The Press Box - The Art of Hate-Reading | Damage Control (Ep. 573)

Episode Date: February 14, 2019

Esquire published a cover story this week that Twitter immediately deemed a "hate-read"; is there any value in reading things just to dislike them (1:18)? Atlanta rapper 21 Savage was arrested two weeks ago by ICE; the agency might be trying to send a message (22:21). Hosts: Kate Knibbs and Justin Charity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Liz Kelly. Here's what to check out on The Ringer.com as we head into the 2019 NBA All-Star Weekend. Dan Devine is writing about the five most interesting NBA teams, Chase Serrano's The Disrespectful Dunk Index returns, and Kevin O'Connor analyzes Steph Curry's evolution and how he changed the game of basketball. Also, don't forget to check out Bill Simmons's NBA trade value rankings and much more on the ringer.com. I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibbs.

Welcome to Damage Control on the Channel 33 Network, a podcast where we unpack what upsets, excites, and divides us. We're talking about the Atlanta rapper 21 Savage who faces deportation to the UK a week after ICE detained him hours before the Super Bowl. But first, have you ever read something

that you knew you were going to hate and then you read it anyways? This week, Esquire published something we both read knowing it would probably suck, which got us thinking, why do we hate read? Okay, so this week, like pretty much every week ever, I read something that I hated. I heavily suspected I wouldn't like it before I read it because people I respected were criticizing it on Twitter in a way that certainly made it seem like it was poorly written

and poorly thought out. And then I read it anyways. The thing that I read that I did not like was this month's Esquire Editor's Letter's Letter. I think it was the first time I've ever even write an Esquire editor's letter. It's a bad piece of writing for so many ways I could probably talk about the ways in which it is bad for like three separate podcasts, but I think that would be boring and a more interesting topic of conversation that it brought up is, why did I even do this? Why do we hate read? I truly don't know. Have you been hate reading, Justin? Yes, I've been hate reading since I was a teen. What are you talking about? You came out of the room like just looking.

for a reading material that you would despise? Well, I'll tell you what. So one thing I noted is that you were talking about this Esquire story, which we're going to get into. But you said the first medium that you noted was Twitter. Yeah. Right? And there's something like, I've been a child of the Internet for a long time. I'm 31.

But for some reason, I do think that Twitter specifically, like the advent of Twitter and I guess it was like 2007, really. It's like Twitter comes into its own, right? I associate Twitter, 2007 and onward, with peak hate read. Like, Twitter is the medium for spreading pieces of writing and basically promoting pieces of writing with the gusto of a publicist, despite the fact that in a lot of cases, the writing that people are sharing and promoting and making go viral, is writing that they don't like.

Yeah. They're like, I hate this. Link, tweet. Right. Retweet, retweet. I didn't have Twitter in the early stages, so I think I might have missed your peak hate read phase. Oh, my God. But that is how I find out about the things on the internet that upset me nowadays. I feel like we should define what a hate read is.

Yeah. Because I think there are a few different genres. Right. Like this was, I guess, an ideological hate read. I just thought that his perspective on the world. Yeah, let's talk about, let's just outline. So we're talking about two different things, really. You noted, I think, rightly, right?

That the sort of actually annoying, provocative piece of writing in question is an editor's letter in the latest Esquire. And the editor's letter is referring to a story that I think on the internet, people have convinced themselves as the real offender, which is the actual. Esquire cover story about Ryan Morgan. Who's Ryan Moore? I didn't read it. I did. And it's sort of like a, it's a very like, I read the story and it sounded, the whole story reads like a Bob Dylan song. It's kind of like ambling and it's kind of

like this very strange loose meditation on like, on this teen boy. And like his sort of I don't know. It just reads like a long magazine feature about a teen who feels like out of place but also feels like a teen in ways that are familiar to anyone who's ever been a teen and been kind of like ill-advised and aimless and inarticulate but also like profound in a totally childish way.

Esquire build the story but also Twitter characterized the story as like about a magatine which is not really what the story feels like it's about. but it's like you look at the cover photo of the boy and it's just the photo of this white boy and he's not like some celebrity so you're looking at it and it's like okay this is the cover of Esquire and it sort of has all the trappings of like a lot of stories

that are explicitly about white conservatives from MAGA country and like this kid is from West Bend, Wisconsin which the piece goes out of its way to know is like super white in that, you know, Trump has done rallies in the area, or, you know, Trump appeared at a rally in the area at one point. And so it's sort of like, it's a story that is having it both ways. It's both not really about Trump country, I don't think. It's just sort of like a loopy, like overly literary feature story about a kid.

But at the same time, it feels like it's clickbaiting a little bit to get people. people to think that this is like, this is a thing you need to read if you want to understand real America. Yeah. And I think that's what got people into this story. What the editor's note sort of says, it argues that we've devolved into this like thought police culture where you can't say what you want to say at parties anymore. And then that's why they have the story on the cover.

It's just, it's very weird and sloppily argued and also just. really poorly written. Like he refers to this experience of feeling like thought police are after you is Kafka-esque. Like Kafka didn't write about the thought police, bitch. Like, you know. Wow. That's a weird teacher. So, yeah, it's just a bad piece of writing.

And I don't know why I read it. And I don't know if it's good or bad that I read it. And that is what I'm trying to figure out. Like what is a hate read that is good for us? What is a hate read that is bad for us? Right. And you were up top characterizing it as like, okay, this is if this is a subgenre of hate read, it's sort of like the ideological hate read.

And the thing is like I read plenty of stuff all the time from like, I mean, look, anyone who listens to this podcast knows that we're both pretty liberal. Like I read conservative writers pretty frequently, right? Like I don't, I want to distinguish between like, disagreeing with someone, which can be, like, exhilarating in its own way. Even in cases where you think the writer is a dipshit, right? You can still be like, no, but I get what this is. A hate read in this sort of ideological sense is when you're reading something and you not only disagree with it,

but you think it's, like, profoundly stupid. Yes, yes. It's stupid in some profound, almost, like, magical way. Mm-hmm. And I come across those not that often, but fairly often. And I don't, like I'm thinking right now, there was a piece about like a leftist case for closed borders that was a classic ideological hate read for me. Okay. I don't think that these, sometimes I think it's actually good to read these no matter how much they infuriate you.

It might even be good that they exist because if people are thinking it, at least it's good that we have an option. opportunity to know that this is a perspective people have. Yeah, yeah. It almost comes with a caveat of, well, look, you can't say that no one let you publish this. You know, it's like, look, you got this out into the world, buddy. Like, you can only complain about the thought police so much. At the end of the day, like, you got your editor's note published as the editor's note and Esquire.

You're the editor in chief. Right, of Esquire. The weird thing about this story, though, is. is that the actual cover story doesn't actually read like it's in the lineage of journalism that does otherwise exist, right? Like, I think people are engaging with the Esquire cover story as if it is one of the actual New York Times stories where they send a reporter to do a long-form dispatch from Trump country about, like, you know, why, you know, how do Trump voters feel a year after or two years after, you know, voting for. Trump and their lives have actually gotten worse. Why do they vote for this guy? Like, what did Trump voters think? I think those are the stories that are the more classic Trump-era hate reads. Yes. And that kind of story, I don't know if I should be reading. I don't know if it's good

that they exist at all. Because it's not really plumbing any new ground. It's just telling us things we already know. Right. So if we're looking at that kind of hate read, right, the Trump voters, who are are they? What do they think? Like, I take it that the point of those stories is to sort of address, I guess one, it's to flatter conservatives on some level, but two, it's to address this liberal insecurity of like, what if I don't know real America? And it's like, I just think that that's stupid, right? Like, I think that framing of like, what is the real DNA of America that people in New York City in Los Angeles don't understand? It's like, that's the false premise of these stories, Is that like, you know, all of these coastal liberals, it's like, look, we've all been to Panera.

We've all lived in other parts of the country, too. The idea that, like, I've never met a Republican before until I picked up the latest issue of Esquire. I didn't realize that there would be so much Panera slender. I'm just thinking of I lived in Iowa. I briefly, I worked in the Obama campaign in 2007, and they had me in Iowa. And I went to Des Moines once. And I just remember thinking that there were way too many. Paneras in a single American city.

There are a lot of paneras in the Midwest. I'll say that. I grew up basically eating those bread bowls. But yeah, so that I guess would be a type of hate read that's just a bad hate read. Like it doesn't really benefit you from reading it. It doesn't help you refine your values. Right. Or does it?

Like, what do you think? Do you think it's helpful or harmful for you to form negative opinions about these types of abuses? I think forming negative opinions is one thing. I think it would be fine if, if, like, the New York Times published eight of those stories where they are like, why did this guy become a Nazi? Why did this guy vote for Trump? And people were just like, oh, I don't think this story was well constructed. Or I don't think its insights are new. And I struggle to understand the rationale. But I don't think that even that is what happens. I think what happens is people read those stories. No, I think people don't even read those stories before they get mad.

I think they literally read the headline. And it's like a very specific phenomenon where they're filled with rage. They're filled with this just like instinctive, immediate rage. And for whatever reason, the way that they process that rage, and I think this is important. The way that they go about processing that rage is specifically by copying the link and dropping it in the tweet field, adding a caption and sharing the story. I think that's fascinating that that is what the literal... You can see it play out on Twitter and on social media

that the way people process the rage is by sharing the story and making sure that other people read it. And that's strange to me. It's very strange. And I wonder how much that process plays into more stories like this coming out. Because like sometimes someone was saying like that, you know, Barry Weiss is one of the most controversial New York Times columnist. Like she generates this reaction from people a lot. Like I've heard people hypothesize that the New York Times basically hired her for the outrage clicks.

It's weird that that's a position that one can hold in society. Right, right. But I don't even know if I think that, do you think that's true? No. I think, well, I think it has a kernel of truth to it. Yeah. I think that that's probably like 10% of it. of why they hired her.

But also, I just think that they think she has valid opinions. And, like, I think they make poor choices when it comes to who they think deserves a platform to share their opinions. Yeah, I think the controversial Barry Weiss. I actually think that the Times has Barry Weiss for the same reason I was just saying of, like, why they published those stories, right? Which is, I do think that some mainstream media has, like, a counterintuitive and kind of perverse. relationship to conservatism, where it's like they're on the one hand, they feel distant from like hardcore Republican politics, but because they feel so distant from it, they get insecure about it. And they're like, are we not taking this seriously enough? And so you end up like hiring

a troll like Barry Weiss because you're insecure in your ability to determine that Barry Weiss is a charlatan. I don't, do you think she's a troll, though? I don't, okay, you're right. I don't think she's a troll, but I don't think that she's like a strong thinker. I think she's like a junior communications aid for like the NRC or something. Like I don't think she writes like somebody who has interesting ideas about anything. She just seems like kind of a, I think Barry Weiss has a lot of like two-dimensional like what's the word I'm looking for? It's almost kind of like glib opinions. Yeah, I think

Glib is a good term. It's like basically she's really adept at putting sort of the thoughts of the average like conversation on the Joe Rogan podcast

into a New York Times appropriate column form and then like serving it up. Right, which is another way of saying that she's like part of the apparatus of mainstreaming the Joe Rogan podcast, right? The Joe Rogan podcast being like

a place where Milo Yanopolis and Kanye West go to not make sense. Did Milo go on it? I don't know. Yeah, Milo's been on Rogan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's also another kind of hate read that I think is, I also don't know how I feel about it, basically, which is like the genre of, like, lifestyle. Oh, let's get into this. Yeah.

It's like, like, people, Refinery 29 does this money diaries. Yeah, okay. And I think a few other websites do it, too, but that's like the most famous. one. And then the New York Times has like a lot, basically its entire real estate section could be considered a hate read, but they do this series where they go with people, people explain like why they rented the space that they rented. And it's always, they're always paying like $9,000 for a one bedroom in the West Village. And they're like, I think one person like literally worked for Facebook and had a hobbyist, like ceramics painting. They're just like caricature.

of yuppies. Yeah. I always think of those headlines that are like, oh, I lived on, you know, I went a month living on a budget of $10,000 a day. Yeah. It's like, what is this? And those, I think, are actually great journalism because they, even though they're infuriating, they are sometimes infuriating to read and like make the reader feel contempt

above all other emotions. But I think that they're documenting how certain types of people, like, I do think, think that they have value because they're showing they're pulling the curtain from like how people are actually living their lives right they're definitely helpful for examining how class operates in america totally that's like what i think of when i think of a good hate read which i'm is like sometimes i feel bad about the contempt that i feel when i'm reading it because i don't like to think of myself as a contemptuous person but i'm definitely i think it has like value and I don't really feel guilty about reading it because I feel like I'm learning something about, like, society.

Right. I just get frustrated because I don't like to see. I think it would be one thing if we were just talking about the rabble being mad at a piece of writing. But so many times it's like the way I'll see it play out is journalists will be the people especially to sort of dogpile these pieces of writing. And that is frustrating because journalists, if no one else, totally understand. how this pipeline works. They totally understand like an editor's logic in commissioning that piece in the first place. They totally

understand the idea that like hate clicks or clicks too. And yet they do like they do it despite everything they know about web journalism and journalism in general. They share these pieces. And I both understand a lot of the factors that would lead somebody to be upstep

with the state of media and like media incentives. But it's just hard to take, it's harder to take people seriously when you see them get legitimately furious at the drop of like a like a hat and I don't know every time I I mean I'm not I'm not on Twitter anymore partially because of stuff like this but it's like yeah whenever those episodes of hate sharing of like hate nuclear fusion play out I just think no one looks good reacting to these things in this way like I totally get not liking I don't know some

Kevin Williamson column or like an Esquire cover story, but it's like there has to be a different way to process this because this is a name. Agree. That's why I still have Twitter, but I don't, honestly I have to make a conscious effort, which is embarrassing, but I won't share things that I hate or that I dislike. And but sharing also includes to me screenshoting, which is like one way. I don't do that either. But I'm just saying that's one way people rash.

In the past few years, one way people have come to rationalize it is they won't share the link. What they used to do is share these like do not link things where you can share a link but in a way that if you click through it, it won't actually count toward the web traffic. But now what people do is screenshot articles and they share that. And that's the way of being like, well, I'm not sending traffic to the New York Times, even though I'm shitting on the New York Times. I think that's basically the same thing. Yeah, just there has to be a different way for people to process disgust and disagreement and rage on the internet. I do want to offer the large caveat at the end here that like even with money diaries, for instance, I think the problem is that for every one of those pieces that you see on the internet where it's like, well, God, there's such a contemptuous point of view writing this thing. but I guess I'm glad it exists on some level as anthropology, if nothing else.

But it's like it's media and it's such a competitive field and there's so much little money to go around that it is easy to look at it and say, for every one of these pieces that exist, a piece from somebody who is maybe underrepresented in media doesn't exist. Like for every time an editor commissions that kind of piece, an angel loses its wings. is basically how I would think about it. And if you think about it that way, then, yeah, I do understand being like, one of the ways people argued against the Esquire story was it's Black History Month.

What is Esquire doing about Black History Month? What are they writing about black people this month? They're writing about this kid instead. How much did that story cost and what could that have gone to alternatively? The ways that newspapers and magazines allocate resources and who they're paying and who they're shining a light on, that stuff matters. And in that case, yeah, I don't really know why I'm reading this story about this random white kid from Wisconsin.

Yeah, I mean, I think that is a fair critique. Okay, so we'll put that in the category of bad hate reads officially. And I wanted to actually end this section by asking our list or something. Is hate listening to podcasts a thing? Please let me know. Yeah, please let us know. And if you hate listen to this podcast, okay, I'm fine with that. Keep going.

Yeah, keep going. Rewind. Rewind it. Listen to it at half speed. So you can really milk the rage. Listen to all the ad breaks. Just run those ads back. Let me tell you.

Just do it. Trump border policies and ICE, which happened right before his arrest. Here's this famous musician a lot of people have heard of who wasn't bothered until. Take a look. Been through some things, but I couldn't imagine my kids stuck at the border. Kids stuck there need water. People was innocent. Couldn't get lawyers.

Kids stuck at the border. People was innocent, quote, couldn't get lawyers soon enough. Arrested by ICE in this big public display. He needed a lawyer. Do you listen to rap music? Sometimes. So it turns out that the Atlanta rapper 21 Savage, born Chea bin Abraham Joseph, is actually British. This is like a legitimately surprising thing.

I mean, 21 Savage is popular, right? He's popular. He is, like, very primarily associated with... Atlanta, right? With Atlanta. But, yeah, it turns out... He doesn't have a British accent. Right, he certainly does not have a British accent.

You know, he's a trap rapper. But it turns out he was born in London, where his father and, I believe, his twin sisters currently live. And he moved from England to Georgia with his mother at Iranians. as mother entered the U.S. with a work visa, which eventually expired. And we only learned all of this. We only learned that 21 Savage is actually British because ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency arrested 21 Savage the morning before the Super Bowl. They disputed his residency status. They put out press release. They gave some statements to a few

publications and they basically scheduled an immigration hearing to potentially deport 21 Savage. He's getting deported, right? Yeah. He has a date. He has an April date. So crazy. I mean, look, we have opinions about ICE and we can talk about them. You know, ICE is a divisive and controversial agency in the grand scheme of American

immigration policy. This story's weird because 21 Savage is literally an actively popular rapper. He released a number one album less than a month ago. He's got a hit song a lot near the top of the Hot 100 chart right now. And he's actually scheduled to perform alongside Post Malone at the Grammys this past weekend. I should note that at the Grammys, 21 Savage was nominated for record of the year. So on Wednesday morning, 21 Savage. Savage gets released on bond. Like I said, he's got, he's scheduled for an April 11th appearance in immigration court. And it seems quite possible that he will be deported to the United Kingdom.

Let's talk about this story a little bit because it's kind of wild to think about this. So a really strange thing about this story is that when it first broke, I should say I was on vacation when this story broke. It was a Super Bowl. Yeah, I was in Hong Kong. You missed the news cycle. I missed the news cycle. Except I saw that there were initially all of these tweets where people were really fixating on the fact that, wait, what, 21 Savage is British?

And it sort of lent this story a really silly, humorous dimension of people making memes and jokes about 21 Savage and like basically trying to re-contextualize him as like some sort of British lord. And I mean, look, I think a lot of that stuff actually was and is legitimately funny. Like, you know, as much as like it very, this story very quickly transformed into a very serious, somber story about immigration and like hardline anti-immigration policy. I do want to at the top declare my stance that it is objectively funny to find out that a rapper that you sort of associated with these like very dominant American conventions turns out to be slick Rick. Secret British. Secret British. Secret British rapper is an objectively funny. For sure.

But it just, that was the thing that people were focusing on more than the fact that he was being horrifically detained. Right, right, totally. And he was detained, I should say. He was detained in like a sting operation. Because initially I remember thinking that like, oh, was this a, he was riding with someone and got pulled over. But then I slated or clarified that, and I'm going to read. read their language. They say they arrested him in a targeted operation with federal and law enforcement partners.

This is such a psychotic waste of our resources. There's a lot of things wrong with it, but it's just that is one of them. There are so many problems the government could be fixing. They're doing a sting operation to deport someone. Right. Someone who has been an American since he was a kid. Right. That's the thing we should really stress.

is that like 21 Savage is relatively young and he was literally a minor when he entered the United States. This gets to a lot of the contention and a lot of the language of the Trump administration and talking about chain migration as it were and the Dream Act and things like that where you're not just talking about like as much as sort of the, I think, conservative party lines or about people coming to the country illegally. It's like, look, you're also talking about a lot of people. people who weren't even the conscious actors of coming to this country. And inso much as you might deport them, you're deporting them to a place that they, by no means, would call, like their home. Although, like I said at the top, Toin Man Savage has other family in London currently. But Atlanta is his home. Right.

Atlanta is his home. He is a small businessman. Whatever his legal status is, he's clearly an American. Right. That is correct. It's such a strange story to me. So like we covered the fact that people were sort of initially amused. And what I thought was remarkable about it was that I would say maybe an hour into people being amused. There was this sort of pronounced second wave of people being like, you know, it's really not funny and people joking about it just really don't. And it's like I get where those people are coming from. And I think several days after the initial arrest, I think people have all rallied around the idea. Or, you know, you know, 21 Savage fans and rap fans have rallied around the idea that this is a serious thing and this is really fucked up. Yeah. But it was interesting to see those two tones competing with each other.

The first wave of, this is hilarious, this guy is secretly British and people being like, this is a capital S, capital I serious issue. Mm-hmm. The next step is you have, you have 21 Savage in ICE custody. The Super Bowl goes on while this is happening. The Super Bowl itself is weird because, you know, in the early stages of planning the halftime show, the NFL was struggling with the fact that they were apparently in talks with like a lot of different rappers and pop singers and R&B singers who are black to potentially perform. And a lot of them didn't want anything to do with the Super Bowl halftime show because of how the NFL has treated Colin Kaepernick and other players who protested. at games.

And so you have that context for a lot of people going into the Super Bowl, playing out against the arrest of 21 Savage and sort of like, and mind you, the Super Bowl being hosted in Atlanta this year. And you move on from the Super Bowl, which is when the initial arrest happens, to the Grammys, which were this past weekend. Now, the Grammys are interesting because 21 Savage is nominating. for record of the year.

And he's also supposed to perform. And he's supposed to perform with Post Malone. Noted white rapper Post Malone. And instead, Post Malone ends up performing with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Did he? I didn't watch the Grammy. He performs with the red hot chili peppers. It's bad performance.

He's like wearing in the classic like Post Malone is sort of a dipshit way. Like he's wearing a 21 Savage shirt in support. But like he doesn't really say anything. about any of this you know no one really is I don't know

if there was a moment where I thought would that would maybe rally around and maybe have some like someone

stand up and say something about this situation about a rapper who's literally nominated and was supposed to be at the ceremony

I thought it would be the Grammys and instead did no one say anything? I don't know if maybe no one said anything I just know

that the biggest the biggest sort of statement coming out of the Grammys was Drake complaining about the Grammys on stage of the Grammys. Right. Yeah. But I do want to give credit, as it stands, Jay-Z is apparently bankrolling, like, 21 Savage's legal team going into his April immigration hearing. You know, I think Jay and Beyonce, they end up playing this role a lot. they are the sort of civil rights benefactors of like the hip hop wing of the civil rights movement

and Jay J.J. seems to be playing that role with regard to 21 Savage. But otherwise it's sort of like this so far at least almost feels like the inverse of when Meek Mill got sent back to jail. Right. Like I would say that Meek Mill is sort of the immediate predecessor to 21 Savage in terms of A rapper highlighting systemic injustice in America. Totally, totally. But I don't know. There's something very strange about how 21 Savage is sort of taking shape. Because for one, he's a strange rapper for this to happen to, right?

He... I don't know that much about him. He is a very, I would say, very distinctly understated guy. He is, you know, some would say he's monotivistead. I think he has a very stylistic, like, understatement about him. He's just very decidedly, like, low-key. Like, you contrast that with Meek Mill. Meek-Mil, to the point where this used to be the joke about meek-mill,

Meek-Mill is, like, a very loud, he's just, like, a very loud presence and has a very loud voice in his music, at least. And so you sort of see how he becomes this hip-hop underdog who ends up. up leading a certain fight for criminal justice reform, whereas like 21 Savage is so the inverse of that, 21 Savage seems so much like a spiritual recluse in a way. And again, it's like the dimension of the story where we secretly found out that he's a British citizen have created this like distraction and even understanding what the hell is happening. I hope he gets a chance to do what Meek Mill has done. Right. And advocate for him.

for people in his situation. Right. I hope he gets a chance to do it from this country and not from England. Right, right. There's like no, nothing good about this story. I do hope that it draws attention to what the immigration situation in America is right now, that someone who grew up here could be potentially sent to a country that they aren't really from. Right.

It's just so unfair and draconian and disturbing. I hope that, yeah, I hope that this incident at least brings attention to what a mess our policies are. Well, one thing I think that is quite interesting about the story itself, how people react to the story, how people contextualize it, is this sense that ICE targeted 21s that, like, basically. We're all trying to figure out why this happened. The line ICE would give you is, well, it happened because he overstated visa and that's against the law. Right? Like, sure, that's maybe the pretext. But I'm saying, okay, but why did you, of all the people that ICE targets, why did they target 21 Savage?

Yeah. He's a, you know, it's like, there. To make a point, I would say. Right, that's the thing. It's like, was it politically motivated? Like 21 Savage is black. he's part of a black musical tradition where people are like predominantly critical to Trump administration. 21st Havage himself has been critical of conservatives and critical of Trump.

But not in a way like a Kendrick Lamar is. Right? Like Kendrick Lamar is critical of, you know, white people in Trump. I'm sure they would deport him if they could. Right. But it's, you know, a Kendrick Lamar is critical of Trump and of conservatives in a very, let's say, thought leadery way in this way that's very, it feels very curated and deliberate and very, like, designed for, like, a lecture hall, whereas, like, 21 Savage is not even that.

And yet, it's tempting to look at this whole situation and be, like, is this politically motivated? And I don't even know what to make of that. Like, that's how inscrutable ICE is to me. Yeah. He's high profile enough. The guy is literal, like, hit records and, like, a number one album on the charts. Yeah. So whatever backlash ICE is getting about this story, it's like, yeah, but this has to be why you targeted this guy in the first place.

It's not like you rolled up in this guy and he just happened to be. Like, your investigators, like you clearly know who this guy is. There has to have been like a political design in doing this. Even if it's not, Trump is like, you know that 21 Savage, but we got to get him out of the country. Like, I don't think it happened like that. No, I don't think Trump probably knew who he was. Right. But I just wonder what I thought would happen politically for doing this.

Like I don't really necessarily understand what they think that they would accomplish by deporting 21 Savage. I think one thing that it gets across is that no one is safe who doesn't have the correct documentation. Like this is an example that they're not going to give you a pass if you are rich or famous. Right. So I think it's to instill more fear into a community of people who don't have their documentation in order. Right. It's horrible. Right.

It's just, I think it's to make people more afraid. It is to make people more afraid. But it just seemed, the thing that makes it seem so ill-avised is as you make people more afraid, you've obviously just reinforced all of the public backlash. though. Like people are more afraid and thus you're going to have more people sympathetic to the abolish ice cause, right? Which has become this like again yet another divisive point in American politics where increasingly more even like normie-ass Democrats are rallying behind abolish ice whereas you have like the Trump administration which is like these people are saints

and that's why I think it's interesting. It's like sure if your if your mission is to make people more fearful mission accomplished, but you've also just made it, it seems like the weirdest instance of an institution just courting more and more reasons for people to doubt its legitimacy, you know, and to destabilize its own, like, political existence in the long term. Like, yeah, he's literally a face of abolish ice now. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's one of those things where it's like you are ruining or attempting to ruin this kid's life, but also you're turning him into a martyr and a martyr who whose lawyer is being paid by Jay-Z. So it's, you know what I mean?

Like he has like a martyr with deep pockets. A martyr with deep pockets. ICE is just such a deeply strange. Like I see all the time conservatives argue that liberals have this very. overblown, almost, like, highly dramatized sense of what Trump's America is even like and, like, this sort of more rigid, authoritarian impulses of the Trump administration. But ICE is one of the few things that you look at and you're like, no, it's this is deeply overactive, chaotic, disturbing agency that acts in ways that, like you say, seem designed to just

make people feel fearful, whether they've even done any actual, like, material crimes. You know what I mean? It's like you want to make people feel fearful for the fact that their mom moved to the United States however many years ago. That's the thing you want people to feel, you want people who live in the United States to feel fearful about. That is, if nothing else. It's Obama as America, too, though.

Right. Yes. He was a huge deporter and had a very conservative stance. immigration. But it, I mean, Trump has taken it to the next level with his, like, just direct and vocal animosity towards people who don't have American citizenship. Absolutely. Absolutely. That context is like super helpful. Trump did not invent. No. He just took it to the next level.

He took, well, he took policy to the next level. And again, he took that like fearfulness. Yeah. He injected it with this like, animus against immigrants. That's definitely damaging, additionally damaging. Right. But yeah, I think it's kind of, I think it's important to remember that this didn't just start with Trump. I think that actually, because sometimes people will argue that it's all about opposing Trump instead of opposing his policies. Right.

But this is a policy that deserves opposition no matter who was enforcing it. Right. Totally. Well, like I said, 21 Savage has an immigration hearing in April. Who knows? Maybe Esquire will cover it. Maybe they'll write a cover story about it. We'll see.

We'll see. All right, I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibbs. That's been Damage Control for this week. Thanks for listening. You'll hear from us again two weeks from now.