The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Fredrik DeBoer

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Fredrik DeBoer, a writer and academic. He is the author of The Cult of Smart and How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement.

This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous comedy cellar, coming at you on SiriusXM 99, Raw Dog, and wherever podcasts are available. I'm Dan Natterman, the co-host of the show, along with Noam Dorman, the co-host, I guess the main host, really. I mean, certainly he does most of the talking. Noam Dorman, owner of the comedy cellar. We also have Perrie L Ashton Brand here. She is the show's producer.

Loosely defined. Anyway, we were discussing last week, you know the word Asian, like Asian American? There was another word that began with O. Are you crazy? Be careful what you're saying. It began with an O and it's used to describe... Careful what you're saying. It began with an O, and it's used to describe rugs. Now, we used that word on the last show. I don't think it's a problem,

but Periel says we should believe it. We didn't use it. We didn't wield it. Yes, we used it. We were talking about how the word... The O word. How the O word lost... Became a word of disfavor.

And in that conversation of the word, we used the word. Yes. And I felt that there's nothing wrong with it. I feel there's nothing wrong with it in order to have a discussion. But Perry Elf feels that we shouldn't say the word because maybe somebody would take a clip of us saying the word out of context. I just think that if there are words that are considered offensive, there's nothing to be gained. There's something to be gained when we're having a discussion of how that word morphed into saying Asian.

Almost, it wasn't really overnight. It took a long time, but. It wasn't overnight. It was very, very fast. But I think it was pretty quickly, and Noam objected on some level to... He felt that this word sprung from basically academic white people. And I don't know if that's true.

I've done a little research. It's really hard to ascertain, but I think it came from the Asian community itself. We might ask our guests later. So it's just part of a... We're becoming... This problem is so deep actually that I almost

weekly, bi-weekly just want to quit the podcast because you just can't talk about anything. You can talk about whatever you want. The only point I was making is that if you're using a word over and over and over again, you're making work for... I was just being mindful of our engineers.

We were having a discussion and we weren't using the word to disparage or in a pejorative sense. I found nothing wrong with it. Noam found nothing wrong with it. Periel is saying that we shouldn't use that word because it could be taken out of context. I don't... I mean, yes, I guess it could be, but I don't think people are quite that easily duped

to think that we're racist just because somebody takes a clip. I mean, if you're going to be that... You know, I... What's my job here? Isn't my job... That's what we're trying to figure out, you know, I. What's my job here? Isn't my job. That's what we're trying to figure out. So why don't we table this word discussion? Because I know our guests will.

But I just want to say that Noam indicated that this word, that this change from the O word to Asian, he doesn't like it because he feels it came from white people in academia. I think it came from the. That's not why I don't like it. But listen. I think it came from the Asian community, and they I didn't like it. But listen. I think it came from the Asian community

and they had certain reasons for preferring the word Asian. Okay. But I think that's a little... That's research that has to be done. I don't have a definitive answer to that question.

What? We can ask our guests who's not Asian. So listen. But that's not accurate. So listen. This is what was funny about it. So Periel writes me

with a podcast. And quite often in the podcast, I was like, maybe you should take this out. Maybe you should take that out. I didn what was funny about it. So Perriell writes me with the podcast. And quite often in the podcast, I'm like, maybe you should take this out. Maybe you should take that out. I didn't think anything of it exactly like you. And she writes me back, should we take out this? Should we take out that? Should we take out that? I'm like, you know what?

Take it all out. Bleep it all. So she bleeped 50 different words from the show apparently last week, which I think will be hilarious on Sirius. And that's a political statement in and of itself on our part, I think, just to bleep out every single word, every single reference. Right, we're mocking. Although Perrielle's not mocking it.

She's quite serious. But the fact that Perrielle was so paranoid about it was actually making the very point that I was making. Like that these people hand down to us what we can no longer say, can't say, doesn't matter. Listen. You know what? No one is saying you can't use that word in the context in which we used it, by the way. Periel is saying that. No one else is saying that.

You know what? I didn't say by the way. Perrielle is saying that. No one else is saying that. You know what? I didn't say anything at all. I was looking out for the greater good here. You were, Perrielle. That's true. We appreciate that. Okay. Well, we're staring in the window at the McDonald's.

There seems to be demolition going on. There's demolition going on. So the process has started. I'm sorry, I got a message. I'm just going to answer it real quickly. Dan, this is another reason I wanted to put it on. Assessive compulsive disorder, you have some sympathy. So turn off the phone when the podcast starts.

Can I just write that we're doing a podcast? Just write that we're doing a podcast. Make, just write that we're doing a podcast. Make sure you spell it correctly, because I don't want you to have to do it twice. All right, okay. Okay, I'll do it. Now, do you have obsessive compulsive disorder? I think so.

I mean, not diagnosed as such, but yeah. I mean, like when I go away, and this manifests itself, by the way, in my book, Iris Spiro Before COVID, available on Amazon.com, the main character, Iris Spiro, is partly not entirely based on me. And you'll recall his character

when he would leave his apartment would check several times to see that the door was locked and that the lights were off and so forth. So I do that, especially when the more anxious I am, the more I will do that. So if I'm leaving for a gig

that is anxiety provoking, which is most gigs, I will check to see if the door's locked, go to the elevator, turn around, go back, open the door, check to see that the light, that my space heater is not plugged in because that can cause fires. So, yeah.

Now, certainly there's methods. You could make yourself a little checklist and you could go through the checklist and check it. I guess so. I guess so. I guess so. It's not overwhelmingly – you're the only one that's really irritated by it. It doesn't really –

By the fact that you're on your cell phone during a show? That's right. But my point is my OCD does not really interfere with my life. It's a little annoying, but it's not to the point where I can't do things. But you won't check your phone if you're actually on stage during doing a show. No, but if I feel a beep coming,

that's going to be, it's very tough. Yeah, I got to soldier on. But why don't you turn it off? Leave it off? I should turn it off. I should do that. That's a good idea. Turn it off. But why don't you turn it off? Leave it off? I should turn it off. I should do that. That's a good idea. Turn it off.

But that wouldn't make you crazy? No, it wouldn't make me crazy. But, you know, no. I mean, OCD, it's an anxiety disorder. I have OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, which is fun. I like to say I have it. Some people word it differently. Some people will say this.

I am OCD. You ever meet those people? Like, I got to say I have it some people word it differently some people will say this I am OCD you're gonna meet those people like I gotta go wash my hands I'm OCD that triggers my OCD because I'm like you're not saying it properly I guess it sounds normal because you hear it so it sounds normal but watch me replace it with something else I gotta go wash my hands I'm genital herpes. See how that... I'm sorry. You have genital... No, no. I am genital herpes. It's who I am. Call me Jen for short. It's very serious.

But anyway, my apologies. I don't think it's a big deal. I think it's... No, you can't be on the phone during the show. Well, it leads to interesting conversations

like this one about OCD and it brings attention to the topic. But anyway— It was a method literally to your madness. Demolition beginning at—you predicted—I was talking with Seton Smith. Everybody's very excited, by the way, to perform there. But you had said that it won't be for two years.

Is that still a timetable that you asked? Yeah, now this is a perfect example. Like, I had made a joke. I've been making a joke that's been getting a big laugh. But I can't even make the joke about, it was something on the order of how can I put it that

I need to start with a disclaimer that says, you know, I'm quite respectful of the trans community and you know, nothing I would ever want to say would be taken to disparage them. But I've been making this joke that if I were to want to, and of course this is an exaggeration to,

that's probably not even literally true, but the spirit of it is true that, that so it's going to take us probably close to two years to build this McDonald's. It's going to take us between the permits and everything. It's going to take us like four or permits and everything, it's going to take us like four or five months just to pull out the vestiges of the old, the demolition as it were, pull out the tables and chairs, whatever it is.

Permits, all sorts of approval process just to remove stuff. And I had been making this joke that if I'd wanted to authorize the surgery to remove the genitalia of my son, I could probably

have done that last Tuesday. Like, right this way, Mr. Dwarman. Like, you know, but if you want to pull out the tables and chairs, like, one second here. This is serious.

We better check on this. Not so fast, Mr. Dwarman. You're not pulling these tables and chairs. That's a joke. By the way, if your son were 16, it might be true.

I don't know. It's certainly not true with your son who's 10 years old. But there is something I am hitting on, I think, a kernel of truth there, which is that they treat the removal of tables and

chairs from or in any, probably any blue state or blue city, as a very, very dangerous and serious matter. You need permits. It's a nothing thing, right? Of course, terrible things can happen in

you can have a, leave a propane torch on and burn the building and I don't really know that the permit process L.S. Reger rule prevents that in any way. But of course, terrible things can happen when you're doing construction. But there is a disconnect between the glacial pace that they impose on what seems to be a pretty dumb thing

and the kind of express train decision-making they allow for. If one parent says it's okay, you can go ahead-trained decision-making they allow for. If one parent says, okay, you can go ahead right this way, change the sex. I'm not against the sex change. Don't get me wrong.

I'm just saying, like, you would think that that would be the thing which would take a very slow committee-like process. Okay, but there's one point I want to make, and you can dispute it,

is that when you're dealing with changing a child's sex, you're dealing with the child's potential psychological welfare. In other words, if the child's suicidal because he's in the wrong body, you're in a race against time, right? I mean, you're not in a race against time to remove the tables and chairs, but you might be in a race against time if your child is in deep despair over his biological sex.

Yes, I get that. You can say that, except that it's not just the time. It's the, I mean, obviously the consequences could be horrible in the other direction too. Right. We're dealing with possible horrible consequences in both directions. Hello, sir. So that's the point I was making. I'm saying the lack of sober reflection and the time window of it just doesn't seem A is to B the gravity of that decision

the sex change what do they call it what's the jargon for it's affirmation gender affirmative something of that nature to how quickly you can Affirmation. Gender affirmative. Gender affirmative. Something of that nature. Yeah.

To how quickly you can do that or how fast-tracked it is. Well, I don't know how fast-tracked it is. Compared to the inability to remove some tables and chairs from a building. I have to get, like, months of process just to get permits just to remove literally tables and chairs. My guess is for a child your son's age, it can't, you can't, there's no, it's not. Well, you haven't been reading the whistleblower article. I don't know what the process would be. Maybe for a 16-year-old it would be relatively. You have not.

I don't know. Like Marielle, you like to pontificate about things you haven't read about. Well, I don't know. Anyway. You walked right into this. Might vary by location. But Freddie DeBoer is with us. Freddie DeBoer.

Is that the right pronunciation? That's correct. I guess that's Dutch. That's Dutch. Yep. You know, the Boers, of course, were something to do with South Africa. Anyway, he's a writer. It's a very short and sweet bio I have for you.

But it says all that needs to be said. You're a writer and an academic and you live in Brooklyn. That's right. What more is there? Live in Brooklyn? Yeah. In Park Slope. But not for long. We're moving said. You're a writer and an academic, and you live in Brooklyn. That's right. What more is there? Live in Brooklyn? Yeah, in Park Slope, but not for long. We're moving soon. Where are you moving to?

I bought a little house in Connecticut. That's where I grew up. Where in Connecticut? Well, I'm from Middletown originally. Okay. It's in West Haven. Just a nice little house. It's a five-minute walk to the beach.

That's near New Haven I've been here seven years and I don't have anything geographically tying me here anymore the new place is close enough I can be in midtown in like an hour and a half in a car like if you saw my house

you would think that a legitimately deeply deranged person lives there because every single surface is covered with so much stuff. And we just, we can't afford more space. And it's just like, why, if I'm not going to an office and we don't really also, we don't really do anything. Like my girlfriend and I don't really go out and do things as much as we should.

We always say that we're going to, and then we don't. We're paying all these New York prices and not getting a lot out of it. So we're buying a little house. No, Freddie DeBoer, that's a name that's new to me, but you assigned me a couple of his Substack articles, exceedingly well-written, exceedingly interesting. What brought him to your attention? So the reason, so

you're one of the people who I read with great expectation because, that's not the right word, but with great expectation because, that's not the right word, but with great eagerness because I really don't know what your opinion is going to be on things. And it's always interesting and well-reasoned.

So I wanted to do my little bit to expose you to our audience, whatever the size is, and to meet you. We have some friends in common, like Coleman Hughes is a very good friend of mine. I know you did his show. And I just find your columns fascinating each and every week. And so I'm very pleased to have you on

the show. Glad to be here. Thank you. Now, the most recent column you wrote, which was after I actually watched you on the show, column you wrote was which is was uh after i actually watched on the show it was about humor and you talked about having having been the class clown and uh dan might find did you read that one dan no i only read the two that you sent me to read he thinks that people who uh think that they're funny are are quite often not funny why don't you tell dan about that since dan's, so the extension of the Class Comp part

is that I had in college had like a moment of clarity, like the alcoholics, you know, where I just realized the only context in which I've ever been funny in my life is in like high school classrooms. And that's just a really specific setup, which is perfectly tuned for a certain kind of comedy, right? Because, I mean, everybody is forced to be there, right? So there's this sort of built-in antagonism.

There's this authority figure who can be like the butt of every joke, and you don't feel bad about making the butt of every joke. And there's all different kinds of people from different, sort of, walks of life and stuff. And I just sort of realized, like, I'm just, I just don't have that skill. One of the big things that I've written about a lot is that the internet has democratized some things, but it hasn't democratized other things. And I think that one of the unfortunate things is it's so easy to get your stuff out there now that people sometimes mistake that for having talent, right? The ability to create now is easier than ever in terms of the tools available to you and to reach an audience.

But you have to actually be good at what you're doing. And I think that one of the things that's happened is just like people consume so much of this stuff all the time. They're listening to podcasts all their time. They're watching so much television shows and stuff where everybody's bantering all back and forth all the time. I think that so much television shows and stuff where everybody's bantering all back and forth all the time. I think that people underestimate just how hard it is to actually be funny on command and to sort of keep up like a running banter that's genuinely amusing to people

who aren't you. And so, yeah, I was just sort of wrote about that, like saying, like, I don't mean to be a dick. I don't want to like sort of make anybody feel bad, but I have detected this sort of sense that people think that they're funny when they're not. Well, people that can make their friends laugh assume they can make everybody laugh. I did think I was funny in school. My teachers probably disagreed with

me on that, and whether I'm funny or not, I'll leave to your opinion, but the person, I was not voted class clown. That was Matt Shostak who became a math teacher. That's funny. No, I'm just saying what happened. Matt Shostak was voted class clown. And he is now a math, and he was funny as I recall.

But he didn't, he didn't have, he didn't, you know, have the insane idea to try to make a living at it. But let me ask you, Dan, let's look through the other end of the telescope. Does it, does it frustrate you in any way now to see that there's so many people who actually are very, very funny and they're simply civilians? They're just like,

and this is not just in comedy. I know this is going on in music too. First of all, you know. Like, holy shit. I never thought stand-up was all that hard. I'll be honest with you. I mean, it's people doing, on TikTok, you know, like, holy shit. I never thought stand up was all that hard. I'll be honest with you. I mean, it's people doing on TikTok. We don't see we see a lot of sketch people that do man in the street.

As far as stand up is concerned, I've concluded it's not that difficult. So, yeah, there are a lot of people can do it well. And some of those people will actually become stars and some won't. But, you know, I do a joke that I think is a really great joke and it kills. And then I see somebody else get on stage with a joke that I think is just very, very easy and get the exact same laughs. I'm like, what the hell am I even, what am I doing? You know, there's another side, flip side to this, right? Which is that like sometimes having all these avenues to do things creatively keeps you from putting in the work to get to the really

high places that you might go to so i don't remember this guy's name and i wouldn't say it on the podcast even if i did because it would be a little mean-spirited but i first moved here uh to brooklyn in 2016 and i uh to new york in 2016 and i went to this um open mic show it was like some sort of bar in brooklyn somewhere up in north brooklyn i think williamsburg and i saw this guy and i thought he was funny i thought you know i liked his set so he was you know he was telling everybody you know get on my instagram to see my next dates or whatever and so um i followed him on instagram and i had a plan to go see him again um but he was just never performing and what he was constantly promoting was that he was going on somebody's podcast like his buddy's podcast his friend's podcast and um like maybe once or twice a month he would do an open mic but that was it as far as actually like doing comedy but

then he would go on these podcasts like you know my craft the i know the stand-up craft and i'm like you're not doing your craft I'm following your Instagram you never actually go out there and do it I know exactly this type so I sort of stopped paying attention for a while and then months later I just randomly looked him up on Instagram and he was announcing that he was releasing

his first special himself on YouTube and this is someone who as far as I know had never featured anywhere or anything like that or open for anybody big. And it's just like, I get the desire to like skip steps. And obviously if you're already a big star, you can put your special on YouTube and you'll be fine.

But it's like, to me, it's just an example of, this is someone who sees these avenues that are easy. So he doesn't do the hard work to get to the more- And I suppose it is possible that some people are so brilliant that they can skip steps. I'm not sure I've ever necessarily seen it, but one might imagine there's somebody that could skip steps that's just so unbelievable,

head and shoulders above everybody else. I don't know. I think that that's incredibly rare I thought you were turning my mic off you are an obvious comedy fan because you used a word that nobody outside the comedy world uses

and that's the word feature you say feature, and to explain that to people who don't know, the standard show at a comedy club is there's an MC who does usually 15 minutes or so there's a middle or a feature act that usually does about a half hour and there's a headliner that does 45 minutes to an hour uh most people would just say the opening acts or the second guy that went on the word feature is sort of a term of art used in the comedy world and you used it and so obviously

you're a big comedy fan is that fair to say well, I was before COVID, and it's just one of those things that I just never fell back into. Like, it was just I never made the decision I'm going to stop going to live comedy shows. And this gets back to, like, I was saying about my girlfriend and I. Like, we don't go to museums anymore, really. We don't go to shows, you know, where it was just something like COVID stopped. And then COVID happened. And then COVID is, OK, it's not over, but whatever. COVID is mostly over.

And I could go back. It's just I just never fell back into the habit of doing it. COVID happened and then you guys retired. Yeah. I got old. You said this thing about hard work and it just like it's been going through the gears of my brain. My experience is that, of course, the talent has to come first. The hard work doesn't really ever overcome the lack of talent, right?

And that most people who do the hard work is because they, I mean, it's actually not hard work. It's hard in one way, but they also, they're dying to do that hard work, you know? Most of the times I worked hardest in my life it's weird because i those were times when i didn't want to be doing anything else the times when i was working like 15 16 hours a day that's when the second i opened my eyes i couldn't wait to get to work so it's like weird to call it right but but if wait let him answer right you know yeah like but i think the thing is is so this specific example it's's just – on the one hand, I can understand that going on your buddy's low viewership or low listenership, whatever, podcast is less scary than standing in the middle of a stage alone with nothing but a microphone.

But it's also like that's the whole thing, right? Like that's – if you're not getting comfortable doing that now, when are you ever going to get comfortable doing it? And I think that there's a – one thing I think that's happened is also there's been a sort of a collapse of sort of people sort of thinking I'm a stand-up or I'm a writer, comedy writer, or I'm an improv person or I do sketch, right? It's just like people just feel like they need to sort of have their finger in every pile all the time. But that can result in people who are sort of wasting their time doing elements of it that are not to their strength. But again, like I thought this guy was funny and that's why I went. I thought that he was inventive. And I've been to some really awful local comedy shows and know what a really bad comedy is like.

Yeah, there are people who are really, really great at this and being hilarious, and some of them are not even good stand-ups at all, and some of them are so-so. It's a different thing. What do you want to say, Dan? Well, I was going to say that in terms of skipping steps, yeah, you're right. Most comics love the process, but

of course, if they could accelerate their ascent, most comics would do that. If they could, obviously, you know, you'd rather get that big Netflix deal sooner rather than later. You know, if you could accelerate it. So you wrote a piece. It was kind of a it was a dialogue between, you know, not real people. We were exploring about crime. People say crime is based from poverty and all that stuff.

Could you have like a synopsis of all that? Because it was a pretty fascinating point you were making. Yeah. So we are sort of living, those of us who run the political left like me, we're sort of living in the shadow of 2020, the George Floyd killing. Now, basically, you say you're on the political left, but of course, most people who read your substack would not know that if you didn't tell them that. But go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, it depends on the issue. Yeah, you know, the idea of defunding the police and abolishing the police is still sort of has this sort of salience within that space. I think the first thing to say is it's just never going to happen in a million years. And I don't know why we're talking about it. But the bigger thing is, is that there's just this reductive thinking that goes into everything. So you mentioned poverty and crime. It's indisputable. There's a relationship between poverty and crime. But the vast majority of poor people don't commit crimes. Right. In other words, you can't just say

poverty causes crime in the most simplistic sense because most poor people are able to not be criminals, right? And it's that kind of just very simple, to me, complication that's been kind of read out of the conversation a little bit. And it's also subject to all these weird exceptions. So if a guy carjacks a family, right, sticks a gun in their face and steals their minivan, there's a lot of places on the political left, particularly online, like on Twitter, where if you talk about this, they'll say, oh, not his fault. You can't blame him for it. That's his background. That's poverty. That's the society that he lives in. You say, OK, how about Harvey

Weinstein, right? He committed crimes, right? Should he be freed from prison? Is Harvey Weinstein, did he sexually assault all those women because he came from poverty because of his background? They say, no, that's different. You say, okay, well, how about this guy I know who beat up his wife? Is that to be excused because he came from poverty, whatever? No, that's different, right? What about a school shooter who shoots up a middle came from poverty? No, that's different, right? What about a school shooter who shoots up a middle school, right? No, that's different, right? So what sort of unites those things together is those are identity crimes, right? So crime is caused by poverty and by society and by all these conditions, except in the instances where it's uncomfortable for us to say that it is. And it's that kind of basic lack of sense that really gets to me.

I mean, are people, you know, I don't know if, I mean, is this at all in some ways a straw man? Or are there really people that, a large group of people that will excuse a carjacking but not excuse domestic violence. I promise. Yeah, there are. So just to give you a little background about me, my grandfather on my father's side was blacklisted. He was a professor in the University of Illinois system, was blacklisted for being a communist and a pacifist and anti-war subversive. My grandmother received the Illinois State ACLU's Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in civil liberties and in civil rights. My mother was an environmental activist. My father was an activist. I am like a literal like red diaper baby. I just grew up in socialism,

in Marxism. And so whenever people say, are there really people like that, that far left? And I say, yes, because I grew up with them. I've known them my whole life. I've been an activist my entire adult life. I've been in those spaces. I think it's fair to say they don't have a lot of control. But I think what is the problem is, is we are not formulating more intelligent, more effective approaches to crime and policing, to law and order on the left, because there's still so much. Cops are always bad and we always have to oppose them in every single situation when the situation is often more complicated than that. Well, it's also complex to me because poverty will always be defined as people who have, you know, bottom 5% or whatever, bottom 20% of comparative wealth.

But the real, what really tugs on our heartstrings when you want to forgive crime based in poverty is need. People who steal because they don't have food or because they can't put dinner on the table or whatever it is. Jean Valjean. And less and less – I don't want to sound ignorant, but less and less it seems like that kind of poverty is what people who commit crimes are experiencing. I mean, we will always have people much poorer than everybody else, but do we have that kind of need behind poverty in 2023 like we did in 1953? Yeah, I mean, it's also, it's worth saying that, for example, at the country level, crime and poverty are not, they don't have a strong statistical relationship at all. So in other words, India, for example, is an extremely poor country still, but has a relatively low

poverty rate. A relatively low crime rate. A crime rate, excuse me, yes, relatively low crime rate. And you can go through the list of countries and you can look at their relative crime rates and their poverty rates, and there really isn't much of a relationship there. So what do you attribute our crime rate to? You know, it's interesting. People often want to chalk it up to our racial diversity, but there are places like the UK now, which is almost as racially diverse as the United States, and which has some crime problems certainly but has a tiny fraction of the murders that we have for example. It's a million-dollar question and I don't have a good answer.

The guns are a big part of it. I'm not a big gun control guy because I think the process of getting rid of the guns would potentially incite more violence than the guns actually cause. But I mean, that's an issue in which I'm very, like, open to other people's opinions. What I what I can tell you, though, is that, you know, I stand for really muscular police and criminal justice reform. Right. You go to Denmark. Denmark is many people's vision of what like an advanced left-leaning society looks like. It's vastly more equal socioeconomically. It's the tiniest, I think it's the smallest poverty rate in the world. It's advanced technologically,

but they do have the police, right? They have the police because there are some people in the world who are bad people. But what they have is a system where the prisons are much cleaner, safer, much more free of gang violence, et cetera, et cetera. Who we can achieve a system that is not a defund the police, no police abolish the police system, but which still is vastly more humane. Yeah. Well, I mean, also as far as Perry, I was nodding, let the record show that Perry was nodding, uh, uh, with,

with great enthusiasm at the mention of guns. But, um, you correct me if I'm wrong. I imagine we have higher crime across the board. It's not just like we had the same number of rapes, same number of street crimes, same numbers as stabbings and just way more people dying from guns.

I'm, I assume we have more of every variety across. So as a generic statement, if you look at like – so there's the OECD, which is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That's often used as like shorthand for like the developed nations of the world, right? It's the countries that are, you know, that have their shit together to a certain degree and have, you know, infrastructure, et cetera, that they need in order to be an advanced nation. That is often used as a point of comparison for these kinds of questions. We do have more crime than the OECD average in just about every category, but we have, we do also have like dramatically more gun crime.

And what we really, really have in this country is just vastly higher suicide rates. Like we have extremely higher suicide rates. The thing with the guns is far more people are – on a day-to-day, are threatened with the potential of committing suicide with a gun if they own a gun than they are being the victim of a homicide by somebody else with a gun, right? One of the things about suicide that's in a lot of the research is that despite what you might think, it's often a impulse. Yeah, it's an impulsive decision, often when people are drunk, right? If you have the impulsive decision to kill yourself and you have a gun, it's just way, way, way easier to do that than if you have to contrive some much more complicated thing. And so, I mean, you can look at the suicide rate as the real scandal.

Are people more apt to use a gun than to just jump out the window? And if so, why? Both are seemingly equally easy. Well, I think the answer to that question is that I think the average American lives on like the 1.8th floor. All right, but given somebody that lives on a high floor, is there something scary? Last clown strikes the gun. Is there something about jumping out a window that would be too scary? Well, it's funny you say that.

It sounds like a joke, right? But people do, when they commit suicide, avoid things that they have preexisting fears for. And you would think to yourself, well, you're scared of heights, but what you're scared of is you're going to fall and die. So why would you be scared of heights to kill you? But it turns out that doesn't matter, right? When you go to actually jump off of that ledge, it's still just as scary. So I think you're right. Well, I have a dear friend and we could talk about this too because you know a lot about

mental illness and stuff who not that long ago jumped off a bridge. But you said committed suicide and this brings us to something that we've been arguing about last week and I'm sure you know something about it. It wasn't necessarily an argument. I think it was more of a discussion.

All right. And you're apparently not supposed to say committed suicide anymore. Right. But just let me enter this conversation with something I saw today. Have you seen this guy, this video of this poor man, Jordan Neely, who died in the chokehold on the subway? Yeah. So somebody told me to Google it. And what struck me was, first of all, it's preceded by an ad for McDonald's, which was just disconcerting.

And then you see, I mean, it was one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen. You see this guy in a chokehold. You don't see how he got there, what happened before. And then you literally see him die. And it occurred to me, and I'd made this as a joke before, but it occurred to me that, I mean, anybody can watch this video. But if somebody had screamed the N word while he was this video, they would have to bleep that out. And just the crazy juxtaposition between the idea that you can't even report

the word, the N word in an article in the New York times about it. They, they believe that you can't pause, you can't hear the video, but you can actually show my daughter could just go to the new yorkpost.com and see somebody being killed. You know? This cannot

hold, this is psychotic to me. You know, like you said about you can't say committing suicide anymore. I believe what they say you have to say is died by suicide. But who is that? I mean, I heard that only because Perry Elson sent me the article. But it's not I keep saying it's not just one

article. Fellas, please. I keep saying, it's not just one article. I know, but fellas, please, let the guests know. There's always people saying things. It's not about any one thing, although I do want to hear about that. It's about the fact, at least in my opinion, that certain changes to the language are handed down from somewhere. And then they become tripwires.

And very soon, we all dutifully respect these things and judge each other if we don't respect them when they actually don't hold up and make any sense. The fact that you can't hear a word, we laugh at in the movies, but you can see somebody being murdered and you can't say committed suicide because somehow the word committed is the operative word there. You're going to fool people not to realize how tragic that is because you take somehow the word committed is the operative word there. You're going to fool people not to realize how tragic that is because you take out the word commit all these things. And we also got into the

when Oriental was changed to Asian and how that all of a sudden was, how dare you, it was never a slur. All these things. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that committed suicide will never become a tripwire, but I might be wrong. Okay, well, you can respond to all this issue. It's an interesting issue.

I mean, first we should talk about what they call the euphemism treadmill, which is a word that might get me bleeped in some places is the word retarded, right? To mean someone who has cognitive or developmental disabilities. That was the more humane, caring, respectful alternative that was deliberately introduced by people in the medical community to use because previous to that, words like idiot and moron were actual medical terms that were used to refer to people with cognitive and developmental disabilities. So literally, doctors would write on charts like clinical moron or something like that. And so there's this big effort, let's replace that with a word that just means that they develop more slowly. Retarded is a good word for that. We'll use retarded, right? Retarded obviously became a schoolyard insult, and so it's now become impermissible to say.

That's fine by me. I'm not out to hurt anybody's feelings and I can use other words. I don't use it myself in day-to-day language. But we have to remember that like that can just keep happening forever, right? Like same thing with handicapped, right? Handicapped is now a term that is considered to be insulting to people with disabilities. But it replaced crippled or cripple, right? And so, again, these alternatives eventually become impermissible.

Is handicap now impermissible? There's still handicapped parking. If you go to, I mean, you know, I did six years of grad school, two years of master's, four years of PhD. If I had ever said the word handicapped in a class, I would have gotten a near fill. So physically challenged would have been. From everybody.

Yeah. I mean, disabled, I think, is the word that people tend to use now, or people with, persons with disabilities. Yeah. So one of the things that tends to happen is you don't want to say disabled people because that makes it sound like that's all that they are. So you say people with disabilities. Right.

It was the same thing that happened with aids right that they started saying people living with aids instead of but you but is there a finish there's a the big one that is is sort of in my community in one part of my life which is i do a lot of tenant activism in the city i've been doing it for six years a lot of what i'm tenant tenantant activism. So it's basically... If I'd known that, I would have never brought it here. Good day, sir. Like nine-tenths of it is just... Nine-tenths of it is

this landlord has a legal obligation to get this family hot water. They haven't done it for 18 months. We need to use the pressure points to be able to... I mean, a huge, huge portion of it is just getting the city to actually enforce the law. I'm coming around to your position on the hot water for tenants, but I'm good.

I'm slow to get there. So people have heat and hot water, stuff like that. Anyway, the big thing now is getting rid of homeless and saying unhoused. Unhoused. Right. And you say, you replace that. You say, oh, he's not. We're not talking about homelessness. We're talking about people a list of any homeless person's problems, the stigma of the word homeless is really, really, really far down the list. But number two,

as somebody who wants to change this, who wants to help people who are homeless, I want the word to be stigmatizing because then it's powerful, right? Homeless has this visceral thing. If your friend comes up to you, you haven't seen him, and if you say, how are you doing? And you say, I'm homeless, you'll feel like you got punched in the chest, right? Because the word has that power. And they're saying, oh, we should get rid of that power. And to me, for what, right? This is a condition we want to end. It's not the same as saying that somebody who has a cognitive disability is a moron or is retarded or is developmentally disabled, because that's inherent to that person. Homelessness is a condition that we want to end,

so let's stigmatize it, right? Well, let me tell you, yes, I agree. From a different angle, it's something, now I haven't been following news like I usually do, so I might be guilty of just taking things from headlines, but the governor of Texas, Abbott, is that his name? He got in trouble. There was a shooting there and he got in trouble for saying the victims were illegal immigrants. And as I gleaned from it, he was not trying to disparage the victims. He was describing who they were. And this was another example to me. I was like, well, this term illegal immigrants was, you know, never a bad, it was never a disparaging term. It was simply a technical description of people who were here illegally. And now the governor of Texas, I don't think with any hardness of heart, described these

poor people who died as illegal immigrants. And now he's being called heartless for something because he has not chosen to adopt. I said he's tripped on the wire. They put this trip wire. You can't say illegal murder. You don't have to agree with it. You don't have to. We don't even have to present your rationale why it should be prima facie that it's a bad thing to say.

So now he's in trouble for using the phrase. And that I don't I think that's ridiculous. He didn't mean anything bad by it, did he? You may have read the story. Did he mean anything bad? But, I mean, I think that, like, to me the bigger thing is, like, it's a classic example of the more intractable a problem seems to be, the more we fixate on, like, the language, the manners when discussing it, whatever. Right. Immigration is an issue in which we have like the status quo nobody likes. Right.

Because millions of people come in. And so the people who don't want immigration are upset. The conditions in which these millions of people come in are really horrible and then they get exploited while they're here. So the people who do want to let them in aren't happy about that. The idea of some sort of grand compromise in congress between democrats and republicans on immigrants is just unthinkable because of the status quo and so like to me like i'm sure he didn't mean any any harm by it um i think that like we have a fundamental problem here where our economy absolutely requires a certain number of people

who are illegal or undocumented or whatever you want. The California agricultural industry, if you did a finger snap and vanished all the undocumented labor involved there, this country would starve, right? And so you have these like structural issues that we can't get past. So it's just easier to say, well, that wasn't the right term to use, right? Because that seems like something that we could yell about and maybe have a resolution about, right? Well, and I mean I don't – a lot of these things – you can't fight city hall. I always say this. So there's like a – there's a timeline.

At first, they try to ram this new word down your throat and you, you push back against it because hell, this is ridiculous. I've been saying this my whole life. And, and at some point you're like, all right, I can't fight city hall. At some point to keep using this term makes me look like an asshole. Like, you know, that, that ship has sailed. And now it looks like I'm, I have some sort of agenda to say illegal immigrants. So I will eventually adopt whatever,

I don't know what the undocumented alien, whatever it is, but it always, I always feel like I've like, like, you know, been a little cowardly. I don't know if that's the right word. I always feel like, you know, I fuck, I submitted. They came at me and I'm going through the motions of saying the proper phrase now as if I think the other word was bad, but I know the other word was never bad and it, it, it bothers me, but it doesn't always bother you as,

as an example that I mentioned last week, but a certain, a word that became archaic and was replaced by African American. That doesn't bother you. Can I say the word Negro? You're talking about Negro. Well, you said it.

I don't know. Periel's that, that to me, Periel is looking frustrated. I don't, I think it would be ridiculous. I was about to text me something. Just said it. I don't know. Periel's. That to me. Periel is looking frustrated. I think it would be ridiculous. Periel's about to text me something. Just say it. It would be ridiculous to bleep that out, Periel. So that to me is somehow different, just having lived through it, because that word, first of all, it was the polite term when I was a young boy.

As a matter of fact, I was telling Periel, I'm so old, I'm 60, that I can remember older black people referring to each other as colored. Even that term. But that term was the enlightened progressive term, Negro. And then it was never handed down. Still used in the college fund. Yeah. It was never handed down that it became a slur. It literally just went out of favor, such that when you hear it now, it's so old-fashioned, it harkens back to a particular time,

that it doesn't feel right to use it anymore. That's quite different than, for instance, what happened with the old word in Asian. That was literally like overnight, you walk up and say, how could you possibly? And at that time, there were still commercials, like Nancy Kwan, remember Nancy Kwan? Never wonder overnight you woke up and said, how could you possibly and at that time there were still commercials like Nancy Kwan, remember Nancy Kwan?

Never wonder why you ever looked their age. You would hear Asian people use this term all the time. And I get it, the word I'm assuming it came out of academia. Maybe you know where this change came from. We're talking about how the O word that

precedes rug was replaced by Asian. I say the O word because Periel doesn't want me to say it. The word Negro to me, as I recall it, was not extinguished. It simply kind of faded away. I don't know. That's probably hard to track.

You can't track it. That's just the way I remember it. I remember when I was 11 years old, maybe year 12 in the early 90s, and particularly when the Malcolm X movie came out, which was a really watershed moment. It was still a big debate about whether the term of preference was African-American or black. And I think at this point you can use either. But I think black is far more common now. And I think that there was a – I think that the reason for that is I just think people

just sort of like said, this is just what people use. And it's, you know, and it's a word, it's also that sort of reclamation project, you know. So my girlfriend is Korean. Well, she's just half Korean, half Japanese. And so the word for Korea in the Korean language is Hanguk, and there is a slur. The last syllable. use because Hanguk was said so often. And so that's sort of, and, you know, she is one of these people who will, she and her friends who are also Korean will often sort of, you know, jokingly sort of reappropriate that and use that, you know, those, those sort of terms,

which I think is natural and healthy, you know? I, I, I do think like fundamentally most, most people don't want to be a pain in the ass about these things. The people who are staying unhoused, I 100 percent believe that they're doing so from like a sincere place and like wanting to to prevent harm. I just think it's like dumb. But I also think that it comes from a place that's sincere and, you know, born out of a desire to act with respect. There does seem to be something in the left-wing worldview which just puts a lot of importance on these types of issues that doesn't seem really to happen on the right, that they're going to impact these issues by relabeling things. And some of it, I think, is born out of the fact that they can then weaponize this to trip up you know us us idiots that we that we didn't get the memo and now we've said the wrong phrase I

don't know you're on the left yeah I mean I guess the thing that I would say is like what else do we have but language right like again like thinking of like my kind of left the left I was born in and I've been in my whole life I mean literally like again like i grew up in in a socialist family i i grew up on a college campus a particularly left-wing college campus wesleyan uh university in middletown um i've been in academia for most of my life i was in grad school for six years etc etc like that kind of left the hard left um what else do we have to exercise power over other than language, right? I mean, it's a movement of poets and professors and writers and songwriters and, you know, it's people who live in symbol and language and that's like, that's what the source of where their power is,

their source of sort of self-respect is, where their professions are. So it's kind of inevitable that you end up with this endless, tiresome language policing because it's like if you're somebody who feels I'm completely shut out of the actual political process, I don't really have the numbers to make real change with my movement. I'm just going to be the language cop because it's the only thing I can be. Latinx seems to have really run into a brick wall, though, right? The Latino community is just like, no, we're not on board with that. Right. Because for them, Latino and Latina are fundamental aspects of their language because Spanish has grammatical gender, and putting X on it for terms of self-identification doesn't change the fact that Spanish has grammatical gender like lots of languages do.

And it's just like – I think it's just like, what? That's so stupid. Why? And there's legitimate – I mean Hispanic just means technically coming from a country where Spanish is the lingua franca, right? And then there's Latin as in Latin America. But that's all complicated because a lot of Hispanic identity is from the fact that they have indigenous background, ancestry, you know, an actual Spanish person, most actual Spanish people who are from Spain, Spanish,

are as white as I am, if that's possible, you know. Luis C.K. is, he has ancestry from Mexico, but they're European, and he jokes about that. Well, he says I'm Mexican. I mean, I'm still white.

Right, yeah. So he's making that point. Yeah. But that's a good example of, it's just just like it's a big, complex stew of stuff. And people want to imagine this sort of like coalition of people of color. And so they sort of just cram everybody into that. But you go to Argentina. Right. And you tell a lot of people there, oh, no, you're not white. They might punch you in the face. Right. Like there's like in a lot of people there, oh, no, you're not white. They might punch you in the face, right? In a lot of these in Argentina and Ecuador and Colombia, it's often the case that the people who are the wealthiest, the higher class sort of people tend to be quite fair skinned and are proud of their sort of unblemished heritage.

Look how, you know, there's Egypt. There's two, well, right now they're reacting negatively because Cleopatra is being portrayed as black. But this also happened years ago. There was a Sadat movie, and Egypt complained about Sadat being played by Lou Gossett. Now, I don't know what Cleopatra was, but Sadat was quite dark. Lou Gossett was not ridiculous casting for Sadat was quite dark. Yeah, Lugas, it was not ridiculous casting for Sadat.

But they apparently do not feel that they're black. Well, they have genetic information, not from Cleopatra specifically, but from Egyptian people of her era. And they look like people from Syria or Israel, the people in the Levant, which is like what you'd expect. Yeah, that's a funny one. The idea that Cleopatra was black, that the ancient Egyptians were black is associated with this sort of Hotep tendency. Are you guys familiar with this? I've heard about it. I know there was a book, Black Athena. I remember that one. Yeah, the sort of Hotep movement is a sort of – it is a – or was a black pride movement that has a lot of conspiracism sort of tied up into it and believe some kind of wild things. But it's also deeply conservative, deeply traditionalist, which is hard for people to sort of wrap their minds around. But they believe in things like there's what's called Asiatic black man theory is commonly found among Hoteps, which is

also a Nation of Islam thing, which is the belief that black people don't actually come from Africa, that they came from Asia originally, and that the effort to say that Africa is where black people came from is a white conspiracy because Africa is so chronically underdeveloped in so many ways that it's an insult to black people, which is just like kind of wild, right? Like just all these sort of ideas piled on top of each other. I wrote a piece for the Guardian, not for the guardian for harper's um like almost 10 years ago now on on lewis farrakhan was just one of the most fascinating figures um possible he's a despicable guy but he's also just totally unique and totally american and like tracing the various weird things

that are going on in his politics it like just tells me a lot about what America is. But these dissident, weird, racialized political movements often sort of speak to the American experience in a really unique way. I want to read that piece. Two more things, but let's talk about something a little more fun. Do you have any impressions or comments on this whole Tucker Carlson fiasco playing out? No, I just think he's an asshole. And the thing is, is I'm confident that he will find a forum somewhere which will make him a rich man and give him a big audience.

He's already a rich man. Isn't he a rich man even as a – I mean he's from like Swanson Food or something? I don't know, but he's very rich. I mean like – so Alex Jones, people talk about him as like, oh, we deplatformed Alex Jones. We got him removed from YouTube and like all these respectable places, so we deplatformed him. He still routinely gets like two million viewers for his shows, which I believe is more than any CNN show regularly gets. Like 2 million people will watch his web broadcasts because you can't actually – in the internet era, you can't actually de-platform anyone. There's always going to be a way for someone to set up some kind of a forum for themselves if people want to find it. So the idea of cancellation is somewhat of a myth in many cases. Yeah, I mean, I think this is like the weird part is that like when I talk about cancellation with people,

they often sort of say, well, if you look at it, most people who got canceled are fine, right? Like they didn't actually get hurt that badly. And I say to them, so you're defending the political tactic of canceling by pointing out that it doesn't work, right? And that's like the weird sort of double thing. But it's absolutely true that a lot of people survive fine, right?

I think Tucker is going to survive and he'll find some place. He'll have some show that is probably will be web-based. Maybe he'll go to Newsmax. I don't know. But like what he represents is much bigger than, and that's the real problem, right? Well, normally the worst types of cancellations where they're not fine is where they are rejected from the bosom of their own people. Tucker is not risking being expelled from the Tucker Carlson types. So his cancellation is really just a loss of a job.

He's still, he wasn't, he wasn't welcome in polite company before his cancellation, but people like McNeil at the times or Mike Peska or various people or Louie or, you know, they were, they were thrown out of their entire lives, their kids. So that, so I, and I, I've always felt that the fact that they had money was almost a willful disregard of what it means to be human. It's not just about being able to, you know, make a living. I mean, Mike Petska in particular, I think is an example of you had an institution at Slate that

used to be like center left and was often known for sort of being contrarian and like taking the conservative point of view, even though they were ostensibly from a left direction to the point that it became sort of a joke. But they sort of had the same thing happen to them that happened to so much of digital media, which is that like a new cohort of young staffers came in and completely sort of changed the culture of the place, which must have been disorienting for someone like Mike Peska. But what I also, you know, I don't have any insider knowledge, but my guess is that, I mean, his podcast was such a big part of their numbers and he was doing, he was so important in, in, for the organization. I suspect that

the things that he said that got him canceled were just a convenient pretext for for getting him out. Right. In other words, people already probably had resentments or problems. I mean, that's that happens all the time. So like this Don Lemon situation at CNN, he said some offensive stuff and I get it. But it's also clear that everybody there hated him and his ratings weren't doing that well anymore anyway. And so CNN brass, I think we're probably happy that he handed them these scandals so that they had a reason to get rid of him. Yeah. So I should say that Mike Peskin and I have become kind of become not kind of

become friends. Yeah. So he's here all the time. Well, he's just, but we, we know like we communicate and we're friends and I, and I like him very,

very much. And I know him now. And the notion that he should be given that particular scarlet letter as somehow somebody who is not concerned about racism and that kind of – it's so fucking delusional that it's angry. What Mike Peska was standing for, in my opinion, this is not from him, was that when you have an issue, you can discuss it. As opposed to Don Lemon, who said ridiculous

things about Nikki Haley being beyond... I don't like when people are called misogynist, but what Don Lemon did was as close to actually textbook misogyny as I've ever seen where he says, well, she's Pastor Prime. What do you mean by that? Google it.

You can Google it. It was crazy. And he didn't have ratings, which almost put a spotlight on the fact that maybe the only reason he was still there was because he was gay and black, God forbid, because he has no ratings and he's saying ridiculous stuff, right? So I would not want to compare him to Mike. I know you didn't mean to, but just because he's my friend and he might listen to this, that's not, these are not two examples of the same thing.

Yeah, but I mean, I think that like, I think that he's also a good example of the issue is that like, again, like some people survive cancellation just fine. I mean, I think I kind of did. I didn't realize you were canceling. Well, I mean who knows if I was. But Mike Peska, I think the situation was one where a lot of people in the business quietly said or quietly thought this is bullshit, right? But were afraid to say something because of the rhetorical environment. And this is why when people say, well, hey, look,

Louis C.K. is selling out huge arenas again, and he's going to be fine. It's like, okay, but it's not just about a Louis C.K. It's about all the self-censorship. It's about creating a culture of fear in which people don't

say anything. I know because I talked to them, people in the industry who thought that Mike Peska's firing was bullshit but said, what can I do? It's a contracting industry with a ton of people who are sort of flexing their muscles and who are out for blood and I'm just not going to stick my neck out. And unfortunately that's true of a lot of things in the industry. And just for the record, Mike Peska never actually said anything bad. If anybody gets the wrong brand, all he – like he really was just discussing both sides of an issue. So the Tucker Carlson – and, you know, just because it's all connected. So listen, I think Tucker Carlson is an asshole as well.

Although I did watch his show with some regularity or listen to it on the radio because I found it interesting. And I should say, I used to listen to the 700 Club all the time when I was in high school. I was never a fundamentalist Christian. I just found it interesting. Yeah, I used to watch the Black Hebrews on Public Access for the same reason. You know, the Black Hebrew Israel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They had a Public Access show, which I thought was hysterical.

And I would be the only thing I really watch on public access. So Tucker Carlson would talk about some things that I would agree with him from time to time. But, well, the asshole part is that I think he got people killed with his nonsense COVID stuff. I think he was absolutely irresponsible by talking about bioweapons labs in Ukraine and January 6th being a false flag operation. This is just – Fox should have fired him for that stuff. It's indefensible, and they should be ashamed of themselves. And I think people died listening to that stuff. Having said that, he would talk about undocumented aliens and stuff like that and unfortunately be the only one

talking about it now something came out yesterday a text message which was very disturbing I don't know if you saw it where he talked about some people

fighting brutally and he said white people don't fight that way did you see that? I heard a little bit about it but I wasn't I'm not really sure and

although I'm because we've seen so many things that you know where the context was unimaginable but there was a context I'm, because we've seen so many things that, you know, where the context was unimaginable, but there was a context, I still have an open mind if some facts come to light, which can explain that quote in a way which, you know, changes my opinion of it. It sounds like an outright white nationalist oriented comment. And then it made me think that maybe in the world we live in, only the hateful people have the moxie to talk about the border because the everyday person like me who has issues with the border and is concerned about it and concerned about all the various aspects of us are just not going to take the risk.

I mean, my my resistance to ever seeing Tucker Carlson is some sort of like honest broker or voice of honesty is that he went through a complete personal rebrand and changed the kind of conservative that he was in order to appeal to the Trump era. People need to remember Tucker, Tucker Carlson was a, was, he was never without a bow tie for the first half of his career because he was, he sold himself not as the crazy MAGA, like, you know, Hick Republican guy. He was the sort of genteel upper class, like, you know, went to wherever he went to Princeton who's talking about, you know, how Mexicans are going to come and rape your children or whatever. Like that only happened after Trump was a descendant. Right. And it's like, to me, that kind of like cynically sort of copying whatever is in vogue right

now, like that's the opposite of honesty to me. I take him at his word, actually. The ones who seem more phony to me are like the Bill Kristol types and the David Frum, only because it's so it's obviously that Trump came at them personally. It's obvious to me. And they hate him, I think, because of the personal attacks. I mean, people have changes of heart. Maybe maybe Tucker Carlson did as well. But then,

okay, so that text message came out last night, and that's, I think, really bad. There's other things the Times accused him of, which they say he used a misogynist term. Apparently, he called a woman the C-word. Now, I have to tell you, I hear people use that word quite often. Women, too. Is it a misogynist? It can be a misogynist term that you can call somebody a dick. Is that like... And then,

this is getting the language police. Don't we all know in the real world people sometimes use that phrase without being misogynist. You know, I mean, I think I've even heard you say it, Perrielle. Yeah. I mean, I had a comedy show on Tuesdays called See You Next Tuesday with the drawing of a vagina.

I'm not saying like, and then. I mean, I think that it, context is a lot, right? So I think it's one thing. He was complaining about apparently somebody who was a horrible person. Like, this is a news story. And then apparently he also said that somebody's girlfriend was yummy. But then it came out, the whole video came out today. And actually, he used the word yummy.

And then he says, I'm just joking around. I never even met the woman. And if I did meet her, I'm sure she wouldn't be yummy. But the Times didn't bother to report any of that context. And then he says, my I heard this on Megyn Kelly's. I my does he look attractive? My menopausal women audience. You have to ask my menopausal postmenopausal women audience. But if you hear the context of that, it also was nothing. He was just kind of saying like, I don't know if I'm attractive. You'll have to ask the demographic who watches me, which is essentially older people. And the Times, again,

they had the full context to his statement, but the Times reported it as if like they had him. He used post-menopausal. He used the C word. And so except for this thing about fighting like white people, they always do this. I'm happy he's fired. I think he's an asshole. And then the way they reported, I find myself being kind of sympathetic to the guy. Like they can't come at him on the up and up. Yeah, I mean that's – so I am completely libertarian about like what schools have in their libraries and I'm really against – Oh, we should talk about that. Yeah. I'm really against this Republican push to sort of push all this stuff out of school libraries or classrooms or whatever. And I, you know, and I think that it's cynical. I do think that fundamentally it's most sort of motivated by a Republican desire to sort of kick up anti-LGBTQ sentiment for political purposes. Sometimes liberals say that things that are not

true about this issue, though. So, for example, there is a book called This Book is Gay, which explicitly says on the back of it that it's a guidebook for young people for having sex, having queer sex. And it does include things like instructions on how to give a blowjob and how to – Send a copy to my house. Yes. Like, oh, you should go and get on a dating app so you can meet someone for something. What age group is this targeting? Well, so here's the thing. Even the author of the book has says that it's for I believe like 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, like that age range.

But that book does exist, and it was apparently put by somebody on a reading list for children who are 8 and 9 and 10 years old. And there are screen grabs of parts of that book that circulate on Twitter. And whenever that happens, liberals on Twitter say that's made up, that's not real, that's been doctored, it's been photoshopped. But it actually hasn't been. Like, that is the book, right? And again, like, the author was interviewed and said, like, no, this book is not intended for children that young. But like – and so you can just say, hey, whatever you want to say about whether this book should be available, like it is what Republicans say it is, right? It was on a reading list like that. There's another one called Genderqueer, which has sort of similar controversies about it, where the stuff actually is in the book. And you can just say, okay, like maybe we can have a conversation about this one or whatever.

But there's just this desire to say, nope, it's just not real. It violates my narrative, so it cannot be real, even though it is real. Well, I have a couple things to say about that. First of all, I'm like you. I really almost don't care what my kids read. I was raised that way too. But I'm conscious and aware that just because I feel that way doesn't mean that I should be saying everybody has to feel that way. There are people who are raised with certain mentalities and religious precepts or whatever it is that don't want their kids to learn or be exposed to certain things. And I don't, now obviously when it came to like racism and racial things, these arguments were brought up, too.

And we couldn't accept that. There's certain times you can't accept those things. And I don't know where those lines are to be drawn. These are complicated issues. But I send my kids to learn academics. What's clear to me today more than ever before in history is that it doesn't really matter if they learn this stuff in school. All this LGBTQ trans stuff, all of that, this is in the ether for every child now that has access to a phone or a computer. So I don't

really worry that they're not going to be exposed to it. My daughter was able to identify in a BuzzFeed quiz 11 out of 12 LGBTQ flags. She can't identify a state flag or a state capital. Now, she didn't get this at school. She's very aware of all this stuff without school. So I don't think it's actually that big a deal. And at the same time, let's not pretend that the same people who are up in arms about this

want to ban, I put that in quotes, I don't know if it's really banned, Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, great works of literature. And if I have to choose, what am I more concerned about? If I had to pick one side, my kids are going to be denied all this LGBTQ

stuff, or great works of literature that might have the N-word or some concept that describes some reason. Diary of Anne Frank, not because of Anne Frank's, because it was something sexual to a young thing, but because of a description of the Holocaust or whatever it might be. I'm with the people who want to let the kids read the great works of literature. And if I had to choose between those two and it burns me up that they,

they're complaining about book banning while not owning up to the fact that they want to ban books too. Right. Am I wrong? No, I don't think you're wrong. I, um, yeah, that's why, like I said, I'm completely libertarian about all of this. Like I, you know, I would put a copy of the anarchist cookbook in every preschool classroom if i could um uh and but that that's i think the thing to do is to just stand for the fact that like look i mean i always put this in the in the terms like you you just you cannot hide from the world forever right so there's a controversy trying to think of what college it was but it

was at some fancy college recently and um they tried to pass a mandatory trigger warning um thing because this young this student had read a book about the korean war uh that included a rape scene and uh it was she her roommate or something was very upset she was very upset about it and her roommate wanted to pass this, this trigger warning policy. As I said at the time, it's like, look, um,

what that person is upset about is not the fact that they read a book about that contains a rape scene. They're upset about the fact that they live in a world in which rape occurs. Right. And like the campus walls only stretched so far, right. Like sooner or later,

which is why, like, mean again, like look. Parents are always going to have some say in what the curriculum is for their students. It's just the nature of public schools are financed with public money and they are subject to the democratic process. As I said, I'm on the libertarian side in terms of what people get to look at. But like the Republic, a lot of these Republican parents seem very much to like feel like if my kid ever finds out about people being trans, it's all over. It's like they probably already know about people being trans and they're going to find out. And the more that you try to sort of artificially restrict how they find out, the worse it's going to go for you anyway. their own agendas above and beyond what a disinterested person would think would be the proper formula of what a kid's third grade curriculum ought to be.

I don't think this is just because, well, kids really need to hear this stuff. I think this is a political agenda. And I don't have any problem necessarily with that agenda, but let's not lie about it and pretend it's not an agenda. It is. Yeah, I mean, I just think that, like... I'd be happy if they told them about Israel and Zionism too, but I wouldn't pretend it's not an agenda. Yeah, I mean, I

think that, like, sex ed is necessary and important and also kind of lame and pointless, right? Because, like, who actually learned about sex from sex ed in school, right? Like, that's just not how people learn about sex. I learned about sex from sex ed in school right like that's just not how it's not how people learn about sex i learned about sex by like you know my friend sam ortiz had a porno in fifth grade right you know what i'm saying like that's like uh that's how

you actually learn about sex as a real human being um i do think sex ed is important but yeah like and i but i also think that that I suspect that like you know these edge cases like they're not taking copies of that book and like doing read alongs to five year olds you know what I'm saying like I think that okay can I tell you about

we're going to go a little bit longer but there is something else going on which I think you'll agree with me we do seem to be seeing some sort of fad or some sort of viral trans thing going on. At least a lot of respectable people are even admitting that there may be something going on here. Like you see, suicide will spread. And so we do have to worry about that, right? If that could be true, we have to worry about it. So I don't worry. So personally, I don't think that being trans is a fad.

But the beauty of it is, is that like if that were true, right, then fads fade, right? Fads fade out. Like if it's a fad, it will go out of style. You know what I'm saying? Like I think that it is – look, I think that there's an awful lot of identity stuff that's very complicated and that young people spend – all of us spend a lot of time sort of sorting through it. I also know a lot of people – not a lot of people, but I know a fair number of people who are trans and you meet them and it's just so clear that like this is who they are. This is their identity it's something that is intrinsic to them that they didn't choose and it's something that they

just want to just sort of be able to be to be left alone to sort of live this way and yeah like i don't think it's a it's a fad but if it is a fad it'll go out of style and we won't have i don't have a strong opinion it's an empirical matter in the end and i just but i i do notice people that who were i, level-headed seem to be open to the idea that there's a kind of peer pressure fit in. It's cool to identify this way now. And if that's true, or even if it might be true, then it would cause us to take a look at, you know, what we're teaching in the schools. I can't just dismiss that. I don't think that it's quote unquote cool to do that now. I think that suddenly there's a space that didn't exist when we were younger for these

people who have always existed and have always been this way. Peril. Maybe you're right. And I really, maybe this is just, thank God for the first time in history, we're getting a hundred percent of the people. But we don't know that. And like I said, we know that suicide can catch on. So in my mind, if something as like against the prime directive of evolution as killing yourself can become kind of viral,

then in my opinion, almost anything can become viral. And for people who are not fitting in, who understand that this can catapult them to great acceptance and adulation and be celebrated, whatever it is, human psychology can be weak in that way. And perhaps that is at root of what's going on here. I'm not saying that's what it is. I'm saying that if it's possible that's what it is, it would cause responsible people to consider this all because the consequences of these hormones and all this stuff can be catastrophic to people who regret it later on. And there are some people like that. Anyway, the final thing is, and I'm going to say this now, we don't have to talk about this and we can cut this out so no one would ever know we don't talk about it, but you are a fascinating figure because you've had, suffered from some mental things. Bipolar disorder. I've had two really, really close

friends who suffered from bipolar disorder, one of whom threw himself off a bridge not long ago. And of all the things which people really never get to hear, it's what that's like from someone who's got their shit together. I just say like my friend Wig who died, you know, there were times when he was having an episode where one time he held a ketchup bottle over my head and was talking about killing me. And this was a dear friend of mine. And then he came out of it.

And I said, wait, you know, when you did that, did you know what she says? Yeah, I knew what I was doing, but it made sense to me then. It made sense to me then. And then we see people like Kanye and things like this and crimes committed and committed and Dylan Roof. And I don't know if Dylan Roof, but whatever it is, um, we really don't know how to process all this. And somebody like you can be a tremendous source of information on this. So, you know, tell us what, what you would about that.

It's gotta be an issue that matters to you. Uh, yeah, I have been, uh, medicated and in treatment, uh, So tell us what you would about that. It's got to be an issue that matters to you. Yeah. I have been medicated and in treatment since August of 2017, which is partly why I'm as fat as I am right now because the meds are really, really making me gain weight, unfortunately. Yeah. I was diagnosed when I was 20 years old in 2002. I had a series of terrible vows of depression and I was living alone. I had dropped out of college. I wasn't in good shape and I developed bipolar mania without really knowing it.

I got into an altercation with a neighbor in the apartment complex in which I lived. The cops were called. They showed up. an altercation with a neighbor in the apartment complex in which I was, I lived, uh, the, the cops were called, uh, they showed up and they took me to the hospital and their cop car. Uh, they did not put me in handcuffs, which was kind of them.

Um, and yeah, they gave me a shot of Haldol, uh, which is a powerful, uh, injectable, uh,

antipsychotic. And I went to a, uh, psychiatric facility for like about three weeks, a little less than three weeks, I think. And then I spent the next 15 years in and out of treatment, mostly out. I've had a very common sort of bipolar pattern of I would have a psychotic episode from the mania. I would end up back in a hospital. I would go back on meds.

I would say this time I have my shit together and I'm on the straight and narrow and I'm on the right path, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then eventually I would stop taking the pills. It was never – I never made a decision to stop taking pills. I would just always, oh, I forgot to today. I'll take them tomorrow. Then the next day I would just always, oh, I forgot to today. I'll take them tomorrow. Then the next day I would just sort of forget again. And then, you know, it's just sort of a powerful sense, sort of sense of denial. And then like, once you're a certain way out of the pills, you're

like, oh, it's been so long. It's probably, I probably shouldn't take them anymore, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, bipolar disorder, one of the big misconceptions is that it's like, oh, I'm angry in the morning and I'm happy in the afternoon or whatever. But bipolar disorder is a series of like long and slow cycles between mania and depression. And part of what happens is that you have a period which is called euthymia, I think, where you're – you've come up from, but you haven't hit mania yet. So you're just sort of normal and flat. And so part of what makes it so dangerous is that it's very easy to convince yourself that you are fine. What causes more suffering?

Everybody knows that depression is a terrible thing, and you suffer when you're depressed. Do you suffer when you're manic? Yeah. So like depression sucks and is very powerful and painful. But I ruin my life when I'm manic. I absolutely ruin my life. But do you feel good? So a lot of people who have bipolar disorder report having like elation or euphoria. I don't get that. There is a period

in the run-up where it feels like it's a good thing because I lose weight really easily without trying to. I work out like a maniac. I am very productive. I write a ton. I read a lot. I'm more sociable. I'm more apt to make my move on somebody, like on a woman if I'm interested in her, which all feels like a positive thing at the time. The problem is that as time goes on, I develop really punishing, terrible paranoia, really, really intense paranoia. What happens is like the repeated sort of behavior is I become very invested in the idea that people that are close to me, my friends and loved ones, whatever, are abandoning me, are giving up on me, are severing my friendships. As it goes on, I then accuse them of conspiring against me and

getting other people against me. I become so aggressive with checking with them, like that's what the psychiatrists always say, I have checking behaviors, like with, you know, demanding that they show their loyalty to me, that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where now they don't want to associate with me because I've been so treated them so badly, which proves the point that I was thinking. And then by the time it gets to the end, you know, I've accused ex-girlfriends of stealing from my bank account. And like, that's a, that's a big, a big one is people trying to rob me. People I know, this will be people, I mean, you know, I've I mean I've had women that I dated five years earlier and I suddenly became convinced that even though I hadn't talked to them in all those years that they had decided to break into my bank account that day.

And then at its worst, I think that people are putting glass in my food and stuff like that. So yeah, but it's like it's under those conditions in which I've destroyed a ton of relationships, ruined my career, stuff like that. So, um, yeah, but it's like, it's under those conditions in which I've destroyed a ton of relationships, ruined my career, um, you know, things like that. And it's, it's, it's in mania where I might actually kill myself, not in depression. So, um, but, uh, like I said, um, I'm on six years on meds, um, for whatever reason it took this time. Um, yeah, I freaked out again in Augustust of 2017 and i uh threatened a young woman that i had previously been uh romantically engaged with and because i'm a criminal mastermind i did it in a voicemail um and so she said she called me up and said like look if you go to the hospital tomorrow i might still call

the cops on you but if you don't go to the hospital tomorrow i'm definitely calling the cops on you and so i called my little brother and he came to rescue me again he got on the train from dc and he came and we went to um uh a uh psychiatric facility in staten island and i got back on the train and uh for whatever reason it's it stuck this time I just think I did so much damage to my professional networks and I um I mean I didn't I didn't publish anything um for three years um uh and I just think I just sort of looked around and I just looked at myself and I said you know I'm 35 years old and my little brother is here to rescue me again and like I And I can't keep doing this.

And what would you like people to – how should this inform uninformed people and how they judge and take in things that they hear in the news like Kanye, like a crime, like someone who shoots something up? I mean my whole thing is always to de-romanticize, just that it sucks, right? There's a whole genre of movies that sort of romanticize mental illness and bipolar disorder specifically.

Like Girl Interrupted, are you talking? Girl Interrupted is an edge case. Like the book by Susanna Kaysen is really good. The movie had to make it into a movie, and so it made it something that the book is not. So like almost nothing actually happens in the book because that's what it's actually like to be in one of these facilities. Like I always tell people all the time. It's like it's not like One Fle flew over the cuckoo's nest.

It's the most boring place you've ever been in your life. But in the movie, like, you know, like the character, the Angelina Jolie character who's crazy and doing all this stuff, she's really just a sort of passive background character, stuff like that. But yeah, I just tell people like it's not cool or fun. It doesn't make me more creative, right? It doesn't make me more special. It's just a shitty thing that I've had to deal with for a long time and i've come very close to like permanently ruining my life on on several occasions does it bother you when people i

saw a meme recently where somebody said stop using mental illness language casually no i'm just i guess as relates to your point about the use of language. Like when people say, oh, my God, I'm so bipolar. You know, apparently that bothers some people. I mean, nothing really bothers me. When you're on as many meds as I'm on, it's hard to be bothered by anything. No, I don't care. Like, it just, that can't hurt me. Like, it's like, you know, it's like some people, like, don't want you to casually use the word crazy.

And it's just like, I know how the human language, like how the English language works, right? The crazy is just a word that we use. Again, it's like, it's a sort of thing, like, it's hard for me to conceive of getting offended by someone saying, oh, I'm so bipolar in that way. Like, it's like what you said about homelessness, right? Like on the list of things that are their problem, like that's pretty low on it. Yeah, I I was in a facility, you know, if you spend enough time in those facilities, you do get a good appreciation for how other people have it worse. There was a guy who was on special restriction. He left pretty soon after I got there, but he was on special restriction. So he had a – I don't know if this is common, but we call the orderlies wardies in this place.

And so he had this wardie that would follow him around everywhere, and he couldn't take part in certain activities and stuff like that. And I asked somebody, why is that? And they said, well, he likes to play with need his own shit and um so apparently like he he was a he was on his best behavior and he finished out his period of special restriction and he they lifted a special restriction and it was like this really nice moment and supposedly like immediately like immediately after he was off special restriction, he just went right back out and shit in his hand and started smearing it on the wall somewhere.

And it's like, you know, I can live with people using the word bipolar. You know what I'm saying? That doesn't bother me that much. If somebody, maybe almost close. If somebody were to commit a terrible crime in the throes of a manic period and then um was sentenced somewhere and and they uh and and it was feasible that they would then from then on take their

medication forever and never once go off and the medication is reliable would you think that they should be allowed to do that would you Is there any reason that you can think of that we ought to punish somebody for what they do while they're mentally ill if the mental illness can be cured or treated? I think it's very complicated, and I think it always has to be figured out on a case-by-case basis.

I think that there's mitigating factors for everyone and for everything. I have tried to repair relationships and repair my reputation, you know? Um, and I've said like, look, like, um, you can feel any kind of way about this. Um, it is a fact that I was psychotic when I did these things and that I hope that that will inform how you feel, but ultimately, um, I'm responsible for it. Right. Like there's, well, no, you're not. Well, but there I'm responsible for it, right? Like there's –

Well, no, you're not. Well, but there's this statement that I like, which is mental illness is never your fault but always your responsibility, right? Like in other words, I have no alternative but to recognize that the world is going to hold me accountable for some of the things that I do, even under the influence of my mental illness. And I have to be the only person – I'm the only one ultimately who can regulate me. There's a great book that I reviewed that is out just this past month, I think, called The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen. And it's about the story about this guy, Michael Lauder, who was schizophrenic, but he went to Yale Law School and he flourished there.

And he became the symbol of what schizophrenic people can do. And he was this celebrated figure. They had a big piece on him in the New York Times. And then he hacked his girlfriend to death with a kitchen knife. And he's spent the 25 years since then in a high security mental hospital here in New York State. And what he is responsible for or not responsible for is a hard question, like morally and philosophically. But ultimately, like those of us who are in a state of mind where we can comprehend what we've done and try to keep a

sort of sense of ethics about what we're doing, we have to do the best that we can to regulate ourselves while also understanding that it's not always up to us. One could get into a discussion about free will and whether anything's really up to us,

but we'll save that for another day. Maybe this is the last frontier of, I don't know if civil rights is not the word, but where society has to really focus in, shine a light, and try to understand. We're going to end now, but I had a cousin growing up who was not manic, but he was paranoid, schizophrenic, and he had just horrendous things happen to him in mental institutions,

you know, just horrendous things. It's part of our family's story. And then these two dear friends, one of whom is still alive and doing well, but this one friend of mine who committed suicide, when he was very threatening to me, somehow when he came out, I never, I just felt like it was a different person. I never, it didn't stay with me. But I guess, I mean, it sounds like I'm virtue signaling. I don't mean to, but I guess that's just how I was. Like I just, for some reason,

when he was, he was him, it was wig again. I was like, okay, whatever happened, happened. But if he'd actually hurt somebody or God forbid hurt somebody I cared about, that might've been a bridge too far for me, you know, to just say, oh, it wasn't him. Anyway, it's, it's, there's, there's no answer, right? There's no answer to this. All right.

Well, you know, thank you for talking about it. It's, it's, it's riveting stuff, you know, but it's, it's also your life. So anytime, happy to talk about it. It's riveting stuff, you know, but it's also your life. Anytime. Happy to talk about it. So anyway, that's it. Okay, that's our show. Thank you, podcast at comedycellar.com for... Check out Freddie DeBoer's sub stack. And I have

a new book called How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement. It comes out September 5th. I brought three copies for the three of you. Oh, great. Yeah, so keep your eyes out for that one in September. Thank you. Thank you very, very much.

Thanks.