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Transcript

What the Heck is Woke 2? · Boomer Has It!

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: We've been recording our pods uh this week from Paris where the sound and video quality or not are not up to our usual standard.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I uh I apologize for that.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: At the beginning of this podcast, I call Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Alexandrio.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: I apologize for that too.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, on with the pod.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: On August 9th, US Representative Alexandrio Ocasio-Cortez was interviewed by Jonathan Carl on ABC News.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: He asked her about some of the more loopy positions of left-wing Democratic candidates in the current political cycle, such as defunding the police or calling for the cancellation of Thanksgiving.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: AOC laughed and said, I have a local city councilman who has this saying, Woke 1 was crazy.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: But can woke one really be laughed off so easily?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: What the hell is woke one?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it makes the question, what is woke two?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is JB Miller in Paris.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this is Jim Jelamis in humble Brooklyn, New York.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this is Boomer Has It.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh la la, you're in Paris, and we're talking about woke.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: How exciting and complex.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Le Le Wokism here.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in a friend's flat on a top floor on the Isle Saint-Louis.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful view of the Seine and Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, but the sound is a bit echoey in here because this building is probably a couple hundred years old.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: But we hopefully people will be able to hear and understand what we're talking about.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: We are talking about woke.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I didn't think this would be an issue that anyone would be talking about much in 2026 in this election cycle, but AOC did make that comment, which really struck me um as baffling.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm surprised no one called her on it.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, much as I like AOC, and I do like her, and I have tremendous respect for her, I don't think anyone can squirm out of woke one or whatever that is, that easily.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think she should have been challenged on that statement.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Jim, what do you think woke one is compared to woke two?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: What's what's woke one?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be honest with you.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still dwelling on the fact that you're podcasting from Paris.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I does that mean I have to podcast from Beverly Hills or Tokyo?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And will we lose listeners because you're too fancy?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: I hope not.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, answer the question, please.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she certainly raised a lot of questions about what woke two is.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think we know what woke one.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, do we even need to add one to the description of that of that moment in time, that extended moment.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: But that implied she was brushing off woke one.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but she didn't say, oh, you know, what that was woke, that's over.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: She said, oh, that were, you know, woke one was so crazy.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um didn't that what what did you get out of the statement?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I got out of the statement is we're now in woke two, right?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And what is woke two?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I I think you're right.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's it it does it.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: That statement does many things.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: It signals a retreat from the old, maybe unpopular days of what Democrats hath wrought, and uh a vision of the future, obscure as it may be.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: I uh in my in my sense of it is that it's a retreat from identity politics in favor of more baseline democratic interests like affordability, universal health care, and maybe the ethics of funding Israel to just make an entreaty towards the Gaza crowd.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: What what's your take, my my Parisian buddy?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I guess so.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's I get I've been I've been disappointed uh by the Democrats' uh great success at losing the language.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um there are certain terms like woke, like fake news, like cancel culture, like DEI, where they've allowed the right wing to set the terms, set the definitions of these terms that are that are that were from uh in a lot in a lot of cases from the left.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um so woke, that's why I've hate I became to hate the term woke because I thought it been totally co-opted by the right wing.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so whenever anyone heard the term woke, it it was, I think in people's minds, it was defined as the way the right wing, you know, defined it.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think it was uh an honorable uh project.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think it did get wildly out of hand.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I am confused of what where we are in the in the woke around the the woke the woke era now.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: As I said, uh uh uh you know, as I said earlier, you know, there is wokeism in France, and it's been imported um by the right wing here uh as a term of of condemnation on the left.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: So they went right, they didn't even have the the the positive uh definition of the word it.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: They they just right wing term.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And not only was it co-opted by the right, but it was co-opted by by white folks from black culture.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I'm I'm gonna challenge you to tell me when when was the first time you heard the term and maybe ask the audience to think about the first time they've audience members have heard the first time they heard it.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And how did it how did it uh what what did you feel when you heard it?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, I I could it the last six years have blurred a blurred in my mind.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um it must have been uh you know before the the Black Lives Matter uh marches, that was 2020.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: I must have heard it before then, but that would have been in lockdown.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: You heard it before then, and you heard it before lockdown.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I I remember my father calling me and saying, Well, what is woke?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the first time I heard it, now I I have a wife who's not white, and she was uh uh a board member at our school, which had a you know very long, protracted sort of woke battle.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: She was in the trenches and she was on the you know various committees addressing diversity, equity, inclusion.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: We were together watching, this is nine years ago, the director's commentary that addressed the alternate ending to the 2017 film Get Out, which, if anyone hasn't seen it, it's a creepy, hilarious allegory about white supremacy.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: The movie released in 2017.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: But Jordan Peel uh conceived and wrote it during Obama, and in his director's commentary, he said that the public consciousness shifted during the film's production.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: So there were two endings.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So when he explained the change to the original sort of bleak ending, he said that audience had become audiences had become woke to systemic injustice during the latter half of the Obama presidency.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I I said I said, What what did he just say?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: What is woke?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And my my DEI cultured and up-to-date wife explained it to me.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it seems quaint.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, doesn't it?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Jim, I would, I would wager whenever you first heard the term woke, I heard it afterwards.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: At the very least, two weeks later.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: You would be in vanguard of hearing that you had a you had a direct line into the DEI.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Are you calling me in France?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are you calling me avant-garde?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: You're avant-garde, politically avant-garde.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, why are we why are we discussing this now?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm so surprised.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think I wanted to talk about it, so I shouldn't be surprised.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm just I I that that AOC statement just uh who has anyone challenged her on that?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Have you have you read any follow-up on that?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you you identified the the councilman, councilman, uh she referred to as local New York.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's a local New York council member.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: His name is She I'll say.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's all over social media and adored and loved by the electorate, specifically the electorate that overlaps with with Zaron Mamdani.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you might say, well, anyway, you're to answer your question.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I I've heard many, many different answers.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much chatter about it.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And to your point, um, you know, Democrats and liberals are not playing defense anymore.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: They've introduced a concept that signals a retreat from the past from identity politics and something for the future, something to come.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a mystery.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And let the opponent let their opponents wonder what it will be.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I I sense that it's something that looks more like uh Ziran Mamdani or Abdul El Sayed, or maybe maybe John Asoff.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, you know, we're gonna find out in a few weeks.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're we're recording this about four, four and a half weeks out from the midterm elections.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the answer will be uh you know loud and clear uh soon enough.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was gonna say that whenever DEI makes me grumpy and I think went too far, I read about a Hegsef saying something so preposterous and racist and sexist and beardist and beardist and fattest, sorry, of appearances, um, that I I I swing back into the DEI side of things.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: I consider myself bang in the middle.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a I'm a uh uh extreme moderate, I'm a radical moderate when it comes to politics.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm left of center, but but you know, DEI, I think um some of those proposals did go too far.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, Heggseth, what he's doing in the Pentagon, he has no understanding of how difficult it is for military uh personnel of color to get to reach the ranks of a general.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's 20 years.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: And say with women, uh, he thinks it's all DEI.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: He thinks if there's any any generals of color, any female generals, they were uh promoted, you know, beyond their their ability, which I think is probably, I don't know for certain, probably absolute nonsense.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, so yeah, maybe that's why we're still discussing these issues because the Trump administration uh it always uh pushes back on it and reminds us why we need uh programs, why we need um to support uh people who are uh non-white, uh non-uh up middle class.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: What am I saying?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to talk about inclusivity, which is probably a bad word now, but I think you're to your point, yeah.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: The anti the anti-woke movement has the the pendulum has swung.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: You you know, you might say, you know, having a TV personality as the Secretary of Defense.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not won't I won't use the other term.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's really using all the skills he has.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have any kind of war management skills or defense management skills.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so in in this speech he gave, this annual speech, he he attacked, he used the word tranny, which isn't that a porn term.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask you.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: I have no, you know, I only have a vague idea about what they're doing porn.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he also used the word beirdo.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when is it when did people with beards become objects of hatred?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know, my my priest, my parents' priest from their church has a beard.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Is he a beard?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so does JD Vance, who's a beard.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, to my mind, this goes.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: But his is trimmed like yours.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: To my mind, back in the 1950s and early 60s, the bearded ones was shorthand for the anti-nuclear um you know marchers.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's even like a reference point in in John Osborne's The Look Back in Anger, you know, and it made uh right-wing people uh kind of grumpy, and uh but that's 70, 60, 65, 70 years ago.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's a retro term.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know what the beardo what in a wood represents now.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh why is JD Vance not a beardo?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is he didn't say the untrimmed beardos, he didn't uh speak out, he just said beardos and the and the fatties and the trannies, I don't think is a porn term, I think it's just uh a der now uh uh unacceptable uh term for trans.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know how many trans people are in the military and how many trans generals there are.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: But if any trans person wants to be in the U.S.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: military, I should welcome them.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: They need they need conscripts, you know.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: It can't be easy to be a trans member of the military, so good on them for being in the military.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I am not the Secretary of Defense or even the Secretary of War, so I it's not my call.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: But are we trying to set the definitions or contextualize what inclusivity means now in 2026, where the word woke, don't you think the word woke is politically unpalatable at this point?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think there are that many candidates using that term.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's been a discredited.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Can we accept that that's a discredited term at this point?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think it's passed through the alimentary canal of the the right wing and it's come out this sort of uh unsavory word that is uncool, unhip.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's like calling someone a hip cat or something.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, or yeah, because I I I I reached the point where I thought the only people referring to using that word were on the right wing.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a friend.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're right.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: I thought whenever I heard the word woke, I kind of recoiled because I thought that uh I'm gonna be hearing a right wing, you know, definition of this, a use of this word.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: But the left wing, you know, gave up that word like they did with um, you know, fake news.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: God, Trump got on fake news real fast and turned it 180 degrees to what it it originally meant.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but we're not any closer to trying to figure out what AOC meant when she said that.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I I it would be interesting to see if someone has a platform, you know, someone in the DNC or anywhere in the leadership of the party can to that can say what it is.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: I have not seen it, I've only seen some speculation.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Wired published an interesting article about um the the they called the fantasy of a resurgent woke or something like that.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they they identified the new woke as something like you know, no king's protests, bad bunny performing at the Super Bowl, and culturally gay hockey, heated rivalry, and and actually heterosexual hockey, which you and I observed in the bookstore.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's the these hawk, these hot, these hockey romance novels that are that they've sort of replaced, they've sort of replaced vampires, haven't they?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Vampires have have gone, and the sexy hockey players have arrived.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, woke two.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sexy hockey players.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: That that implies, in a way, you are everything you mentioned were like successful series, successful things.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, to my mind, in a way, it's the right wing being grumpy about successful culture, aspects of the culture that are that are successful in the sense that they have it have an audience and that they don't understand.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: The right wing does not understand.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: There was a recent story in the news that I know you wanted to talk about as like as a great symbol of where of where woke is at the at the time.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think it involves a certain bar in the state of Massachusetts.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to explain that story for anyone who just hasn't heard it?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a it's very interesting.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: It opened in only in 2025, and it's a bar for dykes, this is in quotes, transsexuals, gender freaks, workers, and their friends.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Where is it?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's based in Greenfield, Massachusetts, population 17,000, almost 18,000.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this three partners created an inclusive space for queer people, uh, and generously included wearing KN95 masks to accommodate immunocompromised queer people.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you go you go in there on a Saturday night, any given night of the week, and you have cocktails, and everyone looks like, you know, forget hair, forget body shape and size and gender.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone looks like a dental hygienist.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, but how do they drink?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: I I the I don't understand how you drink with a mask on.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, I I don't know if it's it's really a very um hermetically sealed environment.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: If everyone's lifting their and maybe there's a little hole for a straw.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to hear about the do you want to hear what happened?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, well, first of all, we should say Jim.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: We should say the the location.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is northwestern Massachusetts, 12 miles south of the Vermont border.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: All snarky jokes aside, according to the U.S.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Census, northwestern Massachusetts, especially Hampshire County, has a largest largest percentage of lesbian lesbian households in the country.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's according to the census, sometimes called lesbianville, USA.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: I know I happen to know people who live there and about.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's it's a it's a spread spread out.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's spread out.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's Northampton, there's um Greenfield, there's the foothills of the Berkshire.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big geographical area.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: It is a beautiful part of the country.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's beautiful countryside, the Berkshires.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've been through it's just lovely.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: You and I, you and I visited it together.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we were Great Barrington near um Great Barrington.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful part of the state, beautiful part of the country, lesbian central, if a very lesbian-friendly community.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: So this bar was more than just lesbian friendly, it was immunocompromised lesbian friendly.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: But the story does not end there.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: It does not end.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um so if you know, if you think of what northwestern Massachusetts is a safe spit, safe space, think again.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: The bar owner, the the other two owners retreated.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: They left.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: One went to clown school.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where the other one went.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: This the the poor remaining um sole proprietor asked the community if they could adjust the masked policy one night to Saturdays.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because they were going out of business, they were going out of business.
• 19:32
  unknown: Yes.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: People were not showing up, and they and they were one of them owners was living in her truck for a while because she lost the colour.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the owner I'm telling you about, and she works three jobs.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if this sounds like a fringe story, yes, it is, although it attracted the attention of three major dailies, and it's it's the talk of the potosphere.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And not because of the circumstances, but because of the reaction.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: It uh when they adjusted their their mandatory mask policy to freeze to Saturday nights, they came under attack.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: This sole proprietor and everyone who works, people worked on a voluntary basis.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: They were accused of ableism, eugenics, pandering to white supremacy, eugenics, cap capitalism.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and and they had to and they had to endure threat threats of viol violence.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: This seems so extreme and crazy to me.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh uh, is that why the story got so much attention?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's so extreme.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: The reaction was so extreme and unrealistic and uncharitable, literally because they were expecting us to be a charity.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't understand how the economic they didn't care about the economics of the poor owner of this bar.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, it's an interesting point.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: One of the columns I read said that, you know, the kind of radical inclusivity, all the values of, you know, woke one, they're not compatible with running a business.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can't, you can't satisfy every single person and you know, you know, in a private organization.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's what that's the reality that we've cut they've bumped up against.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it sadly, you know, a cohort of people who are in in devoted to humanity and compassion.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: When the bar owner had a put had a public address this issue, she started weeping, and they chastised her for crying.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's yeah, it's a it's a form of it's really is you know a reverse form of bullying.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and then that's I think that's probably why we've seen the react reaction.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: We've we, you know, the right-wing reaction, the term woke.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it it just captured this story, an obscure basement bar in northwestern Massachusetts.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: It captured the public interest.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: I hope I'm not making too much out of it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: A podcast called Blocked and Reported broke the story, but the Boston Globe followed up, published its own article about the fracas, and it generated thousands, I will repeat, thousands of new paid subscriptions.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wait for it, wait for it, within 24 hours.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: So what does that tell you about audiences?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is a part of the story that totally confuses me.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: We read about all of the Washington Post subscribers canceling their subscriptions.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Here are people who are what angry, not angrily, what pleasantly, happily subscribing to the Boston Globe.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: What what was so extraordinary about this article that they ever read the article?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: The story doesn't, it's because the story is it has legs.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's the story that keeps on giving.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: The Globe article generated a denunciation from the Western Massachusetts branch of the Communist Party.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know one existed?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: That Western Massachusetts had a branch of the Communist Party.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, here you go.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I have a quote: the fascist Trump administration and Republican state governments have instigated a genocide of LGBTQI plus people, supposedly embodied in the mask ban at Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that I and I think, you know, because it made it to the New York Times, Washington Post, God knows where else, met the great Megan McArdle, who I love and remains at the Washington Post, declared, woke is dead, and this story is its epitaph.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Explain that to me because I read that too, and I didn't understand why she said what she meant by that.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think what she means is why crowds flocked to the Boston Globe to read this story and take some kind of solace, delight, uh comeuppance, feeling of that you know that someone's on the other side has gotten their comeuppance.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't know if I don't know if conservatives read the watch the the globe.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing it's a people from Massachusetts.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in Massachusetts.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it was my local paper for a long time.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: So what does it mean that readers of the Boston Globe re-subscribe by the thousands within 24 hours?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think it's I think it may be uh the the the left side of the electric breathe electorate breathing a sigh of relief.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think the poor woman who runs that bar, I don't know if it's still running, should have had engraved over the doorway, no good deed goes unpunished, because she was certainly punished for her good deeds to you know her community.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: But why does Megan McCardo think that this is the sort of epitoph of the of the woke year generation?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you call her that because she McCurdles the cream in your tea?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well why why?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: Why please answer my question?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly why, because audiences are tired, audiences have demonstrated that they're tired of it and an obscure story from an obscure part of New England.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't I'm not gonna try to interpret as delight, but let's just say drawn great interest from readers in that region who tend to vote blue.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: So because it stirred up great interest in what, like a Schadenfreude um manner?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, were people looking uh askance at this?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, look, this is what happens when you try to accommodate the extreme left.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is that is that what was going on?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Interpret it as you like.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, for you know, since since MAGA started, since since you know the Trump won and now Trump two, you know, we've had public delight, a kind of casual sadism uh about oppressed people.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but I think I think also people who have been uh sympathetic with woke politics maybe feel like that's run its course, that that the rhetoric has become ridiculous.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is in an extreme case.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And let's let's start again with woke too.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I I wonder, you know, when mania passes, when there's a kind of mania that passes, how you know, how do people feel about themselves?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what when the when the Salem witch trials were over, where where people who who you know blamed women for their hysteria and called them witches and murdered them, did they feel bad?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: What about the witch trials of the 1950s?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Did people feel bad about that?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: What happens in the wake of this this kind of mania?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: This kind of woke mania and anti-woke mania.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's not if there's a woke.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: If there's a woke too, woke by definition isn't over.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I'm I'm stiff.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I think what is well because I I that's why I think that statement was there was something maybe unintentionally brilliant about it.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: It it declared the end of woke.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um and let me finish talking, my French friend, my Francophile buddy.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: It it suggested there's something to come without giving us an answer.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it it's in a way, it's yeah, it's where it it put put us, you know, uh in the electorate on a cliffhanger.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: What is what is woke too?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're giving exactly you're giving AOC much too much benefit here.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: That statement made me grumpy because um it it it's it sounded like nonsense to me.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: It sounded like she was trying to disavow any connection to the crazy woke one without owning up to what she really believes in and woke two, and assuming there is a woke two.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't say woke or woke was crazy, woke one was crazy.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Woke two, you're gonna love if you thought woke one was crazy, you're gonna love you're gonna love woke two because we're we're we're not crazy.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is the good woke.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: What is that?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: AOC, tell us it wasn't for the Senate, and tell us what woke two is.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I think it I think that Democrats, center, left of center, people on the left maybe felt a sigh of relief after she said that to say we don't have to play defense anymore.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what that meant?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't get that at all from that statement.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's what it meant.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's was that was the reaction to it.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: How does that not put them on the defense?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm putting them on the defense, uh, explaining what that means.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: But you're saying they don't why?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Why does this why does this work in their favor?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Why does this work for a democratic candidate?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I've explained it six times already.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: It and you and and what do you care?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're in France.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, for God's sake.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, I seriously, I'm I follow American politics and I'm rooting for the Democrats, and uh I uh I just that's all right.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: You said you've explained it six times to me, and I'm I'm too thick to to understand how how this benefits the Democrats.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh except that there was no follow-up.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess it maybe it benefited them that they there was some slate of hand.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's what you're saying.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: That she seemed to have answered that question without actually answering that question.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I I said maybe unintentionally crafty.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was maybe an accident that a lot of people can read into and just feel you know, feel relieved about.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Are you relieved?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel relieved?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't feel relieved.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: I you you know how I feel.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm solid into DEI, ESG.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want it, I love it, I want more of it.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look, and and actually let's talk about that for a second.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Why the reaction to DEI and wokeness, uh, you know, I challenge anyone on the far right to tell me the harm it's caused.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: And there are scattered instances in at universities, in academe of professors or even students being heckled or um shamed or fired.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's not nice.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with you.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I I I find it hard to to you know detect actual harm.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's an and there's a it's a response for everything, you know.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to um, for example, colorblind casting.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, the historical record is being changed.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's all fiction anyway.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let me finish.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then and and but there's an answer for everything.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I, you know, um when you talk about colorblind casting or um post-colonial studies that dare to look at a a geography or part of history um that might have been rewritten by you know uh oppressors or uh conquistadors.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um they blame libraries.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we they they attack libraries.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: What about uh what about gayness?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well then then you know what what's the answer there?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: They're being if I can get a word in a head you are.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, let me let I just need to finish.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: They they're being groomed.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Our young people are being groomed to be homosexuals and trannies.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're being groomed right now as we speak.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, take take your children out of school.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Jim, Jim, I agree with all of that, but that's not to say that you know DEI would was a you know victimless you know crime, if you want to put it that way.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: There were small colleges that were taken over by crazy uh you know left-wing agents and that got uh professors fired for uh saying something that they perceived was you know, you know, in favor of example eugenic.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have the example for you know the examples.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not making this up.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: There were there was some crazy shit going down in universities.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um it wasn't DEI is not this perfect thing.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh everything that you bring up that you represent uh that you've mentioned, yes, I agree with, but that's not the whole story by a long shot.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: It really is.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I I I believe there there were egregious problems with um, you know, woke politics, especially on campus, maybe at the workplace.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: But one observer made said that the internet has a way of making fringe movements look like mass movements and when they're not.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like that message you see in the side view mirror, objects appear larger than they are.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, but that doesn't mean that that there wasn't there wasn't really egregious things going on, uh mostly in you know academia.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about uh you know workplaces.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, were problems.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: There really were.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I think uh that had to be um that had to be changed, but I think the Trump administration's response is just a blunt object, and then it, you know, it did not and and have gone much too far.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the things originally uh went too far left, and now they're they're too far, you know.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I think if you had if you created a a chart and you had two columns, and on the left were the harms caused by the woke era and DEI, and you made a list, there'd be a list.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: But if you talk on the right side, if you talk about if you list the harms caused by you know Jim Crow, uh uh discrimination in the workplace, uh, against uh people of different races, against women, that's a long list.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's I don't think it's funny.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think Jordan Peel was very, you know, sweet to claim that there was a post-racial candidate during Obama, but we had Trayvon Martin since then, and we've had George Floyd, and we had the Harvey Weinstein uh sexual assault allegations and me too, and all leading us all the way up to Cornell today.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, the we're not in a post-racial era, and we need DEI badly.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: This this country is run by humans.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: We need a humans are horrible.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: We need a corrected kind of of DEI.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, I have to change that term because it's been again adopted by the right wing and maybe destroyed.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you need a new term.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I I agree um with um everything you're saying, except that I don't think you're really acknowledging some of the egregious.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: You said there are few.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: You you you're lining them up.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: And look, there are few on one side and big more in the other.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't wipe out the the things that were egregious uh, you know, on the left.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think the response was, as I've said, was just not uh was not at all commensurate and has made things much worse.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: And what you know Heggseth is doing in the in the Pentagon is you know exhibit A and Cornell University.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: We've learned this horrible rape scandal shows us that the the Me Too movement is far from over.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it gets confusing when the president of the United States himself has been found guilty of sexual assault in a court, um, that makes things murky.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: It blurs, you know, right?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: It does not, you know, I think um influences from the top down, you know, and then um so but hopefully uh maybe we're getting to see a political movement that's a response to there a political movement.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think the egregions, egregiousness on the right far outweigh those on the left, but that doesn't mean there weren't any egregiousnesses on the left.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I might be um, you know, not exactly politically aligned with you, which is why this podcast works so well.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go to headquakes.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: What is your headquake this week, Jim?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, you know, I'm I'm thinking about aftermath lately.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: We've we've endured a lot of hardship um in these years, the oh, you know, in the last since 2016, really, leading pandemic, Biden disappointment, Trump, uh, Trump crime corruption.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I I'm thinking about a song by Pete Seeger folk song fans called The Foolish Frog.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a story about sort of about people in the aftermath of a kind of hysteria euphoria.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's based on a folk tale about a farmer who sees a bullfrog jump into the water and tumble awkwardly.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he he's so amused by it.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: He he makes up a song and he's on the way to the corner store, and he tells the proprietor, Hey, I've got this funny song.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: He sings the song, and that's Pete Seeger in the chorus doing the song.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: And um proprietor says, Wow, that's great.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's break out the crackers and soda, and they start dancing, and customers start dancing, and people from the town come to the store and they're dancing and singing and eating free crackers and soda.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very kind of pure, sweet story about euphoria.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then the bullfrog shows up and it gets becomes so proud, he blows up, he puffs his chest and blows up and disrupts everything.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and all the all the townsfolk feel embarrassed.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the story of the uh the foolish frog and the foolish people who became enamored with it.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think uh in the US we're bound to live, some lives are bound to live that way.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you see that as a sort of um analogy of our current, our current sort of political moment, the embarrassment.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think the the post-political moment.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: The post-polit.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting, interesting perspective.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: So my headquake is uh I am in France, and there's been a crisis in the high schools here, and there are 400 schools, high schools are closed today in France after violent demonstrations earlier in the week, yesterday and the day before.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, why?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're the the complaints, students are complaining of long hours, teacher shortages, and decaying facilities, and this has escalated into quote urban violence.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Some of this urban violence is in the countryside.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: I guess that would be country violence.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but uh according to The Guardian, a student said, I won't do this in a French accent, uh, but there are there are 35 of us per classroom.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: One 17-year-old Strasbourg student said, there aren't enough toilets, there are water leaks in some rooms, the building is falling apart, the cafeteria is too small, and there's zero budget, zero resources.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously, yeah, the schools are not being funded well.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are other issues too.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: There was a terrible heat wave here.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, in Europe, they don't get out of school till early July.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: So when it gets hot in June, uh, these poor students were stuck in schools that had no air conditioning.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, that was maybe to be expected because they were built before uh, you know, there were these big uh great heat waves.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: I have a friend who has a 16-year-old daughter in the state school system here in France, and she had nothing good to say about the French school system, which she thought was archaic um and and really uh punitive and extreme, very, very difficult.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um so um there there have also been accusations, the demonstrations were encouraged by the far-left political party, La France Insoumise, or French unbound.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's a far left party.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now they're widely, it's widely expected that the far right are going to win the national elections next April, with uh Marine Le Pen of the National Front uh becoming in charge.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: So let's see how she deals with this national emergency of the school system here.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: So in America, um uh be lucky that you have pencils and the correct number of toilets and a large enough cafeteria, and you aren't being um brow beaten for not um working hard enough.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um things are tough here.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: But there is a tradition in France of complaining about a lot of things, and it's a very generally it's a very generous socialist system here.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the retirement age um is something like 63 or something, and they want to raise it to 64 or 65, and there are huge demonstrations.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: The the national health system uh gives several, several weeks to women who um, when they give birth, uh get paid leave.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: They go for, yeah, I don't know, 12 weeks, 14 weeks.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's very generous.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: And when they try to, once you give rights um to people, once you give uh these things to people, it's very hard to claw them back.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is uh an issue in the UK as well, uh, where there are sort of socialist systems.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a real tradition of demonstrations here in France, and the students are are stepping up to the plate, you might say.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my that's my headquake this week.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I would add, you know, I was gonna make a joke about well, that's what you get with socialism, no pencils or toilets.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, being an amateur economist, I would I would like to point out to anyone who might actually think that European, Western European countries have very generous social policies, and it's not socialism as defined by economists, it's called social welfare policies.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: The national health uh system, certainly in England and in the UK, which I've experienced firsthand, is um it would be the envy of almost anyone in American uh medical distress.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that the same goes for I would think in France.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: So uh there are there are huge positives in a strong social network and social uh social welfare policy and uh and I think that's for another podcast.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is for another podcast, uh and on that note, um, this has been Boomer Has It with JB Miller in Paris and Jim Jelamis in humble sweet Brooklyn.