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Episode One Hundred Twenty Eight: White Trash Adjacent · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number one hundred and twenty eight of the Death of Journalism podcasts.
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My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. This
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week's special election results are ominous for Republicans, the Super Bowl ratings break records,
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CBS News lays off one of their best reporters, and there is yet
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another racism hoax in the sports world. I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing
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Man. I'm a digital advertising SEO and email marketing specialist that also happens to
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the Dutchdigitalmarketingman dot com and let me help you tell your story. The
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website is the Dutchdigital Marketingman dot com. If you want to grow your business,
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Peter can help. That's the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com. And
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hey, thanks for sponsoring the show. For the last few months, I
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have been targeting this episode of the podcast as our last. However, as
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I indicated in the previous episode of this podcast, it will not be our
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last episode. Now I realize that the way people consume this podcast most podcasts,
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is kind of unpredictable. Some people are still catching up, some people
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skip episodes, so it's quite possible you may be confused by this revelation.
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But the bottom line is that we are transitioning this podcast from a free,
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advertiser based podcast to a subscription only version of the podcast that'll happen in March.
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So as this podcast currently exists, it will effectively end not with this
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episode, but at the end of February. So the episode that comes out
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at the very end of February will be the last free episode of the podcast.
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And if you so choose, you can subscribe on a monthly basis to
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the new version. And if you want to be part of that, to
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simply email our executive producer, Mike Gagavino at Ago Ago and then TDJ The
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It'll be very easy, seamless, and the transition will happen in March,
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so you get a bonus few episodes if you're one of those people.
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The majority of the listeners of this podcast who will stop consuming this once it
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ends up no longer being free. But that was the only way to make
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this viable for everybody in the long run, And so I listened. I
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listened to Mike, I listened to the listener response, and begrudgingly, I
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have agreed to continue the at least some version of this podcast into the depths
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of hell that is going to be this twenty twenty four election year, and
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who knows beyond that. But this election year is turning out to be just
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as ominous and horrendous as I expected. And in the last episode of the
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podcast, I predicted that We're Republicans would lose another House seat because of a
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special election in New York, a special election that was required because George Santos,
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the freaky fraud who got elected as a Republican and then then got kicked
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out of the House of Representatives, mostly because well Democrats totally wanted them out,
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and enough Republicans agreed. By the way, I'm not at all,
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in any way, shape or form a fan Achars Santos. I think he's
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nuts, and I don't think he belonged in Congress. I was uncomfortable with
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the way he was kicked out. I think it's set a dangerous precedent because
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he hadn't been convicted of anything yet, and that that bothers me. I
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also don't think that Santo's would have been forced out of the House if he
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was a Democrat and Democrats were holding on to a very narrow majority. I
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think that's partially because of the media environment and how much media attention would be
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placed on a Santo's situation if he was a Democrat and Democrats were hanging on
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for dear life to control the House. That's part of the price that Republicans
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pay for the massive media bias in this country. But with that said,
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the reality is that I felt like, even though the polls were indicating that
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it was a neck and neck race, the Democrat at least the Democrat on
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the ballot, they're both technically registered Democrats. The Republican was a female of
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color who's a registered Democrat and so, but she was under the Republican banner.
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The polls indicated this was a one or two point race, and I
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predicted no, I think that this is going to go the Democrats way.
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And I did that not really based on data, but just based upon the
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way that many of these special elections are going, and what direction the wind
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feels like it is blowing. And that's sure enough, is exactly what happened.
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This race did not turn out to be that close. The Democrat won
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by a pretty healthy margin, under ten points, but still nowhere near what
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the polling indicated. And it was called fairly early in the night. And
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so now the Republicans lose yet another member of their incredibly slim majority. And
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that was not the only result that I found to be significant last night,
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and in fact, it might not even be the most significant result when it
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comes to trying to figure out where we are in the presidential race. Now,
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the special elections are very, very dangerous because they are easily over interpreted.
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You have a situation where you're very low voter turnout, especially in New
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York. There was a snowstorm yesterday that may have hindered the Republican because of
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in person voting and mail in voting is clearly playing a major role. Now.
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You know, special elections and off year elections for a pretty good period
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of time where elections where Republicans overperformed, and now it seems like it's exactly
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the opposite and I think mail in voting plays a big role in that Republicans
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are not embracing mail in voting, and mail in voting is making it much
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easier for many Democrats who maybe in the past would not have bothered to vote
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in a special election or an off year election, and now they are voting.
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And we saw it in the New York race, and we also saw
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it in a race from a place that I grew up in Bucks County,
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Pennsylvania. Now this is really dangerous to over interpret, but there are a
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lot of people who are latching on to what happened in Bucks County this week.
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And I understand why. Bucks County is in the suburbs of Philadelphia,
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and traditionally it has been a swing county that you know, as Bucks County
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goes or Montgomery County goes, generally that's where the state is going to go.
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And if a Republican is going to win the state of Pennsylvania, they
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have to do very well in Bucks County and Montgomery County and the county surrounding
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Philadelphia. And you know, that's where suburban white moms dominate. And there
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was a state house race. Now, state house races are very small.
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So again I want to emphasize it is easy to overinterpret this, but this
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was a remarkable data point. So there was a state house special election that
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was determining control of the state House in Pennsylvania. This was not an significant
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race, and the district is a Democratic district. This is, you know,
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in the more working class area of Bucks County where I believe the registration
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voter registration is plus ten for Joe Biden, not voter for registration, but
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they voted for Joe Biden plus ten in the twenty twenty election. So it's
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not a Republican stronghold. But the problem here is that in this highly contested
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race, the Democrat won by thirty five points, thirty five points in a
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district that should be at least somewhat competitive. Now, again, it's a
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state house race and it's a special election, and so you know, there's
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all sorts of excuses you can make. But I'm sorry, when I look
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at that, I go, Okay, that is not an indication that the
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situation on the ground, the weather, if you will, is can producive
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to this narrative that Donald Trump is going to win Pennsylvania. Because if Donald
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Trump is gonna win Pennsylvania. That district in Bucks County is exactly the type
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of district where he's going to do very well and he's certainly not going to
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be losing by thirty five points. And you may say, well, Trump
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wasn't on the ballot. Of course not. But Trump has become for better,
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and I believe, mostly for worse, the Republican brand. He is
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the Republican brand nationwide. You can't have it both ways. Trump supporters,
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you can't run a cult and a monarchy and decided you're not even allowed to
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run against him as he as a former president running for a third straight time
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for the Republican presidential nomination. You can't make that argument and say, well,
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he doesn't get blamed for anything that happens way down ballot. Trump is
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the Republican brand. Now, abortion has also become part of the Republican brand,
10:00
and so I think those three things are what is causing Republican candidates to
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grossly underperform polling and voter registration in some of these races. So you've got
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mail in balloting, the abortion issue, and the Trump branding all weighing down
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Republicans in a pretty significant way. But when I look at what happened in
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that particular race. Again, I'm very cognizant that it is very easy to
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overinterpret these kind of races, but that the dramatic margin there tells me Trump
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ain't wing, ain't winning Pennsylvania. Now, I'm not making a call on
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this. I made a call a few weeks ago that barring black swan or
10:43
conviction, Trump is going to win Georgia. I'm not willing to make a
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call yet on Pennsylvania. I'm just saying the wind is blowing in the wrong
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direction if you're somebody who is rooting for Donald Trump to win, and Pennsylvania
10:58
is extremely key here because if you don't win Pennsylvania, if you're Donald Trump
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and you don't win Pennsylvania, now all of a sudden, the path becomes
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extremely narrow. There's only six states that matter. Georgia, Arizona, Nevada,
11:16
Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Those are really it. And so
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you know, let's say that I'm right about Georgia, that puts Trump on
11:24
the precipice. But if you take away Pennsylvania and Wisconsin has been drifting in
11:31
the wrong direction for years now, and we saw what happened with the state
11:35
Supreme Court election there a couple of years ago. That was very telling.
11:41
Everything's been going in the wrong direction if you're a Republican in Wisconsin, and
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Wisconsin is probably Trump's weakest polling state even currently when it comes to projecting the
11:54
twenty twenty four elections. So if you take away Pennsylvania and you take away
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Wisconsin, and Arizona is a fricking mess with carry Lake on the ballot,
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Democrats are going to have all sorts of reasons to come out and vote in
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a twenty twenty four election. With vote Trump and carry Lake on the ballot.
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The Republican Party is in a complete mess there. And so I don't
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think you can count on Arizona. Now You're left with one path, one
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path only, and that is Georgia. Okay, Nevada, Okay, I
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actually can see Nevada. Trump's doing well in the polls there. They just
12:31
elected a Republican governor by a pretty decent margin, better than expected. In
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fact, what happened in Nevada in twenty twenty two is probably the most significant
12:41
thing other than Ronda Sandis's resounding re election in Florida. And so Okay,
12:48
I can see Nevada, but now that leaves Michigan. Now Trump's doing well
12:52
in the polls in Michigan. Right now, he probably would have an advantage
12:56
that seems to be based upon him getting a shir of the black vote.
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That seems kind of unrealistic based upon many decades of history, but that's all
13:07
you've got. That's the only path you have if you're a Trump supporter right
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now logically. And I hate to be sounding like a weather vane going back
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and forth, because I've been very much in the camp of this is a
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fifty to fifty race, and then after the Special Council's report by Robert Hurr,
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I thought, well, maybe Trump is actually a slight favorite. Now
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well, after these results, I got to say that while it's barring a
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conviction of Donald Trump, between now in November, it's going to be close.
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The path for Trump winning is exceedingly narrow. If he wins Georgia,
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if he wins Nevada, and if he wins Michigan, he wins by the
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narrowest of marches, depending on how congressional districts in Nebraska and Maine turnout,
13:58
because those are the two states where you can actually not win all the electoral
14:03
college votes even though you win the state. He would get between two hundred
14:07
and seventy and two hundred and seventy two electoral college votes. Now you need
14:11
to you need two seventy to win. So this would be an extremely close
14:16
election, but that's the only shot you have if this week's special election in
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Bucks County, Pennsylvania is at all a bell weather for what's going to happen.
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And by the way, I also think that the congressional race could be
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a bell weather for the presidential race, not because New York is really in
14:35
play, but because the demographics of the George Santos seat are pretty similar to
14:41
a lot of areas of Pennsylvania that are key and so it's really hard for
14:46
me to see right now based upon the real world data, not the polling.
14:52
The polling clearly has a pro Republican bias in it. That's probably what
14:58
we have learned most in the last couple of years. There was no massive
15:03
red wave as the polling projected, and frankly, the only person in the
15:09
last couple of years who is outperformed polling on the Republican side is Rond de
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Santis, who Donald Trump just literally destroyed, not just because he beat him,
15:20
but he went out and took his legs out, trying purposely to destroy
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his career. So the one person that's able to overperform polling, Ronda Santis,
15:33
the Republican hero, has taken out like a mob boss. That's how
15:37
completely screwed the up things are. It's just incredibly frustrating. So I realized
15:46
that it is dangerous to overreact to a small data base. And this is
15:50
a small database, but it's real world data as opposed to polling. And
15:56
I am becoming convinced that there is now and inherent, I don't know what
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it is, three points, four points, five point six points somewhere in
16:04
there. There is an inherent pro Republican bias in a lot of these polls,
16:10
because when you turn it into a real world situation, Republicans other than
16:14
Ron de Santis are underperforming those polls. And logically, the only way to
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make sense of this is it's about abortion, it's about mail in balloting,
16:26
and it's about the Donald Trump brand being toxic. And as far as Joe
16:34
Biden is concerned, we still at this taping taping on Wednesday, morning of
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Valentine's Day. We still do not have what I would consider a really strong
16:47
post Robert Hurr Special Counsel Report poll that gives us an indication of whether or
16:53
not the race has changed at all, or whether or not Joe Biden's approval
16:59
ratings have changed changed at all because of the revelations and the allegations in the
17:04
special report Special Counsel Report indicating that basically Biden's memory is so bad he's not
17:11
even eligible to be prosecuted, and that he's an elderly man who you know,
17:17
doesn't really even understand what's going on some of the time because he doesn't
17:21
know when he was vice president, can't remember when his son died, and
17:25
what have you. We went into very great detail on that situation in episode
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number one hundred and twenty seven. So I predicted in episode one twenty seven
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that I did not think we would see dramatic ships in polling post Special Council
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Report. So far, in the little bit of data we do have post
17:47
Special Counsel Report, it's actually very good for Joe Biden. Now, again,
17:52
I am not willing to make any assessment yet because I want to see
17:56
at least three or four post Special counsel Or polls, and we really only
18:00
have had two and they're not all that credible. But frankly, so far
18:07
the data actually has cast a slight bump for Joe Biden, which I guess
18:11
is consistent with everything in this world being upside down. I don't think yet
18:18
that we have enough data to be able to come to any conclusions, but
18:22
so far there's zero indication, zero evidence that Biden has been hurt in the
18:27
polls by the Special Council report and the relatively fair and comprehensive media coverage of
18:36
that. And you know, I thought that there'd be at least some impact,
18:41
if only because all this happened just a few days before one of the
18:45
biggest social occasions of not the biggest social occasion of the year, which of
18:51
course is the Super Bowl, which gives people a chance, you know,
18:53
to talk about things that are going on in the news. So anything that
18:56
happens just a couple of days before the super Bowl, you would think would
19:00
have a little bit more impact than normal, which is why I thought Joe
19:06
Biden deciding to do an emergency press conference, thus taking away any ability of
19:11
the news media to ignore the story was colossally stupid. I mean, it
19:17
was dumb under any circumstances. But you did this just before the Super Bowl,
19:22
a super Bowl where by the way, and of course the media dropped
19:26
this story very quickly. Where by the way, you dodged a news interview
19:30
with CBS, breaking what has become a tradition for the president to do a
19:36
Super Bowl interview. So, you know, you've got the Super Bowl and
19:38
everybody you know, half the country, you know, in some way,
19:44
shape or form, at least I shouldn't say half the country is going to
19:47
parties, but a lot of the country is going to some sort of social
19:49
occasion revolving around the super Bowl. And you would think that this would be
19:53
the kind of thing, Hey, did you hear about this? This is
19:56
crazy. A president doesn't know what the hell's going on. I would give
20:00
it more legs. Well, so far, we've seen zero evidence of that.
20:04
That doesn't mean there's not going to be some evidence in the coming days.
20:07
I expect that as soon as I'm done with this podcast, we're probably
20:11
going to see two, three, four more polls out the rest of this
20:15
week, because I think the polling institutes all realize that this was a significant
20:19
event, and that therefore they need to get out in the field. So
20:23
you know, if by Friday we don't see a couple more polls, I
20:27
will be stunned and I'll have a better understanding of what's really going on.
20:32
And of course, in the next episode of the podcast, I'll give my
20:33
analysis of that. But so far, in the very little data we have,
20:40
there is zero indication that the Special Counsel's report has changed the race at
20:45
all, and certainly not in Donald Trump's favor. So again, I hate
20:51
being seeming like I'm a weather vane here. I think this is a critical
20:56
juncture of the campaign now that we know for or in the rational world,
21:00
that's going to be Trump Biden and things that the smoke is starting to clear,
21:06
the dust is starting to settle, people are starting to realize, oh
21:08
my god, this is this is our real choice. And you know,
21:12
we've got things going on here that are very significant. I think we can
21:17
tell a lot about where this this race is headed. I just need a
21:22
little bit more data before I come to any firm conclusions. But right now,
21:26
again because I have no dog in this hunt, I think we're choosing
21:30
between you know, basically a lobotomy and castration. I have no interest in
21:33
either of these candidates. So in a weird way, this makes me way
21:37
more objective than most commentators, you know, So it doesn't I don't really
21:42
even have a I don't have any rooting interest in this at all. I've
21:47
been trying to find a rooting interest and I can't because every time I get
21:52
seduced into thinking, well, maybe Trump wouldn't be that bad, he does
21:55
something or says something, or I'm reminded of something that indicates, now,
22:00
well, it's going to be just as bad or worse certainly than a first
22:03
term was. And we can't forget what happened in the fourth year of his
22:07
term, which was the COVID panic slash disaster. So you know, at
22:11
this point, I am already now back into the camp of it's going to
22:17
be a bit of a long shot, it'll be closed, but it's I
22:19
think right now in my mind, Joe Biden has now bizarrely gone back into
22:26
the driver's seat here based upon the special election results of this week and the
22:32
fact that we're not so far seeing any damage done to Biden by the Special
22:37
Council report. Now one of the predictions I made, or I guess.
22:41
I don't know if this you call this a prediction or not, but I
22:45
said in the last episode of the podcast that I thought that the decision to
22:51
hold that emergency press conference was made by Joe Biden himself, and I came
22:56
to that conclusion based upon really a couple of things. One, it was
23:00
so inexplicable from a political perspective. I could not understand how anyone on the
23:07
Biden team would have promoted this idea, proposed it, approved it. It
23:12
just didn't seem remotely politically smart. Not that the Biden team is a bunch
23:18
of geniuses, but it just didn't seem savvy. And therefore, for it
23:22
to happen, somebody very high up in the food chain would have had to
23:27
have demanded it. And based upon Biden's reaction at that press conference, which
23:34
was very angry and consistent with what I have perceived in my own personal experience
23:41
with men in their eighties who are starting to realize that they're in mental decline,
23:45
that tends to be the reaction anger and stubbornness. So the decision to
23:51
do an emergency press conference, especially when you don't generally do press conferences.
23:56
It felt very much like, Okay, this is some old, angry man
24:00
who's very stubborn and wants to prove to the world and maybe even to himself,
24:03
that he's really not on the verge of dementia. So that made sense.
24:08
That was a narrative that made sense to me. And then we played
24:11
a clip in the last episode of a CBS News reporter who subtly dropped within
24:18
her report what seemed to me she didn't say this, but seemed to me
24:23
as an indication that she was being told, maybe on background or off the
24:27
record, by people in the White House that yeah, this wasn't our call,
24:32
this came from the big guy. This came from Joe Biden. And
24:37
I said at the time, Okay, I think this was Joe Biden's call.
24:41
Well, it appears as if I was right about that, because the
24:45
White House Press Secretary Kneine Jean Pierre, was asked about this, and she
24:52
made it very clear, didn't equivocate at all, that this was Joe Biden's
24:56
decision to do this press conference, and she had no answer to the follow
25:02
up, which was fascinating as to whether the people around him agreed with this
25:08
decision, and here's what that sounded like at the White House, Koreen.
25:12
Earlier, you mentioned that the president of the White House dodup was a good
25:15
idea for him to come out last Thursday. Just want to clear it up.
25:18
Was it the president's idea come up? It was the president's idea,
25:21
Yes, he wanted to It was his idea. And how forceful was he
25:26
when he came out and they said he wanted to do it at that time?
25:30
I mean, you saw the president out do this, make a statement,
25:33
take questions from all of you because he wanted to do it. I'm
25:37
not going to get into private conversations that the president has. The president is
25:41
the president of the United States. If he says he wants to speak to
25:44
directly to the American people, he's going to do that. And following up
25:47
on something that now, I found that to be very telling, not just
25:49
because it seems to substantiate a bit of a prediction I made in the last
25:53
episode of the podcast, but that was a declarative statement, and the lack
26:00
of a response is consistent. It doesn't prove it, but it's completely consistent
26:07
with my assessment that this was not a decision that those around Biden and the
26:12
White House approved of She didn't couldn't even bring us out to say, of
26:18
course everyone thought it was a great idea because the press conference went fantastically.
26:22
She didn't even say that. That's one of those situations where what is not
26:25
said is often more important than what actually is said. So I am now
26:30
very convinced that Joe Biden made that decision himself. I still think it was
26:36
a mistake, but we haven't yet seen any real world evidence in the polling
26:40
to indicate that he's going to have any damage to either his personal approval or
26:45
his standing against Donald Trump, at least not in the short run. I
26:48
still think even if there is zero impact or maybe even somehow a positive impact
26:55
for Biden, how I have no idea, but we're living in a very
26:57
strange world. I still believe, as I said in the last episode of
27:02
the podcast, I still believe that down the road, this narrative is going
27:07
to play in an incredibly important role, specifically when it comes to whether or
27:11
not Biden can get away with dodging the debates against Donald Trump. So that
27:15
to me is the key part of what happened with the Special Council report with
27:19
regard to Joe Biden's memory. Now, another prediction I made in not just
27:26
the last episode of the podcast, but the last two episodes of the podcast.
27:30
I told you that I thought that the Super Bowl ratings would be and
27:33
I said this was the quote. I said, there will be at least
27:37
one hundred and twenty million viewers on average, maybe more than that, and
27:44
that this will be the most viewed sporting event in American history. Not the
27:52
highest rated because rating is based upon population, but the highest view the most
28:00
viewed. And I have to say I pretty much nailed this one because the
28:04
ratings are now out, and sure enough, the average viewership for the Super
28:10
Bowl was just over one hundred and twenty three million viewers. Now, to
28:15
compare that to last year, where the Chiefs played the Eagles in a similarly
28:22
competitive game with a lot of compelling subplots, including the Kelsey brothers going up
28:29
against each other, that was around one hundred and fourteen million people. So
28:33
you had about nine million more people on average watching the Super Bowl then watched
28:41
it last year, and last year was a significant increase over the previous years.
28:48
Now, there's a caveat here the way that they are calculating the Super
28:53
Bowl ratings has changed. This is a little bit like global warming, where
29:00
where we're comparing apples and oranges. I mean, in Global War Big we
29:03
only have about forty or forty five years of data that has compiled the way
29:07
we currently do it using satellite technology, and they pretend that somehow they can
29:14
compare that to data previous to that. And when it comes to the super
29:18
Bowl ratings. And I'm not an expert on this area, but I've read
29:22
enough about it to at least have some knowledge, it is clear that they're
29:26
doing this in a different way than they have previously. And I've always been
29:30
very skeptical as to how in the world you could possibly be able to figure
29:36
out how many people are watching the super Bowl when it's inherently a very social
29:41
event. How do you calculate how many people are going to other people's houses
29:45
for parties? And, by the way, even within that construct, how
29:51
do you know how many people are actually watching the game? I mean,
29:53
almost on a yearly basis, we go to my sister in laws to watch
29:59
the Super Bowl. But these are not really hardcore football fans, so there's
30:03
generally about twenty five people at the party, and I would say maybe two
30:07
or three of us are actually watching the game. Most people end up watching
30:11
the halftime show regardless of whether it's any good or not, and so do
30:15
they get counted as watching the game, And so it's an inherently difficult thing
30:22
to determine. But Okay, for the record, the number set a record,
30:27
and I think it is at least reasonable to compare this year's number with
30:33
last year's number, And I think it's a really pretty easy comparison. One
30:38
the metrics are pretty much the same, that the method is pretty much the
30:42
same, and you're only talking about a year's difference as far as you know,
30:47
how many people have televisions, how many people are on streaming and all
30:51
that. So the world hasn't changed that much in a year. And again
30:55
we have the same team winning, the Kansas City Chiefs, and we have
30:59
a competitive game, and so that is much more of an apples to apples
31:03
comparison than comparing these Super Bowl ratings to what has happened ten years ago,
31:10
twenty years ago, what have you. And from that standpoint, it is
31:14
pretty darn easy to make the conclusion or come to the conclusion that Taylor Swift
31:19
was responsible for about nine million viewers to the Super Bowl. Now, there
31:26
are I'm sure people in the conservative or pro Trump side that would dispute that
31:30
that, oh, she wasn't responsible for all of it. I'm sorry,
31:34
I think she is. I mean, you got as good a comparison as
31:37
you're gonna get. I mean, it's not like last year was a low
31:41
year for Super Bowl ratings. Last year was a blowout year. So again,
31:47
I've already gone through all the reasons why this game from a football perspective
31:52
should have garnered about the same audience as last year's game. There's no other
31:57
rational explanation for this. Then, the ingredient that's completely different is Taylor Swift
32:04
and her cult and nine million people. That's slightly more of an increase than
32:08
I predicted. I thought it would be about a six or seven million person
32:14
increase or viewer increase because of Taylor Swift, and it turns out it could
32:17
be as many as nine million people. Well, that has implications. Now,
32:24
as I said in the last episode of the podcast, and no other
32:28
sportscaster, I'm not that I'm a sportscaster anymore, but a former sportscaster.
32:31
But Nobody in the sports media will tell you the dangers of the fact that
32:37
the National Football League just picked up between five and ten million new I don't
32:44
know if you would call them fans, but at least people interested in their
32:46
sport because of Taylor Swift. That has really significant, potentially negative consequences if
32:54
you're a hardcore football fan, because those fans are going to need to be
32:59
catered to and pandered to to keep them in the fall. That is what
33:05
the NFL is gonna do, and that means they're gonna do things, in
33:08
my opinion, that the hardcore football fan doesn't like. But the hardcore football
33:14
fan has proven time and time and time and time and time and time and
33:17
time again over the last several decades that they will take any indignity and say,
33:22
thank you, sir, May I have another? Thank you, sir?
33:25
May I have another? I mean, I could go through a dozen
33:29
things that the hardcore football fan should have revolted over in the last couple of
33:34
decades, and they never did. And so the NFL realizes they can get
33:37
away with anything, and I guarantee you they're going to do things to try
33:42
to hold on to this audience in any way, shape or form that they
33:45
can. So that's the first negative implication of the Taylor Swift impact. If
33:51
you're a football fan, then of course there's something I've been discussing for many
33:54
months and was way ahead of the curve on, and that is what is
33:58
the potential impact of Swift on this election? And Donald Trump put out a
34:02
statement on true Social that was actually kind of benign for him, but still
34:07
as nine kind of attacking Taylor Swift and kind of attacking Travis Kelcey. It
34:13
was, as I said, it wasn't his worst, but the fact that
34:15
he even did that was just so stupid, because in my view, conservatives
34:21
ought to largely be embracing Taylor Swift and Travis Kelcey for many reasons. You
34:27
know, go ahead and say, look, we know you're liberals, you
34:30
know, and you're you're probably not going to vote for us, but you
34:31
know, more power to you. We think you're actually teaching some decent lessons
34:36
to kids and showing a decent example, and you know, we have no
34:40
problem with you personally. That ought to be the message, in my opinion,
34:44
if you're a conservative about Taylor Swift, but you know, Trump's ego
34:49
won't allow for that, and Trump fans are incredibly insecure, and the right
34:52
wing media is so insane with you know, this whole idea that Taylor Swift
34:58
is a pentagon set to try to take out Donald Trump. I mean Patrick
35:04
Mahomes was actually asked about some of this craziness on CNN doing an interview from
35:08
Disneyland. I mean, that's how insane this has gotten now he dodged the
35:13
answer rightfully, so, but I mean the wacky right wing conspiracy stuff surrounding
35:21
Taylor Swift and whether the game was fixed and all sorts of other insanity is
35:25
not helpful to anybody. But we saw in a real world situation how powerful
35:34
Taylor Swift is to impact behavior. Now. Is getting a young woman to
35:38
watch a Super Bowl game the same thing as getting her to vote against Donald
35:45
Trump? No at all. And obviously a lot of those people who are
35:50
in that nine million are not voting eligible. They're you know, girls like
35:53
my daughters, So that's part of that equation of her. It still shows
36:01
the enormity of her influence and power, the size of her cult, and
36:08
I'm not sure I think a lot of older people have underestimated how easy it
36:15
is to influence a younger person's vote. An older person, you know,
36:22
I think, is much more likely to think that their vote is sacred and
36:25
that nobody tells them how to vote, not even you know, a parent
36:30
or a sibling or a spouse. This is my vote, and I'm going
36:35
to vote my way. I'm just not sure that younger people take it nearly
36:39
as seriously, and so therefore, I don't think it's that much of a
36:44
leap that, especially when that demographic is liberal to begin with, especially on
36:49
the issue of abortion, that if Taylor Swift is telling her cult to get
36:53
out and vote, that it's critical to do so. I mean, she
36:57
never told anybody to tune into the Super Bowl. People did that. I
37:01
just don't think it's that big of elite to think that she's going to be
37:07
able to increase the voter turnout among a younger demographic of women that don't generally
37:14
vote. And this is one of the reasons why I am very convinced that
37:17
the Democrats are going to take the House of Representatives, especially after what happened
37:22
in New York this week with the special election. I would bet pretty good
37:28
money that Democrats are going to take back the House of Representatives. The Senate
37:31
is a more difficult climb for them because of the map. But I really
37:37
do think that the Taylor Swift effect is real. It is going to help
37:40
Democrats, and that Trump fans and quote unquote conservatives or Republicans or right wing
37:47
media is handling this all completely wrong. And you know, there's a new
37:54
story out that's not going to help the right wing reaction to Taylor Swift and
38:00
Travis Kelcey because we've learned now that Travis Kelcey is a movie producer. He's
38:06
an executive producer of the first film that's going to use green energy tax credits
38:14
put forward by Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. This is, I mean,
38:21
this is hilarios of insanity here are almost too plentiful to unpack. But we
38:28
have green energy tax credits within an inflation Reduction Act that are somehow being used
38:37
to help fund Travis Kelcey's first movie as an executive producer. That's a mad
38:45
lib for you right there. But that's the world in which we're living,
38:50
and you know this is not gonna help quell any of these conspiracy theories about
38:54
how the left is gonna use Taylor Swift and Travis Kelcey, especially since kel
39:00
she does commercials for Pfizer and bud Light and what have you, that they're
39:04
gonna use them for political purposes. And I think they will be used for
39:08
political purposes. I don't think it's a massive conspiracy. I don't know to
39:13
what extent Swift will do this. I don't think she has to do very
39:17
much because again, it's all about turnout. She doesn't have to say who
39:22
to vote for, just I really need you to get out in there and
39:24
vote. This is an incredibly important election. Her fans are experts at interpreting
39:30
what she really means. This is part of of her entire, huge part
39:36
of her cult. I mean they're used to unraveling her riddles and numbers and
39:42
numerology and all sorts of things. So it's not gonna take much for them
39:46
to realize, Ah, we're supposed to vote against Donald Trump, We're supposed
39:52
to vote for Democrats. And while it's not going to be a huge portion
39:58
of the voting population, it's going to be enough to influence tight elections,
40:02
and the presidential race could very much be a tight election that is influenced by
40:08
something like that that is not going to show up in the polls, because
40:14
the polls is I keep telling you one seem to have a pro Republican bias
40:19
over the last few years. But they're clearly not using a turnout model based
40:24
upon Taylor Swift juicing the numbers. They're not, and I think that's going
40:32
to be a flaw that will work likely in Democrats' favor, maybe in a
40:37
fairly dramatic fashion. Now today, as I'm taping, this is Valentine's Day.
40:45
And the reason why that's relevant is I normally would not weigh deeply into
40:50
this area, but since Taylor Swift and Travis Kelcier is such a huge part
40:55
of the news cycle, and because bizarrely I have found myself trying to figure
41:01
this out quite a bit over the last couple of days, I want to
41:05
share some thoughts on the state of their romance. Now, again, you
41:10
may or may not find this to be relevant or interesting. I'm not even
41:14
sure why I do, other than I like trying to figure things out,
41:19
and I have a gut instinct that something has changed within the Taylor Swift Jason
41:27
Kelsey relationship. I'm not sure about this, but it's just a feeling that
41:32
I have now to be clear and to provide context, I have been saying
41:37
from the beginning, this relationship is real, this relationship appears to be healthy.
41:44
I even said at one point that Travis Kelcey ought to nail that down
41:47
as fast as he can, because I was very impressed with how Taylor Swift
41:52
handled, for instance, the aftermath of the AFC Championship game, when I
41:57
thought, if there was any problem what so ever amidst all that chaos and
42:01
all that confusion on the field and all the pressure and all the microphones and
42:06
the cameras, that if there was a crack in the foundation, it would
42:09
have come out when we saw what happened after the AFC Championship game. So
42:15
at that point, I'm like, Okay, these people are set. You
42:17
know, they're going to get engaged at some point. I hope it works
42:21
out good for them. I am no longer as convinced of that narrative,
42:28
but I'm not sure, and I have spent a ridiculous amount of time.
42:31
I did not intend to do this, but it just kind of happened.
42:35
And this is what happens on TikTok where you get you go down a rabbit
42:38
hole and you're like, Okay, what's really going on here? And I
42:43
have to say, first of all, this is something I am sure about.
42:46
There is absolutely no question, no question whatsoever, that Travis Kelsey's approval
42:53
rating among Swifties, which has been exceedingly high in the ninety percentile at least,
43:01
has completely collapsed in the last few days since the Super Bowl, which
43:08
surprised me a little bit because I thought winning, say you know, solves
43:12
everything. That when you win, almost assaulting your head coach in a fit
43:17
of rage gets forgotten. Well, the Swifties are not forgetting about this,
43:23
and they are combining this with what happened after the game when Kelsey took the
43:31
Vince Lombardi Trophy from Jim Nantz and started into this very strange Viva Las Vegas
43:38
scream, like a primal scream of Viva Las Vegas. And for a lot
43:46
of Swifty fans or that's what they called, you know, Taylor swift fans
43:52
or Swifties, So for a lot of Swifties, this was an ick moment.
43:57
Now I realize it's difficult to discern things based upon on a few TikTok
44:00
videos, but there's been a lot of these videos saying almost exactly the same
44:05
thing, and they have a lot of views and a lot of likes,
44:07
and there are a lot of Swifties who are now like, whoa, whoa,
44:12
whoa, whoa, whoa? What is going on here? And it
44:15
was an ick moment, like who is this guy Travis Kelcey? And if
44:21
you look at Taylor Swift's reaction to the Viva Las Vegas thing, it was
44:27
consistent with an ick moment. Now, after that, they did have this
44:30
wonderful embrace and kiss and there's audio of what they were saying to each other
44:36
afterwards, and you know, it was absolutely consistent with two people that are
44:39
still very much in love and may end up together forever. And if that's,
44:45
you know, that works for both of them, I hope that that's
44:47
what ends up occurring. But after that, there were all sorts of videos
44:53
from the postgame celebration where for some reason they decided to go to this this
44:59
club and they're dancing to Taylor Swift music with a whole bunch of what seemed
45:02
like strangers, mostly in security people around them, and Taylor Swift, actually,
45:09
I can't believe I'm talking about this. But I do find this interesting.
45:12
I do think it could be significant on a number of different levels.
45:15
But Taylor Swift actually posted the first video she ever has on TikTok that had
45:22
Travis kelce in it, and it was her hanging out in the postgame celebration
45:30
club where there's you know, very little energy in the air, doesn't even
45:35
seem like anyone's having any fun. The camera shows Travis Kelcey sticking his tongue
45:39
out like a goofball, and then it pans to her parents, who are
45:45
sitting there having a drink, looking kind of bored, and then the camera
45:50
pans to Taylor Swift herself and she's looking bored. Now, that could have
45:54
been part of like the joke of the video, which is I somehow ended
45:58
up partying with my pant parents after the Super Bowl. But I'm always someone
46:05
who compares what I'm seeing to what should be the reality. I mean,
46:08
this is as good as it possibly gets in any relationship in the modern history
46:15
of man. You've been the focus of everyone's attention for months. You as
46:20
Tyler Swifter, just coming off a huge victory at the Grammys, and Travis
46:24
Kelcey just won his second Super Bowl in dramatic fashion. I mean, it's
46:30
never gonna get any better than this. This is as good as it gets.
46:36
And the videos of them were nice, they were warm, they were
46:42
certainly hanging out with each other and having affection towards each other, But it
46:46
just didn't feel like it ought to be at the level it should be given
46:52
the unique nature of the circumstances. I mean, this should be an eleven
46:58
out of ten. Instead it felt like a six or a seven as far
47:04
as the level of excitement and joy and affection and all that. And so
47:10
when you combine the fact that the Swifties are clearly starting to turn against Travis
47:15
Kelcey and that you know that Viva lost the Viva Las Vegas thing. The
47:20
way I interpreted it, I interpreted it almost from an evolutionary standpoint, where
47:25
you know, you have this this family, the Kelsey's, which I like.
47:30
I love the Kelsey's. Jason Kelcey is awesome. I actually like Travis
47:34
and Jason's podcast. I think they're great together. I think it's very intelligent
47:38
and and frankly, you know, Travis comes awsome. It's a pretty smart
47:42
guy. Not as smart as Jason is, but they're two very intelligent people.
47:45
The family seems great. But when he did that Viva Las Vegas thing,
47:52
it was almost like his you know, his genetic heritage started screaming and
47:58
like, Okay, wait a minute, hold on, He's not white trash,
48:01
but he might be white trash adjacent. I mean, that's the what
48:06
I got out of that. I don't know what Tael Swift got out of
48:09
it, but again, her initial reaction wasn't fantastic, and her fans it
48:15
was very, very very negative. Not in unison, but to a large
48:20
degree. And so when I think about all this, I cannot again believe
48:24
I'm devoting this much time to the of the podcast to this topic. But
48:29
there's a point to this. There's a precedent for this situation, and that
48:35
is the Reggie Bush Kim Kardashian relationship. It's remarkable to me how people forget
48:40
how big a deal that was. I mean, Reggie Bush was at the
48:44
time a more famous before he started dating Kim Kardashian, a much more famous
48:49
football player than Travis Kelcey had won the Heisman Trophy. He was probably the
48:52
most exciting college football player probably in history, playing for USC at the time.
48:58
Then, of course they ridiculously took away his Heisman Trophy, which is
49:01
absolutely insane, especially since when you go to the coliseum, Oj Simpson's jersey
49:07
is still hanging as one of the Heisman Trophy winners, but Reggie Bush's is
49:13
not, so go figure that one out. But anyway, Reggie Bush dated
49:16
Kim Kardashian for an extended period of time, and then the Saints won the
49:21
Super Bowl and Reggie Bush was doing an interview with the NFL Network in the
49:29
post game, and Kim Kardashian came onto the set with Reggie Bush. Now,
49:35
the reason I remember this is my wife, who's, like a lot
49:38
of women, very good at this kind of stuff, very intuitive within it
49:44
might have even been seconds, but certainly within minutes of watching them and their
49:49
body language in the post Super Bowl aftermath, said to me, they're breaking
49:53
up. He's not into this. And sure enough, they broke up not
50:00
long after that situation. And the reason I bring it up not just because
50:05
it's a remarkable parallel, because obviously you have two Super Bowl champions in very
50:09
high profile dating relationships, but you have a situation that should be the pinnacle.
50:16
That's why it's so I think telling this is as big as it gets,
50:22
You're never going to have a moment that is better than this. And
50:25
so if you're not both one hundred percent in and all over each other and
50:31
loving every moment of it when you've just won the super Bowl and in this
50:36
particular case, your Taylor Swift, you just came off a huge victory at
50:39
the Grammys and the world is your oyster. If you're not one hundred percent
50:45
in at that moment, that's a problem, that is a crack in the
50:51
foundation. And so my prediction, for whatever it's worth, my prediction is
50:57
if Travis Kelcey and Taylor Swift are not engaged by training camp, then they
51:04
will be broken up a year from now. That's not a very dramatic prediction,
51:07
but that's that's my prediction that Travis better nail this thing down now before
51:15
Taylor starts to think too much about this and see where her swifties are heading
51:20
on him, or this is not going to work. So if they're not
51:23
engaged by training camp, they will be broken up in a year. Now.
51:28
It could go in one hundred percent the other direction. They clearly have
51:30
affection for each other, it's clearly real, but it just did not feel
51:35
to me, based upon what it should be given those very very unique circumstances,
51:40
to be something that where this was a sure fire situation. They're gonna
51:46
get engaged, get married, have kids, and frankly, to me,
51:51
unless Taylor Swift is really getting their urge to have children, I mean,
51:55
she's I think thirty three thirty four years old at this point, so that's
51:59
a key question. And unless she really wants to have kids in short order,
52:05
then I think Travis might be in a bit of trouble here. That's
52:07
my prediction. Just for the record. My track record on this kind of
52:12
stuff is not as good as it is in politics and maybe in sports,
52:16
but I am willing to predict that if they're not engaged by the training camp,
52:21
then they will be broken up a year from now. A couple other
52:24
quick things regarding the aftermath of the Super Bowl that don't have anything to do
52:30
with football and may not seem like they're that significant in and of themselves,
52:35
but I think they do have social and cultural importance. There's a controversy involving
52:40
Alicia Keys and her performance at the halftime show that I find fascinating and very
52:49
important, even though it's minute. And that is that Alicia Keys when she
52:54
started singing live, and good for her for trying to sing live at the
53:00
halftime show of the Super Bowl, she botched like one of the first notes,
53:06
pretty dramatically, and everybody noticed this, and okay, fine, you
53:10
know it's an incredibly nerve racking situation. You're live. It's not like a
53:16
normal concert. I mean, everyone's rushing out there. You don't get the
53:20
same kind of sound check, you're not warmed up the whole bit. It's
53:22
a difficult deal. But she clearly blew the note, at least one note,
53:29
maybe a couple, and then all of a sudden, when the performance
53:34
got posted on the NFL YouTube page, she hadn't blown the note anymore.
53:43
The audio got fixed. Now how it got fixed, I have no idea,
53:46
but it clearly got fixed. And people were like, what the hell
53:51
is this? I know what I heard. I know that I heard her
53:54
blow the beginning of the song. And then people started to post on social
54:01
media the actual version where she didn't hit the note, and those versions were
54:09
taken down systematically, and so we have here, what is I think an
54:16
increasingly common phenomenon in the social media age, where it's almost the embodiment of
54:25
George Orwell's nineteen eighty four, where there is no truth anymore, that what
54:31
actually happened is irrelevant, that we're just going to create whatever narrative works for
54:37
us. Anything that's inconvenient, we're literally going to erase from the record,
54:43
and we're just going to pretend that it happened in a completely different way.
54:46
Now, this seems incredibly minute and insignificant, and I agree with that.
54:52
However, this is symbolic and emblematic of a much larger reality than is very
55:00
very dangerous. We are quickly entering a post truth world, a post truth
55:07
world where you can't tell for sure if anything is real, if anything is
55:15
truthful. You know, it used to be that audio or video was the
55:21
gold standard. Like if you were in a debate with somebody on Twitter or
55:24
whatever in social media, and you had video or audio that proved your side
55:32
of the story and showed that you know, somebody actually did say something or
55:37
they didn't say something, or the facts were you know, the way you
55:40
are saying that they were. That was a mic drop moment. Okay,
55:45
yoh, you got audio or video. You can't do anything better than that.
55:49
That's the end of the argument. You win. We no longer live
55:52
in that world because the audio could be claimed to be fake, or the
55:59
video could be claimed to be fake or AI. And by the way,
56:05
it's not necessarily a kooky conspiracy theory anymore to believe that it could be fake.
56:10
One of the predictions I have made about the twenty twenty four election.
56:14
I'm kind of amazed that hasn't happened yet, but there will probably be multiple
56:17
occasions on both sides of the political divide where both Biden and Trump are believed
56:27
to have said things they didn't really say. That is as easy a bet
56:32
as you're gonna find in the twenty twenty four election. Because of technology,
56:37
because of AI, it's going to be exceedingly easy for those kinds of things
56:44
to be put out there and to go viral and to never really be able
56:49
to be one hundred percent refuted because of the nature of social media and the
56:54
world in which we're now living in, especially when people are very willing to
56:59
believe they that fit what they want to believe in the first place. So
57:04
this Alicia Keys things seems very insignificant. But I found it to be important
57:09
and telling and really an indication of we are heading into a brave new world
57:16
here where you're not going to be able to be sure about anything. There
57:22
is no objective truth. We're living in a post truth world, and then
57:28
people won't have trust in anything. And that's why this kind of stuff matters,
57:34
because eventually trust in everything gets eroded, and that is we're very close
57:39
to that already, because the media has lost all sorts of trust over the
57:45
last several decades, and for very good reasons. See even though I'm a
57:49
media critic, I think that's incredibly corrosive and corrupting and a negative development in
57:57
our culture. I wish we had a news media that we could have some
58:00
trust in, because you gotta have to be able to function as the United
58:05
States of America. You got to be able to have some level of trust
58:08
in what you're being told. There has to be some level of objective truth,
58:14
and we are quickly quickly fading away from that society. And the Alicia
58:20
keasting I think is symbolic of that. One other music related note from the
58:27
super Bowl, and again this is not my wheelhouse, but I know I
58:31
like pop music like most people do, especially now that my daughters are so
58:35
into it. And something interesting happened at the super Bowl and in the aftermath
58:39
with Beyonce. Now I like Beyonce's music. I'm not a big fan of
58:45
jay Z. I didn't like what he did at the Grammys, using the
58:47
Grammys to complain about her never having one album of the Year. And by
58:52
the way, when I commented on the Grammys, I occasionally go back and
58:55
I listened to the podcast, and all I ever hear is the things I
58:59
say grewed up on, which happens more often than I would like to have
59:04
it happen. But when I talked about the Grammys, I said something I'm
59:07
sure sounded very stupid to a lot of people. I said that in the
59:10
pop world, Taylor Swift his head and shoulders of everybody else. Then you
59:15
got Miley Cyrus, and then below that, there's a whole bunch of people.
59:19
I was referring to the people who were actually at the Grammys. I'm
59:23
well aware that Beyonce exists, that Rihanna exists, that Lady Gaga exists,
59:28
that Adele exists. I would put them somewhere in the Miley silas Cyrus range,
59:36
give or take depending on what's going on in any particular year, but
59:38
obviously Taylor Swift his head and shoulders above all of them right now. And
59:44
Beyonce has now dropped a country album or is it in the process of dropping
59:49
a country album, and she alluded to that in a super Bowl commercial.
59:53
I have no problem with Beyonce dabbling in country. I do think it's kind
59:58
of hilarious that two of the biggest pop stars right now, Taylor Swift and
1:00:01
Miley Cyrus, were once living in Nashville doing country music and then basically sold
1:00:07
out country to go pop and it was a huge success for both of them.
1:00:13
And now you have Beyonce going into the country realm. I have no
1:00:17
idea how successful it will be, but I found that to be interesting from
1:00:22
a musical cultural perspective, especially given the fact that Beyonce is obviously black.
1:00:29
And what's particularly interesting to me about this is that she seems to be doing
1:00:34
everything she possibly can to look like a white person. Now. I mean,
1:00:37
she had blonde hair at the super Bowl. Again, I have no
1:00:40
problem with her having blonde hair at the super Bowl, and now she's wearing
1:00:45
a cowboy hat and what have you great, But I just want for the
1:00:50
moment for you to imagine what would occur if the opposite situation happened. When
1:00:55
it comes to quote unquote cultural appropriation term that I don't I don't like.
1:01:00
In fact, I hate it. I don't even understand it fully. But
1:01:05
you know, that's a term that gets used by the left whenever a white
1:01:08
person tries to do anything that might usurp the territory that is traditionally black.
1:01:15
But can you imagine can you imagine if a white country singer tried to make
1:01:22
herself as black as possible to put out an R and B album? Can
1:01:28
you imagine what the public reaction and the media reaction would be to that.
1:01:32
It would be dramatic, it would be very very negative. Now again,
1:01:37
I think it's fine that Beyonce's doing this. I'm curious to see whether or
1:01:40
not she'll be a success. I just think it's another example of the of
1:01:45
the double standards of behavior here and by the way, this is the way
1:01:49
it should be. It should be great that a black superstar decides to delve
1:01:53
into a realm of music that is generally considered to be white. I think
1:01:59
there's some potential positive for that. I also just think that it's a double
1:02:04
standard that nobody else is going to point out, and so I just did.
1:02:07
Now one other thing that is, I guess kind of the aftermath of
1:02:13
the super Bowl, although it's technically not is that Obviously the super Bowl aired
1:02:17
on CBS and Paramount Plus, and now we have Paramount and CBS News all
1:02:25
of a sudden announcing a massive number of layoffs, eight hundred layoffs from Paramount
1:02:34
and about twenty of those coming from CBS News. Now imagine the timing of
1:02:40
this, by the way, I mean, it sucks to be laid off,
1:02:44
and we're seeing all sorts of layoffs in the news media business in general.
1:02:50
And I'm going to get to a few more than I haven't mentioned previously
1:02:52
on this podcast because I haven't gotten time to do it. But you know,
1:02:59
here you have CBS just aired the Super Bowl to record ratings, and
1:03:05
not just record ratings, but because the game went into overtime. I'm sure
1:03:09
that they were able to generate more ad revenue than they ever possibly thought was
1:03:15
realistic because they had more commercial space and so they had to have made a
1:03:22
boatload of money. I mean, the super Bowl could not possibly have gone
1:03:25
better for CBS and Paramount, and then just two days later they announced eight
1:03:31
hundred layoffs, including twenty at CBS News. Now, obviously I'm most interested
1:03:38
in the CBS News part, although the Paramount layoffs are potentially significant because Paramount
1:03:45
has been the target apparently of a potential takeover by numerous other media companies,
1:03:52
so that may have played a role in all of this. I have no
1:03:55
idea for sure, but that certainly seems to be an interesting coinn incidents.
1:04:00
But when it comes to the CBS News aspect of this equation, Catherine Herriage,
1:04:05
a CBS News reporter who has become very well known for her objective reporting,
1:04:14
was laid off, and this I thought was wrong on so many levels.
1:04:18
I mean, first of all, she's a good reporter. She's much
1:04:24
more fair than most mainstream reporters. She's done a lot of good work,
1:04:28
for instance on the Joe Biden Hunter Biden's story. She has stood up for
1:04:33
the First Amendment. In fact, she's embroiled currently in a major First Amendment
1:04:39
case. And obviously this is an election year, and she happens to be
1:04:44
the National Security correspondent. There's all sorts of things going on in that realm,
1:04:48
of course, and to effectively fire her right now was just incredibly tone
1:04:58
death stupid and troubling. I mean, it's not like, you know,
1:05:02
they only had twenty layoffs from CBS News and to make Catherine herriage part of
1:05:09
that carnage in an election year, especially especially given the fact that she's become
1:05:15
very well known as one of the few fair mainstream reporters when it comes to
1:05:19
being tough on Joe Biden and even being somewhat fair to Donald Trump. I
1:05:25
just I thought, wow, okay, here, I am mister anti conspiracy
1:05:30
person. But there's no way that this is going to be interpreted in any
1:05:34
other fashion than as some sort of attempt by CBS to influence the election.
1:05:41
And I don't necessarily believe that, but I'm sorry, I can't defend CBS
1:05:45
on this perceptions matter. I mean, you couldn't fucking wait until at least
1:05:49
the end of the election before you do this. I mean, this is
1:05:54
going to birth all sorts of conspiracy theories, and even I have to go,
1:06:00
hey, I'm sorry, that's fishy as hell. That doesn't make any
1:06:05
sense to me. Why the hell would you get rid of one of your
1:06:09
best reporters who's been rather tough on Joe Biden in the middle of an election
1:06:15
year. That is not going to fly, and, like I said,
1:06:19
is going to cause all sorts of conspiracy theories on the right. And it's
1:06:25
an indication of just how unbelievably broken the news media is, especially now that
1:06:30
the business model has completely collapsed, and that's really at the heart of all
1:06:35
this. The business model has collapsed, and that's why we're seeing layoffs and
1:06:42
firings across the board in every element of news media. And one of the
1:06:47
most major outlets to go under, the most major, that's poorly said,
1:06:53
one of the biggest and most prominent outlets to go completely under so far this
1:06:58
year was the news outlet called The Messenger. And I made a mistake in
1:07:03
not referencing this earlier, but I think it actually dovetails with another story I'm
1:07:09
going to talk about in just a moment, involving John Stewart returning to The
1:07:13
Daily Show. And you're going to probably say, well, John, what
1:07:15
could possibly be the connection here? Here's the connection. The Messenger, which
1:07:20
was funded with fifty million dollars, intended itself to be a non partisan news
1:07:30
outlet, and you know, the idea was, Okay, we've got the
1:07:34
right wing media and the left wing media. There's a massive hole in the
1:07:39
middle. There's a large audience there that really wants unbiased news, and you
1:07:45
know, we're not going to appeal to the partisans. We're going to try
1:07:49
to be as objective as possible. Well, there were at least two major
1:07:55
problems with that idea, at least well, probably three, which was execution
1:08:00
of the plan, but there were two major problems with the plane itself.
1:08:05
I love the idea of objective, non partisan news. The problem is there's
1:08:13
not an inherent passionate audience for it because inherently, inherently, if you are
1:08:20
in the middle, you're not very partisan, which means you're not that interested,
1:08:26
which means you don't consume news that much, especially when we're living in
1:08:30
a world where there's so many other options, especially related to entertainment, and
1:08:34
you've got social media, and you know, a thousand TV channels and there's
1:08:41
all sorts of other things that are going to take away your attention from news.
1:08:45
So doing hard news for a nonpartisan audience, I am incredibly skeptical of
1:08:53
that being a ratings and revenue winner. This is one of the things that
1:08:58
I've been concerned about regards News Nation. You know, I appear on Dan
1:09:02
Abrams show about every other week on the News Nation television network. I think
1:09:06
News Nation does some great work, not just on Dan's show. There's some
1:09:10
shows on NewsNation I'm not a big fan of, but generally, I think
1:09:13
News Nation does a really good job of being objective. And I don't think
1:09:16
anybody does a better job of that than than Dan Abrams. So if you
1:09:20
want, you know, no bs objective news reporting and analysis, I think
1:09:26
that's the place to go. But is there an audience that's large enough in
1:09:30
cable television for that. I am very skeptical of that because, again because
1:09:34
of the reasons I've just stated that, inherently you're dealing with non partisans.
1:09:41
And the reason why that the right wing media and the left wing media appeal
1:09:45
to extreme partisans is because with partisanship comes passion. With passion becomes consumer being
1:09:53
a consumer consumption. If you can, you consume more. If you're passionate,
1:09:59
you're gonna be there every single day, come hell or high water.
1:10:02
It doesn't really matter what the news of the day. Is when you are
1:10:06
trying to play to the middle, you are at the mercy of the news
1:10:10
cycle. It's only when really big things happen that those people in the middle
1:10:15
are all of a sudden going to go, oh, this is interesting,
1:10:17
tell me what really happened here? And so you don't have control over your
1:10:23
own destiny. And advertisers, the advertising business models already broken, but to
1:10:29
the extent that it works at all, they also want passionate cult members because
1:10:35
those are the type of people that will actually maybe buy the product. I've
1:10:40
talked many times about the history of television news can basically be broken down into
1:10:45
it started as broadcasting, it shifted to narrow casting, then it went to
1:10:49
cult casting, and now we're into basically narrow cult casting or micro colt casting.
1:10:55
And it's not been good for news, and it's not been good for
1:10:58
the country at all. And the messenger collapsed not because they didn't get traffic.
1:11:04
That's the other part of this that is significant. They got traffic,
1:11:10
but they could not translate that traffic into actual revenue. Their traffic projections weren't
1:11:17
that far off, their revenue projections were catastrophically off, and so in less
1:11:25
than a year, they blew through fifty million dollars partly because they overspent.
1:11:29
They were spent on talent, they overspent on expenses, and they completely missed
1:11:36
the boat when it came to projecting their revenue. And now they're no more
1:11:42
and hundreds of journalists, some of them were very good, no longer have
1:11:46
a job. And I think, maybe even more importantly than that, there's
1:11:51
now a further chilling effect when it comes to anybody who is targeting that middle
1:11:59
that middle ground, that objective, fact based middle ground when it comes to
1:12:04
news and political reporting, because we now have ye another example, though it
1:12:10
was not a perfect example, because I don't think they executed this very well,
1:12:14
and in fact, they kind of abandoned the hard news idea where they
1:12:17
were they panicked and started to go after entertainment clicks in a desperate attempt to
1:12:23
keep themselves afloat. But the point here is the message is going to be
1:12:27
sent by the death of the messenger that you can't do objective, middle based
1:12:33
news reporting. It just can't work in the current media corporate environment. And
1:12:41
that might be the case, which again is not good for news and it's
1:12:45
not good for the country. But that to me is the legacy of the
1:12:49
failure of the Messenger. Now, how does that relate to John Stewart returning
1:12:54
to The Daily Show, Because he's come back for the election twenty twenty four
1:13:00
and his first show got a lot of fanfare, got a good number for
1:13:04
Comedy Central. And John Stewart, who's very liberal, I think is often
1:13:10
funny. I think he's pretty intelligent. He's been more objective than a lot
1:13:15
of left wing comedians. For instance, I mean, I think he did
1:13:19
one of the certainly the funniest and maybe the most pressioned commentaries when it came
1:13:27
to the whole lab leak theory of COVID. I mean, he was very
1:13:30
much in the boat that obviously the lab leak theory not only wasn't crazy,
1:13:35
it's it's obviously true and you know, look it up online for yourself.
1:13:41
You know, he did it in a late night TV show. Was very
1:13:43
funny, but he was he was very outspoken about it. So it's not
1:13:46
as if he's completely in the tank for the liberal narrative and is unable to
1:13:51
think for himself. Well, when he did his opening monologue on this return
1:13:58
as much valuehood return to the Daily Show He gave a whole diatribe about how
1:14:04
both Biden and Trump suck, and I agree with just about everything he said,
1:14:10
not totally, but the vast majority of it, and some of it
1:14:13
was humorous, but the bottom line message here was the bottom line message.
1:14:17
Look, this year is gonna suck. Biden sucks. Trump sucks. Trump
1:14:21
sucks worse than Biden, let's be clear about that. But Biden sucks too.
1:14:27
That was the basics of what John Stewart did, which again I think
1:14:31
is pretty accurate. Now you can argue is who sucks worst? Trump or
1:14:35
Biden. I'm still trying to figure out that myself. But I get from
1:14:40
a left wing perspective that's about as you know, as dangerous as it's gonna
1:14:45
get. Because John Stewart is kind of going for that same audience share as
1:14:50
The Messenger and on Comedy Central. I don't know that that's gonna work.
1:14:57
Now. Stuart may not care because this is kind of like a coming out
1:15:00
retirement, you know, one shot deal, just because this election year is
1:15:04
going to be so insane, and I don't know what his expectations are for
1:15:10
ratings and how much he even cares. But there's no question that a lot
1:15:15
of left wing viewers were offended by the fact that he would equate Biden and
1:15:19
Trump. You can't win with a partisan audience with that messaging, even though
1:15:27
I believe strongly that's the basic truth of it. You can't win on the
1:15:30
right wing with that messaging. That's not going to be the messaging of anyone
1:15:33
in the right wing media, which is part of why I'm ending the free
1:15:38
version of this podcast. There's no way to make that work in an advertising
1:15:44
world, with an advertising business model. It's just not possible. You can't
1:15:48
generate a large enough audience, especially when the advertising business model, particularly for
1:15:55
certain types of podcasts, is so completely broken. So that's what everyone on
1:16:00
the right wing media will tell you. Well, you might have some misgivings
1:16:02
about Trump, but come on, he's awesome and he's way better than Biden.
1:16:06
That'll be the most objective narrative you get on the right wing, and
1:16:13
similarly on the left wing. So I'm curious as to how John Stewart is
1:16:17
going to be able to maneuver through that problem because that's a place where there's
1:16:23
no ratings, especially when you're known as a left winger. So it's not
1:16:27
like conservatives are something going to flock to the Daily Show on Comedy Central as
1:16:32
a way to get a checked of news about the twenty twenty four election.
1:16:38
I want to briefly touch on a story that I have mentioned many, many,
1:16:42
many times regarding the death of Jeffrey Epstein. I mean mostly doing this
1:16:47
because our executive producer, Mike got Gavino kind of urged me to do so.
1:16:53
But Jeffrey Epstein's brother has created some news on the right because he went
1:16:58
on The Megan Kelly Show to make his argument that his brother was in fact
1:17:05
murdered in a federal prison. And I have been extremely outspoken in mocking this
1:17:13
idea that there is no evidence that Epstein was murdered. There's no logic to
1:17:17
it. If he had been murdered in a federal prison, we'd have the
1:17:21
easiest crime to solve in history. We would know exactly who was in that
1:17:26
prison at that time and had access to his cell, and we'd be able
1:17:30
to watch those people, and those people would have to come into some very
1:17:35
significant amount of money, or there'd be something in their lives that would give
1:17:40
away the fact that they had been hired to kill Jeffrey Epstein to cover up
1:17:45
for very powerful people. I mean, there also wouldn't be any motivation for
1:17:51
Bill Barr to cover this up as Attorney General and Donald Trump to effectively be
1:17:59
part of that cover up. And Donald Trump has told Tucker Carlson to his
1:18:02
face, although it didn't dissuade Tucker Carlson at all, that he believes that
1:18:06
Epstein in fact killed himself, was pretty confident of that. The weirdest part
1:18:12
of that, I mean that, to me was the most telling interview of
1:18:15
last year was when Donald Trump told Tucker Carlson to his face that Epstein did
1:18:21
in fact kill himself, and it had no influence at all on Tucker's very
1:18:27
firm belief that Epstein was murdered. And then Trump seemed to not even understand
1:18:32
that this was an article of faith among his fan base, that Epstein in
1:18:38
fact had been murdered, And then he kind of slightly backs off of it
1:18:42
and lets Tucker save face by saying, well, I don't know for sure,
1:18:45
but Trump would know. Trump would know and would have to be part
1:18:49
of a massive cover up if if Epstein had been murdered in by the way
1:18:54
Epstein, a former friend of his, had been murdered in a federal prison,
1:18:59
was overseen by his own Attorney General, Bill Barr. But look,
1:19:05
Epstein's brother. First of all, I don't know why we're giving him any
1:19:08
credibility because you know, he had no idea, that is, apparently that
1:19:12
his brother was a monster. So it's not like, you know, he
1:19:15
has any real great insight in his brother's life or any great intelligence to be
1:19:20
able to figure out what was going on in his brother's life. So he
1:19:23
was duped apparently like everybody else was, so right there, His credibility is
1:19:29
suspect too. He has a huge personal incentive to either believe or portray that
1:19:35
he believes that his brother was murdered because it gives a completely different significance to
1:19:42
his brother's life. And it might, by the way, even have financial
1:19:45
implications if they were ever able to prove that he was murdered in a federal
1:19:48
prison by some sort of federal conspiracy to kill him. So there's that element
1:19:54
of this, and then there's the nature of his evidence quote unquote itself.
1:19:58
And the evidence has been basically boiled down into two things. One autopsy photos
1:20:03
and the autopsy photos stuff. Granted, I'm not an expert in this area,
1:20:09
but I've got common sense. You know, there are obvious dramatic ligature
1:20:15
marks surrounding Jeffrey Epstein's entire neck, which certainly seem awfully consistent with an attempted
1:20:24
hanging. But let's also be clear about something. You're not going to get
1:20:29
a perfect hanging when you're doing it alone in a federal prison. It's going
1:20:38
to be botched. It is a very difficult thing to hang yourself when you
1:20:45
don't have access to all the materials that you would like to have in order
1:20:49
to be able to hang yourself. So inherently it's not going to be perfectly
1:20:55
done. And so there's nothing in the pictures that I see that is all
1:21:00
inconsistent with the conventional narrative, which is that Epstein hung himself in a federal
1:21:05
prison and died because he knew the jig was up and he was guilty as
1:21:11
hell and he didn't want to have to face the consequences. That's Oxhom's razor
1:21:15
as to what occurred. But then there's the quote unquote scientific analysis on which
1:21:21
Epstein's brother has concluded that Epstein in fact did get murdered by the way it
1:21:29
should be pointed out that Epstein's brother says, at first he believed that he
1:21:32
did in fact commit suicide, but now that more quote unquote facts are in,
1:21:36
he has changed his mind. Well, the analysis here from a quote
1:21:42
unquote scientific perspective has been provided by a guy by the name of Michael Boden.
1:21:46
And there are very few public figures that I have more disdain for than
1:21:53
Michael Boden. Michael Boden is a complete fraud and a whore. Well,
1:22:00
I could spend a lot of time explaining why that is, but all I
1:22:04
really need to tell you is he was one of the key quote unquote expert
1:22:10
witnesses on behalf of OJ Simpson in his murder trial. So Michael Boden,
1:22:15
and that was, you know, almost thirty years ago. Now, Michael
1:22:19
Biden has been horring himself out because he got a name. He got a
1:22:23
name that you know, had some cachet within the scientific community, and he's
1:22:28
been living off of that name and horring it out for decades, with Oj
1:22:32
being probably the most dramatic example, but he's not the only example. In
1:22:36
fact, I've referenced many times before that my wife and I watch a lot
1:22:43
of datelines a lot of twenty twenties, a lot of forty eight hours.
1:22:46
You know, we like crime dramas, and we have a literal joke between
1:22:51
the two of us that if we're seeing a story where somebody is clearly guilty
1:22:58
and they're trying to make you think that maybe he's not guilty, and they
1:23:04
reference a forensic pathologist that is going to come up with some new evidence that
1:23:11
make you question everything you think you know about the case, we will turn
1:23:15
to each other and it will go here comes Michael Boden, And sure enough,
1:23:21
I mean, without fail, it's always Michael Boden, because that's where
1:23:27
you go when you're guilty as fuck and you have money and you need someone
1:23:31
to pour themselves out to try to convince a jury that you might not be
1:23:35
guilty. So when it comes to attention or money, Michael Boden will always
1:23:41
tell you exactly what you want. He's the Louis Free of forensic pathologists.
1:23:46
So don't believe this bullshit that somehow Jeffrey Epstein was murdered because his brother is
1:23:55
now claiming that he was. Now, speaking of obvious bullshit, there has
1:24:00
been yet another alleged I guess you would call it hate crime when it comes
1:24:06
to the world of high school sports. This is so reminiscent of other situations
1:24:14
that we have talked about previously on the podcast. It's almost a cliche now,
1:24:18
and every single time the news media falls for it, and every single
1:24:23
time, the truth eventually comes out and it's clear that the original story was
1:24:28
bullshit. And here's the most recent example. This was as it was reported
1:24:32
in the New York Post. And the New York Post tends to fall for
1:24:38
these stories way more than they should. Concerner the fact that the Post is
1:24:41
generally a pretty conservative newspaper, but this is a local New York City story.
1:24:46
And see here's how they reported on it. Just a couple of days
1:24:49
ago, headline, new York High school girls basketball team quote unquote forfeited after
1:24:58
players reportedly called quote unquote black end words by crowd during game. So let
1:25:06
me repeat that headline, new York High school girls basketball team forfeited. In
1:25:13
other words, they were the ones that forfeited the game after players reportedly called
1:25:17
quote unquote black end words. That's what was alleged to have said been said
1:25:23
by crowd. Now crowd implies more than one person during game so that was
1:25:30
the headline. And as I was reading this story, of course, I'm
1:25:34
inherently very skeptical, because all these stories end up turning out exactly like all
1:25:41
the others. They're either completely bullshit or mostly bullshit. But this was alleged
1:25:45
to have happened in a game between Scarsdale, not Scarsborough, Scarsdale High School
1:25:53
in New York and East Ramapo High School. Now East Ramapo seems to be
1:26:00
a mostly black high school and Scarsdale is a public school, and based upon
1:26:05
the demographics of Scarsdale, my guess is there are very few black people who
1:26:11
are on the team because the demographics are mostly white and Asian. In fact,
1:26:16
there's even more Hispanics in the official demographics of Scarsdale, New York than
1:26:21
there are black people. So you have what seems to have been a mostly
1:26:26
not entirely black school playing a mostly not entirely white school, which unfortunately is
1:26:31
always a combustible situation. It should be pointed out that this game happened at
1:26:39
Scarsdale High School, but this was not really a varsity game, and the
1:26:45
details are here are always important, and when I'm always looking at these situations,
1:26:50
when they're sporting events, because you know, it's amazing how often these
1:26:54
allegedly occur during sporting events. One of the first things I look at is,
1:26:59
okay, who won the game? Who won the game, because in
1:27:06
my experience, with one hundred percent, with one hundred correlation, it is
1:27:15
never the winning team that comes out and says, oh, we were the
1:27:19
subject of racial tents or racism or the N word. It is always the
1:27:25
losing team that was subject to some sort of racial indignity. And you know,
1:27:31
then some of these things are ridiculous. I remember a few years ago
1:27:33
there was a racist banana that was left in a locker room of a team,
1:27:38
and that was ridiculous to begin with. I mean, bananas are in
1:27:42
lockers all over all over the place because a lot of people like to eat
1:27:45
bananas for potassium before a game. But somehow this black football team, mostly
1:27:50
black football team, I think this was in New Jersey. It was in
1:27:55
the New York, New Jersey area, and uh, you know, they
1:27:58
lost, so they claimed they had been subjected to racism because someone put bananas
1:28:03
in their locker room. I mean, this is the insanity that now ensues
1:28:09
because we've taught an entire generation of American kids, that racism is everywhere,
1:28:14
that were inherently racist country, and that any kind of indignity, real or
1:28:17
imagined isn't is supposed to be interpreted through the prism of racism. So when
1:28:25
I read the story, I was inherently skeptical of it. But even within
1:28:30
the story itself, even within the story itself, there was evidence that this
1:28:38
didn't really happen, and that the authorities knew that this didn't really happen.
1:28:43
But by the way I mentioned, this wasn't really a varsity game. This
1:28:45
was called a varsity B game. This is not something I was even familiar
1:28:50
with. But apparently both these schools have enough kids that they have a varsity
1:28:57
A team like the real varsity, and then they have a varsity B team,
1:29:01
which I guess would be for the players that are juniors and seniors but
1:29:05
aren't good enough to make varsity. So the point, the reason why that's
1:29:10
significant is this is not a high level of competition. There's not a lot
1:29:15
of people watching this game. There's not a lot of intensity in this game
1:29:19
because no one really cares that much about a varsity B girls' high school basketball
1:29:26
game. In order for the to be that much intensity for somehow this to
1:29:30
devolve into N word being used by the crowd. It's also important to point
1:29:35
out because the crowd would be so small that if that did happen, this
1:29:41
would be easily discernible. Everyone would know about it. You'd be able to
1:29:45
identify immediately who did this, and that would be the end of it.
1:29:50
The other part of this that was suspicious before I get to the joint statement
1:29:55
put out by the two schools that basically admitted that this didn't happen, if
1:30:00
you read between the lines, is that this forfeit issue, the forfeit thing
1:30:05
I was an immediate red flag to me because wait a minute. So the
1:30:12
narrative here is that this black school in the gym of a white school is
1:30:18
the subject of the N word being chanted at them by either one person in
1:30:24
the crowd or multiple people in the crowd, and they decide voluntarily that they're
1:30:30
going to quit the game with a few minutes left. And forfeit, I
1:30:35
mean the world we're living in now when it comes to racial entitlement, when
1:30:41
you become a victim of a hate crime, of a racial hate crime,
1:30:45
my god, I can't believe you wouldn't expect to be declared the winner,
1:30:48
regardless of what the score is. So the idea that you would forfeit the
1:30:53
game, it seems preposterous on its face. I mean, I could see
1:30:59
you might call for if let's pretend this happened, which of course it didn't,
1:31:02
but let's pretend that it did. I could see you call for a
1:31:05
stoppage, and you want to have the crowd admonished, or you want the
1:31:10
person that perpetrated this horrible act removed. And I get all that, and
1:31:15
I guarantee you any referee, and especially in this day and age, would
1:31:17
be more than willing to do that. Stop the game, fix the problem,
1:31:21
and we move on. But to voluntarily forfeit, to me, that
1:31:27
is not consistent with the idea that you're the victim, especially in this era
1:31:31
where being a victim is the ultimate goal for a lot of people. I
1:31:35
mean, there's nothing better in America than being a victim of some sort,
1:31:41
you know, depending on the situation. So this story had all sorts of
1:31:45
red flags and then came at the end of this article in the New York
1:31:49
Post, the statement that was put out jointly by the two schools involved in
1:31:56
this alleged episode, and this is so telling and interrational world. This would
1:32:00
have eliminated any media coverage of this story to begin with. But here was
1:32:05
the statement. So far, this review has not identified a specific individual or
1:32:15
group who engaged in any inappropriate conduct. I mean, the cities are too
1:32:24
you know, New York woke academic institutions. If there was any evidence at
1:32:30
all, it would be obvious. This is not a difficult thing to discern
1:32:34
what happened, especially since there was video and audio being taken of the game.
1:32:42
And they are willing to put out a joint statement saying there's no no
1:32:46
one, no one has been identified as someone who engaged in any inappropriate conduct.
1:32:54
That's a pretty significant and declarative statement. But then they go on,
1:32:58
this is really so telling about the word of academia. Despite the absence of
1:33:03
specific information, we view any act against the dignity of any student athlete as
1:33:11
unacceptable. I know that the Scarsdale and East Ramapos communities join us in denouncing
1:33:18
all acts of hate, but there's no evidence that any hate happen, but
1:33:28
they still have to denounce it. So basically, as I'm reading this statement,
1:33:32
I'm like Okay, we looked into this. It didn't really happen.
1:33:35
We're not gonna say it didn't happen. We're just gonna make it clear there's
1:33:39
no evidence that it happened. But we're still gonna condemn the imaginary allegation because
1:33:45
it's just so horrendous that we can't let this stand. So even if this
1:33:49
happened only in someone's imagination, we must still condemn it. Reality means nothing,
1:33:56
truth means nothing. Well, thankfully, in this particular case, someone
1:34:00
stood up and said, wait a minute, this isn't at all what happened.
1:34:05
Now. You know, this wasn't picked up at least not as of
1:34:09
yet by a major news media outlet, but this is apparently there's some It
1:34:14
seems to be a local paper in Scarsdale, which I'm sure this is a
1:34:17
big story there, because basically the entire community of Scarsdale, New York,
1:34:21
is being painted as a bunch of racists calling these poor black girls the N
1:34:26
word. A Scarsdale parent stood up and told the local paper, no,
1:34:33
this is bullshit, and here's what they reported. A Scarsdale parent is refuting
1:34:40
claims of racial slurs that purportedly shut down a Varsity B girls basketball game at
1:34:48
Scarsdale High School. Jason Paris, a dad who was in the stands for
1:34:54
the girls varsity B basketball game against the team from East Ramapo, said that
1:35:00
no racially charged words were uttered, contrary to what he heard while at the
1:35:06
game. NBC News, The Journal News, The News twelve reported that racial
1:35:12
slurs had come from the stands. According to Paris, whose daughter is a
1:35:17
junior and plays on the team, it was a referees call, not a
1:35:24
racist slur, that caused the game to end halfway through the fourth quarter.
1:35:30
Paris said, quote, nothing remotely close to what is being reported happened at
1:35:38
the game. It was the last game of the season for both teams.
1:35:43
It was a normal game up to halfway through the fourth quarter when one of
1:35:47
the Ramapo girls committed a foul. When the same girl had a second foul
1:35:53
called against her, the East Ramapo coach began berating the referees about calls.
1:36:00
He said, quote, that's it, We're done, and the referees declared
1:36:05
the game over and left the court. At the time, the score was
1:36:12
wait for it, thirty four to twenty two in favor of you guessed it.
1:36:17
Scarsdale so once again the record continues to be unblemished. That it's just
1:36:24
it's just remarkable that only teams that are losing or have lost are the ones
1:36:29
who claimed to be the victims of racial slurs. But this story continues.
1:36:34
Paris had quote it ended. When the game was forfeited, the East Ramapo
1:36:41
coach yelled at the refs who called the game and walked out. The Scarsdale
1:36:47
coach gathered her girls on the bench, and they left the gym to go
1:36:53
to the locker room to change and say their season goodbyes. By the way,
1:36:58
this is the last game of the season and makes this, in my
1:37:01
opinion, way worse because they not only took away the victory from the Scarsdale
1:37:06
girls, but you know, for some of these girls, this might be
1:37:10
the last basketball game they ever play in their lives. I don't know what
1:37:14
the playoff situation is, but you know it's varsity BE so they might not
1:37:16
even be playoffs for varsity B. So so here their their careers end and
1:37:21
their season ends in which should be a home victory, and instead these girls
1:37:27
walk off the court with four minutes left and then claim to be victims of
1:37:31
racism. So I mean, this is this is not trivial, this is
1:37:35
this is angering, this is infuriating. Paris explained that the Scarsdale players were
1:37:43
unaware of any of these allegations and only learned about them when they received a
1:37:47
text from one of the girls on the Scarsdale Varsity A team who was in
1:37:53
the gym. She reported that a girl from East Ramapos said someone called her
1:37:58
the N word. Paris said that girl was on crutches and did not play
1:38:03
in the game. Paris is a long time Scarsdale resident who has been watching
1:38:09
his kids play for the past fifteen years. Commenting on the incident, Paris
1:38:12
said, as someone who was there, it's incredibly frustrating because you can't prove
1:38:18
a negative. There is nothing that can be done to dispel this. The
1:38:24
game was live stream with audio. The camera and audio were on and all
1:38:30
you hear is cheering for the teams. Seeing this on the news from parents
1:38:35
who teach their children to never do anything hateful is devastating. Parents and girls
1:38:43
are very upset at what appears to be a total fabrication. Unquote. I
1:38:50
mean, I realized that's a parent of one of the Scarsdale players, but
1:38:55
there were only a handful of people in the gym. That's about as clear
1:39:00
cut as it gets, and without any evidence corroborating the allegation when there should
1:39:05
be tons. I'm sorry, the story is bullshit, especially when you consider
1:39:11
the history of these things, and it's the boy who Cried Wolf phenomenon is
1:39:15
clearly now part of this whole equation. In fact, this story, from
1:39:20
what I can tell from a media standpoint, never really made it out of
1:39:24
New York other than like on Twitter. No other major media outlets outside of
1:39:29
New York picked this up. And I think it's because even they are starting
1:39:34
to realize, you know what, these stories all turn out to be bullshit,
1:39:39
so maybe we shouldn't bother. And it was only a you know,
1:39:42
a girl's varsity B game. There was hardly anybody there. There's no evidence
1:39:45
of it. I don't I mean, and maybe I'm giving them too much
1:39:49
credit, but there wasn't the same type of news coverage of this as for
1:39:54
instance, there was with the BYU Duke volleyball game. Now I realized that
1:39:59
was a much bigger de because that was a major college event and there were
1:40:01
a lot of people there, and you're dealing with two very well known institutions
1:40:05
and Duke and BYU. So I'm not equating it from the standpoint of news
1:40:10
significance, but I do think the two stories are very similar, very similar.
1:40:15
I don't know what the origin of the N word story here was,
1:40:18
but we now we have taught we have I cannot emphasize this enough. We
1:40:24
have taught this generation of kids that victimhood is good and that if you are
1:40:30
black you can use that as a weapon at any time to excuse anything that
1:40:35
happens. And if you're losing and you're frustrated and you don't like the referees
1:40:41
and you quit, if you claim it was because you were the victim of
1:40:45
racism, not only is that forgiven, you're actually in some eyes, a
1:40:50
hero or a heroine. Now, these are the rules we have created,
1:40:56
and it's It is incredibly divisive, It is incredibly hurtful to these poor girls
1:41:01
from Scarsdale, and it is really bad for the country. And the news
1:41:06
media plays into it and falls for it every single time. And then my
1:41:13
guess is there will be no accountability, there will be no correcting of the
1:41:16
record. I could be wrong. I would like to believe the New York
1:41:19
Post will eventually do a follow up story on this, but generally, generally
1:41:24
the way this goes down is an allegation, no follow up, and we
1:41:30
just drop it. And then even when we find out definitively that it's not
1:41:32
what happened, unless we're absolutely forced to, we're never going to acknowledge that.
1:41:39
I mean, one of the most obvious examples of that was the news
1:41:43
that was found at the site of the Obama Library in Chicago, this construction
1:41:48
site. Imagine that a news a rope with a hole at the end of
1:41:53
it on a construction site, and that was found just before the twenty twenty
1:41:58
two election, and the construction site was shut down, people had to go
1:42:03
to sensitivity training. And yet somehow, despite all sorts of potential witnesses and
1:42:10
I'm sure video cameras everywhere, nothing was ever found out about that. That
1:42:15
was just one of those crimes better left unsolved, that somehow, for no
1:42:19
apparent reason, someone in a racist fashion placed a noose at the site of
1:42:26
the construction site for the Obama Library in Chicago, and we just never found
1:42:30
out who did it because it was bullshit. It wasn't racism, It was
1:42:35
just a rope with a whole at the end of it. It's just unbelievable.
1:42:41
It's absolutely unbelievable. But this keeps happening. And I guess the only
1:42:45
positive part of this is that, at least on the right, within the
1:42:49
right wing media, it is now really easy to debunk these things because it's
1:42:56
now just accepted. Oh, here we go again. We've seen this one.
1:43:00
It's groundhog Day. And and by the way, there's even a negative
1:43:03
to that, because eventually one of these things is actually going to be real.
1:43:11
I don't know when, I don't know how, but it is possible
1:43:14
that one of these things is gonna be real. And I guarantee you when
1:43:18
the right wing and maybe even myself, although I'm pretty good at being able
1:43:21
to discern what could be real and what isn't, I have an unblemished record
1:43:26
in this particular area. But you know, eventually, somebody on the right
1:43:30
is going to get duped into claiming that a situation didn't really happen, and
1:43:35
we're going to be proven wrong. And I guarantee you the media is going
1:43:40
to jump all over that. That's gonna be Aha. See, you were
1:43:43
right for ninety nine times in a row, but that one hundredth time you
1:43:46
were wrong. So you're a bunch of freaking racists and not to be trusted
1:43:50
that this is. This is the advantage that the left has because they control
1:43:55
so much of the news media, and they certainly control all of that.
1:44:00
I mean, when you control academia, you can control the statements to come
1:44:03
out from these schools. And it's always it's always within academia, right,
1:44:08
because this is an issue that is fertile ground in academia. You cannot have
1:44:14
an allegation of racism be debunked within academia. It's not within the dna of
1:44:19
anybody in a position of power within academia, whether it's high school or college
1:44:24
or what have you. It's just not possible. So the allegation's always going
1:44:29
to be able to make it into the news media because it's not going to
1:44:30
be shot down where it should be at the beginning, where some school administrator
1:44:35
goes, no, this didn't happen, and we put out a statement saying
1:44:40
there was a misunderstanding. We apologize if anyone was heard. The game should
1:44:45
have gone on. Scarsdale crowd and girls did nothing wrong. That should be
1:44:49
the statement. But that's not in the DNA of anybody in academia. And
1:44:55
by the way, even if it was in the NA of someone in academia,
1:44:59
you know, white guy would be terrified to do that. So the
1:45:02
only chance there is of anyone in academia having the balls to tell the truth
1:45:09
about a situation like this is if it happens to come from a black male
1:45:13
or maybe a black female, and then they would have to go against their
1:45:16
own perceived self interest, and very few people, regardless of their color,
1:45:21
willing to do that. So I hate this whole thing. I hate this
1:45:26
whole situation, but it is. It seems trivial in the micro, but
1:45:32
in the macro, this type of story is incredibly important because it goes to
1:45:39
the type of country we live in, the nature of our society, the
1:45:43
nature of our culture, whether or not we're really a racist, inherently racist
1:45:46
country, and how the news media is portraying the idea that we are when
1:45:51
the evidence keeps coming in time and time and time again that we're not.
1:45:57
And there's you know, frankly, there's a situation now where the desire for
1:46:01
racism incidents is far greater than the supply we've got to supply, and demand
1:46:06
problem in the news media. There is an enormous demand and no supply.
1:46:13
There's a draft of real racism issues, so we have to concoct fake ones,
1:46:18
and then we never even tell the truth about what happens when they are
1:46:23
debunked. As I believe this one has been one other sports related story that
1:46:30
it doesn't have a direct racial angle, although I do think there is a
1:46:32
racial angle to it, because I've been saying constantly that the nil topic in
1:46:39
college sports is a fake civil rights issue that's at the heart of all of
1:46:44
this. But there's been a development college football that I had intended to discuss
1:46:48
in the last episode and I just never got to it, and that is
1:46:53
that UCLA's head football coach, Chip Kelly has just taken a job to be
1:46:59
an assistant coach the offensive coordinator at Ohio State. And Ohio State and UCLA
1:47:05
are bizarrely going to be in the same conference this coming college football season.
1:47:10
No one wants to talk about the impact on the carbon footprint for all the
1:47:15
teams in the Big Ten because now they're going to be flying around far more
1:47:17
than they were before. And all these liberal academic institutions and including the State
1:47:21
of California government have signed off on these massive increases in carbon footprint. But
1:47:28
that's just a side note to this story. Now, why is it significant
1:47:30
that Chip Kelly, the head coach at UCLA, is taking an assistance job
1:47:35
at Ohio State. To my knowledge, this is completely unprecedented in the history
1:47:40
of college football. There has never been a major college football program that had
1:47:45
a well known head coach that just won a bowl game, just at a
1:47:48
winning season that has decided, you know what, screw this, I'm just
1:47:54
going to take an assistance job for much less money. I mean, Chip
1:47:57
Kelly was, by some accounts, the high paid public employee in the state
1:48:01
of California because he was at UCLA, and now he's going to take an
1:48:05
assistance job at Ohio State. Why because the system is just that fucked up
1:48:12
that it's just that insane that we've destroyed college football so much now that someone
1:48:17
like Chip Kelly just doesn't want to have to deal with nil and instant transfers
1:48:23
and the impact of radical realignment. And chip Kelly was someone who was,
1:48:28
unlike Nick Saban, who I know was against all this stuff, was pretty
1:48:33
darn outspoken, especially when it came to realignment. And he came up with
1:48:38
a proposal which I didn't fully agree with, but I can understand why it
1:48:42
was very popular with a lot of people of how to change college football,
1:48:45
at least from a realignment standpoint. But from my knowledge, and I'm pretty
1:48:49
confident of this, we've never seen this kind of situation, and it's not
1:48:54
isolated. We've got Jim Harball winning a national championship at his alma mater and
1:48:58
going to the NFL. Well, We've got Boston Colleges head coach taking an
1:49:02
assistance job in the NFL, Nick Saban stepping down, and there are other
1:49:09
examples of this. This has been a complete and total collapse of the foundation
1:49:15
of college football, the best team sport that, in my opinion, humans
1:49:18
have ever created, and it has happened even faster than I predicted. I
1:49:24
wrote about this topic multiple times as a calmness for mediaite, and if anything,
1:49:29
I was If I was, I was prescient to a certain degree,
1:49:31
but I actually was not accurate as to how quickly this would all happen.
1:49:36
I immediately knew that the nil issue was going to be much worse than people
1:49:42
and even some conservatives were giving it credit for that. People were being naive
1:49:46
that they somehow thought that this was going to be just a situation. Oh,
1:49:49
this will be this will be nice, this will be fair, this
1:49:53
will be cute. You know, local car dealerships will will hire a few
1:49:57
college football players to do ads for them. This will be legitimate sponsorships and
1:50:01
endorsements. People will be paid simply for their worth in the in the marketplace
1:50:08
when it comes to the value of their name, image, and likeness.
1:50:11
And I immediately said, bullshit, this is gonna be the biggest loophole that
1:50:15
you could drive a you know, the proverbial mac truck through that you've ever
1:50:20
conceived of in the history of sports. That this is not a real market.
1:50:25
This is much more like you know, people claim that what Live Golf
1:50:30
is doing is capitalism. No, it's not capitalism. It's a fake market
1:50:34
because they have unlimited resources doing a comic coze attack on the PGA tour,
1:50:39
and Donald Trump is benefiting from that. Well, similarly, that's what NIL
1:50:44
is. Nil is not a real market. It's a contrived market. It's
1:50:48
fake market. And because there's no restrictions, and because there's you're even allowed
1:50:54
to transfer instantaneously now multiple times it's you know, unrestricted free agency with no
1:51:00
salary cap. That's how utterly insane it is. Somehow we took the best
1:51:04
team sport ever created and we made it way worse than the National Football League.
1:51:10
And so now college coaches think it's better to be an assistant in the
1:51:15
National Football League to be a head coach of a major college team. And
1:51:18
we got college coaches thinking it's better to be an assistant where someone else could
1:51:24
actually have to put up with all this bs and where we're gonna win because
1:51:28
Ohio State is gonna be one of the top teams this coming year instead of
1:51:31
having to deal with coaching UCLA. And now all of a sudden, we're
1:51:35
going against teams that actually tackle. I don't want any part of that.
1:51:40
I was playing in the Pac twelve where there is no tackling because people,
1:51:44
you know, California is the recruiting base. We got Oregon and Washington,
1:51:47
all these liberal states where they don't tackle in high school and so it's not
1:51:51
a coincidence as to why the colleges don't tackle and there's no defense. So
1:51:58
now all of a sudden, we got to play in the Big Ten.
1:52:00
We're gonna get our butts kicked. I'd rather be an assistant coach. So
1:52:03
we've based Congratulations everybody, you've destroyed. You've destroyed the greatest team sport humans
1:52:11
have ever created. You've destroyed it. And it's happened faster than even I
1:52:15
thought, and it's gonna happen more completely than even I feared. In fact,
1:52:19
my only hope is that maybe this is all happening so fast and so
1:52:25
dramatically that there's going to be have to be some fix. And I do
1:52:29
think there will be a fix to the transfer issue. There's gotta be.
1:52:32
There's got to be. But all of this is based in the fake civil
1:52:36
rights issue that somehow, because most college football players, especially the stars,
1:52:43
and almost all college basketball players, especially the stars, are black, and
1:52:47
that therefore paying them is inherently good and inherently somehow a civil rights issue.
1:52:54
It is not. College athletes are not employees. Despite what Summers and approved.
1:53:00
Dartmouth's basketball team bizarrely has just gotten a ruling in their favor on this.
1:53:04
And if they're employees, they ought to ought to be fired because they
1:53:08
all stink. But they are not employees. It is a completely different set
1:53:13
of circumstances. There are all sorts of benefits that used to be there for
1:53:17
college athletes that are not consistent with the idea that they are employees. I
1:53:24
mean, getting a full ride scholarship at a major university is worth maybe hundreds
1:53:30
of thousands of dollars when you consider all of it, not to mention the
1:53:33
enhancement of your brand. And here's the ultimate this last thing I'll say on
1:53:38
this for now, the ultimate proof that nil money is complete bullshit except in
1:53:45
extreme circumstances. Johnny Manziel, Tim Tebow, Reggie Bush, people like that,
1:53:55
who really move the needle, that people really paid to see, and
1:54:00
who really paid for their jersey in significant ways, those guys all got hosed
1:54:06
when it came to their not being name image likeness. And I'm even open
1:54:11
to there being some limited name image likeness in a very restricted way that is
1:54:15
based really on your market value and not on this contrived market. But the
1:54:21
ultimate proof that I'm right about this is I want you to think about what
1:54:26
would happen. What would happen. Let's say it took Michigan's football team,
1:54:30
right, they just won the national championship, raw rah, you know,
1:54:34
hell to the victors, and then you lose your head coach and you have
1:54:39
to place them with somebody who's not even from your university. You know,
1:54:43
not even Isama Moderor. He's from Oklahoma. So you've destroyed your your legacy
1:54:47
of a Michigan man and the Bosham Beckaler era and all that. So congratulations
1:54:51
on your big win. Okay, let's pretend if those exact players from Michigan,
1:54:58
those exact players Michigan played in their own league. They decided, you
1:55:04
know what, we're going to create our own team, and we'll even call
1:55:09
ourselves the Michigan Whatevers, and we're gonna play minor league football against other teams
1:55:15
that are made up of former college football players. Right, So you take
1:55:20
away the branding of the university, you take away the uniforms, you take
1:55:25
away the stadiums, you take away the history, you take away the legacy,
1:55:30
you take away the connection to the university itself, regardless of how much
1:55:33
these guys are actually going to school these days. But you take away all
1:55:38
that exact same bodies, exact same sport. You stick them in a stadium
1:55:44
and see how many people show up, See how whether or not any television
1:55:48
network designs to televise that, and if they do, what the TV ratings
1:55:54
for that would be, it would be an economic fucking disaster, a disaster.
1:56:00
There would be no economic viability to that whatsoever. Why because individually those
1:56:06
players, other than the t Bows, the Manzell's, the Reggie Bushes,
1:56:12
they mean nothing from an economic standpoint. It's the universities. They're the ones
1:56:18
that have the brand that people are attached to, are that make them willing
1:56:25
to buy the product and buy the tickets and watch the games. But because
1:56:30
Hackadamia is so steeped in liberalism and stupidity and this fear of doing anything that's
1:56:36
even remotely seen as racist, they won't fight for themselves. And now they've
1:56:42
allowed all of this to be destroyed. And I think the golden Goose is
1:56:45
going to be killed eventually. Eventually there's gonna be a dead cat bounce with
1:56:50
this new playoff system, and people will be excited about it. An ESPN
1:56:55
will get a big rating, and it's gonna take a couple of years.
1:56:58
I don't know how many years, but it's gonna ta I don't know.
1:57:00
I always use ten to fifteen when it comes to the NFL no longer being
1:57:03
recognizable. I think the same thing's going to happen with college football, and
1:57:08
it's tragic because college football used to be absolutely awesome and now it's already unrecognizable
1:57:15
in many many ways, and the Chip Kelly situation is certainly emblematic of that.
1:57:20
That'll do it for this episode of the podcast. As I have said
1:57:24
that previously, our plan is no longer for this to be the final Free
1:57:29
and Clear episode, but you're still running out of time if you're somebody who
1:57:32
does not plan on subscribing to this podcast in the long run, starting in
1:57:36
March, we still will do four more planned episodes till the end of February,
1:57:43
just so there's no confusion to that. I had been planning on this
1:57:45
being our last episode of the podcast, but because we wanted to be able
1:57:49
to take this right up to March, where we will transition to a paid
1:57:53
version of the podcast, I am going to do those four more episodes,
1:57:57
So I guess you have that to look forward to. And thanks as always
1:58:00
for listening. My name is John Zigler. This has been the Death of Journalism podcast