The Ricochet Podcast - Pajama Boys

Episode Date: December 20, 2013

Direct link to MP3 file It’s our final podcast of 2013, and we’ve assembled a full compliment of Ricochet editors and contributors as we’re joined by Troy Senik, Jon Gabriel, and D.C. McAllister. They talk Pajama Boy, Duck Dynasty, the best and most memorable posts of the year, and what to look forward to to in 2014. Merry Christmas, everyone! Music from this week’s episode: Have Yourself A Merry... Source

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I spent my life in the private sector, not in government. You do your work, and we will do our best. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lylex, and it's a Ricochet wrap-up today with editors Troy Senec and John Gabriel and favorite contributor DC McAllister. So, put on some adult clothing, grab something an adult would drink, and let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. All right, everybody. Everybody in their footie jammies.

Everybody have their hot chocolate. We're going to talk about health care. Uncle Joe put down that brisket. It's bad for you. But why would he? Because that brisket's from foodiedirect.com. Hi, folks. Welcome to the Ricochet Podcast number 198.

And it's brought to you, as I mentioned, by foodiedirect.com, which is a curated regional gourmet artisan food marketplace with some of America's most iconic foods and 98. And it's brought to you, as I mentioned, by foodiedirect.com, which is a curated regional gourmet artisan food marketplace with some of America's most iconic foods and brands. It's not just stuff they get everywhere and slap a name on, but it's food from particular restaurants, pies, chocolates. We'll be discussing it a little bit later. And we'll make you, A, want to go there and order right away before your mouth stops watering. And B, we'll give you some little detail on how to just save money there, too. Anyway, on to the thing that is the podcast, which is, I should mention, brought to you also by Audible.com. You know who they are.

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It only works, honestly. Give us money or we die. Give the gift of Christmas guilt. Peter Robinson, you also are with us as well, Peter. And Merry Christmas to you since we probably won't be talking before the blessed season concludes with Christmas itself. How are you and how are your preparations in California for the event? Preparations in California are going well, although unusually frantic in the Robinson family. Whereupon I give you some family talk of the kind that drives many members crazy.

But you asked, last weekend, to everyone's complete, total, and utter astonishment. I can say it now that it's over. My youngest son's high school football team won their Division III, which is for smaller schools, Northern California Championship. The newspapers and the parents were expecting a blowout. I had already given my son the character-building speech, which is the speech you give when you expect the kids to lose. And there was a blowout. I had already given my son the character building speech, which is the speech you give when you expect the kids to lose. And there was a blowout, but we won again to everyone's astonishment. So we are now scrambling because on Saturday, just South of LA proper in Carson, California, my son's high school football team will play for the division three state championship,

an event totally unexpected a few days ago. And now my wife and I are scrambling to get the kids. The kids are in from college. We get tickets to Disneyland for after the game. That's what's going on in our house. It's a happy event, but it's wild. So your lives have been tossed into a cocked hat, as they say. That's astonishing.

Now, you're in L.A. proper. Now, you're in L.A. proper. Rob, you're in L.A. improper, I believe. Are there lots of decorations up? Are there lights? Are there plastic Santas? There's sort of a lot of decorations going up. I mean, where I live, there's a lot of – they're for the holidays, James.

Right, of course, of course. The holidays are being celebrated here. We just about five minutes ago, maybe ten minutes ago, had a little earthquake-y, jolty thing happen. Not a big one, but you rarely feel them out here, but I live up at the beach.

But I did sign up for a Twitter feed that tells you all the tiny little tremors you get every minute. And it's alarming how many you have, really, how many we have out here. Well, that could be alcoholism, I'm just saying. It could be. It could be.

But if it's confirmed by Caltech, it's probably not. So that's a 2.8 magnitude earthquake occurred just a half a mile northwest of Marina del Rey, which is kind of interesting. 2.8. Well, actually, some of Charles Bukowski's hangovers were detected by seismographs. So I'm not so sure about that. Could be.

And speaking of Charles Bukowski, it's been an interesting week for the dead poet. He appears to be one of the people that Shia LaBeouf has plagiarized in his artistic career. Now, I know everybody wants to get us quickly talking about Pajama Boy, but I think the instance of plagiarism that they uncovered in

Shia LaBeouf's latest artistic endeavor is interesting for one reason. I'm not surprised that the guy took a Daniel Klaus cartoon and used it as the basis, and by basis I mean copying word for word for a little artistic movie that he did. What I find interesting is that

he plagiarized his apologies for plagiarism, which I think really does bring it up to a new level. People went back and ran his quotes through the internet and came up with at least three citations for people who were apologizing and had used the exact same words. That's, I mean – Unbelievable. But that makes more sense though, doesn't it?

I mean you'll do research before you do – what have been successful apologies for plagiarism in the past? Doesn't that almost raise it to the level of performance art? Not that I even know what performance art is. Oh, you're a parent. You know what performance art is. It makes it meta, meta in a very meta overarching sense, which brings us back to Pajama Boy. Now, Reason Magazine, I think it was Nick Gillespie, was saying that the reason that that officious little nerdy beta male in the black glasses and the cocoa and the plaid pajamas works is because it got people talking about Obamacare. I know. I don't think it got them talking about it at all. I think it got them talking about what

appears to be an absolutely clueless sense of how to reach their target market when you guys then again i'm not the market for pajama boy ad but on the other hand i can't imagine anybody in that target demographic looking at that and saying that's who i want to be that's the guy i don't get i you know it's funny i don't understand who the target is the theory is – I mean just the way this stuff has got to unfold. If you have a national health insurance, you have to have young people in it because they're the ones who are going to get fleeced, right? You fleece the young people to pay for the old people. That's social security. That's socialized medicine. That's what it is. So having that smug little dude in his union suit, he's not the target.

He's not who should be talking. It's the grownups who need to get talking. They need the ones – so it's very strange, very strange kind of – every now and then you'll travel somewhere and you'll see a really weird ad buy. And that seemed to be a very strange ad buy right there well i don't know what what they're trying to do but what's interesting about it is that i don't think it's anything different or anything uh or any less irritating or annoying than all the stuff they were doing during the campaign for young people the difference is now we know it's nonsense you know now the the we know the emperor's not wearing any clothes. So everything they're doing looks stupid.

Well, the emperor is wearing footie jammies. Peter, when you look at that thing, do you as a parent of young boys, do you look forward to the moment when they lecture you on a holiday get-together about an issue of particular importance that you believe they don't understand at all? Wow. All I've gotten so far is rolled eyes, not lectures. That thought hadn't crossed my mind until now. And I have to say that it almost instantly assumes the outlines of a horror movie. It does. It really does.

I can't. A Christmas horror movie. Yeah, a Christmas horror movie. Yesterday, well, no. Oh, my goodness. James, words fail me. They never fail you. Take over.

Well, I'm just saying I can imagine going home at some point while I was away at college and sitting my father down and saying, dad, we need to discuss military policy now. I know you served in the Navy for four years, and I know you think that gives you some sort of knowledge about it. But I'm here to tell you I read something in the New Republic about a repositioning, transitioning to lesser forces. And I really think that – no. What I find hilarious also, and this just struck me, Rob, you mentioned the National Health Service. Elvis Costello, when he first came out, was noted for his geek glasses, which I think they called national health glasses because those were the standard issue specs you got from the government when you went, held out your hand and said, I can't afford my own. Those black-rimmed nerdy glasses.

So this kid with his trademark hipster glasses is actually showing the future of national health service where you have one style of glasses and that's clunky and black. But the thing is that we don't – young people – it's so bizarre. Young people, smug little young people have nothing to say about this. They're the ones who should be getting on the – I mean the guy in the hot chocolate is the target. He's of the message. He's not the bringer of the message. That's what's so strange is that if one of those kids started to yak on Christmas morning about care, the only response for the other people is like, fine, go get on it.

Get something. Right, exactly. The other thing is – But remember, for him to get talking, he's got to be older than 27, right, or 27. Right, right. When you turf out of this thing. So everything about this is sort of wrong, but it's no wronger than any of the other stuff they've done. It's just that now we know. It's like, it is a remarkable

thing. We now know just how awful this is. And so everything they do seems absurd. That's bad. When you're being laughed at, that's not good. That's very bad. Just flat factual question. It occurs to me, all of a sudden, I don't know the answer to this. What is the

relationship of Obamacare to kids in college? I believe that most colleges, or at least a lot of colleges, have some sort of health insurance provision for their students. They don't want kids on their campus without health coverage. So it's some small additional stipend to the tuition you pay, or at least because tuition is so gigantic, it seems small. But isn't it the case that the college kids were the ones who all through this administration have been most enthusiastic about Obama and all his works and yet they're totally insulated? It seems to me as though the administration would like to get at them.

They're the kinds of kids who are just foolish enough to sign up for Obamacare using their parents' money if they could to sign up for health insurance they don't need. It would work on them, and yet the administration can't get to them I think. Is that right? I just flat don't know. Well, yeah. That's the weird thing about it. I don't – their default setting is always grownups dumb, young people great, right?

Right. That's the default setting. But in this case, it's the young people who right that's the fault setting but in this case it's the young people who are really are failing their leader obama yes yes that's exactly right that's exactly right it's just a very strange it's very very it's very very weird and i and i mean and it's fantastic too because it's just great to see these uh jerks flail and and twist in the wind and wonder where – why the applause has died down. Why no one is loving him so much? I just cannot tell you what a wonderful Christmas present that is.

All that and a wonderful window into how they see themselves. Now, some people were saying that if you attack pajama boys and image that that's anti-gay, which is nonsense. I didn't look at that guy and think he was gay. I thought he was the perfect model of the beta male, chestless, nerdy voice guy that you always hear on American Life, being smarter than everybody else. That's the kid who was smarter than everybody else, and in college, managed

to find an insulated niche where he could expand to fit all the horizons and be the wonderful person. And they're the guys who talk with a nasal voice, and they're very clipped, and they're very smart, and they're very funny, and they're very ironic. Ha person. And they're the guys who talk with a nasal voice and they're very clipped and they're very smart and they're very funny and they're very ironic. Ha ha. And they're always angry because the big football player brood is getting all the girls in the week,

especially the one that they liked, who they thought was better than this because she had glasses and she was deep and she read Jane Austen. They, but it turns out they had nothing in common at all. I mean, I, God,

I knew this guy. I knew tons of them. So that's what I see when I see that. But apparently if you want to go anti-gay, you got to go to duck dynasty where you find the most – the vilest sort of thing. I'm looking at this and, I mean, a guy actually paraphrased a Bible verse in front of an Esquire interview take on whether or not this is going to bring down Duck Dynasty or people are going to say, would you just leave it alone for a bit? Peter? Somebody drew breath.

Was it Peter? Yeah, it was Peter. I want to hear what Peter's thoughts are on Duck Dynasty. Because, Peter, this all sort of broke late-ish yesterday afternoon. I happen to have a busy day yesterday. So I got – I see what's on Drudge, but I haven't read yet what it is that the Duck Dynast said. But then I went to Facebook, just checked sort of my farewell, last thing I do in the evening, what interesting things that my friends posted, and there were three or four or five. This is the death of A&E.

A&E, the whole point of Duck Dynasty is that these guys are authentic. They're not politically correct. And then somebody, who was it? When it comes to seeking fertility treatment, time can be of the essence. At Beacon Care Fertility, we are proud to offer prompt access to affordable fertility care.

With over 60,000 babies born across our fertility clinic network, we have both the science and the expertise to deliver. We offer convenient payment plans and are partnered with VHI and LEA. Beacon Care Fertility, where science meets life. Ah, Phil Terzian. Phil Terzian of the Weekly Standard had a post, just a brief little post on Facebook that struck me as very perceptive and very compelling. Although I repeat, I still haven't read what the Duck Dynasty man said. But Phil said, isn't it the case that the left and the gay left, I think in particular is the way he phrased it, now plays almost exactly the same role in society that we've been told for lo these many decades Joe McCarthy played, hunting out the witches, the witch hunt, so to speak, hunting out people. That famous scene where – who was it? Fred Friendly of CBS News before Edward R. Murrow's famous broadcast said, the fear is in this room. The fear is in the producer's room at A&E.

So what I experienced was a little pushback, at least on Facebook. Who knows? Robert? Well, I mean, what's so strange is that, I mean, are there any gay people watching Duck Dynasty? That's exactly right. It doesn't matter.

Maybe there are. Who knows? But I mean, the problem, of course, is that at A&E, they have Duck Dynasty? That's exactly right. It doesn't matter. Maybe there are. Maybe there aren't. Who knows? But I mean the problem of course is that A&E, they have Duck Dynasty. There are so many problems with this. One of them is that on the Arts and Entertainment Network, which used to be sort of highbrow, the old movies from Sweden and smaller city symphony orchestras. Now they have something called Duck Dynasty. And who would have thunk that that guy who looks like ZZ Top would have views that do not conform with the more sophisticated urbans?

I don't – I mean look, I haven't seen the show. So I can't really respond to the show or to this guy except that there does seem to be this urge on people to not only to put reality television on TV but then to complain that it's too real. It needed to be fixed. So what you really want is you want to find some guy from the swamps of where he's from and put him on TV and make – and just make sure whatever he says isn't too interesting. I mean, I actually think it would do both sides a good to have this guy on TV. It would do both the people who agree with him and the people who disagree with him. It would be useful to have him on television. I would also argue that there should be a lobby group for adulterers because he was talking – he was describing a wide variety of sins as he sees them, sins.

And you don't see the adulterer American community getting up in arms. I would love to see just combinations of fights between different grievance groups about who should be more offended by his comments. It's never a good idea. I don't think in general for a citizen, if you were not actually wearing some kind of clerical garb, it is probably better for you not to discuss sins, and especially the sins of others. Oh, Rob, no, so no,

no, there I just, no, nope, nope, nope. I have to say, I just flatly disagree. That's exactly the kind of politically correct muzzle. I know that you don't mean it that way. But ordinary people ought to be able to talk about morality. If this man quoted a verse from the Bible, he ought to be able to do that. I'm not saying you should be fired.

I just think in general it is better if you're going to talk about sins and you're a lay person to talk about your own instead of talking about how you perceive other people's sins to be. I disagree. I think we all ought to have the right to talk about what we view as fundamental morality, our own sense of decency. He has a right to do it. He absolutely has a right to do it. And the culture ought to be welcoming of it.

No, I don't think so. The it just – And the culture ought to be welcoming of it. It is – no. No, I don't think so. No. The culture should – I mean for me personally – No, we're not all Episcopalians. We don't all just say no politics and no religion, please. I'm not saying no politics and no religion. But if you're going to talk about sin, it's probably smarter to talk about your own, to talk about it in the context of your own failings rather than pointing fingers at somebody else's failings when i hear that from anyone about any sin i think what a jerk what a what a a self-righteous jerk i don't want to hear from gone from saying what's saying people ought not to talk about morality to that they ought not to

point fingers i agree i haven't thought that's how i ought to be able to assert some fundamental norms of decency that's how i started if you're going to talk about sin, you should start by talking about your own. Well, he did. He didn't start, but he did mention that back in the 60s, he was all about all sorts of – well, the 60s lifestyle as we call it now. I just think it's interesting that what people are really coming down on him for, so to speak, is to say that men ought to prefer this to that. I don't know why they prefer that to this. I don't know. If that now becomes hate speech, then we've crossed another line.

If merely expressing a head-scratching curiousness over why that would be preferable to that in a sexual context, if you can't say that, we've got to add that to the list of things that are hateful because they just simply draw a distinction. But the other thing is that, as they said in the promo, this is a family that goes out and loves to hunt things and kill them and skin them and eat them. And not everybody does like to go out there and get themselves a duck and all the work that takes to skin it and eat it and cook it and all the rest of it.

Why not just have it sent to your door? Wrapped in a chicken and stuffed in a turkey. I hate to tell you that Turducken is actually sold out at Foodie Direct. They had four different varieties that you could go and get. But if you go to foodiedirect.com, you will find a panoply of meats, an astonishing array of things from coffee to cheese to desserts. And here's the deal. I pulled up this page the other day and I showed my wife.

I said, look, we got people coming over. You're stressed. Everybody's stressed. It's the holidays. Why not just get this? It comes. It's frozen. We heat it.

Everyone's happy. And her eyes went wide. And she just looked and said, you know, is it the same price as going down and getting the meat cheap raw in the store? No. But all the time and the effort that you save getting it sent. And this isn't just somebody in the back room throwing some spices on a brisket and sending it to you. These are the finest restaurants, the greatest restaurants that have taken their signature discs

and made them possible for you to have at your home. Rob, Peter, before we go to our guests, quickly tell us what food direct would you like to pop up on your plate just this very moment? Me, cioppino. The cioppino is great. And the, I don't know, but I just, maybe it's because there's so much red meat in the air at Christmas,

in the air. What a strange thought at Christmas season. In Syria, perhaps, but yeah. For some reason, I find myself yearning for this Maine lobster from Portland, Maine. That just looks great to me at the moment. Man. Well, there you have it. A couple of seafood choices and you want to top it off with some Michigan cherry pie, you can find it there. If you want the best granola in America

as Andrew Zimmer from the Travel Channel Show, it's all there. Foodie to rack. Now, if you put in the coupon code RICOCHET at the checkout, you'll get 20% off your first order. Wow. 20%. Most people who just show up the first time get 10. So, coupon Ricochet. 20%. And thank FoodieDirect for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now it's time to bring on a couple of Ricochet editors to discuss what they love about

Ricochet and editing. Troy Senec and John Gabriel, they make the member seat safe for democracy in your tender eyes. And we welcome them back to the podcast. Hey, gents. Hey, fellas. Good morning. How are you?

Good morning. Jack Dandy. Rob, I know you've got a question burning to ask Troy, or was it John? But go right ahead. Hey, Troy and John, too. So we were on earlier, and we're talking about Pajama Boy Boy and John put up a very, very funny Pajama Boy. What do you call a mashup? What do you call that? A Photoshop.

A Photoshop. You managed to put Pajama Boy at the Nelson Mandela funeral. Is that correct? It seemed appropriate. Yeah. And so – I mean can you – I mean can you follow what happened to that image? It is crazy. I don't – I was there on Twitter when they made the faithful decision to put Bob Hope in the hippie wig and it was – I don't know what they're thinking. I don't know who they're trying to appeal to. And I heard you talking a little bit earlier about who are these people they're trying to reach out to. Because this is – most advertising, I've done a lot of advertising, especially print ads, and it's supposed to be aspirational. You see a person and he's drinking a certain kind of beer and you say, I want to be that guy. He's got all the girls. You look at this poor guy.

You're just like, oh, that's – he's like an object lesson to avoid. He's what parents warn people. Okay, don't be this poor guy. You're just like, oh, that's – he's like an object lesson to avoid. He's what parents warn people. Okay, don't be like this guy. And so I'm not sure what they're doing but it was pretty organic and I'm confused about people calling it any kind of an anti-gay thing. It's just kind of an anti-pajama boy thing, anti-25-year-old boy who wears pajamas and sips his hot cocoa and asks for marshmallows. It seems a little non-aspirational. All right. So, Troy, what do you think they think is going to happen?

Like usually with an ad or something, you say, OK, what is the action I want this dude – people to take who watch the commercial or see the print ad? Come down to Mattress King on Sunday or buy Mountain Dew and you'll be swinging a rope in a river. What do you think they think is the most positive outcome of this little ad? I don't know because I don't – Rob, I don't want to get into that headspace. I don't want to think about it. I don't know what it could be, and here's why I say that. I mean we sort of went through this, what, a month ago with the Thanksgiving tweet that you need to sit down and talk to your family. And this seems like a variation on that theme.

But it's so – it seems like sort of marketing for marketing's sake insofar as anybody who understands how political discussions go between family members and things like that in the real world, it doesn't happen this way. I mean you don't get people breaking bread over Thanksgiving and breaking down the importance of covering preexisting conditions. This kid, God help him, attired as he is. I don't know what this – this is not a beta – this is a delta male. I wouldn't call him mattress king, no. Yeah, this is the kid. This is the – what is it? The gimp that the beta male has. James asked earlier what I would feel if one of my kids started lecturing me. And I have to say since I now – just to mull on a onesie, cradled a cup of hot cocoa in his hands and raised his eyebrows archly and looked at me and uttered the phrase Obamacare,

I'd say, hey, you, I've got some work that needs to be done in the backyard. That retaining wall. Show me your hands. Any blisters? I mean, it is just from the point of view of a father, this is insufferable. Does that count as cursing in the Robinson house? It's close. I have some odd jobs that need to be completed, young man. Yeah, that's – you're a better man than I, Peter. I don't have children, of course, but if that was mine, he'd be hooked up to a car better.

Here's my question though. What's the point? I mean – I don't get it. That kid in the onesie with the hot cocoa, he already has health insurance. And if he – I mean he's covered by his parents. That's exactly right. This is a college kid.

This is an entitled college kid. As a matter of fact, I can tell by looking at him that this is a kid at Columbia, either Columbia or Brown. Well, Molly Hemingway's husband, Mark, had one of the – maybe the second best, I mean after John's, which was the picture of the meme, the internet meme, the picture of a pajama boy and above it it said, how did you know I went to Oberlin? That was great. OK. So my – here's my premise, John and Troy, and you let me know what you think. My premise is that everything they do now looks stupid. Even stuff that had they done it a year and a half ago, we might not be laughing so hard because we now – we and everyone knows they're full of it. This is a death spiral they're in now.

I agree. Everything they do is just a disaster. And I think if this happened a year ago, the Mitt Romney campaign would be getting their own pajama boy, maybe wearing blue pajamas because it's like, hey, I guess this is how you reach out to the kids. Now everybody sees that the emperor has no onesie and they're just saying, OK, these guys don't know what they're doing. They're grasping at straws. I wonder if part of it too is just the ego feed. He's for so many years gotten off the college kids and he's just panicked that they don't like him anymore. He doesn't need them because they're covered by their parents' insurance.

But he needs their approval. I don't know. I'm sure he isn't day-to-day directing the ad strategy. But it just seems like a very odd cohort to be targeting. I also think that there's a certain sadness to the whole thing but by which i mean let's assume for a moment that they did something that was halfway competent instead of this abomination what's your upshot there really i mean the problem comes back to the fact that they're conceiving of this as a public relations problem that can be solved via public relations

even if you've got something that was halfway persuasive, that doesn't get them out of the woods on this. I think they've fallen back on this because this is all they do. This is all they know. It's always a messaging problem, which is not unique to them. I mean it's kind of the hallmark of all flailing administrations is they think we just have to say it differently. It's not going to help them here.

Something else here and there's something else that I wish that people would get angry about and that is the invasion of every single possible piece of personal space by politics and i've tried not to pop my peas and push my plosives into the mic here but it's when they say take thanksgiving and christmas and use these opportunities to talk to your parents about i don't care uh can we can we just carve out a space in which the state does not have to expand and fill every possible corner of the room? No, because as we've been told for 30 years, the personal is the political and vice versa. So therefore there shouldn't be any space.

I mean you look at these people and say, you know what? That kind of sounds like that Mussolini fellow about everything for the state, everything in the state, nothing outside the state, which they're perfectly fine with as long as the state does what they would like them to do. The strange thing is like I don't see how that's going to be of a benefit. I don't think it helps Obama or Obamacare for people to be talking about it. That's what I find so strange is that what they should be saying is, well, don't talk about it too much. Let's just kick this out of the road a little bit. Let's just soft pedal this a little bit. They shouldn't be saying – these people are so insane.

They shouldn't be saying – let's everyone talk about Obamacare. I want you to go home and talk to your parents about it because every kid who brings it up is going to get an earful. It doesn't seem even remotely in their interests to keep harping on this and to keep talking about this. Statistically, mathematically, they are not going to make their number in March. It's just not going to happen. And they're going to have to prepare themselves for failure. And they should right now be doing the smart thing, which even though it would be sort of dishonest and everything, the thing that the politicians should do is they should be trying to figure out a way to build down out of this position.

And instead, they keep doing these – it's as if maybe in the O So they're not incompetent at garnering and marshalling public opinion. But assuming that's the case, this is the problem with having such devoted brain-dead acolytes. The machine keeps running even though you're trying to get it desperately to turn around. So some idiot put together that picture and said, I know the leader is going to love this and then released it. And I'm sure that there are four guys in the Oval Office saying, yeah, we got to figure out a way to not make this the thing. Let's even stop calling it Obamacare, which they are. So I just – the whole thing, it's very – it's just – I don't know. It's glorious.

I'm really enjoying it. So, Troy, what are the first three sentences of the speech that you write for Barack Obama to deliver building down from Obamacare? Yeah, Troy. Go for it. Yeah. Rob is your director of communications. He just gave you the usual loose directions that a director of communication gives to the speechwriter whose job is actually to figure it out. So give us a few sentences. What do you write?

I love that you guys keep putting me in the strategic position of doing something I'm completely ideologically and morally opposed to. How do you do that speech? I mean you're better at this than I am anyway, Peter. Oh, yeah, right. Thanks for the compliment. I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd tell you what I'd do. I'd have President Obama stare dead-eyed into the camera for a prolonged period of time, 45 seconds or a minute, and

then it would be Mulligan. That's all you got. I mean, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? You've committed to this so much. How do you deconstruct that? So he has two choices, I think. One is to fumble along with pajama boys and so forth and treat this as just try to say,

no, no, no, you don't understand. It really is cool. Keep public opinion or keep enough public opinion on his side while in his mind, at least the gnomes back behind the internet are working on the thing to solve the problems. He seems still to believe it can be fixed. So that's choice number one is just sort of try to fumble along and vamp for time, which I think is what they're doing. Choice number two would be the speech from the Oval Office in which he says something pretty remarkable along the lines of, despite our best intentions and our highest aspirations,

what we put in place simply has not worked. I am therefore asking Mitt Romney to join, you name a centrist Democrat, in an emergency commission which will report to me within three months or six months, the fixes that we need on Obamacare. It worked in Massachusetts, which is why I'm asking Governor Romney to participate in this. In the meantime, I'm asking Harry Reid and Speaker Boehner to enact legislation to delay the mandate for six months. He just says that and puts together a blue-ribbon commission.

What do you think? Well, wait a minute. At that point, Mitt Romney, I think, would be perfectly permitted to say, yes, Mr. President, as soon as you put Bo in a crate on top of Air Force One. I think what would happen in that speech, the president would come out and say, I realize that this makes me look bad, and no one is angrier about that than me. He's always taking very, very personally, don't you know, the criticism and nobody is ever angrier than he is and just wishes he had been told these things earlier. unlike the president who has to look at the front page of the Washington Post to figure out what's happening in the world, you have got a series of flows of posts coming at you all the time, and you sometimes have to step in between them and us. So when it comes to your job at editing

Ricochet, what are some of the things that you, for example, that, can you remember a memorable flagged post that you really had to agonize as to whether or not it went on. I don't know about a memorable one where it was a close call because those, you know, the nice thing about Ricochet, the wonderful thing about our members, we should thank them for this here at the holiday season. And I've told them this when we've had in-person meetups.

For people who are listening who aren't members, we have a code of conduct at Ricochet that prohibits the use of things like profanity and ad hominem attacks because we're trying to have an elevated civil discussion. And the reason that we have that in place, the reason that we have editors in place is to make sure that somebody – if somebody steps over those lines, there's somebody to knock it back down. The wonderful thing about our membership is that 95 percent of the time, we don't have to do that because they've internalized it. They're essentially self-policing and they're committed to having a community that's built that way. So the close calls actually don't come up quite as often as you'd think. Every now and again, we have the ones that are so flagrant that we – it doesn't take a second's consideration.

About once a year, somebody will try to float a BC Alley conversation. And as a public service announcement, I can tell everybody right now that is a non-starter. Apart from that, our people are pretty good. I mean they're very sensitive to that ethos that we have in place and our thanks to them for that because they're the people who make this place special. And one of the things that attracts people to Ricochet is wanting to be a part of a community like that since, as we were talking about earlier, there's no public space where you can politely discuss ideas instead of I disagree with you. It's become you need to be fired is kind of what the conversation is on most of the internet. And I think the vast majority of people on Ricochet, they join because they like that and usually just a warning, hey, this conversation is getting a little dicey. Let's all take a breath and back up. That's usually enough to calm all sides down and help them redouble their efforts.

Is it getting – I mean do you think it – I mean do people get more heated around certain times? I mean we're entering the midterm zone. We'll start midterms in January, February and that's going to be exciting. That's actually a great time to be a member of Ricochet. If you're not a member, you should be thinking about it now. I always found that like it's the hypothetical stuff that got people upset. When we first started it was it was hypothetically talking about a hypothetical sarah palin presidency right and that was that

was like a third rail like if if she said like i remember jonah and something i had a podcast together and he said you know i don't think it's insulting to say that someone shouldn't be president um i don't think she should be president that's not really an insult i mean i don't think you know jonas i'm saying i don't think rob should be president. That's not really an insult. I mean I don't think – I don't think Rob should be president, which I thought was an insult. But do you think that people are getting more easygoing or do you get prickly because the way the dynamic tends to work at Ricochet is we're about as broad of a cross-section of the – you could say the conservative base, but it's broader than conservative. It's basically everything to the right of the center. And so the things that get really heated are the things that divide the right. I mean my recommendation for anybody in Washington, anybody who's in a position of power who reads or listens to Ricochet, if you see a post that generates 300 fairly heated comments, that's a piece of legislation you don't want to

carry because it's something that divides – if you look at the last year, our big fights over the last year were over gay marriage, which is a perennial. That sort of stopped after the Supreme Court ruling because everybody now is sort of focused on the civil society aspects of it, the religious liberty aspects, business owners getting hit for not wanting to serve – to photograph a gay wedding or something like that. NSA surveillance has been a huge flashpoint this year. The pope has been a huge issue and, of course, immigration a little bit, but I think people have gotten the sense that nothing much is probably going to happen there. And the other one that has of course come up over and over again, particularly here at the end of this year, is this conflict between – pick your terms, but the Tea Party and the establishment, everything around the government shutdown. Those are the things that blow up on Ricochet.

But I get the sense that – I mean we'll see. We've got a lot of time. We've got basically a year. But when the feeling is that the wind is at our backs on Ricochet, for one, we see a lot more people coming to the site. I mean there was a lot of people dispirited this time last year after the election. But two, it's not that we don't have interesting, engaging conversations, but people aren't going for each other's throats the same way because they're looking across the aisle for their opponents. Yeah, well, people of course are always asking, when is Kenneth going to be back, which is sort of the – it's sort of the internet equivalent of are they going to make a second season of Firefly? We all enjoyed it for what it was and the answer is no, frankly.

Well, guys, you want to hang around here because there's nothing better, I think, for a robust podcast than to have six people trying to talk at once. So if you would – if you just cool your jets for a little second here because – what was I going to say? Oh, I know what I was going to say. We have a hobbyby coming to town. You were talking about the various hot button issues. And when I saw in the newspaper that Hobby Lobby was coming to town, I know some people are going to look at that like somebody opening a warehouse for Klansman sheets. And now all of a sudden people are going to be judged as to whether or not you go to Hobby Lobby. I mean there was a small little fast food restaurant being opened on the edge of town and I thought, boy, I hope it's a Chick-fil-A.

I love Chick-fil-A. But can I tell anybody that? Are they going to think poorly of me because I say that I went there and liked it? All of these things that as the political, as we were saying before, extends into every single possible aspect of your life. There's absolutely no space whatsoever for you simply to have a preference for a hobby store or a chicken sandwich. It's like reading a Stephen King book, for example, and enjoying it and then having some ridiculous, you know, um, juvenile insult to your politics dropped in for no particular reason. You look at that and you say, Mr. King.

And he's starting to do it more and more and more. He's got a new book out, for example, which is a sequel to The Shining. And I'm actually looking forward to reading it, although I fear at some point there's going to be a crack about Tea Partiers that'll just ruin whatever mood he's got going. But The Shining itself is a hell of a book. He hated the movie, which I understand, and it's one of those arguments I couldn't care less about because the movie is great, the book is great,

but it's different than the movie. And if you'd like to find out how, might you want to go over to audible.com and see whether or not Stephen King's... That's a pretty good one. Thank you very much. I was struggling there for a second. No, no, I knew that, but I didn't want to jump in.

I thought you had it. You didn't throw me a lifeline and I appreciate that. I just found myself – No, no, no. Yeah, I had – Interrupts. Yeah, there was no segue queued up. I don't do lifelines.

I just do interrupts. I was surprised. You don't do lifelines. Okay, well, who wants to be a millionaire segue edition? We will not have. But as I was saying, Audible, you know the drill, right? You get an audiobook of your choice, and you get a 30-day trial, and it's free, a word we love. Now, there's 150,000 titles to choose from, so you'll take your time picking them out.

Whisper sync, yeah. You know what that is? No? Well, it's technology that lets you sync your Kindle to your audio device, so wherever you go, you can pick up where you left off. It's amazing. It has to be heard to be believed. Now, audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet today. That's audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet.

Troy, John, quick, book pick. Ha! Put you on the spot. You know, I'll recommend if people are traveling over the holidays and have an abundance of time, The Last Lion, which is the final volume of the way Manchester biographies of Churchill. I just pulled it up on Audible. The unabridged

version runs 53 hours and 27 minutes. You can find an abridged one, which is only 36 hours and 26 minutes. But if you are a Churchill aficionado, as I am, these books are indispensable. It's very, very good. Yeah. It's very, very good. Yeah.

That's 36 hours? That's the short one? Yes. Maybe you can skip over it. We win World War II. Yes. You can skip that part. Spoiler alert. That's a heck of a free

choice. That's like saying you can go into the supermarket and pick out anything you want and you choose the produce aisle. But that's what I say. I mean the depth and breadth of Audible is quite astonishing. Now, so far here, we've got five guys. Now, I'm short, so I bring the median down a bit. If we were to improve our situation, perhaps bringing in a tall woman might make this a much more well-rounded podcast. And I only say tall because I believe somewhere she was talking about the Vegas meetup and mentioned that she was tall.

And it was the talk about heels, high heels in Camille Paglia, which was a spicy and zesty read, might I add. And contributing to that, if not starting in the first place, was D.C. McAllister. He's a graduate of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Journalism School, previously a reporter, ooh, somebody from the fourth estate like myself, for the Orlando Sentinel, Lake Sentinel,

UPI, and the Aiken Standard. He's also worked in television news as an associate producer at WFTV Orlando, and she's one of Ricochet's most popular and beloved contributors, and we welcome her to the podcast. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Thank you.

You know, I loved your post on road rage because you admitted to things that most people don't. We're all supposed to keep a good distance. We're all supposed to keep our cool. myself frequently, frequently behind a car somewhere, behind somebody just saying out loud, as my daughter hears with dismay in the back, just get into the intersection. Just get in so we can all turn, all of us left when the lights shake. Just get in. So it was revelatory to find somebody admit that they're like that. Expand on that a little bit and what it says about you as a person.

I have a temper. I guess I wrote it because I had been taking my children to The Hobbit, and it was crazy with all the Christmas shoppers. And I was thinking, surely I'm not the only one who becomes a monster behind the wheel. And I'm quite often sharing my weaknesses at Ricochet, if you notice. And I think it's a point of contact with other people. Not only do they feel comfortable with you because you're being vulnerable, but it also taps into something that they can share and identify with and feel comfortable with. And so I always like bringing that to the site as much as I can within reason. And so it was a great opportunity just for people to see that I lose

patience. It's just this environment that I get into and what's the problem with me. Peter here, how did you discover Ricochet? By the way, I just love every word that you write. It's so accessible. There's so much personality there, and it's all just so beautifully written. How did you find Ricochet? Get a room. Well, thank you, Peter. That just humbles me. Thank you.

I found Ricochet, well, after the election in November, I was devastated and depressed like everyone else. And I was also motivated to figure out what was going on with the women's vote. So instead of sitting around like I'd done for years, I decided to put my journalism skills to work and start doing some investigating to find out what happened. And it was through that process and gathering all that information, I actually ran across Nathan Hardin's book about God, Sex, and Yale. And so I was really impressed with that. And I saw that he wrote for this website called Ricochet. And I was like, okay, well, let me look at that. Because I was also looking for places where I could communicate

with people. I was looking for a community where I could bounce off ideas and other like-minded people to figure out what's going on in our country and why people are being irrational about these things. And so it led me to Ricochet and I immediately went on. I have to say I was so overwhelmed by what a wonderful site it was because I was like, not only are you dealing with issues from a broad spectrum, I liked the center right idea. But you could interact with each other and you could post and write and I'm a writer. So of course, I was attracted to that. But not only that you could talk to the contributors, I immediately got on I sent I sent Nathan a message and said, I love your book. Thank you. He immediately responded graciously. And I was like, this

place is so cool. It's cool i love it and i'm staying here so i've been here i've been here since january 1st 2013 so the entire year and it has been wonderful so so what are you i mean after a year if you were gonna you know there's an old story of when um johnny carson had i think conrad Hilton or maybe Baron Hilton on. He was then president and founder of Hilton Hotels. And he had him on tonight's show and he said, hey, now you're talking to America now. This is a good opportunity. What would you like to say to America, Mr. Hilton?

And Hilton turned to the camera and said, please put the shower curtain inside the tub, which is sort of I guess what you'd say, right? You're a guy who has a lot of bathrooms and you want to make sure – so all right. You've been here a year. What would you like to say to the Ricochet community? I think I lost you. Oh, I'm sorry. No. No.

What would you like – so you've been here for a year. So what would you like to say to the Ricochet community right now, to the podcast community about the future, about the next year, about the direction of the country, about how they're thinking about it? You got their ears now. What would you like to say? Well, the first thing, as I was thinking about Ricochet and have been, is that I am fascinated and appreciative of the diversity at the site and all the different debates and issues that we've wrestled with. The libertarians versus the SOCONs and the rhinos and the tea parties, the gays versus straight and Protestants versus Catholics and men versus women, which is always a biggie. I love it. I actually enjoy the conflict. And because in the context of Ricochet, it's done with such respect at the

end of the day. And we grow from that. And I think even though they get really heated, the thing that pulls us together is we have a common idea. And this is what, if I were to say anything to Ricochet, is to be encouraged by each other in your differences. Because what binds us together is a common principle of freedom. But it's not only that. It's not just that we love big freedom as opposed to big government and a bunch of big lies. But we have big hearts. There's the virtue element at Ricochet. And that's what makes Ricochet unique. There's just an involvement. There's a community. You know, the left is always

talking about community, but we are the ones who really know how to be a community because we know how to love people. And we know that we have big hearts that can embrace everyone. And that has been my biggest impression of Ricochet is not only the opportunity to share ideas and to hone each other. Iron sharpens iron and the arguments. But we have relationships and we get our backs are covered by people and there's encouragement to be had. We need that in the days ahead. We need it. And the Republican Party, if you're listening to me, you can learn a lot from Ricochet because these people are about freedom, but they also have big hearts, and that's what the difference is. Wow.

Okay. Troy, John. Troy, hi. How are you? It's been a long time since Vegas. Wow. That's great. Welcome to Ricochet After Hours.

I have to say I'm sort of – I would not have necessarily put it that way. It's kind of heartening to hear someone say – I do feel that way, but I don't know if I've ever really articulated it. I mean it's a big-hearted place. Troy and John, you're kind of sometimes on the – in the referee side of it. I mean it's a big hearted place. Troy and John, you're kind of sometimes on the referee side of it. How do you does that ring true for you? I think it's very true.

First of all, I need to clarify my lawyers are going to tell me that the Vegas thing that Denise was referring to, this is germane, but there was a big ricochet national meetup in Las Vegas in October, I think. And what underscores the point

that Denise was just making was that you had a room full of, I don't know, 50 or 60 people, most of whom had never met each other in person before. And what was remarkable, I stood back and watched this as people filed into the room,

is that there was the recognition of people who were old friends. And none of these people had had face-to-face contact before. I don't think the vast majority of them had spoken on the phone or anything like that. It builds a sense of community. It's very real. And the other thing that I would mention, and I don't think we maybe highlight this enough, it bears noting that Denise joined up, as she described, as a member

and was writing on the member feed. And if you're not a member, when you scroll through the homepage on Ricochet, you'll notice that two or three times a day, we promote pieces that our members write that are up alongside our contributors, alongside the pros. And we got to a point with Denise where we were promoting them so often, we thought, well, we just probably ought to give her the designation herself. And you always hear the criticism that the punditocracy is centered in DC, New York, LA, Silicon Valley. Here we have Denise who's from North Carolina. We've got all these other people. We should probably actually do this with more people. So many talented writers who come to the site who are not professionally involved in politics or necessarily journalism, and it gives us this broad sampling of America and this broad sampling of perspectives. I think, Rob, I think you've described it in the past as kind of an everyman's think tank. And we don't really get that, and that is one of the huge benefits I think as a reader but also as a writer.

For people who don't want to make the trek to DC, don't want to do that kind of thing professionally but want to do it as a sort of a semi-professional hobby, Ricochet kind of gives you an opportunity that no other place on the web really does. Hey, John. Well, no. I have to interrupt. No, there's also the YouTube comment section. Let's – Hey, John. You're from Phoenix, right?

Yes. Uh-huh. And Denise is from – are you in North Carolina, Denise? Or are you in Orlando? I'm in Charlotte. You're in Charlotte. Okay, so you're in Charlotte. Okay. Is it different walking around, talking to people about politics?

Do you feel that – is there – I mean maybe this is just an obvious question. But people I know who don't live in the big media markets that everyone talks about always think that where they live, there's interesting stuff happening, interesting conversations happening that no one is reporting and those voices are simply not heard. Do you feel that way? Or other people have said, listen, in the age of the internet and 24-hour news stations, everybody sounds the same. Do you feel that there's a specific voice that isn't heard, the voice from places like – big cities. Charlotte is a huge city. It's a money center but still it's not New York. Do you feel that way or are people making too much of it?

I think I definitely see that here in Phoenix. There are different voices and I think part of it is it's the voice is the – more usually the voice of an individual as opposed to here's how I should reorganize society. And that's kind of what you hear when you're in a lot of places in DC. Instead it's, hey, why doesn't DC let me do A, B, or C? I think another thing, and I haven't lived in the Beltway, but something that I always notice and it can get frustrating and that's why Ricochet is such an oasis for these things. If we have a family gathering, there are republicans and democrats and libertarians and progressives and gay and straight and different races and cultures and we all get along famously. And even if politics comes up, we'll laugh at each other's jokes. One side will dig the republicans.

The others will dig Obama and it's not a big deal because we can handle other viewpoints. We don't eat, live, and breathe this stuff. And we can be very passionate about things. But it is just kind of interesting how disconnected much of the web can be and Ricochet kind of reminds me of that. All right. So let me ask you this. Is that part of the hilarity of Pajama Boy for most of Americans? They're looking at that kid and thinking, I don't know that kid. That kid seems like he's somebody else's idea of what a kid is. No, it's worse than that. No, I think some people know that kid, and they're living in their house, and they're like, get the heck out of my house, kid. And they're looking at that and they're saying, oh, you're praising my son who's a

lazy bum who won't get out of my house? No, this is not working. This is not realistic. This is not my life. I know this guy and I don't want him here. And I want him out of his onesie. I took him out about 20 years ago out of his onesie and now he's back in it. I want him out of the house and you're encouraging him. I think people are resenting this kind of advertising more and more and that it's not reflecting the reality in a positive way that they would like. It does come down to money. They don't feel like their struggles in real life are being taken seriously. One thing I can't really blame Pajama Boy entirely because when you're a millennial and you've been unemployed for five years, after a while, you just don't take off the onesie. You just kind of lounge on the couch.

Why go out there and strive? It's sad. I have one son right now. Earth for Crooks is right about this. Yes. So all right. But let me ask you one more question about Pajama Boy and then we can move on. I mean, doesn't he look rich?

He does. Yes. It's very sad. He looks spoiled. Yeah. That's what he looks. He looks spoiled. And he's the kind of person if mom instead of Coco brought over coffee he would demand to know were they whole

beans were they fair trade where did you get certainly not starbucks i hope heaven for fend and he would complain and refuse to drink it in the end that's probably why he settled for the cocoa got it it's amazing how far we've come as a society that we now we now look down our noses at starbucks well actually the elite place you went to and now we're like, oh, no, no, too corporate. That's where Pajama Boy actually works despite the fact that he realizes it's corporate. It's the only place that he could get because he needs to pay off the student loans.

He took about $65,000 to get something that studied the heteronormative assumptions and the translations of Sumerian tablets. And now all he can do is sit there and do little barista art, making the cuneiforms for F.U. into the foam before he hands it to somebody and working on it. James, this is your department because this is nostalgia. It's American history and so forth. And I don't hold any brief for the New Deal, which was the beginning of all kinds of bad things.

But remember those pictures. I think it was Margaret Burke White who traveled through the middle of the country in the American South and down in Appalachia. There were pictures in Life magazine during the depression. And the pictures that helped to build support for the New Deal, those were pictures of people who were really poor, really poor. Pictures of people in front of their log homes without running water, without electricity. Log. Log. Oh, you had a log.

No, we didn't take that one log. And this child boy is in need of government assistance? What madness. It is just insanity. The New Deal was a response to real need. This is a response to nothing. Could you Photoshop pajamas and little

cups of cocoa in front of some dust bowl, sad dust bowl pictures. Put them into a Walker Evans dust bowl picture. No, it's true. If you go back a hundred years to to Jacob Reese who did a study of the underclass in New York City, the poverty, the impoverished surroundings are astonishing to look at today. I mean it's just – you can't imagine that people lived like that in America 100 years ago. But they did by the millions. And slum clearance was a great thing.

A handout to people truly in need was a good thing. Lives were saved. But then of course it turns into this elephantine bureaucracy that can never be removed and just pumps more money and creates dysfunction. And so now when you look at the worst part of America, you see rooms that themselves have a 36-inch flat television set as opposed to what the people back in 1902 had, which was maybe a newspaper from three weeks ago, and that was their blanket. So yeah, it is all relative. And pajama boy – well, here's the thing. Atlantic Magazine is reporting now, ladies and gentlemen, that while we slept, apparently two Americas emerged, that the split down the middle is how you feel about pajama boy in the intellectual sense and how you feel about Duck Dynasty. Are you a – this is their headline. Are you a pajamerican or in the confedukarasi? Confedukarasi.

Oh, my god. Go home for Christmas, guys. Those are only two choices? You're only two choices. Oh, great. But it's interesting that they're equating siding with the Duck Dynasty guy with secessionism, racism, slavery, and the rest of the Confederate ideas. So in other words – That's smart though.

They have to do that. They must do that. That's their only solution. The only other thing that they could do is admit that Obamacare is a mistake and try to fix it. So it's never been about Obamacare or giving pajama boy health care. It's always been about how soon can we have a statue of Obama in every town square in America? The only way to do that is to demonize your opposition and say, ah, thank god. Thank god we have this weird bearded dude from Duck Dynasty to use as a straw man, as it were, for our opposition.

But that's just ludicrous and insulting. Also, you know that old guy could just kick Pajama Boy's butt, right? In the octagon, it would last about ten seconds. Yeah, in our culture too. I don't know where we have lost track of sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me because words are the – that's the capital offense of our era. Basically what's happening to Duck Dynasty, it's like the medieval blasphemy trials. It's like you spoke against this group and you must be punished and you must be punished publicly and you must apologize. You must recant.

And I just don't understand why people are so upset by words. I hear people saying awful things about all my beliefs, all of us do, constantly. And I don't demand they be fired. Actually, the less articulate ones, like say an Alec Baldwin, I think he actually helps our side the more public he is. But I just don't, it's bizarre to me that we've elevated words to be such a dangerous thing and such a form of bullying when I definitely, unfortunately remember bullying. It did not involve words when I was in grade school. Well, words are the big commodity of the day that we live in now.

Everything's about communication. We're constantly communicating. We're on the internet constantly, on phones constantly. We're not out in the fields working. We're talking. And so everyone's hyper aware of everything that's being said. Couple that with, it's not about freedom. It's about control and about agendas. And so you step onto landmines and you're going to blow up in this environment. Ah, well, let me just tell you how Atlantic wants us to think about this because Atlantic wire piece actually says this division is kind of silly. Here's what it comes down to.

And I'm going to read the last paragraph. One last irony in this goofy situation that's worth pointing out the threads of class, of course, that wind through this dumb debate are uncoupled from actual economics. Robertson was suspended from a show which consists only of cameras following him and his family around documenting the massive wealth they accrued from selling duck calls. The model in the tweet is an unknown and presumably a model that, like other young models, is hardly wealthy. One of these two men can afford to fly to Paris on a whim and scoff at America from the window of a private jet. He's the one that real Americans embrace. Yeah, he's also the one who's not doing that very well.

Yeah, which of the two do you believe is the sort to look down upon America and scoff at it in general? I'm having a hard time with this whole dichotomy they've set up here because it seems to me that the difference is people actually like Duck Dynasty. Is there anybody on the left who's actually sort of gleefully embracing what they've done with this castrati in this PR campaign? That would be a castrato. Unless the rest of the family is shown and they're equally gormless and bereft of the endowment. I don't think anyone is defending that. I just think that these – they are – they are unused on the left.

They are unused to being laughed at. They're the people pointing and laughing. Right. And so they – I think this is a very strange experience for them. It's very disorienting. It's not the way it's supposed to be. Even when they're plummeting in popularity, even when bad things are happening, they're never laughed at. They're the ones. They write The Daily Show.

They write The Colbert Report. They do all – that's their job. And now they're being laughed at and they understand why and I think it's shocking. I think it's really disorienting. It's lovely. Boo-hoo, right? It's lovely. It absolutely couldn't be better because the one thing that we've learned – and I'm sorry to hog all this stuff here but it's this – is that these people believe that their smartness and their proper opinions about everything and their rich, diverse knowledge of Western civilization entitles them to a life

and a stature that is above the grunty guy who's digging up the asphalt on the road. And their job in life is to make a witty remark about the fact you can see the crack of his ass and to judge the life that he lives

when he goes home and to acknowledge him sort of in the abstract as something that we want and we should have unions so they get good wages and all the rest of it. But they think that they're essential when it's the burly guys with the beards and the retro opinions who are absolutely indispensable to the construction and maintenance of the nation.

And when that's rubbed in their faces and they realize how utterly irrelevant they are, that is what this whole thing must cause. A phantom twinge like a tooth that was pulled long ago while you were under an anesthetic and you don't even realize it's gone. Peter, are you dead or are you good? No, no, I'm here. Oh, good, good. DC said a moment ago something or other. Somebody made a comment that humbled her.

I'm just letting all this roll past, thinking everybody's being brilliant this morning. Well, Santa, thanks for all that. Now we've got to go here. Speaking of Santa Claus, though, I'm going to give everybody one quick prediction for the next year. I'm giving you that opportunity, gift-wrapped. And, Peter, you'll be last.

Rob, you will be first. Go. Ricochet hits 20,000 members. Well, now we know where we are Good DC Oh We will win big in 2014

In the elections Huge You did have a post that says That's not really the end all and be all No it is not But hey We're going to get the 2014 big Troy

It'll be a boost It'll be encouraging Great I'm going to take the same tact, but actually apply a metric to it that I will probably be crucified on at this time next year. I think we take the Senate. Whoa. Wow.

You know, Harry Reid's running again and says that he wants to be majority leader, which would put him up at 16 years. And frankly, eight more years of that lemon sucking sourpuss is just enough to make you want to drag a big razor across your veins. John, your prediction. Well, I actually agree with both of those predictions.

And I think this is kind of a dark horse, but I think Hillary does not run. I think she's going to get polling. That's going to scare her off. And despite being the most fascinating person on the planet, according to Barbara Walters, I don't think America is that fascinated and or interested. And I think especially the left and Democrats will not want to go for the inevitable candidate just like she was inevitable in 2008 and they didn't care for it. They're really not going to care for it in 2016. I think you're right. I've never felt the inevitability like Hillary. And I'm really sorry that I just said I never felt the inevitability of Hillary. Everybody, we thank you for being on the podcast today.

Everybody knows where they're going to find you. They're going to find you at Ricochet. And in the meantime, before they hustle off to the site and see what's new, they ought to check out Audible.com where they can get that free, free subscription. AudiblePodcast.com slash Ricochet. Coupon code, what do you think? And go to FoodieDirect.com. If not for this holiday, for the next one when you need people coming over and you need food, this is where you go. It's quality stuff from the best restaurants in the country.

FoodieDirect.com. Use the coupon code Ricochet for 20% off. Again, thanks, everybody. Thanks for listening. Thanks from the best restaurants in the country. FoodieDirect.com. Use the coupon code RICOSHET for 20% off. Again, thanks, everybody. Thanks for listening. Thanks for a great year on the site, and we will see you down the road at Ricochet.com. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

And God bless us. Alright, let's get the a** out of here. Is this still on? Yes. Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Let your heart be light. Next year all our troubles will be out of sight. Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Make the Yuletide gay Next year all our troubles will be miles away Once again as in olden days Happy golden days of yore Faithful friends who were dear to us Will be near to us once more Someday soon we all will be together If the fates allow.

Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow. So have yourself a merry little Christmas now. Ricochet! Join the conversation. Once again as in olden days Happy golden days of yore Faithful friends who were dear to us Will be near to us much more Someday soon we all will be together If the fakes allow.

Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow. So have yourself a merry little Christmas now. © transcript Emily Beynon