Lovett or Leave It - F*ck Jamie Spears

Episode Date: July 10, 2021

Jia Tolentino and Ronan Farrow join to talk about their investigation into the Britney Spears conservatorship and some of the larger lessons it offers. The very funny Aida Rodriguez helps break down the week's news from frivolous lawsuits by Trump to a surprising revelation about Jimmy Carter. Plus Clark Gregg absolutely destroys Adam Conover in a quiz on First Lady history. (And please subscribe to Edith right now!)For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/lovettorleaveit. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Love It or Leave It, out of the closets, into the streets. Oh, my friends Right back where they belong We've been locked away Trying to do what's right It's been a cold, dark year But baby, now we see the light Coming out of the closet Into the streets

Coming out of the closet Got a lot of new people to meet That amazing song was by Stone Throwers. It was awesome. These songs have been incredible. If you have an Out of the Closets, Into the Streets song, please email it to us at leaveitatcrooked.com. On the show this week, New Yorker writers Gia Tolentino and Ronan Farrow, tough booking, joined to talk about their Britney Spears conservatorship story and some of the members

of the Edith cast pop by to prove they know their herstory. But first, she is a comedian, actress, and Young Turks commenter. Please welcome Ida Rodriguez. Ida, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Let's get into it. What a week. Jimmy and Rosalind Carter celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary this year, the longest marriage in presidential history. Upon reaching the milestone,

the couple announced that they're going to try to open things up, see where it takes them. Actually explains why the last time all the ex-presidents and first ladies were together, Rosalind kept trying to get the Bushes and the Obamas to throw their keys in a bowl. I've been fucking this peanut farmer for 75 years. Now, which one of you war criminals is going to eat my ass? Said Rosalind Carter. Who wrote that joke? I wrote, I want you to know something.

I want you to know something. I wrote that and I'm really sorry. And I do like it. And I'm not really creating ironic distance. I'm happy with it. But I'm also sorry. Your attacks were nonpartisan. They were just, you hit them all evenly.

You called them all war criminals. That's so 90s. Now, like the war criminals, you have to pick a side. Well, first of all, let's just be clear i didn't say that that's in the voice of rosalind carter uh famously jimmy carter didn't drop a bomb didn't didn't use uh force so i think it's in her point of view but it's also kind of alluring for her in the character of the joke she's like hey what if uh george w bush who i think is a war criminal uh engaged in some um sexual activity with me that's that's alluring to me rosalind carter

of course after 75 years of sex with jimmy carter the only man i've ever kissed or fucked per rosalind carter's previous interviews where she did not say fuck she said kissed but i drew my own conclusion yes because they have children because they have children she's had enough of that peaceful dick she needs some turbulence she needs some drama in her life some dysfunction you know especially with you know bush and obama both got daddy issues i just i just picture you know rosalalind Carter just whispering in George W. Bush's ears like lie to me, piece of shit. You know, it's funny is that it's interesting that this Democrat couple lasted 75 years.

Let these modern day Republicans, the way they talk about Democrats, it's like they're all selling their ass on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami. Yeah. 75 years. You got to get married real young and you got to be real old to get to 75 years. Yeah. And you got to be hopeless

that you know that the grass is never going to be greener. And you're like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm going to ride this out till the wheels fall off. I believe Jimmy Carter gave an interview where he apologized for violating the commandment, coveting the neighbor's wife. Like that's as far as he was willing to go.

And he was sorry. Damn. He coveted and he regretted it. What a good person. I'm very sorry for that joke. It's funny. But leave it in. Believe it.

Rudy Giuliani was suspended from practicing law in Washington, D.C., which sucks because how's he going to get better if he doesn't practice? So stupid. So stupid. I have Rudy Giuliani fatigue. I've heard his name enough. So did several of his wives. I know.

But you know what's funny? Maybe he can get into auctioning. Remember when they ended up in front of the garage for pawn shop wars or whatever? Yeah, yeah. He's really taking a tumble. I don't think the Rudy Giuliani story ends well. I don't think it gets better from here.

Wait a minute. The hair dye leaked and he farted in public, right? Like several times, multiple farts. Yep. And you think the Rudy Giuliani story continues? I thought it ended. I definitely think we're at the part of the movie where there's words on the screen after the final scene. think we're at the part of the movie where there's words on the screen after the final scene that's like you know Rudy Giuliani later was found in a condo building in Fort Lauderdale surrounded by

three hundred dollars several vials of meth and a letter to the editor I don't know but I agree that the movie's over I agree that the movie's over state officials have set the date for the recall election facing California Governor Gavin Newsom, September 14th. The recall is expected to cost taxpayers $276 million, which is the worst way California has spent that much money

since that godforsaken Lone Ranger movie with Johnny Depp. This next one, I don't know. America's dad, Bill Cosby, returned home this week after three years in prison following the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's ruling that a non-prosecution agreement with the previous prosecutor should have prevented him from ever actually standing trial. There are reports that he's plotting a comedy comeback. I just, again, I'm going to, before we, this is, now this one's bad. But here's the thing.

We have great writers who write jokes for this show. And we have a system. And we have this big document with all the pitches. And if there's one everybody likes, they bold it. You know? And they say, this is a good one. We're all on board for this one. And this one was bolded.

Okay. And out of respect for them. You're going to say it. And this great team of people who come together to make this podcast. I'm going to say this part. Okay. Bill Cosby's working on a new hour, but the next day you'll only remember the first 10 minutes. I was thinking about Bill Cosby the other day and I was like, because it's polarized.

So many people, like I was online and I didn't realize how many people were fighting over this current Bill Cosby story. I didn't know that many people were supporting him. But it's just so funny that I was looking through the comments to see if anybody named Shaniqua was in the comments because Bill Cosby did this whole thing about the way black people named their children. And I was like, all of these people defending him now, I'm like, do y'all remember him employing his respectability politics and shitting on black people for naming their children the names that they were naming them?

So I was looking for the names that were on the list of the names that he said. I wanted to see who was defending him. Yeah, I remember when Hannibal Buress helped set off a collective acknowledgement of what Bill Cosby had done. It would already been kind of publicly known about what he had done because he was mocking the respectability politics. And that's what set it off. Anyway, well, you know, now he's just home going in the pool, eating bagels with Felicia Rashad.

Nagels with Felicia Rashad. On Wednesday, Egyptian authorities officially released the Ever Given, the ship that blocked the Suez Canal from the canal's Great Bitter Lake, where it was held due to a financial dispute. The bitch is back. Which is great because my AirPods were stuck on there. I was waiting for those AirPods sitting on the Ever Given. This package is delayed. You know, it's funny.

So many people are not paying attention to what's going on. So I can imagine how many people will hear this joke and be like me. What? What? What happened? What do you mean? What is he talking about? I don't need to know.

On Wednesday, disgraced former President Donald Trump filed a class action lawsuit against Google, Twitter, Facebook and their CEOs. The frivolous suit is broadly about censorship, and one of them claims Facebook is a state actor that should be constrained by the First Amendment. Facebook, when reached for comment, said, how did they get this crazy idea? So much traction. Like, where does this ridiculous stuff come from? How does this spread? Where are people getting these ideas? So stupid. That was cute.

It's okay. I feel like Zuck versus Trump is like Alien versus Predator in that it's way way more boring than you think it's going to be. You think it's going to be. You think it's going to be super boring. It's funny. But remember that they used to have those celebrity wars?

I don't want to see Donald Trump in a debate. I want to see him in a physical fight. I want to see him slap his hands because I know he can't fight like exactly. I want to see him fight like I can't. That's how I fight. That's how I feel. That's how Donald Trump fights. I fight like Donald Trump. I fight like that. No, when he's not tripping over that one bum leg that he has, I would love to see him and Zuck get into a physical fight. I'm advocating for the fights right now. People are mad with me because they said I'm advocating for violence.

In an arena for pay-per-view, people can make some money, have a night. The MAGA people on one side, the people who read on the other, like just going back and forth. Who do you root for? Who do you want? The one who built the terrible system that allowed misinformation to spread around the world or the one who saw that happening and was like, I know what to do.

I'll use it. So I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, hold my beer. So listen, I just saw a bumper sticker on the freeway on the 10 coming back into L.A. that said Trump 2024 make votes count again. Brought to you by Trump, Fox News and Mark Zuckerberg. That's what they built. Thank you so much. What a wonderful community Facebook is. They got QAnon people running for school board all over the country. That's terrific. Thank you for creating a platform for this kind of information. It's been great to see study after study that shows that once Facebook is in a place, that place radicalizes

and becomes more prone to right wing fanaticism. Terrific. Great product. Congrats to all the Democrats who work there. You've done a great job convincing yourself that it's a reasonable place to be. I think that's terrific. I love you. I think that's just fucking terrific.

Unbelievable. Yeah, they're great titles and they pay a lot. Oh, no. I get it. I get it. Unbelievable. Yeah, they're great titles and they pay a lot. Oh, no. I get it. I get it.

I, too, want to be the chief content digital vice president for global affairs. How cool. Meanwhile, an Israeli study found that Pfizer's vaccine was only 64 percent effective against the infection from the Delta variant. But it's important to note that the study found the vaccine was 94% effective at preventing severe illness and hospitalization. And some experts think that that Israeli study might be an outlier, but nobody says that when they text the tweet, that's just the headline. And the headline is just the bad news. Did you get a lot of texts from people? My phone, tons of everybody was texting this 64 percent number from the israel study did you have that yeah because i got pfizer yeah so i um i got a lot of uh the messages i don't know if you have these experts in your circle the experts on vaccines but i got quite a few that i know you know in addition to me being chipped uh for my location which you can pull up on a Google any Google app. Also people wanting my DNA,

which I don't know why they will want my DNA because I am like, I commend anyone who will want my DNA because they are really aiming, you know, to master the studies on mediocrity. Oh, come on. Yeah, I don't like that. Oh, putting down your own DNA. You got great DNA. This I appreciate you. But I'm like, why would they want my DNA? There are motherfuckers out here who are working on the cure for cancer that actually came up with these vaccines. And there are people who really think that they want your vaccine that Bill Gates wants their vaccine. So I had to get all of those text messages. I think it's amazing to me. The 5G, the magnetism, the secret

plot to get your DNA. I feel like there's two aspects to what made conspiracy theories so appealing to people. One is that there's some group of people that actually know what the fuck they're doing somewhere. That's a fantasy. It's like the Area 51 thing, deep underground. There's a

super sophisticated place where somebody actually knows that all this randomness that we're in control. But the other piece of it that I don't think gets enough credit is like part of the conspiracy theory is that like that anybody's paying attention. Like no one gives a fuck about you. No one gives a fuck about you. They're trying to make you magnetized. They're trying to know where you are at all times. No one cares where you are. No one gives a fuck where you drive your fucking enormous pickup truck that does no work around your exurban town. Like nobody gives a fuck. that you're not eating fries from McDonald's anymore is not going to make a dent in the capitalism monster that runs this country.

And I think it's funny that people think that they are that important. That's what the internet does, though. What is your route every day that you think is so important? Like, hey, we got our eyes on this MAGA guy from outside Cleveland. He did get up and go to work,

and then he did stop by the supermarket and he did go home again. We'll check back tomorrow to see if there's any diversion. So far, nothing. No, it seems like he right now he's either. Wait a second. Wait a second. He is either. Nope. It's a Buffalo Wild Wings. Sorry. Never mind. Never mind, everybody. It's a Buffalo Wild Wings. Yes. Yes. The one on Jog Road. Yep. That's the one. It's same one. Not even the other one. Not the one that's further away, even though they're usually less busy. I know. No, it's just the one right by his house. What do you mean the mango habanero? Meanwhile, this is what is on Fox News right now. One of the big stories been with us for the last

two years is COVID-19. The origin is the top story, but the focus of this administration on vaccination is mind-boggling. How dare these people talk about the solution to the problem? We want to talk about the problem of the problem exclusively. So Fox News spreading misinformation about vaccination is how you end up with a new Yale study that found that the U.S. vaccine rollout prevented 279,000 deaths and 1.25 million hospitalizations. And a new Washington Post poll found that 47 percent of Republicans said they likely won't get vaccinated. Fox News, we radicalized our audience to win elections, and now they're so rabidly anti-science and bigoted that they would rather die than trust a doctor with an Italian name.

That's where they're at. Fauci, I don't trust it. It's ethnic. No thank you. It is. Well, you know, did you get those conspiracies about Fauci? Fauci is him and the CDC are in on it. Yep. Yep. Look, here was Fauci's plan to become

fabulously wealthy. Step one, spend 40 years working for the government to establish trust. Then only then once the pandemic comes, which conveniently will happen after that period of time. That's when the big bucks roll in. That's when Fauci takes his that's when Fauci gets his beak wet. Right, right. But you know what's funny? They didn't have that much bitchel against the lady who actually lied to them. What was the other doctor's name? Burks, Burks. Burks. So Burks sat there, lied. Burks sat there and made faces while Trump lied. She made faces

while Huckabee lied. No problem. What we have learned from this pandemic is people would rather literally die than admit someone whose politics they don't like has a point. They would rather die. Yeah. They'd rather literally die. Yeah. I'm going to end today with just the punchline of a joke. I'm not doing the beginning. I'm just going to say the punchline,

the setup as it were. Are you ready? I'm ready. More like Bill or Melinda Gates Foundation. See, you didn't need the setup. You actually didn't need it. I felt pretty good about that. You didn't need it.

No. And then I thought about like five different setups in my mind. And I was like, don't get canceled. Don't get canceled. Don't get canceled. They're going to continue. Well, they are going to continue to call it that. I don't know.

Something happens in two. They have two years to figure it out. And if not, they'll go their separate ways. And it'll be back to being, I don't know what they'll call it, but it'll be just Bill Gates's foundation. The Bill and Second Wife Gates Foundation is what it will be. I hate it here. I hate it here. And on that note,

Aida Rodriguez, thank you so much for being here. That was so much fun. I really appreciate it. No, thank you for having me. When we come back, Gia Tolentino, Ronan Farrow, they've asked the big question, does this conservatorship work, bitch? Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. Joining us today, two New Yorker writers and New York Times bestselling authors who just published a bombshell investigative piece about Britney Spears' conservatorship nightmare. Gia Tolentino and Ronan Farrow, thank you both for being here.

Thank you for having us. Good to be here. You had to pull a lot of strings to get me on this show. All right. All right. Yeah, we were talking. Tough booking. You're in the hallway.

I'm in here. Thank you for doing this. Gia, thank you for being here for this. I'm excited to be here. It's a serious topic, obviously, but I've never interviewed Ronan and someone else. So this is like you're in an extremely odd place inside of this dynamic. Let me just dive right in. So Britney Spears' lawyer appointed by the court, Samuel Ingham III, filed a motion to resign as her attorney.

In her testimony, Britney said, Ingham has been scared for me to come forward. And it sounds like she, as she describes it, like didn't know her basic rights. What do you make of Ingham's role in this conservatorship as an advocate for Britney Spears? You know, she called into this hearing, and the lawyers representing the conservatorship immediately tried to suggest that the room should be cleared if sensitive topics arose, that the transcripts should be sealed. And she said, no, I want to be heard. And then as she got to talking, she really suggested some allegations about the way Ingham has represented her that are seriously problematic for any attorney. As an attorney myself, you never want to hear a client say, I was not advised of my basic right to get out of this situation or avenues to

terminate it. So what we've seen in the leaks around his departure is sources familiar with his thinking, air quoting that, implying that he is quite mad about this, that he's defiant in suggesting that he did advise her in the ways that he needed to. over the years is it seems like there was a situation where Ingham was chummy at times with the judge on this case and where there were conversations where, in fact, at times they joked about not telling Spears things. You know, there's an exchange that the Times first reported a while back where the judge and Ingham talk about, you know, not telling Britney that she can get married if she wants. So you do sort of see a pattern that seems to suggest that Spears' take on this has something to it. And I think that that would be alarming to any lawyer and prompt any lawyer to want to get the hell out of Dodge. There's one piece of it, which is just, was this lawyer doing an adequate job of representing Britney

Spears, or did he have other kinds of entanglements? And then there's this larger question about the rights of a person in a conservatorship, even when those rights are being represented faithfully. One thing you say in the piece is, Britney could have been found holding an axe and severed head saying, I did it, and she would still have had the right to an attorney. But under a guardianship, you don't have the same rights as an axe murderer. It's also strange to me that this is a court appointed attorney because she's a wealthy person who should be able to afford her own attorney, right? Can you talk a little bit about the rights that people under conservatorship don't have? This is the

only, I think the only corner in the legal system where you can have a court-appointed counsel that you then will pay. The maximum for Sam Ingham has been $520,000 a year, which is more than Britney Spears has often claimed as her living expenses. And this strikes, you know, it's extremely unusual. It doesn't make sense to people when they hear about it, right? That the only situations in which the court appoints counsel for you is if you're unable to. Brittany is obviously someone who's been able to. And not just that, somebody who from the beginning, you know, Sam Ingham seems to have met Brittany maybe two days after the court ordered conservatorship had been placed upon her that her right to have a five day notification period had been waived. It seems like his representation of her was so inadequate that she, you know, we talked to so many people who said that for the next year and a half, she was essentially nonstop trying to get another lawyer. And there were three lawyers that came into the picture,

all of whom were effectively thrown out on the basis of Britney Spears has been found to be incapacitated and thus she does not have the capacity to hire you as the lawyer. And so it's this unbreachable catch-22 when you're, and this is something that I've been bringing up, is that the kind of conservatorship that Britney's under, a probate conservatorship, it's not even for people who are having mental health crises. In California, that's a different kind of conservatorship called the LPS conservatorship. And the probate conservatorship is very specifically for people who will not get better, for whom that is sort of an absolute certainty, whether by age or by sort of terminal condition

or something like that. But there are plenty of people with disabilities who have been placed in the kind of position that Brittany's in. The lawyer that gave us that ax murderer quote famously broke up one of the most high-profile conservatorship cases in the country before this, a woman named Jenny Hatch, who has Down syndrome and was placed under conservatorship after an accident. before this, a woman named Jenny Hatch, who has Down syndrome

and was placed under conservatorship after an accident. But anyway, many people with disabilities have found themselves in this position where formally deemed incapacitated, they lose any avenue to prove or use their capacity at all. There's something so strange about the kind of pushback you hear from whether it's anyone representing the conservatorship or from this attorney or from Larry Rudolph, the manager who resigned today, this idea that like there are these very kind of specific arguments made about the specific set of facts. But then you step back and you're like, wait, hold on a second.

This is an international pop star performing regularly. That is high level work. That is somebody using a great many faculties every single day, performing, going out on stage, meeting fans, doing all of these kinds of high functioning activities. And yet she has denied the basic rights to kind of control her own destiny, as she said in her own testimony, you know, denied her reproductive freedom, denied any kind of ability to choose to have a family. In looking at this conservatorship issue, did you find any examples anywhere of someone under a conservatorship having this level of kind of employment of like ongoing kind of career activity anywhere ever?

The experts we talked to definitely found it unusual. I mean, Britney Spears tests the outer limits of the kinds of people to whom this extremely restrictive type of conservatorship, as Gia points out, should be applied. And so we are, in some respects, in kind of untested territory. You know, we have seen after our article, Rudolph stepped down. Now Ingham stepped down. Ingham filed paperwork requesting that a new court appointed counsel be put in place. And so it's sort of anyone's guess, because this is such an idiosyncratic case, how this is going to play out at this point and whether Britney Spears will be allowed any autonomy in finally choosing her own attorney, for instance, or whether the weight of the same sort of behind the scenes diagnoses that defenders of the conservatorship invariably point to will continue to prevent her from doing that. Yeah, one thing that I guess Bessemer trusts, which was overseeing the finances on behalf of the conservatorship, they are claiming, oh, we're withdrawing. We're resigning

because we were under the impression that this was voluntary. Those were the arguments made to us. But it does seem like all of these people, like her sister is going on Instagram saying, if she wants to go to Mars or end the conservatorship, that's fine by me. It's very like, I love all people, whether they're black, white or blue. I mean, it's very like I love all people, whether they're black, white or blue. You know, yeah, I see this debate unfolding and it's a little bit like we're inside the logic of this conservatorship. Absolutely. Still. Right. Like, what the fuck are we talking about? Right. This is a performer who has an ongoing career. She gets to decide how that money is spent. We have the right to blow our money however we want. We have the right to sleep with male models who maybe want a career, whatever it is, like

whatever they're claiming. Like there just seems to be this like denial of reality even now. The way in which this structure, which is so sort of like all encompassingly maddening, the way that the cultural paradigm surrounding Britney Spears has gotten grafted almost exactly onto its framework about how do we think you should live? You know, what do we want out of you? What we want from you is for you to be blonde and performing and hot and constantly making money and smiling at the camera and doing everything that the public wants from you and continuing to make money and being an amazing mother and never making a mistake, right? The way in which these cultural expectations that have shaped and constricted and flattened

and taken over her life from the second she got famous, the way that her life has always been governed by what other people thought was in her best interest and what they wanted from her, and the way that that has gotten completely conflated with something that, you know, people we talk to says it happens in conservatorships. In real life, as you were saying, we don't operate under the framework of our choices must be in our best interest. We have the right to make bad decisions. And those bad decisions often become foundational to any good ones we make in the future, right? We only learn how to make good decisions by fucking up in the past.

We don't learn anything unless we're able to, right? And Britney has always, starting culturally and now through this legal framework, been bound by what other people think is in her best interest. And we have seen how corrosive that idea is, starting from the way that was grafted onto a 17-year-old, that you have to be hot, but also virginal, but also, you know, tyrannically perfect in your body, you know, all of these things. The way that these expectations have arguably never actually served her human interests, right, and only ever served profit for other people, mainly men around her, is one of the darkest and saddest parts of this story. The Jenny Hatch case that I brought up, this is a woman with intellectual disabilities,

with Down syndrome, who was still able to live on her own and have a job. And, you know, we're not talking about sort of mental health issues or addiction issues. This type of conservatorship, it invokes questions of capacity that Britney Spears has clearly proved herself to me, well past.

Right. What we then talk about is these cultural expectations of how should a Britney Spears be. Having had deep conversations with people who defend the conservatorship, there is this factual question on which the conversation turns that Gia just alluded to. You know, there are sort of insinuations without outright statements that the checking of a box that said dementia in early paperwork has grounds to it, or, you know, other diagnoses that I won't get into here because I don't want to repeat spurious information are raised that implies some sort of

serious degenerative condition. The specter of, you know, she may hurt herself in one way or another if released is raised. But I think then you get to a point in those conversations, again, even with the most ardent defenders and executors of this situation, and you raise the philosophical question of, in our society, do we rob people of their rights so extensively to prevent those outcomes? And when challenged, it's really interesting to hear the people who kind of have been perpetuating this structure for years and living within a space where, you know, a circle of a dozen or so people have all bought into the argument that it's a good thing to some extent, confront the idea that maybe actually the fundamental framework within which

that decision was made should be questioned more. You know, I think it's very hard once you raise the philosophical question to go back to believing that this degree of restrictiveness could possibly be necessary. But if someone does not have the capacity to decide to buy a car, they don't have the capacity to decide to perform in front of thousands of people. Right. Full stop. The argument that gets made, Jonathan, is that she is no longer that person who was performing in front of thousands of people. I have heard it said again, you know, this is not a view that I'm endorsing. This is the argument that gets trotted out by those defending the situation, that she would be incapable of the things that she did on

tour or in Vegas in the present day. And Spears herself alluded to the fact that she is perhaps in worse mental health condition now than she was then. She talked about being medicated against her will, being given lithium, being given mood-altering drugs that can have a cumulative effect given mood-altering drugs that can have a cumulative effect that, if not applied correctly, can be adverse to someone's mental health. So there are real questions about the mental health condition she's in now. And nevertheless, regardless of where that factual question lands, there are grounds to criticize the philosophy and the law behind this structure. One of the things that is most conceptually maddening about the conservatorship structure

is that many people involved in disability rights have spoken about is that being officially deemed incapacitated, it has an inherently self-perpetuating quality, right? If I was essentially deemed unworthy of making any mistakes in the future after having made a series of mistakes in the past, that would do things to my own sense of capacity and my own internal ability to, you know, if you are robbed of avenues to use your capacity and formally separated from it, then you do lose

access to that capacity. I think that's a really good point. There was an experiment in psychology years ago where I believe there were students or maybe graduate students as part of this experiment, they pretended to have some form of mental illness and they fully manifested there. They did a performance of having mental illness to get committed in some way. But that once they were committed, they did nothing to portray that mental illness anymore. But several of them could not get out because all of the activities they did while they were considered mentally ill were attributed to mental illness when they would take notes in their journal just to keep track of what was going on while they were being committed. It was called like, you know, writing behavior. They were manifesting writing behavior. One thing that was striking to me in the Britney testimony

itself, she says, I want changes going forward. I deserve changes. And it struck me as such an incredible understatement. She describes horrific abuse. She describes being denied her reproductive freedom. She describes being basically enslaved by this conservatorship and by her father. And she still comes to kind of plead her case, like not recognizing just how serious these allegations are and just how obvious it is that she would deserve change. You know, in 2017, you wrote something after the Weinstein story was broken. It was about how predators entangle and contaminate the best qualities people have. Right. And obviously, I don't want to compare the kinds of abuse,

but in terms of how Britney Spears herself has dealt with both the misogyny of the press and the media and the false narratives that you both described so eloquently in the article, the difference between what was actually going on when she shaved her head, what was actually going on when the police came versus how it was reported, plus how her father has treated her. Right. It seems like so much of this is that the family believed that Britney Spears trusted people she shouldn't, and that that was some deep sin, some horrible thing she needed to be protected against,

that her being kind and being trusting was something wrong with her, that she had to be stopped from experiencing. Did you find in investigating this story that in some sense that part of why this has gone on so long is that the misogyny from the press and from her own family directed at her had worked, that she had come to kind of accept this diagnosis of what was wrong with her. I remember writing that about the Weinstein story that, you know, when someone takes advantage of

you or abuses you, the worst thing about it, as you said, is it entangles all the good things about you. If you're really sweet, then it's your fault for being sweet to them. If you are tough, then it's your fault for coming off so tough that they thought you could take it or something. There are things that we have heard about Britney Spears from every, I would say this has been an absolute from everyone we've ever talked to about her. Everyone says she is deeply, deeply, deeply hardworking. You know, that she has this unparalleled work ethic and that she is genuinely sweet and kind. And the way that those two things have been used against her in this structure, you heard in the testimony, and something that we heard, you know, going back to people who were around her since she was 16, instantly she became such a valuable asset that it would be letting so many people down to take a break even for a second. It was not even allowable starting at the very beginning that she has taken genuine pleasure and artistry and performing, but that

she understood it as sort of a mandate. That is what she does because she's Britney Spears. Her success was so sudden and she was so valuable and she was so monetizable that that itself was wielded against her as if it made her vulnerable in a way that was analogous to the way disabilities make people vulnerable, where she was worth so much that she had to be robbed of decision-making power in order to protect the asset that was her life. And in a way, she's been made to pay for other people's possible or actual desire to use her, where that has been used against her to say, you are so valuable and so vulnerable because of your outsized talent and charisma that we must erect this structure around you that does not give

anyone, not even you, the person generating this value, the ability to endanger that in any way or for any reason. even if that reason is, I would simply like to stop. Right. You know, going back and talking to, you know, we quote Paris Hilton in this article. We talked to a lot of friends who were with her at that peak of white hot fame that she lived through in the early 2000s. And the way they talk about her already being controlled and sheltered to the point where, you know, Paris Hilton, we report, taught her to use Google, what Google was. And, you know, we talked to friends who said, we don't know if she was ever allowed access to a computer. It seemed like she

was sort of cut off from the world. It's run through this whole conversation, this theme of if you deprive someone of their rights for this long, if you shelter someone for this long and erect these walls around someone, it's going to change to some extent someone's actual capacity to make decisions for themselves and certainly their expectation of themselves. And I think that's what you're hearing in her testimony, where it's sort of pleading and still in some ways, for those of us on the outside of this kind of an arrangement, shockingly obedient. You know, she was angry and lucid and seemingly correctly furious, but still living within this structure and the precursor of many, many years of other types of control. And that is one way in which her case is actually not unique, because although that early control came in Britney Spears's case from fame and wealth, what you see in disability rights disputes all the time with conservatives is that for years,

they are treated in a way that deprives them of control and that that can set up a situation that is ripe for this kind of a legal mechanism to formally rob them of control. And that then once they get into it, for a whole variety of reasons, it can be hard to get out of. But one of them is that they have been trained and conditioned in a way where they don't necessarily advocate for themselves in the way that you or I might in this situation if we were placed into it tomorrow. So one thing that I suspect that we will be hearing going forward is some sort of factual dispute in Britney's testimony, right? Or in her account of her life in court. And I suspect that there will be some sort of hovering argument that if something was untrue

in what she said then that nullifies the argument right that if she is not correctly and accurately representing every bit of reality then there is actually a reason for all of this to be in place exactly as it was but one thing that I've been thinking about the last few days is let's say every single word of that was a lie, that still shows to me sufficient narrative control and mental sophistication as to make a pretty airtight argument against the structure. And I want to say that her elaborate planning, starting in 2008, to try to get these lawyers, to try to meet them, to try to communicate with them, to try to, you know, go to her friend, get him to read a letter on live TV, pleading her

case, writing a letter in the third person about herself so that her friend could read it on live TV. I mean, this is indicative of a level of composure and narrative control even that is so different from the story that has been put forth by her camp that, I don't know, it's been a little shocking to me to remember how sophisticated these covert ops she was running in 2008 were, you know? How little sophistication ought to be required to be free in America. You don't need to be sophisticated. You can blow it all. You can spend it all. This is America. We throw people to the wolves. What are we talking about here? This is America. You can spend it all. This is America. We throw people to the wolves. What are we talking about here? This is America. You are not safe from your own decisions. We built a whole big country

around the idea that you are not safe from your worst decisions or even mediocre decisions or even best decisions and bad luck. So why on earth is this one per... Anyway, now I'm very upset. I'm going to cut that out. Thank you both for your time. Before I let you go, what happens now? I think there's two pieces of this. One, I think you've kicked off a conversation about the Britney Spears conservatorship. Well, she helped kick it off, and I think you've helped elaborate on that conversation. But there's also this larger now debate around how conservatorships work outside of people with enormous fame and celebrity

and money. Where does this go from here? Well, this was one of the reasons why I think Gia and I both felt this was such an important story. And we both kind of went deep in conversations that were not just about Britney Spears, but were with legal and disability rights experts talking about this as an under-regulated corner of the court system and a set of legal mechanisms that can be exploited to take advantage of the vulnerable. We talked to a disability rights lawyer who says that in the most extreme of these kinds of cases of conservatorship abuse, you see families adopt a strategy of isolating a person, medicating them, liquidating their assets. So this can get to a very dark place. It can be very hard to escape from for conservatees that want to assert their rights to due process, as Britney Spears is

clearly struggling to do. And, you know, we talked to people familiar with the L.A. court system specifically who said there is a lot of inside dealing and cronyism and repeat players where you get the same judges and the same lawyers. a family to look out for the best interests of a person, but also in a fair number of cases that result in these lawyers taking a fat cut of someone's assets as those assets fall into the hands of someone other than the conservatee. So I think this requires a watchful eye. I think part of the solution to these problems is going to be policy change and more scrutiny on the Hill. We're already seeing that. We've seen calls for hearings about conservatorship abuse on both sides of the aisle. And I think that's the right avenue. I think there need to be some tough conversations

about where we draw the line in terms of someone's right even to behave in a way that is harmful to themselves. You know, in California, it is within the probate code that you will be represented by somebody. In Brittany's case, it went straight to court-appointed counsel. But the probate code is really, it differs greatly state to state. There are some states where you are not guaranteed by any means access to counsel whatsoever. The rules vary place by place. But to me, the key, the legislative, the policy lever involves language around the

right to counsel of your choosing, which, you know, when it's there, as it ostensibly is in California, it is often not applied as such. And in many states, it doesn't exist at all. And to me, you know, that and the sort of data gathering stuff that Elizabeth Warren and company have called for, that to me is where it lies. I think that that is such an important point to take away from all of this, and it's often overlooked. You know, regardless of whether you buy into the arguments of Britney Spears' conservatorship defenders, regardless of the factual questions about her mental health, it is very hard to come up with an argument that justifies the repeated refusal to allow her to seek her own

outside counsel who could have worked with someone with genuine mental health struggles. There just has not been a valid argument that I have seen in all the conversations around this. And if that problem can be solved on a policy level in this wider universe of conservatorship abuse, if people can have more ready access to their own counsel in cases where they are high functioning enough to want and to seek that, I think that that would go a long way. What I find makes me the saddest about it is it is so clear that this was a person who did not have a champion in her life. Yeah. But at the very least, she needed a champion in court, someone who worked for her, cared only for her and her interests.

And it seems based on this resignation and what she said that that is not the case. So Ronan Farrow, Gia Tolentino, thank you both so much. Thank you for your reporting in this story. And I think it was worth it for you to do Good Morning America on Sunday while we were on our holiday weekend. That was the right decision. Thank you both. I think, yeah, there needs to be special credit to both of our spouses for putting up with us the last week. Andrew hasn't even read the piece.

He's like, oh, I saw that clip. Whatever. It seems long. I'll read it later. Wait, John, I have to say, I'm really grateful that you, like, I don't think you should cut the part where you're saying,

what the fuck are we even talking about? Because that is the feeling I've had all along. It's like, you know, we let tons of celebrities sink themselves underground in gambling debt and we don't give a shit if they're old men, you know? Yeah. But because she is like,

still has a monetizable body and image, there's this idea that you can't do anything to endanger that asset. It's wild. It's like, I don't know, like as a, as someone that just had a baby and like, if there had been a camera on me, you know, you might've had some legal right to like challenge my fitness and yet nobody is and nobody should and nobody, you know, like it's, it's wild. It's horrible. And if someone has mental illness and doesn't, you know, like it's wild. It's horrible. And if someone has mental illness and isn't seen to have a lot of economic value, we discard them literally on the street. Right.

Someone who has great economic power will imprison them and make them work. Right. It's horrible. Thank you so much to Ronan and Gia for being here. When we come back, we'll play a game. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It and there's more on the way and we're back first ladies something james buchanan should have had if he didn't want

people speculating about his sexuality for 230 years one of my favorite pieces of historical quotation is andrew jackson uh calling james buchanan Buchanan and his life partner, I suppose, Aunt Fancy and Miss Nancy, which I just always like. That's not a fact for this game, but I just like that one of our presidents was called by another president, Aunt Nancy. There was homophobia back then. Let's move on. The job isn't just picking China and stroking egos. First ladies are some of the most remarkable people in American history. Dolly Madison saved a portrait of George Washington from the White House before the British burned it to the ground.

Louisa Adams raised silkworms. And who knows how many people Hillary Clinton killed. I'm very sorry. Here to prove that they know their first lady history, we have some of the cast of Crooked's first ever scripted narrative podcast. Edith, Adam Conover, and Clark Gregg, thank you both for being here. The show is incredible. You're both so funny in it. and Clark Gregg. Thank you both for being here. The show is incredible. You're both so funny in it. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here. And thank you for making Edith so that our mutual friend, Travis, could, I don't know, have some kind of income in his life. I hope he got paid for this. Yeah, he did. Don't worry. We got him.

He's compensated. He's compensated fairly for his time and work. Yes. I'm also grateful to be here, not just because I love the show, but because I'm a first lady fetishist and secret historian. That's your fetish. That's your one of them. It's just one of them. Please don't limit me. Don't let me know. I wouldn't I wouldn't dare. I wouldn't dare. Big Dolly Madison guy. Yep. Here's how it works. I'm going to ask you a multiple choice question and then you answer it. That's it.

That's not a hard thing. Clark, I'll start with you. Which first lady held seances in the Red Room of the White House in an attempt to communicate with the dead? Was it A, Lucretia Garfield, B, Louisa Adams, C, Morticia Adams, D, Mary Todd Lincoln? Well, that's a really good one. I'm really glad you asked me that one. And Lady Bird Johnson is not on the list? Not on the list.

Neither is Nancy Reagan, who I guess didn't do it. She was known to do a lot of Ouija. Okay, I'm just making stuff up now. It was Mary Todd Lincoln for sure. Correct. That is correct. That was my guess. Adam, over to you. I just want to say that was my guess. Hold on. It was Mary Todd Lincoln for sure. Correct. That is correct. That was my guess. Adam, over to you. I just want to say that was my guess. Hold on. It is?

Yeah. You're an expert and fetishist. Very rarely do we have someone who can where that Venn diagram overlaps. You know? It's more often than you think. But okay, let's go. I mean, Quentin Tarantino with film. Never mind. We don't need to get into it.

Don't need to get into it. Martha Washington was the first First Lady to appear on American paper currency. And which other official government tender? Is it A, passports? B, postage stamps? C, Virginia driver's licenses? D, liquor licenses? I'm going to say postage stamps that she was the first to appear on postage stamps.

You got it. You got it. You know, it was a process of elimination, and the other one sounded stupid, so I knew it was that one. Now you're explaining how multiple choice works. Yeah. Now you're unplugging from the matrix. And we have any kids who are listening who are about to take the SATs. It's often A more than the other answers.

And I'll tell you all this shit that you pay Kaplan to tell you, all right? It's pretty simple. Go A if you don't know and eliminate the one obviously wrong one. And then you basically got a two out of four chance and you'll be fine. Don't worry about it.

That's really good advice. That's really good advice. We're learning. Trying to help. Who is the first first lady to drive a car and smoke cigarettes, Clark? Was it A, Nellie Taft? B, Mamie Eisenhower, C, Martha Washington, G, Jacqueline? Oh, shit.

What a rebel candidate. It was Nellie Taft. It was Nellie Taft. Wow. How'd you know? He's a fetishist and expert. How many times does the man have to say it? He wants to learn and...

Okay. I was picturing Jackie O because that's a cool image. You can picture it. She's just like, fuck all of them. You know? Okay. I'm going away for the weekend. Husband's dead. Who gives a shit? Adam, who was the first First Lady to fly

in an airplane, one that was piloted by none other than Amelia Earhart? Was it A, Bess Truman? B, Jill Biden? Is it A, Bess Truman? B, Jill Biden? Is it C, Eleanor Roosevelt? Or D, Dolly Madison? It's not Jill Biden. It was Mrs. Truman, Mrs. Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart.

Oh, I'm not very good at the years with Amelia Earhart. But I'm going to say it's, oh, Dolly Madison. It's not Dolly Madison. That's too early. Too early. So I'm going to go with Mrs. Roosevelt because that would have been a little bit earlier. So she's more likely to have been the first.

You got it. Yeah. It was Eleanor Roosevelt. Yeah. Eleanor was like, what if the two of us just disappear for a while? And Amelia, not getting that it was flirting, was like, okay, I'll go first. Ah. See what I'm saying?

That was about the, you know, there's, that's why I struggled to get through it. Well, there's a lot of historical knowledge that goes into that joke, and I really admire it. Thank you for saying that. You see, Clark, he gives me a lot of shit, you know, but every once in a while he'll surprise you. You know, he'll come at you with something sweet. All right. That's what Adam does. That's classic Adam Conover.

Just when you think you're on the outs, just when you're desperate for just a little bit of that love, that drug, that approval, he gives you just a taste. Everyone's hungry for my approval. And he says the first one's free. That's what he says about his compliments. All right. Clark. Yeah.

Next one to you. Frances Clara Cleveland Preston was first lady from 1886 to 1889. And again, from 1893 to 1897. As you know, to this day, she holds the record for a being the only first lady to throw the opening pitch of a World Series be the only first lady to be removed from the Capitol Building for public drunkenness, C, the First Lady who held her breath the longest, or D, becoming the youngest First Lady at age 21? Youngest First Lady at 21. That is correct. The man is a wizard.

Knows his shit. We are tied at getting them all right so far. Yeah. So far, we've gotten everyone right. Yeah, but here's the thing. Clark's getting real hard questions, and you're getting fucking gimme's. What? No.

And you know it. You know it. No. All right? You are coasting. No. You are coasting. I figured it out using process of elimination, Kaplan SAT, multiple choice skills.

This is a high school math class. I am the football coach. Adam, you are my quarterback. Clark is just some fucking nerd. That's how the testing is being done bullshit that's what's happening here no i'm i i'm smart i'm a smart kid i'm getting it with my own brain no you can't take this away from me all right you're right you're a smart kid you're lowered expectations hey you're a smart kid adam thank you really brought me back there Adam's up Dolly Madison was the first private

citizen to transmit a message by which method was it a a classified in a newspaper b morse code c telegraph or d a telephone wait what's the difference between morse code and telegraph I thought telegraph was via morse code this is is why Clark's winning the game. All right. He's not bringing up this fucking. He's not attacking. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Telegraphs were done via Morse code. Welcome to America.

Your criticism is valid and you will be punished for it. You're incorrect. That's the sound of a telegraph, which is Morse code. I'm going to say the answer is telegraph. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. So I just want to say, I just want to say, whoever wrote these questions, did you write these questions?

Obviously not. Whoever wrote these questions, telegraph, and then they put in Morse code not knowing that Morse code is the medium for telegraph. That's like if, oh, who was the first person to use the telephone? You were. Did they do it using the telephone or the human voice? You are fucking embarrassing me, Adam, in front of an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. fucking embarrassing me, Adam,

in front of an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. And I will remind the both of you that no, I don't know what the real answer is. The books behind me are fake. This is a wallpaper of books. They're not real books. Final question goes to Clark. Yeah, he gets one extra question than you, Adam. What the fuck? Yeah, that's how it goes.

That's how it goes. Who was the first First Lady to have a doctorate? Clark Gregg. Is it A, Rosalind Carter, B, Jill Biden, C, Nancy Reagan, or D, Mamie Eisenhower? Rosalind Carter. You were crushing it, but it was Jill Biden. Jill Biden is the first First Lady to ever have a doctorate. Oh my God, you're right. Rosalind Carter didn't have she didn't finish her thesis.

It was a scandal. Honestly, honestly, you're right. Honestly, the fact you you know what? That's that's why he's an expert and fetishist. All right. He knows the details. All right. I know why I lost. He knows, which is why is is not. Honestly, we've had some close, close competitions before. This isn't one of them. It is not even fucking close. This was an embarrassment for Adam Conover and an unbelievable destruction by Clark Gregg, who is the winner of this game. Just absolutely.

What are you talking about? Why would that be the case? My win percentage is 100. I got every one right. absolutely what are you talking about why would that be the case my win percentage is 100 i got everyone right adam conover leaves with his tail between his leg completely fucking embarrassed i have not seen someone win so thoroughly adam i hope this doesn't make you feel like you're not welcome i want you to come back don't be embarrassed some people win some people lose you lost this time by every metric i won or at at least tied. That sounds like what a loser would say. I think Clark and I would agree as a couple of winners,

me being a host and Clark being the winner of the game and two of the stars of Edith. Everybody, please go subscribe to Edith right now. It is incredibly funny. It is an incredible story about Edith Wilson, the first secret female president of the United States. Adam Clark, thank you so, so much. When we come back, we'll end on a high note. And we're back. Because we all need it this week. Here it is, the high note. Hi, I'm calling from Maine today. We have a high note, I think, for the whole state of Maine, because our state legislature is proposing an amendment to the constitution of our state to establish a right to food and we would be the first state to do that and a huge shout out to the most amazing

craig hickman who um works tirelessly for the people of maine go craig go maine i love it this is jackie now newly from massachusetts and i'm calling with my high note. My husband and I just accomplished the impossible millennial dream and just bought our first house today. I'm 35. I'm a physician, and still we have to live with my parents to get this done. Now we're going to move on to the next goal of paying off the student loans. Who's kidding? That's never going to happen.

I'll just die with them. It's okay. Anyway, thank you for everything, and have a great week. Hi, just die with them. It's okay. Anyway, thank you for everything and have a great week. Hi, Love It. My name's Andy. I'm a stand-up comic and my highlight for the week is that I got to go home for the first time in

18 months until Jokes. I got to perform at my home comedy club. We got to do a show at the park that had 200 people at it. It was just the best week ever, so I wanted to share. Thank you. I love it. I'm finally able to share a high note that I've been working toward for a year and a half. This week, I've left my job of 10 years in middle management in the tech sector, and I'm heading to graduate school in August at the age of 50. If there's one thing

all the pods on Crooked Media have taught me, it's how important it is for our voices to be heard, so I'm going to do my part to support those voices. I'll be getting my master's in speech language pathology. And once I graduate, I'll spend my time helping people to gain or to regain their ability to communicate. So my thanks to you, the whole gang at Crooked, and to all the other high note callers whose stories gave me confidence that I too could take the reins of my life in hand and pivot towards something meaningful. Thanks for all you do and for keeping us laughing even through the worst of it. Bye. Hey, this is Kevin from San Diego. My high note of the week is about my daughter, two and a half. Throughout the pandemic, she has been receiving services for likely autism.

It's been really, really challenging with the pandemic and vaccinations taking forever to roll out, et cetera, et cetera. This week, we were sitting around singing to her, singing, you know, skidamarinky dinky dink, skidamarinky doo, and just kind of paused without saying the I love you part. And out of nowhere, our nonverbal little angel said, I love you. And my wife and I just about lost it the first time she's really ever said any words in her 30 plus months on Earth. Yeah, thank you very much.

If you want to leave us a message about something that gave you hope, you can call us at 213-262-4427. And thanks to everybody who called in. Thank you to Ida Rodriguez, Gia Tolentino, Ronan Farrow, Adam Conover, Clark Gregg, and everybody who called in. There are 486 days until the 2022 midterm elections.

Have a great weekend. Love It or Leave It is a Crooked Media production. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett, and Lee Eisenberg. Kendra James is our senior producer. Jolson Kaufman, Poulavi Ganalan, and Peter Miller are our writers. Our associate producer is Brian Semel. Bill Lance is our editor. And Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Our theme producer is Brian Semel. Bill Lance is our editor and Kyle Segwin is our sound engineer.

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