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John Galliano vs The Met: Can You Separate Art from Outrage? · Boomer Has It!

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: For those of a certain age, the name Galliano might summon the image of an herbal Italian liqueur that comes in a tall bottle designed after a Roman pillar and was the key ingredient of the Harvey Wallbanger cocktail of the swinging 70s.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: But today's pod is not about the drink or how it even fit into your parents' liquor cabinet.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: We are instead talking about a different kind of intoxicating or maybe toxic figure, fashion designer John Galliano.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: And for decades, uh Galliano was the undisputed king of high fashion as the creative powerhouse behind Gavachy and Christian Dior.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: But in 2011, it all came crashing down in a Paris cafe after being caught on camera unleashing a venomous bigoted tirade.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: That transgression reared its ugly head a couple of weeks ago when the Metropolitan Museum of Art canceled a planned Met Gala exhibit based on Galliana's career.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Today we revisit cancel culture and ask whether it's to better to forgive or forget, cancel or contextualize this is Boomer Has It.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jamie.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm JV Miller in London.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm Jim Jelamis, also in London.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is really about cancel culture, but we're talking about John Galliano as today's poster child.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone wants to know who he is, he grew up in Britain and he's lived in France for decades, but he's a fashion icon.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: He served as head designer at both Gibanchi and Christian Dior, both owned by the luxury brand conglomerate LVMH.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: He's a four-time British designer of the year.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: But most importantly, he's credited for credited for transforming Dior into a global fashion powerhouse.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: He has been controversial at best.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, JB, I'm going to hand this over to you because this topic caught your attention in a in a very compulsive way, I'd say.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: It did.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, I want Jim, I want to invite, I'm going to welcome you to the Boomer Has It London studio for the first time.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's great to have you here.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, these fake books are really great.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it was very expensive to have that all painted on it.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's all wallpaper.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was really interested in this story because uh I've always um been more in favor of contextualizing um the situations, people, scandals, um, contentious, contentious careers, difficult films, problematic books and art, rather than rather than than canceling them.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: But uh we have to really explain why he was canceled.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And he's truly was canceled because he he was well he he was so in a parisian cafe.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't mean to laugh, but it was this it's don't laugh.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's such an absurd situation.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: So in September 2011, he was found guilty of a hate crime by a French court following three separate anti-Semitic encounters in the same cafe in Paris.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is reported by the New Yorker recently.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is the same, it goes back to the same cafe to insult people in these anti-Semitic tirades.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: In a video of one of these incidents published by The Sun earlier that year, a visibly intoxicated Galeano tells patrons at a nearby table, I love Hitler.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: People like you would be dead today.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Your mothers, your forefathers would be fucking gassed.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: In another tirade, Galeano called a museum curator, Geraldine Bloch, who again just happened to be sitting nearby, a fucking ugly Jewish bitch, and threatened her friend, fucking Asian bastard, I will kill you.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um he apparently then, in course of his roughly 45-minute rant, he used the word Jewish something like 30 times.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this just seems so over the top.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: He later claimed he didn't remember any of the altered uh altercations because he was suffering from a triple addiction to alcohol, valium, and sleeping pills in an attempt to cope with the pressures of the fashion industry.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um cope this pressure.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's interesting because he he blames it all on the drugs, but didn't you just quote something in in Latin to me?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's a great Latin phrase in vino veritas, in wine there is truth.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: When people say, Oh, I was drunk, I wasn't myself.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I would argue when you're drunk, you're almost more yourself because you've reduced all your um your your inhibitions have been sort of whisked away, and your true self kind of comes through.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not really a defense to say you were you were drunk at the time, you're in a drug sort of stupor.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: I uh there are millions and millions of people who, when drunk, do not suddenly become uh anti-Semitic or racist.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: What if it was the other way around?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: What if you you were a real oaf or really a crude jerk and you got drunk and you became a humanitarian?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I guess in Vino Veritas.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a friend of mine's mother, who was uh apparently it was a horrible mother, he said, and was mean and racist and horrible.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: When she developed dementia, she became a lovely person and welcomed him into the care home and had nothing bad to say about anyone.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't know what to make of that, but I I I don't think generally being drunk or in a drug stupor is very um credible defense.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so he lost his job, right?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: You looked into this.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So let's yeah, let's trace back.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now they take these things seriously in Europe, uh, not here so much.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: France is uh France's anti-hate legislation.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly, you can be you can you can be uh charged, he he had a suspended fine.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he went to court and was convicted in by by a French court and had got a suspended sentence.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um but he's a convicted hate mongerer in um in uh the city of light.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and and just to bring everyone up to date, after after the court conviction, he entered a period of rehabilitation where he met with rabbis and apologized a lot, returned to the fashion industry in 2014 as the creative director of a brand called Maison Marjella, don't know it.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: But his latest gig is a partnership with uh fast fashion retailer Zara, and his first collection is set to debut this month.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a you know, a question about the back who really is this man?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is he rehabilitated?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Who is he?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: That would be my my question.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you utter these anti-Semitic outbursts several times at the same cafe, and one of them got caught on on video, so luckily, because if it hadn't been, God, video makes such a huge, huge difference.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Something gets posted on YouTube, you know, everybody can see it.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think it becomes a much um bigger scandal.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: But my question is, you know, are you really kind of is a racist anti-Semite really um habilitated by meeting with rabbis?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, his his entire career is on the line.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know if I completely buy it.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Do you?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, did he quit drugs and listen closely, or was he on drugs and not paying attention?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh whatever happened, I mean, no, there's evidence to show that this is in his DNA in 2000, before these scandals, he mounted a show for Dior featuring his French speakers.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Listen up, his Clochard collection.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: The word clochard means beggar in French, uh, which he said drew inspiration from Paris's homeless population.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it was an homage to the needy.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some of the clothes were meant resembled piles of old newspapers.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: They were likely to have seen that.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't, and then accessories.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is where we don't understand fashion.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: This fashion is way over our head.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what what are they talking about?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't, I just don't understand it.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the accessories were fashioned from found objects like pony bottles of booze.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this this if you look at the photos, the models they feature, they they have um purposely created uh an effect of flyaway hair in their so they look really downtrodden, and and they look they use this smoky makeup that makes them look unwashed.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that to me is more an art sort of performance piece than fashion, but maybe that's where that blurs the line and he wants to make art fashion, and that's the big thing of the metgala.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: They all show up the metgala as like works of pieces of art, like a great big um, you know, like dressed like a vacuum cleaner or something, and somebody has to help them up the stairs.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I never understand the metcala.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, well, when I say bad taste, what I mean is, you know, each of these pieces sell for 15, 20,000, 25,000,$30,000 for it to be part of his clichard collection.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: But how does that I don't think he donated any of those to the the cultists of Paris?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: But how does that speak to his his anti-Semitism and racism?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's just bad taste.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's bad taste.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it means he doesn't care about people, in my mind.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the other the other part of it.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: So two years after his conviction, uh uh a 2013 photograph captured by a paparazzo in New York City during New York Fashion Week, no less.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the little surprise I have for you.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Two eight two years after his hate crime conviction, Galliana dressed in what appeared to be a Hasidic costume with a long formal black overcoat, a big black hat, and ring curls.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: We're getting into Kanye uh territory here.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and he reminds me of of Kanye because Kanye also had a uh well he I don't think Kanye's apologized for anything, or he's uh he's uh a recidivist.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, do you remember a band called called Culture Club?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Boy George dressed in um Hasidic Hasidic costume.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: He did, yeah, and he's not Jewish.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um boy but he didn't say anything mean.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, he didn't.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm just saying that's maybe it was no, maybe that was a true homage.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hasidic, that's Hasidic hip, Hasidic fashion.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know what to make of that, but I mean that that's again that's in context with his anti-Semitic, you know, um, outburst.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, Kanye said some pretty crazy rubbish.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And Kanye's got a connection to fashion, right?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: He's got his own fashion line.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Does he have like Nazi Nazi branded sneakers or something?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: SS uniform and or I I I I I find this a bit funny because it's just so absurd.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: It it doesn't seem real.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And this um, but it is real.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: He did say uh John Galliano did say these things.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: So he he we had to talk about you know Anna Winter because she the what is the we editor M we need to talk about we need to talk about the Met, the Met Gala, and Anna Winter.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: How much time do we have?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well I think we could do it pretty quickly.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: So get into it.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, we should talk about what what actually happened at the Met.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to talk about the well just the U the U-turn the the Met made?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And well, then we have to say who you know uh Anna Winter, who was the editor of Vogue for many years, and now she's editor emeratus, whatever we call it.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: She was at Vogue 37 years.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: She's responsible for elevating the magazine from a fusty women's publication to what I would call a hefty ad pack taste and fashion defining Bible.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: A huge money maker for Condé Nass, the magazine group.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: At least until recently, probably, but yeah.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: May maybe until recently, although the big September issue, the big fat, all the full of ad.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, she's also a trustee of the museum and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, specifically the Costume Institute, the Galaxy A trustee of the magazine in general, but she oversees the Met Gala.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the Met Gala is um part of something called the Met Costume Institute.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the Met the Met Gala, everyone knows about the Met Gala because it's become a news event that uh which is probably very helpful to the costume um collection or whatever it's called.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that yeah, it becomes huge story and famous people, like um probably Lady Gaga and the uh Khashoggi, what is it called?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Khashoggi.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is Khashoggi showing up to that?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Casco, what it'll he wear the the keep up with the Cascara Cardigans Cascade the Card Cardigans did show up.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um what what I was gonna the point I was gonna make was as as a trustee of the museum and as uh someone who has complete oversight of the Met Gala, it creates a symbiotic relationship between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Vogue magazine.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: They are they are allies aesthetically, but maybe more than that.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as much as great publicity can contribute to your brand and your bottom line, this it's locked up here.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: I would say Anna Winter is probably the most has been, and maybe still is the most powerful figure in the fashion industry.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: She's a household name for people like us who don't even follow fashion.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: There was Deborah's Prada is modeled on her, is really about her.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and that story is interesting because it was a tell-all and not novel, not flattering to Anna Wintour until it became a hit.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And she, as you pointed out, she leaned into it.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: She leaned into it belatedly.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think after, you know, she I don't think she has that much of a sense of humor.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: She should have done it sooner, she should have embraced that much sooner than she did and laughed it off.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you embrace something, you you're you kind of own it somewhere, you're in control of it.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: She sort of distanced herself from it.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Meryl Streep played um Miranda Priestley, the character based on her.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Meryl, when Meryl Streep is playing a version of you, you lean into it.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a that's a compliment in itself that you're played by Meryl Streep, um, very glamorous and brilliant actor.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and we should point out, loyal listeners, if you listen to our episode with mystery writer Charles Salzberg, he has a well-known writing class.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the author of Devil Wears Prada was his student, Lauren Weisberger.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Lauren Weisberger.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: We both met Lauren in our lovely.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but she wrote the book.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was a tell-all, not very flattering, and but made into two films and a musical, which is still playing either Western.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't think the musical work in um on Broadway, maybe it closed, but it's a big hit here in London.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, and uh Elton John wrote the songs, as he does.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, so anyway, Anna Winter is this big uh figure.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: She was behind promoting John Galliano to have a retrospective at the Met Costume Institute.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Met let's just a couple more definitions for the for anyone who's unschooled.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: The Met Costume Institute is the Metropolitan Museum of Arts dedicated fashion and costume design curatorial department.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's huge, it's probably the largest fashion collection in the world, bigger than the VNA.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: The Victorian Ableton Museum is a famous uh uh costume.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Do they?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's one of my favorite things about the VA.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're they've closed it for a couple of years to re-redesign the whole the whole area, but it it has costumes going back to the early 17th century, so the early 1600s caught clothes do not last that long, they fall apart, people do not save them particularly.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's extremely rare to find any any clothes that go back more than you know a hundred years.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, I I might be maybe I'm a fashion and clothing philistine, right you are.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I sort of thank you.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I dress.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look at the I mean, let's look at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: It houses centuries of of of uh um classical and contemporary art, and but it also has fashion, and that's something we should think about as an art form.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's a separate conversation.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people, I think a lot of people would debate it.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: I remember hearing the artist Richard Serra complaining to the speaking of canceled, canceled interviewer Charlie Rose, debating whether architecture is really fine art or not.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Richard, what are you talking about?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, rum.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: He is a grumpy guy.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Someone died when a when a piece of his sculptures fell on them, and another one lost his leg.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I didn't have anything good to say about Richard.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I dismember him not fondly.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, remember anyway.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh uh funny.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, what's unusual about the Met Gala and the Costume Institute?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the Met Gala is the annual first Monday of March event that draws many people, lots of publicity, and celebrities.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um it is a self-funding organization within the Museum of Modern of Medicare.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Is that important to know about this?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is that it means it's very rich.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's very rich.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: In its last gala last year, it raised$42 million.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Wait a second, driven mostly by tech industry sponsorship.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Individual cost cost for an individual to enter is$100,000.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get a table for you and your friends, it's$350,000.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: That money goes back into the Costume Institute, not necessarily a Metropolitan Museum.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's self-funded for for a decade or more.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: So the but the point is it's extremely prestigious.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh for a number of years, Anna Winter, who is a big fan of uh of John Galliano, has wanted the Met to do a gala in his honor and followed by a retrospective of his work that would be on display for nine months.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And there have only there have been you know a lot of a lot of fashion designers have had retrospectives of the Met, but only two in their uh living designers.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I wrote this down somewhere who it was.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh one was um lay.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, Fargo.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he was dead.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: He was dead by then.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um Yves Saint Laurent and someone else I'd never heard of.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: But so it's it's a rare thing.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: She uh proposed this a few years ago, and there was a lot of pushback, and they didn't do it.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: She pushed for it again this past year, and the Met announced it, and there was pushback on that, right?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: You've done some research on this.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, where would you it would have been a nine-month exhibit?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: And what's that's fine?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: What's wrong with a nine-month exhibit?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's nothing.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it offended uh New York City officials, religious leaders, yeah, and maybe more importantly, museum donors.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, one of them was uh what Arn Arnie um Arnie Sher?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Arnie Glimpsher of uh Pace Gallery.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: The very famous, very highly acclaimed Pace Gallery, wrote an email to the Met saying he was reconsidering what would be donated from his estate.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's a huge thing.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you're if you if you're at the Metropolitan Museum and you get an email um from a major art uh you know figure, art um art gallery owner, Mark Rothko, who are you listed all these incredible names, and he threatens not to donate any of them to the Met.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the Met's gonna think twice about uh I would almost call it ex existential.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, so I mean, for art lovers out there, who who did Pace Gallery represent, right?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they were Arnie Glimpsher was an art dealer, and his his clock, his stable of artists included Mark Rothko, Alexander Calder, David Hockney, Agnes Martin, Jean DuBafet, James Terrell, Robert Indiana of the famous Love Sculpture, and Louise Nevelson.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: These are names that are that are in history books.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: You study art history, contemporary art history, you study these names.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: What is he and they're these these are what we would see they would be entrusted to our great institutions.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, does he have all these arbories?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is this a gallery owner?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is he supposed to sell them during their lifetime?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Does he buy them himself?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't where is all those art?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: He's the back room, he saved all the best stuff.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, he's a dealer, but he has his he has a collection.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Personal collection it's just from his personal collection.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're aware of this, but U-Haul offers a container.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: He probably has them all in a U-Haul right now.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe several U-Halls.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Leo Costelli, the wonderful late Leo Costelli, who uh I was joking about the U-Haul.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Lovely uh gallery on West Broadway in Soho in the old days.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: He um was uh understandably upset that the Museum of Modern Art did not have a major Rauschenberg combine painting and he donated um um um bed, one of the finest of Rauschenberg's combine.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're a Rauschenberg fan.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: I love Rauschenberg.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So he donated BED, which was worth millions, much more now, uh, to the Museum of Modern Art so they would have a proper a proper Rauschenberg.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, why do you like Rauschenberg so much?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh well, that's a whole other pod.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Rauschenberg is absolutely brilliant for many reasons.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get back to John Galeano.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, when I read the story, which broke like a couple weeks ago, I was just fascinated by it because he was being can't his show was literally being canceled uh before it he's like you're gonna cancel something before it gets launched.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you cancel it the night's canceled, cancel the exhibit.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not always in favor of cancellation, I'm in favor of contextualizing.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what does that fancy word mean?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's it's put four syllables.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh five syllables.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: All right, all right.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Get it out of my mouth.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: All right, down, dan boy.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so no, contextualize, just put it in context.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you I I thought they should have gone ahead with the exhibit and had on the wall as you walk in, a description, an explanation of his anti-Semitic outbursts in Paris, maybe have a video, that video recording as part of his rap sheet and as part of his career.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, would it be the equivalent of a a trigger warning, for example, that you for a controversial film or or uh I don't know how it'd be, I don't know if you call it a trigger trigger warning.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: He said bad things in Paris.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I just think it's part of his, it puts his career in context.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: He maybe he's I don't know if he actually deserves this retrospective or not.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know his work.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't, you know, um homeless people dressed up as uh newspapers, I don't know.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like rubbish to me, literally.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: But um, I don't, but you know, Anna Winter knows more about fashion than than I do.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: She thinks he's worth uh a retrospective, so maybe he deserves one.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: But if he does, I think uh that should be part of of his career.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Just put it up on the wall.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if it's right when you come in, you can't ignore it.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And but does that excuse it?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I'm I wonder if does that get it out of the way?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Does that excuse him?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think the other way of looking at it, the the other way of looking at it is does it by by mounting the show, what what is the harm?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Does it make anti-Semites say, see, I can say whatever I want?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it is it um callous towards the Jewish people and the Asian people who were part of his tirade?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: What what you know that's really, I think, the key question about cancel culture.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: What is the harm?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's well, I guess they feel it's rewarding bad behavior, you know.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I use the the example of um the director Ilya Kazan, which some of our viewers and listeners will remember as a great director from the 40s and 50s, a stage director and a film director.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: He directed East of Eden and um streetcar named Desire, both the play, uh the stage version and the film, and um and the original Death of a Salesman.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: He got he won two Oscars for directing Gentleman's Agreement and uh On the Waterfront, brilliant films.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: He deserved those, those Oscars.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: But at the height of his height of his film career, uh he named names.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: He knew communists and he he named This way, this was during the House of On American Activities Committee.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: The McCarthy era McCarthy era, and he named names to uh preserve his career so he could still work in the business.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and what was the harm caused by that?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: People were up lost their jobs, could have lost their jobs, put on the blacklist, some had to move to Europe to find work.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was a terrible thing he did.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he also he during this time he had a stage career.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: He could have not named names, and maybe he wouldn't have gotten as much work in the film industry, but he could go to Broadway and still direct plays.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: There was not a blacklist on Broadway, and anyway, he wouldn't have so so, but in 1999, it's also I I guess it's um ex an experiment in cowardice, isn't it?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, okay.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: He was one of the profiles of cardice.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: So in 1999, profile of cowardice, the the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences, or whatever it's called, uh where they give out the Oscars every year, 1999.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: So this is 30 years later.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um they wanted to give him an honorary Oscar.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he wasn't overlooked, he's not like you know, Peter O'Toole was an overlooked great actor, never won a competitive Oscar, so they gave him a lifetime achievement Oscar.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Ilya Kazan didn't need another Oscar, he'd won two, fair and squared, and he deserved them.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think you know, he went into some cinematic um obscurity, and he's always had that asterisk next to his name because he'd named names, and that was considered a bad thing.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: So they went ahead with the award, they gave it to him.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, the the reaction was really interesting because you had sort of a third of the audience standing and applauding, led by Warren Beatty, I think.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Warren Beatty was very pro.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Warren Beatty got his start in um Splendor in the Grass, which was uh Ilya Kazan directed.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: Another third uh sat down and applauded, and another third didn't applaud at all.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I love this controversy because it made everyone um talk about the the blacklist and the uh you know House on American Activities Committee.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so it brought history back to a whole gener or introduced this history to a whole generation um of the uh people, younger people who didn't know really about the blacklist and Ilya cousin.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I that was kind of uh that was contextualized um through no doing of his own.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he went and got took the Oscar.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I just have to point out, you know, I'm Ilya Kazan is was Greek American, and I'm Greek American, yes, and you think he didn't deserve that Oscar, which means you hate the Greek American.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: We had two Oscars, he deserved those two.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't need another one, just because he was Greek American, I don't think that's fair.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that was to me, that was a great controversy because it got everyone looking at this issue.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe the John Gagliano scandal um has uh you could say one of the positive things that's come out about it is that it's not allowed John Galliano to escape his past.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there is this article we read in the New York Times and the New Yorker.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a sort of spotlight shone on um his transgressions, his anti anti-Semite outbursts, his racist outbursts.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is a problematic person.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it was uh he didn't get an honorary Oscar, um, and he didn't get his uh met um retrospective yet.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it'll still have I don't think it will happen at this point.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's too many, there's such a pushback on it.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think they're gonna try to, but maybe you get one in Paris.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they got museums in Paris, and maybe there'll be one in London.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I mean, the here's another there are a couple of questions here, right?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: With the passage of time, will we accept someone like John Galliano and his achievements based on their merit alone?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Does it does it require time for us to sort of forget or forgive?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we've done that with artists of the 20th century, too many to name, actually.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: What is what is comedy?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Tragedy plus time.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it'll end up who said that was that Mel Brooks?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's a famous, I don't know.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's uh quoted by Woody Allen, but I don't think he he came up with it.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Tragedy is comedy plus time.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe in a few years there'll be a um, you know, um the comedy.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't know, Mark Ruffalo or Paul Rudd will play a version of him.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, you know, it would be good to play uh John Galliano would be um a Johnny Depp.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: That'd be a that'd be a twofer because he has his own scandal and he looks like John De.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: He dressed like a pirate in the movies in the uh Pirates of the Caribbean, and John Galliano likes it.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: He does look like a pirate.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: John Galliano dresses as a pirate.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I think Johnny Depp is destined to play John Galliano.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know what you're doing?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're fan casting the John Galliana Met scandal.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: But who would play?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know who could play Anna Winter?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Merrill Street.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I was gonna say.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Meryl Street.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hollywood producers take note.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: We've got your next project.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: But here's my here's here's a couple other points.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, was this is this really cancel culture, or does it demonstrate how the citizenry can challenge and overrule institutional power, which is an increasingly rare dynamic these days?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or conversely, did did the Met give in to a woke mob that deprives society of celebrating artistic achievements?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: What's the answer, sir?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: You answer.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is your thing, not mine.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Woke.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the fact.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: I hate that.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, I the question is you know, what is what is the harm from this?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: We've already established that the Met Gala and the Costume Institute are are rich, both rich endeavors, well, very well funded.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Does does does a society lose out?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is the harm that we don't get to see uh the evolution of fashion in the 90s?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: I would say yes.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: I would say yes to that.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in favor of contextualizing and not and not canceling.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, I've used the example of uh of the film Gom of the Wind.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: HBO Max, whatever it was called, had it in its list of films uh a couple years ago, and there was talk of not of not letting it be available on their platform because uh people uh objected to the depiction of slavery in the film, which was made in 1939, and um and they wanted it to sort of deplatform.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: And HBO, in its better judgment, in my in my uh in my estimation, contextualized the film.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: How did they do this?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: They got a a um black um film historian, a professor of film, um, and she wrote and delivered something like a 20-minute introduction to the film, contextualizing it.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's that word again.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: And there's that word again, and um, and because and I have to say, I didn't see I didn't see that 20-minute thing because I don't get HBO, but uh so I but I was in favor of the idea.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe she said, don't watch this.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think she said that.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh because in me, I mean the interesting thing about Gone with the Win, it's not the greatest film, but it's not a terrible film.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's an important Hollywood film.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was one of the, you know, for many years, it was the most successful film ever made.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, the film is as much about 1939 when the film was made as the Civil War uh that it depicts in the movie.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there was, and part of the context of the film where there were um black uh groups um in in America, uh I think the N NAACP that that protested the film because of its depiction of slavery, happy slaves on a uh on a plantation.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's ludicrous.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's really laughable, although it's a serious subject, obviously.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: But it's don't cancel the film, put it in context.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh that's what I mean.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: But so we were talking about this earlier, and I was saying how so many scandals uh can be put in context, with maybe the exception of sexual scandals.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about James Franco.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's just back it up a second, you know, because I think the um Gone with the Wind also in the 1990s, before we were able to deplatform institutions because institutions were so powerful, became a flashpoint in the feminist movement, in which uh they uh outspoken people in the feminist movement claim that Clark the Clark Gable scene.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: There was a scene with Clark Gable, and who's the leading lady?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Vivian Lee.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Vivian Lee uh committed an act of rape.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he raped her.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh yeah, and then she's seen smiling the next morning because she had such a that's to me, that's as bad in a way as it's fair, it's implied, obviously.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: But is it is it a rape?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um is it spousal, yes, he is it abuse?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: He picks her up.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: He picks her up and goes up the stairs, and this is one night he's drinking and the uh let um him sleep with her or obsex with her, and he picks her up.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: He's drinking, he's drunk.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: She doesn't know what he's doing because he's drunk, it's not oh, right, that's true.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and very task that's like John Galliano, yeah.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: He picks her up, he says, This is one night, you're not gonna lock me out of the bedroom, or something like that.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: So clearly it's implied that it's uh it's spousal rape, which is bad enough.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: But the the 1939 joke, I think, on it is that the next morning she's singing and laughing, and obviously she had a a good night that she has, and that's well, you know what?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we've just exposed something to the sleeping public, and maybe this film should be deplatformed, unless you want to contextualize it.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have do you have 20 minutes of your time to I just did contextualize it?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: Come with the wind.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't ban the film.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't maybe that was in um the introduction to it, um, that that film professor uh put together.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen it.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um getting on to James Franco.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we were thinking about who uh what other figures uh like uh John Galeano, um Ilya Kazan, uh Dili, you know, Ilya Kazan was never canceled, um, really, except that his reputation was destroyed by the name of his life.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: But who else recently did a whole pod about about Woody Allen, who has never been canceled.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: He's banging out a film every year.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: He could and and um so you know but he can't make a film in the United States, though.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: He can't get the financing in the United States.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody hasn't stopped at making films, you know.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, he hasn't.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't say he's been deplatformed or canceled, particularly.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think not getting financing to an 89-year-old, 90-year-old director's uh canceling that got the money, you know, in Spain.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I think I think I think if he were popular, he could get as much money he as he wanted in the United States.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, yeah, he's lost a lot of producers, a lot of money.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what do I care?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Kevin Spacey, uh so Kevin Spacey, like Woody Allen, we're getting into controversial territory here.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Kevin Spacey, like uh Woody Allen, was um was uh brought to some kind of justice in the court.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: He's never lost a court case, so he's never been, he's never been found guilty of sexual abuse.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I have a good friend, I won't mention his name, who's worked with him um in a in a in a popular television series, had nothing good to say about Kevin Spacey, both as a uh you know, as an actor and as a person.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: He's trying to upstage my friend in the same scene when it was my friend scene.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: And he and my friend said he was uh um pawing and and trying to um being very uh sexual predatory to all the young men.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: So not only that not only is he a sexual predator, but he's a selfish actor.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: He's probably a selfish lover too.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so he's no, yeah.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: So so but he has been de-platformed.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: He's been he's live literally had films uh uh cancel.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: There was one where he was slated to play Gore Vidal, and I would like to see that film.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see Kevin Spacey play Gore Vidal.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be interested in that.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't abuse anyone, I should be able to see that film.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: As I said with Woody Allen, maybe he shouldn't be able to see that film, but um, he's been de-platformed in the way Woody Allen hasn't.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I don't know um exactly why.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: What was the case with uh Mel Gibson?
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: I guess he couldn't, he lost some jobs.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um Johnny App worked with him.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: I guess people work with anybody.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: What did Trump came out and named three three of his favorite actors to be official Hollywood representatives?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: And one was Mel Gibson.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: Who were the others?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one was I think Adolf Hitler's grandson, maybe a thespian.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: There are probably two other horrible people.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not a big Mel Gibson fan.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, who who was the lead in um Deliverance?
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, uh Nick Nolte?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, Deliverance from the 1970s.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, who's the father of um what's her name?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh Julie, John Voigt, thank you.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody could and Sylvester Salone was the third.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was a triumvirate of actors he could he thought could restore Hollywood to its his its uh previous glory, yeah.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um so what is this?
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess what is the my wife had to work with John Voigt and had nothing good to say about him.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: What did she say about?
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have BO?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: He no, they they were warned that uh young uh women to keep not be really room with them alone, yeah.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, John Voigt?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and that's why Angelina Jolie is nothing uh nothing about to be sued by John Voigt.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you get this right, but but the point anyway, I don't care about uh the Hollywood the Trump Trump people, Trump skies in Hollywood.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: The question is, why are some people deplatformed and other people aren't?
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: And we looked up James Franco.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Franco has had a uh number of what are they sexual predator predatory.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is juicy podcast, my it is a juicy podcast, and he James Franco is he he's not a very nice man, he's 48 years old now.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he created an actors institute of some kind, the James Franco Act Institute, which was basically like the you know his way to pick up young women and uh it was basically like the Epstein Acting Institute where he he basically uh you know poached young women for sexual pleasure.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: He had to settle out of court, he he's a pariah in Hollywood right now, and then joining he's enjoying a career in vertical media, which to some listeners this might be unfamiliar, but if you live in the Far East, you watch these episodic TV shows and um films that last a minute or two over each episode on your phone, and you can watch his on a platform called Shorticle.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's quite a come down from uh I don't know what other great films that what are the big Well I he won an Academy Award.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, he didn't was he no I thought he did something in four was in milk?
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't he get a supporting actor in milk?
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, I don't think so.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: 127 hours where he had cut off his own arm.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, right, yeah.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he did cut off his own arm.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: That is Keppler, he got that better.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: I I I almost there's a part of me, there's not a hundred percent of me, but there's a part of me that kind of thinks that if you're a great artist, you get a little more leeway than if you're a shit artist.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sorry, I I uh uh it's like we try not to use swear words on this show.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I know a young person, I'm not gonna um say who this young person is, um, but I know a regular young person who hates Picasso because of the way Picasso treated women, and uh she wouldn't be the only one.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a she, I don't know what uh gender this person, yes, right.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this person, um, so uh I uh my view on that is yes, Picasso treated women very poorly.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you allow yourself or disallow yourself to appreciate his art, you're doing yourself a disservice.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh right, I mean it's like what I said about Woody Allen.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you know well, we actually let's think about this.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: The the monologuist, former comedian, now monologues Hannah Gadsby was invited to the Brooklyn Museum to curate a show uh featuring artists of the earliest 20 early 20th century, but mostly Pablo Picasso.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she curated the show um her way.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was called It's Pro It's Pabblomatic Picasso, according to Hannah Gadsby.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the show was roundly criticized by people who follow the artist.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: World, but it's it's an interesting point of view.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: Love that.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: I am totally in favor of her doing that.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I disagree with her, but she's contextualizing it, and her name is in it.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: So she's giving, she's identifying it's a personal view of Pacas.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: What was it called?
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Picasa problematic.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm all for that.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's contextualizing.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: I I I you know, she her politics are far to the left of mine.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I really liked one of her famous uh monologues, I forget what it's called.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: She's a talent, and and I don't agree with everything she says, but that to me, yes, give her room and and let's hear Hannah Gadsby's perspective on Picasso.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm no problem with that whatsoever.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in favor of that.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it and I think I think what was good about it was that it did not omit Picasso, it included Picasso with counterpoints from other artists.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: She it wasn't she didn't remove she didn't she didn't cancel Picasso, right?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it's uh so I you know I like that it's more and more.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I think the museum was at the Brooklyn Museum a couple years ago.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm all for that.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: It supports your your view on contextualizing eyes, so so you can contextualize um certain personalities up to a point.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: And Hannah Gadsby showed us how we can contextualize Picasso.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I you can't context is how I don't know how you contextualize James Franco.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how you contextualize Kevin Spacey, even though I'd like to see maybe some of those films that got canceled.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um I wouldn't want to work with them.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've seen him on stage a couple of times.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: He's you know a good actor.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: He's got the narrow range, but what within that range is very good.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I don't know.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: Are there are there any are there any person are there any are personalities, actors, creative people that you would not want to see canceled, that maybe happened cancelled?
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: If I can put that to you, Mr.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: Jillamis.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm not sure if I've objected to anyone who's been canceled, uh honestly.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think really they you know what it was hard for me to watch, you know, to do the research on Woody Allen.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just I just he turned my stomach.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: And but you know, in that but with with with Manhattan, but you really like you really like Annie Hall.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know what?
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's facing Woody Allen in 2026 is hard.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: He he's stomach turning, and it was really hard for me to watch Manhattan.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, especially the cringy moments when he's making out with anyway, sweet mother of god.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just finish.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: That that it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and whether you know the passage of time will allow audiences to forgive and maybe accept uh the work that he did for five, six decades is is up for grabs, but it it definitely leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I think, but I also think you know, time will contextualize in its own way.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: Huh?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: I like that word.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, go on.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you like the word.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Contextualize.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: I like it too now.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: But the but you know, it's it that's why we have art history, that's why we call it that.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: Is that an aggregate sour?
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: Don't have to be.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't say I don't like dislike Alan Annie Hall.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was saying it was an it was a chore to watch Woody Allen and to get to to gird my loins to what to watch this man's work.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking of some reference that it's actually Woody Allen himself.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: He was asked what he thought of Bob Hope, and because he often he often mimics uh Bob Hope's sort of gestures in his early films, and he said, politics aside, I'm a big fan of Bob Hope.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's interesting to me because Bob Hope was so right wing, he was pro-Vietnam War, he was politically really problematic.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I can still watch his films, you know.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have other right wing, you know, nuts.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um you're a big Ronald Reagan fan, too.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: You loved those, you love those bonzo movies.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Don't you reague?
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Ronald Reagan was never a serious actor.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you know, there I I know the politics of a lot of my favorite actors from the 1930s.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I know that um, you know, Ebber G.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Robinson was very left-wing and very liberal.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Warner Brothers was a very liberal studio was very pro Roosevelt.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: MGM was uh very conservative, and Louis B.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: Maire was a good friend of Herbert Hoover.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was so you know, there was it was they were very political uh figures, uh, beside not every no at the time people didn't know what politics it's all it's also a question of whether an actor should be political because they come off ham-handed a lot of the time.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I agree with that.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as we talk about this, I I think of uh John Wayne in Stagecoach and the other great film, The Searchers, where he's such a presence in front of the camera and can really really act act his heart out.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it makes me forget some some of the insensitive, silly things he's said and done.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but so it's different from Woody Allen.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe because it's older, maybe because I you know, I I think I think part of it is I don't think I ever had a kind of um almost personal relationship with John Wayne.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: As you know, when I watched John Wayne, he'd been in he'd been in the film industry for decades, and he was just some older man who played a cowboy a lot of the time that I was I didn't discover until later, some of the nuances of that, what a great actor he really was.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: But with with Woody Allen, I I was there almost from the beginning, and it feels like a personal betrayal, and which would be different, I think, for someone in their 20s or 30s who discovers Woody Allen, yeah, but it's and says, My dad liked Woody Allen, yeah and what he's kind of funny.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was I heard he was a jerk and maybe a sociopath.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but you said in the in the on our Woody podcast, you said some of the young people you encountered and you asked about Woody Allen, they knew they weren't supposed to like him, but they didn't know he'd lied.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, some some did, but but I'm you know, I'm thinking I'm just comparing it to my own, you know, my own experience with with Hollywood.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: John Wayne was an was an older actor.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, I I had no business watching him because I should have been watching the actors of my generation.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: What about Picasso?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: Where are you on Picasso?
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm fine with Picasso.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean you know you're so horrible.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: He was a bad he was a bad man, but I mean pretty pretty exciting artist.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, I I did have the privilege of visiting Madrid and seeing the Guernica in person, and it's it's a shocking, it's a showstopping piece of artwork.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big horizontal, almost black and white.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: Still works.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it that's a real political painting.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing about it is I'd seen it, you know, in my teens in New York, in New York, all wall, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art, where it was on loan from the Spanish government to be to be returned after the 45-year reign of Franco.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: And why what a reversal it was.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: I we're living in pretty much a fascist government, certainly authoritarian, yeah, and corrupt and cruel and illegitimate.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: And here I am a visitor in the completely reverse circumstances in Madrid, looking at this profound piece of work.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: But let's move on.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have a question.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: How does how does Anna Wintor how does she how does what's the look for her right now?
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think she's clearly damaged her own reputation.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she uh we can say you she misread the room by a long shot, and that's a big room, you know.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think she doesn't didn't do herself any any favors.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: She she was if you put it in political terms, she spent a lot of political capital on John Galliano.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: She risked a lot of um political capital on Galliano and lost.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: So she lost, and it's it's kind of um, you know, she has a place in the cultural firmament that we will never forget.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: As long as that movie is is lasts and has sequels, we'll never forget that Devil Hurst Prada.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean, well, might there be a time when we actually remember Meryl Streep's performance more than we'll remember Anna Winter?
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's happened with films in the past.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: The characters that based on she's a she's an interesting character.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she, you know, in her role, and again, there, you know, there is a a question about um, you know, profit in all of this because fashion is you know, it's a separate conversation.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is a is it a form of art?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: Really, I mean, in her role as leading that magazine, she balances, she's gonna have to balance or has progressive social values with commercial fashion interests.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: And she's out lasted every trend over the course of her career.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting that she's willing to invest her reputation in John in someone like John Galliano.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of it's a little bit stubborn, it's kind of stubborn, and yeah, but she's think about it, she's dodged um defending fur.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um dodge accusations of cultivating white, she got cultivating white privilege at the magazine.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: So her the question is, will her reputation endure?
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: And do we care?
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the most, you know, the thing about fashion is we often think about people who love fashion as being um out of touch with reality, maybe.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe not rare rarefied community, a rarefied uh, you know, plus space.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a rarefied space, and and it's a little bit people have tunnel vision.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're they're in both deleted.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's the met gala, as you said, the cost of those, it's so elitist.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: Favors beauty, it favors beauty.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: But here's here's one a real oversight from the magazine.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: In March of 2011, they featured, they they had a feature interview with the wife of Syrian dictator.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, her name is Osma al-Assad, um, the former uh former president of Bashir, the wife of former Syrian president Bashir al-Assad.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: Butcher absolutely did he murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands of his own people.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: He's now residing in in Russia.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he's uh one of the great evil characters well and it this was so uh this was so clumsily handled.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was around the time when the um the whole Arab world was in uh in approaching an uprising, which we called the the Arab Spring.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: So this is March 2011.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: The Arab Spring really erupted about a month later, and they were so embarrassed they bleached it from every every aspect of the max.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I happened to be doing research for this pod.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: I happen to be doing a little bit of research, and I stumbled across um the University of St.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: Andrews Center for Syrian Studies, where they have featured the only remaining online copy of Vogue's Ozma al-Assad profile.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: Listeners, wait for the name of this title.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: A Rose in the Desert.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's so tone-deaf.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's pretty incredible.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I was thinking, you know, to get an article in print in Vogue must have they must have so many editorial meetings, there's so many articles they don't put in to get in, you know, and that's so tone-deaf.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole staff debating the article.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: Anna Winter signed off on that.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's on her on her rap sheet.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is on her wrap sheet, and then another another interesting thing that sort of demonstrates her her loyalty to certain causes, just as she was loyal to John Galliano, she was very loyal to fur.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: And there were fur activists all over her.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: In 1996, she was at lunch at the four seasons.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: Four seasons, everyone.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is where the elite in media uh have their power lunches, right?
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: And someone dropped a dead raccoon, a carcass, on her plate.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: And um it's very she's off mean.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: She's uh she it's very endplayed.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: She's pretty she's a pretty cool, uh, pretty cool cat.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: When they dropped uh they cleaned the plate, she she looked at everyone and said, Merry Christmas.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: It must have been in December.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: You couldn't see her eyes because she was always wearing sunglasses.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: And she had a tofu pie attack.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: Someone someone threw a tofu pie at her face.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know how you make a tofu pie, but that's pretty impressive.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, she as we said before, she was slow to uh you know lean into the devil as a product.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, Anna Winter sees something in John Galliano that we don't.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: We I see his anti-Semitism and his racism and his dressing up homeless people in newspapers.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it's uh but that's I just don't, I don't, I don't I don't get it.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think the future is for John Galliano?
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: You you think if enough time passes and well, we've already cast the movie, he could be in his character on it.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's 65 years old, and he's his career is you know as strong as ever.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's he has a job, he has partnerships, he's he's entrenched in the uh he's been the fashion industry, and uh from from what I can tell, people in the fashion industry just might not care.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: What one more item one more item is that she Anna Winter had to apologize to staff during the Black Lives Latter uh Black Lives Matter movement, um, June of 2020.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: She she had to uh write a letter of apology to staff for um what having a very white white models you know not favoring diverse choices and so uh she's had a lot of blind spots in her career, but it's sort of I mean, jack god, she's still she's uh you know a big uh important person in the conde nast's um uh family.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: She but this may damage her reputation.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: She's 76, um so she's you know getting on in years, and she's no longer editor, but she is a she is the content director of conde nast.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when we say conde nast, we're not just talking about Vogue, we're talking about a family of magazines, including the New Yorker.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think she's anything to do with the the New York, she doesn't oversee what you know David Remnick is doing.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I wonder if she's I wonder well, I wonder, does she meet with David Remnick?
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they meet.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: I and she says, David, I have this, I have a profile I think would be very interesting for you.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: He's a man named John Galliano.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: Has your magazine covered him lately?
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: Epstein, I think you should put I don't know.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see, I don't see.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh uh to me it maybe it's a figurehead uh position, but uh you know, what do I know?
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say as as common folk, we we have a view that's that other people share when it comes to who should who should uh have the spotlight on them and who shouldn't.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um you think John Galliano is fine, fine as long as contextualized.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I may be on the other side of that, haven't made up my mind yet.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I think this brings us to another interesting thing.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, did we get any feedback on whether to include the headquake sound effect?
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god, uh yeah, we've had hundreds of responses, and it's split absolutely 50-50.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we haven't quite made up our minds yet.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: So can we do can we do a sound effect this time?
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: Boom.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh our new and this is this is a little bit of a departure for us, our headquake.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a shared headquake.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: Shared headquake.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's about an actor named Sydney Sweeney.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this month she became the center of international media attention following a controversial advertising campaign for the U.S.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: sports prediction market platform called Novig.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you've never heard of Novig, we have now, but you have now, and someone at Novig probably got a big fat promotion for signing Sydney Sweeney uh as a sponsor.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: There was nothing like a Sydney Sweeney controversy or scandal to go viral and get your name out there.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: This happened with her um what, no excuse genes.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember what was the gene guy.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: I have good I have good jeans, jeans, but I actually don't remember what brand it was, so it didn't work on me.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, I guess it didn't.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that was a silly controversy anyway.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: But here's an this one is a little this is also silly, but it's it's really off target.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Novig is um among the top five of the prediction market platforms.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, no, wait, wait, wait, no, you're missing.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: You missed well, yeah.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just finish.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: All right, okay.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: The top pro the one of the top platforms, if anyone knows about prediction pro prediction markets, it's betting.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's betting on anything, like what color tie someone is going to wear tomorrow.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's the weather, it's gambling.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's gambling, it's gambling.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: The top players are Couchi, Holly Market, Profit X, Novig number four.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: You knew your stuff.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: You do a lot of gambling.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: Manifold Markets is number five.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: Novig, possibly soon to take uh to take place of another one because of Sydney Sweeney.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, do you want to tell us about this controversy?
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: The controversy was, yeah, that I think it was a misplaced controversy.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the controversy, as I saw it, was that uh she was uh did a um number of pictures, pictorials where she's um in various states of undress.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: Mostly undressed, mostly completely undressed.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm afraid seeing Sydney Sweeney without enough clothes on.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the controversy was supposedly women, especially women, but other people as well, other genders well, uh didn't like that she'd was sexualizing women's sports.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the humanity the humanity, she was appeared on like holding a tennis racket and maybe holding a football, um, you know, without many clothes.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: And uh comment response to this.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, could they not find an actual sports figure to be in the picture?
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_01: Someone who actually she's not a she has nothing to do with sports, she's an actress.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know why.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I know why they chose her, but it's very attractive and it's got a lot of attention.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yes, a lot of people thought she was sexualizing women's sports just when women's sports was you know getting taken seriously.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the um female football league, soccer leagues have been incredibly taken, you know, doing amazing, amazing work and the US team and the British team, you know, they're taken seriously.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: And this was trivializing women's sports and sexualizing it.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: No, the cardivers, she's promoting gambling.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's what that's what I thought.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's what the controversy should be.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_01: The the scandal should be.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: Why is she lending her name, her image, um to gambling, which is a horrible thing, it's addictive.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've got nothing good to say about uh there's so much money in sports.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's what's that's what's abusing sports, that's what's defiguring sports, is the sports gambling, not and you know, maybe we should remind any everyone who's who is Sydney Sweeney.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: Why is she why is she who she is?
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: She made a big splash.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: She's been in a few films, she's been in The Handmaid's Tale.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she was in a film called Everything Sucks.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've never seen her in a but she was in uh the TV series Euphoria, um, which I think entered its third season.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: It is a shocking story about teens and drug addiction and sex, all all the all the good stuff.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're they're teenagers, and um, and she's voluptuous and blonde.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: And she had a earlier controversy about her politics, so she disavowed her republicanism.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_00: The controversy, she disavowed so initially she embraced her republicanism, or I'm I'm sorry, she dismissed anyone who cared that maybe she might have been possibly a Republican.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's different, and she was embraced by Trump.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: Trump embraced her because she's a great-looking babe, and uh one of the one of his one on his side.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's all for that.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of on her side.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_00: The the controversy was uh with the genes ad was that Sydney Sweeney has great genes, J-E-A-N-S, uh G-E-N for the American Eagle brand.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it we're we're we're hinting at eugenics, yeah, genetic, genetic superiority.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_01: It makes the left wing look so pathetic because it was such a so that just drove more traffic to to that side.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: I I had no problem with it.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's still why and they have no good gene.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_01: She does have good genes, she looks great.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what doesn't why can't she?
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: What's wrong with that?
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and the other so with this current with this Novig controversy, right?
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not only does it miss the point, but who cares if she's sexualizing athletics?
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: What we I mean, male athletes have done that in the past.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of number of male athletes.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she's an athlete, but oh my god, now she's a hypocrite or something, or she's right.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a silly she's a mountbatten.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_00: She thinks she's a mount baton, but she's no but.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: You were you she's masquerading as an athlete, but she's not got a no costume on, she's naked.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: No, the buttons the controversy should be that she's promoting the um what is it called?
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_00: The this aspect of gambling, the the the it's a prediction prediction platform, and it's rubbish, as a rubbish business.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_00: And listeners who aren't familiar with the prediction platforms, Novig specializes in sports, but when you participate in one of these on one of these platforms, you're not saying like, oh, I'm gonna bet on the Knicks, or you know, Mets have a good chance next Tuesday.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're making bets 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 times a day in small or large increments.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's a novelty right now, and it's very popular with um people of a younger age who maybe don't know the difference between you know betting on a prediction market and betting.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know the difference between speculating and investing.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Cal she does has an ad that I find particularly repulsive because it's a it's a young woman, uh, and you'll see this ad on social media saying, We are about to do a short sale.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to show you how.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: She's smiling, and the comments are adoring at this beautiful young Asian American woman who's who's showing everyone a short sale.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_00: Objectifying her.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay, okay, Mr.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_00: Mr.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_00: Wolf.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they are.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, the the the they are doing that, but the pet the the point is a short sale is is a bet.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, we do that on Wall Street.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's legal, but it's a bet.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's do need I go into the details about the sins or the the harm of of that.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_01: Need I you don't no, you don't need to.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: We all but it's it's very addictive.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's like you know, it's a bit like the um the um like the lottery.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the people who can least afford to play the lottery play the lottery.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_01: The people who can least afford to gamble tend to gamble, and they uh it's a it's a very pernicious business, it is taken over sports.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: It is it is really taken over sports.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_01: Is and the sports people in charge of the sports team have nothing bad to say about it because they're raking it in too.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_01: They're people making in their vested interests.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I I'm against Sydney Sweeney promoting this this dreadful scourge of our idea.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: I wish the backlash was about the moral hazards or the moral harm of having five major platforms uh accommodating betters.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know, as I think about this, the way our world works these days, as we enter this dark phase of society and running up to the midterm elections, where we have the the power of the presidential pardon um getting known criminals off the hook.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: We have conflict of interest in government, we have uh elected officials betting on insider trading.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_00: The corruption is so rife.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and not only that, we have um ICE murdering people with no follow-up investigation and lies covering up the reasons for it.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: Need I go into detail?
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, it feels I almost feel like before MAGA we were living in Bedford Falls.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, in the film It's a Wonderful Life.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and honestly, I know it wasn't that wonderful.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, but it does feel like we're in Pottersville right now, which was the alternate, it's the alternate dystopian reality that that occurs when George imagines himself having never been born.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Jimmy played by Jimmy Stewart.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, George Bailey wishes he had never been born, and what do we see?
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: We see this MAGA world.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I why do you think people misread that card?
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with you.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Who cares if she's sexualizing um women's sports?
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know not even women's sports, sports in general.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so why do you think people missed maybe people are so uh immune or you know to these sports, these sports gambling ads, we're seeing them everywhere.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_01: They sponsor everything.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you see them in bus shelters, on uh, you know, on television.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe people are are are immune or to what's the word I'm looking for?
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_01: They're just not they're not aware of the pernicious.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's just it's the fact that it's it's popular, it's exciting, it's popular, it's techie, it's sexy, and we don't see until until until we see the harm.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that and you know, betting is one of those things where we don't really see the harm it causes.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_00: We don't see how you know, we don't see bankruptcy filings.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, and the ads you see on television do make it look fun, and it's these people who enjoy betting on whatever stuff.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, so um yeah, but that's I sound down.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we're I feel like we're moralizing a lot, but that's okay, I think.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_01: We're moralizing in a certain yeah, well I we I don't mind criticizing gambling.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I that's fair enough.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not we're not criticizing, you know, uh Cindy Sweeney for you know some of the other things she's done, and we're not criticizing her for what people haven't done.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think what we're criticizing is the critics.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_00: The critics have missed the point.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, they haven't read the room.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and they're they're uh I I don't know what their obsession is, but um I wish they would refocus their criticism to to a scourge that's happening in our society.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And fair enough.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_01: There, got it in.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Fair enough.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, say your prayers, podcast listeners.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks for joining us.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_01: This has been Boomer Has It.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_01: I am JB Miller in London, and I'm Jim Jelamis in Brook, London.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Also in London.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.