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Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to

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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for

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your support. So it is rare that a long form

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essay published on I believe a British owned company's website

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gets the kind of attention and views that this piece

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that I have now in front of me got over

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the last forty eight hours. It's called The Lost Generation

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and was published at Compactmagazine compactmag dot com. And it

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was written by Jacob Savage, a white male heterosexual. And

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that's important. I'm telling you that for a reason, white

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male heterosexual gen Z creative type okay. And he talks

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about how back in January of twenty sixteen, he was

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thirty one, he had been living in Los Angeles for

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five years writing scripts. I take it back. He may

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be a millennial, he may be gen z I don't know,

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but he's one of those, and that's what the focus

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of this piece is on. So he's thirty one, living

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in LA for five years and he's just been writing scripts.

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He wants to be a TV show writer, and he's

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trying to get work. And the way I guess you

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do that is you do all of these menial jobs,

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you know, wait tables and all that, while you're doing

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all of this writing and trying to hone your craft

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and get ideas pitched in front of people, and you know,

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somebody picks it up. And he had been writing with

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his best friend, so there was like a duo and

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they were just writing straight constantly five years. They wrote

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a pilot script and a veteran show runner said yeah,

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let let's talk, and so they were like excited at first.

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The project though, fizzled, but then they were surprised when

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out of the blue, an executive emailed them and wanted

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to meet with them. The show runner said that he

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had submitted the two writers, Jacob and his friend for

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an upcoming writer's room that he was going to run,

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and that this executive really liked that pilot script that

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the two had written and heed to hire the duo,

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so they thought, this is our break, right, So their

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project was dead. But they met with the executive anyway,

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who is described here as a gen X white guy,

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who told us how much he loved our pilot. But

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the writer's room was small, and the higher level writers,

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the veteran writers in the room, the ones with the

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most seniority, well they were all white guys too, and

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they couldn't have an all white male room. But you know,

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maybe if we get another season, we may be able

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to bring you on. And then they never did, he says.

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The door seemed to close everywhere and all at once.

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In twenty eleven, the year I moved to Los Angeles,

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white men were forty eight percent of lower level TV writers.

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So the thing to keep in mind and all of

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this is this is about the talent pipeline. Okay, forty

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eight percent of the lower level TV writers white men

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in twenty eleven. By twenty twenty four, so thirteen years later,

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it went from forty eight percent white dudes to twelve

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percent white dudes. The Atlantic's editorial staff the newspaper, it

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went from fifty three percent mail and eighty nine percent

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white down to thirty six percent male and sixty six

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percent white. White men fell from thirty nine percent of

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tenure track positions in the humanities at Harvard went from

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thirty nine percent down to eighteen percent over the course

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of a decade. He says in retrospec twenty fourteen was

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the hinge, the year DEI became institutional on across American

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life in industry, after industry gatekeepers promised extra consideration to

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anyone who wasn't a white guy and then provided just

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that quote with every announcement of promotions. There was a

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desire to put extra emphasis on gender or race. That's

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according to a former management consultant who went on to say, quote,

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and when you don't fall into those groups, that message

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gets louder and louder and gains more and more emphasis.

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On the one hand, you want to celebrate people who

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have been at a disadvantage, and on the other hand,

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you look and say, wow, the world is not rooting

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for you. In fact, it's deliberately rooting against you, he says.

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As the Trump administration takes a chainsaw to the DEI apparatus,

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there's a tendency to portray DEI as a series of

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well meaning but ineffectual HR modules. And then he has

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a quote from Kianga Yamata Taylor in The New Yorker. Now,

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if you do a Google search of this woman, you

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find out like she's in African American studies, professor I

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think at Yale and big in the DEI activism. Okay,

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and she says, undoubtedly there has been ham fisted DEI

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programming that is intrusive or even alienating, but for the

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most part, it is a relatively benign practice meant to

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increase diversity while also sending a message that workplaces should

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be fair and open to everyone. Except it hasn't been.

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So here's the problem. It hasn't been. He goes on

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to say, this may be how boomers and Gen X

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white guys experienced DEI, but for white male millenniums, DEI

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wasn't a gentle rebalancing. It was a profound shift in

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how power and prestige were distributed. Yet practically none of

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the thousands of articles and think pieces about diversity have

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considered the issue by cohort, in other words, by the

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by the generational cohort, the millennials, the Gen zs, the

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Gen wise, the Gen a's. I'm not calling them Alpha's

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jen a is what I call them. For now. We'll

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see if they can pick up another title at some point.

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But he's exactly right, because I've I've read a lot

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of stuff. I've covered the DEI stuff for years now.

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And I am a white dude, gen xer myself, so

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I you know, I was already in you know, into

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well into my career when all of this stuff started happening.

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And because of my age, I am already in sort

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of the you know, the upper levels, if you will,

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of a seniority kind of a place. Much like he

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goes on to explain, in newsrooms, in media companies, in

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television and movie production, in academia, and what keeps coming

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through and this is a piece. It's like it took

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an hour to read this thing. It's a massive essay.

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And what he keeps coming back to is that for

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gen xers and boomers, white men, they're the ones that

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are still in place because they've got the seniority and

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the tenure. And so what happens when you try to

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rebalance for DEI purposes, Well, if you have people already

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on the job, you're not firing all of those people

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because they're white guys that would probably get you sued, right,

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But what happens is everybody that comes along after then

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has to be an offset to your existing your existing

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employee demographic. And what does that mean for young white guys.

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Means there's there's no path for them because there's gen

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X and boomer white guys already on the payroll. This, this,

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and this, what he's describing here, It proves the warning

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that I was making about DEI and people like me

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were saying, this is not good. You do not want

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to have everybody viewing everything through these prisms of race

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and gender and sexual orientation. That cannot be the way

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that you view people, right, particularly in hiring decisions. But

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also this helps explain what is being used as sort

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of the jet fuel for you know, these more radical

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influencer types that have emerged over the last couple of years.

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I'm talking about guys like Nick Fouentes and the Manna

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Sphere and all of these like misogynist norm breakers and

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all of that, like they like, they are the ones

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that have come up in this environment. And lo and behold,

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look when when you tell everybody to view each other

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through racialized prisms, that also is going to lead the

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white guys to start looking at themselves like that too,

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And that's what they're doing. That's what's happening. Now here's

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Compact Magazine's piece by Jacob Savage, This thing has gotten

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a lot of discussion in various places over the last

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forty eight hours, so I bring it to you. I'm

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going over this with you so you know what this

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is about. And also I think it offers a different

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perspective on the blast zone of the DEI policies that

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you know, people like me and many in the audience

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were arguing against because we saw the corrosive effects on

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the society. But this is like, this is beyond what

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even I thought would occur, he says. Institutions pursuing diversity

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decided that there would be no backsliding. If a position

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was vacated by a woman or a person of color,

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the expectation was it would be filled by another woman

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or person of color. The hope was always that you

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were going to hire a diverse candidate. A senior hiring

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editor at a major outlet told me. This is in

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the section he's talking about media. He says, if there

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was a black woman at the beginning of her career

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you wanted to hire, you could find someone. But if

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she was good, you knew that she would get accelerated

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to the New York Times or the Washington Post in

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pretty short order. The truth is, after years of concerted effort,

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most news outlets had already reached and quietly surpassed gender parity.

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By twenty nineteen, the newsrooms of Pro Publica, the Washington Post,

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and the New York Times were majority female, as were

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new media upstarts like Vice, Vox, BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post.

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And then twenty twenty happened and the wheels came off.

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He says, that was the summer of fiery but mostly

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peaceful riots, And when I was reading this, I had

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completely forgotten. But I did have a pretty close experience

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to this myself after I left WBT the first time,

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when I was on my timeout, as John Hancock called

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his timeout, that's what he called it. So I was

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also on a similar timeout. And so when I was

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looking for a job and I got one, but I

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was told by a manager that they really had to

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go to bat for me. They really had to like

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twist some arms in their corporate HR because I was

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replacing a black female employee. And they just said it

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like that, like wait, so my race and my sex

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would would prohibit me from getting this job somehow like

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like that that was a factor that was discussed. I

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think that's illegal. But I got the job. But I

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think it was also because I had a lot of

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experience in the in the field. But I don't know.

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I mean, this was before a lot of the DEI

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stuff really ramped up. It's about five years prior. And

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then he says, of course, twenty twenty happened, and the

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wheels came off. In the aftermath of George Floyd's death,

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newsrooms tripped over themselves to stage a quote unquote reckoning.

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And then he goes on to quote all of the

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statements that came out promising, you know, more diverse hires

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at the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Bon Appetite, NPR,

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Conde Nast, La Times, San Diego Union Tribune, Pro Publica

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as I mentioned, and The Atlantic. They were all out

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there saying, you know, this is what we're going to do,

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and then they did it. You know, stories are powerful.

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through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They

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are your life told through the eyes of everyone around

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you and all who came before you, and they will

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tell others to come who you are, visit Creative video

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dot com. Going over this piece called the Lost Generation

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at compactmag dot com by Jacob Savage. Called the Lost Generation,

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he says, for a typical job, he's got a quote

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in here from a hiring editor at this in this

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section is a very lengthy piece. He's got it broken

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down into media, academia, and a couple other sectors. So

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this is the media section. And these are all cultural institutions, right,

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These are the things that drive narratives, that impact the culture, right,

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that tell stories to help people make sense of what's

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going on. And so this hiring editor says, for a

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typical job, we would get a couple hundred applications, probably

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at least eighty from white guys. It was a given

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that we weren't gonna hire the best person. It was

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jarring how we would talk about excluding the white guys.

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The pipeline hadn't changed much. White men were still about

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half of the applicants, but they were now filling closer

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to only ten percent of the open positions. And he

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has various quotes from various white, straight guys telling their

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stories in all of these different industries. He doesn't give

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their full names, and he talks at a later point

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in the piece about how he's never had so many

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of his sources callback and change their anonymous name, make

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it something else, so it's not anything. Take out that

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detail because that could be identifiable. Like nobody wanted to

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be seen as that guy complaining that they didn't get

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the job, saying, oh, it's because of you know, discrimination,

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when it is and they're telling you, like these hiring people,

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they they're telling these young white guys, sorry, you know

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you're you're a white, straight guy, you're not getting the job.

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Like that's that's what they're they're talking about. So one

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of these people that he talked to, his name is Andrew,

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worked in a newsroom. He says everything was driven by identity.

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There were endless diversity trainings, there was a racial climate assessment.

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At one point, reporters were told that they had to

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catalog in detail the identity characteristics of all of their sources.

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Why would you need to do that. Andrew had been

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instrumental in forming the union at his company, and he

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objected when negotia shifted from severance pay and parental leave,

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which I think are things that unions typically tried to implement,

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you know, but they were trying to shift the negotiations

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away from that and onto racial quotas. They wanted to

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do emergency hires of black people, emergency hires quick. Everybody,

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we're racist, we're systematically institutionally racists. We need to hire

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some more black people, like this is what they were

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saying in a newsroom. When he questioned these new priorities.

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The response was swift. He says, on a zoom call,

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women would clap back at something I was saying, and

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then other women would snap their fingers in the chat window.

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It was this whole subcultural language being introduced wholesale. He

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goes on to say later in the piece, the irony

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was where older white men remained in charge. Actually, where

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they remained in charge, there was almost no room to

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move up. They were already filling the white guy quota.

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All the upper management types that were implementing these policies

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that are stiff arming younger white males. And this plays

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out in example after example after example. Other pipelines dried

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up as well, the alt weeklies. I don't believe we

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have a dead tree copy of such magazine here in Charlotte. Anymore.

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It used to be called creative loafing way back in

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the day. But then they went belly up and think

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some of their writers went over and started was a

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Queen city nerve, I think is what it is. But

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I think it's only online. The old weeklies that gave

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misfit young men their start have now shed them entirely.

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There are no white men on the editorial staff of

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the Seattle Stranger, or on staff of Indie week which

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publishes in North Carolina. As late as twenty seventeen, there

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were six white men atop the masthead for the Portland

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Mercury twenty seventeen. Seven years later there was one. And

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that's the white eye Boomer. Not our traffic eye boomer,

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but a baby Boomer generation. And he's the editor in chief,

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so the boss. By the early twenty twenties, many journalists

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I spoke to noticed something else. The young white men

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who once flooded internship and fellowship pools had simply stopped applying.

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Gen Z men had absorbed the message the journalism was

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not for them. I have noticed this as well. You

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know who else noticed this? Like I don't know twenty

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years ago, Rush Limbaugh, do you remember what he called it,

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the chickification. He called it the chickification of news. A

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well known gen X reporter with impeccable liberal bona Fides

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confided quote, the femaleness is striking. It's like, Wow, where

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have the guys gone? In less than a decade, the

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entire face of the industry changed. And he then goes

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over all the data. I mean, the piece is packed

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with data. I'm just I'm trying to limit the percentages

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and the years and stuff because numbers are difficult to

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convey on radio. They're easier to understand and digest when

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you are looking at them. So I'm not going over

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But he's got New York Times and the male to

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female ratio changing, and it's all going in one direction.

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It's all the same, no matter which media operation he's

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looking at. The demographic shift reshaped, not only who told

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the stories. But here's the key, what do I always say, right,

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The greatest media bias is in the stories that don't

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get covered, Right, He says, the demographics shift from male

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to female reshaped, not only who told the stories, but

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which stories got told. Andrew at a colleague at this

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news department, We'll call him Lucas, and he was assigned

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to go write a piece after George Floyd's death about

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why you should never call the cops. He says, I

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remember having to interview one of these abolitionists, the prison abolitionists,

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for a story about how if somebody breaks into your

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car or your house, that it's white supremacy to call

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the cops, even if you need the police report for

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an insurance report. He says, that always made me feel gross.

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I think back on that with a lot of regret.

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Newsrooms were center left places in two thousand and five,

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the prominent gen X reporter said, now they're incredibly lefty places.

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I imagine one reason newsrooms have gotten more explicitly lefty

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is that you have white guys and white women adopting

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a kind of protective coloration allyship mindset, just to get

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in the door. All right. If you're listening to this show,

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00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:08,240
you know I try to keep up with all sorts

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00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:10,279
of current events, and I know you do too. And

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00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:13,799
you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources.

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00:25:14,279 --> 00:25:17,559
Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias. Which

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00:25:17,559 --> 00:25:20,480
is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's

358
00:25:20,599 --> 00:25:24,000
an app and it's a website and it combines news

359
00:25:24,039 --> 00:25:26,000
from around the world in one place, so you can

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00:25:26,039 --> 00:25:29,400
compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out

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00:25:29,400 --> 00:25:34,039
at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put

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00:25:34,039 --> 00:25:37,000
the link in the podcast description too. I started using

363
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:39,920
ground News a few months ago and more recently chose

364
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:41,920
to work with them as an affiliate because it lets

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00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:45,519
me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom.

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00:25:45,799 --> 00:25:48,759
The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored

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00:25:48,799 --> 00:25:51,720
by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check

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00:25:51,839 --> 00:25:56,279
dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link

369
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,240
and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use

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00:25:59,279 --> 00:26:02,400
the vantage play to get unlimited access to every feature.

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00:26:02,599 --> 00:26:05,359
Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it

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00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:08,559
also supports ground News as they make the media landscape

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00:26:08,599 --> 00:26:13,319
more transparent. Kevin says, well, Pete, I've really enjoyed your show.

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Hopefully you'll find employment soon after you're firing. That's well,

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I mean it's going to happen at some point. Chris says.

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When it comes to DEI I look at it as

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00:26:27,759 --> 00:26:31,200
the chickens have come back home to roost or karma

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if you will the same way black people were treated

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based on the color of their skin. Now white people

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find themselves in the same predicament. I'm black, and I'm

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not saying what's happening is right, I smell a butt.

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I don't really agree with DEI I believe in content

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of character, quality of work, and being qualified. Transgressions of

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00:26:54,799 --> 00:26:57,400
the past will eventually come back to bite you in

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00:26:57,599 --> 00:27:02,839
the butt, though, Right, So this is Kendyism. What Chris

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00:27:03,319 --> 00:27:06,480
is articulating, I think here is that's Ibra Mex Kendy,

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who in his you Know, Anti Racism book that he

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was invited to share with all of the educators in

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the Charlotte Mecklenberg school system, for example, among many other

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00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:26,279
places that brought in Kendy to to sell this slop,

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00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:34,599
he says that the remedy for past discrimination is current discrimination.

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See this is why, like this is an unethical view, okay,

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because if that's the case, then you never end up

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without discrimination. And again, if you want to live in

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a racialized society where rights and jobs and opportunities and

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00:27:57,519 --> 00:28:01,839
all this other stuff is dependent on on whatever racial

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00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:09,079
demographic has power, like that is a completely unethical system

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to advocate. And you darn sure, I better not be

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talking about equality under the law for everybody either. See.

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I am of the opinion that you should not discriminate

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based on any of these characteristics. Like we need to

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00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:25,200
be as Chris says in his message that a meritocracy,

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if somebody is producing the work and they are good

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00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:32,559
at what they do, then that's the person you would want,

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right obviously, because then what ends up happening is now

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you will have the cycle just continuing. Let me see here,

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this is from seven oh four number. My aunt was

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a teacher years ago. She was turned down for a

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position because they said that they had to hire a minority,

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even though they said she was far more qualified for

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the job. This from Ken five years ago. It was

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called affirmative action. I mean up until a couple of

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years ago it still is. I mean yeah, I mean

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this was the outcome of affirmative action, which again you

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may agree with the reasoning behind it, which was to

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you know, correct the past transgressions. But that's still discrimination.

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That's what that is in practice, as was laid bare

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in the Supreme Court arguments. Ken says, I applied to

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a company that my father and uncle worked for. I

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did not get hired. My uncle was friends with the

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hiring manager, and he asked him why this is what

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He stated that even though I had one of the

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highest test scores, he could not hire me because I

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was white. Walter wants to know, as a middle aged

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white guy, where do I apply for my reparation. I

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don't think I don't think that's gonna I don't think

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that's how that works. Walter. So in this in this

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piece called the Lost Generation, it's at Compactmagazine compactmag dot

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00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:08,880
com by Jacob Savage. I mentioned he talks about and

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I just kind of went over the media and the

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00:30:11,039 --> 00:30:17,400
news organizations. He then pivots over to academia the Ivory Tower.

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He calls this section and he says, there are a

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lot of stories we tell ourselves about race and gender,

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especially in academia. But the one thing everybody that I

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00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:31,480
spoke to seem to agree on it's best not to

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00:30:31,559 --> 00:30:36,079
talk about it, at least not in public. And that's

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00:30:36,119 --> 00:30:40,160
why I'm talking about it in public right now. All right,

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that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much

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00:30:42,559 --> 00:30:44,599
for listening. I could not do the show without your

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00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:47,400
support and the support of the businesses that advertise on

441
00:30:47,440 --> 00:30:50,240
the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too

442
00:30:50,279 --> 00:30:51,960
and tell them you heard it here. You can also

443
00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:54,559
become a patron at my Patreon page or go to

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00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:58,440
dpetecallanarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening,

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00:30:58,519 --> 00:31:04,400
and don't break anything while I'm gone.