The Ricochet Podcast - Pride and Prejudice

Episode Date: June 30, 2016

This week, we take a little break from politics to bring you one of our favorite people — writer/director Whit Stillman, who’s new movie Love & Friendship is in theaters now. We talk Jane Austen (the movie is based on Austen’s novella Lady Susan), his writing process, and some of Stillman’s favorite films. Then, Charles C.W. Cooke, newly minted National Review Online Editor (and co-host of the... Source

Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South American, all the ships at sea, let's go to press. The British people have voted to leave the European Union, and their will must be respected. One of the things people love about you is you speak your mind, and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides. What Boehner is angry with is the American people holding him accountable. If I become president, oh, do they have problems. They're going to have such problems. That's funny.

I don't know why that's funny. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lalix. Today we will discuss morals and comedy with director Whit Stillman and Brexit with Charles C.W. Cook. Let's have ourselves a podcast. We will discuss morals and comedy with director Whit Stillman and Brexit with Charles C.W. Cook. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody, to this, the Ricochet Podcast number 310.

I'm James Lylings, and we are brought to you by SaneBox. Hey, is your email box a raging conflagration of your inanities and irrelevancies? Of course it is, because it's an email box. Extinguish that fire. Get it back in control with SaneBox. And we're brought to you by The Great Courses Plus. To start your free trial today, you can sign up now at thegreatcoursesplus.com. Why?

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For a great shave at an even greater price, you can go to harrys.com and enter the coupon code RICOSHET. And as if that wasn't enough, we're brought to you. Well, you know who, but I want to say who and why and where. Rob Long is doing his annual travels with Charlie bit as he goes across America. And I assume, of course, you're taking the back roads. You're investing in the Hamlets. You're just blasting through on the freeway.

I'm just blasting through the freeway, unfortunately, James, this time. I mean, I do enjoy doing that, but I've got to get back to L.A., I've got to get to work, I've got some stuff I've got to get going. But Rob, that's like going to a website that has news stories on it and just reading the headlines. You have to go behind it. I've got to click. To the story, click, and you have to delve into the comments, so to speak, in the small towns and hamlets that dot the capillary roads of America. If only there was a website analog to an experience like that. To a civil experience like that.

Well, I'm glad you brought that up, James, because there is. It's called Ricochet.com. We are the producers of the Ricochet Family podcast, which, by the way, are getting larger and getting more exposure. We're very excited about the things that are about to happen. But let me... I need to say something about our members and about why we need you to sign up and to become a member.

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every morning and is filled with funny stuff and tips and interesting factoids for you to win any argument you get in with the leftist in your life. But we need you to join because there's a ceiling for us. The left does not have this problem. That is not fair. That is not the way the world works, but it is, in fact, the way the world is. And we got to work within that constraint, and we got to ask you for your help. So please do. Exactly. It's not like we have people coming and saying, well, we'll sponsor you, but we only want you people to use the product on the left side of their body. So that happy little throaty civil chuckle there indicates that Peter Robinson is with us, joining us.

Peter, hello. What was it, a happy throaty little chuckle? Yes. It was. Hello, boys. So I confess I missed just one bit. Where is Rob right now, about to leave or halfway across the country? I'm dead center.

I'm halfway across the country. I'm in Oklahoma City. Ah, wonderful. Okay, good. center. I'm halfway across the country. I'm in Oklahoma City. Ah, wonderful. Okay, good. Yes. Yes, take notes, Rob. That is the real America. It is the real America.

Well, it's all the real America. Let's not say one part's more real. It's all real. Oh, I know. This is America, yes. You can bounce back and forth between Los Angeles and New York. Let's put it this way. You're getting a particular and limited view of America in those two cities.

That's very true. However, as we now know, the cities are, well, I'm just going to reiterate your point, the cities are remarkably asynchronous with the interior lands if the recent vote in the UK is to be believed. Well, this is what we're told. Now the backlash begins. There was a piece in the Financial Times yesterday which says,

it is time for the elites to stop apologizing for being elites and to do the right thing on behalf of the boorish masses who can't be trusted by the believers of power. Unbelievable. The Financial Times was campaigning against Brexit from the very get-go. And I mean, to the extent that I'm sorry to say, I think a little less of that great newspaper because it infected the way they wrote their news stories, in my humble opinion. And now they have a result.

The prime minister himself, whose career has ended because of this result, has honorably announced his resignation. And the FT won't take it. No, no no no no when they get the vote wrong it doesn't count unbelievable well the the idea that somehow that the elites them first of all the elites who are they precisely are they the the government or are they they're chattering handmaidens in the press one out of the three people on this podcast right now. Don't you think we can agree on that, James? Would be an elite?

Yeah, the one in Oklahoma City or the one in Silicon Valley? Or the one who writes a column for a newspaper with a half million circulation on Sundays. I mean, I can easily say that I'm part of the problem as well because I write for a newspaper. What they mean, I can easily say that I'm part of the problem as well because I write for a newspaper. What they mean, I think, different terms. The elites themselves think the term means us smart people who are cultured and really know what's best for everybody else. And in some instances, they do. The people who are using the term in a derogative sense are talking about people who look down on them because they commit the sin of being slightly provincial, which is the one thing that the elites can't bear. We have to have a wonderful global transnational identity.

Somebody put it in other terms, though, in a piece I read on Medium that I liked. It was simply between the progressives and the culturalists. The culturalists are those people who believe that actually the folkways, the traditions from which we come, are an important and crucial means of identifying oneself in one community. That's good. It is. It feels true, right? Yeah. It does.

Rob, would you say that you have an affinity for the culturalists, even though we may not share the entirety of their values? It's at least recognizing the importance of them and what they provide for social cohesion. Yeah do i think that's probably right um i i the the i always feel it's very strange to um to sort of make our way through this sort of brexit event from the you know it's really very fresh i mean i was driving uh into nashville when i listened to bbc world service and um and i was listening to it all unfold and you could hear in their voices this sort of shock this un this this sort of disbelief um that they got it so horribly

wrong and that their predictions have been so horribly wrong and the people had been so um unmanageable really that's kind of the way it felt like they you people are being unreasonable you're refusing to behave so there is sort of that on the other side of it from the culturalist is the other side of it i suspect that this be i mean i may be an outlier here i think it's going to mean a lot less than people think. And the reaction from places like The Economist and Financial Times are sort of understandable from their perspective because nobody in the financial business or the financial world wants one more variable, right? They have enough variables. Adding X and Z and Y and now K and Q is like that's too much for me to think about. And you add one more in and everything goes haywire and no one likes stability.

And you can kind of see it in their temper tantrums they're having or at least they're having on Friday and then on Monday. This kind of anger that there's volatility in the marketplace, as if volatility produced by a millionaire and billionaire – I mean I hate using – I'm consciously using Bernie Sanders' terms. But millionaire and billionaire speculators and program traders and large financial institutions, that volatility is okay. But volatility produced by ordinary people exercising their democratic right to vote, that volatility is absolutely unacceptable. It's like the British people stepped into their sandbox and said, oh, no, no, we get to play too, and now they're furious. Well, we've got Charles C.W. Cook, and the C.W. of course stands for conventional wisdom. We'll have him coming up a little later to talk about Brexit.

But to find an American spin on this, Peter would you say that as many are is that this is this presages the the worldwide uprising against the elite the technocrats and that's why donald trump is going to ride that wave do you see him uh do you see the same thing working here and do you see trump uh capital i mean he just gave a speech essentially uh which said uh down with globalism hoorah for tariffs, thinking that perhaps the Hoover administration is what we want to replay for the next couple of years. Right, right, right. So do you think there's an American analog to the Brexit? Yes and no. Just the obvious answer, yes and no.

Listen, here's a quotation that's been making the rounds on the Internet for a couple of days now. And in my judgment, this is the perfect summary of what people in Britain and this country, ordinary people in Britain and this country, have had enough of. This comes from an article written in 2004, so this has been going on a long time, by Samuel P. Huntington, Harvard political scientist, the late Harvard political scientist,

and he wrote about Davos Man. Let me just, do you remember this? So Davos Man, they are people, quote, who have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite's global operations, close quote. People sense that that's who's in charge. And for sure, if you walk around, you can't splash a beer in Washington without hitting somebody in the Obama administration who's a Davos man or woman. Likewise, the people who run the Financial Times, who run The Economist, it's that much for sure, I believe, is common between what's taking place in Britain or took place in Britain and what's taking place here. The differences, of course, are also very,

very important. The British people were voting for a straightforward reassertion of national sovereignty. They had lost. European Union started out as a common market. That's what they voted to enter back in 1975. Then with the introduction of the euro, with the various crises since, in the last decade, it's become a political project. The European court can overrule British courts. They're forced to take regulations from

Brussels. They were losing their sovereignty and they saw it. That's different from what Donald Trump is attempting to assert. In my opinion, he thinks he's asserting something of the same thing, but the speech yesterday, which I thought was just terrible.

Anyway, I'm going, I don't need to give a speech when we've got experts coming on. But yes, they're the same. People are fed up with having their countries run by people who don't love their countries in the same way. And who aren't accountable to them. And who are not accountable to them. That seemed to be the underlying issue in Britain, if you believe any of these sort

of exit surveys. I mean, in addition to concern about immigration, which of in code and more about the british have been uh extremely generous and open with their immigration policies for years but but the difference is that they they are their immigration policies yes they are theirs to set and to and to adjust if they wish the eu immigration policies tended to squeeze out immigrants from the former British Empire with whom they had normal historical ties, felt more comfortable to be. So fewer Indians, fewer Pakistanis, more Syrians, that sort of thing. It actually did shift the composition of immigrants into.

Well, like Rob, I, too, was listening to the BBC World Service and on World Have Your Say, they went to a pub or a fish and chip shop or whatever and talked to seven britons and they had on the line somebody from poland who was who was giving his opinion on brexit i did what you want to say well gives a toss what he thinks about it he's in poland of course the polls have been coming over in a large measure at the end of it the uh the interviewer asked everybody uh how they'd voted on it and she was stunned to find that of this young group that it was five to two for leave and she was it was a fascinating conversation because she was not getting the answers that

she expected and she listened to them but then of course they go to another i swear the reporter is just hectoring somebody who had a contrary opinion on brexit did not regard it as the apocalyptic scenario and she was just this impatient furious need to jump in and correct him when he was wrong horrible conversationalist obviously this isn't somebody who went to the greatcoursesplus.com

oh wow I knew that was coming I didn't know where though I didn't know how you were going to do it but now I know it's about time I vote remain I're going to do it. But now I know. It's about time. Anyway, but one of the things. I vote remain. I'm going to vote remain in Lilac Segways.

I never want to Segwexit. Yeah, well. Lilacxit. No, no Lilaccits for me. Once upon a time, I was doing. Remember how Rob was telling you about how we value those advertisers so much? Well, I'd like to get to one of them. This is what it's all about.

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Everyone needs 401 oil. One of the great things, of course, that oils human society is our manners and codes of behavior and the way people interact and how different tribes interact with different tribes and so forth, which has been one of the themes

you can find in the work of producer-director of Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco, and Damsels in Distress. He's also the creator of the TV show The Cosmopolitans on Amazon Prime, a good reason to sign up for that to stream. And his new movie, Love and Friendship, is in theaters now. Welcome to the podcast, sir. Thanks for having me. Hey, Whit, it's Rob Long. Thank you for joining us. Now, Whit, you and I have known each other for a bunch of years, and we

have sat and talked for a long time about what's in the movie theaters and what's on TV. Your movies are dialogue-heavy, filled with sort of articulate characters who have long conversations.

The dialogue's really tight in this one. Okay. But I would like – Okay. So here's my question. Your past pictures have all been kind of urban and contemporary, filled with very contemporary, smart, urban people. This one is different. Why did you go in this different direction?

Well, I ran out of material of my own that might have been interesting. So I started looking at adaptations of stealing other people's work and of frank plagiarism. And I finally found someone good to plagiarize, who is Jane Austen. And she wrote this novella that no one had touched called Lady Susan. It was called that by her nephew because it was published 50 years after she died. And we retitled it Love and Friendship, which is a real Jane Austen title, and it's really funny. She was writing very funny material before she got into her more serious novels, which are also comic, but they're not entirely comic. They're not mostly comic.

So now I guess the one thing that this has in common with your other work is that it's a comedy – would you say comedy of manners? Is that what you're calling it? Well, I don't call it that. Other people do. It bothers me, the manners thing, because it sounds like folding napkins or using finger bowls. What's wrong with that? We did have Stephen Fry in the film, and he was really eloquent about Jane Austen and comedies of morals, and he says it comes from the Latin mores, and I'm not up in Latin.

I mean, I guess I took two years, so I'm not going to debate that. But he said that that's where the origin is, so it's not really manners. It's comedies of morals, and I think that would fit. Well, so do you see any analog today? I mean, it doesn't feel like we have that same kind of social fabric. I mean, if you were – put it this way. Your first big picture that sort of burst you on the scene was Metropolitan. It was about young, urban, just out of college, set in a kind of an indeterminate time. I was talking to Terry Teachout about it once, and I said it's not really a time – it wasn't really set in a time or an era.

It was set in a time of life, which everyone's experienced no matter how big the cars are or how tiny the phones are. This kind of out of college, just trying to find yourself and hanging out with a lot of friends. Could you do that now? Does that exist now? Yeah, I mean, all that I think still exists. Everything still exists. And I mean, I think before we were kind of criticized

for having our films always seeming out of time with anachronistic characters there's sort of a myth that everyone at every one moment has the same ideas in the same way behaving in the same late model uh self cell phone um my friends would like not have the late model cell phone if they had one and and so i think we were accused in all the other films of sort of being out of date and anachronistic and they weren't that way. Relief is going back to the 1790s. There's actually no one around who can say, oh, I remember the 1790s and it wasn't that way.

Yeah. We had more fun back then. And, you know, I had these journalists coming in and the film you mentioned, Last Days of Disco, and saying, well, I was in publishing and I went to discos and neither was like that. But, you know, each person has their own experience. So I had my publishing experience and in Last Days of Disco, it was exactly my publishing experience. Maybe it wasn't this other lady's publishing experience. So I tried to be really authentic with expert in period and bring a lot of knowledge to it. Well, in the case of doing either Metropolitan about Deb's season in New York in the past

or the last days of disco, sort of Harvard preppies in discos, I sort of had to say, well, actually, they wouldn't dress that way. They'd dress this way, and it was all kind of tiresome for the crew. This is a much more fun experience because everyone was bringing some expertise to it.

I know Peter wants to jump in because he wants to talk about it,. I have one more about this. It's just when you make, I mean, how's the workflow go? I mean, the first couple movies are, they seem so personal. And I mean, is there a period where you're just kind of walking,

I mean, walking around and you got nothing and you're like, I've got nothing. I have nothing to make a movie about. Or do you have like 20 things that you feel like you're going to die and have 20 ungotten to projects? Where are you right now in that process? Well, I mean I think I've learned it's never to sort of poo-poo other people's um comments and advice so i remember reading fitzgerald and he'd worry about burning up all his material

and when i was young i was thinking oh what nonsense you can just kind of keep on going and this whole idea of burning material that you couldn't use he's really on his commercial short stories using the material he could use for sort of serious good novels. And I think it's really true. You do burn your material. So I had three stories I could tell. This sort of two-week period of the debutante parties because it was important for me because I was incredibly depressed and sort of very sort of Bolshevik Cambridge of that period

and this two-week respite from all the politics of then. And then Barcelona by Americans abroad all the politics of them. And then Barcelona, the Americans abroad during the debates over NATO. And then this sort of incredible moment of nightlife in New York with the discos. And that was like an it. And so after that, I was thinking wrong for other things to do

and other books and all that. But you get involved in the film industry with these other, you know, you know about it on the TV side. These are the producers and studio people and they all have their own version of how they want the book. And it's not your story. It's everyone's story, and they don't like your version. You like one part of the book, and they like the other part of the book.

And so you get all bogged down in all these people giving you advice and notes. notes and this was taking some unlikely material and just working on it myself and just coming to the market with it and putting it together ourselves and doing it and it's been really fortunate. It premiered at Sundance in January and it's been kind of a dream. It's a Cinderella story except

I'm not Cinderella. I gotta say, it's a huge hit. I mean, it's a really big hit. It's a wonderful... I'm sorry,. But I got to say, it's a huge hit. I mean, it's a really, it's a big hit. It's a wonderful. I'm sorry, Peter Robinson here. I just wanted to get, if I may, I was fascinated through the whole film. I kept, I'm one of those people who's seen the movie but not read the book. Good.

What proportion, if you can say this, if it makes sense, if I'm even asking a coherent question, what proportion of the dialogue was very tightly lifted from Lady Susan? It all seems so seamless, and yet, of course, you have to, at a minimum, you have to have transitions from one scene to another that she didn't have. How much of it was lifted or a close paraphrase? 10%, 80%? I'm just fascinated to hear that. It's two-thirds jane austen and one-third us adding to it and i think one thing that makes it sort of the jane austen film more appealing to guys is there's a lot of sketch comedy in it yes so um we were adapting an epistolary um novel novel in the form of letters and that means that if characters don't write letters um they don't fully exist

and some of these guys in the story are sort of too stupid to write letters you'd think and so we had to sort of invent what they would say they're described as being very silly and and foolish but we had to do that silliness and foolishness and fortunately there's sort of a new school of not mighty python-esque but um chris guest-esque uh british um comedians or comic actors and this whole group of them came into the film one named tom bannett who we'll be seeing a lot of plays the role of sir james martin and he's really funny and he's supported by a guy who's in a british um political satire called the thick of it um justin ed. He's good. And Stephen Fry plays into that. And there's a whole group of these comic actors

that give it sort of something else beyond the Austen dialogue. But I was totally immersed in the Austen for 12 years so I could sort of go into how it would be a little bit. But it's a slightly different tone when the comic guys get operating. Right. Different tone. But I didn't

hear anything. I didn't hear anything. I didn't hear any slips. I didn't think, oh, that was anachronistic. That didn't fit the rest of the – I thought it was just a brilliant – so the famous scene, Martin, if I recall, the dining room scene in which he looks at peas and says, oh, what a jolly idea, little green round balls. That's you? Yes.

So this really funny actor came in, and I started writing these scenes. I mean, it's one thing I learned from working a tiny bit in TV with Rob's friends at Amazon Studios. I just did this one pilot. But I learned that actually you can write stuff while you're shooting. They wanted a scene with Floyd-7E. And so we whipped up a scene. You know, 4 a.m., you get up, and you've got some idea for material you write it and you shoot it that day and it's actually the best scene in that pilot so i realized that i could be getting up at 4am and writing new

stuff for this guy and uh he was in shock he said he bribed the hair and makeup people to keep him in the chair longer so he could learn these four-page scenes i was getting him in the morning but he was just so good i had to get as much as possible and if i'm i know james lilacs also wants to come in and ask we all want to ask questions but one more if i may indulge myself i and again i'm not even sure this is a coherent question but i thought to myself as i was watching the movie this goes back to the point that rob made earlier all the movies these days are effectively amusement park rides whiz bang 3d computer graphics and i thought wait this sensibility this sensibility is so enjoyable the dialogue the it almost reminds me of irene dunn and and carrie grant and i thought so my favorite film you've got my favorite film there the The Awful Truth. Okay. Everyone should see that.

Then I got it. All right. I thought to myself, I've wondered if Whit Stillman's favorite director is Leo McCary. Okay, so it's true. Well, that's just a wonderful film. That's one of my favorite films. And I love that whole period. And a lot of the sort of techniques we used in the film to keep it fast and funny were techniques that were sort of learned and used in the 30s and then kind of forgotten so they did all kinds of things that were really interesting and so we do these little portraits of the characters to introduce them and at the end we do a sort of uh curtain call with all the actresses all the actors saying things and uh those are very much sort of classic golden age of Hollywood 1930s techniques. Got it. And the other bit that, then to James, but the other bit is that those movies, the Irene Dunn, Cary Grant, those were written. It was dialogue that actually moved those things

along. Plus, in my opinion, I suppose people could differ about this, but in my opinion, Irene Dunn, the strong but witty woman, she's the one who drives the whole movie. Cary Grant is absolutely wonderful, but she's the driving force. She's sort of the rudder or the main plot line, I felt. Much as in Love and Friendship, the lead female role drives the whole picture. I used to think that The Awful Truth invented Cary Grant, that they sort of created his character in The Awful Truth. But then later I saw another film where he was already doing that character but yeah i think about irene dunn a lot and when i did a damsels in distress with greta gerwig i sort of told her

she really should think about irene dunn rather than just go off in the indie comedy world that james disparages saying they're just people talking about Woody Allen all the time. I heard that last week. And to take Irene Dunn as the model, not just sort of getting out of the pure indie model and think about careers like that, Irene Dunn was wonderful. Yeah, that's the trouble with Woody Allen movies is that nobody's talking about Woody Allen movies.

They're just the sort of people you would think would be nattering on about Woody Allen movies. But I do think there are a lot of good indie comedies these days. There's a whole bunch of them in the past six years. Don't ask me to name them. And not to disparage Woody Allen. I've loved a lot of his work.

If anybody's interested in hearing what Whit likes about other movies of the older nature, they can go to Criterion, that great restorer of classic heritage, and find his top ten list. And if you look at these, and I am looking at it right now, you see, of course, the great Hitchcock films. And when I think of the films of the 40s, as you were talking about before,

you really get the sense, when you combine it with your copy of Life magazine and what was on the radio at the time, of a fairly coherent culture. It wasn't as variegated and kaleidoscopic as ours, but it was there, and there's advantages to that. There's a certain sort of familiarity and continuity that gives a culture and a society and a country

when there's a feeling that all of these things are of a part. When did that start, do you think, to break up? Was it when the studio system cracked up and the auteurs of the 60s started doing it and the 70s started doing it? When television split from three channels or four to 400? When did we start to lose the general sense of an overarching cultural narrative?

Well, that's a big question for several of your podcasts probably. I think we think the 60s is the big break. And that's why sort of for me, Metropolitan, the first film was sort of poignant because my own experience was right in 68, 69 that I was having that experience when the world was sort of going crazy. And yet there's still sort of outmoded modes still going on. So that was interesting. But I think in the film industry sense, things broke down really quickly. There was really a golden age that ended. And so I really loved films before 1942 and precious few films after 1942,

except in sort of the new modes. I mean, that great studio period. And some people say it was because the studios lost their audience in Europe and hereabouts. And other people say it was just the opposite. It was that any film they put out during the war was really popular because people were just desperate to watch anything. So the whole sort of standards fell apart. There's a whole bunch of things. I think people learn formulas.

And when they learn formulas, things stop being as good because everything becomes sort of a copy of something else and but it's a wonderful period from sort of um 1930 to 1942 just such great films 42 that's a fascinating cutoff yeah when you were talking before about making changes to the script while it's shooting casablanca of course if i remember the story they were they were writing the end of it right up until they were doing the end of it. And then Casablanca, having been so beloved and successful, they kept trying to do it in other cities

with combinations. And they did a pretty good job. Those are pretty good. And actually, that's an exception to the rule because I think Casablanca was like 44 and they did Passage to Marseille or I'm not sure which was first and which was second. But there's a whole bunch of have and have not.

So it's true, there's a whole bunch of things. And for me, the sort of classic directors, the auteur directors that we love and admire are those who are able to keep on going, making great films after the studios were falling apart. So John Ford, Hitchcock, and to some extent, Howard Hawks were still doing that. I mean, my favorite, John Ford, is a film called Wagon Master. It's just marvelous.

It's rarely seen because it's one of his indies when he was doing Argosy Pictures with Marion Cooper, who is another wonderful character who fought in the 1920 anti-Bolshevik war. He was in the squadron of American pilots who went over to fight with Poland in 1920 and was shot down. And people believe that Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry captured Marion Cooper. There's all this legend about it. And that was John Ford's great friend and collaborator, Marion Cooper. Wow. Hey, Whit, it's Rob again. We were talking once, I don't know, maybe a couple of years ago, and there's a character in Barcelona played by Taylor Nichols, great actor. It's a young salesman, ambitious young salesman in Barcelona,

American salesman in Barcelona, who listens to Dale Carnegie. Yes. And you told me that there was this strange reaction to that. And it was the people were saying, oh, come on. No one listens to – you're only putting it in there to make fun of Dale Carnegie. It must be snarky. It must be some kind of – you must be trying to make some point. And I think you said at the time, you said,

it was amazing to me that no one just assumed that somebody who wanted to get ahead in business and in life would be listening to the world's most influential personal coach, I guess. Do you find that still is the case that the stuff that you're writing about and thinking about is stuff that maybe the paymasters in LA who congratulates you or not your paymasters just don't get?

I mean, do they just not get it? That's the interesting story. I think I was probably telling you about a story meeting at Castle Rock and it was actually the paymaster who was good. It was the screenwriter, Kibitzer, who came in. We were having a story meeting at Castle Rock. It was the head of the company

who's going on to have really big studio jobs and do really well. He, frankly, was great. The businessman was great. This screenplay expert, screenwriter, Kibitzer was there and he said, now, in this script, you have this character listening to and reading Dale Carnegie and Drucker and all these people, all these salesmen, manuals, and business

self-help books. And he really should, at the end, see through these and decide these are not valuable and all that. And then I said, well, no. I put in the ones that I really like. These are really helpful to me. I had to sell at one point, and these were books sort of the godsend, and I really liked them, think they're very constructive.

And the head of Castrock, who went on to be, is now the head of Disney, said, no, these are great books. It's true, they're terrific, and they have good advice. And yes, they're bad business books, but they're also really, really good self-help books. And so we won that argument. And so that was one of the great things of working at Robert Runner's company, Castle Rock. They generally were terrific and really respectful and knew comedy. And I mean, they'd call you up and I remember Martin Schaefer at Castrock calling up about the Barcelona script and he started saying, he gave me all the honey parts, all the

sugar parts, the good stuff and then he was going to give me... You love it, it's great. Then he was going to give me the castor oil and he said, now about the ending and before he could finish the sentence I realized the ending was a disaster and I also realized how I could

fix the ending, the different ending. And that was so great versus the experience I sometimes had in London with like five people at a company putting all their notes together and sending me an email with 20 pages of comments and notes, which is really not helpful or respectful. It's so much better when people talk to you about something. And you can think of things while you're talking. And it just makes so much better when people talk to you about something. You can think of things while you're talking. It just makes it much better. I know you've got to run, but I have the opposite feeling. I always like to have them put it in writing because

making them write it down is so hard that they tend to just only write a few things down. But I will try your technique. I'll talk to you in a few months and let you know if it works for me or not. So I went ahead and wrote a derivative tie-in novel also called – well, it's called Love and Friendship in which Jane Austen's Lady Susan Vernon is entirely vindicated. And it's the nephew who defends his aunt whom he loves who argues her case very implausibly. Oh, great.

And so this has now been published actually by Jane Austen's publishers. No. The John Murray Press. Yes, the John Murray Press has published it in the United Kingdom. It's Little Brown in the United States. So I have a novel out, too. Just to be... To be

incredibly insufferable, you also have a novel out. Yes. And you managed to plug it at the end of the movie, too, because according to IMDb, at the conclusion of the end credits, there's a line encouraging viewers to read the novel quote in which Lady Susan Vernon is thoroughly vindicated end quote

and Whit I'll just tell you this I think frankly if I'd been in Hollywood and given you notes I would have insisted that that line can stay but we should have Samuel L. Jackson with an eye patch come on and deliver it because that's what people expect at the end of the credits. Whit Stillman it has been a pleasure and an honor.

Thank you very much for joining us. We hope to talk to you again when the Amazon streaming series is the hit that we know it will be. Congratulations. Really pleased. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you. See, that's the future of media.

It's not necessarily movies. Of course, we will always love to go see the story told on the big screen. But it's also streaming. Who would have thought that when Amazon started up sending you books to your door quickly, that they would also then become a house that gives you all kinds of really cool television shows that are head and shoulders above the stuff that you get from the Nets? It's incredible. I mean, it's what the Internet does, frankly. And we were complaining about those big movies and the big superhero movies.

But on the other hand, this new media landscape also allows and I think encourages more people like Witt to make these smaller but incredibly idiosyncratic and wonderful pictures. I mean, he's a good friend of mine, and I've always wished him well. But I just think this is a great, great moment for him, And I'm really pleased he came on to share that with us. Right. And while we may talk, as we did, about the loss of cultural cohesion when there were fewer products and they all came from the same places and there was a certain sort of similarity, the options now that we have are so extraordinary that you can't really say that the old way was better. Can you? I mean, I like the fact that I can go on Amazon and pick up Whit Stillman's new show as opposed to waiting for it to come on and then missing the five minutes

because I was elsewhere. That's an archaic way of thinking that is so bygone. It's like going to the store to buy your drugstore razors. Yeah, standing in line or something. It's preposterous. And nobody does that. No. The internet lets the blades come to you when you want them. And that's

why Harrys.com is one of those marvelous modern inventions that makes your life easier. Started by a couple of passionate guys who wanted to create a better shaving experience, and they did it because that's what it is. It's my favorite blade. The way it's balanced, the way it holds in your hand, the scent of the

emollients that they use to make your face ready for the kiss of the razor. Oh, it's a great product. Well, how do they deliver this? It's pretty simple, really. They bought a factory in Germany that makes steel blades. German steel blades were over 100 years. By cutting out the middle man, they offer, not literally

cutting, they can offer an amazing shame at a fraction of the price of the drugstore brands. They come right to your house at factory direct prices. Starter kit is $15, as you may have heard. That includes the razor, three blades, and your choice of Harry's shave cream or foaming shave gel. I've become partial to the gel, I have to say. I used to be ecumenical in my preference, but now I'm a gel man.

Added bonus, though, you can get $5 off your first purchase with the coupon code RICOCHET. And after using that code, you get a month's worth of shaving a whole month for ten dollars shipping is free as we say you don't have to drive to the store park go in swipe your card and satisfaction is guaranteed go to harry's.com now and harry's will give you five dollars off if you type in the code ricochet with your first purchase that's h-a-r-r-y-s.com enter the coupon code ricochet at checkout for $5 off, and you will start shaving smarter as soon as that wonderful box arrives. Now we have to talk about other things, and it's a choice.

Let's see. Should we talk about the Second Amendment? Should we talk about Brexit? So many things. Oh, if only there was somebody who was knowledgeable on both. And, of course, there is. Our friend Charles C.W. Cook, the newly minted fresh online editor at National Review. Graduate of Oxford,

at which he studied modern history and politics. His work is focused especially on Anglo-American history, British liberty, free speech, the Second Amendment, and American exceptionalism. He's one of those few people who actually still believes in that, unlike most of the people in our political landscape today. He's the co-host of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen podcast, and we welcome back. Charles, how are you today?

I'm doing well. How are you? Are you dissolving in a puddle of tears over what's happening across the pond in Blighty, or do you think that there's a tremendous amount of screaming and hideous overreaction? The latter. I've been appalled at the way in which not only British elites have reacted. Yes, I am one of them. I just have different views. And American elites as well. I think we've all become chicken little.

Charlie, Peter Robinson here. First of all, correct my figures if I'm wrong, but it occurred to me to wonder how many of the 650 members of the House of Commons supported Brexit. And what I come up with is 157 members of the Tory party and two members of the Labour party making 159 or much less than one third of the entire body, which suggests that most of the members of the House of Commons got it wrong on the most important issue of a generation, and that the political class either has to hunker down and fight for its position or find itself turned over dramatically.

Right, wrong, overstatement, what am I missing? There's certainly a disconnect. From my perspective, they they got it wrong i'm in favor of leave i think as a general matter the representatives of the people being out of step with the people is not always a bad thing and the american system is built on the presumption that it can be a good thing certainly with the senate with the Senate, with the way the constitutional amendment process is built. Will of the people tends to be a progressive term more than a conservative term.

But in this case, we are dealing with a matter of fundamental sovereignty and that the political class believes one thing and that the citizenry, or at least a small majority narrow majority of the citizenry believe another thing is a little dangerous i don't think it's dangerous enough to yield any likelihood that the plebiscite will be ignored not only do i think there'll be a constitutional crisis if that happens, Britain has an unwritten constitution,

but we can still have constitutional crises. But I think the Labour Party would find itself in even more dire straits than it currently does because it would have its heels bitten off by the UK Independence Party and lose seats all over the place. So I don't think that's going to happen. But yes, there is a real disconnect.

And Charlie, the latest, again, this is me in California. It's been a long time since I set foot in England, let alone studied there ages ago. So it's me trying to piece things together sitting here in California. The question now is which of two models by the way adjust my question a little on your way to giving an answer if you'd like but as i understand it there's the norway norwegian model norway is not a member of the eu but has come to an arrangement whereby it pays the eu a little money and permits free movement of labor. It accepts anybody from the EU who wants to move to Norway in return for access to the European market.

And then there's the Canadian model, which is a much more arm's length from the EU. And Canada retains full control over immigration into Canada. And to my surprise, as best I can tell, again, I keep saying as best I can tell, Boris Johnson, certainly of the Brexit campaigners, the one who made it through the clutter most here in the United States, seems to be leaning toward the Norwegian model when a third of the people told pollsters that they were voting for Brexit because they wanted to regain control of immigration, what on earth is going on? Why doesn't he just embrace the full separation represented by, again, the Canadian model? Why don't they just chuck all the models and say, we're going to negotiate from scratch.

Here's what we want. We'll invent a British model. I think the problem here is that while there was a narrow majority for leaving, the reasons for leaving and the preferred model once Britain had left was a matter of considerable debate. Now, I'm obviously not comparing this to the American Revolution directly. They were different structurally as well as on the merits. But the founders,

once they had got what they wanted, i.e. separation from Britain, disagreed among themselves as to the ideal form of government. You would have seen, had you been in the salons in the 1780s, a Hamilton faction and a Jefferson faction and a Madison faction and a Washington faction. And that's what you're seeing now. It is the case that a coalition was put together that wanted out of

the EU, but there is now going to be an almighty fight as to what should be done next. And I think the reason for that is that sovereignty, like free speech, is a neutral concept. When a person stands up and says, I wish to be able to speak freely, they're not forecasting what they're going to say. Likewise, some people wanted the sovereignty back so that they could pass stricter immigration laws. Some people wanted sovereignty back on a matter of principle. Some people wanted sovereignty back because they thought that they could negotiate a better deal with the EU. There are liberal internationalists in the UK who would essentially, if given free

reign, reconstruct most of the relationship with the EU, but through Parliament on a basis that could be tinkered with at will. So it's not that odd to me that we're now seeing a fight. Had the Remain side won, there would also have been a fight because many conservatives and centre-right advocates of Remain in Britain don't like the EU. They don't like the way it's structured they just thought that on balance throwing the whole thing out was too risky uh it just so happens that leave prevailed and therefore that's where the fight is charlie one last question from peter before i let rob and james come in here um as if i could prevent them much longer the the almighty

fight that you're talking about that is going to to take, again, from the point of view of Americans trying to sort out what's going on, that almighty fight will take place largely within the battle for leadership of the Conservative Party. Is that what we need to keep our eyes on? I think that's partly the case. And, of course, we're also seeing a battle within the Labour Party. It's not just because Jeremy Corbyn was weak in his defence of the Remain campaign. And it's not just because he's seen as a liability. The fight you're seeing on the left is the product of fishers, important fishers. But so, yeah, I mean, yeah, you're going to see some of that fight in the two leadership campaigns that we're probably going to see. But you're also going to see it once those leadership campaigns have been wrapped up because there's going to be a negotiation.

And as with all negotiations, both sides will offer and counteroffer. The lay of the land will become more apparent once Britain opts to leave. The Europeans will make clear what they will accept and what they won't. Britain will have to take some risks. Europe will have to take some risks. And when that happens, when Europe threatens Britain, when Britain threatens Europe, people are going to line up on one or other side of the divide. So I think it's going to be fractious for quite a long time now. The only thing I would say is I'm not sure why people are surprised by this. People are surprised the markets reacted as they did.

They're surprised that people are angry with one another. They're surprised this is going to lead to a long and protracted fight. It was always going to. The reason that there is so much shock, I think, is that for some reason, no one thought this would actually happen. Charlie. Go ahead, James.

Here's one of the things that I constantly heard from the young folk who were bewailing the horrible, dank future into which they had now been consigned, was their loss of a European identity. They didn't really want to be British. They wanted to be European, which is something that's very attractive in your 19 to 21, I

suppose. Is that European identity that they seem to want to constantly forge, is this the beginning of a reality setting in and making people realize that actually no there are nations there are tribes or are we going to see the uh the davos sect uh double down and continue to reinforce a pan-national european identity i don't think that the davos sect realizes the scope of its opposition i don't think that you can create new Soviet man. I don't think that this Helmut Kohl-led vision for a European polity

in which divisions and disagreements and past events were wiped out is ever and could ever happen. Firstly, I think that one massive failing, and this is true of America as well, of the elite class in the last few years has been to fail to understand just how much people care about sovereignty,

how much people care about local government and about keeping their country their country. Now, it doesn't have to be sinister. That can be a good thing. America was built on this conception of civil society, which does require some sort of cohesion. Britain is more like that than is France or Germany. And Britons are not the French. Britons are not Italians. They're not the Germans. They don't even speak the same language. So I think the first thing is they've totally underestimated the opposition there. And the second thing is that far from bringing people together, it seems to me that the European Union has started to serve as a cause of dissension, a cause of anger.

The idea, the claim we always hear is that the EU stopped a war. It stopped a third European war in the 20th century. I don't think that's true. I think NATO stopped a third European war if there was ever going to be one. I think the American military stopped a third European war. Hear, hear. But I also think that at one point the flowery language you hear coming out of brussels probably was bought into by a good number of citizens of the various countries within europe and now it's not to me this is a little bit like the internet when you

hear silicon valley wax lyrical about the internet they always say it's this great fount of knowledge it's this place where we can all meet and in mutual understanding spend time together but actually what we do is we just break one another online and scream about racism in the comments on youtube and the european union has become similar we hear from brussels this this florid description of unity and harmony and peace and mutual understanding and love. But I think that the French are more angry with the Germans than they have been for a long time. I think the British are angry with Angela Merkel over her immigration policies. I think Eastern Europe is terrified of Putin and thinks the only good country in Europe is Britain because it is closer to America in terms of foreign policy.

So I don't think that it's doing a great deal of what it was supposed to do, and I think it's arguably causing more upset, especially with the way the euro has collapsed and the resentment that's caused, than good. Yes, one of the articles that I read that had a long lament for the post-historical world into which we were all supposed to go, used as its metaphor for this now lost future, Europe Endless, a song by Kraftwerk, which was done when Germany was still divided,

and how this hymn to speeding across Europe with its sparkly vistas and its real-life views and all the rest of it. I thought, you know, going to an uncertain destination on a German train is not exactly my idea of a wonderful future, given the precedence. Rob, you had a question. I do. Maybe I'm sort of sanguine here, overly sanguine. So, you know, the invoke Article 50, there's a year of wrangling. There's probably ups and downs and people storming out of meetings and coming back to meetings. They have to get it all wrapped up in two years or it sort of happens automatically.

What if it's all okay? I guess what I mean to say is what if the polar ice caps don't melt and the seas don't rise three feet as they were predicted to have risen in 2015 or something what if all of this is some kind of uh charade a con game played on ordinary people to terrify them into you know i don't know changing their light bulbs or or uh or staying part of Europe. It all feels kind of a piece. As I was driving, I told the guys earlier, as I was driving at night on Thursday night listening to BBC World Service, the hysteria of it is that people were furious, especially people in the markets were furious. The markets were volatile.

Like that's a bad thing uh just in and of itself well isn't a part of this just the kind of the slight gleeful tweaking uh that the non-elites are feeling towards the elites who are constantly telling them that the sky is falling i agree with you i've been sanguine from the beginning it's constantly um insisted that britain is in the midst of a terrible historic crisis because the conservative party is going to have to choose a new leader and the labor party is in turmoil i don't believe that that's how free societies work. I don't believe that's how old societies work. And Britain is an old liberal democracy. This is, in my mind, akin to the sort of freak-outs

that we see when there's a government shutdown. People say, well, what on earth will we all do? Then they realize by day three that it hasn't mattered at all. In terms of the bullying you've've seen and i use that word advisedly but it is bullying from elites on both sides of the atlantic i have to say i have been utterly appalled uh not only because i saw it firsthand my family at least for england is ridiculously mixed race and most of them were for leave um and watching my black cousin and

my malaysian brother-in-law being told that they were racist by a series of white progressives was really a sight to behold but but more more broadly uh instantly as soon as the vote was announced you saw these pathetic attempts at narrative building. We were told that these stupid Leave voters had instantly taken to Google and searched the EU. Well, 1,000 people did it. We don't know that they were Leave voters. We don't know that they were even voters at all. We don't know how old they were.

1,000 people, there's not a trend make and if you compare that to other google searches after monumental events for example when mitt romney lost in 2012 it doesn't even compare should we presume therefore that the american people were rending their garments having made such a mistake exactly and they did the same thing with this petition this oh my goodness three million people signed a petition saying they want a do-over. Firstly, even if they had, that doesn't matter because 16 million people voted to remain. So, of course, some of them want a do-over. But secondly, it seems to have been a hoax.

All across the board, there has been this narrative that there is regret and people have realized how stupid they've been. Really what's happening is the media is telling people that they've been stupid and then pretending that they're agreeing with them but they're not the polls show the opposite in fact there are four times more people who are upset about the result that's right there are four times more uh leave voters who are uh i'll start again there are four times more remain voters who are happy with the result than leave voters who are unhappy with the result well i know we have to let you go, but one more thought here about that. Traditionally, the elites, the reason that the people in charge,

the reasons they give for being in charge is, well, we don't want mob rule, right? Because if left to the people, the people will do something insane. We need to attenuate their power. But it does seem like everywhere you look, certainly in the culture and in politics across the Atlantic, it's the elites who seem to be hysterics. The elites saying that the earth is going to die tomorrow and Britain is going to be plunged into a 20-year depression.

It's the elites who seem to be painting these incredible nightmare scenarios that the people are just kind of exhausted by it. Because at a certain point, if the climate doesn't change and the island of Manhattan isn't under two feet of water, then what else can you conclude but that everything's a lie? I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah, I just thought of it. Well, it's been a temper tantrum we've seen. It's been a vast temper tantrum, seen it's been a vast temper tantrum and it's become

more and more ridiculous people like ian bremer saying this is the scariest moment in world history since the cuban missile crisis the brookings institute says this will be the biggest disaster of the 21st century if he's right if they're right the 21st century is going to be a paradise compared to the 20th century. Exactly right. It's been very silly. Well, we need them to say these things because if they just say that everything is going to be okay, who listens to somebody there? Where's the excitement there?

They have to build a narrative in order to keep people hooked in, which is why, Charlie, I'd like to ask you why you support giving automatic weapons to terrorists out of the trunk of your car. But that's another narrative that they're building that perhaps we can discuss the next time. Thank you for joining us today on the podcast. We'll see you down the road. Thank you for having me.

And of course you can see him at National Review. Yes, Rob, I think you're right. What if it's not the end of the world? People are tired of being told that it's always the end of the world. We're always at a crisis. And when some of us point out things that are actual possible threats, we're the hysterics and the xenophobes.

But in Britain right now, you think of the old Saturnine British personality, the classic sort of muddled through type of character, and to think that an anxiety is now besetting them. It goes back to that old line what the British women used to tell their daughters on their wedding night. Lie back and think of England. Well, apparently now that's kind of difficult because England is a thing that they worry about, unless they're on a Casper. If you're on a Casper mattress.

Oh! That was PG-13. Well, I had to do it quickly. That was a PG-13 transition? Possibly so. Parental guidance is part of the deal. But if you're a parent with a child, you would guide them to sleep on a Casper. And if you have one, you probably have them outfitted in all the rooms because it's just that good a product.

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and I can attest to that. It's one of a kind. It's a hybrid mattress that combines premium latex foam with memory foam. Now, you think that's going to cost a pile, right? Well, mattresses usually cost over $1,500, but a Casper, $500 for a twin, $600 for a twin XL, $750 for a full, $850 for a queen, and $950 for a king. If you've shopped for kings, you know that's a good price. it's risk-free for you though casper will offer the free delivery to you and returns within a hundred day period that simple now lying on a bed for four minutes in a showroom has got zero correlation to whether it's the right

bed for you that's why it takes a hundred nights or maybe 10 but i think the first time you get on a casper you'll realize it's the one for you they've turned this buying process into a risk-free experience they understand the importance of trying it out so you're going to spend a third of your life on this thing so yeah you'll want a hundred nights but like i say the first one you're going to think where's this been all my life so why buy one from them well it's an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price it's a risk-free trial and return policy try sleeping on a casper for 100 days with free delivery and painless returns. And they're made in America. $500 for a twin, $950 for a king.

Compare that to industry averages. It's outstanding. So $50 off your first purchase, if you like. Go to casper.com slash ricochet and use the coupon code ricochet at the checkout, and we will all sleep better knowing that you did. We thank them for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Well, speaking of Ricochet, lots in the member feed as usual about the things you might expect. It's not all Trump, but it seems odd.

It seems odd we've done a podcast here without talking about him. Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice?

Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice?

Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice?

Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice?

Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice?

Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice?

Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? There's just no point. I think Doc J had something about this. Was it Doc J who was talking about VDH joining the rabble alliance and saying, essentially, there's nothing that never Trumpers can contribute to the conversation at this point. Brian Wolf wrote confessions of an almost never Trumper and what could make me change my mind. He wrote, so how can I make my mind be changed?

I need evidence that Trump's core principles align with mine. I would need to see evidence that Trump is acquiring experienced hands that he actually listens to and that he's honing his knowledge and policies so he can bring conservative reforms. I would need to see him willing to sacrifice his own instincts for the betterment of the Republican conservative movements. In essence, I need evidence that he's willing to sacrifice for the good of the country, even if that means he is not personally winning. And if that's what you need, you're not going to get it. It's not going to happen.

And then, ergo, either get on board or artillery. Peter? Oh, no. I'm spent on this subject. Yeah, me too. No, no. I'm spent on this subject. I'm just spent. Yeah, me too. No, no.

I couldn't agree more. Me too. He gave a major speech just yesterday. Was it yesterday? Yes, it was just yesterday on trade in which, oh, my goodness. I thought to myself, I think I even put up a post to this effect. After Brexit, I thought, here's what Donald Trump and the Republicans should do. They should announce that they're formally going to invite Britain to join NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, Ronald Reagan's great achievement. And instead, Trump said he's going to rip it up, rip it up and confront the Chinese.

Springtime for terrorists and unions. So this is, I'm sure, I'm only saying this to give Rob, because Rob is such a good friend, and I know that driving for hours every day across the country is hard work. I'm giving him this moment of pleasure to let him gloat, to let him chortle. He predicted this would happen to me just when I thought trump would be president would start to act presidential he'd start to mute some of his more well some of his positions and in dress speeches he would he would sound and this was a dress speech it was carefully considered written down he delivered it and right that's like a cry. Trump movement or the Never Hillary movement or any of that. I just – I kind of find these things silly. I would rather just talk about the problem with national electoral politics is what we're seeing right now. If you are given to telling yourself comeback stories and fantastic movie stories with terrific third acts where the guy, the underdog wins, then the past 62 polls, national polls, shouldn't bother you. But if you aren't, if you don't believe that those things happen in real life,

then they should bother you and they should worry you, and they should worry you for real reasons. Trump won a plurality of the votes in the Republican primary. The number of votes he won is a little less than one-half of the number of minority votes expected to be cast in November. It is true that you can sit in a hot bathtub and take a nice hot bath, but if you take that hot water and you pour it into an Olympic-sized swimming pool, it's not going to heat the pool. You cannot boil the ocean

with all the heat that Trump generates. Trump's support is getting stronger and stronger and stronger among people who support him. And his negatives are going up and up and up among people who are undecided. That is not a good sign in July. So whether you think he's right or wrong or whether you think he's the candidate or not the candidate, it should – you are doing your candidate no service to fantasize about what's going to happen in November or after the first debate you would do your candidate a better service if you put the pressure on him to pull himself together and appeal to the center of the country that and that is who elects the

president whether you like it or not it doesn't matter whether this conforms to your wish or your hope or your preference for the american polity it is exactly how it is. And whether Trump can win or not win is going to depend entirely on whether the delusional fantasy land that is Trump Tower can be permeated by the smart people who want him to win. I mean, I don't think the people

who want him to win are necessarily dumb. I think they're smart. But as long as they are slavishly acolytes slavish cheerleaders to everything trump says and does and they spend all their time worrying about the never trumpers they are going to ride this horse to defeat they need to get their candidate in order i don't hear a lot of slavish defenses of what he says because i think that what he says is regarded by a lot of his fans as irrelevant he'll say this and he said that and he think that what he says is regarded by a lot of his fans as irrelevant. He'll say this and he's said that, and he's said this before. What matters

is that they trust his instincts and that he will get in and do the right things. And even if he says, even if the right thing that they like was something that he said three months ago and he's repudiated it since, it doesn't matter. That is the right thing and he will do it. I mean,

if Make America Great is your general umbrella for this whole thing without a great deal of specifics, it doesn't matter what he says. Unfortunately, we live in America in 2016. Here's what you need to win. It doesn't work. None of that works.

That's what you say from your entertainment bubble. Conservative. I don't know. I mean, even on his wrong position on free trade, what is there to be said in favor of Donald Trump? What is there? Hillary Clinton is a catastrophe. I'm still, even though Trump is shocking me by refusing to do things that I would consider really quite simple, like give speeches that make him sound presidential. And the notion that he has to cease being his true self to do that is ridiculous.

His true self is so well established, the speeches could be written in such a way that it's clearly the same Donald Trump delivering them, but that he just sounds like a president. Anyway, that wouldn't be hard. And he's just not doing it. All of that said, Hillary Clinton is still Hillary Clinton. People are understandably, rightly, in my judgment, furious that somehow or other the country seems very – even as in Brussels, there is a permanent elite that doesn't seem to respond to the popular will at all in Europe.

Likewise in Washington. What was it? Yes, that's right. This struck me and it struck other people too to judge from comments that got written here, there and everywhere on the web. bought a mansion for several million dollars in Calorama, which is the fanciest, well, maybe there are one or two others, but one of the fanciest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. to which to retire, six-bedroom mansion. I think the price was five, six, seven, eight million dollars. From whom did he purchase this?

From a former press secretary to bill clinton no press secretary has contributed enough to the national economy to deserve to own a six million dollar mansion what clearly has happened here is this is a representative of the new the permanent class in washington in and out of government and when you're out of government, you make big money manipulating the system that the founders erected on behalf of your clients, not in response to the American people, but on behalf of your clients. People look at that and say, this is an outrage. So all of that strikes me as commendable and good.

I just wish Trump would behave a little bit, little. OK, enough. I'm just worn out. I'm just worn out. But you drill down to the numbers and there's all sorts of ways to describe favorable, unfavorable, trustworthy, not trustworthy, all sorts of things. And the irony of ironies is that we are on the precipice of electing the least liked candidate in history as president of the United States. I mean, Hillary Clinton. Yeah, well, I think it's more likely.

Overwhelmingly likely it's Hillary. But what's interesting about it is that if you actually drill down to the numbers, the question that seems to be, to me anyway, dispositive is, does he make you nervous? And she is a liar and a crook and a thief, but she doesn't make you nervous. And he is a liar, probably not a crook, maybe a crook, but not a thief. Maybe a little bit of a thief, depending on how this Trump University works out. Well, if you bought into those Mexican condominiums, which is another story. I'm saying how many are there?

How many of these things that went south? But he makes people nervous. Yes. It's not really going to come down to – remarkably, I don't think it's going to come down to character or trustworthiness or any of the things that we traditionally want to associate with our leaders. It's just going to come down to I can depend on her to behave in a predictable way, venal, greedy, etc. And I can't depend on him. And therefore, I vote for her. And therefore I vote for her. And it's a twofer.

She brings along a gaunt, syphilitic, lecherous cohort. You're in consort. So that'll be fun as well. I want to register just a slight protest against or a slight dissent from Rob. Rob is arguing on the polling numbers. I draw the same conclusion that it's very likely to be Hillary Clinton. But I'd on the polling numbers. I draw the same conclusion that it's very likely

to be Hillary Clinton, but I'd argue from different numbers. In my judgment, it's so early still in the race that Trump has a chance to move the polls if he wages a campaign. But his FEC filing, which showed that during a period when Hillary Clinton had raised $42 million, he had raised a little under a million and a half. Even that wouldn't be the end of things if we had the sense that Donald Trump really were worth $10 billion and intended to spend some piece of his fortune waging a real campaign.

But we know that's not true. He's not raising money. You can't change those poll numbers unless you fight, unless you wage a campaign. And in my judgment, the free media is not going to carry him through November. Well, some of his defenders are saying that the reason he doesn't have the money is that he's not getting the donor class, the fat cats, the guys who employ all the illegal aliens. They don't want their illegal aliens to be taken away, so they're not going to give him any money. So when this is all done, we'll just have to those jewish financiers who stabbed us in the back well but look that's but how many okay anyway i just gotta ask yeah that is partially true in a sense go on um it's partially

true in in a sense because you know if you spend a year exactly a year, claiming that all donors are corrupt and stupid. Yes, yes, exactly right. And that you don't need their money and you're smarter than they are. And then you say to the last person to raise a whole lot of money who would be really useful to have on your side, he's a loser, Mitt Romney, and a jerk and a joke. And then you say to at least the most powerful fundraising network of the Republican Party, the Bush family, and you say, well, the former president George W. Bush is responsible in part for 9-11. And then you wonder why they're not on your side? Then you wonder why they're not coming to your aid? And the argument from his side is always, you should unify.

You should do the – no, no, no. That's not how politics works. Politics does not work that I think of all the favors I can do for you as the politician. Politics works that you try to convince me that you're on my side. And you try to convince me and you charm me and cajole me

and get me to do what you want me to do. That's how politics works. You scratch my back. I'll gouge out your eyes with my thumb. Or just learn that in another day, on another morning, you're going to have to eat those words

and start eating those words. There's not a president, certainly not a successful president in American history, who has not eaten a certain kind of sandwich. And the more sandwiches that you ate on the way to the White House, the more effective you are lbj uh ronald reagan bill clinton these were effective presidents because when they were in the senate or in the state house they learned how to say oh gosh let me what can i

do for you they learned how they learned strategic humility and this guy doesn't have it that sandwich meat of course that Rob's referring to is crow. Tastes just like crow. I'm going to be one of our sponsors. I wasn't quite, but I know what you're saying. I was going to use a more robust term, but yes. Robust. Code of conduct. We wanted to mention before we go out

that we've been informed by the ever checking Blue Yeti, who Googles everything that we say to make sure that we're always scrupulously accurate, has noted that the house that President Obama is going to be moving to is a rental. Can't even buy one himself? It's just sad. So the house is valued around $6 million, and to be fair, the former press secretary could have bought it when it was two,

because D.C. real estate has been really good. It's cost $22,000 a month to rent. Think about that. And what galls you is that you have the suspicion that he's not even going to pay that himself, that there will be some foundation or some donor or somebody else who will pay that. Guy's never going to have to write a check in his life. But you might want to because this thing is supported by you, the listeners. So you might want to go to Ricochet.com and join.

First month is free, and after that, you won't want to quit because you'll get addicted to the member feed, and you'll hit it 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times a day like a Pavlovian crack monkey experiment, but with more rationality. Also brought to you, of course, by our great sponsors, The Great Courses, GreatCoursesPlus.com, Harry's, and Casper Mattresses. The coupon code for all of those, as you well might imagine, is RobLogInterruptsMySegues. Now, we'll put that in there so you can just copy and paste. Now, of course, it's Ricochet. And visit the Ricochet store where you can get many pieces of branded swag. And I believe there's a little button on the site now that tells you how you can preview Ricochet 3.

Is that right? Rob? Yes, I believe there is. I'm sorry. The answer is yes yes i'm sorry to have got to to have waved for your attention there but apparently rob no i was i was i was flipping through it yes yeah you know rob himself is probably anxious to get back in his car and zoom back to california and now i gotta get the ac fixed oh that Oh, my goodness. Broiling as you go across Death Valley. Oh, you do have to get the AC fixed before you head off.

Yes, yes. Do you have your dog with you? Yeah. Do you have your dog with you? She is. Well, she can at least stick her head out the door and window and let the tongue flap. Yeah, she should have stood up, sit on the back and pants the whole way. But, yeah, no, I need to order a little part for the Subaru,

and they're going to have it tomorrow morning, and they're going to put it in, and that's that. Route 40, so you've got the Texas, Pan, Mexico, and Arizona. Is that the route you're taking? You got it. Okay, you do need that air conditioning fixed. Don't worry, folks. I do need the AC. When there's no podcast next week, don't worry.

It just means that we're off for the holiday week. Barbara's not lost. He's not crawling across some cartoon landscape with one cactus and a skull and horns on him. We'll see you in a fortnight here back at the Ricochet Podcast at Ricochet.com. See everybody in the comments. Next week, fellas, we're two weeks.

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That's too far And somewhere on the way You might find out who you are. Living in America. Out of arms. Six in the kitchen. Living in America. Henny. A awesome nation.

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