The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Coleman Hughes and Blasphemy

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

Coleman Hughes is a writer, podcaster and opinion columnist who specialises in issues related to race, public policy and applied ethics. He is also a jazz/hip-hop artist. 

🎵 This is Live from the Table, recorded at the world-famous Comedy Cellar. Coming at you on Sirius XM 99, Rod Dogg. And on the Laugh Button Podcast Network, Dan Aderman here. Noam Dorman, the owner of the world-famous Comedy Club, is in studio today. It's a special occasion because he's been doing this via Skype, not Skype, but via Zoom. I was here last week, Dan, on false pretenses. That's true. He was here last week. Dan, on false pretenses. That's true.

He was here last week. Periel Ashenbrand is with us. Is your mic working, Periel? I don't think so. No, Periel's mic's not working. Whilst Periel is getting her mic set, I will give her a brief introduction. She is our producer, but not only that, she is an on-air personality. And I would mention, if I haven't yet, that she didn't on-air personality and I would mention if I haven't yet that she

didn't start out that way. It just sort of evolved in that direction and we're happy to have her as an on-air personality. Welcome Perrielle Ashenbrand. Thank you. Wow, that's an amazing timely fix, Nicole. That was very good.

I would remind her that she is not authorized to change topics. She is authorized to comment on the topic that is currently being discussed. Noam, I believe, when are you going to the Bahamas? You're going on your annual or biannual or biennial family vacation. You know, the word biannual doesn't really make sense. Those words always confuse me because you think biannual would mean twice a year, right? Well, they're confusing, but... So I don't know which it is, but I guess you go twice a year.

A fortnight. I'll be in the Bahamas. I'll be at the beautiful... No. No? No. I have to edit that out now. Why?

I mean, do we need everybody knowing what hotel he's staying at? That's his decision. And where and what dates? That's his decision. I mean, do we need everybody knowing what hotel he's staying at? That's his decision. And where and what dates? That's his decision. I mean, you flatter me. I mean, really? Well, every comic tells people where they're going to be. Well, he's not performing.

It's like a personal trip. What am I, the Hughes baby or something? No. All right. Just keep going. Well, anyway, the point is I'll be in Aruba also. I'll be in Aruba from like the 13th. What?

Are you crazy? Don't tell anybody where you're going to be. So I don't know if we're going to have shows those weeks or do best ofs. We have shows those weeks. Well, but we're going to both be Sky Big In. It could be problematic. Oh, I'm going to kill you. I'll zoom in.

It's just when we have multiple zooms, especially when it's out of the country, the sound could be an issue, but we'll see what we can do. On the 7th? I can't tell you that. All right. After. Go ahead.

In any case, yes. So we have no... Coleman News will be joining us soon. He'll be here in a few minutes. Does he know he's in person this week? I don't know. Okay, go ahead. We'll find out.

Hilarious if he doesn't come again. No, I spoke to him't know. Okay, go ahead. We'll find out. Hilarious if he doesn't come again. No, I spoke to him this morning. Okay, go ahead. In any case, Coleman's not here yet, so what do we discuss? What are our talking points? Our talking points are

Coleman's new music video. We can't talk about that without Coleman. Whoopi Goldberg. We should wait for Coleman for that, too. We can talk about it twice, can't we? We can talk about it before Coleman, and then we can talk about that without Coleman. Whoopi Goldberg. We should wait for Coleman for that, too. Yeah, everything is Coleman-based. We can talk about it twice, can't we?

We can talk about it before Coleman, and then we can talk about it- There's something else that was big, though. What was it? You said it downstairs. It's the third thing. I know that the bubble over the head of everyone listening is like, can't these guys- The Supreme Court. Oh, the Supreme Court.

Now, I tweeted- We should wait for Coleman for that, though. I tweeted, now, we all know that- As long as we have time i'll talk about my tweet which you liked and i don't know if it was a what was what was your tweet well you liked it but it was um i said that you know uh well biden wants to appoint a black one i said that biden appointed star jones and his advisor said you moron we said we want a diverse court not divorce divorce court not yeah that was funny then. I thought it was funny. It didn't get much traffic on traction on either Instagram or Twitter.

But there's an inner satisfaction of knowing that no one at least liked the joke. That's like a well-crafted- I mean, it's cornball. It's a well-crafted all-in-the-family joke. Jeez, eat it. What's the joke again? Divorce court. Oh, yeah. Jeez, eat it. What's the joke again? Divorce court. Oh, yeah, geez, eat it.

It's divorce court, whatever. Did you really forget that in that short time? Yeah, I did. You know, Noam has an issue with his memory. Please do not rub salt into that wound, please. Noam, are you still concerned about your memory? What do you mean? What are you referring to?

Of course I'm concerned about my memory. I'm not concerned about that. I'm just concerned about not remembering things. But it's been for a long, long, long time. It's been since I was younger, so young that it couldn't be anything other than just my nature and having a million things to think about all the time.

Well, look, on more than one occasion, I've had to look at the schedule to remember who the hell I was talking to downstairs. You know, there's so many comics here. And more and more all the time, by the way. Actually, we can discuss that. But I forget many of them, and I look at the schedule,

and then I see their name, and then it springs to mind. So when I was – go ahead. Okay, so you're about to – No, when I was younger, like in college, my roommate's Don Fabricant, outside Steve's brother. That's how outside Steve works here. He would quote movie lines, movie lines, movie lines, movie lines, movie lines. Caddyshack, Animal House, Fast

Signs of Ridgemont High. And I could never remember those lines. I could remember the gist of them, but I was never able to remember them. But you probably remember every line from every song. I mean, maybe it's just important to him to remember that, but that's his thing, so he remembers

that, whereas you are less concerned with music. Some people have that. My friend. But it may not be an interest of yours, in other words. Music, you do remember. Yeah, you remember so many songs. I remember music, yeah. I don't remember lyrics so well anymore.

I just remember them more easily. But, I mean, I'm all right. I'm healthy. You're far from all right. I remember healthy. You're far from all right. I remember things. Was that, I mean, really,

because I couldn't remember diverse and divorce. No, your memory's not the issue. Last week, you were, we were talking about something and you brought up.

Sorry about something, whatever it was. Yeah. Anyway, so go on. So, no, I'm saying,

just to lead into all these new comics here at the Cellar, and there's quite a few. A plethora. There is a plethora. Do you feel that the quality is being maintained? I know you had said, you had alluded to the possibility that maybe there's too many new people playing here.

I don't know the answer to that. It worries me. I don't know the answer to that. Well, how do you monitor or do you monitor new people? Just you ask the waitstaff, hey, how's it going? You know, we send out emails to all the customers. I ask Liz and the people whose judgment I trust. And sometimes I go down and I watch, yeah.

And it worries me, but on the other hand, it's a good thing because we have to have new comics. People complain they see the same comics all the time. Well, I do think, I mean, the comedy seller, I do think more so than the other clubs. Hey, here's Steve. Steve, you want to sit down and join us just for a couple of minutes? No?

That's Steve. He remembers every line from every movie. He remembers also, he can remember every Dave Attell line. Yeah. But again, you know, it may just be that it's important to him to remember those things because it's something that he's interested in, whereas you're less interested, perhaps. No, no, no. It's floating that hypothesis. It's the thing.

So when I was younger, I would be able to remember the comedian's routines. But I say there's so many more comedians now, and I still call them routines, although the comedians call them jokes now, which I never, they're not jokes to me. Like from time to time, they're jokes. But I think routines was a better word. Well, I don't, the word joke to me minimizes it. I mean, when comedians say, hey, I tell jokes for a living, you know, I mean, they are jokes, but the act, the act in its globality, is that even a word, or totality, I don't refer

to it as telling jokes, although arguably that's what it is. I like to think of it as more of a performance. It's more global than just joke telling. It's sort of a, it's a theater piece almost. Yeah, and a joke. Like with Steve Martin telling jokes, I mean, jokes used to have the meaning of like a man walks into a bar, you tell a little story, and there's a punchline. That was a joke.

And then comedians told routines, which were like, which were. Well, some comedians do tell jokes. Some do. And I tell. Henny Youngman told jokes. I tend to tell, as much as anybody, I tell jokes, you know. But they call any comedy performance now jokes. These are the jokes.

And I don't. Yeah, I wouldn't qualify CK or Chris Rock as telling jokes. Right. But they will call him, Chris Rock will refer to his stuff as jokes now. Well, I think you might call it a bit or a chunk. Bits are good. Bit or a chunk or a... It's just the parlance of the

day. Or a set. Well, set, yeah. The set is the whole... A set is, you know, your time on stage on a given night it's composed of in my case i guess jokes would probably be the best word to describe it in the case of chris rock i'm i'm louis i don't know that i would describe those as jokes but david tells more joke yeah you know style so um but but I just find the word joke, to me, when I hear comedians saying, hey, I tell jokes, I just, to me, that kind of minimizes it in my, but that just could be my own perception.

I just think it's something ridiculous, like a prostitute saying, yeah, I get blowjobs. It kind of minimizes. I get blowjobs. It kind of minimizes. I get blowjobs. That's good though, because it is. It's like a whole experience. It's so much more than that. Yeah, it is. It is more than that though. It's so true. That's such a good example. Well, depending on the prostitute, some give what's known as a girlfriend experience. Right. Yeah. And that goes beyond just a blowjob.

But, you know, they have to pretend that they like you and that they're not repulsed by you. Hey, Coleman. Coleman Hughes is joining us. Thank you, Coleman, for stopping by. Coleman Hughes is a, whilst you're settling in, I'll give you the introduction you deserve. Coleman Hughes is a friend of the Comedy Cellar.

He's a, I guess, public intellectual, for want of a better word. That's what he is. He's a podcaster. He has a conversation with Coleman where he discusses philosophy and issues of the day. And he's also a musician. He plays trombone here on Monday nights, although they haven't done it in a while because of COVID. And he has a new video out that he's going to talk about with us. Good to be here. Thank you, Coleman Hughes.

How you doing, Dan? And Noam is busy with his- I saw it. I saw it. Look at the board. Hi, Coleman. Hey. So let's talk about-

We have just a shit ton of things to talk about with Coleman. But we got to do the video first. So we'll do the video first. So this is- First of all, I have a beef with him. I already, I already told him this, but Coleman and I,

like we're friends. I think, I think we're friends. Well, I'm, I'm, I don't know if he comes here for,

for, for friendship or for free cheeseburgers, but I know he's here all the time. Both, but, but, but we have a relationship outside here.

He's been to my house. There's also cheeseburgers at the house, I should say. He comes, we spent some holidays together, like we're friends, like actually friends, you know. And he went

off to Ukraine, didn't barely told anybody, and then just drops this mega produced video of a song he recorded and produced himself. And this is no ordinary video, but I guess we could show it.

Will we be able to see it, Nicole? And he never even mentioned to me that he was doing this. Like, you told me you were writing a book. I remember that very clearly. I'm sure Perriella told me stuff she was doing. I don't remember. But anyway, so

Coleman... Well, before we show the video, um, do you want, you want to set it up? I feel like I have to defend myself. No, you don't have to. Yeah, yeah. I want to. No, this is his personality.

I'll tell you, he's, he's a little bit, uh, to himself in these things, I guess. Yeah. And you know, it's like, I didn't know how it was going to turn out. Yeah. So I didn't want to be talking about it all the time and then it turns out bad and then I'm the kind of like self-absorbed asshole that's talking about like this thing I'm doing that's going to come out in like a year

and it's kind of hard to describe I get it but it wasn't anything personal no no it wasn't it was not like an indication of a lack of closeness no I don't think it's personal because I do understand the quirks of the people that I have kind of close relationships with. Like Harry, for instance.

Coleman's quirks are minuscule. Harry's got all these quirks. And I love him for those quirks. Coleman doesn't really have many quirks, but I know he's a little bit – it's not the first time. There was something else. He left a job one time. He was writing for a city journal, I think.

He said, I don't work there anymore. What do you mean you don't work there anymore? You didn't even tell me. Anyway, that's the way he is. I feel bad. I didn't tell you. I have a kid but i actually had a friend like that too but the thing is this this is such a monumental piece of uh work that he dropped on us it's just amazing to me that had no inkling of it whatsoever and well i'm gonna I'm going to let him set it up. Go ahead. So I wrote this song in 2019, right after I testified before Congress against reparations.

I was feeling the heat from people in that room. I was feeling the heat from people online, and some people in my life didn't want to hear anything i had to say i i felt like a heretic and i wrote this song and later probably maybe over a year later linked up with this guy ian ponds jewel who's a major commercial director he does nike and apple and he loved the song and took it on as a passion project basically and he has he has a team in Ukraine that he usually shoots with, so flew out there. The video is largely his concept, and the song is me, and we just became friends, and we did this.

Now, Nicole, we're going to play it, and this will be fed directly into the video? Yeah. So you're not shooting the TV screen, right? No. Okay, so go ahead. I'll turn not shooting the TV screen, right? No. Okay, so go ahead. I'll turn the lights out. Okay, well, let's hear it.

I've heard it like 20 times. Roll tape. Let's go. Mr. Coleman Hughes is a columnist for Quillette. He's had pieces published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal,

the National Review, the City Journal, and the Spectator. He's studying philosophy at Columbia University, and we appreciate your attendance, and you're recognized for five minutes, sir. Back with the pen, took a sabbatical, at it again. Look at my attitude after they call me a time, and Ray call me a coon, it's a ten. Bitch, it's a ten. Don't tell me who to offend.

Losing a few of my friends. Yeah, I've been booted from public events, and it was all or something i said because it was blasphemy never was like an audacity going to a flaw in a fallacy right on a different mentality committing that blasphemy bet all the bullshit is passing me trust that you ain't seen the last of me pray i don't end up like calvary over some blasphemy make it official charge people thinking and put me in prison Serving a sentence for sentences written Should've known better than having opinions Got about 100k in my minions

I could lose half and still fill up a building What if you extra to spare like Micheline Let me stop there cause I know what you thinking You just saying shit for white people Nigga you ain't hanging with the right people Bro I bet they keep you on a tight leash Before they bring you out so you can fight people Let me school you like Boy Q with the right people, bro. I bet they keep you on a tight leash before they bring you out so you can fight people. Let me school you like Boy Q with the bucket hat.

Drop your fucking Uncle Ruckus act. Stop forgetting that you fucking black. Cause the pigs won't run your hands up and the piss throws at your fucking back. Oh. For people on the radio, Coleman just been shot in the head. That is gory. Oh, Coleman, no. He's dead.

Our hands up for these white coppers, yo hands out for these coke dollars. And that ain't the half of it. This shit don't stay in the past, does it? We built the nation from scratch, honey. And we still ain't seen the cash from it. So get out the way. Ain't trying to hear what they pay you to say.

Ain't nothing changed. 10 to one wealth ratio yesterday is the same as today today so go ahead make a name for yourself do what you gotta do for the fame and the wealth i'll say it backwards you are out in the cell factors you ain't nothing but a cracker and stealth slavery slavery slavery you dwell on the past but letting it go that requires more bravery and last time i checked they all in the grave or they in Mauritania I'll pass on the check for my lowest fee Uncle Sam couldn't pay for me I feel with my heart but think with my head Mix up the parts and we all end up dead Race is a fake idea put it to bed Ain't no debate I said what I said and my

name is my name Cold man I got love for the world and my soul man I am black I am white I said and my name is my name Cold man, I got love for the world in my soul man I am black, I am white, I am all man We all stuck in between like toe jam I'm an American, I'm the American I really don't give a fuck about the color of keratin Oh, who you ferretting? I had a Greek as my therapist I made this beef from a theremin

That ain't the shit I inherited From the culture that me and my parents lived And it's still gas like serenade So I'm a little bit even killer I don't care if they belong to us, you heard? I'm gonna apologize from the birds But like a possible I'll bring the word I'm in the business of brute facts, you see

I'm in the business of new blasphemies I've taken bullets for two magazines And backhanded shots at me like advocacy Chill, chill, chill, chill. He was presumptive, but he still has a right to speak. I need your permission. All of you tripping. All of you blinded by colorful vision.

All of the stories you tell are too simple. Y'all heard of foot, but y'all ain't heard of temper. I don't fear getting shot by a cop. I fear my mind getting brainwashed by a mob. I fear right getting made from a couple wrongs. I fear what I call truth. Y'all gonna call. Blasphemy.

Never was like an audacity. Point to a flaw in a fallacy. Right on a different mentality. Committing that blasphemy. Bet all the bullshit is passing me. Trust that you ain't seen the last of me. Pray I don't end up like Calvary. Over some blasphemy.

Woo! Fantastic. Yay! Serving a sentence for sentences written. Yeah, good line. Very good line. Thank you. So I have a few questions about,

you have a question for us? I just don't know who's in Mauritania. There's a line about they're all dead or in Mauritania. You're referring to slavery in Mauritania. There's modern day slaves in Mauritania. Oh. You didn't know that? I didn't know that. One of the few countries where there's actually

still a big slavery problem. I did not know that. Okay. That's funny. that was your question, my question is where did you find that black guy in Ukraine? I think there are only a couple black people in Ukraine and I think they're all in my video so now that I know that those are all Ukrainians

it takes on an extra level because I'm just imagining these people who don't understand what you're saying even whatever it is most of them a good amount of them spoke English

well but speaking English and being able to understand rap that's true may not be the same thing plus the fact that I didn't even I had to

I had to read to get some of the words because rap it's very quick and sometimes you don't get every word so I when I read the lyrics

just to get everything. I have some political and personal questions, but I do have a question about music. When rap first started in, like, 1979, when Rappers of the Light came out, whatever, 78, whatever that was, 79, the timing of rap was very precise, like the way you would play

a percussion instrument you know hip hop the hippie to the hippie the hip hip hop and now thank you very much and now

there's a there's a playing with the rhythm of rap where that is really sophisticated and it took me a while

to get used to it it's ahead of the beat now a lot it's a what? me a while to get used to it. It's ahead of the beat now a lot. It's a what? Like a lot of the trap... Oh, it's ahead of the beat? It's ahead of the beat. Like in the past five years, that's the new trend. Like that's considered in the pocket is like a little bit in front.

It's ahead of the beat, and it almost sounds free to the beat sometimes. But I... Almost like the people doing it are so deep that no matter how it comes out their internal their internal clock is still perfect which is very very complex in a way and then it's interesting that the listeners get it right i I will say the big adjustment for me was before 2014, what was considered in-the-pocket rapping to me growing up with Kanye and then early Kendrick Lamar, early Drake, Jay-Z.

Jay-Z is pretty behind the beat. He's like a lot of great jazz musicians. You play a pretty behind the beat. He's like a lot of great jazz musicians, you play a little behind the beat. Sonny Rollins or Freddie Hubbard. But it's consistent with itself, but it's laid back, and that's in the pocket. And that's usually how I felt rap should be. But the past five years or so,

with a lot of the trap rappers, a lot of the mumble rappers, being ahead of the beat is the new in the pocket. And at first for a long time, it just felt really rushed and wrong to me. But there's a way of doing it that it makes sense to my ear now. And that's not really what I'm doing. I'm not quite doing that in this video, but that's been a huge trend. Yeah, I don't know if you trend. Yeah, it's so... I don't know if you guys pick up on it.

You lost me. Whenever we get too music nerdy, I kind of... Anyway, it's just... It's not just like... It used to be you could imagine a rap as a percussion solo, like a drum beat almost.

And now there's a freeness to it, which like I said, it took me a while to get used to it, and now I really like it, and also I admire it because I don't think I could do that. Maybe if you grew up and you could do it. Do they ever just pull the track back and backwards or forwards in Pro Tools to get the same effect?

You know, I don't know. I try to record it with as little latency as possible so it's natural. They will do that with guitar solos. I've been there with a guitar player who said just pull it back a percentage of a second. Right.

And it does change the feel. Right. Anyway, so that's the musical thing. Now, the political thing is that what was interesting to me about this, again, being homeless friend, is that there's way more resentment you had in your gut about everything that went on than I picked up on.

By the way, there's two kind of characters in the rap. There's you being you, and then there's you being the guy berating you. But that's still you. I mean, it's your voice. Yeah, sure, sure. I'm saying that's impressive because it sounded like a different voice to me. Right. Did it not? No, I'm saying that's impressive because it sounded like a different voice to me. Right. Did it not?

No, I know. What do you mean? I mean, it sounded like another character in the rap. There was Coleman as Coleman, and there was Coleman as the guy berating Coleman. Yeah. Well, I think that's the conversation. I'm just saying it sounded like a different, like if you had told me you hired somebody else to be that guy.

Really, it sounded that different to you? I would have said, I wouldn't have questioned it, you know. All right. But I know that you didn't. It definitely is a different, like, register of my voice slightly. But I can't tell because I'm me. I'm not outside myself.

So anyway, so it seems to me, and I didn't realize this, that you're carrying deep resentments for the way you're being depicted and dismissed and all that stuff. Is that... I mean, can we just briefly, just very, very briefly,

go over the fact that Coleman testified before Congress against reparations. Not against reparations. Well, I'll let him say what he... Well, yeah. I guess the full version of my position that Coleman testified before Congress against reparations. Not against reparations. Well, I'll let him say what he... Well, yeah, I guess the full version of my position was that I would be for reparations for someone like my grandfather that grew up in Jim Crow and against it for someone like myself, born in 96,

which would describe, you know, most black people in America today would fall into my category, born long after segregation. look at the world and tell the truth about things and is being called essentially a sellout in some way or a stooge for the Koch brothers getting their money or the other things that he goes through in that litany and the way they try to write him off by sliming him with something other than a sincerity of his thought about things and a brave honesty to not be afraid to say. He also mentioned in the rap, he mentioned Floyd and Tempo, right? So Floyd was the, we all

know who Floyd was, and Tempo was a white guy that died under circumstances not terribly dissimilar to Floyd. So he mentions that. So what about that? So yeah mean the i think you know being called an uncle time being called a coon this this stuff hurts um you know obviously it doesn't hurt enough for me to have actually shut up you know and i do believe ultimately and if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. And, um, you know, I think it would hurt me much more not to speak my mind and to, to actually censor myself and not think for myself and just think what you're supposed to as a sort of correct thinking black person to, uh, that would involve a lot of pain too. So, you know, I do, uh, view speaking out as, um, the, definitely the better of two options. Like ultimately I, I think it's, what's really sad

to me is that those kinds of epithets and those kinds of, you're not invited to the barbecue. You're not a real black person. You are, um, you know, you're know you're you're just uh you know sort of like a white mind in a black body or whatever um i think that kind of stuff really works on a lot of people it really does silence a lot of people because uh it's hurtful and it's effective and it's it's obviously not just a black issue i mean i've and makes you doubt yourself probably yeah yes it makes me doubt yeah definitely i mean there's a certain level of social ostracism that uh it's it's painful to the point where and well i guess you start to feel like what are the odds that all these people telling me i'm wrong are also wrong but then then i look back at the issue from scratch and i'm well what about the people that come up to you,

and I assume they're out there, that say, hey, thank God you're saying what I was thinking because I feel the pressure that you were just talking about, and I don't want to say it. So there's a lot of people doing that. I get those messages all the time from... and, you know, not just from white people. Do you get harassed and or praised in the street?

No. Or just between the street? No. Or just between the sheets. Nice. Wow. No, I mean, after the Congress hearing, I think they were briefly running it on Fox News or one of the other cable networks. And for a day or two, maybe a week, a couple of people recognized me on the street. But since then, I rarely get recognized on the street.

I think partly because the mask, but also even without the mask, it'd be maybe once a month at most. Also, you suffer because there's people like who I regard as somewhat hackish, even though they can be bright. And I could agree with them. Like a Candace Owens, for instance,

who people will lump you in with these people who are they're not intellectual, not in the sense that you are, and she's coming out against vaccines and all kinds of craziness, you know? But that's the small subset of black conservatives,

even though I don't even think conservatives is the right word and it's not a word that you would choose for yourself. And that tarnishes you also to be associated with these people. Fun fact, Candace Owens went to my high school, albeit about a decade

later. She went to high school in Stanford High, where I went to high school. I mean, there's you, there's like, who are the people that think along the same line? You, Glenn Lowry. Glenn Lowry, John McWhorter.

But even McWhorter is a little bit to the left of you on some things, right? Yeah, probably, yeah. Although he seems to be moving to the right. What about comics here at the Comedy Salad? Do you feel that you have common cause with any of the comics that work here, or you haven't really discussed any of them? Seton has said very nice things to me and about me.

We were on Marina's podcast together and we were making a lot of the same points. I'm sure we would disagree on a whole host of stuff, but he seemed very sympathetic to my perspective. Anyway, so let's go go let's go yeah i want to say something um i don't want to say that you guys are missing the forest for the trees here but this video is so incredible and so poignant and like aesthetically so well done not that i would expect anything less, but as somebody who knows you personally,

it really was at once difficult to watch. Like I just wanted to come in and grab you. And Juanita, Noam's wife, said the same thing. We're like, oh my God, it was so hard. I videotaped her watching it for the first time. I sent it to Coleman. And the scene where Coleman gets shot in the head, she can't watch.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's... I don't want to know what my sisters were thinking when they saw that. What about your dad? Or my dad. And the other part is sort of like, you know, recognize you in this, you know, as quote-unquote public intellectual or however, you know, you want to

phrase it. And I was thinking it must be so amazing to be able to like, you know, sort of reconcile all of those feelings into this piece of art. Um, yeah, I think that's so unusual that you have somebody who does both of those things in that way right yeah and i i well i've always been that i know privately i've always been as into music as i am into writing and public intellectual stuff so it's really nice to be able to integrate that into my public image too yeah that's i feel more integrated which is amazing i think it gives you some hopefully it also people people less inclined to jump to a conclusion about you i think hope maybe not you know people are sometimes just unfair but i would like to think oh yeah i think

for sure i mean it's it's kind of like, fuck you. Like, I don't need, you know, all of these, like, opinions. Like, I'm figuring this out myself. Like, I understand that there's, like, another side to this, obviously. Anyway, I just think it's— Well, they'll try to—I feel funny saying this stuff out loud, but they'll try to depict him and other black people who don't have 100% thinking lockstep with the approved opinions of the day as somehow being self-hating or rejecting their people. And sometimes these guys give them a lot of ammunition, like Clarence Thomas has a white wife and it seems to have very, quote unquote, white interests and does seem to have moved on.

Now, that may be superficial. Maybe that's not true, but that's the way it's presented. But to see a guy who's steeped in, you know, really in his culture, loves his culture, obviously loves the art forms of his people. It says something. It's a statement. I can imagine, like, somebody being called a self-hating Jew, but then you see that they're surrounding themselves in Jewish things. And you say, oh, well, maybe, you know, it's not as simple as that.

I don't know. Yeah, no, I think that is, I think that's definitely true. I think people are, this is true for everyone in life, but they're going to judge you in part based on the sort of their perception of what people like you are like. So if I'm up there talking about why I don't support reparations for all black people, they're going to think, well, who do I know that has that kind of position? Well, black conservatives. What do I know about black or black Republicans? Right. What do I know about black Republicans?

You know, the key and the key and peel sketch where they're there. It's like a room of black Republicans and they're like somebody's white wife is here and they got they all like raise their hand. That's the that's the stereotype. And like like all stereotypes, it doesn't come from nowhere. And it also misfires. You're saying that Jews really do have an issue with money? Does he have to spell it out then? But then it also, like every stereotype,

it misfires so often that if you allow yourself to think in terms of it, you're just going to get so much wrong in life. Anyway, so anyway, congratulations on that accomplishment. It's a huge accomplishment. So good. It's just so, so good. All right, let's move on to some of the issues of the day. It's like God came down and gave us a couple of really hot issues that Coleman would be—

Well, he tweeted about both of them. Which ones? Coleman would be like one of the top three people in the country to speak to about. Which one do you want to take first, Dan? I guess just in order of chronological order there, the Supreme Court. You tweeted that Biden had said that he wanted to nominate a black woman and you tweeted that that didn't really bother you. So I think I should have been more careful in what I said. What I think I really meant to say is what bothered me about it was the public announcement of it.

If he had privately done the same thing in his mind or to his people said, we're nominating a black woman to the Supreme Court. I don't think it would have bothered me because I assume the process to select a justice is not meritocratic to begin with. Obviously, it's meritocracy to some extent to get to the point of being considered. But once you've got the pool you're choosing from, I've always assumed they're choosing based on who is friends with who, what friend of the justice knows the president and can ask for a favor, who does Biden owe a favor, what do the optics look like? There are all these kinds of non-meritocratic considerations. I think another question is, what is merit when it comes to the Supreme Court? What is it to be the best person for that particular job? That's a very good question.

Because... And I don't think it's all intelligence. It's like it's not... I think what I would like to see in a Supreme Court justice is a kind of temperament and integrity to have some kind of consistent outlook and not be pressured by the trends of society. So let's just go through a few of the issues on both sides. I think one thing I agree with, I think probably all agree with,

is that it's very healthy for the country to have a Supreme court that looks like America. I mean, the extreme of having like nine white men in a country that is like America is today. Even if those nine white men were demonstrably the nine most qualified people for the Supreme court in the country, that would not be the best Supreme Court for

the United States, right? So we all, and I think that's, so I think we start from- Well, but, yeah, I mean, if you could really demonstrate that they were the best, but as I just said, I'm not sure that there's such a thing as- Right, but I'm saying even if we were to say for the sake of argument, no, actually, you could demonstrate those are the best. Even then, we'd say, no, it's still not right for America to have as diverse as America is in 2022 to have that kind of thing. So I think we, and, and we all,

I believe are sentimentally moved by the breaking of these glass ceilings. I was very, very moved when Obama became president, even though I, I wasn't particularly in agreement with most of what he stood for, you know, as policies he was planning to implement. It was very moving. So we start from that. And the danger is, I think, that you're so moved by the outcome that you're ready to rubber stamp no matter how you get there. No, I think that's right. Yeah. And so, so my first inclination was, no, no, this is, this is,

this is okay. It's certainly a legitimate political concern, the race of the justice and blah, blah, blah. But then I began to really second guess myself because, as I think I wrote to you first of all the lack of finesse in the way he did it it matters like my first instinct was because it's always kind of my knee-jerk thing is like well if it's true then why shouldn't he be able to just say it like if they're really going to be doing that and we know they're going to do it then how could then he should be able to just say that's what i'm But no, that's not really the way the world works.

It's much better to not say that and to do it. There's a vulgarity and a lack of finesse that's damaging. It's damaging to the woman who's appointed. It's kind of like, now this, I don't want to be guilty of what Ilya Shapiro did. So it's an analogy, but for all the reasons, the analogy is off base. Just, I understand it. But like when you, when, when you let your kid win, uh, to help him feel good about himself, you wouldn't tell him I'm letting you win. Right. You wouldn't tell him you would say, you would say you, you won because to

say it out loud and he might even know you let him win. Right. You would say you won because to say it out loud, and he might even know you let him win, right? But you just don't say it out loud. So you just don't say, no, no, we don't want anyone else qualified. It's going to be a female justice. And it seems like this is a problem for Biden in general, because he did the same thing about Ukraine. If he had privately had a policy that if they invade a little bit well we won't do much if they invade a lot if he had privately had that policy yeah i mean that would have been i think of a piece with the kind of policy you'd expect right but to say it out loud he seems to i don't know what he lacks this kind of judgment to know what you should and shouldn't

say but it seems like it's a recurring problem for him. Yeah, absolutely. And there's another thing. So yeah, it's true. First of all, I'm a big believer that the world has moved forward by the top 10th, top 100th percent of people who are good at. Like you could have a room full of people with 145 IQ, but it's the people with 160 IQ that really move the world forward with inventions and insights, whatever it is. So I do think it's really important to have the very, very best Supreme Court justices, the best minds.

And I know you can't be sure you're getting them, but I don't think that's the same thing as saying, well, we can't be sure we're getting them, so what's the point of even trying? I think there's something wrong. For instance, this woman, Judge, I forget her first name. Last name is Jackson. Do you know her? Katonji?

Katonji Jackson. So I spent an evening looking at all the qualifications of various Supreme Court justices. I sent some of them to you. Yeah. And it's like 20 years on this and this many books and wrote the textbook and was influential here and influential there. And kind of there was a consensus that this person is the kind of cut from the cloth that would make a great justice, with notable exceptions like Souter and Bush recommended Harriet Myers, who was a hack.

But these have always been looked down upon. It's not like this was, it's one of those examples where just because you can prove that somebody did it in the past, that's not exactly an argument to do it again, right? So Judge Jackson, in Wikipedia, says, has not yet written a body of appeals court opinions expressing a legal philosophy, having joined the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia only last summer. And it goes on. And I'm like, this is really, this is tough to swallow.

Like, like it's, that's a pretty, and she's the front runner. And that's, that's, that's a lot to, to, that's a big bending of qualifications, I think. And I make one more point, and I'll let you speak for a little time. And I also don't know which way it cuts. So, for instance, take the example of getting rid of the entrance exams for the best high schools,

for the Bronx Science and those high schools in the city. One of the reasons I've been against it, and I think you too, is because, well, if you just let in a whole big number of minorities, you just make the whole problem disappear. Like you can just camouflage the entire horrible problem with education in this city by just bringing in 14 or 30% black kids and say, we got no problem here. So in some sense, if we just fill the Supreme Court and all analogous positions all through the country, like from now on, we're just going to make sure that 14% of everything that's important is black.

It will camouflage the fact that there really is a shortage of people that actually have the qualifications, that there really is a shortage of black women who can go toe to toe with the rest of uh people in the country and that's a national shame and it we can you know it's not the end of the world to say you know what we need to focus on that because why don't we have that? So that's, I don't know. Yeah, so I think one thing I'm thinking about is the pipeline issue, which is how many, in this case, black women are there in the pipeline with the qualifications to have that spot?

And it looks like based on Ketanji Jackson being the front runner, that there must not be that many. And that's surprising to me because, you know, my gut sense is that there would be enough by now, by this moment in history, that you wouldn't have to go, you wouldn't have to lower standards to find one. And my sense of that was just based, I don't know, you know, like my sister's a black woman that went to Yale law

school. She's extremely smart. I, you know, but she's also like 35, right? She's smart enough, probably, I would think to be a Supreme Court justice. But even if she had taken that route, she wouldn't be, she wouldn't be probably wouldn't be qualified for another 30 years just based on it's a, you know, I think there's a time lag between how much racial progress we've made in terms of black people going to college, going to law school, etc. And enough of enough black people having the qualifications to be Supreme Court. So it could look like there's a lot of progress when you look at 35-year-olds, but they still need that 20, 30 years of career to technically have the qualifications. in law school and so forth. I think this, this actually might be a problem that, um, that time will, will solve with, with the pipeline issue. Like if it's 1970, there's just a lot of,

a lot of places where there are not enough educated black people to fill certain spots. Right. And now there's a lot of places where that's no longer, no longer the case because there are enough people in the pipeline for certain things. But this might be kind of the last thing to go. So you're suggesting until we get there, until the date arrives where there's a sufficient number of qualified black women, then we should not hire a black woman. Is that your... So, yeah, I mean, I think that would make... What would make sense is to have some... is to respect the trade-off between

competence and merit and diversity and the pipeline issues, right? It's like, you go too fast, you end up with a lot of unqualified people in positions. Which can end up damaging the cause. Right.

So another thing Wikipedia says, and maybe this is not a fair assessment, it says, as a judge, she is known more for being detailed and thorough, sometimes to a fault, than for her crisp and succinct rulings. That's what they said in the Times, too, yeah. Yeah. So... And the Times said she had one sentence that was like an 80-word run-on sentence or something. They didn't use the word run-on sentence. 84-word sentence.

I guess this was quoted from the Times. I find it very difficult to believe that there are no qualified black women to be Supreme Court. But qualified and the most qualified are two separate questions. Well, I mean, qualified enough. See, that's the thing.

Qualified enough, it's... I find that really, really difficult to wrap my head around. See, if Biden hadn't said what he said, then we wouldn't even have to get into this qualified enough. It would just kind of all disappear. But now he's kind of forcing us to say, okay, well, let's look at this.

And, you know um like i said if you google these various justices and then compare what their qualifications were before they were appointed on the court there is a stark difference okay maybe she's not the one i don't know she's apparently the front runner so maybe she is, but they're probably... What about her in 10 years? Her with 10 years of writing decisions under her belt? So, I mean, she would look much more qualified if they could point to a 10-year history of her writing decisions on a federal court, right?

Yeah. By the way, and another thing that occurred to me is Obama, you know, his last nominee was Merrick Garland, the one who didn't get actually voted on. But do you think that he was reluctant to appoint a black justice because he would look too parochial? Well, he was definitely very sensitive to that kind of stuff. Yeah, to not needlessly, not giving fuel to Fox News, essentially. I don't blame you. Maybe to a fault.

Can I just jump in with this issue of having the court look like America? The question then becomes, well, what does America look like? America also has people from India. America also has Muslims. America also has Asians. So how much do we want to then have one from column A, one from column B? And in a healthy society, in an ideal healthy society, just as... And I think, Coleman, you might have... I think you've written about this very point. We don't ask how many redheads are on the Supreme Court or how many people of Swedish descent are on the Supreme Court, but it doesn't matter. In a healthy society, it shouldn't matter how many

black or white people are on the Supreme Court either, I don't think. Yeah, I mean, in a, in a, well, so I think there are, there are times when authority and legitimacy require some degree of diversity. So like a police force for instance it becomes problematic even if they're great cops it becomes problematic if like every cop in a neighborhood is white policing and they're not getting yeah and it's a shame that it becomes a problem because uh you know people get impugned for racism if they're not racist sometimes um there's like a lack of trust where there could be trust. But there are times when diversity matters more because legitimacy can depend on it. And you could argue the Supreme Court may be one of those cases. I think in general, like the makeup of the

politicians of the country is definitely, you know, if the senate is 100 white that becomes it becomes very difficult to hold legitimacy in a multiracial company yeah i mean every time every time you touch the stand it makes a noise right it's insane to like even consider that it should be like all straight white men no of course not and and also, if the court is going to be dealing with issues that touch uniquely on the black population, then of course you want to have black people... You can't have nine justices rule on affirmative action.

But you want to have someone who gets it from inside the skin perspective. Well, so then you're saying that color is part and parcel of merit, because to have, to be able to appropriately judge a situation, you have to have lived it. And so therefore, color becomes an element of merit. That's not what I said.

No, I'm asking Noam if that's what he said. To be able to appropriately judge it, you have to have lived it? You said you want people that can make appropriate judgments because they can get in the skin. Look, I have all kinds of thoughts about the Arab-Israeli conflict, right? But I speak to like Mustafa, our Palestinian friend who's Arab-Israeli. Obviously, he has an understanding of it on the ground that I'm an idiot

if I don't spend a lot of time listening to that. Maybe it doesn't change my opinion. Maybe it does. But my opinion is shallow without having spoken extensively to somebody who has firsthand experience with it. So if the Supreme Court is deciding issues that directly affect black America, of course there has to be black Americans in that consideration. Now, do they have to be on the court? Could it not just be the lawyers? I don't know.

I mean, you can say, but it, you know, but it looks way better if it's somebody on the court. I think, you know. There should be a trans person on the court. There should be a woman on the court. There should be. Well, what about, but there's, there's only nine people on the damn court. Okay.

So they don't all have to be straight white men who are like 60-plus years old. But you're saying you've got to have one of every single minority? But you see, when she talks this way, this is where I lose confidence. It's like, there has to be a trans woman on the court? There should be a trans person. Why? Why not? No, I'm not against it.

Why not is a totally different question. Why not would be bigotry. Why does there have to be one? It's a totally different question. Why not would be bigotry. Why does there have to be one? It's a totally different question. Because I'm sure that there is somebody who is just as qualified as one of these straight white guys in their fucking 60s that's been

holding this position for a hundred years. So now we get down to what Eugene Volokh wrote about. Do you want to say something? No, I was just saying if we're already struggling somewhat to find a black woman, which is 7% of the population, and maybe that's where you're going.

Yeah. Trans is, numbers I see are usually 1% or less. I don't know. We're struggling. I don't know. Are we struggling or did they just pick somebody

that is perhaps not the most qualified according to what, like, maybe there are a bunch of other women. I would argue that there probably are. This is the thing.

And Coleman probably knows it, you know, way better than I do, the stats. When there have been some cases about affirmative action in law school, I think it was in Michigan or something like that, the stats that came out about the actual scores and the number of people who were horrifying. They're worse at law schools than almost any other part of higher education or grad education.

In terms of not as many black people doing well on these tests and getting into schools. And then the hottest prospects out of law school don't necessarily take jobs in the intellectual fields of law. They go to make high-paying jobs. So to say that there's not brilliant young black female lawyers, or not young, but brilliant female lawyers, is not to say that they don't exist, but they're a hot commodity, and they get a lot of money thrown at them by firms who want their diversity and blah, blah, blah. And they make them offers they can't refuse. So there's a certain number that are left on the bench. And there is a time delay because these are recent.

This happened more recently in history. And usually these people are seasoned. So you could get down to a small number. And they're 7% of the population, but they may not be 7% of the pool. And to look at it, so somebody wrote an article about the 7%, Eugene Volokh,

you can look it up. But even he shied away from it. So if you look at it in the opposite direction, let's say you're talking about the NBA, and I said, we're going to choose this team from 93% of the population. You say, well, from 93% of the population.

You say, well, from 93% of the population, there's no goddamn way you're not going to be able to field a world-class champion team. If you have 90, you can pick anybody you want from 93% of the population. Oh, I didn't tell you, the 7% we're not going to choose from are black Americans. Black men.

Holy shit. Even with 93%, you're never going to win. So the pool does matter. And this is reverse. We're going to choose somebody from the 7%, right? So when you start thinking about it that way, yeah, it can be. It can be that it's hard to find the very, very best when a limited pool. Yeah, I think there are so many ways in which the pipeline issue becomes worse here because like i i have and this is why

my gut assumption is was the same as yours perry which is like there must be so many i mean like there must be many black women to choose from that are smart enough to do this qualified enough to do this right went to ivy league law schools enough to do this um but when you when you winnow it down by all these criteria like they had to have foregone the five hundred thousand dollar jobs and uh chosen basically this public service profession which already like right there that's a lot of people out um and not only and this is why I asked about Katonji Jackson. It's like, she might be the perfect candidate or a totally qualified candidate in 10 years.

So it's like, do have all the qualifications, but you also need to have 10 or 15 years of writing decisions in a federal court under your belt in order to look as qualified as the other justices on the court. It's like, maybe there are a lot of black women that are 15 years away from looking like the same level of qualified as the average justice. That seems a very plausible situation to me. And then the final issue, and then we'll move on to Whoopi, that I think about is the kind of the

Lucy and Charlie Brown trying to – do you know Charlie Brown tries to kick the football and Lucy lifts it? Do you know this? Well, do you know this, Perry? I don't know. I don't know what you're going to say. You don't know Charlie Brown and Lucy? Yeah, yeah, I know.

And she always lifts it up and he always falls flat on it and she always promises him. I mean, I don't know if the physics supports that, but that was the cartoon. We always think that, well, if we do this and we do the right thing and we show that America is not the racist cesspool that we say it is, and we elevate it, that we'll get some credit for it amongst ourselves. And what I've found already, we've all found, is that it doesn't matter. They will put a black woman on the Supreme Court

and it will be like it never happened. They will call America 100% as racist as it was the day before. The next day will be, can you believe there's only one black woman

on the Supreme Court? Well, I know you said there's only nine. That bothers me. But maybe there's, maybe if you put a black trans person in the position. But don't get me wrong.

I mean, I'm putting them all out there. I'll be very happy if there's a black woman on the Supreme Court. Does that make it the right thing to do? Can I totally justify it with logic? It's an end justifies the means thing, I guess. But I hope the ends is actually significant because if the ends don't actually prove to be significant and we just end up, um, uh, uh, instilling this kind of routine racial quota system for everything that we do, it will be counterproductive. I mean, we have a black woman on Supreme court. What happens when she retires? Does it have to be

replaced by another black woman on Supreme court? The logic would dictate yes. Right? I mean, as we've seen many times in history, it seems okay at the time, but then it accretes and it expands. And 50 years later, you say, oh, you know what? The naysayers were right. Look at the situation we're in now. Everything is by race. Everything is a quota. I mean, we could become like Singapore, which I don't know that much about it, but off a couple articles, they have almost every block in the city has a quota of Singaporeans of Indian descent, Singaporeans of Chinese descent, Singaporeans of Malay descent, and it's a kind of forced integration to prevent any clustering of ethnicities and segregation, basically. And I think because it's so different culturally,

there's no sense of individual freedom as much over there. People are okay with it. Yeah, Regu, you know Regu? Yeah, yeah. He says it works. Yeah. He's a fan of it. People don'tu. You know Regu? Yeah, yeah. He says it works. Yeah. He's a fan of it. People don't really complain, but they're not Americans.

I think they also cane you for chewing gum on the street there. So maybe not also the best example of... Also, I don't know if they have a history of subjugation, if they have big disparities in the qualifications of people, the scores. I don't know what they're... We don't know anything about Singapore. Right. Yeah, I don't. I don't. what they're... We know anything about Singapore. Yeah, I don't. So Whoopi...

Whoopi. Okay, let Coleman go first. Whoopi, just very, very briefly. Whoopi had said that the Holocaust was not about race. And she has been... It's about man's inhumanity to man. She has been suspended for two weeks from The View. That's pretty much the whole story.

Coleman, he also tweeted about that. Okay, so I saw her comments on Colbert, and she said, I'm paraphrasing, well, I don't think it was about race. I think it was about ethnicity. It was white people being cruel and genocidal towards a different group of white people. And so that's essentially what I meant.

And Colbert said, well, you understand, they thought of it as race. The Nazis certainly viewed it as a race problem. And it seemed to me to be maybe just as simple as a semantic issue with Whoopi using the sort of modern American notion of race versus ethnicity, wherein Jews would be considered an ethnicity of white people. Um, and she doesn't understand that actually race was used that way for, for a very long time, Jewish race, German race, English race, French race. Um, do you think it was deeper than that? I'm not sure it was deeper than that. I'm willing to extend the principle of charity to it.

And I think maybe people are too quick to condemn. I mean, even if she was wrong about that. So she was wrong. I mean, even if, you know, is there any interpretation of what you said? Can you possibly deduce an anti-Semitic sentiment? No. I think it's preposterous. And by all accounts is a good person.

No, I think what you can deduce from it is similar to what you can deduce from Chappelle's supposedly anti-trans thing. It's not about him being anti-trans. It's not about Whoopi being anti-Jewish. It's about both of them being jealous of their, in my opinion, their cause, the black cause. Right. And kind of wanting to set that off from, I think Chappelle was bothered by the fact that these other causes are zooming, in his opinion, zooming past the black cause in acceptance. And I think somehow

Whoopi is... It bothers her to identify the mother of all racial crimes as not being against the black people, as kind of against the Jews. Now, that is not anti-Semitic

at all. It's immature. It's immature, I think. kind of against the Jews. Now, that is not anti-Semitic at all. But, you know, if she said... It's immature. It's immature, I think. Yeah, I mean... If she said it's not about race, because race isn't an exact term, and as a matter of fact, it's an unprovable term, right? It's not like an X or Y chromosome.

Race is, you know, it is kind of a social construct. And if she said it's not about race because they were all white, but it was about bigotry and ethnicity, then I think the race, the semantics wouldn't matter. But she didn't say it's not about race. It's about man's inhumanity to man without, those aren't opposite sides of a coin. So could the race thing be about man's inhumanity to man?

So, and I made this point too, even if it's not racial, because for instance, today we use racism to describe a lot of things which might not actually be racism. Like if you're prejudiced against Spanish people, they'll say that's racist. And I might say, well, actually she's Colombian, she's white, but we'll still basically say that's racist. So since when did people get so exact with the term racism? But having said that, if your goal is to purify your own race, even if your victims are other white people, how could that not be racist? And nobody can doubt that Hitler's goal was to purify the race.

There's no other way to describe that. So I think they went kind of a little bit down the wrong path by saying, well, she doesn't understand that in Hitler's day, they thought races differently. You don't really need to go there. Clearly, his goal was to purify the race. Any talk about purifying the white race, even from other white people, who would not describe that as racism?

So what then is the appropriate response vis-a-vis Whoopi? I think it was the best. First of all, she did a great service to the Jews. More people are learning about the Holocaust this week. No, really. This is why people like Coleman and me believe so much in free speech because actually,

even I've had to clarify my views about it, think about it, do some reading about it. All of this wouldn't happen if somebody could have just censored her from saying it to begin with. There's nothing bad that came out of Whoopi saying this. It's The View.

It's all good. Suspending her is crazy because people will be totally afraid to say things that are wrong in the future. Why are they suspending her? The other thing is, like, on a show like The View, it's so fast-paced that, you know, I worry about reading too much into her soundbite because she said, right. What did she say exactly? The Holocaust is not about race.

But then she doubled down on it. She dug in. And here's the thing. Here's the thing. I like Whoopi a lot. I don't think that she's anti-Semitic. I do think that somebody in her position, it's not like Chappelle. This is not like a crafted thing. Like, I feel like she has had

ample opportunity in her life to learn about the Holocaust. And she is in the exact position where she should know better than to say something like that. That having been said, I don't think she should have been suspended. I think that I completely agree with you. She, um, I would have preferred to just see her have this conversation on the view for the next two weeks to have like other intellectuals or historians or people

who are, I don't think you need two weeks. I think you need two sentences. Well, I don't agree. They thought Jews were a different race, and they tried to kill them. No, I— What's up next? Kim Kardashian. No, I don't think so.

I actually think that with the amount of anti-Semitism— You're not going to cure it by talking about the Holocaust. If anything, you encourage these people. Yeah, you're not going to cure the anti-Semites by showing them how strong the Jews can control Hollywood. That's the other thing. I feel that this is really you know, suspending her is just a gift to the people that

admittedly are unpersuadable and think that the Jews control the world. But, you know, optically I don't think that's a very good thing to do. So why do you think they did it? It wasn't because the right was calling for it. Well, I think they thought they good thing to do. So why do you think they did it? It wasn't because the right was calling for it. Well, I think they thought they had to. I mean, why do they always do this shit with cancel culture?

You know? Well, they usually cancel in the other direction. I mean, is it because— Was it a Jew? I think it was a non-Jewish executive that canceled. I think a Jewish executive would have been like, let's pretend we don't control everything. But I think it was like, I don't know who made that decision,

but it was probably somebody that wasn't Jewish. And I will say this, people on the right are comparing it to Roseanne Barr's comment. Well, if Roseanne Barr was fired, but that's not a fair argument. Roseanne Barr, the one about Valerie Jarrett? Yeah, she compared Valerie Jarrett to a character from Planet of the Apes.

Yeah. That was mocking a woman for, well, I mean, Roseanne denies it, but at least it appeared to be mocking a woman for her skin color. That is not what Whoopi was doing. So the thing about the Roseanne bar, when I looked up Valerie Jarrett at the time, I didn't think she was black when I saw a picture of her. That's what Roseanne Barr, when I looked up Valerie Jarrett at the time,

I didn't think she was black when I saw a picture of her. That's what Roseanne said. And that's what Roseanne says. And genuinely independent of that, I had not thought she was black when I had first seen a picture of her. So either that's just a really good lie

or I can extend the principle of charity and say she didn't know that this woman identified as black. It could be true that she was treated that she actually didn't know but the decision was based on the assumption she's bullshitting she had to know and you can't do that. That's like a third rail.

You just cannot go on TV and say such things about a black woman. But Whoopi was not making fun of the Holocaust. She had her own like I think she thought she was making a profound point yeah and she was confused so you know you you coleman said he thinks it was born of it was born of ignorance of history and you think it was born of of a sort of a jealousy of victimhood. I don't know if I'd put it that way,

but I've heard on discussions in the last 24 hours that apparently what she was repeating was something which has been bubbling up in the intersectional community, this kind of way of describing the Holocaust. So she probably read it somewhere. Like, it's not that big a deal. I wouldn't have been angry

that she said that. I wasn't angry when I heard it. No, I don't think it's okay to say that. I mean, so there's this big... The thing is, it is okay to be colossally dumb and wrong about something. It's okay. It's not like you have to be colossally dumb and wrong about something.

It's okay. It's not like you have to be angry at her for being totally wrong. I'm not angry at her. I just think it was really irresponsible. So you feel that the proper punishment or not would be to have done what, Perriello? I think that the proper response is to have this conversation. But not to suspend one. No, I don't.

I mean, I don't think that that's ever the thing to do. I mean, I don't believe in cancel culture in that way. I don't think. Well, it might be the thing to do if she was legitimately and viciously anti-Semitic. Sure, sure. Yes. So I checked out what Ben Shapiro had to say about it because I figured he'd be a good thing.

So he had a great headline. His headline was, Whoopi Goldberg thinks everyone is racist except for Hitler. He couldn't have written that himself because he has no sense of humor. Whoopi Goldberg thinks everyone is racist except for Hitler. But he said he thinks that she should be suspended. And his reasoning is, and there's a logic to his reasoning.

I don't agree with him in the end. He said, listen, this is mutual assured destruction. The only way to get them to stop this is to have it happen to their own. And he said, if we just let this go, it won't come to a own. And he said, if we just let this go, it won't come to a stop. But if people, if we demand that their side get fired also, then all of a sudden

they'll start, they'll just, everybody will just kind of stand down. I don't like that. Well, there is logic to this. There is a logic to this. I don't like this.

It's the logic of war. It's the logic of actual war. I don't like that. I don't like this, like, their side, our It's the logic of actual war. I don't like that. I don't like this, like, their side, our side, tit for tat. Like, I don't think that it's about that. Like, it's not like it's okay for this, but it's not okay for that. I mean, I just find that, like, very anti-intellectual. Well, and listen, and we should have also mentioned this.

I don't know 100% that this is true, but I think it's to use McWhorter's term, but where somebody asked him the question using the word in European. Whoopi was not out there saying, no, no, we shouldn't fire people for things like this, even if they didn't mean it. We need to go by intentions and blah, blah, blah.

She seems to have been pretty comfortable with people getting, having their lives, having their careers ended for slips of the tongue, for statements that they made which were insensitive and hurtful, but actually were not the way they really felt. She's not out there defending Ilya Shapiro

because he said lesser black woman when everybody knows he meant lesser qualified black women. So it's a little chutzpah to use a Jewish term. Well, so there's this this which is on this big Instagram but the reason I think that Ben Shapiro is wrong or at least the reason he doesn't sit right with me is because two wrongs don't make a right

it's just that if it's wrong to fire people for this stuff then I think that's the position we have to have and hopefully the fact that we say we don't want her fired will make them hold their fire the next time, hopefully.

Yeah, and I like that there's this outrage that she said that. I think that's the part that's actually important, right? That, I mean, it is an outrageous thing to say. So there's this big Instagram account

called JewBelong.com. J-E-W? Yeah, J-E-W. And they put, you can't always see race. Just ask the six million Jewish ghosts. Anything? I like that. I have nothing to add.

You guys don't get it? Yeah, we get it. I don't get it. You believe in ghosts? nothing to add you guys don't get it no yeah we get it you can you i don't get it you're saying you believe in ghosts she's saying that six million jews died that that they had they that they looked apparently just like your average german which they did not by and large well first of all they don't they don't they don't look like their average germans right uh they're probably identifiable but also i, I mean, racism, like,

the one-drop rule, right? You're going to tell me Jeff Goldblum looks like Rutger Hauer? No, but I mean, a lot of racism has been about finding out that you were mixed in some way, even though we couldn't tell by looking at you. Nobody ever said that wasn't racism.

It's your essence. You have some black blood in you. You have some Jewish blood in you. It's not just that you're identifiable. I mean, the KKK and all the white supremacists certainly consider Jews another race. I meant to look up actually what a race is. Is there a scientific definition of race?

No, I think it's in large part a social construct. But Jews are considered and always have been considered at the top of the list of people to cleanse out of. Why are we so preoccupied about what word we use? Yeah. I mean, whether there's such a thing as race or not, there is such a thing as Jews, there is such a thing as black people, there is such a thing as Asians. Whatever word we want to use to make those

distinctions doesn't seem to be highly important. But that's what I sense, and I could be wrong, I sense that she was, almost she was purposely not willing to even admit this was bigotry, that it was, you know, like she's like, it was man's inhumanity to man, which is such a nebulous explanation.

Like, yeah, the more you talk about, I mean, so this thing of intersectionality, not wanting to recognize the historical oppression of Jews is an extremely real thing because, um, it's just, I think it's, it's really upsetting and an embarrassment to the intersectional worldview that Hitler tried to exterminate the Jews, that there's no worse crime than genocide. It's hard to imagine how the Jews could have been more discriminated against than they were not just in the 20th century but before. They have all of the historical oppression you could possibly not wish upon a group and yet are extremely successful by all the typical metrics of success.

And that's an embarrassment to the the simple formula that historical oppression necessarily means that's the only reason why a group such as black people are below various metrics of success it's it's a it's a huge threat not touching that with a 10-foot pole it's a it's a it's a threat and i think that's the way they resolve that is by trying to subtly minimize the reality of Jewish oppression. I mean, go on to any campus in any of these anti-racism classes at like an elite campus. And as a Jewish person, try to sort of like make common cause with black racism. And a lot of the professors are going to kind of artfully tell you why it's not quite the same, why, you know,

there's sort of coded ways of doing it, but it amounts to a very kind of polite denial that you count as a historically oppressed group for the purposes of the intersectional philosophy. Yeah. I think that's kind of what's behind that. And I didn't realize, I wasn't thinking of that when I listened to her comments,

that she might be influenced by intersectionality. But now you think it's true. Yeah, I didn't think that. It's very plausible. I didn't think that either. I just thought she was just ignorant of the history, but you may be onto something. It was just weird the way she says man's inhumanity to man.

It's like... You know what I was thinking of? What I was thinking of is there is... This is my wife calling. Does she know... Do you understand I'm doing a radio show right now? Hello? I'm on the radio.

You're on the air. We have Juanita from Westchester with us Benny I gotta call you back later okay bye sweet boy sweet boy there's this contingent in the black community of Louis Farrakhan

anti-semitism right Nick Cannon a lot of people and so I was wondering is what Whoopi's saying coming from that kind of a point of people. And so I was wondering, is what Whoopi's saying coming from that kind of a point of view? And it didn't seem to me to be coming from that point of view. No, I don't think so. I gave her, and I figured maybe people are stereotyping her as like,

okay, this is another Farrakhan type anti-Semite. I mean, her last name is Goldberg. Right. type anti-semite i mean her last name is goldberg right but that's like why i figured if it's not that then i'm just gonna interpret it charitably as a semantic confusion over race and ethnicity but but it would make more sense that it comes i'm happy to be charitable i really am, but I still think that the intention, consider the intention, but it's still a really like dangerous thing to put out in front of like, I don't know how many tens of millions of people watch The View. I'm happy. I'm not happy for something bad to happen to Whoopi Goldberg. I'm really not. So let me ask you a question. From the Jewish point of view, what's best for the Jews?

Do you think it's better that this happened or worse? I think it's better. Yeah, I agree. I think it's better that it happened, especially because Whoopi genuinely seems to be like, shit, like I kind of fucked up and like I'm willing to sort of understand. Oh really?

That's what she seemed like? It seemed to be like she had a gun to her head. She didn't even seem like she was resenting having to give that apology. I agree, I don't know. She rushed through it. I mean, listen, you know, if I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, if we're going to give her the benefit of the doubt, then let's give her the benefit.

Hopefully not. She was under a lot of stress. Yeah, it sucks. I mean, like I said in the beginning, I don't think Whoopi Goldberg is an anti-Semite by like any stretch of the imagination. That having been said, I don't think you can go on national television and say shit like that. I think one of the things that Coleman and I have in common is that I actually like people who say these, you know, what you would call horrible things. I actually want to talk to them. I have no, like, animosity toward them. I wish I could talk to them more.

I wish I could have them on the show. I'm not angry at Whoopi at all. She's misguided, and that's interesting to me. Like, it's 10 times more interesting, 1,000 times more interesting than having somebody yap on about stuff we all, yeah, yeah, I agree, I agree, I agree. The Holocaust

was terrible. I get that, but I think that there's something that happens in the real world with anti-Semitism that's really frightening. What is the potential danger of Whoopi's point of view being accepted?

That it wasn't about race? How is that dangerous? Is it dangerous? Yeah, how would that be dangerous? It's wrong. It's historically absolutely ridiculous. No, it's not dangerous on its face, right? As long as, I mean, she could have just said,

it's not racism, it's anti-Semitism. I don't think they're the same thing. They're usually not exactly the same thing. The words get used sometimes interchangeably, but it's not. I think the problem. We have a word for it, it's anti-Semitism. Yeah, but I think the problem is, is that there are like real life synagogues being burned down. But how does this, how does this, how does the Holocaust not being about race going to aggravate that problem? Well, because it is about race. Yeah, but how does that exactly

what Hitler said? But I don't understand how that misconception would make it worse. You know what I'm saying? I mean, the misconception that would make it worse is if she's trying to, and it seemed like she was trying to deny that there's anything singular about the Holocaust. It's not about racism. That's fine. But it is about something very distinct with thousands of years of history, which is hatred of Jews. Specifically. Whatever word you want to call that, nobody describes it as, no, that's just man's inhumanity to man.

Right. Man's inhumanity to man would be like World War I. Homelessness. Shootings in this city. That's man's inhumanity to man. That's too generic a problem to describe. To answer your question, I'm not sure what the imminent danger is. But it's just one species of wrongness. that's enough for it to matter, I think.

Oh, so before we go, even though this podcast is way long, we can cut it down for the radio. I do have to do a spot. What time? 8.35. Okay, what about Rogan? Any comments on the Neil Young, Joe Rogan thing? And how come you haven't been on Rogan yet?

I would love to go on. I'm sure he'd love to have you on. I can't imagine he would say no. He follows me on Twitter. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm really proud of Spotify. I'm happy that Spotify

held the line and did not negotiate with terrorists, basically. Because if you buckle for neil young not liking a joe rogan episode and joni mitchell and you know respect unto their names as musicians for sure but you're just opening the door to saying you know anything some artist doesn't like we can you know they're standing up for free speech on their own platform which i think is a really good thing i think jo Joe Rogan doesn't always get everything right, but he has a uniquely good attitude towards error correcting. He'll be on his show and he'll be like, I think this.

And then Josh Epps will be like, no, dude, you're wrong about that. Myocarditis, let me show you the study. And he'll sometimes change his opinion in real time. Yeah, I agree. Have you ever seen cable news people do that? I totally agree with you, Coleman. A hundred percent. So, you know, I agree with you.

And by the way, for the record, Coleman is a total vaccine lover. He's not one of these vaccine skeptics and he's not one of these anti-maskers or anything like that. People might think that, well, if he's defending Rogan, he must agree with these things.

No, not at all. But I do have to say, and I don't know what the solution would be, I do think between the stuff that Joe Rogan has been putting out there and the stuff that Tucker Carlson has been putting out there, it has added to the death toll. Yeah, I think that too. Well, the solution to that is just to get rid of Tucker Carlson.

No. And to the extent that this pressures Joe Rogan, as he said it would, to have on some top-notch doctors who will take on, like there's been a few YouTube debunkings of Rogan's guests. Yeah, really good ones from doctors that aren't boring, that are really willing to engage with it, and aren't just like mainstream everything the CDC says is right because the CDC said it.

These are real independent thinkers that are like, nope, Robert Malone, you're wrong, here's why. He needs to have some of these guys on. And the fact that he can't possibly be unaware of these things, and the fact that he never did reach out to have any of these people on his show, I think you can draw some conclusion from that. However, if he will in the future do that,

then that's great. But I don't want to give him a total free pass. His manner is very winning, and it's tough to see him in a cynical light, as opposed to Tucker Carlson, who's easy to see as a villain. But there is something about the drum beating on that show

of things which really don't hold up that disturbs me. And if Neil Young ended up influencing the show to get better in that way, I think it's a pretty good outcome without Spotify buckling. I'll never get on Rogan now. I think it's a pretty good outcome without Spotify buckling, you know? Right. So.

Anyway. I'll never get on Rogan now. I think Rogan would do well to have you on, but he certainly is going to, I would certainly have on Coleman, you know. In any case, should we wrap it up? Because I do have a spot or you guys can certainly continue. Yeah, we should wrap it up. I thought that was a really, really good discussion. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a better discussion

about the particular issues that we discussed. Thank you, Coleman News. Thanks for having me. A blast for me on YouTube. I don't know. It's up to quite a few views by now. How many? I think like 120,000.

Amazing. Something like that. And also, Coleman's podcast, Conversation with Coleman. Conversation with Coleman. Oh, we should have started. Did you start that at the beginning? Yeah, I mentioned it at the beginning. And every Monday Coleman's podcast, Conversation with Coleman. Conversation with Coleman. Oh, we should have started. Did you start that at the beginning? Yeah, I mentioned it at the beginning. And every Monday night, you can see him here.

Well, not every Monday night, but on many Monday nights, you can see him playing trombone here at the Olive Tree Cafe. So, I don't know if it's because I don't subscribe. I think I do subscribe, but I usually listen to podcasts on Spotify in my car. And as a subscriber, you can't get the episodes in real time, even if you subscribe. That's a terrible, that can't get the episodes in real time even if you subscribe. That's a terrible, that's a flaw in Spotify.

You subscribe on Spotify. I subscribe to Spotify, but I get your episodes like two weeks later, whatever it is, because I'm not a member of Conversations with Coleman. Through my website.

Yeah, but my car doesn't allow me to listen to your website. Okay, go, Dan. Anyway, so right now. I see, I see. That was riveting for the show. No, no. It was a setup. Right now, there's an episode, which is kind of old,

where Coleman gives his year-end rundown and what he got right and what he got wrong. It's a really, really good episode. I would love to do that with you. Coleman and I disagreed, and Coleman turned out to be right.

Coleman endorsed Biden strongly. He did an episode endorsing Biden strongly, and I definitely didn't endorse Trump, but I was very ambivalent about the horrible choice, because it was so important for me to see an end to

this wokeness and political correctness and cancel culture and all that. I thought that Trump was going to concede when he lost. Yes. Which, by the way, if he had conceded like a gentleman, he'd be a shoo-in now for the Republican nomination and for 2024. But he didn't. And it's pretty much disqualifying, I think, for Trump. Do you remember that I called that?

Yeah, everybody called it on me. I just thought he'll hem and haw for a week or two and then he'll concede because what could he possibly gain by not conceding? I was totally wrong. Totally wrong. I love it when you say that. There was another aspect or argument that I think I was right about, which is that this cancel woke culture is not going to go away under Biden. It needs a total repudiation at the ballot box. You remember me saying that? And I think that is. I mean, I think we're seeing it now. I think that is hopefully where we're heading. And I think that we'll really see the ice begin to melt after they have kind of like what the labor party went through in England. Yeah. They just need to get, I think Americans have had it up to here with this stuff. You have

people who are totally sympathetic with trans movement, like me, like totally sympathetic. We're sympathetic to this 20 years ago, but are afraid to say, but I kind of think this woman setting all the records in the Penn swim team is, you know, I don't quite think that's fair. You're a bigot. You're a racist. And, you know, you can think of 10 other examples where people are totally down for the cause, but they have to push it one step beyond. You're like, I'm not really, I can't go with you there. And then you're just attacked as a racist or a bigot or whatever. I think Americans have had it up to here with that. They've had it up to here with being afraid to say anything on the job and all this stuff.

They had it up to here with Biden being elected as a moderate and just being totally beholden to the left, they had it up to here with vaccines being racialized, with antiviral medicines being prioritized by race, COVID relief to businesses being prioritized by race. I think you're going to—what do you think about all that? I mean, it's looking like Republicans are going to do very well later this year. year and there's a huge debate among democratic strategists about whether their strategy is to mobilize their base and fuck fuck the swing voters or let's try to win over some swing voters and i really you know i've been paying attention to this and i i really think the right strategy is to try to win win over swing voters and i think they won't i think a lot of them won't do it because it's just it's a really unsexy position in the Democratic elite to espouse that, to say, no, actually, sorry, like that. That white guy in Wisconsin who you maybe like don't like that much. You have to win him over. He's winnable. And there's no path to victory.

It's a huge mistake. That leaves him out. I totally agree with you. And it's such a no-brainer. First of all, we have, you're a little too young, we have recent history with Dick Morris advising Bill Clinton to move to the center, and then Clinton leaving office as the most popular president, probably still in modern times, simply by moving to the center after he was accused of being too far left.

But, you know, you just imagine a conversation in the Oval Office. OK, President Biden, how did you win the nomination and win the election? Well, I won the nomination because all the moderates voted for me. Kamala Harris, Kamala, you didn't get any votes, Kamala. And, you know, and when everybody raised their hand about decriminalizing illegal immigration, I was the only one who didn't raise my hand. And it's pretty clear how- And all the black people got me elected.

And all the- Pretty much. The ones that are supposed to be the reason why you can ignore the white guy in Wisconsin. And they're voting for Joe Biden, Eric Adams. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And how did Eric-

So who do you think you should be worried about? Oh, no, no. I'm not going to try to win the center over. But it makes no sense whatsoever. Well, they've been a mess forever. It's why, I mean, it's how Trump got elected, right? Yes, it is. It's like, what the fuck are you,

what is the Democratic Party doing? Like, how come they can't put together an amazing candidate who can actually win? Like, how is that so difficult? Barry Weiss, I think, hit it on the head in a different context. She said that Twitter had become

the editor-in-chief of the New York Times. I think that's what, or editor. Twitter has become the head of the Democratic Party. They can't see past it. It is an illusion. It is powerful. If you spend an hour on Twitter, you get a totally distorted view of what's going on.

It's what I went through. Democratic operatives and strategists are really living in that Twitter world to a larger extent than they should be. Who's the guy who we had on the show who's making a documentary and was saying that like twitter is so distorted because they take like it's like three percent or something i don't remember it was i mean i remember seeing some statistic it's probably not exact but something like 20 of america's on twitter and like% of tweets are tweeted by like 10% of the people on Twitter, which would make it 2% of America responsible for like 90% of the tweets. And it's a totally skewed, it's not a random sample.

That's right. So, and this will be the last thing. So the, like the classic example to prove that this is a hundred percent true beyond any doubt is the Latinx thing. So you know this, he knows for sure. They polled Latinos and asked them how many of them like the term Latinx. And it's like- 4%.

Less, I think, 3%. A minuscule number. And yet you will not find a single Democrat who will not use the term Latinx. Every Democratic paper, it's 100% Latinx. How can you explain that in any other way other than the illusion of a small, tiny group of people overpowering everything? What other example can you imagine where a people,

97% of a people say, we don't like that term. We don't like that term. We don't identify like that. We don't like that term. We want to be called this. And in the name of social justice, the white people say, no, no, no. We hear you, but no, we're not going to call you that term. We hate Jew-X. Don't call us Jew-X. No, no, I'm sorry. We're going to call you Jew-X. It's, it's, like, could you even believe that could be true? Anyway, it's crazy.

Anyway, you're part Latinx. Yeah, I'm Afro-Latinx. Okay, Nicole, what do you think? Are you sleeping? Wake up, Nicole. Hello, what's up? How was the show? Good? It was great, yeah. I think we should run this in two parts. I think it, what's up? How was the show? Good? It was great, yeah. She always says that. I think we should run this in two parts. I think it should be-

The funny part and the serious part? No, seriously, but it's an hour and 40 minutes. No, that's fine for a podcast. Lou will cut it for the show. We'll do it for a podcast. Yeah, and we have to take out where he says where he's going and with who and for how long. Like, what is wrong with you? I said that? Yeah. What are wrong with you? I said that?

Yeah. He said he's going on vacation with his family. He said where he's going, the hotel he's staying at. Before you came, I said I'm going to the Bahamas. She's like, how can you tell people where you're going? And the hotel and the dates. And the room number. Perrielle, can I just tell you that if somebody wants to murder me,

they know I'm here every night give me a ticket to the Bahamas Mohammed get me a ticket to the Bahamas right away I know where he's gonna be I got a lead on Foreman

Nicole can you also edit out the part where he says Mohammed that's a David Tell joke that's why I said it. What's the matter with you? I think that part of my job is to make sure that you don't get killed in like God knows where because you're just sitting here giving out like personal information. Well, that's easy for you to say from your house on f***ing road in f***ing hell.

Nicole, can you edit that? All right, on that note, good night, everybody.