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Episode One Hundred Thirteen: The Obama Bait & Switch · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number one hundred and thirteen of the Death of Journalism podcast.
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My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. Equity Madness
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is sweeping America. The media coverage of a democratic gay sex scandal seems like
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a parody. The path for the end of tackle football becomes more clear,
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some thoughts on Tiger Woods son Charlie, and my daughter's annual visit with Santa
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does not go well. I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man. I'm
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a digital advertising SEO and email marketing specialist that also happens to be a big
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the Dutchdigital Marketingman dot com. If you want to grow your business, Peter
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can help. That's the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. And hey, thanks
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for sponsoring the show. In episode number one hundred and twelve of this podcast,
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we spent a great deal of time discussing the issue of Claudine Gay,
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the president at Harvard University, and how she was able to survive multiple scandals
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because of the concept of equity and the fact that she is a black female
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gave her the protection she needed to survive when the white female president at the
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University of Pennsylvania did not. And since that episode, there have been a
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series of stories directly related to this issue of equity, which I have pinpointed
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for the duration of this podcast as being maybe the number one underrated topic facing
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America, where the news media is unwilling to fully acknowledge what is actually happening.
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And that is, in short, that the definitions have changed of keywords,
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that equality of opportunity has become equity of outcome. And it is my
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very strong belief that that right there is game set match, that's the end
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of America as we know it. And so I want to go through a
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series of these stories kind of in chronological order. They're all very similar,
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they're all to various degrees outrageous. But the first one I want to touch
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on deals since this is a topic I'll talk about later on in the show,
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deals with football, specifically the NFL and the Amazon Thursday Night broadcast of
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last week's horrendous came between the Las Vegas Raiders and the Los Angeles Chargers,
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and specifically this announcement made by Carrissa Thompson. Now, we've discussed CHRISA.
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Thompson on this podcast before for very very different reasons. One because she bragged
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about making up sideline reports, and two because she has a base a sex
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video of herself that she taped from her offices at Fox Sports that's online that
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no one ever wants to acknowledge even occurred. And yet she still has a
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job and is still considered part of the elite sports media. But here she
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was prior to that game between the Raiders and the Chargers, very somewhat casually,
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but while also cheerleading this new development that was going to be present at
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the Raiders Chargers game, and that is folks, guess what the officiating crew
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for this game was gonna be? All black? That's right, all black.
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And if that's not enough, a record number of females, three women
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on the officiating crew for this NFL football game. And here's what that sounded
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like on Amazon's Thursday Night Football. All Right, the NFL family has committed
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to social justice and reducing barriers to opportunity. Tonight, for the first time
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ever, both the on field officials and free play group will be entirely composed
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of African Americans. It's also the first time three female officials will be working
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on this same crew. Awesome stuff. Guys will be back right after this,
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and of course Thompson is literally cheering this development at the end of that
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clip that you just heard. Now, Look, I think it's fantastic that
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there are black referees. I'm a little less enthusiastic about the fact that there
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are female referees because that means they're referees who did not play any major organized
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football, which I think is critical to being able to be a top notch
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football officials. I know that's a shocking concept, but as someone who's never
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played but did coach at the high school level and the low level high school
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level, I do think it's important that someone at least have some level of
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experience in football to be officiating the National Football League, and obviously is a
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female that does not exist. But the bigger picture here is the idea that
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we're celebrating in twenty twenty three, celebrating openly, unapologetically the idea that we
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can discriminate against all other races Whites, Asians, you know, Hispanics,
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I guess Indians, I guess. You know. This is obviously done on
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purpose. This didn't happen by accident. This is clearly totally subjective in the
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selection process. They didn't earn these spots. You know, there was no
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possible way for this officiating crew to have happened organically. Okay, the numbers
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just make that absolutely impossible. This was done in a contrived way to create
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what equity, equity of outcome. We just want to make history for history's
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sake. We've chosen this game, and everyone's not only going to go along
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with it, we're gonna cheew he it. And the most remarkable part of
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this from a political standpoint is that here we have a National Football League game
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on a streaming service. I have no way of knowing this for sure,
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but my guess is the vast majority of people watching this broadcast were white people.
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White men. White men make up the base of the NFL's key demographic,
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and the NFL has done a remarkable job of crapping all over them.
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For decades now in multiple ways, and the more they get away with it,
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the more they will realize they have nothing to fear from their base of
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support, white males, generally non liberal white males, who have to sit
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there and watch this and see it be cheered. Blatant discrimination. Now,
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I guess what they're saying is the officiating doesn't really matter. I mean,
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the officiating is terrible in the National Football League, and I've talked all sorts
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of times about how the rules are insane in football in general, and I
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will do so again in this episode of the podcast. But effectively, what
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they're telling you there is that we're willing to crap in your face, white
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males. You're gonna have to eat this shit sandwich and you're gonna like it.
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We're gonna cheer it. And oh, by the way, officiating doesn't
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really matter because it can we can choose whoever we want based upon race and
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gender, not based upon performance, not who the best people are, now
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the color of your skin. And I guess in this situation, if you
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can determine female, you know, gender by genitalia and not having a penis,
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I mean, that's what we've come to now, And this is to
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be cheered and accepted, and you're a bad person if you even raise a
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concern about it. Because here we are cheering this development. And if this
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was an isolated circumstance, it would be just kind of a chuckle, a
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laugh. Maybe it worse. Hey, that doesn't seem like a very good
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sign. Things seem like they're going in the wrong direction, but it's not.
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This is one data point out of many many. Let me give you
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a few others. The Biden administration this past weekend removed the Reconciliation Monument in
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Arlington National Cemetery. Now, this is a monument that's over one hundred years
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old that was meant, as its name suggests, to symbolize reconciliation and unity
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in the aftermath of the Civil War. But because some liberals decided that in
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some way, shape or form, this was giving credibility to the Confederacy,
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because after all, that have unity and reconciliation, you have to acknowledge that
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that actually existed. That monument is now being taken down again, not an
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isolated incident, just the most recent outrage that the monument topic has been the
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most obvious slippery slope that I can think of as soon as you start letting
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the get away with this at any level, there's no stopping it. There's
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no stopping And I have to say, and his fans mention this online all
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the time. Donald Trump was right about this one. Donald Trump said,
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paraphrasing, you know, eventually they're going to go after Jefferson and Washington and
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probably Lincoln. By the way, I believe that if I live to a
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natural life cycle, Abraham Lincoln's going to be canceled. Because if you look
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at not just his words, I mean, some of the words that Lincoln
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used, especially in the Lincoln Douglas debate, are as racist as you can
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possibly get by today's standards, but even some of his actions. It is
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it is astonishing to me that he has not yet been canceled. But eventually
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they'll get to Lincoln and Washington and Jefferson and all the other founding fathers.
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But we're just erasing our history now, erasing our culture, erasing our heritage.
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And you know, the Bide administration just does this apparently, by the
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way, going back to Trump, I'm not one hundred percent sure this is
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accurate, but it seemed like it was pretty credible from when I saw online.
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It appears from my reading that Trump actually tried to prevent this from even
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being a thing that could possibly happen, but had his veto overturned with Republican
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help. So Trump fans are gonna love this kind of situation because it really
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does go to one of their favorite narratives, which is that Trump was right
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all along and this is a guy who needs and deserves a second chance.
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I don't believe in any of that, but in this particular case, Trump
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was right. The removal of monuments is a slippery slope, and I don't
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think it's ever going to stop until liberals have eliminated everything and more in their
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wildest fantasies of eliminating and erasing the history of the United States of America,
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which they see as racist, and by the way, that has enormous implications
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far more than just a statue or symbolism. It goes to what people think
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of our own country. Hell, the US military is at its lowest level
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in eighty years, and there's a lot of theories as to why this is.
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Is gen Z soft that's I think part of it, but also studies
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have indicated that Generation Z thinks that this country is racist and therefore not worth
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serving. Now, liberals either don't care or don't realize that when they do
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this kind of stuff, it has enormous ramifications and there are seemingly unintended consequences.
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So when you claim that our entire country's history is racist, gee,
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I wonder why it is that a generation that has been taught this crap wouldn't
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want to serve in the US military. So that's a real world impact of
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this kind of stuff. But back to the data points. So we've got
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you know, Amazon and the all black, partially female officiating crew in an
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NFL game, and the Biden administration removing the Reconciliation Monument. We've got Chicago's
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progressive mayor, a black man by the name of Brandon Johnson, apparently ending
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selective schools, which he promised not to do during the campaign to be Chicago's
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mayor. Because their existence and I'm paraphrasing here, I'm using my own analysis,
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but it's pretty clear because their existence is creating and exposing too much inequity
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in the school system. The Daily Mail reports headline, Chicago's progressive mayor Brandon
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Johnson announces plans to acts Windy cities high achieving select enrollment high schools to boost
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quote unquote equity despite promising not to do so during election campaign. I mean,
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and this is really infuriating because the people that are going to suffer most
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here people. But bottom line of this is they don't want to have a
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situation where there's actual competition because the competition exposes in their minds and the minds
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of progressives, it exposes inequity because you're gonna have halves and you're gonna have
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have nots, and we can't have that. It makes us look bad.
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It makes us feel bad. And so in order to prevent inequity, we
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have to prevent people who are willing and able to succeed from doing so.
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We're not gonna use selective criteria to create these high achieving schools within the black
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community. No no, no. Instead of forcing the people who aren't achieving
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to do better, no no, no, we are going to eliminate the
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ability for the high achievers to be able to succeed on their own and to
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do better than everybody else because that'll make us feel better, because we don't
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want to have to deal with this idea that not everybody's the same, that
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some people are going to do better than others. No, no, no,
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we can't have that. This goes right to the heart of socialism,
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communism, wokeism, all of it. They would rather have black kids not
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achieve at the level they could. They would rather that outcome than they have
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to deal with this idea that we're not all the same, that we're not
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going to end up with the same level of achievement. And this is a
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situation where a black may actually promised not to do this, and now as
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of right now, he's trying to do this, going back on his promise.
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And it really does go right to the heart of this entire concept of
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equity. They believe in equity so much that they're willing to harm their own
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communities in order to achieve equity of outcome. And it's not just in the
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realm of raises. Government all over the place has equity standards that are absolutely
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insane. Even in the realm of gender and sexuality. The FBI has officially
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adopted LGBTQIA as an official term in place of just LGBT. This was proposed
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by bwer Bureau Equality, one of nine diversity Advisory committees within the FBI,
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the Federal Bureau Investigation. When the Federal Bureau of Investigation is that steeped in
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the entire concept of equity and inclusion and using the right PIEC terms, you
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know, we're screwed. This is the FBI we're talking about. And again,
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these things matter, They create cultural standards. It's a bit by bit,
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piece by piece slippery slope from which we cannot recover, and then it
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results in things like the very bizarre story out of Boston where the Asian female
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mayor there had an elected of color holiday party, which she had to apologize
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for, not because she banned white people or didn't invite white people to the
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holiday party, but because white people were accidentally invited and then uninvited in Boston.
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Boston, a city that is majority white and you know, hilariously up
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until the last couple of decades, has always been seen almost stereotypically so as
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a white racist city. Now I've never bought into that because I actually lived
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in Boston and spent my best summer of my life in Boston in nineteen eighty
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eight, but that was always the myth that was created about Boston, especially
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in sports, especially when it came to the Celtics and why the Celtics had
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more white players than other NBA basketball teams did. They had more white players
17:18
because they had really good white players, including Larry Bird, the last great
17:21
American white player probably ever in the NBA. And so, I mean,
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this is the bizarro upside down world we're now living in, and it's even
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happening in a place like Boston. And I'm always talking about how these things
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matter in real life. They're not just theoretical. These actually have real world
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implications. And I ran into one a couple of days ago that really shocked
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me. I guess it shouldn't have. But I went to go shopping for
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a Christmas card for my wife, and so I go to the local pharmacy.
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I live in a city just outside of Los Angeles that I looked up
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the demographics because of this situation I'm about to tell you, and we have
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technically less than two percent of our population that is categorized as quote unquote black
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or African American. So I'll round it up. Two percent of our population
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is quote unquote black. So I go to the section where the Christmas cards
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are and I look for, you know, wife and there are four cards
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there that depict actual human beings. There's probably I don't know, ten to
18:38
a dozen cards in general. But of those, let's say there's a dozen
18:44
wife cards. At most of those dozen, for them, on the cover
18:48
of the card depict human beings couples, you know, a man and a
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woman, which is, by the way, I'm sure that's going to end
18:56
pretty soon. But there's a man and a woman on the front of the
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Christmas card and the card is for your wife. Right. Of those four,
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all four had at least one and in my opinion probably both people within
19:15
the partnership were African American or black. All four cards, all four in
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a city pharmacy in a city major pharmacy, in a city that has a
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population that is quote unquote two percent black, two percent black. Yet four
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out of four cards the people depicted on the cards are black or African American.
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And I didn't really particularly care to buy a card with real human beings
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on it anyway. I usually go for a funnier card if I can,
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But I just thought, holy cow, I mean, this is the real
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world implication of all this, Because the people making these decisions are influenced by
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all of this. It's a culture thing and they feel like that one it's
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you know, it'll give them their woke jollies to put black people on a
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card. Uh, and make sure they don't get fired. No one's going
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to get fired for putting black people on a Christmas card. You might get
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fired if you put out a whole series of Christmas cards and you don't have
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a black person on there, or somebody who's not white. But this is
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a very small example of something that is pervading all of our society, all
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of it and has huge implications, and it's it's not good for any race.
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That's I think maybe my most important part of this whole diatribe that I
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do on the obsession with equity. It's not good for anybody. It's not
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really good in the long run for people of color or black people. It
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puts them under inherent suspicion and everything that they achieve, and it creates enormous
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amounts of distrust and disunity. That's what's so bizarre and ironic about the Biden
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administration removing the Reconciliation monument at Arnolington National Cemetery that was a monument to unity.
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Well removing it creates disunity, It creates enormous amounts of angst and even
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anger in elements of our society that believe, understandably that they are under attack
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by their own government, all because of things that they had nothing to do
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with, all because of the color of their skin, or their ethnicity,
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or their gender or sexuality, not being the flavor of the month. This
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is the exact opposite of what America was supposed to be and was actually I
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think building towards until recent times, last decade or so, and certainly after
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COVID hit and the Great Reset took over. I mean, George Floyd was
22:06
used as a weapon in the Great Reset. That is obvious, and that
22:10
was clear from the memo that I dictated or a memo that I read to
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you in episode one hundred and twelve from Claudine Gay went back when she was
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a dean at Harvard University. Now there is some pushback to this, and
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once again Elon Musk, who I'm extremely conflicted about. At times I love
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him and at times I'm very frustrated by him. Elon Musk tweeted out a
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couple of days AGODI meaning diversity, equity and inclusion DEI must die, capital
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letters die. The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different
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discrimination than He followed up that tweet by saying diversity, equity, and inclusion
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are propaganda words for races, sexism, and other isms. He could not
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be more right about that, and that tweet has been viewed. Now.
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I always hesitate to use Twitter's viewing stats because I think they're greatly overinflated,
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but there's still at least some semblance of a guide to how popular a particular
23:19
post was, and this one, as of this taping, has over thirty
23:23
four million views. That's the power of Elon Musk. And that's also I
23:29
think an indication that this is a topic that while people may still be afraid
23:33
to talk about it publicly, at least privately, they're more than willing to
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like a tweet or view a tweed, or maybe share a tweet that comes
23:44
from someone as rich and famous as Elon Musk because they agree with it.
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They see what's going on, and they realize that this is a problem,
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regardless of what your race is, that this is going right at the heart
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of the society most of us thought we were creating, trying to build and
24:03
trying to maintain. But there's been a massive U turn in just the last
24:08
decade or so. And I've mentioned this before, but I think it bears
24:14
repeating because I think the greatest bait and switch non COVID edition, because COVID
24:22
was a massive bait and switch, especially with you know, two weeks to
24:25
flatten the curve and then they get us by the balls and get us on
24:29
our knees and then we can't get up for two years if you're in a
24:32
blue state like I am in California. But other than COVID, the greatest
24:37
bait and switch of my lifetime was the Obama presidency. And you know,
24:45
the basics, the basic narrative for white people that was provided and created by
24:51
the media was this was a huge part of the narrative of the two thousand
24:56
and eight Obama campaign. You know, his two thousand and four Democratic Convention
25:02
speech, There's no white America or black America, there's no red America or
25:06
blue America or one America. All sounded wonderful, the essence of the narrative
25:12
that the media carried water for in two thousand and eight. And I did
25:15
an entire movie about this called medium outpractice how Obama got elected. The entire
25:22
narrative, at least specifically for independent white people, was here's the deal,
25:27
white people, here's the deal. Now, this may not have been specifically
25:32
stated, but it was a clear message and it was received. The clear
25:37
message was, look, here's the deal. Vote for Obama and we'll let
25:45
this whole race thing go that, you know, we'll realize that the past
25:49
is the past, and we'll finally be able to move on from our racist
25:56
foundation of America and slavery will finally be old over. And look, if
26:00
you do it twice, then then we'll really forget about the past. So
26:07
elect him once and then once you elect him the first time, well,
26:11
just to be sure, let's elect him twice because we wouldn't want to fire
26:14
the black guy that we hired, who was unqualified, but he was a
26:18
really good talker and he's multi racial, and the media was all hot and
26:22
bothered about it. So we went along and we did this. And I'm
26:27
telling you, people may not fully remember it, but again, because I
26:30
made this movie, I was living this. This was a huge part of
26:37
the sales job for Obama, and it worked on a lot of white people
26:42
and not just liberal whites or even independent whites. I've told the story before,
26:47
but I'll never forget. I was at a party in two thousand and
26:51
eight at Andrew Breitbart's house. Andrew Breitbart the guy whose name is on breitbart
26:56
dot com, which I'm sure he would not been thrilled with being becoming a
27:02
pro Trump outlet. But that's another story for another day. But Andrew and
27:06
I at one point were very very very close, and I was at a
27:10
party at his house. This was in the I don't know, late summer,
27:14
early fall. The election hadn't happened yet. I was still under the
27:18
delusion that maybe John McCain might be able to pull this off against Barack Obama,
27:22
and I overhear a conversation between Andrew Breitbart's son, who was probably about
27:29
ten years old at the time. He's got a buddy of his sitting next
27:33
to him. They're watching TV, and I guess I think Obama must have
27:37
come on the television at some point. I don't know what facilitated the conversation,
27:41
but I'll never forget Andrew Breitbart's son told his other buddy, another white
27:47
kid basically in Beverly Hills or close to it might be Brentwood, I forget
27:51
the exact address in Los Angeles, but in a very well to do neighborhood
27:56
told his buddy that wouldn't it be so cool to have a black president?
28:02
And I thought, oh my god, one, there's no chance Obama's losing.
28:07
There's no chance Obama's losing. If Andrew Breitbart's sun is getting the message
28:11
at ten years old, then it would be so cool to have a black
28:15
president. But to me, that is symbolic or emblematic of this larger narrative
28:21
surrounding the Obama presidency. It was a deal that was made, but the
28:26
deal was a bait and switch. Elect him and we'll give up the past
28:32
grievances. We'll be able to move on and we'll get towards a color blind
28:37
society. We'll stop doing these this ridiculous racial grievance thing. And you know,
28:44
he was elected the first time. They said, please do it the
28:47
second time, so we don't fire the black guy. We did it the
28:48
second time, and it was a bait and switch. Because it's never gotten
28:55
worse. There's certainly not in my lifetime, and from my reading of history,
28:59
has never worse with regard to the reverse discrimination that has been facilitated in
29:03
the post Obama era. And let's be clear as to heart of the driver
29:08
of this. Part of it may have been a bait and switch from a
29:12
strategic standpoint, but that gives liberals a little too much credit. What I
29:18
think happened is a little bit more logical. Number One, the Obama presidency
29:22
wasn't magic. We didn't all of a sudden get to equity everywhere, which
29:27
is what liberals, I guess, thought was gonna happen. You know,
29:32
you have a black man in office for eight years, and everyone has equal
29:36
opportunity, and we're gonna get natural equity because everyone's the same. And the
29:41
only reason why certain ethnic groups have ever done better, whether those are white
29:45
people or Asians or Indians or whatever, is simply by luck and getting more
29:51
opportunity unfairly because of their race or their economic background or luck whatever it is.
29:56
That in the liberal minds, that's the only explanation for inequity. And
30:03
we didn't get any more equity after eight years of Obama, and they panicked.
30:08
They're like, oh my god, if we can't get anything close even
30:12
make any progress towards equity of outcome after eight years of a black president.
30:18
Now we've got to really really put the pedal to the medal. We have
30:23
to do this proactively. We can't just let this happen organically politically. I
30:27
think that was the panic button. But then that got accelerated further by the
30:33
fact that Obama got replaced by Donald Trump, who they see as a white
30:38
nationalist. And because Trump replaced him, that drove liberals bananas because they viewed
30:47
Trump's election as basically the backlash of white people. And by the way,
30:53
I think that's part of what happened. I think Trump got a lot more
30:57
white votes. Then Democrats realized was possible against a white female nominee, especially
31:06
in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. There was a lot of
31:11
white angst that facilitated itself in Trump's election. And then once COVID hit and
31:18
the country was down on its knees and George Floyd happened, the floodgates opened
31:22
and it was all over, and Obama's presidency has been completely forgotten, and
31:30
that whole deal that was made has been completely forgotten. We made a deal,
31:34
and that was a bait and switch. It was a complete bait and
31:40
switch, And now I'm seeing something else happening that maybe almost as nefarious as
31:47
that Obama bait and switch, because there are elements of the left who are
31:52
understanding that there's a lot of white angst out there, that white people are
31:57
starting to open their eyes and go and by the way, Asians should be
32:01
should be opening their eyes too, because Asians are often the victims of this
32:06
more than even white people are, especially when it comes to academia. But
32:08
are there are a lot of black people, especially in leadership positions, and
32:14
a lot of liberals who are looking around going, you know, we got
32:17
to do something about this white angst because we may be going too far,
32:22
too fast here. This is my analysis. I mean, to me,
32:25
the greatest weakness, the greatest vulnerability, the kryptonite for liberals has always been
32:31
they have no discipline at all. None. They will always, always,
32:37
always, always biologically overplay their hand because they're emotional people and because of their
32:45
worldview, they will always go too far, too fast. It's their greatest
32:51
weakness. I'm probably the only guy who despises Gavin Newsom, and I can't
32:58
imagine anyone despises Newsome more than I do, who actually hopes that somehow he
33:01
is the nominee in twenty twenty four, which I don't see how that's possible,
33:07
because I want him on the ballot as soon as possible, because he
33:12
won't get elected now, he might get elected four years from now, eight
33:15
years from now, as a demographics change and the culture changes. I want
33:20
them to overplay their hand as dramatically and as quickly as possible while there's still
33:25
a semblance of hope within the demographics of the country. And that's symbolic of
33:31
this entire phenomenon that liberals always overplay their hand because they're emotional people. But
33:38
there are some people within the liberal movement and within the Civil War I guess
33:44
you would still call it civil rights movement, or maybe the racial grievance movement,
33:46
the woke movement, whatever you want to call it, who are understanding
33:51
the dangers of this politically, this going too far too fast, and so
33:55
I think they have come up with a strategy for how to combat this.
34:00
And I'm going to use a few that is broken out between Van Jones of
34:06
CNN, a blackmail commentator for CNN, and the fake Obama Swami, who
34:12
of course is running for the Republican presidential nomination. And this is a few
34:17
that broke out over the last week or so because after the last Republican debate,
34:22
Van Jones very dramatically. Now look, I like Van Jones. I
34:25
think Van is a very smart guy. I correctly predicted that he would be
34:30
the first major commentator to basically say Democrats have to throw Joe Biden under the
34:37
bus. He hasn't said those words exactly, but he's come as close as
34:39
anybody else has. I think he has his finger on the pulse of what's
34:44
really going on in this country, probably better than almost any other liberal commentator
34:47
does, at least on a place like CNN. I don't agree with him
34:52
on everything. I think he's way too liberal for my blood in a lot
34:55
of areas, but I at least respect his commentary, and I think by
35:00
and large he's trying to be sincere. But because he's a liberal, he
35:05
often goes too far. And I think he went too far, even though
35:07
I despise of fake Obama Swamy, and of course ironic that I use Obama
35:13
Swamy as the moniker for Ramaswamy because he is a lot like Barack Obama,
35:19
not in his politics, but in the phrases that he uses. There are
35:22
videos online that are uncanny. It's basically plagiarism what Obama Swamy does with Barack
35:30
Obama. And because he's got dark skin, he's an Indian, you know,
35:34
he plays off of this entire narrative. And so he has taken a
35:39
lot from Obama and just used it for Maga political purposes. And he's so
35:45
far for his own selfish purposes. He's done very well with it. But
35:49
back to Van Jones. So during that debate for fake Obama, Swamy used
35:54
the phrase great replacement theory. Now this is I think actually a smart move
36:00
on Obama's Swami's part because as a guy who is a I guess you call
36:06
him a person of color because he's Indian, and because he's not afraid of
36:10
saying anything, because he knows he's not going to win the nomination, and
36:14
he's just in this for his own selfish purposes and to increase his profile and
36:19
potentially get a stake in the future of Maga inc. That's my theory on
36:24
Obama Swami. And who knows, you know, people think he might even
36:28
be Trump's vice presidential nominee, which I doubt but I guess is theoretically possible.
36:32
But it's a smart move on for fake Obama Swamy's part, because what
36:38
he's using great replacement theory to talk about is to play on white angst that
36:45
white people are being replaced. He's warning them again, He's not doing this
36:50
sincerely, but sometimes grifters are right by accident, and I think in this
36:54
case he largely is, but white people are being replaced, and that you
37:00
ought to be aware of this and you ought to fight back against it.
37:04
I'm again paraphrasing what Obama's Swami said. Well, Van Jones very dramatically on
37:12
CNN, you know, said he was shaking thinking about how this hearkens back
37:16
to Nazism and this was some of the same arguments that the Nazis used to
37:22
stir up anger against Jewish people and you know, you're being replaced, and
37:30
you know it's not a perfect analogy, but I kind of understood where Jones
37:34
was coming from. But the important part of this is what Jones is doing,
37:39
because I think Jones understands this better than anybody, the problem that liberals
37:45
and Democrats have and going too far, too fast. They need a way
37:50
to defuse the white angst, the white cynicism. They need white people to
37:57
not wake up fully to what is happening. So the best way to do
38:02
that, in Jones's mind, is to make it racist or dangerous to even
38:09
acknowledge the reality of what is happening. You're a kook, you're a racist,
38:16
you're a white nationalist, you're a nazi. If you acknowledge or mention
38:22
the fact that white people are now being discriminated against. That is a strategy.
38:30
That is a strategy to diffuse this. By the way, it's a
38:32
strategy that I think might work pretty well. I mean, this is all
38:37
based in white guilt, right, and so this is essentially taking white guilt
38:42
to the ultimate degree. This is trying to squeeze the last little bit out
38:49
of white guilt that you possibly can. Look, you can't even acknowledge this.
38:53
You cannot use this as a political weapon. No, no, no,
38:58
that's our job. We use racism political weapon. You can't use race
39:01
as a political weapon because to do so would be racist in its an in
39:06
and of itself, and it would even be dangerous. So Obama Swami was
39:12
at a MAGA event over this past weekend, and he went after Jones heart
39:17
and even used some profanity, which as a presidential candidate I think was probably
39:22
inappropriate, but it was obviously something that the crowd loved. But here was
39:27
Obama Swami's rebuttal to Van Jones going after him on the issue of great replacement
39:32
theory. So I say that on that last debate stage to a bunch of
39:37
Republicans that are shaken in their boots, these are the things you're not supposed
39:39
to say in the Republican Party even today. And then you get the mainstream
39:45
media. You got this character Van Jones on CNN afterwards saying this is the
39:50
rise of an American demagogue who's going to live fifty years longer than Trump.
39:53
This is dangerous. I am shaking, that's what he says. Just shut
40:00
the fuck up. At a certain point, just shut the fuck up,
40:08
Van Jones at CNN, We're done with it now. To me, that
40:19
was classic Obama Swamy, because he's right about a lot, takes it too
40:23
far, uses language that's inappropriate in that setting for a presidential candidate, but
40:30
he's doing so because he knows it will appeal to the crowd and it will
40:36
suit his selfish purposes, and so the I don't want to give him credit
40:42
for fighting this great fight on behalf of white people or Asian people, or
40:47
whoever it is that's being discriminated against any particular situation in today's woke culture world.
40:54
He's doing so for his own purposes, but he happens to be right.
40:59
I Actually, I think the bigger issue here is Jones's reaction to this,
41:02
because I find Jones to be more of a credible commentator than Obama Swami,
41:08
and Jones is a smart guy, and Jones is trying to head this
41:13
off at the pass. Jones knows this is going too far, but he
41:19
also knows that politically it must be diffused. And by using this tactic that
41:24
you're not even allowed, in fact, you're crazy. It's crazy. I
41:29
see this all the time online. If you think white people are discriminated against
41:32
the United States of America, you are crazy. No, we're not crazy.
41:37
We're just our eyes are open. It's obvious, and it's becoming more
41:43
and more obvious every day. But they first they'll call you crazy, then
41:45
they'll call you a racist or a Nazi or whatever it is. And we're
41:51
seeing this in all different elements of media. In fact, this past weekend,
41:57
the trailer for a new movie that's coming out in the spring from a
42:01
major studio. And I hesitate to go into this too deeply because it was
42:07
just a trailer, and it's often dangerous to interpret a movie based upon its
42:12
trailer. But the movie is called The American Society of Magical Negroes, the
42:17
American Society of Magical Negroes, And the best way I can describe at this
42:27
movie based upon the trailer is that this goes right to the heart of this
42:32
issue of having to deal with liberals having to deal with white angst, and
42:38
that essentially, here's the message to white people in this movie. Look,
42:45
you're angst at how far this is going. It's racist. You're a racist
42:51
for feeling this angst. It's natural, But don't trust your instincts white people.
42:59
And this is another avenue for extending the power of white guilt as far
43:06
as it can possibly go. That they'll basically, you know, there's this
43:10
narrative in the trailer that that black people are just here to make white people
43:15
feel comfortable, and that they're currently feeling uncomfortable. So the whole theme is
43:22
making white people comfortable with these massive changes in our society, and the implication
43:30
is that the angst itself is racist. You're a racist if you feel this.
43:37
So this movie seems to be addressing you know, moderate white people,
43:42
non maga white people are looking around going, boy, this doesn't seem right.
43:46
And then they're supposed to now interpret those feelings of angst as inherently racist
43:52
or wrong or delusional, or you're a victim of right wing media, whatever
44:00
it is. And that seems to be the essence of this movie. I
44:05
obviously haven't seen the movie as it's come out till the spring, but I
44:07
found that to dovetail almost perfectly with this Van Jones vivek Obama Swami feud that
44:15
has just broken out over this basic issue. And of course, all this
44:20
is coming at the same time when the person who's probably most attacked in public
44:25
in this day and age, it's Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice. As
44:30
of this taping, he's being attacked again by another liberal news outlet for alleged
44:37
financial conflicts of interest. And I all acknowledge that some of the stuff in
44:40
this most recent report is interesting. I think their interpretation of the evidence is
44:47
extremely biased against Thomas, but by and large, forget about this particular story.
44:53
Clarence Thomas, if he was a liberal, would be considered an America
45:00
hero of epic proportions epic proportions, and instead he's a villain. Why because
45:06
he has committed the greatest sin that there is. He's a black man who
45:12
is against racial grievance, against the firmentive action, against reverse racism, and
45:17
is willing to stand on principle in the Constitution regardless of how much he's criticized.
45:24
If all that happened politically in the reverse he would be a hero.
45:29
Instead, he's basically villain number one, which tells you all you really need
45:32
to know about how liberals really view this issue. Liberals, again, the
45:39
only hope here is they're overplaying their hand too soon and too dramatically, and
45:46
great replacement theory backlash and the American Society of Magical Negroes are ways defend this
45:55
off and diffuse it at least through the next election. Suggesting that a commercial
46:00
movie is is a pure political prop but it's consistent with this entire messaging from
46:08
the left, from Hollywood, from the major media, and what they really
46:14
believe and by the way, part of it is self rationalization. To be
46:19
able to be a white person within this movement, you have to do a
46:22
lot of rationalization. And of course there's a massive difference between the white people
46:30
who are currently in power and younger white people or white people who are not
46:35
in any real position of power. The white people who are in positions of
46:38
power, the last thing they want to do is lose their position of power,
46:43
so of course they're gonna go along with this. But nobody sells out
46:46
their own race more than white people of power. My god, you should
46:51
see white newscasters, the few that are left in Los Angeles. Whenever a
46:55
racial issue comes up, they're the first to throw people under the bus because
47:01
they know they're the most vulnerable. And it's the same way throughout society in
47:07
all different positions of power, whether it's political or media or otherwise. White
47:14
people who are in a position of power don't want to lose it, and
47:15
they know that they're incredibly vulnerable in this day and age. Because the right
47:22
handwriting is on the wall. They just don't want you to see it.
47:24
They don't want you to interpret it any other way than either your eyes are
47:30
deceiving you or your eyes are racist, or maybe a little bit of both.
47:35
And it's not, by the way, just in race. The media
47:37
does this in all different areas of life in this woke era. We saw
47:43
that again when it came to this very bizarre and outrageous story involving a gay
47:49
senate staffer for Democrat Ben Carden from Maryland who posted video online of them engaging
47:59
in anal sex in a Senate hearing room. Let me repeat that, a
48:07
senate staffer for a Democratic senator from Maryland posted video online of them having anal
48:15
sex in a Senate hearing room. This is a pretty prominent person, super
48:20
woke, and you know, has said a lot of very strange and outrageous
48:25
things online until this story broke. They were a senate staffer, but it
48:30
was how the media reacted to this video being found by a conservative outlet,
48:37
The Daily Caller, which I think is a huge part of how the media
48:40
decided to interpret this story because the Daily Caller, while it's a legitimate organization,
48:46
is not mainstream and therefore because it's right wing, every liberal and mainstream
48:52
news media outlet takes what they say very cynically. There's there's somewhat in a
49:00
Maga era, an understandable hesitation to believe anything they report, although in this
49:07
case there really wasn't much ambiguity. There was a videotape that was posted by
49:12
the guy online. He eventually got fired from his job. This is about
49:17
as clear cut as it gets. But some of this is even subconscious.
49:21
Some of it's conscious, some of it's subconscious that the mainstream media looks at
49:25
everything the right wing does with suspicion and cynicism and is unwilling to accept it
49:32
as being real or true or legitimate. This is why I am constantly pounding
49:38
the table when it comes to the right wing media embracing people like Alex Jones,
49:45
because whether it's conscious or subconscious, and then the era of Trump,
49:50
this is happening all over the place. Is not just Alvix Jones, but
49:52
Jones is the worst example where the credibility of the right wing media in general
50:00
is degraded to the point where the Daily Caller can do a news story about
50:07
a clear cut video of anal sex in a Senate hearing room, and the
50:12
left wing media is unwilling to immediately accept that is the reality, and they
50:19
use the fact that it came out from The Daily Caller as a way to
50:22
either diminish or even ignore the story. As of this taping, there are
50:29
major mainstream outlets that have never even reported on the story of a gay Senate
50:36
staffer for Ben Carden posting a video online of them having anal sex in a
50:44
Senate hearing room, and they're losing them losing their job over it. That's
50:49
a news story, and some have decided to just ignore it. Now,
50:52
do they ignore it because it's from the Daily Caller? Do they ignore it
50:57
because inherently in this equity world, they feel like they have to give more
51:01
slack to a person because he's gay. And if this had been a straight
51:06
person, there would have been no hesitancy at all, But they feel like
51:09
they need to protect the gay person because I guess in their minds, this
51:14
is what gay culture. This is the way this is different for you because
51:17
it's dealing with gay people. I guess I'm just I'm trying to come up
51:22
with some explanation for why you wouldn't treat this as a legitimate news story.
51:25
But even those that actually did report on it did so in such a way
51:30
that it was beyond hilarious and felt very much like a parody. Let me
51:37
give you a few examples. These are major mainstream media outlets and how they
51:44
reported on this situation. Headline number one, Senate staffer loses his job after
51:51
allegedly having sex in hearing room. Allegedly. It's allegedly they lose their job.
52:00
The video was posted online by them. It's a video. Where's the
52:06
allegedly here? Not to mention that the headline itself is as benign as it
52:10
could possibly be given the facts of the situation. CNN headline, Senate aid
52:16
out of job, therefore inherently a victim. I guess Senate eight out of
52:22
job after purported sex tape apparently filmed in Senate hearing room. We're just not
52:30
sure. We're really just not sure what to make of this whole situation.
52:34
But a Senate aid is out of a job. Nothing about gay sex,
52:38
nothing about anal sex, and all sorts of conditions put on this purported apparently
52:46
and oh, by the way, it seems like the person's a victim.
52:51
Politico reported Cardon staffer linked to sex tape leaves Senate. That's pretty amazing.
53:01
Cardon staffer linked to sex tape leaves Senate wow okay linked to They filmed it,
53:10
they participated in it, they posted in it to the internet, and
53:15
they were fired from the Senate again. No mention of gay sex and all
53:22
the other things I already mentioned make this outrageous. A Baltimore television station,
53:29
this is a Maryland story. Their headline, Maryland senate staffer fired following video
53:37
surfacing online. It's just a video. It's just a video. It's surfaced
53:42
online. It didn't surface online, it was posted online. And it's a
53:47
video of a gay man having anal sex in a Senate hearing room. I
53:52
think that makes it different. It's just it's amazing. But that probably was
54:00
not the most ridiculous headline. I believe that that is reserved for NBC News.
54:06
This is NBC News's headline for which they got absolutely mocked on social media,
54:13
specifically on Twitter slash x. Their headline, Senate staffer alleged by conservative
54:21
outlets to have had sex in a hearing room is no longer employed. Senate
54:30
staffer alleged by conservative outlets to have had sex in the hearing room is no
54:37
longer employed. Their sub headline, conservative news outlets alleged that the aid to
54:45
Senator Ben Carden appeared in a leaked video showing men having sex in a Senate
54:53
hearing room. Well, at least there there's an allusion to gay sex,
54:59
nothing about an sex. But the part about this being alleged by conservative outlets
55:07
is really telling. It goes right back to what I was telling you about
55:10
the Daily Caller and how it is that the right wing media has been so
55:15
discredited in the minds of the mainstream in the Trump era, and this is
55:20
not This was not always the way it was. I know this. I
55:23
know this because I lived it. I know this, ironically enough, since
55:28
I mentioned Andrew Breitbart earlier in this episode, Andrew Breitbart was a world class
55:34
expert in this when he was essentially running the Drudge Report, where he would
55:38
get a story from a conservative outlet and get it into the mainstream by putting
55:45
it on the Drudge Report. Because the mainstream at that time still looked at
55:50
Drudge constantly oftentimes had their lives dictated by what was going on on Drudge.
55:58
So what Andrew Breitbart would do on the Drudge Report is he would often take
56:04
a story that was in the right wing media and get it into the mainstream,
56:08
either by simply posting it on Drudge or by getting somebody in a semi
56:15
mainstream news outlet to do the same story. He did this with Politico a
56:20
lot, where a right wing story might have the right wing stench on it,
56:23
and this was even before Trump, there was some stench from a right
56:29
wing outlet. But now that stench is overwhelming, and we've gotten to the
56:34
point now where the Daily Caller can literally show an actual video and it doesn't
56:38
matter. But just to finish with what Breitbart would do. He would either
56:44
get that right wing story in a way on Drudge where it was backed up
56:49
by other outlets and therefore would be taken seriously, or he would get it
56:52
into a different outlet that was maybe more respected, and all of a sudden,
56:58
the mainstream media would on it. Well that no longer happens, Andrew
57:02
is gone. The Drudge Report has lost all of its credibility in the mainstream
57:07
because of the right wing stench and because what's happened with Drudge, And now
57:10
we get a situation where bizarrely the left wing media is not trusting a story
57:16
that has a video posted by the person who ended up losing their job over
57:22
this because it's a right wing media organization. And so when I am outraged
57:30
by the lack of credibility in the right wing media, this is part of
57:34
why I get upset, because I know it has an impact, because I
57:37
know the ability for the truth to get into the mainstream gets diminished. This
57:42
is one of the many, many, many, many prices we pay for
57:45
Donald Trump and for those that have turned into his sickophants within the right wing
57:51
media. But in this particular case, the story could not have been more
57:54
clearcut, could not have been more solid. The Daily Caller was right,
57:59
and the left wing media turned into a parody, a literal parody over this
58:05
topic. And whether it's because they're protecting a Democrat, they're protecting a gay
58:08
man, their hatred of right wing media, it's probably all of those things
58:14
combined to create a situation that really exposed what a joke the mainstream news media
58:22
has become, and why we do a podcast called the Death of Journalism.
58:27
But it's not just even in the realm of this particular story that NBC News,
58:32
you know, clowned itself. There's another headline that NBC got raked over
58:38
the coals for that is at least somewhat related to this story, because it's
58:43
in the realm of gender. And this one is really extraordinary. I mean,
58:49
this one sent chills down my spine as to how insane it was.
58:53
So there's this court case that's going on in Connecticut where there are women who
59:01
are fighting on behalf of women's sports, traditional women's sports, and trying to
59:07
prevent biological males from playing school sports in Connecticut. And they won a court
59:15
case. Now they didn't win the final judgment, but they won the ability
59:20
to keep going in the court case. So here's how NBC News reported on
59:27
that development. And I'm not making this up. This is a real headline.
59:31
This is not a parody, even though it appears that by all intensive
59:36
purposes it must be some sort of satire headline. A federal court will allow
59:43
for CIS gender runners to sue over Connecticut's trans inclusive policy, which they say
59:53
deprived them of honors and opportunities. I need to repeat this. A federal
1:00:02
court will allow four cisgender runners. Those are women, Those are biological women.
1:00:10
They used to be called until like two years ago. Women. The
1:00:15
headline should read the Federal Court a federal court will allow for women to sue
1:00:22
over Connecticut's trans inclusive policy, which is, you know, about as biased
1:00:27
the phrase as you could possibly come up with. Essentially, what they're really
1:00:30
doing there is they're they're saying that biological men, biological men, should not
1:00:37
be allowed to play women's sports, and then it makes them sound like they're
1:00:44
fake victims are whining because the headline concludes, which they say, deprive them
1:00:51
of honors and opportunities. What's the they say, business, It absolutely deprived
1:00:57
them of honors and opportunities in this particular case in their field in track and
1:01:02
field, where we know that biological men took places away from biological females because
1:01:12
this trans inclusive policy allowed them to compete in competitions where they had no business
1:01:19
competing because they're not eligible because they're biological males. NBC's headline in the article
1:01:28
itself what I read to you was their tweet promoting an article. Their headline
1:01:32
in the article itself was court revives lawsuit over Connecticut rule allowing trans girls to
1:01:42
compete in school sports. Trans girls as opposed to biological males. That is,
1:01:51
I mean, such a stark and important difference trans girls versus biological males.
1:01:58
They've replaced biological mail else with trans girls, just like they've replaced women
1:02:04
with cis gender cis gender runners. It's just it's astonishing, it's breathtaking.
1:02:13
But is this shows this is way way, way bigger than this bias.
1:02:17
This is an agenda. This is a very badly broken news media that is
1:02:24
trying to change America at a very very fundamental level. And people are starting
1:02:30
to catch on to the scam. And I'm very happy that NBC got destroyed
1:02:37
in both the comments section as well as well as they got ratioed in that
1:02:42
tweet that I shared with you. So people aren't buying it, but they're
1:02:45
still trying and it still has at least some impact. But maybe, going
1:02:52
back to what I said earlier, maybe this is a situation where they've gone
1:02:55
too far too fast, they've overplayed their hand too soon, and people are
1:03:00
going to be able to see it more clearly soon enough where something can be
1:03:06
done. I'm not one hundred percent optimistic about that, but that's at least
1:03:09
a possibility now. In the broader picture of the broken news media, there
1:03:15
was a remarkable thing that happened with regard to a former New York Times opinion
1:03:22
editor by the name of James Bennett, who put out a very, very
1:03:27
lengthy piece about his time at the New York Times, which famously ended in
1:03:31
twenty twenty because he had the audacity, as the opinion editor at the New
1:03:37
York Times, the alleged paper of record in America, to publish an op
1:03:42
ed by Tom Cotton, whose crime it was, whose crime was being a
1:03:49
Republican senator. I'm not making this up. It's not an exaggeration. He
1:03:53
lost his job because liberals went bananas over the fact that Tom Cotton, publican
1:04:00
senator, was allowed to write an op ed in the New York Times,
1:04:04
and that led to James Bennett's ouster, and he wrote this very long piece
1:04:12
making an incredibly important point about essentially what I discussed constantly on this podcast,
1:04:18
which is the news media is broken, and it's broken largely because you have
1:04:26
outlets like the New York Times who are being forced, because the business model
1:04:30
is busted, to appeal to liberals in a way that has made liberals in
1:04:38
liberal readers, liberal subscribers in charge of their product. And here's how a
1:04:45
conservative media outlet, Free Bacon. They reported on this this I guess you
1:04:53
would call it essay by James Bennett, former New York Times opinion editor.
1:04:57
And here's how they covered it, because I think this kind of gives you
1:04:59
a pretty good synopsis of what happened here. Their headline, takedown of New
1:05:03
York Times rankles reporters explains biased coverage because this really did create an enormous amount
1:05:12
of hatred of Bennett among liberals once this thing went viral online. This article
1:05:17
in The Free Bacon is by Drew Holden, he writes in a scathing essay
1:05:24
for The Economists published a few days ago. Former New York Times opinion editor
1:05:29
James Bennett took his old publication to task for the paper's capitulation to left leaning,
1:05:35
illiberal opinion. According to Bennett, the Times and other media have quote
1:05:43
forfeited what had always been most valuable about their work, their credibility as arbiters
1:05:50
of truth and brokers of ideas, which, for more than a century,
1:05:57
despite all of journalism's flaws and faiailures, have been a bulwark of how Americans
1:06:02
governed themselves. That is an incredibly important statement, and it's one that I
1:06:10
have made similarly many many times on this podcast. They forfeited their credibility,
1:06:17
They forfeited their magic powers. I've used the analogy of a water hose for
1:06:25
a fireman that you know, especially when it came to Trump, right.
1:06:29
Trump was the ultimate example of this, that the water in the fire hosees
1:06:34
the firemen's you know in the analogy, here is the journalist's credibility. And
1:06:40
you know that credibility is incredibly important because when you need it to put out
1:06:45
a fire, especially in an emergency, it's going to be there. But
1:06:48
over the years, the American media, especially the mainstream, especially the New
1:06:54
York Times, they forfeited that credibility. They used up all their water,
1:07:00
and their water actually turned into gasoline when it came to Trump, as we've
1:07:04
seen in the twenty twenty four election cycle, with all these indictments, they
1:07:11
thought they were pouring water on this Trump fire of a potential second term,
1:07:16
and they overplayed their hand with all these indictments and all the massive coverage of
1:07:20
it, and it turned into gasoline on the fire, turning him from into
1:07:27
a situation where he's the clear cut nominee doing absolutely nothing except getting indicted four
1:07:33
times and become a martyr. And that's just the most dramatic example of many,
1:07:40
many examples. They forfeited their credibility. Why did they forfeit their credibility?
1:07:44
They forfeited it largely because of financial and political agendas. They fell victim
1:07:51
to this. They gave up the essence of what made them special to begin
1:07:56
with. Now, they were never perfect, but there were eras where even
1:08:00
the mainstream news media was pretty darn solid, I would say, the sixties,
1:08:04
the seventies and into the eighties. Even while there was bias, there
1:08:09
was always bias, it was substantive, It was at least attempted real journalism.
1:08:15
There was at least a conscience. It wasn't and it wasn't a political
1:08:20
agenda that drove the thing. It might have been just you typical human bias,
1:08:26
but there was at least some effort to correct things when they got things
1:08:29
wrong. There was not the rush to judgment or that, you know,
1:08:33
there wasn't all the pressure to get the story out there immediately, because the
1:08:38
news cycle wasn't fifteen minutes long, and so therefore you could get it right,
1:08:43
and there was the financial situation was such that you could actually take your
1:08:48
time on a story put resources into it. You weren't forced to come up
1:08:53
with something if resources were put into a story, because you needed to justify
1:08:57
that to your boss. I mean, there were all sorts of stories where
1:09:00
major publications, including New York Times, would spend ridiculous amounts of man hours,
1:09:05
all sorts of money on it and never publish anything because it just didn't
1:09:09
turn out to be the story that they suspected. That's part of journalism.
1:09:15
A lot of journalism is stories that never get published, never get aired because
1:09:19
we found out it wasn't what we suspected it would be, and we did
1:09:24
enough reporting to realize what the truth was. Back to this essay by Bennett,
1:09:30
he writes, since Adolph Ox bought the newspaper in the New York Times
1:09:34
in eighteen ninety six, one of the most inspiring things The Times has said
1:09:39
about itself is that it does its work without fear or favor. That is
1:09:45
not true of the institution today. It cannot be not when its journalists are
1:09:51
afraid to trust readers with a mainstream conservative argument such as Tom Cottons, and
1:10:00
its leaders are afraid to say otherwise. As preoccupied as it is with the
1:10:06
question of why so many Americans have lost trust in it. The Times is
1:10:12
failing to face up to one crucial reason that it has lost faith in Americans
1:10:17
too for now. To assert that The Times plays by the same rules it
1:10:25
always has is to commit a hypocrisy that is transparent to conservatives, dangerous to
1:10:30
liberals, and bad for the country as a whole. It makes The Times
1:10:35
too easy for conservatives to dismiss and too easy for progressives to believe. The
1:10:43
reality is that The Times is becoming the publication through which America's progressive elite talks
1:10:49
to itself about an America that does not really exist. Boy, those two
1:10:58
points are so incredibly significant. The first point is that they squandered their credibility
1:11:05
and it's gone, and now it's actually working in reverse, especially when it
1:11:10
comes to Trump. And the second part as to why and the why And
1:11:15
he doesn't say it directly there, but he certainly implies. It is about
1:11:18
the economics. It's about the business model being broken. That's really at the
1:11:25
heart of this. And it's the subscriber system, the subscription model that the
1:11:31
New York Times went. You now, newspapers obviously have always been subscription,
1:11:35
right. You used to subscribe to get it delivered to your house on a
1:11:40
daily basis, especially if you lived in the in the Northeast. That was
1:11:45
in my view, it wasn't quite the same kind of subscription. First of
1:11:49
all, you know, you didn't even really you thought about it more like
1:11:53
the electricity. You know, it's just the cost of living. Of course
1:11:58
you're going to get a newspaper delivered to your house. You didn't. It
1:12:01
also wasn't as easy to unsubscribe, and it was almost like a thing you
1:12:06
felt like you had to have. It was. It was if you didn't
1:12:10
get a newspaper delivered to your house, you couldn't even really exist in polite
1:12:14
society. There was something wrong with you. So no one ever thought about
1:12:18
unsubscribing to The New York Times because The Times were in an article they disagreed
1:12:24
with. Maybe some conservatives, uh you know, did in dramatic situations.
1:12:28
But today, when it's online, it's it's much more clear cut. And
1:12:33
and because the Times is almost completely reliant on online subscriptions, they are also
1:12:41
very beholden to the online audience and specifically on Twitter. I have said this
1:12:47
many times, and it's it is so remarkable that it bears repeating that the
1:12:53
New York Times on a regular basis, regular basis, will change headlines,
1:13:00
They will change verbiage and articles, not because of inaccuracies, not because they're
1:13:08
correcting the record, but because their audience has demanded it. That the twitter
1:13:14
woke mob demanded it. One of the more dramatic examples of that was when
1:13:19
there was a mask study early on in COVID that didn't come out with the
1:13:25
results that liberals wanted basically said masks do nothing. And the New York Times
1:13:30
original headline essentially said that, and then they added to the headline, but
1:13:36
here's why you should wear a mask anyway, because their liberal subscription base.
1:13:43
The subscriber base went so bananas over the idea that the New York Times could
1:13:47
possibly print the truth about masks not working. And we saw that constantly during
1:13:54
COVID. That's one of many, many examples. And so this goes waybe
1:14:00
on biases, goes to the structural dysfunction of the news media in the modern
1:14:04
age, and Bennett has pinpointed it in two very very important areas. They're
1:14:11
obviously very related. It's why the New York Times squandered its credibility. It
1:14:16
squandered its credibility, not just because of the economic pressures, but that's what
1:14:21
really led to it, what led to the other squandering of the credibility,
1:14:26
of the essence of the squandering of the credibility led to incompetence, lack of
1:14:30
staffing, you know, people that were far too liberal. No conservatives in
1:14:35
the room to say, Hey, what the hell are we doing here?
1:14:40
Because at a certain point, once you be it becomes known within the culture
1:14:45
of a news organization that conservative thought is not welcome. Guess what's going to
1:14:50
happen. Nobody's going to be the person in the room to say, hey,
1:14:54
what are we doing here? Nobody was in the room saying this.
1:14:59
For instance, when the media went completely out of control with the Russian collusion
1:15:03
narrative to the point where Trump was a Manchurian candidate because they all hated Trump
1:15:10
so much, they knew he was a buffoon. Their audience hated them,
1:15:14
hated Trump even more than they did. The audience was buying up the Russian
1:15:17
collusion narrative, and so it became a self fulfilling prophecy that fed on itself,
1:15:25
and The New York Times killed what was left of its credibility at that
1:15:30
moment, and now they're paying a huge price for it, and we may
1:15:32
end up seeing Donald Trump be elected one more time because of it, which,
1:15:36
by the way, they probably secretly like because they know he's great for
1:15:41
business, great for content, great for rating subscriptions. I mean, my
1:15:45
gosh, Trump's election was fantastic for the New York Times and the Washington Post
1:15:50
at first when it came to increase subscriptions. Now and the Biden presidency has
1:15:56
been terrible for the left wing mainstream knew media, so subconsciously or maybe even
1:16:01
consciously, they want Trump back in office. And Trump has talked about this
1:16:05
numerous times and accurately so and so everything is completely broken. It's fundamentally completely
1:16:13
broken. And again that's why we call this podcast the Death of Journalism.
1:16:17
Now, even though it's called the Death of journalism, I do talk about
1:16:21
a lot of different areas of life. One of those areas is the sport
1:16:26
of football, which I've discussed quite a bit this fall, because I do
1:16:30
think that twenty twenty three is a seminal year when it comes to the inevitable
1:16:34
end of tackle football. And I've talked a lot about why this is the
1:16:40
case a lot about the evidence that this is the case. To me,
1:16:43
it could not be more obvious that this is where we're headed. I don't
1:16:46
know how long it's going to take. I've been using the time period of
1:16:51
ten years, and maybe a little longer than that, maybe not as long
1:16:56
as that, depending on your definition. Here my vision is, but eventually
1:17:00
we're going to get to some semblance of flag football when it comes to even
1:17:04
the National Football League. This is why they're embracing flag football in the Olympics,
1:17:10
flag football at the Pro Bowl. You know what it will eventually look
1:17:15
like. I don't know. A lot of people think they'll make special rules
1:17:17
just for the quarterback and that that'll be flag football, or who knows,
1:17:23
maybe technology allow for some semblance of two hand touch with gloves or something.
1:17:30
I don't know what it's going to look like, but I do know it's
1:17:32
not going to be what it has been, or even what it is today.
1:17:35
And the evidence for this continues to build. And one of the red
1:17:41
flags for me this year has been that, unlike in prior years when we
1:17:45
saw ridiculous penalties, specifically usually for roughing the passer, the TV announcers would
1:17:53
express outrage over that, sometimes dramatic outrage. I have not seen that hardly
1:17:59
at all, and that can't be a coincidence. I strongly believe that the
1:18:03
National Football League has told its network television partners to knock it off and to
1:18:11
have those announcers, those analysts simply seed to the rules quote unquote expert on
1:18:17
the broadcast, because that seems to be what they're doing at every level,
1:18:21
and it's a cop out. And of course the rules expert has a massive
1:18:26
conflict of interest. They're usually a former referee, They're very tied to the
1:18:30
league or to the in college football, to the college football establishment. They're
1:18:38
not going to go against a referees call. They also know the handwriting is
1:18:42
on the wall that the game is being dramatically changed and wissified, and so
1:18:47
you know, it's only the former players that would matter. You know,
1:18:50
Troy Aiightman last year, so they got to take the dresses off the quarterbacks.
1:18:55
I thought he was going to get canceled over that he didn't, but
1:18:58
I have not heard him say anything similar to that this year. And Tony
1:19:01
Romo, Chris collins Worth, they've all become essentially self censored on the issue
1:19:09
of the wissification of football, which continues on a very very slippery slope and
1:19:15
slow, but it's sure, and it's happening in all areas of the game.
1:19:18
My god. The kickoff is actually a great example that I don't think
1:19:24
I've ever mentioned before, but I should have. You know, the kickoff
1:19:27
in both pro and college football, especially pro is now essentially ceremonial. It
1:19:33
doesn't even exist as a play anymore. And this is a classic way that
1:19:38
the slippery slope works, in a classic way that liberals can often change the
1:19:43
world without sparking too much outrage too quickly, because it still looks like there's
1:19:49
a kickoff. And we've always known that there were a lot of touchbacks,
1:19:54
but now with the fair catch rules and all the other rules that are supposed
1:19:58
to protect people from getting injured, you essentially don't have real kickoffs anymore,
1:20:02
released very very rarely. And not that the kickoff was the greatest play in
1:20:08
football, but sometimes it was more and the more exciting plays of a game
1:20:13
was a kickoff return for a touchdown. Well, that's essentially been replaced,
1:20:17
even though they won't acknowledge that it's been replaced, And that's really them here.
1:20:21
A lot of these changes are happening in a way that to the maybe
1:20:27
casual fan doesn't seem that dramatic. That's how they get away with this.
1:20:31
So we make the kickoff ceremonial, and we say we're going to protect the
1:20:36
head because of the concussion issue. Who could possibly be against that. No
1:20:41
one's in favor of concussions. So anything that's remotely a hit to the head
1:20:45
that's banned, and you can get kicked out of the game. And now
1:20:49
there's news out over the last few days that apparently the National Football League is
1:20:55
going to ban what's called the hip drop tackle. And to me, this
1:21:02
was, Okay, we're near the end. The end of football as we
1:21:09
know it has just arrived, and we're now basically one rule change away from
1:21:15
the slippery slope being so slippery that there's no possible way to ever return from
1:21:20
it. And if you're not a football fan, you're probably wondering, what
1:21:25
the hell is the hip drop tackle. I think most football fans don't even
1:21:29
know what the hip drop tackle is. But this is a classic example of
1:21:33
how, in my mind, the liberal mindset can destroy something and can ban
1:21:41
things in a way that won't spark too much outrage too soon because it doesn't
1:21:47
happen that often the hip drop tackle. It happens, I don't know,
1:21:54
a couple times a game maybe, depending on how you define it, but
1:21:58
if you ban it, and the reason why they want to ban it is
1:22:00
because they've determined that a lot of injuries occur because of this so called hip
1:22:05
drop tackle. Basically, this is usually in the open field. Usually a
1:22:11
defensive back or a linebacker is trying to bring down a ball carrier. They
1:22:15
grab them by the hip and they twist their body in a way that forces
1:22:20
them to come down to the ground. Usually it's in a situation where the
1:22:25
defender has no other chance to make the tackle. And this is something that's
1:22:30
been taught. This is literally the way that tackling was taught, especially for
1:22:35
smaller players from the high school level on up. Well. Now the National
1:22:41
Football League wants to ban it because there's been some statistics that indicate that there
1:22:45
are a lot of injuries that occur because of the hip drop tackle. Now,
1:22:49
I have stated before, and I think this is a very good analogy.
1:22:53
This entire idea that we can play tackle football with no injuries if we
1:22:59
simply eliminade kickoffs, but we keep them as ceremonials so that people don't catch
1:23:03
on to what we're doing. And then we get rid of the hip drop
1:23:06
tackle. We're gonna get to know almost zero injuries, which is basically like
1:23:12
COVID and the people who were somehow believing we could get the zero COVID,
1:23:16
I mean the zero COVID people are insane, absolutely insane, and there's no
1:23:23
chance you can ever possibly get the zero COVID. And you can't get this.
1:23:27
The only way you get the zero injuries in football is to not play
1:23:31
the game. I mean, hell, you're even gonna have injuries in touch
1:23:34
football or flag football, not nearly as dramatic, but you can have injuries
1:23:40
and anything you do that's active. It's impossible to get the zero injuries unless
1:23:45
you're in a plastic bubble on your couch. Even then you could probably still
1:23:50
get an injured injury in some way, shape or form. So it's an
1:23:54
absolute absurd goal and there's risk involved in hair in the decision to play football.
1:24:01
I've always felt as that's a large part of the allure of the game,
1:24:05
that people are risking their health for the goal of their team, or
1:24:13
their school, or their individual accomplishments, whatever. There's some drama involved in
1:24:17
that. No one wants to see people injured, especially not dramatically, but
1:24:21
that is a part of the game. Should we reduce injuries within reason,
1:24:28
absolutely, but the idea that you can get to zero is insane. And
1:24:31
I have always said that one of the things that COVID did was it destroyed
1:24:38
our own autonomy over our own medical decisions. For the first time ever,
1:24:45
we were no longer in charge of what we thought was best for ourselves medically,
1:24:50
we were no longer in charge of our own risk reward ratio decisions.
1:24:57
When it came to should I go outside without a man or whatever, those
1:25:00
things became mandated, and even there was attempts to mandate and actual institutations of
1:25:09
mandates when it came to the came to the vaccine, which were based upon
1:25:13
fallacies and essentially lies. I was always against the mandates in everything because I
1:25:18
believe in medical choice. I believe in freedom and liberty. But we lost,
1:25:26
by and large in COVID the ability for ourselves to make those decisions.
1:25:32
Society decided for the first time they could make those decisions for us, And
1:25:38
I've always felt like that's the end of football, because football is based in
1:25:43
the idea at least as the game has been played throughout its inception, and
1:25:46
at the times it was way too dangerous, you know, and twenty years
1:25:50
ago it was almost banned because it was too dangerous. But in the in
1:25:56
its modern creation, I've always felt that that would be the end of football
1:26:01
because part of that is players making their own choices, their own decisions about
1:26:08
the risk of getting injured while playing. That's part of the game. It's
1:26:13
not the essence of it, but it is part of the sport, and
1:26:16
it's a significant part of the sport. Well now that's gone in the post
1:26:20
COVID era. And so this hip drop tackle, to me is classic liberal
1:26:27
magical thinking, Oh yeah, we're getting a lot of injuries involving the hip
1:26:31
drop tackle. It doesn't happen that often. So it's not like we're gonna
1:26:35
take away a large portion of tackles. So we're gonna eliminate all these injuries,
1:26:42
and very few tackles will actually be impacted. In the liberal mindset,
1:26:46
I can see how that makes sense, except it completely forgets maybe purposely or
1:26:55
I don't know whether it's I just don't. Maybe it's just the way little
1:26:57
liberal mind works. They're not capable of understanding the law of unintended consequences,
1:27:01
or maybe they don't care. I never know for sure, but liberals and
1:27:06
their mindset are terrible, terrible and understanding what happens when you change one thing,
1:27:14
what the impact of that is, what the domino effect of that is.
1:27:17
If you ban the hip drop tackle, you are going to one make
1:27:23
it impossible in certain situations for there to be illegal tackle. But more importantly
1:27:28
than that, almost every open field tackle the defender is going to have in
1:27:34
their mind that they may get penalized if their initial attempt to bring the ball
1:27:41
carrier down is not perfect and they have to resort to what is called the
1:27:45
hip drop tackle. So what's gonna happen? One They're going to be tentative.
1:27:50
They already know they can't go after the head in any way, shape
1:27:54
or form. Now, if you go after the hip, you're vulnerable to
1:27:58
a penalty. You're not gonna be able to go after the knees because that's
1:28:01
only gonna cause more injuries. And in certain situations they've already banned going after
1:28:05
the knees, So I don't know where the hell you're supposed to tackle anybody.
1:28:09
Now you can't go up with the head and the hip or the knees.
1:28:12
Basically, all you're allowed to do is push them out of bounds,
1:28:14
and you gotta be careful about that because if you do, it's six inches
1:28:16
after they go over the white line. That's a fifteen yard penalty. Two.
1:28:21
I just don't know how in the world you could possibly ever play defense
1:28:26
under these circumstances. But it's even worse than that, because once you make
1:28:30
it illegal, you are going to change the mindset and the actions of every
1:28:38
defender. You're even gonna dramatically impact the incentive structure to becoming a defensive player
1:28:45
to begin with. I have no idea how any great athlete is ever gonna
1:28:48
want to be a defender in football going forward. There's no glory there,
1:28:55
and all you're gonna do is get penalties and get kicked out of games.
1:28:58
You're not gonna get the NL NIL money at the college level. You know,
1:29:01
you'll still get paid at the pro level, but you you've already made
1:29:05
your position decision by then. You make that usually in high school or early
1:29:11
in college at the very latest, no great athlete is gonna be a defender
1:29:15
that's gonna have a massive impact on the sport going forward. But let me
1:29:19
give you an analogy with regards to this, specifically the hip drop tackle,
1:29:25
which I think is pretty good. You know, I don't know. There's
1:29:30
probably millions of fender benders any particular year when it comes to automobiles in America,
1:29:35
and generally a fender bender is not that big of a deal because the
1:29:40
vast majority of people have insurance. You get into a fender bender, you
1:29:44
give each other your insurance information, your you know, your rates might increase
1:29:48
slightly, but you don't even really notice it usually because it's all lost in
1:29:51
the bills and you know, to paying the ass depending on how much damage
1:29:57
is done with regard to the fender bender. But it's not the end of
1:30:00
the world. And so therefore, you know, people don't go around driving
1:30:06
in constant, deathly fear of a fender bender. But what if, like
1:30:13
banning the hip drop tackle, suddenly a fender bender was vulnerable to a criminal
1:30:19
felony charge. What if you could what if if somebody decided, boy,
1:30:26
we got to get rid of fender benders are all or all collar accidents,
1:30:30
don't they don't even don't even you know, limit this defender benders because obviously
1:30:34
fender benders don't generally result in major physical injuries. What if all car accidents
1:30:41
were subject to criminal felony charges, that it was just accepted that who's ever
1:30:47
at fault in any car accident, they're going to be charged criminally with a
1:30:54
felony where you might go to jail. Now, how would that in theory?
1:30:59
Right? People go, Wow, that's fantastic. Think about all the
1:31:01
fewer car accidents we're gonna have, all the people we're gonna save, all
1:31:04
the aggravation we're gonna save getting rid of fender benders. No one's gonna come
1:31:09
close to getting into a car accident that they can possibly help it because they
1:31:13
may lose their freedom over it, as opposed to just some money and insurance
1:31:17
rates. Well, how would that impact life? That would impact life dramatically
1:31:26
hugely. The incentive structure of driving would fundamentally change. People would be terrified,
1:31:35
They would be incredibly tentative drivers. Many people would never even go on
1:31:41
the road, which, by the way, might not be the worst thing
1:31:42
in the world, but you know, in theory has some negative ramifications to
1:31:47
it. You would have people who were afraid to do anything in their car.
1:31:54
If you made it into a criminal charge to be in a car accident
1:31:59
any of any sort, regardless of what the intent was, then there would
1:32:02
be the issue which goes to the difficulty of refereeing. How do you determine
1:32:06
who's at fault in these situations? You mean, I can be charged with
1:32:11
a criminal felony in a situation that it might not even be my fault,
1:32:16
and so how do you judge? And judging that what a hip drop tackle
1:32:21
is is going to make an already impossible job of refereeing of an NFL football
1:32:27
game even more difficult because it's very subjective as to what the definition of a
1:32:32
hip drop tackle would be. But it appears as if this is going to
1:32:38
happen because Roger Goodell is super woke, super PC and all he cares about
1:32:43
is what's good for the product and if you can lower the injuries for star
1:32:46
players, and there seems to be no negative impact on the wissification of the
1:32:51
game when it comes to television ratings. Television ratings are sky high, so
1:32:57
he's all in favor of it, and apparently even Jerry Jones, the owner
1:33:00
of the Dallas Cowboys, the only owner I'm aware of the who's ever played
1:33:04
football at a high level and should know better, he's apparently in favor of
1:33:10
banning the hip drop tackle. This is one of these things that's in theory.
1:33:15
Okay, fine, you're trying to reduce tackle or you're trying to reduce
1:33:17
injuries, but you're actually gonna reduce tackles. I have no idea. By
1:33:21
the way, how scoring in NFL games is not higher than it currently is.
1:33:28
I haven't seen the statistical lately, but by my perception, there's not
1:33:31
been an increase in scoring, certainly this year in NFL games. But to
1:33:38
me, I don't know how in the world you possibly play defense. I
1:33:41
have no idea. And if this is in fact what ends up happening,
1:33:46
which it appears as if it's going to this is the end, there's no
1:33:51
way to possibly play defense. The ramivocations of this will be far more dramatic
1:33:57
than just a couple of tackles a game being impacted by it, because it
1:34:00
will fundamentally alter the incentive structure of the defender. They're already confused as hell
1:34:06
as to what they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do.
1:34:11
And again I asked the question. So you can't go for the head,
1:34:14
you can't do a hip drop, so now you're supposed to go for the
1:34:16
knees. Not to mention, you know, running backs will be jumping over
1:34:21
defenders constantly, but that's supposed to be the worst injury you can have is
1:34:27
to the knees. So I don't see any other path here other than the
1:34:31
wussification of football in its totality, and going to a game that is not
1:34:36
even close to even what it currently is. It can get a lot worse
1:34:43
before this ends. And this entire concept of no injuries, which is so
1:34:48
much like zero COVID, is just mind blowing to me. And the base
1:34:55
fan doesn't seem to understand or care, and as long is the base fan
1:35:00
for football doesn't express outrage. And I think this is partially why they've put
1:35:05
this what I proceed to be soft ban on announcers creating outrage, because this
1:35:12
is usually how it happens. The announcer condemns a call, then that clip
1:35:16
goes viral online, gets millions of views, and there's an embarrassment for the
1:35:21
NFL or for college football where whatever the wherever the contest is being played,
1:35:27
Well, if you eliminate the announcer from expressing umbrage what happened, the chances
1:35:33
of that clip going viral have been greatly reduced. And so I think this
1:35:38
is all part of the plan here, not in a conspiracy. There didn't
1:35:41
even have to be a memo. All it takes is is, you know,
1:35:44
a call from the office to the executives that the networks that are their
1:35:48
business partners, and then the executives some executives says hey, let's knock it
1:35:53
off. On on. They don't even have to say hey, knock it
1:35:55
off. They can just say, hey, look, instead of you criticizing
1:35:58
the call, let's just give it off to the rules expert. I've heard
1:36:02
this happened dozens of times already. This seems to clearly be the new m
1:36:08
the new rule for how they do things. You don't comment on it because
1:36:12
you're too dangerous. Let's give it off to the rules expert. And occasionally
1:36:15
the rules expert will say, well that, yeah, that probably wasn't the
1:36:17
right call, But there's never any real outrage about it. It's all very
1:36:24
benign and it's all very contained, and so all this is happening slowly but
1:36:30
surely. Slippery slope. That's uh, that's newter the kickoff, you know,
1:36:35
well, we'll take away most tackled or vicious tackling because we're preventing concussions.
1:36:41
Now, we're going to get rid of the hip drop tackle, leaving
1:36:44
defenders with all sorts of uncertainty and creating all sorts of incentive problems. And
1:36:50
eventually we're going to have a game that effectively, whether we call it flag
1:36:56
football or not, that's effectively what it's going to be. And that's what
1:37:00
we want because we're protecting our stars. We want to get rid of injuries,
1:37:04
specifically concussions, because we saw that as a mortal threat. The media
1:37:09
is still going after us on that. The New York Times, the Washington
1:37:12
Post, still going after us on concussions and CTE. That's a mortal threat
1:37:16
to the game and to our business model. We're protecting the money here.
1:37:20
It's always all about money, and unfortunately the fan has decided to go along
1:37:27
with it, and even people like me are starting to wave the white flag.
1:37:30
And once that happens, the change is going to be fast, and
1:37:34
it might not even take ten years, but it's certain, it's absolutely certain,
1:37:40
and once it's lost, you can never get it back. And that's,
1:37:44
you know, partially why I've been warning my fellow football fans about it
1:37:48
and my senses. Most people don't really seem to care that much, mainly
1:37:53
because I think they don't truly believe that it's possible. And this goes to
1:38:00
a larger phenomenon, the great vulnerability of America. I think the greatest vulnerability
1:38:04
America as is that most Americans don't believe it's possible for America to be lost
1:38:11
because it's so big and it's so great, and it's so strong. And
1:38:15
that's our great vulnerability. And it's very similar with football. There are a
1:38:19
lot of hardcore football fans who think, well, yeah, the game's so
1:38:23
great, so big, so successful, it's so embedded in American culture,
1:38:29
nothing can destroy it. Totally bullshit, bullshit. And you know, I'm
1:38:35
one of those people that believes that COVID showed the leadership and the establishment what
1:38:41
they can get away with and the best way to do it. And the
1:38:44
National Football League is doing that on numerous fronts. They're doing that on the
1:38:49
race and equity front, as I started this episode with, but they're also
1:38:53
doing it when it comes to the wussification of football. One other story that
1:38:59
revolves around but to me, really doesn't have that much to do with sports,
1:39:02
and I'm dealing with it one because it was in the news that would
1:39:05
last couple of days, and two because I'm planning on ending the podcast in
1:39:10
the next less than two months or now, and so I need to get
1:39:14
as many predictions and thoughts about the future off my chest as possible because my
1:39:18
plan is to leave public life. But Tiger Woods and Charlie Woods, his
1:39:25
now fourteen year old son, played in what's called the PNC Championship over this
1:39:29
past weekend. They finished tied for fifth after a poor first day. It's
1:39:33
a two day tournament. It's supposed to be originally was the father's son,
1:39:38
then it was father daughter, then it's basically turned into whatever you want it
1:39:43
to be. If you're a friend of Tiger, you'll get in the tournament
1:39:45
and you can play with your dad. If you're justin Thomas or whatever,
1:39:48
you have to even qualify for the tournament. If you're Steve Stricker and your
1:39:53
friend of Tiger's. You can get in not having won a major championship or
1:39:57
the Tournament players Championship, which used to be the rule. If you're friends
1:40:00
with Tiger. The rules really don't matter anymore. But this is a very
1:40:03
popular event because it's generally dad's playing with their sons or daughters in a competitive
1:40:11
format. And there's been a lot of understandable speculation about Charlie Woods, Tiger's
1:40:17
son, and how he will do once he becomes an adult. Is he
1:40:21
going to be Tiger two point zero? Is he going to save the PGA
1:40:26
Tour, which is imperil because of its threat from live golf? Is he
1:40:30
going to potentially be as good as his dad? And will he be a
1:40:34
fantastic golfer and of itself? And obviously he has the world at his feet.
1:40:39
He's gonna have every opportunity imaginable, every advantage imaginable, everything he wants
1:40:45
as far as equipment and instruction, and all these friends that he has that
1:40:51
are pro golfers, including Justin Thomas, and like everybody else who's been a
1:40:57
fan of Tiger, and I've been as big a fan of Tiger as anybody.
1:41:00
Most people forget but I was one of the first to really go out
1:41:03
on a limb and predict that Tiger was going to be the greatest of all
1:41:06
time. Even had a satirical website called Tiger Woods as God that I created
1:41:12
back in nineteen ninety nine, just before he really dominated the golf world in
1:41:16
the year two thousand. But I've been following Tiger Woods now for thirty years
1:41:21
since his junior career and have been predicting, like many people did, great
1:41:27
things for him. Was positive he was going to be the greatest of his
1:41:30
generation. And he turned out basically exactly as I thought that he would,
1:41:34
and at times I was the biggest Tiger fan ever. When the scandal hit,
1:41:40
I lost a lot of respect for him and jumped off the bandwagon,
1:41:44
but then felt like he he deserved a second chance because he had earned it,
1:41:47
He had suffered, he had gone through a lot of adversity, and
1:41:51
had I thought, shown a lot of at least golf related character and being
1:41:56
able to overcome injuries, and that the scandal and the divorce and coming back
1:42:01
and winning the Masters in twenty nineteen might be the last great thing that ever
1:42:04
happens in America, because it happened just before COVID, about almost a year
1:42:10
before COVID actually hit. But so I'm a huge Tiger fan and nobody on
1:42:16
the planet would be more excited if Charlie Woods became even close to what his
1:42:23
dad was than me, especially since I'm looking at retirement with nothing to do
1:42:29
and the PGA tour and the verge of destruction. I would be thrilled to
1:42:32
be able to go through what Tiger gave us for twenty twenty five years with
1:42:39
his son Charlie. I would be thrilled, and I'm still to this moment
1:42:43
rooting for that. But I'm now starting to become convinced that there's no chance
1:42:48
that's really going to happen. And it's nothing against Charlie. And I'm sure
1:42:53
people are thinking, well, he's fourteen years old, seg how can you
1:42:57
possibly be making projections of someone at fourteen. I'm sorry, folks, In
1:43:02
this modern era of golf, fourteen is not too young to start making some
1:43:10
significant I don't say definitive predictions, but some at least getting some thoughts about
1:43:17
where someone appears to be headed. I know that sounds crazy to the non
1:43:21
golfer, because golf is still to this day proceed wrongly as a sport where
1:43:27
you hit your peak in like your thirties and you can play into your forties,
1:43:30
and so there's all this time to develop. Golf has changed. Golf
1:43:35
has basically become what tennis used to be. It's weird that tennis, as
1:43:41
you know, with Novak Djokovic and until recently, you know, Frederer and
1:43:46
Nadal still dominating at seemingly old age. But you know, tennis used to
1:43:51
be dominated by very young players. Golf is increasingly being dominated by young players.
1:43:57
I am of the belief that you're now hitting your prime in golf at
1:44:01
the age of twenty four, twenty five, and even that might be young.
1:44:08
I think there are golfers who are you know, still thought of as
1:44:12
superstars, people like Rory McElroy, who, don't get me wrong, is
1:44:15
a great golfer. But it would not shock me if Rory McElroy never wins
1:44:18
another major championship as a won one for a very long time. He's you
1:44:24
know, in his early thirties now, and you know, I just don't
1:44:28
think people understand how much the game has changed because of technology and fitness and
1:44:32
how popular it became because of Tiger Woods. That's the great irony of Tiger
1:44:36
Woods. Tiger Woods made the game so popular among athletes that it effectively made
1:44:43
himself obsolete. Now, he had all sorts of injuries that helped in that,
1:44:47
But Tiger can't compete with these younger players anymore, even if he hadn't
1:44:51
had all these injuries and the car accident, what have you. You know,
1:44:57
it's just because it's a younger man's game now. And while fourteen is
1:45:01
young and Charlie has not yet physically fully developed, so I'm not making any
1:45:06
kind of definitive prediction. What I'm saying is the chances of Charlie Woods coming
1:45:14
even close to what Tiger Woods was are almost zero. And there's a couple
1:45:21
of reasons for this. One is just history. I'm going to give you
1:45:27
a list of all the sons of major golf champions who have also won major
1:45:36
golf championships. Major championships meaning the four major championships. I'll even put in
1:45:42
the Tournament Players Championship, which is often thought of as the fifth major,
1:45:45
at least the PJ Tour would like you to believe that, but so one
1:45:49
major major tournaments. Here is a list of all the sons of major champions
1:45:56
who have also won major championships in the modern era and even remotely the modern
1:46:01
era of golf, here's the list. Yeah, it doesn't exist. Nobody,
1:46:12
no one, zero. Now, there have been a couple a handful
1:46:16
in the modern era of sons of players who have won golf tournaments like PGA
1:46:24
Tour events who have also won APGA Tour event or two, But those it's
1:46:30
only a handful. And trust me, I'm gonna guess that every single son
1:46:39
of a major champion golfer has at least tried to play the game and clearly
1:46:44
has had the opportunity to play the game. And we've always thought of golf,
1:46:47
you know, the biggest hindrance to play, right is opportunity. Having
1:46:53
the facilities, the access to great golf courses, country clubs, proper instruction,
1:46:58
proper equipment, all of that is a huge deal. And I agree
1:47:01
that's a huge deal. Access is big. Access is obviously not a problem
1:47:08
if your dad was a major golf champion. Yet nobody in the modern era
1:47:14
has even come close to winning a major championship. Who was the son of
1:47:18
a dad who won a major Jack Nicholas's kids, they didn't come close.
1:47:24
Gary Nicholas almost won one PGA Tour event and that was it for him,
1:47:30
and he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated with Jack and I think the
1:47:34
age of sixteen. So that was an era when again, you're hit your
1:47:40
golf prime in your thirties. Now you're hitting your golf prime in my very
1:47:44
strong opinion, twenty four to twenty five tops, I mean, and it
1:47:47
could even be earlier than that. Some of the players were seeing out of
1:47:51
college are incredible. So Charlie fourteen years old, who again has not fully
1:47:58
physically developed, so I'm not making any conclusions about how good he's going to
1:48:02
be. But the history here is bad, and it's particularly bad across all
1:48:09
sports when it comes to super successful dads who are also obviously super rich and
1:48:15
famous, because I think there is an inherent hindrance to great success when you
1:48:24
are the son of a super rich, super famous, super successful dad.
1:48:29
And it's very complex, but some of it I think is common sense.
1:48:35
The reality is that with all the good things that come with being the son
1:48:40
of a super successful dad, come a lot of bad things. Yes,
1:48:44
there's the pressure, but there's also the lack of urgency when it comes to
1:48:50
being a success. Yes, you want to be like your dad, but
1:48:55
it's just not the same thing. When you know you have no financial concerns,
1:49:00
you are living a spoiled life, and Charlie Woods is clearly living a
1:49:04
spoiled life. There's nothing Tiger can do to prevent that, especially since he's
1:49:11
divorced. Right in theory, this would be very, very difficult given the
1:49:15
life that Tiger has to live because he's Tiger, taking private jets everywhere and
1:49:19
being buddy buddy with super famous people and living in a palatial house and playing
1:49:26
golf at super private golf courses. That would be it would be impossible to
1:49:30
shield Charlie from that life anyway. But because of the divorce with Charlie's mom,
1:49:36
Elin Nordegren, now you've got an extra layer of problems there because you've
1:49:42
got two parents that are super rich who are effectively competing with one another.
1:49:47
So if one decided, you know, we're going to try to pretend that
1:49:50
we're not super rich here, the other would immediately, you know, fill
1:49:56
that void, if only out of competition. That's just you nature. So
1:50:00
it's impossible to keep Charlie from being spoiled and you know, kids at every
1:50:05
level or spoiled brats these days. I mean, my kids are, I
1:50:10
believe, spoiled brats in a lot of ways. And it's not because we're
1:50:14
economically comfortable in any way, shape or form. We struggle on a monthly
1:50:17
basis to meet our bills, but we're at least comfortable. And it's just
1:50:24
the nature of the world we live in now where I think kids tend to
1:50:26
be more and more spoiled than they ever were before for a lot of other
1:50:30
different reasons that are probably more appropriate for another episode of the podcast, But
1:50:34
the point is, Charlie cannot possibly grow up with the eye of the tiger.
1:50:42
To mix a metaphor, you know, use using the famous song from
1:50:45
the Rocky movies and obviously the name Tiger Woods. He can't possibly have that
1:50:49
like Tiger did. Tiger grew up in a middle class family whose dad was
1:50:55
hard on him, and it was a miracle that it generated a once in
1:51:00
a lifetime freak of nature named Tiger Woods. Charlie's not in the same environment,
1:51:08
by the way. He's also only fifty percent of the DNA of Tiger
1:51:12
woods, so right off the bat, you get a you know, a
1:51:15
dilution effect. You know, my knowledge, Elan's never played golf in her
1:51:18
life. If he wants to be a bikini model or a swimsuit model,
1:51:25
you know he's got great genes, because that's what what Elan was. But
1:51:30
you know, so there's that's another element of this whole thing that people seem
1:51:33
to forget. You only get fifty percent of your DNA from your dad or
1:51:38
your mom, and so you have I think this is a hurdle that cannot
1:51:43
be overcome. And you would think that in golf it would be less of
1:51:47
a problem because in theory, in golf, right if you don't have any
1:51:51
economic pressures, and you have access to all the great courses, all the
1:51:58
great equipment, all the great instruction, and you would think that that would
1:52:00
give you such an enormous advantage that you would play at the highest level.
1:52:05
You have no fear of failure, of you miss a cut, who cares.
1:52:10
You're still, you know, living a very luxurious life. You can
1:52:15
fly at every pin, try to make every put. In theory, it
1:52:19
actually is is is a benefit, and I actually I believe that in some
1:52:24
ways it might be given my experience, but the results, the stats,
1:52:30
the history shows a very different result, which is that there are no kids
1:52:38
that succeed in a hyper fashion who grew up in that environment, even within
1:52:45
golf, where you would think that would be the one sport where those types
1:52:50
of advantages would be the most significant. And if you look at other sports,
1:52:56
very few sons of greats have ever measured up to their dads. Only
1:53:01
a couple have ever exceeded their dads. You know, to my memory,
1:53:06
in the modern era, you basically have two examples. You got the Manning
1:53:11
brothers exceeding what their dad Archie did. But Archie, while he was huge
1:53:16
in Mississippi and huge in New Orleans, was not a worldwide celebrity. He
1:53:21
was rich, but not super rich. And so you know, Peyton and
1:53:27
Eli Manning were able to live real lives. They weren't flying around in private
1:53:31
jets as kids, and you know, they both had the dedication to do
1:53:36
what it took in a different, slightly different era of football to exceed what
1:53:41
their dad did in football. Kobe Bryant in basketball, his dad was an
1:53:45
NBA player, but nowhere near the level that Kobe was in an era where
1:53:50
NBA players were not making that much money. He was not a super success.
1:53:56
In fact, many people thought Kobe's dad was an underachiever in his talent
1:54:00
level. But Kobe is one of the very few examples, and he had
1:54:05
that drive. And Kobe did not grow up poor. He grew up in
1:54:10
the suburbs of Philadelphia, or actually in Italy and then in the suburbs of
1:54:14
Philadelphia, so he was in a very well to do family, but again,
1:54:17
not super rich. I think there's a big difference between, you know,
1:54:23
being comfortable and being so rich that you're not living a real life.
1:54:29
So Kobe did live a real life, and he had the determination and the
1:54:32
grit and the grind, very much like Tiger, to make himself the greatest
1:54:38
that he possibly could, and he ended up being one of the all time
1:54:41
best players in the history of basketball. I just don't see how Charlie's going
1:54:45
to be able to do this. And from a golf standpoint, what became
1:54:50
clear this weekend. I realized it's only two days, it's a scramble format,
1:54:55
it's an incredibly small sample size. He's only fourteen. I get this,
1:55:00
but he is a terrible putter, terrible, and that to me is
1:55:03
a really bad sign, because in my view, putting is one of those
1:55:10
situations where you are born not made putters, much like sprinters, you are
1:55:16
born a great putter or you're not a great putter, and you should be
1:55:19
putting fantastically at fourteen years old. At fourteen years old, where you got
1:55:25
not a care in the world, you should be putting the lights out.
1:55:29
And Charlie was awful on the putting, he admitted, so he tried to
1:55:33
say he and his dad both sucked at putting in a press conference after round
1:55:38
one. But that to me is the greatest warning sign here. He's got
1:55:42
a great swing, great speed, He clearly loves the game, he's got
1:55:45
all the advantages. There's moments when you see flashes of Tiger. But in
1:55:53
this day and age, as many birdies as you have to make to play
1:55:58
competitively on the PGA too, and to win major championships, you got to
1:56:01
be a great putter. And there's no sign of that from Charlie at fourteen.
1:56:04
And based upon what I've seen in my own experience, if you don't
1:56:09
see that at fourteen, I don't know how you. I don't know how
1:56:12
you get it, because that's you either have that magic or you don't.
1:56:15
And so while no one is gonna be rooting for Charlie Woods more than me,
1:56:18
and I've even starting to see a little bit of change in the median
1:56:21
narrative about Charlie, with some of Tiger's friends in the media trying to tamp
1:56:28
down expectations for understandable reasons, because obviously he's gonna have the way of the
1:56:31
world on him. But my prediction, if I'm gonna make one with regard
1:56:36
to Charlie, is he'll he'll play in college. He'll probably go to Tiger's
1:56:41
alma mater, Stanford, assuming that he and his dad stay as close as
1:56:45
they are, and he'll he'll play golf at Stanford. It's gonna be a
1:56:47
tough deal for the coach there at Stanford. I think that's that's not gonna
1:56:50
be an enviable situation. But sometime in Charlie's junior or senior year at Stanford,
1:56:58
he's gonna suddenly realize he's never going to be as good as his dad,
1:57:01
And that's going to be one of those key moments. And generally,
1:57:06
when the sun realizes he's never gonna be as good as his dad, he
1:57:11
quits, and so my guess is sometime in Charlie's juniors senior year at Stanford.
1:57:17
I hope this isn't the case. But my guess is sometime in his
1:57:20
junior years or senior year at Stanford, he's gonna suddenly get an injury,
1:57:25
or suddenly he'll no longer be on the Stanford golf team, or something will
1:57:29
happen where he'll be able to save face and go on into a different area
1:57:33
of life. I hope that's not the case, because no one would make
1:57:38
no one would be happier. Charlie Woods ended up having a great pha to
1:57:42
our career than me, just because we got to extend this amazing gift we
1:57:47
got called Tiger Woods for maybe a couple more decades. I would I would
1:57:51
be excited, excited beyond all description if that happens. And I realize I'm
1:57:57
a pessimist by nature, but I just I just do not see that happening
1:58:01
as of right now. Again, I hope I'm wrong, and there's still
1:58:04
some time for it to change. But contrary to public perception, fourteen is
1:58:12
not too young. Fourteen is a golfer, especially given all the advantages that
1:58:16
Charlie has had. There's enough there to start making some analysis that indicates that
1:58:25
this is not going to be as easy as a lot of people in the
1:58:28
public think. I think the public thinks, oh, Charlie's going to be
1:58:31
the next Tiger Woods, and there's just no evidence of that as of right
1:58:35
now. One last thing to end on in this episode of the podcast.
1:58:40
I have talked periodically about this ten year odyssey that I've been on regarding the
1:58:46
issue of Santa Claus in our house and the fact that I have an eleven
1:58:49
year old daughter, Grace and a six year old daughter, Diana, and
1:58:56
obviously this is Christmas season, and the long story short of this whole thing
1:58:59
is I'm the world's biggest hypocrite on Santa Claus because I have grave issues with
1:59:03
the entire concept of Santa and the lessons that Santa teaches kids. But my
1:59:10
daughter, Grace loves Santa in a huge way. I've never seen any kid
1:59:15
love anything more than she loves Santa. And she loved her elf and the
1:59:19
whole Christmas season thing, and so I did everything I possibly could to maintain
1:59:25
that and to protect the magic what was left of it, and each year
1:59:30
for the last ten years at least, we have had a trip to see
1:59:35
Santa Claus at our local club are the place where I play golf, so
1:59:40
it's I guess you'd call it a country club. It's a nice place,
1:59:43
not spectacular, it's very nice. And this event they call the Santa Brunch
1:59:46
every year is rather expensive. Everything's expensive in this day and age, but
1:59:51
this is really expensive. So you're expecting a first class situation. This is
1:59:57
not going to the shopping and taking pictures with a guy who dresses up like
2:00:02
Santa. This is supposed to be, it has been in the past,
2:00:06
the situation where the Santa looks great, he knows the role. He's an
2:00:11
actor playing a role. He gets it, and his job is to preserve
2:00:15
the magic. That's that's his job. And last year things got to the
2:00:19
point where I was so concerned about this being Grace's last year believing in Santa
2:00:26
Claus when she was in fourth grade and as a ten year old, that
2:00:29
I even found out which Santa had been hired for this particular Santa Brunch,
2:00:35
and I had via email gotten them a message that you know, to say
2:00:42
hi to Grace and Diana, and that Grace's best friend was not believing in
2:00:46
Santa anymore, and if there was something that he could do, and that
2:00:50
message got delivered. Unfortunately that's Santa didn't do a great job of delivering it
2:00:55
because he referenced a rumor that he had heard, which Santa doesn't. The
2:01:00
real Santa doesn't hear rumors. The real Santa knows, and so I was
2:01:03
kind of a little irritated by that, but it had mostly worked. But
2:01:06
then Grace and I had the big talk, and you know, she acknowledged
2:01:12
that she understood that Santa is not a real person, and I tried my
2:01:15
best to at least preserve some of the specialness of Christmas for her, and
2:01:20
there were tears on multiple occasions. And then, weirdly this year, Grace
2:01:27
decided that she was going to go into this hybrid where she cerebraily or cerebrally,
2:01:32
to use the proper English language. She understands there's no Santa Claus as
2:01:38
a human being, but that she wants to pretend that there is. My
2:01:42
wife and I are like, okay, that's a little weird, but fine,
2:01:45
you know, we'll let this go, especially since one of Grace's jobs
2:01:48
is to preserve the magic for her younger daughter, Grace, I mean your
2:01:51
under younger daughter, Diana, who is six years old and who's very very
2:01:56
cynical, nowhere near as idealistic and romantic as her older sister Grace is.
2:02:01
So we know that we're on borrowed time with six year old Diana, who's
2:02:05
very very smart, going to figure this out very very quickly, and,
2:02:10
as I said, is a cynic to begin with. So we're totally fine
2:02:14
with Grace pretending, especially if it's helping out Diana get through one maybe two
2:02:18
more years. And we go to this year's event, which I did not
2:02:24
partially because Grace now understands, at least, you know, from a cognitive
2:02:29
standpoint, she understands that there's no human being named Santa Claus who flies around
2:02:33
on Christmas Eve all over the world giving gifts. I thought, all right,
2:02:38
you know what, it's not that big of a deal who the Santa
2:02:40
is. I'll just trust this to happen organically. I'm not going to go
2:02:45
send any messages to Santa. I'll just let it happen. And that was
2:02:49
apparently a mistake, because in all the ten years plus that we've been doing
2:02:55
this event, this was by first, by far, the worst Santa we've
2:02:59
ever had, by far, the worst Santa we've ever had. He was
2:03:02
basically a buffoon, and they had oversold the brunch. There was no space
2:03:08
for him. Usually they put him in front of the fireplace with a throne
2:03:11
and a tree, and he's got these helpers, and so there's the majesty
2:03:15
and and you know, the the pomp and the circumstance, which is big
2:03:19
for kids. There was nothing like that. They almost literally had him in
2:03:25
a corner, in a in a cubby hole, you know, like he
2:03:29
was in detention, and he was just a jokester, and he didn't understand
2:03:33
his role, and he looked fine. I think he was one of these
2:03:38
guys who I've got a good suit, My beard's pretty good. You know.
2:03:41
That's all I have to do is just show up. There was there
2:03:44
was none of the role playing. I even said to him to that because
2:03:50
at first we thought maybe this guy knew what he was doing. That was
2:03:55
a bad presumption on my part, but I said to him him because our
2:04:00
six year old daughter Diana, immediately as soon as we saw Santa we sat
2:04:03
down for brunch, said I don't think that's the real Santa, and we're
2:04:08
like, are you sure, because you know, we thought maybe this guy
2:04:12
was going to be able to sell it. So they go to see Santa
2:04:15
and I say to Santa, you know, Diana is not convinced that you're
2:04:18
the real Santa. Not the same thing as not believing in Santa. Those
2:04:23
are two different things, which a good Santa would understand. A good Santa
2:04:28
would understand that what I'm saying there is, hey, Santa, step it
2:04:31
the fuck up. That's what I'm really saying to Santa. But instead Santa
2:04:36
interpret that is she doesn't believe in Santa in general. And so he goes
2:04:42
into this little speech for her where he says, oh, that's okay,
2:04:47
don't believe in me, believe in yourself. And I'm like, what woke
2:04:54
PC handbook did this guy get this line from? So he's essentially telling her,
2:05:02
yeah, I'm not the real Santa, or I'm not even real to
2:05:04
begin with, which for a six year old cynec like Diana, was very
2:05:11
problematic. And my wife and I are looking at each other like, what
2:05:15
the hell is going on here? Again, this is an event where we
2:05:17
pay a significant amount of money for them to pay a really good Santa,
2:05:23
and in the past there have been some excellent Santas at this particular event,
2:05:27
but this guy was the worst ever. So we get back to our table
2:05:31
and even Grace is like, oh, that was bullshit, although she doesn't
2:05:36
want to say that, and quickly I call it audible and I decide to
2:05:42
turn this. I basically turn into the curve and I say, Diana,
2:05:46
how did you know that was not the real Santa Claus. You're smarter than
2:05:53
all of us. That guy was not the real Santa. And so that
2:05:56
kind of gave her a little bit of pride that she was the first be
2:06:00
able to figure it out that that's not the real Santa clause. I don't
2:06:03
know whether that had a dramatic impact on her view of Santa in general.
2:06:08
It's a little too early to tell, but my guess is that to the
2:06:12
point that Diana still believes in the concept of Santa, were probably in our
2:06:17
last year, we might be able to squeak out one more to where she
2:06:21
gets to seven years old next year. There's always a year where they played
2:06:25
for ten because they're not one hundred percent sure. But this was a definitely
2:06:30
a negative development on the Santa front, and I was pretty pissed off about
2:06:36
it. I complained about it to management, which didn't go over particularly well
2:06:42
because I just I really don't think that people, and that the person in
2:06:45
charge doesn't have kids. I think people that don't have kids and don't do
2:06:50
the whole Santa thing in the real world, they don't understand how important it
2:06:56
is, and they also don't understand the intricacies of it. And the fact
2:07:00
that I've gotten so involved in this is hilarious because, as I've said,
2:07:02
through most of my adult life, I've been railing against Santa, and now
2:07:06
I'm in the bizarre world situation of not only trying to protect Santa to the
2:07:12
bitter end, but now my wife, literally after this episode, my wife,
2:07:16
who knows him about that and the podcast and effectively retire, is now
2:07:23
mostly seriously. I thought at first it was a joke. She's now mostly
2:07:28
seriously pitching me on me becoming Santa Claus in my retirement. What. First
2:07:35
of all, that's insulting and insane and absurd, because I could never grow
2:07:42
a beard like that, and I'm not nearly fat enough. Of course,
2:07:45
she thinks I'm out of shape, and I probably am, but nowhere near
2:07:48
fat enough to be Santa, nor would I have the desire to do this.
2:07:55
And you know, I'm who knows what I would be any good at
2:07:57
it or not. I certainly have the knowledge to do it. But this
2:08:01
is the strangeness of my life where here I am one of the foremost Santa
2:08:07
critics now facing a situation where my wife is literally sincerely and on multiple occasions
2:08:16
because I thought she was joking it first, but she kept at it,
2:08:18
trying to convince me to become Santa because I could make a killing, because
2:08:22
there are so many bad Santas out there, and there's such a desire for
2:08:26
these types of events where a Santa is hired to try to maintain the magic,
2:08:31
which this particular Santa did not do. But this is my life now
2:08:37
as I head into retirement, the bizarreness of it, the strangeness of it,
2:08:39
the sadness of all of it, and I'm not sure we're going to
2:08:43
be able to get through this particular Christmas with the Santas still being intact.
2:08:48
I do plan just after Christmas to interview my eleven year old fifth grade daughter
2:08:54
Grace on a series of topics, including Santa. So you can look forward
2:08:58
to. That will be our first post Christmas episode of the podcast, which
2:09:03
might be our last episode of the year, so that's still to come.
2:09:07
When it comes to the death of Journalism podcasts, that'll do it for this
2:09:09
particular episode, as is always the case. Thanks so much for listening.
2:09:13
Until next time. My name is John Zigler. This has been the Death
2:09:18
of Journalism podcast