: which is we just we don't have a weird topic
Speaker 1: that I mean, I chafe at because I just that's
Speaker 1: that's my personality. Uh, and we kind of just go
Speaker 1: off on little directions. We just kind of do our own,
Speaker 1: our own weird thing, all right.
Speaker 3: So, can I summarize the broad brushstrokes of this this
Speaker 3: not so much disagreement but uh and not in a conflict,
Speaker 3: but friction of visions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, oh here you go.
Speaker 2: Okay, so so so.
Speaker 3: John has been airing this reservation, these reservations about glop
Speaker 3: for a while now with me, and I've mostly rejected them,
Speaker 3: finding them fairly unpersuasive. And then in the wake of
Speaker 3: last month our last episode, John said, Okay, here's what
Speaker 3: I'm talking about. We try to talk about all these
Speaker 3: things and Rob just doesn't care about pop culture anymore.
Speaker 2: And he was like, nah.
Speaker 3: And since that episode was fairly fresh in my mind
Speaker 3: because this text came mere minutes after the show, I said, well, hey,
Speaker 3: that's a good point and we should talk about that.
Speaker 2: I and you make a very.
Speaker 3: Powerful case that basically what this podcast is, I mean,
Speaker 3: the glop culture, the pop culture part of it is.
Speaker 1: Part of the stick.
Speaker 3: But basically people tune in to listen to us gibbets
Speaker 3: and bigger and reminisce and whatnot, and they they tend
Speaker 3: to like it. And the fact that we're not doing
Speaker 3: what the mission and it originally was as.
Speaker 2: Much as we once were.
Speaker 3: Most people who listen, by definition of the fact that
Speaker 3: they're listening, they don't really give a rats ask. They
Speaker 3: just want to hear us. You know, Uh, what's the
Speaker 3: Yiddish word I'm looking for.
Speaker 2: It's kibbits. It's a kibbe, it's kibbits schnor no, that's
Speaker 2: not it a beggar. So anyway, snoring is begging. So
Speaker 2: all right, so let me put it this way. Let
Speaker 2: me let me just so, uh, I feel because in
Speaker 2: a weird way, hosting duties, not that there is a host,
Speaker 2: kind of devolved to me over time how this happened.
Speaker 2: So I feel like I.
Speaker 1: Have you'rey.
Speaker 3: Joy give the mic to John, he'll host anything, or like.
Speaker 2: A friend of mine realized he's an art historian and
Speaker 2: he was sort of a young art historian and came
Speaker 2: to get a job, his first tenure track job, and
Speaker 2: people were like, hey, you're great, you are the greatest
Speaker 2: thing ever. We want you to be chair of the department.
Speaker 2: And he was like, oh my god, I'm going to
Speaker 2: be chair of the department. And then he became chair
Speaker 2: of the department. Of course, they all closed the door
Speaker 2: and then burst out into gales of contemptuous left because
Speaker 2: this is the worst job in the world, actually, being
Speaker 2: a departmental chair at a second rank university where you
Speaker 2: have no disciplinary authority or anything over anybody and you
Speaker 2: just have to do administrative.
Speaker 1: Well, the new guy always gets a bad job. I
Speaker 1: mean I've heard this from like uh old the old
Speaker 1: but like middle middle career priests, episcopal priests, especially when
Speaker 1: he started out. You know, the guy running the church,
Speaker 1: the woman running church runs a little finger down the calendar.
Speaker 1: It sees what the electionary calendar is, what the readings
Speaker 1: are each Sunday. It decides that the Sunday where Jesus
Speaker 1: says like, hey, if you're divorced, you're going to Hell,
Speaker 1: or any of those really tough things. It's like, what
Speaker 1: is the new guy do the sermon on that one right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's exactly it. So, so the hosting duty
Speaker 2: has devolved to me, and then I feel this kind
Speaker 2: of responsibility to introduce points of discussion, and Robin has
Speaker 2: been your increasing habits not increasing, and I do that
Speaker 2: to say, eh, so like.
Speaker 1: That's and that is a fair criticism, rob That is
Speaker 1: a fair I I I absolutely one hundred percent cop
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 2: I don't mind in the sense that then I think
Speaker 2: maybe you're saying, because all of these topics are boring,
Speaker 2: how do you feel about the fact that HBO went
Speaker 2: back to HBO Max And.
Speaker 1: I love that about that.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 4: We should talk about that because that's delicious. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: that's hilarious. Okay, So I guess what I mean is
Speaker 4: this is.
Speaker 1: That uh uh uh you ever gone on one of
Speaker 1: those well, I know, Joan of the answer to drones. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're going to one of those NR cruises.
Speaker 2: We've all we've all.
Speaker 3: We of this podcast stretched back into the Okay, so wow,
Speaker 3: you just came up with that right now.
Speaker 1: Well, back in the midst of I have an allergic
Speaker 1: reaction to the cruise industry and their need to corral
Speaker 1: you and organize you into areas in which you were
Speaker 1: told where to be at a certain time, even when
Speaker 1: that is inconvenience. So the idea, especially when you dis embark,
Speaker 1: there's this, well you're purple, so you you will, We'll
Speaker 1: call for purple. And I'm like, this is the stupidest thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not playing this game. And when they say, well
Speaker 1: you're doing I remember having it. I rarely have a Melton, Right,
Speaker 1: but are you calling me?
Speaker 2: Are you saying no?
Speaker 1: Because I think that was a well run ship. But
Speaker 1: I remember I went had dinner Julie McCoy, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Did it was an eight? No? No, I'm probably like
Speaker 1: the daughter, the little one on.
Speaker 2: The Amy Carter of the Pacific Prince. Yea the daughter
Speaker 2: he didn't know, the daughter, the daughter that the closet
Speaker 2: and Captain Stuming didn't know that he had as well.
Speaker 1: I love the idea that at no point with.
Speaker 2: Just so you know, I can't possibly have a daughter. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess I can't say that, right because it's nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine.
Speaker 1: Right, and ron bring her on and and and pay
Speaker 1: no attention to the fact that she lives in a
Speaker 1: cruise ship and is not being educated in any way
Speaker 1: that she doesn't do anything but work.
Speaker 2: She's learning the rules of rum sobbi and the last.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you because anybody, anybody who could teach that,
Speaker 1: it's Captain Meryl stupid. She's going to the mit of
Speaker 1: that anyway. So you have to sit down at eight o'clock.
Speaker 1: Sit down at eight o'clock, because that's why they tell
Speaker 1: you sit out. So he said, out for dinner eight o'clock,
Speaker 1: if you order your thing. And I wore your wine,
Speaker 1: and I were wine at the beginning of the week,
Speaker 1: and they keep bringing to you and then it sounds eight,
Speaker 1: and I say, bring me this, and bring me the
Speaker 1: wine and the bottle wine. And that's eight forty five
Speaker 1: and nine o'clock and they're basically clearing the table and
Speaker 1: I haven't had a glass of wine yet. So I
Speaker 1: called the guy, said, where the hell is my wine?
Speaker 1: Really I wanted the wine here. I'm here at eight, like,
Speaker 1: where's the wine? It's nine o'clock. I've had, you know.
Speaker 1: And he says this to me because he's the guy
Speaker 1: running the plate as well, you know. So it's very
Speaker 1: difficult for us because of course everybody comes at the
Speaker 1: same time. And I just shouted at him, that's because
Speaker 1: you made us. I would be happy to show up,
Speaker 1: not at time. This is a schedule that you have created.
Speaker 1: And he sort of looked at me. You know, it's
Speaker 1: always it's always a Pacific islander or a Malay person
Speaker 1: in those jobs for that reason, and he was struck
Speaker 1: by my rudeness. But that so, I do have a
Speaker 1: psychological problem about rules and order and calling a schedule
Speaker 1: and then being corralled. And sometimes I feel like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now we're gonna talk about a boring topic when we
Speaker 1: could we're almost on the edge of an interesting riff
Speaker 1: about something. Here's what here's what he's I'm going for
Speaker 1: for true, for true, for true glop fans, they'll get this.
Speaker 1: I'm going for some of that corn hole magic.
Speaker 2: You can't happen on his own. By the way, so
Speaker 2: Meryl Steuming was played by Gavin McLeod. Gavin McLeod in
Speaker 2: the sixties weighed one hundred pounds more than Gavin McLeod
Speaker 2: did in the seventies, and so he played literal heavies
Speaker 2: on every show ever. Mannix the Fugitive whatever. He was
Speaker 2: a big, hulking fat guy and then he lost all
Speaker 2: his weight went on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, as
Speaker 2: Murray did that and then was did the did the law.
Speaker 2: And what was interesting was how the weight covered up
Speaker 2: the fact that he was Faye. He didn't seem Faye
Speaker 2: as a big, hulking heavy on every television show. When
Speaker 2: he was liberated from his fleshly prison, he basically came
Speaker 2: out of his shell, shall we say? And of course
Speaker 2: we never met Murray's wife on the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Speaker 3: And yes we did, Murray, Yes we did, Yes we did,
Speaker 3: we did, Yes we did.
Speaker 1: She was played by Joyce Boulevart. I believe.
Speaker 2: Joyce played Murray's wife.
Speaker 1: I believe she did.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, then I stand corrected. I actually now psychotic
Speaker 2: podcast after all, a psychotagram. I read Joyce's memoir, I did.
Speaker 2: I read her memoir. It was called My Five Hollywood Husbands. Literally,
Speaker 2: I can believe she was married to after she was
Speaker 2: married to Murray on the show, she was married to
Speaker 2: William Asher, who had been married to Elizabeth Montgomery and
Speaker 2: when they did Bewitched, and then she married William Asher.
Speaker 2: How's that for a thrilling piece of trivia about Joyce.
Speaker 2: Joyce ballafant?
Speaker 3: But are we actually saying, are we suggesting that Gavin
Speaker 3: McLeod in real life was gay or just the Meryl
Speaker 3: Steubing character presented as gay.
Speaker 2: No. I think Gavin McLeod presented as as as a
Speaker 2: classic Hollywood character actor of the Faye dis position he
Speaker 2: presented because I think he was married, you had kids.
Speaker 1: So do you ever remember tattle Tales that show tattle
Speaker 1: Tales and they would they would have like real couples, right,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly they would have like, like you know,
Speaker 1: Richard Deacon and Dody Goodman who were kind of not
Speaker 1: who were not a couple in the sense that Dody
Speaker 1: Goodman was not a man, but also just they were
Speaker 1: just it was, oh, no, you're gonna get And nobody
Speaker 1: ever said, oh, you guys are going out or anything.
Speaker 1: It was just we'll have Richard Deacon Doty Goodman. I
Speaker 1: remember that, and of course it didn't make an difference
Speaker 1: to me because I was a kid.
Speaker 2: What did I know?
Speaker 1: But he already this seems more interesting to me.
Speaker 2: Gavin McLeod, Well, now it's not became an evangelical Christian
Speaker 2: that I do know, but that was after that was
Speaker 2: like in the after the the eighties and the nineties anyway.
Speaker 2: So I just thought it was an interesting detail that
Speaker 2: he was once a fat guy and had a completely
Speaker 2: different affect from when he was a thin guy.
Speaker 1: Do you think that now? If you do, if you're
Speaker 1: going to reboot The Love Boat.
Speaker 2: They have rebooted The love Boat and it features and
Speaker 2: it features a throttle. It's called Doctor Odyssey. It's on ABC.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: See this gets us back to the problem that you're
Speaker 3: not paying attention to pop culture anymore.
Speaker 1: I really am not.
Speaker 2: Literally. So this show, which is produced by Ryan Murphy,
Speaker 2: is about a cruise ship. Don Johnson is the Meryl
Speaker 2: Stooping of the show. Jeremy Jackson, Joshua Jackson, who was
Speaker 2: on Dawson's Creek, is doctor. And then there are two nurses,
Speaker 2: one played by Philip as Sue is a nurse. Two nurses.
Speaker 2: It's like a partly a medical drama, the medical drama
Speaker 2: set on a cruise ship.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Every episode. Well, so here's the thing. It isn't a
Speaker 2: preposterous but there's a love triangle. And the love triangle
Speaker 2: is that Philip is Sue, the beautiful nurse who was
Speaker 2: who was Eliza, and Hamilton Uh is torn between the
Speaker 2: other nurse who is I think a Hispanic guy, and
Speaker 2: Joshua Jackson, who is the doctor. Doctor No, then they
Speaker 2: have a throuple. Then they literally she sleeps with Joshua Jackson.
Speaker 2: On the next episode she sleeps with the other guy,
Speaker 2: and then on the third episode they actually end the
Speaker 2: episode having a throupple. On network tep, I believe perhaps
Speaker 2: last on network television, because give Bryan Murphy, you're going
Speaker 2: to give Ryan Murphy a show broadcast television. He is
Speaker 2: going to try to introduce we used.
Speaker 1: To like we used to. We would get calls this
Speaker 1: is the nineties where they'd say, you know, listen, you
Speaker 1: know you said ass, like last week and the week before,
Speaker 1: and this week you're saying, you know, bastard, can it's
Speaker 1: your fault?
Speaker 2: Can you not? You know? Can you? Can you not?
Speaker 1: Next week? No ass? Can you just know? No ass?
Speaker 1: For the rest of the season.
Speaker 2: You've hit your ass quota and.
Speaker 1: You hit your quote. And and then when I was
Speaker 1: doing another show on the ad supporting case.
Speaker 2: Phrase Captain Steubing never heard because he had a different port.
Speaker 1: To another show. Later on, Uh, you could say ship,
Speaker 1: but not if it referred to feces. Huh. You you
Speaker 1: can say, I look at all that shit, Oh that
Speaker 1: was bullshit. You know, everything you're saying is shit.
Speaker 2: This is all shit.
Speaker 1: But if you said, oh that that dog took a
Speaker 1: ship over there, they would say, oh, you can't do that.
Speaker 2: You do that.
Speaker 1: And so now on broadcast TV, Little Dawson's Creek can
Speaker 1: have a threatle have a three way.
Speaker 2: Now. So Eli Lake has a fantastic podcast out just
Speaker 2: now about Lenny Bruce, and he actually says, look, here's
Speaker 2: the story of Lenny Bruce. Lenny Bruce, the you know,
Speaker 2: the sick comic who literally was thrown in jail for
Speaker 2: making a joke about Jackie Kennedy like he was. He
Speaker 2: went to jail for making a joke about Jackie Kennedy
Speaker 2: running away from the bullet when when Jay.
Speaker 1: Was shot, she kind of did.
Speaker 2: That was his point. That was offensive, trying to buy
Speaker 2: out the year was this? This was nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 2: So there's anyway, right, No, but nobody here the too
Speaker 2: soon factor here, right. But the reason that I'm bringing
Speaker 2: this up is that Eli, it's a brilliant podcast talking
Speaker 2: about how all of this ruined Lenny Bruce and like
Speaker 2: nine years late. You know, five years later, Midnight Cowboy
Speaker 2: wins the Oscar Like that that the the moment at
Speaker 2: which obscenity disappeared from our entire understanding of the of
Speaker 2: you know, what was right and wrong and how things
Speaker 2: went was so fast and so quick that not only
Speaker 2: Lady Bruce died overdosed and died in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: had he just lived a couple more years, he would
Speaker 2: have been just fine, like nobody would have left him alone. Well,
Speaker 2: but this rate, And then Eli says, well, I mean,
Speaker 2: does Lenny Bruce deserve some censure or the world in
Speaker 2: which there was there were people who wanted to throw
Speaker 2: Lenny Bruce and Jail's also world that did not have
Speaker 2: pornography on an iPhone. And we live in this world
Speaker 2: you in which a five year old can find porn
Speaker 2: on an iPhone. What are the two connected? Can you?
Speaker 2: Can you prevent pornography from being on an iPhone without
Speaker 2: having the standards that would lead you to throw Lenny
Speaker 2: Bruce in jail? And that's an unanswerable question, but it
Speaker 2: is sort of suggested by this Ryan Murphy story. Right,
Speaker 2: you were very eager to say ass in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: and then in twenty twenty five, Ryan Murphy has Thrupples
Speaker 2: on ABC in prime time that there that the slippery
Speaker 2: slope was real, and it wasn't just slippery, it was
Speaker 2: like retigenous. It was like falling off a cliff, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean the neighborhood that Joan and I lived in
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty three, there was a movie theater called
Speaker 2: the Midtown, which was a third rate theater, and by
Speaker 2: the time I was seven years old at ninety ninth
Speaker 2: and Broadway, it was a hardcore porn theater that I
Speaker 2: walked by every day on my way to school, with
Speaker 2: hardcore porn pictures, you know, with posters and everything right there.
Speaker 2: That was again, five years after Lenny Bruce went to
Speaker 2: jail for obscenity and you know, essentially seditious libel or
Speaker 2: something like that. It's just sort of an interesting phenomenon
Speaker 2: that it is okay for Ye Murphy to do a
Speaker 2: thrupple on sure sure.
Speaker 3: So I mean, look, I so I have a couple
Speaker 3: of different views on this.
Speaker 2: First of all, you see this in a lot of
Speaker 2: different ways.
Speaker 3: Right, Poor Judge Ginsburg, who turned out he smoked pot,
Speaker 3: lost a shot at the Supreme Court, and then five
Speaker 3: years later it's like Ganjamin, who cares?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: I mean, these things happened really fast. Without getting too
Speaker 3: philosophical about any of this, I I think you can
Speaker 3: have a society that says no porn on iPhones, but
Speaker 3: it requires the will power to do it, But I
Speaker 3: think I think it's worth thinking about. I agree a
Speaker 3: lot of taboos have disappeared, but that doesn't mean we
Speaker 3: don't have taboos.
Speaker 1: They just yeah, what is taboo?
Speaker 2: Changes?
Speaker 3: And it's sort of like my thing about censorship. I
Speaker 3: used to love getting into big arguments with libertarians who
Speaker 3: said they were against all forms of censorship. And I
Speaker 3: would be like, okay, so like hardcorese enough films on
Speaker 3: Saturday morning TV, You're fine with that, you know uh?
Speaker 3: And they're like, well, no, no, of course not, that's not
Speaker 3: that's that's not that's just community standards, you know, or whatever, right,
Speaker 3: And so there are all sorts of things we Irvan
Speaker 3: Crystal used to make this point is that censorship is
Speaker 3: one of these words that we only use for the censorship.
Speaker 3: We don't like everything else. We just don't call it
Speaker 3: censorship community standards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like.
Speaker 2: Eli points out Eli points out that that in comedy, right,
Speaker 2: bocuness has now been seems to have been overturned. Right
Speaker 2: that guy Tony Hinchcliff made the joke about Puerto Rican's
Speaker 2: at the Trump rally. He's doing fine. Now you can
Speaker 2: use party again all of this. The one word that
Speaker 2: you cannot say, right George Carlin said there were seven
Speaker 2: words you couldn't say on television. There is one word
Speaker 2: you cannot say period anywhere ever, and that's the end word. Right.
Speaker 2: That is a thing where.
Speaker 1: That that's still a thing, that's still a thing.
Speaker 2: Unless you're black, or you're in you're a rapper.
Speaker 1: Or unless you're unless you were you know, a middle
Speaker 1: aged Jewish comedy writer in the nineteen seventies writing for
Speaker 1: Sanford and Son. Right, right, then you could then you
Speaker 1: could use but let me let me just your two
Speaker 1: end points here. From my own career, I used to
Speaker 1: do my Martini shot, my famous Martini shot, which of
Speaker 1: course everybody loves. I used to do it for the
Speaker 1: Irish radio or it was on Irish radio, and I
Speaker 1: did one that was I thought was completely benign, in
Speaker 1: which I made a I told a story about James
Speaker 1: conn on a BBC documentary about Hollywood in the late eighties,
Speaker 1: in which he said, you know, Hollywood location shootings terrible.
Speaker 1: People always think of it's so glamorous, location shootings, the
Speaker 1: words shooting a movie on location is really really awful.
Speaker 1: It's like Auschwitz. And we thought that was hilarious, and
Speaker 1: so from the from that day on in the office,
Speaker 1: we would say, yet, we're out of the little bottles
Speaker 1: of Evyon, what is this Auschwitz? I wanted to turn
Speaker 1: to smoke turkey wrap, not the regular roasted turkeys. This
Speaker 1: is Auschwitz, which we thought was very, very funny. Of
Speaker 1: course it's not, and uh and then some it's some.
Speaker 1: The point was, somebody takes that joke home from the
Speaker 1: writer's room, and that's a terrible idea. And somebody took
Speaker 1: that joke home to Thanksgiving when I think it was like,
Speaker 1: there was only three kinds of pie, and he's only
Speaker 1: three kinds of pie? What is this Auschwitz? And he
Speaker 1: forgot that his wife's grandfather who was there was the survivor.
Speaker 2: Ha ha ha.
Speaker 1: Did I get an email saying Hi, we had some
Speaker 1: we had a complaint about your martini shots. Are really
Speaker 1: gonna have to take a pause on it for now
Speaker 1: because and I said, well, but but I was making
Speaker 1: I was joking. It was a joke. It was I
Speaker 1: was talking about how this is outrageous, but it didn't work.
Speaker 1: So then yesterday or two days ago, whatever whenever, it dropped,
Speaker 1: because that's what happens when podcasts they drop, this one
Speaker 1: will drop. I was talking about when I was in
Speaker 1: the hospital a few years ago for uh for vertigo.
Speaker 1: But I was being we didn't know it was ver
Speaker 1: to go until we thought it was a stroke. And
Speaker 1: I woke up one kind of terrified in my hotel,
Speaker 1: I mean my hotel, my in my hospital bed and
Speaker 1: looked up and saw my neurology consult pet a staff
Speaker 1: there from Letex Hill Neurology neurological department, and every single
Speaker 1: one of the doctors, and he was about a dozen
Speaker 1: in a semi circle around my hospital a bit. We're
Speaker 1: either Asian or South Asian. And I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be okay. And I said this on NATIVZ
Speaker 1: shat yes two days ago, and I'm still waiting to
Speaker 1: see if it doesn't be any push back at all.
Speaker 1: So I think I can say evidence example, a h
Speaker 1: E A wokenus is near dead. Look, we all want
Speaker 1: Wocus to be dead. We all want it to be dead.
Speaker 1: I didn't really want it to be dead so that
Speaker 1: Martyr Made could talk about how Winston Churchill was the
Speaker 1: great villain of the Second World War, and so that
Speaker 1: Kanye West could release a song called Hyley Hitler.
Speaker 2: That wasn't why I thought Vocus should die. Was too
Speaker 2: free up. You can't tatzism. I mean, okay, but that's
Speaker 2: the point, which is when you also when you suppress,
Speaker 2: and then the suppression is ended violently right by like
Speaker 2: the result of this twenty twenty four election. You have
Speaker 2: no idea how it's going to how the how the
Speaker 2: expression that has been sp is going to explode.
Speaker 5: Out, But you know it's going to be horrible, right,
Speaker 5: It's not going to be someone's.
Speaker 2: Not going to write Ulysses, right, you know that's not right.
Speaker 2: So the censorship battles of the early twentieth century were
Speaker 2: making sure that great novels with erotic themes like Ulysses
Speaker 2: or Lady Child's Lover or something like that, we're not
Speaker 2: we're not kept out of the public view by censors
Speaker 2: who were unable to grasp that they were works of value.
Speaker 2: And but that's not what you're going to get.
Speaker 1: Now, well, that's not usually what you get. We get
Speaker 1: more of culture and more of pop culture. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get more crap. That's just the way it is. More
Speaker 1: or more ship. You could say that now what we're
Speaker 1: saying it right here right now.
Speaker 2: So I think the last book banned in Boston was
Speaker 2: like not it was well into the sixties.
Speaker 1: Oh you know what book was it?
Speaker 2: You know? I don't, I don't.
Speaker 1: It's a great some crap, prob great Dick Cavit joke,
Speaker 1: he said once about the Now, this is completely not this,
Speaker 1: this idea does not connected to what you just said.
Speaker 1: But he just said that. It was like you know
Speaker 1: that old story about it. You know, a thousand monkeys
Speaker 1: and a thousand typewriters will eventually produce works of Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: And they actually did an experiment with a thousand monkeys
Speaker 1: and a thousand typewriters in a room, and they didn't
Speaker 1: write any work of Shakespeare. But four of them wrote
Speaker 1: Bally of the Dolls. Okay, first great joke, by the way.
Speaker 2: I looked it up, and it's a great joke. I
Speaker 2: looked it up. Naked Lunch was the last okay, last
Speaker 2: book band in Boston in nineteen sixty five. But of
Speaker 2: course there are plenty of book bands that aren't the
Speaker 2: that aren't the sexually restrictive censorship. Right. There are book
Speaker 2: bands all over the place. There there are kind of
Speaker 2: do you remember the kind of weird moral panic over
Speaker 2: American Psycho? Ellis's American Psycho, which is a satire, which
Speaker 2: is a book about uh yuppies being materialist ciphers who
Speaker 2: do everything that everybody else does and have no souls
Speaker 2: and therefore, you know, are all It takes it to
Speaker 2: the point where they not only dressed like this and
Speaker 2: listen to Phil Collins and do this and do that,
Speaker 2: but like are willing to kill people and eat them
Speaker 2: and get away with it.
Speaker 1: Phil Collins was the gateway drug.
Speaker 2: But that's in the book. Patrick Bateman is obsessed with
Speaker 2: is obsessed with Phil Collins.
Speaker 5: Another movie, by the way, American Psycho is a It
Speaker 5: was a hard satire and people like Kurt Anderson of
Speaker 5: Spy supported its suppression, but people wanted Random House to
Speaker 5: pulp the book because they found it so disgusting.
Speaker 2: I actually think it's kind of brilliant, uh As Ellis
Speaker 2: can be and and.
Speaker 1: You know it's he's super right wing right now, or
Speaker 1: it's just not.
Speaker 2: I get you something. But that that book, by the way,
Speaker 2: all of his work is like his Lesson zero is
Speaker 2: a book about soulless material. You know, it's he's almost
Speaker 2: well a back or somebody like that.
Speaker 1: He's like but like, it's like, is there that is
Speaker 1: a weird social movement that I don't I'm gonna refer.
Speaker 1: I'm going to defer to Joanah on this.
Speaker 2: Has it ever?
Speaker 1: Has this actually happened before? Where you have a bunch
Speaker 1: of people who in this weird to punch drunk kind
Speaker 1: of reaction to wokeism and censorship. And also now uh
Speaker 1: Hamas and Gaza have found themselves. You know, if you
Speaker 1: were a liberal and you were like, well, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a liberal, so I'm a free hentoff liberal and
Speaker 1: free speech liberal, and I also think that Israel's are
Speaker 1: right to exist and to defend itself. And suddenly you
Speaker 1: find yourself kind of marching in a parade with a
Speaker 1: bunch of right wing kooks. Right, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: just bad.
Speaker 4: But let's do it reverse. So the age you don't
Speaker 4: do it my way. I don't do it verse yet.
Speaker 2: Now I want to do it reverse because I thought
Speaker 2: of an interesting verse example. So the ACLU existed as
Speaker 2: the absolutist free speech organization, right, That's what it was
Speaker 2: there for, to say the First Amendment gives you the
Speaker 2: right to pretty much do anything. And that was season Skokie, right, Na,
Speaker 2: Season Skokie. And then in the twenty seventeen or twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen the head lawyer of the New York Civil Liberties
Speaker 2: Union was a guy named Chase Strange EO. And Chase
Speaker 2: Strange GEO decided he.
Speaker 1: Was not that was that was not his name.
Speaker 2: That is Strangeo. That is actually his name. That's like
Speaker 2: the Beavis and butt Head cornfolio. Yeah. To bring it
Speaker 2: back to yes, yes.
Speaker 1: A Strange Geo, Nazis and Skokie.
Speaker 2: That Chase Stranger would enjoy TP for his bunkhole as
Speaker 2: as I will explain, because he became. His idea was
Speaker 2: that the the the ACLU and the NYL you should
Speaker 2: become advocates for the suppression of books about and articles
Speaker 2: and things like that about trans that he didn't like.
Speaker 1: I see, so he literally hants to change you O.
Speaker 1: So he probably his name probably isn't change.
Speaker 2: He just.
Speaker 3: Okay, So he was Phil status quoio, and then he
Speaker 3: was Phil Danglio.
Speaker 2: Demanded that that Amazon suppress Abbiel Schreyer's book Irreversible Damage
Speaker 2: out of his post at the American Civil Liberties Union
Speaker 2: or the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Speaker 2: So you had this weird thing that happened, okay, and
Speaker 2: that's the River twenty tens. Right. So now, if you're
Speaker 2: a free speech advocate, right, the question now is.
Speaker 1: That's what I guess what I went from Joan is
Speaker 1: like that has that ever happened before? As the cultural
Speaker 1: movement historian.
Speaker 3: I'm hard pressed to think of a cultural analog. But like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, like the I mean, the way you
Speaker 3: were describing it originally about you find yourself marching in
Speaker 3: lockstep with right wing, which.
Speaker 1: Is marching in the same parade, I mean maybe not,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like so the popular front stuff of
Speaker 3: the nineteen nineteen thirties, right was I was recently rereading
Speaker 3: chunks of Witness for this piece I wrote for Dispatcher
Speaker 3: about some of this stuff. Like part of what he
Speaker 3: talks about confronting was what he called the popular Front
Speaker 3: mind and which is this this idea that you have
Speaker 3: to have complete solidarity with your side, And of course
Speaker 3: it never actually works that way because the people who
Speaker 3: are really enforcing the popular Front crap the communists.
Speaker 2: In this case, the stalin is the second they could
Speaker 2: throw other members of the faction under.
Speaker 1: The blast, they would.
Speaker 2: I mean, they have no solidarity for anybody. They want everything.
Speaker 2: It's a one way or it's one way thing.
Speaker 3: And it's very similar to the MAGA stuff these days,
Speaker 3: where you criticize Trump or anything in MAGA and you
Speaker 3: get this, I guess you don't believe in Reagan's eleventh
Speaker 3: commandment and they're like, why are you, like, you know,
Speaker 3: get on the get on board. And then the second
Speaker 3: you know you're problematic for anything, you cuck rhino squish.
Speaker 3: You know, they have no problem throwing anybody else under
Speaker 3: the bus. And I think there's a lot of popular frontism,
Speaker 3: and I think the ACOU stuff is sort of an
Speaker 3: example of that, where no one wants to stay in
Speaker 3: their lane and actually do the job of their institution.
Speaker 3: You know, remember the Poetry Foundation during the Black Lives
Speaker 3: Matter thing were basically they were ordered to demonstrate their
Speaker 3: racial enlightenment by essentially like dismantling their own organization, quitting
Speaker 3: all their jobs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, so I think there is there are some
Speaker 2: versions of this, but they're I mean, what happens is
Speaker 2: that people have their eyes opened to the intolerances and
Speaker 2: smallnesses and totalitarian tendencies of their own side. That happens
Speaker 2: on both sides of the aisle, and then the question
Speaker 2: is what is it that they can tolerate, What is
Speaker 2: it about the other side that they can't stand, and
Speaker 2: can they can they make their peace with the things
Speaker 2: they can't stand on the other side, because the other
Speaker 2: side at least isn't trying to make sure that they
Speaker 2: end up in jail for having the views that they
Speaker 2: might have. Right, That's the sort of the neo The
Speaker 2: story of the neo Conservatives is they could no longer
Speaker 2: affiliate themselves with a Democratic Party controlled by the mcgovernites,
Speaker 2: which was that we're actively rooting for an American loss
Speaker 2: in Vietnam. That was not you know, as Prooffrock would say,
Speaker 2: that was not it at all. That's not what that
Speaker 2: they could stand for. And so they sort of tried
Speaker 2: to save the Democratic Party and that didn't go anywhere,
Speaker 2: and then they sort of had a choice, which is
Speaker 2: could they make their peace on the right, and then
Speaker 2: could they make their peace with Republicans. And that was
Speaker 2: a ten or fifteen year journey for a lot of
Speaker 2: people who couldn't imagine, particularly Jews, couldn't imagine being that
Speaker 2: way with Republican Party because the old Republican Party was
Speaker 2: kind of genteel, anti Semitic country Republicanism. But it's a journey,
Speaker 2: and there are people who are on that journey from
Speaker 2: left to right now. It's just that people do seem
Speaker 2: to shift a lot faster, just like everything is fast.
Speaker 3: But I'm you know, I'm fascinated by all that stuff,
Speaker 3: and it is worth pointing out. I agree that the
Speaker 3: shifts are faster, but if you go back and you
Speaker 3: look at you know, I don't want to get too
Speaker 3: close to home. But basically, everybody, every one of the neocons,
Speaker 3: with very few exceptions, some exceptions. The gateway drug was
Speaker 3: foreign policy for the nineteen seventies ones right right. For
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties ones, it's great society stuff. And for
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifty ones, I would argue, you know, like
Speaker 3: half of the founders of National Review were all ex communists,
Speaker 3: and I still think that they followed the Neocon playbook.
Speaker 3: It was communism, right, So like it's these different domestic
Speaker 3: communisms as much as anything. But what is remarkable is
Speaker 3: you have a gateway drug of a single issue, and
Speaker 3: it's not very long until you know, Charles Crowdhammer is
Speaker 3: just a full fledged conservative on almost every issue. It's
Speaker 3: not very long. Your dad, you know, came over for
Speaker 3: a specific reason. It became basically a full fledged conservative.
Speaker 3: Bill Bennett, you go down a very long list, and
Speaker 3: I think there's something about the cognitive dissonance of being
Speaker 3: of switching aside, where you try to hold on tight
Speaker 3: to all your old positions. It's catch one and it
Speaker 3: gets really hard, and you start listening to your friends
Speaker 3: and they get more persuasive, and I'm I'm not saying
Speaker 3: it's an intellectually dishonest thing or anything like that, but
Speaker 3: it is a fascinating sort of thing to see. Nat
Speaker 3: Glazer basically had to like get and and and what's
Speaker 3: his name, the first founder of the Public Interest. They, yeah, Bell,
Speaker 3: some of those guys who were part of all that stuff,
Speaker 3: they had to kind of pull back and hide a
Speaker 3: bit because the poll of just having to join check
Speaker 3: all the boxes seemed to be pretty strong.
Speaker 2: And they and they didn't want to and they in
Speaker 2: the end Nat and Daniel bellnck Glazer and did not
Speaker 2: so they were founding the Conserve. They did not end
Speaker 2: up there. They ended up as kind of as kind
Speaker 2: of moynihan liberal I don't know even know there was
Speaker 2: no place for them, but they they were. They remained
Speaker 2: discomfited mostly by the by the by the Christian right,
Speaker 2: and they they could not make their peace with any
Speaker 2: of that or or with really serious like with untrammeled
Speaker 2: free market.
Speaker 3: Sure, but the exceptions are more are few and far between,
Speaker 3: but they do exist. And meanwhile, I think it's it's
Speaker 3: kind of amazing how and we don't because some of
Speaker 3: these people are our friends. We don't need to get
Speaker 3: into all that. But like, there are a bunch of
Speaker 3: people on the anti Trump side who have just basically
Speaker 3: become liberal Democrats now. And I think it's for the
Speaker 3: same reasons. It's wanting to have a team and and
Speaker 3: beyond the team.
Speaker 2: And I will say this, I will say.
Speaker 1: This, by the way, so is Trump a little bit
Speaker 1: That's like pretty soon those are friends who are now
Speaker 1: liberal Democrats will notice that he's also in the room.
Speaker 2: But I mean, i'll give it.
Speaker 1: I'll give you following you along whatever you join he joins.
Speaker 2: So I'll give you an example. Two issues that that
Speaker 2: were not neocon issues, uh, that were enormously important to
Speaker 2: the right, but we're not neocon issues guns and abortion.
Speaker 2: Guns and abortion not important in neocons who were foreign
Speaker 2: policy or when they were domestic policy. The central concepsia
Speaker 2: of the of of neo conservatism was they're trying, they're
Speaker 2: trying to do all this stuff and it's not going
Speaker 2: to work right, It's not going to work, and it's
Speaker 2: going to make everything the The intentions may be good,
Speaker 2: but they're going to make everything worse, and it's going
Speaker 2: to be a huge mess. And the great Society is
Speaker 2: going to be a huge mess. It has bad incentives
Speaker 2: and perverse incentives, and and better not to do it
Speaker 2: and mess much everything up. But that wasn't more. The
Speaker 2: moral frame was your goals are admirable, Your your your
Speaker 2: stratagems are not right.
Speaker 1: I just want to know. I'm not trying to interrupt,
Speaker 1: but I just want to note we started talking about
Speaker 1: Joyce Boulevont now and this.
Speaker 2: Is what we getting you right now. Joyce balf voted
Speaker 2: for voting for Trump.
Speaker 1: I'm sure this is what we do.
Speaker 3: And this is the only podcast where you can get yes,
Speaker 3: you get that, you get the high and the low,
Speaker 3: and then and where a person uses the word conceptsia, yeah, concept.
Speaker 2: Okay, but here's what I here's what just so, I
Speaker 2: didn't care about guns, I don't care about a boy.
Speaker 2: I really don't care about guns and an abortion, but
Speaker 2: so I am. I find myself in close proximity to
Speaker 2: people who care about these issues more than they care
Speaker 2: about anything else. And when you don't really care about things,
Speaker 2: you don't read about them all. You know, you don't
Speaker 2: pay much attention to them. They bore you or they're
Speaker 2: not that interesting. And then you start having conversations with
Speaker 2: people about this because they're interesting and they interest you,
Speaker 2: and they start telling you things and you start reading
Speaker 2: up on it, and you're like, you know what, these
Speaker 2: are really interesting, complicated matters, and you know, don't be
Speaker 2: so quick to say I'm pro choice. You know, I
Speaker 2: was there myself with my wife and you know, in
Speaker 2: the in the doctor's office looking at the fetal heartbeat
Speaker 2: and saying that's a living creature in there, right, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean stuff like that, Like there's also I mean,
Speaker 2: you're open to things that you they really ever think
Speaker 2: you needed to be open to, although.
Speaker 3: I would argue that the catalyst is often different. It's
Speaker 3: less that it makes you open to the new things.
Speaker 3: It's that you start talking to your old friends from
Speaker 3: your old position and they're like, how can you be
Speaker 3: part of the party that supports guns or the supports
Speaker 3: pro life or whatever? And you get defensive, and so
Speaker 3: you start trying to come up with arguments right to
Speaker 3: defend your associations, and it turns out the arguments aren't
Speaker 3: as stupid as the people on the other side always
Speaker 3: thought they were. And does I mean they're necessarily right
Speaker 3: or wrong, But my point is that they're more complicated.
Speaker 2: Than people think.
Speaker 1: There's a theologian named Richard Rohorr who's written a little
Speaker 1: bit about this, not quite the idea of like ideas shifting,
Speaker 1: but the idea that you as long as you maintain
Speaker 1: this sort of studious ignorance of the value of the
Speaker 1: person that you're against right or the person that you
Speaker 1: disagree with, you feel safe and so that's why you
Speaker 1: want to do it. But the minute, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: that wall is broken. Sometimes broken because you're just you're
Speaker 1: reaching out to somebody that you love, who you disagree with,
Speaker 1: or because there's a bigger issue that draws you there.
Speaker 1: That's when things start to get really really uncomfortable for people,
Speaker 1: which is I think, what what? I don't know? He
Speaker 1: would say, that's the goal is to be uncomfortable. I
Speaker 1: will say just as a as a as a show
Speaker 1: business anecdote, because that's my job. Here. I was walking
Speaker 1: it's a National View conference, isn't this is not maybe
Speaker 1: thirty years ago maybe walking down some walking down this
Speaker 1: long path in the Centry Park Hotel in La with
Speaker 1: Tom Selleck and Tom was gonna post that was going
Speaker 1: to be see the dinner or something. We're walking down
Speaker 1: and uh uh. The first person we passed it was
Speaker 1: leaving another event in the hotel was Liza Minelli and
Speaker 1: who just ran after. You know, there are weird time.
Speaker 1: It's just some terrific it just terrific and she had
Speaker 1: just done something and uh and and he said, well
Speaker 1: great to see you, and she had such great to
Speaker 1: see you. It's look good to see you a big kiss,
Speaker 1: we said, walking and said, I don't know you.
Speaker 2: I've never met her before.
Speaker 1: It we're walking around the outside, you know how the
Speaker 1: outside of these conferences always people with with tables and things.
Speaker 1: And some guy runs up. The little guy runs up
Speaker 1: to him and he's wearing this vest with all these
Speaker 1: buttons on it, and he goes, I'm so glad to
Speaker 1: know that you're one of us, Tom, and Tom so
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I don't know who what you are?
Speaker 1: You got any points to all the buttons because you've
Speaker 1: got a lot going on there, just very much. And
Speaker 1: you look at the buttons, and buttons are all that crazy,
Speaker 1: like you know, the kinds of things that were alarming
Speaker 1: back then, but now would would be completely normal. Uh
Speaker 1: and would probably that guy could, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: could be actually in the Trump administration now. He seems
Speaker 1: to have the right views. But that is that is
Speaker 1: the case. You like, you see something, you're one of me?
Speaker 2: Now, I'm I'm with you.
Speaker 1: Now, who slow down?
Speaker 3: Well, you know a bit of a tangent, but I
Speaker 3: don't want to lose the ability to get the story
Speaker 3: I probably told last time on here nine years ago.
Speaker 3: But when you brought up Conceptsia the Housekeeper, which I
Speaker 3: take prilosect for the Back in my early days when
Speaker 3: I was a television producer working out of AI, me
Speaker 3: and my buddies, we had this parlor game where we
Speaker 3: would try to find examples of people using foreign words
Speaker 3: where English words would be just fine for the pretentiousness
Speaker 3: of it, right, And we had contests and we would
Speaker 3: find you know, you'd be reading the New Criteria and
Speaker 3: you find something commentary whatever, and you find.
Speaker 1: Something and then a new criteria Scott Scott nickol.
Speaker 2: Wait, I got a good new Criteria, Scott Nick Lucas, John,
Speaker 2: you've Matt. He was at my roast, right, you know,
Speaker 2: he comes running in like he won the lottery.
Speaker 3: And because he was reading a piece I believe by
Speaker 3: Michael Jos Flajos, who's a smart guy. I'm not trying
Speaker 3: to denounce him or anything like that. But he had
Speaker 3: written something for the American Spectator where he said, and
Speaker 3: I can't remember the exact context, but it was and
Speaker 3: so we have to dig deeper into this con zept.
Speaker 2: And he spelt concept in the German with the K.
Speaker 3: And like like sort of like rob with the what
Speaker 3: is this Auschwitz thing? But the next five years, anytime
Speaker 3: said hey you want to go at some wings?
Speaker 1: Interesting?
Speaker 2: My favorite, my favorite new criterionism It wasn't wasn't the
Speaker 2: use of a foreign word, but but but it is
Speaker 2: the adoption of britishisms that are that are bizarrely out
Speaker 2: of place or inappropriate. And the best one was a
Speaker 2: sentence in which somebody this was Todd Lindberg's favorite. He's
Speaker 2: the one who discovered this. That there was a passage
Speaker 2: and he said, aha, someone wrote, you know this is
Speaker 2: it the smoking pistol as it were the smoking pistol
Speaker 2: as this you know anyway, So yes, so the so
Speaker 2: if you're if you're blaming me for saying conceptci I know.
Speaker 3: So again, I just want to keep calling back to
Speaker 3: previous bits of the conversation speaking of the N word, Uh,
Speaker 3: my dad and britishisms. My dad had a business partner
Speaker 3: in the UK who or a consultant that he worked with,
Speaker 3: very nice guy, Oxford Don Good, fifteen twenty years older
Speaker 3: than my dad, and they were talking about some sales
Speaker 3: rights thing in the UK media market and there are
Speaker 3: a bunch of people on the call and this guy,
Speaker 3: very enlightened, sweet British guy, Oxford guy, he says, and
Speaker 3: I'm going to boulderize it for our purposes because he
Speaker 3: can't say it.
Speaker 2: He says, hm on.
Speaker 3: The question of rights on that, I think we have
Speaker 3: a bit of an N word in the woodpile. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and his total deafening silence. Oh god, Yeah, my dad
Speaker 3: was like, Peter, we don't. We don't really use that
Speaker 3: phrase anymore.
Speaker 1: But like, on another note, my favorite Agatha Christie novel
Speaker 1: is Let's go Smoke some faggots.
Speaker 2: But that's the story. Agatha Christie's most famous novel until.
Speaker 1: A play, right was it a play too? But I
Speaker 1: think Indians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was to be called ten Little Indians. Oh,
Speaker 2: in America was called ten Little Indians. It was called
Speaker 2: ten little n words. And when they when they made
Speaker 2: the movie, there's actually a great movie made out of
Speaker 2: it because it's basically one of these everyone.
Speaker 1: Died, everyone.
Speaker 2: Called, and then there were none.
Speaker 1: And then there were none. Is the name of the novel.
Speaker 2: It was was how Hollywood dealt with the but I
Speaker 2: mean that's how that's how a word. It was in
Speaker 2: the English language.
Speaker 1: I played the judge writer in England, I played the
Speaker 1: judge in that in the High school, and it was
Speaker 1: the job I was well, I had a very specific
Speaker 1: conception that role. No, but I uh I uh okay,
Speaker 1: this is another you know, name dropping Hollywood anecdote, this
Speaker 1: time a slightly bigger star for you. I've worked for
Speaker 1: years intermittently, happily but intermittently on a project that I
Speaker 1: was pretty sure was going to never go uh with
Speaker 1: Morgan Freeman, and I spent a lot of time with him.
Speaker 1: It was a lovely, really thoughtful, incredibly smart guy, been
Speaker 1: around like just could tell great stories and just a
Speaker 1: wonderful guy. So I would fly to Mississippi where he
Speaker 1: lived a lot of the time. He was born in Charleston, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and we would you have dinner and he'd tell me stories.
Speaker 1: And we were working on a story set in the
Speaker 1: Mississippi Delta, which actually was turned out was a great
Speaker 1: great would have been a great series. And then he
Speaker 1: had a car accident, a lot of other things happened,
Speaker 1: so we didn't quite make it. Uh, But he told
Speaker 1: me he would tell me each time, he would tell
Speaker 1: me stories of encountering uh uh old Mississippi guys, old
Speaker 1: Mississippi white guys.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And he was a movie star, so they won't talk
Speaker 1: to him, and the things that they would say. And
Speaker 1: he said, this one old guy he likes very much,
Speaker 1: so he's a friend of his. But the old guy
Speaker 1: would talk about At one point said they're there. They're
Speaker 1: having a drink because Morgan had and a friend of
Speaker 1: his who's also helped on this project. They owned this
Speaker 1: giant blues club called Ground Zero and Morgan, so they're
Speaker 1: sitting there having drink and he goes, yeah, Morgan, I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how different my life is now and
Speaker 1: how different I am and my thoughts about you know,
Speaker 1: the various social and cultural things that you Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: He's basically making this kind of confession about how he's
Speaker 1: changed over time, and he says, you know, for instance,
Speaker 1: I I'll be honest with you, when I's growing up
Speaker 1: for a long time, I would use the N word,
Speaker 1: and my my, my father, my grandfather, the whole family
Speaker 1: they used it. I mean, we used it all the time.
Speaker 1: And I will not use that word. I would never
Speaker 1: use that word, and I will tell the young people
Speaker 1: in my world that that word is absolutely you did
Speaker 1: not allowed to use the N word. And then he
Speaker 1: said you pause, took a sip of his drink. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you know, I hear the Ends
Speaker 1: using it all the time. The Ends are driving up
Speaker 1: and down they listen to their their music. That end
Speaker 1: music's got that word an word in all time. But
Speaker 1: the Ends just love that word more. You just love
Speaker 1: that story so much. You didn't wait to tell me
Speaker 1: that story.
Speaker 2: Oh that is fantastic, by the way, Just cultural recommendation time.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Mississippi, this uh you know movie Sensation Centers,
Speaker 2: which came out about a month ago. Yeah, with Michael B. Jordan,
Speaker 2: a story about twin brothers returning to their hometown in
Speaker 2: Mississippi and getting in order to open a big blues
Speaker 2: club juke joy like the one that you're talking about
Speaker 2: in the middle of the depression, and uh get get
Speaker 2: waylaid by some vampires. And it is fantastic, which great
Speaker 2: idea it is a It is a The movie itself
Speaker 2: is spectacular, and it deals with all kinds of weird. Basically,
Speaker 2: it's kind of the story of Robert Johnson, the famous,
Speaker 2: the famous, the mythical, mythical guitar blues guitarist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I can't see that movie because somebody explained
Speaker 1: that to me. And it was exactly what we were
Speaker 1: trying to do. We were trying to do this multi
Speaker 1: generational in and out, past and present, because there's no
Speaker 1: spookier place in America than the city, and it's got
Speaker 1: all this great story. It's just too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Robert Johnson the story, well, Robert Johns the story.
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson was a young uh blues guitarist and he
Speaker 1: was terrible. He was terrible, and they were hooting him
Speaker 1: off the stage. I mean, I wrote that I have
Speaker 1: a scene written and he goes uh and he leaves
Speaker 1: and he's sitting in the crossroads over sixty one and
Speaker 1: something else, and it happens to be a full moon
Speaker 1: and suddenly there's an old man sitting next to him
Speaker 1: and it's the Devil. And that was good. That was
Speaker 1: the part that Morgan was gonna play. He was gonna
Speaker 1: play the devil who has been living in the Delta
Speaker 1: forever and just he's always there and the guy is
Speaker 1: a Robert Johnson, and he basically makes a deal because
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Delta is like, we're a million deals being made,
Speaker 1: and he wants to he wants to play the guitar
Speaker 1: because the reading exactly right. It's the cutter of the
Speaker 1: He wants play guitar because he's like been, he's been
Speaker 1: dissed by all these all the hot girls in the club.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to do anything with anything to do with
Speaker 1: him because he can't play. And so he sells his
Speaker 1: soul and comes back to the club, disappears for about
Speaker 1: a year, comes back to the club. But this is
Speaker 1: all true, though. He did disappear for a year and
Speaker 1: come back, and he's one of the best loose guitars,
Speaker 1: if not, he created this and he created the whole genre.
Speaker 1: And and you know that kicked off the show. It's
Speaker 1: a great story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean right, So the idea of how did
Speaker 2: this kid couldn't play here come back as the greatest
Speaker 2: guitarist anyone had ever heard? And the story was, obviously
Speaker 2: he must have sold his soul to the devil. And
Speaker 2: so this is one of the great American myths and
Speaker 2: it is at the center of Centers. And I really
Speaker 2: do highly recommend Centners, but not to rob because it
Speaker 2: is really awful, I have to say. And I've known
Speaker 2: people who have had this experience when when somebody makes
Speaker 2: something that you wrote and then does it like and
Speaker 2: you're like, I don't care if it's good.
Speaker 1: I'm never going to know the worst thing in the
Speaker 1: world is.
Speaker 2: Great. Yeah. So I Jonah's mother and I became friends because.
Speaker 1: I came winter how that sentence went.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty two because I had an idea for
Speaker 2: a humor book, and it was a parody, full on
Speaker 2: cover to cover of TV Guide, like a week of
Speaker 2: TV Guide. And this was when parody books were like
Speaker 2: all the rage. And my idea is we would do
Speaker 2: a fake issue of TV Guide, like the Sunday newspaper
Speaker 2: parody that National Impoon put out or the Yuppi Handbook
Speaker 2: or something like that, and the week and it was
Speaker 2: really good. And I'm telling you right now, it was
Speaker 2: really really good. And we did you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I did twenty five pages of it, a day's worth
Speaker 2: of listings, articles, whatever, and then was gonna and the
Speaker 2: day that we were taking it out to market, somebody
Speaker 2: bought one. Yeah, you know this firm, Andrews and McNeil
Speaker 2: or whatever they decided they were going to They made
Speaker 2: a deal with Tony Hendra or somebody like that to
Speaker 2: do a TV Guide parody. And I was heartbroken. And
Speaker 2: then it came out a year later and it's steak
Speaker 2: and it was a complete bomb in the marketplace, and
Speaker 2: that was very satisfying that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's worse because then you're like, well, well
Speaker 1: we have a good one, like, no, we've tried it,
Speaker 1: and that happens and Joe is a lot. We've tried it. It
Speaker 1: doesn't work. What do you mean it doesn't work?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Everything can work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, now you could just put out what
Speaker 2: you did on the internet, but then it had to
Speaker 2: it was going to be mimetically perfect and all of that.
Speaker 2: That is a that is a that is a rough.
Speaker 1: That is a rough.
Speaker 2: Go all right, so I guess waiting it? Are we
Speaker 2: just going to keep doing this? Is that?
Speaker 1: That was a fun conversation, don't you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And because you're yeah, no, it was was fine.
Speaker 2: It was good.
Speaker 1: It was wait, voice, what up? When your voice goes
Speaker 1: up like that?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe we can't. Maybe we should change the name
Speaker 3: of this HBO he Max bought Max Max klob.
Speaker 2: So it was HBO Max. First it was HBO, then
Speaker 2: it was HBO Go, then it was HBO Max, then
Speaker 2: it was Max and now it is HBO Max again. Right, okay,
Speaker 2: here's my quick question for you, David Zaslov, who now
Speaker 2: is the runs Warner Brothers Discovery, which is the parent
Speaker 2: company ran Discovery, right that we ran the Discovery networks,
Speaker 2: which were wildly successful and so successful that this guy
Speaker 2: five six, seven years ago made and I'm not kidding,
Speaker 2: in salary one hundred and fifty million dollars a year
Speaker 2: in salary at Discovery. So the engineered this thing. Discovery
Speaker 2: kind of takes over Warner Brothers and he's running everything
Speaker 2: after at and T screws up and all this okay,
Speaker 2: and he's now making fifty million, one hundred and fifty million.
Speaker 2: Now I'm expect and people are saying okay, And people
Speaker 2: are saying okay, people are saying, this is the dumbest
Speaker 2: thing I've ever seen. What do you mean? They're calling
Speaker 2: it HBO. They could have just why did they ever change?
Speaker 2: This is this is what you get, This is the innovation,
Speaker 2: this is what's going to turn the company around. What
Speaker 2: the hell is going on? And I keep having these experiences,
Speaker 2: particularly when I read about show business or about mergers
Speaker 2: or about anything, where it's like, really, these people make
Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars a year. And this is what
Speaker 2: they do. Explain this.
Speaker 1: To I have a metric that I intend to use
Speaker 1: like it's like it's the base input is number of meetings.
Speaker 1: So the number of meetings that this calling it HBO,
Speaker 1: HBO Go, HBO max max and back to HBO max.
Speaker 1: The number of meeting and meeting hours supposed to have
Speaker 1: been well, number meetings must have been at least two dozen,
Speaker 1: so the number of eighty hours must have been at least
Speaker 1: a thousand, probably a thousand hours of either consultant time
Speaker 1: or an executive time to do basically nothing. And the
Speaker 1: problem with HBO and HBO max and max and HBO
Speaker 1: max has nothing to do with what they called it
Speaker 1: right there, the amount of effort and money and time
Speaker 1: spent trying to fix a thing that isn't. The problem
Speaker 1: is everything you need to know about why they show
Speaker 1: businesses in trouble and maybe why businesses get in trouble.
Speaker 2: So, Rob, you wrote a really great piece for me,
Speaker 2: thank you, thank you about bob Iger bob Iger, Yeah,
Speaker 2: out of Disney and basically based on his using his memoir,
Speaker 2: and the question is bob Iger was this wildly successful,
Speaker 2: like the most successful entertainment executive of his time and
Speaker 2: took Disney to New Heights and all this, and he
Speaker 2: wrote this book called Right of a Lifetime or something
Speaker 2: like that, and the book begins with him deciding in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen to have an off site with all of
Speaker 2: his lead saying, we need to make our path for
Speaker 2: the future. And it's going to be streaming because you
Speaker 2: can see Netflix here it is and Netflix and streaming
Speaker 2: and Netflix and this whole thing basically is his bid
Speaker 2: for immortality in the book by saying that unlike other
Speaker 2: corporate executives who sat on their laurels and missed the moment,
Speaker 2: he had jumped on it early. He had seen the threat,
Speaker 2: he had addressed it, he was working on it. And
Speaker 2: you know, three years later or something that they introduce,
Speaker 2: you know, Disney Plus, and isn't this fantastic? Okay? Flash forward,
Speaker 2: it's twenty twenty five and Disney Plus has materially destroyed Marvel.
Speaker 1: And Star Wars, the two.
Speaker 2: Things that they bought. Disney Plus said to Marvel, make
Speaker 2: us twelve television series and they did. And now nobody
Speaker 2: cares about Marvel anymore because there was too much of
Speaker 2: it and it was too junkie, and this incredible cash
Speaker 2: cow and the driver of show business for twenty years
Speaker 2: was ruined. And even though and or the latest Star
Speaker 2: Wars thing is great, it is great, it is great,
Speaker 2: did exactly the same to Star Wars series after some
Speaker 2: bad series, after the Acolyte at Obi Wan Kenobi and
Speaker 2: the Book of Boba Fett and this and that, and
Speaker 2: they created this series. They created the service to save Disney,
Speaker 2: and they basically killed their milkcows and they over milked
Speaker 2: their milk cows and now they're ruined. And it's interesting
Speaker 2: because had he just retired, had he just retired and
Speaker 2: gone off into the sunset and not come back or whatever,
Speaker 2: had he not done this and he had just like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know what, it's twenty eighteen. I guess we better
Speaker 2: have a good streaming service. We'll just do it in
Speaker 2: a year and we'll throw some stuff up and see
Speaker 2: what happens. He wouldn't have had this drive to copy
Speaker 2: Netflix and and try to compete there when Disney was
Speaker 2: doing just fine.
Speaker 1: Where it was yep, yep.
Speaker 2: It's like the fear of not being innovative ended up being.
Speaker 1: There is a thing called pilot induced turbulence. And it's
Speaker 1: when you're flying and your hand is on the stick
Speaker 1: and you maybe hit a little buck, small buck, and
Speaker 1: then you compensate for that, and then because you compensated,
Speaker 1: maybe you overcompensate a little bit, and then you kind
Speaker 1: of now you need to recompensate for that, and then
Speaker 1: compensate for that, and before you know it, you're convinced
Speaker 1: that you've hit choppy air because you keep bouncing up
Speaker 1: and down. But actually you've created all that turbulence yourself.
Speaker 1: And so they sometimes that happens in a big car.
Speaker 1: They always hit a little your cabinet, me a little
Speaker 1: choppy air up here. So I'm gonna put on a
Speaker 1: he did it, he created it. It's because you just
Speaker 1: script it to tight.
Speaker 2: Jonah blame the captain. Then Jonah hates Jonah is the
Speaker 2: person I know who flies the most, who hates flying
Speaker 2: the most.
Speaker 1: Fair.
Speaker 2: It's really not fair. And I think you should go
Speaker 2: and yell at the captain.
Speaker 1: Just pound on the door. They love that, They love that.
Speaker 2: And you know you're not going to get in trouble
Speaker 2: or anything, but.
Speaker 1: Put on a fun accent.
Speaker 2: They have guns now, they are they are?
Speaker 3: They not allowed to carry guns. I love to do
Speaker 3: is yellar? That's great coffee anyway?
Speaker 2: And or is great? I mean, Andre just finished unbelievably
Speaker 2: innovative second season. Did this thing where they released three
Speaker 2: episodes per week each. These three episodes are take place
Speaker 2: each a year apart, as we approach closer and closer
Speaker 2: to the moment that theos are sent to Aldron Tattooine
Speaker 2: and Luke finds them and sees the hologram of Princess
Speaker 2: Leah saying help me Obi wan Kenobi are my only hope?
Speaker 2: That was That's the entire backstory. Wow, twenty seven hours
Speaker 2: of backstory and it's back to that moment. I know
Speaker 2: we got to get out.
Speaker 3: But you know, one of my my my basic take
Speaker 3: about why it's so good, unlike so much other stuff,
Speaker 3: is that one of the first rules of fantasy stuff,
Speaker 3: of escapism, sci fi, whatever, is you have to take yourself.
Speaker 3: You have to take your actual product seriously. And so
Speaker 3: much of the Star Wars stuff you saw it with
Speaker 3: the problem with George Lucas was he had little kids
Speaker 3: when he was making those prequels and they were his
Speaker 3: test audience, and so they're all of these scenes in
Speaker 3: those originals, not the originals in the sequels sequel prequel sequels,
Speaker 3: Attack of the Clone, Revenge of the Cess, where they
Speaker 3: basically wink or make inside jokes that only work in
Speaker 3: our universe, right, that.
Speaker 2: Like like like little sort of cutesy.
Speaker 3: Oh that's got to hurt, right, And these kinds of
Speaker 3: references that take you out of things. And we I
Speaker 3: wrote about a little bit for the commentary piece about
Speaker 3: Battlestar Galactago where where Obi Wan Kenobi, young Obi Wan
Speaker 3: Kenobi has to get a little dig in against George w.
Speaker 3: Bush with you know, uh when when Young Anakin Skywalker
Speaker 3: says if you're not with me, you're against me, which
Speaker 3: was like obviously a reference to the whole Moor Entior stuff,
Speaker 3: and and George and and George Lucas the rose away
Speaker 3: the entire metaphysics of the Force by saying only sith
Speaker 3: deals and absolutes. Well, wait a second, I'm a burkiyan,
Speaker 3: I'm with you. But the whole point of the freaking
Speaker 3: Force was there's a light side of the dark slide
Speaker 3: was mannekean, and there's all these things that they throw
Speaker 3: out and and or gets back to this thing where
Speaker 3: it takes itself seriously and lets you take it seriously
Speaker 3: in a way that you can't with a lot of
Speaker 3: those other crap that they put out.
Speaker 2: See what I love about it, what I loved about it,
Speaker 2: and by the way, I love it even though I
Speaker 2: hate its politics. It's basically a Howard Zinn story. And
Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of There's a lot there,
Speaker 2: just as there's the cyth deals and absolutes. There's a
Speaker 2: whole Fox News subplot there is, I mean, but it's
Speaker 2: done so much better. It's not cartoony, so no, it's
Speaker 2: so it's it's it's beautifully dumb, but it is there anyway.
Speaker 2: Is that like Game of Thrones, which I also loved,
Speaker 2: You don't have to cringe at the fantasy elements because
Speaker 2: it's really it's about backdoor politics, right, That's.
Speaker 1: What I like about it. Nice go politics by thirty
Speaker 1: years in Hollywood Bike Gavin mclos it's fair.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I mean, let's get back to
Speaker 2: paul In jokes.
Speaker 1: Paul In jokes, and what do you mean, what are
Speaker 1: you insinuating.
Speaker 2: Richard Richard Deacon ellen Brady's brother in law. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: needed a job because otherwise he was going to be
Speaker 2: out on Christopher Street. As you might say, anyway, sorry,
Speaker 2: uh so and watch and or Centers, except unless you're rob.
Speaker 1: I'll see it anyway.
Speaker 2: I jack right on.
Speaker 3: Brit Box is fun. It's kind of nuts, but it's fun.
Speaker 3: Brit Box is playing games though the whole season's out
Speaker 3: and they're holding on to the last two episodes to
Speaker 3: get people to check out other things on brit Box.
Speaker 3: Oh and it's so freaking obnoxious, but.
Speaker 2: That is not good.
Speaker 1: Brit Box is fun because you and you and you.
Speaker 1: There's like a category for murder mysteries in like the
Speaker 1: countryside and and it's like the endless scroll You've never
Speaker 1: you never see is it?
Speaker 2: Because I've never been on brother this is like countryside,
Speaker 2: Scotland yard, Manchester Police Department. Right, That's how I would
Speaker 2: That's how.
Speaker 1: It's more like you know that the Somerset County murders.
Speaker 1: It's like and it's just a it's just everybody in
Speaker 1: rural England is is killing everybody else in rural England.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see what. I always showing up showing up
Speaker 2: at my parents' house and they're like what is this
Speaker 2: And they're like, well, it's Inspector McGill cutty. Okay, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean I sort of jumped off this at Prime suspect.
Speaker 2: But okay, that was many, many, many you guys like Modland.
Speaker 3: Not like my.
Speaker 1: It's okay, I saw my thing.
Speaker 2: I'm sposed to I'm supposed to watch it. I mean,
Speaker 2: Pierce Brosidon is fantastic good in general. Yeah, he has
Speaker 2: had a very interesting career. Like he's a guy who
Speaker 2: like every five years pops up and you're like, man,
Speaker 2: he's good.
Speaker 1: He's really good.
Speaker 2: And now he must be in his late seventy I
Speaker 2: mean he must, right, Revington Steel was forty some odd
Speaker 2: years ago, so it's got to be in the seventies.
Speaker 1: Like, boy is he good looking? Yeah, guy like that.
Speaker 1: I've never heard anyone say anything about him that isn't.
Speaker 1: Oh he's the nicest, greatest guy. Oh he's a running
Speaker 1: to people and they oh he's you know, I had
Speaker 1: a flat tire and he fixed it some crazy stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, Like he's just apparently the world's nicest person.
Speaker 2: So can I give you one piece of credit before
Speaker 2: we go, Rob, because I think you're the one who
Speaker 2: came up with this, because you mentioned the Liza meeting
Speaker 2: Tom in the hallway and they kissing and everything. He's
Speaker 2: never matter Before that you said, there's this world. There
Speaker 2: are these people. They're all face famous celebrities, and they
Speaker 2: all feel like they're part of the same They're like
Speaker 2: Jews as saint. It doesn't matter if they've never met,
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. They know each other. They're all part of
Speaker 2: the same congregation, and they can immediately be familiar because
Speaker 2: nobody knows what it is like except them. They they're
Speaker 2: the only people. It's sort of like the ex presidents.
Speaker 2: Nobody knows what it's like to be really famous except
Speaker 2: really famous people, and really famous people don't live normal lives,
Speaker 2: and so they have this instant connection. It's like when
Speaker 2: you see the photograph my favorite photograph, which is it's
Speaker 2: the cast of Happy Days, and they're standing there and
Speaker 2: in the middle there's this kid, and if you look
Speaker 2: really closely, you'll notice that it's Sean Lennon. And then
Speaker 2: on the left standing there also smiling is John Lennon.
Speaker 2: So it's John Lennon.
Speaker 1: And Potzi, yeah, right, and Ralph.
Speaker 2: And on the far side is Henry Winkler and and
Speaker 2: then Ron Howard. But basically Potzy and Ralph get to
Speaker 2: be in a photo with John Lennon has more in
Speaker 2: common with Potzy and Ralph than he does with.
Speaker 1: It's all show business. Everybody in show business isn't show
Speaker 1: business and it's your Vin vendors. You're Mikyl Rischikov, You're
Speaker 1: Joyce Boulevard. It's all show business. And don't act like,
Speaker 1: oh well, I'm I'm, I'm, I'm I'm really actually a
Speaker 1: very well known But no, no, no, you're you're in
Speaker 1: show business.
Speaker 2: And I just want to say that Joyce Ballafan is
Speaker 2: no Arleane Golanka. That's what I have to say. All Right,
Speaker 2: So we'll we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll do this again.
Speaker 1: One one glop at a time. We're not gonna one
Speaker 1: at a time.
Speaker 2: Uh. And we could do the inter music from One
Speaker 2: Day at a Time for the top of the show.
Speaker 2: There you go. Maybe maybe some quotes from Schneider Schneider
Speaker 2: the only Jewish, the only you know, Pat Pat Harrington,
Speaker 2: famous Irish comic playing a Jewish super in Indianapolis because
Speaker 2: it's American comic from Queens only in America said of
Speaker 2: the mayor of Dublin, who was Jewish, told that Bobby Briscoe,
Speaker 2: the mayor of Dublin, was Jewish. Yo Eberra, who turned
Speaker 2: a hundred, who would have turned a hundred three days ago,
Speaker 2: said only in America, all right, mistake and legging one
Speaker 2: day is shide one day, one day inside.
Speaker 1: His side.
Speaker 2: Day inside.
Speaker 1: Can't top that