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Why Would I Read That Crap??!! · Armstrong & Getty One More Thing

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  Speaker 1: I'm already proud and prejudiced. Why would I want to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: read that crap. It's one more thing I'm a reference,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: of course to Jane Austen is pride and prejudice, which
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  Speaker 1: I believe is a guidebook to get you better at
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: those two qualities.
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  Speaker 2: Ah I uh, I'm going to say this on the
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  Speaker 2: air so that it kind of backs me into having
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  Speaker 2: to do it. Oh boy, this is not a good
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  Speaker 2: story about me, or maybe it is, depends on how
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: you look at it. I have to go to apologize
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  Speaker 2: to a bank teller today, oh boy, because yesterday I
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: was doing something and there was some dumb, just dumb,
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  Speaker 2: bureaucratic hiccup in me trying to deposit this check. This one.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: I should switch banks. There's one particular bank I've been
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  Speaker 2: going to forever. They've gotten crappier and crappier and crappier
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  Speaker 2: over the years, with more and more and more stupid
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  Speaker 2: just crap, and it's so annoying. And it takes like
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  Speaker 2: fifteen minutes to deposit a check for some reason I
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  Speaker 2: don't know why anyway, which I only have to do
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  Speaker 2: like twice a year. But you can't do it through
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  Speaker 2: the ATM passed us whatever it was my it was
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  Speaker 2: my refund check from the State of California. And uh,
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  Speaker 2: and then the way you don't believe this, I mean,
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  Speaker 2: this is it's just AnyWho. What I did was that
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  Speaker 2: I gotta go apologize for today. Is he needed something
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  Speaker 2: else which seemed ridiculous to me and I already hate
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  Speaker 2: this bank. And uh. He said you need to take
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  Speaker 2: all your stuff with you and I said, there's nobody here.
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  Speaker 2: It's a completely empty bank. I said, oh, could be
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  Speaker 2: our I'll go out to my cards right there. And
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: he said, you need to take all this stuff right here.
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  Speaker 2: You can't leave this here, my check and driver's license
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  Speaker 2: and the stuff that I had for our little thing
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  Speaker 2: we were doing. Yeah, I said, I'm going right out
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  Speaker 2: to my truck. He said you can't leave this here,
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  Speaker 2: and I said, well, that's freaking ridiculous. And I grabbed
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  Speaker 2: my stuff and I walked out. So I'm gonna go
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  Speaker 2: back and apologize that for that today, because all he
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  Speaker 2: was doing was following their bank rules. I'm sure doing
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  Speaker 2: what his boss tells.
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  Speaker 1: Them to do.
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  Speaker 2: And I, you know, I didn't need to do that.
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  Speaker 2: So I'm going to go back and apologize him today,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: which we'll get that off of my mind because I
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  Speaker 2: keep thinking about saying, you know, criticizing something, poor young
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  Speaker 2: guy just doing his job.
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  Speaker 1: Now, let's tell the whole story. Did you call him
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  Speaker 1: a dumb effort?
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  Speaker 2: No, that was the whole thing, A greasy hair jack, rabbit, anything, No,
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  Speaker 2: that was it. I don't even think I said friggin'
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  Speaker 2: I think I just said, well, that's ridiculous, and grabbed
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  Speaker 2: my stuff in a huff and walked out and then
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  Speaker 2: came back. But I didn't need to do that, and
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  Speaker 2: he doesn't need to be feeling bad about doing his job.
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  Speaker 2: So I will go back today and walk in there
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  Speaker 2: and probably wait in line, and I'll walk out and
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  Speaker 2: he'll still think I'm a dick.
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  Speaker 1: But right, well, he left in a huff. You should
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  Speaker 1: have waited a second, left in a second and a huff.
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  Speaker 1: Groucho Marx nineteen thirty Fourish.
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  Speaker 2: I since I was a little kid, and I should
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  Speaker 2: get better. It's just the way of the world. I've
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  Speaker 2: never liked dumb rules. Dumb rules have always bothered me.
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  Speaker 2: I understand the point sometimes of dumb rules.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, I kind of get that rule though.
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  Speaker 2: Oh I'm sure, I understand why it exists in an
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  Speaker 2: empty bank. Just him and me walk him to Barkamara.
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  Speaker 2: I'm gonna walk right back here. Yeah, it'll take me.
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  Speaker 2: It took me fifteen twenty seconds.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, but whatever. Yeah, it's it's it's avoiding that whole
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: you stole my blanking scenario, you know. Yeah, Yeah, I
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  Speaker 1: almost got in one of those the other day. I'd
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  Speaker 1: misplaced something and was sure I knew where it was misplaced.
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  Speaker 1: I ended up being wrong, and I'm glad I didn't
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  Speaker 1: escalate the conversation at all. Uh No, I left it here.
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure I left it here, and one he has it.
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  Speaker 1: It's one of those situations, but they seem to be
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  Speaker 1: of good character, and so I let it go, thinking
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  Speaker 1: that's unlikely and I'm not going to be the mane
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  Speaker 1: is stealing my jewelry person, And you turned out you
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  Speaker 1: were wrong anyway. Oh yeah, I had put it somewhere
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  Speaker 1: utterly inexplicable. I mean, I will never think figure out
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  Speaker 1: why I would have done what I did. It was
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  Speaker 1: it was akin to not quite as crazy, but akin
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  Speaker 1: to putting your screwdriver in the refrigerator and the milk
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  Speaker 1: in your tool chest. You know. It's just one of
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  Speaker 1: those things not paying attention.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I swore up and down. I left my credit
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  Speaker 2: card for my son because he needed it for something
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: and I didn't. I left him my insurance card, which
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: is really no value. Well, I have some value, but
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  Speaker 2: it's no good to buy anything at the grocery store.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah huh. Anyway, uh so we're discussing or
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  Speaker 1: My introduction was a reference to pride and prejudice. You
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  Speaker 1: may recall I haven't read I'm going to read that.
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  Speaker 1: That's like two down my list. I'm going to get
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  Speaker 1: to that enough. People that I really respect say that's
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  Speaker 1: one of the great all time pieces of literature, and
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  Speaker 1: I should read it. It's a really, really good window
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  Speaker 1: into Victorian customs and values.
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  Speaker 2: I gotta admit I tend to stay away from chick books, but.
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  Speaker 1: My daughter, Delanni and my wife are huge fans. They
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: kist women are practically recite the like the most celebrated
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: screen version of it. I can't tell you how many
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: times I heard oh, mister Bingley, mister Darcy around my house. Hilarious.
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  Speaker 1: Good times. Anyway, Texas is out with their required booklist,
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  Speaker 1: and this is a trend among conservative state. Yes, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: for I'm sorry for uh curriculu, school curriculum, curricula. And
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: this is a trend. There are a couple of universities
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  Speaker 1: and I wish I had it in front of me
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  Speaker 1: who's doing this. But the message that they're sending is,
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  Speaker 1: I'm more than delighted to show you what we are
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  Speaker 1: teaching your children, progressive places you next. And there's also
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  Speaker 1: an element of hey, we're going to teach the classics
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  Speaker 1: because their classics were proud of it, their great literature.
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  Speaker 1: It's Western civilization. We're not ashamed Western civilization. Come look,
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  Speaker 1: both of which I think are absolutely wonderful trends. Anyway, Texas,
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  Speaker 1: I deliberately grabbed the account from the New York Times
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  Speaker 1: about the Texas book List because I knew it would
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  Speaker 1: be a it would be annoying. And they name check
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  Speaker 1: a bunch of the lists, and they have the entire
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  Speaker 1: list for various grades, which I'll touch on in a
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  Speaker 1: little bit. They go through the mechanics of how this
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  Speaker 1: came to be. The list was applauded in some corners
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  Speaker 1: for prioritizing reading at a time when many students are
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  Speaker 1: reading fewer whole books. In schooling at home. It was
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  Speaker 1: also highly contested, in part because it includes excerpts from
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  Speaker 1: the Bible. It also puts a focus on classic texts,
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  Speaker 1: often written by white and male authors, a stirring debate
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  Speaker 1: about what qualifies as essential literature. In a highly diverse state,
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  Speaker 1: teachers can still assign additional books on top of the
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  Speaker 1: ones required. The whole anti white, anti male they won.
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  Speaker 2: They won, by the way. Who dat the people that
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  Speaker 2: don't that wanted to drive out literature written of the
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  Speaker 2: classic literature written by straight white males, old dead white males.
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  Speaker 2: According to Harold Bloom, who was one of the greatest
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  Speaker 2: fighters of that in American history, I just happened to
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  Speaker 2: come across his one of his final interviews before he
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  Speaker 2: died about fifteen years ago. He was a professor at Yale,
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  Speaker 2: taught Shakespeare primarily, but all kinds of American literature. And
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  Speaker 2: he was not a conservative. I mean, he thought we
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  Speaker 2: were living in a theocracy under George Bush. I mean
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  Speaker 2: he was one of those people. I mean he was
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  Speaker 2: a hardcore Democrat, I know, whatever, but hated the new
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  Speaker 2: woke erase, the Western canon because it was dead white
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  Speaker 2: males thing, and particularly because he thought Shakespeare was the
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  Speaker 2: greatest writer in human history. He hated the fact that
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  Speaker 2: at the time that he started lecturing about this, there
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  Speaker 2: wasn't a university in the country teaching Shakespeare trade up
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  Speaker 2: straight up. I mean, like this is, you know, let's
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  Speaker 2: read Hamlet because it's a great piece of literature. You
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  Speaker 2: would only bring up Shakespeare if you brought it up
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  Speaker 2: at all. Mostly it wasn't brought up at all. But
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  Speaker 2: the only reason you'd bring it up is to show
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  Speaker 2: how they didn't have enough a women, or didn't have
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  Speaker 2: enough gay people, or didn't handle slim well, or what it.
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  Speaker 1: Was going to deconstruct it exactly right imblematize it.
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  Speaker 2: And so he as a left he fought against this
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  Speaker 2: and just got attacked endlessly. He spent the last ten
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  Speaker 2: years of his life fighting against people who had been
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  Speaker 2: his best friends his whole life because they thought he
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  Speaker 2: was on the wrong side of history. And I saw
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  Speaker 2: one of his last interviews the other day on YouTube,
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  Speaker 2: and it was so depressing to me. He's all, he's
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  Speaker 2: all bent over, his body had given out on him.
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  Speaker 2: They have a microphone they're holding up to his mouth
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  Speaker 2: as he's in a wheelchair, and uh, and he said
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  Speaker 2: I wish I'd never done it, he said. It cost
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  Speaker 2: me too much. I lost all my friends and I lost.
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  Speaker 2: I lost the battle. It's over. The universities no longer
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  Speaker 2: teach that stuff. It's never coming back, he said. All
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  Speaker 2: I could do is hope there's a remnant of some
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  Speaker 2: of us. It was his last year teaching, and he
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  Speaker 2: taught like ten people at Yale in the Shakespeare class
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  Speaker 2: because no kids wanted to take it. He said, All
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  Speaker 2: I can do is hope to educate a remnant for
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  Speaker 2: the rest of my life, which didn't end up being
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  Speaker 2: much longer. He said. We lost, and hopefully someday it
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  Speaker 2: will come back again.
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  Speaker 1: Well, Harold, if you're looking down from the heaven, you
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  Speaker 1: don't believe in or up from similarly described hell. They
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  Speaker 1: were winning for a long time, but there is a
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  Speaker 1: counter fight going on.
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  Speaker 2: I hope it's not over. Is it not horrifying though,
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  Speaker 2: that Shakespeare went from being the greatest writer in human
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  Speaker 2: history to not taught in our colleges at all, and
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  Speaker 2: if you stood up for it, you got destroyed. That's horrifying,
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  Speaker 2: you know.
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  Speaker 1: In the midst of the terror in the French Revolution,
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure lots of people probably went to the guillotines thinking,
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  Speaker 1: oh my god, they won. Right they did for a while. Anyway,
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  Speaker 1: I won't give up on any of this stuff. I
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  Speaker 1: don't care. But Texas's list, which is controversial in some quarters,
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  Speaker 1: includes the Holy Bible. I read an absolutely terrific defense
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  Speaker 1: of it, more eloquent than I can provide about how
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  Speaker 1: you cannot understand much in literature without being passingly familiar
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: with the Bible and its stories. The Bible. That's right, sir,
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  Speaker 1: That's what I just said. But it goes from kindergarten
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  Speaker 1: where they have you reading the Berenstain Bears in the
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Golden Rule, for instance, and The Cat and the Hat
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  Speaker 1: by Doctor Seuss, among other classics, to classic nursery rhymes
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  Speaker 1: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, et cetera.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Three Little Bear, Doctor Seuss took money from Apak.
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  Speaker 1: Hilarious, The Three Little Pigs slash Los Tres Serditos, a
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  Speaker 1: bilingual story book by Patricia Seibert. Anyway, I have no
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  Speaker 1: problem with that. Let's see. Grade one includes Abe Lincoln,
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  Speaker 1: The Boy who Loved Books Beautiful something called Aboila by
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Arthur Doros. So you're reflecting Hispanic culture. Wait, a minute.
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  Speaker 1: Let me go back to that sentence by the annoying
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  Speaker 1: fing New York Times quote unquote journalist. It puts a
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  Speaker 1: focus on classic texts often written by white and male authors,
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  Speaker 1: but nowhere near exclusively. So I guess you threw that
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  Speaker 1: in because you just feel like you have to God,
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  Speaker 1: these people are annoying. What grade do you want? Name
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: a grade, Michael. You get to pick the grade name
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: of grade any grade seventh, seventh grade, here you go,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: grade seven, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Let's see Letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport by
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  Speaker 1: George Washington. I don't know that the Shepherd's Psalm from
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: the Book of Psalms, Chapter twenty three by King the
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: King James Versu.
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  Speaker 2: Sh having Christiandy down my throat.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: No, they're not the outsiders by S. E. Hinton, very famous.
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  Speaker 1: Got some Dylan Thomas and Langston Hughes from Robert Frost.
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  Speaker 1: Good stuff. Let's see grade eight, grade nine, grade ten.
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  Speaker 1: What have they got? The seniors in high school reading
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  Speaker 1: the twelve vers Hamlet by William Shakespeare to deconstruct it
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  Speaker 1: and problematize, and I'm sure, yeah, the thing then then
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  Speaker 1: the thing that really depressed me because I've taken in
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  Speaker 1: so much Harold Blooms stuff, uh recently, because I got
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  Speaker 1: on this Shakespeare kick.
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  Speaker 2: And he used to be on Charlie Rose all the time,
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  Speaker 2: back when that was what passed for being a lefty.
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  Speaker 2: Then he was hunted down by you know, the other
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  Speaker 2: people academy and he was a pariah. So he went
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  Speaker 2: from being a regular on Charlie Rose as a ill
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  Speaker 2: professor to a pariah. But the thing that was depressing
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  Speaker 2: is watching an interview with him from like nineteen ninety
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  Speaker 2: two and he was talking about, you know, I'm in
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: the fight for my life Charlie for trying to keep
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  Speaker 2: Shakespeare in the colleges. But this is a blip in time.
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  Speaker 2: They won't win. It's just a select few people. Back then,
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  Speaker 2: everybody used the term political correctness instead of woke. But
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: he taught political correctness will have its time, but it
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: will go away. Shakespeare will prevail. It went from that
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  Speaker 2: in ninety two, little by little, year by year, and
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: he was inside these in your universities. He taught at Yale,
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: he taught at NYU, he did stuff at Stanford. He
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: was in and and to the end of his life
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  Speaker 2: where he said we lost. I lost the battle. It
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: is over. They won. Uh. He saw it go in
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  Speaker 2: that direction little by little over the years. I mean,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: that's that's so depressing. Yeah, yeah, it is as as
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: I I've quoted before Christopher Hitchens said, you talk about
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: the end of civilizations, the barbarians at the gate. The
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: reality is the barbarians woke, walk in the gates with
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: somebody holding the door from them. That's the way civilizations.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Die, right right. So Grade eleven Ray Bradbury for height
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: four fifty one, you got some Kurt Vonnegut, some mine ran,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: some Thomas Sowell, uh, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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  Speaker 2: I wasn't introduced to hardly any of this stuff in school.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: It all came later on the round.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Yeaharnheim first fifty one was required.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Pretty sure. I never read Kurt Vonnagut in school.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: I did. It was one of the formative experiences of
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: my life, reading his short story Harrison bergeron which every
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: child should read ten times by the time they get
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: out of high school. Yeah. Let's see, Yeah, this is
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: really good. This is terrific. Grade nine you got Animal Farm.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Let's see the Lyceum address by Abraham Lincoln, which is
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: absolutely brilliant Ozymandias by Percy is it bite Bishe Shelley.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I'll just go with Percy Shelley. I've never really got
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: into poetry that much. It was never taught to me,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: all sorts of good stuff, including the Parable of the
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Prodigal Sun.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: I hope you're right they can make a comeback. I'm
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: not optimistic.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I know. I'm always more optimistic in these things than
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: you are.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: I hope I'm wrong. I would rub I'd love to
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: be wrong. I would roll around in my wrongness. If
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: this stuff can make a comeback, well.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: If they can quote unquote when for fifth the years
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: and then it gets rolled back, if that's as good
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: as it gets, that's as good as it gets. But
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: you got to keep fighting it one way or another,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: you know. I remember reading about the Civil War, how
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: depressing it was, how the Union endured defeat after defeat,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: and the incompetence of McClellan in particular. It's just astonishing
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: a lot of people more or less gave up. But
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: that's why you keep fighting.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Not only is it like you know, I just think
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: it's wrong and depressing. All that sort of stuff. The
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: self pleasedness of these people who are smarter than all
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: of you know, the last four hundred years. Shakespeare has
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: some problems, you know, and we are now, all of
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: a sudden, after four centuries, way smarter than everybody that's
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: come before. They didn't realize how awful this was. And
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: we're gonna kill it off.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the smug self congressional progressivesm makes me insane, But
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: you know that's where you keep fighting. You're either gonna
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: win or you're gonna go down. Swinging one of Tom
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Petty's greatest songs, Swinging like Sonny Listen, man, I love
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: that song. That ought to be required listening in Texas
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and everywhere else. Also read three Shakespeare's Michael portraying the
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: modern university. Well, I guess that's it. That's great.