The Daily Beast Podcast - The Most Absurd Republican Temper Tantrums This Year

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

Conservatives get angry over the darnedest things. From Lizzo playing a Founding Father’s flute to a gay PDA in a Disney movie, 2022 was a year full of right-wing outrage that was so dumb, The New Abnormal politics podcast host Andy Levy and Media Matters’ deputy director of Rapid Response Andrew Lawrence decided to round up the most “offensive” instances in the show’s latest episode. Plus! TNA co-host Danielle Moodie interviews Treva Lindsey, professor at The Ohio State University and author of America, Goddamn: Violence, Black Women, And The Struggle For Justice, to talk about just that, and Brittney Griner specifically: “Obviously she is worth something and worth so much more than even one arms dealer for these individuals…” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. We're off for the holiday, but that doesn't mean we didn't take

you a fantastic episode before we left. Treva Lindsay joins us, who's a professor at OSU and the author of America Goddam, Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice. But first, we're joined by Media Matters, Deputy Director of Rapid Response, Andrew Lawrence, who's going to talk to us about the year in conservative non-traversies. If there's one thing, Fox News, and conservative media overall, like, it's ginning up a controversy out of whole cloth. We love to mix metaphors, don't we, folks? Joining me now to talk about some of the more ridiculous and some of the more dangerous of these non-traversies from the past year is the deputy director of rapid response for media matters, Andrew Lawrence. Andrew, thanks for being in. Yeah, thanks for having me, Andy.

We were talking about how to organize this, and really, there's like so many different ways you can do it. You seem to think that it's best to put them in two categories, like the culture war stuff and the politics stuff. So let's do that. All right. I think we both agree that it's become increasingly difficult to separate those two things, but I do think that's not a bad lens to look at this in. So let's start. The first one I have is the Lizzo Crystal Flute thing.

The Crystal Flute. Yeah, that was a big one. That was a big one. The Library of Congress let R&B superstar Lizzo play a flute that had been given to James Madison as a gift. And then she tweeted, bitch, I just twerked and played James Madison's crystal flute from the 1800s. We just made history tonight. History is freaking cool.

And this, of course, this first, this, freaked out the right to no end. Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire called it a form of racial retribution. Ben Shapiro called it the vulgarization of American history. Conservative radio host Jesse Kelly said, if you can figure out the link between raiding the home of a peaceful man who offered to turn himself in and an anti-American singer, which apparently Lizzo is now anti-American,

twerking with James Madison's flute, congratulations, you know what's happening and what time it is. It's unreal the lengths they went to to be outraged by this. one. Yeah, and it's, you know, all she did was play the flute, man. She's a classically trained floutist as well, you know, she's, she's incredibly talented. And all it was was just a black woman playing James Madison's, a flute that no one knew existed before this, by the way, you know? It's not like this is some, some huge piece of history that our entire ethos of America hinges on. It's just a crystal flute. I mean, look, it was a black woman who doesn't subscribe

to our traditional body image issues. And she's playing James Madison, one of founding fathers, you know, a white man, his old flute. And it just, it sent them off the deep end. I mean, I think for three or four days we were talking about this. Yeah, this was not a 24-hour thing for them. They were infected by this for quite some time. And you're right. What it all boils down to is she's black.

Totally agree, you know. And mainstream media started covering this. They didn't take the bait on it. But then you've got to sit there and sort of make fun of them as well because you have half of the country sort of making a stink about this whole thing. And it's, you know, three or four days that we waste just talking about this nonsense. Yeah. And then, look, obviously, we're part of the problem, too, because we're talking about it also.

But all of these things, and I think we'll get to this more as we go into this, all of these things are dumb and they're silly and they're good to make fun of. But they all have sort of a deeper cultural meaning and a much more dangerous cultural meaning. And, you know, I think as we move along on these various non-traversies, we'll get more into that. Eminem's decided that they were going to do a makeover of their, not the candy itself. The candy itself wasn't changing. They were going to give their cartoon characters that exist solely in their commercials to sell their product, I think, a makeover to make them sort of, I guess, quote unquote, less sexy. Like the female Eminem was going to not wear as high heels and stuff like that.

And so like an ordinary person looks at this and goes, all right, fine, they're doing some silly marketing thing. Who cares? But of course, it can't stop there. So you have Tucker Carlson saying, quote, M&Ms will not be satisfied until every last cartoon character is deeply unappealing and totally androgynous. Until the moment you wouldn't want to have a drink with any one of them, that's the goal. When you're totally turned off, we've achieved equity.

I've always been turned off by M&Ms, I guess. I've never really thought about it that way. And look, this was one of the silliest ones of this past year. It just barely made the cut off. I think this was early January when, when this came up. You touched on this earlier. It's so silly. It's so ridiculous. But it feeds into, you know, especially with Tucker Carlson, the whole gender roles and masculinity is disappearing is such a huge part of his program. And those kind of insecurities are what he feeds into

to draw viewers to his show. So it fits in perfectly, you know, it makes total sense if you're looking at it through that lens. For the rest of us, we look at this and it's just silly. Like, how can we take this person seriously? How is this? How is this? this the top-rated table news show in America? But this is why, because it feeds into those types of things, whether it's silly or not, and Tucker doesn't care. He just needs, you know, the viewers to, just needs the viewers to watch. He doesn't mind being a clown from them. Yeah, he kind of relishes it, I think. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. But yeah, and the rest of the country is looking at this, I mean, who cares? Like, these companies redo their characters and stuff like this all the time,

but, you know, if you're a conservative and you're looking for something to get angry about, and this fits, I mean, it gives them something to be. agree about, but just so silly. I mean, so silly. And Tucker got a lot of crap for it, but, you know, it doesn't matter. They just keep plugging along. Yeah. And then they, you know, after a couple days, they jump to the next one. Yeah, exactly. Mission accomplished. It is kind of funny. And I'm far from the first person to point this out is the whole thing on the right now is this whole stop sexualizing children and stop not even sexualizing children. It's like exposing children to what they think is sexuality, which is, of course, just a term for gay and trans people for them. But at the same

he's pissed off that Eminem is making their literal cartoon characters less sexy and less appealing to whom? No, I didn't even think about that angle and you're so right. Yeah, you're so spot on there. Yeah, it's just bizarre. Again, these are all along similar lines. We had the movie Lightyear and there was a same-sex kiss in it. I believe it was two female characters.

Yes, yeah, two female characters. And this caused an absolute explosion on the right. and Shapiro tweeting, Disney works to push a not at all secret gay agenda and seeks to add queerness to its programming. Parents should keep that in mind before deciding whether to take kids to see Light Ear. Children are not adults. What may be appropriate for adults is not appropriate for children. That this must be said demonstrates that our society is in a state of moral collapse. It's just the drama quiz. I mean, my God. Amazing. Did you see Light Year? I didn't. I know that it wasn't much in terms of what they showed.

No, it was, I mean, as far as the kiss, it was a peck. I mean, it was a little peck between these two characters. And other than that, the characters were in the movie for a couple of minutes, maybe total. And it was clear that they were married, but it was, you've seen a lot more graphic with same-sex couples in the same thing.

It's just that the gay couple exists. Right. That's what they're pissed off at. Again, it just ties into the whole thing. It's so ridiculous to get mad about something like this, but for them it makes total sense. Yeah, because, I mean, you know, for people who are always accusing other people of having an agenda, it's like, theirs couldn't be more obvious. Here's another one that, again, is on its surface, it's absolutely ridiculous. It's the idea that there were these schools that were having to put kitty litter boxes.

They were having to use them because kids were identifying as cats and refusing to use bathrooms and they would only use litter boxes. This rumor was spread by, among other people, Joe Rogan, by GOP, Polaro. politicians by a lot of people in the conservative media world, et cetera. And this really is where it is on the face of it, the most absurd thing in the world and just deserves nothing but mockery and sarcastic fun. But we were talking, you know, before we started recording. And this really is emblematic of something much bigger. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is just a straight up lie. You know, I mean, I think with the, just going back to Lightyear, for example, at least that actually happened, you know, but there are no schools anywhere putting.

kiddie litter boxes in the classroom so that kids can use them. And you and I are talking about this to somebody who's maybe not very plugged into politics. You laugh it off. Oh, that's really dumb. It's really ridiculous. There is that sinister element there. You have to remember this is all coming I mean, still with the LGBT panic that we're seeing right now. And it feeds into that. It feeds into that panic. And also feeds into that the children aren't safe, you know, that they're coming for your kids. They're trying to indoctrinate them, all based off of a lie. And you said, this found its way into the Republican politicians stump speeches during the midterm. It was everywhere, and it was just a provable lie, and they kept running with it.

I mean, I would not be surprised if there are still Republicans saying this. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah, and I guess in the interest of fairness, we should point out that even Joe Rogan eventually walked this back and admitted that it wasn't true. Yeah, I haven't seen many others walk it back. No, that didn't stop anyone else. But, you know, this is one of those things that started as it was one of those, you know,

while my cousin's sister-in-law's nephew's friend says, and it was literally at that level. It was never anyone saying this school and this principal did this. It was never that specific. It never needed to be for their purposes. Right. And it's just, it's amazing. Like you said, this plays into a whole LGBTQ panic. And the reason it does is sort of the topic of our next non-traversy, which has become a huge deal.

And that's the drag shows and the idea that. kids are somehow being forced to see drag shows or it should be illegal for kids to see drag shows. And the reason the kitty litter box plays into that is because it all goes back to what everyone always jokes about that conservatives have one joke. And it's the I identify as my pronouns are and then some really stupid joke that makes fun of the notion of identity and of the notion that trans people are real and exist. And that's what the kitty litter thing was getting to. But the drag show thing is just straight up evil. I think we can agree. Yeah. I mean, drag shows are entertainment and they've been around forever.

Like this isn't a new thing that's just happening. And because it's people, you know, men dressing as women or vice versa, whatever it is, they're trying to paint this as indoctrination of children into some sort of sexual ideology. And I don't know if you've ever been to a drag brunch, but like it's not

sexual at all. You know, it's entertainment. There's, yeah, no, there's dancing and like singing, lots of singing, you know, very campy. But it's certainly not sexual. And these things have been around forever. But because of this trans panic. And look, conservative media, this is kind of a larger point, but they need things to be angry about. They need things to be upset about. And not so much the personalities, but they need to

keep their audience angry and engaged and just ready for the next fight in order to keep viewers and eyeballs and get clicks and all that. And this trans panic stuff works as far as that's concerned. It gets them clicks. It gets them viewers. It gets them money at the end of the day. Yeah, I always used to say of Fox News, and I think this applies, as you said, to conservative media overall. The Fox News exists for two reasons, and that's one to make its viewers angry that things are happening, whether they're really happening or not, but the idea is to make them angry that these things are happening. And the second thing is to assure them that they're not alone. And all of this sort of plays into that, and it plays into bigotry, and it plays into hatred. And not only are

they more than willing to do that? That's their reason for existence, I think. Yeah, exactly. And it's just, I mean, I think it just keeps their audience engaged. And look, when you, when you feel like if you're a consumer of this type of media, you're being told over and over again that the fate of civilization hinges on you watching these shows and being mad about the same things and sending them money to get brain pills and stuff like that. I mean, they've been told that the future civilization hangs on these issues. Right. That keeps them engaged, you know? And it's something as silly as like a peck on the cheek in the cartoon light year, but it makes sense to the audience. Right. And again, remember, the peck on the cheek in lightyear is bad, but also making

Eminem's cartoon characters less sexy. That's also bad. Right. And both are equally the signs of the end of civilization somehow. Yeah. And they both sort of tie into the sexualization of children, except one is good and one is bad. And consistency is not super important with these things. I should have said this earlier, but with the light year thing, Disney slash Pixar had originally taken that peck out. And there was a bit of an uproar from Pixar employees saying, what are you doing? Like, you shouldn't be doing this. And I think the main reason they took it out was to not offend China and to affect their Chinese market. And the ironic thing about this is conservatives have, and I think not incorrectly, been yelling at Hollywood for sort of cowtowing to China and for putting certain things in their movies and taking things out to keep their Chinese market alive.

and to keep their movies from not being banned in China. And here's a company that eventually sort of got, you know, forced into it by its own employees, did the thing that I believe actually did get it banned in China. And conservatives are still mad at them. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because it doesn't matter. And, you know, you also have to remember Disney at the time. At the time the light year came out, Disney was embroiled with quote-unquote controversy

because they spoke out about something Ron DeSantis did. I don't remember exactly what it was. So Disney was already, you know, they were on the practice. for something else to get mad about Disney with. And so, you know, and this is another one of those things. It was a three, four, five day affair, you know, in conservative media. It was a segment every single hour on Fox News. Yeah, it might have been the don't say gay bill that Disney was not happy about.

Yes. Yeah, I think that was it. Other stuff we have on this list sort of is in the political section. But again, there's just so much overlap. But let's talk about, and these two, I think, go together. The drugs in the Halloween candy, there was a big deal about this so-called rainbow fentanyl that surprise surprise turned out not to be an actual thing, but for a good solid month, at least leading up to Halloween, we heard an awful lot about it on Fox News and from conservative media.

And the regular media fell for this, which was the most obnoxious thing about this whole thing. But then another thing on the list we have is crime slash inflation. So explain how those two go together. Yeah, sure. So I think that the drugs in Halloween candy, there's really a bunch of layers to this because the focus this on the drugs in Halloween candy was being a rainbow fentanyl, which you just mentioned, being found among Skittles and different types of candy. Obviously, there was nothing to that.

But fentanyl, if you're a Fox News viewer and you hear fentanyl, you immediately tie it to immigration because you're being told day after day after day that millions of immigrants are coming in and they're bringing in fentanyl and that's why Americans are dying. So you have that. And then you also have, like you said, at times into the whole crime narrative that they were pushing right before the midterms as well, just because, you know, drugs, crime, that all gets conflated. So these things, you know, again, it's about creating sort of fear. And from the outside looking in, it looks super silly. But these people are taking it extremely

seriously. And it all serves that final end, kind of. Crime is so interesting because you have the immigration aspect. They go after black people for crime all the time. And then you have the midterms coming up. They focus on local district attorneys that had received funding from George Soros for their campaign. So you have that. The whole Soros element is tied into this at well. So it just, it encompasses so much and they can do so much with it. So I think that's one reason why we do hear about the crime so much. But yeah, and then drugs, the drugs and the Halloween candy, man, I mean, they are very protective of holidays as well. And so the whole, they needed Halloween stories this year. And that, that sort of fit into that as well, I think. Being protective

of Halloween for conservatives is always hilarious to me. It's interesting. Like, if you know anything about the origins of Halloween, I don't want to say it's an unchristian holiday, but it's kind of an unchristian holiday, at least in origin. And I don't say that in a bad way, but you would think conservatives would not be too keen on Halloween. But boy, they are just, you know, I think it's because of the kids. Yes. They love to talk about the kids and, you know, talking about drugs.

Look, I'm old enough to remember the razor blades in the apples and all that stuff. And this is exactly the same thing. Like nobody, there was never an actual recorded incident that you could point to with a razor blade in an apple or razor blade in candy. But everyone always had a story, just like with the kiddie litter thing. You know, oh, well, my friend who goes to a different school, someone in his brother's class, two grades earlier, a friend of theirs got it. And it's always a story like that. And it's interesting because it's stuff that kids believe, but this is adults who are falling for the same thing.

Yeah. There's sort of like that, I don't know, it's like almost like a basic instinct to like want to feel fear at times or something. I'm not sure exactly what it plugs into, but there's a large segment of the population that is kind of addicted to these types of stories. No, I think it's true. And it goes back to what I said about Fox. Like one of their goals is to scare people because I think, you know, fear is a very, it's a very basic and primal emotion and it spurs you to do things. And, you know, from Fox News's point of view, it, they hope it spurs you to vote for Republicans. And obviously that, you know, every time there's an election, crime becomes a huge issue. And, you know, we all kind of joke, as you said, that ties into immigration.

kind of joke about how there's always some biggest caravan ever coming from our south in an election year. It never happens in odd numbered years for some reason. Right. So yeah, some other issues, this is an interesting one. The woke military is a phrase we are hearing a lot. Go into that for us. It is, it is just mind-blowing. And really what it comes down to is, well, it goes back to sort of the critical race theory panic that we had a couple years ago with the Virginia governor's race. But it's the diversity policies that they have. There was a huge, huge thing with Tucker Carlson. I think this might have actually been in 2021 with when he found out that the Air Force

was starting to create flight suits for pregnant crew members. Right. And it's just one of those things that it made them incredibly mad. I think this ties back into the whole masculinity thing. They're being told that, you know, these were jobs that were only for men for a long, long time, and now women are getting into it, and they see that as a threat. And so, you know, again, it's one of those things that is just super. silly on the surface, but it feeds into sort of these nefarious things that Fox News is, you know,

using it to try to drum up that fear that we were just talking of. Yeah, I think they might have actually gotten two years out of the maternity jumpsuit thing because I think it was in 2021 that the Air Force announced it and then they rolled it out just this past year, I think. So I think they were able to get like, you know, a couple good news cycles on that. And what they do there is, of course, what they do with everything is they make it sound like something it's not. We're not talking about fighter pilots, we're not talking about pregnant women pulling 8Gs or whatever in a fighter plane or in a bomber or something like that. I mean, what we're talking about is like when you're in the military, you wear your uniform when you're on duty. And the female members of the Air Force,

whose normal uniform of the day was jumpsuits were having to wear, you know, different stuff. And this was an attempt to sort of, you know, regulate that and let everyone feel like they're wearing the same uniform because oddly, one of the reasons you do that is for unit cohesion and stuff like that. All these things that conservatives, again, should be in favor of, but suddenly they're not when it comes to this. And they have to conjure up images of like, you know, and I know top gun is Navy, not Air Force, so please, I don't need any tweets about that. But, you know, they try to conjure up images of like someone replacing Tom Cruise with like a 10 month pregnant woman. Right. And it's like, no one is letting a 10 month pregnant woman fly a fighter jet. It's just not happening because it would, I,

I suspect it would not be great for the fetus or the woman for that matter. So, but that's what they do. And then the whole, the woke military thing writ large, part of it is that the COVID vaccines were mandated. Part of it is that, you know, the military was doing some diversity training and stuff like that, which in 2022 should not be anything that anyone even raises an eyebrow at, other than the fact that, unfortunately, we still need it. One of the biggest things that sort of sparked the whole woke military outcry was,

was announcements that they were going to try to fight white supremacy and alt-right extremism within the ranks of the military. And you saw Fox News and conservative media just reply en masse against that because, I mean, they don't want that, obviously, you know? Right. It was a rare, although increasingly less rare, I guess, mask off situation where they were like basically admitting that that's their people. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it's so, I mean, all these, all these criticisms of the military, I mean, if somebody on the left made those, The exact same criticisms. Yeah, forget about it, you know. And then the funniest. And again, a lot of times we have to put funniest in air quotes when we're talking about the stuff. But, boy, they loved contrasting our military with the Russian military right at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. You don't hear too much about that anymore, though.

No, not so much. Not so much anymore. But, man, they tried to paint the Russian military as this, like, you know, old-fashioned macho man. And of course, you know, Putin, who they can't help but adore, fitting that mold perfectly. And boy, they tried really hard to contrast that with our quote-unquote woke military. And with a couple of lame exceptions, I haven't heard too much about that these days. It's been a while. Now that you mention it, I haven't heard that mentioned much on Fox News recently, for sure. Before I let you go, I think we have time for one more thing.

And this is kind of a big one. And it was your idea to talk about this, the Twitter files. The Twitter files. So explain to me how this fits into the discussion we're having. The Twitter files are interesting in a way that we are sort of seen behind the scenes, these conversations about moderation and content policy and all that, which is admittedly, I mean, I sympathize with social media companies in general. This is a tough, tough topic to sort of get right.

But I think that, like, what we're seeing is conservatives are outraged because, like, Dan Bongino's tweets didn't get amplified. Not even that Dan Bongino was suspended or anything, just they think that his tweets should have been amplified. And they weren't. And that's just one example. But they never tell you what those tweets were that weren't getting amplified. I think that, you know, you take a look at the tweets that the Biden campaign asked to be removed and were removed by Twitter. There were pictures of Hunter Biden's dick, you know, and you don't get that context from the right wing right now when they're foaming at the mouth over the Twitter files, you know. So I think this qualifies as a not-traversy. In the way that there just isn't all that much there, there,

it doesn't really confirm what Republicans are saying it does. And there's just not a whole lot of controversy there, especially for when you consider the amount of play that it's getting in right-wing media and on Twitter. And I mean in mainstream media as well, everybody's talking about it. Some people are covering it a little more critically than others, but it's certainly getting a lot of play, and it's definitely top of mind right now as well.

It's not as silly as the other ones that we've talked about, I guess. No, it's not. But I think you're right. It does fit. Like, they want so badly for Hunter Biden's dickpicks to be public. Right. And it's just, you're so weird. But it fits there, you know, the angry thing. And also, they also always have to be the victims. Yeah, the victims are, there always has to be like sort of a big bad wolf out there coming for you, you know, that, that type of thing. And, and look, I'm not going to apologize for big tech. I'm not on their side by any. No, God, no. But there's plenty, there are, there's plenty out there to criticize big tech and social media for. And I think, you know, when you actually dig into and read this stuff,

I'm seeing a lot of thoughtful discussions of people wrestling with really tough subjects that they have to make a call on in real time. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I've been saying from the start, I think these Twitter files are interesting and I think they're newsworthy. And in the sense that anytime you get a behind-the-scenes peak at how decisions are made by big corporations, particularly when they involve speech, it's super interesting. It's just that they're trying to spin it into something it's not. But it does all go back to this victim mentality, which, again, to try to wrap this up, you know, I think every one of these things that we talked about fits into that narrative. I mean, even as something as silly as the Lizzo flute thing, the subtext of that

is look what they're doing to your history. When you're watching Fox News and they're covering a subject, whether it's Green M&Ms, Lizzo's Flute, the Twitter files that nobody else is talking about. And they're telling you that the fate of civilization hinges on these things. And Fox News is the only one covering them. The viewer thinks that they better damn well turn into Fox News every. every single night and watching it, or they might die, you know, because nobody else is talking about this. And it's just, it's one of those ways to keep people glued to their TV set and the channel tuned to Fox News and, you know, clicking on the right substack and all that. And they've spent decades doing this. They've spent decades telling people that you cannot trust anyone except for

us. We are the only ones that you can trust. Like, everything that we've talked about is all sort of that, the big overview, this is what that's about. Yeah. And as you said, they've, you know, They've been doing it for decades, and they've gotten very, very good at it. And the worst part of it for me is when the so-called mainstream media falls for it. And we saw that in particular with the Halloween candy and the drugs thing. And it just pissed me off to no end. Andrew, thank you so much. I do want to say, I think I've told you this before.

My middle name is Lawrence. So every time I see your name, Andrew Lawrence, I just think my mom is yelling at me. Oh, that's great. No, I didn't know that. Yeah. So it's a bit of a nightmare for me personally. That's funny. But I'll get over it.

Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. This was really interesting, I thought, and hopefully we'll have you back again soon. Yeah, so much fun. Thanks for having me. And I'd be willing to do it whenever. Just let me know. Folks, I am so excited to welcome to the new abnormal. Black feminist historian, professor of women's gender and sexuality studies at Ohio State University,

and the author of America Goddamn, Dr. Treva B. Lindsay. Dr. Lindsay, I got to say that first off, the title of your book, America God Damn, Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice is one that hits you in the gut. When you see it, when you see the cover, if you are a music fan or an activist, then you know that it harkens to Nina Simone. But I wanted to give you an opportunity to just talk about it because titles are important, right? When we're talking about topics, but when all. also trying to sell books. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about America Goddamn as a title choice and why it was important. Yes, and thank you so much for having me. America Goddamn came to me because at my core, I'm a North Carolina girl. That's where my family's from honoring Nina Simone, who is someone who used her voice to amplify the stories of black people to go into those dark and inglorious parts of our hearing. history and make our stories known at a wider level. And with this particular song, which is

actually her first protest song, we tend to think of being alone as someone who has this extensive career even prior to this song being released in the 1960s, that she'd always been this. But this was the first time she felt compelled to put this fury, this anger, this rage into her music in this way. And it was inspired by both the assassination of Medgar Evers and Mississippi, outside of his home, as well as the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four black girls and severely injured another one, Addie, Carol, Denise, and Cynthia. And I kept thinking about the fact that I always hear people calling them the four little girls. They're never named. We're not saying her name. We're not saying their names. We don't know much about who they were before that terroristic moment. And so the

fact that this song is in honor of their lives and what happened to them, it gave me a framework for thinking about what it means to document violence against black women and girls and say their names and tell their stories in life-affirming ways and the ways that we're attempting to outrun these death-dealing systems. Death-dealing systems. I know that's right. You know, it was Malcolm Max who had said that the most disrespected person in America is the black woman. And, you know, oftentimes black women are talked about in this country in a variety of ways, very few of them good. One is as the backbone of the Democratic Party. We can't win without black women.

And yet, when we find politicians get into office, they seem to forget our names. When you talk about say her name in general, they forget who got them there in the first place. women have also been referred to as the mules of this country, doing all of its hard work without any of the respect or recognition or salary that would match the efforts that they put in. And when we think about dealing with both white supremacy, patriarchy, and added to that misogyny, we oftentimes, in mainstream society, do not talk about the complexities of what it means to walk in a black woman's body, what it means to deal with all those thousand slights, those thousand cuts that we deal with every single day. Also, for this audience, there are terms

that are thrown around a lot that people use but without significant context. And so I wanted you to be able to offer up the definition of misogy noir and why it is something that we should talk about more often and really provide examples and context when we see it kind of flung around on social media. Yes. Thank you for that question. And you are so right about this word being out there, but not necessarily as robustly understood as it should be, although it's so important for the ways that we talk about what it means to move through this world as a black woman, as a black girl, as a black gender expansive person. And so misogy. A war is a term coined by Moia Bailey and conceptualized in conjunction with Twitter users

So Truth as a way to speak about the specific kind of racist misogyny that often we encounter as black women and black girls. And so that combination of anti-black racism and the perniciousness of misogyny had a role into one. It's not one or the other, but rather this complex interdependent structure of marginalization, dispossession, and denigration. A way I talk to my students about this is right now we're talking about the opioid crisis, right? And we're engaged in talking about this. And there's a way that particularly in the earlier years of our discussion, this was a discussion about primarily white people for a while in this discussion. And specifically, we saw these heartfelt and touching and emotional stories about middle class white women who had become a

addicted to opioids. And they're referred to as opioid patients. And that public health turn, that approach to a health crisis was so different from what we encountered. We were cracked wars. We were crack babies. We were junkies. We were criminalized. We were seen as the bottom of the bottom of society because there were those of us who were living with addiction or who were families with people who are living with addiction. That's a kind of racist misogyny that we talk about as massage noir, that one group gets the care and protection of public health response and what do we need to do.

And the other one gets jail and gets a closer seat to premature death. And I think it's important to understand that misogy noir can have fatal consequences and outcomes for black women and girls. You know, I'm so thankful for the example that you provided with regard to the opioid crisis, even if in its title was an opioid crisis as opposed to us needing to create a war on drugs, right, as opposed to the crack epidemic. And Howe was seen as a way to, you know, wipe out crime and gangs with zero tolerance, but the kid gloves in which we handled the opioid crisis because of who it was affecting.

And I think that the same is true in a lot of ways, Dr. Lindsay, when we're looking at how we lift up, even within our own communities, the plight of black men and that of black women. And what I mean by that is when we look at the barrage of people that then became hashtags, because they became victims of police violence, police and state-sanctioned violence. They were shot dead or kneeled upon and suffocated, snuffed out by this egregious system. We remember their names and they're largely men. But we know and you write about and you open up in the first chapter of your book with Say Her Name, you know, policing is violence. And the hashtag Say Her Name became such a huge force on Twitter, on social media, because of the way in which black women who had also been victims of state sanctioned violence

were erased. And so I want you to speak to that and why it's so important to utter the women and also the cis black women and trans black women who have lost their lives, been murdered at the hands of police. But somehow when it comes around to them, we forget to say their names. I mean, this one always strikes a chord with me. It's one of the propelling forces of this book is that even within a movement that we talk about, if we frame the movement for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter, as a movement that at its core has black women, has black queer women, has Black trans women on the ground floor of those movements who are in the streets,

who are protesting, who are demanding everything from reform to abolition with regards to policing, that even with that happening, we still saw the erasure or limited visibility of black women and girls as victims of police violence. And so say her name, which is a report initially that comes out from the African American Policy Forum in 2015, authored by Kimberly Crenshaw and Andrea Ritchie, to say, look, this is what police brutality against black women and girls looks like. And we need to talk about this because other than black men, we're the second. highest rate in terms of proportion that is meeting these fatal outcomes with policing. And it's happening in our homes. It's happening on our couches in our grandmother's house where a young girl is asleep and a failed drug rate takes the life of Ayanna Stanley Jones. It is happening when a

black girl is in mental distress in Cleveland, Ohio. And instead of receiving help, she's killed outside of her home as her family watches in horror. These kinds of stories matter in telling the full picture of what policing and specifically police brutality look like in the United States. And of course, across the world, there's so many stories from Brazil, from South Africa, from other places, from France, from England that tell us that policing is something that disparately impacts black communities and across genders. And so we need to amplify the names of people like Deborah Danner, of people like Yula Love, whose murder in front of her home in Los Angeles in 1979 is how we got the term officer-involved shooting, right?

The popularization of that term comes as a result of her being killed in front of her own home. And that passive language that in many ways absolves police of active responsibility for the killing of a human being is concretized in the aftermath. who will love being killed. I want to switch gears for a moment because, obviously, we all know in recent weeks that Brittany Griner, is a WNBA player who was held hostage by Russian forces by Putin in Russia on the ideas that they created. She had empty oil cartridges that had cannabis. We know that other people, namely white people who had the same infractions, were released with fines and, you know, and a slap on the wrist and deported and sent home.

However, Brittany Greiner, black, queer, out basketball player is used as a political pawn. And sadly, inside of the United States, we're not unified on this front. Dr. Lindsay, we have seen reactions to her release cheered as well as smeared as smeared. by those on the right. And I wanted to just give you an opportunity to talk about the way in which her case was even discussed as we were awaiting to see whether or not she was going to be released or suffer through nine years of hard labor in a Russian penal colony. What you made of how the mainstream media even talked about Britney Greiner. And frankly, if Britney Griner wasn't Britney Griner, we probably would have never heard of her at all. Absolutely. Absolutely. And

And I mean, that in and of itself is where I enter the conversation, how little we think about those behind the wall in various incarcerated contexts, whether that's jails and prisons here, detention centers here, other forms of criminal supervision that have black women and girls are overrepresented in those. But with someone like a Brittany Griner who is not only a WNB player, but a signature name in the WNBA, right? This is a celebrity that is captured. And watching the mainstream media debate her value, her work.

Come on. And how we as a nation should be responding to this alleged transgression. And the justifications people were using, well, if you do this, you're going to be penalized. As though, as you mentioned, there isn't an inequitable way that punishment is always doled out, not just in the United States, but across the law. world to those of us who are black and woman and girl and queer, that that matters deeply in this, in this framing of this and then seeing when she's actually released in exchange for this other person, oh, it was our arms dealer, her life is not worth that. So literally in this moment now,

we're getting people talking about the worth of black women and girls. They're having to articulate and verbalize explicitly that they don't value us. And don't also recognize the U.S.'s role as an arms dealer in the world as well. Come on. That part of it was like, okay, she wasn't worth that. I'm like, and who do you mean in that context? Is she worth or worth less to? Certainly she is worth something to the wife

that was waiting for her, pleading, writing, advocating, keeping her name in the media, certainly the community around her, Don Staley, certainly around her friends, her children. Obviously, she is worth something and worth so much more than even one arms dealer for these individuals. But the fact that we

can openly debate her worth and her deservateness is a testament to the ways that we consistently undervalue black women and girls, specifically queer black women. As a black queer woman, when I first heard about her being held captive, the fear that I had and the tears that I broke into, you would think that I knew her, right? But I did know her. because a black queer woman being held in a violent, homophobic country that is also anti-black, you can see yourself in this and the fears that we all have for her. And then the idea that, you know, it wasn't too long ago where the release of an American citizen that had been held as a political prisoner would have been cheered by everyone, by everyone.

And so the fact that we are here in this political state is deeply troubling and frustrating because we don't talk about it for what it is. We don't talk about the racism for what it is. We don't talk about the misogyn and war for what it is, right? We keep debating based on these false ideologies that just are not, they're not real, right? They're tropes. And so I want to ask you, last question for you, we seem to vacillate between our admiration and care for black women. every now and again, and then our erasure of them. We hold up entertainers, sports figures, and in sometimes academics.

And then we overlook the larger way that we treat the community of black women. And I'm wondering, how do you think that shifts, or if that ever shifts, or if this is just the way it is? I mean, my orientation is always towards the hopeful, right? It's always towards that, you know, we will get better. My hope is that we get better. But in reality, what I've seen repeatedly is that there's a fetidization, not of black women, but of black women's labor. So what they admire are the things that we do that serve everyone else.

And sometimes it serves us too, but primarily it's the things that serve the nation, that serve communities, that that's where the value is. And there's this fetishization, Black women save America again after another election. We come out in droves and support and organized campaigns, voter education, rail against voter suppression and gerrymandering in the electoral context. We're organizing and protesting on the street for any number of things. Little Miss Flynn is still out here begging for clean water, still having to beg and raise money and do this. And she's applauded and she's noted for doing that. but the folks who are feeling the brunt of deprivation,

feeling the brunt of marginalization, or feeling the brunt of what poverty looks like in this moment in which the pandemic has wreaked so much havoc on already marginal communities and communities that were already struggling prior to this, that we become invisibleized in that context, black women and black girls who are day to day again trying to out.

run premature death are coming up against that. That's not the story we like to tell. If we're going to talk about black women and girls in any kind of affirming or flattering way, it is often to hail the labor that saves all of these other people, that in some way indicates that maybe we're not as bad as we probably are because this thing has happened that black women made happen, that we created this. And that's specializing in the wholly impossible, which was the motto for Nanny Helen Burroughs training school for colored girls that we specialize in it, that what happens when the day when black women stopped deciding to specialize in the wholly impossible? What would that mean for everyone else? And that's the fear that I think people have, which is why

we get the superficial praise, but not the substantive investment in our communities, in our organizations, campaigns, initiatives, our survival. Let me tell you something. Dr. Treva-Lindsay, I could talk to you all day, every day. I so appreciate you and the work that you do. Folks, the book is America goddamn violence, black women, and the struggle for justice. Dr. Treva Lindsay, thank you so much for making the time for The New Abnormal. I appreciate you. Thank you so much, Danielle. Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back to

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