Transcript

Josh Filler · Newsradio WGAN

0:00
It's now Josh filler time, and Josh is with us once more.
0:03
Sir, how are things this morning?
0:05
Doing well, Matt, how are you? Not too bad here.
0:08
So let's talk a little bit about DEI and race and sex based
0:14
affirmative action in this country.
0:16
I know that obviously we've seen Supreme Court rulings on this
0:19
several, I mean, going all the way back to, you know, college
0:22
admissions to a number of other issues as well, but it's also
0:26
touching many other areas as well.
0:28
Can you give me a quick update on many of these things sort of
0:31
converging right now and and what your view on all this is?
0:35
Yeah, I think we're at an A really historic point and I
0:39
think you almost have to go back to the founding to understand
0:43
where we are, how we got here and, and where we're going.
0:47
In a nutshell, when you look at our history and the law, there's
0:51
really 2 two sides to this, but basically the outcome is the
0:54
same. And that is from the founding to
0:57
the present. We have never been colorblind
1:01
under the law, and we have discriminated on the basis of
1:05
sex under the law from the founding up until the present.
1:10
The switch has been really from the 1960s and 70s.
1:15
Up until that point, discrimination on the basis of
1:17
race was largely discrimination against blacks, although not
1:21
exclusively, and discrimination on the basis of sex was against
1:25
women, although not exclusively. Then with the passage of the
1:29
civil rights laws, Equal Pay Act and so forth, that was all
1:33
supposed to end. But it didn't.
1:37
We carved out this exception called affirmative action, and
1:41
basically what it is, what it has allowed, is discrimination
1:44
on the basis of race and sex. If it's done to aid women and
1:49
minorities. And really, over the last
1:51
decade, going back to about 2015 or so, this thing is taken off
1:56
on steroids called DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion.
2:01
And with Trump's second term now, it's very clear that his
2:06
administration is determined to try once and for all to make us
2:12
not sexist and colorblind. And they just had a major
2:16
settlement with PayPal on the discrimination on the basis of
2:20
race. PayPal had to set aside to
2:22
invest in only black-owned businesses.
2:26
And they've just filed a landmark lawsuit against The New
2:29
York Times for discrimination on both the basis of race and sex.
2:36
Right, exactly. And this is something that's
2:38
obviously when you try to get back to the sort of like the
2:41
source of it and where it's come from it it's a it's 1000
2:45
different places, right? I know that there's been efforts
2:48
by some major, very wealthy liberal political activist
2:53
minded folks to try to steer companies in this direction by
2:56
actually gaining control over their boards of directors and
3:00
then steering them towards investments in a lot of these
3:02
places. And forcing these kinds of
3:04
policy changes as a means of sort of like, you know, not even
3:08
worrying about what the government does or doesn't do.
3:10
Try to actually make the companies that do the hiring and
3:14
the firing and control so much of the economy actually behave
3:17
in this way. And what I think one of the
3:19
things that was disappointing to me to see over this period you
3:22
mentioned, which is like 2015 to today, is how many companies
3:25
kind of just like sort of surrendered right away.
3:28
They were like, I guess this is just what we do to be a good
3:30
company. I don't want to rock the boat.
3:32
I don't want to be on the receiving end of accusations of
3:35
not caring about this or that. So we'll go along with it.
3:38
We'll, we'll hire these types of jobs.
3:42
We will have these types of policies in, in terms of hiring,
3:45
firing, promotion, etcetera. And hopefully they'll leave us
3:48
alone. And I think we've arrived at a
3:50
point now where a lot of those companies are like, man, I
3:52
shouldn't have done that. And, and this is kind of
3:55
dripping into the rest of society at the same time,
3:57
obviously well. It's I think it's even worse.
3:59
There was a Sub Stack article a couple of months ago from a
4:03
writer, a white male writer, married with kids who never
4:08
could break in into the writing business in Hollywood because he
4:12
was a white male and he basically lost that opportunity.
4:17
I think he's in his mid 30s or early 40s now.
4:20
I'm not sure. But you know, he talked about
4:23
how he and his colleagues just had every door slammed in their
4:26
face and they were told straight up, you know, you're not being
4:30
hired because you're a white male.
4:32
They they didn't even hide it, right?
4:33
Like you said, it became so pervasive and so normalized,
4:37
even though it was so obviously illegal.
4:40
And yet I think it that when I said it's even worse, what you
4:43
described is I think a lot of these young guys had the door
4:47
slammed in their face because older men, older white men, my
4:51
generation, Gen. X baby boomers threw these guys
4:56
under the bus to save themselves, to save themselves.
5:00
And it's, it's and now the chickens are coming home to
5:03
roost because these programs I think are, are short, have a
5:06
short lifespan because they so obviously violate the law.
5:11
I mean, the New York Times publishes statistics.
5:14
It's got a program and it, it celebrates not hiring white
5:19
people, not hiring men. And you know, they, they are
5:24
the, the complaint against them from the, from the Trump.
5:27
What's the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity
5:30
Commission that is suing them? I mean, it has a mountain of
5:33
evidence and it's goal here. The particular case is a white
5:37
male editor for their real estate desk.
5:41
And he was picked. He was not picked, but the
5:45
person who was picked was a woman, a multiracial woman, and
5:49
she happened to be the least qualified.
5:51
And So what they're trying to do here is not only get him
5:54
restitution, but force the New York Times to drop their DEI
5:59
program altogether. You know, I've been searching
6:02
for a way Josh Filler, to talk about the Oscars issue and a
6:07
little bit about Christopher Nolan's odyssey because there's
6:10
been something stuck in my brain about it for a while.
6:12
And this is my opportunity. Because really, it's the same
6:14
story, right? I mean, the Oscars have this new
6:18
insane criteria for awards. They basically have adopted a
6:22
set of rules which say if you'd like to be considered for these
6:25
major nominations and awards, you have to have done the
6:29
following things and they have a long list.
6:31
It's about diversity and hiring for the staff for, you know,
6:35
directing, producing, you know, sort of like the behind the
6:38
scenes stuff too, or, and, and, or, you know, diversity on the
6:44
on the actual casting. And we have this movie that's
6:47
being done by frankly, one of my favorite directors, Christopher
6:49
Nolan. He's done amazing work in his
6:51
career and he's one of the last great directors that actually
6:53
believes in practical facts and realism and all this other
6:56
stuff. And I was very, very excited to
6:58
see that he was doing the odyssey because it's one of my
6:59
favorite stories. It's a core thing of West of the
7:02
Western literature that I grew up reading and it really should
7:06
be adopted into something pretty cool.
7:07
And that's a guy I would have trusted to do it.
7:10
But every single thing I see about this movie in the last
7:14
like 3 months has it been about very bizarre and odd casting
7:20
decisions. The most recent which is they
7:23
announced that they have a black actress playing Helen of Troy.
7:26
But it's not just that. It's also apparently the main,
7:31
the main narrator of the story, who is a poet, a Greek poet is
7:35
being played by a rapper. And it goes on and on and on.
7:38
And you know, he's he's giving these weird statements about why
7:41
he's doing it. He's like, well, you know, rap
7:43
is modern day poetry. And since he was a poet, it.
7:46
Just made sense. Even if you think it is, I mean,
7:49
you're doing a period piece about, you know, Greece and and
7:53
Troy and the Trojan War and I mean, come on.
7:56
I mean, like, seriously, right? So I, I could not help this is a
8:01
long lead in and I appreciate you, you indulging me here a
8:04
little bit. But I could not help but think
8:06
of the line in in The Dark Knight, which is the second
8:10
Batman movie that Nolan did where where Harvey Dent says you
8:13
either, you know, die a hero or you live long enough to become a
8:16
villain. And I feel like I'm now in the
8:18
live along live long enough to become a villain stage of
8:21
Christopher Nolan's career. He's selling out to the to the
8:25
to the Academy so that he can go hunting for more awards after he
8:28
won for Oppenheimer. And that really drives me nuts.
8:31
But it means that their policies working, right?
8:33
It's driving these people to He would never have done this
8:35
otherwise, never would have done it otherwise, in my opinion.
8:39
I hope, you know, it's funny. I don't know his motives either.
8:42
I assume that the Hollywood criteria as you described, you
8:47
know, 30% of your actors have to come from 2 underrepresented
8:51
groups. Women which are not
8:53
underrepresented, they're over 50% of the population, racial or
8:57
ethnic, LGBTQ or people with cognitive and physical
9:01
disabilities. I'm not making this stuff up.
9:03
This is part of their criteria. And like you said, the list goes
9:07
on and on. You know, I have reports that
9:11
Nolan and his wife have attended anti Trump rallies in Britain.
9:15
I don't know if that's true with the AI these days, who knows,
9:19
But I have read that and yeah. I have no doubt that he's
9:23
progressive. I just like he spent a career,
9:27
you know, not taking bait like this.
9:29
You know, there's been so many opportunities over the years
9:31
where he's been able to, you know, suck up to these people
9:34
and and do what they want. And he actually has been telling
9:37
them no. He's been a bit of a dissident
9:38
filmmaker not doing it the way that everybody else is doing it.
9:41
And I've always respected that. So, you know, his politics
9:44
aside, I would have hoped that he would have kept doing that.
9:47
But it's obvious to me that, I mean, he won.
9:49
He won for Oppenheimer, right? And the dissident filmmaker
9:52
becomes now the celebrated mainstream guy.
9:55
And that is like the entry point for a lot of these guys.
9:58
They're like, they fall in love with being accepted.
10:01
And now he's there. That's.
10:04
Yeah, it may well be the case. Or he made true.
10:07
Look, when I read that he was adapting off of not the original
10:11
story, but out of a progressive feminist.
10:15
It's a good interpretation. Emily Wilson.
10:17
That's a good. Point.
10:18
Name, you know, once, once I read that that was the
10:21
inspiration for this story, I knew it was in trouble.
10:25
And look, Hollywood has been trying to tear down classical
10:29
stories, and you can't get much more classical than the Odyssey,
10:33
the Iliad and the Odyssey. I mean, they're right up there
10:35
with Beowulf, classic Western heroism and storytelling.
10:40
And it's like you said, it seems very clear that in the name of
10:44
Dei, don't forget they're reporting that Elliot Page, who
10:47
is a female who's 51, who thinks she's a male, is presumably
10:53
going to play Achilles, who was played by Brad Pitt 20 years
10:57
ago. So, you know, I believe it.
11:00
I don't know if that's true or not, but I believe it.
11:02
But it seems that it seems that it's more than just diversity
11:06
with this stuff in Hollywood that they want to tear down the
11:09
culture, all the great stories, they need to be redone and they
11:13
need to be done for a modern audience.
11:16
And by the way, that audience doesn't exist.
11:19
These movies don't do well. And I hope and I pray, if this
11:23
movie, The Odyssey, is as woke as the reporting as says it is,
11:27
I hope it flops. That's the only way they're
11:29
going to learn is keep losing money.
11:32
I know, but you think that they would have learned by now
11:34
because so many of them have been such epic disasters.
11:36
I mean, this is this is frankly never worked.
11:38
Like I have not. I can't think of a single time
11:41
where someone has done an adaptation like this that has
11:43
gone so obviously and hilariously off track, where it
11:47
hasn't resulted in massive failures at the box office.
11:51
I mean, huge losses of money, etcetera.
11:53
It just, it always happens like that.
11:56
And yet they keep doing this. I know it is remarkable.
12:00
You think the people in Hollywood, everyone says all
12:02
Hollywood cares about is money. Apparently not because they are
12:06
willing to throw good money after bad over and over again.
12:10
And this this may be another case of that.
12:12
I mean, I've some of the the way the dialogue, you know,
12:16
referring to a father is daddy. I don't know about you.
12:19
I don't think the ancient Greeks talk that way.
12:22
But just everything about this movie looks like a
12:24
disappointment and I was really excited for it as well.
12:28
The culture matters. Movies matter.
12:30
And when they stick their thumb in the eye of the public, of the
12:34
of the paying public, there's going to be a consequence.
12:37
And there should be. Yeah, well, I agree with you
12:40
100% on all that. Thanks a lot, Josh Filler, as
12:42
always. We're out of time, sadly.
12:43
I was going to ask you about the British midterm elections.
12:45
Maybe next time we'll get to it then.
12:47
Thanks a lot, Josh. See you next Thursday.