Tangle - The scandal in Los Angeles.

Episode Date: October 18, 2022

We're discussing the scandal in Los Angeles over a leaked audio recording of racist remarks. Plus, a question about why Biden is blamed for inflation when inflation is happening globally.You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here.Today’s clickables: Quick hits (1:16), Today’s story (2:16), Right’s take (11:05), Left’s take (6:32), Isaac’s take (15:42), Listener question (20:52), Under the Radar (23:42), Numbers (24:36), Have a nice day (25:25)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about Los Angeles and the city council there. A little bit of a scandal that has broken out. You may wonder why are we discussing a super hyperlocal issue? Well, it's not that hyperlocal. There are some threads to the story that I think apply to national issues. President Biden got involved and Los Angeles is big and

these city council members represent some 4 million Americans. So it's a pretty interesting story and we're going to break it down for you and what's being talked about. And I have some pretty strong feelings about this one. As always, though, before we jump in, we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, President Biden announced that more than 8 million people have submitted student loan forgiveness applications since a beta website launched on Friday. Number two, rapper Kanye West announced his intention to buy Parler, a Twitter alternative, shortly after West's Twitter account was suspended. Number three, Steve Bannon is facing prosecutors' requests for six months in jail and a $200,000 fine for a contempt of Congress conviction after failing to comply with the House's January 6

committee subpoenas. Number four, Russia's latest airstrikes have damaged energy and water infrastructure in Ukraine, prompting power cuts to thousands of civilians. Number five, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has ordered the nation's three nuclear power plants to stay open through 2023. They were previously scheduled to be closed down by the end of this year. Back now on the Politics Lead, the president of the Los Angeles City Council has resigned that position, the presidency, following the release of a secretly recorded conversation during which she used a vile racist slur. Sir Pedro, hi. As you mentioned, she initially stepped down as council president and took a leave of absence, but she held onto her seat on city council.

But after public outcry, she officially announced today that she's out. The meeting was secretly recorded, posted on Reddit, and first reported by the Los Angeles Times, capturing the group making racist comments and plotting political power grabs. The scandal has put a spotlight on tension between Latinx and Black political leaders in Los Angeles. Before I jump in to the story, a quick heads up that today's podcast does include some explicit language and references to some racially charged language, which is obviously part of this story, but we will be using those terms. On Wednesday, Nuri Martinez resigned her seat on the Los Angeles City Council just a week after the leaked audio of a racist conversation among Latino political leaders made its way to the press. Earlier this month, audio was posted on the website Reddit of a conversation between Martinez and council members Gil Cedillo and

Kevin de Leon, as well as Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera. The conversation was from October of 2021. In the recording, the group is mostly discussing how they can redraw their districts to ensure they maintain Latino political power in Los Angeles. During the conversation, Martinez derides Mike Bonin, a white council member who is raising a black son with his husband as a, quote, little bitch, and said he handles his son like a, quote, accessory. She also described Bonin's son as a parese changuito, or like a monkey, and insisted that they were, quote, raising him like a little white kid and that he needs a beat down. Martinez also mocks Oaxacans,

an indigenous Mexican ethnic group from Oaxaca, calling them, quote, little short dark people and saying, quote, I don't know what village they came from, how they got here, but boy, they're ugly. Martinez also criticized Los Angeles County District Attorney General George Gascon, saying, quote, F that guy, he is with the blacks. The year-old conversation mostly focused on the group's frustration with maps that had been proposed by the state redistricting community. While the crude and racist remarks made headlines, the full audio is a rare, behind-the-scenes look at how various political groups try to manipulate the system to maintain power. The story became a national

scandal, with President Biden even chiming in and insisting that Martinez step down. Many of her city council colleagues, including Bonin, also called for her to resign. Many of her city council colleagues, including Bonin, also called for her to resign. Martinez and Herrera have now resigned, but Cedillo and de Leon have not, although they were stripped of their committee roles. Over the weekend, hundreds of Oaxacans took to the streets in Los Angeles to protest the anti-indigenous comments. The story, which drew national attention, has set off an interesting debate about racism, political power, and the things politicians do and say behind closed doors. Today, we're going to examine some reactions from the left and the

right, and then my take. All right, first up, we'll start with what the left is saying. Many on the left feel betrayed by the council members and argue that it's a reminder of how widespread racism is. Some call it a betrayal of the black indigenous communities, noting that the group wields great power in Los Angeles. Some Latino writers say it is a reminder that their community still has huge problems of its own to deal with. Amir Whitaker said Los Angeles needs a reckoning with anti-blackness more than it needs resignations. In the more than hour-long recording of a redistricting meeting last year, we can hear city council members strategizing how to draw districts that would give Latinx

people more power, Whitaker wrote. On the surface, it seems to be an understandable goal because although Latinx people make up nearly half of Los Angeles, they hold fewer than a third of the council seats. But the meeting quickly turned to ridiculing Black, including two-year-old LGBTQ and Oaxacan communities. It laid bare the true colors of four of the most influential Latinx leaders in the country, whose collective power affects nearly 4 million Angelenos. They aren't for the people, solidarity, children, or diversity, not even for democracy itself. I'm a black man residing in Council District 14, where De Leon is my representative. But De Leon's words and complacency in the leaked

conversation clearly indicate that he doesn't represent my interests or my community, Whitaker said. To think that at one point I had almost supported his bid for mayor this year and encouraged Afro-Latinx students to volunteer for his campaign. Now I feel betrayed. Martinez's comments were also dangerously divisive, putting at risk decades of coalition building by activists of color. She referred to us as, quote, the blacks as she and her colleagues schemed about Latinx dominance in LA politics. Black people are merely 8% of the city's population compared to Latinx people at 48%. Although we have never truly been united, I also never viewed black people as being in competition with the Latinx people in LA. In the New York Times, Charles Blow called it a revealing racist rant.

It is a theory that worries me and that I have written about, that with the browning of America, white supremacy could simply be replaced or buffeted by a form of light supremacy, in which fairer-skinned people perpetuate a modified anti-blackness rather than eliminating it, Blow wrote. The racist comments revealed this week on a recording of Latino leaders in Los Angeles, three city council members and a labor union leader did nothing to allay those fears. What disturbs me most is the racial-ethnic tribalism of her political calculations. After all, the recording is of a meeting to discuss the city's once-in-a-decade redistricting process. This is a meeting about power, about who can be helped or hurt, and by

how districts are drawn. To be clear, I believe in representative distribution of political power. Los Angeles is nearly half Latino. There should be strong, unapologetic Latino political power in that city. In fact, underrepresentation is a problem that continues to plague the Latino community, Blow said. Instead of allying with other disadvantaged groups, they diminished them. Their discussion was anti-black, anti-indigenous, anti-Jewish. They were doing the work of white supremacy, and not because they see white power as one and the same as their own. In the Los Angeles Times, Gustavo Arellano said the recording is a reminder that the worst enemy of Latino political power is ourselves. Instead of taking responsibility for the

underwhelming state of Latino political power, they just whined and whined about their predicament and blamed everyone else, especially black people, Arellano said. When you have an elected Latina official use words to describe black people, children no less, as changuitos, little monkeys, and negritos, darkies, while no one else in the room pushes back, it shows the rot, pettiness, and paranoia that infests LA's political class. The four waded in grievance politics straight out of Sam Yorty's City Hall. This wasn't a case of your rancho libertarian cousins from Corona drunkenly mouthing off during a backyard carne asada, or small-town politics in southeast LA County or the San Gabriel Valley. These are some of the most powerful politicians in Southern California and some of the most prominent Latino politicos in the United States. Mike Bonin won't effing ever say a peep about Latinos. He'll never

say an effing word about us, DeLeon said. Maybe Bonin might have supported Latinos if Martinez and her cohorts tried harder to ally with him. All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to the right's take. Many on the right said the story is a reminder that racism isn't as simple as the left tries to make it. Some criticized the anti-racist movement, noting that this story is a reminder of the flawed notion that it's only white people who are racist. Some argue this is the natural result of making race such a central part of politics. In the dispatch, Jonah Goldberg called it a great teaching moment. For instance, the quote-unquote guy who is quote with the blacks is a Oaxacan.

So here we have three Hispanics crapping on another Hispanic for not being sufficiently on their team, Goldberg said. The conversation segues into outright bigotry imported from Mexico about Oaxacans being short and ugly peasants. What I like about this LA story is that it's a very human story. The reigning ideology of zero tolerance for racism, which I entirely support with regard to any state action and in most other realms, has a downside. It tends to homogenize groups into artificial categories. The Latinx farce is just one example of how disproportionately white and upscale progressive ideologues like to divide the world into people of color and white people.

Not only do the vast majority of Hispanic people reject the term Latinx as condescending and inauthentic, even the term Hispanic erases so much of the diversity of people we lump under that rubric. Mexican American immigrants aren't just different from Spanish, Cuban, Argentinian, or Puerto Rican immigrants, who aren't even immigrants, strictly speaking, since they're already Americans. They're also very different from Mexican-Americans who've been here for generations, Goldberg said. And even there, Mexican-Americans in Texas are culturally different from Mexican-Americans in California. Heck, apparently, some Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles don't even like Oaxacan Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles. In National Review, Nate Hockman wrote that Charles Blow learned that non-whites

can be racist too. One of the oddest orthodoxies of modern anti-racist doctrine is that only white people can be racist, or as a vice writer declared in October of 2016, it's literally impossible to be racist to a white person. In the summer of 2020, the New York Times reported that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary was planning to update its definition of racism after an activist complained, quote, that white people sometimes defended their arguments by cutting and pasting the definition from the dictionary. Racism, activists argued, was not merely prejudicial attitudes towards members of another race, but prejudice combined with social and institutional power. New York Times columnist Charles Blow seemed to echo a version of this line himself in 2019, Hockman said.

On Wednesday, however, Blow penned a column titled A Revealing Racist Rant in LA. But he also argues that the Latino politicians, all Democrats, were, quote, doing the work of white supremacy, Hockman said. It's always somewhat amusing to watch a certain kind of anti-racist progressive reckon with the fact that various non-white groups can dislike one another and that the way that animosity manifests is, at least in the contemporary United States, often far more bitter and explicitly racist than white racism itself. Blow doesn't explain how or why the anti-black racism of the Latino LA council members is the work of white supremacy. These are the kinds of things that are asserted, not argued. But then again, recognizing that ethnic conflict and tribalism exist everywhere, across time, place, and race, would be deeply inconvenient

for a number of progressive premises about America and the logic of intersectionality. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza

cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. In the Washington Examiner, Quinn Hillier said, let's not pretend this is just some isolated incident. Instead, this is exactly what happens when people look at the world through a racial lens and try slicing and dicing political power to racial identity, Hillier said. When people think according to race, they speak and act

according to race. And the word for that thinking, speaking and acting according to race, they speak and act according to race. And the word for that thinking, speaking and acting according to race, is racism. The leftists today who have made a lucrative scam of being anti-racist are now pushing a form of Orwellian doublethink in which to be colorblind is actually to be racist. Real anti-racism, they say, insists that race is determinative and that equity demands that the races be treated differently to account for past and present privileges. That approach is pernicious, Hillier argued. It denies our common humanity. It leads to everlasting racial conflict about which ethnicity gets to claim how much power. The left's obsession with racial power politics

is a deadly societal pathology. To combat it, colorblindness is neither disease nor even a symptom. Colorblindness is the cure. Alright, that is it for the left and the right, which brings us to my take. Watching this story percolate reminds me just how good our two major political tribes are at molding any event into the narrative that they wish. On the left, this story is just, you know, it's one of more oppression. In Los Angeles, Latinos are no longer a minority, but now that

they have political power, not enough, everyone on the left is sure to point out, they're acting just like white people, demeaning other minorities behind closed doors and discussing openly the ways in which they can consolidate and advance that power. Now, black and indigenous folks don't just have to look out for white people, but also powerful Mexican-American politicians too. On the right, the story is seen as a reminder of how absurd the anti-racist movement is. Of course, the people who talk about race all the time are actually the real racists, they say, and isn't this all just a reminder that our obsession over race really just reinforces racial divisions? Never mind the fact that this is an actual overt instance of racism. Because it's coming from Democrats and Latinos, they say

it proves their point that racism isn't that big of a deal and we should stop obsessing over it. There are some days, I must confess, when I feel like the arguments around a major political debate are making my head spin and I can't tell up from down. Then there are days like today, when I feel like I'm the only one seeing clearly. Here's the reality of the situation as best as I can tell. This story does speak to the dangers of race essentialism. When everything is defined by race, when every story is seen through the lens of race, when we are conditioned to think about most or all political issues principally in the context of race first, it is not surprising at all to see politicians, even purported allies, operating in stark racial terms behind closed doors. Conservatives are right about this. It's not

about vouching for colorblindness or some other mythical ideal, but it is about the reality that race essentialism reinforces race as a concept and serves only to divide people from across the political and class spectrums, potentially turning them against each other. This is why some labor activists warn that performative white guilt is a good way to destroy cross-racial solidarity. But an overt and obvious instance of racism should not be used as some kind of proof that anti-racism is worthless and a waste of time. That requires pretzel making in your brain. In fact, the opposite should be true. The recording confirms some of the biggest fears of black Americans, white progressives who

ally themselves with anti-racism, and yes, even Latinos, that people in political power pretending to be allies are actually closeted racists looking out for their own interests above everything else. Martinez, for example, tweeted this in the summer of 2020. Today we introduced a motion to cut funding to the LAPD as we reset our priorities in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter call that we all support to end racism. This is just one small step. We cannot talk about change. We have to be about change. Behind closed doors, she says, F that guy. He's with the blacks. Of course, as Gustavo Arellano and other Mexican-American writers

have noted, this can be both shocking and yet unsurprising. White Americans are not the only ones capable of racism or bigotry, and America is still far more accepting of diversity than most other places. In my travels, I've witnessed much more overt and open anti-blackness in my time in Latin America than I ever have in the United States. This intersectional bigotry is not unique to Spanish-speaking countries either. Many predominantly black communities have major issues with anti-gayness and transphobia. The Jewish community is rife with Islamophobia. China is littered with anti-black and anti-Uyghur sentiments. And, apparently, Mexican-American Los Angeles City Council members can also be overtly racist toward indigenous Mexicans who have lived in Los Angeles for decades. And so it goes, on and on.

Our takeaway from all of this shouldn't be that racism is actually no big deal and anti-racism is dumb and counterproductive. Nor should it be that essentializing race and talking more about our world in stark racial terms is the best way out of it. To me, the takeaways are that, unlike many conservative Republicans will acknowledge, race is still a powerful lens through which many people see the world, often in discriminatory terms. And that, as many progressives seem unable to acknowledge, racism is pernicious not just among white conservatives, but among Democrats and liberals and so-called allies, even among other minorities. It's that people with outsized political power often talk differently behind closed doors than they do in

public, and that many of them are having meetings like this to scheme how to coalesce and cement their power, even at a cost to the communities they are assumed to be serving. We don't live in a simple world, we live in a messy one. We suffer when we try to view events in simple black and white terms, if you'll excuse the expression, and then stuff those events into our tribal simple world. We live in a messy one. We suffer when we try to view events in simple black and white terms, if you'll excuse the expression, and then stuff those events into our tribal narratives. We suffer more when we take politicians at their word about who they are. This story was informative and revealing, yes, but it should be changing attitudes on both the left and right. All right, that is it for my take. Before we get into your questions answered, just a quick plug.

Today at 1 p.m. Eastern, I'm going to be joining the All Sides Instagram to discuss Tangle, the 2022 midterms, polarization, and our attempt to produce nonpartisan news. If you're on Instagram, go check out All Sides right at 1 p.m. They're going to be launching a live. I'll be joining it to chat. They have a pretty big page. It should be pretty fun. 1 p.m. Eastern, All Sides, Instagram. You want to hear me talk, tangle, and politics and all that good stuff.

All right, next up is Your Questions Answered. This one is from Bruce in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Bruce said, why is Biden taking all this blame on inflation? Isn't most of the Western world going through the same thing we are? Biden did not send cash to England or Italy or any other country, so how much of his cash payments are really fueling inflation? Is this more likely a result of suppressed economies during the COVID shutdown, which is the only worldwide event to affect all countries? So if I were the Biden administration, this is the only worldwide event to affect all countries. So if I were the Biden administration, this is certainly an argument I'd be making,

at least for some political gain. But there are some problems with it too. For starters, yes, inflation is bad in Europe also. We linked to this Financial Times piece yesterday, which included charts showing inflation rates in Germany and the United Kingdom are now higher than in the US. There, though, the inflation is being driven predominantly by soaring energy prices. Here, it's our core inflation being pushed up by higher demand. Simply put, core inflation, which excludes volatile energy and food prices, has been significantly higher in the US than in Europe. The idea, supported by many economists, is that demand is driving that inflation, and that demand has come from big government stimulus and rising wages. Obviously, those things are both good and bad. As Noah Smith put it in June,

we had the biggest stimulus, we got the most inflation, but we also got the fastest growth. It's also important to note that inflation in Europe is tied much more to the war in Ukraine. Europe depends on Russia for much of its energy, and that relationship is now badly strained. Before the war, inflation was rising faster in the U.S. than in Europe, and many economists believe the stimulus packages passed under Trump and Biden and the Fed's reluctance to raise interest rates, nothing to do with Trump or Biden, played a big role. So yes, COVID-19 played a massive role in the U.S. inflation. Inflation is happening globally. In some places, it is worse than here. But the core underlying causes of inflation are different from country to country, and there are fair reasons to put

some degrees of the blame on our fiscal policy, which was pushed first by Trump towards the end of his term, and then by Biden. All right, that is it for our reader question. Don't forget, if you want to ask a question yourself, you can email me, Isaac at readtangle.com. All right, next up is our under the radar section. Yesterday, a federal law first passed in 2017 went into effect, making hearing aids available to purchase over-the-counter in the U.S. for people with mild to moderate hearing loss. The FDA issued a rule in August that allowed adults to begin buying the aids, which will immediately be available without prescription in stores like Walgreens, CVS, and Best Buy. Walgreens began selling the hearing aids in its stores for $799

compared to the $2,000 to $8,000 cost for similar prescription hearing aids. CVS has prices ranging from $199 to $999. An estimated 37.5 million Americans above the age of 18 have hearing loss, and close to 30 million would benefit from the use of hearing aids. NBC has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of Americans who have already voted in the 2022 midterm general election is over 2 million. The number of Georgians who voted on the first day of early voting yesterday was about 100,000. The previous record for the first day of early voting in Georgia was 72,000.

The number of competitive congressional races where Democrats raised more money than Republicans in the third quarter of 2022 was 50 out of 65, according to Politico. The estimated cost of flood and wind damage to Florida residential and commercial properties due to Hurricane Ian was $40 to $64 billion. Of the U.S. residents who plan to buy or sell a home in the next year, 62% say they are hesitant to move to an area with climate risk. All right, that is it for our numbers section, which brings us last but not least to our Have a Nice Day story. Vaccines that target cancer could be available by the end of the decade, the husband and wife team behind BioNTech say.

Ugar Sahin and Özlem Tureki, the German couple who founded BioNTech and partnered with Pfizer to make the mRNA COVID vaccine, said they have made breakthroughs that fuel their optimism for cancer vaccines in the coming years. The couple believes the mRNA technology could be repurposed to attack cancer cells instead of invading viruses like COVID-19. The Guardian has the story on their plans and how they expect it to work. There's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for the podcast before you go take a minute go to retangle.com membership become a member or simply share this podcast with friends and tell them to follow us and give us a listen heading into the midterms we are you know hoping to get the word

out before november 2022 we'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Sean Brady, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager, Magdalena Pokova, who designed our logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our website at www.readtangle.com. Thanks for watching! character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported

across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur,

and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.