The Ricochet Podcast - Swanning Around

Episode Date: January 23, 2014

Direct Link to MP3 file There’s only one more show until the big live extravaganza (where there’ll be plenty of swanning, apparently). In this prelude to our big night in Los Angeles, we discuss the blackballing of Mike Huckabee, snow days in Washington D.C. (courtesy of guest Jonah Goldberg), umlauts vs. diaereses, and…puppies. Then, Victor Davis Hanson drops by to opine on Obama, entitlements... Source

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But I am not a bully. I'm the king of the world! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast, one shy of number 200. And here to help promote our upcoming live extravaganza of the double century mark, it's Jonah Goldberg. And also because we have an embarrassment of riches, Victor Davis Hanson. I'm James Lileks in Minneapolis. We've got Peter Robinson and Rob in L.A.

Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast. And as for which one it is, well, if I was a cliched 1940s movie telephone operator, There you go again. Encounter Books. And this week's pick, this month's pick, this year's pick for the Epoch for the Era is Glenn Reynolds' The New School, How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself. For 15% off this title, go to the Encounter site and use

the coupon code RICOSHET at your checkout. It's also brought to you by Audible.com, the leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment. What can you do there? You know as well as I. You can listen to audiobooks whenever and wherever you please. So go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet and get a free, free audiobook and a 30-day trial.

Peter, Rob, how are you on this fine January morn? I am – excuse me. Rob usually reports first but before I – you just – the 999, just a little flicker of nostalgia. What do we do with humor that no longer reads? Our – I loved – I still love in retrospect on YouTube, Lily Tomlin's telephone operator. Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking? Is this Mr. William Fubuckley? Exactly.

It was brilliant. And our children will have no idea what a telephone – the humor will just be dead. Or let alone the idea of a telephone operator who has great power at her fingertips because she is a representative of an uncaring monopoly. Yeah, this will strike children as absolutely baffling. I'm not sure. Well, I'm not sure that that's i mean look look i mean humor always marches forward and people don't laugh the same things they laughed at in you know 1903 so that's that's normal but what is strange about it is that how long we laughed at stuff that was not relevant to our lives i mean by watching cartoons in 1970 or 1972 or 1970, cartoons that were made in the 1950s, making fun of movies that were made in the 1930s based on movie stars from the 20s and 30s, we somehow thought that was funny. People were making Bogart, doing Bogart impressions very late because that was all sort of still on TV.

Now it's sort of been overcome and flooded. It was more surprising how long we held on to stuff that we didn't even know in the original. You're quite right. Warner Brothers helped keep alive the ephemera of

that culture and transmit it to two, three generations hence, which is pretty cool. And you also, when you watch some of those old cartoons, you hear these catchphrases, which at the time, of course, flashed in and out and vanished. I was watching a Cagney movie about a year or so ago, and at the end of it, somebody questions what Cagney says, and he turns to the woman and says, Was you there, Charlotte? And I'm looking at that, and I'm looking at that, and I think, why is Jimmy Cagney all

of a sudden ending up with this strange Yiddish line? And then the movie ends. This must have meant something to the audience. And, of course, it did. That was the tagline for another radio comedian, Baron Munchhausen, who, after he told a fantastical tale and people doubted, would turn and waggle his eyebrows and say, fast you there, Charlie. So, yeah, you're right. I love the fact that we have this big vocabulary of references and it's the larger vote your vocabulary the richer your cultural database

is and you know i i used to i i'm sorry go ahead well just one one note rob will this will be meaningful to rob probably to you too james because you know everything no but you know common often on how young a country this is just over 200 years old how young hollywood still is a man who died toward the end of last year a c lyles do you remember that name rob did you yeah i knew him very well you knew him very well but i knew him a c lyles who died deep in his 90s but was totally compus mentis the last time I met him, ran into him, which was I guess two years ago. A.C. Lyles went to Hollywood as a young man from Florida, very young man, teenage young man. He knew Cecil B. DeMille.

He knew and worked with Adolf Zucker and his two best friends about whom he loved to talk, which is why I so enjoyed running into him, were Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Cagney. And until just three or four months ago, A.C. Lyles was still with us. That's how young that whole industry still is. He was still in touch with them. He still had an office at the Paramount lot. He was like the Paramount ambassador.

He'd dress in his cream-colored, beautiful suit every day and walk around in clouds of aqua de parma cologne and he'd sort of saunter through the commissary and shake hands with everybody. Both sides of the commissary, A.C. Lyles, not just the fancy side but also the sort of below the line cafeteria side. He was an amazing character. But I was going to say that I remember going to see years – not that long ago. Excuse me.

Sorry. The below the line cafeteria side. A little window right there into the supposedly wonderfully liberally egalitarian world of Hollywood, which wants no income inequality, which wants fairness for all describes – below the line costs are always the same because you're never, ever going to pay anybody below the line anymore. Above the line costs are the ones that are extraordinarily elastic. They can go up and down. But I was going to say that – so I went to go see Don Rickles. They're not that long ago, a few years ago. And he was OK.

He's a little older than he has. I've heard him and I've seen him play. He's been great. But he has. I've heard him and I've seen him play and he's been great. But he wasn't that good this time. And the second half of his act is all sort of a – he does sort of a musical stuff. He kind of dances and sings. It's an unusual choice for an elderly insult comedian. But okay.

But he does this great – he introduces it by – he introduces the finale, which is Yankee Doodle Dandy and stuff, this way. He says, you young people in the audience, think of Jimmy Cagney as the guy who said, you dirty rat. A lot of us older folks remember that he was a great song and dance man. Now, the younger people of the audience who remember Jimmy Cagney are 75. And the older people of the audience who remember he's a song and dance man are probably in the grave at that point. Just the idea that anyone remembers who that is, I mean, it's sad, but it's true. Well, I remember because Shanghai Lil, of course, there's a great moment where he leaps up on the table and a whole new dancing career begins, almost like Christopher Walken jumping up and he's from heaven. And it has this wonderful moment in that movie too where the camera is passing down the bar and illuminates the face of every man who has ever done in by shanghai lil and when it gets to a fellow who's obviously of the hebraic persuasion as i'm sure they would say he said said she won't be mine for all of palestine it reminds you back then palestine was a jew was the term for where the jewish people lived right and so in that one little moment there you can see how cagney's career fractures how the culture

used to treat the middle east and then when the cards all flip over and everybody does a song and dance for fdr and the nra all of a a sudden you realize how entwined government and Hollywood and propaganda used to be so much more than we fear today. So things you can learn. That's what I'm saying is when you – everything that we've said here, you, Peter, and Rob, is fraught with knowledge of what America is and it's great stuff. So why then does the right want to throw Mike Huckabee out of the party? Doesn't he represent some sort of old virtues there that might be resurrected

and, and turned to our advantage? He said, segueing and grinding every gear in the process. Well, I mean, I would segue to, I would like to ask our first guest.

Well, is our first guest even here? Oh yes. That's the question. Oh really? Oh, Rob and I's the question. Oh, really? Oh, yes. Rob and I are getting frantic. I'm going to segue even harder than that segue and twist and turn.

I thought you were making kind of a complicated, kind of vaguely anti-Semitic thing when you started talking about Palestine. Speaking of Palestine. No. That's what I thought. But then I didn't hear Jonah giggling, so I realized he wasn't on yet. My mistake. Well, usually there's a couple of spots to get in front of this, but we're going to make Jonah wait while we do those. No, who are we kidding?

We're going to get him on right now. Ladies and gentlemen, no introduction necessary. Jonah Goldberg. Hey, man, how are you? Snow in D.C. How are you? I'm well. How are you guys?

You hear me okay? Yeah. So, Jonah, how are you? Snow in D.C. How are you? How are you guys? You hear me OK? Yeah. So, Jonah, you're going on. What do you what do you you're on Fox to talk about what you'll be in Fox in 10 minutes to talk about what? I just got off of Fox. I was just talking about I was just discussing Obamacare with Juan Williams. williams really we we endeavor to uh shed more light than heat and really get into the deeper issues of the of of health care legislation it was a it was a edifying and important piece of civic journalism how'd it go who won it was fine you know i i think in the last 40 appearances on fox let's talk about obamacare and 36 of them. So there's a certain Groundhog Day feel to it. Yeah, that's Fox is the all Obamacare station. MSNBC is the all Chris Christie station.

So James brought this up and I thought we should talk about a little bit. What is the what do you feel about this? This is the tiny little Mike Huckabee kerfuffle that's happening now about blackballing him or trying to run him out of the – Peter, you posted this on Ricochet. So if Joan has been in the Fox studios, he will have missed it. A Ricochet member copied a list of 32 prospective GOP presidential candidates from an article in the Washington Post, put it up on Ricochet and said to the membership, you hereby have three black balls. Where would you use them? I thought the post was fascinating but there was one bit I couldn't understand. People blackballed candidates whom – if I'm interpreting it correctly, they did not consider sufficiently conservative. And they also blackballed candidates whom they considered temperamentally ill-suited to the office.

So Sarah Palin got blackballs. The most objected to candidate was Mike Huckabee. And that one baffles me because as far as I can tell, he's both thoroughly conservative and wonderfully pleasant. He's a fellow, was until some recently, a fellow media performer of yours, John. By the way, that's only one item in your portfolio. You're also an extremely high-minded and serious scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. But what do you make of Mike Huckabee? I'm also a proficient modern dancer. I got to say, you know, I had more, it's funny, I've gone the other way. I had much bigger

problems with Mike Huckabee four or eight years ago, whenever it was he ran. Because to me, he always struck me as, you know, compassionate conservatism. This time we really mean it. And he, you know, the thing that he lost me on forever was when he explained that he would be in favor of a federal smoking ban in all 50 states, just because he doesn't like smoking, which just raises all my red flags. Not that I'm a huge smoking fan, but I think that part of the problem with Huckabee is that his presence on TV has worn thin on a lot of rank-and-file conservatives, and I can understand why that's the case. I actually kind of like him more because he actually kind of cares about reaching out rank and file conservatives. And I can understand why that's the case.

I actually kind of like him more because he actually kind of cares about reaching out to constituencies that don't already agree with him. And I kind of like his performance attitude and all of that kind of stuff. But I guess I'm a little surprised by it. But not to catch aspersions on the incredibly intelligent and quite frankly handsome readership of Ricochet,

but this might have something to do with the filter bias of Ricochet readers, in that Huckabee might be more popular in other segments, like in the Iowa straw hole, then he is among the, you know, let's face it, the elitist cognoscenti that comprises Ricochet listeners and readers. Those are fighting words. Yeah. Speaking of elitist cognoscenti, Joda, you named your new puppy Zoe and gave her an umlaut. It's a diuresis, not an umlaut. Thank you very much.

They look the same. Okay. Explain why you're not a horribly pretentious character from the East Coast elite who swans around in Georgetown cocktail parties? I will tell you, and I think this is something that both James and Peter can at least sympathize with, is that it does not show that I am someone who swans around or even understands the use of swan as a verb in any context. I am, in fact, like all good conservatives, nothing but a humble servant to my daughter. Yes.

Who has been reading the Percy Jackson Greek mythology books. And she insisted that... These days, life is all... Luckily, with Bank of Ireland's current account and Visa debit card, you get all your day-to-day banking covered for just €6 a month. So you can tap, pay and send in euro with no surprises. Easy. Search Bank of Ireland current account to find out more. Terms and conditions apply. Send via 365 online and phone. Government stamp duty applies to debit cards and checks.

Bank of Ireland is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. First of all, she liked the name Zoe, and she thinks it's really cool that it has, to use her terminology, the two dots over the E. Right. And so I agreed to do that. That is why I did it. Not so I could get invited to whoever has replaced Pamela Harriman

as the swanner in chief of Washington. It's still Pamela Harriman. They just kind of prop her up. When anyone uses the term swanning, we're all quoting Mark Stein. No, I saw the same thing. When I saw the name of the new dog, who is adorable, and I love the little pictures that you have

of giving him a bath and the rest of it. It's going to grow up to be a great dog. But when I saw the name, I said, yep, daughter named it. And the two dots to me, when you go to the vet and you tell them how to spell it correctly, you have to make that three stooges eye gouging gesture with your hand to indicate the two dots. That's obligatory. And you had something the other day where you defended. I like this. I like this a lot because when I lived in D.C., I remember that every time a couple of flakes hit,

everybody would scramble to the giant or the safe way to get toilet paper, bread and milk. And as I always said, people were preparing themselves for French toast and dysentery every time there was a blizzard. You defended the panic the other day as an essential part of the silly culture of DC. And you made a point that the culture is greater now. It's bigger. It's more interesting. And I believe, as you said, like the atmosphere of an alien planet, it can support some life and culture, not a lot. But that this spaz out over snow is one of those things that actually makes DC, DC. Explain how it's working out for them today. Okay.

So I was – to give a little more nuance, which is what the Huckabee hating readership of Ricochet wants. They're all about the nuance. I was defending the D.C. resident's tendency to self-flagellate ourselves over our snow panic. The snow panic is ridiculous, but part of the rite of passage of being a D.C. resident is mocking ourselves about how ridiculous we are about snow. And there are some people on Twitter, guys like Sonny Bunch and Con Carroll and a few others, who are arguing that D.C.ers should get over it and just stop beating ourselves up over how bad we are about snow. And that is the tradition I respect,

making fun of D.C. for its ridiculous snow panic. My wife told me when I come back from Fox, she wanted me to go to the store, and I was like, what do you want me to get? And I'm sure all they have left is diet tonic and citronella candles. I mean, it is like a zombie attack when snow starts to fall. People storm into the supermarket, and you see sort of like, you know those scenes like in Red Dawn where they just shove their arm all the way to the back of the shelf and just

swipe all of the cans into the cart? You know, they're doing that with canned tuna. It's the only time at a Whole Foods no one checks to see if the tuna is dolphin safe is when there's snow coming. They just get it off. I have to mute myself. He's got me. Well, there you have the culture of D.C.

When people stock up in a panic, they don't go to Costco. They go to Whole Foods. Right. Okay. I know. And wait a minute. We're letting you off way too easily here. This is a definition of solipsism.

Not only do we worry about snowfall, but we worry about worrying about the snow. I mean, that's Washington. Okay. This is too much. A diuresis over the E in Zoe, which is your dog's name. And you're buying into, you're getting,

you're getting deeply into this debate about. That's how I started. Exactly. You, I, this, you probably are calling from a cocktail party right now in Georgetown. Like,

I mean, James is the only guy here who can try to do this populist crap against me. I mean, you're calling him a clown. You know, Rob Long, bi-coastal Rob Long. I am not on trial here.

But I went to those D.C. cocktail parties. I don't remember any of them looking like I expected them to. I expected to walk in and everything would look like the set from a 1962 Look magazine photo feature about the White House. And Pamela Harriman would be there in the great dress and the hair that was poofed up and came to a point. And there would be Gore Vidal in a suit. It was never like that. There was never anything as sophisticated or t Tony as I was led to believe.

So Jonah, describe then the D.C. cocktail parties that you recall that define the modern genre. I have not been to a D.C. cocktail party in five, ten years. I mean, I just don't go to such things. Oh, tell that to the people who comment at the corner. Come on, ten years. I mean, I just don't go to such things. Oh, tell that to the people who comment at the corner. Come on, come on. No, I know. Rich Lowry and I joke about it a little bit. Like, Rich Lowry, who's like almost a

cypher recluse survivalist in terms of his social skills. The idea that, like, he is dying to go to cocktail parties is ridiculous. You know, I'm like, I spend, you know, most of my time with my family,

with, with my dog pastor present, um, or with a few close friends. But like the idea of using precious babysitter time, right. To, to go to some cocktail party,

first of all, you know, to take the, the Kleenex boxes off my feet and trim my toenails. Exactly right. You can get shoes on. That would be different. Carefully remove the tinfoil from your head, all that stuff.

But can we talk about cocktail parties for a minute? Because we're all going to one together, and I want to make sure that our listeners know that. Jonah, you're coming out to LA. We're going to do the 200th. We're going to do the 200th We're going to record the 200th episode Of the Ricochet podcast together It's going to be a lot of people on stage, it's going to be a lot of fun If you are listening to this podcast and you are a Ricochet member You've already heard about it

You've had a chance to buy some tickets, please do Please buy tickets to the event And also buy tickets to the VIP reception right before it Which will have some Speaking of cocktail parties, some drinks. There'll be swanning? There'll be some swanning around. There won't be that many...

Very little self-flagellation, however. Very little self-flagellation, and obviously we'll be keeping a careful eye on how much we let Jonah drink, because he'll have to go on stage later. And it'll be a lot of fun. And we hope to see you there. If you are listening to this podcast and you are not a Ricochet member, this is a perfect time to join. There's a meetup here.

There's a meetup in DC. There's going to be meetups all year and they are for members. So join. It's an easy thing to do. Go to Ricochet.com. Join and buy your ticket and we would love to see you and meet you and greet you in Los Angeles. It's me and Peter and Jonah and James and Pat Sajak and Andrew Clavin and an embarrassment

Troy Sinek, an embarrassment of Ricochet All-Stars. It's going to be a lot of fun. Oh, Dennis Prager will be there. I'm just getting a message. And Dennis Prager is very, very excited. And Dennis Prager is very, very tall. So at some point we're going to have a cage match between Dennis and James. Hey Jonah, what do

you make of Los Angeles? It's been growing on me over the last few years as I sort of understand it, but you know how like Jonah, I'm sorry. The diuresis over the E and L.A. has been growing on you as you come and understand it.

This is just outrageous. Go ahead. Go ahead. Look, you know how blue whales eat? They just basically swim for miles and miles and miles, scooping up tiny little bits of plankton that provide them sustenance. That's how I feel driving around LA. You have to drive around forever and ever and ever. But if you do it long enough, you start scooping up enough culture and enough charm that it kind of satisfies you.

You can also scoop up food there because there's a taco joint or fast food restaurant about every corner. So you can actually efficiently drive through like a giant blue whale in a blue car the streets of L.A. and just go through every drive-thru you see. So there's that. I mean, the thing about Los Angeles, I think – Yeah, go ahead. I'm a walker. I like to walk cities, and that's why San Francisco is a better city.

That's why Chicago is a much better city. New York, obviously, is a much better city because they're walking cities. And LA is a bunch of distinct little communities that are held together by some municipal code. Well, speaking of San Francisco, of course, that great walkable, livable city, they're having trouble with the Google buses. There's a big sense of resentment toward the one percenters who get on those things and ruin transportation for everybody else. If you follow this story, they've got regulations now to do something about the terrible scourge of Google buses. I know nothing about this. Ah, yes.

Well, Rob, Peter, you guys. Yeah, it's really a class argument. Large tech companies, rich tech companies, Google, Twitter, places like that, although Twitter's based in San Francisco, they hire large charter buses to take, you know, so they're commuters, the people who live in the city and want to commute down a mountain view or Cupertino or Palo Alto can sort of meet in the Caltrain area and get, or on street corners and muni bus stops and get a big old charter bus. And then, you know, it's got wifi and it's comfortable and you can sit there and it can, and it kind of drops you off at your office and takes you back to the city. There's something kind of glamorous and

not very fair about it if you're a San Franciscan. You kind of feel like, who are these people? The companies say, well, this is great, right? Because these are natural gas-powered buses and it takes people off the road and it's not public transportation but it's mass transportation and it's a perfectly efficient way to get people back and forth. The local San Franciscans complain about it because they complain about everything. The problem is that this is an unalloyed good for San Francisco because it encourages people who are working to live in the city, whereas otherwise they'd be living outside the city and they wouldn't bother going to the city and paying city taxes and living and going to city restaurants.

They'd just live in Palo Alto or Mountain View directly. So this is a classic argument about not being rich but acting rich. This is sort of early tremors of what's going to happen in New York with de Blasio. People are just going to start – it's going to be how you behave in public, not what you do in private that's going to be enforced. So I don't know why I went on that disquisition. But that's what's happening in San Francisco about those damn buses. So there's your question, Jonah.

Yes or no? Fascinating. But gentlemen, I actually have to run. Was that bad? Yeah. We'll leave you there. I was told that this was going to be a cameo appearance, sort of like the Harlem Globetrotters on Scooby-Doo.

You may give us your answer. Give us your answer and talk about de Blasio when we see you in Los Angeles. Rob was just asking a question because that's an essay question. You need time to prepare for that one. We'll get the answer this weekend. I do. I mean – Listen to the question, Jonah.

I just wanted you to listen. Swan off then and we'll – Yes. We'll see you on Sunday at the Ricochet 200th Podcast Extravaganza in LA. Thanks for being with us today, Jonah. We'll see you there and of course at the corner. All right, guys. Great to be here.

Swan away. Swan away. Swan away. Should be noted that Rob is taking credit for the first use, the insertion of swanning. Well, not the first. In a public discourse. I'm not taking credit for the first use of it. I'm just saying that I used it in print in 1992. At the latest, it could have been 1991.

Well, how do you know that you used swan as a verb in 1992? James, it wouldn't surprise me if somewhere in that amazingly verbal brain of his, he notes every use of every verb. But you? Yeah, I know where i wrote it and i know where i was writing at the time i understand that that makes sense to me yeah tell us no no it does yeah well i was i was writing uh for a british uh you know literary kind of thing called modern review and um yeah i know uh yeah exactly and uh jonah would do with that yeah and i was uh i was just writing pieces about it and i used that term and i remember somebody saying oh i love that i

haven't heard that in a long time not i invented it but i hadn't heard it in a long time so um you know just you know no offense to to brother stein but give me a break james you know we'll write constantly you have a visual you have a visual memory of anything you wrote. Sometimes I have memories of lines that were written at particular times, and I don't want to repeat myself. I hate autoplagiarism. I hate taking a line that I came up with a couple of years ago and passing it off as something new. I always figure I'll be caught for that, and somebody will say, you didn't just make that up. You're reaching into your bag of tricks, and you want the illusion of total and utter spontaneity. Now, Rob, I can see exactly why he would recall that because it's a distinctive word.

It used to be and there probably still is around here in Minneapolis a home food delivery company that uses a swan as its logo. The company itself is known as Schwan. Schwan. Schwans. Diuresis over the schwan we're bringing your schwan's exactly but they have a love they have a lovely swan and i always thought and they had a problem with some listeria in the ice cream or something like that and i always thought that they should have changed it uh to to to reflect the the swanishness more than the schwan'sishness

of it but i always wanted to go up and ask if they had a madeleine you know those cookies sure you know what those are, right? Sure. And the guy would give me a complete and utterly blank look, and I would say, well, Madeline, like Bruce wrote about. You would think that since you're named Schwanz that that would be something you'd have. It would be Schwanz way to give us a Madeline. Wow. I'm surprised they didn't punch in the nose.

They didn't punch in the nose. They didn't. No. But if you've been curious what I meant, of course, all you had to do is go to audible.com where Swan's Way and many other Proust novels can be heard and gotten for free. That's all there is to it. Yes, you can hear Proust. You needn't subject yourself to the tedious task of reading him when you can pop it in, listen to it, and say, yes, I heard Proust. And at Audible, it's all free. Well, not forever, but you have a free 30-day membership

and a free trial if you go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet. And we thank them as ever for letting you know that thanks to their technology, you can listen to it on one device, put it down, pick it up, hear it on another. It's the Internet's finest, greatest, largest source of spoken word entertainment.

And it's not just novels. It's not just bestsellers. It's periodicals. It's the internet's finest, greatest, largest source of spoken word entertainment. It's not just novels. It's not just bestsellers. It's periodicals. It's all kinds of stuff. Audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet. Boy, I'm glad you landed one. That was an especially nerve-wracking segue, James. That was like –

That was. I was nervous about that. You land at Lebanon Airport in New Hampshire. It looks as though you're headed directly at the mountain and only for the last moment do you fly up and over. That was what that was. I was just wondering. Would he stick this one? I actually had one in the pocket.

I was sitting here Googling about for something else and I had another one in case that one shattered on impact and I couldn't take off and go around. There was foam on the runway. They were following you along with the fire trucks. It worked. It worked. It's an important thing. We do need to note, however, that it's not just Audible that sponsors us. We have to thank Encounter, and we have to note that there's an important book out there.

Yes. There was a piece by Cass Sunstein that's running around in the op-ed sections. It's in our paper today about how to spot snark. And he gets snark absolutely wrong. Snark is just – he seems to think it means a particular form of intellectual criticism. It's just bitchy intellectual whining is what it is. But one of the forms of snark he identifies is hypocrisy where a public official will support public schools but send his kids to private schools. You know, that's not really hypocrisy if that official supports good public

schools. Yeah, right. Okay. Fine, Cass. Got it. And if that person happens to fight charter schools and the attempts from parents to move their money elsewhere, of course, there's no hypocrisy at all. Look, how do we blow up the school system and start again? Glenn Reynolds, the instapunit you know him, his new book, The New School, How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, talks about that process. I'm not going to go through the long praises here because A, you know Glenn.

B, you've heard about the book. And C, you know you ought to read it because whether or not you have kids, this is something that costs everybody money. This is something that has a trillion dollars of debt coming down the road as these useless degrees end up costing us everything and ending up with just a completely overeducated class of barista, right? So what do we do to make education cheaper, to make it work better,

and to suit the needs of the information society? Glenn will tell you. The new school, How the Information Age Will Save American Education, from itself. 15% off the price of this book. Go to encounterbooks.com and use the coupon code ricochet at the checkout. And we thank our friends at encounter for sponsoring this, the ricochet podcast. And that was an awful lot of Harlow Wilcox there for you folks. So it's time to bring on the next guest and,

and get into more substantive matters than me blathering about, about the guys who delivered ice cream here in my neighborhood. You know, the other, actually the, the backup, this is fascinating while we're getting, while we're getting Victor, the backup for a transition that I had. Yes, Peter. Is the heat coming on in your house? It sounds as though there's some pipes banging. Really?

Yeah. No, I think that may actually be my mouse banging against the table. Oh, is that a, is that a euphemism? No, it's sort of Khrushchev-like fury on my part. That's good, that's good. You will listen to me. We will bury you. Nyet, nyet, nyet.

Well, we'll tell you about this when Victor comes because it actually has to do with Ukraine, and this is one of those things that we love to talk to smart people about. And our favorite smart person is Victor Davis Hanson. He's with us now. Hoover Senior Fellow Columnist

for National Review, Ricochet contributor, and farmer and all-around fascinating fellow. Welcome back to the podcast, sir. Thanks for having me again, you guys. Victor, Peter here. Where are you at this moment? I am.

I just drove up from my farm to Fresno so I could have a clear phone. Oh, I feel honored. My farmer line is kind of scratchy. Okay. Victor, David Remick has a 17,000-word piece profile. I read every word of it on Facebook. In The New Yorker. And I watched the other evening.

I had been doing some traveling. I was jet lagged. I couldn't sleep. I watched Charlie Rose interview David Remick. I have the feeling that asking you about that profile will be the anti-David Remick interview. What do you make in his sixth year of the current president of the United States as described in that profile? Well, the profile was fawning at the disgrace. It's not even, it's just a puff piece.

And it's layered with all these pretentious, aristocratic, intellectual little fillets. But it's basically, it's a fawning, obsequious, toady interview that makes Obama a hero of everything. And then all the things that the media picked up, you know, that he blames, in a sense, his race, although he did say that he might benefit from being black as well as be deprecated for being black. The worst thing he did is that the interview is a kind of a, I don't know, a movable feast where he goes from Seattle to Santa Monica to Beverly Hills, and he shakes down these very, very wealthy, high-tech, cool, hip, young billionaires.

And David Remick, who's supposedly a man on the left, is here with him, and he's kind of a little bit sarcastic once in a while, but in an affectionate way. And then he basically says to all these people, we live in a very unfair society, and they nod, and they gasp, and they ooh, and we've got to be fair, we've got to help people. And then you read the little subtext that they all want something from them, whether it's some kind of high-tech concession in China or a little wrinkle in the U.S. finance law,

and that's what it is. It's just a typical, it's like Bob McDonald in Virginia, only in the Virginia poor white version, a guy wants a Rolex watch, supposedly. It's all allegedly, because he's not convicted. So he shakes down somebody. But out in California, it's a little bit more Tony and high tech. So I was disgusted by it, especially when he gets up and he says, I'm going to go with the achievements of my first administration. I have a little bit about that. And there were four things. He said,

unemployment. Well, you know. Every month has been above 7%, except one. He's got 90 million people out of work and he's bragging on it. The second thing is we've used more green energy. Green energy has not really... It's about 2% of the

energy profile and we've got this whole string of crony capitalist failures. Then the third, he says we've got this whole string of crony capitalist failures and then the third he says we've used uh less coal and more natural gas but that came despite him not because of him and only because he couldn't stop fracking on private land and so when you read this stuff and you think these people who made so much money are so intelligent and they're oohing and aahing it's it was one of the more depressing things I've ever read. Hey, Victor, I know Rob and James want to – I get the chance to talk to you when you and I have coffee at the Hoover Institution.

But question, you wrote a piece the other day on Pajamas Media. I think it was just two days ago. I try to – you write faster than I can read and that is almost literally true. But the piece was about the expanding welfare state. What do you make? I'm trying to pose this question in a way that doesn't sound pretentious on my part, but it's almost hopeless. Because your actual academic background is, in a certain sense, in the rise and fall of civilizations. What do you make of Mitt Romney's 47 percent comment?

Now that the election is all over and done, now that it's not a question of whether it was politic or not for him to say that we're approaching a tipping point that almost half of the country, that depends on the federal government. But the substance of what he said. It was absolutely empirical. And it was one of the stupidest things, because even though it was in a so-called private room of supporters, he should have known that people would have ran out or somebody would have got a hold of that. So politically, you're not supposed to say that in a campaign. So I was upset because that might have led to his implosion. But he's absolutely right. And whether it's 4th century Athens or Britain after the war, Britain after the war is a good example. I mean, the whole world is destroyed.

There is no China. There is no Russia. There is no Korean miracle. There is no French industry. There's only the United States and Britain. They're going to supply this whole post-war world. No Japan, no West Germany yet. And what happens? Britain becomes socialized and the United

States takes off. And same thing with the Roman Republic, etc. So my problem, if you look back at the philosophical or historical record, no society willingly gives up entitlements. Instead, as the Romans call it, the remedy is always worse than the disease. If you say austerity or cutback or balanced budget, it's racist, sexist, ispology, ism, etc. And that's prevalent throughout history. So the 47% isn't the bad part. If you ask the 47%, don't you think you live in a very benevolent society

that allows you to have an iPhone or allows you to cash in your food stamps at a marijuana thing or you get to have this or this, they would say no, absolutely not. That guy has more than, he has an iPhone 5, I have an iPhone 4. Or if you said to somebody on public assistance, that Kia that you're driving has better air conditioning, it's got a better sound system than a Mercedes did 10 years ago. It's more reliable. They say, so what?

I don't have a Mercedes now. Poverty is always defined not in absolute terms but in relative want. And you have a president who understands that brilliantly. And so Obama basically goes to the 1%. He lives like the 1%. And he tells everybody that we live in a very unfair society, and people are not getting what they want because somebody's taking it away. And my perplexity about all this is, on every one of these issues is a turkey served up at Thanksgiving

for Republicans, because they're the party of the middle class now. They're very, very wealthy. By any statistic we look at, counties or income are voting progressives. And they're sort of saying to themselves, we're medieval grandees, and we feel so bad that we have gardeners and nannies, and we live in Malibu and Santa Monica and the Upper West Side, or kids go to prep schools, that we feel so bad that we're an apartheid culture, that we want to have the illegal immigration, we want to have more food stamps,

because that way I can feel good about my privilege. And that basically sums up the nexus between the poor and the wealthy in the Democratic Party and the inability of the Republicans to just point that out and say, you know what? Republicans have got to be a lot more looking at the middle and upper middle class and just forget, I think, a lot of these really esoteric capital gains and all that stuff, even though they're important. For now, they need to say illegal immigration is a populist issue. Tax cuts for the upper middle class is a populist issue, but they don't do it. Do you think it would have been – hey, Victor, it's Rob in L.A. Do you think it would have been better if Mitt Romney had been caught, quote, unquote, caught on video saying something along those lines?

Yeah, oh, yeah. The Democrats are just rich people and rich people who want to just assuage their guilt. They want to have all their toys, but assuage their guilt in a lot of big government programs that don't work anyway? Absolutely. We had this guy, white male, conservative Republican, Andy Vidak over here. He was about 15 miles from my house, and he was running against a typical Latina, well-educated phony who added the accents to her name, drove her Spanish. Right. And she flew in here as an elite.

And the district's about 60% Hispanic, and they voted for Andy Vidak because all the guy did, if you listened to him, was he wore faded jeans, not Mitt Romney's guy, but real jeans. He had a little 40-acre orchard, and he didn't talk about water for corporate agriculture. He didn't talk about capital gains. He didn't talk about anything. He just said, you know what? You people don't even have water that you can drink,

and we're letting all these elites that represent you in the Bay Area are letting all of our precious water out of the reservoirs so they can save a bait fish or they can have a salmon so somebody in the Sierra Club can feel good about themselves they won't log up there when there's a you know right a billion board feet that's been burned by these forest fires because somebody wants a bunch of maggots and woodpeckers to have a better life, but not you. And he won't. And I think they could do that, but they have to live that life. I don't know why they're not.

I'm getting so tired of that Republican mainstream establishment. You're getting tired of it enough to run for governor? Yeah, I'm getting really tired of it. Run for governor, Victor. Well, to me, it's just the flip side of the Silicon Valley techie hypocrites. And they've got to realize that they represent the middle class now. The Democratic Party does not care about the people who make about $ to 150, 250 or 300. They don't care about them. You look at every little item, whether it's inheritance tax or any of these things,

and it's geared, the Democratic position is, let's find a way so that techies can outsource, they can outsource jobs, they can put money offshore, they don't have to be unionized in Silicon Valley, they can hire their nannies and so they can feel good about themselves by voting for higher taxes, more regulations that affect other people. And yet, Victor, you did not answer Peter's question.

Why don't you run for governor? I have one fatal problem I don't want to say I detest politicians because they keep long hours but my god I haven't been reading about this Bob McDonald who Peter remembers came to Hoover not long ago

nice guy but if one tenth of that indictment is true that his wife was shaking down people so that they can get a Rolex watch so that they can have their son pictured driving a Ferrari. You know what I mean?

It's just that elite, political elite is disgusting. Yeah, well, just don't do that. Just don't do that part. Do the other part. Yeah, but I don't know. I think that you can't... We'll leave it at that. Not a no. I think that you can't. All right.

You know what? We'll leave it at that. Not a no. We each have talent. Yes, that's right. But not a no. Professor Hansen refuses to rule it out. Hey, Peter, why don't you go buy an almond orchard and get on a tractor? He does.

He can't. He can't because the sweater tied around his neck. I've got no limitations. Certain skills don't translate well. I don't have those skills. He can't. But you can't put Peter in a tractor. The sweater tied around his neck would get caught in the giant fields. Right, he'd Sarah Bernard himself.

All right, well, President Hanson, here's the problem. You're now facing a resurgent Russia. You're looking at Ukraine turning into something that no one expected when the revolution happened. There's a great piece today on Vice which says the following. People in Ukraine who are participating in disturbances, as the government called them, protests, as they called them, felt their phones jingle in their pocket. And when they looked at it, there was a text message that said, dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance. The government banned these demonstrations and then worked with the telcos to pinpoint the location of everybody who was out there protesting and sent them what is called the most Orwellian text message ever.

This is not a government that's in the interest of expanding liberty. This is a government that's looking to save itself and tie itself ever greater to Mother Russia. What would you do if you were president looking at the situation in ukraine well i wouldn't i would sort of just i wouldn't do what we're doing now and that is to give uh putin all these little sermons talk really please let bloggers have this please don't get and then all under the this is reset is to to blast Putin because he doesn't function like somebody in Menlo Park or his sensitivities and then don't do anything.

So it would be much better to just say, you know, whatever Putin has his own interest, I can understand that he's a national head and then privately start to ratchet back on him just to organize Europe and the United States and to have a common defense against him. But boy, whether it's Syria or Ukraine, he looks at all the Europeans and Obama, and he says, you know what, I am sick and tired of their lectures to me about gays or abortion or all these social issues in the West because they're weak, and I can do what I want. So he's telling Europe, you guys are postmodern. Don't dare touch the Ukraine. I can do what I want in there. And I get my guy in there.

And you know what? You're not going to do anything. And don't lecture me anymore. He comes on here and says, you know what? Your states treat gays worse than me. Don't even talk to me. But this policy is speak loud, sermonize, talk a bunch, and then do nothing. Carry a little stick.

It would be much better not to say a word about criticism of Putin, but then systematically go to your allies. Same thing with China. We shouldn't go over there like Biden and talk about a blogger and get them all mad and not do anything. We should be going over there to South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, and India and say, look, these guys don't like any of us, and they're encroaching on territorial, water, space, airspace,

and we've got to do something, and let's make it common league, so to speak. But you know what? This administration, Assad must leave. Remember that? Don't dare use chemical weapons. Iran, by the first of the year, the G20 must stop enrichment. Nobody believes that. It's like this little wimp in high school, a freshman who, you know, has the bow tie and he starts telling everybody stuff.

Well, they steal his lunch money. That's what we have in the West. It's almost as if the mewling bleats of an elite elite don't mean anything to a former KGB guy or the nakedly, coldly... You know where you can see that is all in the dark hearts of all of us. We have a thick admiration for him. That's right. I can't stand Putin. He's an evil incarnate.

But every once in a while I'll talk to a very intelligent person and they'll wink or smile and say, Putin. And then you know what follows. At least he knows what he believes in. He knows how to get it. And he doesn't give a damn about Western piety. And he's basically like the guy in high school who said, I don't like you.

I didn't like you the day you came to high school. I don't like you the day you're going to graduate. What are you going to do about it? You don't know what to do, but you do admire that he knows what he wants and how to get it. Victor, do you suspect that around dinner tables and dinner parties in the United States in the early 1930s, people said the same thing about the fascist leaders of Europe? Hitler said, yeah. He was right when he said, I saw them in Munich. They were worms, and they were worms because everything he wrote, what he was going to do, he went into the Rhineland, he went into the Saarland, he went into the Anschluss, he went into the Sudenland.

And the only thing that was weird is they declared war on him and he was surprised. Why did they declare war on me in Poland? And then they didn't do anything when they had a better army, better tanks, better artillery. And they still didn't do anything.

I mean, and the way it worked out, we just went hyper crazy and then we all produced him. But yeah, I mean, you don't admire that evil, but there's something about it that's a good mirror to look at our society and our culture. It's a strange kind of respect. You respect the person who sees your weakness so clearly. So it's sort of like that Jack Wilson in Chain

when Jack Palance comes in there and all these settlers have been talking about all this stuff they're going to do and they're going to do that. And you look at that evil face who guns down that poor guy in the middle of the street and he said, what are you going to do about it? Yeah, right. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? Ultimately, you need somebody like Shane who's sort of nutty himself to deal with him. So you need somebody like Reagan who everybody made fun of, you know, bombing begins and this and this and this. But Reagan scared the crap out of him.

I see. This is why the Republicans lose here. Victor is making an appeal to history and then couching it in terms of Western movies. I mean, how out of touch can you be? History is irrelevant. And the cultural products of 50 years ago are saturated in heteronormative sexism. So please, please spare me that. Victor, thank you, as ever, for appearing with us in the podcast. Thank you for having me.

Look forward to seeing you down the road in all of your myriad venues. Victor, see you soon. Headline, headline. Asked if he would run for governor. Victor David Sampson does not say no. Does not rule it out. Does not rule it out. Does not rule it out. Thanks, Victor.

I love the fact that Victor left his farm line for us. And the reason that stuck in my mind was just last week I was watching this documentary that AT&T made in 1960 about this new program that they had for farmers, which would bring more better farms, phone service to farms. Cause you know, the farmers had a phone and it wasn't the old style where it rang twice and then once to tell them that it was their ring. And so they should pick up the party line. They had their own individual lines, but when the phone rang, the wife would have to lean out the window and say, telephone. And the farmer would have to come all the way from the barn. So they had this new system they advised people to get where you had actual different phones in the barn, in the shed. And then you had a loudspeaker mounted on a pole that the wife could use to call the farmer to get him

to the closest telephonic instrument. And they interviewed all of these real farmers. You could tell they weren't actors and asked them whether or not they thought this would be a great idea. And so you had all these rangy types looking at the camera and saying, well, I go back and forth 30 times a day and I've missed a few, you know, and saying why it's great. My favorite was this gentleman who looked up thoughtfully into the corner of the sky and said, I think it'd be a fine idea, especially during the farrowing season when the sows mash the pigs against the wall and i thought well here's a practical man i would like to be able to because when i leave to answer

the phone the the sows with their huge weight will crush the newborn pigs against the wall and it's you know it's not the blood it's not the pain, it's not the misery. That's lost money. You're losing your pigs of the future at that point. And of course now everybody in the farm is out there in it. Well, not everybody, but most with a tractor that not only has a cell phone, but that has a GPS that automatically drives it so the farmer can put his feet up, listen to an audio book from audible.com, and the tractor will actually make the turns at the end of the field, which is quite extraordinary.

Anyway, there are a couple of other things we want to talk about before we let you go here. And apparently I'm supposed to pimp my last post. I don't know why. Everybody's made great posts this week, not just Rob and Peter, but the readers as well. That's why people love Ricochet because you can comment yourself and then have your post promoted to the main page and come 2.0, there'll be a whole new look. We advise all the members to go over to the beta and check that out.

Of course, we want to tell everybody that there is some sort of show coming up, guys, where we're going to be on stage with 40 other people all clamoring for attention. Exactly, yes. There will be, just in case anybody wants to know, if you're listening to this podcast or you're a Ricochet member, just go to thericochet.com and buy some tickets and we'd love to see you on Sunday, January 26th at USC in Los Angeles tickets left. So join. Join if you are not a member.

Come to Ricochet.com and join and then buy tickets. This is a perfect time to become a member of Ricochet if you've been on the fence. You've been wondering. You've been thinking to yourself, I don't know. Do I really need to? Join. Not just because we need you to join, but because we're going to be doing these things all year round. And you've got to be a member to come.

That's the benefit of being a member. We get to meet you. We do want to meet you, and we want to meet you on Sunday, 26th of January. We're going to record this podcast live. We're going to have a bunch of guests, James and Peter and me and Jonah and Pat Sajak and Dennis Prager and a bunch of other people. So just do it. Just get a Ricochet.com, join, or if you're a member, just buy a ticket and get out of here. Right. And because we aren't conservatives, this thing is economically

stratified. You mentioned that there's a VIP thing. Yes. So you can pay more money if you have it, if you're one of the 1%. You can come in, you can meet all around, you can swat around, you can meet everybody who will put on a great show of being pleased to meet you and pretend to remember your membership name. And then private jokes will be made and referenced in the later show so that the people who didn't have access to the private meeting will be able to – will laugh. And the other people will know what they're talking about. And it's our way of setting up and reinforcing economic division, don't you think? Well, yes, but I also feel like – look, I mean we started Ricochet. We want to start as a business. We wanted to pay people who work here and we wanted to see if this experiment would work, which is that we were really obsessed with community.

One of the things that Peter and I thought was that when we started, it was that there's a lot of one-way communication on our side. A lot of it's great, right? Rush, Mark Levin, people like that. It's great. You ride around in your car. You listen to a guy and he's talking to you or to you. There's not a lot of networky, honeycomby, intra-group communication or intra-group debate. It's usually people meet in factions at primaries and then they go home. And we thought it would be sort of more interesting to have a long conversation among and between

members of the center-right and create a community. And then eventually if that community worked, we would actually meet together and we would have these meetups and maybe do even more stuff together. And it was remarkable and we have to pay because you have to pay to do that and conservatives understand that. And what's been remarkable is how well we've grown, how well we've done. We'd like to do better. So we'd like to have more members.

But we're doing pretty well. And this is our first big year where we're really going to pull out the stops and go for broke. And I do mean broke. So please join. So that's kind of what we're after here. And we've got a lot of people coming and we're really thrilled. But we're especially thrilled not just that we get to meet you but that we all get to meet each other because that's how this thing is going to work is if we all meet each other. So –

Exactly. And what does your money go for? It goes for things like Peter Robinson's microphone, which just died, which is why he's silent. It's not as if Peter is sitting back sort of red-faced about that knotted sweater crack. Maybe he is. Maybe he is. Can you hear me actually? Oh, there he is. Yeah, the mic died.

I'm just using the computer mic now. So yes, I need a new mic. There's one item. Correct. Well, gentlemen, we should go here. The one thing we did not get to, and we'll have to get to that in the next time that we have Victor on, is exactly how they managed to do a sequel to 300. Did I read that correctly?

That's one of the things we were supposed to bring. Now, Rob, you're in the trade. I was always astonished that there was never a Titanic sequel. Did not Hollywood, when they saw the numbers for that, say, well, of course there's going to be another one? And naturally you can find something in the story of the Spartans. But why was there never a Titanic sequel, Rob? Well, I mean a sequel in Hollywood doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing the next part of the story. It just means that you're getting everybody together and trying to recreate the business model or the deal memo of the first project.

Sequel is like a business term. It just means do that thing again with that thing with the people and the thing explodes or the thing sinks. So a Titanic sequel would be – they'd figure it out. They just would figure it out. So the 300 sequels, I don't think it's a sequel, but it's like a 300 thing again. Do that thing again. And then someone says, well, you can't. They all die at 300. And then the executive looks at you like, I don't want to 300 thing again. Do that thing again. And then someone says, well, you can't. They all die at 300.

And then the executive looks at you like, I don't want to hear that. Don't tell me that. That's not what I asked. I said, give me a sequel. And then someone, they walk to their car, they go, they're going to pay a lot of money for this. We've got to figure this out. And then someone says, well, whatever we do, let's not tell Victor Hansen this, because he'll get mad.

Because apparently everybody dies at the end in real life. Then someone says the smart thing, which is that nobody pays for real life. They get real life for free. They pay for a movie. I repeat my question.

There were two other ships in the Titanic's class. Didn't somebody look around and say, holy cow, we got a trilogy here. Oh, for that. The reason that didn't happen is because you just did not – because every – everybody in Hollywood, every ounce of everyone's gut, every knuckle was white. No one knew. No one thought.

No one believed that movie was going to be that huge. And it cost so much money that no one knew what it was going to do and when it did well everybody said okay let's just not do that again let's not sink a boat again um and no one really wanted to pick up the pay the price for that again and they just didn't know how to do it again so they didn't so they found you know for avatar which is cameron's second movement movie after that they found a lot of very very um willing financial partners to come in with that because he only does really expensive effects movies and um and and way offset that risk but everybody at 20th you know it's a very complicated deal at

which they co-financed this is really boring but but Titanic was co-financed between Paramount and 20th. The Paramount deal was so tough on 20th that 20th was left holding the bag. 20th was left very, very, very exposed financially. If that movie had been anything less than the biggest hit ever, it would have

been a giant disaster. I mean, the studio probably would have gone under. It still mystifies me to this day that the only big ship movies they've made subsequently have been horror or ghost films set in cruise ships with the number of people who take those things and the appetite for seeing interesting things happen on ships i'm astonished there hasn't been an oceanic and a britannic aside from a couple bad tv movie versions well listen folks uh if you would like to uh revisit the idea of idea of the ship of the damned,

there are still some tickets available for the 200th podcast where we will sail into the future of Ricochet and American political wins and joy, laughter, cigar smoke, conversation, witty insights, Dennis Prager being taller than everybody, including Jonah Goldberg. I mean, really, with me on the same stage and Dennis Prager on the same stage, it averages out to about a normal person height. So go there. Get that.

And be there. Otherwise, that's it. Thanks, folks, for being here. Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Peter. I'm James Lilacs, frigid Minnesota, eager to go to L.A. and more eager, even still, to see all of you in the comments at Ricochet.com. See you this weekend, boys. See you soon, fellas. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Ricochet.

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