The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Storming the Capitol and New Years Eve Party Etiquette

Episode Date: January 9, 2021

Barry Friedman serves as the Faculty Director of the Policing Project at New York University School of Law, where he is a Professor of Law and of Politics.

This is live from the table, the official podcast of New York's world-famous comedy cellar, coming at you on Sirius XM 99 Raw Dog and on the Laugh Button Podcast Network. And this is 2021, our first show of the new year. This is Dan Natterman, of course. Noam Dorman is here. Periel Ashenbrand is here. We have with us Barry Friedman. Barry Friedman serves as the faculty director

of the Policing Project at NYU School of Law where he is the Jacob Fuchsberg Professor of Law and Affiliated Professor of Politics. Welcome Barry and Happy New Year also Barry, even though I just met you, but with the happy new year to you. And you picked a hell of a night to come join us on the heels of what some are calling an insurrection. Anyway, I guess I assume we'll talk about that. We have no real choice. But

Noam, I don't know how you want to start things off. I don't know. Can you believe what's happening? My son, I ran out with my wife to do some errands and my kids turned on the television and started to call us alarmed at what was going on. They were incredibly upset. I told them it was probably going to be fine. But my son then asked me, is today going to be in the history books? And I thought about it a moment and I said, quite possible. It's very possible today is going to be in the history books? And I thought about it a moment and I said, quite possible. It's very possible today is going to be in the history books. Oh, absolutely. I think it'll be in the history books.

I don't think that the date, January 6th, will be a date that we remember like December 7th or 9-11, although I suppose it's possible. But I think the event will be in the history books. Yeah, it's really. What do you guys think is really going on here? I mean, what is really going on? I mean, from one angle, I mean, first of all, I should start by admitting that I didn't think Trump would take it this far. You know, I thought he would. I thought he'd see the writing on the wall and back down.

I should have known better in a certain sense because one of my insights into him has always been that he doesn't have the sense to conform his behavior to his own self-interest. I mean, obviously, this is, at the point now, damaging to him. He's becoming a laughingstock, but he still can't help himself. But anyway, without the courts and the military, he never really hoped to keep power, right? So what is all this?

And what do you think he's after here? I mean, I'm not a psychologist. You should have had a psychologist on if that was the question that you wanted to talk about. If I were a psychologist, I would think he's perhaps psychotic. And therefore you are observing psychotic behavior because that's what it looks like to me. I think that's psychosis doesn't usually manifest itself in the 70 when you're 75. I mean, you're not extreme narcissism or something, right? Yeah, psychotic and layman's terms.

There's Meshuggah, Dan. True psychosis, I don't think we're dealing with here. But yeah, Meshuggah is another issue. People do lose... I mean... I mean, the only thing I can come up with is that of late-onset psychosis, the only example I can give you with is that of late onset psychosis, the only example I can give you is Scarlett O'Hara's father in Gone with the Wind.

Pretty solid until he lost his wife and his plantation, which I always thought was, by the way, a weak point in the novel. But in any case. Is that Mr. Kennedy? No, no. Scarlett O'Hara's father. Remember? He went mad.

Yeah. What's his name? His name was Gerald O'Hara. Oh, Gerald O'Hara. Oh, Scarlett O'Hara's father, remember? He went mad. Yeah, what's his name? His name was Gerald O'Hara. Oh, Gerald O'Hara. Oh, Scarlett O'Hara. Yeah, yeah. Mr. Kennedy was the guy he married, right? He married Mr. Kennedy after her first husband died.

She married Mr. Kennedy. Yeah, yeah. I got it. Who was killed in some sort of KKK operation. So, I mean... Y'all are very impressive. Right. I mean, we want to talk about the police, but it's hard to talk about the police today with what's going on. It's actually easy to talk about the police today. Go ahead. Because, you know, I, like the rest of us, sat through

months of protests about policing in which the police responded in an incredibly heavy-handed fashion. And then on an utterly predictable day when there was going to be a large crowd in the nation's capital where we built up barriers and all kinds of things to keep people away from public buildings, this mob just found its way into the U.S. Capitol. And so I have all kinds of questions for the police. Those are the people I'd really like to talk to. So I have to admit that I was doing homeschooling all day. So were they undermanned? Is that what you're saying? I mean, that's a generous view of what happened. I've seen a couple of, I don't want to judge until I know the facts. That's my nature. And the one thing I'm sure about is that we need to have a complete inquiry of everything that happened today and understand exactly who was responsible.

You know, there are people on the right now claiming that not the right word, rioters, insurrectionists, whatever word you want to use, at a gate, and there are not enough police officers there, but it looks like the police officers just stepped back and let them in. I mean, it is incredible. And so at the least, I think you have rank incompetence. And at the most, I wonder whether there isn't some complicity. So my nature is to judge having little to no information. That's what you do. I mean, I think that it's fair to say that if those were all far left or black protesters, I mean, they would all probably be dead by now.

All of them. Just mow them down. Yeah, that's right. Sorry, I'll... Is that what happened in the other protests when they were black and far left protesters? They've been mowing them down? There was no pepper spray, right? No, there was tear gas. Today? And good. And mean that's what i read good i hope there was i heard i read that they want they were warning the congressman to to get out of the way

that's true they did there was a conversation about they didn't have masks and the whole bit but you know look you knew that there was going to be this. We all knew this was not news that there was going to be a day of, you know, Trumpers flowing into Washington, D.C. and having a gathering and to not have all hands on deck then after what we've watched in city after city. I think the contrast, that was the first thing that struck me about this was that there was a double standard going on here that was very, very hard to understand. I guess I just didn't expect it to happen. I mean, I mean, you say complicity mean that somebody gave the order to let them in or something? No, I don't mean to suggest that. I mean, I certainly hope not. But I think there's a sufficient sympathy for, you know, one side of this among the police. And so maybe you're not at your sharpest, maybe you're more willing to tolerate

certain behaviors that you act, you know, excessively toward the other side. I mean, there was, I can only comment so much on New York, because I'm, I'm an advisor to the State Attorney General on how the NYPD conducted itself. But I watched protests throughout the country. And, you know, it seemed to me that there were many instances, there were protests that got out of control without any doubt, particularly on the West Coast. But in many cities, there were perfectly peaceful folks doing what they're supposed to do under the First Amendment of the Constitution, which is to petition their government for redress of grievances. And, you know, they were met with with kettling and pepper spray and all kinds of tactics that have no place in a democracy when

there's orderly demonstrations. Well, I think that I agree with you. I think we have, although I don't agree with you in all cases, in cases but by so i thought the police should have been harder i mean i you know as people's lives were ruined and their businesses burned and yeah absolutely yeah i mean the the um the thing about all these situations is that they're a hodgepodge. Some incidents are underplayed, some are overplayed, and partisans and people with agendas want to see them all one way. That's just not the way the world works. So I'm a civil libertarian guy like you, and there's no question that the police are heavy handed sometimes. And sometimes they've been told to stand down when we really needed their help. And you can look at the L.A. riots if you want to see a really heartbreaking example of that.

Right. But it's such a terrible, perfect storm here. First of all, I do believe there's a normalizing, a contagion effect of seeing rioting that just normalizes. B, the pandemic. C, this crazy Trump. D, this enabling. These people like Ted Cruz, who obviously never thought Trump was going to stay in office, but thought they could cynically hitch their wagon to the cause in the hope that this will help them in 2024, and was playing with fire. And the fire, you know, started a forest fire. Shame on him. I don't think he's coming back from this. I don't think Trump's coming back from this. And I'm a guy who, you know, was not particularly anti-Trump. I never supported him, but I defended him many times times but this is indefensible right and um and at the same time we don't want to overreact to it because we do tend to overreact to things we overreacted

to 9-11 even i mean it's very human to overreact to things and i and i did draw another analogy and then i'm going to let mr friedman talk a lot but i just wanted to, because it was an email conversation I had. I do think that there's such contempt that very few people are thinking what's best for the country. And I would say what's best for the country now really would be a bipartisan audit of this election, not because I think Trump won the election. I think that's absurd. But because, you know, 40% of the country does think that way. And they are no longer going to take the media's word for it. The media told them, even in recent history,

Trump was lying about a vaccine. 50 former intelligence operatives said that Hunter Biden was Russian disinformation. I mean, there was case after case. This is the first wolf that Trump claimed that turned out to be fake. I said, is it like a boy who cried wolf in reverse? And they're just not going to take the media's word for it. And I'll make an analogy that maybe Mr. Friedman will be angry about. I don't know. Just like on the left, we're not just on the left, just like so many people see a video of a cop killing somebody, for lack of a better word, and cannot put that in perspective in terms of a nation of 300 million

people and the hundreds of thousands of interactions with police that happen all the time. And they immediately jump from that to wanting to dismantle police departments. A lot of Trump supporters are not able to see a bag of votes found here, and a bag of votes found there, and a little election impropriety found there, which is, you know, they are finding these things, and have the perspective to say, but this doesn't mean the election was fraudulent. This doesn't mean we have to burn the whole thing down. These are basically isolated incidents which have to be dealt with in a localized way. This is very human, I think, to not be able to see things, to be able to conceive of things in perspective. We are not equipped for the information evolutionarily. We're not equipped

for what we're getting now in terms of every single thing that happens in the world showing up on our phone and being able to put that, do the math to understand that this is one incident in a planet of billions. And people are just flying off the handle in every direction when they see something that, and I don't know what the answer to this, but this is the challenge of the next part of our history. This is not going away. We overreact, we flail from left to right. So just to end with what I started, it would be very healthy. Biden would benefit immensely from a bipartisan commission that just laid it all out there and showed that this didn't happen. I know they don't want to do it because they don't want to give any credence to it, but I think 40% of the country believes this stuff. And how are we going to convince them it didn't happen? By the media reporting it? By CBS News is going to tell them it didn't happen? CNN is going to tell them it didn't happen? That's not going to work. I don't know that a bipartisan commission would work. I mean, once people get their teeth into this kind of thinking,

I think it's very tough to dissuade them. I'm going to go to my grave believing that sunlight is the best, the only disinfectant. It's not perfect. It's not going to convince everybody. Maybe it will convince a third. But I'm not going to wrap myself in the fact that Twitter and Facebook need to

start conquering this with some sort of censorship. That's clearly not going to work. And I don't want to live in that country. So I really, I just think everything needs to be aired as much as it can. And I mean, I've read some articles that were pretty convincing about election fraud. And the only reason they were convincing is I didn't have access to the facts. I mean, I knew in my gut this can't be true, all the stuff I'm reading.

But then I had to do real research and say, oh, well, no, actually, Georgia did a – you know, everything could be debunked. But who's going to take the time to do that? And how many people have the background to be able to do that kind of research? You know, people are average and they have lives. They don't have got the time to do this stuff. And really the media, I mean, really this little vaccine story is really kind of telling because they did. They fact-checked Trump in the debate and they didn't just say it was unfounded.

They said he was lying that the vaccine would be available in 2020. Lying. They had no basis for that. Now, what happened? I mean, maybe that's why Cuomo didn't bother preparing a plan to get the vaccine in New York or in California, because they believed that this was all a lie. Like, if they really believed what Trump was saying, or that there'd be a vaccine in 30 days or less, I imagine Cuomo would be saying, hey, shit, we need to get on this. There's going to

be a vaccine in three weeks. But no, every network said it's a lie. It's not going to be for another year at least, right? This is what they reported. This is all part of the story. Everywhere you look. And one more thing, and I really will shut up, but you said about incompetence. There's incompetence everywhere. You get the feeling that people like de Blasio and Cuomo are like, holy shit, I never thought I would actually have to handle something. I never thought I was going to have to be an executive and actually do things. Our leaders run on poetry now. Whoever has the best poetry wins. And there's such a vast thing we expect from them. We can't even judge whether they can do anything right anymore.

Bloomberg one time didn't clear the streets of snow. Remember that? And he got in a lot of trouble because the snow wasn't cleared on time. But otherwise, who the fuck knows what these people do? And I don't think Cuomo or de Blasio ever imagined in a million years that they'd actually be responsible for rolling up their sleeves and managing something the way like I have to manage a restaurant. They're just figureheads. It's all empty suits. Same thing probably with whatever who's running DC. Where are we not led by empty suits anymore? Who's a capable leader? Can you name one? Biden? Who? All right, I'm done. You've thrown a lot on the table.

That was a long, one of your longest, I dare say. Yeah, but it's what I've been thinking about lately. And I hope that doesn't sound like a partisan thing. It's not. I love my country. I want what's best for the country. I don't really care if they raise taxes or lower taxes. That's not an I love my country. I want what's best for the country. I don't really care if they raise taxes or lower taxes. That's not an important issue right now.

I'm glad that we're taping for about six hours so we can work through all of that. Go ahead. Go ahead. Now, go ahead, Mr. Freeman. No, I mean, I don't, and you can call me Barry. He always does that, Barry. He leads with the mister. I have two reactions to that diatribe. The first is, you know, which you really want to get on here, because I'm an ersatz constitutional, I mean, I'm a constitutional law professor, but the First Amendment isn't my specialty. But, you know, and I have a good friend, for example, at the University of Chicago that's deeply immersed in all of this. We used to have this, we had fewer channels of communication. We had a fairness doctrine, which said that you had to have equal time for both sides of something.

And people got two sides of something. They got more of a story. And you're absolutely right that we all live in our little silo where we get whatever collection of how to reconcile the first amendment with that problem and that is just a huge huge social policy problem that maybe is at the top of the list up there with you know global warming because if we can't manage to operate from the same set of facts we can't have same conversation if we can't have same conversation we can't live peaceably and And that's what we learned today. So that's, that's that. And I'm happy to talk more about that if you'd like. You know, on the, on the, just because you brought up the police shooting and that's tumbled in and out, and that was what we were going to talk about tonight was policing. You know what I would say, first, I just want to point out that we're a bunch of white folks talking

about policing. And I know you tried to not have that we're a bunch of white folks talking about policing. And I know you tried to not have that be the group of us and it didn't work out that way. But I try never to be in a group of white folks talking about policing because we're usually not the folks being policed. And I think it's important to have conversations with people who are impacted by the thing that you're talking about. Just to tell the listeners, we had someone scheduled and for whatever reason, at the very last minute, they didn't appear. They got arrested actually.

Go ahead. You never know. So, you know, I think, look, I live in the world of policing. I spend a lot of time with folks in impacted communities. I spend a lot of time with police. The policing project that I run,

it's an article of faith that we work with all stakeholders. I know a lot of time with police, the policing project that I run. It's an article of faith that we work with all stakeholders. I know lots of really terrific cops. There's just no doubt about it. Very impressive people. But the institution itself is broken. It's broken in a lot of ways. And this kind of feeds into your little talk there, which is it's broken because we don't want to see the truth about it. You know, people want to be on one side or the other of this. They want to be for the police or against the police. And if you take that perspective, instead of really looking at a situation and saying, what are the problems and how do we fix them? You never fix them. And I think, and I think that's where we are with policing, which is-

Everything seems to be, you mentioned all or nothing. Isn't that the discourse? Isn't everything about kind of an all or nothing discourse these days the discourse isn't everything about kind of an all or nothing discourse these days either trump is the devil or trump is a savior either immigration either we got to open the borders or we gotta uh not let anybody in i almost every conversation even if we get into me too either you believe all women or you or you say they're all lying whores i mean there doesn't seem to be any middle ground in any of the discussions. Some of them are lying whores.

Is that what you mean? That's a middle ground. That would be a middle ground. But I mean, like, you know, every time there's a Me Too incident, the question is, who do you believe? Yeah, no, no. Who do you believe is not the appropriate question.

The appropriate question is, what is more likely? I mean, I don't believe anybody unless I hear all the facts. The appropriate question for all of this, and I think Noam is right about his point about suits. I have this huge respect for technocrats, right? People that actually try to understand problems and solve them. And I've been fortunate in my life to work with some really really good people who are really good at running stuff and i learned the lesson that you can you can fix things if you try to run them uh and and i do think that

you know our politics has become shrill and empty and embarrassing you know you said you love the country and i i've always been such a patriot but but I'm embarrassed to the core. I mean, I have lost so much faith in the people I inhabit this space with. Everything that, you know, I've learned just how short-sighted people are and how incautious and selfish and greedy. And it's hugely disappointing to me because we are facing a set of serious, serious problems. But they are not beyond our capability to address. They never have been. And it's never been the spirit of this country to sort of look at a problem and say we can't

tackle that. But we are just tripping over our feet and making fools of ourselves right now. And yet, at the same time, at the same time where there is reason to be self-conscious, embarrassed, whatever word you want to use about being an American. I mean, we are at the height of our badassery in so many ways as a country. We used to have embarrassing automobiles. I mean, the Ford Pinto, hello. Now we've got Tesla. The biggest, baddest car company on the block is an American company.

We have Apple computers. You know, we have Facebook. We we the vaccine that was us you know more or less i mean it was us and and and some other companies but a lot of it was us we're kind of at the height of our powers in many ways our private sector is still quite good and and i think our public sector, first of all, I think fewer people than ever before, by far, would even consider a life in the public sector right now. I mean, I toyed with it at one time, just who wants to be attacked and taken down and they find it on email or they find some disgruntled person or like, it's people who can make good money on the outside um it's asking a lot for them to be ruined by running for office and be this i was alluding

to the poetry listen i had a lot of beefs with mayor bloomberg and um and i didn't like uh in particular his his stop and frisk stuff i you know I don't know when he apologized, he meant it or it was just politics. But and I'm just so you know, Barry, I'm a pretty right wing guy. But I always thought what was going on with stop and frisk was just wrong. But anyway, is there any doubt that we would want Bloomberg right now when we're trying to do this vaccination? I mean, Jesus Christ, we have to understand what's important. And we just lost sight of the fact that at some point we also need people who can actually do the job. It's not just about them saying flowery things and the fact that they never insulted anybody and that they tip their hat to the right people.

It's like, you know, you need somebody who can do it. And Bloomberg could do it. You're absolutely right about the capability of governing. You know, one of my heroes is Winston Churchill, who nobody could stand until they were in total trouble. And then that was who they turned to because he could solve problems. And you need those people. Bloomberg was completely wrong about stop and frisk.

I mean, I'd love to get to have a candid conversation with him someday about exactly what it was he was thinking. I mean, it's not crazy what he was thinking. You know, my students who are always extremely upset about stop and frisk, I will often stand in the aisle in the classroom and I'll say, let's just stop and think about this for a minute. I mean, Michael Bloomberg's a smart guy. But for this, I'd turn a lot of governing over to the guy. I mean, he's, you know, he's got hands down over a lot of people we've got running things right now. What was going on? You know, what he thought was, if we just jack up everybody when they walk out of their houses. Well, I should take a step back. Michael Bloomberg hates gun violence.

And he has put his money where his mouth is. I mean, he's set up a huge foundation to deal with the problem. It's a really, really serious problem. And it just, it's, I mean, I've never talked to him about it, but it's obvious how much it upsets him. And so he figured if you just jack up everybody, when they walk out of their house, they're going to leave their guns at home. And that's not insane. It's just completely unconstitutional and disrespectful of human beings. And, you know, it's just, it was, I mean, it's interesting. Another hero of mine is Franklin Roosevelt. And Franklin Roosevelt, but he made some huge missteps, right? You know, one of them was certainly going along with the Japanese internment was huge and

packing the court and we're trying to pack the court in retrospect. That's complicated whether that was a mistake or not. Actually, we could talk about court packing if you want to talk about everything about policing. But, but, you know, it's, it's, you're right. One other thing I want to say, just because now I understand how the show works, and I get to talk for as long as I can until somebody manages to barge in. You know, you were talking about the private sector, and the private sector, you know, you were talking about the private sector and the private sector, you know, it has advantages and disadvantages. And one of the advantages is the profit motive. And one of the disadvantages is the profit motive. So that's why you need regulation. I mean, we're seeing that with Facebook now,

right? I mean, Facebook is a disaster for the country in many, many ways, but I saw an interesting thing on Twitter right before we started, which is two groups that have come out and condemned what happened today in terms that I'll tell you in a moment, we're startling, where the national association of manufacturers, the U S chamber of commerce. Now those are both super conservative groups that have had a lot of money flowing into them to try to get, you know,

to ease up regulation and let them do whatever it is that they want to do. And the national association of manufacturers called this an insurrection and suggested invoking the 25th Amendment. So what you see, and we've seen industry speaking up more and more about Trump, and it's really fascinating, is folks whose vested interest is their pocket don't have much time for this nonsense. Like it was all great when they could get the judges that they wanted and they could get the tax cuts that they wanted, but this is runs the risk of interfering with their making money. And they have, you know, that's, they got no patience for that.

Absolutely. I mean, you, I have to say, when you say they're, they're making money, it's, it sounds a little cynical. I mean, making money is, you know, we all depend on our pipeline to make money. I'm all for capitalism. I'm not, you're not, you're not going to be criticizing. And I think it makes the world go around. Well, it's just, you know, it's how we feed our children. It's how we have our lives. It's how we, you know, we don't have much time on earth. And this is how we make the best of it. We have to, you know, that's what's important to us. Let's talk about the police for a second. So I can make the moral case for Bloomberg. And I think it's kind of what you were backing into, which is that from Bloomberg's point of view, he would say, listen, a hundred fewer people died because of this policy.

You want to be the guy who says, you know, let's have a hundred more deaths. But, and that is a difficult, it's not a racist trade-off. It's a difficult trade-off. But I think that he, like, and this is his weakness in most areas that he was weak. He just didn't have the life experience to understand how many people were being humiliated every day. If it had happened to him twice, he would have backed off that policy in some way, or at least changed in some way. A hundred, that, you know, so I'll tell you, I had a conversation with a friend of mine who I'm

going to allow to remain nameless in this story, but a very, very accomplished academic and, you know, coming at things both with a good heart and from the left. And one of the things at the policing project that we, our main thing that we believe is that the, you know, public should have a say in how they're policed. And that's not how we've done things in this country. And then the other thing that we believe in a lot is science and cost-benefit analysis. And I had this conversation with this guy. And he said, you know, the problem with bringing cost-benefit analysis to stop and frisk is if you save 100 lives and you value a life at $9 million, which is something like we tend to do in the environmental sphere, that's a lot of money. It takes a lot of

harm to overcome that benefit that you think you're getting from stop and frisk. But even he wasn't picking it apart. When you start to look at the number of people, what dollar figure do you put on the humiliation that they experience? what dollar figure do you put on the humiliation that they experience? What dollar figure do you put on? There are studies now that are starting to show that, you know, in these neighborhoods where there's huge stop and frisk, kids aren't doing as well in school. People are declining to vote. They're doing all kinds of things. And so this is the biggest problem with policing in many ways is that we police first and ask questions later. We don't think about the social costs of what we're doing. And it's really sad because, I mean, I'll tell you

what makes me crazy is not being smart. You know, that's what makes me totally crazy. And there's so many times when we can address problems in a smart way without humiliating people, but it's just not been the nature. Can I add to that? There's also something that can be a little facile or maybe that sounds intentional, but what happens with cost benefit analysis is that it can sometimes just be wrong. I know many times in my business, this happened recently with something as stupid as bagging the phones so that the public wouldn't be able to have their cell phones during the show. I won't go into the whole story, but that's the most recent example. When you take an option off

the table, all of a sudden, the smart minds put attention to the problem in a way that they never did before about what other way can we achieve this benefit. So when, yeah, stop and frisk was an easy way to save those hundred lives. But that doesn't mean that if you take stop and frisk off the table, that there wouldn't be other ways that people would come up with to save those same hundred lives. Necessity is the mother of invention. And there is something that is a good management technique to say, listen, I don't care. We're not doing it this way anymore. And also, by the way, we're not going to have 100 people die. So now go in that room and you figure it out. And maybe we need trial and error, but

we're going to figure out a way to save these 100 lives without humiliating people. And you push that down from the top. And then more often than not, you'll be amazed what will bubble back up. But that's how cost-benefit analysis is supposed to work. People think that what you do is you, and partly you do, you take a piece of paper, you draw a line down the middle, like here's the cost, here are the benefits, let's put a value on each of them, and then we decide. But that's wrong. One of the things we try to teach at the Policing Project is you take that, and this is how we think, you know, I've got this background up here, right. Which is about facial recognition. And so, you know, people look at technologies and they fight over them like everything else

you've been describing, you know, we're a Ford, we're against it. Let's ban facial recognition. Let's have facial recognition. What you're supposed to do is say, what are the benefits we think we can get from it? What are the harms that are going to come from it? And then can we think of a policy? Can we think of an approach that lets us get the benefits and gets rid of the harms? That's exactly what you're supposed to do is go to that room and say, is there another way to, if the expression

is crack that egg, right? And that's what we just don't do. And I don't, you said something way early in the taping here about where we are today versus where we are in the past. And I started to bridle at that because I always bridle at people who say that. I wrote a book about the relationship between public opinion and the Supreme Court. And it caused me to track U.S. history pretty closely for 200 and many years. And one of the things you learn when you do that is the more things change, the more they're the same. They, you know, you say things are like this today, and they were different before, it turns out it's almost never true. They were, they were just as bad in some ways back then. And so it's hard to know whether, how we've actually changed. I mean, I feel it a lot of

years, I'm sure all of you do, right, which is that the time we're living in now is unique, and it's nothing like how politics looked in the past, and you can, there are examples of it, you know, there was a time when there was this club in the Senate of people from the left and the right who had lunch together once a week, Democrats and Republicans, I don't know how big the club was at its biggest, but you know have been like 25 people and eventually went to zero. They just don't communicate anymore. And so that is a problem. And it's what keeps us from being smart.

So you're right to point, Dan, to the way that in some ways private industry is crushing it and government is just completely failing us. I mean, I'd love to know why the vaccine disaster is happening. I think part of it is not just the state. I think it's the federal government. I think that they failed completely to plan for a rollout. Like they just, they dropped that ball, but I'm, I'm furious. I get calls. You probably are too, from people all over the country are getting the vaccine. Yeah. And here in New York, it's like, I don't know what the hell's going on. Yeah. I mean, of course I, I, I just assume everybody did a lousy job. The federal government, obviously. But I mean, when you read about what's going on in New York,

I mean, they can't even figure out a way to blame the federal government at this point. You know, I mean, it's just, I mean, Cuomo, you think maybe he should have been writing that mission accomplished book? I mean, what the hell is with you? I'm still with you. And, you know, I think, I mean, I don't know enough about this issue, so let me speak to it eloquently, because why should I be different than anyone else in the country?

So, you know, he, but I didn't, I think his authoritarian streak is just defeating him and all the rest of us right now. So he's, you know, he's like a million dollar fine if you vaccinate somebody who should be vaccinated. And yes, they don't have the people in the first category that we want vaccinated but we are not going to move on to the second category we're going to ascribe blame to the hospitals that can't finish the first category and it's like what are you thinking like just find some arms and start sticking some needles

in them and let's go like day and night time square let's be doing it before we blame the federal government i mean we still have to get over the hurdle. Can you believe they were taking holidays and weekends and after hours off on this vaccine stuff? I mean, what the hell? This is a pandemic. People are dying and they're not vaccinating 24-7? I mean, you can't. And imagine what that implies about everything we don't know about

what's going on. You're exactly right. I mean, I don't, I don't understand which part of this is a disaster you don't get, but I mean, you're, you're a, you know, a business person. I mean, you know, it's, it's interesting. I've got a daughter who sometimes thinks she'd like to be a comic. So I said, I'm going to take you to a comedy club if we can ever go to one again. I mean, it's like, this is ridiculous. And, you know, I crave going to a restaurant and having somebody bring me a piece of stemware that I don't have to clean myself and pouring some wine into it. Like that's my fantasy in the world. And everybody's suffering and the idea that we are not fully mobile. And this, you know, this is, again, I've thought I didn't live through World War II, obviously, none of us did, but we've read a lot

about it. And I do think that there was a sense of shared espiry and sacrifice in the country that we have just lost. I think this is what ends republics, if you want a really dour look at it, which is that if you can't manage to find the, you know, shared respect for people and willingness to jump in and take some of the burden on yourself and not be selfish, but you're absolutely right. Why we're not out there day and night vaccinating people is a mystery to me. Yeah. I think the Republic will bounce back, but I, I, I don't know, but I want to talk about the police too, but Perry, you want to just say something?

Well, I have a question and maybe it's relevant and maybe it's not, but you know, I'll just take our Jew factor to like the nth power while we're at it. So I have a lot of family who's in Israel and they're vaccinating everyone there. I mean, it's, they've vaccinated, there are 9 million people in the country, and I think over a million have been vaccinated already. I mean, is there any explanation how, and so I spoke to my from the other side, like big, powerful America, who everybody thinks is, you know, I don't know, so strong and so far ahead of everyone is so far behind on this. Yep. I mean, Israel's not run by, you can say what you want about Netanyahu,

but he's not an empty suit. You know, I mean, the, the, the guy, the guy is very capable. It's, it's what his goals are that make people may object to, but no, he's not Trump. He's not de Blasio. He's not Cuomo. The guy is very, very capable. And the country and the country is quite capable, obviously. Look what they do. I mean, it's astonishing, you know? Have you read the articles about the way the Koreans are, what's the matter, Dan? Dan, your mic is off, Dan. Oh, here I am. Have you read the article about the way the

Koreans are managing? I mean, they have such a thorough procedure of entering and leaving that country. And I mean, I mean, I complained about this before. Everything here is kind of like an honor system. Wear a mask. But if you don't wear a mask, it's OK. And yes, officer, right? Like they nothing's taken seriously. No real fines.

They don't treat it as seriously as urinating on the street. In Korea, and the countries that are serious, I mean, they are imposing strict standards of behavior on people. When they tell you to quarantine, it's not on your honor. You quarantine, and if you don't, you go to jail or whatever it is, you know. And the results speak for themselves. I mean, maybe we don't want to live that way. Go ahead. We were talking before about the country that people care about each other. And America is, you know, built on the frontier spirit, spirit of independence, which has its place. And there's a lot of good to be said about it. But there are times when you need to all get together and have a common goal. I mean, you know, the Koreans, first of all, they're all Korean. I don't know. You know, and there've been studies

that say that people that are all one thing tend to trust each other more. It's okay, Peter Beinart referred to the same study. So you're okay then. You can get away with it. So, you know, that might be relevant. Maybe the fact that we're so multi-ethnic. On the other hand, Canada's almost as multi-ethnic

as we are, and they seem to be, have a more of a all for one spirit self-interest here this is not i i understand but this isn't about caring for others this is just i really we are just and cynicism of government which here it seems to be far greater than although in france by the way you know as i watch french news because you know i study the language it's part of my studies there there's a lot of cynicism and a lot of skepticism about the vaccine. They have a very high rate of skepticism with regard to the vaccine.

And many of them also think that the government is conspiring, that this whole thing is a conspiracy, this whole pandemic. So we're not the only ones. I mean, it's really, we should be ashamed of ourselves really we'll get our shit together we always do it is inexcusable

across the fucking board it really is look you can't have everything we have the best music we have the best music England has good music but we have amongst the best music have you ever listened to like pop music from from other countries i'm listening and we have you know the companies like i said the technology i mean i don't know that facebook is something to be showing off about right now i think you're right by the way i think facebook and particularly

instagram in particular are nothing to be proud of but there's a lot of a lot not to be showing off about right now. I think you're right, by the way. I think Facebook and particularly Instagram in particular are nothing to be proud of. But there's a lot of- A lot not to be proud of. So I'm going to have to leave you because I have to go deal with policing. Wait, wait, guys. I have one question for you. Can I have time for one more question?

Yeah, but you know what? You have to make me a promise. Sure. Which is you have to have me back on to talk about policing. Yeah, absolutely. I'm envious because I realize I'm in the wrong business.

Like if I was in y'all's business, I could just say anything, which would be fun. I'm kind of, I wish I could get like a pass on everything for just like, you know, 45 minutes to get to say anything. And I would have a really good time to get that out of my system. But in the meantime, but this is the thing, but this is it, Barry. First of all, obviously today was a ridiculous day. So, you know, it was almost ridiculous to not talk about the elephant on the mall. I agree. But next time that there's, you know, unfortunately, I'm sure there will be at some point another incident where the police are front and center in the news. Let's try to get you on like that week or the week after.

So it's, you know, but what I really wanted to talk, what I wanted to talk to you about initially when I found you and I asked you to contact you was qualified immunity and what your feelings were about qualified immunity. Cause I'm quite skeptical of getting rid of qualified immunity. I'll tell you. Yeah. You asked. Yeah. And maybe you should tell people what it is too. It is interesting that you found me. I mean, we, in, in normal life, when our, when we were going to our offices are yours in my office, we could throw a rock from one to the other.

But the, so look, the rule is that if the police harm somebody, a police officer harms somebody, you sue them. People sue. It's America, that's what you do. And when people are responsible for things they pay. But the police have this magic shield that the Supreme Court has given them called qualified immunity. And what qualified immunity says is, even if you did wrong, so an ordinary person would be responsible. You're not unless you can show that there's a prior court case that said exactly what you did was wrong. And since there's always some difference, you know, the dog was big, the dog was little, the person was standing up, they were sitting down, police officers never get held responsible. But I am going to answer your question, tell you how I feel about qualified immunity, because if this had been a normal

conversation about policing, this would have been the first thing I said. And you're absolutely right. That was not the thing to talk about today. So the whole policing project is built off of a book I wrote called Unwarranted, Policing Without Permission. And it was because a light bulb went off in my head in 2006. And there's a funny law teaching story behind the light bulb, but the light bulb was this. We talk about accountability in government all the time. We've talked about government a lot tonight. And accountability in policing turns out to mean something completely different than in the rest of government. And that's where we've gone wrong. So in the rest of government, when we talk about accountability, what we mean

is that legislative bodies get together in public, transparently, and they adopt policies that the people ostensibly want. We all know that goes wrong in every way imaginable, but that's the idea. Call that front-end accountability. In policing, when we want to hold people accountable, it's always on the back end after something's gone wrong. We want to bring a lawsuit against them. We want to prosecute officers. We want to have federal investigations. We want to have special monitors.

We want to have body cameras so we can see. And where we've gone wrong in policing is in not focusing on the front end, on not creating rules and policies for how to do things so that the bad stuff doesn't happen. You know, you made the point, and I think there's some fairness to the point that, you know,

a thousand people shot and killed may seem like a small number compared to 300 million people that live in the country. But that's the wrong question. It's completely the wrong question. The question is, did those thousand people need to die? Right. And not only that, but there's lots more that get jacked up that are the wrong question. It's completely the wrong question. The question is, did those thousand people need to die?

And not only that, but there's lots more that get jacked up that are the victims of use as a force. And the question is, does that all need to happen? And that wouldn't need to happen and wouldn't happen if we had the proper governance on the front end. Now, I will just say as a last word on this subject, I don't think you're ever going to fix policing by doing what a lot of people want, which is to get the blood of police officers after something's gone wrong.

It's never going to work. What we should do, because there should be responsibility when terrible things happen is that the end should be, you know, liability is the, the, the, the employer should be liable. The breakage in this system is that it's hard to sue the cities. And it's hard to make the cities pay. And then when the cities pay, they don't take it out of the budget of the police department.

So the police department never wants to get any better. You know, if you don't clean your sidewalk when there's been a snowstorm and it's icy and somebody falls and breaks a hip, you're responsible. And because you know that you're responsible, what do you do? You clean the sidewalk yeah unless there's that responsibility in the system somewhere the sidewalk never gets clean dude i agree with you i well i agree with a hundred percent that's exactly my what i was what my common sense has led me to that if you expect a policeman to start having liability insurance and then of course the the policemen who have the most dangerous beats are going to have to pay the highest insurance and they, you know, they can't get a raise.

And I mean, it's something that just seems unmanageable. But yeah, sue the municipality. Absolutely. The municipality should pay. Yeah. Is it possible, Barry, that policing is just sort of an impossible job? I mean, OK, we're going to pay you, you know, at best $90,000 and you have to be a psychologist. You have to be a soldier.

You have to be a lawyer. You know, you have to be, it's a job that nobody can do. So I don't, I'm going to answer your question, then you have to let me go. Because actually there's a policing thing I have to go deal with, but, uh, but, uh, um, let me just ask my wife to keep the dinner warm. Uh, so, uh, so the, uh, it's not an impossible job. It's a really hard job. I don't think people understand how hard it is. I didn't understand until I started to ride around in police cars, how hard it is. I could not do the job. I would not want to do the job. Some people are incredibly good at it. Some people are

incredibly bad at it. We have this idea. Two big ideas drive the policing project. One is this idea of front-end accountability. The other is an idea about reimagining public safety. So next time we talk, I'll tell you more, but I have a paper and a piece in the Wall Street Journal and we're working hard on this. In my dream world, you know, you're hearing a lot of people who are now saying correctly, you know, the cops get asked to do all this stuff that they're not trained to do, just what you just went down the list, social worker, lawyer, you know, confidant, the whole bit. So what if we actually imagined that instead of we've got these police cars driving around the city, you know, with people that have whatever pay they get, whatever education they have, and they've got a gun strapped to their side.

Instead, we had cars driving around that said first on them. And the first responders were like the equivalent of emergency room doctors in the sense you go to the emergency room, you see a doctor, that doctor's got three jobs. Stabilize you. Fix the problem if they can, because they're generalists. And then if not, they send you on to a specialist to actually get the problem solved. So what if we had generalist first responders with four-year degrees who were taught dispute resolution, social services, basic EMS, you know, go down your list. And they had a different incentive system, which wasn't, you know, to get rewarded for arrests and stops,

but to get rewarded for solving problems. I think that world's possible. That's the, you know, gnomes idea of taking smart people and putting them in a room and getting them to solve problems. I think we could move to that world. And that is a part of what I'm working toward. And now you have to let me go. Okay, Barry. It's a pleasure.

Happy New Year once again. And we'll see you again. It was really good. Let's get him on again soon, okay? Hurry up. Okay, nice to meet you. Now we have to do this. Manny Dorman.

Take care. Thank you, Barry. I'll be in touch. Happy New Year, Manny. Bye, Barry. Happy New Year. Thank you very Bye, guys. Happy New Year. Thank you very much. We hope it's a good one.

Okay, was that a, what's that? It's a person. Person at the van. Oh. You know who that is, of course. That's your friend's mom. Hi, Manny. You know, the camera puts 10 pounds on you.

Hi. All right. um you know the camera the camera puts 10 pounds on this thing all right um so so um oh again dad i gotta tell you a great story before we go you have something you want to say go ahead you go first no i'm just gonna say do we have any other yeah yeah dan what do you think about this so perry all came to my house for new year we invited her to a new year's party right and uh everybody got dressed clarified that you knew her mike i i put on a jacket um it was our new year's party the kids got dressed up man party no like we we don't see anybody else though right like it's just us and and and another friend came over and outside steve is here he's been staying with me for quarantine together though we were gonna spend New Year's we were doing New Year's Eve together we catered dinner

from the chain from the Italian restaurant everything 1135 Perry else says okay we're leaving now I'm like what do you mean you're leaving us goes what do you mean it's time to go home I'm like it's 11 35 she goes 9 30. what she goes what you expected us to stay past midnight i'm like yes it's a new year's eve party why would who in the world wouldn't think you're staying past midnight when you're half the party she goes well you didn't tell us you wanted us to stay till midnight i'm like tell you have you ever even seen a movie of a New Year's Eve party? Like, like, have you ever, do you understand anything about New Year's Eve? What it means to celebrate New Year's Eve? Dan, how do you account for this? It's very strange.

First of all, it's not an, it's not accurate. It was nine, it was nine o'clock or 9 30 11 35 that's totally it was not 9 30 it may have been 10 30 no it was earlier than that steve we'll have bring steve into uh decide this it's absurd to think that you're gonna leave new year's eve before midnight go ahead dan let dan let dan talk that is odd now had you said we're very tired i know that it's New Year's Eve, but for what, but she didn't, it sounded to me like she thought it was normal,

which is the weirdest part. In other words, she didn't say, you know what, I know it's New Year's Eve, but this, we got to do this. She just said,

okay, that I think is odd. I can't account for it. We both have seven-year-old sons, and they play together, and she's like, well, it's,

I have a seven-year-old. He has to go to bed. I'm's New Year's Eve is those boys on vacation what's gonna happen he can stay up so New Year's all my kids they have to midnight like like this like the charm maybe think I'm a bad parent you're gonna let your son stay up past New Year's? What are you, should I call Child Protection Services? He's seven years old. You could have told him at 9.30 it was midnight. They wouldn't know the fucking difference. I don't lie to my kids. So in the end, the kids- It's the most ridiculous thing in the world

to think that you have to stay up until midnight at a New Year's Eve. Hold on, Manny wants to say something. Come here, come here. You got to talk quietly until midnight at a kid's year's eve. Hold on, Manny wants to say something. Come here, come here. You got to talk quietly and into the microphone, into the camera. Go ahead.

No, no, no, you don't have to. Go ahead, just say it. Even if Daddy tried to lie, I would check the time and say, you're lying, Daddy. Oh, yeah. They actually know how to tell time at seven years old, by the way,

for real. They wouldn't know the difference if at 10 o'clock, you're like, it's time for bed. Happy New Year. No, I did you know the years was at midnight yeah you tell the truth yeah make a stupid face tell Tell the truth. Alright, get out of here. This is crazy. You should go to bed. It's midnight. It's midnight. Go to bed.

I think I've left categorically almost every New Year's Eve party I've ever gone to before midnight. It's ridiculous to think that... And your husband, Guy, I don't know which way he came out because he was

he was unusually and characteristically quiet during all of this it either meant it either meant oh my fucking wife or it could have meant what is with this dude he really said now i gotta stay here past midnight for his for this asshole i don't know where he was coming from listen the thing is is you're coming from the mentality of being at the club and really celebrating new year's no i'm coming from the mentality of every single new year's gathering that i've ever heard of on planet earth it involves a countdown happy new year busy afterwards i mean that'd be it's like you're going to a birthday party and you don't stick around for the presents or the cake that's exactly what it's like you're going to a birthday party and you don't stick around for the presents or the cake. That's exactly what it's like. I had to make an analogy. That's right.

You don't leave until they blow out the candle. You're like, happy new year. Then, you know, good night. I think we've, we look, we've, we've, uh, there's not much more to say about this. Perrielle obviously doesn't know much about new year's traditions whatever um i don't know there's much more to say about this i did want to discuss the article if we uh i had that i mean i just say one more thing which is that noam was so uncharacteristically like in a good mood and like excited i mean that was he was so excited about new year's eve i've never seen him like that before well my new year's i actually did i was excited too because that was the first time i'd actually done anything in so long i went to a friend of mine's house we had takeout um

and uh you know i was out and about in a way for the first time in like a couple of months you know other than when i was in aruba but um i did want to talk about noam's uh noam gave an interview noam's been out of the public eye for a long time noam used to be always being interviewed for this and that but he gave an interview to the gothamist which i guess is a online something or other about i think they might actually have a print uh go ahead but anyway he gave an interview about what he sees as the state of comedy and it's a lot of the stuff we've already talked about on the show he sees it coming back that there's no real substitute for going out that people want to go out and that sometimes people just go out and

comedy's an afterthought they say i'm going out what should we do so a lot of this stuff we've heard before noam you know he has certain themes that he hits over and over again but one of the things that struck me in the article was noam once again downplaying it seemed to me like you know he has certain themes that he hits over and over again but one of the things that struck me in the article was noam once again downplaying it seemed to me like you know at least i see it the comedy seller success he was saying up until five years ago it was really touch and go um and you know if this had happened five years ago maybe they couldn't have survived it as i recall five years ago i mean things, things have been going, in my recollection, the comedy cell has been going gangbusters

since about, I would say, 2000. No, no, no, no. What changed everything was when we opened the additional rooms. Now, maybe that was six years ago. I lost track of the time. But that's when, you can take that down now, if you don't mind that that was when my my

situation changed for real was he was the extra 200 seats even even listen Listen, in 2000, things were touch and go, right? He's thinking about the Louis show. I didn't say business was touch and go then. What I said was that I wouldn't have been able to survive this, meaning that if business went down to zero um personally i would have had no money i mean i i made a good living at that time but i wasn't able to save any money and i don't know how i would have lived a year without any income i don't know what i would have done yeah Yeah, well, but how are the other club owners? Oh, also, another thing I wanted to discuss is,

Noam, I tried to imagine other club owners giving an interview, and I always do this whenever, it absolutely, if you read the article, and if you know anything about the clubs in New York City, it's absolutely so striking, the difference between Noam and the other club

owners. I don't want to say the other club owners are dumb. They're not dumb. They're scrappers, okay? They're generally- Al Martin is pretty eloquent, no? Yeah, I suppose. It's just very tough to imagine. For example, you used the phrase Hobson's choice in New York. Yeah,ginally correct. No other comedy club owner would ever use the phrase, even though you didn't use it 100% correctly. Be that as it may, no other club owner would ever use the phrase Hobson's Choice. True or false?

True, Dan. I would say that's a true. I don't know that for sure. I think one could bet with a reasonable degree of confidence. If I had to put money on it, I wouldn't be too nervous about losing that bet. I mean, just for the record on that Gothamist interview, they didn't tell me it was going to be published as a one-on-one interview. I got the impression that they just wanted a quote or two from me for a larger article,

which would include many other business people. So I didn't speak very carefully. So there's a lot of conversational disjointed things, which I was surprised they didn't clean up. But all in all, I'm getting a lot of positive feedback about the article. So I guess I'm happy with it. Just to be clear, a Hobson's choice is basically a take it or leave it choice. Basically no choice at all.

Yeah, but would Noam seem to be using it as a choice between two bad options, which is how it's often used, but that's not what a Hobson's choice is. Well, you can see it either way, because at some point, some business owners faced with the choice of losing everything or just opening in some sort of underground way, they may see they have no actual choice. I mean, well, like one, one, one, I think classic Hobbes's choice is I do this or you're fired. Right. So, so that's kind of like do this or you're, you know,

you lose everything. So you could see it there, but then later on I put it slightly differently. So anyway, you could quibble with whether I use it particularly 100% accurately. I could sneak by, I think. Is there a difference between that and Sophie's Choice? Well, Sophie's Choice is a movie. No, but it's an expression also. No, I've never heard any.

I mean, I guess people use the expression because it's a movie that's famous. never heard any but i mean i get people use the expression because it's a movie that's famous so people use that expression i don't hear it used often but sophie's choice was no that's like a like a horrific choice when you have it i mean i mean you know if you had to pick which baby was going to die right so hops hops's choice is defined as a choice of taking what is available or nothing at all. So, you know, nothing at all could be, you know, what's available is opening up and nothing at all is complying with the law, right? So, I think it's all right, actually. Anyway. that it's really important just because of everything that's going on that we re-articulate

the confines in which we're operating here to really carefully define the word New Year's, the phrase New Year's party. Well, again, I think we've gone through that. No, I'm really serious. I mean, especially because we've been so careful. Noam is really the only person, much to his chagrin, I'm sure. Much. That I've seen since March. I mean, since June, rather. So. Yeah, we have two families who basically live in a bubble.

From time to time, I will see somebody like, we had somebody who came over on New Year's, but he had to quarantine for seven days in his house and then took a day, took a test on the day of new year's and came straight from the test immediately to my house, which is about as safe as you can get. You know, if you're going to see anybody and that's, and that's what I did. And that was only because it was new year's, but I, I think that's a safe protocol seven Seven-day hard quarantine and then a test and then go visit someone.

I mean, nothing's perfect, but I think that's pretty safe. That's what we did. I also had to hear it written down, Noam, very quickly on New Year's Eve. Speaking of New Year's Eve, the Comedy Cellar, for the first time, ventured into online, well, not the first time, but for the first time since the pandemic, I think. The Comedy Cellar ventured into the world of virtual comedy with Mint Comedy, which is something that Chappelle's former manager, Mustafa, I don't know his last name, I think was involved in. Abuelita. You know, that's not my thing.

I just let them use the room. Oh, you let them use the room. Well, do you know how it went? It went well. It went well. They sold, I think, almost 1,000 tickets. And the show, it was a three-camera thing. And the show was high quality.

They tested everybody. They had 35 people, I think, in the audience. And they tested everybody before they came in. But I didn't want to be involved in that. I didn't want to get involved in a business way in that whole thing. But now that you saw that it worked and you had spoken to that Jarecki guy,

I forgot his first name. Andrew Jarecki. Andrew Jarecki, who told you that this is a legitimate thing, that he sees this, even after the pandemic, being a legitimate thing. You said a couple of episodes ago or last episode that you would uh i mean it was the new year's eve episode that you said that you would really make an effort going forward to to to do virtual shows and you

wanted liz to spearhead no i what i said was after the pandemic i'll look if he thinks it's a it's a winning thing i'll take i'll take a better look at it. And I told Liz, you know, but I don't really, I'm not a believer in it. But, you know, when somebody is smart and successful, and Andrew Jarecki says he believes in it, then you have to take a second look at it, you know. I just think that the, well, we really sell it. He said that we could monetize the fact that we're good curators.

And I think people overrate the curating aspect of the comedy seller. I think that it's almost as if you have one bar which is really packed and the other bar which is empty. And the fact is, in the end, they're all selling the same alcohol right and i think the comedy seller the comedians basically the comedians are performing the comedy seller are available to every other club and what we do and we do a very very good

job of curating which is the word that they use these days. However, there's a lot of other things that we do better than the other clubs, which end up in giving people a great, fun night out at a reasonable price where they're treated well and friendly and they want to come back and the atmosphere is nice and the lights are twinkling and the vibe is right and there's happiness in the air and all this kind of stuff is very very magical and very difficult for other people to do and i think when if i had to try to make a living outside that just through live streaming shows essentially just through i can pick a lineup better than anybody else.

And this is how I'm going to dominate. I just don't, I'm not a believer in that. Well, I think you're half right. The fact is, yes, every comic is available to other clubs. However,

there's two points. Number one, the other clubs don't necessarily, as obvious as it would seem, their goal is not necessarily to book the people that they that do the best on stage they have other interests they book people that they're managing oftentimes people that they're friends with there's that there's another and

also some comics just don't want to work anywhere else the comedy seller especially now because you've got the comedy seller the comedy seller the village underground the fat black pussycat so a comic goes to to your area of town he can work he can stay at the Village Underground, the Fat Black Pussycat. So a comic goes to your area of town. He can work, he can stay at the comedy cellar. He can stay at McDougal and Wester the whole night. He doesn't have to run around like a chicken with his head cut off. It used to be when I was doing comedy early on, people would run around all over.

They'd do the cellar, they'd run up to the comic strip, they'd run over to stand up. I see less of that nowadays. I see because the comedy cellar allows you, because you do four shows at the main room and three shows at the underground that you can basically just keep everybody there and so um you are monopolizing to some extent and then the drop-ins the drop-ins that you sit somebody don't see everywhere else which you wouldn't which you wouldn't have by the way i wouldn't have in the live stream but also we also we treat the comedians i think much better than any other club does i don't know why that is it's not it's not a not very challenging to treat people nicely but i hear

it all the time well you have the restaurant so the restaurant just creates a nice environment it's a simple thing but the fact that you can go to the restaurant and eat and and hopefully you know you'll find a chef that really to take that to another level would be really nice. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and then the other thing is the live streaming is like, there's so much free content on YouTube. And there's also things that are already paid for,

like Netflix where you subscribe, you know, and HBO and stuff like that. I just don't see why it is that people want to plunk down $7 or $10 to see a live show on the one thing i mentioned to you on the new year's eve show and it's worth repeating here is that there's a slight difference between watching a netflix stand-up special and a virtual show at the cellar is that you can do crowd work on a virtual show on a zoom show i'll you know people you you can pick out everybody's got their little picture in the corner with their name under it. You can say, hey, it's Joe.

Hey, Joe, nice house. You know, whatever. Like, you know, you see a guy with like, you know, an antler. I did a show where there was a guy, he had like, you know, he was like a trophy hunter. So he had antlers all over the place. So I say, so, you know, you make a joke about that.

You know, you can, you can, guys bald. I could say, so, so Steve, you make a joke about that. You know, you can, you can, guys bald. I could say, so, so Steve, you're bald now, you know, and then I make a joke about being bald. All right. We got to go. Not quite the same, but is it enough for people to want to see it? I don't know. Yeah.

I mean, I don't know. Perry L believes in it, but you know, and I won't just assume it's wrong because of that. All right. That was a good show. That guy, Barry, had a good vibe, right? Yeah, he was good. I didn't realize he was a con law professor.

Manny, be careful. He thinks he's Rocky now. What do you mean? You know what? My son got punished today, and he wasn't allowed to watch screens all day. And even though he wasn't allowed all day, he wasn't allowed to use his ipad and stuff all day watch youtube and uh but the truth is we had one of our best days ever we had a really good day by the way no i i i noam recommended a guitar oh yeah and i bought it it was 250 bucks but i figured might as

well have a guitar that sounds good rather than like getting some used guitar right i guess you know so anyway it should be here on Saturday. That's a pretty, I bought, I bought Manny's guitar as a Cordova, Mila's beginning guitar as a Cordova. I have a,

I have one which is like a thousand dollar one, but like Mila's guitar, which I got for like $300, it sounds as good as a very expensive guitar that I have. These are really,

they make really good guitars. Yeah, I don't know if I'll stick with it. I mean, I can't guarantee it, but if I do, then look for me in 2010 playing at the olive tree. Oh,

that'd be great. Be good enough by then. Then you can write some jokes with it too, Dan. But I don't know if I'll stick with it. I mean, right now I'm enthusiastic. I don't have it.

It's coming Saturday, but I've been studying some theory in the meantime, because I got nothing else to do. All right. My son's about to hit himself in the face studying some theory in the meantime because I got nothing else to do. All right, my son's about to hit himself in the face with barbells, so I gotta go. So happy new year and... Happy new year, everybody.

Perrielle, can we just get it straight, that next time there's a holiday or a birthday or New Year's, you have to stay until the obvious moments of the thing, whatever. I mean, I... Don't worry about it, I'm never inviting you to New Year's Eve again anyway, it doesn't matter. you next time hopefully next time