The Ricochet Podcast - Excelsior!

Episode Date: November 16, 2018

This week, Peter Robinson is off, but we still have plenty o’ show for you: First, we go across the pond (well, actually he’s in Michigan, but you know what we meant…) to chat with Anglophile John O’Sullivan on Brexit and then we delve deep into the cultural zeitgeist with The Weekly Standard’s (and The Substandard podcast host) Jonathan V. Last to examine the legacies of Stan Lee and the great... Source

We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. Excelsior! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long. I'm James Lalix, and today we talk to John O'Sullivan about Brexit

and Jonathan Velas to the Weekly Standard about pop culture, Goldman, Stan Lee. And let's have ourselves a podcast. Bye-bye. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 425. I'm James Lilacs. Peter Robinson is off this week. Rob Long, whereabouts in the globe, on the globe?

I am in New York City, James. I am in New York City. It's snowy in New York City. We had a blizzard yesterday. The sun is – it's a gorgeous day today. It's one of those like winter days where it's cold, but not even that cold, but like brilliant sunshine. blizzard yesterday that nobody was prepared for. And it came so suddenly that the branches, a lot of streets lost, tree branches were all in the streets because it got cold really fast

and then it got windy. I think that's the problem with your New York trees there. As a Midwesterner, I'm tempted to channel the captain from Wally and say, define blizzard. What is it for you people that constitutes a blizzard? Right, exactly.

No, no, it was – what I loved about it was that he was – the New York Times said unexpected. But actually I remember saying to my Alexa – in fact, by mentioning the name Alexa, she just turned on. Alexa, forget it. Go away. Okay. She had been predicting snow for a couple days. I knew it was going to snow. Everybody knew it was going to snow, but somehow we were still... It's like classic New York Times diction, you know, unexpectedly. Yeah, right.

X or Y happened, which was not unexpected. Pauline Kael did not expect it to have nobody I know was preparing for a blizzard. But I mean, are you talking like two to three inches? Are you talking I mean, because when we have a blizzard, we have a foot and a half, two feet of snow around here. We're stuck. It's all gone now. I mean, it came we have a blizzard, we have a foot and a half, two feet of snow around here. We're stuck. No, it's all gone now. I mean, it came. It was wet.

Then it rained, and sort of it hit 37, 38 degrees, and it all turned to slush. So last night, there was beautiful. The windows I'm looking at right now, there were these beautiful, you know, icy branches and snow-covered branches. It was like a post-war. Now they're all just – it's all just, you know. I know. So you understand now why those of us in real America sometimes scoff at you people on the coast with your curious definitions of hardship and the like.

Oh, I couldn't get Thai at three in the morning. It was like no other year we'd ever seen. Yeah, I mean, we have a very weird thing we do in the writer's room, which is completely inexcusable, and will probably now get me... I don't know. Can I get fired from this? Anyway, it was an old documentary

about show business almost 20 years ago, maybe 30 years ago, and he interviewed James Caan, the actor James Caan, and he was talking about how hard it is to work on location, how location work is so difficult, and he said about how hard it is to like uh work at on location how location work is so difficult and he was like trying to go for the uh shooting on location

it's like it's like a and he's searching he's like auschwitz and i remember thinking myself look it's you know shooting on location it's not even like it's not even as tough as taking the tour of auschwitz yeah right so like so we always say like the snow, it's just horrible. But it's not. Yeah, work will make you free, but you still got to give 10% to your agent. Right. And also the truth is that nothing is as bad as you think it is really. I mean in 2018, the extravagant life we all lead, even if we're not fancy, is still pretty extravagant compared to 1918, 100 years ago.

Right. Well, I mean my father tells tales of driving from Fargo to Harwood, ending up in the ditch and having to walk through the Blizzard 5 because there are no cell phones. There's nobody coming along. There's no AAA. There's no GPS. There's no drones they can send out. I mean you had to walk somewhere and hope that there was a guy who would open up his gas station and give you a can of gas. So, yes, we are lucky people.

But let's consider the toil that faces those in D.C. because even if they have weather like this, and I know how poorly D.C. does with blizzards, they now have the specter of impeachment. We have impeachment and we have infrastructure. What's going to dominate the weeks to come when the Dems ramp up and take power? Because there's all these, who's going to get the speaker nomination? Who's going to get the majority leader stuff that goes on? That's ephemeral. Let's look ahead. What do you think they're going to do when they finally get sworn in? Well, the most important thing is that they have to remain – I mean I think this is generic political advice too. But they have to remain oppositional because that's the best position they're in, right? Democrats have a – they have one branch of the government, and they need to remain oppositional to it because that really worked for them in the midterms.

And I think over time, the past week and a half, we've seen that their midterm strategy was very, very, very successful. It was the ho-hum kind of mini wave, wave let we thought didn't happen on Tuesday. It did happen. It just happened slow. And so they have a very strong hand to play. So as long as they remain oppositional, they will be in good shape. On the other hand, it's a strange thing. I think people in Washington live by these weird cliches that they think are laws and rules but really aren't. And one of them is that they don't want to be the do-nothing Congress. They want to do something, which is not necessarily what America sent them to do.

But nonetheless, that is the cliche. We've got to do something. And so they're going to have this very strange conflict between oppositional to a president who they despise and a quixotic and pointless, ultimately pointless show of impeachment, which I don't think they'll do because they don't really want it to go there. They just want to be a low, slow, constant drip of investigations. Plus, they want to get something done. So they're going to have to come back to this president who famously does not compartmentalize, right? I mean, Reagan compartmentalized. All the other presidents have been able to say, OK, you're you're you're nailing me hard over here in this zone.

But over here, we're going to do some business. This is not a president who does that. So they're going to have they're going to really get they are going to face a choice. I don't think they know they're going to face, which is they're not going to get anything from this guy unless they let him win, which they can't let him win. So, I mean, we may be facing, you know, two years of, you know, of rancor and gridlock. But that's kind of what we've had for years. Right. So I'm not really sure that it's right to say the American people are against that now. Rancor and gridlock sound like jugglers at the Renaissance Fair, but that's what we keep asking.

My lawyer is Ranker. I mean, they can get infrastructure out of him because he wants to be a builder and he wants to put his name on things, and he's been talking about that before. Why aren't our airports better? That might be something you could actually unite the country behind because everybody drives over a

pothole, everybody sees a bridge that they think is crumbling infrastructure. Yeah, let's do that. But you're right. If they decide that they're going to go all out with rancor and gridlock and impeachment and the rest of it, they're just going to cheese them off. They're not going to get that. And then they can say, actually, you're right, that in opposition, we can't deal with them, so you have to give us the house. And they'll booby trap. They'll booby trap all those initiatives.

So it won't be infrastructure. It'll be infrastructure plus something, you know, Planned Parenthood. Plus free college. But if they try to do the oppositional thing where we're going to go for free college and global climate change initiatives and the rest of it, and they don't get it, the question is whether or not then they will be able to go to the people and say, well, you have to give us more power so we can get these things like free college and free Medicare for all. Or they will have ruined the debate by having it too early and having it sort of spoiled in the public marketplace of ideas as a thing that just wasn't really fully developed and explained and died. I mean you think sometimes that George W. – that W. tried to do social security reform had the same problem. And that just never came back. Well, that's because nobody wanted it.

I mean nobody – I mean it's the right thing to do. It's the smart thing to do. But nobody wanted it. Now, Republicans don't want it. I mean Donald Trump ran against it. He said no entitlement reform. I mean, Republicans have given up on all those things. They can't now claim that they're going to take them back. That is really the struggle for Republicans, really. It's going to be. I mean, I know nobody listening to this podcast wants to hear it. There

is zero good news from the midtermsms and there is zero good news in emerging demographics in America for the Republican Party as it stands now. And considering the walloping that Republicans took in the suburbs, it's going to be really hard to maintain this kind of, you know, for whatever reason, popular own the libs, troll the libs, make the media mad posture and make that your the only reason and one of the sole reasons why you support the president and also win back the suburbs. That's that is turning people off. Now, everything turns some people off, right? But that's what that is. So you either Republicans either accept that and kind of march through it and try to figure out ways to sort of demonize the other side, which is not that hard to do. Right. I mean, we're just on one side of politics right now. The other side is that Democrats have this incredible need to be weird and to be nutty and to like to betray themselves as as kind of crazy lefties. So, you know, that is a that's a that is the current Republican strategy. It's a it's a high wire act, but it may work. Right. I mean, sometimes these things work, but I suspect what will happen is a lot of booby trapping of generally popular initiatives from the Democrats, which is smart, which is very smart for them to do.

And then a continual, maybe not always on message, maybe faulty, maybe failing, maybe typical Democrat awkward badness attempt to appeal and to rebrand themselves to the moderate suburbanites as we're not weird. We're not weird. I mean, what is it that Claire McCaskill said in the waning days for a failed campaign, but it was like a desperate thing. I'm not a crazy Democrat, she said. She didn't even try to sugarcoat it. She just came right out and said the words, I am not a crazy Democrat.

And that I think will be the, that should be anyway. And I think it's going to, they're going to try the subtext of every democratic initiative going forward. And then every now and then things will bubble up, like you got to, you got to go to the bathroom with a guy in a dress, and you're, you're, if you're, if your son picks up a doll at school, we're going to claim he's transgender, and we're going to pay for free college and that means everything mean free french literature majors for the world and then you know then republicans will have a day what will happen you mentioned before that nobody wanted social security reform i think you mean there are two sets of groups here there's the politicians and

then there's the people and i think the people were split the politicians didn't want social security reform because it's hard it's dangerous You get lots of angry letters from old people. And what's in it for them? I think the case could have been made then that there was an argument to be made and people could have been persuaded. But I think that's gone now. When it comes to the Democratic Party being odd and weird today, unfortunately, all of their energy is their effervescence. Their geist is coming from the people who are happy when Twitter bans somebody who says, if you have a penis, you're not a woman. And on their side, the argument shrinks. The argument gets more confined. And there's no way that they can keep that from eventually contaminating the rest of their

politics. But you're right. I mean, what happens is the Republicans say, all right, we are going to fight tooth and nail free college. And at the end of it, we have free undergraduate college and graduate school. There's no way we're going to pay for that. And that'll be their bid to fiscal responsibility. And then again, the Overton window shifts, paying more, doing more, being nicer. It'll be fun. I can't wait to see their upcoming agenda because it's going to be a mixture of good things that will be paid for by money conjured out of the air and the usual punitive restrictions on your liberty that they seem to think empower them as the friends of the people when actually they're all about the diminution of the human sphere and the subjugation to the state.

But they don't want to say that because that just sounds so... It's hard not to put that on a bumper sticker, my friend. It certainly is. You know, it makes you just want to stay home and burrow into the cupboard. If only you could. Furniture is so uncomfortable these days. Well, Rob, you're in New York.

Then you've got to go to the store, you've got to bring it home. Don't buy furniture. My advice, don't buy any furniture. That's just it. I can't remember the last time in New York. Then you've got to go to a store. You've got to bring it home. Don't buy furniture. My advice, don't buy any furniture. That's just it. I can't remember the last time in New York I saw a furniture store. I don't. And I'm sure there's showrooms, and I'm sure there's wonderful places that will hire burly guys to take a big, expensive piece of thing up to your 97th floor apartment. But you're probably not that person, and you're probably thinking, I've got a crummy sofa downstairs I'd like to do something about.

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for fall and save 10% off the entire site. 10% until Black Friday by visiting burrow.com slash ricochet. That's B-U-R-R-O-W dot com slash ricochet to get 10% off the entire site now, but only until Black Friday. And thanks again to Burroughs for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast John O'Sullivan, editor-at-large, National Review.

During the 1980s, he was a senior policy writer and speechwriter 10 Downing Street for Margaret Thatcher, and he's currently president of the Danube Institute and editor of the Austrian monthly Quadrant. Follow him on Twitter, if you wish, at John O'SullivanNR. John, those of us who are following Brexit over here are confused, dismayed, dismayed, confused. We have no idea what's going on hour to hour. Something about Ireland. Tell us where it stands now and whether or not Brexit is actually going to happen. Well, I'm dismayed and confused as much as you are, in fact, probably more so. And something called Brexit will happen that we don't know whether it will be as yet, whether it will be something real or whether it will be the proposal from the agreement with the EU that Mrs. May has produced.

Now, just very simply, and we don't want to get over the details, but very simply, she said three major lines, red lines for her, that she would absolutely insist on. One was we wouldn't be part of the single market and so subject to its regulations. Well, we won't be part of the single market, but we will be subject to its regulations, the, we won't be part of the single market, but we will be subject to its regulations, the exact regulations of the single market.

Secondly, we wouldn't be in the customs union. Well, we will be in the customs union. And this time she sort of admits it, but she thinks it may be temporary. And the third is that we wouldn't be subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Well, it turns out we will be subject to the European Court of Justice. And so we have all the burdens and constraints and rules and regulations of being in the EU. With one big exception, because we will be technically outside it, we lose our vote. And indeed, the most hotly controversial part of the arrangement, she's agreed, is that we cannot leave the new negotiated deal without the consent of the EU, which means, you know,

as far as one can see, we might never be able to leave if they didn't want us to, and apparently they don't want us to. Final point, Jim, the EU itself, the spokesman for the EU, all the politicians are saying quite openly they regard this as a complete surrender and as a triumph for them.

So Mrs. May now has a very difficult job, which I hope she fails at, of persuading the House of Commons and the Conservative Party that she's had a triumph when in fact she has brought home disaster. Hey, John, it's Rob Long. Thank you for joining us.

Are you in Budapest? Where are you? Just because I'm interested. No, well, as a matter of fact, I'm in Michigan in the town of Holland, having been at the Hope College last night talking about Russell Kirk, who, of course, is a local hero. Of course. OK, so that I can't now call you a global elite then because they're Michigan doesn't count. So the calculation – I mean it seems astonishing to us or astonishing to most people because there was in fact a referendum and the people voted for Brexit. And there was sort of great wailing and gnashing of teeth and predicting all sorts of disasters. And now there was – I think everyone who voted for it I assume understood there would be a negotiated exit.

It wouldn't just happen sort of Big Bang style. But over time, it seems to me Theresa May's making a calculation, which is the people changed their minds, and she won't pay a price. They don't really want to leave Brexit. They were just having a sort of a momentary tantrum, and now cooler heads prevail. So we'll give them a window dressing Brexit without the Brexit, and the people will be happy. Do you think the people will be happy?

Well, actually, there's already been a test of that, and an interesting one. In the local elections, which took place earlier this year, and which were unexpectedly good for the Tories, this is before this whole range of betrayal started which were unexpectedly good for the Tories the

pundits all said this shows beyond any doubt that the Tories are now a leaver party they are the party that has got the lion's share of the people who want to leave, and they'll be punished if they don't leave. And, you know, the interesting thing about that

election was, although it was a good election result for them, they tried to suppress the news about it. They practically said nothing about it. There was no, they were kind of looking shifty and saying, well, we did better than we expected and so on. Now, the polls since then have shown that there is pretty well stable, but a slight drift in the country as a whole

to remain very small. And I don't believe, frankly, I don't believe that for the reason that if you're living in England at the moment, you're being subject to a barrage of official media and establishment propaganda about how awful Brexit is. So people who believe in it tend, again, to, show that only about one-fifth of the nation thinks that Brexit is any kind of a good deal. Actually, some say as low as 7%. And when you put the range of possibilities, which include the so-called no deal or leaving on the basis of WTO rules and regulations, World Trade Organization general rules, that does far better than any of the other options

and is probably at this point the best expression of Brexit. So Theresa May is making a calculation that if you sort of wait, it's sort of a rope-a-dope, right? You wait long enough, muddy the waters enough, you'll be seen as enacting the people's will in a responsible way, whereas you and I both know it just seems like a total perversion of the people's will. And in fact, a worse deal than remaining – it's actually worse than remaining at this point. I quite agree with that. It is worse than remaining. It's worse than remain at this point um i quite agree with that it is worse than remain and it's worth remaining worse than remain in two respects in remain you get a vote you're part of the system of um the hangling and negotiations every day in the eu we don't get it in this one they can impose on a whole set of arrangements on us that we don't like. And secondly, if we leave in name only,

it's going to be very hard, well, impossible in some senses, to get people saying, well, now we want to leave again. Whereas if we don't leave, people will say, well, this betrayal is too blatant. This denial of democracy is too severe. We simply want to go back to the drawing board. And I think that, incidentally, I'm not in despair at the moment. I'm depressed. But I do believe that there is enough opposition in the Tory party, a great majority. And even among the terrified Tory MPs who are being threatened with all kinds of things if they don't go along with the government. So I do think that this can be stopped.

Whether she can be got rid of, which I think is the best solution, because we want not only a new policy, but a new leader of the party and prime minister who believes in the policy and who will pursue it, and who will have the backing and the authority of a majority in the leadership election. But I think that's possible, but it's not absolutely likely. Whereas I think there's a much stronger possibility that enough Conservative MPs will rebel, and there won't be a corresponding rebellion

of enough sides from the Labour benches to support her, which is what now she is relying on. Well, what's she telling herself that this is actually deeply popular and she doesn't know it or only she knows it? Is she saying, well, look, I'm the new Iron Lady and I'm going to just march and they'll all understand my wisdom later when I've enacted my will. I mean what is the story that Theresa May is telling herself that seems suicidal to me? What does she think she's doing as opposed to what is she doing?

I agree with that. That's a question I generally ask on these occasions, and normally you can, in fact, work out a fairly good analysis. You can, well, yeah, she's doing it for this reason or that reason. It's very hard to do so here, partly because she keeps stating that things are the case. When you look at the document in front of you and they are not the case. This is something we're doing. No, it isn't. And when somebody just repeatedly, again and again, and she does this quite effectively on her feet in the House of Commons for two hours, that you wonder

have they absorbed their own propaganda to the point that they really believe all these things. I think the case, the real actual case for what Mrs. May is doing is as follows. It is, okay, we'll burden ourselves with all kinds of obligations, but we will actually

have sovereignty back. So, you know, after a while, after it becomes burdensome, we'll be able to use our sovereignty to get out of the deal with the EU. We'll be able to make long-term plans for transferring much of our trade to other countries. This kind of analysis. We'll have something we don't have now, sovereign independence.

But the answer is, of course, that's just sovereign independence under the conditions that she's already agreed with the EU isn't really sovereign independence. I keep going back to this because I know that you worked for Mrs. Thatcher and you were a fan of Mrs. Thatcher. And I can't imagine you could be Theresa May and not be looking at a picture of Margaret Thatcher every day and hoping to live up to that. So is this her coal miner strike or is this her poll tax? Yes, it's certainly her poll tax because let's suppose that she gets it through. The argument that, well, they'll come to a see I was right in the end, you need time for that. But how much time has she got? She's now got the, she doesn't have a majority in the House of Commons. She has, she's relying on the support of the Democratic Union, this party

from Northern Ireland and they are against the bill and they say they will vote against it they certainly won't have the same kind of sympathy with her they've had until now there will be by-elections at some point, there always are people die and the special elections

have to be held to replace them. The Tories will suffer tremendous rebuffs in those elections. When you have something like 90% of the Tory party saying they don't like the deal, practically, I would say myself that the Tory party is the solidly

lever party at every level except the cabinet. The cabinet's majority remain. And as you go further down the party to the MPs, then the activists, then the voters, you find a larger and larger majority for leave without trimmings, just leave. John, we'll see how this plays out. Let's go elsewhere in Europe. Let's go to Turkey.

There's a story from NBC this week that the Trump administration is trying to figure out the way to get Gulen, I can never pronounce his name correctly, to get him out of America and off to Turkey in order to get the Turks to stop pressuring the Saudis and make nice. This seems strange and ill-advised. What do you make of this if it's actually happening? Well, I'd say it doesn't seem strange. And I'm sure a lot of advice went into reaching that conclusion, Jim. But it seems to me to be monstrous.

And it's a perfectly rational, cold-hearted, state-as-a-cold-monster policy. You know, we need the Saudis in the current policies, very reliant on the Saudis in the Middle East. The Saudis are now allied to the Israelis and the Egyptians. We don't want this important alliance to break up, even if it's semi-covert. And we certainly don't want to benefit either the Iranians or indeed the Turks, actually, who are both wild cards in this game. So what you do is you say, OK, what can we give them? Well, there isn't a lot we can give them.

But one of them is this guy. He's not a particularly nice guy in my view. And he certainly is not, so to speak, one of the relatively few liberal democratic intellectuals who we like to see prosper in that part of the world. And we never do see him prosper. But nonetheless, they want him, and he's the guy they are blaming, probably falsely, for the coup, and they want to put him inside, along with a lot of other innocent people in Turkey. So essentially, if you don't give a damn about individual rights and about your own reputation as a decent country and all that, you'll do that. I mean, a lot of countries do that all the time.

But this one is hard to do for the Trump administration or for any administration because it's taking place in the full glare of publicity. And I hope that saves the man from being sent back to a very unpleasant fate. So, I mean, in a sense, this is the difference between the politics that happen in democratic societies and the politics that happen in democratic societies and the politics that happen in

completely oppressive ones because rulers of an oppressive society would just send him back without a second thought and nothing about it would appear in the newspapers. Publicity can perhaps save this man as it saved the much better and more admirable case of

RCRBB from Pakistan and I hope that we in Britain become ashamed of ourselves, ashamed enough to invite her in, which we should do. Well, there's two points there. One, in an era where the news cycle lasted longer than a hummingbird's heartbeat, you might, yes, be talking about the fallout from the journalist, the quote, journalist assassination in the Turkish embassy. Where I work at the newspaper, one day there appeared a little shrine to the journalist.

There was a flower, there was a yellow ribbon, there was a press notebook on a chair, and it was under a spotlight. I'm walking by this, and I'm saying, this is Minnesota, for God's sakes. This is quite the outpouring, but I give it two or three days before the flowers are wilted and a week before the shrine is gone, and that's exactly what happened. Things move so quickly now that that whole episode is like seven years ago, and the idea that it's still actually affecting what's going on in politics, when you're right, it's the relationship between the Saudis and the Israelis and the other shifts with the Gulf

Cooperation Council, that seems to have moved on and over the whole incident in the Turkish embassy. So I don't know why we're trying to still make nice about that. Everyone's forgotten, or have they? Well, your point is absolutely valid, but there is a qualification to it. And the qualification is there's a difference between doing nothing about something or, well, turning a blind eye, saying we wish it were different. There's a difference between that and the saying, okay, we've got the guy,

we're putting him on the plane now, he'll be bound hand and foot, and don't tell us what happens to him when he gets there. Would you? It's even more embarrassing if you do that. So the controversy, the row itself, may die. But it will always be a major point of opposition speeches, the Democrats,

that Trump is the kind of president who sends home innocent people to be tortured. That will just live on and on and on and on. And you might say, well, wouldn't the Democrats do the same? Very often they would do it and more easily because the media wouldn't be holding them to account, but the media will hold Trump to account. John, are you going on

the cruise, the National Review cruise this year? Yes, I am. Looking forward to it, too, as well. I badly need a cruise to know about you chaps. I certainly do, and we'll stand you a gin at the crow's nest when we get there. John, it's been a pleasure as ever.

See you on the show. All the very best. Thanks again. Goodbye. And I think that qualifies as our DC cocktail party moment here, because cruises are... Well, you know what people think about cruises right rob they're yeah we know what we know what they're like we should we should just

just i mean i i because you mentioned it last week and i think we should probably just bring everybody up to speed on the current term that people are using it's sort of like a synonym for cuck servitive right that your establishment go, you go on these cruises and you chit-chat with other go-along Republicans about how, well, we have to make common cause with the Democrats, right? That's

their theory about what happens on these cruises where, in fact, the only person saying that is me. Everyone else is looking at me like I'm a commie pinko traitor, and it's red-blooded, full-throated conservatism from start to finish. It is. It's lots of fun. It's also a great way to unplug from the world because even though the ships tell you they've got Wi-Fi, you get out there, pages don't load. It's slow.

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Eero Plus included. Our thanks to Eero for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we happily bring back to the podcast Jonathan V. Last, digital editor of the Weekly Standard, author of What to Expect When No One's Expecting, and the editor of three humorous books on virtues, The Seven Deadly Virtues, The Dadly Virtues, and The Christian Virtues, all three of which I would like to mention. The words, the wisdom of Rob Long. And me, too. And Jonathan, welcome. Hey, boys, how are you? Good. Jack Dandy. Everybody we love is dying.

That is literally always true, though. I just hope you know that that's a process of, you know, I'm not trying to be Buddhist here, but everybody on this podcast right now is dying not not true for me though because i have so few people that i love my heart is so cold and black that i very very few people i really like and care about you know we want to talk a little bit about politics before we do can we can we just talk about everybody you love dying i mean let's start from the back uh stan lee stan the man explain to me why stan lee i'm not a comic book fan okay um not to say that i i i don't like him i just i just it was never i didn't grow up with him it was not a fan um so explain to me why he's so awesome or was so awesome uh well he essentially created an industry uh the the pop cultural

landscape that we have today would not exist without stan lee we had had comic books in one form or another since shortly before the civil war uh this was a medium that never really progressed beyond what it was until stan lee shows up on the scene and in 1961 launches a series of comic books which all wind up changing the medium and creating an industry and he has the vision to understand how important intellectual property is it is like this um i would say we had professional wrestling before vince mcmahon but the professional wrestling world the industry as it really is now simply wouldn't be there without him there were circuses there were things like circuses before pt barnum uh but without barnum the circus doesn't exist and stanley is like that for comics and and

big chunks of popular culture so people say this about stanley right uh i mean on on the on the other side not on the other side but in addition to the um the praise they say well you know he didn't like he didn't create it wasn't like he was that creative he was like he consolidated it was a catalyst and and he was a conglomerator and a an aggregator of great brilliant um artists and thinkers and writers and comic book artists right is? Is that fair to say? Well, it's part of it, but I don't think it's all of it. I mean, do you know anything about the Marvel method?

Do you care about the Marvel methods? Well, I can't say no now, can I? Well, yeah, no. I mean, so for like 100 years, the way comic books were written was this. He had a writer who wrote the thing, and he described what it was all supposed to look like, and he hated it as an artist, and the artist drew the panels the way they were supposed to you know and lee decided he was going to just change the entire creative process where he would come up with a very vague outline for a story he would hand that vague outline to the artist the artist would draw a

comic book with no words based upon this story idea which sometimes could be like you know a couple pages sometimes could be a couple sentences and then lee would take the art and write dialogue on top of it and he i mean this is such a weird idiosyncratic process and it it first of all i mean again it's visionary in the sense that he made the artists full partners for the first time in the history of the medium nobody Nobody ever cared what the artists thought. Right. I mean, it was just the artists were really worked for hire. Lee turns them into essentially co-creators for the first time.

And it's again, I mean, so the reason there is some crack back against Lee is because there is bad feeling among a couple of the big artists who worked with him, specifically Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, who always felt like they did not get their proper credit. And Lee was very cute about this. You know, Lee would say, I was never hogging all the credit. People would just give me credit. And whenever I was asked, I would say that they were co-creators with me. And I get the Kirby and Steve Ditko complaints about this, you know, in the science.

But on the other hand, there are certain people who are so gigantic in the development of an industry that you simply can't judge them. So not to get... Okay, sorry, James, go. Lee was not an artiste. Lee was a promoter. But he also instinctually and almost without effort was

able to write and come up with a style that he got it in this just way in his marrow that when you look at the other artists that were working they might have been a little bit i think uh resentful that somebody who was not of the artistic persuasion and temperament was able to bring these things and make them better when he finished off the dialogue. Because if you look at Ditko and Kirby after they left Marvel, Ditko just turned out these incomprehensible Randian rants, although he did some good stuff at Charlton,

but the writing was horrible. Kirby went over to DC in the New Gods series as this turgid thing, both of which lacked that light, sprightly touch that Stan so effortlessly added. So, I mean, we can which lacked that light, sprightly touch that Stan so effortlessly added. So, I mean, we can say that, yes, he was a promoter, he was a co-creator, he was coy about this, but there was something so unique about what he brought to the medium that a lot of the snapback that we're getting seems to be ill-advised.

Right, Jonathan? Yeah, I would agree. I mean, here's the thing at the end of the day the marvel enterprise can succeed as it has succeeded minus any one or two of the artists it could not have succeeded minus lee right i mean he was the essential man here uh and he's you know it's a weird it's a weird thing i would even go so far as to say that our popular culture is better for having comic books in them comic books have a lot of crap if you read 100 comic books 90 of them are really bad

but the other 10 are pretty good they they can be a pretty good medium for ideas a pretty good medium for exploring interesting thoughts uh you know and even the movies look people complain about how bad superhero movies and comic book movies are. Are the Avengers movies worse than the Schwarzenegger blow-em-up movies of the late 1980s? I don't think so. That's a good point. We could be all still eating a steady diet of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sylvester Stallone, and Schwarzenegger. I actually think, believe it or not, the comic book movies represent a pretty serious upgrade. Sorry, James. You go. or not the comic book movies represent a pretty serious upgrade i i you know i'm sorry james you go with the comic book movies have done now is mainstream what used to be geek culture used to

be marginalized culture i did a piece for the paper about this 12 year old kid in 1978 who said i want to throw a comic con because all the other comic cons are crappy 12 years old he writes stanley a letter and says i'd like you to come to my Comic-Con here in Minnesota. And Stan sends him his terms, thinking that's the end of it. But the kid says, I accept your terms. And Stan flies out and shows up. And as another guy I interviewed said, was standing there critiquing some other – on the stage, some other artists. And he's got his satiny disco shirt.

It's buttoned down a little bit to the sternum with his chest hair out, the smoked glasses, the sideburns, very much the swinger, right? Very much. So Stan was not some basement-dwelling geek at the time to the people who were reading comics. He was a man. He was out there. He was getting some. But more than that, he was one of us. I mean, when he talked talked everybody read stan's bullpen

bulletin right everybody read stan's soapbox because he was talking to us with the same enthusiasm that we had about these things and he liked us and we liked him back so it went from being this sort of mouth breathing pimply guys reading hugo Gernsback's sci-fi magazines in the bathroom to something that was a little bit more mainstream. Yeah, still a little bit of a former too, by the way, James. I know, absolutely so, absolutely so. But it paved the way for a general, larger cultural acceptance because all of a sudden, magazine, you know,

highbrow magazines are talking about what Marvel is doing. Why? College students are reading these things, and that made it possible for this eventually to become this billion-dollar enterprise that it is today. Well, I read a lot of Archie comics. I just want to let me go on record. And during my European boyhood, I read a lot of Asterix and Tintin. Those are my graphic novels. But let me ask you a bigger question because you mentioned P.D. Barnum.

And I would actually say that the transformative sort of 20th century, maybe even 19th century, though I'm the wrong person to say, entrepreneur, founder, visionaries who changed whatever it is they did, weren't themselves the thing, right? So Stanley was not an artist. Henry Ford was not really an engineer. I mean he aggregated a bunch of different processes and put them together and created the – now it's not the Marvel method, the Ford method, but it really wasn't.

He didn't invent that. In fact, his two biggest rivals, the Dodge brothers, died mysteriously. Or Steve Jobs, right? Steve Jobs wasn't an engineer. He couldn't build an Apple computer to save his life. Is there any parallel in that sort of typical Americanism of those people? Is there anything about America that kind of creates these slightly you know a little bit huckster a little bit marketing but also incredibly enthusiastic and inspiring leaders

you know i i thought a lot about this with lee because what you are putting your finger on is exactly right with these guys who shift the world around us they are very rarely the progenitors of something they're not the inventors they're not coming up with stuff. What they are is they see something that already exists that is not being leveraged properly. You know, like Jobs saw the personal computer and thought the personal computer isn't being used the right way. And Howard Schultz with Starbucks, right? I mean, the idea of the coffee shop was not new, but Schultz thought that it could be used as something different. And this is, you know, it's weird. If you look at the history of technology, you see this all the time.

I think that it was the Mayan civilization that had the wheel, but they just, the wheel was just a children's play toy. They never thought to actually use it as a pulley or to roll stuff on it or anything like that. You know, it happens that things in the culture or inventions that half of it is inventing it, but the other half is actually understanding the best use for it. And a lot of the times with all the people you say, from Barnum to Vince McMahon to Steve Jobs to Stan Lee, they're not inventing something new, but they are seeing the way to use it. It's just different. I'm not sure if vince mcmahon shifted

it was part of the title paradigm shift in human experience but okay i'll i'll let you get away with that one you know why we have pay-per-views we have pay-per-views because of vince mcmahon like he created the pay-per-view you know that that is a thing that did not exist did you know this this is a weird thing it was he so leveraged himself uh for the expenses on the third wrestlemania i think it was uh that he was desperate to come up with some alternate revenue streams because ticket sales alone weren't enough to pay for for what he was putting on and so he went to a bunch of cable companies and had them invent the technology that became pay-per-view i'll never be able to pass myself off as a highbrow guy again

no no really you wouldn't um then can we shift to the to what happened this morning well the news this morning that um william goldman uh probably the best screenwriter ever uh certainly the most um the most fun uh died today or maybe last night in 87 and uh to me he will i mean there's like you know he there's a couple things he should be remembered for one is just the idea of writing so with such lean with such lean elegance in his movies that we that we use the phrases even today. So in Princess Bride, how many people say, like, I don't think that word means what you think it means, right?

He wrote, the screenplays themselves were incredibly elegant. If you looked at them, lots of white space, and yet he told these incredible stories. Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid has got to be one of the best movies ever made. Marathon Man is still one of the spookiest thriller novels I've ever read.

Princess Bride is pure joy from start to finish as a movie and as a book, and funny. What's your favorite Goldman work? favorite goldman work so my favorite goldman work is probably the the novel version of princess bride because he does such great stuff i mean people are people who have only read who've only seen the movie i would say go to amazon and treat yourself to the book and buy the there are a bunch of different editions get the anniversary edition which has his obituary for Andre the Giant, which is just lovely. And what he what he does is that he's this genius conceit for for the book, which is that it's going to be a story with all the boring parts left out. And so it is structured as a translation from an original text. But the original text is missing a bunch of pages.

And so there's like a translator's note at the beginning. And this way, whenever he gets to a part where there has to be some boring exposition, it just ends and goes, you know, there's like a little translation note saying we've lost the next 45 pages and you start at the next chapter. And it works. And to be honest, I have always taken that as sort of instructions for all of my writing. And even though I don't do fiction, I do nonfiction, just leave the boring parts out like your pieces shouldn't have any boring parts in it. It should be all candy. You know, there can't be any spinach in there. It has to be all candy.

Yeah. And I I don't know. I really, really love that. I love his book on screenwriting adventures in the screen trade. I'd say I look at him differently than most people would, but the same way you guys would. I mean, I read him primarily as a writer writing about writing. And most other people are not going to be interested in that. I mean, for you guys and me, for us, it's a trade journal almost, you know, seeing how he talks about things and how he talks about the importance of story as opposed to dialogue, the importance of endings. Now, endings should be really brief. Did you ever read his essay on the end of North by Northwest? Oh, yeah. You should.

Yeah, you should. Yes. But you should finish that thought. Yeah. So he has this great essay in one of his books about endings. And he says, look, just consider what happens at the end of North by Northwest. So North by Northwest ends with Cary Grant throwing Leonard off of Mount Rushmore. Right.

And he saves the girl and they get in a train and he is he they have sex and get married and all this. You have to understand in total screen time, that's like 35 seconds. You know, like it's just bam, bam, bam, bam. He said. And the reason this is done is because the story actually ends the minute Leonard falls. Right. You know, and so many move. Once you think that way, whenever you're watching a movie, you will be shocked by realizing that like the story that you are there to see actually ends

sometimes 12 15 in the case of like the lord of the rings return of the king like you know fully 45 minutes there's 20 goodbyes yeah yeah well i still remember two most efficient things i ever saw in film right we're in butch cassidy one is the opening sequence the opening you know half a reel where they are about to rob a bank and they walk into this bank and now it's not the old west anymore it's the early 20th century and they're looking at banks have gotten smart and their bars on the windows and bars on the in front of the teller and there's a giant safe and there's these gates that come down and you see these two guys see that the world has changed. There's no dialogue.

They just realize, uh-oh, I know how this ends. And then that moment where they're being pursued by a posse. The super posse. The super posse. The super posse. That's right. And all they – there's only one really line of dialogue. And people remember it.

People who are fans of the movie, if you haven't seen the movie, you should see it. Who are these guys? Who are these guys who are these guys and it's all paul newman always looking at like to robert redford saying who i i can you do that i can't do that seeing how they ride all night and they can see them in the distance following them can you do that i can't do that who are these guys and he says who are these guys about five times and each time it's funny and sad and hilarious and perfect it's just perfect yeah and he goldman said that for him the key writing moment for that screenplay was again

not a piece of dialogue it's the decision to jump off the cliff and into the into the water and because into the river rather because he said that's the moment there in with the screenplay after that you realize that anything can happen. You know, it's this fantastic show-don't-tell moment. And it has a, ironically, it has a great piece of dialogue. I forget who it was, either Butch or Sundance. It was Sundance turns to Butch and says, I got a problem.

I can't swim. And wait, go ahead, James. And then Butch says, The fall will probably kill you. Oh, hell, the fall will probably kill you. It's a great movie. Well, here's the thing. I mean you're right. Violent – but abrupt, good, strong, satisfying ending is fantastic, and nowadays we're deprived of that.

Nowadays when a movie ends, when it feels like it ends, the audience is trained by 10 years, 15 years of movie going to know that that's not it something's kind of started in horror movies when the horror whether you know freddie would always come back and stab you again but now every movie's got to end two or three times and even after it finally ends and the credits are starting to roll those interminable credits we know that it's not really ending because if this makes enough money, it will be back. Nothing ends. A television show gets canceled. It moves to another network.

A show that seems to have a natural logical conclusion ends, but yet they say, oh, you know what? There's money to be made here. Let's roll out another season. So we simultaneously live in an era of too many endings and no endings at all. And so Goldman is right. I mean Goldman – you can quote him from the movies. You can quote him from his books. My question to you, Jonathan, maybe is,

when you die, and may it be 100 years, of course, would you rather people say, oh, Jonathan last died, or, oh, that guy who said these great lines died? In other words, the name or the work. Because we're all remembering the work. Those of us who follow these things know the names as well. Well, I mean, there's no chance of either. But if I could get one of them, I think I would like them to remember my name because I'm vain.

And no, I would choose the work. But that's because I have the soul of an artiste, you know, however unlikely it is to happen. I would say, you know, one of my favorite pieces of his work, which is overlooked, is a little nonfiction book called Hype and Glory, which is a memoir of a year in which he was a judge at the Cannes Film Festival and then a judge at Miss America, at the Miss America pageant. And I, I watch, I read that. And once you read that, it is like the Rosetta Stone for Miss America. And my, my sister has a Miss America party every single year where she brings all of her friends together. And they, they all, one of the things like, you know, it's like a pool where you bet who's going to win, et cetera, et cetera. And after reading that book, I think I picked Miss America correctly like 12 of 14 years consecutively or something like that because it is the key to understanding exactly what the pageant is looking for. And it's also just tremendous fun. One of my proudest moments was when I wrote a book about television called Conversations with My Agent, which is elegantly and I would say is now dignifiedly – in dignity out of print.

But isn't it? I thought it was re-released as part of a – with all three books unconvenced. I feel like I just bought this last year or the year before. That magnificent collection is also out of print. I don't like being too showy, but I would say that I got a little note from him. I treasure the note

because he said, someone told me that this is a new version of that, which is not the case because i was writing about television but it was nice to get a little note from william goldman which i have in a uh in a special place uh not only in my heart but also in my house so you want to know something sad can we end on something sad because you should always but before i say that like i would just say like what are the things the mantra of adventures in the screen trade his fantastic book about the

movies which is not really about the movies. I mean it is sort of, but it's also just about like being in a job is a constant refrain in the book. No one knows anything. And what's great about that phrase is that I think depending on how you take it to heart, I should say that to young writers. Read the book and tell me what you think that phrase means. And they always say is like it means that the stupid executives are stupid they don't know anything like it also means you don't know anything yeah that's an important addition to the you know that's the other 180 degrees of the 360 degree 360 degree viewpoint which you don't know anything either this thing that you know is brilliant and genius is probably a piece of

crap. It could be a piece of crap. That's the brilliance of it, but everybody thinks that they're the exception. They are wise because they know that to be true, but they are also considering themselves the exception. If it was easy to make Raiders of the Lost Ark, then every studio would make Raiders of the Lost

Ark every single year. I mean, it's just like, nobody knows how audiences will receive things i mean this is yeah right nobody knows how voters are going to vote and nobody knows how audiences receive things and the interesting thing is the studio executives and politicians have the same attitude which is those stupid people buying tickets or voting why won't they just do what we tell them to do? Why won't they just eat the food we're putting in front of them? And they just refuse to, and it just enrages everyone. Last question, Jonathan. As long as we're talking about what Goldman did in the last few years,

people wonder why didn't people pay him lots of money every year to do great things. Well, there are great talents that fall on strange times, and one of those was Orson Welles, who's supposed a great visionary masterpiece, The Other Side of the Wind, has now been assembled in somewhat of an original, perhaps what he meant, and released on Netflix. Have you watched it? And have you watched the accompanying documentaries

that sort of detail what went on? The documentary is far more interesting than the movie itself, which is practically unwatchable. I have not watched it. So I don't need to watch it, but I should watch the documentary, is what you're telling me? Yes, that'll do. And you might be surprised to find out

that it contains large amounts of Peter Bogdanovich. I would not be surprised about that. It does. Yeah, so Goldman, I knew him only a very little bit i interviewed him once or twice for pieces i was writing and i actually reached out to him to do an essay in one of the books that we did together the three of us and i was just tremendously saddened when he responded to me and said thank you it's very kind of you to offer, but I don't write anymore. Oh. And I was just like, wow. Because he, I mean, this is a guy who

talked frequently in his writing about how difficult writing was for him. He referred to it as descending into the pit. You know, whenever he took on a new project, he would say, well, now I have to go back down to the pit. And, man, that hit me hard. Well, it's all easy for us, which is why our work will

endure like cotton candy in a hot rainstorm. Exactly. Exactly. Well, it's all easy for us, which is why our work will endure like cotton candy in a hot rainstorm. Exactly. Exactly. Jonathan, it's a pleasure. We hope to see you some time in the future. Come D.C. or whether or not the Weekly Standard has one of its Cuxervative cruises and wants Rob and I to come on and bring some sort of cross-pollination from the N.R. Cuxervative. We're available. We're available.

Awesome. Happy Thanksgiving, guys. You too. Same to you. Bye-bye. Bye. So he did not take the bait Cooks. We're available. Awesome. Happy Thanksgiving, guys. You too. Same to you. Bye-bye. Bye. So he did not take the bait, James. I was hoping he would take the bait and say,

oh, you know, we're doing another one of those Book of Virtues things. You guys have to sign up. He didn't do it. I don't think he's doing any more of them. But we gave him more than ample opportunity to fight back. Yeah, I know. Why was that, Rob? Do you think that our contributions overshadowed his to the extent where he realized that he was just – he was embarrassing himself? I think so. I mean your stuff was wonderful. His stuff was wonderful.

So your Christmas one especially is the one I like. You reminded me. I know it's the holidays, but you reminded of those and i remember them because you know we're i think i'm all like roughly the same era um i remember those good year and firestone yes christmas albums and it made no sense why a tire company would do this but they did it and um well for one company to do it is one thing for another tire company to say damn it yeah good year's got them good year you know really uh stole this one from us let's get out there and claim christmas for our own oh they're amazing i mean i'm i'm surprised one of these days i'm going to find the glit and paint christmas album compilation from 1962 to 1974.

Did you just make that up, or is that real? I just made it up, but it's entirely possible. It could be. Hey, folks, listen, before we go, and we're not going to go right yet because we've got some stuff that Rob has to tell you. I'm going to make you wait through this spot in order to hear it. You could scrub ahead

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And, again, the price didn't keep me up at all. That's why I got all Boll & Branch from every room in the house. Call them today, bullandbranch.com. You get $50 off your first set of sheets and free shipping in the U.S. when you use the promo code RICOCHET, R-I-C-O-C-H-E-T. That's $50 off plus free shipping right now at bullandbranch.com, B-O-L-L, and branch.com, promo code RICOCHET. And our thanks to Bull & Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, Rob, before we go, there is a problem with CNN and Jim Acosta. And apparently this is not only a First Amendment issue, it's a Fifth Amendment issue.

And the funny thing is, it's neither. Yeah, I mean, a judge has just ordered them to give him back his hard pass. Do I have the latest news correct? Oh, I did not get that alert. You're kidding. How exactly does the judge have any jurisdiction, any standing whatsoever? I'm not sure. There's no constitutional provision for this whatsoever.

All the Constitution says when it comes to communication about the president is that he periodically has to tell Congress what's going on. He doesn't even have to show up. There's no constitutional right to go to that room and have a pass and be able to head to the president. And I say that as somebody who is not – as you know, rah-rah, everything this administration does is fine. This is irrelevant to what you think about Trump and irrelevant to what you think about Acosta. I don't have a first – do I have a First Amendment right to be a White House press correspondent? No, but I think the argument is going to be, or I think it was – we don't know. David French has written a piece about it, and he's just going by press accounts too because the opinion is not online yet. It's on Fifth Amendment grounds that once you give somebody a press pass, you can't take it away without due process.

And the process – it's not legal process but a process, and that process was shrouded in mystery. So because they came up with two different reasons to get – A, he's disruptive, and B, he touched the intern and all that other stuff, and it was never clear. I think – I'm sorry. The process in this instance is the administration or any administration saying it's revoked. That's the process. Due process refers to very specific legal objectives and settings and situations and mechanisms, none of which seem to apply to me here.

There was no – was he deprived of his liberty? Did the states take away his property without – It's also stupid because you don't need to be there. It's such a dumb thing. In 2018, you've got to climb into that room, which everyone – I mean, James, you've been to the White House. I've been to the White House. What is it that everybody says when they look at that White House press room?

Every single human being. It's so small. Yes, I know. It's much smaller than you think it is. It's tiny. And so the idea that – and people do great reporting, great White House reporting, and never, ever set foot in that building. You never have to. I may be the only person on this podcast today – well, there's only two of us – who's actually had government credentials for Congress.

I had a House of Representatives senator. I could go there. I had the badge with a special little flag in the background to tell security where I could and could not go. That could have been revoked at any moment for any number of things, including my employer saying, you did a really bad job. You're fired. There's no due process involved in that. It's just – so it's clear that the judge that they got is trying to make a point, and I'm disappointed in David for saying this. But the judge is trying –

Honestly, I think it was an actual Trump-appointed judge, just so you know. Well, that doesn't mean anything anymore. care and universal college education mandated by confiscation of private industry is going to go up the chain and every single person who votes for it is going to be Bush appointee, Bush appointee, Reagan appointee for the rest of it because something happens when they get on the bench. I don't know what it is, but there's some warming of the left buttock that seems to occur in those chairs and that just shifts them ever so slightly over. Hey, Rob, you never told anybody why they should pay for Ricochet.

Oh, here's why. Here's why. If you're listening to this podcast, you're a member. We thank you. If you are listening to it and you have been meaning to join, we really need you to join. Please put this on your to-do list for today. And I know it's hard to do that, and I know that it's easy to put it off, but it means a lot to us. We've actually had some success with me just being

super honest about it. And we've had a nice uptick in our members, which has been great and gratifying, but it is still not enough to make our payroll, and our payroll is not large. So if you're listening and you've been meaning to join at $2.50 a month, which is nothing, please do. If you've been listening and you're already a member and you think, well, you know what? I'm going to give somebody a membership. We can offer that too. We would be glad to offer you membership at a bunch of different levels, but we just really need you to sign up. It's going to matter, and it will matter in a matter of months, not in a matter of years. So please do it, ricochet.com slash join,

or just go and look at the site and join, and it'll ease your conscience as we enter the advent. You'll also have access to the member feed, which is really the community that you will find yourself going to more and more than the main feed. Here's what I really want. I want this huge, incredible search, thousands of subscriptions.

And so Peter comes back next week and says, wow, as Peter would say, look at this uptick. And we explained, well, you weren't here, and for some reason people really responded to that. Not entirely kind to do, but that's what we do. No, that's right, exactly. Look how many members we got when Peter wasn't here. Rob, it's been a pleasure. We'll see you next week. Wait, or will we? Do we have Thanksgiving? Are we off? I don't know. Rob, it's been a pleasure. We'll see you next week. Wait, or will we?

Do we have Thanksgiving? Are we off? I don't know. We'll figure it out. I think we'll be off next week. We're going to be off. I've just gotten the notice that we're not going to be here next week, so I'll be filing my First and my Fifth Amendment protests against that revocation of my Blatherskite privileges here, but we'll

see it on the road. I'm James Lilex. This is Rob Long. This has been the Ricochet Podcast, and see you later. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you. And there goes the Spider-Man In the cheers of the night At the scene of a crime Like a straight-up delight He arrives in time

Spider-Man, Spider-Man Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man When man is ignored Action is miserable Look out! Here goes the is miserable. Look out! Here comes Spider-Man. Look out! Ricochet.

Join the conversation. Let's go! In the chill of the night Like the sound of a cry Like the scream of a lie We arise in time The End Life is a great example Whenever there's a handle You'll find it's not a Man