Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "The Price Of Having Opinions" with Mike Pesca

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"The Price Of Having Opinions" with Mike Pesca · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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What an amazing time to be alive, what an amazing time to be watching the news and having
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conversations about the news and consuming all kinds of bits and pieces and opinions from
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Heather and Thither. Like a little bowel bird pecking around the internet and social media,
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trying to figure out what's true and what's not. But also what an amazing time to be susceptible
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and vulnerable to stridency, to misinformation, to what aboutism, to people trying to distract us
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from what really matters, jangling keys in front of our face in order to get us to look over here
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instead of remaining stable and calm and even killed about our own opinions, our own vision of
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the truth. Now is a moment to reach across aisles, to set aside differences, to have faith in
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democracy, to have faith in bigger ambitions and bigger things to believe in than just the day to
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day. The only way we can do that is by having conversations that resonate with all of us,
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conversations that make sense to all of us, conversations that are difficult, conversations
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that are important, conversations that are, as always, a little bit uncomfortable.
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Today on the show, one of the most popular podcasters in the United States of America, he's the
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host of the longest running daily news analysis podcast. It's called the GIST half hour a day,
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every day. It's a lot of work, a lot of work I've got to tell you, I do this thing once a week,
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already feels like a lot. He did the show, he did 1400 episodes for slate of the GIST. For seven years,
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it's had about 100 million lifetime downloads apparently, 20 million of those were in 2020,
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until a year ago, in 2021, he was fired, not fired, claims not to be fired, not exactly fired,
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a consciously coupling, perhaps they parted ways. There had been a seven month long investigation
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by slate into his conduct as a white man talking with colleagues about race.
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And when Mike Pesca was forced to leave slate, it was something of a bombshell in,
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I was going to say the national media, but I would say even the international media because it was
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almost like a final nail in the coffin of any hope that the kind of racial reckoning of 2020 and 2021
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would end with cooler heads prevailing. It was a moment at which everybody realised
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it was an orthodoxy and that orthodoxy has to be upheld. It's a minority orthodoxy held by
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largely white educated university elites who feel like they're doing the right thing by being
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patronising towards people of colour, by molly coddling them and protecting them. And that anyone in
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them is to suggest that we have open or frank dialogue about sensitive issues,
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is not only to be discouraged but to be fired, not fired consciously decoupled.
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Mike goes into this and he has an extraordinarily magnanimous attitude towards the whole thing
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in light of what went down. If you would like to hear Mike's show, it has been resurrected.
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He jokingly calls this the second season of the gist of the first season, having been
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seven years long. Now he does it for himself, it's late to allow him to go off and re-birth it.
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So I hope you enjoy this conversation with the one and only Mike Pesca of the fabulous podcast,
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the gist.
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Here's my question, Josh. How and please speak for all of Australia, the continent, the people,
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everything, the fauna. How do Australians feel and think about how their country Australia
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has dealt with the pandemic? I will probably get into a lot of trouble because the people who
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agitate on the fringes are very, very noisy. But if you look at polling, Australians are extremely
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proud of what Australia has achieved. In terms of the mortality, as a proportion of the population,
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I think the mortality is about 97% less than the United States and the UK were the ability to
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continue to flatten the curve and continue to use aggressive contact tracing and isolation
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to nip in the mud, any eruptions of coronavirus. I think there's a misconception maybe overseas,
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in some places that Australia was completely quarantined and none of the virus never got in.
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It was quarantined and you had to spend two weeks in a quarantine hotel up until
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the 1st of November last year if you wanted to come into the country. But nonetheless, it escaped
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from the quarantine hotels a number of times and there were breakouts all over the place and
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various states handled that with various degrees of quote unquote rampant authoritarianism as the
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the alt-right American keyboard warriors might call it. In certain states, so I think it's
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important to understand that this was very, very, very much a state-by-state thing, Western Australia,
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which is basically the entire western half of the continent is still closed even to other
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Australians. You can't go in and if you do go in, then you have to you will be incarcerated
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in a quarantine hotel and that is only going to be phased out in coming months. Victoria, which is
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the state where Melbourne is, took a very strong police heavy attitude imposing nightly curfews
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and so on for a very long lockdowns. I think the longest lockdown in the world. But perhaps I'm
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somewhat, and the weird thing is I was going to say perhaps I'm somewhat biased because I'm from
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Sydney, which is the largest city in the most populous state, which took a more, what Americans might
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think of as a more hands-offie kind of attitude and more a little bit just 1% towards the Florida
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Texas model versus the New York, California model. But I don't think that it's that I am biased
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because opinion polls in Victoria and Western Australia are also wildly supportive of those
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governments. You could say that people have a kind of a Stockholm syndrome and that they don't
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know what they don't know. But the reality is in places where there's never been a major COVID
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outbreak like Western Australia, they've basically been living as if the pandemic never happened.
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They haven't had hospitalizations to speak of, they haven't had masking to speak of, they haven't
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had school closures to speak of. And so the Australian population is generally like, yeah, you're
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at the very, very, very fringes, there are going to be cases in which people who are agitating
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for an extremely libertarian vision of individual rights find themselves in situations where the
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police are kind of forced to enforce silly rules or arbitrary rules or rules that seem
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capricious. That's always going to be the case with police interactions with the public. And it's
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certainly going to be the case during public health emergencies where dire laws need to be enacted
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for a short term period. But you know, now that we wander out of it and international tourists
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are allowed back in Australia now, we can travel, we can come back, well, you have to be vaccinated
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to come into the country, but that's the sort of the last barrier to fall. The Sensing Australia
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is good on us. We did a good job. Josh Zepp's journalist, Australian and specifically
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New South Welshman. Thank you. You're welcome, Mike. That is the demand you can hear. I'm just
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getting caught up because I'm that is. Yes, New South Welshman. Yeah, you're on to your
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South Welshman. I always wondered if maybe this could be my second question. Wouldn't just
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New Wales or South Wales have suffice to why New South Wales? I've always wondered, Mike, whether
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or not does this mean did the British, when they named it, did they think that it looked like
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South Wales? Or were they saying that it looked like Wales and it's in the South of the
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Wales? Oh, the South of Wales. Is that true? You know what I mean? Like, yes, exactly. Why are they
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being so, are they, is South Wales so specific and so noticeably different from North Wales
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that they were like, oh, you know what this is? This is New South Wales, not New East Wales. Or were
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they saying, this is New Wales, very much in the South of the planet. We'll call it New
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Sutherly version of Wales. I know. It's a great question. If the same, if the same, if the same
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these are great questions. Well, if the same New Minconventions had taken place, I'd be living in
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New West York or West New West. Yes. Yeah. That's right. That's right. New West Amsterdam.
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I like to still call it New Amsterdam. I'm old-timey like that. That's right.
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Let's talk about, you know, what I want to start by talking about is election night 2016,
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oddly enough, because my producer of my last podcast with People Live, and I was still living in
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New York at the time. And I came out to the podcast that you were doing in Brooklyn, which was
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this live Lollapalooza, you might say, election night, Hillary Clinton, a shoe-in. All the polls
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said it. This crazy Republican party, so foolish, for having elected an unelectable candidate.
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And at some point, about halfway through the night, grant my producer and I just sort of looked
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to each other and he said, should we just go back to my place and get stoned? I was like,
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well, probably better than standing here and watching Mike Pesca try to salvage this thing.
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What were your emotions? It was flop sweat on the inside, but I've been complimented by my saying
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foie on the outside. I just put my head down, powered on, and tweaked the segments like,
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is conservatism dead from now on. Actually, that would have been a good discussion because as much
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as we thought Donald Trump's victory was a triumph of Republicanism slash conservatism,
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I think conservatism was dead. It was of course shocking. It was very odd to be on a public stage
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and trying to keep it up, keep up the idea of performing. I think that the next time I meet Stephen
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Colbert, who is doing a live special that night, we'll have something to bond over, the people
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who are actually performing. Based on the premise that the world has been remade and Hillary Clinton
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will now be president, and then you have an entirely different show. It's really as if they've
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changed the genre on you from one minute to the next. I was both a counselor, a consulieri,
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I was just performing a lot of services for that audience as they were trying to process it.
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What I was surprised by watching Colbert once we got back to Grand Place was that it didn't seem
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like the writers had really even bothered to cover this option. I don't know how you ended up
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handling it because I bailed on your show, my apologies. But like Colbert, they just kept trying
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to roughly do the same things that they'd done. There was no sophisticated way of carrying the
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heft of what people felt like was happening. We didn't know at the time whether or not this
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would be a derailing of American democracy altogether. I remember Andrew Sullivan writing an article
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saying this is the end of the American experiment. As if this is literally the end of America,
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it was sort of like, I don't know, the aftermath of 9 or 11 or something where with the benefit
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of hindsight, we are now able to put it into a historical context that isn't cataclysmic,
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but at the time, you just don't know what you're in for. And Colbert just wasn't really
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able to channel any of that. He seemed like he was flailing around like a flopping fish.
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Well, he had a lot of, no, he had a lot of comedy set pieces that there was no bailing out of,
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whereas I had a lot of panel discussions. So even if the panel discussion was titled
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something like what happens to Republicans now or will women ever recover? I don't know,
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maybe before it wasn't titled, will women ever recover? But then we titled it that. Also,
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didn't Andrew Sullivan have the cover piece I think in the Atlantic showing Barack Obama's face
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saying now from this point forward with this man as the representative of America,
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we will have only open arms on the international stage. That's how international Barack Obama is.
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I don't know, maybe these grand pronouncements about how the person of the president will change
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everything that we should put the pump the brakes on. Yes, I think that's probably wise.
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Yeah, there was, but I think they probably ran like I just imagined all the scrambling behind
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the scenes to change the front pages of the papers that they'd expected to be a Hillary Clinton
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win with titles like will there ever be a male president again? That's right.
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And let's talk in the in approximate sense about your past couple of years.
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When when when did you leave a slate with the gist? I started the gist in 2014 and the anniversary
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of my last show was a couple days ago from the from the time we're talking now. Happy happy
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anniversary. Yeah, I think it's I think it's like the Louis CK bit about when people are divorced.
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Don't say I'm sorry. I say congratulations. Yeah. Now I'm free to be the kind of guy who
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quotes Louis CK without a hundred disclaimers. That is what my freedom bought me, I guess.
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That must be refreshing. Hey, just having to all of the throat clearing that has to be done.
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It's it's we're going to get to I want to get I'm just going to make you explain what happened
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because it's such an interesting story and we can't expect that all of my listeners have
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necessarily heard you on Jesse singles podcast or something or are following the nuances of
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cancel culture in the United States that well. But it is it is amazing to me that we've become
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used to the sort of tax that the throat clearing requires. It's just attacks on our attention
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and time. Like I tweeted the other day there was a some journalist asked the Australian Prime Minister
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what the price of bread and milk is because there's an upcoming federal election here.
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I'm sure this is a thing that lazy American journalists to do to and like I tweeted what is
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what is it with journalists and that question like if if you're not poor then you're not paying
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attention then you're buying bread and milk without paying attention to the price because they
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just go in your shopping cart and really you're not thinking about it because like you just need
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those things I mean if you there are there are things like steak for example that you might be
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price sensitive to but you're not price sensitive to bread and milk you just you're just buying them.
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Does a journalist think that some viewers or listeners are under the impression that the Prime
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Minister is a poor man that who goes shopping and like and do they think that this question is
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going to like disabuse us of the of the presumption that that countries are run by very poor people on
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the bread line. It's just great but this is a great point there are elastic goods and inelastic
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goods and it doesn't make much sense to ask about an inelastic good. There is no real substitute
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for bread there is I suppose some substitutes for milk the gluten people and the oat people
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would tell you otherwise but yes you should say you know what is the I guess the gallon of gas
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question becomes a little more salient but that's an easy one they're on giant sides. Exactly that's
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the only reason why that's a good one because it's right you know you'd have to be an idiot not to
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know but yeah I mean you know lamb chops or something like that or you know something that's
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as if the lamb chop here in Australia and back in cheese bites before yeah sure you're a man
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of the people exactly. I'm a pain your popper sir good yeah good to have you no shame you have
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no idea of the price of the TGI Friday menu sir that would be the American version yes yes in
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Australia it would be a you know a quinoa bowl with an almond latte but in America it would be
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a jumbo large bucket of KFC but so anyway I tweet this out you know and of course I mean I you
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can tell me what the reaction you tell me what you think a sort of bad faith reaction to such a tweet
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might be. Well assailing you for not caring that some people are poor and need to know this
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uh you're so privileged to assume that it blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
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Right and it's and the thing is it's so obvious you don't even it didn't even take you one second
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to to know what the bad faith retort would be you know how you know you have no compassion for poor
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people your privilege is showing you know this is so out of touch this is so a lead test and so on
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so the fact that I get thousands of like hate tweets back because someone you know retweets it
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with a comment about like you know is this a joke that how dare you know you think that people
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shouldn't care about price inflation you think that leaders shouldn't care about the inflation of
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fresh produce like no that's not what I said I'm not saying that so now in order to tweet that
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you're sort of required to do three preemptive throat clearing tweets which say now I understand
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that many people are doing it harder than me and I come from a position of great privilege and
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I have the good fortune to not be below the poverty line uh nonetheless when journalists ask this
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question blah blah blah blah blah fuck everything's gonna become pretty anodine if everything we say
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has to be prefaced with like a 45 second written disclaimer like we're in some stylonist
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Joe trial and maybe that's the point you know it gets me to thinking well first of all
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perhaps this is why Twitter expanded from 140 to 280 characters just to get in the 140 characters
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of throat clearing second of all maybe if you want to have a really punchy podcast you have the
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main feed which is what you want to say and then a sub feed or a different feed this is all the
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throat clearing if you really need that this is all the throat clearing about the stuff I did say
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it's called the tubi shore cast but maybe but maybe the point is and even if it's not consciously
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the point this is what it becomes to just force everyone into that crouched corner of tubi shore
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so as not to offend now I need to make clear and you're so boring and you can't make an interesting
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point that you never do make the interesting point or it's not worth it to make the interesting
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point and then the people who just need you to know that you're so privileged it's not to have
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a sensitivity to the price changes of milk on a microscopic level those people win yeah it's
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almost like you know here's a crazy idea maybe we could just extend a principle of charity to
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each other and start with a baseline assumption that the your interlocutor is not an asshole
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you know what I mean whenever I deal with people in real life that seems to be the assumption
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and it's not just because I'm dealing with the same people but of course you know online this is
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not the case and it's even happening in radio I was there was a fatal horribly brutal fatal shark
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attack in Sydney last week and you know I was doing a segment about how you can with a psychologist
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about how you how you might be able to help yourself pivot your brain away from sort of gruesome
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fearful images because you don't want them to loom too large in in your mind and how you can use
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your rational brain to sort of use the statistical unlikely hood of either dying in a plane crash
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or you know a shark attack or something like that to override your lizard animal
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remote fear and emotions and the psychologist spends the first three or four minutes of the
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interview of like an eight minute interview talking about how you know first of all we should
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extend our you know sympathies to the family of the the victim you know it's a terrible thing
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that happened and you know we want to make sure that you know they're getting all the support
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that they yeah I know I'm not a fucking asshole like this can we just take all of that as a given
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I don't yeah we know it was bad we know we know that being having your limbs ripped off by a vicious
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sea beast is a bad thing so can we all just path that for a moment we talk about something more
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interesting yes you're a psychologist sir you're not a liminologist who will tell me if it's
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better or worse not to have your limbs assumed stipulated stipulated assumed facts and evidence
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yes absolutely or I remember one time when I was working for NPR we would get you know some
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some angry letters and there was a shooting at either I think it was the Holocaust Museum
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and in a 20 second newscast item the important news what is that the murder or would be murder
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I think it might have been a murder was sentenced to however much time it was sentenced to in jail
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so it went like this uh the shooting at the Holocaust Museum which claimed the life of the 78th
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year old security guard uh Josh Zeps you know why I'm not going to use that name Zoss yep thank you
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sentence to 20 years in prison fine we got the understanding letter saying how dare you not
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mention the name of the guard how could you mention the shooter and not the name of the guard
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and then the ombudsman ways and yes you must of course mention the name of how could you erase the
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guard because we have 20 seconds and of the four million people listening all but seven members
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of the guards family if they care at all only care about the salient news that the guy was sentenced
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to jail you know I'm sure the guard did a lot for his community if you mention his name how could
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you not mention that and I'm sure he you know what worked as a hobby we just have a limited
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amount of time in our days in mind yes can we take things as a given people and the one thing we
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should take as a given that is it might be that people are allowed to have opinions about the kinds
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of words that that we say in in in modern culture without being fired Mike so will you take that
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beautiful segue that I just handed you on a silver platter and tell the folks a little bit
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about your departure from slate sure I was engaged in a slack discussion about another journalist who
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works like is a phenomenal techie heads this slack is a little chatty chat thing that you do at work
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where everybody is all chatting with each other like a sort of a group messenger right it takes
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the glories of Twitter and brings it to the workplace there are there are a lot of efficiencies with
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stretch slack but if left unchecked you also do get a lot of the pylons and group things and it allows
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the users of slack maybe all the members of a workplace to break off into little groups where they
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could talk with each other the whole idea is to have an analog to the water cooler and I guess people
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do gossip in the office so why not let them gossip on slack well anyway um we have slack channels
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at slate and some of these channels are let us talk about the news of the day let us talk about
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there are some you know channels for when we were all in the office what are some local restaurants
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that we like to go to but there was a big channel that a lot of people liked to uh like to visit
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called industry news and it was what was going on in media news and at the time and this was about
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a year ago a little more than a year ago there was a story of Donald McNeil who was the science reporter
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for the New York Times for my money the best reporter covering the pandemic uh that I was aware of
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at least in the early stages and there was a kerfuffle within the times because a couple years
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earlier he had gone on a New York Times sponsored trip where in talking to a high school student he
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actually uttered uh what what we will call euphemistically the N word and the reason he uttered
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it was to get clarity she was telling him a story or maybe the group of story about a suspension in
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her school about the N word and he wanted to know when you say about the N word do you mean the
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euphemisms do you mean the actual word so to cut through a little bit like what were you talking
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about the maybe minute of throw clearing it would take to get there he just said do you mean
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the word or do you mean and then he said the actual word a couple years later I guess it came to
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light a couple years later um people at the times were upset that he was not in their mind
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sufficiently disciplined for this uh that story got out and other people in the media began
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opining about uh if he should be disciplined for that or not and then that opining came to slate
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where I was whereas the majority of most of the people having this discussion were something
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along the lines of he should have been fired and I disagreed now we could stop the story right here
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and say just because I disagree doesn't mean I should be involved in the discussion was it wise to
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be involved in the discussion at that point history would say no was it an ethically good thing
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or bad thing to be involved in the discussion I'll just explain what my thinking is which is
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when slack was presented to us it was as I said this this substitute for the water cooler and
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a place and an opinion magazine it was always sold to us that you know a great benefit of working
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in a place where people have opinions is that you could share your opinions with others you could
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refine the opinions that you might wish to pursue on the pages of slate you sharpen your opinions
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they get better this way and so then it wasn't an abstract idea that slack is a place to trade
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opinions I could recount six maybe four or five times where I had a differing opinion for most
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people at slate I said so in a slack channel the editors of slate would say what an interesting
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opinion or please pursue that on the pages of our magazine and so we did and so I wrote an article
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about why Mayor Bloomberg had the best credentials other than Joe Biden of those in the race not an
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endorsement just talking about credentials I wrote an article about why AOC and others were
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wrong to chase Amazon from New York state and Queens as their potential headquarters this was
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more than a minority opinion with its slate I would think I was the only one who thought that but
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they thought an interesting discussion had come from the idea that I disagreed with my slate
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colleagues and so in the same vein I disagreed with my slate colleague saying perhaps the discipline if
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there was to be discipline in the case of McNeil should not have amounted to a firing and from that
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opinion I no longer work at slate was there an opinion expressed by you about whether or not it
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should be okay for white people to use the n-word and actually say the word when we're talking in
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conversation about the appropriate use of the word well I got into the you know someone in the
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channel said you know explain your thinking if you will and I put into the channel well not only
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the idea of proportionality I think you know I'm trying to remember this from a year or so ago I think
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I said that this is not nothing the his bosses should have of course you know had given him a
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talking to but I put into the channel an article by John McWater who I chose for a couple specific
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reasons so if your listeners I don't know maybe they know who John is but he's a linguist yeah he's
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a linguist he teaches a Columbia very much the point of why I did it it's he was a long time not
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official employee but he had a show on slate he had a show called lexicon valley where he talked
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about language issues he he is black that you know to many gives him standing to a pun on this more
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than a white person would and he wrote about then and he's since written about again the use
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mention distinction that using the word as a slur is far different from mentioning it and he
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talked about how for most of you know our recent history there was an acceptability to utter a slur
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or write a slur if the intention was and what you're communicating to the audience something about
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how this slur was used in a in an actual real world situation or to write a I suppose to write
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about the slur in you know an academic context certainly a quote so I put that in the slack channel
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as the use mentioned distinction seems to have played a part in what they are saying that Donald
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McNeill said you know none of what I said I didn't I didn't dig in I couldn't have been
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couple things to note I've of course never used the word in the slack discussion I furthermore
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didn't use as I have with you the n word I didn't use that phrase because I've heard that phrase
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could be upsetting and in fact since then there've been a couple of stories out of America where for
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instance a college professor in Illinois a law school professor wrote on a blackboard I think or
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maybe on a handout B dot dot dot for an anti woman slur that's the name of a female dog and end
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dot dot dot as slurs that an employee of a company had directed at her and it was a hypothetical
29:02
about a situation where someone would sue for being discriminated against anyway that professor
29:10
got in a lot of trouble hasn't taught since after writing n dot dot dot Jesse Jackson protested
29:17
at the school calling for his firing so even writing the word in a way saying that he should have
29:22
written the whole word out or saying that he should not even have had a conversation about the
29:26
existence of the word the argument is that for the students taking the test they don't need to be
29:32
and this is just the this is the argument that the members of the black student union put forward
29:36
they don't need to be confronted with the ugly legacy of racism it's enough that they go through
29:43
you know law school and have the struggles that they have they don't need to confront it on a test
29:48
it's not necessary and they accused him of insensitivity and creating an unsafe environment
29:54
and the school ordered the school ordered a raft of trainings Jesse Jackson got involved but I
30:02
only mentioned it say of course never use the word I of course never use the shortened version of
30:06
the word I mean you don't even need to say of course I don't think that that's necessarily yeah I
30:09
like when you say that Donald McNeil should have been is that his name McNeil it is yeah that
30:15
that he should have that of course he should have been you know punished in some way but maybe
30:19
short of firing I'm not sure that it was clear at the time if it was a couple of years before a
30:24
year ago that this happened I'm not entirely sure that everybody understood in 2018 or 2019
30:31
that we all agreed on the taboo of never even being able to utter the mouth sounds of that word
30:37
even when you're referring to that word I mean I think that's a reasonably new thing so it's a
30:43
bit like the Joe Rogan mash up of him saying the word in the past and people saying like you know
30:48
it's the 21st century everybody knows that you can't out of that word no for a start or even now
30:54
it's not it's not a universal consensus everywhere that you can't make the the sounds of
30:59
referring to that word when you're talking about you know if I were to say the end word is the
31:05
worst word in the world and it should never be used in hate against anyone because it's a horrendous
31:10
thing to say to somebody but if I would actually say the word in that sentence I don't think it's
31:15
I don't think it's entirely clear to everybody even now that that would be an unforgivable
31:20
offense or something that I should be punished for there's clearly a very noisy cohort of people
31:24
who think that but the idea that a New York Times journalist talking to a younger student
31:31
on a trip to South America in whenever it was in the 20 teens should have been aware I mean should
31:37
have been punished for treating that person like a grown-up and just using words in the English
31:42
language when you're talking about those words and just trying to clarify something that happened
31:46
not in hate not in the spirit of animosity not in the spirit of racism that that
31:51
totemic mouth sound you know requires him to be punished I don't even think I would grant that
31:57
yes I mean in describing where the public is or where even the section of the public that's in charge
32:03
of putting out mouth sounds and visual representations thereof yeah I don't know that there is
32:10
absolute agreement or even close there's probably a wide debate in fact we saw that there was a
32:15
debate here in America when a couple of weeks ago a old clip of Joe Biden from his time in the
32:21
Senate surfaced where he literally is malving the word and the fact check the Reuters fact check
32:28
it was actually a recycled fact check because people tried to smear him with this in the past is
32:33
that no no no this is all taken out of context that's Joe Biden quoting from someone who is using
32:40
racist invective in term and he used that as a justification for a vote that he was giving on
32:47
the center floor how bad this racist invective was so there's Reuters saying no no no he's not
32:52
saying the word for any reason other than to tell the audience what the full flavor of the quote was
32:59
which is I suppose what you could say what what Donald McNeil did what I in fact in 2019 the exact
33:06
time that McNeil was getting in trouble or not getting in trouble but would lay the groundwork
33:11
for getting in trouble in Peru I had a segment on my show where I was quoting a security guard from
33:18
Madison Wisconsin it was a pretty complex story but I was more commenting on the CNN coverage of it
33:25
which is that there are students of a school marched and said there is a march and said you can't
33:30
suspend this black security guard for saying I am not this word the student's point was that
33:37
context matters and CNN in its coverage seemed to agree with the students but then bleeped out the
33:42
word in confusing ways when the actual black security guard on their air said and then I told him I
33:48
am not and then they bleeped out the word so in my show I said the word without the bleep but then
33:53
thought better of it took it off the air but it did cause it did cause strife I found out later it
33:59
did cause strife within slate that I would even dare to entertain the idea that an exact quote should
34:07
be given it I knew it wasn't against policy I just was thinking about you know how would my audience
34:12
take it is it more distracting to use it or not to use it and you know I in consultation with my
34:19
supervisor decided better not to use it I was happy with that decision I mean there's also people
34:25
I have a significant cohort of black American friends who find it infantilizing and like
34:30
molly coddling and sort of condescending to say as if like they're so fragile and so ignorant that
34:36
they can't understand what the intention is or like you know they have to be covered in cotton wool
34:41
and like protected from the existence of this historical legacy of slavery like yeah so it's not
34:47
entirely clear yeah the comedians came peel wrote an essay to that effect for time magazine in 2014
34:54
I don't know if they'd I don't know what they think about it today and I don't know I think
34:58
they'd not write that today um I just think the more um okaran trend is under no circumstances should
35:07
it oh yeah and it's not just okaran it's viciously hostile and you know it's bitch it's flaming
35:13
tortures and pitchforks as you well know so I mean I'm I'm so relieved when I first joined
35:18
half post live in 2012 when that was launching one of the first segments that I wanted to do was
35:24
because it's my I suppose my beach was like what the hell is going on with this america thing
35:30
that you guys have over here and I would sort of play the like curious outsider uh not dissimilar
35:35
to your constantly perplexed persona of the person who's taking contrary and opinion to things
35:40
and one of the segments was about the end the phrase the n-word which in 2012 uh was in use I suppose
35:48
in a minimal way I mean it was around but I think most people outside of elite circles in america
35:54
like most people outside of america wouldn't have known what I was talking about if I said the
35:58
n-word like they wouldn't they just wouldn't you get blank stairs like are you talking about
36:04
the word that I think you're talking about and in which case why aren't you just talk saying it um
36:08
and I wanted to do a segment in which we talked about it and debated it but we didn't constantly fall
36:14
back on using that baby-ish phrase the n-word and thank god my producer at the time uh Mitch
36:23
pulled me aside and said just think about the possibility of someone doing a mash-up of you saying
36:28
that word and just putting it back to back to back to back to back to try and try to take it out of
36:32
context and try to you know like you know paint the wrong picture of you I think you should do
36:37
the segment without saying the word and so I took his advice and but it wasn't through any great
36:42
virtue of mine it wasn't because I I think that it would have been wrong to have uttered those
36:47
mouth sounds instead of saying the phrase the n-word he was just more keenly aware than I was having
36:52
just moved to well you know into that sort of cultural circle in the united states he was more keenly
36:59
aware of the nefarious ways in which one cohort of people would use their beliefs as a way to
37:05
bludgeon and destroy other people whereas the people the black american friends who I have who think
37:10
that it's okay don't choose to go out of their way to demean belittle and you know crucify
37:16
people who disagree with them so it's it's a tactical thing as much as anything right and for the people
37:21
who don't go out of their way to demean and belittle and what maybe even more than don't go out of
37:25
their way who really really hold it as a virtuous behavior that they'd really like to operate in the
37:31
world by causing the least amount of unpleasantness to everyone but maybe you know marginalized
37:36
communities who've had to experience a lot of shall we say unpleasantness from the past what
37:40
these people want to do is to figure out what the current morays are and adjust to them and fit
37:47
to them and I think to some extent you know as you told that anecdote it seemed like you did it out
37:52
of conscious self-defense right I don't want to give anyone else ammunition um and I but I also
37:58
would think Josh that there's part of it if you know if people really were to be offended that's
38:03
not your intention and it would get in the way of your overall message so with the
38:09
gentleman but I find it I found it hard then and I find it hard now not to agree with John McWhorter
38:14
that there is no offense there that the offense is is performative like there may be there is
38:20
a fence then it is today well but do they actually I mean McWhorter thinks that that you know
38:26
McWhorter claims that they're that we have we have built up a culture of encouraging people to
38:31
feign or you know interpret and see perceive offense in areas where there is no actual offense there
38:39
is no genuine uh like there's no there's no there's no chance that the person actually thinks that
38:45
they are being attacked put it that way so you can take offense in the same way that some people
38:49
might take offense if they see a picture of a nude person but that doesn't mean that we punish
38:53
people for you know producing portraits publishing portraits of nude people it just means that we
38:59
we understand that there that some people will be sort of irrationally offended by some things but
39:03
I mean I suppose I can't at you're right I can't tell people that they're not being offended if
39:07
they claim to be offended but at some point McWhorter's McWhorter would say that the offense is
39:12
disingenuous but I okay just let's just use a couple examples what is the offense of one of our
39:19
five fingers when shown alone is said to cause offense I can make a similar argument you're only
39:24
pretending to take offense but given how people were raised and what they were taught and what
39:29
it always meant to people I think people genuinely take offense is random and bizarre as it may be
39:35
that that one finger is an offensive action well hey I don't know if I give you the finger then you
39:41
can take offense but if I was if I were telling a story and I said you know there was this this guy
39:46
who got fired when all he'd done was do this to a colleague and I pointed my finger at the at
39:50
the window just to show that then the idea that someone would be really really deeply offended by
39:56
that story is implausible to me hmm well I think that there are a large cohort of people who maybe
40:05
are in their early 20s and have just graduated a college experience where they were told you know
40:10
this is absolutely offensive and should not be allowed and maybe they've never questioned
40:15
if it is offensive or isn't offensive they just know uh there's no shortage of explanations as
40:21
to why it's extremely offensive you know things like their this word isn't for everyone this word
40:28
is for us why must uh white people use this word it's one word and while the arguments might be
40:35
strong or not strong I do think that there are a lot of people who've heard arguments and arguments
40:39
like them for their whole lives and were taught in places where they go to learn ethics and how the
40:45
world works they were told that this is the ethical thing so why wouldn't they emerge into society
40:50
fully believing it's the ethical thing right just pretending it is so maybe what maybe a clearer
40:54
way of saying it is that they they know that it's a taboo like they you know whether or not they're
41:00
offended per se whether or not they're actually shocked and you know they they're hurt whether or
41:05
not it feels like you're dredging up 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow and sticking it into their
41:10
heart uh the same way that you would be if you actually use the word integration maybe that's
41:16
sort of the wrong question and the question is just like you know they're aware that there's a taboo
41:19
that they've been taught and you're preaching the taboo just the way some old tribal society has a
41:24
taboo against saying the name of a dead pharaoh or emperor or something you don't say that name
41:29
it's uh it's it's it's just what we've all agreed not to do and that brings us to the consensus
41:34
component of your firing from slight which i want to get back into which is
41:40
after the after you were fired i saw someone i wasn't far off i should i should sorry clarify
41:45
so we mutually agreed to part ways after you mutually agreed to part ways we uh i saw any more
41:52
words rather than fewer we're just trying to right trying to take up all 280 characters of life
41:58
right i saw uh i saw uh and i come up with who it was it was a black american guy who was tweeting
42:04
against you saying like enough already like can't we just i'm just sick and tired of hearing white
42:11
people try to rationalize why they get to say that word like you don't get to say that word that's
42:18
the rule and i saw that and i thought you know what if that is the rule i'm actually kind of fine
42:24
with us all agreeing on that rule what i'm not fine with is us pretending that that was the rule
42:30
everywhere up until right now like that was not the rule a few years ago and so if we want to set
42:39
rules then let's all set rules and we can go get on the same page and then we can say that if you
42:43
say the sounds bubbly gook or if you say the word Auschwitz or if you know whatever else you might
42:49
be or if you say the word Stonewall hate crimes then some particular cohort of society is going to
42:56
either feign or genuinely feel outraged you've reached the taboo that person gets fired if that's
43:00
the rule great let's all sign up let's all agree on the rules we've all been informed that's that
43:05
that's not what was happening that's not what was happening that wasn't the rule at the time we
43:10
didn't know that we didn't know that it was unacceptable for Mike pesca to go on a slate on a
43:15
slack channel and say i don't think that a great journalist should be fired for having
43:21
said the inward like that wasn't there obviously it wasn't the rule because no one would be so much
43:25
of a fuck with as you would have had to be to do it yeah yeah like let's take a rule that we all
43:32
know is the rule cannibalism would i be would i say look this guy was an act of cannibal but i think
43:38
that you know the New York Times should excuse that well so anyway what it's obviously true that
43:44
it is contended though like you can't just whistle pass is it is it a source of contention
43:48
let's all agree it's not a source of contention well we haven't all agreed to that quite obviously
43:53
and let me also point out with that argument like let's say i was with you saying okay let's all
43:59
agree it's the rule even if we do your point is that you can't retroactively apply an agreement
44:04
that we have now then but my point was that i don't think you could even well i don't know if
44:09
it's my point but i would just point out that even if we all agree that it is or was the rule we
44:14
didn't also agree did we that there is to be no discussion of if it is the rule let's say we get
44:21
to the point where we agree it's the rule it probably is the case that we'd have gotten to the point
44:26
because we engage in discussion about it right which is all which is what i was doing discussing it
44:31
why would the slack channel even exist if there wasn't some dispute about this question
44:36
and should we just take a moment to wander off into the into the thicket and into the daisies and do
44:42
all of the all of the throat clearing and say that it's bad to have your limbs ripped off by a shark
44:48
and that you know the that Josh is a privileged person who doesn't know the exact price of milk
44:54
because do you want to tell me what the objection to this conversation that we're having right now
44:58
will be Mike well first of all i can object to the last two sentences judge this isn't milk
45:03
this isn't hypothetical sharks we're talking about real stuff here right we're talking about worse
45:08
than being eaten by a shark yeah yeah we're talking about words yeah so what's the objection that
45:15
that people are going to have to this i don't know could be at this point my threat matrix is so
45:20
overwhelmed you tell me oh i mean well i mean it's that of course two white people you know of course
45:25
of course it's white privilege that two white males would be you know talking about the words
45:29
that they can and can't use whereas the voice of people of color in this conversation it's very
45:34
convenient for white people to try to find excuses as to why they continue can continue upholding
45:39
white supremacy and you know loading their privilege over people of color just as they and their
45:46
full fathers have done for centuries yeah um so let's uh you know just park that i accept that
45:53
that is an opinion that some people will have i don't think that all people of color are one
45:59
gigantic mindless blob who just think exactly the same way and aren't capable of hearing
46:04
articulate you know thoughtful wrestling wrestling matches with various ideas i have many many
46:12
friends any of whom i could invite on this show and have and we'll continue to talk to from
46:16
common hues to come ill faster to john mcwoda to go and lorry and they will all have an opinion
46:24
that is probably more strident away from the consensus black american sort of black lives
46:32
matter consensus than the one that you and i are articulating mike but to to to only have these
46:38
conversations when i'm talking to them is to engage in a kind of reductionistic patronizing condescending
46:43
white supremacist i would say much more white supremacist than the points that we're making here
46:47
attitude towards people of color like i'm not going to enlist my token black friend to come on and
46:53
say the things that i want them to say uh everyone is a is a grown up in this conversation and you and
46:58
i are entitled to have opinions about the society we live in we have standing in this society we all
47:03
have a stake in this society we all have a stake in the future of this culture not devouring itself
47:07
and eating itself alive so that is my response to the inevitable backlash that will come as a
47:13
result of this episode all right yeah i would i would i'd like to say if well if i can say as
47:18
you know my statement people accuse me of this of this being a hill to die on you ask these
47:23
questions and i ask answered and i'm happy to do so to get to an understanding of in general what
47:29
i think about illiberalism sensoriousness the prices of that but also even more globally how to craft
47:36
good opinions and how places like opinion magazine should go about you know testing and and stress
47:43
testing their opinions about creating better opinions this of all the issues in the world this is
47:50
very small portion of my of of my consciousness it's not i you know i have a show i talk about
47:57
issues for more than a half hour a day i've talked about this one or two times over seven years
48:03
on the show in general i am i do default to more speech instead of less that i am very um i am very
48:12
engaged in the issues of people trying to shut down speech in any way which includes in fact
48:17
probably the biggest threat to speech now are people banning books it's not the anti cr it is
48:23
the anti crt as opposed to the crt impulse but i just wanted to say that that this is not an issue
48:31
that you did ask i will answer this is far from my number one or number one thousandth issue this
48:37
one word no i feel bad i feel bad for you in a sense that you have been draguned into this because
48:42
you were just a victim of a wave of cancel culture and in a way that was that you became a sort of
48:47
a totem of a problem so you find yourself in a position of having to talk about this stupid issue
48:52
which is really neither here nor there which is not something that you should you do or should
48:57
care care about terribly much um other than the extent to which it's one example of a way in which
49:02
our culture is being deranged by people taking each other out of context and and punishing each other
49:07
for transgressions that either shouldn't be transgressions or certainly shouldn't be you know
49:12
job and career killing transgressions so what happens uh let's put a pin in this very quickly and
49:18
then we can move on to more interesting conversations about the culture wars but just to give people a
49:21
sense so you you're you're having this conversation in a slack channel you're saying like i'm not
49:25
sure a person should be fired for just for saying the word if it's not said in in in hate and then
49:31
what happens yes well the slack channel is shut down people are upset the uh management then
49:36
of slate um solicits opinions launches an investigation the investigation asks me about
49:44
dozens of opinions i've shared over the years on my podcast the gist opinions like i don't think
49:51
that the they them pronouns will replace he and she i wasn't making a should argument i was just
49:58
predicting what the future may hold you know i was asked to answer for that opinion i was asked
50:04
to answer for very light jokes i made that did not that i think we're not inherently offensive i
50:11
uh described one of my former uh supervisors as engaging in bear like behavior of rubbing himself
50:18
and urinating on a tree in the that no that guy's not it's late i talked to him and i said did
50:25
you know about this and he was like no i don't that that was funny it was stupid so you know you
50:30
do an investigation you i suppose ask answer for everything that you might have done wrong and
50:35
then the upshot of that investigation i can say uh and i can say this because there were negotiations
50:41
and nondisclosure agreements but i can disclose that the investigation found that no rules were
50:45
broken no policies were violated um yeah and i knew that to be the case even though um if
50:53
yeah i just flat out knew that to be the case so i wasn't that scared about what the investigation
50:57
might find although it's never pleasant to have an official investigation about all the opinions
51:02
that you've held but the further upshot beyond the investigation was slate looked at the situation
51:07
and i looked at the situation and we both said you know i we don't want you working here and you
51:13
don't want to work here and it would just be better for everyone if you took your show which they
51:19
you know admitted and admitted i shouldn't say that which they described in the press release
51:23
you know pretty generously as saying they're proud of the show that i've put together in the seven
51:27
years that i was with slate um and so i took it independent with uh that's how that's what there
51:33
was disentanglement legal disentanglement involved but i now have an independent show beyond the rich
51:40
of anyone except me and my listeners and this was at a moment i mean the reason why this sort of
51:46
shocked everybody i think was it felt like the last in a string of i'm not going to say
51:52
firings but uh conscious decouplings of uh people whose transgressions were becoming smaller and
51:59
smaller and smaller and more and more incidental such that i mean if you know if anyone has not said
52:05
something that could potentially rub a coworker slightly the wrong way over the course of their
52:11
career then i would argue that they're just not very interesting and they're not really thoughtful
52:15
and they're not actually interested in challenging and pushing back and and trying to flesh out
52:19
what is true they're just being compliant cheap and yours i mean there was i guess Barry Weiss
52:26
was kind of hounded out of the times you know Andrew Sullivan as i mentioned had to leave the uh
52:33
had to leave the Atlantic uh Matt Taivi left Rolling Stone uh Jesse single well has Jesse ever been
52:41
anywhere i don't know but there was and there were you know a number a number of kind of
52:45
roiling controversies that mainstream uh journalistic institutions where the racial reckoning i
52:52
suppose that had been uh ignited over the northern summer of 2020 during the pandemics with black
52:59
lives matter and the the anti trump protests you know what did you make of the way that that all
53:06
came to a head and how did you see your experience as fitting into a bigger cultural trend you mean
53:12
the ritualistic casting out of apostates that you could put it that way i thought that
53:19
clearing do we need to do before we start talking about apostates and religion shall we uh i
53:23
thought i thought at least a few of these outlets were the kind of outlets that would stand
53:30
the thwart that sort of thing you know when i read New York magazine i like the fact that Jonathan
53:36
Chate is there pretty much disagreeing with 90 percent of what's written in New York magazine
53:42
and that's his read and we should also clarify for people sorry to interrupt that was your bit i
53:46
mean your whole thing since day one has been very slight pitchy meaning very kind of i'm taking the
53:53
unexpected angle on this thing i'm not i'm gonna be the person who is who is not off my cohort and
53:58
who is encouraging people to think in different ways yeah and i you know i get i guess accused of
54:04
being a contrarian it just comes quite natural to me and i can list a hundred ways that i'm not a
54:10
contrarian from please take your please take your vaccine to Steph Curry's an excellent three point
54:15
shooter i mean i'm mostly not a contrarian i cross at the light you know i put let it uh
54:21
unleaded gasoline in the car things like this but but um it was always i always love the
54:27
organizations that had a robust variety of opinion uh just as the news consume as a news consumer
54:34
i like the fact that i didn't have to you know curate my own experience to get the differing
54:39
opinions that uh sustain me as a citizen and a democracy so the fact that New York magazine
54:44
had chate and had Andrew Sullivan but also had Rebecca Tracer great i love that
54:50
until there came a time i suppose just going by what was reported that Sullivan's existence there
54:56
at New York magazine so upset other people at New York magazine i consider that you know you
55:01
could document oh here are things he did in the office and the plates he threw at people and the
55:06
you know terrible places that he chose to defecate at none of that seemed to come to light it was
55:10
just that his opinions seem not to be in the fitting with the general uh thrust of the magazine i
55:16
put Matt and Glacias and Vox in the same category i think Matt decided no one kicked him i don't know
55:22
if it what really happened it didn't seem like he he is an owner of Vox didn't seem like anyone
55:26
kicked him out of Vox but the fact that there could be Matt and Ezra together with Hermann Lopez
55:32
made Vox more exciting and once the in Glacias side of things gets stripped away from Vox Vox becomes
55:38
just a less vital place so this is all the examples that you gave were people who made
55:46
generally left to center left outlets a bit more exciting and there there are some
55:52
you know when the uh when the national review when they first when they first took on Trump
55:57
and they had a greater variety of voices i think crystal didn't immediately go to the dispatch
56:03
that was a very exciting time for national review if you want to talk about a national review is
56:09
republican and conservative but they're more exciting when they're not doctrinaire i think all
56:13
these places are so much better when they're not doctrinaire and there is a trend or was a trend
56:19
and we're living in the trend of the insistence on more and more doctrine more of the same ideology
56:27
the sub stack trend is a counter trend to that i think what we're doing you and i and others are
56:31
doing on podcasts is a counter trend but there was a time when all these people could play in the same
56:36
sandbox and you know no one had the veto power over that except maybe the editors or the audience
56:43
yeah do you think there's more diverse voices now i mean it's interesting you mentioned
56:47
metaglacias and Ezra Klein because they created Vox i think that's fair to say right and
56:53
Matt has gone off on his own and now writes consistently insightful really interesting unusual
56:59
provocative things you know at the kinds of articles where i read the headline and i'm like oh
57:03
come on you're just trolling that that's not going to be true and then i hear his argument and i'm
57:07
like oh maybe there should be a billion americans or maybe there should be like you know this
57:12
complete overhaul of this thing that i've never even thought about before whereas Ezra is now at
57:17
the New York Times and i find him considerably more uh straight laced and down the middle of the
57:25
road and you know i don't think anything that he says would ruffle any feathers at elite cocktail
57:30
parties in in Brooklyn and his argument is occasionally that all of this is a storm in a teacup
57:37
because there's actually greater diversity of opinion and greater diversity of voices now than
57:41
there ever has been before what's happening is that privileged white males are seeing their
57:49
privilege eroded and so they're saying oh there are all kinds of things that i can't say anymore
57:54
which is just like in the 1950s people saying you can't even slap a woman on the ass anymore
57:58
and call her tuts until i to get you a cup of coffee uh and that they you know people in the 50s
58:04
saw that erosion of privilege as being uh you know an attack on them too but that you know in that
58:12
era a black trans woman wouldn't be able to have a seat at the table and now she potentially could
58:17
it's still harder but we're we're getting there where she's not going to get laughed out of the room
58:21
so there's actually a greater cacophony of voices it's just not the cacophony that people like you
58:25
and me want to hear and so i i constantly sort of check myself with that reality check and make sure
58:31
that i'm not blundering into that worldview but how do you see that Ezra critique if if i'm
58:37
characterizing it correctly well i don't know well first of all Ezra you're right he does i mean his
58:42
actual opinions that he holds are within the the Brooklyn cocktail or the San Francisco cocktail
58:48
circuit i guess that he lives in but he genuinely likes to engage with i just heard his podcast where he
58:55
talked with a i guess a flat out straight straight up and down uh libertarian from george mason
59:01
university and it was a very productive conversation the kind of which would not be had at a number of
59:08
these other institutions i put the new york times a little bit to the side they clearly still want
59:13
to have a robust conversation where they run an op-ed saying that gel reform is a bad idea and
59:20
or gel and bail reform is bad idea and another op-ed that says it's good and they could get the best
59:25
voices in america to contribute to that but i'm talking about all the other places that are you
59:29
know one level under the new york times just in terms of reach and influence and i'll just
59:34
i'll just quickly make the note yeah mike that around the time that you had your cacophony with
59:38
slate the new york times also fired their their opinion page editor for daring to publish an article
59:43
by a sitting senator of the united states saying that the the protests the black lives matter
59:47
protests should be uh suppressed using military force yes they were probably not fired but consciously
59:53
decoupled although you know that's a complicated story because i thought well if tom cotton runs
59:57
to write a stupid op-ed he is tom cotton and we could all read the op-ed and think that it is a bad
1:00:03
policy he is advocating so that's what you want an op-ed page to do the complication is you
1:00:08
know we just had a big trial with sarah palin who sued the times for defamation and lost but in
1:00:13
that trial the very same um editor of the editorial page did not come off did not cover himself in
1:00:19
glory with his inattention to detail in uh if not legally defaming then you spreading untruths
1:00:26
about sarah palin so that said back to Ezra for first of all i think a lot of those people who three
1:00:31
years ago said oh come on there's more voices than ever i talked to a lot of these people and
1:00:37
today they say no you're actually right there has been a there has been a calling of the unusual
1:00:43
opinion their hat there is definitely a trend away from let us have the full cacophony under one
1:00:50
roof and the other thing is even though yeah there are voices out there and a few of them like
1:00:56
taebi and inglesias have really big prominent sub stacks uh and the fact that and barry white seems
1:01:03
to be doing well the fact that she was with the new york times is what made barry white and the fact
1:01:08
that these people have big followings to begin with they were able to take their followings with them
1:01:14
well the next generation or even the same generation but just at one level lower than to be able to
1:01:19
be self-sufficient on a sub stack they really need an ethic of let us disagree productively
1:01:26
and that ethic i do think the 40 50 60 year old managers of op ed pages more or less agree with
1:01:33
the ethic i think the 30 and 20 year old future managers do not i think we're going to see that come
1:01:41
there might be a market correction but i think we are seeing the effects of that and just because
1:01:46
there are superstars who are outside the system and outside the uh veil of acceptability
1:01:54
that are doing well doesn't mean that we have a healthy and robust system where our biggest
1:01:59
institutions are embracing this idea of productive disagreement our biggest institutions are not
1:02:06
embracing the idea of course i want to blame so much of republican media as well fox news does not
1:02:11
do that um the dispatch and the bulwark are the equivalence of uh of of inglesias and taebi on
1:02:19
the right there are post dates who had to set up their own shop to uh in order to be heard that's
1:02:25
not a good it's not a good development that this is the only way for all these voices to really
1:02:33
get a hearing from your average citizen who wants to be engaged but really can't spend time
1:02:39
seeking out which half dozen substock sub stacks or podcasts he can cultivate to create a collection
1:02:47
that gives him what one or two op-ed pages used to in the past um and i mean then part of the
1:02:52
concern is also that if you do cultivate that sub stack of independent voices who aren't just
1:02:57
towing exactly the same kind of narrative that you're going to hear either in the conservative media
1:03:02
or in the left wing media but are going to throw interesting things at you there's a sort of a
1:03:09
self selection bias going on in those independent outlets and among those independent dissenting
1:03:16
podcasters and bloggers that can drive them off the rails too i mean we've seen the
1:03:22
arrangement of some people who i previously respected a lot a few years ago i don't know if it's
1:03:26
because of the pandemic i don't know if it's because of the just the cultural uh the
1:03:30
oiling cultural crisis of being captivated captured in your own home and doing nothing but
1:03:36
zoom meetings and surfing twitter all day but uh you know i don't think i need to name the people
1:03:42
five years ago we thought of as being fiercely independent thinkers who are now slightly
1:03:47
conspiratorial uh purveyors of misinformation and and bullshit and there's a sort of an audience
1:03:53
capture going on where it the red meat to the to their followers becomes more and more enticing and
1:03:59
they get kind of steered into ever more conspiratorial thinking and now they're talking about
1:04:04
you know coronavirus being a a world plot to install a world government and issue us all with
1:04:10
social credit vaccine passports that are going to win slavers and that that was the point of the
1:04:14
wuhan lab concocting the virus all along and i'm like wow five years ago you were an independent
1:04:21
thinker i don't know if this is independent but it's certainly that that's it crazy
1:04:25
right one of the first of all it wasn't a defect of the idea of uh an op-ed page or a magazine
1:04:33
that had a number of voices it wasn't a defect that the preferences and whims of the audience were
1:04:39
one or two levels removed from the people doing the writing uh the people be doing the writing
1:04:45
to some extent should come out with their opinions popularity of the opinion be damned but with
1:04:51
sub-stack it's exactly married to what the audience wants so it's very hard and this is where my
1:04:57
podcast digest has the it's a very bad market position in that what i do frequently is tell the
1:05:04
audience what they don't want to hear there is no way to make millions of dollars when you
1:05:09
consistently tell people what they don't want to hear but i think of here's a great example i don't
1:05:13
know if he's as celebrated in chicago he's well known but i don't know if he's as celebrated or
1:05:18
uh a case as some of these other guys were to our women were talking about and i also don't know i
1:05:22
don't think that he was uh erxornous who i'm talking about a columnist for the chicago tribune
1:05:27
and he wasn't exactly chased out for his opinions but it became clear that his opinions caused a
1:05:32
lot of trouble at his organization plus the chicago tribune was bought by you know a terribly
1:05:37
replatious um company that stripped it for parts but erick in this is a typical editorial of him
1:05:44
there was a shooting of a 13 year old a kid named adam teledo i say kid and there was a question of
1:05:49
you know did he have a gun did he flash the gun he did have a gun but dropped it before he was shot
1:05:54
his people activists were saying you know adam teledo is an angel he's 13 he's just an innocent
1:06:01
zorn does a column saying just because the kid is 13 not making any judgments on this actual
1:06:06
kid or these actual cases it is a faulty argument to put forward that 13 year olds are purely angelic
1:06:14
and cannot in fact kill a cop he lists a half dozen examples where someone of 13 years of age
1:06:19
shot at a cop or attempted to kill a cop or were quite dangerous to themselves or other people
1:06:24
well the the the blowback that he got from those within his organization um and others in the
1:06:31
world of journalism who just were very quick to call him racist it was enormous zorn with stood
1:06:38
that the editors at the time did not discipline him but it was quite clear that this is not the
1:06:44
sort of argumentation that you engage in if you want to keep your job as a columnist and that's
1:06:50
what we want the op-ed op-ed page to have we want a variety of voices where they even say the thing
1:06:57
that most of the public will disagree with but maybe it makes you think i think that's what makes
1:07:01
an op-ed page vital i think the idea of the op-ed page as a singular institution is really important
1:07:07
the society and i do think if what we have to do is kind of assemble our own op-ed pages by a
1:07:12
podcast here a sub stack there the regular op-ed page here it's just not as good as it once was
1:07:17
when there were people putting this together um for the for the news consumer to to peruse
1:07:23
conveniently the you mentioned earlier Mike that the the people who are currently running these
1:07:28
institutions who are in their their fifties largely uh or or older are they came up with an idea
1:07:36
about small liberalism which which revered free speech and and sort of held the free exchange
1:07:42
of ideas and even pushing you know pushing people's buttons a little bit as being part of the point
1:07:47
of their job and if as you suggest people in their 20s and 30s have been inculcated with a worldview
1:07:55
that is not predominantly motivated by the messy exchange of complicated provocative ideas but
1:08:03
rather by what you might call generously a mission towards greater justice a mission towards
1:08:10
uh ironing out or excluding points of view that are uh that are bigoted that are representatives
1:08:17
of the white supremacist patriarchal power structures and making sure that all of the all content
1:08:22
and all behavior conforms to um a vision of of justice and equality for minorities if that's the
1:08:33
worldview then what happens to the likes of you and the future use when those people are running
1:08:42
all institutions well a couple things one and what's going on with the high profile cases is
1:08:48
they're more successful than the old institutions i mean there are old institutions who are dying
1:08:54
i think because they got away from this idea i think that it is an exciting idea and it does the
1:09:00
idea of uh a plural a number of voices often disagreeing with things um i think the other idea of
1:09:08
similar voices all saying the same things it's just going to appeal to the public less and
1:09:13
sell less and what might happen is that many of these institutions pivot to unpopularity
1:09:21
and they cease to exist or are forced to change um it i would think in the midterm elections
1:09:28
um democrats are going to get shellac there's going to be a big argument about to what extent should
1:09:36
we blame how much uh being a democrat is associated with the kind of progressivism that you were
1:09:43
describing in your question you know the brand is toxic is a headline that played in a lot of
1:09:48
newspapers in the united states from an ap story the democratic brand is toxic how much is that
1:09:54
toxicity based on things that democrats or people you know elite uh left leaning people say
1:10:00
how much is it you know conservative smearing all democrats is believing what those elite left
1:10:06
leaning people say but i do think that if more more elite left leaning people only voice the
1:10:11
opinions of elite left leaning people they're not going to be such robust institutions in the future
1:10:17
maca i think that's uh that's a pretty good place to uh to to leave that with either a depressing or
1:10:23
optimistic uh worldview of the future that i i'm just trying to think are there any shark uh stories
1:10:30
that you want to leave us with before we uh before we go either shark related bread related or lactation
1:10:38
related for i think i think in doing so in traipsing in so frivolously traipsing in these fields it
1:10:44
would just expose my uh my unfind defend privilege my you know a lot of people have lactose intolerance
1:10:52
intolerance and i would want to show myself as being one of those people no that's true you are not
1:10:56
intolerant to the lactose intolerant that's what we love about you maca i think thank you for doing
1:11:00
show good to you uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan posthuma follow me Josh
1:11:12
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1:11:18
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