The Ricochet Podcast - That's No Lady
Episode Date: October 8, 2014It’s always great fun when our good pal Pat Sajak stops by for a visit, and today’s show is no exception. Along with America’s most beloved TV icon (his words, not ours), we cover the latest in ...communicative diseases, Leon Panetta and the plethora of books coming from the Obama administration, Pat’s memory of Joan Rivers, baseball (pretty sure this one’s a Ricochet Podcast first)... Source
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hi wait a minute i'm really telling i'm lonely. I wondered if you wouldn't mind buying me lunch.
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Gregory, this will...
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It's Michael Dorsey, okay?
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Last time you got me a job, it was at the maid.
Yeah? Swear to God.
Michael? Yeah.
Oh, God, I begged you to get some therapy.
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More than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.
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It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long.
I'm James Lilacs, and today we're lucky enough to have the whole show with Pat Sajak.
That's right.
Who knows where this one's going to go?
Let's have ourselves a podcast.
There you go again.
Yes, it's the Ricochet Podcast, number 6,233.
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Well, I think haunt is a better term than guilt.
We don't want to guilt anybody.
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Well, that's pretty good.
I mean, all the way from Switzerland, from the land of secret banking.
And another caller makes the case to join just for the comments,
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When the stand miniseries was first aired,
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Unlike The Stand, however, a Ricochet meetup does not have the opportunity for transmission of Captain Trips or any other deadly disease.
It's been a long time since I've read the book, The Stand,
and the only people that I remember actually is sort of a vague collection of good guys who go to Vegas and then Randall Flagg.
Was that his name?
The walk-and-do who strove the lands with the specter of death behind him, a character that intersected with about 48 other Stephen King novels.
They're going to make a movie of it.
They're going to make two movies of it. And frankly, this is a pretty good time because this is a time where people are looking around the world and saying,
hmm, the idea of a massive globe-scouring pandemic isn't that ridiculous.
It isn't that silly.
And this Ebola thing, you've got to say one thing about it.
Of all the diseases to come along, it's one of the shortest with the most vowels.
And we all know how expensive vowels are.
And if there's anybody actually who does know how expensive vowels are,
it's our good friend Pat Sajak. Welcome back to the podcast, sir. And Pat, say something nice to
make Peter Robinson talk. He's been sullen and silent the entire time. It's nice to be,
it's nice to be welcomed. Have I missed anything of note? Well, I think you know the answer to
that, Pat. But it's charming that you still ask. Pat, can we ask what region, what country, what state region are you in right now?
Wow.
The state region is I'm in California, actually.
I'm in Los Angeles in the beautiful San Fernando Valley.
Of course.
I think you're required to say it's beautiful.
I believe so.
I think it's on the welcome to the beautiful San Fernando Valley line,
a sign that you get as you come in on a four or five.
Yeah,
I'm here.
And,
and so it's early in the morning,
but,
but happy to be here with you guys.
Pat,
do you remember,
I mean,
I'm in New York right now.
This is,
this is Rob,
by the way.
But do you remember when they started putting those little Purell dispensers in front of every – the entrance of every soundstage and every office in Hollywood.
Do you remember like roughly – remember that moment where suddenly there weren't any and then suddenly they were everywhere?
Having worked in Hollywood, they were long overdue.
I know that.
I don't know. They just started pop i started seeing them you
see them in hospitals and and then then i started seeing them in grocery stores and yeah now i see
see them in studios i'm not i'm not quite sure what i'm supposed to do with that information
as i walk in like you're about to meet three players who are going to play hangman but first
you know you have to disinfect yourself that's right i mean uh so so i guess that that's my
segues into this question is is it has in in the i'm not there right now but it is a land of
hypochondriacs um how how are how are the people in hollywood handling the ebola scare well i i
just hang on while i use a little purell on my hands here. I just got here actually the other day, so it's a little difficult to answer that question.
I would certainly suspect that the dispensers will multiply in great order.
But yeah, we're that way anyway.
So anything to make it worse will make it better for us, I guess.
Pat, are you worried about it at all?
No.
I was in Liberia, actually.
Not many people can start a sentence that way, but I was.
I'm wiping my earphones with Purell right now.
That's the bad news for you guys.
The good news is it was about 27 years ago.
So
then it was just a
terrible, corrupt place. Now
it's a terrible, corrupt place with this horrible
scourge going on.
The incubation time,
Pat, is 27 years
and six months.
Sorry.
You know, I'm feeling a little queasy.
Well, you know, there's nothing, obviously nothing funny about this subject, but it is,
you know, we're in this, we're in this strange era of names we hadn't thought much about
before.
You know, we wake up and see what's going on with ISIS and Ebola and all these words
that we didn't know existed a while ago.
Yep.
Pat Peter here. ISIS, Ebola. We have a midterm didn't know existed a while ago. Yep. Pat, Peter here.
ISIS, Ebola.
We have a midterm election coming up.
And here's my question for you.
How good was Joan Rivers really?
You know, she was, she was.
Actually, that is my question.
I've been meaning to ask you ever since, ever since she died.
What was it?
Three weeks ago now.
She was terrific. You know, when I, uh, uh, when I was out working at local television in,
uh, in Los Angeles, um, uh, and then, uh, then I started, uh, then I started doing a wheel of
fortune and I left local TV. I left the weather and I went out to my parking lot at NBC where I
did the local news and where I would be doing wheel of fortune. And there was a, uh, uh, there
was a note on my windshield.
It was from Joan, whom I had never met, just wishing me luck with the new show, which was pretty sweet.
Yeah, and that's the kind of woman she was.
I'll tell you that she came to our wedding reception.
We got married in the East, but we had a reception out here a short time afterwards.
And she was invited.
She was nice enough to come with her then very young daughter.
This was 25 years ago.
And she brought no gift.
And she said, she said, it's Hollywood.
It's not going to last is what she said.
So why bother?
10 years, 10 years later for our 10th anniversary,
received a package at the house and it was from Joan.
And it said, so I was wrong.
And, and to top it off, it was a used toaster.
So, you know, I'm very sad, as a lot of people were, that we lost her,
but especially sad because our 25th is coming up in a couple of months,
and I would love to know what she would have sent for that if she might finally have been.
But she was quite good. She was, at some point along the way,
she really decided that she was kind of untouchable
in what she could get away with.
She was really liked within this Hollywood community
and was really rough on it.
I mean, her shows on the E! Channel
were just brutal about things she would say about people
and she seemed to be able to get away with it.
She was not, you know, Don Rickles got away with that kind of stuff.
But there was certain, a kind of benign quality to Don.
You know, he'd always end his act, Rob, with that, you know, we all love each other.
Yeah, that's right.
We're all kidding.
Yeah.
Joan never did that.
Right.
Yeah, but she was caustic and decided she could get away with it.
And, you know, she wasn't quite that way.
She wasn't that way originally.
I don't exactly know in her evolution where that came, but she somehow managed to do that.
And she, you know, but there was a self-mocking attitude, too.
I mean, she had so much work done on her person that her person, uh, that that could be a, you know,
you could look at that and go, but she was the one who went, you know, so it was okay. Uh, so I,
I miss her. She was, she held a special place, um, in this town and did,
and did it in a way that I don't think anyone else has.
How would you compare her as a comedian, as a figure in Hollywood with Lucille Ball,
whom you also, well, I know you at least met her once on a golf course.
I've heard you tell that story.
She was, I'd like to hear that story
because I never golfed with Lucille Ball. But anyway,
No, didn't you tell?
I did run into her someplace. It just happened
not to be in a golf club, and I was attempting to humiliate
you on the podcast. I've done so.
Taking the next flight to
Liberia. Yeah, it's hard to
compare the two because Lucy was a mogul as much as a comedian.
And I just think as far as – I don't know what a comedian is.
I mean Lucy was a comic actress and was really good at it.
I've heard you said that Lucy LeBall was not funny, whereas Joan Rivers, as best I can tell, never stopped being funny.
Yeah, I've heard that.
And I didn't know Lucy at all, although I call her Lucy.
But I'm told that.
She was not particularly funny sitting around the office and that kind of thing
because she was a businesswoman.
Joan was.
Joan was pretty much the same on the air and off. I mean,
if she's sending you a 10-year used toaster, that tells you something right there. So they're very,
very different people. But just as far as being funny, this is someone you want to be in a room
with and just laugh your head off. It would be, it would certainly be Joan.
So, Peter, can we talk about politics for a minute?
If you'd like, if you insist.
You know, Peter, you know, secretly, maybe not so secretly, Peter really wants to be
in show business, don't you, Peter?
I think.
Of course I do.
Well, now what would you, what do you think you would do?
What would be your specialty?
I think I would be a transvestite.
That's your specialty? I think I would be a transvestite. That's your
specialty? I think I would be a music
hall transvestite in England
in about 1946
or 7, when people really
needed cheering up. That, if I could
redesign the whole thing...
I just, I cannot...
I'm doing it to keep going until you start to
scream for mercy, Rob.
I cannot.
E.J. Hill, there you go.
Knock off for the rest of the day.
Peter Robinson in British Music Hall drag.
With a huge bosom shell for the large gray hips.
What's so amazing, Peter, is that your answer was so fast.
You've been waiting for years to be asked that question.
Yes.
I love Benny Hill.
You guys all know who I mean when I say Benny Hill.
And James will be able to do, do, do, do, do.
Yeah.
Exactly.
But none of us would have been loving him, I think.
And they did a fair amount of cross.
Monty Python comes right out of that music hall, chaotic, very witty, very fast tradition.
John Cleese did a lot of cross-dressing in Monty Python.
Now I'm trying to elevate the whole idea here to a sort of intellectual Cambridge level.
May I ask you a question, Peter?
I have two questions.
Number one, what are you wearing right now?
Levi's.
Number two, not really a question, just an observation.
You're a very, very pleasant looking, and I don't mean to demean.
You almost handsome man, but you'd be a terrifically unattractive woman.
I agree.
I have to agree.
I don't think that's a criticism. I just think
that's a statement. No, it's an observation. That's all.
Alright. Have we
mind this?
No, we haven't because I...
Well, speaking of...
No, we haven't mind that
chap, but I must ask Peter, if you were to go
that route, would you put on the gray
thick hosiery or would you swan about
the stage bare-legged? Oh, no, no.
The hosiery is important, I think. I see.
But don't you...
Revolting ancillaries at the same time.
Of course, depending on the hosiery.
Well, no, I mean... Let me put it a different way.
Have we shafted that mine?
If you were to go bare-legged
though, you'd have to shave, wouldn't you?
And if you were, wouldn't you want the best, smoothest,
cleanest shave you could possibly get?
The kind that Harry's provides?
Right.
And when you say Harry, you may think hairy legs of Peter Robinson.
No, just don't.
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Because they bought the factory, the old 97.
It's going to be 98-year-old German factory next year.
They purchased it so they could provide you something cleaner, cheaper, and better than the big guys like Schick.
Right.
You want to go to the store and pay $8, $9, $15, $20, $30, $40 for those razors, the cartridges, the kinds that come up with 68 blades in them.
No, what are they selling you?
Go to Harrys.com.
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that you put on your mug. Cleanest, finest shave you'll ever get. You'll never go back to anything
else. You'll never go back to electric. You'll never go back to the ones you get in the store
because Harry's will be the blade for you. There we go. I had to say, Peter, we were talking about
Joan and it seemed like she was, yes, she burned her bridge work because she didn't really think
she was ever going to get the big roles anymore. and she was content to do what she did there on the stage.
Unlike some people who come out and do the whole scouring, blasted earth, acidic spray
in the hopes of maybe getting something in the next administration.
Leon Panetta is out there with a book where he is trashing the hell out of the Obama mystique,
perhaps angling for more work with the soon-to-be Hillary Clinton regime or administration?
What do you think of that?
See, that was my way of handing it to Rob for the politics.
So I'll just sit back now and get a cup of coffee.
Well, I would say without a doubt the Leon Panetta book, which is really interesting.
And what's interesting about the Panetta book to me is that it's the first one from this administration really.
This administration has been pretty tight-lipped and it's got a pretty tight circle of people um you know compared to say reagan's
administration where there were a lot of books a lot of internal squabbles you heard all about the
fights um this is the first book but it's also a a uh i mean liam pettis a man of a certain age so
i'm not sure this is really realistic but it it is a – the first formal job application for a position in the Hillary Clinton administration.
And if I may say, if you're talking about people who would be unattractive in drag –
Leon Panetta?
Is that where you're going?
I didn't say it.
You did.
So this will be the theme apparently through the show.
Well, I guess so.
So what I don't understand, so if I'm looking at someone to bring into my administration, I want to bring someone in whom I know is going to write a book about me down the road?
Well, no.
I think that he's very tough on Obama.
He's not tough on Obama. He's not that he's not tough on Hillary. He basically is making Hillary's argument, making the arguments that the Clintons or that Bill Clinton has been making privately, apparently about the problems with that administration.
And he's doing it and making making sure that it's clear that.
It's clear that whatever the failings were, whether you agree with it or not, but one of the things he says is that as Secretary of Defense, he was not allowed to speak – this is a guy
who's a longtime congressman too.
Anytime he spoke to a congressman, he was attacked, attacked by someone in the White
House.
He was dressed down and told he can't do that. Well, how much is preparing for the next administration and how much is trying to put your own spin on your own image before it's too late?
Well, I guess that's a good question.
It's hard to know.
I mean especially now that I feel like it's almost a gratuitous pile on. One of the things we know now about the way, I think this is before the
Panetta book came out, that the way the decision making, certainly the sort of America defending
America decisions are made, the foreign policy decisions are made in the White House is that all
the, uh, you know, his military advisors suggest one thing and then Barack Obama says, no, that's
why we're, that's why we're having trouble in Syria. That's why, uh, that's sort of why we have,
we have, we had trouble in Libya. It's all, um. It's all kind of run out of the Oval Office, primarily in my view anyway as a way of advancing domestic politics. It does seem to confirm it and it does seem to tee up the idea that I think Hillary Clinton will use for foreign policy failures under her watch that, well, I was overruled.
And I suspect that the I was overruled excuse will be something we hear for the next 18 months.
Is this book selling well?
I don't know that.
Do you know?
Oh, I don't know that. Do you know? Oh, I don't know either. I mean, because what's interesting, what happens in these, tends to happen in these books is the author seems to realize, or those advising him or those who are helping him write, realize that they need, you know, they need that morning talk show line to get on and talk about the book.
And so it's often being critical of someone else. And
that's what people hear. And then you read an excerpt and no one buys the book. So I don't know
whether this is right. That's right. The excerpt's doing well. I'm not sure. Well, yeah. Who knows
whether anybody will buy the book? It's all over the press. I would agree with the importance.
In my judgment,
there are two important things about Leon Panetta, aside from the way he would look wearing a dress.
And one is that he's very closely associated with the Clintons. He was Bill Clinton's chief
of staff. This is as distinct from Robert Gates, the other secretary of defense, who's written a
book critical of the administration. Gates was a Republican and an outsider in the administration.
Leon Panetta is as democratic as democrats can get and he is in the Clinton camp and he is saying they weren't tough enough and they weren't competent.
Wait, wait, wait.
Hold on, Peter.
Are you suggesting there's some friction and animosity between the Clinton and the Obama camps?
Is that where you're going with this, man?
I'm suggesting that Hillary Clinton's campaign has already begun and Leon Panetta is playing very effectively the role of a proxy for the nominee.
How's that?
I think that's probably – I think that's probably even – I think that's the best way to put it.
I mean more accurate than angling for a job, I think you're right.
I think that you cannot – I don't think you can underestimate the Clinton media sophistication and their ability to get their argument out by a whole variety of proxies. And I also don't think that you can underestimate the, from the excerpts that
I've read, Pat's right, I've only read excerpts, but the genuineness of Leon Panetta's book,
he isn't really settling score. I mean, I think this is a guy, this is an old school Democrat.
I mean, he's genuinely concerned. I think when you take on the role of Secretary of Defense,
and of course, DCI,
it was DCI before that, or after that, I can't remember. I think it does change you. And I don't
think Leon Panetta was frivolous before, but I think he's genuinely concerned about the security
of the United States. And I think he might have felt alone in that one house.
Leon Panetta is an old fashionedfashioned Democrat, just as you said.
His parents are great grandparents, as I recall, immigrants.
He's from Monterey.
In those days, a fishing town and canning town here in California.
He's gone back to Monterey.
He's founded something called the Panetta Institute.
But the point is he's an old-fashioned Democrat, almost in the mold of Harry Truman, strong abroad, liberal at home.
He is the guy who, running the Central Intelligence Agency, is the architect of using drones in Afghanistan if President Obama wasn't going to fight the war and also in Pakistan.
He's the guy who put together the mission that got Osama bin Laden.
And when he was secretary of defense, as distinct from the current secretary, Hegel,
Leon Panetta was fighting to hold on to important defense programs and fighting for his budget.
The guy is – I agree with Rob.
I don't see any reason to doubt the genuineness of his feelings about the security of the republic this question might be uh because i've been watching too many of those those limited series on television about
intrigue in washington but uh if you if you um you know concede the fact that that he and mrs
clinton are very close close to the clintons and and and um can you envision uh him having gone to Mrs. Clinton or her people prior to writing this book and either clearing it with her or getting some input or taking her temperature in this regard?
You know, in an early draft, certainly an early draft.
I mean, at some point, I mean, it'd be interesting to graph the book, the timeline of that book and the moments of that book and then to match them up with her later descriptions of events.
And I guarantee you they will be left is sort of hapless – I mean I think this morning some hapless Obama staffer came out to sort of attack Leon Panetta and calling him petty and something.
It would be left to sort of people who weren't there and sort of the also-rans.
Yeah, I think the administration has realized that the nation places a great deal of trust and confidence in Jen Psaki.
And so if Jen Psaki comes out and criticizes Leon Panetta for being unschooled or not up to speed,
yeah, we'll fall in line behind that.
You know, the cable news networks now have a super that they put over –
they can actually put over when someone's speaking.
It says hapless Obama spokesman.
The P is silent. The P is silent and I certainly hope so.
Yes, Rob, you.
It does sort of bring up the other question, which I think in the freefall of Obama's popularity
and there does seem to be sort of a – it does correlate I think with the rising or
lowering however you look at it, confidence people have in the federal government
to do things, to accomplish things. It does seem to suggest that there is an issue that
no one could have predicted that might have an effect on the midterm. So that's the,
we mentioned this earlier, the Ebola outbreak. Just got word that, I mean, while we're doing this podcast, that the Ebola victim sufferer in Dallas has died.
Which, I mean, obviously
it was a serious disease, but I think a lot of us thought, well, I mean, maybe if you're in the United States
and they can blast you with antibiotics and quarantine you and all that stuff, it's something
that you could be dealt with. The Ebola sufferer has died here. So now we have one Ebola death
in the United States. Now we have another Ebola death in Spain. Um,
does anyone believe the federal government, um, is up to the task of protecting the nation
from this virus?
Well, you know, if you, um, uh, if you look at polling data, the answer is no. And if
you look at the, uh, uh, sort of the general, to get away from, to broaden it a little bit,
you look at the polling data from local elections around the country,
it's the farther away you can get from the federal government in terms of your connection,
the better off you are and the more you can be painted as a Washington insider, whatever that is,
the worse off you are and the more you can be painted as a Washington insider, whatever that is, the worse off you are.
And you wonder if in a way the Obama administration hasn't been a godsend for people who believe
in a smaller government, that maybe we've learned something in these eight years or
that may be the takeaway from this administration.
I'm through.
What you're hearing from the left, of course,
is this is an example of why the Tea Partiers
and the Ayn Rand freaks and everybody else
who wants a smaller government are wrong
because this proves that government is absolutely essential.
And to me, it says that, no, as Pat is saying,
local government is more apt to respond to these with a nimbler
profile, you would think.
Because we all have, based on the movies, the idea that the moment you have an outbreak
like this, a helicopter from CDC lands and Dustin Hoffman in a clean suit gets out, and
people who are tremendously competent and beyond and above politics immediately snap
into gear and fix things.
Well, listen, I hope,
listen, I want this,
I want the answer to be,
can the government take care of this?
I want the answer to be yes.
Take no pleasure in their failure on this.
You really, I mean, part of you,
certainly when public health matters such as this come up,
you want them to be competent.
You want them to succeed.
I like big government.
I want it to work.
But do I have faith
that it will? No. I just don't get, I just don't understand why we haven't had a serious speech
from the president. Here's the way, I mean, it would be the easiest thing in the world.
He calls two or three of the top scientists on this matter. He has an all-day briefing or a morning briefing
at the White House. Maybe it's a larger grouping of physicians and volunteers from Liberia.
They get together in the East Room. There are a lot of pictures. The president is shown being
engaged. He's asking questions. And that evening, he does maybe a 10-minute, very brief. Maybe he
does it standing in the press room. Maybe he actually does it from the Oval
Office. But he says, here is the nature of the disease. Here is what we are doing about it.
I am informed by the best minds in the country that there are a number of vaccines and treatments
that are under consideration. And I am signing, and he signs it right there on camera, I am signing
an executive order to release half a billion dollars immediately and I am submitting legislation to Congress tomorrow.
We are putting this on a faster – and that would all play to what they understand and what they believe.
There are moments when the federal government is needed, when this is its appropriate duty and when they – when the need of the hour actually comports with what they feel about the importance of the federal government, why that hasn't happened, I do not begin to understand.
Sometimes I think by merely addressing the issue that they're going to, I don't know, point to their own shortcomings or cause a panic.
You're absolutely right.
We don't need just everything's – they're there.
Everything is going to be all right. Give us some specifics. Tell us't need just everything's there, everything's going to
be all right. Give us some specifics. Tell us what you're doing, what you know, and what the plan is.
And I think you're ready to be supported on that. I mean, again, no one wants failure in this area.
Nobody does. It would be one of those moments where the country, maybe it's only brief,
but on the other hand, to be crass about it, we're only four weeks away from the elect from the midterms. Maybe it's only a brief effect,
but it would be one of those moments where the whole country rallies to the leader.
Well, to return to like the banana book, he said they all seemed exhausted and kind of like given
up in that administration. It does seem that way. It seems like they have a playbook and they're
just going to, they just don't know what else to do.
And the playbook is go around the country to places that want the president to campaign.
Those places are very, very far and very, very few and say the same thing.
We don't raise the minimum wage.
The republicans are against us, all that stuff.
It does seem like the events of the world have moved radically past that, and the president keeps talking about these small little domestic issues, whereas these huge global issues continually knock on our door that he then ignores.
Ebola is one.
I think if he did that, Peter, he'd have to also do something called grounding flights.
He'd have to do something serious, which I think would be hard for him to do just temperamentally.
And so I suspect that that's one of the reasons why he doesn't want to do it.
But also you then have to like coming across the border in Texas.
Now, that may be – go ahead.
Sorry.
Go on.
No, that's just lovely.
Yeah, that may be hyperbole.
He may have been freelancing.
Are you sure these aren't interns from the James O'Keefe's Veritas project?
I'd like to think that's the case.
That suggests a certain lack
of interest in, I don't know,
a certain lack of alarm in protecting the borders of the country.
Not just from a virus virus but also from terrorists.
Well, if they're running out the clock, I remind them it's only the third quarter.
It's a little early for that.
And the borders of the country are an arbitrary thing that was imposed on people.
It was a divided people who ought to be together.
In a true, just world, there's no such thing in the Americas open to all.
Pat, you know, there was something else. You've been writing a lot of great stuff on ricochet lately
and i was thinking ebola where does the name come from and it comes from a river and i know that
because i heard it i learned it at some place and that's why it's capitalized etc but if you don't
know that well you just quickly go to the little handheld glowing rectangle that you carry around in your pocket, type it in, and find it by searching.
Not by learning, but by searching.
Now, this was part of your man shakes fist at cloud in sky series of postings about how our culture has gotten done.
About whether searching is replacing learning. And in the style of Ricochet posts,
60% of which now end with a question mark,
you asked if searching had replaced learning.
And I thought about this and I thought, yes and no.
It doesn't because oftentimes
when I'm having an argument with somebody
and you're stuck on a point,
you can resolve it instantaneously
and then go on with the conversation.
So searching actually enables you to not get hung up on who won the MLB whatever in 82.
It actually helps you to have a richer, more productive conversation.
But on the other side, are we just teaching kids the techniques of searching
as opposed to how to absorb and connect knowledge?
Well, I think that's the point.
Big ideas are built on smaller pieces of information. And, and if you
don't have those, uh, at the ready, it seems to me, the big ideas can suffer. I was not necessarily
railing against it. I was, I was merely asking the question because like a lot of us, I find myself,
um, um, relying, it's kind of, you know what it's like it's a to me it's a little like uh um
not knowing anyone's phone number because you have speed dial is that a bad thing or a good
thing i don't know if you don't have your phone with you to find their number it's a bad thing
uh so i'm not saying you need to know have memorize a list of the state capitals but
but in in not knowing and having – if you search for a piece
of information to settle a bar bet or to advance the conversation, have you merely – so you
found it, you've made the point, you moved on.
Has that registered with you because you know it's there?
You don't have to go back to the library.
You don't have to open up the encyclopedia again and find the right volume. You just have to press that button again. That's the only question I was
asking in my 60% way. I didn't realize it was that low. I think it's a good question. And I myself
know that I'm losing ground. How do I know this? Because the other day somebody handed me a form, DMV I think it was, and said, write down your home phone number.
And I could not remember my own number.
And it is because I don't – I have it in my – my phone was out in the car.
It was in your purse.
Yes, I know.
Boy, you got there before I did.
Okay.
Excuse me. Excuse me. That does it.
I am going to quote a recent post by Mr. Patrick Sajak.
Quote, this is the way the post begins. Quote, I was watching the 1982 film Tootsie the other day when I was struck by the iconic scene in which Dustin Hoffman's title character makes his first appearance as a woman walking down the streets of Manhattan.
Close quote.
Go ahead and explain what you were doing watching that movie, Dustin Hoffman in drag, Patrick Sajak.
Because it's Wednesday.
I always watch Tootsie on Wednesday.
I don't understand where this whole hour is going.
I don't either, to tell you the truth.
Well, I have to – can I contribute to that for a moment?
I read that post and I liked it and I felt it touched a part of me and I enjoyed it.
And I complained – I'm in New York City now and it's true.
People are on their phones all the time and they're bumping into each other and it's ridiculous and it's incredibly irritating.
And as I was thinking about that, I think at one point I was walking along the street and I bumped into a metal railing because I was reading on my phone.
And so I feel like if you can have both of those things in your head, absolute rage and fury and condemnation of those people who do it. And yet you, I still do it,
that there's a, either hope for us or no hope for us. I don't know which one, but it's not.
Okay. Well, here's the problem with New York. If you make eye contact as you're walking down
the street, it's, it's, it's against all the social rules. If you look up at the magnificent
architecture above you, you're a room. Okay. So what exactly do you do?
Where do I look next time I go to New York at middle point in the vague
distance, not make, not like that. Okay.
It's enabling a behavior right there. I like that.
To me,
the biggest downside of being in New York now with all the Bluetooth and the
phones and everything is it's more difficult to tell who the crazy people are.
It used to be clear if they were talking to themselves that was a pretty good sign now
it could you could be a ceo i was guilty the other day walking the dog around the block and i took
out my phone to check some tweets because that you know and i thought how typical is this the
modern person can't can't bring himself to listen to the tweets of the bird, he's got to look at the little electronic flickerings across his screen.
But then I thought, I've been walking around this block every day with a dog for 13 years.
I think I got it pretty much figured out what I'm going to see.
And I don't necessarily have to immerse myself in the glories and the wonders of the world at this point.
Here's what I wonder.
It's still too early in this whole revolution to know how it's going to play out and what things are going to be like a couple of generations down the line.
I don't think there's any doubt it will have an effect, an important one.
Will it be good?
Will it be bad?
Will we have a generation of super achievers or will we have people who are disconnected from each other?
I don't know the answers to any of that. But I do know that it's a serious
issue and we've sort of gone headlong into it without thinking much about it. I mean, it came,
it got here. We never talked about it and here we are and we're going to have to deal with
the consequences. They could very well be good and we could just be old fogies railing against a change.
But I do know it's different.
I do know that – I do think that part of the reason that public discourse has become so coarse is because of that in some ways.
You're no longer – there's no longer any time to digest anything, to ruminate, to think about it before you open
your yap. And we're all yelling at each other now or we're typing in capital letters to each other.
Pat and James, you both have kids. Do you have rules, dinner table or any place in the house
or any time during the day? Do you have rules about when the phones have to get turned off and put away so the family can talk to each other?
My kids are a little older now.
Our son is 24 and our daughter is about to turn 20.
And they came in toward the end of that.
So we actually didn't have to deal with it a whole lot through at least through the early part of high school.
So that was good.
The problem is when I go to a restaurant and I
see a family together, I more often see the kids being ignored by the parents rather than the other
way around. So I'm not, I'm not sure that I'm not sure the problem is from the bottom up in terms
of age. I think it may be the other way. I harangue my daughter sometimes when her text message goes
off, I say, you have a text on social media. She's on the thing, she's on the thing quite a lot.
But on the other hand, so is dad. And, uh, it, you know, I've got a little bit of credibility
with her because I was on Twitter first. I've got a low Twitter number and I've got a lot of
followers and she finds that impressive sort of kind of, but we have a rule at the dinner table,
everything is off. And if I'm going to break that rule to show her something that's germane to our
conversation, then I say, I am breaking the rule to do this. I mean, that's the idea that we would,
that we would have our cameras and phones and laptops on when we're talking as preposterous.
That's why the vacation that we take are marvelous because I don't buy internet until the last couple
of days. We're on our own. For my wife, who's not very much connected tweet-wise, Facebook or the rest of it,
email for her is just a constant tsunami of duty and she hates it. When we go on a trip,
it's freedom from that. And when I see my daughter disconnect from her social networks,
I don't see panic. I see a sort of sense, once again, of freedom from not having to be involved
in that. And there's a sense of being, you know, a glorious freedom from the obligations of talking to other people.
On the other hand, though, if you have freedom from speech redefined to be that the new world is where you don't have to worry about anything else except offending people, then we've got a bit of a problem.
And that might be a topic for a broadside.
Why?
Why it is.
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You know what it is.
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There, I'm done.
But just to – I mean I don't want to pile on to the Encounter –
Pile on.
Pile on.
Pile on.
But it is a timely book.
I mean I remember reading – I think it was last week, this week, that George Will was uninvited from speaking to Scripps College.
George Will, who was –
Why? The least firebrand – yeah, because he wrote a column in which he criticized the idea that there's a rape epidemic on campus.
No, he justified rape culture.
That's what his column was.
By questioning the premise, he underscored and justified rape culture.
Oh, I see.
That's the reason why they invited him, right. But the actual crime was he wrote a column in which he questioned whether the statistics were correct and also said that it's kind of crazy to suggest that level of intrusion into sort of two people in a dorm room.
And so he was uninvited because his speech is sort of dangerous and scary.
And I remember reading – it's George Will.
I mean, George Will is the most sort of civilized,
the least firebrandy conservative around.
In fact, there were moments during the Roosevelt's PBS Endless series
in which you'd even wonder quite how conservative he is.
He is capable of saying something admiring about every figure in American history and almost every aspect of American culture.
Okay.
Let George Wilfen for himself.
Pat, how are the Nats?
They're toast is what they are.
That's over.
It's been – nothing thrills a general audience more than discussing baseball.
So I'll be brief.
But it's been an amazing playoffs.
I mean things – you could have made a lot of money at the gambling meccas of Las Vegas this week with what's happened. But I just posted a tweet this morning.
I said in 10 years, the Dodgers will look back with two thoughts,
in 2014, and what were we thinking with those beards?
Those would be the two thoughts they're going to have.
Right, right, right.
But, yeah, you know, we are bi-coastal,
and we spend most of our baseball time with the Orioles.
So that's a nice thing.
So I'll get to see a lot of playoffs in the next round from our lovely seats.
How have your baseball loyalties evolved?
Here I live in California and have for more than two decades, and I still feel something for the Yankees because when I was growing up eons ago in upstate New York, my
brother and I would listen to Yankees games on his transistor radio. Do you feel anything for
a Chicago team? You know, it's interesting you say that. First of all, I did grow up in Chicago,
and I was a fan. This was prior to interleague play. I was a fan of both Chicago teams,
and I never understood why you had to hate one or the other. They were in different leagues.
I wished them both well. I went to both games. I was, my heart was a little more with the Cubs.
And I must say, as I got older into my twenties and thirties, I became one of those goofy
Cub guys who hung on everything. And when are they going to win this thing?
But then I decided at some point, if they can't do it in a hundred years,
I'm through with them. They were, they were at about 96, 97. I said, I'm going to
give them to a hundred because anything should have be able to happen in a hundred years by
accident, if nothing else. And, uh, when a hundred came and went what five or six years ago, I said,
that's it. I can't invest any more time with this team. So I have, I have scrubbed them from my
heart. And now, uh, I tend to, uh, I tend to root geographically wherever, you know,
so we spend our time in Los Angeles and, and the Baltimore, Washington area.
So those, those are the teams that we, that we support and,
and care most about. But you're, you're right. The, the,
what you hear as a kid, you know, the voice you hear on the radio,
it does build a loyalty and here in Los Angeles, that voice you heard on the radio as a kid is still doing it.
I was still doing it.
It's so weird.
If you, you're, okay, you're a professional.
I think Vince Scully is, he's deep into his 80s now, I think.
Yes.
But I just, just a couple of weeks ago, I heard a voice.
I thought, oh my goodness.
And of course it was Vince Scully.
And I just listened for a while and thought to myself, that guy, A, the voice is still one of the most pleasant, listenable voices you could possibly imagine. And B, he can still call a game. Am I right about that? I almost prefer Vinny on the radio. I mean he's smart enough to know you do it a little differently on television than you do.
But because he's cut back on his workload, he only does – there are a couple of innings on television where he does both.
He does – it's a simulcast.
He does radio and television, which is a tough thing to do.
You're talking to a radio audience who can't see anything and a television audience where you don't want to repeat the obvious.
And somehow he manages to bridge that.
But, yeah, he's incredible, and he's not that far from 90 years old.
I mean, he was broadcasting in Brooklyn when the Dodgers were there.
It's absolutely incredible.
So, you know, someday, sooner rather than later, he's going to say that's enough,
and it's going to be a very sad day for the sport.
But, yeah, he's going to say that's enough and it's going to be a very sad day for the sport. But yeah, he is incredible. But now that we have these baseball packages where you can listen on satellite and watch all the local teams, it's interesting because,
I want to be careful how I say this, but there are a lot of terrible broadcasters,
particularly former ballplayers working, but they are beloved in their local markets.
They just love them, but they couldn't get a job in Sioux City, Iowa if they wanted to because they're terrible.
But they've been doing it forever in their local market and the fans love them.
And I'm not knocking it, but it's a funny phenomenon to me.
I always wanted to be the – I always wanted to call tennis games because it seemed really easy.
And he's hit the ball over the net. On radio really easy. And he's hit the ball over the net.
On radio or television?
And he's hit the ball back.
Well, on radio, of course.
I think you could really bring the excitement of tennis to that there.
There was a tradition of like the former athletes who were not quite national superstars but local superstars.
They would open – later on, they would get car dealerships.
Right, right.
And I think John Elway is –
Yes, I think you're right about that.
John Elway Ford, John Elway Chevrolet, Elway Subaru, Elway Cadillac, right?
But they'd also open steakhouses.
Yes.
And I've always loved that.
I mean I remember I think – I remember as a kid growing up in Baltimore, Ordel Bracey had a restaurant called something.
And Johnny Unitas.
Johnny Unitas had a steakhouse.
I think it was called a steakhouse.
I think it was a steakhouse back then called the a steakhouse back then, called the Golden Arm.
And you go to the Golden Arm, you know,
and it was like, I guess you thought
that he was going to stand there and sit.
And I think he did stand there at the bar a lot
and greet people.
Remember the mini Minoso burrito stand?
I don't recall that.
I don't recall that.
We had a Viking here who wasn't really known for spectacular stellar performances.
As a matter of fact, his nickname was Bench Warmer Bob because he just sort of sat there.
The bench kept it warm.
But after he left the Vikings, he was in constant demand for promotional appearances and commercials because he was such a genial sort of guy.
You were going to say, Peter?
Well, I was just – this has been going on for a lot of generations.
Whenever we went to New York, which wasn't that often, uh, it was a big deal for our family to
get down to New York city. But my father always wanted to go to Jack Dempsey's because Jack
Dempsey was a hero of my dad's when my father was a kid is Brooks Robinson still a figure in Baltimore.
Oh, sure. Sure. I, I'm not sure he has any. I don't think he has a restaurant. Boog Powell
has the
beef sandwiches you
buy at the stadium
are named after him. There's a
Dempsey
who used to... Rick Dempsey, who played for the
Orioles, has a restaurant there.
So, yeah. Now, by the way,
just a few steps
from the Ritz-Carlton in New York was Mickey Mantle's.
Oh, yes.
Central Park South.
Exactly.
Which is now closed.
It just closed within the last year.
Because I think Mickey retired.
But, yeah, it's a common – Don Shula's Steakhouse.
We could go on.
That's right.
Or DiMaggio's Fromaggio.
I remember that cheese shop.
That was good.
It was a great place.
Yeah. That's right. DiMaggio's Fromaggio. I remember that cheese shop. That was good. Well, you know, when we talk about these teams,
we might be talking about teams with names like the Braves and the Indians,
which might have to be adjusted to something like the Indigenous Tribes Assembly
because those names are not longer acceptable.
And speaking of which, from the member feed this last week,
there was a story where one of the towns, which one was it?
Seattle, of course, has replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.
And the only thing you have to ask is what took Seattle so long?
It seems like this is something it would have jumped on 10 years ago.
Is this a good thing?
Is this a natural sign the pendulum has swung all the way back in the other direction?
Or do you think that Columbus Day will be gone from the culture of this country in 10, 15, 20 years?
Can we just do yes or no answers on this?
Not to cut it short.
Come on, he was a 1967 Mustang man who obviously has some taste in fine American ideas.
You know, actually, I think it will be gone.
I mean, it's already headed in that direction.
And it wouldn't surprise me at all whether it's 10 years or 20.
I don't know.
But that's – for better or worse, that appears to be the direction we're headed.
And that's sort of a – that's a harbinger of things to come I'm afraid.
Yeah.
It's really depressing too.
I don't think it's depressing for someone to want to have a day to celebrate the indigenous peoples, although we can come up with a better name than that.
But that's fine.
I mean I – but we are kind of losing the myths, aren't we, of what built the country? we're not we're not losing them like like it rolled under the sofa we're actively seeking to destroy them good point good point
these myths as you put it allow people to feel reasonably good about american history and that's
where they got to go well all i know is that peoples who need peoples are the luckiest peoples
in the world they're indigenous especially i remember a friend of mine telling me um
that he was at some event uh with a friend of his who was an academic and they were having
some conversation he found himself in a conversation my friend is not an academic
and someone referred to um uh someone that's, well, what I what I really appreciate about this event is that they really, really are celebrating authentic cultures.
I hate those phony cultures.
Yeah.
Authentic cultures that.
You know, we're at a we're at a really ironic time, it seems to me.
It has never been easier to have your voice heard and every anyone's voice.
It can be multiplied by a million
times. Something goes viral, something you said. This is not just for celebrities. It's not just
for writers. It's for anybody. I mean, the opportunities to be heard are greater than ever
before. And yet the the the fear and trepidation you have to have before you put anything comes out of your mouth or anything is put onto your computer screen or onto a piece of paper is enormous.
So we have this ability to be heard and yet this fear of what the reaction will be when we're heard.
And we also have this inability to accept, I mean for me anyway, stories without – one story has to cancel out the other.
So a story about the fact that this country had Indians on it or Native Americans or indigenous people.
What do you want to – and they had a culture and they had headdresses and they did all this stuff and whatever.
That's fine.
The country had Indians on it.
You know what I mean, right?
I know.
I just love that line.
You know what I'm saying.
And that's fine. We should tell those stories. You know what I mean, right? I know. I just love that line. You know what I'm saying. And that's fine.
We should tell those stories.
Those are great stories.
There's no reason not to tell those stories.
But we also could tell the story of the Nina Pinta and Santa Maria.
This is now my own pet project.
It's one of the things I'm trying to do if I can get anyone interested in it.
I'm trying to get people to – I'd like to raise some money to start an American history channel, which there are some – there are available channels around.
The Current was one of them, bought a zero-degree channel, put some money into it, and then they sold it to the Arabs for a lot of money.
But the idea that there would be a channel where you could tune in and there would be a miniseries – I'm not talking about from a conservative point of view.
I'd be straight down the middle.
But the idea of telling these stories over and over again which we don't do anymore i mean remember when you were a kid that all these little myths you heard
they were part of your just part of your childhood sure and you know and they tended uh you know i
and i'm guessing most because they're myths so they they weren't necessarily accurate but they
did you know george washington chopping down the cherry tree, I'm guessing that didn't happen as it's been told.
But you know what?
There was a lesson there.
There was a little bit of a morality play.
I don't think it hurt anybody.
I think it was a positive.
And because we have the video now or whatever, whatever the equivalent is
to say that that didn't happen. I, I'm not sure that we're better off knowing that.
And the strange thing was, as a kid is that you always saw this small eight-year-old boy
with a fully formed adult head of George Washington on his shoulders, right down to the
wooden teeth. That's right. Well, we're back to it again. Little boys wearing powdered wigs.
Hey, my secret aspiration.
It is sort of sad that we've lost those or that we've hidden them or that we've suppressed them or something because they really were the kind of five or eight or ten stories we used to tell each other as Americans that were really, I think, powerful.
To use that line of thinking,
we need to get rid of all Greek mythology.
Sorry, that stuff didn't happen.
So let's dump it
and let's get the real story.
Right. And the
Trojan War was really an act of
aggression, an unmotivated
act of aggression from the people of the kingdoms of Greece.
Peoples.
Peoples of Greece onto a small city-state in Turkey.
Right.
Right, exactly.
Pat, Rob and James are much too young to remember this, but I think you might.
Do you remember biography?
Oh, sure.
I think – wasn't Mike Wallace the – wasn't that his voice?
You know, they still – one of the networks still runs that. Oh, sure. all over again, although it was – I did not care for the Roosevelt's miniseries. Apart from anything else, it was endless and apart from anything else, it was just an unbelievable sort of worshipful.
Nevertheless, if you tell history through the stories of human beings, it's engrossing.
Rob, you're on to something.
I think so. By the way, if I could say two words to ken burns just two it would
be hold still yeah right right lock it down man talk about attention deficit disorder i did hear
a ken burns story which i will not tell out of school so don't share it um but he uh recently Um, he, uh, recently, um, had an encounter with one of the Koch brothers.
Really?
Yeah.
And his response after that account was this kind of incredulous little boy in wonder voice.
He said, you know, I met this, you know, I don't know which one it was.
And, um, obviously I was, uh, prepared to dislike him.
And, um, uh, so we got to talking.
And so I asked him, I said, what are the five things that you care about, the five issues that you care about?
And can you – I mean, brace yourself.
We agreed on three of those five.
And he's not a monster at all.
But the shock and the incredulity was sort of – it's all you need to know about that bubble, right?
Right.
Another myth busted.
Yeah, exactly right.
Well, Ken Burns then is emblematic of a group of people who have their own myths, which can't be punctured. When we say that we're giving, wonderful, glorious age when, no, that's
not the case either.
So we have to believe the left myth, but we just can't believe the old, old, old ones.
Now, one of the myths that goes around Ricochet, of course, is that Rob Long is just a squish.
And there was an interesting post that I'm going to read because it led to many, many
comments about Rob and his attitude toward another pillar of the conservative movement.
This was a post from our Volker.
I think I'm pronouncing this correctly.
And it read like this.
Rob,
explain your statement that you do not agree with everything.
Rush exposes sounds like you are a rhino or lib.
Rush is not always right,
but he's a solid Reagan conservative.
Do not make blanket statements that give the impression that you are off the
reservation.
You have to be careful how you express your points.
This was a discussion of Russia's comment that Barry was using his newfound warring tendencies to affect the Senate races in the fall.
Buck up and load the masses.
All right, Rob, respond.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
That was lead the masses, not load the masses.
Yeah.
There's a lot of punctuation there.
Well, the point of the piece was that we're all on the same side.
We've got to be really careful what we say because we don't want to give the other side any ammunition, which is not an argument that I really have much sympathy for.
And what I said was, listen, I mean, you didn't have to hear my one statement, by the way, which I was agreeing with Rush to know that I was a rhino squish.
I say I'm a rhino squish rather constantly on every podcast and on every post.
It's pretty obvious.
But the argument really was or the discussion then became whether we who are sort of basically directionally aligned with each other, although we have our differences, whether we should kind of keep quiet
about those and march in lockstep, or we should continue our sort of fractious debate, internal
debates. And my argument was, well, and fractious internal debates are always good.
I believe that settles the issue for everybody's satisfaction. There we go. Well, listen, folks,
we have wandered all over the road here.
And, well, some of us wandered.
Some of us strode.
Some of us were constantly jerking the skirt down because it rides up from time to time.
Right, Peter?
How much do you regret starting the broadcast?
Oh, I can't even.
This is one of the very few podcasts that my wife is certain to hear about.
It's when the stockings puddle around the ankles though.
Isn't that the worst?
I think it's a podcast that the local authorities are going to hear about.
Just let me say – just a little piece of advice.
Just don't get your knickers in a knot.
Be inspired.
Be inspired, Peter.
Peter, lift and separate.
That's what we always say.
What was that, Ron? I do want to go back, though, and just time, just so I know how many fractions of a nanosecond it took between the question.
What kind of performer would you be?
Cross-dresser.
Not dancer, not comedian, not magician, not impressionist, not ventriloquist, not, not, um, um, you know,
a charming host of a, of a, of a quiz show. No, no, no. Transvestite. And yet somehow for the
entire podcast, we managed to avoid getting to the conversation of transgendered rights and third
bathrooms and the rest of it, possibly out of respect for Peter, because we're all having to
process this information right now. I am just channeling my hero, Ronald Reagan. And now you have to listen to a 90-second anecdote. State visit, president of Venezuela and his wife. Dinner in the dining room, then they go across to the East Room for entertainment, which is Robert Goulet, who does his lounge act from Las Vegas. And the Venezuelans, and particularly the First Lady of Venezuela,
a woman of massive dignity,
I was told this story by Tom Wolfe, who was present that evening,
simply become more and more tense at Robert Goulet's vulgarity.
He takes off his bow tie, he loosens his dinner jacket,
and he says, let's get down, and goes into his lounge act.
And there's a moment of silence. And Robert Goulet says, this is the hardest audience I've played since I played in
Anchorage, Alaska. And the only person who liked me that night was the transvestite standing at
the back of the room. Not a laugh. He finishes his act and it falls to Ronald Reagan. It falls
to the president of the United States to wrap up the evening.
And Reagan gets up there and makes a few comments about the – and he says – and Bob Goulet, thank you so much for flying in from Las Vegas for this evening.
And Bob, I would never have believed that you still remember our night together in Anchorage.
The room collapsed into laughter.
Reagan saved the evening.
A lovely moment.
So that's what I was doing, Rob.
I was just channeling Ronald Reagan.
Wow.
As always, yeah.
As always.
As always.
And with that, we get you off the hook.
With that, we do indeed.
Listen, folks, thank you so much.
And show your thanks by going to Harrys.com and entering the coupon code Rchet. Five bucks off your first delivery of those wonderful razors. You'll never go back to anything else. And thanks also for EncounterBooks.com using that coupon code Ricochet to indicate that you can get 15% off anything you want, including this month's title to broadside the Freedom From Speech. And thanks to Pat. Thanks to Dame Edna.
Thanks to Rob.
And remember, folks, when the red fills your eye like a big pizza pie, that's Ebola.
So we'll talk to you next week and hope that we're all still here, hale and hearty.
Thanks, Pat.
It's been a joy.
You peoples are great.
Thanks, Pat.
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candy came from out on the island in the back room she was everybody's darling But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head
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And the colored girls go
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Jewel take a walk on the wild
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