The Daily Signal - Why TV’s ‘The Office’ Could Never Be Made Today

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

The left is the dominant force in media today. Leftists control all the levers of cultural power, from the TV writers' room to the film sets in Hollywood. These leftists use their cultural power to dictate what you can and can't see. The latest casualty is an episode of the hit sitcom "The Office," which aired on NBC from 2005 to 2013. Without explanation, Comedy Central removed an episode titled "Diversity Day" from rotation, likely in an attempt to avoid offending some viewers. The episode mocks lead character Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell) as he makes a fool of himself by using various racial stereotypes, employing satire to illustrate just how terrible Scott’s racism is. Emily Jashinsky, culture editor at The Federalist, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to talk about the new censorious left, as well as how conservatives can claim their place in the media landscape. We also cover these stories: The House Foreign Affairs Committee holds its first hearing examining the rushed U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fallout from it. House Democrats say they intend to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy to finance their $3.5 trillion spending proposal. An upstate New York hospital system will have to "pause" delivering babies because of a staff shortage caused by some employees' refusal to get a COVID-19 vaccination. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, September 14th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Doug Blair. Fans of the comedy series The Office might have noticed that the episode Diversity Day didn't play during a chronological airing of the series on Comedy Central. The network likely decided the episode would be too offensive and canceled it. Today's guest is Emily Jashinsky, the culture editor at the Federalist. She joins the show to discuss the rise of the cancel-happy left

and what conservatives can do to push back leftist domination of the media lancel. Don't forget. If you enjoy listening to this podcast, please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star reading on Apple Podcasts. And please take a moment to encourage others to subscribe. And now on to our top news. What went wrong in Afghanistan? That is the question lawmakers are seeking to answer. On Monday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held its first hearing, examining the hurried U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In his testimony, Secretary of State Anthony Blumey, Lincoln defended the actions of the Biden administration per CBS News. By January 2021, the Taliban was in the strongest military position it had been in since 9-11. And we have the smallest number of troops on the ground since 2001. As a result, upon taking office, President Biden immediately faced the choice between ending the war or escalating it. Had he not followed through on his predecessor's commitment,

Attacks on our forces, and those of our allies would have resumed, and the Taliban's nationwide assaults on Afghanistan's major cities would have commenced. That would have required sending substantially more U.S. forces into Afghanistan to defend themselves and prevent a Taliban takeover. The House hearing is expected to be the first of many oversight efforts by lawmakers who are eager to get definitive answers from the Biden administration. The Heritage Foundation's Vice President for National Security and Foreign Policy, James Carapano, recently joined Newsmax to discuss the need for a 9-11-style commission to investigate the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. So it's not just about fall fighting. It's about figuring out how do we deal with going in the future.

And look, we could face a very different security environment from where we are today, because we literally know that there's going to be another terrorist sanctuary in Afghanistan. and the same people that did 9-11 are going to go back there and try to plan another 9-11. House Democrats announced Monday that they intend to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy in order to fund their proposed $3.5 trillion spending package. According to a summary released by the House Ways and Means Committee, the Democrats' proposal calls for a top corporate rate of 26.5% and an individual tax rate of 39.6%. The current corporate tax rate is 21%, while the individual tax rate,

is 37%. The spending bill has not actually been written yet, but is likely to contain numerous items from the Democrats' wish list, including spending to address climate change and provide government-subsidized college. The massive spending package is not guaranteed to pass. Democrats will need votes from all 48 Democrats and two independents in the Senate, and all but three-house Democrats. Democrat leaders intend to pass the spending bill through the so-called reconciliation process, which requires only a simple majority of 51 votes in the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a tie there, thus avoiding the need for Republican votes. A New York hospital will no longer deliver babies because of a staff shortage caused by

the state's vaccine mandate. Six maternity ward employees at Lewis County General Hospital in Lowville, New York, have chosen to resign rather than be vaccinated. The hospital's CEO, Gerald Kair says the hospital is pausing the delivery of babies because the maternity ward is so understaffed. Lewis County is located about 60 miles north of Utica, New York. In August, New York State mandated that all health care workers be inoculated with at least the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by September 27th. Kair says he hopes the hospital will be able to quickly recruit new vaccinated nurses and resume delivering babies. surrounding the U.S. Capitol building is set to return in advance of a pro-Trump rally set for

September 18th, Capitol Police Chief Thomas Mangers said in a Monday press conference. Mangers' comments followed a meeting with top congressional leaders to discuss intelligence surrounding the upcoming Justice for J6 rally set to take place at the Capitol. The protest is aimed at highlighting the treatment of those arrested and charged in connection with the January 6th riot there. Manger said that the fence wouldn't stay up as long as last time, explained the fence will go up a day or two before, and if everything goes well, it will come down very soon after. The fencing erected around the Capitol after the Capitol riot stayed up for just over six months.

Now stay tuned for my conversation with Culture Editor at the Federalist, Emily Jashinsky, as we discuss cancel culture and how conservatives can push back against leftism in the media. Are you looking for an easy and entertaining way to keep up with the news you care about? The Daily Signal and Heritage Foundation YouTube channels offer interviews with policy experts on the most critical issues and debates America is facing today, as well as short explainer videos that break down complex issues and documentaries that dive deep into the way its policy actually impacts people. Go ahead and subscribe to both the Daily Signal and Heritage Foundation YouTube channels today. You can search for either on your YouTube app or visit YouTube.com slash. Heritage Foundation and YouTube.com slash Daily Signal. Our guest today is Emily Jashinsky, cultural editor at The Federalist, as well as director

of the National Journalism Center. Emily, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Excellent. So let's start with your work at The Federalist. You focus on cultural topics like film and TV, and one of the great headlines that I found that you wrote about recently was, Why Won't Comedy Central Air, the Office's Diversity Day, which is this article that highlights an episode of The Office, which is this very funny

comedy, and it's kind of controversial, like this particular episode. So before we get into that specifically, what drew you to writing about pop culture topics in general? You know, for me, so my, the most, the book that has shaped my worldview more than anything else is coming apart by Charles Murray. And the reason that book resonated and sort of changed me is because it gave research and sort of argumentation to a phenomenon that was murkily defined in my own mind as I was growing up outside Milwaukee about how differently our lives are based on our zip code. You know, basically like what I was seeing on television and actually the office, I remember

having a moment where I realized how low the ratings of the office were compared to programs like two and a half men or NCIS at the time. And it was like, wow, this is a show that, like, educated people in certain areas of the country are watching a lot more than people in other areas of the country. And that was just sort of like a lightball moment. And reading that book, you know, really, really gave voice to something that I had noticed. And so I'm really interested in, and because I'm sort of an obsessive consumer of lowbrow pop culture, I should say obsessive or just incorrigible. any incredible consumer of lowbrow pop culture. I think it's really important for conservatives,

not necessarily to endorse what's happening on keeping up with the Kardashians, but to understand it and to understand what's happening on the Real Housewives and why, for instance, those shows have some of the most educated viewers of any shows on television. Why is that?

And why are people watching it? What does it mean about our culture that this is something that's popular with this group of people? And for me, that's just much more, it's not that it's more important, but it's that, you know, as somebody who actually enjoys paying attention to those sort of artifacts of our popular culture, it seemed like as a conservative something that I could offer.

Definitely. You know, I'm not ashamed. Those are not guilty pleasures for me. They're just things that I really enjoy watching. And it is important. It is important. And it can be hard to do it without endorsing those cultural artifacts. But it's possible.

And it is very important to understand. Well, as a fellow consumer of pop culture, I do think it is quite important that we as conservatives are making sure that we are part of that, that we are part of this process and that, you know, we are engaged with culture and we are engaged with what is going on in the culture. So specifically about this Diversity Day episode, would you be able to explain to our listeners what was so controversial about it and then what you wrote in your piece? Yeah. So what was controversial about it was actually what we used to call anti-racism. And now that phrase has been co-opted, of course, by Ibramax-Kendi, who is paid by our sort of tech, oligarchs to the tune of millions of dollars to spread this idea that anti-racism is something

that you are either, it's like this dichotomy, you are either a racist or an anti-racist. And so he would call the anti-racism of the office. And I think this episode, season one, so it would have aired in the early aughts. It was the second episode ever aired. It was literally the second episode. And he would call it just flat out racist. But what it was, actually, at the time, was a satire of racism. And the article that I wrote, and you always.

end up writing these things from time to time because some episode of The Office or episode of 30 Rock or episode of whatever, a movie, whatever it is becomes, you know, we're no longer allowed to touch it or enjoy it or act as though it had any merits whatsoever. And so you end up having to repeat this argument that is basically an argument in favor of satire as an art form. And that's essentially what we have to do now. We now have to argue to the left, the artistic left and the art friendly left, why satire is valuable and Diversity Day

is controversial because there's a scene at the end where they are asked to play a game that involves, you know, heavily using stereotypes to guess somebody is a race or gender or whatever they're assigned by a placard on their

forehead or an index card on their forehead. And you have to, you know, mimic the race on that person's index card. And what it does is shows the just like ugliness of stereotypes, which is on full The only reason anybody is laughing at these jokes, it's not because they're racist. They're laughing because the jokes are so racist.

Like not the jokes themselves, but the lines that come from Michael Scott's mouth. It is just so nakedly racist. And when you laugh, this is the basic argument in favor of satire. When you laugh, you reinforce your shared sort of cultural boundaries of what's right and what's wrong, of what's racist and what's not racist. And that's the value of satire. It's the value of satire on Diversity Day. where we could all see how gross

stereotype and prejudices. Stereotyping and prejudices are. And so to have the network dedicated allegedly to comedy, pull that from its lineup. So whenever Comedy Central this has been happening for at least a couple of years,

I reached out to them for an explanation. They did not get back to me. Whenever they play season one of the office, they play the pilot, and then they play episode three. And they just skip right over Diversity Day. Controversial episode, yes.

Also one of the most popular episodes, It's one of the best episodes, one of the most useful episodes. And this is the network that's dedicated to comedy in the country. So it's a pretty disappointing statement on where we are. Definitely. And I think you're hitting on that topic that's so important is you're not agreeing with the character who's making this statement. Obviously, when Michael says something inherently racist, you're not saying, yes, Michael, Scott, you are 100% correct. It's like, wow, Michael, you're kind of an idiot.

Right. One of the other things that I think is so fascinating about what you've said is that the artistic left is this sort of like opponent that we have now. Like it's so censorious the way that the left handles these topics nowadays. Obviously, you know, you think about, you know, the office as this prime example of, oh, it's a comedy and we don't like what the comedy is. So we just have to cancel it. We have to, you know, skip over it. Was it always like this? Or are we sort of in this new woke era where like if you don't like something, you get rid of?

of it. Yeah, it's weird. It's sort of like this neotipper goreism, but with the parties flipped, well, I guess not the parties, but with the ideological, I guess, groups flipped because it used to be that the left was sort of the bastion. Like the ACLU used to be a very different organization, for example. You know, I reject what you say, but defend your right to say it. And that used to not just be a sort of principle that was important to a lot of people, especially on the artistic left, but on the, that was just like an American value, period. You know, it wasn't a controversial thing. It was actually something we championed and celebrated.

And when the ACLU would do the horrible work of defending legitimate racists and just the most disgusting people, we celebrated that as, you know, something that we do in this country, that a lot of other countries don't. We let you say that because we know that your ideas are going to fade in the sunlight, right? We know that debate is going to. defeat your arguments. We know that having a culture of free expression will defeat it. What's interesting, and I forgot to mention this earlier, is that Steve Carell, the star of the office, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood period, a couple of years ago, he came out

and said in an interview with a magazine that it would be impossible to make the office today because so much of the humor is predicated on bad behavior. And that's what he is, that's totally fair game because it's again how we decide and how we understand what constitutes good and bad behavior, and a lot of that is through comedy, and there's no reason it shouldn't be. And so this is, you know, a liberal Hollywood artist saying the show would just be impossible now. Like, no network would pick up this show. And that means we would be losing out on this, like, decade-long piece of satire that everybody loves in this country. Almost everybody loves. By now, it caught on a lot with streaming in a way that it didn't even when it was

on the air. And we would just lose all of that. All of that. All of that. that laughter, all of that community, all of that just gone. Sure. Because no studio would pick it up because we can no longer, at least the people who are the arbiters of our popular culture are no longer willing to take the risk that they get, you know, the backlash personally or professionally from people on social media, from the woke sort of mob. And it is absolutely telling on the trajectory of the left, that it went from, you know,

laughing at, I guess, a Democrat like Tipper Gore to now being. even more censorious than Dipper Gore. Right, right. It is kind of shocking how we've gotten it. I'm so glad that you actually mentioned Steve Gerell's comments about, would you be able to make the office today? Because there was another show that was kind of this quintessential show of the times, Friends, which has now been sort of critiqued as this very insensitive show,

even though at the time, back in the 90s, there were some relatively progressive elements to it. Oh, big time. Yeah. So, I mean, do you agree with that sentiment that, like, we wouldn't be able to make these shows nowadays? And what does that say about our culture now that two of the most popular shows couldn't be made? It's interesting. We're going in a direction that will be very consequential. Within a few years, we'll see how this is shaking out. Because I think it's absolutely true. Steve Carell is correct. And a lot of people who've observed this with friends are

correct, that the big networks would not pick up these pilots anymore. And if they did, they wouldn't allow the shows to be written as they were in a way that resonated with a lot of people because they're too afraid to resonate with the people, right? Because the people have these tastes that are bigoted and problematic. And so these shows would not air the way that they do now. But there's something really interesting happening with like The Daily Wire, for instance, where there's suddenly this money that is showing up for sort of heterodox art because there's market demand for it, right? Like there's this immense market demand for people who are not towing Hollywood's line. I mean, if you watch most comedies that have come out in the last 10 years, they're miserable.

They are utterly mediocre at best. You know, there's so few really good comedies that have come out. And it's because Hollywood is very risk averse. And even more so when it comes to comedy because so much comedy has been re-evaluated for the worse. And there's just nothing good. There's no like culture of free expression that's allowing the commercial sort of art that Hollywood produces to be good and funny. And so that means there's major market demand for like actually really good comedy. And so I think some of it will sneak through the gates of the mainstream.

But you're also going to start to see more money show up for like when the daily wall. wire snatched Gina Carano. So Gina Carano, star of The Mandalorian, one of the biggest shows on television, is axed over a social media post, a meme. She ended up at the Daily Wire, at a conservative media companies. She's now making a movie with them. She just started filming a movie that she wrote and directed. They just picked up a, or they're actually just wrapped in their first original movie that's

coming out in January. They already bought a film that I think had run at Sundance, and they premiered that earlier this year. So they're moving into the space, and the more that happens, it's not just going to be conservative companies picking it up. It's going to be companies that are like, oh, wait, if we can raise the capital, we can make money off of this because there's a huge market demand. So that's why I say in the next few years, I think we're going to see a very consequential trend in either direction. So, I mean, I think what you're talking about is that movie was run-fight hide, I believe. Run-Hight, yep. Yeah, which was I never saw it, but I heard it was quite a good movie.

But it seems like one of the things that conservatives are now picking up on is that we were on the defensive in terms of American culture. And the best way to get back on the offensive is to use the market. You know, you find these movies that we can produce. There's a demand for it. So movies like Run Fight Hyde or this movie with Gina Carano, we're going to produce it and we're going to create it for that audience. Is that kind of what you're saying? Totally. And conservatives have kind of known that for a long time, but haven't really known what to do

about it because there wasn't a will among like good artists or people who are not good artists, but people that have the means to create commercially viable art. So stuff that looks like it's on the same level of quality as what, you know, people go to the movie theaters to see and what they see when they see when they turn on, you know, NBC and prime time. that A, used to be much more difficult to replicate with less capital and B, there just used to be less capital. You know, you couldn't really make good conservative art, but there's a show that a lot of listeners are probably familiar with called The Chosen. Yes.

Yes. And I remember right when that show, early in the pandemic, like actually before the pandemic really started, I interviewed the creator of the show. And I was like, holy smokes, you know, this film has already crowdfunded more money than the Veronica Mars reboot, which was like the biggest crowdfunding success in history. And nobody's talking about it. Nobody's talking about it. And it turned out over the course of the pandemic to become just huge. And if you watch the show, you can see that it does really have a quality level that's similar to Hollywood productions. Right.

So to viewers, it seems, you know, and in the way it's so interesting how they crowdfund, you pay it forward after you watch an episode. It has a little thing on an app. So you download the chosen app. You watch an episode. and then you pay it forward for the next people to watch an episode basically. You don't have to pay, but you can. It's really easy. It's simple.

And the product looks just like a Hollywood product. So this stuff is getting easier and the demand is getting bigger. And I think that spells, that's very good news for consumers. Absolutely. Now, for some of our listeners or viewers who might not be 100% familiar with The Chosen, the Chosen is... The Chosen basically is a... I don't know totally how to describe it.

It's the Gospels in TV form. So it takes the Gospels and breaks them down into episode-sized bites into the sort of, weaves them into the broader narrative. And there are some, I guess, like, fictionalized elements of it to make it, you know, more palatable as a story, I guess. You know, there's some dimensionalizing of the characters, for instance, and what their lives might have looked like. And, you know, it's not like word for word, verbatim things out of the gospel. but it's basically true to the stories of the gospel, and a lot of it is actually word for word. So it takes the gospel as and televises them, basically, in a bite-sized episode format. And it is so popular.

It just has taken off. And people, it's funny because the Atlantic wrote a story about it like a month ago, which a couple months ago. And I was like, leave it to the Atlantic. Like, after the Federalist wrote this like, you know, 18 months ago, the Atlantic to suddenly catch on and be like, We're the intellectual, you know, we're really telling the left and the intellectual class, you know, what's trending, what's happening. So you've been missing this for 18 months. But it has become just extremely popular. And again, like shows like that, what the Daily Wire is doing, this is very good news for consumers.

Right, right. They have the choice and the options to look at something. And it seems almost like there's part of this idea that it's just the topics that conservatives care about as well. It's not even that you're not actively hostile, which a lot of. shows on television seem to be now too conservative. It's, hey, this is a topic you care about. This is a topic you're passionate about. Yeah. On that note, I'm curious if you believe that maybe like as Gen Z or the sort of upcoming generations start to grow older and they start to have different demands for cultural

products and cultural artifacts as you refer to them, do you think that that's going to be a motivator as well for these companies to start diversifying their portfolios in terms of what media they're creating. Oh, totally. And we already see that a little bit with like a lot of media companies have different verticals, but like the biggest thing we haven't talked about yet is that the landscape of our entertainment, our entertainment landscape is splintering into niches. And there's the example I always use is how is it possible that the worst man in late night comedy, Stephen Colbert, has the highest rated show of the network hosts. And, you We can talk about how Greg Gutfeld surpassed him in the ratings recently.

And the reason for that is, and I actually, that's another one I wrote a couple of years ago when Gutfeld was really successful. And I was like brought up on Red Eye. I love that show. And it really shaped my beliefs and why I sort of entered the conservative movement. The reason that Gottfeld is really successful, the reason that Colbert is really successful is that we, you know, you don't have to put up Johnny Carson's numbers anymore to be successful in late night. you need to corner a niche. And Gutfeld does it really well. I think Colbert does it really poorly.

But if you are sort of somebody who wants a dose of resistance comedy every night, you're tuning into Stephen Colbert. And if you're sort of an anti-woke person, you're turning into Gutfeld. You're tuning into Gutfeld. And you don't have to be Johnny Carson that appeals to everyone anymore. And this happens in the news media. It happens in entertainment media. It's happening just across the board. And that's a good thing.

It's also a bad thing. It's a good thing because it really gives consumers choice. And it should sort of scare people in the mainstream when they're not providing, you know, the right kind of option. They're only providing what the people in their C-suits over at Comcast or NBC Universal want. And they're really restricting their product to those boundaries. But at the same time, it also means that we have to appeal less and less to what makes us similar and what makes us laugh as a country, what makes us cry as a country, what makes us proud as a country. You don't have to appeal across those sort of boundaries because mass media is splintering into niches. And that means you just have to appeal to what your niche likes about the country or your niche hates about the country.

And that, I think, is a real loss. And I hope it's one, I don't know how it happens, but I hope that mass media actually is able to be robust in the future in some form because it does really have a unifying value. Right. And what you're talking about is this sort of nicheification of sort of like comedy in a sense of, you know, who can you even listen to it all. So I'll give you an example. Like to me, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert. But they're all the same. It feels as if they're not really that distinct anymore, whereas you can get somebody like a Gutfeld.

And I'll tell you, my personal favorite was, oh gosh, what was his name? Very tall. Conan O'Brien, right? Conan was great. I very much enjoyed Conan, and it felt like there was something unique about him. But what we're getting now is, you said, this nicheification. Like, if you're a leftist, you listen to John Oliver, you listen to Stephen Colbert, you listen to all these people. Whereas if you're on the right, you listen to Greg Gutfeld.

one of the things that I've also found particularly true when it comes to these types of cultural discussions about comedy and about television and film is that politics is downstream of culture. So that was Andrew Breitbart, who used to say that. Do you agree with that sentiment that what we're seeing now is this kind of like politics is now reflecting our cultural landscape? And if not, why not? Yeah, it's a little of both. And so I've always been a big believer in that maxim from Breitbart that politics is. downstream of culture. I think also it's the slight revision I would make to it. And this is, you know, Terry Schilling is someone who's changed my thinking on this. Politics is often downstream

of culture. You know, it happens in the other direction as well. And you can see that in terms of if you look at like really bad decisions that our leaders have made that have shattered communities around the country, closed factories, shattered the communities and the fragile ecosystems that existed in various communities around the country, that has created, those political decisions have created a culture of despair in a lot of places in the country. And you can talk about the same thing with opioids. So it goes both ways, but I think the value and why Breitbart's Maxim caught on and has been so influential in the conservative movement is because it's something that we have done

so poorly at understanding for so long that, you know, we dedicate so much time the politics and so little time to the culture, partially because there just aren't a lot of conservative artists. There aren't a lot of, you know, conservatives also, like, we've had wonderful publications that have done great commentary and writing on high art, on opera, on literature. Right. But that's not what most people are consuming.

And so that's what Breitbart really understood. And I think that's what he understood something that the conservative movement didn't understand at the time and is getting increasingly better at understanding. So I think, yes, like that is very important, although I also think it's important to understand that some of our cultural maladies have, like, actually come from political decisions as well. And it does go in both directions. Excellent. Well, Emily, we are running a little low on time. So I want to kind of end on a positive note.

So we talked a little bit about some of the success stories. You mentioned The Chosen. You mentioned some of the work that the Daily Wire is creating. Are there any other success stories that conservatives can point to as like, hey, look, this is something that's viable, this is something that we can actually make work? And then secondly, do you have any advice for our listeners who want to kind of directly push back against the left and the war on our culture? Yeah. I mean, so the Substack Revolution is a huge success story. You know, shows like Breaking Points, my friend Saugger and Jetty and Crystal Ball, they run that show because they caught just on fire when they hosted Rising on Hill TV.

and it showed that there was this demand for, you know, anti-establishment, like really independent news coverage. We've seen that with, like, leftists like Matt Taibi, Glenn Greenwald, who have just massively successful substacks or people on Patreon who are independent newsmakers and do a really good job. The concern there is that, you know, there aren't gatekeepers and maybe some people are going to spread false news. I haven't really seen that happen yet. so far, but like the sub-sec revolution, the Patreon revolution, these are all really positive. The fact that podcasts like this exists, like that is a really, really positive thing going forward. So those are, there are a lot of like the democratization of the media does have a lot of good

stuff, like the federalists, a great example. Independent News website that has broken tons of news, basically was breaking the news about the Russia hoax, right? For years before that was ever, I mean, we had the entire corporate. media basically created a Mueller investigation, a special consul investigation that consumed their attention for years. And, you know,

we were one of the only people that were casting doubt on that and with good reporting. And so I would point to stories like that. Like, this is really successful. And if you want to be supportive of, you know, this trend and to help us move in the right direction, it's, you know, a matter of paying for substacks, paying for patrons, you know, relying less and less on the cakekeepers and the failed institutions

and the media, the entertainment media and the news media, relying less on them. That's not to say don't rely on them at all, but pay for the stuff. Pay for the independent creators. They're doing a good job because that supports them, but it also shows that there is room in the market for capital to invest in independent sources, independent shows, independent everything. And that's the right direction. We're always fans of the market. So that was Emily Jishinsky, culture editor at the Federalist, as well as director at the National Journalism Center.

Emily, thank you so much again for joining us. Thank you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review and have five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening. and we'll see you all tomorrow.

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