Latest / Dangerous Laughter / The Last Sane Generation? Scott McKay on Gen X, Trump, Red Dawn & the Culture War | Dangerous Laughter

Transcript

The Last Sane Generation? Scott McKay on Gen X, Trump, Red Dawn & the Culture War | Dangerous Laughter · Dangerous Laughter

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Dangerous laughter.
• 0:03
  Speaker B: Laughter.
• 0:05
  Speaker A: Dangerous. Dangerous laughter. Dangerous laughter.
• 0:19
  Speaker C: Danger. Left earth, sam.
• 1:06
  Speaker A: Day 8.
• 1:08
  Speaker C: The Emergency Destruct system is now activated.
• 1:13
  Speaker A: The option to override detonation procedure has now expired. The ship will automatically destruct in minus one minute. Five, four, three, two, one. And we are back. Another episode of Dangerous Laughter, where comedy is our civic duty and we are here to make powerful people sweat in public. I've got a good buddy of mine Today here, Scott McKay. He is today's dangerous guest. Born on the bayou.
• 1:56
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:56
  Speaker A: He's the forgotten member of CCR and loves to dump gumbo on the heads of his liberal enemies. He's the contributing editor at the American Spectator, author of the Mike Coleman adventure books. Did a book called Racism, Revenge and Ruin. It's all Obama. Please welcome the uncompromising Scott McKay, everybody. He's in the house.
• 2:21
  Speaker C: Uncompromising. I will take some issue with that intro because I would not waste good gumbo on a leftist set. Now, once it goes stale, that's a different story, but good gumbo is not to be wasted.
• 2:38
  Speaker A: So for. For the folks out there, tell us, what is the difference between jambalaya and gumbo? All right. And where do the recipes come from? What's the ethnic background there?
• 2:52
  Speaker C: Humidity? Well, I think they both come from paella originally.
• 2:58
  Speaker A: Spanish dish.
• 2:59
  Speaker C: Well, jambalaya, you cook down a little bit more so that the liquid is gone. Gumbo is actually a soup and you put rice into it, whereas jambalaya, you cook with the rice.
• 3:10
  Speaker A: From the very beginning, you let the broth evaporate. Yeah, that's closer to a paella, I would say.
• 3:20
  Speaker C: Yeah, for sure.
• 3:23
  Speaker A: So, my friend, you recently wrote a piece of in the American Spectator, which I found fascinating. It was called Right Here, Right now, which is a reference to the old Jesus Jones One Hit Wonder song, right? Where you make. You basically make the case that it's time and you're not the first to make it, but, you know, it's time for the boomers to step aside. Yeah. And people that are even older than boomers, like Joe Biden, who's, you know, plugged into the wall socket and that it. That we should be looking to Gen X, dare I say now, most of my staff is Gen X. I am on the cusp. I am depending upon which list you look at a geriatric millennial. But you're basically making the case that Gen X is the last. This is how I interpreted it, the Gen X's view, sort of last generation, before the algorithm. Before the algorithm came and got. Came and got us all, you know, the millennials and Gen Z and all the, all the other crybabies that come after Gen Z that, that they have all been in a state of digital manipulation. Is that right?
• 4:40
  Speaker C: I would say that's true. I mean, like our generation was the last where everybody ratted the neighborhood on their bike, you know, all day when they like we, they got home from school and I mean, you know, you had to be home for dinner at a particular time, but they pretty much left you alone and nobody parents that way anymore. And in fact, if you allow your kids to ride around the neighborhood on bike, somebody's going to call the cops on you, which is just outright bizarre. And I guess some of this has to do with, you know, moms got scared, you know, completely to death by, you know, news reports of pedos and whoever are going to come get your kids. So you got to watch them at all times. That was just not a thing when we were kids. I mean, it just was like completely not a thing. Parents were, they were busy, but they wanted to have their own lives and they were fine with us having our lot. And that development for us, I mean, you know, we were the first generation where there were a lot of latchkey kids, right? And so, you know, we, I think we got, I don't want to say cynical, but we got a realistic perspective on things at a young age because we were exposed to a lot of life. The boomers were too. But the boomers also had this sort of messianic attitude like, you know, and they were propagandized in the 60s when they were young that, you know, our generation is going to change the world, right? And when our generation came along was like, yeah, we just won the Cold War, you know, like, let's go live life. And you know, and then along comes the tech revolution, which kind of changes everything and connects people in ways that turns out are really not all that healthy. You know, with social media and some of this stuff that, you know, our generation participates in that, but we didn't marinate it growing up. And it's not something that defines us, right, per se. It's, you know, to us it's a tool to everybody else below us, it's kind of a way of life, right? And they're not satisfied with that.
• 7:00
  Speaker A: You have a dichotomy between the sort of helicopter parents and the, these sort of free range parents, you know, for the most part, you know, and I talk about this a lot. This is why I wanted to have you on. And I blame certain people because basically I talk a lot about the. The very different behaviors between the millennials and Gen Z in particular. And in most cases, it has to do with who the parents of those two generations are. Okay? So I am. I am usually not here to praise Gen X because for the most part, they're the parents of Gen Z, who I'm at war with constantly. But for the sake of this and for the fact that I. And I have read also that, you know, there's a. There's this term that gets kicked around called the Goonies generation. Now, these are people. It's a snapshot overlay between the end of X and the beginning of millennials, right? So like from 76 to 84, right? They're a little different. They're a little different. Now I'm about as old as you can get. Born in the 80s, technically, a Carter baby, technically, because Reagan wasn't sworn in until January of 81. Most of the time, my cut off on who can remember in the way that you're describing and who can't is really the day Reagan leaves office. So, you know, you're talking January of 89. The millennials that are 90s babies, they are very different than us. I remember VCRs. I remember pagers. I know who John Hughes is, you know, and we're gonna. We're gonna get into a lot of that here. But, you know, YouTube is invented on Valentine's Day, 2005 now, so. Yeah, three. Three guys from PayPal invented. Okay. I'm 25 years old at this point, so a lot of what you're talking about is going through. Look, I'm also from Philadelphia, which already, you know, we're already playing Wiffle ball in the street, you know, flipping the bird off of the. The snowplow truck. Right? That's what we did. So. But I'm already kind of set.
• 9:20
  Speaker C: I'm.
• 9:21
  Speaker A: If I'm 20, I've been. I've been alive, you know, quarter century at this point. But the people that are being born into the mil, you where. Where these freaking devices have always existed, these phones we all have, and YouTube's always existed and this and that. And now, you know, Tik Tok, right? I mean, you and I aren't here. I am not. Look, McKay is a cultured guy. He's a sophisticated guy. If you read his books. He blends satire and facts, just like me, your humble correspondent. And I would just say that. That there is. There is a moment, I thought the Murphy Brown moment in the 90s when, you know, the Shoulder, padded pantsuit mafia wanted to be like Hillary. And they, they. And this is why Bill Maher's original show existed. Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. Did something started to happen there mid-90s, these psychotropic drugs show up. You know, oh, he wants to play, you know, basketball instead of do his homework, let's give him Ritalin.
• 10:28
  Speaker B: Right.
• 10:28
  Speaker A: The Ritalin shows up and all these things show up. Ironically. It's also when a lot of the food allergies, like being gluten free, you know, gluten intolerance, all these things show up. Now, McKay and I are here to bust balls. We're not here to blame NAFTA for the cheap food that came in that poisoned us and all the rest of it. That's for another. That's for another show.
• 10:51
  Speaker C: Right.
• 10:51
  Speaker A: Well, here's what I'll say. You know, there are people that, like you write about the movie Red dawn, okay? This is a generational classic. It is an all time classic. Now tell the audience what Red dawn was. It came out in 84. It came out in 84.
• 11:13
  Speaker D: Right.
• 11:13
  Speaker A: It basically, other than Sway, Patrick Sway, you know, it was a superstar lineup of Gen X icons and like an avengers team. You have 80s young actors before they really made it.
• 11:28
  Speaker C: Yeah, well, Charlie Sheen being a perfect example of that. Sure. And I think C. Thomas.
• 11:32
  Speaker B: How.
• 11:34
  Speaker A: Gray Thompson. Leah Thompson's mother. Yeah, yeah.
• 11:41
  Speaker C: So. And this thing hit right at the, like, right on the, like the cliff of the, of the Cold war. Right. In 1984, we did not know we were about to win the Cold War. What we knew was we maybe had the leadership that might win the Cold War. Reagan talked about, you know, he talked about that as, you know, look, my formula for the Cold War is we win, they lose. And when he said it, it was, oh, you can't say that you're going to start World War iii.
• 12:15
  Speaker A: Right.
• 12:15
  Speaker C: And.
• 12:16
  Speaker A: Right.
• 12:16
  Speaker C: You know, but I mean, the whole point was prior to Reagan, it was kind of, well, let's, you know, manage the decline and, you know, we're probably going to end up getting swallowed by the communists, but let's, you know, let's kind of contain it as long as we can. And Reagan was like, no, let's just go on offense. Let's win this thing, because that's a crappy system and it needs to go away. And so you had a national mentality in the, in the mid-80s of, you know, look, this, this is going to come to head at some point. And so the premise of Red dawn is, you know, you'd had like the communists taken over in Nicaragua and we were fighting, you know, we're arming the Contras and the whole. Everybody kind of figured Central America was going to be a domino theory and all the way up to Mexico. And the premise of the movie is that's what happens, that Mexico goes communist. And so you've got basically Europe and South America, Latin America, all of that was. Went to the other side and we're basically standing alone. And now it's time for the Russians to invade the United States. And it's set in this little town in Colorado. And these are all kind of like high school kids and like guys that just got out of high school or whatever, you know, who are hunters and outdoor people or whatever. And like Cubans parachute into this town, right? And it's all about, you know, these kids who know how they know their way around a rifle decide, screw this, we're fighting like, you know, we're not going to put up with this crap. And, you know, the locals in the town are basically occupied citizens. The mayor kind of turns, turns tail. And so it's like it's a, you know, American kids who turn into partisans. And it's a real kind of, you know, it's a. I don't want to say it's a teeny bopper movie, but it was kind of like my generation got put in a situation when we were kids of, hey, you're going to have to save America, right? And so everybody who was my age, like all of us, can recite pretty much the whole movie. We've all seen it. 20. And I included this in this, this piece that I wrote because it's for Gen X. This thing is one of the sort of unsung cultural icons of growing up for us, which is, you know, hey, you know, Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen and a few other badasses freaking threw back the Soviet Union, right? Like, I mean, it's a movie, but it was the sentiment of this, which is, look, if this is what we got to do, we're ready to do it.
• 14:45
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 14:46
  Speaker C: And then by the time I'm 18, 19, you didn't have to, because this thing, the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight largely because Reagan was pressuring him. And prior to that, nobody had really put that kind of pressure on him. So in other words, my generation kind of feels like we own the, the victory of the Cold War because we were the ones ready to go, right? Maybe the, you know, boomers. We were the ones that actually did it.
• 15:12
  Speaker A: Sure. Well, no, yeah, the Gen X was next, man up. If there was going to be some kind of, well, you know, you know, Meganism and peace through strength wasn't going to work. Well, it was going to be Gen X. It was going to have to fight.
• 15:25
  Speaker C: Yeah, well, and it was my generation that went to Iraq in that first Desert Storm, right? Like, that was the most dominating military achievement in maybe world history, was to blow that place away in three weeks and then pack up and go home and say, okay, that was it. Now, I don't know that the politics of Iraq were ever freaking managed correctly after that point, but like, it was, my generation went in there and we, you know, with the tanks in freaking.
• 15:56
  Speaker A: And, you know, George H.W. bush's approval rating, you know, before the taxes line, I mean, he was like at 80%. Norman Schwarzkopf took that, like you said, threw him out of Kuwait and he, you know, he could have kept going, but that wasn't the mission, right? So, you know, three weeks, it was over. You know, Saddam went back to the palace and.
• 16:14
  Speaker C: And it was a breathtaking achievement because nobody thought war could be won like that. I mean, it was impossible. They're right. The Iraqis had hardware and so many, you know, men, men at arms. Like, it takes six years for you to go. Like, no, it took three weeks. And so, you know, like, I mean, I had a whole bunch of friends that, you know, were there and, and, you know, came back and it was like, you know, they were blown away by how easy it was to win that thing. And so, like, we look at this, it was like, well, we probably could have done this to the Russians if we'd had to.
• 16:47
  Speaker A: Right.
• 16:49
  Speaker C: Anyway. And I don't want to crow too much about it because we're all like 18, 19, 20 years old at the time. But the point is, I came from a generation that its mindset was built by the Cold War, which is, hey, there's evil out there and it has to be defeated. You can't just go make peace with people who hate you because, like, you know, I mean, I'm nine years old with the Iranian revolutionaries, took the embassy and humiliated the country for more than a year. And you know, I. And I don't have polling data indicate this, but my guess is if you broke it down by generation, you're probably going to see that Gen X is the generation sticking by Trump on the Iran thing more than anybody else, probably because all we know is what sons of bitches.
• 17:37
  Speaker A: Older. Gen X and older for sure. Right. Well, you know, you guys weren't totally manipulated by postmodernism in college either. So to. Listen, we're gonna. It was starting.
• 17:47
  Speaker C: It was start starting. But yeah, you're right.
• 17:48
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 17:49
  Speaker C: I mean like when I was in college, like I had one of these ultra freaking con. I went to SMU the first three years of college and I finished it my freshman year. Like I had absolutely like one of these all time worst professors for English. You know, she like has the communist manufact manifestos on the syllabus. It's like, how is this English? And. But like her whole thing was like, you know, 1,000% was going to punish anybody who outed themselves as a conservative in class. And we pushed back on that woman like there was no tomorrow. Right. Half, more than half the class got seized because we just weren't going to put up with it.
• 18:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, you had to be willing to do that. Listen, we're going to take a break. You know it's funny thing about Red dawn comes out in 84. Up until 1984, there were no such films that got the PG13 rating. Red dawn was the first.
• 18:45
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 18:45
  Speaker A: So I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk a little bit about how Hollywood tried to remake red dawn in 2012 when we get back. You're listening to and watching Dangerous Laughter with AJ Rice. We will be right back.
• 19:00
  Speaker D: Yo, yo, yo the chamber like a daycare Toys all scattered Democrats throwing tantrums Egos all batted Popcorn flying out Greens in the M Booted out the union like a bad magic trick Crying, whining, wine, can't keep it low Nancy holding tricks trying not to explode Chewing on her tongue Silence a weapon A circus in the capital A lesson on step it in. Alphabet soup the DNC's a mess drop juvenile antics no adult finesse Chucky in the corner scheming with a grin Politics a playground Let the chaos begin Al Green serenades but they mute the tune Ejected from the floor by the afternoon tug of war Politics, truth lost in the fray Pelosi's tongue acrobatic Steal the play Congress acting up no teacher in sight Time keeps ticking but ain't making it right Throwing fits, paper planes in the air this democracy looks more like
• 20:05
  Speaker C: daycare Our family here at Dangerous Laughter
• 20:08
  Speaker A: has a new mission.
• 20:09
  Speaker C: After 250 years of American history, we seek to showcase moments of great statesmanship, moments of courage, moments of restraint and uncommon wisdom.
• 20:19
  Speaker A: Moments of.
• 20:20
  Speaker C: Maxine Waters.
• 20:27
  Speaker D: We did not consider ourselves victims of this President. You have members of your cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants taking up at their house and saying, no kids, no sleep, no pets, no sleep. And if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you call a crowd and you go stack on them. The management of this station are clueless.
• 21:03
  Speaker C: You're listening to Dangerous Laughter with AJ
• 21:06
  Speaker D: Rice on the Publius Media Network.
• 21:10
  Speaker A: We are back on Dangerous Laughter. I've got Scott McKay here. Author, novelist, does non fiction and fiction, you know. Yeah, the greats, you know, Twain, Hemingway, they all did this. And he is editor. What are you, associate editor at the American.
• 21:32
  Speaker C: Senior editor, I'll have you know.
• 21:34
  Speaker A: Senior. Senior Gen Xer at the American Spectator. And look, we've been discussing this piece he wrote in the America Spectator last week or a couple weeks ago, right here, right now, which is about, look, Gen X, is it time for them to lead or not?
• 21:52
  Speaker C: Can I jump in real quick on that?
• 21:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:54
  Speaker C: So I get pounded in the comments by boomers. Sure. And, and the article is. I mean, you know, it does talk about Gen X. It actually gets into the whole redistricting thing in, in all the southern states and how that sort of feels like the fall of the Soviet Union with the cow case coming. But, like, I get pounded in the comments by boomers who are furious at the idea that Gen X should be the one, you know, kind of taking over the country at this point. And it's like, dude, you're 75 years old. You've been retired from your job for 10 years. Why do you still feel like, like, why do you feel like it's an insult for somebody saying your generation doesn't need to be running the country anymore?
• 22:38
  Speaker A: I mean, look, Gen X, the oldest ones started turning 60 in. In. In, you know, 24 and 25.
• 22:44
  Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, it's 1965 is the start of Gen X. Right. So, like, you're talking about people 61 years old, 45 to 61, basically.
• 22:55
  Speaker A: Right.
• 22:56
  Speaker C: That's kind of the age where you're supposed to take over the country.
• 23:00
  Speaker A: Yeah. You know, so. So we were talking about Red dawn, this cult classic from the 80s with the, you know, some of the brat packers making her name, fighting the Soviets, fighting the communist Cubans. And it became a cult classic. And look, I'm born in, you know, 1980. I was watching it probably by. By 88, 89. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I stood on the top of a hill and screamed Wolverines with my crew. I mean, I, you know, I love. I Love the hell out of that movie.
• 23:28
  Speaker C: It was absolutely a thing. There's no question.
• 23:31
  Speaker A: And look, you know, I'm a fan of Goonies and the Outsiders and know a lot of the classics from the 80s, John Hughes movies and all the rest. So Hollywood got this idea in 2012, and this was before Chris Hemsworth, who went on to become Thor. I think he was Thor already, but he was basically the. The headliner to remake red dawn in 2012, just in time for the young millennials and the old gen zers. And the reality is it was not just a flop, but kind of a political debacle. Because unlike the 84 movie, the 84 movie was something, as Scotch has said, you know, this was a possibility. I mean, I remember Bedminster elementary in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I remember drills that were still in the 80s. You know, I tell my wife this. You know, she's born in the late 80s. You don't remember. They weren't doing this in the 90s when she was in school. So I remember, you know, nuclear, get under the debt nuclear drills. I mean, I remember them.
• 24:35
  Speaker C: Yeah, we had those, right?
• 24:36
  Speaker A: I had my Walkman and I was under the desk waiting for, you know, Gorbachev to bomb me anyway. Right, right. Well, knocked that mole off his forehead. So 2012, they put this movie out, the bad guys, based on how the script was made, was supposed to be the ccp.
• 24:55
  Speaker C: Yeah, it was supposed to be, which was somewhat plausible. I mean, not. But something plausible for tomorrow, today.
• 25:05
  Speaker A: But instead they decided to change the villains last minute. You know, potato, potato, one Asian strokes, another, you know, Right. That they were gonna. That they were gonna make the North Koreans the enemy. Because as I'm sure people that follow Hollywood today know, they were worried about distribution rights. So. So. So in the original movie, you're fighting hardcore communists. The Soviet Union, they've taken it. Most of the Western hemisphere, They're parachuting into freaking North America. Here they are, we're fighting them. Gen X is fighting them. The Brad Pack's fighting them. Marty McFly's mom is fighting them. Don't put baby in the corners. Fighting them. They're fighting them.
• 25:54
  Speaker C: Right? And Powers Booth.
• 25:56
  Speaker A: Powers Booth is a commander. And by 2012, the only thing that Hollywood's fighting is distribution rights.
• 26:04
  Speaker D: Right.
• 26:04
  Speaker A: For the Communists. So.
• 26:06
  Speaker C: Well, and, you know, and what we find out later, it's, yes, it's distribution rights, but it's also the fact that China is where the money is coming from. To bombs that are upset.
• 26:18
  Speaker A: They are upset.
• 26:19
  Speaker C: Like, it goes even further when you get to 20. What, six? No, 20. 19, I guess. Where they. They go. Take Hong Kong. Right. And Daryl Mori, who's the president of the Houston Rockets at the time, you know, it's like, hey, this is bad. Right. And
• 26:41
  Speaker A: Maury, who was the general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers until a month ago.
• 26:46
  Speaker C: Right.
• 26:46
  Speaker A: He backed the protesters.
• 26:49
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 26:49
  Speaker A: The people that were against this, the CCP regime.
• 26:52
  Speaker C: And. And for his trouble, like, you know, the Rockets. Because that's where he was at the time. What's the. The 7 foot 4 guy that played for them. That's where he played. So the Rockets were China's team, like that. They were the most popular team in China.
• 27:10
  Speaker B: And the.
• 27:10
  Speaker C: And the Chinese set up. We're not showing any Rockets games on TV anymore. How you like them App? And so, like, all of a sudden, before you know it, LeBron James, who, like, got a charity diploma from that Catholic high school in Toledo he came from, never even sniffed a minute of college. And he's like, daryl Moore needs to learn to get educated.
• 27:32
  Speaker A: Right?
• 27:32
  Speaker C: It's like, what, he's got a freaking MBA from Princeton. What are you talking about? Educated? Like.
• 27:39
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 27:39
  Speaker C: And.
• 27:39
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 27:40
  Speaker C: But what happened was it was. It kind of made a joke of the whole Red dawn thing on a different level, which is China ain't got a parachute. Anybody in a. Spokane, Washington, Okay. They're already taking over the country without any of that. Right. I mean, that, like, they own the NBA is. Was the lesson of this.
• 28:00
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 28:01
  Speaker C: And Adam Silver's a. Who's the. The. The. The president of the NBA, Commissioner of the NBA. Like, did the best he could with this because they got a billion dollars in China, so he's got to try to make some peace out of this deal. And I thought he did as well as he could possibly do. But, like, the whole point was the NBA didn't tell the Chinese to go screw themselves. That. Daryl. Daryl. More. He had the freedom to say whatever the hell he wanted.
• 28:24
  Speaker A: They could.
• 28:24
  Speaker C: They couldn't afford to do that. Was a billion dollars at stake. And all of a sudden it's like, wait, how much influence do these people have on our culture? And we've since found out it's way outsized. And we've also found out that the influence on our politics is, like, over the top, particularly in a place like California. We just had a. A Chinese mayor in. Where is it? Arcadia, who doesn't even speak English, and she gets busted as a Chinese spy, and everybody's like, what is this? And then you find out well, yeah, she's the mayor. Because arcadia is like 65% Chinese.
• 29:02
  Speaker A: And it's like, when did that happen?
• 29:04
  Speaker C: Arcadia was a nice suburb of L. A. And now it's all Chinese. It's like.
• 29:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
• 29:08
  Speaker C: And it's still a nice suburb of LA because the Chinese live very well when they get Communist Party friggin like contracts and stuff. And they're running California these days.
• 29:17
  Speaker A: And you know the geopolitical mastermind, Dr. LeBron James, one of the reasons he said that was back to our distribution discussion.
• 29:29
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 29:30
  Speaker A: He was in the middle of what was going to be a basically movie tour for Space Jam 2, which none of us saw.
• 29:40
  Speaker C: Okay?
• 29:40
  Speaker A: The original, of course, with the goat, the real goat, Michael Jordan, okay. And Barkley and some other people were that. But LeBron was super worried that if one of the more high profile GMs, like Daryl Morey made those comments supporting the protesters against the phony baloney regime that basically stole an election, that, you know, his movie tour for Space Jam 2, giant freaking flop, apologies to Bugs Bunny. That's what he was worried about, that dollar. He don't care about the organ harvesting. He don't care about the political prisoners. He don't care about the furnaces that were running during COVID He cares about none of it. He cares about that $$. All right, that's. And look, that's the thing is that the NBA, yes, there's control by the ccp, but it also, you know, it swerves into, you know, the fact that there's a lot of cultural control. And as a publicist, I can tell you a lot of these decisions because look, let's be honest, D. Wade and Kevin Durant and half of these bozos, these are meat puppets. These are not great thinkers. Okay? So they are being controlled by their PR firm, by their publicists. Right? And I can tell you this because I've made a few people my own meat puppet in my day that, you know, these dummies will pantomine anything. Yes. There's 72 genders. Yes, the CCP are wonderful. Open the border, Joe. Joe Biden is a genius.
• 31:10
  Speaker C: This is Wade let Gabrielle Union trans his kids.
• 31:15
  Speaker A: Correct.
• 31:16
  Speaker C: You know?
• 31:17
  Speaker A: Correct.
• 31:18
  Speaker C: They're on TV all the time because he let her trans his kids. But here's.
• 31:21
  Speaker A: Here's what they don't understand. And I wrote about this in the White Privilege album behind me. Not all activism is created equal. And they think that they're Jim Brown, they think they're Kareem, they think They're Muhammad Ali. But the. And I think history would dictate that a lot of the struggles that Jackie Robinson and others went through, I think came out on the right side of history. But when we roll back the tape about D. Wade letting his son become one of the 72 genders, you are not Jim Brown. You have been fooled. You have been fooled by the trans mafia, and you've been fooled by the bearded lady. Now back to Gen X. Let's see here. And look, I hate to say it, but most of those NBA players I just said are dummy millennials. But, you know, there's no. There's no Gen Xers, I don't think.
• 32:10
  Speaker C: Glad that you said that.
• 32:12
  Speaker B: They are.
• 32:12
  Speaker A: They definitely are. They definitely are. So I got. So I went out. I got a list, curated list here of Gen X icons who died young. All right, all right. Now, I need to know from you whether these people should be on this list, whether they make the cut not
• 32:33
  Speaker C: as dead bodies, because I think we can stipulate to that.
• 32:36
  Speaker A: Well, some of these people that they think are still alive. So let me just.
• 32:39
  Speaker C: Okay. Then I maybe stand corrected. We'll see.
• 32:42
  Speaker A: All right, let's start with River Phoenix.
• 32:47
  Speaker C: Okay.
• 32:48
  Speaker A: Is River Phoenix, say, look more of
• 32:53
  Speaker C: a cult figure than an icon? But I guess if you're counting cult figures, I like River Phoenix. Never really got to do a whole hell of a lot.
• 33:01
  Speaker A: He was poised to basically be what DiCaprio became.
• 33:05
  Speaker C: Yes. No, I think. I think that's. I think that's as accurate a statement as you can make about River Phoenix.
• 33:10
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 33:11
  Speaker C: That guy was gonna be big, you know?
• 33:13
  Speaker A: You know, maybe Leo had him whacked or something, man. Who knows here? So.
• 33:16
  Speaker C: Yeah. Well.
• 33:16
  Speaker A: All right, next. Next.
• 33:18
  Speaker C: Based on all the characters that Joaquin plays, maybe it was Joaquin.
• 33:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. That's true. You know, it's funny. When Joaquin finally won that Academy Award for Joker, he didn't mention his brother. He didn't thank him. Right. He thanked all kinds of people.
• 33:36
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 33:37
  Speaker A: But he didn't mention river, which is interesting. All right, so next up, Kurt Cobain.
• 33:45
  Speaker C: Yeah, I guess he was an icon. I mean, Nirvana was absolutely a big deal.
• 33:50
  Speaker A: I mean, Gen X invented the grunge music scene.
• 33:54
  Speaker C: Yeah, some of us did.
• 33:57
  Speaker A: I mean, you know, but I mean,
• 33:59
  Speaker C: look, and here's the thing. Stylistically, the grunge thing was. Was a special kind of awful. And I think that.
• 34:08
  Speaker D: That.
• 34:09
  Speaker C: That was. I think that was really.
• 34:11
  Speaker D: You're out.
• 34:11
  Speaker A: So you're out on the grunge music. No, no, Wait, go ahead.
• 34:15
  Speaker C: Let me do here. Let me cook.
• 34:17
  Speaker A: All right.
• 34:18
  Speaker C: Stylistically, when I'm saying the flannel shirts and all, you know, and all of that.
• 34:23
  Speaker A: Right. Seattle. Right.
• 34:24
  Speaker C: Which I think, you know, that was sort of the corporate influence on how do we sell this and how do we package it? Which was. Which was not really Gen X people doing that. That was more boomers that were doing it. But the music itself, if you go back and you listen to Nirvana and then of course you can go do the whole, you know, Foo Fighters, which was. Kind of came out well.
• 34:47
  Speaker A: Pearl Jam. Well, the big four. The big four would be Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.
• 34:54
  Speaker C: Yeah. And. And you know, that's. That is a change. Big chunk of Gen X music. And it holds up really, really well. Very, very good stuff.
• 35:04
  Speaker A: It holds up. And you know, Lane Staley, that, you know, he was another. He was Alison James, you know that he was kind of a second tier person, but he died as well. All right, how about in the, in the. In the sort of rap game? What about Tupac? What about Biggie Small?
• 35:20
  Speaker C: Both of those guys have to qualify as icons.
• 35:24
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 35:24
  Speaker C: And I'm not, you know, the. I. I was not a. By the time rap had progressed to Tupac and. And those guys, I was kind of off it because to me, the rap part was Run DMC. And it was.
• 35:42
  Speaker A: Yeah. And that's the 80s, LL Cool J. Yeah.
• 35:44
  Speaker C: I mean, young. Young MC to this day, Digital Underground, those were my. Those are my enemy. Yeah. When you started getting into the gangster stuff, it just.
• 35:57
  Speaker A: Well, Tupac actually was a backup dancer for Digital Underground, so there is that.
• 36:00
  Speaker C: Yeah, I know, I know.
• 36:03
  Speaker A: Okay, so let me hit a few more of these here. Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee's son. Oh, the crow figure. The crow.
• 36:13
  Speaker C: I look you. The crow is enough to. To imply icon status.
• 36:18
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 36:20
  Speaker C: That movie. And they've done remakes that all of them sucked. But the original Crow was amazing. Sensational. I mean, it was such a. Yeah, like the story was kind of okay, whatever. It was sort of. It was a superhero movie that didn't advertise itself as a superhero. It wasn't as crass commercialized as like the Marvel stuff is, but like, sure.
• 36:43
  Speaker D: Front.
• 36:44
  Speaker C: I mean, you know, kind of similar to the Christopher Nolan Batman movies in. In the. In the style that it presented was. It was just a great, great movie. I can watch that thing over and over again.
• 36:56
  Speaker A: Before we, before we take a break here. I want to hit. Because this is dangerous laughter. I want to hit on some Some funny people here. Some comedy guys. I mean, look, John Candy was a boomer, but he. He basically became most popular.
• 37:10
  Speaker C: We were his audience for you guys. Yeah, we were absolutely a. John Candy's audience.
• 37:14
  Speaker A: Right.
• 37:14
  Speaker C: Do you know that John Candy, he died before he could do it. But John Candy was going to play in Ignatius J. Riley in A Confederacy of Dunces.
• 37:24
  Speaker A: I. I have read that. Yes. Yes.
• 37:27
  Speaker C: It's such a tragedy that we never got to see that, because that would have been. You want to talk about iconic, Would have been Candy doing that.
• 37:35
  Speaker A: Now, I've got some more dangerous laughter here. What about Sam Kinison?
• 37:40
  Speaker C: Oh, for sure.
• 37:41
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 37:42
  Speaker C: For sure. Back to school alone. Sam Kenison belongs. Exactly.
• 37:47
  Speaker A: How about Chris Farley?
• 37:49
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, Chris Farley was. I mean, Chris Farley, I. I don't know, rises to John Candy and Sam Kinison's level. But Chris Farley was. Was funny.
• 37:59
  Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. And then. Yeah, funny. You know, you've got guys, you know, different. Like about, like the heartthrob world. And then. We'll take a break here. Like when. When. Let me. When Luke Perry dropped dead at age 54, whatever the hell it was. I think most. Most Gen Xers ran to the doctor the next day because he looked good. And then he just dropped dead. Yeah. Unbelievable.
• 38:23
  Speaker C: That was not supposed to happen. Right. That was another guy. Like River Phoenix. Like, that guy would have been big if he'd have. If he.
• 38:31
  Speaker A: But he made it at least in his 50s.
• 38:34
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, but he was. He was just getting to the point where he could start playing the really distinguished roles.
• 38:41
  Speaker A: Yeah. And look, you know, I know everyone's gonna email me and message me. You forgot this one. You forgot that one. I've got everyone on here from Matthew Perry to Corey Haim. Remember the two Corey's, Feldman and Haynes. Feldman's still alive. Mouth from Goonies, Paul Walker, you know, dying in that car crash. I mean, all kinds of people. But is there anyone that you would add that we haven't mentioned here before we take a break? Well, I.
• 39:04
  Speaker C: And he doesn't really qualify as Gen X, other than we were, I guess, his audience. But the. You know, when you mentioned we were going to talk about this, the thing that popped into my head almost immediately was Michael Hutchins was the lead singer of NXS, who In the 80s, there was no bigger band than NXS. And I mean, song after song that those guys sung is still like. Like everywhere you go, there's an NXS song playing on the stereo someplace.
• 39:31
  Speaker A: It's funny, you Mentioned that it's funny you mentioned that because my producer, Blind Chris, he. He threw that name at me right before we went live. And because it wasn't on my list. Yeah, should have been. I stand corrected. You are right. In excess is amazing. We're gonna take a break here. You're watching Dangerous laughter. I am A.J. rice. We'll be back with Scott McKay right after this break.
• 39:53
  Speaker C: In today's breaking news.
• 39:55
  Speaker A: The Curse of the Bearded lady by AJ Rice has already hit number one on Amazon new releases and it is only on pre sale.
• 40:02
  Speaker C: You should be women and yet your
• 40:05
  Speaker D: beards forbid me to interpret that you are so. Someone once said comedy is the art
• 40:11
  Speaker C: of turning horror into humor. That's the essence of the Curse of the Bearded Lady.
• 40:17
  Speaker D: Laughing in the the face of madness
• 40:19
  Speaker C: before it devours us whole. The Curse of the B Lady.
• 40:24
  Speaker A: And now a historic moment in Dangerous laughter. The year is 1992 and George Carlin
• 40:31
  Speaker C: explains why he is tired of Earth
• 40:33
  Speaker B: Day People kidding me? Save the planet. We don't know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to help one another. We're going to save the planet and getting tired of that. I'm tired of Earth Day. I'm tired of these self righteous environmentalists. I'm tired of these white, liberal, bourgeois liberal white people who think the only thing wrong with this planet is there aren't enough bicycle paths trying to make the world safe and clean for their Volvos. And I'm really sick, really sick of these rock stars and movie stars gonna work off their cocaine guilt by saving a forest somewhere. Besides. Besides there's nothing besides the first of all, the environmentalists don't give a about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract. They don't know what they're interested in. A clean place to live, their own habitat. They're worried that someday in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self interest doesn't impress me. Besides, there's nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The people are. The people are.
• 41:37
  Speaker A: Stay locked in with the man who slayed the woken dead.
• 41:41
  Speaker D: This is Dangerous Laughter with AJ Rice on the publiest media network.
• 41:48
  Speaker A: This is Dangerous laughter. I am A.J. rice talking to Scott McKay. Scott McKay and I are both unfit for polite company. We are both Catholic. McKay's got an Irish name. I don't know whether he's Creole Cajun.
• 42:02
  Speaker C: Stop that. Stop that. It's a Scottish name, it's not an Irish Name.
• 42:05
  Speaker A: And you're Catholic. Good for you. Good. Yeah, well, there's. It's not Mackay. It's McKay. Well, they take the A from you. Is that what happened there?
• 42:15
  Speaker C: Well, I think we took it from ourselves, actually. At the Hayride, which is my site that covers, like, Louisiana and Southern politics, I post as not Scott McKay. I post as MacKay, which is, like, the Gaelic clan name, and spelled in is M, A, C, A, O, I, D, H. So you know that, like, that's actually my name. And I got a couple radio shows that I do around the country where, like, you got, like, guys who are Scottish. You're like, yeah, you can't. You can't be McKay. You've got to be Makai. And I know you know that because you post that way at your website. I'm like, yeah, well. Well, I know story about that. We're. I'm nine. We're going to London for, like, the summer, you know, vacation, and we go check into this Savoy, right?
• 43:01
  Speaker A: Ah, beautiful.
• 43:02
  Speaker C: And the concierge is a Scotsman, right? And so my dad, who's like, you know, we're McKay, and we've got, you know, three rooms or whatever. Oh, no. To do that. You know, he's like, what. What are.
• 43:12
  Speaker D: To do?
• 43:12
  Speaker C: He says, you're bastardizing your name like that. McKay or Makai. And my dad's like, oh, I'm. I'm sorry. I didn't. And I'm like, nine, and I'm like, makai. Are we Makai? He's like, no, you're Macai.
• 43:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, look, I. I know the feeling of him.
• 43:28
  Speaker C: I'm fine with it.
• 43:29
  Speaker A: My mom's maiden name was O' Neal with an E and I and two Ls. And when they came across Irish, they pulled an L off. Yeah, they pulled an L off in the. In the 19th century. We put it back in the 20th century. So both L's are still there. Not. Of course, we don't spell it the way your LSU friend and Scotsman Shaquille o' Neal spells it the Scottish way, with the A and one M. That's right. And I. You can see the resemblance there.
• 43:58
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, That's. I think that's the Black Scottish is what that is.
• 44:03
  Speaker A: So we've been talking. We've been talking with. With. With Scott Mai about Gen X, millennials, Boomers, and, you know, and I. I'm. I am convinced that it's time to. To play Next man up and put the, you know, Gen Xers, I think, probably in charge.
• 44:22
  Speaker C: Well, look, if you're not convinced, then go watch James Carville's podcast and you will be.
• 44:27
  Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly.
• 44:28
  Speaker C: Now, enough of that.
• 44:30
  Speaker A: Because as a. As a geriatric millennial, I grew up with the movie Fight Club. I've read the book by Chuck and love the movie. Movie came out when I'm 19 or 20 or 18, somewhere in there, right?
• 44:44
  Speaker D: And.
• 44:45
  Speaker A: And, you know, I have developed a dark way of looking at Gen X. Not just like I. I hinted earlier, because of who their children are, which is Gen Z, who I'm at war with every day, but also certain lines, like from Fight Club, like this. Chris, give me that graphic here. We are, the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great war. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. Now, that's Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. If you. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. Fiction of his imagination. I've got a few of them here in the studio with me, and I will tell you, I kind of saw that, because I look at the alien, I look at the Ali Sheedies of the world. I look at the alienation kids, the Judd Nelson character and Breakfast Club, and I thought to myself, and look, I grew up with Gen X filmmakers. Not just David Fincher who made Fight Club, but Quentin and Kevin Smith, right? And Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers and so on. So they have painted you guys as the middle children of history to some degree, because millennials are the children of boomers. Boomers are the children of the people that defeated the Nazis. There's a through line there. Whereas, you know, Gen X. Are you guys the middle children of history? What do you think of that line from Fight Club?
• 46:25
  Speaker C: I mean, I'm not going to say something so tried as it's just a movie, because I think that there's something to that. But, you know, the thing about it is when you talk about a generation, there are things that hold true and there are things that, you know, hold true for some of it, but not so much the others. Like, you know, I mean, our generation is that created the tech revolution, which to me, now there's lots of negative there, too. Don't get me wrong, okay? But, like, that's the most revolutionary thing in the history and camp mankind and it's my generation that did it.
• 47:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. Pretty much every one of these tech companies. And I'm not sure, you know, maybe once when Skynet shows up, you might regret what we're about to say next. But other than Zuckerberg and maybe a few others who are old millennials like me, you know, it's basically all these tech guys are basically from 1970 to 1985.
• 47:24
  Speaker C: That's when they were all born. It's. Yeah, it's. It's. It's mostly Gen X. We built the infrastructure for the tech economy, which, I'll be honest. Okay. Now, again, there's good and bad, but if you want to talk about making your mark on history, I don't know that a generation has done more than mine has. Okay. From the standpoint of what it did to people. And I know he was a jackass, okay. But I look at a guy like Steve Jobs, all right, who was kind of a little bit boomer, but sort of on the end. But his mentality was more Gen X than boomer.
• 48:04
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 48:04
  Speaker C: And I would say that about Trump, too, by the way. Trump is very much a Gen X politician from a mindset standpoint, because he's iconoclastic.
• 48:15
  Speaker A: Well, he also was peaking as the playboy of the Western world right there in the 80s when.
• 48:23
  Speaker C: Absolutely. And I think that's it.
• 48:24
  Speaker A: But, like,
• 48:27
  Speaker C: our generational mindset, there's a little bit of that middle. Middle children of history or whatever thing. But mostly it's. We've. We saw from the Cold War to post Cold War. Like, we saw what the previous generations had built, and we saw how it didn't really work anymore, and yet we're supposed to continue it. Like, I mean, talk to people. My generation, we're all like, why are we still in NATO? What's the point of that? We're defending a bunch of freaking welfare queens in Europe who we don't give a shit about and who hate us.
• 49:05
  Speaker A: Right.
• 49:05
  Speaker C: Screw these people. You know, let them defend themselves against the freaking Russians. We don't get. I mean, like, who cares?
• 49:11
  Speaker A: Like.
• 49:12
  Speaker C: And that's. I mean, which is very much Trump, and it's very much our thing. So anyway, I'm claiming Steve Jobs because what, like, his great innovation was that I can change the world not in the way that the freaking hippie boomers thought they could change the world. I'm going to make. I'm going to make things that people will change their lives in order to access, because that's power. If I can convince you, hey, here's Something that you can use that will change everything about how you see the world. Okay? But I'm not gonna force it on you. You don't have to buy a friggin iPhone or an iPad or a Mac. You don't have to do any of that. It's just, I'm presenting it. And if you want it, you can have it. And here's what it can do for you. That is more power than Napoleon could have ever dreamed of.
• 50:04
  Speaker A: Okay?
• 50:05
  Speaker C: And you have these people who have this. And Steve Jobs was not some, you know, loony left wing utopian. He wasn't anything like that, okay? He was a jackass. Like he was absolutely.
• 50:19
  Speaker A: We need that.
• 50:20
  Speaker C: But I mean, the point was, the way he saw the world was I'm going to bring you something and if you like it and you change your life in order to use it the way I'm intending it to be used, then that's, you know, that's your choice and good for you. But if you don't, it's fine. I'm just presenting it. And a guy who can do that and change the world, that's like, I mean, I don't, I'm not going to equate Steve Jobs with Jesus Christ, but that's what Jesus did, right?
• 50:47
  Speaker A: Look, and he made hardware. He didn't make the sort of psychological dopamine hit that some of these apps are. And you know, people have made a lot of money off of Twitter and this, that and the other thing, but this is hardware. Whether it's, it's for graphic designers originally. You can hold it. The eye. The ipod was revolutionary because it put all of our music in one spot. We didn't have to carry around a Discman anymore or a Walkman anymore, right?
• 51:17
  Speaker C: Both of those lying around here somewhere.
• 51:19
  Speaker A: Yeah. As fun as that was watching Red Dawn. And let me just say, let me just stay and look. You're right about Gen X going through the Cold War and being there to hit the bricks and take the picks out to bring down the Berlin Wall. One thing I try to remind people about the millennials, at least, is that millennials have been hit by. And look, they do some complaining and that's fine, but they are driven by purpose and not by identity. But they also were hit by the worst terror attack in history, right? September 11th. And then the worst financial crisis. The worst financial Crisis in history in 08. So worst terror in history, worst financial in history, and then the worst epidemic medical crisis with COVID in history. And they're, they're Powering through it. Now some of the ways we power through it is because we have boomer parents saying, walk it off, shut up. They act like, they act like the, the teacher in the movie Whiplash. Right.
• 52:19
  Speaker C: Yeah. Right.
• 52:19
  Speaker A: So, you know, I mean, so that we, we haven't had, you know, a cushy ride here.
• 52:25
  Speaker C: No, no, look, if, if Gen X is the middle children of history, then, then I think are the abused children of history. I'll grant you that for sure. I will, I will take a little bit of an issue with one of the things that you said about Gen X and parenting, because I agree with you that Gen Z is, is horrible in many ways. But what I noticed about Gen Z is there's a split. The, the boys of Gen Z and the girls of Gen Z are totally different. The girls are straight up freaking communists. I mean.
• 53:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. The other guys are the bros that were. The bros that were restoring the American flag. The UNC Chapel Hills.
• 53:16
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 53:16
  Speaker A: Remember?
• 53:17
  Speaker C: Well, I mean, you know, but. And, and I'm gonna plug it real quick. I do the Spectacle podcast with Melissa McKenzie over at the American Spectator and we did a segment this week, this Luigi Mangioni trial and Mamdani's office gave press passes to these three utterly horrible human beings who were like Luigi fan girls and like, were outside the courthouse. You know, basically like, oh, tell his Brian Thompson, the insurance executive guy, tell his kids to enjoy their blood money. Right? Like this whole. And it was like, I've never seen anything so disgusting as these people. And yet they're not freaks. There is so much of that like ugly animus out there. There's, I mean all of these TikTok bitches that go out there and they're screaming about there's no good guys. And like they're saying there's no good guys. And I'll tell you why. Because they are left wing harpies. And Gen Z's boys, generally speaking, are they a nightmare conservative and want nothing to do with them? No. Now that's a problem because I don't know how you propagate the species, right?
• 54:35
  Speaker A: The gender split with, you know, political affiliation. And in the last election we saw it. So as far as Gen X presidents go, this gentleman is the closest we've had. Okay.
• 54:47
  Speaker C: He's still a boomer though.
• 54:48
  Speaker A: He is a boomer. He was born in 61, right? Born in 61. Which brings me to you know what will. Which should be a fun ride here we have a situation where we have a Tupac Biggie listening to Secretary of State named Marco Rubio, who was prime Gen X. Yeah. And we have a vice president who is a millennial.
• 55:12
  Speaker C: Yeah. And these are the geriatric millennial like you.
• 55:15
  Speaker A: That's right. He's like, he's a little younger than me. I'm Gandalf the millennial. And he, he, we might have a situation where they're in a primary together. So we're going to have a millennial Gen X standoff here. Maybe they work out a deal. Right. Unless they work out some kind of.
• 55:33
  Speaker C: I actually think they will.
• 55:35
  Speaker A: Okay. Trump hinted at that not long ago in a cabinet meeting. But break that down for me. Where do you see those two gentlemen? And is there anyone else out there, a third name that could possibly try to, you know, run for president in 2028? Well, and let's filter it through the cultural discussion we've had here.
• 55:55
  Speaker C: Well, I mean, I think it's probably DeSantis. If it's somebody else, you know, he built some infrastructure and he's going to have nothing to do come next year. So unless Trump brings him into the administration or like this is the most fun thing out there is there's this, this discussion that will. Look, either Alito or Thomas is going to pack it in and, you know, let's make the, let's put DeSantis on the Supreme Court.
• 56:22
  Speaker A: Unbelievable. That would happen.
• 56:23
  Speaker C: Oh, my God. I mean, the thing is, is that he's. Because he's, he's been legislative and executive his whole political career, people don't recognize what a legal mind that guy actually is.
• 56:35
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 56:35
  Speaker C: But the fact that he's had the executive responsibilities that he's had in Florida, I mean, you want to talk about somebody that could actually engineer opinions on that court, that would be really something because anyway, now, now we'll see what DeSantis's future holds. I mean, like, he's not done by any means. That guy is going to be a national political figure.
• 57:00
  Speaker A: Now, you wrote this book, Race, Revenge and Ruin before the last election cycle.
• 57:06
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 57:06
  Speaker A: Basically, you know, making the case that this is the long legged Mack daddy puppet master of the Democrat Party.
• 57:15
  Speaker C: Certainly Joe Biden. Yeah.
• 57:16
  Speaker A: And he's. Does he remain the puppet master?
• 57:20
  Speaker C: Well, I think that what happened to Kamala put a real damper on Barack
• 57:28
  Speaker A: Obama, on his ability to pick a racehorse.
• 57:31
  Speaker C: Yeah. Well, but the thing is, is that there. I don't think there's a replacement power broker over there.
• 57:36
  Speaker B: There.
• 57:37
  Speaker A: Right.
• 57:37
  Speaker C: What there is Bill Clinton.
• 57:39
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 57:40
  Speaker A: He's out. They're out.
• 57:41
  Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, well, they don't I mean, you could tell when they brought Bill Clinton to speak at the convention in 2024 and he utterly mailed it in. It was like, this is Yalls party.
• 57:51
  Speaker A: He was getting cross examined for the Epstein thing. He was having a blast. He was all there now, memory lane.
• 57:56
  Speaker D: Look at me.
• 57:59
  Speaker C: I do movie references. I can't help myself. But he reminded me of. Was it Frank Pantangeli in the Godfather Part two? And he's leaning back in his chair. They told me, go say this and then go say that. And so that's what I did. Like, that was Bill Clinton at the Epstein thing. He's like, he's like, you're not putting me in jail and I don't give a damn. And the lawyers kind of pull the thing away from. No, no, I want to look at that now.
• 58:26
  Speaker A: Now he's done.
• 58:28
  Speaker C: Like, he's not, he doesn't even care anymore. Bill is, Bill is out.
• 58:32
  Speaker A: And so now he's out.
• 58:35
  Speaker C: Want to go away, though, AJ Obama wants back in. Obama wants to control that party. The problem is he's racking up the Ls, left and right. This on Wednesday the 20th last night, Obama was like over 15 on the big elections that, like, he was, he was asking in Georgia, they were trying to take over the Supreme Court. And he got zeroed. He got clobbered in Georgia.
• 59:04
  Speaker A: And here's the other thing you, you will recall, too, when he was president, he was terrible at helping anyone else. He was only a winner when he was on the ballot.
• 59:12
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 59:12
  Speaker A: You know, he was, he really, he ran against, you know, the hero that was captured or the hero that wasn't captured. And then he ran against, you know, Mitt Romney, God bless him. He's a great, magical underwear, you know, wearing American. But, you know, these were linguini spine. This was, I mean, he never had to fight. He never, he never had.
• 59:32
  Speaker C: I mean, look, Obama didn't win that election. Did not win that election in 2012. Mitt Romney lost it.
• 59:40
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm saying. Like, and, and you know, he allowed Candy Crowley to push him around on stage and all the restaurants. I don't want to relitigate.
• 59:48
  Speaker C: Always hate Mitt Romney for that.
• 59:49
  Speaker A: Without those losses, we wouldn't, we wouldn't have gotten Big Daddy. But, but so, so let's, so, you know, you're, you're handicapping the Rubio Vance thing. We'll, we'll see what happens here. So tell the audience a little bit about your series of novels. I've Got one of them here. This is, I think, book three, blockbuster.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker C: That's. That's the most current one.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker A: So now, and I want to know about the process. Do you walk out into the bayou with the. With the alligator people?
• 1:00:16
  Speaker C: A little bit.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker A: What about you down there?
• 1:00:22
  Speaker C: What happened? So. All right, so give you, like, the just quick elevator speech about the Mike Holman books. Basically, I. I decided, you know, like, look, I've written some novels, but I want to do something, you know, kind of timely, whatever. And the folks at the American Spectator and I were talking about, well, you know, maybe we'll do something that's serialized. That would be a cool thing for the American spectators audience. Like, well, let me write political satire novels. Let me do some Tom Wolf type stuff. And not just Wolf.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker A: A lot of. I mean, a lot of people did that. I mean, there. That's the history of it.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker C: Yeah, well. And so I came up with it. I came up with a character. I called him Mike Holman. And basically his deal is he's kind of like a Tucker Carlson before he Went crazy, where, you know, like, he's this independent web publisher guy, does a podcast, all this stuff, but he's just kind of bumping along. And his deal is his college roommate is essentially a cross between elon Musk, John McAfee, and Erik Prince. All right, like, this guy's omnipotent. He's got billions of dollars, owns all these companies, and the guy's, like, been trying, hey, let me throw you some money, and all this kind of stuff, but he always wants to just, no, no, I want to do my own thing, or whatever. Finally he says, okay, fine, you know, I'll do stuff with you. And what's going on at the time. And this is the first book, King of the Jungle is that Pierce Polk, who's the billionaire guy, is building because he's had it with the Joe Deadhorse administration, which was the Joe Biden administration. He's had it with these guys. He decides he's gonna build a Shangri La in the jungles of Guyana. And so he's built, like, a freaking whole great place. He says, why don't you come down? And all this kind of stuff. Turns out, and this was actually going to happen before Maduro went down. I mean, it was, like, really realistic possibility that the Venezuelans decided they're going to invade Guyana, okay? And like in the book, that actually happens, but this guy's like, yeah, I'm not leaving. And he, you know, mobilizes his billions of dollars to get Some military hardware in, brings in all these guys. Okay. And they fight off the Venezuelans. All right. And that's like King of the Jungle. And then I've written two since then. I wrote a book. The second one in the series is a book called From Hellmarsh With Love, which is Mike and his fiance. They get married. They go to London for the honeymoon. I wrote this thing in 2004. Everything that's in that book has happened in Great Britain. And when Keir Starmer finally goes down, which is going to be in a week. Okay. Like, virtually every page of that book will have panned out. So.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker A: Right.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker C: And it's. Of the three, it's the one that didn't really sell that well. And I'm like, it's the one that should sell the most copies because it's totally prescient, actually. From King of the Jungle, predicted two assassination attempts on Donald Trump. And I wrote it in January of 23. Three, I guess. Okay. No, January.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker C: Blockbusters is the third book in the series. And what happens in Blockbusters is Pierce goes to Mike and he says, we should do something about the culture, because the culture is trash. What can we do? And Mike. And this is a little bit autobiographical. I'm not like. Mike's like, well, I like the movies. Let's go make movies. And so the book gets into AI filmmaking, which is like, everybody's heard about it, but you're just starting to see what this actually is in the book. It's like, completely fleshed out. And it also gets into. And it's. Again, it's predictive. It gets into what happens when conservatives decide to start buying up mass media. Right. Which the Ellisons are doing.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker C: And so this. This is a different take on that. But it's like that happens. And so, like, when the mass media. When the left's hold on mass media is broken up, what does that do? What happens? So Blockbuster sort of examines that. It's really, really. I mean, it's. There's. It's a lot of fun. It's worth reading for chapter six alone, because it kind of gets into who the people are that run Hollywood.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker C: And. And sort of what LA is like. Anyway, it's a. It's a great book. Of the three, I think it's probably the one that sold the. The most copies. But really, all three of them are. I mean, you know, they're of everything I've done as a writer. Those are the three things that. That I'm. I'm happiest About, I guess.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker A: Well, that's great. I mean, and look, we need more people that, you know, come from upbringing like you, that have, you know, political ideas like you. Engaging. And Andrew Breitbart used to say this. Engaging in the culture.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker C: Engaging.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker A: Engaging. Not just in non fiction, but engaging in satire, Engaging in fiction, storytelling. Absolutely.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker C: A long time ago. Who is Ben Shapiro's partner when he got Daily Wirestar? Jeremy Boring. Thank you. Jeremy Bore. I went to this Heritage foundation event they had in New Orleans, like back in 2011 or whatever. He gave this speech and it was all about how conservatives need to be the storytellers because we have the best stories. He's like, you know, the hero's journey is the conservative story, right? And it's everything from Jesus Christ to 300 to Lawrence of Arabia is all the hero's journey story. We're the guys who can tell it, because every time the left starts in with it, they ruin it. He's like, but all of the best stories in Western culture are the hero's journey, and we're the people qualified to tell it. And yet we're not the storytellers. And that, you know, like, it took me a while before I finally started actually writing fiction as a result, but it percolated in my head for like eight years. I'm like, I gotta come up with a book idea because I really want to participate in this. And then finally I did, and now I can't stop. But we don't tell stories enough. We let the left tell stories. And you look at Hollywood and you can see just how bad they are at this. Because, I mean, you know, give Chris. Christopher Nolan's like, the best filmmaker in Hollywood. You give him the Odyssey and look what he's done to it. We haven't even seen it. We already know it's trash.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker A: It's tone deaf. I mean, I guess he missed what happened, you know, here culturally, in, you know, the 2024 election. I mean, they still are kicking that. They still think there's, you know, 73 genders underneath their skirt.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker C: I mean, that's what happened to him. He goes and he makes Dunkirk. Okay?
• 1:07:21
  Speaker A: And.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker C: Which was a great movie. Okay? Like, you want to talk about something that is true to its source material? Was Dunkirk okay? And they hammered him. Where are all the black people? It's like, it's Dunkirk. They didn't have any black people at Dunkirk. Like, if you show me where there were black people at Dunkirk, I'm not casting the Admiral as a black. I'm not having IDRIS Elbow play Tom Hardy's role. Because that's stupid. It's not real. They hammered him about that. And so now he gets the Odyssey, right? And it's not a British story, so he doesn't really care. And that's how you get Lupita as Helena Troy and you get Zendaya as Athena. And you know, they say, well, it's just a rumor, but they sure as hell haven't dispelled it of Ellen Page playing Achilles. And this movie is dead in the water, okay? Because you don't. And it's. Well, who cares? It's a myth, so it doesn't matter what race is. No, it's Greek culture. You're screwing the Greeks over. And they're like, well, but Diane Kruger played Helena Troy and like, she's.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker A: She was German.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker C: I get it, okay? And you know what? Maybe that wasn't good casting either, okay?
• 1:08:31
  Speaker A: Alexander the Great had blonde hair, blue eyes, just like Julius Caesar before the Moors and the Ottomans went through there. You understand what I'm saying?
• 1:08:39
  Speaker C: Well, and I'm not saying you have to have Nia Vardellos playing Helena Troy. I'm not saying that, okay? But it probably would be nice if somebody would make these, you know, a movie about that stuff. And Helena Troy is actually Greek. There are very, very good looking Greek women out there. There. So get one and cast them instead of trying to. And if you want to put Lupita in a movie, for crying out loud, make a movie where she's appropriate.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker A: I have to see if my old client, my. My friend Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is the US Ambassador to Greece, whether she has issued a press release condemning Juno as Achilles. You know, I mean, just an amazing thing. Well, look, brother, you know I love you. Everyone needs to go out and get some of these books, the Mike Holman
• 1:09:27
  Speaker C: novels, and find them on Amazon. Just actually go to Amazon, Scott McKay, and you'll. You'll find all the stuff.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker A: That's right. Spell his name right. And I mean, look, this guy, he's a machine. He's churning out stuff. He's hosting shows, you know, he's hosting banquets. And we appreciate you taking the time. There he is, right there. He's wrestling gators, right? He's in the bayou. The member of cc, member of CCR that no one knew about. So, look, we appreciate you coming here. Dangerous laughter. Go to Amazon, pick up McKay's books. Help pay for that Bezos wedding. He's still trying to pay that wedding off. And, you know, we'll catch you next time, Scott, really. It's been an honor, brother.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker C: All right. See you in the funny papers.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker A: All right, man. See you soon. Thank you. This is dangerous laughter. I am AJ Rice. We will catch you,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker C: Sam.