The Eric Metaxas Show - Ruth Wisse (Encore)

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

Ruth Wisse shares her fascinating life story which she's compiled in her new book, "Free As A Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation." (Encore Presentation)

Welcome to the Eric Mettaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey, folks, happy Monday. It's the Eric Mataxis show. Today, I forget who we're talking to, but I know who we're talking to right now. You're naked. I think it's Victoria Jackson. Victoria, I hear your voice. Yeah, my husband's walking around with no shirt on, knowing I'm on the air right now.

I wanted to talk to you because I know you were friends with Norman McDonald. Norm McDonald passed away a few days ago, kind of shocking everybody, 61 years old. I can't see Victoria, by the way. There she is. Victoria, you knew Norm. You worked on SNL. He worked on SNL. I only recently appreciated how extraordinary he was, how he wasn't afraid to say anything.

And you knew him. How did you know him? I mean, did you know him on SNL? No, I was on before him. What happened was I was asked to be the host of a Palm Springs show, and they gave me some stand-up comics tapes, VHS. It was probably, I don't know, 90, I don't know. And I looked through the mall, and I didn't like any of the stand-ups. I was like, I was the host of this show.

And they said, I could pick the talent. I'm like, really? And there was one tape I liked, Norm McDonald. No one ever heard of them. He was chain smoking. He was tall and thin. He looked like Elvis. But his material was brilliant.

And he was so deadpan. And I was like, him. I want him in the show. Weird Al was the music. I don't remember if I was in charge of picking the music, but Weird Al was music. He's my favorite music. And I was the host.

And I was young. young and skinny and I wore this movie star dress from like the 40s and we did a show. So cut to my next memory, I'm standing outside the Laugh Factory. I think I would had finished my time on Saturday Night Live six years and our contract was five years. Everyone asked me blah blah blah. We'll do another show on that. So I'm standing outside the Laugh Factory and Norm McDonald's standing there and he says, why is your stomach so big? And I go, I don't know, some comics think that's funny

to be like super honest or direct. And it usually works for him. But in this case, I would have to tell him, that's not what you say to a lady. But, you know, I think we were talking about, oh, the show we did in Palm Springs. I might have the timeline wrong. But I said, oh, well, I had a baby.

A couple years. go. And so then he goes, hey, how do I get on it? No, how do I get on SNL? You know, it always sounds like he asked you how do I get on SNL after he insults you? Yeah. I find that very funny, by the way. Everything he does is funny. Andy didn't drive a car. Super funny. And he's very mysterious like Bob Dylan. So anyway, I'm like, you don't drive a car because he's waiting for a ride or something on the street outside the laugh factor. And he goes, how do you get on SNL? And I said, I don't know. I don't have any power there. I had to like fight to get a line on every week, you know. But I said, I know Jim Downey is like the smartest person there and has a little power there, I think, the headwriter. And

I said, I will call it. I know their phone number. I'll call them and tell them about you because you should definitely be on there. And I think I called Jim Downey. And the next year, a couple months later or something, I saw Norm on SNL, and I was like, awesome. Now, I don't know if I had anything to do with it. You're claiming you made the career of Norm McDonald. Is that what you're doing?

I discovered him. No, no. I'm just saying that. You're the rainmaker, baby. Yeah. Anyone else need to be discovered? Oh, I discovered you, Eric. I discovered you before you had a TV show.

I think you did. I think you did. And I, everything to you, all the problems, all the headaches. I blame you. I think of you. No, seriously, Vicky,

you knew Norm before he was on SNL, and you said he had this deadpan quality. People often say that I have a deadpan quality. When I was watching him recently on clips, after he passed away, people are passing around these clips. and I thought it is fascinating that he does something that I try to do. He kind of, he speaks truth in a way, which is funny.

The thing says things you're not supposed to say, which are true. But he had this, he actually had real courage. I mean, he said a lot of things on a lot of programs that I was just amazed at him. Like everyone was thinking, OJ's a murderer, but Norm said it. I'm at the risk of losing his job and career. And it was like, thank you. Somebody finally said it. Everybody's thinking it.

And so it was funny. That's kind of a part of comedy is saying what everyone's thinking. Not that we want to put murder down because we're all about grace. But it's true. When everybody was saying, you can't say that,

he would say it. He said it on SNL a million times. He did weekend update. You can see the clips. But he made references to it a million times. And what makes it funny, let's be honest, because you and I, you know, we do comedy.

What makes something funny is often saying something that everyone knows is true, but everyone has been told you can't say that. So when you say it, it is itself funny just because you're saying what you're not supposed to say. And he didn't care, did he? Yeah, and it wasn't a cuss word. Like, I don't like shock value comedy. It was like, yeah. And then when he, you know, his joke about Michael Jackson and all that,

I've done all this research on him. I'm mostly watching YouTube videos to find out if he had faith in Christ because that's important to me. And I want to know that he's with Jesus right now in heaven putting on a show from my mom and my brother who just went to heaven. But what I loved about him was his relentless pursuit for truth, whether it was in politics or religion or medicine or, COVID or government. Now, what is the other side? Because I'm not aware of that. Was he, did he make political statements?

Did he make, I mean, where was he politically? Conservative. He was. Yeah, but he disguised it in humor. My problem is, I just say what I believe in. He hides it, what he believes in, and super brilliant jokes that go over the head of the left, and he kind of gets away with it.

But like the ones in the know are like, He's one of us. But I researched his faith. And some programs he says he's into Judaism. Some programs he says he's reading the Bible. But this Larry King clip I found, he said, I'm a Christian. And it seemed very sincere. Where was this clip?

I didn't hear that. Oh, I posted it on my Facebook. It's Larry King. The name of it is Norm McDonald. something about DNA. They're trying to, it's one of those titles to grab you. They're trying to say he doesn't believe in DNA, which is not what he was saying.

But the point is, on Larry King, he said he was a Christian. Yeah. That's kind of amazing. There was a clip going around that he was on one of those shows, I don't know, American Idol or something, and somebody came out and said some kind of nasty stuff about the Bible, and he really let the guy have it. It was kind of amazing.

Yes, he, I was so proud of him because I was a judge once on one of those comedy, last comic standing, and the comics offended me. They were really dirty and stuff, but, and I have blasphemous to God, but I didn't have the nerve to say it. And Norm had the nerve. He said, that wasn't funny. It wasn't brave. And, like, I was like, you, oh, you're so much braver than me.

this is the one where he says Are you playing your phone on my show? This is the Larry King. I got to find the title for you. Vicki? Yeah. We're at a time. It makes me happy to see you.

Will you come back on the show and we can just talk about anything because we haven't had you on in a while. It's been a weird season. Would you do that, please? I have more norm stories, so we'll talk to. Oh, well, then we should get you on soon. Let's get Vicky on next week, please.

Or this week, whatever. Okay, Victoria, we love you. We'll see you again soon. God bless you. Hey, folks, you wish you remembered names better and thought more clearly? Improve your memory with Vivalore memory support. Vivalour's founder prayed that God would show her the solution to memory loss when her mother had dementia. Divine encounters, faith, and her background as a pharmacist led Susan Gibson to create Vivalor memory support.

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Go to Vivalor.com, buy three, and get 40% off automatically applied. That's 40% off if you order three. The makers pray that God's healing presence rests on every pill. V-V-L-O-R-R dot com. Check it out. Hey there, folks. I have a lot of fun on this program, but certain days I have more fun than others. Today, I have a funny feeling. I'm going to have a lot of fun.

I have sitting with me here in the studio, the author of a book, funny title. It's Free as a Jew, a Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation, Ruth Weiss. Welcome to this program. Thank you. I really can't just start talking to you because I have to let people know with whom I'm seated and who is the author of this book. You have an extraordinary life. We're going to talk about your life. But you won the National Humanities Medal, which is an extraordinary honor. You taught Yiddish literature at Harvard for a couple of... decades, and now as you approach your 86th birthday, I too am approaching my 86th birthday,

but I can't see it as clearly as you can. But you've decided to write a book, which is a memoir, but it's called Free as a Jew. We should start there. Why is it called that? And then I want to get into your story. I should have a soundbite answer for it, but I haven't yet. Maybe this will get me there. I love freedom. It's a very great value of mine, and I love being a Jew, and the two things are very much connected in my mind. I think there's an idea of freedom that comes with being a Jew, and, you know, this is not a moment when the Jews are particularly popular, not an American culture, as they used to be once, And so I wanted to lead with that.

And it's also because writing the memoir, I didn't myself know what emerges being the most important theme or the most important connective through it. So free as a Jew, it begins, for me, you know, in childhood, with the most important part of our Jewish year, and that is the celebration of Passover and the reading of the Passover Hagata every year. Now, I didn't grow up in a very religious, family, but somehow my parents kept the Passover holiday in the way that some people

latch on to one thing in their religious lives or in their national lives that is so strong that it almost makes up for everything else. And the Passover holiday was like that, and it's all about freedom, the idea of freedom, and what you do during the Passover, two evenings of the Seder when the family is gathered together, is, is you actually re-experience the exodus from Egypt. And that whole concept of what it is to be free as a Jew, that is to say you experience the joy of just breaking out from slavery, but mostly you experience that freedom only comes

when you really begin to assume the responsibility that goes with it. Aha. Responsibility, you say. It's like just freedom meant I could do what I want. Yeah. I guess that was wrong. Well, look, there's so much to talk about. This is a personal memoir. Now, a personal memoir, aren't memoirs all personally, personal?

It's true. It may be saying repetition, needless. That's redundant. So I want to talk to the editor. We just get rid of that right there. So we have a memoir of national. Self-liberation. There's a lot in that title, but let's go back just to get the details. Where were you born? Well, I was born in a city called Chernovitz, which is now Cherniz, I believe. It was then in Romania. It is today in Ukraine.

The borders shifted. The city is probably still the same, but I left it when I was four years old. My parents were there, had just been there for another four years previous to my birth. They came from Poland. My father came there as a young engineer. His boss who ran a rubber factory in Poland decided that since Romania had decided not to import its rubber products anymore. He decided, well, then, there's an opportunity for building the first rubber. rubber factory in northern Romania. So he sent my father in his late 20s to build a huge rubber factory in Chernivitz. So this is in the 30s? In 1933. Wow. Obviously, for people familiar

with that period, Hitler had just come to power in Germany at the beginning of 33. So you're born in Europe as a Jew at a time just beginning to be about as troubling as times can be to be a Jew. So did your family escape from Romania? I don't remember the disposition of Romania during the war. Well, Romania was at that point experiencing itself as a rather nationalistic and xenophobic and increasingly anti-Semitic society, all on its own. Without Hitler's help, thank you very much. Well, but the interesting thing is that that is exactly the conclusion

that most people would come to if you say that you were born in Romania, 1936, and that you left in 1940, everyone would think that you were escaping the Germans. That's not our case. We fled the Russians. We fled the Soviets because my father, as I write in the memoir, understood that you can have more than one enemy. And he knew, having been associated with the left as a young man himself,

he knew that if the Soviets ever entered Romania, he as a factory owner would be one of the first to go. So the day the Russians, the Soviets, crossed the northern border into Romania. And when was that? What year? In 1940, the June of 1940, that's when we left. The war was already on, of course. But so when the Soviets attacked Romania, we fled Chernivitz on that day.

Wow. Where did you go from Romania? Well, my father was already in Bucharest. We went down to Athens and then across to Lisbon, and we were extraordinary fortunate. It's a long story. Well, it's an amazing thing to think that, you know, You know, you're leaving Romania, okay, but it's 1940. Right.

And practically anywhere you go in Europe, your life is in danger. Right. So what part of 1940 was it? Because the Greeks had not yet declared war with Germany until October. Well, it was the summer. It was from June to September, 1940. And, of course, everybody was fleeing to Lisbon. When we got to Lisbon, the city was flooded with refugees.

And we had during the course of fleeing my father's brothers who were already in Canada at the time had just arrived in Canada in 1939, managed to get us entry papers to Canada. And in all that extraordinary, I mean, everybody who was alive, who was born in East Central Europe in 1936 as a Jew, and who then lived to tell you about it has some kind of miracle tale to tell. Mine is not the most extraordinary of them. But it was extraordinary that we made it to Canada because, interestingly enough, it wasn't just getting there. It's that Canada, at that point, had the worst record, if you might call it, in the so-called civilized world.

The people who wrote a book about Canadian immigration policy in 1940, And in the years immediately preceding and following, you know what they called their book? None is too many because that was the policy of Canada. Wow. None is too many. Right. Huh. I wonder if negative one is still too many.

Wow, that's amazing. Okay, so I want to tell my audience because I always do that your name is not just Ruth Wise, but it's spelled W-I-S-E-Y-S-E. W-I-S-E, W-I-S-E, Ruth Weiss. The book is Free as a Jew, personal memoir on National Self-Liberation. So do you remember the tumult of those years going to Lisbon and then going to... I remember. No, I'm very fortunate, I think, that I have no memory, and I don't know how deeply you want to get into this, but it is a curiosity.

One of the reasons I think I have no memory is because I was German speaking for the first four years of my life. I had a German governess who raised me from birth to the time that we left, and I spoke flawless German. Now, my parents spoke Yiddish at home. My older brother was already learning Romanian in school. Nobody except the governess and everyone else around spoke German. But I was raised to speak as they thought they would be living. in Chernivz and the language of high society in Chernivis was German. I didn't know that. Wow.

So I spoke German. And then during this flight, you see, there was nobody speaking German to me, except they would put me in front when we get to borders. Because here's this blonde, cute kid who speaks fluent German. It's kind of a good advertisement for who you are. In those years, it could be beneficial. Okay, we're talking, folks, to the author of Free as a Jew. Ruth Weiss.

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go to relieffactor.com, relieffactor.com, or call 800, 500, 8384, 800, 500, 8384, relief factor.com. I use it. It works. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to the author of Free As a Jew, Ruth Weiss. Ruth, there's so much to talk about with you, which is the joy of it. So you're telling us, this is the story of your life in this book. And you call it a personal memoir of national self-liberation. So you're playing with their heads there right in the beginning.

You're saying it's a personal memoir, but it's about national liberation, but national self-liberation. So you deal with the idea of freedom, obviously, in the title, but freedom on a personal level and on a national level, I guess. That's what it sounds like. Exactly. Maybe I try to stuff too much into that. And the paradoxes of it really do work sort of against each other, but I hope in some kind of synergy with each other as well. You see, telling that story, as I was just writing it, I realized that it basically follows along the same path as the story of the Jews in the middle of the 20th century. And one of the things that bothers me so much about the way that people tell that story is that I think that there's too much emphasis that is placed on what is called the Holocaust.

That event is so cataclysmic, and it's so beyond belief, that for many reasons, it has become prominent. And there are many people who believe that somehow this story, the telling of it, is redemptive. Now, I don't know how you feel about that. I think that the idea that something like that can be redemptive must come from Christianity, that if Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus, is redemptive, then how can the crucifixion of an entire people not be redemptive? Now, here's the whole Jewish people kind of on the cross or worse. Maybe we can use that as a redemptive story.

And somehow, Holocaust education is meant to suggest that by telling, now, I'm not saying anything about, of course, the story of Jesus is completely, different, but you see the analogy here being that the story of this horrific, in a sense, evil, telling it can somehow keep others from going that path. Now, I've never been a believer in that. Well, now that's obviously different from being redemptive, but it could be useful. In other words, that that's, of course, the whole idea, at least in my lifetime, you know, we never forget, never forget. have to remember, and that's why we'll tell the story over and over and over and over and over. You're somehow saying that it's not redemptive, but it's also maybe not so helpful.

There's an aspect of it that you are pushing against, and what is that? And here we come to exactly what I began with, that the idea of freedom is really the paramount idea, even of those years, because if I were telling the story, and I do tell the story that way, of the 1940s, think of it. I think of it as the greatest national miracle, if there are miracles in life. It is. How can a people,

six million of whose members, were not just murdered, but in the most humiliating and unbelievable way, this brilliant so-called people, this people that is touted for being so intelligent, wiped off the map of Europe in just a question of five years, you'd think no one would ever recover from that.

But here is the thing. Within that same decade, Jews recovered their sovereignty in the land of Israel that had been under foreign domination for two millennia. So that's the story in a way. And here I am, I mean, it never occurred to me when I was growing up that there was anything like this. But when I began to write about myself, I realized that that's how I felt my life. And that is really how I feel Jewish national life to be, that the real story that we should be, I mean, sharing, not necessarily teaching or asking anyone else to become excited about.

But if we are going to tell the story of what happened under Hitler and under Stalin, then you have to tell the most important part of that story is the self-liberation. How did this people already have the infrastructure? How did they already have the energy? How could they pick themselves up so quickly? Well, you know, you are making it sound like a redemptive story, though, the way you're telling it. Of a different kind. Of a different kind.

Exactly. So it's redemptive if you get to the good part, so to speak. Exactly. Thank you. Well, I mean, and if you don't emphasize the murderous part being redemptive, if you don't remember the killing part being redemptive. If the Holocaust Museum, for example, were to be the way it is in Jerusalem, you see, in Jerusalem you also have a Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem.

But the idea there is you go through it. It's the same horrors. But you come out in Jerusalem. That's the story. If only they could do that in Washington, D.C., where you come out in Jerusalem. But geographically, that's very tough to pull off. So you don't have to do it that way, but you do have to tell the story differently from the way in which the Holocaust Museum was conceived. Do you see what I mean? Oh, certainly I do. But I don't think, well, you've got, I mean, this is very interesting because you're an expert on this stuff.

And, of course, you were, for many years, professor of Yiddish literature and comparative literature. And so you're familiar with the concept of narrative arc. And so obviously, it's kind of in human nature to look for redemption, not necessarily on a spiritual or religious level, but you're always looking for the story, and the story is the more that you suffer, the greater is the other side, the thesis, the antithesis.

You're disagreeing. I am. You are. Tell me. What do you know? No, come on. I want to hear this. Tell me, tell me.

No, I know. Oh, wait, we're going to a break? Oh, so you don't get to make your point. We'll be right back with Ruth Wise. Latest reporting and analysis on the big stories of the day on the daybreak Insider podcast. It's top-notch reporting from SRN News along with the sharpest insight from Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Sebastian Gorka, and the voices of townhall.com. The daybreak insider podcast. It's your first look at today's top stories. Available at Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google, and at Salem Podcast Network.com. Folks, I'm talking to the author of Free as a Jew.

Her name is Ruth Weiss. Ruth Weiss, no relation to Eric Weiss, who we know as Houdini. No. No? You're sure. Because I've noticed you're trying to wriggle out of my question here. My question to you is, no, you weren't. You're answering it straight on.

I was saying that you're having a problem with it. The Holocaust is presented without the good news on the other side, which is the founding, the miraculous after two millennia, a founding of Israel. It's an astonishing thing, however you look at it. But the story, I mean, look, this goes back to Aristotle when you're talking about plot or anything, that the worse something is, it makes the story better. And you have nothing worse, really, in history than the Holocaust. And so, but are you saying that it's just that people only focus on that and that they don't

come out on the other side to the founding of National Israel? Yes. In essence, that is where, you know, my father used to joke always, don't put the emphasis on the wrong syllable. And, you know, this we say ourselves to, this is what it is. It's, the emphasis was wrong from America's perspective. Here are the Jews telling, they have one shot at the mall in Washington. Right.

They're not going to give us another museum. We're not going to tell a story of the Jewish people. And I'm thinking of kids, you know, who come from, I don't know, anywhere. Denver, they come from Indiana. They come to the center of this magnificent country where you have the Air and Space Museum and when you have the National Gallery and where you have the Lincoln. I don't have to tell you how splendid Washington should be to people, what it should resonate. And what do the Jewish people decide to place there?

a Holocaust museum. We should have put up the Bible Museum, if we're going to put up a Bible Museum. But we put up the Holocaust Museum. Now, I can understand, let me just say, I understand, I knew Ellie Weasel very well, and I know almost everyone I grew up with was a survivor of one kind or another.

I understand the impulse of it. Jews have to carry this and have to mourn this and have to be with it forever. But if one was going to bring a story to the world, then the story should not be of the Nazi victory, which is really, I would say that part of that is the triumph of anti-Semitism. I mean, that's what the Holocaust Museum displays, the triumph of anti-Semitism.

What else is it? To rid Europe of the Jews in such a short period of time, to actually make that your program and to get it done so neatly, so efficiently. Okay, now the reason I'm just guessing here, but it strikes me that when was the Holocaust Museum created? I don't know. In the under, actually, it was created in the 90s.

It was opened in the 90s. Well, it was opened. It strikes me that the larger cultural and historical narratives since the 60s have been negative. In other words, we have prized the idea of the victim. And so we almost like to wallow in the worst sins of, humanity, whether it's regard to what we've done to Native Americans or to black Americans, that there's something about wallowing and it's maudlin and it doesn't really get past that. And it sounds like what the Holocaust Museum can be.

Well, that's what I mean. In other words, it doesn't get past that to the other side. Well, they say that it does because they say that by exposing people to that, presumably what these people who've never heard anything like this, and who don't know, by the way, who don't know anything about the Jews and who encounter them first in this particular way, they think that this might mean that you then become kinder to others, that you say never again, this is not going to happen again.

But, you know, as a teacher in general, I don't think that that's how education works. And, you know, I tried to write about the dark side, of Holocaust education, warning against stopping the story too early. The story, yes, the background is to say we were slaves in the land of Egypt, and never to short-sighted that. You know, when you tell that part of the story, you really eat the bread of slavery. You eat the kids never want to eat the Maror, which is the bitterness,

where you're supposed to eat that horseradish that really stings, you're not supposed to elide the experience of slavery. No, you're supposed to say that's the way it was. Not revel in it, but just know it, know it. In order to know how to get beyond it, through what means do you get beyond it? But you're bringing some ideas to the table here, and as I was suggesting earlier,

I think in the latter part of the 20th century and certainly where we are now, the cultural mandarins are in love with sorrow, negativity, victimhood. They wallow in it. They don't believe, you know, when you think of, I guess they almost think like, well, the world's so horrible. You know, this is the narrative, right? How could you bring a kid into it? Everything's going to hell.

They don't even like the idea of joy. or getting through to the other side, because they seem to have a predisposition to focus on the negative. And that's what it sounds like you have with the Holocaust Museum in D.C. Well, but you see, you, if I may put it this way, are in the business of changing people's minds slightly, of not letting them wallow in that. And so the question really is, how do you move people from that phase of their thinking to the new phase of recognizing that one of the reasons that one doesn't want to pass through the second phase

to say, look what this people did. How in the world did it manage to create this remarkable country and to never having been able to defend themselves? I mean, the one thing that we know about the Jews is that they had to depend on others for whatever defense they were going to get. That's one of the reasons that the Holocaust could happen, the way it did, right? Suddenly, what you've never been able to do before,

you become masters at self-defense. You build a self-defense unit, which can really defend the country against the longest war, by the way, the war that is being waged against the Jewish people started in 1945, and despite the Abraham Accords, it's still ongoing, right? It's the most lopsided war ever fought, much more lopsided than the war in Europe. This is the Arab War against.

Forgive me, we're going to go to another break. Do not go away. Why would you go away? I'm talking to Ruth Weiss. The book is free as a Jew. Folks, we've got something very strange to share with you. Albin has been combing the known world for oddities, things that go quirk in the night. And Albin, we.

We need to remind our audience during this segment. Please go to metaxis talk.com and write to us if you want. We'd like to read your letters, number one. Number two, before we move over to what you're holding in your hands album, I want to mention people also. Please go to nutrometics.com, buy your nutraceuticals at nutrometics.com. 50% of their profits go to help missions, folks. Please go to MyPillmetics. dot com and my store.com.

You can buy all kinds of things. Use the code Eric or you're crazy. Okay, Albin. Yes. You are holding something in your hands. Yes. All right. People have been waiting patiently.

Yes. To find out. Yes. You've combed the known world. I have. And what have you found? Okay. Nutraceuticals.

That's a great word. I'm holding in my hand a brand of crinkle cut paper potato chips. Okay. And I was eating them. I was eating them. I said, boy, these are good taste in potato chips. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You have in your hand.

Yeah. It's a bad. An empty bag of potato chips. If it's an empty bag. Yeah. How's it an empty bag of potato chips? It's just an empty bag that once held potato chips. That's true.

But you've brought it in as show and tell for the program. Yes. Because you read something on it. Yes. That is defying to logic. It is mind-blowing. And I don't know if my audience, folks, sit down because this is going to freak you out. This is kettle brand potato chips.

Yes, it is. Crinkle cut. Crinkle cut. Okay, Albin, share with our audience. All right. What have you discovered? Okay, it's a new bag because on the front it says new look, same great taste. Okay, hold it.

It says new look, same great taste. So the taste of what's in the bag is the same as it's always been. It looks different because it's a new bag, but it says new look, same great taste. And yet, across the way on the same bag. On the same bag. It says boulder and crunchier. So is it the same or is it bolder and crunchier? Which is it?

No matter how you slice it, they're lying. Yeah. Because it can't be, if it's bolder and crunchier, folks, it's not the same great taste. On the left hand side it says same great taste. But if it's bolder and crunchier, that is a lot. Now, if it really is the same great taste, then it's not bolder and crunchier. I rest my case. I know, but I think I know how it happened.

It's the two ends of the graphic department. one end said it was the same. The other side said it was bolder and crunchier. But they never came together. They never came together. We need unity, people. I know. That's what it's about.

Unity. I just can't. Now, when did you find this album? Because this is crazy. You don't really go combing the world. You just happen on these things. Well, yes, that's true. Because years ago, I had picked up an apple pie.

And on the front, it said, contains no real fruit. And then, like on the back, it said 10% real fruit. And I was like, what, okay, what is it? Wait, first of all, how could it be an apple pie if it contains no real fruit? Well, how is it called an apple pie? I don't, I'm not sure. I was like, well, are these genetically made? Like, you know, today they've got that phony beef.

And I'm thinking this is a precursor. But what is in it? Well, it tasted like apples. I think there was a mistake on the front, you know. You just think it was a typo? I think it was just, it was probably the packaging from a former apple pie. And then they improved it just like this. But it said, you contain.

10% real fruit. First of all, either one is disturbing. An apple pie with no real fruit is that's just weird. Yeah. But an apple pie with 10% real fruit. I mean, I can understand if it says apple drink and that it says contains 10% real apple juice.

But how can a pie? I mean, what is in it that has the texture of an apple? I think it might be tofu. I mean, really. I had saved, I'm not kidding. I saved this for the longest time.

And I said, hmm, one day I'll be on a show and I can share this. and pretty soon when I got married, my wife was throwing all these things out. Don't you hate that? I hate it. What is with these ladies? Always cleaning up. It's wrong, I tell you.

I tell you. Hey, folks, thank the Lord we're out of time.