Latest / Blocked and Reported / Episode 218: The Dreyfuss Affair (with Ben Dreyfuss)

Transcript

Episode 218: The Dreyfuss Affair (with Ben Dreyfuss) · Blocked and Reported

0:02
Thank you.
0:09
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Blocked and Reported.
0:11
SPEAKER_02: I'm Katie Herzog.
0:12
SPEAKER_02: And joining me today,
0:13
SPEAKER_02: while Jesse is protesting outside Samuel Alito's house with a sign that says,
0:17
SPEAKER_02: God hates flags,
0:18
SPEAKER_02: we have the much-requested Ben Dreyfuss.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: Ben is a writer publishing at his own substack, Calm Down, or Calm Down Ben, as I like to think of it.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: But he is probably most famous for two things, being the son of Hollywood star Richard Dreyfuss.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: And once pissing off the entire disability community for tweeting that he would not
0:38
SPEAKER_02: invite Madison Cawthorn to his orgy.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: Ben, welcome to Blocked and Reported.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me, Katie.
0:43
SPEAKER_02: Now, Ben, you are correct about a lot of stuff.
0:47
SPEAKER_02: You were somehow right about Joe Biden being the most electable candidate in 2020.
0:51
SPEAKER_02: You and Josh Barrow might have been the only people making that point.
0:54
SPEAKER_02: But I have to say,
0:55
SPEAKER_02: I disagree with you about not inviting Madison Cawthorn to the orgy because he
1:00
SPEAKER_02: brings his own chair.
1:01
SPEAKER_02: So that's one less you have to wash.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you're looking for a cum bucket, then great.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: How can you possibly talk about our elected officials like that then?
1:12
SPEAKER_02: It's not religious.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:15
SPEAKER_00: I've just always thought that if I was going to have an orgy,
1:17
SPEAKER_00: I would just really want people there who were going to be proactive,
1:20
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:20
SPEAKER_00: and they weren't just going to sit back and wait for the phone to ring,
1:24
SPEAKER_00: you know?
1:26
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: We have so much to discuss today.
1:28
SPEAKER_02: We're going to get into your latest spat with the international press,
1:32
SPEAKER_02: your time at Mother Jones Magazine.
1:33
SPEAKER_02: I want to talk to you a little bit about Me Too, some other shit.
1:37
SPEAKER_02: But since I have you here and you were the only descendant of an Oscar winner I
1:42
SPEAKER_02: have or probably will ever meet because Chad Hanks won't respond to my DMs,
1:46
SPEAKER_02: I'm just curious.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: It's a hard question to answer, but what was it like being the child of someone who was rich and famous?
1:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean, did you grow up in Hollywood?
1:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: I did for a while and then my parents got divorced and I moved to Hollywood North,
1:57
SPEAKER_00: which is called Sun Valley,
1:58
SPEAKER_00: Idaho.
1:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the Hollywood of Idaho for sure.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: I actually met a woman from Sun Valley recently standing in line to go through TSA at the airport.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: And I thought for a moment about saying, oh, do you know Ben Dreyfuss?
2:11
SPEAKER_02: And then I thought, this is a really long line.
2:13
SPEAKER_02: What if she does?
2:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the thing is, it is a really small town.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: So there's a very good chance she would have said yes.
2:19
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: I didn't know.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: I mean, she was in her 60s, but I thought they could have dated.
2:23
SPEAKER_02: It's possible.
2:24
SPEAKER_02: I'm just not going to bring it up.
2:25
SPEAKER_02: OK, so you you grew up in Sun Valley.
2:28
SPEAKER_02: You're living there now again.
2:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:30
SPEAKER_02: Did you have a sort of like Hollywood?
2:33
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
2:34
SPEAKER_02: we think like I think of sort of the Maya Hawks of the world,
2:37
SPEAKER_02: these kids who have this sort of,
2:40
SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
2:40
SPEAKER_02: gold dusted upbringing.
2:41
SPEAKER_02: Was that your life as a child?
2:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, sort of in term – in like objective terms, yes.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: Like compared to like, you know, normal people.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: It's not compared to Maya Hawk probably.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, like it's – when we moved from LA to Idaho, there was some culture change.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: You know, we didn't have quite as many servants.
3:01
But –
3:02
SPEAKER_00: But like, there are there are a couple of, you know, divorced Hollywood's up here.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: So we know we had our own little like, you know, there's a private school.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: So we don't have to get too close to poor people.
3:12
SPEAKER_02: Were you like, were you because you were the you went to live with your mom?
3:16
SPEAKER_02: Were you considered like the poor kids of Sun Valley?
3:19
SPEAKER_00: No, there are those kids who are not poor.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: The housekeepers.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: No one in this valley is actually poor.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: But no,
3:29
SPEAKER_00: there is like another class of money up here,
3:32
SPEAKER_00: which is the CEOs of Hewlett Packard and stuff like that.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: And they were always the real wealthy people.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: They lived north of town.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: And-
3:43
SPEAKER_00: Then recently,
3:44
SPEAKER_00: a few years ago,
3:44
SPEAKER_00: when I came back here during COVID,
3:46
SPEAKER_00: I ran into another movie star's son who had gone to school with me.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, yeah.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: So your parents still in that house I haven't seen in 20 years?
3:54
SPEAKER_00: And he said, no, you know, they moved.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: And I told him my parents moved, too.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: And he looked at me and shook his head and he said, man, it's crazy.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: The billionaires are pricing the millionaires out.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: I just thought like this is the least sympathetic form of like,
4:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
4:13
SPEAKER_00: gentrification victims in the world.
4:16
SPEAKER_02: Right.
4:16
SPEAKER_02: When Oscar winners are being gentrified out of their homes.
4:20
SPEAKER_02: Speaking of your father, you recently disavowed him, correct?
4:22
SPEAKER_02: Or at least that's what I read in the Daily Mail.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: Please explain what happened.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: So my dad apparently was in some Jaws event in Massachusetts like you do.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: And I guess he said he went on some political rants where he said some unreconstructed things.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: And hilariously, there's no actual quotes about it in these stories, but it's just the reaction.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: So it's just like, liberals in Massachusetts horrified by Richard Dreyfuss' transphobic rant.
4:52
Right.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: Then I tweeted some joke about it,
4:55
SPEAKER_00: which I didn't think needed to be explained,
4:58
SPEAKER_00: but I was like,
4:58
SPEAKER_00: oh,
4:59
SPEAKER_00: I can't believe I had to come online and see this disgusting behavior.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: And then it was a photo of my sister switching to Android.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: All of the papers the next day wrote that I had,
5:08
SPEAKER_00: like...
5:09
SPEAKER_00: They didn't see...
5:09
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if they didn't see the photo or something,
5:11
SPEAKER_00: but they were like,
5:12
SPEAKER_00: Ben Dreyfuss,
5:12
SPEAKER_00: like,
5:13
SPEAKER_00: disavows his father.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: And so then I've been on like I went like a tirade tweeting at them getting the ball corrected.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: And I wrote like a long subtext post.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: And then hilariously, the next day, the L.A.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: Times did it again.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Jesus Christ, you're supposed to be one of the good papers.
5:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, this seems to be a recurring theme with you.
5:32
SPEAKER_02: Can you give me some other examples of times you feel like you've been misrepresented by the press?
5:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they constantly misrepresent my tweets because they ain't smart.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: They don't understand.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: I think that a lot of the people who are on the write about tweets beat are just morons.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: They don't understand that sometimes people say things not entirely seriously.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: And last year, the Daily Mail had a big story that said, Jaws star's son won't sleep with fat women.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: Which, that's true, right?
6:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the thing is, it was about a thread where I had explicitly said those words.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: But it was, like, an ironic thread, you know?
6:14
SPEAKER_00: I was, like, trying to trigger and play with, like, the body community.
6:20
SPEAKER_02: Right, the body community.
6:22
SPEAKER_02: So people who aren't on Twitter...
6:25
SPEAKER_02: might not understand, but your Twitter, it's a work of art.
6:29
SPEAKER_02: It really is.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: People use the word unhinged way too frequently these days.
6:34
SPEAKER_02: Your Twitter persona is actually unhinged.
6:36
SPEAKER_02: And I mean that as a compliment.
6:38
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: Do you...
6:40
SPEAKER_02: You are like very frequently you are oftentimes like the main character of the day,
6:46
SPEAKER_02: but it seems to be fully on purpose.
6:48
SPEAKER_02: You say things that are incredibly provocative and then people react.
6:52
SPEAKER_02: The international press reacts because you are the son of Richard Dreyfuss.
6:56
SPEAKER_02: When this happens, do you feel like oftentimes when people get dogpiled on Twitter, they feel bad.
7:02
SPEAKER_02: They feel bad about themselves.
7:04
SPEAKER_02: They feel bad for themselves.
7:05
SPEAKER_02: Do you does this at all like affect your mood when this happens?
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Do I feel bad for myself or for other people?
7:10
SPEAKER_02: For yourself.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
7:13
SPEAKER_00: I've definitely felt at times in my life that I've been like,
7:17
SPEAKER_00: these morons are being unfair to me.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: But because I have a pretty good survival rate from all of it,
7:24
SPEAKER_00: I've generally got a pretty good,
7:27
SPEAKER_00: you know,
7:28
SPEAKER_00: forget about it sort of mode.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people have asked me if I feel bad that, like, I've hurt other people's feelings.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: And that one is a very easy no.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: No.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
7:39
SPEAKER_00: the thing is,
7:40
SPEAKER_00: I think that all of the tweets that anyone has ever gotten mad at me for are
7:46
SPEAKER_00: literally just not...
7:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm willing to stand behind them because if I was hanging out with someone in
7:54
SPEAKER_00: reality at a bar,
7:55
SPEAKER_00: I would say those things.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: And it might be easier to tell that I was joking if I can do it in a voice or I can
8:01
SPEAKER_00: do a blah,
8:01
SPEAKER_00: blah,
8:01
SPEAKER_00: blah.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: But the fact is, these people on the internet have...
8:06
SPEAKER_00: been tricked,
8:06
SPEAKER_00: but I've made the same mistake of thinking I'm serious about stuff so many times
8:11
SPEAKER_00: that they're really just asking for it and fuck them.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: Fuck all of them.
8:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:14
SPEAKER_02: It's sort of like this thing happens online when,
8:17
SPEAKER_02: you know,
8:17
SPEAKER_02: you're making a joke for your specific audience,
8:20
SPEAKER_02: people who get it,
8:21
SPEAKER_02: people who understand that Ben Driver says this very particular sense of humor and
8:24
SPEAKER_02: they get it.
8:25
SPEAKER_02: But then when it leaves your circle, you're
8:29
SPEAKER_02: People – all of a sudden it takes on this weird meaning.
8:32
SPEAKER_02: People think that you're literal.
8:33
SPEAKER_02: People think that you're serious.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: And then it becomes a news story.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean I think that because of the way Twitter works specifically that we're all
8:41
SPEAKER_00: just one retweet away from a really humorless cohort saying it.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: That then for some reason people will get mad at the person who sent the offending
8:51
SPEAKER_00: tweet when the person they should really be mad at is their friend who retweeted it.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: um and i sort of i mean the people who are on the ben drivers beat or the any like
9:01
SPEAKER_00: nepo baby beat and just looking for tweets that upset them i think that you know
9:05
SPEAKER_00: those people are very lowly paid reporters being assigned to it by idiot editors
9:11
SPEAKER_00: like i don't i don't actually have a problem with with the reporters those people
9:14
SPEAKER_00: are trying to get their foot in the door they they saw all the president's men and
9:18
SPEAKER_00: this is what they're doing but like
9:21
SPEAKER_00: The perverse incentives of all of it.
9:23
SPEAKER_02: It's cheaper than going to NYU.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, these people probably actually went to Yale.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: I do think that it's...
9:32
SPEAKER_00: The problem with social media so much is that it's not just that articles are
9:37
SPEAKER_00: content and everything is content.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: It's that people's reaction to content is content.
9:41
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: And so it just leads into this vicious circle of people who haven't seen Jaws in 30
9:49
SPEAKER_00: years being like,
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Jaws star's son did what?
9:52
SPEAKER_00: What?
9:54
SPEAKER_02: Right.
9:54
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that seems to be the thing.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: It's like if you were not the son of Richard Dreyfuss or somebody famous,
10:01
SPEAKER_02: you would just be like these would just be tweets that would go viral.
10:05
SPEAKER_02: They would probably still go viral.
10:06
SPEAKER_02: But the Daily Mail wouldn't be writing about them.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: No, it's true.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: And maybe they wouldn't go viral.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: Like I might be dead in a ditch with a different parent.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, like, you know, maybe I'd be much happier.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'd have a lot of less psychological problems.
10:24
SPEAKER_02: You might have two eyes as well.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Might have two eyes.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: Any, almost any other parent would, I would have had two eyes.
10:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
10:31
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, you win some, you lose some.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:33
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
10:33
SPEAKER_02: So you grew up in Idaho.
10:35
SPEAKER_02: Did you go to college in New York?
10:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I went to NYU.
10:37
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
10:38
SPEAKER_02: So you went to NYU and then eventually, how did you get into media?
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I went to NYU and I was studying politics and writing and other pretend bullshit.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: And the whole time I was planning on leaving and like the second I was going to be done,
10:54
SPEAKER_00: I was going to go to LA and inherit,
10:57
SPEAKER_00: inherit,
10:58
SPEAKER_00: inherit the mantle of movie star and become an actor.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: And then I did that and I moved out there and I didn't become a movie star.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: Turns out that I'm both not that good of an actor.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: And also I have one eye, which is quite distracting.
11:15
SPEAKER_02: You know, I would assume there are limited roles you could play, like Dan Crenshaw in a biopic.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: Although now with AI,
11:23
SPEAKER_02: they might be able to digitally,
11:24
SPEAKER_02: like,
11:25
SPEAKER_02: replace your eye very – now might be your time.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they could.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: It's true.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: Also, I mean, there always used to be the Munsters.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: True.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's shows like that.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: But then I – so I went out there,
11:35
SPEAKER_00: failed entirely,
11:37
SPEAKER_00: had no real plans for what to do for a job because I'd never really thought about it.
11:41
SPEAKER_02: So you were like, I'll just go into media.
11:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: And I, my sister had a job at a CNET.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: She like,
11:47
SPEAKER_00: as opposed to me,
11:48
SPEAKER_00: she had like studied journalism in college and had like gone to work at a local
11:51
SPEAKER_00: paper and they were hiring someone to do their Twitter account.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: And so I was able to apply for it before the job listing went public.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: I think they probably interviewed three people altogether or something,
12:04
SPEAKER_00: but then I got,
12:05
SPEAKER_00: I became the CNET Twitter person.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: And from there, you know, it was all written in the stars.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:12
SPEAKER_02: So you went from CNET directly to Mother Jones?
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was at CNET for about a year and a half doing the social media stuff.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: And then I left to go work at Mother Jones.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: There's all these idiot euphemisms for these jobs, especially about 10 years ago.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: But they had to be their engagement editor.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: And when I got there, I sort of assumed I was just going to be doing –
12:35
SPEAKER_00: you know, tweets and Facebook posts and all of that nonsense.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: But then I realized that they hadn't made it.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a pretend term that I was an editor for them.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: They were like, all right, you'll also be editing stories and writing them.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Oh, I, Ben, don't say anything.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: Don't tell them that you're completely unqualified to do that.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: And, uh, so they did, they gave me the keys to all those things and I did it and got good at it.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: And then eventually was able to hire people under me and, uh,
13:04
SPEAKER_00: my career advanced.
13:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: So I first encountered you during this period because we were both in a Facebook
13:11
SPEAKER_02: group for the Online News Association,
13:13
SPEAKER_02: which I'm not sure it still exists anymore,
13:15
SPEAKER_02: but it was this professional organization.
13:17
SPEAKER_02: And you would post the most insane shit in this Facebook group.
13:23
SPEAKER_02: I honestly wasn't sure if you were psychotic or a performance artist.
13:27
SPEAKER_02: I have some screenshots here.
13:28
SPEAKER_02: Ben, I put these in our notes.
13:31
SPEAKER_02: Will you do me the honor of reading these Facebook posts?
13:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: I cheated on my wife.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: I cheated on her because I wasn't attracted to her anymore.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm a bad person, but I don't want to be.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: I want her to love me.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: She does.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: She does love me.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: She loves me still, and that's the worst part.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: She will forgive me, but I don't know if I love myself enough to be forgiven.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I'm worthy of her love.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: I also don't know if I'm ready to resume a sexual relationship with her.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm still not terribly attracted to her.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: When we first met, I was ravenous for her.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: We used to listen to Van Morrison and lay out by the river and talk for hours, if not days.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: But that feels like a lifetime ago.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: The last three years have been a story in how love grays, you know?
14:18
SPEAKER_00: I guess this isn't a question so much as a comment.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
14:23
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
14:23
SPEAKER_02: So this was September 8th, 2015, posted in the Online News Association Facebook group.
14:31
SPEAKER_02: I have another one here that I pulled from the group.
14:33
SPEAKER_02: Ben, will you please read this one?
14:36
SPEAKER_00: I am not at ONA, but if anyone in this group is at ONA, can you please tell me if you've seen my wife?
14:43
SPEAKER_00: And then it's a stick drawing of a woman.
14:46
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
14:47
SPEAKER_02: You also, for the record, never married.
14:51
SPEAKER_02: This wife did not exist.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: Wait, wait.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: I need to explain more about this joke, okay?
14:55
SPEAKER_00: This went on for a long time.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: I had this fake marriage in this group for a really long time that would end up
15:02
SPEAKER_00: with increasingly drunken and sad,
15:04
SPEAKER_00: me having nervous breakdowns.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just this one.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: No.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: I lured these people into an entire soap opera.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:13
SPEAKER_02: At one point you posted,
15:15
SPEAKER_02: I believe in this group,
15:16
SPEAKER_02: maybe this was on Twitter,
15:17
SPEAKER_02: but you were,
15:17
SPEAKER_02: you had convinced people that your wife was cheating on you with Mark McGrath.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: Sugar race, Mark McGrath.
15:25
SPEAKER_02: Did you ever get a cease and desist from him?
15:27
SPEAKER_00: No,
15:28
SPEAKER_00: although someone did try to hire him on Cameo to say,
15:32
SPEAKER_00: like,
15:32
SPEAKER_00: I fucked your wife,
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Ben,
15:34
SPEAKER_00: and I guess he rejected the request.
15:38
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so just tell me, what was your, why did you do this?
15:42
SPEAKER_02: What was going on here?
15:43
SPEAKER_00: I just thought it was always funny for when a man was upset about something.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: But then in reality, he was upset about his wife not loving him.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: In any situation,
15:53
SPEAKER_00: you could just start with talking about,
15:55
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:55
SPEAKER_00: anything as dumb as social media management.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: But then when you really pushed into it,
15:59
SPEAKER_00: the person is really just sad that their wife doesn't be with them.
16:03
SPEAKER_02: Well, it was very funny.
16:04
SPEAKER_02: I thought so.
16:05
SPEAKER_02: There were definitely some comments about like, what the fuck?
16:07
SPEAKER_02: Why?
16:08
SPEAKER_02: What?
16:08
SPEAKER_02: What is happening?
16:09
SPEAKER_02: This is a professional Facebook group.
16:10
SPEAKER_02: What are you doing?
16:12
SPEAKER_02: But you kept a straight face.
16:13
SPEAKER_02: You kept it on, kept it going for quite a while.
16:15
SPEAKER_02: This became a topic of frequent conversation between me and my colleagues at the time.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, I was a few years after all of this.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: It was like 2017 or 2018.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: I was at some like Facebook event for journalists and all these people kept coming
16:29
SPEAKER_00: up to me and being like,
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Ben Drivers.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: So do you actually have a wife?
16:34
SPEAKER_02: OK,
16:34
SPEAKER_02: so presumably you're also doing this while you were at work at Mother Jones,
16:38
SPEAKER_02: at least I hope that you were.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about Mother Jones for a bit.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: So over the last few years,
16:46
SPEAKER_02: Jesse and I have spent a lot of time talking about how the Great Awokening or
16:50
SPEAKER_02: whatever you want to call it impacted various media organizations.
16:54
SPEAKER_02: The story of what happened at the New York Times, that's been told many times.
16:58
SPEAKER_02: Last week, we talked about Michael Moynihan's new tell-all about what happened at Vice.
17:02
SPEAKER_02: For people who didn't hear that, basically, it's a story that has been told so many times.
17:05
SPEAKER_02: The young,
17:06
SPEAKER_02: woke staffers hated the brand and were able to essentially take the company over
17:10
SPEAKER_02: and run it into the ground.
17:12
SPEAKER_02: Although,
17:12
SPEAKER_02: of course,
17:12
SPEAKER_02: there were bigger structural forces than just staffers with pronouns in their bios
17:17
SPEAKER_02: pulling management into submission.
17:19
SPEAKER_02: But less has been said about Mother Jones during this time.
17:23
SPEAKER_02: So while you were there, did those same cultural shifts, did that happen?
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was thinking about it.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: I got to Mother Jones in
17:33
SPEAKER_00: the beginning of 2013 and then ended up leaving in 2021.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: So I basically covered,
17:39
SPEAKER_00: covered like a Obama's second term and Trump's first term or hopefully last term,
17:45
SPEAKER_00: but whatever.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: And so basically the entire era when all of this went, went on, right.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: Um,
17:52
SPEAKER_00: And when I first got there, you know, there was always a bunch of people who were wacky leftists.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: Cause I mean, it's a left, it's a magazine.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: But those people were generally normally not the journalists.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: Like maybe they were the very young journalists, but they were actually like the product team and.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: you know, the technical people who are just San Francisco loons and everything.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: But,
18:14
SPEAKER_00: uh,
18:14
SPEAKER_00: the journalists themselves,
18:15
SPEAKER_00: like mother Jones has a pretty good history,
18:17
SPEAKER_00: um,
18:17
SPEAKER_00: of being like a reporting institution.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: And so all of the actual,
18:22
SPEAKER_00: like my colleagues were all very much like,
18:25
SPEAKER_00: they,
18:26
SPEAKER_00: they're all liberals obviously,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: but they weren't like ideological,
18:28
SPEAKER_00: uh,
18:29
SPEAKER_00: And then I think it starts in around game like 2014 with the Gamergate stuff and 2015 with Trump.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: And then everything just goes crazy in 2016 where people started to be more infused.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to bring their politics to it more.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: And then also just like the young people coming up because there's a fellowship program.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Those people became more militant about it.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: And in particular offices like the San Francisco office,
18:58
SPEAKER_00: which I was in the New York office,
19:00
SPEAKER_00: the San Francisco office sort of just became,
19:02
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:03
SPEAKER_00: Jonestown.
19:04
SPEAKER_03: Mother Jonestown.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Mother Jonestown.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: And I kind of thought that it was interesting because the New York office was –
19:13
SPEAKER_00: built by me and this one other guy.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And we were,
19:15
SPEAKER_00: we,
19:16
SPEAKER_00: we would kind of like staffed it up with people who were more like the New York
19:21
SPEAKER_00: journalists of your,
19:22
SPEAKER_00: who like are doing this stuff,
19:24
SPEAKER_00: but they're more mercenary than ideological,
19:27
SPEAKER_00: I guess.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, and can have somewhat more of a gawker sense of humor for good or bad.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then when the, there was increasing run-ins, but all of this over, over Trump's, um,
19:40
SPEAKER_00: presidency.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: But when we all then went online because of COVID in 2020, everyone was sent to Zoom.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of the stuff that had only happened in the New York Bureau was then
19:53
SPEAKER_00: being conducted in these rooms with people in San Francisco who were shocked.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: And they were like, what sort of jokes are these people telling and things like that.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: And from there, everything just got even worse.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: And then 2020 happened.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: And eventually I was a racist and kicked out.
20:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
20:10
SPEAKER_02: So you were fired from Mother Jones.
20:12
SPEAKER_02: Was it were you technically fired or?
20:14
SPEAKER_00: I was technically laid off because they wanted me to be able to get, uh, right.
20:19
SPEAKER_02: Unemployment.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Which I then didn't even get, but yeah.
20:21
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
20:22
SPEAKER_02: So tell me what happened.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: So I,
20:25
SPEAKER_00: during 2020,
20:26
SPEAKER_00: there had been all these increasing run-ins in newsrooms and mother Jones particularly.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: And,
20:32
SPEAKER_00: uh,
20:33
SPEAKER_00: actually like going back to,
20:34
SPEAKER_00: you know,
20:34
SPEAKER_00: it had started a few years before,
20:35
SPEAKER_00: but it really all picked up.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, and in 2020, uh,
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Right around,
20:42
SPEAKER_00: I guess it was May and June,
20:46
SPEAKER_00: there was this letter that went around from the union that was signed by basically
20:52
SPEAKER_00: everyone at the company,
20:53
SPEAKER_00: even people who weren't in the union,
20:54
SPEAKER_00: that was about how the leadership was failing the black community.
21:02
SPEAKER_02: Were there black employees?
21:04
SPEAKER_00: There were two, you know, like there's two out of 100 or something like that.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: But it was about how and it listed all these various grievances,
21:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
21:13
SPEAKER_00: some of which were the editors and stuff going back years.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: But it would be like this editor,
21:18
SPEAKER_00: you know,
21:19
SPEAKER_00: asked a black reporter like an insensitive question about black culture or
21:23
SPEAKER_00: something like that.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: And,
21:25
SPEAKER_00: or this blogger,
21:26
SPEAKER_00: because we have,
21:27
SPEAKER_00: we had a blogger named Kevin Drum,
21:28
SPEAKER_00: who was constantly pissing them off.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: He, you know, said that he, it was also stupid that they would get mad at Kevin before.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: They got very mad at Kevin for saying that he hadn't seen that movie.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: What's that?
21:40
SPEAKER_00: It was Korean.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: It won Best Picture.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: What was it called?
21:42
SPEAKER_02: Oh, Parasite.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: Parasite, yeah.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: He wrote a post that was like, I didn't see Parasite because I don't like... Oh, subtitles?
21:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't like subtitles.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: I remember this.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: They all got... And I had read that post before it had gone live and had found no problems with it.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: And so the CEO... And so then when there was this total outrage, I had...
22:01
SPEAKER_02: Because nobody fucking likes subtitles.
22:03
SPEAKER_02: No, of course.
22:04
SPEAKER_02: I was like, what do you mean?
22:06
SPEAKER_00: What's this in here?
22:07
SPEAKER_02: Oh, my God.
22:07
SPEAKER_02: If you're watching a movie with subtitles,
22:09
SPEAKER_02: you have to actually pay attention to the movie and you can't scroll on your phone.
22:12
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
22:13
SPEAKER_02: I would never watch a movie where I have to read.
22:15
SPEAKER_02: What's the point?
22:16
SPEAKER_00: I've still never seen that movie because of it.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: But they all got, so all of this stuff is listed in this letter about all these evil whites.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: And the thing is,
22:27
SPEAKER_00: is that I,
22:27
SPEAKER_00: like,
22:28
SPEAKER_00: for all of the stuff that I'd been,
22:29
SPEAKER_00: like,
22:29
SPEAKER_00: kind of controversial for there,
22:30
SPEAKER_00: I had never had any run-ins with,
22:32
SPEAKER_00: like,
22:32
SPEAKER_00: the black people,
22:34
SPEAKER_00: the two black employees.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not a racist.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: No, you're ableist.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm ableist, you know, sexist, all of these things.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: But then I – there's the paragraph in it that then starts blaming the
22:48
SPEAKER_00: editors-in-chief and CEO for letting a white employee,
22:53
SPEAKER_00: a senior white employee,
22:53
SPEAKER_00: me,
22:55
SPEAKER_00: get away with stuff that black employees would never be allowed to do.
22:58
SPEAKER_02: Would any other – would anybody else in that organization tweet things like I
23:02
SPEAKER_02: wouldn't invite Madison Cothran to the orgy?
23:04
SPEAKER_02: Is this like a popular position?
23:05
SPEAKER_02: People were dying to tweet like Ben Dreyfuss?
23:08
SPEAKER_00: No, that's the thing.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: It's like – it's true.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: I guess the black employees wouldn't.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: But neither would the white employees.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: Right.
23:14
SPEAKER_02: Right.
23:15
SPEAKER_02: I mean, do you think there is some – were you able to get away with shit that other people weren't?
23:20
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
23:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was just a – I just was – I brought in a lot of money.
23:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: After David Korn, I was like the most profitable person they had there.
23:30
SPEAKER_02: You tweeted something –
23:32
SPEAKER_02: A little bit related earlier this week.
23:33
SPEAKER_02: So the Washington Post has a new CEO.
23:36
SPEAKER_02: His name's Will Lewis.
23:37
SPEAKER_02: They pushed out the previous CEO, Sally Busby.
23:40
SPEAKER_02: And Vanity, I think it was Vanity Fair, posted an article about this.
23:44
SPEAKER_02: And apparently during a meeting,
23:46
SPEAKER_02: people were were complaining about like,
23:49
SPEAKER_02: oh,
23:49
SPEAKER_02: now there's you've got four white guys protesting.
23:52
SPEAKER_02: At the helm of The Post, people were complaining about this.
23:56
SPEAKER_02: And someone in leadership said something like, people aren't reading your stuff.
24:00
SPEAKER_02: Nobody is reading your stuff.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: We have lost half of our audience.
24:04
SPEAKER_02: It's like basically stop complaining about race and sex and identity and just do your jobs.
24:11
SPEAKER_02: Things are not going well.
24:12
SPEAKER_02: And this went a little bit viral in like right wing and sort of anti-woke Twitter.
24:17
SPEAKER_02: Because people were saying, you know, oh, this is a sign that things are the ship is writing.
24:22
SPEAKER_02: It's going to the Great Awakening is over at The Washington Post.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: We'll really know if Taylor Lorenz is fired.
24:28
SPEAKER_02: Now, you're friends with Taylor, so you're not unbiased here.
24:31
SPEAKER_02: But you pointed out rightfully that.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: That Taylor is in all likelihood a moneymaker for The Washington Post.
24:37
SPEAKER_02: No matter how you feel about her, she gets eyeballs.
24:40
SPEAKER_02: And it is true in every organization I've worked for,
24:43
SPEAKER_02: media organizations or any other kind of organization,
24:46
SPEAKER_02: that people who are the stars,
24:48
SPEAKER_02: people who bring in the most money,
24:50
SPEAKER_02: there is more latitude.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: It's built into the system for how those people are supposed to subsidize all the other ones.
24:59
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
25:00
SPEAKER_02: It is literally subsidizing.
25:02
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the same thing was true at The Stranger.
25:05
SPEAKER_02: And there was this kind of like fucking grim irony when the people who got the most
25:10
SPEAKER_02: eyeballs at The Stranger,
25:11
SPEAKER_02: obviously Dan Savage,
25:13
SPEAKER_02: by far the most eyeballs,
25:14
SPEAKER_02: the most clicks at the paper.
25:15
SPEAKER_02: I was generally second when I was there.
25:18
SPEAKER_02: The two people who
25:19
SPEAKER_02: brought in the most money were also the two people who were the most loathe within the organization.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's exactly how it was at Mother Jones.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, David Korn is still there.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, he's still the bureau chief and he's far away number one.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: But then like Kevin Drum and I were like number two.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: And we were both people who internally were complained about, but also –
25:43
SPEAKER_00: those internal complaints all came from Twitter.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: People would become,
25:49
SPEAKER_00: they'd all spend more time on Twitter and then they'd see all their left-wing
25:52
SPEAKER_00: friends getting mad at Kevin for not seeing Parasite.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: And they'd get so mad and then they'd go into these little Slack groups and all
26:01
SPEAKER_00: talk themselves into a frenzy.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: And then one of them would come out of that private Slack group into the broader
26:07
SPEAKER_00: one and be like,
26:07
SPEAKER_00: they'd been decided to do it.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: And they would say, I just want to say Parasite was great.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: Or whatever.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: And then it would just all the scariest thing about slack that I because I was the
26:19
SPEAKER_00: owner of the Mother Jones slack.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: And so there's all these like stat reports you can download.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: You can't like read people's private slacks, but you can see all the stats that they do.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: And whenever anyone would send a group into a send a message in a public group,
26:31
SPEAKER_00: it would then set off immediately.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: three more private messages.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: So basically for whatever amount of like work people were doing,
26:40
SPEAKER_00: people were then talking shit about that person three times as much.
26:44
SPEAKER_02: Right.
26:45
SPEAKER_02: So what was it like for you to – I mean surely you did not know that you were
26:49
SPEAKER_02: disliked among many of the staffers.
26:51
SPEAKER_02: What was that experience like for you?
26:53
SPEAKER_00: I was very shocked.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: I knew that some of them didn't like me.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: I'd been there for eight years or so.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: And I had been somewhat controversial there because I had sort of remade the
27:05
SPEAKER_00: organization to be more digital and all of this stuff.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: And that had been – that had led to –
27:13
SPEAKER_00: frequent run ins with people.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: But I had basically won all of those fights because I had the backing of leadership.
27:18
SPEAKER_02: And during this period,
27:20
SPEAKER_02: like I worked in social media during a little for a little while during this period,
27:23
SPEAKER_02: too.
27:24
SPEAKER_02: And Mother Jones was held up as like the advantage of an outlet that was doing digital correctly.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
27:30
SPEAKER_00: it's hilarious that actually,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: like,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: when you Google me right now,
27:32
SPEAKER_00: there's a lot of,
27:33
SPEAKER_00: like,
27:33
SPEAKER_00: Daily Mail says Richard Iverson's son won't sleep with fat people.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: But then it's also,
27:37
SPEAKER_00: like,
27:37
SPEAKER_00: these glowing profiles about me in,
27:39
SPEAKER_00: like,
27:40
SPEAKER_00: the Columbia Journalism Review and stuff about how,
27:42
SPEAKER_00: like,
27:44
SPEAKER_00: got the youngs to care about left-wing politics and nonsense.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: And, um...
27:49
SPEAKER_00: And one of the last things that I ever did at Mother Jo's was to do all these
27:53
SPEAKER_00: interviews with this person who was conducting a case study for the Harvard
27:57
SPEAKER_00: Business School about us.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: And so I think it came out by the time I was gone.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: But it's framed around all of these statements about how to do everything.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: But so it was interesting because there had always been all this stuff going on.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: But it had always been sort of low level and hadn't really mattered up until really 2020 when –
28:17
SPEAKER_00: everything just got so much more fraught.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: And like one of the things,
28:22
SPEAKER_00: like the day George Floyd died,
28:25
SPEAKER_00: I was on my phone breaking,
28:29
SPEAKER_00: breaking quarantine or something.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: And I had seen on my phone, like people on Slack really reacting a lot.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: And, but I hadn't seen the video and I hadn't seen any of this stuff.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: And so all I,
28:40
SPEAKER_00: I put into Slack was my job was that I saw all these people,
28:43
SPEAKER_00: these reporters talking about it.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: And I said, okay, so who is writing about this?
28:48
SPEAKER_00: And everyone went dead silent, as they always did.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: And so then I had to be like, look, we need to get something up about this.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: It sounds like it's a big deal.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: And no one wrote anything.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: And then I said, please don't make me do this.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: I am obviously not the right person to write about this.
29:04
SPEAKER_03: We're our two black staffers.
29:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: And so then no response.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: And so then I said, fine, I'm going home and I'll do it.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: And I went home and wrote a little short blog post about it.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: And the next day I got two notes, one from my CEO and one from the editor in chief.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: The editor in chief's,
29:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
29:20
SPEAKER_00: the CEO's note was that apparently when I said in the Slack that I wasn't the right
29:26
SPEAKER_00: person to do it,
29:27
SPEAKER_00: a lot of the people took it to me and I meant get a black to do it.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: As opposed to the more obvious, I haven't even seen the video and I don't know what I'm talking about.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: And then the other one was from the editor in chief who said, also that post you did, Ben, not very good.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: Ouch.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: And so all of that sort of just like went on.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: And there was I don't know if you remember around this time.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you do, actually.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: But around 2019 as well,
29:55
SPEAKER_00: there was these cases of someone saying the N word somewhere at some point,
30:00
SPEAKER_00: and then it would come out and they'd have to get fired.
30:02
SPEAKER_02: Sang along to a Biggie Smalls song in 2003.
30:04
SPEAKER_02: And now you have lost your job as a dentist in Des Moines.
30:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: There was this one where like one of those happened in 2019 or 2020.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: And like another staffer who I'm not going to name had,
30:16
SPEAKER_00: had gone into the Slack and while everyone was talking about it had said like,
30:20
SPEAKER_00: you know,
30:21
SPEAKER_00: it's different for you young guys.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: You don't know what it was like, like, like 40 years ago, these words were just more common.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: And that's all the person said.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: They didn't say they didn't use the N word.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: They didn't even type it, but they did acknowledge that like,
30:34
SPEAKER_00: In their past, 50 years ago, they had said it to tell jokes of some kind.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: And I remember hearing,
30:41
SPEAKER_00: because we were in the office until then,
30:42
SPEAKER_00: I can just hear the rest of the New York office go...
30:47
SPEAKER_00: I like race to my computer and look at it and I'm seeing it and I can hear all of
30:51
SPEAKER_00: the other people going into their little private slacks to fight and talk
30:54
SPEAKER_00: themselves into a panic.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: And I like immediately called the other employee and I was like, look, I just want I've just seen this.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: I think it would be good if you explained it.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: Calm it down before it gets out of hand.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: And that person said, I'm on the phone with the editor in chief right now.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: They're telling me the same thing.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: And so then they come in and they write like a little unnecessary note that says,
31:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry if that wording was weird.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: I just want to be clear.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm not defending it.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm just trying to add context.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: And we're all sitting looking at the screen waiting to see what's going to happen.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: And no one responds.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: And so I then was like, all right.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: And I give him like a thumbs up emoji.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: And I come in and said like, yeah, thanks.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: You know,
31:34
SPEAKER_00: I think we all know you're not a racist,
31:35
SPEAKER_00: but I really appreciate you taking the time to clarify blah,
31:38
SPEAKER_00: blah,
31:38
SPEAKER_00: blah.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: No more emojis, no more support is there.
31:42
SPEAKER_03: Oh God, the silence.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: I find out by like the next day that I was done.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: I was now on the blacklist.
31:50
Oh my God.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: What about this other person?
31:54
SPEAKER_02: Did he end up getting in trouble as well?
31:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that person got in lots... They were part of that letter, too, that eventually went around.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: There's just a lot of really ridiculous things that happened then that,
32:12
SPEAKER_00: as with everything,
32:13
SPEAKER_00: there was always people who wanted to kind of be...
32:17
SPEAKER_00: activists about this stuff.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: And it's just that,
32:21
SPEAKER_00: like everything in the world,
32:22
SPEAKER_00: those people are never able to accomplish anything unless they scare the normies
32:25
SPEAKER_00: into it.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: And so those people had to convince the rest of the staff that all this stuff was
32:30
SPEAKER_00: going on,
32:30
SPEAKER_00: and that had never happened until 2020.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: The thing that I find so interesting,
32:34
SPEAKER_02: or one of the things I find really interesting about you,
32:36
SPEAKER_02: Ben,
32:37
SPEAKER_02: is that you are able to tap into the normie audience.
32:42
SPEAKER_02: You understand normies,
32:44
SPEAKER_02: which is especially odd because you are the child of a literal Hollywood star,
32:50
SPEAKER_02: but you somehow understand...
32:54
SPEAKER_02: Middle America,
32:55
SPEAKER_02: which I don't think you've ever been to except to drive your Miata through on your
33:00
SPEAKER_02: way from the coast,
33:02
SPEAKER_02: better than like your average 25-year-old Mother Jones staffer?
33:06
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
33:06
SPEAKER_00: I totally – I was thinking about – you mentioned about how Josh and I were the only
33:09
SPEAKER_00: ones who got Biden right.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: And the thing about it is I remember the day that Josh and I were having drinks,
33:15
SPEAKER_00: talking about it,
33:15
SPEAKER_00: and we both agreed that Biden was going to win.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: And we were sitting in the bar at Neiman Marcus.
33:21
And –
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Like Josh,
33:22
SPEAKER_00: who's from – his father is like an economist and all of these things,
33:26
SPEAKER_00: and me,
33:27
SPEAKER_00: who's like a Hollywood brat.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: And we were sitting in there talking about how all of these people weren't getting
33:32
SPEAKER_00: it for the simple reason that like maybe the reason we were noticing it was because
33:35
SPEAKER_00: we aren't normies.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: Was that like we were able to just look at the polls and be like, well, this is how people react.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is just like –
33:44
SPEAKER_00: I think it's probably a little different now because the internet is so weird.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: But when I first got into this sort of like field of convincing people to read things,
33:52
SPEAKER_00: like what,
33:53
SPEAKER_00: what it's great for in that,
33:55
SPEAKER_00: like if all you can do for a year is run the CNET Twitter account,
33:59
SPEAKER_00: and try to convince people to read about Nokia phones and nonsense,
34:04
SPEAKER_00: all you can do is focus on that one small slice of life that you have,
34:09
SPEAKER_00: which are those 140 characters.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: And you can learn a lot about how people read and how they click and what they respond to.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: And those people are normal people.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: And you can just like get a great sense of what people do,
34:21
SPEAKER_00: not from what they're saying they want,
34:24
SPEAKER_00: which is they always lie about that,
34:25
SPEAKER_00: but it's actually what they're clicking on and like their actual behavior.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: And if you do all of that stuff, then you immediately realize that like, you know, most people are not,
34:38
SPEAKER_00: are not what activists think.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: And they're not anything like that.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's maybe when people are not as happy to admit that,
34:48
SPEAKER_00: like,
34:49
SPEAKER_00: they personally haven't had normal lives,
34:52
SPEAKER_00: that they get a little too caught up in projecting their own stuff on the normies.
34:57
SPEAKER_02: Right.
34:58
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so what ends up happening at Mother Jones?
35:01
SPEAKER_02: Like, did they sit you down and say, like, Ben, you've lost the newsroom.
35:04
SPEAKER_02: It was because you... Yeah, so...
35:07
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
35:08
SPEAKER_03: Oh, no, that's good.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, that's pretty close.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: I was going on book leave once the election was over.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: And so then I ended up staying through the end of New Year because it took so –
35:20
SPEAKER_00: because Trump dragged it out.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: But the book was supposed to be about – which they had all approved for me to go on
35:25
SPEAKER_00: book leave – was about how I regretted all of this,
35:28
SPEAKER_00: everything I'd done.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: That I had spent all these years convincing people to care about politics online and
35:35
SPEAKER_00: And that I had seen the deleterious effect that has had on people I love who just
35:40
SPEAKER_00: are crazy from watching MSNBC all day.
35:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:43
SPEAKER_02: So it's the opposite of the Fox News made my uncle crazy.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
35:48
SPEAKER_02: It's Rachel Maddow did.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: And it's all the same.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: The book that I was doing was going to talk to people on the right who do that too
35:55
SPEAKER_00: and see their misgivings about it.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: And I left to go and sort of work with some agents and get the proposal ready.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: And they all knew this was the premise of the book was.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: And then I decided I wanted to come back from book leave in beginning of 2021.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: And-
36:12
SPEAKER_00: I got sat down by the editor in chief and the CEO,
36:15
SPEAKER_00: the two people who had defended me my entire life there and who had,
36:20
SPEAKER_00: you know,
36:20
SPEAKER_00: made my career.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: And they said, you've lost the newsroom.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: And we, we don't think we think that this is ended, that your, your time here has ended.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: And it was very emotional.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: And I, I,
36:38
SPEAKER_00: I think I made a mistake probably with sort of like not pushing back against it
36:44
SPEAKER_00: more probably but then like that when then that turned into a bunch of like me
36:50
SPEAKER_00: lashing out at them sort of like internally privately for a little while and while
36:54
SPEAKER_00: we're working out this like
36:55
SPEAKER_00: severance agreement that involved me having to lie and say that I had quit,
37:02
SPEAKER_00: which lasted all of a week,
37:03
SPEAKER_00: essentially a week before I told everyone the truth.
37:07
SPEAKER_02: So did you sign an NDA and then immediately violate it?
37:10
SPEAKER_00: I refused to sign an NDA.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: I did sign a non-disparagement clause.
37:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: But that, I was told, was essentially meaningless.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: Unenforceable.
37:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: They had wanted me to sign an NDA and I had refused.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: And I just sort of think it's sort of funny that like...
37:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't think their heart was really in forcing me to sign it,
37:27
SPEAKER_00: but I had decided in my own brain at that moment that that is the last thing I will do.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: I must be allowed to tell my story.
37:34
SPEAKER_02: Well, there is, besides the fact that you should be allowed to tell your story...
37:40
SPEAKER_02: At that moment,
37:41
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
37:41
SPEAKER_02: a lot of people were getting canceled and a lot of people that became a jumping off
37:46
SPEAKER_02: point for a lot of people and a really successful one.
37:49
SPEAKER_02: And I feel like you didn't quite lean into your cancellation as much as you could have right away.
37:56
SPEAKER_02: Like that's the time to do it.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: I know.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: I think that was a mistake that I made was that I was – I do.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: I am sort of like – I have a lot of mixed feelings about Mother Jones.
38:05
SPEAKER_00: Because the worst thing about it – I mean,
38:07
SPEAKER_00: the worst thing was probably having the career and the money go away.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: But the other worst thing was that I had been there for so long that my best friend
38:17
SPEAKER_00: worked at Mother Jones.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: And people I –
38:19
SPEAKER_00: Spent all of my time with and I lost all of those friendships.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
38:24
SPEAKER_00: like they almost immediately like they I still there's a couple of people there who
38:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm still friendly with,
38:30
SPEAKER_00: but not the ones in New York,
38:32
SPEAKER_00: like not not the person who was my best friend who hasn't spoken to me since that day.
38:36
SPEAKER_02: And why?
38:38
SPEAKER_02: So you've you've talked publicly about this.
38:41
SPEAKER_02: Why was it you getting losing your job that made him write you off?
38:47
SPEAKER_02: Like the fact that you lost your job didn't change anything about who you are.
38:50
SPEAKER_02: You had been the same person the entire time.
38:53
SPEAKER_02: You'd been saying offensive shit online in public.
38:56
SPEAKER_02: Funny, but offensive shit forever.
38:58
SPEAKER_02: Why was it?
38:58
SPEAKER_02: Do you think it was getting fired that made him be like, OK, I'm done with men?
39:02
SPEAKER_00: I think that... Well, for one, I don't 100% know, obviously, because we haven't spoken.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: But,
39:07
SPEAKER_00: like,
39:08
SPEAKER_00: I think in that moment,
39:11
SPEAKER_00: he kind of distanced himself from me from a mix of not wanting to get yelled at by
39:19
SPEAKER_00: his colleagues,
39:21
SPEAKER_00: but also that,
39:21
SPEAKER_00: like,
39:22
SPEAKER_00: he was probably,
39:23
SPEAKER_00: like everyone else,
39:24
SPEAKER_00: he probably had a lot going on and just didn't want to,
39:25
SPEAKER_00: like,
39:25
SPEAKER_00: get involved in that drama at that moment.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: And then I think, like, so many...
39:31
SPEAKER_00: things with humans and relationships he was probably embarrassed about it after a
39:34
SPEAKER_02: little while and then it was too late yeah do you have fantasies about your old
39:41
SPEAKER_00: friends apologizing to you I have I mean it speaks sicker to me but my fantasy is
39:47
SPEAKER_00: definitely that I win the lottery and all of those people have to go fuck
39:51
SPEAKER_00: I guess bad things happen.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, good things happen to bad people.
39:56
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe he was actually good all the time.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
39:59
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
39:59
SPEAKER_02: I've talked about this on the show plenty,
40:02
SPEAKER_02: but that is the losing the friendships,
40:05
SPEAKER_02: losing friendships from people who,
40:07
SPEAKER_02: you know,
40:08
SPEAKER_02: people I lived with,
40:09
SPEAKER_02: people whose weddings I was in,
40:11
SPEAKER_02: who just like never fucking said anything.
40:13
SPEAKER_02: They just like slowly unfollowed me or blocked me or stopped returning my text messages and
40:20
SPEAKER_02: And it's still like almost monthly at this point.
40:22
SPEAKER_02: And it's been seven years since my like cancellation or whatever you want to call
40:27
SPEAKER_02: it when I wrote this piece about detransitioners.
40:29
SPEAKER_02: It's been seven years.
40:30
SPEAKER_02: And still like once a month now,
40:32
SPEAKER_02: I'll be looking at like my Facebook memories and I'll click on somebody and I'm like,
40:36
SPEAKER_02: oh,
40:36
SPEAKER_02: that person has unfriended me.
40:39
SPEAKER_02: It still happens all the fucking time.
40:41
SPEAKER_02: And like nobody has ever said a word about why.
40:44
SPEAKER_02: Nobody.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: It's absurd.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: And like part of me thinks that like there's a part of these people that is just
40:51
SPEAKER_00: ashamed of the way like the lunacy that happened in these years and they just don't
40:55
SPEAKER_00: want to revisit it.
40:56
SPEAKER_00: But I think that might be giving them a little too much credit.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: Like on the other hand,
41:01
SPEAKER_00: these these are people who let this nonsense really like affect their personal
41:07
SPEAKER_00: relationships in a truly disgusting way.
41:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: And like it it is incredible.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: Even if it is just denial that they don't want to go back and look at it.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: That's that's bad.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: That's pathetic.
41:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
41:19
SPEAKER_02: Well,
41:19
SPEAKER_02: OK,
41:19
SPEAKER_02: so let's talk about Taylor Lorenz for a little bit,
41:21
SPEAKER_02: because one of the things so Jesse is also friends with Taylor.
41:24
SPEAKER_02: I've met Taylor once in person,
41:27
SPEAKER_02: had a good time,
41:28
SPEAKER_02: went out with her in the fifth column,
41:29
SPEAKER_02: guys,
41:29
SPEAKER_02: who I don't.
41:31
SPEAKER_02: I don't think she would be probably joining them for drinks at this point.
41:34
SPEAKER_02: I think she and Camille have had some beef in the last few years.
41:38
SPEAKER_02: But Taylor was totally personable.
41:40
SPEAKER_02: We haven't in a long time, but we used to DM fairly often.
41:44
SPEAKER_02: I liked her.
41:46
SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, I do think that sometime between like this was like Taylor at the Atlantic period.
41:52
SPEAKER_02: I do think that Taylor moving to the New York Times changed her public persona a bit.
41:58
SPEAKER_02: She got kind of cancel-y.
42:00
SPEAKER_02: I think that's why a lot of our listeners hate her because they think that she is a big,
42:05
SPEAKER_02: an offender when it comes to things like perpetuating cancel culture.
42:09
SPEAKER_02: Some of which I think is unfair because what she does is reporting.
42:12
SPEAKER_02: Like, it is not actually a cancel culture to unmask an account like Libs of TikTok.
42:18
SPEAKER_02: Even if you find it icky or whatever, that is actually reporting.
42:22
SPEAKER_02: She has done some things that I do fully object to, like...
42:26
SPEAKER_02: When Clubhouse was big and she wrongly accused Marc Andreessen of using what she
42:31
SPEAKER_02: called the R-slur,
42:33
SPEAKER_02: my opposition to that was not that she wrongly accused Marc Andreessen.
42:36
SPEAKER_02: It was that she said R-slur and not retard.
42:38
SPEAKER_02: It's just too embarrassing.
42:41
SPEAKER_02: But you are friends with Taylor.
42:44
SPEAKER_02: You defend her.
42:45
SPEAKER_02: So talk to me a little bit about your friendship with Taylor.
42:47
SPEAKER_02: You have managed to maintain a friendship with someone who I assume finds many of
42:51
SPEAKER_02: your views pretty odious.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm sure that she does.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: And I'm,
42:56
SPEAKER_00: you know,
42:56
SPEAKER_00: I met Taylor 10 years ago or so when we were both sort of like doing social media
43:01
SPEAKER_00: for places.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: And then Taylor went off and became,
43:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
43:05
SPEAKER_00: went into a,
43:06
SPEAKER_00: she gave up some,
43:07
SPEAKER_00: she gave up money originally when she like moved down from a director of social
43:11
SPEAKER_00: media position to go be like,
43:13
SPEAKER_00: you know,
43:13
SPEAKER_00: a columnist and then has become like a,
43:16
SPEAKER_00: or then became a reporter and then became,
43:18
SPEAKER_00: you know,
43:19
SPEAKER_00: discovered this entire beat and became like a star.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, I've known Taylor since before she was putting her name on stories.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, and Taylor and I disagree about politics quite a lot.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: Like, but I disagree with basically everyone about politics quite a lot.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: And I think that it's never really annoyed me to have someone who disagrees with me
43:42
SPEAKER_00: about stuff like that,
43:43
SPEAKER_00: as long as it doesn't become a problem in the friendship.
43:45
SPEAKER_00: Like as long as they aren't accusing me of being a bad person or, um,
43:49
SPEAKER_00: anything like that.
43:50
SPEAKER_00: And that just has never happened with Taylor.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: I, I, I, I, I see a lot of her tweets and I don't, don't agree with all of them.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: And I think that some of them are wrong and blah, blah, blah, blah.
43:59
SPEAKER_00: But like, the fact is that I, I, I don't have that many friends in the world.
44:04
SPEAKER_00: And a couple of times in my life,
44:07
SPEAKER_00: the last decade,
44:07
SPEAKER_00: when things have been not terribly good,
44:10
SPEAKER_00: I have gone to a handful of people and been like,
44:13
SPEAKER_00: Oh,
44:13
SPEAKER_00: help me.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm sad.
44:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm crying about my, my pathetic life or whatever.
44:17
SPEAKER_00: And,
44:19
SPEAKER_00: I only have one eye.
44:20
SPEAKER_00: No one loves me.
44:21
SPEAKER_02: Wait, actually, can you cry out of your glass eye?
44:24
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
44:24
SPEAKER_00: In fact, sometimes it happens when you don't want it to.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: But Taylor has been one of those people.
44:30
SPEAKER_00: She's always been there for me.
44:31
SPEAKER_00: And so I...
44:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if Taylor has maintained those relationships with other people.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: And also,
44:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
44:43
SPEAKER_00: on the other hand,
44:44
SPEAKER_00: some of this is benefited by the fact that Taylor and I haven't been in the same
44:46
SPEAKER_00: city in four years.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's sort of like we can pick and choose when we engage.
44:51
SPEAKER_02: You know,
44:51
SPEAKER_02: this is something that has really been lost,
44:53
SPEAKER_02: especially since Trump entered the political scene.
44:56
SPEAKER_02: It really bothers me that politics can divide families and can end friendships,
45:01
SPEAKER_02: in part because I've been on the losing side of that so many times.
45:05
SPEAKER_02: To the point where now I'm like I will be friends with basically fucking anybody.
45:08
SPEAKER_02: I don't care what their politics are.
45:12
SPEAKER_02: As long as they'll have me,
45:13
SPEAKER_02: I'll be friends with them,
45:15
SPEAKER_02: which is why I'm best friends with an 86-year-old racist.
45:18
SPEAKER_02: The thing about Taylor though that I do – so I appreciate that you have loyalty to her.
45:23
SPEAKER_02: I really do.
45:24
SPEAKER_02: I appreciate that Jesse does as well.
45:26
SPEAKER_02: even though it can get kind of awkward on this podcast.
45:29
SPEAKER_02: The thing that I sort of what I'm not sure of is like you will publicly defend your
45:36
SPEAKER_02: friendship with Taylor.
45:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure I would.
45:38
SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure I can see Taylor ever saying publicly that she is friends with you or with Jesse.
45:42
SPEAKER_02: It would cost her more.
45:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm sure I don't know that.
45:47
SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't I don't I don't know one way or another.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: I would never expect her to.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: but I, I think, I don't know.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
45:59
SPEAKER_00: I do think if something was truly bad,
46:02
SPEAKER_00: if I was truly being,
46:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
46:03
SPEAKER_00: something or other,
46:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't,
46:05
SPEAKER_00: I think that she,
46:06
SPEAKER_00: she would have no problem saying like,
46:08
SPEAKER_00: no,
46:08
SPEAKER_00: Ben didn't kill those children or something like,
46:11
SPEAKER_00: but I do.
46:12
SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons I forced myself to defend her is,
46:18
SPEAKER_00: And it's not forcing myself, but I make a point of doing it.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: It's just because like,
46:21
SPEAKER_00: I do think it's sad on social media that so often and I mean,
46:24
SPEAKER_00: you've experienced this too,
46:25
SPEAKER_00: where like,
46:26
SPEAKER_00: your friends will DM you support.
46:28
SPEAKER_00: And like, that's nice.
46:29
SPEAKER_02: It's always like fucking like privately supportive and publicly nothing.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: And like, it's fine, I guess.
46:34
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not saying everyone who does that needs to ride to my public defense.
46:39
SPEAKER_00: But the truth is that like, you know, I have an unhinged Twitter account.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: If I can't use that to fucking defend my friends, then what's the point?
46:46
SPEAKER_00: True.
46:47
SPEAKER_02: That's actually the least bad thing that you do on Twitter.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: Even because honestly,
46:51
SPEAKER_00: it's funny because even people who hate Taylor will always be like,
46:54
SPEAKER_00: look,
46:54
SPEAKER_00: I respect the fact that you're clearly loyal.
46:57
SPEAKER_02: It is important, especially at this moment when loyalty is like very conditional.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: And I just think that that's bad.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: That is – the conditional loyalty stuff, that is how this whole country is going to hell.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: This is all – all of these people need to have grown up in a small town in Idaho as
47:16
SPEAKER_00: like a Jew from the coast.
47:18
SPEAKER_00: They have to get used to the fact that sometimes not everyone is nice to each other.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't mean you're not necessarily –
47:27
SPEAKER_00: But like you just need to get used to people from different cultures,
47:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
47:30
SPEAKER_00: who who are sometimes going to have different sense of humor and sometimes they're
47:34
SPEAKER_00: going to call you a Jew.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: But they're good folk.
47:37
SPEAKER_02: I've been speaking of Twitter beefs.
47:39
SPEAKER_02: You recently tweeted that you were looking at someone who you disagreed with to
47:43
SPEAKER_02: have a conversation with you on Mike for a podcast.
47:46
SPEAKER_02: Did you get anywhere with that?
47:47
SPEAKER_00: Not yet.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: I have not convinced anyone to do it yet.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: I was trying to find someone who on the left doesn't like me because the left
47:57
SPEAKER_00: complains about me constantly.
47:59
SPEAKER_00: And I reached out to a lot of the people on the left who constantly complain about me.
48:05
SPEAKER_00: And originally,
48:06
SPEAKER_00: I thought I was making headway with Jeet here,
48:08
SPEAKER_00: that he would come on and we would just do a talk where like –
48:11
SPEAKER_00: how we both looked and he could say like why he thinks I'm such a schmuck.
48:15
SPEAKER_00: And I would tell him why I think.
48:17
SPEAKER_01: Why you wouldn't fuck him because he's fat.
48:19
Yeah.
48:20
SPEAKER_00: I only fuck Americans.
48:23
SPEAKER_00: But then he after a few week courtship or I really thought we'd made we'd like we
48:28
SPEAKER_00: were like following each other and finding things to agree with.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: He then he then let me down and he said, sorry, it's not for me.
48:35
SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about it, you know.
48:37
SPEAKER_00: And so I went, oh, I went, all right.
48:39
SPEAKER_00: And I immediately unfollowed him.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:43
SPEAKER_00: And so then I've been I've been trying to find other people.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: And I even like found my the password to my blue ski blue sky account or whatever I
48:50
SPEAKER_03: hadn't used in a year.
48:52
SPEAKER_00: And I like sent out a fly a flare up there to see if I would get any.
48:56
SPEAKER_00: I haven't gotten any yet, but I'm really looking forward to it.
48:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, somebody somewhere will do it.
49:01
SPEAKER_02: God, it's so hard to find people who will have a conversation across political lines.
49:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's left, right, and center.
49:08
SPEAKER_02: They do it.
49:08
SPEAKER_02: But I think that's maybe it.
49:10
SPEAKER_02: I mean, Mike Peska tried to have a show with Virginia Heffernan and Jamie Kirchick.
49:15
SPEAKER_02: And the whole thing imploded in part because Virginia was getting so much shit from her
49:20
SPEAKER_02: audience and her like readers because she she dared to have regular conversations
49:26
SPEAKER_02: with with conservative with jamie kerchick that the whole thing fucking died i mean
49:29
SPEAKER_00: i loved i like i loved that episode you did with him where he talked about this
49:33
SPEAKER_00: like yeah um yeah it's funny because also like jamie kerchick sure he's a
49:36
SPEAKER_00: conservative compared to a lot of people i know but also he like but for the new
49:40
SPEAKER_03: republic yeah like come on how conservative can he be
49:45
SPEAKER_00: He's just a conservative because he thinks that like the people at the LGBT pride
49:49
SPEAKER_00: parade should be lesbian or gay.
49:53
SPEAKER_00: He's like the allies should be you guys can like walk to the side.
49:56
SPEAKER_00: And and I don't know what the queer I don't know what that means.
50:00
SPEAKER_02: He thinks that you should have at least one piece of fabric covering your cock when
50:04
SPEAKER_02: you're walking down the street during bread.
50:06
SPEAKER_02: All right, Ben, let's do a little bit of housekeeping.
50:09
SPEAKER_02: This is Blocked and Reported.
50:10
SPEAKER_02: We are a podcast.
50:11
SPEAKER_02: You can reach us at blockedandreportedpodcast at gmail.com.
50:15
SPEAKER_02: We are also on Reddit.
50:16
SPEAKER_02: Our subreddit is blockedandreported.reddit.com, I believe.
50:20
SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to fact check.
50:21
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50:22
SPEAKER_02: Also, we don't have any control over that.
50:23
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50:27
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50:29
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50:31
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50:32
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50:36
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50:38
SPEAKER_02: That's blockedandreported.org.
50:40
SPEAKER_02: I believe the New York show is sold out,
50:42
SPEAKER_02: but if anyone has an empty apartment they would like to loan me for the duration of
50:47
SPEAKER_02: my stay,
50:48
SPEAKER_02: I will put you on the list.
50:50
SPEAKER_02: That is a value of $50, and the apartment must be empty.
50:55
SPEAKER_02: It can have furniture, but you can't be in it.
50:57
SPEAKER_02: Again, that's a $50 value.
51:00
SPEAKER_02: And the show is sold out.
51:01
SPEAKER_02: So really, it's like double.
51:02
SPEAKER_02: It's like a $100 value.
51:03
SPEAKER_00: I would have thought that the Boston one would have sold out.
51:05
SPEAKER_00: What with all the racists there?
51:07
SPEAKER_02: You would think so.
51:07
SPEAKER_02: Well, there's still time.
51:08
SPEAKER_02: New York is just a very small venue.
51:12
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51:13
SPEAKER_02: if you would like to support this show and get extra content,
51:17
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51:19
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51:21
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51:23
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51:25
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51:26
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51:28
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51:29
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51:31
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51:34
SPEAKER_02: So please join us at blockedandreported.org.
51:37
SPEAKER_02: Okay, Ben, back to you.
51:39
SPEAKER_02: So in addition to being the resident Mother Jones racist,
51:43
SPEAKER_02: you were also a resident Mother Jones shitty media man.
51:48
SPEAKER_02: You were named on the shitty media men list.
51:50
SPEAKER_02: You didn't get fired for that.
51:52
SPEAKER_02: What was the exact allegation against you?
51:53
SPEAKER_02: Did you take out your eye and drop it in someone's drink?
51:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, the allegation in the list was, what's that word that they were?
52:03
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was that I was like, I had threatened women's careers.
52:09
SPEAKER_00: That I hadn't supported women's careers.
52:11
SPEAKER_02: You raped women's careers.
52:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
52:14
SPEAKER_00: It was funny because like I was going up to the – remember that weekend that the
52:17
SPEAKER_00: shitty media men list came out?
52:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
52:19
SPEAKER_02: Let me interrupt you real quick.
52:20
SPEAKER_02: So the shitty media men list,
52:21
SPEAKER_02: for anybody who doesn't remember this,
52:22
SPEAKER_02: this was a crowdsourced anonymous list of what started out as being like – this was
52:27
SPEAKER_02: like height of me to panic of like allegations of assault and harassment and things
52:32
SPEAKER_02: like that.
52:33
SPEAKER_02: And then at some point,
52:34
SPEAKER_02: it just crept into things like – I think – I can't remember who it was,
52:37
SPEAKER_02: but someone's –
52:38
SPEAKER_02: someone's entry a man's entry was like weird lunches like he eats tuna in the
52:42
SPEAKER_02: office or something and yours was equally uh inane i mean i was like we'd all heard
52:47
SPEAKER_00: about this list that was going around this rape list of all these people on this
52:50
SPEAKER_00: rape list and like then it was written about in buzzfeed but they didn't you
52:53
SPEAKER_00: couldn't put any of the names there because you'd get sued and so then i was like
52:57
SPEAKER_00: oh fascinating and the next day i'm walking up the
53:04
SPEAKER_00: A friend of mine who's a journalist at Vox says to me, so?
53:07
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, what?
53:09
SPEAKER_00: And he says, you're on that rape list.
53:12
SPEAKER_00: Oh, God.
53:13
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, what?
53:15
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, my my life flashed before my eyes.
53:17
SPEAKER_00: And I guess he could see that I went pale white.
53:19
SPEAKER_00: And he said, don't worry, don't worry.
53:21
SPEAKER_00: Yours is bullshit.
53:22
SPEAKER_00: And I said, what do you mean?
53:23
SPEAKER_00: And he said, you're on there for like not supporting women's careers or something like
53:28
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, wait, what's this?
53:29
SPEAKER_00: The rape list?
53:30
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was a rape list.
53:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
53:32
SPEAKER_00: And then I like got a hold of it and ran home and like messaged that friend of mine
53:37
SPEAKER_00: who won't talk to me anymore.
53:38
SPEAKER_00: And he said, we actually, me and the CEO have already been talking about it.
53:43
SPEAKER_00: We are hands.
53:43
SPEAKER_00: We didn't know how to tell you.
53:44
SPEAKER_02: We didn't know how to tell you?
53:47
SPEAKER_02: Like with your words.
53:49
SPEAKER_02: Ben, you're on the rape list.
53:50
SPEAKER_02: I know, right?
53:51
SPEAKER_00: I know,
53:51
SPEAKER_00: I was like,
53:52
SPEAKER_00: so instead I found out about it at SoulCycle,
53:54
SPEAKER_00: but I jumped on a plane and flew to San Francisco to put out any fires.
53:58
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I also offered to resign.
54:01
SPEAKER_00: I was like, look, this is stupid, but also it's embarrassing for everybody.
54:05
SPEAKER_00: And they said, no, no, Ben, Ben.
54:08
SPEAKER_00: we know this is absurd.
54:11
SPEAKER_00: These are mobs.
54:12
SPEAKER_00: This is mob behavior.
54:14
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, great, wonderful.
54:16
SPEAKER_00: And then a few years later, I was like, I guess you forgot about how mobs work.
54:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that is very interesting that they supported you through that.
54:27
SPEAKER_02: But I assume that this also did have an impact on your personal life as well.
54:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a ridiculous allegation, but you were still, you were on the rape list.
54:34
SPEAKER_00: Totally, because then also, what's his name?
54:36
SPEAKER_00: The guy who bought the list?
54:38
SPEAKER_00: Pizzagate Man?
54:40
SPEAKER_02: Mike Cernovich?
54:42
SPEAKER_00: Cernovich, yeah, Cernovich.
54:43
SPEAKER_02: Wait, he bought the list?
54:45
SPEAKER_00: He put out a thing that was like, I'll pay $10,000 for a copy of this list.
54:48
SPEAKER_02: Didn't he just get it on Reddit?
54:50
SPEAKER_02: It was everywhere.
54:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, everyone had it by then, it seemed like.
54:53
SPEAKER_00: So he gets a hold of it.
54:55
SPEAKER_00: I flew to San Francisco, and then I flew down to San Diego to spend time with family.
55:00
SPEAKER_00: And while I was down there,
55:03
SPEAKER_00: I was standing out by my dad's pool and I just like told my sister about this and I
55:07
SPEAKER_00: looked at my phone and Cernovich had gotten it and he was doing this thing where he
55:11
SPEAKER_00: was releasing one name at a time like every hour.
55:15
SPEAKER_00: And the first name was someone else who he didn't like from Gamergate.
55:19
SPEAKER_00: And then the second name was mine.
55:21
SPEAKER_02: You think that he would start with like the blockbuster allegations.
55:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
55:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
55:27
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
55:28
SPEAKER_00: Actual rapes.
55:28
SPEAKER_00: But then I guess that –
55:30
SPEAKER_00: He didn't do any more names because someone in his life must have told him,
55:34
SPEAKER_00: like,
55:34
SPEAKER_00: you're about to get sued.
55:36
SPEAKER_00: And so,
55:37
SPEAKER_00: like,
55:38
SPEAKER_00: he only ever released those two names,
55:39
SPEAKER_00: which meant for a while only me and this other guy were out there.
55:45
SPEAKER_02: Oh, my God.
55:46
SPEAKER_02: So what was that like for you?
55:47
SPEAKER_02: So Mother Jones had your back, surprisingly.
55:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it actually is surprising because of that moment.
55:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
55:53
SPEAKER_02: that moment was I think there was just as much a panic over over harassment and
55:59
SPEAKER_02: assault as there was a few years later during during,
56:03
SPEAKER_02: you know,
56:04
SPEAKER_02: the racial reckoning.
56:05
SPEAKER_02: So it is sort of surprising that they had your back there.
56:07
SPEAKER_02: But what was that like?
56:08
SPEAKER_02: I mean, what was it like to be on that list?
56:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was pretty stressful.
56:13
SPEAKER_00: It was also sort of just kind of absurd in that because newspapers couldn't reveal the names.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: Right.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: That it was kind of like everyone was talking about things that then – it hadn't
56:25
SPEAKER_00: affected my Google results yet,
56:26
SPEAKER_00: you know?
56:28
SPEAKER_00: And then it was quickly overtaken by other events because – as Me Too went on.
56:33
SPEAKER_00: But like –
56:36
SPEAKER_00: I also think I was helped by the fact that I had hired a number of people by then,
56:40
SPEAKER_00: all of whom were women,
56:41
SPEAKER_00: and all of whom defended me.
56:45
SPEAKER_00: They spoke to people in the office, and the people in my office were like, he's
56:50
SPEAKER_00: been not done any of that and he has helped our careers you know he's supportive of
56:54
SPEAKER_00: all of us and all that stuff but uh then um the funniest thing was that a few years
56:59
SPEAKER_00: later after i had actually been drummed out of mother jones i moved to idaho and i
57:02
SPEAKER_00: was dating this girl here who told me after a little while that we were together
57:08
SPEAKER_00: that her friends had you know been doing the due diligence on her new boyfriend and
57:14
SPEAKER_00: had found out that i was an infamous um like sex criminal and
57:19
SPEAKER_00: and i was like what and she then like explained to me in detail what they had said
57:24
SPEAKER_00: and it was that they had found out that i was on this rape list and they had but
57:28
SPEAKER_00: they hadn't they since they're not like actual reporters they hadn't actually seen
57:32
SPEAKER_00: the allegation so they just thought that my name appeared on it and it was sort of
57:36
SPEAKER_00: this like way that the small town it was coming back a few years later it was such
57:41
SPEAKER_00: an interesting time with cancel culture stuff like
57:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
57:44
SPEAKER_00: one of the reasons I love your show so much is that you always find these little
57:47
SPEAKER_00: small ones,
57:48
SPEAKER_00: right?
57:48
SPEAKER_00: Like the media pays a lot of attention to the shitty media men list,
57:51
SPEAKER_00: but it then doesn't pay attention to like the small library cancellation stuff.
57:55
SPEAKER_02: Well,
57:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
57:57
SPEAKER_02: to me,
57:57
SPEAKER_02: that was one of the things about the Me Too movement that was kind of galling was
58:01
SPEAKER_02: that it was so focused on these elite industries where like anybody who has worked
58:06
SPEAKER_02: at a Waffle House,
58:08
SPEAKER_02: that's real sexual harassment.
58:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
58:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
58:11
SPEAKER_00: so in 2021,
58:13
SPEAKER_00: one of the funniest small town ones that I've ever heard of was that I went to this
58:17
SPEAKER_00: poker game.
58:19
SPEAKER_00: And this guy who I'd never met before is there.
58:22
SPEAKER_00: And I guess he loved Chapo Trappo House.
58:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
58:27
SPEAKER_03: Chapo Trap House.
58:29
SPEAKER_03: I think your name is better.
58:30
SPEAKER_03: Chapo Trap House.
58:33
SPEAKER_00: And they used to tease me all the time on that show.
58:37
SPEAKER_00: And he heard my name and he said, oh, I hate you.
58:40
SPEAKER_00: I know all about you.
58:41
SPEAKER_00: I heard about you on Chap Trap House or whatever the fuck it's called.
58:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
58:45
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, all right, well, you know, I'm a good guy.
58:49
SPEAKER_00: And like over the course of the game, he sort of lights up a bit, but he's clear he's in a bad mood.
58:54
SPEAKER_00: And I go out to have a cigarette and his girlfriend stands up and she says, can I come with you?
58:58
SPEAKER_00: And we go outside and she says, she starts to apologize for him.
59:01
SPEAKER_00: And she says, look, you know, he's going through a lot.
59:04
SPEAKER_00: And she tells me this story.
59:06
SPEAKER_00: I guess that this guy,
59:08
SPEAKER_00: who is not in media and is just some wacky left-wing podcast listener,
59:13
SPEAKER_00: has some sort of psychological thing,
59:18
SPEAKER_00: disorder,
59:19
SPEAKER_00: where when he's asleep,
59:20
SPEAKER_00: he likes to try to have sex with his girlfriend.
59:22
SPEAKER_03: Oh, God.
59:23
SPEAKER_00: So, like, I don't know if the word is, like, somnosexuality or something.
59:27
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, this guy does it.
59:29
SPEAKER_00: Oh, God.
59:30
SPEAKER_00: And this girlfriend is telling me this,
59:31
SPEAKER_00: that she's like,
59:32
SPEAKER_00: I've been seeing this guy for about a year,
59:33
SPEAKER_00: and,
59:33
SPEAKER_00: you know...
59:34
SPEAKER_00: It's true.
59:35
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'll just wake up to him trying to screw me while we're asleep.
59:38
SPEAKER_00: And I either do it or I wake him up and say, stop it.
59:42
SPEAKER_00: But I guess that his ex-girlfriend,
59:45
SPEAKER_00: who was also aware of this,
59:47
SPEAKER_00: I guess they had like a bad breakup somehow.
59:49
SPEAKER_00: And she went online and said like,
59:52
SPEAKER_00: this guy fucked me in my sleep or like tried to sleep fuck me all the time.
59:56
SPEAKER_00: Or he'd say he was asleep.
59:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
59:59
SPEAKER_00: And,
1:00:00
SPEAKER_00: like,
1:00:00
SPEAKER_00: makes all these allegations,
1:00:01
SPEAKER_00: and I guess it had ruined his...
1:00:03
SPEAKER_00: All of his friends were mad at him,
1:00:04
SPEAKER_00: and I was like,
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: oh,
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: shit,
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: that sucks.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_00: Show me the tweets.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_00: Show me... I hadn't even heard about this sleep fucker.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_00: Like, why isn't that in New York Mag?
1:00:12
SPEAKER_00: And then she shows me the tweet, and, like...
1:00:15
SPEAKER_00: It's a tweet from an account with 100 followers.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_00: There was like one like on it, you know?
1:00:19
SPEAKER_00: And she was like, this ruined his life.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, I hadn't realized that this had like filtered down to this small of a level.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_02: Oh, totally.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
1:00:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:00:30
SPEAKER_00: she spent the whole time being like,
1:00:32
SPEAKER_00: look,
1:00:33
SPEAKER_00: all I can tell you is he definitely is asleep when he's doing it.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_00: He's done it to me.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_00: I think she's lying when she says he was awake.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_02: Oh, my God.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_02: If you have that particular sleep disorder,
1:00:41
SPEAKER_02: you have to make sure all of your breakups are really,
1:00:44
SPEAKER_02: really good.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_02: OK, so you you have an interesting perspective on on Me Too.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_02: You wrote recently in your newsletter that you support Me Too.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_02: I was kind of surprised to hear because you were falsely put on the rape list.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_02: But also your brother was an accuser.
1:01:01
SPEAKER_02: Your brother was he accused Kevin Spacey.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_02: So kind of tell me about your thinking about Me Too.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_02: How can you support this thing that literally implicated you on a on a rape list?
1:01:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I was trying to keep my sense of humor about it at the time.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it is funny.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was sort of that.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I felt when I found out I was on that list was that I felt I deserved it.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_00: Not because I had done anything,
1:01:24
SPEAKER_00: but because when I had first heard about the rape list,
1:01:27
SPEAKER_00: I had said,
1:01:27
SPEAKER_00: ha ha ha,
1:01:28
SPEAKER_00: all the rapists will get it.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_00: And like God said, guess what?
1:01:34
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, sometimes their accuracy isn't right.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_00: And so part of me was like,
1:01:38
SPEAKER_00: well,
1:01:38
SPEAKER_00: I guess I deserved it for not recognizing that this was going to go like that.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_00: My main thing was just that I think that Me Too got so out of hand that it led to
1:01:47
SPEAKER_00: this backlash where it obviously ended.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_00: And now, now women, they're raped on the streets everywhere and no one cares.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_00: Now,
1:01:53
SPEAKER_00: like the in Me Too,
1:01:55
SPEAKER_00: we gave these women whistles to to blow when they were being raped and we would
1:01:59
SPEAKER_00: come and defend them,
1:02:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:02:01
SPEAKER_00: hell,
1:02:01
SPEAKER_00: hell,
1:02:01
SPEAKER_00: we're coming,
1:02:02
SPEAKER_00: we're coming.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_00: And then they started to blow the whistle too much.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_02: Then they were in Israel.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_00: Then they were Israeli rape victims.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_00: And they were blowing them just for times when people were looking at them funny and stuff.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_00: And now no one hears that sound anymore.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_00: That frequency has been tuned out.
1:02:23
SPEAKER_02: We can't hear the sounds of women's whistles.
1:02:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_00: So it's done more harm than – I mean, I don't know if it's done more harm than good.
1:02:29
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think that it has done more harm than good in certain specific ways.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_02: Like researchers have done studies following up on Me Too on women's job
1:02:38
SPEAKER_02: opportunities post-Me Too,
1:02:40
SPEAKER_02: and they found that in some fields opportunities for women actually decreased
1:02:43
SPEAKER_02: because men were less likely to want to mentor them or in some cases even be alone
1:02:48
SPEAKER_02: with them.
1:02:48
SPEAKER_02: And honestly, I can't say they blame them.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_02: So this thing that was meant to uplift women –
1:02:53
SPEAKER_02: had the opposite effect.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_02: So that's my first objection to Me Too.
1:02:57
SPEAKER_02: I guess actually my first objection would be that there were so many cases that I
1:03:01
SPEAKER_02: think were just people were falsely accused,
1:03:03
SPEAKER_02: people like you,
1:03:04
SPEAKER_02: the sort of ratcheting up of allegations from something like didn't support women's
1:03:09
SPEAKER_02: careers or whatever to rape.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_02: That's obviously harmful.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_02: But plus my other main objection is that I think Al Franken would have been a good
1:03:17
SPEAKER_02: president and him running against Trump would have been fucking hilarious.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm pissed about this.
1:03:23
SPEAKER_02: I'm pissed that Me Too took out a man who I think would have been one of the more
1:03:27
SPEAKER_02: viable candidates because there's not a big bench right now.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean I guess like when I say that I think that I support Me Too overall and that
1:03:36
SPEAKER_00: then it got out of hand.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_00: The thing that I support is women not getting raped.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_00: When it got to the more ridiculous things,
1:03:45
SPEAKER_00: like people suddenly being like,
1:03:46
SPEAKER_00: oh,
1:03:47
SPEAKER_00: the male boss one time touched my shoulder.
1:03:50
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm unfamiliar.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_00: I never signed on to like scream about that stuff.
1:04:00
SPEAKER_00: I don't want you to be raped or like sexually assaulted in some other way,
1:04:05
SPEAKER_00: but I didn't,
1:04:07
SPEAKER_00: I don't give a shit about this low level,
1:04:10
SPEAKER_00: like these conventional,
1:04:11
SPEAKER_00: like you think people are being rude stuff,
1:04:14
SPEAKER_00: nonsense.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's when it really just got crazy.
1:04:18
SPEAKER_00: And then you ended up with that, whatever that article was about that unfunny comedian who like, Oh,
1:04:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_00: And he like went to some girl's house and then she like gave him a blowjob but didn't like it.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_00: I don't really remember the details,
1:04:32
SPEAKER_00: but like that was the story where it came out and people were like,
1:04:35
SPEAKER_02: uh,
1:04:35
SPEAKER_00: what?
1:04:36
SPEAKER_02: That did seem to be the tipping point for sure.
1:04:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:04:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:04:40
SPEAKER_00: part of it's a little like it's a little elitist because like one of the reasons I
1:04:43
SPEAKER_00: think that happened was that it was in that shitty little blog.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Babe.net.
1:04:47
SPEAKER_00: People felt comfortable being like, no way.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_02: This wasn't reported by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker.
1:04:52
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_02: This was in Babe.net.
1:04:55
SPEAKER_02: OK, Ben, I want to – before we go, I want to talk to you a little bit about cancel culture.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_02: I think of you as both a victim and a perpetrator of cancel culture,
1:05:03
SPEAKER_02: apparently not supporting women's careers.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_02: Where do you think we are with this now?
1:05:09
SPEAKER_02: I mean it feels to me a little bit –
1:05:11
SPEAKER_02: dead.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_02: I'm a little bit sick of talking about it.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_02: The term is a little bit embarrassing now, but I still see examples of it pretty frequently.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:05:19
SPEAKER_02: we just did the show last week about a woman who was fired from her job over what
1:05:23
SPEAKER_02: are essentially false allegations of racism.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_02: Where do you think the conversation is around cancel culture now?
1:05:30
SPEAKER_00: I think it's funny because the version of it that people used to talk about that
1:05:34
SPEAKER_00: got so much attention,
1:05:35
SPEAKER_00: I do think is sort of over because media and all of these institutions have kind of
1:05:40
SPEAKER_00: now
1:05:41
SPEAKER_00: built up a spine against it.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_00: But that's why I found that story that you did about the library so interesting is
1:05:46
SPEAKER_00: because it's still clearly a thing in humans' brains and in these progressive communities,
1:05:52
SPEAKER_00: especially,
1:05:53
SPEAKER_00: that it's just happening at a lower level that no one's paying attention to.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, it has shifted a lot in terms of the things that get people canceled.
1:05:59
SPEAKER_02: Right now, I think that racism is – allegations of racism –
1:06:04
SPEAKER_02: are less powerful than allegations of anti-Semitism.
1:06:08
SPEAKER_02: There still seems to be some teeth there.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_02: Sexism, nobody gives a shit about that anymore.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_02: Andy Mills was on the show when Jesse was out of town,
1:06:15
SPEAKER_02: and Andy argued that basically that Elon Musk buying Twitter
1:06:20
SPEAKER_02: Took the teeth out of cancel culture because Twitter mobs no longer have the power
1:06:24
SPEAKER_02: to to get people canceled.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_02: Do you think that's true?
1:06:27
SPEAKER_00: I think that like there's something to that to the point that the fracturing of the
1:06:33
SPEAKER_00: communities where all the lefties move to blue ski or blue sky and like so they're
1:06:38
SPEAKER_00: not there as much.
1:06:39
SPEAKER_02: And like nobody gives a shit about blue sky.
1:06:42
SPEAKER_00: No, no one.
1:06:42
SPEAKER_00: No one at all.
1:06:43
SPEAKER_00: Like no one in history.
1:06:44
SPEAKER_02: Like Blue Sky.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_02: You will know that Blue Sky has made a big when the Daily Mail starts posting about
1:06:50
SPEAKER_02: what Ben Dreyfuss said about his father on Blue Sky.
1:06:52
SPEAKER_02: Until then, it's still fucking Twitter.
1:06:54
SPEAKER_00: And also then like it just then removes that thing that we talked about in the
1:06:57
SPEAKER_00: beginning about how everyone's one retweet away from another group.
1:07:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:07:00
SPEAKER_00: and like without just a bubble yeah without that then then this can't happen
1:07:05
SPEAKER_00: because the entire thing about cancel culture was that you're basically in a
1:07:09
SPEAKER_00: personal disagreement one with one person with another person for probably some
1:07:14
SPEAKER_00: political nonsense but then that one of those people decides to like bring in the
1:07:19
SPEAKER_00: audience and have them like inflate the numbers so that it scares everyone into
1:07:25
SPEAKER_00: thinking that like there's some consensus against it and then that person loses
1:07:28
SPEAKER_00: their
1:07:28
SPEAKER_02: Because editors and managers are basically pussy.
1:07:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
1:07:32
SPEAKER_02: Andy said this on the show when Andy lost his job at the New York Times.
1:07:36
SPEAKER_02: The New York Times actually did some sort of forensic analysis to find out how many
1:07:40
SPEAKER_02: people were actively tweeting about him,
1:07:42
SPEAKER_02: accusing him of being a sexual predator.
1:07:44
SPEAKER_02: And it was,
1:07:45
SPEAKER_02: I believe he told me it was nine accounts,
1:07:48
SPEAKER_02: like lots of accounts that were getting lots of retweets and likes,
1:07:50
SPEAKER_02: like thousands of likes and shit.
1:07:52
SPEAKER_02: But it was nine active accounts.
1:07:53
SPEAKER_02: I believe it was nine active accounts.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_02: And some of them were run by the same person.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh, totally.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_02: It's a tiny,
1:08:00
SPEAKER_02: tiny number of people at that point were able to really mobilize moms and get
1:08:05
SPEAKER_02: people fucking fired.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:08:07
SPEAKER_00: that's why I sort of thought it was a little crazy,
1:08:09
SPEAKER_00: like in the last few months when I remember when all those dumb kids on TikTok were like,
1:08:15
SPEAKER_00: I love Osama bin Laden's new book.
1:08:17
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:08:21
SPEAKER_02: They discovered Osama bin Laden.
1:08:23
SPEAKER_02: They figured out who he was and decided he was hot.
1:08:26
SPEAKER_02: Although, Nepo baby.
1:08:27
SPEAKER_02: You'd think that they would have a problem with that.
1:08:29
SPEAKER_00: They finally found a Nepo baby who they liked.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:08:32
SPEAKER_00: But one of the pushbacks they did to, because the left was very defensive.
1:08:37
SPEAKER_00: No, look, they don't speak for us.
1:08:40
SPEAKER_00: Everyone who doesn't like Jews is smart, except for these people who don't speak for us.
1:08:44
SPEAKER_00: But one of the pushbacks that happened in the Slate article was like,
1:08:46
SPEAKER_00: look,
1:08:47
SPEAKER_00: this is only a few 25,000 people.
1:08:49
SPEAKER_00: At most.
1:08:50
SPEAKER_00: It was like,
1:08:51
SPEAKER_00: OK,
1:08:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty – I think that whole Me Too stuff,
1:08:54
SPEAKER_00: you guys got people fired for nine with nine of them.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was like this is just a fringe, a fringe movement.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_02: These people don't speak for us.
1:09:01
SPEAKER_02: But when some right-winger has a pool party and wears a Confederate flag,
1:09:05
SPEAKER_02: then it's like – then it's proof that fascism is marching down Washington.
1:09:09
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
1:09:10
SPEAKER_00: And also if The New York Times doesn't call that person a fascist whore,
1:09:13
SPEAKER_00: then The New York Times is – they're collaborators.
1:09:16
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
1:09:16
SPEAKER_02: Well, OK.
1:09:17
SPEAKER_02: So the latest example of what may or may not be cancel culture,
1:09:20
SPEAKER_02: I'm curious to get your thoughts on this,
1:09:21
SPEAKER_02: is Breonna Joy Gray.
1:09:23
SPEAKER_02: So she was a former press secretary for Bernie Sanders and she was also just fired
1:09:28
SPEAKER_02: by The Hill where she hosted a show along with Robbie Suave called Rising.
1:09:32
SPEAKER_02: Did you follow this?
1:09:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean I followed the thing that she said with Eli Lake.
1:09:37
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that she was fired.
1:09:38
SPEAKER_02: OK,
1:09:38
SPEAKER_02: so,
1:09:38
SPEAKER_02: yeah,
1:09:39
SPEAKER_02: she's been involved in a lot of drama sort of forever,
1:09:43
SPEAKER_02: but things really reached a fever pitch over the last couple of weeks.
1:09:48
SPEAKER_02: So maybe a month ago or so, she did a debate.
1:09:51
SPEAKER_02: It was her and Jake Klein.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_02: He sat in for Nathan J. Robinson.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_02: Poor guy.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_02: Big velvet shoes to fill.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_02: And they were debating Michael Moynihan and Eli Lake at this conference called
1:10:06
SPEAKER_02: Dissident Dialogues in New York.
1:10:08
SPEAKER_02: And Barry Weiss's show, honestly, they posted the audio of this debate.
1:10:12
SPEAKER_02: It was fucking hard to listen to.
1:10:14
SPEAKER_02: Did you listen to this or watch it?
1:10:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:10:16
SPEAKER_02: You have three very, very argumentative people.
1:10:20
SPEAKER_02: Basically yelling at each other.
1:10:21
SPEAKER_02: Almost impossible to listen to.
1:10:24
SPEAKER_02: It is hard – like it is very hard to make screaming sound like compelling audio.
1:10:29
SPEAKER_02: Maybe if there's like wrestling involved, like a WWE thing, it would be interesting.
1:10:33
SPEAKER_02: But it was just – it was like – it was not well moderated.
1:10:37
SPEAKER_02: It was very difficult to listen to.
1:10:39
SPEAKER_02: And then so since then,
1:10:40
SPEAKER_02: she has been in this like Twitter bitch slap with the moderator,
1:10:44
SPEAKER_02: Constantine Kissin.
1:10:46
SPEAKER_02: They have both, I think, treated each other well.
1:10:48
SPEAKER_02: Like in just the most embarrassing ways.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_02: Like she called him a lying Zionist, which he is Jewish.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_02: That is very, very close to a lying Jew.
1:10:58
SPEAKER_02: And he called her DEI Barbie.
1:11:01
SPEAKER_02: That is fucking racist.
1:11:02
SPEAKER_02: It is racist.
1:11:03
SPEAKER_02: Like people are defending him.
1:11:04
SPEAKER_02: No, this is racist.
1:11:05
SPEAKER_02: Breonna Joy Gray.
1:11:06
SPEAKER_02: I have many disagreements with her, but she is not as sort of like race first, woke DEI thinker.
1:11:12
SPEAKER_02: She's much more of a socialist, like class reductionist.
1:11:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't think the DEI describes her at all.
1:11:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, she doesn't want to work with any stinky Jews.
1:11:21
SPEAKER_02: Also, like people are focusing on the fucking obvious like racism there.
1:11:25
SPEAKER_02: It's also sexist.
1:11:26
SPEAKER_02: He called her DEI Barbie and he's – anyway,
1:11:29
SPEAKER_02: so this has – so she has been all over Twitter over the past couple of weeks
1:11:34
SPEAKER_02: defending herself,
1:11:35
SPEAKER_02: arguing with people.
1:11:36
SPEAKER_02: Actually, for years she's been doing this.
1:11:38
SPEAKER_02: She's been very critical of Israel for her entire career and this really – and then
1:11:42
SPEAKER_02: since October 7th she has really focused –
1:11:45
SPEAKER_02: On Israel.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so she was fired this week.
1:11:48
SPEAKER_02: She says it is the Hill's bias against her because she is a proponent – a staunch supporter of Palestine.
1:11:55
SPEAKER_02: On Twitter,
1:11:55
SPEAKER_02: she pointed to the fact that Katie Halper,
1:11:57
SPEAKER_02: her predecessor,
1:11:58
SPEAKER_02: was also fired for being critical of Israel.
1:12:01
SPEAKER_02: I find this a little hard to believe that that's why she was fired because she has
1:12:05
SPEAKER_02: not shut up about her criticism of Israel since October 7th.
1:12:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:12:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean she's been – I mean she's been –
1:12:13
SPEAKER_00: I've seen clips of her arguing with Ravi about this for nine months.
1:12:16
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:12:17
SPEAKER_02: So I'm a little bit hesitant to weigh in on this because I think more reporting will come out.
1:12:22
SPEAKER_02: But right now,
1:12:24
SPEAKER_02: the rumor online is that she was fired not because she was critical of Israel,
1:12:29
SPEAKER_02: though that's what she's saying,
1:12:31
SPEAKER_02: but because during a recent interview with the sister of a woman who was kidnapped
1:12:36
SPEAKER_02: by Hamas and who is still presumably in Gaza if she is alive –
1:12:40
SPEAKER_02: Brie, at the end of the interview, we'll play a clip here.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_02: Me too.
1:12:44
SPEAKER_01: And I really hope that you specifically will believe women when they say that they got hurt.
1:12:52
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:12:53
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining.
1:12:53
SPEAKER_03: Stick around.
1:12:55
SPEAKER_03: More Rising coming up next.
1:12:57
SPEAKER_02: OK, so you can't see that if you're listening online.
1:12:59
SPEAKER_02: But at the interview, while she's cutting this woman off, Brie rolls her eyes and it's like almost...
1:13:06
SPEAKER_02: Like very dramatic fashion.
1:13:07
SPEAKER_02: She is basically like, shut the fuck up, lady.
1:13:10
SPEAKER_02: I don't care.
1:13:10
SPEAKER_02: And so the rumor online is that that is why she was fired.
1:13:15
SPEAKER_02: Again,
1:13:15
SPEAKER_02: I don't actually know if this was it or if it was just the fact that she is such a
1:13:18
SPEAKER_02: staunch supporter of Palestine and such an anti-Israeli critic.
1:13:24
SPEAKER_02: Ben, do you think this is an example of cancel culture?
1:13:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it might be, but I guess I would need to know why she was really fired.
1:13:30
SPEAKER_00: Maybe she was fired for stealing office supplies.
1:13:34
SPEAKER_03: Now that's racist.
1:13:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we just have no idea why.
1:13:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think that Brie is the biggest moron in history and that she's been terrible for years.
1:13:43
SPEAKER_00: But I also think it's fine for people to have her opinions and still have jobs,
1:13:48
SPEAKER_00: especially when their job is to be an opinion person.
1:13:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, someone has to have these opinions.
1:13:54
SPEAKER_02: And this is like this is a time of war.
1:13:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:13:57
SPEAKER_02: People people, I think, should feel free to criticize governments involved in war.
1:14:02
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:14:03
SPEAKER_02: to me,
1:14:03
SPEAKER_02: I always I think of cancel culture as professional and social consequences for,
1:14:08
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:14:09
SPEAKER_02: either false allegations or for saying things that are within the bounds of
1:14:13
SPEAKER_02: socially acceptable speech.
1:14:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:14:15
SPEAKER_02: And in her case it's a little difficult to tell what's going on because I mean I do
1:14:20
SPEAKER_02: think that critics of Israel have faced disproportionate sanction over the past
1:14:24
SPEAKER_02: eight months including attempts by the fucking government to criminalize political speech.
1:14:29
SPEAKER_02: But she is so argumentative that her show is unwatchable unless you actually like
1:14:35
SPEAKER_02: watching Robbie Suave be bullied until he breaks which is actually kind of fun.
1:14:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:14:40
SPEAKER_02: She's just, she's so disrespectful of her guests.
1:14:42
SPEAKER_02: The eye roll demonstrated that.
1:14:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:14:44
SPEAKER_02: Like,
1:14:44
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:14:44
SPEAKER_00: I think it's sort of,
1:14:46
SPEAKER_00: I got into a run in since October 7th with one of the columnists at the Daily Beast,
1:14:53
SPEAKER_00: whose name I'm forgetting,
1:14:54
SPEAKER_00: but he's,
1:14:55
SPEAKER_00: he hates Israel real,
1:14:56
SPEAKER_00: really doesn't like him.
1:14:57
SPEAKER_00: And at one point we were, he was screaming at me that I was a nepo baby or something.
1:15:02
SPEAKER_00: And I was telling him that like a few years ago,
1:15:04
SPEAKER_00: I had been offered a job at the Daily Beast and that like,
1:15:08
SPEAKER_00: If I one of the things I would have done there if I had taken that job would have been to fire him.
1:15:12
SPEAKER_00: Not not for not because he supports Palestine.
1:15:16
SPEAKER_00: I just think that he supports it poorly.
1:15:18
SPEAKER_00: Like there are smarter people doing it.
1:15:20
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:15:20
SPEAKER_00: And he's not a very interesting thinker and he's stupid.
1:15:23
SPEAKER_00: But that like I would have replaced him with somebody who could do it.
1:15:27
SPEAKER_00: And I sort of feel like that with her,
1:15:29
SPEAKER_00: like I think that she's bad on a number of levels,
1:15:31
SPEAKER_00: but mostly because I just can't handle her as a presenter.
1:15:34
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:15:35
SPEAKER_00: And I think that like they should replace her with someone who can do that better.
1:15:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:15:41
SPEAKER_00: also the thing that she's saying about how Katie Helper was fired for that,
1:15:43
SPEAKER_00: for saying Israel hook knows Jews or whatever.
1:15:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what she actually said,
1:15:47
SPEAKER_00: but like for saying something bad about Israel is that if that were true,
1:15:51
SPEAKER_00: they probably wouldn't have replaced her with Brianna Joy Gray.
1:15:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:15:54
SPEAKER_02: You know how we'll know if The Hill replaces her with Candace Owens?
1:15:58
SPEAKER_02: Then we know it was not a cancel culture.
1:16:02
SPEAKER_02: Okay, Ben.
1:16:03
SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
1:16:05
SPEAKER_02: Where can people find you online?
1:16:06
SPEAKER_00: BenDreyfus.com or CalmDownBen.com is the URL for my sub stack, which you should subscribe to.
1:16:13
SPEAKER_02: I'm a subscriber.
1:16:14
SPEAKER_02: It is great.
1:16:16
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:16:16
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:16:19
SPEAKER_02: Thank you again to Ben Dreyfuss.
1:16:21
SPEAKER_02: We will post links to his work in the show notes.
1:16:23
SPEAKER_02: This has been Blocked and Reported.
1:16:26
SPEAKER_02: Our show is produced, as always, with help from Jessica, the 80s baby.
1:16:29
SPEAKER_02: I'm Katie Herzog, and we'll be back next week.
1:16:43
Thank you.