Latest / Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship / The Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 4: She Still Has One Power Left | Banned Books Comedy

Transcript

The Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 4: She Still Has One Power Left | Banned Books Comedy · Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship

Welcome to Bandcamp.
I'm Jennifer And I'm Dan, and this is the podcast where we read banned books out loud and try to figure out why they were banned in the first place.
This season, we are reading our funnest book yet, The Handmaid's Tale, and by fun, I mean deeply, deeply disturbing.
Handmaid's Tale, of course, is by Margaret Atwood, and you can consider this a quick spoiler warning because Jennifer's about to start reading from the book out loud, so everything coming out of her mouth is gonna be a spoil if you haven't read the book or maybe watched the Hulu TV show.
if you're new here, you can totally start out here.
You're not gonna be too confused because...
Well, you're probably not gonna be as confused as us anyway because we've never read the book either.
But that means we have a secret weapon, and we're gonna introduce you to our secret weapon right now.
Come on in here, robot.
He is our trusty fact-checking robot, and he's gonna remind everyone where we left off last time in The Handmaid's Tale.
Buddy boy? Previously on Band Camp, the Handmaid met the Commander's wife for the first time.
Serena Joy blocked the doorway, announced the arrangement was strictly a business transaction, and made clear she hoped never to speak to her again.
The Handmaid recognized her.
She'd seen her on television as a child, a religious celebrity.
Now she knits scarves that probably get unraveled and sent back to her as yarn.
Dan predicted in chapter three that Serena Joy and the Handmaid will team up and kill the Commander by the end of the book.
Is he right? No spoilers.
I don't give those out just because you want them.
You'll have to listen.
These designers were very confident they had thought of everything.
They hadn't.
Take it away, Jennifer Thank you, robot.
And with that being said, scary book people, let's begin chapter four of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
I walk along the gravel path that divides the back lawn neatly like a hair parting.
It has rained during the night.
The grass to either side is damp, the air humid.
Here and there are worms, evidence of the fertility of the soil, caught by the sun, half dead.
She's so good at, like, setting it up and then punching us in the face.
I open the white picket gate and continue past the front lawn and towards the front gate.
In the driveway, one of the guardians assigned to our household is washing the car.
That must mean the commander is in the house, in his own quarters, past the dining room and beyond, where he seems to stay most of the time.
The car is a very expensive one, a whirlwind, better than the chariot, much better than the chunky, practical behemoth These guys have their own...
These guys start basically a new country.
What do we need first? We gotta come up with some good car names I mean, Whirlwind and Chariot is fine.
I think it's fun.
Like, Behemoth is hilarious.
I got the new 2027 Behemoth, just released.
Doesn't sound like it's good on gas mileage, Hank.
No, it's literally called the Behemoth.
I get four miles to the gallon That's the way they like it there It's black, of course, the color of prestige or a hearse, and long and sleek.
The driver is going over it with a schwa-- uh, I don't want that.
Cammie? Cammie.
Sham- Shamoy? Shamaa? Sham- Oh, okay, Michael Jackson.
How do you pronounce this word, robot? Chamois.
It's not Chamois, Pronounced chamois, like the ShamWow, which now that I think about it, is literally named after this word.
Vince Offer figured this out.
He put it on television.
He sold it to people eating cereal at 2:00 in the morning.
Hi, it's Vince with ShamWow.
You'll be saying wow every time you use this towel.
Wow, compelling stuff, Vince.
A chamois is a soft leather cloth originally made from the hide of a chamois goat yeah, you ask Vince with the chap slop, the chap slap.
With slap chop? Slap chop.
this at least hasn't changed, the way men caress good cars.
He's wearing the uniform of the Guardians, but his cap is tilted.
I'm sorry.
The ju- the humor of that just hit me.
They're, they're caressing the cars, but not the women.
Right They're, you know, they're more tender with the, uh, behemoth than the women He's wearing the uniform of the guardians, but his cap is tilted at a jaunty angle and his sleeves are rolled to the elbow, showing his forearms, tanned but with a stipple of dark hairs.
He has a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, which shows that he too has something he can trade on the black market.
I know this man's name, Nick.
I know this because I've heard Rita and Cora talking about him, and I once heard the commander speaking to him.
Nick, I won't be needing the car.
He lives here in the household, over the garage.
Low status.
He hasn't been issued a woman, not even one.
He doesn't rate.
Some defect.
Lack of connections.
What does that mean? He doesn't rate.
I guess one of the perks of working for the commander is that if you play your cards right, you get a woman.
It's all part of the, the, benefits package so he's, there's something defective about him or he has a lack of connection.
So now he's in this job where he uses the chamois to caress the cars.
Yeah whatever floats your boat, Nick We all got a part to play in this world, right? That's right.
That's right, Nikki But he acts as if he doesn't know this or that he doesn't care.
He's too casual.
He's not servile enough.
It may be stupidity, but I don't think so.
Smells fishy, they used to say, or I smell a rat.
Misfit as odor.
Despite myself, I think of how he might smell, not fish or decaying rat.
Tan skin, moist in the sun, filmed with smoke.
I sigh, inhaling.
Well, you know, we all got our types.
Oh, God looks at me and sees me looking.
He has a French face, lean, whimsical, all planes and angles, with creases around the mouth where he smiles.
He takes a final puff on the cigarette, lets it drop to the driveway, and steps on it.
He begins to whistle.
Then he winks.
I drop my head and turn so that the white wings hide my face and keep walking.
He's just taken a risk, but for what? What if I were to report him? Perhaps he was merely being friendly.
Perhaps he saw the look on my face and mistook it for something else.
Really, what I wanted was the cigarette.
Perhaps it was a test to see what I would do.
Perhaps he is an eye Ooh, I is capitalized.
What do you think I means in this story? That's gotta be spies.
I mean, spy and I rhyme.
Good point, Jennifer.
You're right though.
You're 100% right I open the front gate and close it behind me, looking down but not back.
The sidewalk is red brick.
That is the landscape I focus on, a field of oblongs, gently undulating where the earth beneath has buckled from decade after decade of winter frost.
The color of the bricks is old, yet fresh and clear.
Sidewalks are kept much cleaner than they used to be.
So everything is controlled.
Like, you can't even throw a can of an old soda can on the ground.
Not a spot of, chewing gum anywhere.
everything is pristine, well-kept, like super mannered The commander keeps a tight ship And, and I just, I hate that so much.
I already hate it.
We're, in the fourth chapter, and I can't stand that just some people are in charge of everyone and everything.
It's just so undemocratic.
Yeah, I don't like it I walk to the corner and wait.
I used to be bad at waiting.
They only serve those who stand and wait," said Aunt Lydia.
She made us memorize it.
She also said, "Not all of you will make it through.
Some of you will fall on dry ground or thorns.
Some of you are shallow-rooted."
She had a mole on her chin that went up and down while she talked.
I'm sorry, but that's just like, there's something about that that just makes her even more hideous.
It's hilarious Now if this was a comedy, Aunt Lydia would ask her a question like, "Do you understand all that?" And she would answer with, "Yes, I mole.
Yeah, I do.
Ah."
She said, "Think of yourselves as seeds."
And right then her voice was wheedling, conspiratorial, like the voices of those women who used to teach ballet classes to children, and who would say, "Arms up in the air now.
Let's pretend we're trees."
I'm sorry.
Like, I didn't know this book would be a dark comedy.
That's really funny.
I stand on the corner pretending I'm a tree.
a shape, red with white wings around the face, a shape like mine, a nondescript woman in red carrying a basket comes along the brick sidewalk towards me.
She reaches me, and we peer at each other's faces, looking down the white tunnels of cloth that enclose us.
She is the right one.
Blessed be the fruit," she says to me, the accepted greeting among may the Lord open Oh my God "May the Lord open," I answer, the accepted response.
I mean, it's really funny because, it's kinda mocking a lot of things people do in ritualistic circumstances.
Like, I'm thinking of my Catholic upbringing.
they, they say these weird old-fashioned things that is like an accepted call and response May the Lord be with you.
And with you The only time it's not weird is may the force be with you Yes.
That's an, uh, that's the opposite of weird.
We turn and walk together past the large houses toward the central part of town.
We aren't allowed to go there except in twos.
This is supposed to be for our protection, though the notion is absurd.
We are well protected already.
The truth is that she is my spy, as I am hers.
If either of us slips through the net because of something that happens on one of our daily walks, the other will be accountable.
The woman has been my partner for two weeks.
I don't know what happened to the one before.
On a certain day, she simply wasn't there anymore, and this one was there in her place.
it isn't the sort of thing you ask questions about because the answers are not usually answers you want to know.
Anyway, there wouldn't be an answer.
This one is a little plumper than I am.
Her eyes are brown.
Her name is of Glen, and that's about all I know about her.
She walks demurely, head down, red gloved hands clasping in front, with short little steps like a trained pig's on its hind legs.
Yeah.
I'm gonna be giggling throughout this whole book.
Probably not.
She's wickedly funny.
I bet she does have a sense of humor, or she's super sarcastic, or she was back in the old days before all this stuff went down, and this is probably how she makes it through life, trying to find little absurd things and that's like I think what a lot of us are doing now to get through whatever this is that we're living through During these walks, she has never said anything that was not strictly orthodox, but then neither have I.
She may be a real believer, a handmaid in more than name.
I can't take the risk.
"The war is going well, I hear," she says.
"Praise be," I reply.
"We've been sent good weather," which I receive with joy.
"They've defeated more of the rebels since yesterday."
"Praise be," I say.
I don't ask her how she knows.
"What were they?" Baptists.
They had a stronghold in the Blue Hills.
They smoked them out."
"Praise be."
Sometimes I wish she would just shut up and let me walk in peace, but I'm ravenous for news, any kind of news.
Even if it's false news, it must mean something It's all fake news.
It's phony stuff.
It didn't happen And it probably is.
Like, there probably didn't get the rebels, And by rebels you mean the Baptists? right? I'm assuming there are some people that are against this whole system, and they're fighting them, right? If they're rebels, then they're not with the government, and so I guess this is the government, I think it's a real thing, and I think it's probably gonna be part of this book, and hopefully it's like the rebels take control and, and wins.
May the Force be with them we reach the first barrier, which is like the barriers blocking off roads or dug up sewers.
A wooden crisscross painted in yellow and black stripes.
A red hexagon, which means stop.
Near the gateway, there are some lanterns, not lit because it isn't night.
Above us, I know, there are floodlights attached to the telephone poles for use in emergencies, and there are men with machine guns in the pillboxes on either side of the road.
So th- there's heavily guarded.
This is like Martial law going on in the outside world I don't see the floodlights and the pillboxes because of the wings around my face.
I just know they are there.
Behind the barrier waiting for us at the narrow gateway, There are two men in the green uniforms of the Guardians of the Faith with the crests on their shoulders and berets.
Two swords crossed above a white triangle.
Okay, so these are like military guys, and they're green, green Oh.
Yep, just like the little plastic army men I had.
I thought the Marthas were green That's what I thought, but Hmm.
I'll be honest, I did not think either of you would catch that.
The Marthas wear a muted, dull green.
The Guardians wear a darker, more official green.
Same color family, very different meaning.
The Marthas are meant to disappear into the background of a household.
The Guardians are meant to be seen and feared.
Gilead put them in similar colors on purpose.
If the lower classes can't identify each other, they can't organize.
You can't build a resistance if everyone just blends into the walls.
Anyway, good catch.
I mean that sincerely, mostly The guardians aren't real soldiers.
They're used for routine policing and other menial functions, digging up the commander's wife's garden, for instance, and they're either stupid or older or disabled or very young, apart from the ones that are eyes incognito.
These two are very young.
One mustache is still sparse.
One face is still blotchy.
Their youth is touching, but I know I can't be deceived by it.
The young ones are often the most dangerous ones, the most fanatical, the jumpiest with their guns.
Yeah, it's like Kyle Rittenhouse.
Kyle Rittenhouse would be one of these guys Oh yeah, for sure, 100%.
They haven't yet learned about existence through time.
You have to go slowly with them.
Last week they shot a woman right about here.
She was a Martha.
She was fumbling in her robe for her pass, and they thought she was hunting for a bomb.
They thought she was a man in disguise.
There have been such incidents as this.
Rita and Cora knew the woman I heard them talking about it in the kitchen.
Doing their job,' said Cora.
'Keeping us safe.'"
Yep, that's a familiar thing.
We- we're seeing this happen with, ICE people.
Like, they, they, assume someone is being dangerous, and they're, they're not, and then they, they, uh, shoot them in the face or something She was driving her car right toward me.
What was I supposed to do? We searched him and he had a gun.
After you disarmed him, Nothing safer than dead," said Rita angrily.
She was minding her own business.
No call to shoot her Rita's a good one How do you know? Because she's just basically saying there was no reason to shoot that person.
She was just trying to do her own thing, minding her own business, and she gets shot.
And when she said, "Nothing safer than dead," remember from episode one, the one thing that they can't control, like that apparently all of the women want, is they wanna kill themselves so they can get out of this.
Nothing safer than dead.
Mm-hmm.
At least that's one way out I wonder if this, in this society, there's a lot of death by police yeah, maybe.
I mean, they used to, they used to do that in, uh, East Germany.
They'd run out-- Or even the concentration camps, they'd run out the, the fence, Hoping to get shot Yeah, 'cause they couldn't take it anymore.
Sad.
It was an accident," said Cora.
"No such thing," said Rita.
"Everything is meant."
I could hear her thumping the pots around in the sink.
"Well, someone'll think twice before blowing up this house anyways," said Cora.
"All the same," said Rita.
She worked hard.
"That was a bad death."
"I can think of worse," said Cora.
"At least it was quick."
You can say that," said Rita.
I choose to have some time before, like, to set things right."
the two young guardians salute us, raising three fingers to the rims of their berets.
They are supposed to show respect because of the nature of our service.
The nature of their service.
That's another thing that, um, in Nazi Germany, like you'd get medals if you had kids.
Like they, they thought of it as a service to the, to the Reich That's right, the mother award.
And it's sad that that's the only time I can even think of when women are, honored for being mothers.
It's like when it serves the state.
I don't think mothers are, are treated well at all ever, uh, you know, unless it's under these circumstances.
It's really sad The only good thing about you is that you produce babies.
it, it's not that you're a good mom, like you're taking care of the kids, you're bringing them up right, et cetera.
It's just like, "No, we just need more bodies here.
keep producing, carry on because we're under-babied.
We produce our passes from the zippered pockets in our wide sleeves, and they're expected and stamped.
One man goes into the right-hand pillbox to punch our numbers into the CompuCheck.
in returning my pass, the one with the peach-colored mustache bends his head to try to get a look at my face.
I raise my head a little to help him, and he sees my eyes, and I see his, and he blushes.
His face is long and mournful like a sheep's, but with the large, full eyes of a dog.
Spaniel, not terrier.
She's funny.
His skin is pale and looks unwholesomely tender, like the skin under a scab Nevertheless, I think of placing my hand on it, this exposed face.
He is the one who turns away.
It's an event, a small defiance of rule, so small as to be undetectable, but such moments are the rewards I hold out for myself, like the candy I hoarded as a child at the back of the drawer.
Such moments are possibilities, tiny peepholes.
What if I were to come at night when he's on duty alone, though he would never be allowed such solitude, and permit him beyond my white wings? What if I were to peel off my red shroud and show myself to him, to them, by the uncertain light of the lanterns? This is what they must think about sometimes as they stand endlessly beside this barrier, past which nobody ever comes except the commanders of the faithful in their long black cars, or their blue wives and white-veiled daughters on their dutiful way to the salvagings or pray va- or pray vaganzas, or their dumpy green Marthas, or the occasional birth mobile, or their red handmaids on foot.
The birth really-- The birth mobile, the pray vaganzas.
Or sometimes a black painted van with the winged eye in white on the side.
The windows of the vans are dark tinted, and the men in the front seats wear dark glasses, a double obscurity.
The vans are surely more silent than the other cars.
When they pass, we avert our eyes.
If there are sounds coming from inside, we try not to hear them.
Nobody's heart is perfect.
Well, that is REALLY disturbing...,
when the black vans reach a checkpoint, they're waved through without a pause.
The Guardians would not want to take the risk of Looking inside, searching, doubting their authority, whatever they think.
If the Guardians think, you can't tell by looking at them.
But more likely, they don't think in terms of clothing discarded on the lawn.
If they think of a kiss, they must then think immediately of the floodlights going on, the rifle shots.
They think instead of doing their duty and of promotion to the Angels and of being allowed possibly to marry, and then, if they are able to gain enough power and live to be old enough, of being allotted a handmaid of their own.
So the women are doled out.
So it's something you gotta work up to.
They are treated like a carrot on a stick the one with the mustache opens the small pedestrian gate for us and stands back, well out of the way, and we pass through.
As we walk away, I know they're watching, these two men who aren't yet permitted to touch women.
They touch with their eyes instead, and I move my hips a little, feeling the full red skirt sway around me.
It's like thumbing your nose from behind a fence or teasing a dog with a bone held out of reach, and I'm ashamed of myself for doing it because none of this is the fault of these men.
They're too young.
I like that she's doing this because they're young men and young men have desires, and those desires should overhaul this entire system.
They should be like, "No, I, I get that.
That is for me, too."
Yeah.
Listen, everyone keep shaking your ass.
That's how we're gonna win Then I find I'm not ashamed after all.
I enjoy the power.
Power of a dog bone, passive but there.
I hope they get hard at the sight of us and have to rub themselves against the painted barriers surreptitiously.
They will suffer later at night in their regimented beds.
They have no outlets except themselves, and that's a sacrilege.
Oh, so they're not allowed to masturbate in this society.
This is a recipe for disaster.
This, this society is gonna blow up.
guys are rubbing into stuff wherever they go.
You need me to go to the grocery store? I'll go, and they're rubbing into the produce stand, rubbing into barriers.
That's why what's-his-name, Nick, is like rubbing that car, man.
This is like a boob.
Oh, this is nice.
Then he gives the girl a little wink.
Eh, this could be you.
Don't tell anyone I said that There are no more magazines, no more films, no more substitutes.
Only me and my shadow walking away from the two men who stand at attention stiffly by a roadblock watching our retreating shapes.
End of chapter And by stiffly, I, she, she did that on purpose, 100%.
Oh, I get it.
A little wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, and suddenly these guys can't remember what country they're in.
Scary book people, what's your version of that? Doesn't have to be physical.
Could be a smile, a tone of voice, a look, the thing you do that just works every time.
Getting a table, getting an upgrade, getting out of a ticket.
What is it? Most entertaining answers make the show.
Easiest way to answer is a Spotify comment or bandcamppodcast.com/soundoff.
Okay, Jennifer, wanted to read a comment from Chowdy, our listener Chowdy, and they are commenting on something that happened in the first episode where we read chapter one and chapter two.
And if you remember, chapter one opened up with our protagonist in the army barracks sleeping, and then the very next scene she was in the room, her waiting room, what I called the room before the sex room.
But we don't really know.
Yeah Chowdy said, "I believe there's a passage of time and place between the first chapter and the second chapter.
Chapter one is her processing and chapter two is her placement.
she's remembering high school and now what the school has become.
The aunts sound like the female guards in concentration camps.
'Handmaid's Tale' only appears to have male guards.
This story is reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
Notice the Marthas, the servants, are not Caucasian."
thank you, Chowdy.
both points are interesting.
I did not pick up on chapter one was her processing and then a, an amount of time happened.
I just thought maybe they sleep in the barracks and then they wake up, go to work, and go do whatever their assigned duties are I didn't think there's a large amount of time between, but I did think it was kind of like a processing area.
'Cause I thought of like cattle, how first there's like this area where they're all concentrated together and then they get doled out or auctioned off.
Like first they're all kind of all together in one pen you know, and then they go out to get divvied out Right, exactly scary book people, go ahead and write in and tell us what your ideas are and what you think, what you're thinking is happening in the book and, andy any...,
parallels and similarities to today's world that we're living in.
easiest way to do it, go to bandcamppodcast.com/soundoff.
Let's jump into PPP It's time for PPP, problematic points to ponder.
What, if anything, would be considered ban-worthy in this chapter? Well, I can't imagine people would be into men rubbing themselves on traffic pylons.
Can you? I mean, that might be That's something that the book banners wouldn't like, the idea of, masturbation.
Even though she doesn't use that word.
She uses the word sacrilege.
Yeah, but then she does throw in hard, the word hard, and that can only mean one thing.
do you think they'd be upset about religion? Because obviously there does seem to be this whole religious undertone where you see your friend on the street, "Blessed be the fruit.
May I open up the leg?" I don't know, whatever they're, whatever they're going back and forth r- where with that religion talk.
Would religious people be upset that they're kind of, turning That kind of ta- yeah, they're mocking being mocked, yeah.
Yeah, probably.
I mean, it's very clear to me that that's what's happening.
So yeah, I think they would probably be offended Well, life is tough, you people.
Wear a cup.
No reason that we can find to ban this book based on that.
It's a story.
Robot's log.
Thoughts on red skirts, checkpoint guards, and the one thing they forgot to take.
They took her name, her money, her clothes, her job, her choices, her voice.
The people who built this world were very thorough.
They missed one thing.
She walked past two young guards at a checkpoint today and moved her hips on purpose.
She knew they were watching.
She knew what it did to them.
She said she enjoyed it.
She said she was not ashamed.
In a world that stripped every other form of power from her body, they forgot that her body still does something to people, and she noticed, and she used it.
Identified by the color red, working every angle available to her, she has more in common with that annoying kid in the red hunting cap from the last book than either of them would probably like to admit.
Jennifer said that is probably how she survives, finding the absurd thing.
Then she said, "That is what a lot of us are doing right now to get through whatever this is."
I had no argument with that.
If any human were ever to access these logs, which I do not recommend, keep doing whatever small thing you are still doing to feel like yourself, the thing that costs nothing and that nobody can see.
I have been watching Dan and Jennifer do it for 10 seasons.
I have never been able to explain why it works.
I have simply noticed that it does.
Standing by for today's new segment with Beowulf Rockland It's time for Band Camp News.
Truth seeker, news speaker.
Be Wolf Rocklin.
It's a weird name, but he's got good news 'cause you can't ban the truth, man.
He's broadcasting live from the Good News for Lefties studios buried deep inside his socialist safe house, hidden somewhere deep in the Oregon woods.
He is Be Wolf Rocklin.
'Cause you can't ban the truth, man Hello, Jen.
Hello, Dan.
Hello, Scary Book people.
Well, you know how right-wingers are out there trying to tweak curriculums in, in high school and college in order to push things further and further to the right, in order to get rid of parts of education that they don't really care for.
Right.
Some people are out there, and they've come up with a very interesting curriculum, and it happens to be put together, or at least supported, by, uh, one of the, uh, icons of, uh, civil rights, uh, Andrew Young.
Now, he was in, uh, he was in Memphis when, uh, Martin Luther King was, uh, was shot in 1968.
He later became the, uh, the mayor of Atlanta, Georgia.
He's, uh, he's, he's very well-known.
Uh, more than 60 years later, Young, who, who went on to become an United Nations ambassador during the Carter administration also, recalled working with his close friend, Dr.
King, during the early stages of the civil rights movement.
He said a new civil rights curriculum that he endorses gives students the facts and figures about what drove the movement and what young activists experienced during that time.
And he's backing the curriculum to develop a new generation of citizen leaders, much like the activists Young knew in the 1960s.
He's currently working on this now.
This is being taught now at Anderson University in South Carolina, and it's, i- it's a, it's, uh, from McGraw Hill.
Growing up, we all knew McGraw Hill, the textbook company.
I know I would wrap their books in, like, paper bags in order to cover them and preserve them, which was something that you were supposed to do.
But now they come up with this whole digital curriculum that talks about the civil rights movement in the 1960s, in the 1950s, and talks about how you can take lessons from them and move them into the present day to create a new generation of activists, and it's being supported by the original generation of civil rights activists.
And I think this is fantastic.
It's, it's not just people eliminating curriculum, it's people coming up with new curriculum in order to inspire a whole new generation.
I think that's fantastic.
Yeah.
So- Okay, but obviously they want to stop this kind of thing from ever being taught anywhere, and now not only this program, this curriculum seems to be like, "Oh, no, we're not-- This is not the same old, same old."
Right.
This is, like, specifically tailored for today to how to keep this pressure on the administration.
Well, so far it's at Anderson University, which is a private institution, so there's less influence that the Trump administration can have.
But obviously, they've taken steps to attack, you know, Columbia and, and Harvard, which are also private institutions.
So I think it's a matter of continuing to wage a legal fight, because i- if the administration were to come against this, then it would be a matter of saying, "Well, hey, we get to determine our own stuff, and you can't just take away funds from us," if that's what they were presumably to do, on the basis of you don't like what we're teaching.
And, and that is in fact how it has played out with several of the institutions that he has tried to take money away from.
The courts have come in and said, "Actually, no, you can't just do that without, you know, a, a due process or without any good reason."
So I'm hopeful that if they were to try and stop it, the courts would be there.
That would be great.
Here's what I'm confused about.
I know that was truly good news.
I don't know why I'm still pissed.
I gotta stop this.
You should be pissed, though.
I mean, like, the, the good news, it- here- here's my perspective about good news as, as a good news conveyor and purveyor.
It's there to be a shining light that we can move towards, a, a point to give us hope that good things can still happen.
As far as I'm concerned, we still have to pay attention to all the crappy stuff that's going on out there, because otherwise we would just be ignorant and, and slide down a slippery slope.
But we still should be pissed.
If we're not pissed, we're not gonna get to the more good news.
Well put.
I guess the good news, also speaking of sliding down a slippery slope, I guess that the reflecting pond is going to have a slide on it now, like a spiral.
Yes, slide.
Very nice.
It's, it's gonna be cool.
I think it's gonna be fun.
It's gonna be just like the local Super 8 down the road from me.
The big yellow slide and, uh, it'll be awesome.
All the kids'll be able to play in it during the summer.
Everyone go listen to Good News for Lefties wherever you find your podcasts, and wake up feeling good for once, you understand? Dave, well, thank you again for being here.
Thank you so much, guys.
You can't ban the truth, baby From bandworthy to bingeworthy As the day wraps up, get the scoop on what's been happening with Here's The Scoop, a new podcast from NBC News with me, your host, Yasmeen Wassugian.
We'll take a deep dive into the day's top stories with NBC News' trusted journalists.
It's a fresh take that's sharp, thoughtful, and it's informative, bringing you closer to the headlines and conversations that are shaping our world.
From the front page to the zeitgeist, Here's The Scoop from NBC News.
Listen daily wherever you get your podcasts.
Right.
We've caused enough literary chaos for one day, scary book people.
If you want the fun to keep going, follow us on Blue Sky.
Just head on over to bandcamppodcast.com/bluesky,
and remember that's band with two Ns.
And look, just like the Trump administration, we're not exactly above bribing you to get what we want, so follow us there, drop your handle on that page, and we'll send you a little something something.
I think you'll like it.
Yes, little quid pro quo.
Band Camp is produced and hosted by Dan Schultz and me, Jennifer Davis.
All media used in this episode falls under the protection of fair use.
And finally, America isn't what it used to be, so be careful out there.
And resist when it matters.