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Disco Donald · Political Junkie Podcast

0:17
SPEAKER_00: The LBGT community is just what's happened to them is just so sad.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: And to be thinking about where their policies are currently with this
0:27
SPEAKER_00: administration is a disgrace to that community.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: I will tell you right now.
0:32
Clinton wants to allow radical Islamic terrorists to pour into
0:36
our country.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: They enslave women and they murder gays.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't want them in our country.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself, who is really the friend of women and the LGBT community?
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump with actions or Hillary Clinton with her words?
0:58
That was Donald Trump before the 2016 election and right after
1:03
the Pulse nightclub
1:04
shooting in which Trump was trying to present himself as the
1:09
pro-gay candidate as
1:10
SPEAKER_01: opposed to Hillary Clinton,
1:12
SPEAKER_01: which is something we'll take up a little bit later.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: This is the Disco Donald edition of the Political Junkie podcast.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm Claire Potter.
1:19
SPEAKER_03: And I'm Neil Young.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: And we're here to talk about everything gay in the Trump administration,
1:26
SPEAKER_01: but we're going to start,
1:28
SPEAKER_01: as we always do,
1:29
SPEAKER_01: with the news.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: For the past week,
1:31
California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has trolled
1:34
President Donald J.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: Trump with tweets,
1:37
SPEAKER_01: memes,
1:37
and AI-generated videos that mimic MAGA world's worship of him
1:41
as a sacred figure,
1:43
SPEAKER_01: a pop culture icon,
1:44
SPEAKER_01: and a superhero.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: Newsom has been getting attention for this,
1:48
SPEAKER_01: but also getting out information,
1:50
SPEAKER_01: for example,
1:51
SPEAKER_01: that red state murder rates are higher than those in blue states.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: He's also spoofing Mago with a so-called patriot shop that has made,
1:59
SPEAKER_01: I kid you not,
2:01
SPEAKER_01: Neil,
2:02
SPEAKER_01: $300,000 since Monday,
2:04
SPEAKER_01: selling merch that says things like make America Gavin again.
2:09
Is it a coincidence that he has also surged eight points in the
2:13
polls and is
2:14
SPEAKER_01: currently the leading Democratic candidate for 2026 now or 2028?
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
2:20
Now,
2:22
Neil,
2:23
it's much too early for us to really start calling it for
2:27
presidential candidates.
2:28
But do you think Newsom is really on to something with all of
2:32
this crazy stuff?
2:33
SPEAKER_03: I do.
2:34
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
2:34
SPEAKER_03: first of all,
2:35
just that spike in his numbers is not a bad move at this point
2:40
if you're gaming
2:41
SPEAKER_03: out,
2:42
SPEAKER_03: you know,
2:42
SPEAKER_03: a three year campaign for 2028.
2:45
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
2:46
a lot of this is just I think the numbers going up is probably
2:49
a lot of it is just
2:50
SPEAKER_03: based on name recognition.
2:51
Often those of us who watch politics closely forget how many
2:55
Americans don't.
2:57
And so name recognition and visibility does a huge task in
3:03
improving people's polling numbers.
3:04
SPEAKER_03: And I think that's what's happening a lot here.
3:07
I also think we can discuss what we think about this tactic and
3:11
how we feel about
3:14
SPEAKER_03: sort of Newsom Trumping himself.
3:16
Although I don't think that this is all that distant from sort
3:19
of who he is as a
3:20
SPEAKER_03: person and a politician.
3:22
Although I think he's probably leaning into it a lot more just
3:25
given the Trump of it all.
3:27
SPEAKER_03: But how do you feel about this?
3:29
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm mixed.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: I agree with you that name recognition is everything.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
3:34
SPEAKER_01: it was sort of astonishing before the last election,
3:37
there were all kinds of people walking into the voting booth
3:40
actually having no
3:41
SPEAKER_01: idea who Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were,
3:43
SPEAKER_01: which astonishes me.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: I think you really have to work hard to avoid elections nowadays.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: However...
3:51
I think that Newsom is not responding to something that young
3:57
Democrats and many
3:58
SPEAKER_01: Democrats certainly want,
3:59
SPEAKER_01: which is some kind of program.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: What do Democrats stand for?
4:03
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, he can't do that by himself.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we really need the party to coalesce around a message.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: So in the absence of that,
4:13
SPEAKER_01: Newsom putting himself out there in a way that's funny,
4:17
SPEAKER_01: cute,
4:17
SPEAKER_01: tacky,
4:18
SPEAKER_01: emphasizes two things,
4:20
SPEAKER_01: one of which is he's younger and
4:23
SPEAKER_01: than Donald Trump.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: The other is he's handsomer than Donald Trump.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: And the other is he is both younger and he may not be younger than J.D.
4:31
Vance,
4:32
but he's certainly a heck of a lot better looking and he has a
4:34
sense of humor.
4:36
SPEAKER_03: Definitely.
4:37
SPEAKER_03: I agree with all that.
4:38
SPEAKER_03: I also just want to,
4:39
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
4:39
SPEAKER_03: we're historians here,
4:40
so I want to sort of make a little bit of a historical argument
4:42
or just sort of
4:43
SPEAKER_03: flag what I see as a real change here that's worth noting,
4:47
SPEAKER_03: which is like,
4:48
we have definitely turned the corner from something that wasn't
4:52
all that long ago,
4:53
SPEAKER_03: which was sort of the Michelle Obama era of politics,
4:57
SPEAKER_03: where it was when they go low,
4:58
SPEAKER_03: we go high,
4:59
SPEAKER_03: right?
4:59
SPEAKER_03: Like that was the 2015, 2016 message.
5:03
to respond to the first Trump moment,
5:07
it feels like that one is no longer the case.
5:10
SPEAKER_03: Or if it is,
5:12
Newsom is certainly not going to be the one to take that as an
5:15
approach for his
5:16
SPEAKER_03: campaign strategy.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: And really, who's surprised?
5:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I admired Michelle Obama for taking that approach.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: But how many of us heard our mothers say to us,
5:27
SPEAKER_01: you know,
5:27
SPEAKER_01: don't worry about that bully in the playground,
5:29
SPEAKER_01: dear.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: You know, just walk away and everybody will like you for it.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, everybody didn't like you for it.
5:37
Everybody thought you were just like a big pussy for handling
5:41
it that way.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: So I think if they go low, we go low.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: Might as well try it.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:47
SPEAKER_03: I don't like it, but I think you're right.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: All right.
5:51
So our second item here is that MAGA World went into a tailspin
5:55
this week.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't even believe it when I saw this was happening.
5:58
When the iconic right-wing Cracker Barrel restaurant chain
6:02
unveiled its corporate redesign.
6:05
There was a new logo and decorating scheme and menu items like
6:09
margaritas that
6:10
SPEAKER_01: apparently Cracker Barrel people think are too female.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: What upset people most is that this figure known as the old timer,
6:21
SPEAKER_01: or sometimes as old Uncle Herschel,
6:23
who is this old guy sitting next to the barrel with his elbow
6:27
up in the barrel,
6:28
who I suppose harkens back to the good old days in the South
6:33
where the Ku Klux Klan
6:35
SPEAKER_01: hung out in restaurants and so on before they went and
6:40
SPEAKER_01: hurt people, that that person was removed.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: Now,
6:44
what the MAGA people are saying is that the national chain had
6:50
abandoned its
6:51
SPEAKER_01: old-fashioned charm.
6:52
Donald Trump jumped in to say that Cracker Barrel should put
6:55
everything back the way it was.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: And as of late yesterday, they actually did that.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: Now,
7:01
SPEAKER_01: There's one other thing that I think our audience should know,
7:04
which is the chain has been on the brink of bankruptcy for a
7:08
really long time.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: And this is what this redesign,
7:11
SPEAKER_01: I believe,
7:11
SPEAKER_01: was aimed at to sort of create a larger customer base.
7:14
So all the people who love Cracker Barrel don't seem to be
7:18
supporting it very well.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: Are they, Neil?
7:20
SPEAKER_03: That's right.
7:21
SPEAKER_03: Or there's just not enough of them anymore.
7:23
SPEAKER_03: I mean, what they had said was our audience is only older generation.
7:28
SPEAKER_03: They're probably not coming as much.
7:30
SPEAKER_03: They took a huge hit during COVID as many places did,
7:33
but haven't rebounded from that because I think they're so
7:36
attached to a particular
7:37
SPEAKER_03: generation.
7:38
SPEAKER_03: And this was their attempt to reach new folks and new people.
7:43
SPEAKER_03: new clients and particularly people of a younger age.
7:46
SPEAKER_03: So I don't care about the trademark or the logo sign.
7:52
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I don't have
7:53
SPEAKER_03: I don't care about any of this really,
7:55
SPEAKER_03: but did you see the way that they sort of re-imagined the inside of the
7:59
SPEAKER_03: restaurants?
8:01
SPEAKER_03: It's truly horrible.
8:02
But this is also just the type of restaurant I wouldn't
8:05
normally choose to go to to begin with.
8:07
SPEAKER_03: And it doesn't seem all that radical or woke to me that it just thought,
8:11
SPEAKER_03: okay,
8:12
SPEAKER_03: our infrastructures need a bit of an update.
8:14
SPEAKER_03: This is the normal thing any business does to stay current and fresh.
8:19
this is so perceived as like holding these nostalgic symbols
8:24
and meanings that are
8:27
obviously very fraught in our political culture and it was a
8:31
huge opportunity for
8:32
white americans to sort of engage grievance politics and yeah
8:37
so they're back to
8:37
SPEAKER_03: the old logo and they've gotten a ton of free press this week
8:42
SPEAKER_03: But the question remains,
8:43
are people actually going to go to this place and order lots of
8:46
fried food when
8:47
SPEAKER_03: that's not what really most Americans eat anymore?
8:50
SPEAKER_01: Right.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: Well, and let me say, I haven't gone to Cracker Barrel in years.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: I rarely did anyway.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're by the side of the road all over the place.
8:58
But there was a big boycott of Cracker Barrel when they
9:01
announced a policy that
9:03
SPEAKER_01: said that all of their employees basically had to be straight.
9:07
They didn't come out and say you couldn't be gay because that
9:09
would have been
9:09
SPEAKER_01: breaking the law,
9:10
SPEAKER_01: but that you had to reflect
9:11
SPEAKER_01: the family values of the chain.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: They seem to have backed off of that,
9:16
although I continued to remember it and continued not going to
9:20
Cracker Barrel
9:21
SPEAKER_01: because of it,
9:21
which I think is kind of a sign that once these things get in
9:25
the public mind,
9:26
SPEAKER_01: they really stick.
9:27
I think the other thing that I'm looking at is there is a kind
9:31
of limited,
9:32
SPEAKER_01: and as you're saying,
9:33
SPEAKER_01: shrinking audience for the kind of nostalgia that MAGA is selling,
9:38
SPEAKER_01: that Donald Trump is selling.
9:41
And so you have to wonder whether this is some kind of a
9:45
metaphor for the direction of the GOP.
9:48
I mean,
9:49
you know,
9:49
I don't want to take it too seriously,
9:51
but the sort of burst of outrage.
9:53
SPEAKER_01: At first, I thought they were just trying to knock Epstein off Twitter.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: And then I saw people were really serious.
9:59
The other thing I started thinking about was that article or
10:04
the collection of
10:05
SPEAKER_01: articles that Eric Hobsbawm
10:06
SPEAKER_01: did years ago called the invention of tradition,
10:09
because people kept talking about Cracker Barrel as traditional
10:14
and old fashioned
10:15
SPEAKER_01: and so on.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: It was invented in 1979.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: And so that caused me to think, you know, it's interesting.
10:24
1979 is when the effects of the civil rights movement have
10:29
actually kind of solidified.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: And yes, Ronald Reagan gets elected the next year, but
10:36
SPEAKER_01: The sort of latching onto Cracker Barrel,
10:39
SPEAKER_01: which is Southern,
10:41
as something traditional that is of value to our culture
10:45
strikes me as in keeping
10:48
SPEAKER_01: with MAGA's white supremacist politics.
10:52
yeah and i i think that's so smart and just in terms of the
10:55
symbology and sort of
10:56
the shrinking audience for it just to tie it back to the
10:59
newsome conversation if
11:00
this guy is going to sort of take the meme heavy path to his
11:05
political future it
11:06
does seem like there's an opportunity for the left or at least
11:09
for folks like gavin
11:10
SPEAKER_03: newsome to develop a sort of nostalgia tinged symbology that works
11:16
SPEAKER_03: for actually a broader audience,
11:19
SPEAKER_03: one that's obviously directed towards Democrats,
11:21
SPEAKER_03: but that has appeal across a partisan divide that also might be much more
11:27
SPEAKER_03: generationally fresh,
11:29
SPEAKER_03: but still ties into people's sense of nostalgia and tradition,
11:33
but one that is probably not as niche as this one we see sort
11:37
of waning with
11:38
SPEAKER_03: Cracker Barrel and the like.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: Right,
11:41
SPEAKER_01: and it's also of a piece,
11:42
SPEAKER_01: of course,
11:43
with Trump's urging the Washington commanders to change their
11:48
name back to the old
11:50
SPEAKER_01: racist name that they had for many,
11:52
SPEAKER_01: many years.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: And that, of course, is very, very active on right-wing Twitter.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: And the sort of sense that someone wrote the other day
11:59
who I was in conversation with about this,
12:02
said,
12:03
Native Americans are part of our common past.
12:07
And I was like,
12:07
no,
12:08
they are not part of your common past or my common past.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: They are part of a Native American past.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: And so this return to a time when you could simply
12:19
extract symbols from their historical context and rewrite them
12:25
or reuse them for a
12:27
SPEAKER_01: contemporary purpose.
12:28
Seems to be where manga is at,
12:30
and it seems like a very fragile place to be nowadays.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about another kind of nostalgia.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: One of my
12:38
SPEAKER_01: Favorite slash least favorite restaurant chains ever,
12:41
SPEAKER_01: Hooters,
12:41
which actually did file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last spring
12:46
and closed 30
12:47
SPEAKER_01: locations in Florida and California,
12:49
SPEAKER_01: may be in for a renaissance.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: Attorney Neil Kiefer,
12:53
who owns two dozen franchises and sees the second Trump
12:56
administration as a great
12:58
SPEAKER_01: opportunity to market a tacky aesthetic,
13:01
SPEAKER_01: he actually said that,
13:02
SPEAKER_01: says he wants to,
13:03
SPEAKER_01: quote,
13:04
SPEAKER_01: re-Hooterize the chain.
13:06
This apparently means butter on everything and slightly longer
13:10
shorts for the
13:11
SPEAKER_01: all-female waitstaff.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: He said their cheeks should not be hanging out of the shorts.
13:16
And they will also be no longer instructed to do everything
13:19
short of a pole dance to get a tip.
13:21
The new business plan will emphasize a wholesome nostalgia for
13:25
scantily clad women.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that great?
13:28
SPEAKER_03: Amazing.
13:29
But they're also covered and they're not apparently crossing
13:32
some line that I'm unaware of.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: Neil.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: Do we need Hooters to come back to America to make it great again?
13:39
SPEAKER_03: I don't think so,
13:41
SPEAKER_03: but I love that he said the quiet part out loud,
13:44
that literally this is a moment to lean into tackiness because
13:47
of that gold-covered
13:49
SPEAKER_03: monster in the White House.
13:51
SPEAKER_03: This is a moment for Tacky to come back.
13:55
found this fast i have never been to a hooters i've been to
13:57
cracker barrel many
13:58
times um which i think is you know when you grow up in a
14:01
southern family that goes
14:03
to church you stop on the side of the highway to eat at cracker
14:07
barrel obviously
14:08
not at hooters and also hooters obviously never had appeal to
14:11
me when i became an
14:12
adult because more than a mouthful is the company slogan and
14:16
right you know we
14:17
SPEAKER_03: don't have to spell this out
14:19
But I found I really went down a rabbit hole on the articles
14:23
here and the way they
14:24
SPEAKER_03: were parsing what was like appropriate shorts and not appropriate shorts.
14:29
SPEAKER_03: And like.
14:30
SPEAKER_03: As a gay guy, all of it will look like pretty scanty to me.
14:35
But I love that there's a sort of scanty appropriateness and a
14:39
scanty inappropriateness.
14:41
SPEAKER_03: And this guy, that line is clear to him.
14:43
SPEAKER_03: Right.
14:44
And that there's a sort of like tasteful nostalgia one can get
14:47
back to that is
14:49
SPEAKER_03: markedly different from the tawdry indecency that the restaurant has now.
14:56
Well,
14:56
you know,
14:56
I hadn't actually thought about it in this way before you said
14:59
that,
14:59
Neil.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: But when we think about appropriate tiny shorts,
15:05
SPEAKER_01: I guess we need to think,
15:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:07
SPEAKER_01: Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
15:09
Like they are considered tasteful or like at least riding that
15:15
line between tasteful and lewd.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: And of course,
15:18
there are very strict rules for NFL cheerleaders about what
15:21
they're not allowed to
15:22
SPEAKER_01: do,
15:22
SPEAKER_01: which is like practically everything that
15:25
SPEAKER_01: that also keeps that line intact.
15:28
But the other thing that I thought was interesting about these
15:31
articles is nobody
15:32
SPEAKER_01: talks about the thing that is being advertised,
15:36
SPEAKER_01: the Hooters,
15:37
SPEAKER_01: right?
15:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, it's called Hooters for a reason.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: And of course that may be a word that nobody,
15:46
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:46
SPEAKER_01: my father used it from time to time,
15:48
SPEAKER_01: but certainly our generation is,
15:51
SPEAKER_01: I don't think he even knew that word.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: The only reason I know it is that my father used it.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: But it sort of goes in a category of like,
15:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:58
SPEAKER_01: talking about the shelf,
15:59
which is how large-breasted women were sometimes referred to as
16:03
having a shelf,
16:04
SPEAKER_01: and so on,
16:04
SPEAKER_01: and a range of euphemisms.
16:06
SPEAKER_01: But they don't actually talk about...
16:09
SPEAKER_01: the Hooters at all.
16:10
And,
16:11
you know,
16:11
they talk about the shorts,
16:13
they talk about the hula hoops and so on.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: The other thing that I actually thought was interesting about this,
16:18
SPEAKER_01: Neil,
16:19
was that part of the chain's demise was that it got split in
16:24
two and one half of it
16:26
was being run by private equity and the other half was being
16:29
run by franchise
16:30
SPEAKER_01: owners.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: And the private equity half apparently
16:34
SPEAKER_01: got weirder and weirder.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: So this guy is eliminating all that.
16:38
Anyway,
16:38
we will see if Hooters returns to our country to make America
16:43
great again.
16:44
We have one more news item that I just want to throw in because
16:47
it's actual politics.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: Today,
16:49
we learned that bright red Iowa no longer has a Republican
16:52
supermajority in the
16:53
SPEAKER_01: state legislature.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: Democrat Caitlin Dry appears to have defeated Republican Christopher
17:01
SPEAKER_01: Prosh by 11 points in a lean red Northwest district near Sioux City.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: Neil,
17:08
SPEAKER_01: I know we can't sort of look at these election by election results,
17:14
SPEAKER_01: but that a lean red Iowa district kicked out the Republicans.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: Is that something we should be paying attention to?
17:22
SPEAKER_03: By an 11 point margin?
17:24
I hadn't heard the,
17:25
I just saw the news,
17:26
but I hadn't seen what the results were.
17:28
SPEAKER_03: So I'm
17:30
SPEAKER_03: I think that's a very telling thing.
17:32
SPEAKER_03: Obviously,
17:32
SPEAKER_03: Democratic voters are keyed up and they're ready to go and to act in any
17:36
SPEAKER_03: opportunity they have.
17:38
I think it's a question what that looks like a year plus from
17:42
now when we're in a
17:43
SPEAKER_03: midterm election where it
17:44
like everyone's engaged or certainly more people are engaged,
17:47
but this is not bad news.
17:49
SPEAKER_03: And I think Democrats have to be really happy about this.
17:51
And I would think that Republicans should be very concerned to
17:54
lose what should
17:55
SPEAKER_03: have been a pretty safe district to them.
17:57
SPEAKER_03: And so certainly to lose it by those numbers.
18:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's right.
18:02
I think we're also getting a little bit of information about a
18:06
demographic that's
18:07
SPEAKER_01: hard to poll,
18:08
SPEAKER_01: which is agriculture.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: You know,
18:11
we know that American agriculture has gotten hit pretty hard
18:15
this year with the
18:16
SPEAKER_01: Trump tariffs and other bad decisions that are being made in Washington,
18:20
SPEAKER_01: the removal of subsidies and so on.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, if we are seeing rural people angry
18:29
SPEAKER_01: about what's happening in Washington, Iowa is where it would show up.
18:34
I mean,
18:34
it's a very well-educated population,
18:37
regardless of what you do for a living.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: And they're noticing, I think.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: All right.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: So Neil, let's go back to our happy place, gay conservatives.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: Certainly your happy place, but it also became my happy place after I
18:52
SPEAKER_01: read your wonderful, wonderful book.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: And our focus this week is not on all gay conservatives,
18:57
SPEAKER_01: but those who are currently surrounding Donald Trump.
19:02
It's an administration that is determined to stamp out the
19:05
individual rights that
19:06
SPEAKER_01: the LGBT community has achieved over the last half century.
19:10
And yet we also have a lot of gay men in Washington in very
19:14
powerful positions that
19:16
SPEAKER_01: we can name because they're all out to each other and to the world.
19:20
who say actually their presence in a very conservative
19:24
administration is the sign
19:27
SPEAKER_01: that all gay rights have been achieved and nothing else needs to happen.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: Neil,
19:31
how do we start a conversation about people who seem to be so
19:38
clueless about who
19:39
SPEAKER_01: most LGBT people are?
19:42
SPEAKER_03: Well,
19:42
SPEAKER_03: I'll say that,
19:43
SPEAKER_03: first of all,
19:43
SPEAKER_03: I have lots of thoughts here,
19:45
SPEAKER_03: having written a book about the history of this movement.
19:47
SPEAKER_03: And I think that the history is instructive, as always, here.
19:52
One of the things that gay Republicans were working for for
19:55
decades was for
19:57
SPEAKER_03: recognition that,
19:59
SPEAKER_03: A,
19:59
SPEAKER_03: they belonged to the party,
20:00
SPEAKER_03: that they were already within the party itself,
20:02
SPEAKER_03: and for better position within it,
20:04
SPEAKER_03: sort of better treatment,
20:05
SPEAKER_03: better visibility.
20:07
SPEAKER_03: and that those could be mechanisms of power.
20:10
SPEAKER_03: In order to advance gay rights forward,
20:12
SPEAKER_03: their notion of gay rights was incredibly limited,
20:15
although I think it was one that was really important and did
20:18
accomplish some
20:19
SPEAKER_03: consequential things that can be seen as true progress,
20:23
SPEAKER_03: but limited nonetheless.
20:24
SPEAKER_03: But the goal has been for sort of publicity,
20:29
SPEAKER_03: for visibility and presence and power within the Republican Party itself.
20:34
And on those grounds,
20:35
Trump has really granted it to a handful of white gay men.
20:40
SPEAKER_03: And this movement has really always been a movement of white gay men.
20:45
now that they're visible now that they have sort of a direct
20:48
access to trump um now
20:50
that he says sort of nice things about them and is willing to
20:54
be seen alongside of
20:56
them you know as far as their concern mission accomplished but
21:00
i think what it
21:00
ultimately is is both the historical fulfillment of that you
21:05
know that goal for
21:07
power access and presence but also what are the cost of that
21:11
and what sort of
21:12
SPEAKER_03: consequences and um
21:15
And what sort of things have been given up in this sort of
21:18
quest for power and
21:19
SPEAKER_03: inclusion at the expense of what other things?
21:22
SPEAKER_01: Right.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: Well,
21:23
SPEAKER_01: and it's one of the things I love so much about your book,
21:26
SPEAKER_01: which we link to in the post as we do every week.
21:30
But listeners might want to go and take a look at it because
21:34
you begin to fill in
21:35
SPEAKER_01: what I think is a really important
21:37
SPEAKER_01: big unwritten history.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
21:39
I remember early in the AIDS crisis when I was young and living
21:44
in Manhattan and
21:45
sort of peripherally knew a couple of the guys involved with
21:48
the gay men's health
21:49
SPEAKER_01: crisis,
21:50
SPEAKER_01: there was one big sort of
21:53
calamitous moment in which they were about to have their first
21:57
fundraiser.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: And there was a huge fight within the group about whether to send out the
22:03
invitations in plain brown envelopes or whether to send it out
22:08
with the gay men's
22:09
SPEAKER_01: health crisis return address.
22:11
And there were a great many men involved with GMHC who said,
22:14
I'm not out at work.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm not out to my family.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm not out to my neighbors.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: Do not send this shit to my home.
22:21
And so one of the things that I wonder is how long has there
22:27
been a sort of
22:29
SPEAKER_01: undercurrent of maybe not very political,
22:33
SPEAKER_01: maybe not very arch conservative,
22:35
but right-wing men who did not see their sexuality as
22:40
particularly defining and saw
22:43
SPEAKER_01: their accomplishments,
22:44
SPEAKER_01: their wealth,
22:45
SPEAKER_01: their professional status as much more who they were.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: Is that history well-written, Neil?
22:51
SPEAKER_03: Well, I think that's a huge theme of my book.
22:53
And it was a big thing that I noticed and then realized was
22:56
sort of central to the
22:57
SPEAKER_03: story and the argument I wanted to build.
22:59
SPEAKER_03: I thought that my book was going to begin in the late 1970s.
23:03
SPEAKER_03: And that's when a handful of these,
23:06
the first gay Republican organizations were founded almost
23:09
entirely in California.
23:11
in response to an anti-gay initiative that was on the ballot
23:14
here in 1978.
23:16
SPEAKER_03: And so I thought that's where the story began, right?
23:18
Like these out gay men create gay Republican organizations to
23:21
defeat this amendment
23:22
SPEAKER_03: and also to tell the Republican Party like,
23:24
SPEAKER_03: hey,
23:24
SPEAKER_03: we're here,
23:25
SPEAKER_03: we belong.
23:26
SPEAKER_03: But as I began researching those men and sort of their biographies,
23:30
SPEAKER_03: I realized some of them had been in,
23:31
SPEAKER_03: this is like 1978,
23:33
and I realized some of them had been involved in the Republican
23:35
Party since the
23:36
SPEAKER_03: 19th century.
23:38
And so I sort of started pulling my story back further and
23:41
further and realizing
23:42
SPEAKER_03: there was a long history
23:44
of closeted gay men from the middle of the 20th century through
23:48
those decades who
23:49
SPEAKER_03: were instrumental to the building of the Republican Party and the modern
23:53
SPEAKER_03: conservative movement.
23:54
SPEAKER_03: And even as many of them came out and sort of showed themselves to be gay
23:59
SPEAKER_03: Republicans publicly,
24:01
SPEAKER_03: two things developed.
24:02
One was a lot of them remained in the closet through the 80s,
24:05
through the 90s,
24:06
into the 2000s.
24:07
So you have that ongoing history of the closeted gay Republican
24:11
who's at the center
24:12
SPEAKER_03: of Republican Party politics in Washington,
24:15
SPEAKER_03: D.C.
24:15
SPEAKER_03: But even among those out gay Republicans,
24:19
the sort of overwhelming identity politics that they presented
24:23
was our sexuality is
24:26
SPEAKER_03: inconsequential.
24:27
SPEAKER_03: It's a secondary or even tertiary identity.
24:30
The things that matter most are we're conservatives,
24:34
we're Americans,
24:34
we're business owners.
24:36
And we believe in a sort of politics where our personal lives
24:41
doesn't matter.
24:42
And so I think that adheres to a general sort of conservative
24:46
philosophy that
24:48
SPEAKER_03: doesn't want to play up identity that much,
24:50
SPEAKER_03: even as it does engage identity politics.
24:53
SPEAKER_03: But all that is to say is,
24:55
I think it's sort of of the conservative temperament in
24:57
politics to downplay this
25:00
SPEAKER_03: particular identity
25:03
SPEAKER_03: as central to the politics itself.
25:05
SPEAKER_03: Like I'm a taxpayer first,
25:07
SPEAKER_03: I'm a patriotic American first,
25:10
and I want to work for a country and a party that doesn't hold
25:13
this against me,
25:14
but also doesn't like think that I need to talk about gay
25:17
rights all the time.
25:19
SPEAKER_03: Does that make sense?
25:20
SPEAKER_01: It makes total sense.
25:21
And I just want to return to this paradox of not wanting to
25:26
focus on identity,
25:28
SPEAKER_01: but the identity is pervasively there.
25:31
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
25:31
Featured in the New York Times article we both read this week
25:35
is Charles Moran,
25:36
SPEAKER_01: who was the president of the Log Cabin Republicans.
25:41
Donald Trump has now nominated him to,
25:43
I mean,
25:44
he is,
25:44
the National Nuclear Security Council.
25:47
chief at the department of energy which strikes me as kind of a
25:50
weird job because
25:51
we have almost no nuclear power plants online but whatever um
25:56
and he talks a lot
25:57
about the gay networks that he has a spreadsheet you know he's
26:01
always discovering a
26:02
new gay here and there the article opens with moran sort of
26:06
sitting there greeting
26:07
a range of people and saying you know i love my straights as
26:10
much as i love my gays
26:12
SPEAKER_01: but
26:13
SPEAKER_01: He also talks about this network as a power tribe.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: So,
26:18
SPEAKER_01: of course,
26:19
we know there were always gay networks in Washington that in
26:23
some ways were more
26:24
SPEAKER_01: effective because they were undercover.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: People weren't out.
26:28
But how is this power tribe functioning differently than the
26:33
old power tribe?
26:35
SPEAKER_03: Well,
26:35
SPEAKER_03: I think,
26:36
SPEAKER_03: you know,
26:37
the visibility of it and the sort of centrality of it to the
26:42
Trump administration
26:44
SPEAKER_03: is really different from past administrations.
26:47
SPEAKER_03: And certainly if we look back a couple of decades,
26:50
radically different from sort of the silent shadowy networks
26:54
that often operated
26:55
SPEAKER_03: like under the radar.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: Right.
26:58
SPEAKER_03: I do think that we see visible gay men in the Bush administration,
27:04
SPEAKER_03: less so in the Reagan administration,
27:05
although there were a ton of gay men who were known to be in
27:08
the administration,
27:09
SPEAKER_03: but it just wasn't public.
27:10
But I think to the extent that they are open and out there
27:14
about who they are and
27:17
SPEAKER_03: their access and proximity to Trump is really different.
27:21
SPEAKER_03: George W. Bush
27:23
definitely cultivated that relationship with log cabin
27:26
republicans and gay
27:27
conservatives but you know most of it was like they tried to
27:30
keep it on the down
27:31
low like you get one or two positive articles out there about
27:35
it to show that
27:36
you're not like a right-wing you know monster but like you
27:40
don't constantly show
27:42
that you're meeting with log cabin republicans that's really
27:45
different now with
27:46
SPEAKER_03: trump like there is a much more a sort of visible connection there
27:50
SPEAKER_03: And all of this matters,
27:51
SPEAKER_03: of course,
27:51
SPEAKER_03: because of what's happening in the political realm around LGBTQ rights,
27:55
SPEAKER_03: right?
27:55
SPEAKER_03: That visibility,
27:56
SPEAKER_03: that proximity is significant on its own,
27:59
SPEAKER_03: just as a historical development,
28:01
but is really significant now in the political moment in which
28:06
LGBTQ rights are so
28:08
SPEAKER_03: under assault by this administration.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: Well,
28:10
SPEAKER_01: and I want to talk about this a little bit,
28:12
because what really stands out for me with these men is someone
28:17
like Charles Moran
28:18
SPEAKER_01: and Scott Besant in particular.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: Scott Besant was never in the closet, as far as I can tell.
28:24
I mean,
28:24
one of the things he talks about is having wanted to go to a
28:28
military academy.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: Besant is about four years younger than me.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: And actually, we both went to Yale, which is how I tracked it.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: And Bessent wanted to go to a military academy,
28:38
SPEAKER_01: but he didn't want to lie about himself while he was there,
28:41
SPEAKER_01: which was a really interesting decision.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
28:43
SPEAKER_01: the 1980s were really that moment where,
28:46
SPEAKER_01: yes,
28:47
SPEAKER_01: some people were out,
28:48
SPEAKER_01: but it was also very clear that it could penalize you.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: There were a number of professional decisions I didn't.
28:55
choose because I was a lesbian,
28:57
one of which was the possibility of going into government.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: And I just thought, that's not for me.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: I can't be in the closet like that.
29:03
So Besant and Moran have never been in the closet and they're
29:07
not informed by the
29:09
SPEAKER_01: politics of the closet.
29:10
So how does that then make it possible for them to perhaps
29:15
navigate the homophobia
29:17
SPEAKER_01: of the administration differently?
29:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
29:19
SPEAKER_03: I think that's a great question because they sort of operate from,
29:23
SPEAKER_03: and I think it's not just about these two,
29:24
but about how they represent sort of a broader demographic here
29:29
in our moment of
29:31
SPEAKER_03: being sort of post-closet homosexuals.
29:34
SPEAKER_03: Also, overwhelmingly, again, it should be said, white gay men.
29:38
With that sexual identity comes a ton of privilege predicated
29:43
on race and gender
29:45
SPEAKER_03: that obviously have a lot of privilege in our culture in general,
29:50
SPEAKER_03: to say nothing of how much they're privileged in conservative circles.
29:53
SPEAKER_03: But I think there's not a sort of closeted mindset
29:57
SPEAKER_03: or even a historical sense of the closet in the way that was,
30:02
SPEAKER_03: I think,
30:02
SPEAKER_03: the case for a lot of older gay activists,
30:04
SPEAKER_03: particularly those on the left,
30:06
but was certainly the case for gay Republicans I was writing
30:09
about in the 60s,
30:10
SPEAKER_03: 70s,
30:10
SPEAKER_03: 80s,
30:11
SPEAKER_03: 90s,
30:11
SPEAKER_03: and even the early 2000s.
30:13
They're just operating in sort of a different cultural context
30:16
and a different sort
30:16
of personal biography in which I think they can really dismiss
30:21
homophobia as some
30:24
SPEAKER_03: like silly preoccupation of a few crazy folks,
30:28
but not as sort of like a system of actual culture and law that
30:32
one could return
30:33
SPEAKER_03: to.
30:34
Like they don't see the threat of homophobia as being real and
30:38
of radically
30:39
SPEAKER_03: changing their lives.
30:42
SPEAKER_03: I think they think it's more just sort of like a silly preoccupation of,
30:45
SPEAKER_03: you know,
30:46
SPEAKER_03: a handful of like the crazies.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, and it's interesting that
30:52
You know,
30:52
I have not seen what happened to Milo Yiannopoulos happen to
30:58
anyone else.
30:59
SPEAKER_01: And for listeners who are not tracking what that means,
31:02
SPEAKER_01: Yiannopoulos was,
31:03
SPEAKER_01: of course,
31:04
SPEAKER_01: the very flamboyant,
31:05
SPEAKER_01: very out gay Republican,
31:08
SPEAKER_01: really a fascist,
31:09
SPEAKER_01: who was...
31:10
taken down abruptly by a video posted to YouTube in which he
31:15
talked about a
31:16
relationship that he had with a priest in his youth in England
31:20
and how the priest
31:21
SPEAKER_01: had taught him to do oral sex.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: And it was like a gift for the rest of his life.
31:25
And Yiannopoulos was the kind of person who was always saying
31:28
outrageous things.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: Apparently this video had been batting around for a while,
31:33
SPEAKER_01: but on the eve of a CPAC where he was supposed to give a keynote speech,
31:38
SPEAKER_01: The invitation was withdrawn.
31:40
He was made,
31:41
you know,
31:42
totally persona non grata in the conservative movement.
31:46
And he disappeared only to reemerge a few years later saying
31:50
that he had converted
31:51
SPEAKER_01: to heterosexuality and everything is fine.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: But he had never really, he's never achieved his former status.
31:58
And so this seems not to affect any of these men at all,
32:02
that something could come
32:04
out about them that could turn them into the next milo yeah i
32:09
mean you know who
32:10
knows what's in their closets or what skeletons they have i
32:13
mean i think in general
32:14
these folks have conducted themselves very differently than
32:17
milo milo you know he
32:19
rose to power as an internet provocateur i mean he was one of
32:23
the key editors that
32:24
was essential to the rise of breitbart and that on his platform
32:28
on breitbart
32:29
his big contribution was to bring the Trump message forward in
32:35
2014,
32:35
2015,
32:35
2016.
32:36
SPEAKER_03: He was huge in Trump's rise to power,
32:38
SPEAKER_03: but he was always pushing the line,
32:40
both sort of publicly and apparently in a way that was
32:43
consistent with his own
32:44
SPEAKER_03: personal life.
32:45
I don't necessarily think that's the case with the sort of suit
32:48
and tie folks that
32:49
we see to be generally part and parcel of like log cabin
32:53
Republicans and the folks
32:54
SPEAKER_03: that are
32:55
SPEAKER_03: you know, normally in an administration.
32:57
SPEAKER_03: But I take your point that one doesn't have to have necessarily a totally
33:01
outrageous scandal like Milo has in order to have your career
33:06
derailed because that
33:07
SPEAKER_03: was the case not that long ago.
33:09
SPEAKER_03: Right.
33:09
And like it wouldn't be that hard to return to a moment in time
33:14
in which just by
33:15
SPEAKER_03: nature of your sexual life that is now considered,
33:20
SPEAKER_03: you know,
33:21
past the line of respectability and that that can ruin a life
33:25
and a career.
33:25
SPEAKER_03: I mean, we are not that far away from that being the case.
33:28
SPEAKER_03: They do not believe that we're ever returning to that.
33:31
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
33:31
SPEAKER_03: one of the things I found really interesting,
33:34
I interviewed almost three dozen gay Republicans when I was
33:37
doing my book.
33:38
SPEAKER_03: Many of them no longer identify as gay Republicans,
33:41
SPEAKER_03: but particularly of those who still are involved and active
33:45
SPEAKER_03: they all have this very progressive notion of history,
33:47
SPEAKER_03: meaning like history is a story where things get better over time.
33:52
SPEAKER_03: And you and I know as historians that that's not how history works.
33:56
SPEAKER_03: But I found it so fascinating that these political conservatives had this
34:00
SPEAKER_03: progressive notion of history,
34:01
SPEAKER_03: like things were bad in the past,
34:03
SPEAKER_03: things get better over time,
34:05
SPEAKER_03: and they're only going to get better in the future.
34:07
SPEAKER_03: There is a naivete towards that, that they hold that I think is,
34:13
allows them to continue to participate in this politics and say
34:17
nothing bad is coming up this.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: Right.
34:21
SPEAKER_03: They believe gay marriage is written in stone.
34:23
SPEAKER_03: They believe that public attitudes towards tolerance and acceptance of
34:28
SPEAKER_03: homosexuality,
34:29
SPEAKER_03: that those numbers can't decline.
34:31
I mean,
34:31
they really have this sort of optimistic view that I think is
34:35
truly blinding.
34:36
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's really interesting.
34:38
And they also may have a very accurate sense of the capacity of
34:44
the Republican
34:44
SPEAKER_01: Party to make things go away.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: And in this regard,
34:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking about Matt Schlapp,
34:49
SPEAKER_01: who is married to Mercedes Schlapp,
34:51
SPEAKER_01: who is,
34:52
he runs the Conservative Political Action Conference and is a
34:56
big mover and shaker
34:57
SPEAKER_01: in the MAGA movement.
34:58
SPEAKER_01: And he's also famous among the
35:02
SPEAKER_01: young Republican men for not being able to keep his hands to himself.
35:07
One of these things ended up in the paper where he was playing
35:10
pocket hockey with a
35:12
SPEAKER_01: poor young man who had just been designated to drive him to his hotel.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: And it seems to have gone away.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: Similarly,
35:21
SPEAKER_01: the guy who was head of the Florida Republican Party and his wife,
35:26
SPEAKER_01: who was one of the founders of Moms for Liberty,
35:28
SPEAKER_01: who turned out to be swingers.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: And she seems to have
35:32
SPEAKER_01: Actually, quite a thing for women.
35:34
SPEAKER_01: That came out and then it vanished.
35:36
So there does seem to be some capacity of this powerful
35:41
Republican machine to bury
35:44
things for the people that they choose and then let other
35:47
people like Milo go swing
35:50
SPEAKER_01: in the breeze,
35:50
SPEAKER_01: as it were.
35:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and Milo was never a Republican.
35:53
SPEAKER_03: He was not an inside party player.
35:55
SPEAKER_03: He's a right-wing fascist internet provocateur.
36:00
His efforts absolutely benefited the Republican Party and
36:03
benefited Trump's rise,
36:04
SPEAKER_03: but he's not a Washington power broker.
36:08
SPEAKER_03: He's a media player.
36:09
SPEAKER_03: And so I think that's
36:11
SPEAKER_03: you know, partly that he's also not an American.
36:13
SPEAKER_03: Like there's all sorts of ways I think he was easily otherized.
36:18
SPEAKER_03: And I do think,
36:19
SPEAKER_03: again,
36:20
SPEAKER_03: with all those examples you cite,
36:22
SPEAKER_03: I just have to say again,
36:23
SPEAKER_03: all white gay men.
36:25
SPEAKER_03: I think privilege of race and of gender is operating
36:30
enormously here when we talk about these men who've had sort of
36:33
same-sex scandals.
36:34
And I don't see that that means there's a sort of general
36:37
tolerance to sort of
36:38
sexual variation here within the Republican Party as much as
36:41
there is sort of
36:42
SPEAKER_03: protecting of patriarchal and racist power,
36:46
SPEAKER_03: you know,
36:46
SPEAKER_03: of these men.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: Right.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about a couple of other things that play here.
36:54
And listeners,
36:55
we're not just talking about Scott Bessent and what's his name?
37:00
SPEAKER_01: Charles Moran.
37:01
We're talking about like,
37:02
you know,
37:02
the 175 people that are on Charles Moran's
37:06
spreadsheet,
37:07
including Rick Grinnell,
37:08
who's been in the Trump circle for a long time.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: But there are two other things to introduce here, I think.
37:13
One is the Trump administration's truly awful record on lesbian
37:19
and gay rights.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: And let's put trans rights aside just for a second,
37:24
not just in terms of civil rights and maintaining the right not
37:29
to be discriminated
37:29
SPEAKER_01: against,
37:30
which no longer exists because the Justice Department will not
37:33
defend anybody who's
37:34
SPEAKER_01: filing
37:35
SPEAKER_01: such a claim, the government will not stand behind them.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: But also science policy,
37:41
SPEAKER_01: research policy,
37:42
SPEAKER_01: the Trump administration has defunded suicide hotlines.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
37:47
really the entire infrastructure of LGBT philanthropy has been
37:53
defunded by the
37:55
SPEAKER_01: federal government.
37:56
And a lot of those conservatives were very involved in building
37:59
that infrastructure.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: So what do I think these guys are thinking right now?
38:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
38:05
SPEAKER_03: this has been such a sort of stunning thing to watch,
38:08
SPEAKER_03: even as I think during the first administration,
38:11
SPEAKER_03: we saw all the signs of this continuing to happen.
38:14
SPEAKER_03: And that ties back to sort of my opening point about access to power.
38:19
SPEAKER_03: You know,
38:19
one of the enormous things that I noticed in the 70-year
38:23
history that I was writing
38:24
SPEAKER_03: about,
38:25
SPEAKER_03: and Log Cabin Republicans is sort of the focus of the book,
38:28
SPEAKER_03: Log Cabin Republicans,
38:30
SPEAKER_03: largest,
38:30
SPEAKER_03: oldest gay Republican organization in the country.
38:34
SPEAKER_03: Over three to four decades of their history,
38:38
SPEAKER_03: the first three to four decades of their existence,
38:41
SPEAKER_03: they really existed to be the thorn in the side of the Republican Party,
38:44
SPEAKER_03: to call out homophobic politicians,
38:47
SPEAKER_03: to primary them,
38:49
to work and collaborate with moderate and progressive
38:52
Republicans on sort of
38:54
SPEAKER_03: legislative change and also cultural change within the party.
38:57
SPEAKER_03: to hold the party's feet to the fire.
38:59
They didn't endorse some presidential candidates several times
39:02
in the past because
39:04
SPEAKER_03: folks like George H.W.
39:05
SPEAKER_03: Bush and George W.
39:06
SPEAKER_03: Bush,
39:07
SPEAKER_03: when they ran for office,
39:08
because they didn't think they were progressive enough on gay
39:11
rights issues.
39:12
And the enormous transformation they made in the Trump era is
39:15
the one that every
39:16
SPEAKER_03: single other Republican organization
39:19
SPEAKER_03: has made and every other Republican group has made,
39:21
SPEAKER_03: which is to collapse into full-blown Trumpism,
39:25
SPEAKER_03: to abandon whatever their long-held principles were,
39:28
SPEAKER_03: and to collapse into a Trumpism for access to power.
39:32
SPEAKER_03: And so, yes, they're highly visible.
39:34
Yes,
39:34
they have proximity to a president in a way that they never
39:37
have before,
39:38
but at what cost?
39:40
SPEAKER_03: At no longer willing to be a voice within the party of dissent,
39:44
SPEAKER_03: which is what they were historically.
39:47
SPEAKER_03: And so that includes not just being quiet about a lot of these issues,
39:52
SPEAKER_03: but in many cases,
39:53
SPEAKER_03: cheering them on and applauding them.
39:55
And some of those fall neatly along the lines of like trans
39:58
issues versus gay
39:59
SPEAKER_03: issues,
39:59
SPEAKER_03: which they see as a stark divide.
40:02
SPEAKER_03: But even in this last year, this first year of the administration,
40:07
They are being silent about direct attacks onto the sort of gay
40:11
rights that they
40:12
long advocated for and the very organizations and philanthropic
40:16
endeavors that they
40:18
SPEAKER_03: were essential to helping build.
40:20
SPEAKER_03: So it is an enormous about face.
40:23
SPEAKER_03: And I think it's all being done on the altar of power and access.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: It's really interesting.
40:28
SPEAKER_01: Really interesting.
40:29
SPEAKER_01: So let's get to the trans issue,
40:31
SPEAKER_01: because of course,
40:32
it was anti-trans politics that was really at the center of the
40:37
culture wars during
40:38
the 2024 campaign and anti-trans politics that was being
40:43
affected at the level of
40:46
SPEAKER_01: the states, but has now moved to the federal government.
40:49
And we're seeing a lot of things replicated in the federal
40:51
government that had
40:53
SPEAKER_01: already been done in Florida and Texas.
40:56
SPEAKER_01: We're also seeing things that Trump said he would do and did in the first
41:01
SPEAKER_01: administration,
41:01
SPEAKER_01: kicking transgender people out of the military.
41:04
How does this actually benefit conservative gays to have trans
41:11
people as this,
41:12
SPEAKER_01: and really trans women as this kind of counterpoint?
41:16
SPEAKER_01: to them?
41:18
SPEAKER_03: Well,
41:18
SPEAKER_03: I think it's a complicated situation and it's one that's,
41:22
SPEAKER_03: I think,
41:22
SPEAKER_03: changed a lot even a couple of years.
41:24
Log cabin Republicans,
41:25
for example,
41:26
will tell you that it is a LGBT Republican organization.
41:30
SPEAKER_03: They have trans members, although not a lot.
41:33
SPEAKER_03: They have supported trans candidates for office.
41:36
They were big backers of the Supreme Court decision that
41:40
extended employment
41:42
SPEAKER_03: protections to trans persons.
41:44
And they distinguish those sort of distinct things from what
41:48
they call the radical
41:50
SPEAKER_03: gender ideology being forced on the nation by woke political activists.
41:55
SPEAKER_03: And I think, how does this benefit them?
41:58
SPEAKER_03: Well,
41:58
it allows them to stay within the center of power in
42:03
conservative media and also
42:05
SPEAKER_03: within the Trump administration.
42:08
I think maybe a lot of watchers would be surprised how many gay
42:12
Republicans,
42:12
SPEAKER_03: particularly how many gay men,
42:14
SPEAKER_03: are constant figures on Fox News.
42:17
SPEAKER_03: So again,
42:18
SPEAKER_03: their identity doesn't matter,
42:19
SPEAKER_03: but they're always on Fox News with a chyron underneath them,
42:22
SPEAKER_03: like identifying them as a gay Republican.
42:24
SPEAKER_03: And what are they on there to talk about?
42:26
SPEAKER_03: Overwhelmingly, to oppose the trans agenda.
42:31
to oppose the radical LGBTQ gender ideology being forced on our
42:35
nation's children,
42:37
SPEAKER_03: that that's how it benefits them,
42:39
is they get to continue to participate and have visibility and
42:42
have access to
42:43
SPEAKER_03: power.
42:44
SPEAKER_03: For me, of course, the question is, but for how long?
42:46
SPEAKER_03: Right.
42:47
It seems to be that they think that this is actually a really
42:51
smart strategy to
42:53
separate themselves from that and to drive a wedge or to draw a
42:57
clear line between
42:58
sort of them as gay individuals and this like radical LGBTQ
43:03
political movement.
43:04
SPEAKER_01: Well,
43:05
SPEAKER_01: it's interesting because the other thing I was thinking about is like,
43:09
SPEAKER_01: what are the stakes here?
43:10
SPEAKER_01: And one of the stakes seems to me to also be masculinity.
43:15
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there was a long period in which scientists theorized that
43:20
gay men and lesbians actually had medical aspects of the other
43:25
gender embedded in them.
43:27
SPEAKER_01: And they didn't mean that they were intersex,
43:29
SPEAKER_01: but rather that they weren't good representations of their gender.
43:35
SPEAKER_01: And really, even today, one sort of core precept of homophobia is
43:39
SPEAKER_01: specifically in relation to gay men is that they're not masculine enough,
43:43
SPEAKER_01: that they are womanly in some way,
43:45
SPEAKER_01: that the things that they do sexually are womanly in some way.
43:49
SPEAKER_01: So,
43:49
SPEAKER_01: and,
43:50
SPEAKER_01: you know,
43:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
43:50
SPEAKER_01: it's in the very recent past,
43:53
even oral sex between a man and a woman was seen as kind of
43:57
humiliating to men on
43:58
SPEAKER_01: some level.
43:59
So one of the things I wonder is whether the sort of MAGA
44:04
defense of gender as an
44:07
absolute and as something that can be owned and that you can be
44:10
proud of is also
44:12
SPEAKER_01: served by the anti-trans agenda.
44:15
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
44:15
SPEAKER_03: And I think that gay Republicans,
44:17
SPEAKER_03: first of all,
44:18
they have a long history with this really interesting question
44:21
of sort of gender
44:23
SPEAKER_03: and of masculinity.
44:24
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I would say like all gay persons do or all queer persons do.
44:28
And there's a long history there with these ideas,
44:31
these notions,
44:31
these performances.
44:32
But gay Republicans through the years put so much attention
44:37
into really adhering to
44:39
SPEAKER_03: strict gender presentation.
44:40
SPEAKER_03: So women were
44:42
were very feminine the few women that were involved in gay
44:45
republican clubs talked
44:47
SPEAKER_03: about always wearing dresses and wearing pearls and makeup the men really
44:53
emphasized their masculinity and their appearance like in jeans
44:56
and cowboy boots
44:57
and suits and ties and that's something they sort of thought
45:00
was fundamental to
45:02
being treated as the same as as being included and and you can
45:07
understand that
45:08
SPEAKER_03: calculation but i think particularly this
45:11
this overemphasis on the gender binary in this moment and sort
45:15
of strict gender
45:16
roles is one in which these gay conservatives have really
45:19
attached themselves to.
45:22
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, Andrew Sullivan is really interesting here.
45:24
SPEAKER_03: He's obviously not a gay,
45:25
SPEAKER_03: or he doesn't identify as a Republican,
45:27
SPEAKER_03: but as,
45:28
SPEAKER_03: you know,
45:28
SPEAKER_03: a gay conservative,
45:29
SPEAKER_03: one of our sort of leading,
45:31
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
45:31
SPEAKER_03: a prominent thinker of the last couple of decades,
45:34
SPEAKER_03: particularly around so many of these issues.
45:35
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, he has really,
45:39
made this argument over and over again that homosexuality
45:43
itself is at threat by
45:45
SPEAKER_03: this radical gender ideology that seeks to destroy the gender binary.
45:51
SPEAKER_03: that homosexuality,
45:53
SPEAKER_03: this is his argument,
45:53
that homosexuality is premised on recognizing that men are men
45:58
and women are women,
45:59
SPEAKER_03: and that he as a gay man should only,
46:02
SPEAKER_03: only wants to be sexually attracted to other biological men.
46:06
SPEAKER_03: And that all of that,
46:07
SPEAKER_03: that desire,
46:08
SPEAKER_03: that identity,
46:09
that category of being is under threat by a radical ideology
46:14
that seeks to
46:15
SPEAKER_03: eradicate gender.
46:16
I mean,
46:16
that's sort of a fascinating notion in itself,
46:19
but the fact that his audience for that
46:22
are things like the Megyn Kelly show and sort of suburban
46:25
Republicans,
46:27
right?
46:27
SPEAKER_03: They're like,
46:27
SPEAKER_03: oh my gosh,
46:29
I may not be able to be gay anymore if the trans agenda
46:33
overtakes all of us.
46:34
SPEAKER_03: A lot of things are at work in that sort of political stew.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's so interesting, Neil.
46:43
So before we leave this topic,
46:45
I want to also ask,
46:48
where are the lesbians?
46:49
You know,
46:50
I was able to come up with one lesbian in the Trump
46:54
administration.
46:55
SPEAKER_01: Her name is Tammy Bruce.
46:57
Like many people in the Trump administration,
46:59
she is a former Fox News host.
47:02
SPEAKER_02: Of course.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: who is now deputy UN ambassador.
47:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, I now feel like I could do anything.
47:07
Like all of these people just like go from the makeup room at
47:10
the studio to the UN.
47:12
SPEAKER_01: So she's a deputy UN ambassador.
47:14
SPEAKER_01: She's been out for about 20 years.
47:16
SPEAKER_01: And then there's this other woman who popped into the news this week,
47:19
SPEAKER_01: a woman named Jillian Michaels,
47:21
SPEAKER_01: who was on The View.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: And she is a fitness instructor.
47:26
She was one of the hosts on The Biggest Loser and apparently
47:29
was accused of fat shaming people.
47:31
But it also made me think that there may be more lesbians in
47:36
the Maha and wellness
47:38
space that we know who are beginning to sort of slide over into
47:44
Trumpism through
47:46
SPEAKER_01: motherhood,
47:47
SPEAKER_01: through,
47:48
SPEAKER_01: you know,
47:49
SPEAKER_01: attachment to wellness culture.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: But why aren't we seeing them show up in the policy sector?
47:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
47:57
I think that's really smart that the Maha slash wellness realm
48:01
is where we might
48:02
SPEAKER_03: see sort of more visibility and more names.
48:06
SPEAKER_03: I would also add Barry Weiss to the mix.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: Yes, good.
48:10
SPEAKER_03: Editor of the free press and sort of,
48:12
SPEAKER_03: you know,
48:13
SPEAKER_03: I don't know how she would describe herself,
48:15
SPEAKER_03: but like the right heterodox sort of free thinker.
48:19
SPEAKER_03: But yeah,
48:20
SPEAKER_03: in the policy realm and the organizational realm,
48:23
SPEAKER_03: this is an ongoing history of hardly any lesbians participating.
48:28
You know,
48:28
this was one of the things I got from an early reader of my
48:31
manuscript.
48:32
SPEAKER_03: Where are the lesbians?
48:33
SPEAKER_03: And I thought, oh, my goodness, where are they?
48:34
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to go back into the archives.
48:36
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to find them.
48:36
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to make them much more bigger players in this story.
48:39
SPEAKER_03: And it turns out there were none to be made right there.
48:42
SPEAKER_03: There are literally a handful of them and they're mentioned in the book.
48:46
But what I realized was this,
48:48
again,
48:48
was an overwhelmingly at the organizational level.
48:52
SPEAKER_03: And also at the political level in D.C.,
48:54
it was overwhelmingly a story of white gay men and that so many
48:58
women didn't join
48:59
the organization because they thought that they were so sexist
49:03
as organizations
49:04
SPEAKER_03: that the men didn't want them there.
49:06
SPEAKER_03: They were really demeaning to them.
49:07
SPEAKER_03: They only gave them sort of
49:09
secretarial work,
49:10
and also because they didn't fully align with their politics.
49:13
The lesbian Republicans through the years really believed that
49:17
gay Republicans
49:18
should be firmly pro-choice as a fully libertarian politics of
49:25
bodily autonomy,
49:26
SPEAKER_03: personal individual freedom,
49:28
SPEAKER_03: and gay Republican men were not willing to go there.
49:30
So that was sort of a stumbling block constantly towards their
49:34
participation.
49:36
But I also think this gets back to the very gendered politics
49:40
and culture of this
49:41
SPEAKER_03: Trump administration.
49:42
SPEAKER_03: Who does Trump want around him?
49:44
SPEAKER_03: He wants really, really finny, blonde Fox News types.
49:50
And so is there a place for lesbian Republicans at the policy
49:55
and sort of at the
49:55
SPEAKER_03: administrative level in this White House?
49:58
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't seem so, but I think you're really smart to pinpoint
50:02
this enormous and growing world of Maha wellness culture in
50:07
which we might see
50:09
SPEAKER_03: those sorts of folks have more prominence and visibility.
50:13
SPEAKER_01: You know,
50:14
SPEAKER_01: and it's interesting as you were talking,
50:15
SPEAKER_01: one of the things I was thinking was,
50:18
is it possible to see lesbians doing well as a group in any
50:23
space that is devoid of
50:24
SPEAKER_01: feminism?
50:24
SPEAKER_01: And,
50:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
50:26
it is not impossible to see gay men doing well in spaces where
50:30
gay men have always
50:31
SPEAKER_01: done well,
50:32
SPEAKER_01: which is finance and the law and politics.
50:35
And so,
50:36
you know,
50:36
as long as they were able to play the game or willing to play
50:39
the game,
50:40
SPEAKER_01: They've always done well because,
50:42
SPEAKER_01: as you have said several times,
50:44
SPEAKER_01: white men,
50:44
SPEAKER_01: white men,
50:45
SPEAKER_01: white men,
50:45
SPEAKER_01: whereas white women,
50:47
SPEAKER_01: for all that they're privileged with their whiteness,
50:50
SPEAKER_01: are not privileged through femininity in these circles.
50:54
SPEAKER_01: And so it's really difficult to see any space that doesn't have feminism,
51:01
SPEAKER_01: as I said,
51:02
SPEAKER_01: as a space where lesbians could really
51:06
SPEAKER_01: connect to other people or be taken seriously.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: So Neil,
51:11
SPEAKER_01: I think we're going to be coming back to this again and again,
51:13
SPEAKER_01: because this is one of our happy places,
51:16
SPEAKER_01: but let's go on to what we want to go viral this week.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: What do you want to go viral this week?
51:22
SPEAKER_03: All right, turning the page a little bit.
51:24
SPEAKER_03: I love this piece in The Atlantic by Megan Francis.
51:26
SPEAKER_03: It's titled, How Parents Hijacked the College Dorm.
51:30
Subtitled,
51:31
The Spaces Were Once Furnished by Scrappy Kids,
51:34
Then the Adults Entered the Room.
51:36
And it's just about how the decorating of college dorms has
51:39
become kind of crazy.
51:40
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
51:41
SPEAKER_03: and just to become this full-scale production.
51:44
SPEAKER_03: And there's this wild statistic that I just think we all should hear.
51:48
SPEAKER_03: This year,
51:48
the National Retail Federation projects that American families
51:51
will spend $12.8
51:53
SPEAKER_03: billion on college residence furnishings,
51:56
SPEAKER_03: up from a projected $6.7 billion in 2019.
52:00
SPEAKER_03: So almost doubling in just, what is that, six years.
52:04
So it's a long piece about just how college dorm furnishings
52:08
and just decoration
52:10
SPEAKER_03: has just gone over the top.
52:11
And she really attributes this trend to two big developments or
52:16
two factors,
52:17
SPEAKER_03: which I think won't be surprising to anyone listening.
52:19
SPEAKER_03: One is social media, right?
52:22
SPEAKER_03: Everything is being broadcast onto these social media spaces.
52:26
SPEAKER_03: And also all these ideas are being gathered of like,
52:29
SPEAKER_03: this is what people are doing at the University of Alabama.
52:31
SPEAKER_03: So this is what has to be done everywhere else.
52:34
SPEAKER_03: There's just that sort of arms race that happens via social media,
52:37
SPEAKER_03: which we know is just sort of,
52:40
SPEAKER_03: I don't know, a factor that can be used to explain everything.
52:43
And also like these rise of these enormous Facebook groups
52:46
called things like dorm
52:47
SPEAKER_03: room mamas and dorms on a dime,
52:49
SPEAKER_03: where this is just becoming like full scale.
52:52
And the second thing is,
52:52
which I also think people won't be surprised by is just like,
52:56
SPEAKER_03: that generational nature of the parent child relationship of like,
53:01
SPEAKER_03: that was sort of,
53:02
SPEAKER_03: I think,
53:02
SPEAKER_03: hypercharged by our COVID moment in which parents have become even,
53:07
SPEAKER_03: even more involved than they were just,
53:09
SPEAKER_03: you know,
53:10
a generation or two and sort of every aspect of their
53:13
children's life and the sort
53:14
SPEAKER_03: of the ongoing,
53:16
adolescence of young people into this college period that used
53:20
to mark a real point
53:21
SPEAKER_03: of transition,
53:22
SPEAKER_03: right?
53:22
SPEAKER_03: Like literally not that long ago,
53:24
SPEAKER_03: people were like dropped off on the sidewalk,
53:27
SPEAKER_03: you know,
53:27
SPEAKER_03: and the station wagon was unloaded and like best of luck to you.
53:31
And like parents are like moving into college towns and
53:35
spending like days and days
53:37
SPEAKER_03: getting these places set up and all that stuff.
53:39
SPEAKER_03: You know,
53:39
SPEAKER_03: social media,
53:40
SPEAKER_03: like parent-child relationship,
53:41
SPEAKER_03: those sorts of things weren't necessarily surprising to me.
53:44
SPEAKER_03: The thing that I think this piece doesn't,
53:46
it barely mentions it and just sort of this slight comment at
53:49
the end of the piece,
53:51
SPEAKER_03: but I think is at the heart of this is like gender.
53:54
SPEAKER_03: This is not true across the board.
53:56
This is overwhelmingly a phenomenon of girls and daughters
54:02
going off to college.
54:03
And that was very starkly apparent to me in the last couple of
54:07
weeks as I was
54:08
SPEAKER_03: watching on my own social media feeds on Facebook,
54:11
SPEAKER_03: on Instagram,
54:12
watching friends take their daughters to college and the
54:16
picture of the coordinated
54:18
SPEAKER_03: bedroom with everything matching between the two lights and
54:21
SPEAKER_03: Amazing.
54:22
And like,
54:22
I should say my own niece is included in this,
54:25
who I say all this with affection.
54:27
SPEAKER_03: I'm not, this is not a critique of any of this.
54:28
SPEAKER_03: Like I love seeing my nieces beautifully matched,
54:32
SPEAKER_03: really gorgeous dorm room that she'd,
54:34
SPEAKER_03: she'd decorated with her roommate and like everything was coordinated.
54:38
And then you see the pictures from my friends who are dropping
54:42
their sons off at college.
54:43
SPEAKER_01: All of whom desperately need a haircut.
54:46
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
54:46
And also there's literally a sad blue bed spread on the board
54:51
and one poster taped to the wall.
54:54
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
54:55
SPEAKER_03: And I mean,
54:55
it was just hilarious seeing that back and forth between
54:57
something that looked like
54:58
it was at a decorator showroom and something that looked like
55:02
just a step up from a
55:03
SPEAKER_03: prison cell.
55:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
55:05
SPEAKER_03: And so...
55:07
SPEAKER_03: This is highly gendered.
55:08
SPEAKER_03: It really needed a gender analysis of this,
55:10
and particularly the ways in which social media and that
55:13
parent-child relationship
55:15
SPEAKER_03: are understood through a gendered lens.
55:17
SPEAKER_03: I would have loved that to the piece.
55:19
SPEAKER_03: But anyway, go check out the piece.
55:20
SPEAKER_03: It's in The Atlantic.
55:21
SPEAKER_03: We'll link to it.
55:22
SPEAKER_01: You know,
55:22
SPEAKER_01: I would have loved to have that too,
55:24
SPEAKER_01: because one of the things that was so interesting to me about this,
55:27
SPEAKER_01: Neil,
55:28
SPEAKER_01: is the stark contrast between this article and the numerous articles,
55:33
SPEAKER_01: not just about how unbelievably unaffordable college is.
55:37
It's like,
55:37
it's totally unaffordable and yet we're spending another
55:40
$10,000 to do.
55:41
SPEAKER_01: But also all the concern about why boys aren't going to college.
55:46
SPEAKER_01: And one of the
55:47
things that i was seeing here exactly as you did was you know
55:51
this celebration it's
55:52
like they're having a another bat mitzvah for for the young
55:56
woman like this is a
55:57
celebration on a scale of the quinceanera to mark her
56:01
transition into adulthood
56:02
except she's not really going to be an adult because her
56:04
mother's going to call her
56:05
SPEAKER_01: 89 times a day and whereas how do we celebrate a boy
56:12
SPEAKER_01: leaving home.
56:15
SPEAKER_01: I really do think if we are concerned about boys,
56:18
SPEAKER_01: if we're concerned about how boys fit into our society,
56:22
SPEAKER_01: feel loved,
56:23
SPEAKER_01: are aspirational,
56:25
people need to think a little harder about what they're
56:27
lavishing on their girls
56:30
and pay attention to what the boys might need about some kind
56:34
of acknowledgement
56:36
SPEAKER_01: that they're special and moving on.
56:38
Of course,
56:38
all the gay boys,
56:39
I'm sure,
56:39
are on all of those Facebook sites and so on.
56:43
SPEAKER_01: And the other thing I wanted to suggest is,
56:47
SPEAKER_01: for years,
56:48
you have been able to go into Bed Bath & Beyond and put
56:52
together a dorm room.
56:54
SPEAKER_01: and have it delivered to a Bed Bath & Beyond near your college, right?
56:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
56:58
there were years in which you couldn't go near Bed Bath &
57:01
Beyond during move-in for
57:04
SPEAKER_01: NYU or the new school.
57:06
And so there is a certain kind of marketing and capacity to
57:09
deliver things.
57:10
I'm not sure that will so much be the case in the next couple
57:14
of years with all of
57:15
SPEAKER_01: Trump's tariffs.
57:16
It'll be very interesting to see how Trump administration
57:19
policies impact this kind
57:21
SPEAKER_01: of consumerism.
57:22
SPEAKER_01: So I have a slightly different thing that I'm going to be talking about,
57:27
SPEAKER_01: which is this wonderful book.
57:30
SPEAKER_01: It's called Tony at Random.
57:32
SPEAKER_01: And it is by Dana A. Williams, who is a professor at Howard University.
57:38
And it is a wonderful book about Toni Morrison's years as an
57:42
editor at Random House.
57:44
SPEAKER_01: It is somewhat biographical.
57:46
SPEAKER_01: It is somewhat of a literary study.
57:49
But what it really illuminates is this moment when Morrison is
57:53
establishing herself
57:54
SPEAKER_01: both as a power player in the commercial editorial world and
57:58
and as a leading novelist,
58:00
and how those two things are sort of feeding into each other.
58:03
SPEAKER_01: As an editor,
58:04
she leveraged her growing power in mainstream publishing to
58:08
elevate Black authors
58:10
and let people at Random House know there is a Black audience
58:13
out there that you're
58:14
SPEAKER_01: not selling books to,
58:16
SPEAKER_01: and we need Black books for them.
58:18
SPEAKER_01: But also to be the person who said,
58:20
SPEAKER_01: okay,
58:21
SPEAKER_01: in the absence of a large list of Black books,
58:25
SPEAKER_01: what do we need to have?
58:26
SPEAKER_01: And she decides things like you need,
58:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
58:29
SPEAKER_01: well-known figures like Huey Newton and Angela Davis and so on.
58:33
SPEAKER_01: And she,
58:34
SPEAKER_01: you know,
58:34
SPEAKER_01: she ushers Angela Davis's autobiography,
58:37
which Davis writes at the age of 26 after having gotten out of
58:41
prison for being
58:42
SPEAKER_01: involved with the Black Panthers.
58:43
SPEAKER_01: She ushers that through to becoming a bestseller.
58:46
But she's also very interested in what does it,
58:50
what does a Black literature look like?
58:54
SPEAKER_01: And so she puts together an anthology of African literature, right?
59:00
SPEAKER_01: And to say, actually, there's a past that we're connected to.
59:03
SPEAKER_01: We're not all embedded in the white literary tradition.
59:06
SPEAKER_01: She connects with Tony Cade Bambara.
59:09
They become great friends and republishes a book that Bambara
59:14
had published with a
59:15
SPEAKER_01: very small press,
59:16
SPEAKER_01: called The Black Woman,
59:17
which is really like the breakthrough anthology of Black
59:21
feminist writing.
59:22
SPEAKER_01: So really what Morrison is doing is reinventing
59:27
SPEAKER_01: Black literature.
59:28
SPEAKER_01: It's a really well-written book.
59:30
SPEAKER_01: You'll just sort of speed through it.
59:31
SPEAKER_01: I've read 150 pages in about four hours.
59:34
SPEAKER_01: It's so much fun and so many familiar figures that you'll run into.
59:39
What I would also say is it's really kind of the next step in
59:43
what a lot of
59:44
SPEAKER_01: African-American scholars have done,
59:46
SPEAKER_01: feminist scholars,
59:47
SPEAKER_01: to examine what
59:49
SPEAKER_01: a black women's intellectual history would look like.
59:53
SPEAKER_01: And of course,
59:53
SPEAKER_01: there was a wonderful book years ago toward a black feminist intellectual
59:57
SPEAKER_01: tradition.
59:58
SPEAKER_01: Barbara Savage was one of the editors.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_01: Farrah Griffin was one of the editors.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_01: There were two more.
1:00:03
I don't know why I'm blanking on them,
1:00:05
but I'll include it in the show notes.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_01: And I highly, highly recommend this book about Toni Morrison.
1:00:12
It shows you a Toni Morrison really that everybody has
1:00:15
overlooked and it will
1:00:16
SPEAKER_01: inspire you to go back to some of her earliest writings,
1:00:20
SPEAKER_01: The Bluest Eye and Sula.
1:00:21
SPEAKER_03: I want to read this book so much.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_03: My good friend,
1:00:24
SPEAKER_03: Martha Southgate,
1:00:26
SPEAKER_03: the novelist,
1:00:27
SPEAKER_03: she actually wrote the glowing review in the New York Times of this book,
1:00:31
which people should read that as well because it's a beautiful
1:00:33
piece of writing.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_03: But Toni Morrison, Beloved is my favorite novel.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_03: And I'm a huge Toni Morrison fan.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_03: So it's also,
1:00:41
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:00:41
SPEAKER_03: I think what this book is doing is like people are,
1:00:44
SPEAKER_03: I think,
1:00:45
very familiar with obviously her contribution to literature as
1:00:48
a novelist.
1:00:49
But this also just at the same time,
1:00:52
she was also this incredibly important literary editor.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_03: It's wonderful that this story is being told now.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_03: And I know that that book has gotten just rave reviews everywhere.
1:01:01
Well,
1:01:01
and one of the points Williams makes also is that by being an
1:01:05
editor,
1:01:07
SPEAKER_01: Morrison became a better writer.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_01: And by being a writer,
1:01:11
SPEAKER_01: she was able to help people who had been so marginalized by the literary
1:01:16
establishment learn certain kinds of conventions to get their
1:01:20
work to the audience.
1:01:22
But I think one of the reasons I wanted to pick it up was my
1:01:25
friend Barbara Savage
1:01:26
SPEAKER_01: had recommended it and said it was wonderful.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_01: The other reason is this is also a moment
1:01:31
in which commercial publishers like Random House are publishing
1:01:35
books by white
1:01:36
SPEAKER_01: feminists and they suddenly discover with Women's Liberation,
1:01:39
SPEAKER_01: there's this huge audience of white women readers for serious books.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_01: Well,
1:01:45
SPEAKER_01: simultaneously,
1:01:46
SPEAKER_01: you've got Toni Morrison saying to Random House,
1:01:48
SPEAKER_01: there is a national audience of black people waiting for these books.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_01: And she's very explicit about it.
1:01:55
SPEAKER_01: You can sell books.
1:01:56
You are in the business of selling books and you have not
1:02:00
tapped into this market.
1:02:01
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, I'm enjoying it enormously.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: And yes, read it as soon as you can, Neil.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_01: So that's it for this week.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_01: And we'll be back next week,
1:02:12
SPEAKER_01: probably not talking about gay Republicans,
1:02:14
SPEAKER_01: but you never know,
1:02:16
SPEAKER_01: do you,
1:02:16
SPEAKER_01: Neil?
1:02:20
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
1:02:40
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1:02:51
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1:02:57
SPEAKER_01: This is written, recorded, edited, and produced by me, Claire Potter.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_01: Today's theme is by cast of characters.
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1:03:05
SPEAKER_01: That's all for now.
1:03:06
SPEAKER_01: See you next week.