The Chris Cuomo Project - Jemele Hill

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Jemele Hill (journalist, author, “Uphill: A Memoir,” and podcast host, “Jemele Hill is Unbothered”) joins Chris Cuomo to discuss how “woke” went from being a fun word used on Twitter to a concept hijacked by conservatives, why the conversation about gun control is different in Black America, whether the United States’ appetite for violence is higher than in other countries, the lack of balance in the U.S. media, why politics needs to be treated more preciously than sports, and much more. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, are you somebody who likes to be a critical thinker? If not, you're going to hate my guest today. Hey, I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to another episode of The Chris Cuomo Project. Thank you for subscribing and following. Thank you for getting up those subscriptions on YouTube. We're going to be putting out more videos for you there. Wear your independence.

Don't be played for a sucker by these teams that have become party tribes. Don't let them play you. Make them play to you. Get that free agent merch. Let them know that they got to bring the game to you. You're not just going to play for them, all right? And now that takes me to the critical thinker that is Jemele Hill. You may know the name.

She has a strong game. She's got a new book out right now called Uphill about her life and what it's taught her to date. She's got a great couple of podcasts out in addition to all the work that she does on sports. My preferred one is Jamel Hill is unbothered. I talked to her about what is unbothered? What does that mean? Aren't you bothered? I'm so bothered. And it's a really intelligent talk about the rationales that are motivating our culture, our politics, us as a society, a really smart person who puts a lot of thought into what she sees in the world around her. Race, of course, but there are a lot of different gradients of difference and a lot of different dynamics in our culture. And I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Here is Jemele Hill.

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So if ED is getting you down, it's time to pick it up. Start your free online visit today at HIMS.com slash CCP. H-I-M-S dot com slash CCP. And you will get personalized ED treatment options. HIMS.com slash CCP. a healthcare provider, and they will determine if appropriate. Restrictions apply. You see the website, you'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. Jamel Hill, I must say that I love no shame in the book promotion game. I want you to know that. I hope people are watching this so they can see. I'm surprised that many copies of your book remain unsold.

There should be big appetite for it, and I congratulate you on writing it. Well, thank you, Chris. I appreciate that. But I feel like, and I'm glad you started with that because I feel like this gives me an opportunity to clear something up because sometimes people have jokes about it in the sense of they're like, oh, that must mean the book isn't selling if you have so many copies. No, these are dummy copies. Like these are not the actual book. So for those who may not know this about the publishing world or the book publishing process, is that

the publisher will send you dummy copies so you can see what the cover looks like. And so that you know what it will look like to the reader who decides to buy it. So they sent me like 10 copies of just dummy copies. So it could be Wuthering Heights inside that book. My actual book is not in there. So many of my friends who have published books, they told me, as you do television and digital stuff and podcasts and whatever, you should have your book on display. Now, did I take it a little overboard? Yes, but what else was I supposed to do? No, don't apologize. I'm already going to come after you for apologizing ever. You should be promoting it because you are selling ideas and you want them

exposed and you want them circulated and you want them thought about and chewed on. And that's why I wanted you on the project. And that's why I followed your work. You are one of the people, I would say, a precious commodity. Agree or disagree, and either one is fine, you make people think. You know how to be provocative and not merely offensive. And I think it's a talent. And the only complaint I have about the book is, what are you writing a memoir for? You're like 11. You got so much game left to play, and you're already writing your life story. I was like, she's just getting warmed up. Well, the reason, and I'm going to be completely transparent here, is the reason I did it was frankly because the market said I should. And you know what I mean

by the market, the money was there. And I didn't come into my career or even at any point thinking that I was going to write a memoir. I do want to be an author. I always wanted to be an author, but I wanted to write and still do want to write fiction. But the market was there. The book went to auction, which means there were several publishers that bid on it. And once I jumped into the process, I said, okay, there's usually not a sequel to a memoir. Once I jumped into the process, I said, okay, there's usually not a sequel to a memoir. I'm going to lay out everything, be as transparent as possible, extremely transparent, because this is not just about my career.

A lot of this is about my life, how I grew up, some of the challenges, obstacles. It gets pretty gritty. As I like to jokingly tell people who read the book or who have not yet read it and are interested in it, is that it gets lighter as you go. Real heavy, like the first half, gets lighter as you go. Well, look, I love it. I love that there is an obvious and real appetite for what you're putting out. That's good. We need more of it. We need more of that commodity. The podcasts that you're doing, I like. I don't believe that you're unbothered, though. I think you're in the business of being bothered. And

I think that you're in the business of helping people understand what should be bothersome. So I have a slightly different definition of unbothered. So when I asked my guests, when did you become unbothered? And I titled the podcast, Jemele Hill is Unbothered, because that meant Jemele Hill is comfortable in her own skin. So when you're unbothered by something, it's like you don't really give a fuck about what people think about what you say, how you operate, how you move, how you navigate, how you conduct your personal life, your business. You're in a place of safety within yourself. So, yes, you're correct. I am bothered by a lot of things that are happening in our country, in our world.

And I talk about those things quite a bit on my own podcast. So the unbothered part is not necessarily about like, oh, I don't care about anything. It's just about comfort in your own skin. I love it. I would like to be that way, but I don't think that I am strong enough. I mean, I take a lot of shit, you know, so that's not news.

And I certainly keep coming. And I understand why people do not put themselves in a position to take shit. You know, our critics are our competition. And, you know, in our business, we love to eat our own. And one of the frustrations for me about, like, hashtag Me Too, which I think is an incredibly worthy cause, is that we all but stopped after we got through the low fruit. You know, what a shock. They went after the media first. That's because that's where it was easy. It's where you had your reach and your contacts. But what about women who are

in middling positions all over the country, in corporate chains and in institutions where they're bound by the same and worse? Because look, you can argue a power imbalance anywhere you want and you'll be right. But on comparative levels, women in the media are fairly empowered. A lot of women have platforms. Most of my bosses and my EPs have been women. That's not as well represented in other industries. So I just wish it had gone farther into the places where the women really do need the voice. They have no platform.

It'll never happen. But media eats its own very well and very effectively. will never happen. But media eats its own very well and very effectively. And even though I still do what I've always done, I do get bothered. I do get bothered. But that's okay, though. I mean, I think you have to give yourself permission to do that. And that's something I had to learn because, Chris, I'm sure this was a lesson that was sort of taught to you as you expanded your broadcast journalism career is that, you know, we were sort of taught to be impervious to what people said about us. And people made it seem as if there was something wrong with you if you actually were impacted or affected by the criticism. Yes, you're going to

feel a way, particularly if you feel like you're standing in your truth and standing on the side of right. You are going to feel a way. And I think it's okay now. I didn't give myself permission to do that before, but now I fully do that. I mean, I don't spend my time worrying necessarily about what people say about me on social media, but if it's people in the media or whatever that say some shit about me that I'm like, that's not true. That's not how I get down. You damn right I'm going to say something. And I think you should give yourself the grace to do that. Sometimes you need it for your own spirit to be able to respond to people and say, this is not me. This is not, not even in an apologetic way, be like, let me tell you how I do things. And I think it's okay to stand in that. And especially as a black woman, that can be a very tricky space for us to navigate

because a lot of people think that we're aggressive and angry. And there's all these lazy tropes that people think about us. And I got to a point, again, getting back to why I named the podcast Jemele Hill is Unbothered, where I realized that those people who think those things about me or have these perceptions of who I am, they don't think that way regardless. I could come out tomorrow and just say, hey, sky is blue. Somebody somewhere is going to be like, fuck her for saying the sky is blue. Okay. They're going to think that regardless of what I say. So I'm just like, I'm going to just let them be mad and I'm going to continue to make them mad. And they can just live in their anger and watch everything I do.

Hate watch me. I don't care. Like, I just don't care. So I think you have to give yourself permission to be affected and even sometimes permission to strike back. Yeah, it's hard, especially if you're connected to an institution. Because now, I mean, you know, you live this at ESPN also. Now, they come at you because it's about their brand. And now what I meant for me and in my context, first of all, it's going to be taken out of context most of the time. That's the only reason there's controversy is that people

don't want to give you the benefit of context and they know better. What pisses me off is if I take you out of context, there's nothing that you have ever put out, whether it was about the president or sports or race or whatever, that didn't make sense in context. You're not a dope. Okay. There are people out there who just say stupid shit. You know, one of them was president and you know, it's okay for him because he's become an agent for Animus for a group of angry white men mostly, and they don't care because he's their guy. Okay. And you got guys on Fox who do it. They say things that are just stupid because it feeds the beast. That is certainly not you.

What pisses me off is when the media does someone dirty. It's rarely me, but where I see it, and I'm like, oh, come on, man. This headline's not right. This headline is not right. And I'm going to now read this piece, and I'm going to get down four or five graphs, and I'm going to see there's another way to see this. And it really bothers me because there's such a hypocrisy in our business of people saying, well, I'm big J journalism, so I'm coming after whatever, fill in the blank, Hill, Cuomo, whoever it is. And they are taking it out of context in order to do that. And there's no shame in their game. And I don't see it getting better. I thought that this crucible that we've been in since, let's say, 2015 was going to make things better. But I don't see it yet.

Am I missing something? No, I mean, it won't. I mean, I realize this profession that this is the only thing I've ever wanted to do since I was in high school, that there's something fundamentally and irretrievably broken. There's something fundamentally and irretrievably broken. And, you know, the unfortunate part is that because of the way that corporate media has infected, you know, sort of the free press, that there is now no benefit in being right. There's no benefit in accuracy. There's no benefit in fairness. There's no benefit in all those core principles that I think most of us of a certain age were raised upon in this business. And, you know, it's funny you said that about how it drives you crazy about the lack of context. That part does definitely drive me crazy because that's

literally our job is to put things that happen in context. But I know if they get the small stuff wrong, they're definitely gonna get the big stuff wrong. And I cannot tell you the number of stories that I read where things are misspelled, where the grammar is bad, where like, and when I see that, it drives me fucking crazy because when I was coming up in the business to make a mistake, to misspell somebody's name, to get a fact wrong about somebody was extremely embarrassing. Like it was shame put on your name to the point where you were worried about like, man, I might get fired because of this mistake. Now that investigative journalism and other forms of like really clear advocacy journalism. Like there's no money to be made in that, but there's money to be made in shock and outrage and division and all these things because that's kind of what drums up people's appetites. That's what people pay attention to.

So part of it is as a populace, as a democracy, we have to be more responsible and we have to demand better because the media would demand better. But unfortunately, we don't. And so we've given the media literally no incentive to be better. So why should they? They're just going to keep on cashing them checks and continue the same cycles that we see right now, the cycles that piss you off. Especially because I know that it's kind of like all almost been fictionalized that, you know, we watch people, read people, consume things that we, if pressed, probably don't think they believe. Oh, we know it.

We know it. Like we know if they're just asked like a couple of follow-up questions. I said this when this stuff first started with the whole misuse and overuse now of the word woke. I was like, ask any one of these people what that means. And I promise you, they're going to tell on themselves that they don't know. They're just using a buzzword to stand for all the things I don't like. It's woke. It's like, that wasn't even the and origin of the word. Like we used to use it in a funny way, like like early Twitter or what I call like fun Twitter, where nobody really gave a shit about what you said on Twitter. You know, we used to say like, oh, you know, Starbucks is charging people an extra 15 cents for a cup.

Stay woke. Like we used to just use it in funny ways. Right. And then all of a sudden, it got hijacked by conservatives and started becoming something completely different. But yet when you hear, like when I hear somebody like Governor Ron DeSantis, who I swear to God, if you played a drinking game with how often he uses the word woke,

you would be dead within 30 minutes. Like you're going to have alcohol poisoning and damn near dead. Because he's like, you know, woke corporations and woke this and woke that. Like, that's the only thing, that's the only word that man knows. Because it works. Yeah, and it works.

And I'm like, has anybody asked this fool, what is a woke corporation? What's a woke agenda? Like, tell me what that looks like, all right? It's the cudgel against the left. So what we see is, and once you see it in one place, you see it everywhere, is problems are enough. I saw this meme the other day on Instagram. I don't know what movie it was from. It's some kind of warrior. I think like an African warrior and his eyes are closed in it. And the clip is of him saying,

I don't want peace. I want problems always. And that's what we we are you know you there is no problem that doesn't work for both sides better than solving that problem because cooperation is seen as capitulation it's weakness so you can't do that opposition is the position elect me because jamelle hill is fucking crazy and she will ruin us and i will stop her so what you're asking is if i put you in power you'll do nothing that's what you're yep that's exactly right i will stop every single thing that she wants to do. I'm your boy. Okay. That's the definition of unhealthy thinking. But that's where we are. And we are there in the media also.

So what I do now is, last night I had on a Florida Republican named Byron Donalds. Okay. He is a sophisticated political thinker. He is not, Rhonda Santus should be a sophisticated political thinker. He's just too clued in right now to advantage. The only thing that matters in politics is advantage. You have to come at me with what is gonna make me lose.

And that's why he's saying, this is where woke goes to die, woke, woke, woke is the new left. That's all it is. Socialists to die woke woke woke is the new left that's all it is socialist whatever whatever aspersion you want even though we don't even understand what socialism is and how many socialistic operations we have within our society that are actually benefits but doesn't matter uh it's a bad word this guy is much more sophisticated in my opinion so i invite him to have come on to talk about how we know we can do better than how many people are

dying from gun violence in this country we know we can do better you know it's it's not like this is the human condition you know i mean we've done this but i wanted to have a conversation with this guy and i wanted to hear him say exactly what he said which no, none of these ideas are on the table. Maybe giving people more resources for helping with mental health, but I'm not going to take away their ability to get a weapon. And I said, so where's the conversation then? We're like, where, where does this start? And he says, you can't come at me dogmatically and say, your way is killing people. Your way is too many guns. We need to get rid of guns. If you come at me that way, I will never take a step away from my base because I'm safe there and you are trying to destroy me. But if you give me a win in this,

so I said, so here's your win. I said, your win is red flag laws. You voted against it. He goes, yeah, because you've got the process twisted. I said, how? You could put me in a hospital for 96 hours before I get to go to a hearing about whether I'm a danger to myself or others. He says, yeah, but here you're taking away, there's a taking. I said, you're putting me in a hospital. He says, well, yeah, I don't really like that either. I said, so you think that when they find me digging into my arms with a piece of glass in my bathtub, we should go to court first before they send me to the hospital. And he says, well, there's an obvious health emergency there. I said, but there would have to be a show of one also why they took the guns. And the taking is too much because their side is no taking.

So that's why we are where we are. Because one side says we must take. Well, here's what I would say, and I'm familiar with Byron Donalds. I don't know him. I've never met him, but I've just seen, you know, I've read some things about him, have seen some of the interviews that he's done with other people. And, you know, kind of what he told you is like the exact problem with politics is that everything that would be better for our society is considered a loss for somebody else. And they're very good at framing it that way. And I would say to some degree,

both sides do that. They're very good at framing it that way. You lose if you give up anything. And I consider people like that to be really unserious because to me, you're a coward. Like you're a coward. As simple as that, you're an elected coward. Technically, your job is to make things better for the people that you serve. That is, you know, a very basic definition of what that is. And so what you're telling me is that your selfish desires to stay in politics supersede what is better than the goal of the job that you have. But what do you do when your people who put you there say that's what they want? Where he is, they want to be armed to the teeth for when you come for them. Right, but that's what's so funny about it. It's like, which is why the logic doesn't compute. And I really love, I would want to have a conversation

with some of them and say, hey, look, I hear you. Get your AR-15s and all that. What is that going to do if a plane comes through and drops a bomb on your ass? Do you think you're going to shoot at it? Like, too many of them have seen Red Dawn.

And I'm like, that shit ain't happening in real life. Like, weapons are too sophisticated. They got drones, dog. They don't even have to come to your fort or whatever village you built that you think is going to sustain you

from government tyranny, they will just blow your ass up from somebody's office and it's over. So like, I don't even know where y'all got it in y'all mind that y'all can fight them back. And maybe this is a better job that people who are more progressive and left-leaning can do. And even when I've talked about gun control, my control, it's not about, and maybe control is the wrong word because people in our country, we hear control and we just lose it. It's just about being sensible. My husband's a gun owner. He has this concealed weapons permit.

We got guns all over our house. All right. And most of the people that I know that are like him, and let's be clear, there's a very different gun conversation in black America versus white America. Very different. Okay. And when it comes to gun ownership, these are two different things because the black people are scared of the white people, which is, you know, because they see shit like the Capitol and the insurrection and they see how like, you know, especially during the age of the Trump toxicity, which we're still in, that all these white people are arming up, saying they're afraid enough, saying like, I'll be damned if I'm in a supermarket and something unfortunate and devastating like what happened in Buffalo happens. That's why a lot of the black

people are arming up. And if you look statistically, the number one group that's arming up is black women. All right. And so those are two different kind of conversations. But, you know, I don't really see if you consider yourself to be a legitimate, serious, I ain't trying to hurt nobody gun owner. I don't understand. Is it really that much to ask you to wait like another 48 hours to buy what you're going to purchase? The bad guys don't have to. That's what they say. The bad guys don't have to. But what I would also say to them, too, is like, OK, well, let's have another conversation about how guns get in the wrong hands. What really is interesting to me, too, is that the people that are arming up live, a lot of them live in some of the safest communities in America. And so you know that what they're arming up against is a fear that they're being constantly fed all the time. The fear of when they're sitting there watching, say, Fox all day, and every criminal that they are plastered

on the screen looks like me or looks like my husband. That's what they're seeing. They're like, oh no, one of these days, these criminals, they just going to come up in my nice, safe suburb and they going to take everything. I'm like, do you know what happens to black people when we're in all white communities? As soon as they see us, they know where the fuck we are, okay? You don't need to worry about us. But in their mind, this is like totally reasonable. And so I think a lot of it is that people, unfortunately, our politicians, our leadership, they have used this fear to create a cottage industry. And it's really sad because I think the part that is just really

disappointing and really disheartening is that we have decided that we have more allegiance to these guns. And again, I'm not talking about taking everybody's guns. That's impossible. It's over 400 million guns in the United States. You're not going to be able to take them. But when you go outside of the United States and you're visiting other places and you see culturally just how they look at guns as being so different, it is the selfishness that we possess just generally as Americans being fed the constant diet of your freedom, you come first. It's like American exceptionalism, being fed all that shit your whole life. Of course, you would think it's totally worth it that I be able to purchase my AR-15 at this gun

show in 10 minutes. Yep, that's worth about 10, 15 kids dying. Yep, that's worth it. It seems like it is. And that kind of thinking is going to ruin us. Unfortunately, I feel like that what eventually will happen is that we're just going to fuck around and find out. That's the option we've decided. Don't make shit better. Just fuck around and find out. It was something interesting also that you don't control your right, your reproductive rights. That's why I'm going to the voting boards. I want to stop you. And it's like, what? You do realize that you're paying taxes, all right, that you deserve a certain quality of life in this country because you're paying taxes.

So it's the level of selfishness, greed, just self-centeredness that has really awakened in our country. And it is going to be the death of all of us. We don't fake the funk here. And here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo. It's embarrassing. But it shouldn't be.

I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS, and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care. Why? Because it's giving you access to affordable and discreet sexual health treatments, and you do it right from your couch. discreet sexual health treatments. And you do it right from your couch. HIMS provides access to clinically proven generic alternatives to Viagra or Cialis or whatever. And it's up to like 95% cheaper. And there are options as low as two bucks a dose.

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and they will determine if appropriate. Restrictions apply. You see the website, you'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. Look, no shame in my game. I've been using AG1 for over five years. Why? It works, it's easier, and it's less expensive. That's why. Since 2010, they've been getting their formulations right and tweaking their formulas.

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You know, you and I are fortunate. We get to travel all over the place. We've seen all different kinds of countries. My wife always says I'm the best traveled, least cultured person you'll ever meet in your life. And without exception, the people who are most upset about gun violence in America don't live here. You are 100% right. I'm so glad you said this. So the outside America constituency is appalled by us.

I see it a little differently in-house. We are violent. We only like violent things. Yes, for people like my father, my father was so moved by Dr. King, so moved. And let me tell you, it's easy to say now, as an Italian guy who was fighting his own suffrage fight, because Italian wasn't considered white until my generation,

so he was always called like a mobbed up, swarthy, ethnic, and all that, gap-toothed grin. They always described him in a way to make it very clear that this guy's an Italian, not a wasp. To be moved by members of other races or other groups, he was very insulated. You know, he was all Italians all the time. And the beauty, the demonstration of love, how hard love is, how easy hate is, was a very powerful message for my father and a huge motivation for him. But it's a losing argument. Nine times out of 10 in America, we like The Rock, okay? That's who we like because he is big and mighty. All our sports,

oh, I'm really worried about this stuff in football. Yeah. You want football to be safe? Take off their helmets. You know, I played my whole life. Take off their helmets and you will not have concussion problems. Look at rugby. You know, they only started to have concussion problems when they started putting on those little stupid helmets for the scrummies. We don't want that. We want the collisions. I want the guy who looks like a sculpture that can run at 25 miles an hour to smash into another one that's what we want we watch nascar for the crashes you watch formula one because you want to see what happens all the clips on instagram of the motor motorcycles going 200 miles an hour that's who we are in america and i think it's uniquely so and i think we have to embrace it well i was going to ask you that. Do you really, do you think that our appetite for

violence is significantly higher than it is in other, because other countries have the same access to the same video games and do obviously take part in them, same movies, a lot of the same things that we culturally have access to. They have violent sports in their own particular countries that, you know, would take the place of some of the things that we have here. So why do you feel like our appetite for it is that much higher than the rest of the world? I do believe culturally there are definitely a lot of places where they, that's just culturally not who they are. And the identity in us is a little different, but do you really think that it's that much higher than it is everywhere else?

I think here is what the problem is. First of all, we're developing. Everywhere else has tons of time under their belt. Even if you want to look at them as unsophisticated, they have been the way that you see as unsophisticated or I see as unsophisticated for a long time, okay? And they're almost always homogenous populations, so they have a different feel for one another.

But here is the dynamic difference. Let's say you go to a place that's like straight up tribal, okay, and whether they're organized under a perverse form of Islam or nothing really theocratic at all, and they chop off hands when you steal and they're mutilating women and all these horrible things, okay?

Barbarous, horrible things, okay? Barbarous, horrible things. When you talk to them, they will have a reason for why it's okay, okay? It's a perverse, inhumane reason sometimes, certainly by our standards or just by any standard of decency when it comes to how women are treated in some of the subcultures. Here is the only place where I have ever interviewed people or been around people who've done violent things who can't explain why. So he came and took your socket set

and you then shot him and killed him. Why? I was angry, you know. It was angry. It made me angry. It disrespected me. It had to get my respect. Only here.

You will find in tribal outreaches of Pakistan, on the Northwest Frontier Provinces, where I've had the opportunity to be way more than necessary, where they're like, yep, had to go rape her. Yep, they had to. Why? Why did you have? Well, the guy from the other clan came and touched one of our women

when she was walking through the marketplace. Had to go rape one of the women from the other clan. Now, I don't accept the reason, but there is a reason that they've had that has lasted like 10 generations. Should change. Terrible. Here, there are men who will give you man law

all day long about what a man is, what a man is, that will threaten to hurt you on social media as a woman. And they'll be like, kick her ass. I like to kick her ass. I'd like to see that happen to Only here. No reason. They just default to violence. Every criticism, negativity here is a proxy for insight. Everything is about what they want to do to you. They don't want to win the battle of ideas. This is another problem that left makes. Left is great at winning the argument

But not winning the change or winning the campaign That's why they are locked in a death battle With the other party when the other party only represents about 35 maybe 38 percent of the population so, you know When people say you see it as even no, I don't i see the right as uh more corroded uh at this point in time but i see the left as more ineffective because you have a big registration advantage and yet you lose all of these key races to a minority population because you don't have a better message so that used to be one of the things that I would say all the time and say like,

oh, Democrats got to get better at messaging. Like that's where, that's what's wrong, messaging. But then I realized the reason they aren't better at messaging, the reason they are better at messaging isn't because they don't have a good message. It's because the same, there's no balance in the echo chamber. Because you know what the right has? The right has Fox. That's a the same, there's no balance in the echo chamber. Because you know what the right has? The right has Fox. That's a powerful weapon to have. That means you have one network, now it's more than one. Now you got Newsmax, you got OWN, you have Breitbart, you have an entire

conservative media that will parrot and send their message 24-7 with no accountability, no pushback. They are literally stenographers. And then if anything, they're going to further hype the message and bring out even worse parts of the message that you hadn't thought about. There is no democratic equivalent to that. So it's not that the message is bad. It's the echo chamber is not the same. Like for as many issues as CNN may have or MSNBC or any of the media that you would, some consider left leaning or the very least in the center. All the Democrats are going to get at best is MSNBC. CBS ain't doing that.

ABC is not doing that. Like none of them are doing that. So they're going to lose the race. There's no dedicated 100 percent liberal outlets that are acting as stenographers for the Democrats. So I can't be surprised that there's a difference in how the messages are absorbed. And to be totally honest is that, yes, they can still do things the old-fashioned way and have speeches and rallies and knock on doors, but our attention spans have changed so much that even those who consider themselves to be politically informed and educated about the issues, they even get bored in hearing about actual policy. Right. Even though that's the thing that's going to change their lives.

They want a catchphrase. They want these things that dumb down what they're doing. Like a lot of people during the elections, it drives me crazy. But I do understand it when they say, oh, you know, that person doesn't inspire me. I don't need to be fucking inspired to know that like my reproductive rights are on the table. You ain't got to inspire shit. I don't need a Hallmark card. I don't need like, I don't need a book full of inspirational messages to get me to the voting booth because my life is on the line like literally every single time.

So I don't need all that. But a lot of people do. It's unfortunate, but like I learned to kind of look at it differently. I was like, it's not that the message is bad. It's that they don't have the same delivery mechanisms that can equate to what the right has. And that's an unfortunate and huge drawback, but I don't know if they're ever going to make up that ground. The other part of it is that because inclusiveness and progressiveness and all these things are seen as things that cause people to lose what they have, because that's the perception of them, real or not, that there is going to be a dedicated group of people in this country, and by people,

I have to say, I mean white people, who are going to vote, they're going to vote based off the fact that they're afraid of losing something that they hold dear. Not understanding that you don't really lose anything, right? It's not like tomorrow, you know, somebody's going to come to your house and be like, oh, well, all that is gone just because you happen to think it's fine if somebody uses a pronoun. A pronoun ain't changed nobody's life ever. I'm constantly surprised how people just take such issue with things that don't even affect them. If Susie over there is using a different pronoun, how does that affect you? It doesn't. It doesn't look like any other dynamic in my life. If I had to have somebody

come and fix the roof and the guy showed up and gave me a bullshit estimate and like, didn't seem like he could do the job and then said that he was going to start and then didn't start, I'd get rid of him. In your world, the guy comes back and says, you know, the other roofer's worse. You know, the other roofer eats babies and has lasers aimed from Israel. And you say, oh, okay, I'll stick with this guy then. You don't do that anywhere else in your life. If we're friends and I consistently don't return your messages, I don't show up for you when you need me, I don't seem to want to listen to you. And then you finally are like, hey, listen, this is not working for me. And I say, hold on a second. What about Frank? He's a lot worse than I am. It doesn't work like that. And I mean, I say to parents all the time,

imagine what do you do when your kid comes to you and says, hey, some people got lowered in the 68, okay? I got a couple of friends, they got 50, okay? Every parent knows as soon as that happens, all you're doing is thinking, is this kid sophisticated enough to call CPS when I smack him in the side of the head right now? Like, how bad is this going to get for me, what I'm about to do to them?

But you allow it in your politics. So they don't understand the dynamics, so they just don't pay attention to it. And so it continues to fester. Well, I think maybe part of it is this, most Americans don't really know how our political system works. Like, they don't know something like how a bill is made or how something affects them which is why they're so quick to say like oh you know such and such hasn't done anything i was like well do you realize who controls say something as basic as the liquor licenses in your community or anything like that like they don't know how those mechanisms work so they're very easy to not pay attention to. They know it's corrupt. They know they don't control it. And they know that it's not as immediate to them as we want it to be. I think part of it, much like, you know, when we started having conversations about,

you know, the police and what really is their role in serving in society. And even if you want to take the fundund the police movement, one of the things that I enjoyed about the dialogue is that it actually forced us to think of a vision that we had never thought of. And what you're saying is along those same lines. It's like, it's not that these ideas are not logical. It is kind of logical when you look at how inept and competent our political system is. I mean, for crying out loud, George Santos got elected and he's just sitting up there. I'm like, how is this guy still there?

Like, what are we doing? Okay. And that's totally fine. And so what happens is that it's lack of vision. And in some ways, it's fear. It's fear-based because we can't imagine what our political system looks like without these two parties that have been there forever. Well, also, they have the power and they don't like the idea. You know, they won't even pass term limits. They're going to stamp out the idea.

Right. You know, DeSantis is saying, well, have a constitutional convention put in term limits. I don't even think we could get a constitutional amendment passed today about the name of this country. Because as soon as it circulated and they started going bad on my boy Vespucci about what he was about, because I guarantee you, you know, he wasn't walking around being nice to everybody either. You know, he's going to be out. America's going to be out. But they could just pass it with a law, but they don't want to because they like the powers and they like the parties as imperfect as they are. They work for them and the system works for them the way it is. And I got to tell you, the easiest competition to be in with somebody is one where you just need the other guy to lose. I just need her to have a bad day. That's it. I don't got to

run my best today. You know, it's like that stupid joke. How do you outrun a bear? You know, when you're, I just got to be a step faster than you. Um, that's, you know, it's like that stupid joke, how do you outrun a bear? You know, I just got to be a step faster than you. That's, you know, that's what our politics is. That's why George Santos is still in. Why? Oh, because they're worse. Look what they did to Trump. Wait a minute.

What about Santos? I have this discussion with Bill O'Reilly all the time. Bill O'Reilly voted for George Santos. He's his congressman. What? Yeah. And I say, so, but he lied to you he was like yeah and let me tell you cuomo this lying has been going on all over politics i said whoa whoa whoa okay nothing

this man has said about himself but here's the thing though i get i don't like it i wish i knew how to defeat it i wish i knew how to change. But I get it because once you accept that the whole house smells like shit, which room smells worse becomes less important. And I know this because I live with someone who is actually sensitive to odor. And we have three dogs that are gassy fucking mutts. And she will walk into a room and i have become comfortable in that room because i am used to it being filled with flatulence because i'm loaded up with rescue dogs because god forbid i don't pretend i'm noah and let my kids bring shit home all the time right so i'm just used to the stink whereas she walks in and

she's completely disgusted, opening windows, doesn't matter what's going on. She's like, I can't stay in here. This is terrible. She's kicking dogs out. How are you sitting in here? You're disgusting. You disgust me. I said, I'm not even the one doing it, but she's not comfortable with it. And she won't be made comfortable with it. We are comfortable with the stink. So they say, yeah, Santos lied. Something wrong with that guy. So they say, yeah, Santos lied. Something wrong with that guy. But they all lie.

At least we know about him. At least Trump says it out loud. And that winds up being, again, they wouldn't apply that anywhere else in their life. No friend, no lover, no employee. You would never work for someone like that. Like they wouldn't be able to pay you enough if you're a professional. Like you would leave and find someone like that. Like, they wouldn't be able to pay you enough if you're a professional. Like, you would leave and find someone else to match money.

Only in our politics. Well, part of that, I think, the other thing is that, you know, you said you had this conversation with Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly is in a privileged position to do that, right? Because the truth is he has made enough money. He lives a comfortable life. George Santos' complete lack of ethics and his lack of really any real platform, like all of his disparities or all of his deficiencies, rather, they are not going to affect Bill O'Reilly. So that also is what makes it easier to put up with the stake, right,

is that if it doesn't really, really affect you, take something away from you, you're like, eh, I can live with it. I mean, I do think that is a dangerous position that we have put our political system in because there's zero accountability. You know, you look at the story with Clarence Thomas and I think about these laws,

not just as applied to the Supreme Court, but really everything. It's almost like so many of our laws were made as if no one would ever take advantage. Everybody was going to be really good people. Everybody was going to follow the rules. And I was like, why would you ever have a lifetime appointment where there's literally no checks and balances? Right. They've never impeached somebody from the Supreme Court.

It wasn't because they were all great people. Right. It was because there's really no system and mechanism in place to do anything about them. Right. It's the same with George Santos. There is no system to get him out of office other than voting him out. Well, the party— The party could. But they're not going to do it because we've allowed—

But they're not going to do it. This two-party system to become judged by the same standards as Yankees, Red Sox, Jets, Patriots. And as a long-suffering Jets fan, even I have never understood that. We've never been better than the Patriots. But if you ask me how we're going to do this, well, if we get Aaron Rodgers, I got to tell you right now, we're going to be set up right now. We're going to really show them what it is. That is crazy thinking. Crazy. Right.

But that's what we've made our politics. Oh yeah, but Santos is our boy. Better than AOC. I was about to say, and you'll put up, as a Jets fan, using your sports analogy, because I agree with you that we have turned politics into sports

in how we discuss them, how we cover them, just how we have constructed that dynamic. But you will, despite the fact that Aaron Rodgers has proven to be completely insufferable. He's very talented. And you'll be like, you know what? Even though he's insufferable, I'll take him because we will win. Yeah.

Now he's my boy. Just like that. It's like when a goon goes from one hockey team to another. And you go from hating the guy, now he's your boy. To loving him. And look, and that's fine in sports, but it should stay there. And our politics should be treated a lot more preciously than that. And I really believe that the nature of change has to be bottom up and on the individual

basis of being an independent. And I think the easiest sell on it is, that's all, everybody wants to call themselves in America. Everybody wants to say they're their own woman, their own man, that they're not co-opted, they're not controlled. Nobody wants to say, yeah, I love being told what to do. You know, in America, we're like very stubbornly independent, even if we're stupid. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't have to have a better idea. It just has to be my idea. And I really believe that you put faith in people to make their own decisions that are best for them. Be selfish.

You could argue, though, that to some degree that's why we're in this mess is because we don't have more of a community-centered mindset. It's like, oh, if I have something to gain and it fucks over 5,000 people, I don't care. So there's a balance with that. Like, on one hand, yes, you're correct that when it comes to politics, in many ways, we should be selfish. We should be thinking like, OK, is this person really giving me a message? Are they presenting policies that I feel like really are beneficial? Or am I just voting with them because I don't have another option? They're not as bad as the other person.

And it goes back to the old adage, the greatest way you can take away power from people is to convince them they don't have any. Right. And you said something earlier that's very true is that I think most people, the reason why they are so nonchalant about our politics, the reason why, despite what is often at stake, why we don't have 70, 80 percent of people in this country voting is because a lot of people have given up. But I think that's precisely the point. That is the point of when we have these really disingenuous operators in our political system, that's exactly what they want. They want the apathy. It's the apathy that will get us. It's not that people, I mean, the outrage, yeah, there's a corner for that where that belongs. But it's really the apathy that will do us in. And trust me, none of these people will be running and doing all the things they do and saying all the shit they don't believe to get in these offices

if it wasn't a benefit. So why are you making it easier for the worst characters to take over these positions? Because they're going to decide maybe bill number one doesn't do anything that hits home, but bill number two might, or bill number five might. And by the time you get really pissed about it, it's going to be too late. They've amassed the power already. And more importantly, they understand how to stay in power. I mean, you look at the situation in Tennessee, and some of those legislators, some of the things that they have said, I'm like, how the fuck did somebody put this person in office? I mean, that's a clown show. I'm like, I don't, I was like, this person go out and speak publicly. They said this out loud. My man is saying lynchings are on

the table. Like he said that out loud and everybody's like, oh yeah. You know what? When there is no accountability beyond the team, that's what you get. And I remember, I have very few rules about who I won't have on. I really believe that you should have the person on to expose them for what they are, unless they're a straight up bigot. Then I don't have them on because there is no value to that conversation. But I did have this guy on who was running for Senator in Virginia because the then president Trump had endorsed him. So I had him on and had a very stilted conversation where I was like, Hey, I just want to remind everybody you're a bigot. Right. And the guy was like, excuse me. I thought I came on to have a conversation. I said, no, here's the picture of you with the

Confederate flag. And the guy who is the head of the KKK for the area where that's your boy, right? You're a bigot. That's your friend. That's you in front of the Confederate flag. Confederate flag means different things where I'm from. It means one thing, okay? And you can make it whatever you want. But I just want to remind people, this is who you are, right?

This is you in the picture, right? And Trump endorsed you to be Senator of Virginia, right? And you still believe these things, right? And he was like, yeah, but I also believe, I said, nah, I don't care. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming on the show. And then I just said to the audience, this is who Trump wants to be president. And you can say, well, you cut him believe him. Nah, I don't care. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming on the show. And then I just said to the other guys,

this is who Trump wants to be president. And you can say, well, you cut him off. I don't want to hear him justify why race should mean different things, whatever the fuck he was going to say. I didn't want to hear it because there is no value to that conversation. Is that a subjective judgment?

Yeah, but it's a pretty plain one. Other than that, so why does that guy even have a shot team and i know that that's the answer if you can get away from teams and get people organized around needs or wants is fine because we'll see it on the local level you were saying earlier people don't know who give out the sla license the uh the state liquor authority licenses that's true but when they figure it out and they don't want the nightclub in their neighborhood or they get that NIMBY going, all of a sudden, they do things they never do on the federal level. They're going to put a club down at the end of the street.

It's going to kill our values. It's going to make our summer a nightmare. This can't happen. There's a meeting next Tuesday. I'll see you there. We'll get something to eat afterwards. They would never do that for Congress. You know what I mean?

So when there is, and that's why, you know, the adage, all politics is local. If you find a way to get that connective tissue, and look, there's a reason that the Greeks gave us the word demagogue, but they gave us no positive opposite. Okay. It is easier to organize people around prejudice and fear. It's a basic instinct of self-protection. People play scared. won a Nobel Prize for economics named Kahneman and Tversky. And the reason they won it is that they learned that if you offer somebody a hundred bucks right now, or a 50-50 chance, a coin toss at winning a thousand, they take the hundred. Every time. Because people play scared and you take it now, even though you're going to 10X me on a 50-50 chance. And it's not like 50-50 chance I shoot you in the head. It's 50-50 chance, just straight benefit.

Or you just net to where you are and you still do that. People play scared. People play to self-protection. And that is the key to politics. If I make you scared, I win. And if the other person is telling you to go hug somebody, I'm going to beat that person if I say it's the last hug you'll ever give.

I win. Now, a little bit of that is human nature. A little bit of that is cultural conditioning. And we're young and we're afraid of each other because we're young and we lack a lot of lessons. But I know that it's still the key. I know that if you can get people to think, you know, yes, you want community,

but thinking about me will lead you to the we. If you start with a we that you don't really own except as identification, you're never going to back out if it's any principled position because you're only in on the basis of association. You know, like right now now you mentioned earlier pronouns problem's not the pronoun i was thinking about this i did an event with kamala harris she comes out she says kamala harris she her when this

was first happening my pronouns is she her and i said. Like as a joke. Doesn't go over well. People get mad at me. But the only people who get mad at me was the media and people on left get mad at me. And they're like, hey man, you got to be an ally. This is a very targeted community. I said, they're a targeted community because they're strange and they frighten people, even though they don't have power and they're victimized all the time. You are changing people's ideas of what normal is. And you believe that saying to them, this doesn't matter to you.

I loved the slogan, or not slogan, but the saying of, you don't like gay marriage, don't marry a gay person. I love that. I love that, but that's not how human beings work. Human beings are afraid of others. But I still believe at the end of the day, the best chance for the experiment to continue

is for people to take ownership of it. The only way that we can achieve that in this context is for you to be more open to the idea that you're being owned and played for a sucker if you play for one of these two teams. Now, I will say that there is some, you know, because nobody wants to feel that way, so there's some commonality that's there. But I'm increasingly disheartened. I guess that's the way I can use it.

And it's because we're in the business of asking questions and probing life and trying to understand the context of the world that we're living in. We're in a bit of a unique position. And I try to step outside myself to see how I would think of these things. I really, when I went to college, I went to Michigan State. And the thing, and that's honestly really where my racial awareness took place. You know, I grew up in Detroit. Detroit's, at that time, and still is the case, like it's the blackest city in America in terms of percentage of the population. Like Detroit is about 80% black. When I was growing up, it might've been higher. It might've been like 85, 90. That's what it was. So I'm surrounded by black people all the

time, wherever you go. Michigan State, 40,000 students, very white. Black people might make up 5%, between 3% and 5% of the student population. And it was my first time really living in close contact with white people. And what I was really struck by was the lack of curiosity. The lack of curiosity of some of people, cultures, ethnicities, even when it came to gender and sexual orientation that live so close to them. But you never thought, what's outside of this fence? That never occurred to you? Or that if you see an image or something like, oh, I wonder who that person is. My suitemates had never heard of Malcolm X. And I was stunned at this. I was like, huh? Because I was under the understanding that everybody learned

about Malcolm X. The majority, I went to public school, most of my teachers were Black. February, yeah, we celebrated Black History Month, but Black History Month honestly was 12 months. All right. Because they were Black teachers, they had the insight to know that I have to teach full comprehensive history. So we were learning about black people all the time. Assigned reading was autobiography of Malcolm X. Sure, I read Beowulf and other things, but yes, but that was the assigned reading. And they were like, who's that? And I was like, sorry, you don't know who Malcolm X? And they had never even observed Martin Luther King Jr.'s holiday. I was like, it's a national holiday. How

is this possible? So as I probe deeper, and the only sort of interaction that they had with Black culture was through pop culture. So yeah, they knew who Snoop was. They knew some other singers and stuff like that. But other than that, they didn't know anything. I was like, so you mean in all that time that you know that Black people exist exist and they grew up in a community, it was called Sterling Heights. But in Detroit, we used to call it Sterling Whites because so many white people lived there. Right. And so, you know, I was like, so you were never curious about historically, like beyond just, oh, there was slavery. Then there was Dr. Martin Luther King. Then it was over. And then this, like, you didn't want to fill in the gaps. Like there was nothing. And the answer was Dr. Martin Luther King. Then it was over. And then this, like, you didn't want to fill in the gaps? Like, there was nothing? And the answer was no. And part of the reason why this fear is able to persist is because instead of seeing somebody who's transgender and saying, oh, that person, I don't know, they scare me. Like, that's not normal. They're a freak, this and that, you never wonder in your mind, like, huh, I wonder what it is

they're experiencing that made them want to make this very monumentous decision to really what will eventually wind up further segregating themselves from society. You think they want to be targeted? So then that alone just logically should tell you there's something very serious that's happening here. Maybe I should figure out what that is before I talk about all the ways I don't like it. And so I guess that is the part of the human beings I don't understand. It's the lack of curiosity for me. Because when I see something that maybe is different than, I won't even say my value system, different than the way I grew up

or different than how I've experienced life, it makes me want to find out what that is. Like, huh, I wonder, okay, okay. And then do a little reading. Oh, okay, now I understand this. I mean, and obviously like in sports, when it comes to transgender people, there's this,

that's where they've really been able to drum up a lot of fear is that people think Juana Mayer was a documentary. Okay. And even though, you know, I don't know, transgender people probably make up

less than 3% of the population. Oh yeah, it's very small. And it's very small. Like even in sports, there's this idea running through people's minds that you're going to have people who are your size that are identifying as women suddenly running tracks, suddenly playing basketball and all these other things. And it's that fear that's driving them to create policy

for problems that don't exist. And I guess because there is a lack of curiosity, which is tied very much to empathy, reason why they want a lot of books about sexual orientation and queer communities, the reason they want them banned is because the book reading will create the empathy. And if it creates the empathy, you can't have the fear. And if you can't have the fear, you won't be able to elect these people who like to get elected based off fear. The syllogy is 100% accurate. I just, I wouldn't put too much thought into the reason that it's being done. I think the reason that it's done, like let's say in DeSantis' case in Florida, it's as simple as advantage. And it's going to be hard to accept that because that's not where you come from. And I'm not talking about Detroit.

I'm saying intellectually and emotionally, yeah, but no, wait, this is really dangerous, though. This isn't Coke Pepsi. And, you know, I'm going to pretend that one is different than the other for whatever reason. Yeah, no, it is that simple. It works. You try it. Yeah, I know. I know. You try it. Seems to resonate. You seem to get a lot of eyebrows up about it. You stick with it. Doesn't work. You move on. Yeah, but it's so pernicious that these people are getting beaten. They're getting killed. Even in that Murdoch case that we were all fascinated with in South Carolina, this gay kid just winds up dead in the middle of the road. Nobody investigates it for six, seven years. And

that's just gay. You know what I mean? And like, and like gay is like, you know, you know, now it's almost like an accepted part of the vernacular is everybody realizes, you know, they got somebody within one degree of them, if it's not them, that identifies that way. And then they'll say, yeah, but they're growing. They're more of them. Every five years when they measure it, it's like the rate is growing at a rate that we're not going to be able to procreate in a few generations from now because everybody's going to be chopping themselves up and identify as and now you could think boy wow i would fail that essay answer real fast in any class i was teaching but it is not a rational situation it's about fear and advantage and if you say to somebody you know your kids reading these books you know what happens next, right?

All of a sudden, he's got an earring on. Then he's got two. Then all of a sudden, your nail polish is missing. And next thing you know, Frankie is Fernanda. And now what are you going to do? Because let me tell you, at school, they're going to tell him it's all right. And you all of a sudden are like, then they tell you a story that that's what happened. Right?

Right. Which may or may not be true. Yeah. And they put them on and they'll show you the wrestler. They'll show you the swimmer and be like, look at the shoulders on this lady. And that's enough because I'm afraid already. I started afraid. You don't have,

how many times you got to tell me that there's a monster in the closet? You know, you want me to go open it? This guy once said to me, he goes, you're asking the zebra to go check out the lions and see, you know, what they're about. He's like, you know, he said,

go ahead, go check it out. See what it's about. It's a one-way ticket. That's politics. That's fear. That's others. And I think you're looking at it exactly the right way. You argue it the right way. My only request of you is that you keep doing it in many different ways, as you can think of with the podcast, with your next nine chapters of your memoir, seeing how you're only 11 years old and you got a lot of life left in front of you. But I really do love what you're

doing and I love what you're about. And I love that you're unbothered about what comes along with it. All right. Well, Chris, thank you so much. This conversation has been, are you giving me some things to chew on? I mean, I know everything that you're saying about fear is entirely accurate. It's just hard to watch when the fear replaces the logic. Because for all those people who think that reading a book or being exposed to queer culture in any way is going to have some impact, I'm like, yeah, that's really funny. Because, you know, all the gay people and trans people you fear, they've been exposed to hetero culture forever. And guess what? It didn't work.

So clearly, logically, if that was the case, why didn't it work for them? It only works one way. Is that how it works? Okay, I got it. It's not. You can win the argument, but you may not win the change. The frustration for me is, don't you put that cross in my face? Don't you put that bio in my face about how you're God first. When you do not love mercy, you do not love charity. You do not believe in grace. You are judgmental. You are nothing that Jesus told you to be. Don't come at me with that. I have no patience for it. I'm fine with people being religious. Just don't put it on me. I don't like proselytizers. Just live it. Live it.

That's enough. That's enough of the cell. There's enough of the cell for Jesus. Should be enough of the cell for you. Jamel Hill, thank you so much. I love what you're doing. I appreciate you. Thank you for being a gift to my audience.

I told you, smart lady. And I'm not joking about being a free agent. I'm telling you, these parties are playing you. You know, why else would it work that they just get you to vote for them because the other side is worse? You don't do that anywhere else in your life. You want what's best for you.

You want what's better, not simply avoiding what's worse. And that is a distinction with a very big difference. Okay? So you can check out the merch, see if it works for you. And I hope that you enjoyed this conversation. I hope it made you think. That's the whole point of this. Thank you for subscribing, following, YouTube, still thinking about whether or not to do the subscription-based model. I'll take your feedback on that as well. See you next time.