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Episode Sixty: The Liz and Zig Reunion · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number sixty of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name is
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John Ziggler. I am your host on today's program. My former co host
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Liz Habibe returns to the podcast with a fantastic interview. The news media is
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systematically ignoring a flood of reverse racism throughout the country, and it appears that
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Rhonda Santis is finally announcing for president, but is it too late. I'm
0:27
known as the Dutch Digital Marketing Man. I'm a digital advertising SEO and EMMO
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marketing specialist that also happens to be a big fan of John Ziggler and the
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Man dot com. If you want to grow your business as Peter can help,
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that's the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. And hey, thanks for sponsoring
1:06
the show. Two of the many themes that I talk a lot about on
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the Death of Journalism podcast aren't narratives and the fact that we live in basically
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an opposite world, upside down world, where everything is the exact reverse direction
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of the way it ought to be, at least that's the way the news
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media reports it. And when I refer to narratives, there are two types
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of narratives. There are narratives that the media creates off and out of thin
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air because it fits their agenda, and then there are narratives which the media
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ignore because it does not fit their agenda. Where there would be plenty of
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data points to create a narrative if they wanted to do so, but when
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they have absolutely no interest in doing so, the mainstream news media now will
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most likely, if not almost entirely, completely ignore said narrative. And I
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believe that that's what's happening currently with regard to race in the United States of
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America. Now, this is not something that has just suddenly happened, but
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it has gotten more dramatic, certainly in the last week or so, and
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it is continuing a trend that has been occurring really for the last few years,
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especially since the George Floyd controversy, which erupted in the middle of COVID
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Let's just go through some of the data points that if we had a fair
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reasonable objective news media that was not hypocritical, and that was not willing to
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put their hands over their eyes and ears to ignore things that are inconvenient to
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their worldview or to their job security, how this would create a very very
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significant narrative about what's really happening in America that is exactly the opposite of how
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many people of not most people, especially those that consume mainstream news media,
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perceive is happening in America. The perception in America, of course, is
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that were still a nation that is racist against people of colors, specifically black
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people, and that somehow white people still have some semblance of privilege, whatever
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the hell that is. Well, consider for a moment these few things that
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have occurred just in the last few days, a little bit over a week,
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all of them very much recent within the news cycle. There was this
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really bizarre and heartbreaking situation in New York City where a white female pregnant nurse
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by the name is Sarah Comrie was videotaped crying for help, crying for help
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because she was having her bike stolen from her by some black male teenagers.
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She was literally crying for help, literally crying towards the end of the video.
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First she was calling out for help, then she was reduced to tears.
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That video went viral online because it was portrayed somehow, but absolutely bizarrely,
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I can't believe people actually bought into this idea, this narrative that somehow
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this white, pregnant female nurse was trying to steal a bike from a bunch
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of black teenagers in New York City and that she was doing an act to
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make herself into the victim, and people online brought into this and it went
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so viral that her own employer put her on administrative leave because they were concerned,
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that's the statement that they put out. They were concerned about the nature
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of the video that somehow she was the person who was stealing the bike.
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Well later her attorney produced very strong evidence that it was in fact her bike,
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which anybody with a half a brain would have figured out was always the
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case. And there has been some some effort in the news media to try
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to say, hey, wait a minute, we might have rushed a judgment
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here, but of course never enough, because it's the first report that really
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matters. It's that especially in a situation where race is involved, you can't
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unring that racism bell. This seems very much like the Covington Catholic situation from
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several years ago, where those kids from Kentucky were immediately painted as racists in
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a situation where a video was very much taken out of context, and they
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ended up winning apparently very hefty settlements from media outlets because of coverage of them.
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And it's possible the same thing may happen here. I certainly hope it
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does, because this was outrageous and it just flat out stupid that anybody bought
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this. So we have black teenagers setting up a white woman to make it
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look like somehow she's stealing her own bike, and people are buying it.
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The media is buying it and enabling this absurdity. We got a sixty six
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year old male white man from New Orleans, Lawrence herr Is his name,
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killed and called blood by two black men who admitted that they just wanted to
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kill a white person. Perfectly. It's a guy mine in his own business,
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killed sixty six years old white guy by two black guys who said,
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without equivocation, made no bones about it, that they wanted to kill a
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white guy or a white person. Can you imagine if that situation was reversed,
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two white guys who were white supremacists say hey, we want to go
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kill a black person in twenty to twenty three, and they go kill a
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black person for nothing. This would be known to every American. It would
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be twenty four to seven news coverage of this. Instead, I doubt very
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many people outside of New Orleans, even though the story just over. This
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past weekend, the University of Minnesota was being criticized on conservative media for having
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a summer program that was overtly restricted to non white students. White students need
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not apply. Similarly, and maybe even more outrageously, at the University of
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California Berkeley, very prestigious university, state run. You see, Berkeley held
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a quote unquote black graduation ceremony. A black graduation ceremony with all the trappings
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of a normal ceremony. This is technically illegal. Didn't seem to bother them
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at all, because I guess they feel as if the law doesn't apply to
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them, or that no one's going to enforce the law in California against such
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obvious discrimination being perpetrated by a state run school. Then we've got another situation
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out of New York City, a New York City subway situation of the curred
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actually a couple of weeks ago, where a white guy, Daniel Penny,
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is being charged in an incident that led to the death of a black man
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who happened to be homeless, apparently mentally ill and a criminal, a guy
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by the name of Jordan Neely. But he did a nice Michael Jackson impression
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apparently, so I guess that makes him a sympathetic victim. Here. Penny
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is a former marine who is claiming with witnesses that he was not at fault
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here, that he was actually being a good samaritan. Good luck finding good
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samaritans in similar situations going forward, because if you're a white person and something
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happens to a black person during that circumstance, guess who's not only going to
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get blamed, but probably charged criminally if you happen to live in a blue
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jurisdiction like New York City. But we witnesses are claiming that this was actually
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Jordan Neely's fault, and not only does Penny get charged very very seriously,
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and now it is facing is basically his life on the line in a criminal
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situation, but Neely gets treated as a hero by the left wing media and
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by the black activists, including Al Sharpton. I mean, his funeral was
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almost a state funeral. This is the upside down the wall we're now living
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in, folks. And it doesn't stop there. The NUBACP, which has
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obviously long been known as a very liberal organization. But there's being liberal,
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and there's being political when you shouldn't be, and then there's jumping the shark
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to such an extreme degree that you're issuing a travel at advisory for black people
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not to go to wait for it, Florida, Florida. Gee. I
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wonder why they're issuing a travel advisory for black people not to go to Florida.
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I don't know. Could it be that the governor of Florida is about
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to announce these running for president of the United States. I mean, it's
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an overt political act that does nothing but create racial division. It's not based
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in any logic or facts or semblance of reality. It's an absurdity. But
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of course this gets taken seriously by the media, especially the left wing media,
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as oh wow, boy, wow, things are just so terrible.
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They're in Florida, the right wing nut jobs. We all know what a
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bunch of racists they are. So even black people, even the NAACP don't
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even feel safe going to Florida. What a bunch of garbage that is.
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Well, and guess who is further promote and enabling and benefiting from all of
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this. President Biden, just last weekend, just two weekends ago now,
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at a commencement address at a historically black college, he declared that white nationalism
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or white supremacy is our biggest terrorist threat to the United States of America faces.
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That is an unbelievable statement, and for him to make it at the
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commencement address of a historically black college is beyond outrageous. He is telling a
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generation of future black leaders that things in this country are so dead set against
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them, that the system is so dead set against them, that the majority
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of the people in the country is still a majority white country, is so
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against them, that the greatest challenge our country faces is white nationalism from a
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domestic standpoint. And he's saying it seriously, and the media is taking it
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seriously. This is a nefarious political gambit. And let me tell you this
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goes far deeper than just keeping black voters enslave to the Democratic Party. That's
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obviously a big part of it, right, painting the other side as a
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bunch of racists. So you've got to stay with us, as you have
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for the last couple of generations, even though you know we haven't done anything
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to make your lives better. In fact, in many ways, we made
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your life worse. But we're gonna make you hate the other side so much
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you're gonna keep voting for us. That's obviously a big part of this,
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But it goes deeper than that, and I think it's even more evil than
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that. See here, here's what I think is really happening, and this
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goes to everything being upside down. We are now living in a world,
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especially in the last couple of years, where it is clear as day,
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that straight white people are under attack. They're being targeted, especially in blue
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areas of the country, in nearly every possible way, and culturally, obviously,
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within the media in some ways, legally, in some ways systematically,
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and the other side, the liberal the liberals think that this is a laughable
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assertion for someone to make because they don't want to believe it. Number one
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and two. They don't have the data points because their media won't tell them
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about it. That people on the right who are paying attention do have to
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go a wait a minute, what the hell is going on here? Like
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the six or seven data points I started this podcast with, those people either
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don't know about that, or they have so rationalized it, or they have
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minimized it or claimed that it is not indicative of something larger that it has
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no real significance to them. And the idea that somehow white people could be
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the ones who are being discriminated against, at least straight white people and specifically
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straight white men, is so impossible for them to believe. And since no
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one they trust is telling them that, they simply refuse to believe it's even
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a possibility because they've been so brainwashed into believing it's exactly the opposite. However,
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and here this is where what Biden did is even more nefarious. It's
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a more nefarious political gambit than just trying to enslave black people. What I
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believe the real endgame here is white people are under attack. White people are
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still the majority in this country, and I believe that this is by design
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by the left to make it feel at the very least dangerous or inappropriate or
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unpc for any independent thinking white person to either realize or complain about the fact
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that white people are under attack. What I'm saying here is this isn't about
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just keeping black people enslaved. This is about making sure that the Democratic Party
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doesn't completely hemorrhage white people. Now, there's certain rich liberal whites that are
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never going to vote Republican, but there are a lot of more working class,
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middle class as much as that shrinking in America, white people who are
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predisposed of voting Democrat, who have got to be looking around going what the
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hell is happening? It certainly feels as if I'm under attack as a white
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person, and this white nationalism or white supremacy narrative is intended to keep those
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people in line, either out of fear of speaking out against it, or
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and or by making any white person who claims the things that I'm telling you
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right now, they must be part of the problem. They must be a
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white nationalist, they must be a white supremacist. At the very least,
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they're a racist. So anything you hear now, they're discrediting. Anything you
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hear about white people being under attack, and it's done on purpose. It's
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being done for two purposes, keeping black people in line and making sure independent
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whites don't start to realize that they are actually under attack. And if they
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do realize it, they better shut up about it. And they're going to
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be made to feel racist if it impacts their votes. Now, I don't
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know how effective that's going to be. I'm sure with some people it will
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be effective, especially if Donald Trump happens to be the Republican nominee, because
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let's face it, he is associated with white nationalism, whether he deserves to
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be or not. That's the reality of it. And I'm sure this is
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also part of the strategy here by Biden. They're now expecting then preparing for
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a Donald Trump candidacy in the general election. And Trump has basically demographically one
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thing going for him. We are still a majority white country, and if
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white people on mass ever felt as if they were under attack by democratic policies,
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Trump would have a much better chance of actually pulling this out. So
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that's what this is all about. But it's the opposite of reality now.
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Of course, is there still white racism, obviously, and is that wrong?
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Obviously There's always going to be some level of racism against every race and
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by every race. It's the nature, unfortunately of humanity. It's terrible and
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should we do everything we can to reduce it, obviously, But the reality
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here is the only systematic And when I say systematic, I'm not just saying
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by law, I'm talking about by culture, by media, by academia,
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by the institutions that really have power in this country. The only people that
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are really under attack because of their race, or their gender, or their
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sexuality are straight white men. Now you could argue that Asians are under attack
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in academia because they're getting screwed, although it looks like the Supreme Court is
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likely to step in on their behalf and finally stop that insanity from happening.
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So you know that I hope that happens. I mean, that is an
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important ruling that is expected sometime within the next few weeks or months, I
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believe, with regard to admissions in colleges. But the bigger picture here is
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we are really heading for dangerous territory, really dangerous territory. I have talked
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before about how the equality of opportunity that made America great is being turned into
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equity of outcome, and that over the last several years we have gone not
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just a little bit backwards, we have I've gone in a full sprint backwards
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from whatever progress we have been progressively making right through Barack Obama's not just election,
19:08
but reelection as president of the United States, which now feels like it
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was a million years ago. I mean, I know so many white people
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who voted for Obama who thought, Okay, at the very least, we're
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going to change directions here with regard to party in the presidency, and we're
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gonna end this racial divide. How did that work out? I mean,
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the Obama presidency on this issue alone has now been shown to be a complete
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disaster, because we are in far a far worse situation than we ever were
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before Barack Obama was president with regard to race relations. And you know,
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this is the old two wrongs don't make a right thing. And when you
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watch that video of that New York City pregnant nurse Sarah Comry, I mean,
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it is heartbreaking, heartbreaking for her to be crying out for help so
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that she can ride her own bike, and then she's reduced to tears.
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And why did this happen. Why did that situation happen? Why did the
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black men in New Orleans think that they could get away with killing a white
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guy because he's white? You know why? Why? Why do these colleges
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think that they can get away with all this insanity? Why why is the
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NAACP know that they can do something so overtly absurd and political as issue a
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travel advisory for Florida. It is in large part because the news media has
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enabled this. They are complicit in this. I believe in many ways the
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media is directly to blame for this. When you teach people that they have
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been discriminated against by the system, and you create this much anger over an
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extended period of time, and then you also create the rules where black people
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basically can do no wrong. Guess what's going to happen. Some people are
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gonna go way too far, especially younger people who have no moral bearings,
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who don't even remember what things were like before Barack Obama, and they've actually
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brought into this whole notion that America is a racist country. There are ramifications
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and incredibly damaging implications of the news media painting this narrative that America is inherently
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racist, because then you get black people one perceiving every slight that ever happens
21:41
in their life as occurring because of their race. And then you get also
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some black people feeling like, well, you know what, I'm going to
21:48
fight back and I'm gonna feel enabled, emboldened that I'm gonna do whatever the
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hell I want because one, I might get away with it because of the
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color of my skin, but two, I deserve it because I have suffered
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so much races because that's the way America is. Well, that's not the
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way America is, but it certainly is the way America is becoming when it
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comes to reverse racism, and that's going to create an enormous amount of resentment.
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Enormous amounts of resentment. I think that's why the Democratic Party is going
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so overboard to create this upside down world narrative where it's white people, white
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racism that's the problem, white nationalism, white supremacy, that's the problem.
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They're taking a minuscule beyond a minuscule portion of the country and saying c C,
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that's to blame, and don't you dare side with those people and anyone
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who says that somehow white people are under attack, you're with them, You're
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with the white nationalists, you're with the Proud Boys, you're with the white
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supremacists. You're a racist. It's not true, but the media is more
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than willing to carry their water on that. And the media dynamic, And
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I've talked about this many times before this podcast, but it bears repeating.
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The media dynamic on race really drives the bus here in so many ways because
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you have to think yourself, Okay, why is the media not pushing back?
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It's not just about helping democrats. Why does the media, other than
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maybe Fox News Channel, Why does the major media not push back against reverse
23:26
racism? Why do they continue to promote false, anequated views of America being
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a racist nation against people of color? Why do they do that? Why
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does the media go along? Because it's in their self interest And it's not
23:41
about ratings. Really, it's not even that much about a liberal agenda.
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It's about keeping your goddamn job. That's what it's about. Because the easiest
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way to lose your job and the major media is to say something deemed,
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whether it's racist or not, as being racially tinged or somehow being defined as
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racist especially if you are a white person, especially if you're a straight white
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male and who has the greatest incentive within the media to speak out against reverse
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racism against white males or white people in general. Straight white males, well,
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they've been castrated. Literally, they're literally eunuchs. I see it all
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the time here in Los Angeles. There's still a few straight white males that
24:30
are on the air, and they're the worst when it comes to these topics.
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They go along with whatever the narrative is because they know they're more vulnerable
24:41
to getting their heads chopped off, not just no, the fact that their
24:44
balls have already been chopped off doesn't matter to them. They'll take their balls
24:48
being chopped off. They don't want their heads chopped off because they want their
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jobs. They're cushy, well paying jobs. Because that they know they can't
24:57
duplicate it, they get fired, especially at this stage of their career,
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so they just go along. So the white people within the media aren't going
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to fight back against this. The black people aren't going to fight back against
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this because they'll be seen as Uncle Tom's and it might able to deceive as
25:15
they might even see it as good for them. The other races. They
25:19
don't care. I mean again, there's not very many Asian people within the
25:23
media that might stand up and say this is bullcrap, but there's nobody with
25:30
an incentive and with the credibility to do it, so no one does.
25:34
It's just better to get along, go along, stick with the narrative.
25:40
We're not gonna no one's gonna talk about the narrative in the way that I
25:42
just did in the first twenty five minutes of this podcast. No one's ever
25:47
going to do that in the mainstream news media because it's too dangerous. And
25:52
as I'm as the least racist white guy I know, probably I'm not perceived
25:56
that way because I'm so not racist. I'm unafraid to talk about the topic
26:00
in an honest fashion, which inherently makes you say things that people might take
26:06
out of context and go a boy, that doesn't sound right based upon all
26:08
the other BS narratives. And I'm being fed by the mainstream news media.
26:14
I'm telling you what the truth is. I want a country that is still
26:18
based in the idea of equality of opportunity. Everyone gets the same opportunity and
26:22
let the chips fall where they may. Now, are we one hundred percent
26:26
there obviously not. But we have gone so far in the opposite direction now
26:32
because I believe that big thanks to the Obama presidency not magically fixing all of
26:38
our problems, everyone panicked and said, oh my god, we can't have
26:42
this happen naturally. We can't be patient and wait for this gradual progress.
26:48
We got to do it ourselves. We have to enforce equity, which,
26:51
by the way, is the most discriminatory and I believe actually raisest thing towards
26:56
black people. You can imagine the whole George W. Bush phrase, the
27:00
soft bigotry of low expectations. That's what equity is about. If you don't
27:04
believe black people can fend for themselves on an equal playing field, you're in
27:08
favor of equity. By the way, even just by six by singling out
27:14
black people, I believe it's racist. What about Hispanics, what about Asians?
27:18
What about all sorts of other ethnicities or genders. There's all sorts of
27:22
people that could make that claim. Now, I'm in favor of equality of
27:26
opportunity for everybody, and we're never going to get to a perfect world.
27:32
But we have now gone so far in the opposite direction of perfect and we
27:37
are creating a very combustible and dangerous situation that is not good for America.
27:44
And I don't even care that much about the political aspects of it, although
27:48
I do think it's going to have an impact on the twenty twenty four presidential
27:52
race. Now, as far as that presidential race, interestingly, and maybe
27:57
you know, as a sign of good news, the Republicans have at least
28:02
one and it looks like two new candidates who are officially entering the race.
28:07
One is Tim Scott, black male senator from South Carolina. Now, ordinarily
28:15
I would be against anybody credible getting into the race not named Ron de santist
28:19
because anyone that does is inherently helping Donald Trump and hurting Ron De Santis.
28:25
That's just the basic facts of math. I don't have that big of a
28:29
problem with Tim Scott one because he's a US senator, and he is a
28:33
credible person, and he happens to be black, and he brings I think
28:37
an important perspective, especially in this day and age. Now, how much
28:41
he's going to resonate as a candidate, I don't know. Nationally, he's
28:45
not very well known, and I think we've seen already it's very, very
28:49
difficult for anyone other than Ron de Santist to get over say, five percent
28:55
in a national poll. And I don't believe that Tim Scott is going to
29:00
get traction. But you know, I could see a world where something happened
29:03
to Rhoda Santis and he had to withdraw that Tim Scott could be a person
29:08
that people might turn to as the last hope here to take on Donald Trump.
29:14
I don't anticipate any of that happening. And it's interesting that his former
29:18
governor South Carolina, NICKI Haley, is already announced. So having two people
29:22
from a small state like South Carolina, which happens to be one of the
29:26
first primary states, you know, kind of leads you to believe that,
29:29
Okay, this is mostly for show, and then when South Carolina comes around,
29:33
they're gonna endorse whoever they think is going to be the nominee and that
29:37
will get them in their good graces moving forward if they can deliver South Carolina
29:41
to either Trump or somehow the Santis. Should that be the scenario one South
29:47
Carolina rolls around. But you know, I think it's good to have a
29:51
person of color, even though I don't. I don't like vague Ramaswamy,
29:53
the Indian businessman, because he's a Trump surget bodyguard. But Tim Scott does
30:00
send a good message, and I hope that if there are in fact debates,
30:03
that Tim Scott is in the debates, if only for that reason.
30:07
I also don't perceive him as a Trump's sycophant, certainly not as much as
30:12
vavak Ramaswami. But the big news this week on this front appears to be
30:18
that Ron de Santis is officially getting into the race now is of this taping.
30:25
It appears as if what he's going to do is he's going to do
30:29
the paperwork first. So at some point this week there will be a news
30:33
story that the Santis has filed to run, and then he's gonna let the
30:40
Memorial Day holiday pass, and then I would think the Tuesday after Memorial Day,
30:45
this is the most basic obvious scenario. I don't have any inside information
30:49
on this. I'm guessing that the Tuesday or Wednesday after Memorial Day he will
30:55
make an official announcement as the month of May ends, with all the big
30:59
fan fair and you know, a speech and all of that, expressing why
31:03
in fact, he believes he should be the twenty twenty four Republican presidential nominee.
31:10
And you know, I have made no secret of the fact that I
31:14
am very much supporting a Rhonda Santis candidacy. I think he's the only person
31:18
that can beat Donald Trump in theory in a Republican primary and also win a
31:25
general election. Now, I've also said that the chances of either of those
31:30
two things happening are very small, and they may be diminishing on a daily
31:36
basis. In fact, there's a national poll that is arguably the very worst
31:42
national poll and the very best national poll for for Donald Trump, the worst
31:47
for the Santis and the best for Donald Trump that has happened since the beginning
31:52
of this process, certainly since the mid terms of twenty twenty two. This
31:56
is a Harvard Harris poll. Now, this is pretty are but typical of
32:00
this crazy age in which we live, where Donald Trump has been hyping and
32:06
you know, sending out email alerts to his supporters based upon a whole a
32:12
whole put out by the Harvard University. You know, but I guess you
32:16
know. Trump has embraced wokeism all sorts of ways. He's embraced it with
32:22
Disney, He's you know, he's embraced it with Gavin Newsom, and he's
32:27
embraced it with liberal polls. These are just some of the many examples of
32:30
where Trump has embraced wokeism without paying any price for it. But now a
32:36
whole out of Harvard is the greatest thing since sliced bread to him. I've
32:39
seen numerous email alerts that he's put out crowing about the results. And I
32:44
can understand why he's happy about the results, because this Harvard poll, and
32:50
it's just one poll, and it's not a huge sample, and it's national.
32:52
Also, all those caveats, I get it, But the results of
32:58
this poll were the worst for run the Santists of any I have seen nationally.
33:01
Not only is Trump crushing the Santists by a very very wide margin,
33:07
among the widest I've seen on a national head to head poll with other candidates
33:12
in the race, but the really devastating part of this poll is that Trump
33:16
beats Biden nationally by about seven points, again, which is similar to exactly
33:23
what happened in the ABC Washington Post Pole a couple of weeks ago, which
33:29
I did not think was an accurate poll. But in that poll, in
33:31
the ABC Washington postpoll, the Santists beat Biden by basically the same margin.
33:37
That was not the case here somehow, and this defies rational explanation, although
33:45
I do think I have one. Somehow, Donald Trump is beating Joe Biden
33:51
nationally. Again, that's an irrelevant number because we elect presidents by the electoral
33:54
college, but it's perception and perception matters, especially in this situation. Trump
34:00
beating Biden fairly handily in a national poll of general voters, not state by
34:07
state, but national, while De Santis is tied. So DeSantis running significantly
34:15
behind Trump when it comes to beating Biden nationally. Now, this goes against
34:22
every other poll we've seen. It really goes against some of the state polling
34:25
that we've seen when we've compared the matchup of Trump Biden to the matchup of
34:30
De Santis Biden. In fact, just this past week, one of the
34:35
best state polls for De Santis and the electric electability issue came out in Arizona,
34:42
where Trump was losing the Biden and DeSantis was beating Biden. In Arizona.
34:47
We've seen the same thing in Georgia. We've seen similar things in other
34:52
swing states, and those are the states that really matter when it comes to
34:55
a presidential election, because we pick a president based upon the ele at college
35:00
and not a national popular vote. But again, it's not significant in reality,
35:08
but it is significant in perception during a period of time where the perception
35:13
is all about Donald Trump dominating the race and really establishing himself as the mega
35:21
favorite, the mega alpha male, and creating and forwarding this narrative that he
35:28
keeps gaining in the polls and the Santis keeps fading in the polls and now
35:32
most damaging to the Santis. Even the electability argument, even the electability argument
35:39
is in perception. Perception, which unfortunately is often reality in this day and
35:45
age, in perception is being taken away from De Santis, and there if
35:52
that continues to be the trend in these polls. You know, I've said
35:57
many many times, I'm gonna wait at least east a couple of weeks until
36:00
after De Santis announces to declare anything to be over. But if there's no
36:07
way to make a logical electability argument, there's just no way to beat Trump.
36:15
And that doesn't mean, by the way that I think that somehow Trumps
36:17
all of a sudden become highly electable against Biden. I'm just talking about the
36:22
perception. These poles create perception, and the more of them that there are,
36:29
the greater that perception gets created, and the more difficult it is to
36:32
run against that. And I this even before all this, I had been
36:37
told from the Desantist camp that they were having a very difficult time in the
36:43
focus groups making the electability argument stick. And now if we start getting a
36:49
batch of poles showing that Trump beats Biden and DeSantis doesn't, even if it's
36:53
national and these irrelevant popular vote polls, then that's it. I mean,
37:00
there's no getting around that. As unfortunate and stupid as that is, that's
37:06
just the reality. Now. The explanation goes back to something that I said
37:10
months ago that I thought was either a great strategy by Trump or this could
37:19
be just another example of Trump getting lucky through his own insanity. I never
37:22
know for sure what it is with Trump, but in attacking the Santis as
37:28
he has, I theorized that there was gonna be a certain percentage of the
37:34
Republican base that was going to stop telling polsters that they would vote for de
37:38
Santis over Biden when given that choice, and it appears as if that has
37:45
worked. That is the most logical and most obvious explanation for how it is
37:52
we could be in a world where Trump does better against Biden than De Santis
37:55
does. Now, there are other possible reasons De santiss been attacked on a
38:00
lot of his policies unfairly. I believe the six month abortion ban, the
38:06
Walt Disney thing. Let me just say for a moment about this Walt Disney
38:09
thing. Oh my god. I mean, I have never been a huge
38:15
fan of the Disney attack. By the sand it is not because I disagree
38:17
with him on the issue, but because I don't understand how you go into
38:22
a presidential campaign taking on one of the biggest media companies in the world,
38:27
and not just a media company, but a company that owns dozens of news
38:32
organizations and both nationally and locally. I don't know why you would do that
38:39
from a strategic standpoint. And I support what he's doing, and it's been
38:44
misinterpreted and misreported. But now he's now created a situation where it's an incredibly
38:50
easy narrative for the media to make this whole He's losing the Mickey Mouse and
38:55
that anything Disney does now is seen as the Santis his fault. And that's
39:00
what happened just a couple of days ago, where Disney decided, without a
39:05
word, well this having get anything to do with Rhynda Santis. They have
39:08
a new CEO, by the way, Bob Iger's back in charge at Disney,
39:13
and they're not doing well in a lot of ways in there within their
39:15
business model. They decided to kill or scrap a plan it wasn't actually happening,
39:22
a plan to spend a billion dollars on a new campus in Orlando.
39:29
And of course Gavin Newsom jumped all over this. Donald Trump jumped all over
39:32
this. Joe Scarborough jumped all over this. By the way, isn't it
39:37
an interesting group of allies that Trump has. It's amazing how often he's on
39:40
the same side as Gavin Newsom, especially when it comes to Rhynda Santis in
39:45
Florida. But here Newsom, this should have been an incredibly embarrassing situation for
39:50
Newsom because Disney's plan was to pull further out of California and moved to Florida,
39:57
where they've already moved apparently two thousand employee. He's from California to Florida.
40:02
Well, they decided not to go through with that, and immediately everyone
40:07
says, aha, this is because of Rod de Santis and his attack on
40:10
Disney. I mean, the warning that the mainstream news me to use was
40:15
so nefarious, so evil. You know, they used phrases like, amid
40:19
a feud with Governor De Santis, Disney decides to pull out, as if
40:23
that's the reason. I had people on Twitter telling me that Disney acknowledged that
40:30
the Santis was the reason. No, they did not. They said,
40:32
no such thing. And by the way, how insane would it be?
40:37
And this is for the Joe Scarboroughs of the world. How insane would it
40:40
be if Disney decided to kill a billion dollar project purely at a political vindictiveness
40:45
and you're supporting that that action, as Joe Scarborough from MSNBC, former Republican
40:52
congressman was doing. You're supporting a major company killing a billion dollar project purely
41:01
to stick it to a governor they don't like politically. That would be insane
41:07
from a business standpoint. And again, Disney didn't say anything like that.
41:12
They made it clear that they were changing their mind about because of changing business
41:17
conditions. And interestingly, this won't get nearly the same coverage as oh my
41:22
god, Disney is pulling out of Florida, which a can can I be
41:29
clear about something? Net net Florida loses nothing in this situation, California is
41:36
gaining nothing. In fact, there's an article that will not get nearly as
41:39
much attention as this in the original story that many of the California Disney employees
41:46
who moved to Orlando in preparation for this billion dollar project don't want to move
41:52
back here to California. How much attention will that get? How much will
41:57
Cavin Newsom before's to answer to that zero by the news media, But that,
42:05
you know, that was reported by a network affiliate in Orlando. They
42:08
did a story about, Wow, you know a lot of these Disney employees,
42:13
they really don't want to move back to California. They like it here.
42:16
The evil California Empire where the NAACP is issuing travel advisories and Gavin Newsom
42:23
is trying to claim, is you know, basically the third level of hell.
42:29
But this Disney story really bugs the crap out of me because one I
42:32
think it's an unforced error, not from a policy standpoint, but from a
42:37
political perspective by Ronda Santis. This was a dumb fight to pick just before
42:42
you're running for president, and I think I think that kind of stuff may
42:46
have impacted the santis is play against Biden in these polls. But I really
42:52
do believe that the main thing that's happening here, because that wouldn't explain why
42:58
Trump is beating Biden will the Santis is tied in this Harvard pole, which
43:02
may be a totally bogus pole for all I know. I mean, unless
43:06
it's backed up by several others. I'm not going to panic about it.
43:08
But I think it's an interesting data point that goes to this idea that Trump
43:15
destroying the Santis within the core core core of his cult, which only needs
43:22
to be five to ten percent of the Republican base to have a major impact.
43:27
If those five to ten percent of MAGA Trump fanatics are saying I'm in
43:31
for Trump against Biden, but I'm say undecided against Biden with regard to the
43:37
Santists, then that's going to make it look like Trump is a whole lot
43:40
more electable than the Santiss, which, then of course, becomes a self
43:45
fulfilling prophecy, because then the de Santis people don't have anything to point to
43:50
to say, See, folks, we're running into a buzz saw here.
43:53
We lost once in twenty twenty with Trump against Biden. Why would we do
43:58
the same thing again. Well, once that argument is gone and it's getting
44:02
close, We're not there yet, but it's getting close, then it's really
44:07
hard to see what the argument for DeSantis is to the people that are already
44:12
into DeSantis camp. At that point, you're basically down to well, you
44:15
do know, DeSantis can run for two terms, right and Trump can only
44:20
run for one, which I doubt the majority of Rebulican voters even realize.
44:25
But even that argument, which at one point I thought might be a bit
44:29
of a silver bullet because I had people tell me that proactively, I no
44:34
longer think as a silver bullet because I now think that the Trump fans reaction
44:37
to that piece of information is okay. So Trump runs for one year,
44:43
for one term, he serves till twenty twenty eight, DeSantis can run to
44:46
replace it, which is just a flipping fantasy on every possible level, never
44:52
gonna happen at all. There's no chance of that scenario actually occurring, but
44:58
that's the way they'll they'll see it. And in fact, in a weird
45:00
way, to the Trump fan, it goes to this being Trump's turn because
45:07
he only has one term left to serve. Well, the Santis has two,
45:10
so you can't win for losing when it comes to all this. And
45:16
I do think one of the other things that has been hurting to Santis,
45:20
and this is a very very deep issue that we've talked a lot about before
45:24
previously on this podcast and probably will again in the future, but deserves podcast
45:30
episodes on this issue alone, is how unbelievably fast the entire COVID issue has
45:37
faded from the public consciousness, and how it now seems as if the thirst
45:44
for accountability on that issue is at such a low level that it cannot carry
45:52
Ronda Santis to the Republican nomination. And in a weird way, this was
45:57
illustrated by an opinion that was issued by Supreme Court Justice gorstch over the last
46:06
few days at the end of last week, where he just absolutely excoriated,
46:13
excoriated all these lockdowns and shutdowns in a way that no Supreme Court justice has
46:20
done so publicly since the fiasco that began in March of twenty twenty, and
46:27
I have said several times how incredibly disappointed I have been in the US Supreme
46:32
Court. Yes, Trump gets credit for putting a situation where there are at
46:37
least five, on a good day, six somewhat conservative justices on the US
46:44
Supreme Court, But that did us no good during COVID. And there were
46:49
all sorts of outrageous things that happened. And I'm not even just talking about
46:53
mask mandates and school closings and vaccine mandates. Those are the obvious things.
46:59
I believe that our property rights got absolutely destroyed during COVID. You had banks
47:07
not being allowed to collect on mortgages. You had landlords not being allowed to
47:13
collect rent. You had hotels being forced I know this happened here in California,
47:21
it being forced to basically allow homeless people into their dwellings for free because
47:29
somehow it was a part of the COVID emergency. I mean, these are
47:32
just a couple of many, many examples where our entire foundation for the way
47:40
America is supposed to work was shattered, all in response to an emergency that
47:49
I don't believe was ever an emergency to that level, and most importantly,
47:54
none of these emergency actions did any good. Invariably, there's always that the
48:00
left wing response to this is always In fact, the Associated Press even had
48:05
a headline about Gorsage's opinion where they say, you know, they basically made
48:09
it sound like he was he was decrying the emergency efforts to combat a pandemic
48:17
that caused a million deaths in America. Well, thank you very much,
48:22
Associated Press for acknowledging that none of these emergency restrictions did any damn good because
48:30
we still lost over a million people based upon the way they calculated COVID deaths
48:37
over a three year plus period. How is it that that never sinks in
48:40
on the liberal mind? Because America by most statistical metrics did among the worst
48:49
in the world when it came not the worst, but among the worst in
48:53
the world when it came to COVID deaths per population and all the other ways
49:00
that you determine these statistics. How did that happen? Well, well,
49:06
the lunatics, the doctor Faucie's in the world will tell you, well,
49:08
we didn't lock down hard enough. While simultaneously saying that he never ordered anybody
49:15
to lock out or never ordered schools to be closed or anything else. I
49:19
mean, it's just talking at both sides of your mouth to an extreme degree
49:23
here. But the reality here is that those emergency restrictions didn't very little to
49:30
anything, and the evidence of that is overwhelming. In fact, I'm going
49:35
to get to a clip from Governor to Sandi's talking about that in just a
49:38
moment, But first here is just some of what Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch said
49:44
in this Supreme Court opinion, which was fantastic, although a little too little,
49:50
too late. He wrote, since March twenty twenty, we may have
49:53
experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peace time history of this country.
50:01
Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors
50:10
and local leaders imposed lockdowns orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They
50:19
shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches, even as
50:25
they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not
50:32
just with civil penalties, but with criminal sanctions too. They surveiled church parking
50:39
lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendants at even outdoor
50:47
services, satisfying all state social distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to a criminal
50:55
conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color coded zones, forced individuals to
51:04
fight for their freedoms and court on emergency timetables, and then change their color
51:10
coded schemes when defeat in court seem imminent. That's Supreme Court Justice Gorsage,
51:20
in his evisceration of what I one hundred percent agree was the worst, the
51:28
worst affront to the essence of America in modern times and maybe ever in peacetime.
51:35
By the way, maybe even wasn't alive and during an emergency during wartime.
51:42
But I got to believe that these ranked up there. I mean the
51:46
he doesn't mention the vaccine mandates, which were obscene, if only because of
51:52
the fact that it turns out there was no basis for them, because the
51:58
vaccine mandates did absolutely nothing, and in fact, you could argue based upon
52:01
the data, the vaccine mandates actually exacerbated the spread eventually, maybe because the
52:09
booster shots, who knows, but if you look at the data, the
52:13
worst spread we ever had in America was well after everybody got vaccinated because the
52:20
vaccine did absolutely nothing to stop transmission, which was the only, the only
52:24
basis, especially in an allegedly free country, for the vaccine to be mandated,
52:31
and it damn near got mandated for children. It would have been mandated
52:35
for children, especially here in California. Our King Gavin Newsom threatened us,
52:40
threatened us, He declared he was going to force school children to be vaccinated,
52:46
until eventually he just said quietly, oh well, okay, never mind,
52:52
because even he realized there was no way to get away with this,
52:55
because enough people had had understood are their own experience that the vaccines did nothing
53:02
to stop the spread and that children were not vulnerable to this. But that's
53:08
how insane things got. I mean to me, I'll never get over.
53:14
I'll never get over so many of this, So many of these were absurd
53:19
restrictions. But the most absurd, not the most impactful, but the most
53:22
absurd was here in California in twenty twenty, on multiple major holidays, our
53:30
beaches were not just closed, not just closed. Let's be clear, Being
53:37
on the beach literally the safest place you could possibly be to avoid COVID.
53:43
It's breezy, social distancing the virus says, no place to survive. I
53:51
guarantee it. Nobody, nobody got COVID, nobody from being on the beach.
53:57
Yet the beaches were not just closed. You know, it would be
54:00
one thing to say, don't go to the beach. We're closing it.
54:02
We're not going to put a lifeguard on. You're you know, you know,
54:07
so you're not allowed to go on the beach. No, no,
54:08
no, no. These closings were enforced, and not just a little bit
54:15
by I'm telling you, had to be millions of dollars in man hours and
54:22
resources, putting sheriff deputies in cars and boondoggies to make sure that nobody was
54:30
allowed on the beach or even dared to go on the beach. I mean,
54:37
I thought, my god, I cannot believe we're I can even though
54:39
it's California, I cannot believe. This is the United States of America,
54:44
and I cannot believe. And I would, of course, I would give
54:46
these these police officers, these these sheriff's deputies, I would give them the
54:51
business every single time. And in my experience, based upon their reaction,
54:58
they didn't even realize what they were doing. Insane. There would be one
55:00
thing if they shrug their shoulders and said, I'm sorry, I have to
55:05
do it. I was ordered to do it. I know it's insane.
55:07
You got a little bit of that, But by and large these people actually
55:10
were convinced that they were they were doing the right thing, they were saving
55:15
lives, and what the hell. But so good for Gorsage. But it
55:22
is a little too little, too late, especially if Ronda Santos is not
55:25
the Republican nominee. Because Ronda Santis being the Republican nominee is not just the
55:31
last shot for America, and these two things may be very much connected.
55:37
It's definitely the last shot for there being any semblance of COVID accountability. And
55:42
I'm not just talking putting people in jail. I'm talking about the most important
55:45
thing is that it never happened again. And if Trump and or Biden is
55:51
the next president United States, it could easily happen again because it will be
55:55
seen as a vindication of what they did during COVID, or at least not
56:01
a condemnation of what they did during COVID. These are the two presidents during
56:06
COVID. They both win the nomination and one of them wins obviously, then
56:10
how was that in any way, shape or form an indication that we shouldn't
56:15
have done what we did during COVID. Now, if Trump wins, it's
56:17
a slight repudiation I guess of what Biden did on COVID or what Democrats did
56:24
on COVID. But if you look at the real record, what Trump did
56:29
was at least as bad in some ways. Now, he was at a
56:32
more difficult situation because he didn't have all the data that Biden did. Biden
56:37
didn't give a crap about the data. He was just gonna do whatever he
56:40
was told and do whatever felt right politically, and used the virus to their
56:45
advantage. Trump crapped the bed and then rolled around in it for a year
56:50
and lost the election largely because of it, and should never even be considered
56:53
to be the nominee thanks to what he did on COVID. I think it's
56:59
an inherent disqualifying event for Donald Trump. Unfortunately. I think the number of
57:04
people who agree with me on that is very small and decreasing on almost a
57:08
daily basis. I don't know what the number is, but it's nowhere near
57:13
enough for that issue alone to prevent Donald Trump from being the nominee, even
57:17
though it should. I mean, my guy, what could possibly be bigger
57:21
than how we responded to the COVID virus. Yet, because of time and
57:24
circumstances and rationalizations and everyone having short memories and the media moving on because they
57:30
don't want to deal with this because they deep down though they screwed it up
57:34
as well. So therefore we just pretend it never happened, you know,
57:37
just move on. That all helps Trump, especially in a Republican primary.
57:44
But the Santis is the one guy that would absolutely change that narrative, would
57:50
absolutely cause there to be some accountability and to make sure it never happens again.
57:54
And he addressed this issue a few days ago in very powerful and eloquent
58:00
fashion. And here's what that sounded like. They want to institutionalize lockdowns.
58:06
They act like this worked when it did incredible damage throughout our country. I
58:12
mean, look at like Florida. Our unemployment rates two point six percent,
58:15
New York is four point one. Why why is the gap? It's part
58:19
of it's the taxation, and yes, but part of it was the lockdowns.
58:22
You know, it destroyed parts of the economy, and so the idea
58:27
and it didn't stop the spread. So the idea that we would even be
58:30
entertaining that going forward is absolutely crazy, and so I think that we need
58:36
to make sure that we say faucism was wrong, faucism was destructive, and
58:43
we will never let faucism take root in this country ever again. Now,
58:49
as de Santis's run for president becomes really official, I'll have a greater and
58:55
more in depth analysis of where things stand and how he might still be able
58:59
to pull this off. But I want to hold off on doing that for
59:02
now, partially because we have a really fantastic interview that I know you're going
59:07
to enjoy, especially since it includes the return of my former co host on
59:13
this podcast and my co host for our prior podcast With the Benefit of Hindsight.
59:17
She, of course, is Liza Beebe, and she co hosted the
59:22
first block of episodes of the Death of Journalism till the end of twenty twenty
59:28
two, and she was very, very busy at that time, basically living
59:31
in three different states and starting a new job, and scheduling became very difficult,
59:36
and so we decided, you know, it'd be best if I just
59:38
continued this on my own for now, and we had talked about bringing her
59:44
back on as a guest, and you may recall even reference that we had
59:47
another scheduling issue and I thought she was giving me the run around, and
59:51
I said, well, why don't we just forget about it. Well,
59:53
you know, when you've known someone as long as we have known each other,
59:58
having co hosted the back in an NBC affiliate and Steubenville, Ohio,
1:00:01
Wheeling, West Virginia back in the early nineties, and have been through as
1:00:05
many things as we've been through, you tend to get through that kind of
1:00:07
stuff. It may take a while, but you tend to get through it.
1:00:10
And she graciously agreed and accepted my invitation to come back on the program
1:00:16
and do an interview to discuss a lot of very different and interesting things.
1:00:21
We kind of run the full gamut of topics here from her experience as a
1:00:29
professor as at journalism schools including Syracuse and Arizona State, as well as some
1:00:36
issues that are in the news, including Trump to Santas and including a lot
1:00:39
of things happening in the world of sports. And here was that interview,
1:00:44
which we recorded just a couple of days ago. Liz Habib, Welcome back
1:00:47
to the Death of Journalism podcast, How the heck are you doing? I'm
1:00:52
great, John, I've missed you same here. It's great to be I
1:00:58
listen and you know, I keep up a little bit. But well,
1:01:00
yeah, I'm really glad that we finally were able to schedule this for you
1:01:04
to come back on because there's a lot to talk about, and originally I
1:01:07
had wanted to schedule this interview with you because of your experience in academia,
1:01:13
and we're going to get to that momentarily. But before we do all that
1:01:16
and a whole bunch of other topics they're in the news. What have you
1:01:20
been up to, What's been going on in your life? Nothing. I'm
1:01:22
going to be up to a whole lot of nothing now for a little while.
1:01:25
I'm just kind of hanging out, trying to figure out exactly where i
1:01:30
want to go, and I've had some offers out there to do something,
1:01:32
so John, you know I'm available. Wow, stay tuned. It sounds
1:01:37
like that's interesting, that's amazing. Kind of chill out for a while,
1:01:40
which is a very difficult thing for me to do. When you've done nothing
1:01:44
but hit the gas in your career, your entire life, it's very hard
1:01:46
to take your foot off of it. So right now I'm just trying to
1:01:50
sort of b But I'm gonna tell you, John, how hard this is.
1:01:53
When I see everything going on out there in the world, and I
1:01:57
see the way the media is, and I see what's going on with politics,
1:02:00
it's very hard to sit on the sidelines, especially with an election coming
1:02:04
into play. Well, that's a hell of a tease you gave us.
1:02:07
The listeners can't see you, but I can verify that you look great,
1:02:10
and so obviously you know things are going pretty well for you. Do you
1:02:14
think that was going to be three D. No, but it is a
1:02:23
pretty good indication that things are okay with you in your in your personal life.
1:02:29
So before we get specifically to that primary reason for the interview, which
1:02:34
is your incredible experience as a teacher in academy as a professor, this is
1:02:38
somewhat related and it came up in the podcast a couple of episodes ago,
1:02:43
But we recently did an interview with a reporter by the name of Keenan Schrotter,
1:02:47
and I asked you to listen to the interview for a couple of reasons,
1:02:52
mainly because it dealt with the Penn State Joe Paterno Jerry Sandusky case,
1:02:55
which obviously you are intimately familiar with, because you and I did as epic
1:03:00
podcast called The Benefit of Hindsight, which deals with that entire case, and
1:03:06
you very generous, by the way, I think is one of the best
1:03:10
pieces of journalism and work that I've ever done in my thirty odd years.
1:03:15
I really do well, I agree, and I appreciate that. But so
1:03:21
in episode fifty eight of this podcast, Another Journalism, I interviewed Keenan Troder,
1:03:25
a former reporter for The Insider who worked for years in an investigation on
1:03:30
the Jerry Sandowski case and was seemingly very close along with another reporter or female
1:03:37
to finally giving the mainstream media the opportunity to tell the other side of the
1:03:43
story, the story that we detailed an epic fashion in with the Benefit of
1:03:46
Hindsight. And I sent you the interview because I wanted you to listen to
1:03:51
it from a couple of different perspectives, one from the standpoint of having done
1:03:54
with the Benefit of Hindsight together as well as your experience as a journalism professor,
1:04:00
and you very generously listen to the whole thing because it's not easy to
1:04:04
listen to the whole thing. It's about two and a half hours long.
1:04:08
It can get a bit frustrating at times. What were your general impressions of
1:04:13
having listened to the Keenan trot Or interviewed. I looked at my notes that
1:04:17
I sent to you so that I could remind myself exactly what I thought my
1:04:20
very first thought on here that I like that Keenan is a true representative of
1:04:26
what it means to have diversity in the media and why diversity matters so much,
1:04:30
and that Keenan's instincts as a human being coming into that story would be
1:04:34
very different than your instincts or my instincts coming into a story like that.
1:04:39
So to me, he was a very important journalist to have looked into that
1:04:43
story. That's my very initial thought. And when I talk about diversity,
1:04:46
Keenan is a gay man. And when you come into a story like this,
1:04:49
maybe your perspective is a little different. Maybe you know something doesn't sound
1:04:55
right to you in a different way than it doesn't sound right to you or
1:04:58
me. I don't know if that hap and or not, But when you
1:05:00
talk about diversity, that's real, true diversity. At work in its most
1:05:05
natural sense, and so I noticed it that right off the top, and
1:05:10
I liked it. Keenan's curious, he's intelligent, he's naive. He is
1:05:15
so very very naive, And for a guy who had worked all that time
1:05:18
at Gawker, and it's not that he doesn't have that much experience, but
1:05:23
that being so naive, that should have gone out the window. People lie.
1:05:28
Guess what journalists deal in lies. That's the currency of America, that's
1:05:32
the currency of the whole world. Lies. So our job when we say,
1:05:36
as a journalist, our job is to present all sides, that's our
1:05:40
job. We have to present all sides, because somewhere in the sides is
1:05:44
the middle and in the gray, and somewhere in the gray is the truth.
1:05:48
So there's a he's very naive, And I think that a lot of
1:05:51
young people coming out of school, like I was very naive. I wanted
1:05:56
to be a politician. John. My mom and dad put a stop to
1:05:58
that right away. They said, you'll never be able to do that.
1:06:01
You're too idealistic and you don't understand what that is. Boy, were they
1:06:05
right. So I did what was next best thing for me, and that
1:06:09
was to be a journalist, and but you have to learn right away that
1:06:12
everybody's telling you their version. There's a truth. I don't believe in versions
1:06:15
of truth. I believe in truth. There's a truth. So he's so
1:06:18
naive, right, So he said that he talked to victim number seven,
1:06:23
and he had the interview and it's on tape, and I wish we could
1:06:25
get that interview, John, I wish we could give us that and we
1:06:29
could listen to it. I really want to hear because this was the guy,
1:06:31
his victim number seven. You know, you know all the names better
1:06:34
than a yeah, like, this is a victim who really believes he was
1:06:40
victimized. Let's hear him. Let's hear him. That's what I wanted.
1:06:45
So I think that because of how naive he is, he's afraid, he's
1:06:49
he had feared to trust his gut, and I think that's why he fell
1:06:54
apart so much. And I saw that weakness. It takes tremendous amount of
1:06:59
strength to be a journalist, tremendous amount of strength because you have to be
1:07:02
willing to stand in the center. And he didn't want to go with his
1:07:06
gut. He didn't want to I saw that how naive he was. But
1:07:11
I'll tell you where he's brave. John. He admires Jerry Sandusky and says
1:07:15
it out loud. John, it's just like okay, screaming from the shouted
1:07:23
from the mountaintops. It's okay to have a gut sensence to something. As
1:07:29
a journalist, that's all you have. So I don't know if I'm getting
1:07:32
anywhere with my initial thinking here. I think that he also he's so naive
1:07:39
that John, I'm beginning to really like, I always want to doubt you
1:07:43
a little bit and go, come on, John, the truth will come
1:07:45
out. Come on, John, don't be so pessimistic. But I'm turning
1:07:47
more into you every day that it just gets so hard to believe that we'll
1:07:53
ever get the truth out there when these young journalists are so weak like this
1:07:59
and they're Liz, that's the point. And I think you saw this from
1:08:03
the way I handled that interview that was getting at me so much. And
1:08:10
luck Keenan and I are very very different people. You know me about as
1:08:14
well as anybody since we go all the way back to the early nineties as
1:08:17
co anchors and an NBC affiliate in Ohio and West Virginia and got to know
1:08:23
each other again very very well during with the benefit of hindsight and this podcast
1:08:28
as well. Obviously, Keenan and I have almost nothing in common, but
1:08:31
we tried very hard, and I tried very hard to help Keenan in any
1:08:35
way I possibly could, not just from the standpoint of the story, but
1:08:40
from the standpoint of the psychological elements of dealing with the trauma of this story.
1:08:45
And even I, and you know this very well, Liz, I
1:08:48
have suffered dramatically over the last eleven years in every possible way in investigating the
1:08:55
story. But even I have never gotten to the depths that Keenan has gotten
1:08:59
to. And I blame it on a generational divide. Now, that might
1:09:03
be too simplistic, that might be too easy of an explanation, But I'm
1:09:09
curious what you think, Since you're of my generation and have taught younger generations
1:09:15
as as a professor in two different major universities, what do you make of
1:09:19
my theory that the primary problem here is in fact generational and that this younger
1:09:27
generation which Keenan is part of, is not willing or able to fight through
1:09:31
adversity in any significant way, and instead, their instincts are to curl up
1:09:38
in the fetal position and to be defeated and not power through. What do
1:09:43
you make of my theory there? I think that you're on to something.
1:09:47
I think that there might be some truth into that. But then when I
1:09:49
look at you and I look at me, and we're the same generation,
1:09:53
I was never the fighter that you are. I was never that because I
1:10:00
took I wanted to keep my job, that I worked so hard to have
1:10:03
these jobs, and that I also had as a woman in there, right
1:10:08
that I navigated the world a little differently than you. Right Where I think
1:10:12
you could yell and scream in my air's on fire, where I had to
1:10:15
navigate it a little differently, so I couldn't fight as hard as you could.
1:10:19
So I can kind of think that maybe he doesn't feel he can fight
1:10:24
the way you fight because he wants to keep his job. Look, he
1:10:27
even talked about Gawker was shut down over a story. What was actually shut
1:10:31
down over Peter Teal and all of his lawsuits against Gawker. But but a
1:10:36
story can sink an entire ship. One story can sink an entire ship because
1:10:43
of cancel culture. So how do you have the guts to stand up to
1:10:47
a producer or an editor when you know the story's correct, but cancel culture
1:10:53
can get it canceled, you know. I mean I was suspended when I
1:10:59
was right. I was suspended for putting tweets out about a guy I was
1:11:01
one hundred percent correct about and John. I could almost argue that our work
1:11:08
about the Joe Paterno stuff got me in some hot water at work, so
1:11:11
I couldn't stand up to it. So if you can't stand up to it,
1:11:15
what do you expect a journalist to do. It's a conundrum, you
1:11:19
know, are they weak? I don't want to miss the headline, m
1:11:24
I don't want to miss the headline of the Keen and Trotter interview. And
1:11:27
I may have done that inadvertently because obviously you know the Keenan part of this
1:11:30
is two and a half hours long in episode fifty eight. But how about
1:11:34
the voicemail message from his former boss, the editor at Insider, John Cook.
1:11:42
What was your take on that. I love the way he didn't even
1:11:45
know who he was calling John. I got you, Rob, But because
1:11:48
he's he's really doesn't know what he's doing, right, He doesn't even know
1:11:51
who he's calling. He didn't do his research, So that's pathetic. Okay,
1:11:57
that's number one. And then him calling, Oh, oh, don't
1:12:00
don't contact this woman. Now, you come on strong. I can't remember
1:12:02
the female reporter's name, John, you do come home, Nicole, Nicole
1:12:08
for the record, But for the record, Liz, I I and in
1:12:12
episode fifty eight, I detailed what those direct messages were to Nicole and they
1:12:17
were nothing. They were nothing on a Ziggler scale. They were at two
1:12:21
out of ten. Okay, but I mean, yeah, like she must
1:12:28
have I kept playing it out in my head every time you started talking about
1:12:30
it, like she must have gone, him gone. This guy is harassing
1:12:32
me. He's harassing me, you know, is all I could think.
1:12:35
And then he called and said, oh, don't call her, you can
1:12:38
call me. And then did you call and harass him? Yeah? I
1:12:42
spoke to him and he admitted. And this was the most amazing part of
1:12:45
the whole thing, Liz. He openly admitted and this is a you know,
1:12:47
not a younger guy. This is and this is a guy in a
1:12:50
position of power. He openly admitted to me after having left me a voicemail
1:12:55
message that basically proved my case here that the story, the Sandusky story,
1:13:00
is just too risky. Nothing was wrong, too risky? What was all
1:13:06
the president's men? What was all the president's men? What was Watergate?
1:13:12
If not risk? You know, we we we put those people, we
1:13:15
put those reporters onto pedestal. What was that? If not risk? Where
1:13:19
does journalism gone? If not for risk? Journalism is risky. That's the
1:13:26
point of journalism. That's the point of it. So the propaganda cannot live.
1:13:30
It has to be risky. So is it these kids fault? Is
1:13:34
it the people who are in our generation? Is it our fault? Is
1:13:39
it big Data's fault? Is it corporate America's fault? The the worst thing
1:13:45
that ever happened in news was sixty minutes because they found out you could make
1:13:49
money, Right, that's the conventional wisdom. The once you can make money
1:13:55
on news, corporate America can control the mouthpiece. So what exactly is too
1:14:00
risky? So yeah, that's really but John, now we know that,
1:14:04
And now you and I are just kind of like, Wow, here's let
1:14:08
me tell you where there's hope. I'm going to tell you where there's hope.
1:14:11
I'm gonna tell you where the hope exists. Tucker Carlson got fired from
1:14:14
Fox and guess what. Dan Bongino's out there doing his own thing, Making
1:14:19
Kelly's out there doing her own thing. David Ruben's out there doing his own
1:14:24
thing. Well, I could go on and on and on. These are
1:14:27
all conservatives. Okay, here's why that's so great. Nobody will censor them
1:14:33
unless the elon Musks decides to censor them. YouTube does censor them. Rumble
1:14:38
is open to not censoring. Okay, But the future is now. We
1:14:45
don't need anymore the Foxes of the world. We don't need the so called
1:14:48
journalism Disney controlling everything that you can go out there and you can be an
1:14:54
independent and you can move forward independently. The best thing that's ever gonna happen
1:14:59
is Tucker Carlson got fire. It's going to open people's eyes when they start
1:15:03
looking for him. You disagree, Well, I see where you're coming from
1:15:08
them, because I agree that if Ducker does what he is planning on doing,
1:15:12
that he will have more free speech than he had at Fox News Channel,
1:15:15
although he had pretty darn good free speech at Fox News Channel comparison to
1:15:18
most people. But however, I still think, Liz, that there needs
1:15:25
to be a place where the mainstream media, which still has much more credibility
1:15:30
than quote unquote independent media does in the minds of the majority of Americans.
1:15:38
There must be a place where the mainstream media is still willing and able to
1:15:42
take risks and tell quote unquote dangerous stories. And I think maybe the most
1:15:46
oppressing part of the whole Keenan situation, an insider situation, is that Keenan
1:15:53
describes John Cook, the editor as Boss, as someone who was not risk
1:15:58
adverse in general. So here we had a situation where a guy who was
1:16:01
known as as not being risk adverse was willing to openly admit to me,
1:16:06
you know what, we have this story pretty much nailed. There's nothing wrong
1:16:10
with the reporting. It's just too risky. We're gonna take a pass.
1:16:14
And I'm just like, wow, that to me was forget about the Sandusky
1:16:16
story, of the ben State's story individually. That's a damning indictment of where
1:16:20
we are with regard to journalism and how dead it really is. And you
1:16:25
know, maybe maybe a reshuffling of the dead. There's a future. I
1:16:30
was talking to a friend of mine who went to Berkeley she's a very intelligent
1:16:32
person. Okay, very intelligent person. We don't agree on a lot of
1:16:35
things, but she's a very intelligent person. And she said, I believe
1:16:40
people consume more news than they ever have. They consume it on their phones.
1:16:45
So the way we're consuming news is changing now, right, or it's
1:16:48
already changed. That's done. It's already changed. So the only thing is,
1:16:56
believe it or not, one percent of society does not have access to
1:17:00
the internet. Believe it or not. Many people still watch over the air
1:17:04
television right because they don't have access. They on their phones, whatever data
1:17:08
they can get or whatever. So it's still it's still not accessible. That's
1:17:11
still the issue. Access doesn't exist there. But John, I think that
1:17:15
there's the change is good. The change is good. Let me just say
1:17:21
the change is good. Well we'll see well, we'll see um. All
1:17:25
right, So let's let's speaking of change, and let's change subjects slightly here,
1:17:30
although I think it's related to this generational shift. I wanted to talk
1:17:33
to you about your extraordinary experience as a professor. After you left Fox eleven
1:17:39
as a sports anchor here in Los Angeles a couple of years ago, you
1:17:42
became a professor at Syracuse University, which has the most prestigious communication in school
1:17:47
in America, if not the world, the New House School, and you
1:17:49
were a professor there for a full year. And then you also were a
1:17:54
professor at Arizona State University of the Walter Cronkite School. And I know you've
1:17:58
had different experiences both institutions, so I want to kind of take them separately.
1:18:02
The Syracuse thing was very, very interesting, and you and I were
1:18:05
talking about this constantly in the lead up to this, not just because Syracuse
1:18:11
is very prestigious and what a great job this was, and how I thought,
1:18:14
Wow, this could be a really fascinating and compelling opportunity for you.
1:18:18
But Syracuse was the school that I wanted to go to as a kid,
1:18:23
and I got into and you know, my mother was terrified I was going
1:18:28
to go up to Syracuse and see the Carrier Dome and fall in love and
1:18:30
you'd never see me again. And she had gone to Georgetown where she met
1:18:34
my father, and so I ended up going to Georgetown, Syracuse's rival,
1:18:39
which was terrible for broadcasting. And the rest is history. But so you
1:18:45
become a professor at Syracuse. I mean if you know anything about broadcasting,
1:18:48
this is the place you're a professor there. How did your experience compare to
1:18:54
what you expected with regard to the students at Syracuse University for broadcasting on I
1:19:00
really loved Syracuse. I loved those students. I still talked to my students,
1:19:03
you know, they still they're out there in the working world. They're
1:19:06
done extremely well. I'm so proud of so many of them. I had
1:19:10
master students, I had undergraduate students, and they're all really great. They're
1:19:14
intelligent students, and they're exactly what you expected when you thought, Okay,
1:19:17
this is the top of the hill when it comes to journalism schools. They
1:19:21
were serious. They cared about it. They cared far too much about their
1:19:25
grades. I never thought grades were as important as you know. My motto
1:19:29
was always do the work, the grades will come. But I really loved
1:19:31
them, my students, I really love them, and I love the school.
1:19:34
I tell you, I love the school. You know. I was
1:19:38
there at a time in the middle of COVID Still where we had to mask
1:19:41
up the entire time. That was incredibly frustrating for me. My students were
1:19:46
more honest than any professor was when it came to those things. My students,
1:19:51
I think, felt safe enough to be honest with me, even though
1:19:55
we were forced to be in those situations. You know, I felt like,
1:20:00
you know, I felt like they got a lot from me. And
1:20:02
I learned later too that they did get a lot from me, because the
1:20:05
ones who I taught my classes, when they moved on to their next level,
1:20:10
the professors who were like, oh you had Habib, You're good,
1:20:14
they were like advanced right when they got to the next level. And I
1:20:17
was really happy about that, and I was proud of what happened there.
1:20:20
I was just happy to know the other professors and the other students. I
1:20:25
loved it. I loved it. Walter Cronkite School at Arizona State was a
1:20:30
different story from me. It was a different story. Well. I loved
1:20:33
many of the professors I taught with, and I still keep in touch with
1:20:38
those students. There are several of those students who I still work with and
1:20:41
help and that's just a love of mine. I love helping young journalists as
1:20:44
much as I can, and I believe that's what your heart's goal is.
1:20:46
I want to help you get there. There's a lot of challenges in this
1:20:49
profession, but it wasn't the same experience for me as Syracuse was. And
1:20:56
the and the only reason I would say that I didn't work to get back
1:21:00
to syracuses because it wasn't Syracuse, New York. I mean to offend no
1:21:03
one, but I was living in Los Angeles, you know, and I
1:21:08
went to Syracuse to work Like it wasn't so first of all, I knew
1:21:12
what a great school it was, right that was the place I wanted to
1:21:15
go, but I stayed at the University of Pittsburgh instead. It also was
1:21:18
only six hours from Pittsburgh, where I grew up. Syracuse is an amazing
1:21:24
place with so much cloud and so many great graduates. You know, I
1:21:29
now everywhere I go I talked to people from Syracuse, and I'm so happy
1:21:31
I did it. And if it wasn't in Syracuse, I probably would hopefully
1:21:34
try to get back to it. They it had it had some Syracuse didn't
1:21:41
have a lot of drawbacks for me, but I saw a lot of things
1:21:44
that I went, oh, this is how this is. Okay, now
1:21:47
I see it firsthand, so let me just put it like what So,
1:21:53
I was there in the middle of COVID, right and we're all masking up
1:21:56
and there was like the mask police, right. There was like the Tsar
1:21:58
of masking at the school, right. And you know, there was one
1:22:01
day I had I taught a morning show. Great show. I loved it.
1:22:05
I caught a day it was like we did a morning newscast and the
1:22:08
students, you know, I was super intense about it because I'm like,
1:22:11
it's a newscast. We gotta get on. We're down to the minute here,
1:22:14
and like you know, and I came out of a newsroom and my
1:22:15
students were like sort of hoo home. But they did a pretty darn good
1:22:18
job at it. Anyway, We're into the second semester and we were still
1:22:23
masking at Syracusement. Masks had kind of come and kind of gone and da
1:22:26
da da da dah whatever. So I was sort of lacked, Like my
1:22:29
students didn't wear their masks up over their noses. We were supposed to police
1:22:31
them, but I wasn't. I didn't want to be the mass police that
1:22:35
I just was fatigued. I had enough. I'm not going to be the
1:22:38
mask police. I'm teaching my students and as long as the other students aren't
1:22:42
offended, if someone came to me offended, then we'd deal with those things
1:22:45
right because we'd have a discussion in the group. But no one was ever
1:22:47
offended. So they sort of have the masks down below their noses or on
1:22:50
their chins. They're not up completely. But I would always try to just
1:22:53
keep mine on because I was supposed to be a good example and that was
1:22:57
the rule. So one day, this professor, they're the czar of the
1:23:00
masking, comes through my class. She calls me, and I wasn't really
1:23:02
paying attention. I'm working on getting my show on. We had a deadline.
1:23:06
So she calls me to the back of the room like she's like she's
1:23:09
like, you know, sticks her finger out and points and like does the
1:23:12
finger waggle at me to come back to the back. And I'm like kind
1:23:15
of looked around, and I go back to the back of the room and
1:23:16
she literally dresses me down, and there's all these students in the room and
1:23:20
it's like, tell them to put their masks on. They must be wearing
1:23:24
the mask you needed it, and it's it's like she's humiliating me in front
1:23:28
of my students to tell them to put their masks on. And my students
1:23:31
knew me. They knew that I wasn't going to do that to them,
1:23:34
right, Like they were under this high pressure situation. Went the newscast on
1:23:38
the air, whether it was school or not. They needed to know the
1:23:41
intensity of the situation and work under those deadlines. And so sheepishly, after
1:23:45
I get dressed down by this professor, I have to go back in the
1:23:48
room and go, hey, hey, guys, you gotta put I'm in
1:23:50
trouble. That's that's how I blayed it on. Guys, I'm in trouble.
1:23:56
I'm in trouble. Can you put your masks on? So, like
1:23:59
you know they have masks on, right, Okay, so that's an episode
1:24:02
that occurred. But let me tell you what the behind the scene. Now,
1:24:05
this professor, professor bizarre. She took it seriously. She was not
1:24:10
involved in this next episode. Nothing to do with this next episode. That's
1:24:13
just something that happened, right, We had to take it very seriously.
1:24:15
Professors would show up double masked. I would see double masked professors, right,
1:24:23
So, and we all had to get we all had to get all
1:24:25
the vaccines. I literally on Christmas break. So I had my first semester.
1:24:30
I was vaccinated twice. I go into my first semester. Now we
1:24:33
had Christmas break, and over Christmas break, after I was vaccinated, freaks,
1:24:35
I got COVID. I got COVID. Hey, wow, it's a
1:24:41
virus. Guess what I got COVID. I thought I had signed this infection.
1:24:44
I wasn't even thinking about it being COVID. I was like, I
1:24:46
was like laying down. I was at my brother's house and my brother's a
1:24:49
doctor, and he was looking for me like twice in one day, and
1:24:51
I was laying down. He's like, Liz, what are you doing?
1:24:55
Because no, I never laid out. I was just like, not my
1:24:57
m O. I'm always doing something. He's like, Liz, what are
1:24:59
you doing. I'm like, I'm just laying down. And he goes,
1:25:01
oh, you have COVID. And he's a doctor, right, he goes,
1:25:04
oh, you have COVID. I can't afford to get COVID. I
1:25:06
have patience to watch you have COVID. I'm testing you. So he tested
1:25:11
me, right, He sticks that damn thing like up to my brain,
1:25:14
that of my nostril to my brain, and sure enough I had COVID.
1:25:16
And I never even thought about it like it didn't even occur to me that
1:25:19
I had COVID. So in this semester break, I get COVID and this
1:25:23
is end in December January. We go back to school mid January. I
1:25:28
had to get the booster shot. So I had two shots. I get
1:25:32
COVID and within ten days in the beginning COVID, I have to go and
1:25:35
get the booster shot. It made no sense whatsoever, Okay, but we
1:25:39
did all of those practices because that was the rule, which leads me to
1:25:44
now I'm with the other professors and like you know, we would fratnize the
1:25:46
other professors because lord knows, there's nothing else to do in Syracuse, New
1:25:49
York. So believe me, Georgetown was the better choice. I mean,
1:25:53
for beauty alone, for beauty alone, John, for dupots racle, Georgetown
1:26:00
was the better choice. I mean, at least you can have a life,
1:26:02
Like if I was teaching at Georgetown, I'd still be there, John
1:26:04
anyway. Um, okay, So so we're we're we're like, you know
1:26:10
all this, like you hear how we have to mask up? We should
1:26:12
do this. They're double masking, And I'm at the house of a professor
1:26:15
who literally would double mask he was from la He would literally double mask.
1:26:17
And so this one weekend I'd go to his house and he's at Their professors
1:26:21
come over and their playing pool. No one's got a mask on, and
1:26:24
they're shooting pool and their bils with each other about how the science shows that
1:26:28
their masking doesn't work, how the science shows maskings. With my own two
1:26:31
eyes, this is not a made up story. This is a journalist at
1:26:33
work. I observed this occurring and hear with my own two years and then
1:26:38
the competitor pull and they double mask, and then they complain, and then
1:26:42
they complain and they complain. They complain about how they're you know, how
1:26:45
it's dangerous, how this and this and this. Yet on the weekend they're
1:26:47
with each other talking like this. So that was the signal. Of course
1:26:54
it was, of course it was. And so so that's when I saw
1:26:58
with the professors there. But it asked you, yeah, well, okay,
1:27:02
go ahead if you want to talk about as you or because I had
1:27:05
a specific question I wanted to ask about, go ahead. Okay. So
1:27:09
let's let's let's combine your two experiences Syracuse in Arizona State, and I want
1:27:14
to take your temperature on two different elements of this experience and why I think
1:27:20
it's relevant to the bigger picture of journalism. First, I want to talk
1:27:25
about the culture of academic schools, mostly from the standpoint of the fellow your
1:27:30
fellow professors. When you went into this, I expected that you would be
1:27:36
maybe the only conservative professor on staff, and certainly the only conservative professor on
1:27:43
staff that was willing to let anybody know that you're not a liberal, and
1:27:46
that this that this would have a profound impact on the experience of what is
1:27:53
being taught at journalism schools. How close was your experience to what my perception
1:28:00
of your expectations should be. John, The thing about me is maybe I'm
1:28:08
an idiot, but I spent all those years not trying to show what I
1:28:14
was exactly, you know. So I think people get pretty quickly where I
1:28:18
am. And I have friends who are really far left of me, and
1:28:21
they're still my friends, you know, but we don't think the same.
1:28:25
So yeah, I was probably the most conservative. There's no question. I
1:28:30
think that probably everybody knew. I thought the masking thing was just like,
1:28:33
let's get real, you know. I mean, I was always walking around
1:28:36
with my mask half down, if, I if, but I wanted to
1:28:40
be a good professor like I wanted to play by Okay, okay, but
1:28:42
let's take it out of let's take it out of COVID. I mean,
1:28:44
obviously, you and I both feel very strongly about COVID, and your father
1:28:46
died of covidility on the topic than I than I do. But and I
1:28:51
hope that, By the way, did that give you any credible I'm curious,
1:28:56
did having your father die of COVID give you any credibility with an academy
1:29:00
on your COVID opinions or not? I don't know the answer. Yes,
1:29:05
I guess. All right, Okay, so but let me let me ask
1:29:09
the question in a different way. Taking your experience at both Syracuse and Arizona
1:29:13
State, were the other professors as politically liberal as you and I both expected
1:29:18
they would be? Going in? Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yes,
1:29:23
yes, yes, oh oh my god. You know, John,
1:29:27
Okay, so call me stupid, But the diversity and inclusion thing, you
1:29:31
know, John, and I lived in a world of thirty five years of
1:29:35
fighting for diversity inclusion just because of who I was, Just because of who
1:29:40
I was. I don't never tell you the story when I was in Steubenville
1:29:43
and there was this anchor guy they hired to work next to me and Corey
1:29:45
something or other. And you know what I found out about this guy,
1:29:48
like he got paid more money than me. And I was a little pissed
1:29:51
off. I'm like, why is this guy getting paid more money than me?
1:29:53
Because he couldn't get through his sentence, Like, you know, I
1:29:56
went on to work in flipping national Television Los Angeles, that all kinds of
1:30:00
things. Anyway, he couldn't get through a thing. I find out he's
1:30:01
getting paid more than me. You know what the excuse was, John,
1:30:04
Well, he's got a wife and kids, so we're going to pay him
1:30:06
more. I mean, John, there was my first job. That was
1:30:09
the first job. And then I used to go out and I was patronized.
1:30:12
I lived a life of working. I was diversity and inclusion. I'm
1:30:16
the abodification of diversity and inclusion. And let me tell you when I got
1:30:20
into sports, I can't even begin to tell you the story after story of
1:30:24
the story about the fight that I gave it every single day. So I
1:30:28
never saw myself as anything different than whenever you talked about diversity and inclusion.
1:30:31
I was a woman in journalism and then a woman in sports journalism. And
1:30:35
by the way, John, I think that's why I was hired the way
1:30:39
I was. I think that's why the dean and Syracuse said, oh,
1:30:41
we're bringing Liz in because Liz knows about these things. Right. So when
1:30:45
I went into that world, right, and to me, like, I'm
1:30:49
like, I'm the living, breathing embodiment of it. Right. When I
1:30:55
went into that world and there was this sort of manufactured diversity and inclusion,
1:31:00
I'm leaving one out. It's equity, diversity, equity inclusion. There was
1:31:04
this manufactured diversity, equity and inclusion. It was all manufactured. I always
1:31:12
thought it was the stupidest thing I've ever seen. I'm like, why we
1:31:15
have to do diversity inclusion and equity? Diversity and inclusion in equity I saw
1:31:19
as what I see schools doing. You have to admit people into the schools.
1:31:26
Like I said, Keenan is a good example of diversity. That we
1:31:30
need that in stories because it'll bring something different to stories. We all come
1:31:33
into things from our own point of view. So to me, diversity inclusion
1:31:39
is bring the right people in the room and give them a voice. But
1:31:41
then when we had the right people in the room, then we have to
1:31:45
do diversity and inclusion and equity exercises. Okay, I guess that's true.
1:31:51
But then it made me feel like, are these professors so stupid that they
1:31:54
never teach their students to go out and interview people who don't look like them?
1:31:59
Like literally, the exercises were go out and I taught my students that
1:32:01
go on and talk to somebody who doesn't look like you, got and learned
1:32:04
something about somebody who isn't you? Talk to the person in the line next.
1:32:08
Only we were in COVID it was harder to do these things. Talk
1:32:11
to the person in line at Starbucks who isn't you and learned something about them?
1:32:15
That's part of being a journalist. But there were these sort of manufactured
1:32:18
like it was a big deal. We did our diversity inclusion exercise. Now
1:32:23
Syracuse had those exercises, and I guess it's good to bring to people's minds.
1:32:27
And then I did all kinds of different things. I made them look
1:32:29
at their stories. What type of people did you interview? Where did you
1:32:31
find them? Sometimes it's what you find in the community. But when I
1:32:35
got to Arizona State. Oh my god, John, it was an echo
1:32:41
chamber every day now at Arizona State. I was doing a show with my
1:32:45
students, and every day we put on a television broadcast and news broadcast,
1:32:48
and then every morning the students would come in and then the professors that ran
1:32:53
the TV station would say, okay, let's look at the analytics. Which
1:32:57
stories did well according to the search engine. So then and they would show
1:33:01
which stories did well according to the search engines, and which one's got hits,
1:33:04
and which one's got most likes. And then like a week later,
1:33:09
I hear my students talking and I'm like, oh, you did great,
1:33:11
you got the thing most hits that dada. I'm being encouraging. And when
1:33:15
the students goes, oh, it's not hard, you just look the SEO,
1:33:18
and I was like, oh my god, this is what they learned
1:33:21
that they'll get on a meeting, they get accolades for having the SEO.
1:33:26
You know what a search engine optimization. They'll get more likes because they chose
1:33:30
wheelchair dancing, they chose transgender baseball. They're going to get more likes and
1:33:38
more hits and more that because it's search engine optimization. And if they get
1:33:44
accolades first thing in the morning in the meeting, Boy, you did great,
1:33:46
because you use the right words, then all they're going to do is
1:33:49
search for the right words. So that journalism has become big data and what
1:33:57
gets the most hits. And that's a shocking thing to me that in journalism
1:34:00
and the journalism schools, we've created the echo chamber. And by then at
1:34:05
Arizona State, I could do nothing to teach a change and not because that's
1:34:10
their system. And that was really a shocking system to me, John,
1:34:13
because all the stories the students were doing I had done thirty years ago,
1:34:16
and they all thought they were brand new. They all thought they were wheelchair
1:34:20
dance team that was new to them. Only I think I did it in
1:34:24
Stupenville transgender meetings. Only I did that story thirty years ago. Transgender issues
1:34:30
are not new issues, and we have done these stories, yes we have.
1:34:36
So now there's two major things that you mentioned there that I want to
1:34:41
get a little deeper into. First, the equity situation, and really that,
1:34:46
as I talked about constantly, that is at the heart of the whole
1:34:49
matter. Once we change a quality of opportunity to equity of outcome, whether
1:34:55
it's just in the media or everywhere else in society. America is done.
1:35:00
What is your perception of what a straight white male must feel like going through
1:35:08
academia today, based upon your experiences at Syracuse and Arizona State. Should should
1:35:14
they feel comfortable? Should they feel threatened? Should they feel endangered? Should
1:35:17
they feel attacked? What is your perception of that particular topic, John,
1:35:26
First of all, I had mostly straight white men in my classes in Syracuse.
1:35:30
Okay, Now, mostly doesn't mean ninety percent. Mostly Okay, I
1:35:36
can't remember the exact numbers, but let's just say I had fifteen classes were
1:35:40
so gorgeous because I would have like thirteen to fifteen students in my class.
1:35:43
It was so great at Syracuse that type of thing. Right, So if
1:35:46
I say mostly, if I had thirteen to fifteen students, maybe seven were
1:35:50
straight white guys, and then maybe I didn't excited some women, and then
1:35:55
maybe I had some students who of color. You know, I'd like I
1:35:58
always like to talk about the ethnicity because I think ethnicity is at diversity,
1:36:01
and ethnicity is incredibly important because the way people are raised. So I had
1:36:06
mostly that. Now the school was under constant attack for not bringing in the
1:36:14
and I actually made my students do some work on this, and they had
1:36:15
a hard time finding members for not bringing in enough minorities, for not having
1:36:19
enough diversity. But I don't I can't speak to that on a higher level,
1:36:25
whether they did or didn't. So how did how did the straight white
1:36:28
guys in my class feel? We talked about those things. You know,
1:36:31
that has to be an open conversation in the room, right, so we
1:36:34
talked about those things. Um, I think that they my young students,
1:36:40
they were young. I think they failed, you know, for them,
1:36:42
it was just like, this is important. There has to be diversity in
1:36:44
the room. So they probably don't even really so they probably so let me
1:36:47
guess they don't. They were straight white males either don't realize how much under
1:36:51
attacked they are, or they're afraid demension it because otherwise they'll get attacked even
1:36:57
further. That's probably you're not John, I tell you that. The surprise,
1:37:03
I don't know if it's a surprised or not a surprise, or maybe
1:37:05
it was they were just catering to me because they liked me as their professor.
1:37:09
That the students weren't super liberal. That my students were not super liberal.
1:37:15
They were gorgeous. They were. I mean they were. And that's
1:37:17
not because they weren't super liberal super liberal students in my class too. They're
1:37:21
all gorgeous, is what I'm trying to tell you. Is they all had
1:37:25
diversity and thought and feeling and whatever, and as long as they felt safe
1:37:28
to discuss it, it was okay. The problem was they didn't feel safe.
1:37:32
They don't feel safe. They don't feel safe unless they feel as though
1:37:39
because they feel like they have to do what the teachers want them to say,
1:37:42
or they're not going to get good grades. Because that's why I was
1:37:44
telling your Yeah, so then they will probably happen. Then, is they
1:37:48
probably they probably felt a lot safer talking about these things with you than they
1:37:54
would some other professor because they probably picked up right away that you weren't far
1:38:00
left liberal. Yeah, you're probably right about that. But I don't want
1:38:03
this to sound like, oh, they were gorgeous because they were conservative.
1:38:05
I don't know that they were conservative. They were just they were able and
1:38:10
willing to talk about things a little bit more and I can talk about talk
1:38:14
about you know. So the other element of this that I wanted to get
1:38:18
into and you've already touched on it a bit. Is not just the equity
1:38:23
thing, but then the popularity thing. You know very well that one of
1:38:28
my pet peeves is that popularity is now the coin of the realm when it
1:38:32
comes to the media, and that social media has really driven this into the
1:38:36
minds, especially of younger budding journalists, and that truth really is not the
1:38:43
coin of the realm. And frankly, this is how we get to no
1:38:46
one having the balls to do the Jerry Sandusky story properly because that's about truth.
1:38:51
But it's also got risk because it's not popular and you could become very
1:38:55
unpopular with the wrong people if you make the wrong move. So talk to
1:39:00
us. You already referenced, you know how they view success with the you
1:39:04
know, the the you know what's popular on the internet being the gauge of
1:39:10
what a good story is. Talk to me about how the younger generation of
1:39:15
journalists now see that as the way to determine whether a story is quote unquote
1:39:20
good or a story is quote unquote bad. And it has nothing to do
1:39:25
with truth. That's just because that's all there is to it. How many
1:39:29
likes did you get how many people clicked on this? How many you know?
1:39:33
And is the is the SEO? Is the are the key words?
1:39:38
Is that true journalism? My argument is and was to the students at Arizona
1:39:43
State, you shouldn't find journalism on the internet. It shouldn't be something anyone
1:39:48
knows about. It should be something new that if it's something that you get
1:39:54
out there on the search engines, you haven't done your job. And that's
1:39:57
the mistake. That's a popularity contest. And John, yes, still,
1:40:00
I'm going to tell you that still. Now we're working broadcast and digital,
1:40:04
meaning it's visual the stuff that I also taught digital rights writing, okay,
1:40:11
which oftentimes bothers me so much that it doesn't generally. You brought up something
1:40:15
really important with Keenan that that New York bias. Unless it's been written down,
1:40:18
it's not true journalism. Boy, that pisses me off more than anything,
1:40:21
because it's pissed me off for years and years and years. I've had
1:40:25
this major career and it's like, oh, I never wrote anything down,
1:40:28
so I didn't count. Broadcasters were always nobody right anyway, Beauty still plays
1:40:36
a role. Beauty still plays a role. Now young kids are against that,
1:40:43
some of them, a lot of them. I am against that,
1:40:48
very much against that. I do understand that it's nice to I mean,
1:40:51
I I like looking at good looking people. I'm not going to lie to
1:40:55
you. I believe in diversity in this area very much so, and I
1:41:00
believe hold on, hold on a second, hold on a second. So
1:41:04
hold I gotta stop you here, Liz, Okay, hold on, okay,
1:41:08
So you are against the idea of good looking people having an advantage in
1:41:13
a visual medium when I mean, Liz, come on, I know you
1:41:17
have to you have to. You have to acknowledge, right, you have
1:41:20
to acknowledge that your career was dramatically held by the fact that your face looks
1:41:25
fantastic on television. Right, you understand that, correct? Which woman?
1:41:29
Okay, this is this is a completely life is like another podcast. This
1:41:33
is such a complicated issue. It's a such a complicated issue. And yes,
1:41:38
John, I worked my entire career to look a certain way so that
1:41:41
I could keep a job and and and you know, so far it served
1:41:44
me very very well. But there are limitations to that. Now here's where
1:41:47
here's where there's an issue. You don't have to look like a Waif you
1:41:54
can be overweight, you don't have to be white. You and be brown.
1:42:00
You don't have to have straight hair cut. For God's sake, my
1:42:02
hair was the bane of my existence. You can have curly, crazy hair
1:42:08
on and on and on. Right, that's fine, that's fine. But
1:42:11
that diversity is playing a different role now with these younger journalists. That diversity
1:42:15
of look is playing a different role with these younger journalists. John, there's
1:42:19
a role in here that no one never talks about. All right, let's
1:42:24
let's talk about the bigger picture. Let's table the looks situation. I called
1:42:28
you. That's a different topic. Okay, but let's talk in big picture're
1:42:33
here. You know, I'm generally a pessimist, but my view of what's
1:42:38
as bad as journalism is today, I think it's going to get worse because
1:42:43
I believe that what I call institutional memory is going to quickly fade away people
1:42:47
like you and me. You know, I talk with Dan Abrams on News
1:42:50
Nation. You've done the same about the same topic. Where people like Dan
1:42:54
Abrams are not going to be around forever. The people, you know,
1:42:57
people who are now in our our age group, in our fifties, in
1:43:01
ten years or so, maybe maybe longer, maybe less than that, we're
1:43:05
not going to be having a significant voice in all this, and we're going
1:43:11
to be replaced by a generation that has no memory of the way things were
1:43:16
supposed to be in journalism, the way that things have always been done in
1:43:19
journalism, and that the way this younger generation looks at things now, where
1:43:24
popularity is everything and it's all about keeping the job, and it's all about
1:43:29
being woke, and it's all about not getting canceled by cancel culture. That
1:43:33
that will one hundred percent rule the day and there won't even be an objecting
1:43:39
voice to that. And my right or wrong in being that pessimistic, based
1:43:44
upon your experience at Syracuse and Arizona State, I think it's already here.
1:43:48
I think it's already happened at Look at local television. Local television's a joke.
1:43:58
Television is a joke. And look, television is the most important thing
1:44:01
there is, It's way more important than national and cable, and it's turned
1:44:04
into a joke. Your community television, your community broadcasters, were the most
1:44:10
important people in your town, and it's turned into a joke. Turn it
1:44:13
on, what's Oh my God? And the stuff you read online with if
1:44:17
it's they literally use comments from people on Twitter. Oh come on, John,
1:44:24
it's already here. It's not gone, it's already here, and it's
1:44:28
very depressing. Now, was I teaching my students the right thing? Yeah,
1:44:31
John, I was teaching, And so are the other At least the
1:44:34
other professors in Syracuse taught their students the right thing too. They're being taught
1:44:40
the right thing. Now. I'm not going to argue the same thing for
1:44:44
where we were at Arizona State. I can't argue that for them, because
1:44:47
I'm not sure they were. They were taught popularity. Because if you go
1:44:50
only if you start your morning meeting with let's look at the analytics, who's
1:44:56
got the most likes, who's got the most reads, that's an echo chamber.
1:45:01
And that's not it. Because if a story is hard hitting and overnight
1:45:08
it got no looks and no reads and it was really good, did that
1:45:11
make it a bad story? Or maybe Big Daddy just didn't get their hands
1:45:15
on it. How about that thought? How about it's never been reported before?
1:45:18
How about that thought? You know, journalism isn't what you see in
1:45:26
another source. That's the problem all journalism has become something and responding to something
1:45:30
you've seen on another source. Journalism is new and fresh and you've never heard
1:45:35
of it before, and it's risky. That's what's missing, John, But
1:45:41
we do teach it, right. Well, that's well, that's well said,
1:45:45
although I'm going to mark you down for being even more pessimistic than I
1:45:47
am, since you think we're already in the doomed place and I think we're
1:45:51
just gonna get there. We're already there. Okay, all right, Well,
1:45:56
there are other couple of other things I want to talk to you about
1:45:59
aren't directly related certainly to your academic experience, but they certainly are related to
1:46:03
your experience in journalism, and specifically some in sports and some in politics.
1:46:10
I want to start these other topics with the fact that I've considered you to
1:46:14
be my one person focus group on the Republican race in twenty twenty four.
1:46:19
And you know this. I've told you this before, where at the very
1:46:23
very beginning of all this you were on the Trump side. And one of
1:46:28
the reasons why I consider you to be an important focus group is that you
1:46:30
were very anti COVID. You you basically moved to Florida you loved Governor De
1:46:36
Santis's work in Florida during COVID and and thereabouts. And here you are,
1:46:44
obviously someone who's very close to me, doing a podcast with me who's anti
1:46:48
Trump and pro to Santists. And I'm thinking, in my mind, if
1:46:53
Liza be doesn't get on the Desantist train, there's no hope at all for
1:46:58
De Santis. And then and then at some point you seem to get onto
1:47:01
the Santist train, and then you seemed to veer back off the de Santist
1:47:06
train back on the Trump train, specifically after Trump's indictment, and you told
1:47:12
me you really liked how he handled that whole situation and how he manipulated everybody.
1:47:16
So where are you currently as we speak now in middle of late May
1:47:21
of twenty twenty three, Where is Lizabe By one person focus group on the
1:47:26
Trump de Santist question, John, I've always thought the Santist that don't underestimate
1:47:32
the Trump boost that the Santist got during COVID. I've always said this.
1:47:38
I think the media completely ignores it. I don't know if there's been any
1:47:41
research done it, but boots on the ground, eyes on the scene when
1:47:45
I was in Florida during COVID. I was still working in Los Angeles,
1:47:47
but I went to Florida because my family was in Florida. Is in Florida,
1:47:51
they had Trump parades constantly, So in all the places they weren't being
1:47:56
masked, they were literally and we were on the water. Of course,
1:47:59
there were both parades every single day Trump, there were flags. There was
1:48:03
so much Trump during COVID that I think that DeSantis wins the election and the
1:48:09
dada da da da, But there was a huge Trump influence in there.
1:48:13
Okay that never ever, ever, has that ever been looked upon as a
1:48:17
victory for Trump, that DeSantis won in such a big way. But my
1:48:21
eyes saw a victory for Trump. Being down there, I saw a victory
1:48:26
for Trump. So you're talking, hold on you, you're talking about de
1:48:28
santis is gubernatorial victory, and yes, yes, yes, okay, so
1:48:32
okay, but but hold on a second. If why didn't that translate to
1:48:34
anywhere else in the entire country? Lies, if this was about Trump,
1:48:40
why did that not translate to anywhere else in the entire country. I wasn't
1:48:43
anywhere else in the country. I was in Florida, and I saw that
1:48:45
with my own two eyes, right, I saw the Trump, Okay,
1:48:47
of my own two eyes. Okay, Okay, Well, I wasn't anywhere
1:48:49
else. No question that Trump. There's no question that Trump. There's no
1:48:55
question that Trump is popular in Florida. I'm not going to debate you on
1:48:57
that, all right, So so anyway, go ahead, I'm so so
1:49:00
lead me to where you are currently on this question of Trump. Okay,
1:49:03
still, but I still I still so a lot. Okay, So I
1:49:06
still think that that some of what Trump got, or some of what Desanta's
1:49:12
got, was becau because of Trump down to Florida. So there's this big
1:49:15
push now for DeSantis. Right, everybody thinks he's going to be the savior
1:49:18
of the Republican Party. And I don't know if that's the case, John,
1:49:24
I just am not one hundred percent sure he's this. I don't know
1:49:29
what's going on in the world. I don't I don't know. I just
1:49:35
don't know. So I'm listening. I don't always listen to every interview.
1:49:39
I didn't watch the CNN interview with Trump, Okay. I don't know how
1:49:45
any host or reporter can be expected to fact check everything a politician says.
1:49:49
I think that's an unfair assessment. I think that's why you show both sides.
1:49:53
That's both sides, all sides, every side, because reporters can't be
1:49:57
and anchors can't be expected to fact check every thing, and then they're left
1:50:00
going, oh, he's a liar. I listened to Trump's interview with Tucker
1:50:04
Carlson. I listened to it. I sat and listened to the clips of
1:50:08
it that I can get my hands on that I could see, and I
1:50:11
went, what is it the Trump's saying that is so crazy? What is
1:50:15
he saying that is so crazy? I understand people don't like the way he
1:50:18
talks, the way in which he talks, the type of adjectives he uses.
1:50:23
I get those things, okay, if you don't like that, But
1:50:27
it's hard for me to hear the crazy that everybody is always talking about.
1:50:31
John I just and I know the people say, oh, you're not later,
1:50:34
you're not listening. I challenge anybody to sit and really listen to it,
1:50:39
not listen to the analysis. That's where I come from on a lot
1:50:43
of these things. I don't listen to the analysis. I go back to
1:50:45
the source and I listen to the source. And so That's where sometimes I'm
1:50:49
going, wait a minute, what's really going on here? You know?
1:50:54
So where do I stand on the whole thing right now? I don't really
1:50:57
know for sure, but I know that when Trump gets in New York when
1:51:01
he got accused of raping someone, he didn't get he didn't in a civil
1:51:05
case in New York City, but he didn't get convicted in the civil case
1:51:11
of the rape. He got convicted of sexual abuse and us what was it?
1:51:16
Defamation? Defamation respect something about a woman who accused him of rape,
1:51:20
and fifty one percent is the threshold and it's a New York jury that it's
1:51:27
like laughable to me, And that when I step out of politics and I
1:51:30
kind of look at the people around me, and I say to myself,
1:51:33
what is the American public going to respond to? And I believe, and
1:51:39
you all can call them the great Trump supporters and the Trump core group,
1:51:44
but I believe Americans what they do respond to is they don't like to see
1:51:48
people ganged up on. They can smell something that isn't right, and they
1:51:56
know when it's going too far. And I think that's the reaction. Did
1:52:00
you get with Trump? Like he's he's being come, it's ridiculous what they're
1:52:04
doing to the guy. How far are they going to go with this stuff?
1:52:10
And the American people, they're American after all, and they just don't
1:52:15
like to seeing somebody meet up like that, John, And I think,
1:52:19
Liz, I actually agree. I actually agree with a lot of what you
1:52:21
just said. And I it's funny that you said it in the way that
1:52:27
you did, especially since you referenced the Tucker Carlson interview, because it was
1:52:30
Tucker Carlson who I believe began this narrative and Glenbeck helped him that what the
1:52:36
left is doing to Trump is so outrageous that we must nominate Trump in order
1:52:41
to prove to the left that they can't get away with this. And I
1:52:44
knew immediately, Oh, that's going to resonate, And it's clearly resonated with
1:52:49
you, and I'm sure it's resonated with a lot of other people based upon
1:52:53
the polling. But here's what I don't get, Liz. Why can't you
1:52:58
simultaneously say this is a raw deal that Trump is getting on this indictment and
1:53:04
this lawsuit, and they clearly trying to destroy him in any way possible,
1:53:09
and also say, but you know, maybe he's just not worth the hassle.
1:53:15
Maybe we have another option here. Maybe we have an option that's allowed
1:53:19
to serve two terms in office instead of one term in office. Maybe we
1:53:24
have an option that didn't already lose that the guy who's gonna have to run
1:53:27
against the twenty twenty four. Maybe we have a guy who isn't going to
1:53:30
be eighty years old if he happens to win and he's in office, How
1:53:33
is it. I don't understand this, Liz. Explain to me how that's
1:53:36
not an easy thing to do. Where you go, this is outrageous,
1:53:41
but it doesn't mean he should be the nominee. Explain that to me.
1:53:45
How did O J. Simpson get off? Explain that to me? Do
1:53:49
you see what people will do? Follow me on this for a second.
1:53:55
Follow me on this for a second. I'm listening. Oh J. Simpson
1:54:00
got off because the jury decided thanks to Johnny Carson, Johnny what's his name?
1:54:08
Coran, not Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson had very Johnny Carson had very
1:54:13
little to do with you know, I meant Johnny Cochrane, because Johnny Cochrane
1:54:18
painted it as a situation where a black man where the police went after a
1:54:24
black man and that maybe you know they did they they were over zealous and
1:54:29
going after that black man and and maybe this wasn't it. You know,
1:54:31
the glove doesn't fit. You must have quit. Um. And because of
1:54:35
the and because of the culture in Los Angeles. I didn't live in Los
1:54:40
Angeles at that time, but I covered this trial every single day. Because
1:54:43
the culture in Los Angeles that um Rodney King, uh, you know black
1:54:51
people, you know, um uh you know, what's the group I'm trying
1:54:57
to think of the rap group? You know, um at the police,
1:55:00
you know, the culture in La lent itself to We're gonna let O J.
1:55:05
Simpson off because he may have been wrong. Now, if you watched
1:55:08
many documentaries that have pointed into this is how this could have happened, right,
1:55:12
this is how oj could have gotten off. Okay, now why does
1:55:15
that? Why did that follow? Because when you're so wrong, so wrong,
1:55:23
the American people respond to that. If you bring the power of the
1:55:28
law, the might of the courts, and you go after somebody, and
1:55:31
you go after him, the American people are going. If they can do
1:55:33
that to Trump, they can do that to me and that's where they'll stay
1:55:38
hold on, hold on a second, not Liz, Yeah, Liz,
1:55:44
I like it. I actually like where you're going with this. I mean,
1:55:46
I hate that the reality of it, but I was I was skeptical.
1:55:50
I was skeptical at the beginning of where you know, when you started
1:55:53
to go down this path, I'm like, Ojum, And now I say,
1:55:57
I think, I think, I see I think I see where you're
1:56:00
going. Let me let me try to put it in my words, okay,
1:56:02
because I've actually said similar things. And I think the part where you
1:56:05
might confuse people is where you say the American people in this situation, you're
1:56:11
really talking about the Republican base when you mean republic when you say American people,
1:56:15
because to the Republican base, they are kind of like, this is
1:56:19
the analogy I think you're making. The Republican base is similar to black people
1:56:26
in Los Angeles and the way that they feel like they're being treated by the
1:56:29
establishment, by the media, by the elites, by the powers that be,
1:56:33
and that this has happened for so long, over such an extended period
1:56:36
of time, and in such a dramatic fashion that they feel like, you
1:56:40
know, what, Trump may suck oj may be guilty, but go fuck
1:56:45
them because they've been doing it. That's what I think, Okay, And
1:56:51
I mean, you can vilify. You're right, you have to use the
1:56:55
right You're right. I don't use the right terminology. I don't speak like
1:56:57
a political political person. I don't. You're right. It's the Republican base,
1:57:01
and that that's what I see in people. It's just like you and
1:57:05
your laws and your rules and this shit you're shoving down my throat. Okay,
1:57:11
that doesn't make them wrong or meaning or bad them, even though even
1:57:17
though I understand you know what you're saying there, and I think there's some
1:57:21
validity to it, much like OJE being acquitted for a double murder he clearly
1:57:27
committed. Making Donald Trump the nominee doesn't make this situation any better. You
1:57:31
understand where I'm coming. I'm not against your argument on this, and your
1:57:36
argument is with the argument of plenty of other Republicans or more conservative leaning people
1:57:41
will say, why continue to put up with this? Like this is an
1:57:44
unwinnable battle. It's only made the world a worse place because we continue to
1:57:48
get angry about these things. And maybe you guys are right, and maybe
1:57:53
that message will get across to many other voters. But in the meantime,
1:57:59
a Democratic mayor was just elected in in Jacksonville, Florida, which apparently super
1:58:05
rare. Um. You know, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Progressives are beating
1:58:11
Democrats. So in election terminology, John, things have going going further and
1:58:16
further to the left. So the messages I don't know, John, I
1:58:23
don't know them. Well, here's the Republicans aren't voting, the messages aren't
1:58:27
getting out there, they're not I don't know. I mean, you're not
1:58:32
You're right. What Here's what I hear from Lizabebe. I hear that you
1:58:38
are officially undecided. He I hear that you are slightly leaning towards Trump,
1:58:44
but that you are persuadable. Is that Is that a fair assessment where you
1:58:49
currently are? I haven't made in my mind at all. I think,
1:58:54
Okay, here's the most important here's the most important part. All right,
1:58:58
And I'm gonna keep trying on you. I'm not going to give up on
1:59:01
finally persuading you. DeSantis is the right path to take. However, I
1:59:08
really do believe that you are an important one person focus group because if de
1:59:14
Santist was going to pull this off, you would already be in the decantist
1:59:17
camp, and the fact that you're not tells me what's really going to happen
1:59:23
here, and it might not end up being very close at all. And
1:59:27
so I appreciate you being open and honest and transparent about it because I think
1:59:31
your view is important for the reasons I've already articulated that you come at this
1:59:38
from a pretty unique perspective, and if you're not getting it from the desantist
1:59:43
perspective at this point, then that is going to be a really steep mountain
1:59:47
to climb for him, especially given all the news of the day and how
1:59:51
it seems to go. I'm sorry, okay, I've seen some Now I'm
1:59:56
turning to see some really vicious and unfair or attacks on de Santas, and
2:00:00
I think if on his wife, yes, I'm gonna tell you nothing,
2:00:05
we'll upset women more that what his wife does not deserve what I have seen.
2:00:12
Oh, it's very Melannia. It's how they went after Milania Trump,
2:00:15
and I was just like, whoa, whoa, what has Ron de Santas's
2:00:21
wife done for this? And that went again. John. People respond to
2:00:28
when they feel somebody's been wronged and and and you know bad or how bad
2:00:32
that character might be. And believe me, I am not a fan of
2:00:35
the way Trump talks. I don't like to hear some of that. I
2:00:41
mean, it makes me bristle, some of the things that I've heard him
2:00:45
say. But there have been other things he's said that I've just been like,
2:00:47
he's not okay, Well what I never looked at it like you just
2:00:56
said, and you always have a way to look at it in the most
2:00:58
political of all ways, Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson that that's their conspiracy that
2:01:04
if the left is going to be this bad about him, we better get
2:01:06
him on and do some interviews with him and get him elected. And now
2:01:10
he's on CNN and the and the audience at least one fourth of the audience
2:01:14
loved him. That he's that he might not look that back to the American
2:01:16
people. I've never really thought of it like that. If that's a battle
2:01:20
against the left, then then you do a disservice to people. But he
2:01:24
just every time I listened to Trump, I just don't hear the horrible that
2:01:29
everybody wants to point out. Well, I think you're forgetting a lot of
2:01:32
things that happened. I do think. No, I didn't. I don't
2:01:38
forget a lot of the things that happened, John, I don't. What
2:01:41
I see is Joe Biden. What I see is that America elected Joe Biden.
2:01:45
Like, that's the horrible that happened to me, that we have a
2:01:47
guy in office. It's just not fit to be the president of the United
2:01:50
States and a vice president the same it's not fit to be the vice president
2:01:55
of the United States. And that was all because people responded to Trump.
2:01:58
And though I think it's because of COVID. Okay, I don't forget what
2:02:02
happened. I don't forgive it. And yeah, okay, well, um,
2:02:10
I do think that there's a phenomenon with a lot of Republicans. I
2:02:13
don't know if you're in that category or not, but you know, they
2:02:15
fell in love with the bad boy, uh, you know, because he's
2:02:18
fun and uh and now all these years later, they've forgotten all the all
2:02:23
the times that he stood you up or you know, the car ended up
2:02:26
in the ditch in the side of the road, or he was doing drugs,
2:02:29
or he cheated on you or whatever. And all your members the fun
2:02:31
parts, and you think, well, maybe we'll go for the fun guy
2:02:34
again. When the marriage guy is sitting right there, uh, you know,
2:02:38
perfectly waiting and campaign for real, what's he waiting for announcing? Let's
2:02:44
move? Well, you know Sands is going to announce unofficially this week and
2:02:47
he's gonna officially announce the following week. That's that's a done deal. That's
2:02:53
gonna happen. And you know it's I've been saying for months that that's going
2:02:56
to happen. It's never been a mystery. I do think that it is
2:03:00
point based upon your OJ theory, I think Desandis is only shot at winning
2:03:03
this barring, you know, Trump being in prison or physically incapacitated. I
2:03:09
think if Desandis could figure out a way to get himself indicted, ideally in
2:03:15
San Francisco for something related to COVID or transgenderism, then we have a race.
2:03:21
If DeSantis can somehow get indited in San Francisco. Hi, Well,
2:03:29
it depends on you know what. You are being really extreme about it.
2:03:31
But if the media, the liberal media, goes after Desanta Is really really
2:03:35
really really hard, like what like in a way that's just like, WHOA,
2:03:40
Then I think you see it? Then I think you see it on
2:03:44
his wife are a little extreme. It's just like, seriously, well,
2:03:46
there was the political piece on his wife, and there was the political piece
2:03:50
on his wife that was inappropriate. There was the bizarre cover of Time magazine
2:03:56
that made De Santis look as bad as could possibly be. Uh, you
2:03:59
know, we're seeing more and more examples of that. I'm a little baffled
2:04:02
as to why, considering I guess it's because the timing of his announcement.
2:04:05
But he's down forty points plus I'm the national polling I don't understand why he's
2:04:11
the target. But heck, at this point, anything that reshuffles the deck
2:04:14
is good because this current deck ends up in a lost hand for sure.
2:04:16
All Right, a couple of sports stories I want to get your pulse on.
2:04:23
We just had the death of a true legend, Jim Brown, NFL
2:04:27
legend from the Cleveland Browns who became a really integral part of the city of
2:04:31
Los Angeles from the standpoint of trying to stem gang violence and trying to,
2:04:39
I guess, in his mind, help with race relations. So he lived
2:04:42
in Los Angeles most of his life. He had a post an NFL career
2:04:46
as a movie actor and obviously as a sportscaster in Los Angeles. I know
2:04:50
you've had some interaction with Jim Brown. I had only one interaction with him,
2:04:56
Liz, and that was I interviewed him about appending execution here in California.
2:05:00
And Liz, you know me as well as anybody. I've interviewed a
2:05:04
lot of celebrities. I don't get intimidated by anybody. I was intimidated talking
2:05:11
on the phone to Jim Brown, and I will fully acknowledge it, and
2:05:14
it's the only time I've ever experienced it. I was literally afraid of speaking
2:05:18
to Jim Brown on the phone. That's how much presence an intimidation factor he
2:05:24
had. What can you tell us about your experience with Jim Brown? Waitmut,
2:05:28
you have to tell me that story, what execution and what was the
2:05:30
opinion you wanted from him? Well, he was It was a person I
2:05:34
believe was Tookie Williams was about to be executed at San Quentin and the case
2:05:42
related to gang violence in LA and the crips and the bloods and all that,
2:05:46
and so Jim Brown somehow became involved in the story, and I didn't
2:05:51
even know what his opinion was going to be. And maybe that was partially
2:05:55
why I was nervous, because he wouldn't tell us what his position was going
2:06:00
to be, because I could see him coming down on both sides, because
2:06:03
even though he was a liberal, he was kind of an old school liberal,
2:06:06
right, And so my memory is that he actually came out against the
2:06:12
execution, and the execution didn't happen. I don't know if it was because
2:06:16
of Jim Brown, but he was certainly part of the chorus of people saying
2:06:19
that this person who was clearly guilty should not be executed. But but he
2:06:25
was obviously somebody who cared very much about things way beyond sports and had a
2:06:29
voice way beyond sports. And so I just wanted to give you your chance
2:06:32
to to did you have the same kind of feeling of intimidation around him?
2:06:36
I mean, you've been around at least as many celebrities, of not more
2:06:40
than I have. He had that kind of gravitass and presence, did he
2:06:44
not? You know, don Everything you just said sort of sort of matches
2:06:48
up to my experience with Jim Brown. Speaking of Syracuse. He graduated from
2:06:53
Syracuse and he's a hell of an athlete. A lot of things people don't
2:06:58
know about Jim Brown. He was a cross players in the Lacrosse Hall of
2:07:00
Fame. He was I mean, he did everything. He was a great
2:07:04
baseball player. John he golfed up into his late years here. He was
2:07:09
always on the golf circuit. We always saw him out and about at things.
2:07:13
So I had I had interviewed him a couple times, run into him.
2:07:15
But he came in on one of my shows I just do every Friday
2:07:17
night I do. I take over the newscast at ten thirty and from ten
2:07:20
thirty eleven I do sports. I'd do interviews, show whatever I did with
2:07:24
sports. Right, So so they go, laz, you're gonna get the
2:07:28
second half hour of this ten o'clock show from now on, You're gonna do
2:07:30
sports stuff on Friday nights. And I was like, okay, great,
2:07:32
But I had no budget, had like one producer. I'm in Los Angeles,
2:07:38
I got nothing. So I guess Monique his wife. By the way,
2:07:42
I send my condolences to his wife. I've never met any of his
2:07:45
kids, but his wife. Because I dealt directly with Monique, we'd send
2:07:47
an email to Monique and you know, she handled his stuff and could he
2:07:50
come on that type of thing and with a big star like Jim Brown,
2:07:55
and he is a big star, and make no mistake about that. He
2:07:58
was just a legend. And many many ways, you know, oftentimes these
2:08:01
guys wanted, you know, to make sure you had the hair people and
2:08:05
you sent the car to pick them up and done it on. So then
2:08:07
and she's like, yeah, you know, send the car to pick him
2:08:09
up. And I'm like, send a car. So of course Fox hasn't
2:08:11
given me a car to pick up Jim Brown. But my husband at the
2:08:13
time had a Mercedes s whatever, you know, like a big black look
2:08:18
like a look like a car service. I'm like, Charlie, you gotta
2:08:22
go pick up Jim Brown. And he's like, what are you talking about,
2:08:26
Well, you go pick up Jim Brown. And Charlie used to go
2:08:28
with me to games, and he's like he knew wo Jim Brown was.
2:08:31
He was like, yeah, I'm game. So he picks up Jim Brown
2:08:33
from like the Beverly Hills Hotel because Jim was at some event. He brings
2:08:35
him it's like nine o'clock at night. He brings him over to the station,
2:08:39
and so Jim's in the green room and he's like with Charlie and I
2:08:43
can't remember who else was in the green room, but I come over to
2:08:45
say hi to Jim. And I didn't like to talk to my guests too
2:08:48
much before I got them on the air, because I wanted a natural banter
2:08:50
with him. And I walked into the room, I'm like, Hey,
2:08:52
what's up. So you met my husband, Charlie. He goes the driver,
2:08:56
the driver's your husband. So anyway, so Charlie, Jim does the
2:09:05
show with me, right, and I'll tell you about the show and the
2:09:07
things we talked about. But at the end of the show, Charlie drives
2:09:09
Jim home. I wasn't done working. He was on for a segment.
2:09:11
He gets in the car with the Charlie. He goes home. Charlie goes
2:09:13
up to Jim's house and the Hollywood Hills with them. Jim invites him into
2:09:16
the house. They sat down in chit chatted for a while. He signed
2:09:20
a few footballs for Charlie and a guy like Jim Brown, that's what he
2:09:24
did. You know, I could tell you a lot of stories that Jim
2:09:28
Brown was as big as they come. It was Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul
2:09:31
Jabbar, Mohammed Ali. You know, you think Lebron James and whatever,
2:09:37
huh. These this was the guys, right, and it was Raph Johnson
2:09:41
right. That was the era of Jim Brown. And this was when Mohammed
2:09:45
Ali didn't go to Vietnam and he could, you know, he was a
2:09:48
part of that whole era and sitting on panels with these guys and making media
2:09:54
when there was only three networks, you know, making media appearances with these
2:09:56
guys. This was Jim Brown. So when I had Jim Brown on that,
2:10:01
I think it was that show. It was either I'm pretty sure it
2:10:03
was that particular show at that time. There was some time in the twenty
2:10:09
fifteen sixteen something like that, the controversy was over who could say the N
2:10:15
word? Was this acceptable to say the N word? And since that time,
2:10:18
we've come to a place where it's completely unacceptable for anyone but a black
2:10:20
person to use the N word. But that was the discussion Jim Brown and
2:10:24
I had on the air now I cannot recall, and we discussed some other
2:10:28
things I cannot recall if there was anybody else, And I feel like there
2:10:31
might have been one other person on the set with us that day. But
2:10:35
to his credit, he tackled that issue with me on the air live whether
2:10:41
the N word was something people should use, and Jim use the word,
2:10:45
but he said the old You're gonna get me in trouble. You're gonna get
2:10:46
me in trouble with this conversation. I said, I'm not trying to get
2:10:50
you in trouble because all my opinion has always been that no one owns a
2:10:52
word, that if a word's bad, nobody uses a word, or people
2:10:56
use a word at their own discretion, but we don't can't people for using
2:11:01
words, and not one race or one person or one division owns a word.
2:11:05
There's no word police divisions here. You don't fit. You know.
2:11:07
I can go on and on, but we had that discussion, right,
2:11:11
So we discussed that, We discussed his gang, working with LA gangs.
2:11:15
You know, it was a short and tellision and interviews never longer than five
2:11:18
minutes. So it was a short conversation, not like a podcast if we
2:11:20
did a podcast today, you know, and how we might talk with Jim
2:11:24
Brown. Now back to his gravitas. He was intimidating as heck, it
2:11:30
was just who he was. So now I get Jim Brown in, and
2:11:35
I get criticized because Jim Brown was accused of domestic violence more than once.
2:11:39
So I will do all the research and look at all up. This is
2:11:43
before my time. I don't an even and now now I'm a woman,
2:11:46
I'm a female sports anchor, and it's like, do I have to talk
2:11:48
to him about this? Is this something I have to bring up? Is
2:11:50
this important? Is it important to the conversation today? How does this play
2:11:54
a role? Was there anything it was related to? Do I discuss it?
2:11:56
Should I get in trouble for bringing him in? You know, you
2:12:00
always faced that criticism as a female. I think John, you probably has
2:12:03
never felt that. I don't you should. There shouldn't be any difference between
2:12:05
me and you. But as a female, did you have an extra responsibility
2:12:09
in these areas? You know? And I chose not to bring it up.
2:12:13
But it was such a dilemma. It's always a dilemma. I could
2:12:18
talk about Kobe Bryant in the same way. It's always a dilemma. It's
2:12:20
always a discussion that you have to have with your cell phone, with your
2:12:24
producers and blah, blah blah. So that was one of the issues I
2:12:28
had, did I bringing up I never brought it up. It's in its
2:12:30
obituaries, and that's where it belongs. It's not the first thing, it's
2:12:33
not the most important thing, but it's in its obituaries because a person is
2:12:37
the whole of their life. And he did a lot of good. Jim
2:12:41
prompted a hell of a lot of good and he was a legend. You
2:12:46
know, I agree with a lot of what I agree with just about everything.
2:12:48
I agree with almost everything you just said there. To me, the
2:12:50
biggest issue in the in the larger picture with Jim Brown is it sure seems
2:12:56
like we're losing a lot of true legend people that they're never gonna be the
2:13:01
likes of again. And it's it's sad, not just because you're you're seeing
2:13:07
that that generation die away, you know, the Bill Russells and obviously you
2:13:11
know personally we both had a direct connection with Frank o'harris who passed away.
2:13:16
And I don't believe in a natural life, but if there was, if
2:13:20
there is a natter life, I certainly hope that Jim Brown and Franco are
2:13:22
recreating their ill fated forty yard dash challenge that they had in a very in
2:13:28
a very dramatic fashion up in Heaven. And I hope Franco beats his ass.
2:13:31
But but um, I mean, but I think where I'm going with
2:13:35
this, Liz, is that they're not making We can't make stars like we
2:13:41
used to have them. We can't have legends like used to have them.
2:13:46
And it's a lot because of the nature of the media, because you know,
2:13:50
even I mean, yes, Tom Brady is as famous as anybody's gonna
2:13:54
get. But does Tom Brady have the same kind of of mystique as a
2:13:58
Jim Brown. I mean, I don't think so any and he's just been
2:14:05
no. But the world isn't like that, which is, sports is so
2:14:09
much more big business now. Jim Brown left sports because he made more money
2:14:13
in Hollywood and then and then he broke barriers in Hollywood that that possibilities doesn't
2:14:20
really exist. You can make more money being an athlete. Athletes are the
2:14:22
new celebrity. I don't think actors are as big as athletes anymore. So
2:14:26
he had that that was just a different world. Is that's okay, that's
2:14:28
okay, that's what happened, And I'm just I'm just expressing that we've lost
2:14:33
something in this culture that we now live in where there's almost too much exposure,
2:14:39
right, I mean, part of the mystique was, you know,
2:14:43
you only you know a major football player. You only got to see play
2:14:48
maybe fourteen times a year, and that was it. That was the only
2:14:52
time you saw him, and you were lucky if you saw him on national
2:14:54
television a couple of times a year. Now you know, every game's on
2:14:58
television, in every preseason games on television. Yeah, they're doing commercials,
2:15:03
they're on social media. I mean, there's no mistique anymore. And don't
2:15:09
miss step or they don't miss step as far as we can tell. Because
2:15:13
Jim Brown and our current culture would have been canceled. Oh he could have
2:15:16
been canceled. That would have been it. Well. Well, and I
2:15:20
think maybe Aby was able to come back. It's amazing Kobe was able to
2:15:26
come back. Well. I do think there's an even bigger there's an even
2:15:30
bigger issue of the fact that we've killed all the characters, whether you want
2:15:33
to, you know, where you're defining it as legends or characters, because
2:15:35
now to be a character is way too dangerous. I mean, Tom Brady
2:15:43
is mister corporate America. Michael Jordan was mister corporate America. Don't make anybody
2:15:46
upset at you, don't take any controversial opinion, don't tell an off color
2:15:52
joke. You know that that's that's that's what pays. But that's boring as
2:15:56
hell, and that doesn't make you a legend. But Michael Jordan didn't live
2:16:01
in an era of iPhones. Tom Brady does. There's a difference. Michael
2:16:05
Jordan has no flaws that that if it had been iPhones, would have been
2:16:11
caught. Tom Brady does a better job at that. He really does separate
2:16:16
himself somehow, very very well, well grown up in an era. We're
2:16:20
talking about a lot of different things here, but to me, to me,
2:16:22
it's you know, it's it's there. I don't think we're gonna see
2:16:26
the likes of I don't think we've appreciated in sports what we are seeing the
2:16:31
end of, whether it's that two generations ago, the Jim Brown era,
2:16:37
and I also don't think we're and I also don't think we're appreciating what we
2:16:41
just experienced with Tiger Woods. Tom Brady, you know it's coming to the
2:16:48
end with Lebron James. Uh. You know, um, I really think
2:16:52
that it's going to be very difficult in the future to be able to create
2:16:58
this level of stars that we have just experienced because of the media culture having
2:17:03
changed, because they and for no other reason. By the way, in
2:17:07
sports they change teams every three years now and uh and and they make so
2:17:13
much money they can retire early if they want, unless they're Tom Brady.
2:17:16
I just I just think that we've we've lost something that I think Jim Brown's
2:17:20
passing is emblematic of. There's another there's another sports story I want to talk
2:17:24
to you about, which is in some ways a little bit related, although
2:17:30
maybe not, and it deals with the NBA, a league that I have
2:17:33
lost total interest in, even though I used to be a big fan of.
2:17:37
But something happened a couple of weeks ago that that caught my attention,
2:17:39
and that is that the superstar from the Milwaukee Bucks Giannas, I don't even
2:17:45
know how to say, how does he say his last name? I don't
2:17:46
even know how to coo and tenta coupo coupo. Okay, there even it
2:17:52
took me three shots to get it. There you go. But he he's
2:17:56
an absolute superstar in the NBA, and his team was favored to maybe win
2:18:01
the whole thing, and they lost in the first round. And after they
2:18:05
lost in the first round and a major upset, he gave this soliloquy at
2:18:09
a press conference where he talked about how just because you lose doesn't mean your
2:18:16
entire season is a failure. And you know, if this is a failure,
2:18:20
does that mean every time you don't succeed it's failure. And he said
2:18:24
it very eloquently, but the sports media was almost diddling themselves over their reaction
2:18:31
to this, that this was wonderful and how awesome it was that he spoke
2:18:35
out against this culture of winning and that yes, it's right even though the
2:18:41
Bucks choked and lost in the first round of the playoffs, that this was
2:18:43
not failure. And I thought, wow, how much has the sports media
2:18:50
culture changed? Then? When you and I began, you know where we're
2:18:54
now celebrating, Simonia former athletes, right, I mean athletes, right?
2:19:03
What about former athletes? Is that who we're talking about? Or are we
2:19:07
talking about former athletes? So it's wonderful where they former athletes? Well,
2:19:11
it was singling everybody, I mean the narrative seemed to be. It was
2:19:15
one of those things where you had to signal your virtue by saying how awesome
2:19:18
this press conference was. I mean, it went super viral and we're not
2:19:22
living in this world where Simone Biles went at them. Question is no new?
2:19:31
Oh my godhead. We have asked that question of people like Janis for
2:19:37
years and years and years. Oh. I felt like it was like,
2:19:39
oh, here we go. We gotta ask Kope if the season has been
2:19:41
a failure. First of all, Yes, the season's a failure. Yes,
2:19:46
it's a failure, and everybody knows it. This is the high stakes
2:19:50
world of sports, where there's a lot of money in play, where the
2:19:56
where the contracts are huge, where people's contract next year based on what they
2:20:00
did last year. Right, So it's all a bunch of bs. Jannie
2:20:03
is in the younger generation. What was that all about? And by the
2:20:09
way, did that just make him feel better because he failed? Did it
2:20:11
feel better to just go off? It's not all about winning. Kobe Bryant,
2:20:16
but he's turning in his grave right now. I can't. I would
2:20:20
agree with I would agree with Kobe's reaction and that and that's Partially why I'm
2:20:24
mentioning this is that we were now in a completely different culture where there is
2:20:28
no Kobe around to say, what the hell was that? And we have
2:20:33
these media, and we have these media woosies who are glowingly praising this excuse
2:20:41
for a catastrophic loss. And of course the funniest part of the whole thing
2:20:46
was there's a weak worth of coverage of how awesome this was and how right
2:20:52
he was that the season wasn't a failure. And then the Bucks five,
2:20:56
with their head coach and and and nobody in the media went back and said,
2:21:01
well, wait a minute, I guess it really was a failure.
2:21:03
They he just got his head coach fired. For a second. Think about
2:21:09
that for a second. Oh, Yannis, it's not a failure, but
2:21:11
they fired the coach. Yannis must feel like an ass, he said,
2:21:15
head. He doesn't feel that way, Liz, because no one is telling
2:21:18
him that. Everyone is praising him for what you failed. But that's not
2:21:26
That's not the way he's looking at it. It is a failure. It's
2:21:31
a failure for Lebron, it's a failure for Steph Curry. It's a failure
2:21:35
for Yannis. It's a failure for Let's go down the line. Let's just
2:21:39
keep talking about who. It'll be a failure for the next guy, the
2:21:43
next guy, the next Jimmy Butler. Let's just keep talking about who.
2:21:46
It's gonna be failure if they don't win the championship. Damn right, they
2:21:48
failed, Damn right, they failed. Let's ask Tom Brady if it was
2:21:50
a failure when he didn't win the Super Bowl. Let's ask him, because
2:21:54
that's why he went to Tampa to prove he could do it alone. We're
2:21:58
on the same page here. But I think the most important part of this
2:22:01
and why it matters way beyond just the sports media being a bunch of liberal
2:22:05
woosies and virtue signalers. And you know, when a black man gives an
2:22:09
eloquent speech about how I didn't fail, you feel like this intrinsic need to
2:22:13
support him in very dramatic ways. This goes to the heart of who we
2:22:18
are as a country. I mean, I mentioned Simone Biles. That to
2:22:22
me was a seminal moment where Simone Biles was the most celebrated star the last
2:22:28
Olympics. I mean millions of dollars of promotion to put into her, and
2:22:31
she quits. She quits over mental anguish, and I get, okay,
2:22:39
I'm not let me finish for a second list. I get not killing her.
2:22:43
I get not killing her. But too now feel as if you must
2:22:48
praise the person for their failure for quitting. What kind of what kind of
2:22:54
lesson does that teach not just young kids, but the entire culture. I
2:23:00
mean, that has an impact, and that's all being driven by liberal woosies
2:23:05
in the sports media. Am I right about that? Absolutely positively, John.
2:23:09
One of the things that bothers me the most about transgender women competing in
2:23:15
women's sports. I get confused by the language. I'm not trying to be
2:23:18
a jerk, transgender women competing in women's sports. I heard somebody, darn
2:23:24
it, John, I don't remember where I was, but it was a
2:23:24
man who stood up and said, this is about having fun. It's not
2:23:30
And I thought to myself, what what what are you talking about? It's
2:23:33
not a fun. This is about high performance athletes and records and money and
2:23:37
endorsements. It's not a fun. This is people who put their entire dedication
2:23:43
of their entire lives. They woke up early in the morning, they do
2:23:45
late at night. Their parents spend a fortune. This isn't fun, This
2:23:48
isn't fun. This is a job. These people are. These people are
2:23:52
blessed to have the athletic ability to do something. You don't do it based
2:23:58
on your emotions. You know what, John, People don't raise their families
2:24:03
based on their emotions. They raise their families. Moms don't get out of
2:24:07
bed in the morning sick as a dog to take care of their children based
2:24:11
on their emotions because they'd stay in bed. So it's not based on your
2:24:15
emotions. Families are based on your emotions. Somehow our world, if our
2:24:20
athletes can't outperform their emotions, then they don't deserve to win. Then their
2:24:24
losers. I'll perform your flipping motions, emotions. In fact, that's what
2:24:30
you learn, that's how you train. That's how athletes train. Do you
2:24:33
know how athletes? Traine on athletes train at the highest levels to outperform their
2:24:37
emotions. That their emotions don't matter. That this is about strategy and using
2:24:43
the ability you have as an athlete. All that training you outperform your emotion
2:24:48
and it's about winning because you'd never win a gold if you didn't. So
2:24:52
sorry, you can't praise that. You have to acknowledge it, but not
2:24:56
praise it. You can acknowledge it. Was it a failure of a season?
2:25:01
Yeah, we didn't get the brass ring. I acknowledge we didn't get
2:25:05
the brass ring. But you cannot praise that. And no athlete in the
2:25:09
right mind would tell you that they weren't trained to outperform their emotions. And
2:25:15
no mother, no mother, and no father. John, was the ever
2:25:18
day you didn't want to get out of bed and be a dad? Probably,
2:25:22
John, But you did it anyway. So I'll perform your emotion.
2:25:26
Okay, I'll perform your emotion. You know. That's what this is about.
2:25:31
And sports. Sports. You know why I love sports, joke,
2:25:33
John, because sports truly is it's it's a reflection of society. It really
2:25:41
is a microcosm of society. That's why we love it so much, because
2:25:45
we outperform ourselves every day we do. So let's let ourselves do that.
2:25:48
Oh did I give a good enough speech? There? Man? I got
2:25:50
emotional. I do get pissed at all. Right, A couple other quick
2:25:56
things in our remaining type. Honest you, John, you should be like
2:26:00
damn Rightley. I wish I looked like him. Um, But so all
2:26:05
right, so I want to ask you about um somewhat related since you mentioned
2:26:09
transgender sports. You know, when I was a kid, as every red
2:26:16
blooded American boy did, I waited for the Sports Illustrated to come every week.
2:26:22
It was the highlight of my week. And then in the wintertime,
2:26:26
when Christy Brinkley was on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, it
2:26:31
was literally a life changing experience for me and and altered my perspective on everything,
2:26:37
especially girls at a you know whatever. I was twelve, thirteen,
2:26:41
fourteen years old, and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition has become beyond a woke
2:26:50
uh you know, garbage fest, a dump dumpster file fire of epic proportions.
2:26:56
And this particular Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition which came out, and if you
2:27:01
had told me this ten years ago, I would have said, there is
2:27:05
no effing way possible that this has occur. But they had among their cover
2:27:11
people, they had multiple cover people, which I hate because of course that
2:27:16
diminishes the value of any cover when you when you feel like you have to
2:27:18
fragment and splinter all these different covers for People's Choices, But they had Martha
2:27:26
Stewart and a person who was born a male who is now attempting to biologically
2:27:33
be a female as two of their four cover models for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit
2:27:41
edition as a woman and a sportscaster. And I know you know someone who
2:27:46
felt I think similar ways about Sports Illustrated in the past. What was your
2:27:52
perspective on that monstrosity? I love Making Fox and I could stare at her
2:27:58
forever. That girl is so good looking that yes, I love her on
2:28:01
the cover, Like I see Megan Fox and what's machine Gun Kelly? And
2:28:05
I'm just like, I can't get enough of them, Like you know,
2:28:07
I can't get enough of how are they painting in her nails? What are
2:28:09
they wearing? What do they look like? Like? They're the such beautiful
2:28:13
people to me, right, that to me, that was the choice.
2:28:16
Megan Fox was the choice, right. And her hairs did you see her,
2:28:18
Like she went to the party and you just got this long red hair
2:28:20
and her boobs are sticking out, and I'm just like, damn, that
2:28:22
girl's good looking, right, I'm just like, how does she look like
2:28:26
that? Right? She's had three kids, you know, like, that's
2:28:28
just like craziness to me. Now, I've always thought that way about the
2:28:33
beautiful models of Victoria's Secret Giselle. I mean, holy shit, Gesell's had
2:28:37
a couple of kids. She's still thought that she's like unbelievable looking. I've
2:28:41
seen her in person, Like, it's unbelievable have people that good looking?
2:28:48
Let me think whatever? Whatever else? Right, right, Christie Brinkley go
2:28:50
back to wear her kids. Now. My story about Sports Illustrated is that
2:28:54
was my favorite magazine. I mean, Vogue nothing, Sports Illustrated was my
2:29:01
favorite magazine. And it's because the stories were so flipping good. The writers
2:29:05
were so incredible, the words they used were so amazing. Their movies were
2:29:09
made off of the stories written in Sports Illustrated. Right, you could go
2:29:13
on about how unbelievable Sports Illustrated it was, and then it failed, and
2:29:18
it failed years ago, John, it stopped years ago. I don't remember
2:29:20
the last time I read Sports Illustrated. First of all, I'd love to
2:29:22
get it in my hand. You know, I loved it in my hand.
2:29:26
Online, forget it. You can't do anything online without magazine. But
2:29:28
so it failed. It failed a long time ago. I don't know who
2:29:33
their audience is. I was their audience. Look, I'm not gonna lie
2:29:37
to you, John. Yeah, I would read the Sports Illustrate, I
2:29:39
would do the Swimsuit issue, and I would feel like a half a person,
2:29:43
Like I would feel like I was so inadequate. I didn't look like
2:29:45
those women. Right. One of my girlfriends, though, she makes swimwear
2:29:48
and she's got her swimwear and the Sports Illustrated issues, and I always thought
2:29:50
that was cool. But me feeling inadequate as a person because the beautiful women
2:29:56
in Sports Illustrated Swimmer has nothing to do with Sports Illustrated Swimmer. It had
2:29:58
everything to do with me, right, So I'm not gonna lie to you
2:30:01
and pretend like it was great for my psyche when I saw all these beautiful
2:30:05
women. I'm not gonna lie to you. But that doesn't mean those great,
2:30:09
good looking, beautiful women shouldn't be out there, you know. But
2:30:11
U But so, I don't know what the audience for Sports Illustrated is because
2:30:16
me, I was their audience. You you were their audience. I wasn't
2:30:22
their audience necessarily for the swimmer addition, although I think it was my favorite.
2:30:24
I think it was my favorite one. I think it really was my
2:30:28
favorite one every year because I couldn't wait to see it, only because I
2:30:31
love how they look, right, I want to. I don't know that's
2:30:35
why, but I loved it for I just loved it for what I learned
2:30:39
and the stories and so those that's so far gone that I think it's like
2:30:43
anything else. If you want to get attention and clicks, you have to
2:30:46
do something attention grabbing and attention grabbing. Yeah, Martha Stewart, who cares?
2:30:52
But transgender is right in tune with what we'll get a click. And
2:30:56
it goes back to school. It goes back to the schools. What we'll
2:31:01
get you a click? And so what it's not just what we teach in
2:31:05
our universities, it's what we're doing in our publications. What we'll get you
2:31:07
a click. The transgender issue right now, get you a click. I
2:31:11
mean today they're talking. Don't even I don't even. I don't even,
2:31:13
Liz. I don't even think it gets your clicks. I don't even think
2:31:16
transgender putting a transgender model get your clicks edition. No one looks at the
2:31:24
No one. I think it gets you. I think it gets you woke
2:31:26
points, and that's about all it does. I have an interesting story.
2:31:30
I don't even think I've ever told you this. I may, but I
2:31:31
don't think I have. Um. This would have been back in around twenty
2:31:35
ten, twenty eleven, and there was an event locally where the head of
2:31:43
Sports Illustrated Photography was doing an exhibition and at presentation, and I went to
2:31:48
it simply out of curiosity. By the way, weirdly, Michael Ducoccus was
2:31:52
in the crowd. There's only like fifty people there, Mike, Michael,
2:31:56
Michael Dacus was in the crowd, so so weird, it's like literally fifty
2:32:01
sixty people there, and one of it was Michael Decoccus, the nineteen eighty
2:32:03
eight Democratic presidential nominee, and John Zickler was one of them. So so,
2:32:09
so here's the point. And this guy was was so excited about what
2:32:15
Sports Illustrated was going to do digitally and that this was going to be the
2:32:18
greatest thing for the magazine once it went mostly digital and online. And I'm
2:32:24
like, oh my god, this guy doesn't understand what's going to happen.
2:32:28
So I go up afterwards. You know, how these events happen you know,
2:32:31
and the the actual event, and then people come up to ask direct
2:32:35
questions and there's a bunch of people standing around, and you also know,
2:32:37
I can you know when I'm gonna ask a question. No one's gonna stop
2:32:41
me, right, So so I say to this guy. They say,
2:32:45
you do understand that as soon as the cover is put online and that that
2:32:52
will mean that there's no way you will keep it up there for seven days
2:32:58
because it will not be the best way to get clicks. And as soon
2:33:03
as you dropped the cover from being up there for seven days, it ceases
2:33:07
to be important. And that the cover of Sports Illustrated is literally the essence
2:33:13
of your magazine. You're going to destroy. You're going to destroy your greatest
2:33:20
asset, which is the value of being on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
2:33:24
And he looked at me like I was from freaking Mars, like, what
2:33:28
are you talking about. No, we're gonna we will stand by the cover.
2:33:31
The cover will still be just as important. And I think I've been
2:33:33
pretty damn vindicated in that where now here we are. Not that long later,
2:33:37
twenty twenty three, we got multiple covers of the swimsuit model and one
2:33:43
of them is Martha Stewart and one of them person that was born with a
2:33:46
penis. I mean, what the freaking hell, And so it's just to
2:33:52
me it's emblematic. A couple of years ago, I was a little bit
2:33:56
bothered that they went with overweight models or whatever. But I do think that
2:34:00
actually Graham's unbelievably good looking, you know. But but that movement towards fat
2:34:05
is beautiful has been a little disturbing for me, right, and I agree
2:34:09
with that. I agree with that from this perspective, fat is unhealthy if
2:34:13
it's to a certain degree, and we've we are so now the media is
2:34:18
so intent on giving fat people an excuse and make themselves feel better about themselves
2:34:26
because it's good for media consumption. I mean, fat people will consume media
2:34:28
that makes them feel better about their fatness, and so I think that that
2:34:33
is why the media and in advertising has gone in that particular direction. But
2:34:37
it's not healthy in most cases, not at all. Yeah, I was
2:34:43
satisfied with you know, stars, they're just like us. They have cellulite,
2:34:46
like I don't need to give that are because it's not healthy and it's
2:34:50
diabetes and it's a lot of other things. But yet I would be It's
2:34:54
cruelty. Apparently, according to the woke world, the things I say.
2:35:00
All right, two more things with Lizabebian are remaining time, and you've been
2:35:03
generous with your time, so thank you for that. I have to ask
2:35:07
you about the news story that exploded for a very short period of time and
2:35:13
then completely dissipated when Harry and Meghan Markle Prince Ari and Megan Markle announced last
2:35:20
week that while in New York City that they had experienced a two hour car
2:35:28
chase that resulted in a quote near catastrophic car chase. No one was injured,
2:35:35
there were no actual accidents, but they put out a statement condemning the
2:35:37
paparazzi for chasing them around New York City allegedly for two hours, although no
2:35:43
one understood how that was logistically possible in New York City, and it turns
2:35:46
out that that was not actually accurate. But the phrase that really caught everyone's
2:35:50
attention was near catastrophic car chase, which of course made everyone immediately think about
2:35:56
what happened with Princess Diana and her dad, which was as a result of
2:36:01
a paparazzi chase with her car in Paris, France, resulting in the death
2:36:07
of her and her boyfriend at the time. And I'm curious, as someone
2:36:11
who I'm sure was interested in this story, what year take on on the
2:36:16
story itself as well as the media coverage of it. I saw the statement,
2:36:22
and I saw the headlines, and I went ding ing ing ing nmi,
2:36:26
meaning like that, because it was like near catastrophic, like done on
2:36:28
purpose. Wording like that John in my entire experience in all these years.
2:36:35
And I live in Los Angeles, Californias, and not that I I mean,
2:36:37
I would rise to new level of anything. But I've even had TMZ
2:36:41
take pictures of me. But for God's sake, the pap first thought is
2:36:46
the paparazzi in United States does not act like this. It just does not.
2:36:50
I have never seen it ever, and I live in Los Angeles.
2:36:54
Okay. I covered the death of Princess Diana the when what went on there
2:37:01
was a completely level but the different level of what goes on. But they
2:37:05
wanted, they wanted that he's been trying to turn Megan into Diana from the
2:37:09
get go. That is his He's got some weird problem he's and she feeds
2:37:16
his weird problem, some strange this he's never gotten over his mother. He
2:37:20
has mental illness somehow, and he doesn't treat himself correctly because he's walked away
2:37:24
from his entire family over this woman who wants attention. Right, So dinging
2:37:28
dinging ding ding, John, one thing that you should be happy about because
2:37:33
the media is so flipp and gullible they always accept everything that's put out and
2:37:35
clearly the windsor's here or whatever they call themselves, the Sussex is I love
2:37:41
a family that just makes up their last names, or I've now done you,
2:37:46
the Sussex is anyway, the Sussex is put out a statement. They
2:37:50
apparently still think the media is this scullible. But the media drew a line,
2:37:54
John, The media actually drew a line because even the women on the
2:37:56
view didn't believe the story. Even the women on the view laid down the
2:38:01
law on that one because there was no evidence and it made no sense whatsoever.
2:38:05
And John, you and I spent an entire how many hours is our
2:38:09
podcast about how things don't make sense with the benefit of hindsight, you know
2:38:13
how how if things don't make sense, they don't make sense. And so
2:38:20
pay attention to that. This didn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that
2:38:24
there's a two hour car chase and there was no helicopter overhead. It doesn't
2:38:26
make sense that no one ever got wind, there was no police chatter of
2:38:30
a two hour car chase? Are these two so stupid? But my thinking
2:38:35
isn't that they're so stupid. My thinking is they're dying for attention. That's
2:38:39
how they get attention. Things aren't selling the way they should. Let's make
2:38:43
a controversy to get things to sell. That we're the fools in the end,
2:38:48
because all the headlines go out and then everybody debunks the headlines, and
2:38:52
then every commentator in America talks about it, and now they're back in the
2:38:56
news. So we're the fools. Okay, they put the stay went out
2:39:00
and we just buy it. There was a time in the media, John,
2:39:03
I don't know if you'll remember this time, but this was a time
2:39:05
before cell phones. It was a time when we had to go to police
2:39:07
stations, We had to read police blotters that if we got a statement like
2:39:11
that, and we probably wouldn't even get a statement like that. We never
2:39:16
we wouldn't have gotten a statement like that because there weren't PR people like this.
2:39:18
But when I started in media in the late eighties and early nineties,
2:39:22
you would go to a police station. You would check the police. You
2:39:24
would literally flip through pages in a police blot or to see what the reports
2:39:28
were that if you got a statement like that, you wouldn't just put it
2:39:31
on because you'd have to wait. So you'd have to instead of just waiting
2:39:35
on something, you'd make a few phone calls and you'd check it, and
2:39:37
then before ever hit the public consciousness, you would have different parts of the
2:39:43
story. So the headline wouldn't read Chase blah blah blah catastrophic. It would
2:39:50
have said something along the lines of claims of Chase not substantiated. That's what
2:39:54
it would have done. But in the rush and the social media and the
2:40:00
ESPR people where this is a it's a racket. The media is a racket.
2:40:05
It's a racket, and the Sussexes played into the racket. And we're
2:40:11
all the fools because we've wasted our breath talking about them. Will they now
2:40:13
have sold more spare books? Spare which I will never read. I will
2:40:18
never read that stupid book. However, I'll read all kinds of books about
2:40:24
his brother and Kate, and I can't get enough of willing Kate, and
2:40:28
I can't get enough of how great looking Kate is. Every time I see
2:40:31
are another couple where I'm always like, I can't wait to see them,
2:40:33
I can't wait to see their kids. Oh my god, that youngest one.
2:40:35
I love them. That's what goes on with me. But these two
2:40:37
phonies, the Sussexes, are playing all of us as fools in the United
2:40:41
States of America, of America. But they're stupid things that we're all talking
2:40:46
about. Well, think about how think about, Liz, how insane From
2:40:52
a common sense standpoint, you kind of already got into this issue. It
2:40:56
was for them to release a statement next day, right, I mean,
2:41:01
if something horrendous had actually happened, we would have known about it instantaneously.
2:41:09
It's New York City, It's New York City. It's New York City.
2:41:15
But then I have to admit, Liz, even I was fooled for about
2:41:20
ten seconds because why I saw the Let me let me explain why. Because
2:41:24
when I saw the phrase, the phrase near catastrophic car chase, in my
2:41:33
brain, I saw car crash. Because I'm thinking, why would you connect
2:41:41
catastrophic to chase. That's not doesn't make any sense. So I'm thinking in
2:41:46
my brain was going, wait, a near catastrophic car crash, and why
2:41:52
haven't we seen any video of this? And then I started to piece all
2:41:56
this together and oh, well, wait a minute, this is all bullshit.
2:41:58
This it's bullshit. Even if it wasn't Harry and Meghan Markle, it
2:42:03
would be obviously bullshit. And the media played it for about, I don't
2:42:09
know, an hour or two before they started to realize Hold on a second,
2:42:13
this is the story is ridiculous. I think we should wrong, John,
2:42:16
You're wrong about that. They didn't play it until they realized it was
2:42:18
ridiculous. The fact they realized there ridiculous all played right into it. You're
2:42:22
missing my point entirely. I would like to see their Netflix special. Did
2:42:26
they suddenly over the last few days get more viewers on the Netflix special?
2:42:31
Don't they have a podcast of some sort? How many more books to spare?
2:42:33
Where are the real, cold hard facts of what's going on here?
2:42:37
The thing is, I don't know that we could ever get the cold heart
2:42:39
facts, but that's good investigative journalists. Let's see what really goes on.
2:42:43
Maybe everything dipped down and then all of a sudden they created a controversy and
2:42:46
ooh, they got some more sales or more viewers. Do you see what
2:42:50
I'm saying is this is this is Lindsay Lohan, it's Paris Hilton's. Remember
2:42:54
we used to criticize these girls. They would go out. Do you remember
2:42:58
the days of these guys? Love Paras Hilm. She's just so adorable to
2:43:01
me. But it was like, if they needed a little publicity, they
2:43:03
called paparazzi and said Lindsay Lohan was famous for this, I'm gonna be here,
2:43:07
come and take my picture. And then it would be like, oh
2:43:09
my god, they took my picture. That's the sussexes. We're gonna be
2:43:15
we're gonna be leaving exactly eleven oh eight. Have your guy outside. Okay,
2:43:18
we're gonna sneak out the back door. Just have the paparazzi positioned back
2:43:22
there. And then you know that's the bullshit. Do you know? They
2:43:24
make the calls and then it sells. Something sells. Maybe there's a photograph
2:43:30
that is going to come out, and they get a cut of that photograph
2:43:31
because that's the game. That's the Lindsay Lohan Paris Hilton, Britney Spears game
2:43:37
they do and and Caked and Kardashians. That's the game they're playing. The
2:43:41
game they probably took Kardashian one o one. I think it's of course now,
2:43:48
so you think you're saying that we're not too far away from Megan Markle
2:43:50
purposely getting out of a limousine panny lists, so that the yeah, yoh,
2:43:58
yeah, okay comment, because remember when that was the biggest thing in
2:44:01
paparazzi. It was basically a rite of passage for any female in Los Angeles
2:44:07
to have the penniless shot coming out of the limits, the outrage by Prince
2:44:11
Henry. Oh, I can't wait for that day. This was a joke
2:44:16
to us. But we're going to replay this three years from now. But
2:44:20
well, Liz, Mike, my daughters Diana and Grace are so into the
2:44:24
whole Harry and Meghan thing from the south Park perspective where they mock Harry and
2:44:31
Megan constantly for their Worldwide Privacy Tour, which is what south Park described as
2:44:37
as what Harry and Meghan are doing. And they, I mean, they
2:44:39
totally get it. They hate Megan marco now and South Park is their mantra.
2:44:45
They asked me to play the south Park clips about Harry and Megan all
2:44:48
the time. And that's where I'm going to finish, because I do have
2:44:50
an update on the story that you and I talked extensively. Thing one thing
2:44:54
before you give me update, Meghan Marcole is Chris Jenner, just keep that
2:45:00
in your brain. Megan Markle is Chris Jenner. They need money and she
2:45:05
knows how to manufacture the money, and that's what's going on with them.
2:45:09
So buy into it. People keep buying it because it doesn't matter good or
2:45:13
bad. All right, go ahead. Just before Christmas of last year,
2:45:16
when we were doing the Death of Journalism together, you and I did a
2:45:20
very extensive I don't know if it was the full podcast, but it was.
2:45:24
It was a large portion of an episode about the situation involving my then
2:45:30
ten year old daughter Grace and Santa Claus and how it was that I was
2:45:35
trying to get us through this Christmas and I went to extraordinary lens somewhat successfully,
2:45:43
although not perfectly, to get us through this past Christmas. Because there's
2:45:48
never been a situation where I have seen more love between two human beings than
2:45:56
my daughter Grace and Santa Claus. I mean, Grace loves Christmas in general
2:46:01
and she loves Santa Claus, two depths that I can't even fully comprehend.
2:46:07
And we have the pictures in the video to prove it well. As I
2:46:11
posted on Twitter a couple of days ago, and I know you saw this
2:46:15
because I sent it to you. Grace finally came to me and asked for
2:46:20
the truth because her friends at school were telling her that what she believed was
2:46:26
not true, and I had to basically come clean. I tried to do
2:46:31
it in the nicest, softest way possible, and I think I think I
2:46:37
accomplished this. I also emphasized that she was now in charge of preserving the
2:46:43
magic for her younger daughter, Diana. Then there were tears and there were
2:46:48
hugs, and it was something that I've been dreading for a very as you
2:46:54
know, a very very, very long time, because on the issue of
2:46:56
Santa, I'm a massive hypocrite because I do not think that Santa is particularly
2:47:01
a great idea and in the global but because Grace was so into it,
2:47:07
I was determined to protect Santa at all costs until there were no other options,
2:47:13
which happened this week, And so I wanted to give you that update.
2:47:16
And if there was anything you wanted to add or ask about that,
2:47:20
this would be your opportunity to do that. You have to give me the
2:47:24
words that you used when you broke down and told her the truth. Well,
2:47:30
what I did was I think I alluded to this in our conversation about
2:47:33
this. The best movie ever made about this topic is Polar Express, the
2:47:41
Tom Hanks movie. It's animated, where Tom Hanks is the voice and Polar
2:47:48
Express really deals with this battle of of of a kid who is questioning everything
2:47:56
and and what I tried to, you know. And at the end of
2:48:00
that movie, the parents can no longer hear the bells the bell that Santa
2:48:05
gave the kid, and the sister can no longer hear the bell, but
2:48:11
he can always hear the bell because he believes. And so I basically said
2:48:18
to her that it's a lot like that, that it's it's about the spirit
2:48:24
of the holiday, and that as long as you believe in the spirit,
2:48:28
it will live in some shape or form and the magic will survive. But
2:48:33
that's up to you, and that you're in charge of that for your sister
2:48:37
Diana. So that was how I good. So there are movies like that,
2:48:43
John, that's why to help parents like you in situations like this.
2:48:46
And here's my thought. I remember this in a philosophy class from college,
2:48:52
that there are good lies. That is a lie always a bad thing,
2:48:58
and it's it was. It was an fix class, a philosophy's class.
2:49:01
And when you think about it, you think really hard about it, you
2:49:03
can come up with a lot of examples when lying is a good thing,
2:49:05
when lying is the best thing, And that's a very good lesson. Lying
2:49:11
is sometimes the best thing. Like Anne Frank, that's a great example,
2:49:18
right, Lying is sometimes the best way to do things. So there aren't
2:49:22
black and white, John, And I think that in your world because you're
2:49:24
John Ziggler. I know you, everything's so black and white all the time,
2:49:30
and you get so frustrated and I see the gray a lot more than
2:49:35
you do, and you and I admire I admire it that black and white.
2:49:39
I admire it, but I also don't think it's always realistic. And
2:49:43
that sometimes John, in life you have to lie. Whether sometimes it's just
2:49:50
the right thing to do, it's the right thing to do. I honestly
2:49:54
don't know, Liz. When this is all said and done, now,
2:49:58
I don't know what and it was the right thing to do or not.
2:50:01
I don't. I honestly do not know. I feel sad, but also
2:50:05
relieved that it appears to be over, because this was bothering me for years,
2:50:11
and I mean I hated so much of it. I mean I was
2:50:16
going against my own instincts on all of it, trying to preserve the magic,
2:50:20
and um, you know, obviously Christmas will be different this year.
2:50:24
My guess is, by the way, that our six year old daughter is
2:50:28
going to figure this out incredibly fast. It'll be it'll be a lot easier
2:50:35
for Diana. It'll be a lot easier for don't worry that my senses that
2:50:41
we ever have the same conversation with Diana, She's going to be like,
2:50:45
no shit, Sherlocke. Of course, I can't wait, you know what,
2:50:52
I can't wait for when they get older, like older and we could
2:50:54
really have this discussion with them, and how cute it's going to be.
2:50:56
Don't worry, Johnny, you did a good thing. It's all good.
2:51:00
By the way, You're right, hey, By the way, what did
2:51:03
your wife say? She wasn't. She's my wife. So nothing I do
2:51:09
is correct. I mean, that's just the way you no marriage, That's
2:51:13
the way it works. There's nothing I could have done that would have been
2:51:16
exactly correct. I thought I handled it about as well as I could have,
2:51:20
considering I had no notice. I mean, this came out of nowhere,
2:51:24
you know, in the middle of May. So um, but it's
2:51:28
something I had thought about previously quite a bit. And I just anyway,
2:51:33
I appreciate your support on all that, and I just want to update you.
2:51:35
JE continues, the journey continues, and Christmas this next year will be
2:51:39
interesting and probably cute and probably fun, just as fun, if not better.
2:51:43
I just think a life evolves and the journey continues, and it's just
2:51:48
a different Well. I'm glad, I'm Liz. I'm glad you're so optimistic
2:51:52
about things. You seem really good, and I'm glad you came on.
2:51:54
I hope you'll do it again sometime. It's been great catching up and as
2:52:00
always, you have very interesting things to say, and so I really appreciate
2:52:03
your time. And how can people follow you on? Are you back on
2:52:07
social media now? I mean I'm so rarely there, but at Lisabib.
2:52:11
Everywhere, I'm so rarely there, but at lisad Bebe. I mean,
2:52:13
it's just the world. I think I need to I always want to disconnect,
2:52:18
but then I have a really hard time doing it. I'm so disappointed.
2:52:24
Well, we'll keep in touch, understood. Yes, it's not away,
2:52:28
and we'll talk to you. We'll talk to you again soon. Thanks
2:52:31
so much to Liza Bibe. I hope you enjoyed this interview. This is
2:52:35
a episode number sixty of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name is John
2:52:39
Ziegler. Until next time, Thanks for listening, and who's remembered to subscribe,
2:52:45
rate and review and share this via social media. If you share it
2:52:48
on social media, please tag me. I'll be happy to share it as
2:52:50
well. Until next time, my name is John Zigler. Thanks for listening, everybody,