The Ricochet Podcast - The Home Stretch

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

As you may be aware, we had a Presidential debate last night. The President did well, we all agree on that. Will it move the polls? Do the polls matter? We discuss. Then, Hoover’s Shelby Steele and his filmmaker son Eli Steele have made What Killed Michael Brown, a provocative new documentary about race and the impact of the events in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. The film is streaming on Amazon... Source

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Okay, I'm so sorry. I spent the whole morning thinking today was Thursday. It's one of the... As they say in the movies, I take full responsibility,

but it's COVID. I've lost track of the days of the week. Maybe it's just age. Could be age. I have a dream. This nation will rise up. Live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident.

That all men are created equal. I never said I opposed fracking. You said it on tape. I did. Show the tape. You said it on tape. I did. Show the tape. Put it on your website. No more no-no fracking. I'm the president and you have fake news.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilex, and today we talk to Shelby and Eli Steele about their new documentary, and Susan Ferraccio, Washington Examiner Congressional Correspondent. Let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome to the Ricochet Podcast number 518. I'm James Lilex in Minneapolis, where it snowed an awful lot, and I don't want to talk about it ever again. Rob Long is in New York, where I'm sure it's one of those beautiful autumn days that just makes

the city the most magical place on earth except for the fact that everything has moved out and large swaths of the city are boarded up and economic activity seems never to come back again. But hey, still, the top of those skyscrapers do sparkle in the sunset of an autumn day, I imagine. Rob, how are are you i'm doing very well but you have absolutely identified well it's not terribly sunny yesterday was kind of sunnier but it is a glorious glorious autumn here in new york city which manages to prevail and uh and thrive despite all sorts of disasters mostly of its own uh oh it's of its own doing i mean new york is one of those places where people uh complain and complain and complain and complain about the the the rat

bastard mayor that they voted for twice um so that's like but on the other hand um i don't know i here's what i think i really do think this is and and I know we're, I know that you and I probably agree on this, but I actually feel like there's this weird kind of, yes, there's a pandemic and all that stuff is happening and it's other things combined. This is still the greatest time to be alive on the planet Earth. Like, all measurements are up. All signs point to good. So I'm not sure I... I can't share in anyone else's gloom. I'm glad to hear that. And in the macro sense, you're absolutely right.

In the day-to-day sense, which is, of course, where we live and where we grapple with things, it's different. And I'm not going to say you're wrong. I like to think about that, too. All things considered, yes. But when I think of New York right now, and I'm sure it's quite beautiful, and I'm sure at night the skyline is still dazzling, how many of those marching endless canyons of skyscrapers how many of them are occupied by workers in the course of a day well not as many as used to be but i mean have people gone back to work because here people are still at home and the skyscrapers downtown the big proud towers are virtually empty well i mean i think that there's a lot of people who are

working at home here i mean obviously those are there's a lot of people who are working at home here i mean obviously those are office workers so they tend in general to be uh zoom i don't know zoom efficient or zoom uh zoomable um there's a large amount of service working that's unemployed um and that remains uh but the city itself seems to be uh i don't know i i feel like sometimes we go through uh as a country and as a culture we go through these nervous breakdowns um because we just we're unable to sort of grasp that things are actually okay uh and each side has decided i mean each side the strange thing is like the the apocalyptic language on both sides is so strangely hyperactive. About the world, the shape of the world.

I mean, we roll our eyes when we hear these crazy crackpot environmentalists talk about how everyone's going to die. We're all going to die because of the environment. And yet I think sometimes the conservatives do the same thing. This kind of like, oh, my, it'll be a disaster. Everything's going to be a disaster if this one thing doesn't happen, this one whatever. Or if this one thing does start to take root and change things so give me an example of a specific conservative thing that is as catastrophic as climate change as global warming the joe biden presidency which still looks to me extremely likely uh the kamala harris presidency which i think which by the, I feel like is equally,

for some reason, I think are the odds for that and the odds for the Joe Biden presidency are precisely the same. I suspect that, you know, let's take a couple of let's take two issues that let's take Joe Biden in the debate last night. And I'm I'm eager to hear that you, Rob Long, have probably shed your Trump reservation and found the performance to be so compelling that you now can come home and vote GOP. Just kidding. Well, no, I think he did pretty well last night. I mean, I think I think everyone believes that there's this like weird connecting the dots that this is 2016 over again. And that and if you want to believe that, that's fine.

I think that the Trump supporters are singing themselves sweet lullabies and they're going to wake up and be horribly disappointed. There aren't that many parallels between this and 2016. Fundamentally, he's not a challenger. In 2016, a lot of people thought that Donald Trump was going to be Mr. Eminent Domain. He was going to abuse the Constitution. He would appoint his sister as the Supreme Court judge, that he would start wars. We have four years in which a lot of those fears of people who didn't think that he was going to be conservative or govern conservative did not happen.

But let's talk about what Joe Biden wanted to do when he mentioned he wanted to end the oil industry. The fossil fuels industry in his campaign is running around today saying, oh, no, actually, he meant subsidies. OK, well, he didn't say that. So I don't believe that the Harris-Biden administration would be able to undo the oil industry in four years, but they could certainly do a lot of damage to it. And there are states that depend on it. I don't believe that they would be able to completely destroy the private insurance market in four years, although who knows what they would have if they had all branches of government. Right.

Okay, well, let's just take energy for a minute. By the way, hold that thought for a second, Rob, because Peter is here. Peter was late because he actually thought it was Thursday. Thursday. Understandable. But he also thought it was 1982, which is a little bit. Well, that's not a new. That's not new.

Let's bring you up to speed. Please. Real estate developer turns out to be the president of the United States. The Soviet Union is gone. That's great russia's still an enemy gone gone you don't mean astonishingly so has become quite capitalist but not in a way that we really hope that they would be uh not a lot of news out of africa although generally everything living standard wise disease poverty it's been a great run but right now we're in a bit of a pinch and rob and i were talking about believe it or not peter you're gonna love this coming from 1982 joe biden is the guy that

they're running in this joe biden is he still alive yes he's got and he's running again the hair a little bit more hair but he's lost a step uh he doesn't seem to be the same sort of grinning smart uh smart maybe it's been 40 years getting a great facile glib and uh commanding fellow that he was in your time so anyway that's bring you up to speed that's where you are rob and i are talking about the biden's vow to destroy the fossil fuels industry again yes what what what outrages has rob perpetrated already or have you been able to i merely said i started merely by saying this that things are not so terrible and that we tend to have this sort of disaster scenario which we've adopted people on the right have adopted from the left which i thought was dumb when the left did it i think

it's dumb we did it and and uh we're countering uh james counter with this one specific issue other issues but this is where we we started um about energy which i think is interesting which is true i mean that's that's true i i only i can i i merely mention that we had the only merely merely all right we actually had eight years of the most radically left-wing president in the history of the republic of barack obama simultaneous with the most expansive use of fracking and natural gas harvesting in the in the history of the earth the i mean on private lands they could do nothing about and that they weren't aware that's fine but again it's not fine but like okay but it's not we it's not a disaster it's not it does that look if if joe biden wins which is likely it's not a disaster. It's not a disaster. Look, if Joe Biden wins, which is likely, it's not a disaster.

Well, you don't think it's likely, Peter? It's not that. I want to stay with energy, but I'd like to see the polls in 48 hours. Okay. Well, what if the polls in 48 hours say it's the same as it was 48 hours? Yeah. No, no. Okay.

Then I'll say it's three out of four. Yes. Yes. If the polls don't move in the next 72 hours at the outside, then yes, right. I'll say three out of four chances for Biden. Okay. But proceed, oil. The ideological shift of the Democratic Party, the liberal side, the leftist wing of it has moved over to the point where global warming is an existential threat and we have to get rid of all fossil fuels hence the green new deal there wasn't any green new deal under obama there was just well we're going to end coal that was the first step that's i mean they were that's what they wanted to do that's the first baby step done job's gone move on to the next one and the next one is fossil fuels the next one is oil the next one is fracking the eight years after obama there's a lot more appetite on the left for that because if only we

spent the right amount of money and did the right tech and invested in everything we would have well i see that james has been doing just fine without the rip van winkle may curl up and go back to sleep the problem with here's the problem that winning an election doesn't mean you've convinced everybody and the the attitude on those partisans on both sides is that somehow when the other side wins or we win the real problem is that people still disagree with us the truth is is that you're gonna lose the white house and we're gonna lose the senate and we're gonna lose the house and we're gonna get them both back all three back alternatively we're in a very volatile part of errant american politics it's gonna happen it's just gonna happen and It's just going to happen.

And we're going to have to fight on all of these fronts all the time. And that is not a disaster. I like to be the optimistic guy. But the problem is, is if when we have everything, presidency, Senate, House, generally squat is what occurs on a big on a big level there's no wall there's no dismantling of this there's no hud goes away there's no department of health i'm sorry the department of education dissolved with all the money given back to the states we don't do that they i think are a lot more likely if they have control of all three things to do stuff because i think they're a lot more ideologically motivated than the republicans have ever been we just kind of obama so barack obama won a smashing victory in 2008 53 of the of the popular vote a smashing victory in 2008 in 2010 he was stopped in his tracks by speaker of

the house paul ryan period right and obamacare is a is ruin. That's his signature thing. Two years to regulate the live and bleep out of fracking to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Yeah. Good. If Rob's point is that politics will continue, I grant that. If Rob's point is that half the country will disagree with the Biden administration, I'll grant that. But this election, in my opinion at least, really is different in two regards. One, just as James has been pointing out, so I'll just touch on it because James has clearly been doing just fine without me. The Democratic Party has moved to the left. The energy,

in a certain sense, it's two parties. There's a kind of centrist remainder, which is what Joe Biden clearly comes from and feels most comfortable with. But the energy, and as best I can tell, the money is all on the very extreme left. Item one, the party has moved since Barack Obama's victory. Item two, this is not just we'll impose regulations, you guys get a chance to roll them back, we'll raise taxes, you guys get a chance a few years later to cut taxes. That's the kind of back and forth Rico to the union as states, creating four essentially permanently Democratic Senate seats. They intend to make institutional changes that are outside the usual back and forth and the ordinary give and take of American politics. Those changes, well, permanent is the wrong word.

Puerto Rico elected a Republican governor 20 years ago. There's politics in Puerto Rico. Eventually, Puerto Rico might elect a Republican senator. The point, though, is that those changes are different. They're institutional. They'd be extremely hard to roll back. Packing the court would undermine the court system across the country would they do it well they sure seem to want to the energetic left in the in the democratic party sure seems to want to so to that extent our problem my opinion at least this election really is different that's fine we can we can all we can all adopt our greta thurnberg sweatshirts and talk about an apocalypse about to happen.

In American politics, it shifts back and forth. Our challenge, those of us who are on the center right, our challenge is to start talking to the American people who are sort of the persuadable middle instead of this kind of, I'm going to use a crude phrase that I'm not going to use it. This sort of onanistic autoerotic process we go through on our one television network and love what Sean and what Tucker and what Laura are saying and wonder why we only have five million, five million supporters. Right. If you want to persuade in America, you have to do it with 51 percent of the nation and you have to accept that a lot of those people don't agree with you so you have to persuade the the party that does that the best is going to succeed with their agenda by the way those parties don't do that but the opportunity is there we just simply refuse to do it with said we say like oh my god they're going to get everything they want as if we're going to as if if Americans are going to roll over the last 25 years suggests last 30 years suggests that is simply not true.

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Let them. We don't have to let them. Hey, James. The fatalism is just like my god i feel like i'm talking about the green party got it has any while i while rip van vinkle was was still slowly awaking did anybody make the pretty straightforward but i think important point that donald trump last night had a very good night if that had been in the first debate he'd be up a point or two by now. He did, that Donald Trump was the beginning. He may be gone in a few months, but that was the beginning of the kind of a Donald Trump,

the kind of a Republican president who could begin to do just what Rob talked about as the vital project of persuading the American people. It was a pretty remarkable performance. And I have to say, I found myself admiring him because he demonstrated he's learned a lot. He knows how the government works now. All right. No, it's a great point.

But, and Rob makes a great point. Everybody makes a good point. What's maybe different from eight years is the rise of social media and the rest of it. But there was a piece in Vice today that really amused me is that how vice failed to keep the Hunter Biden story from surfacing as though it was their moral obligation to keep the story from getting, from leaking out to the people, but that's vice for you.

And speaking of vices, a lot of people have a favorite one. And it's smoke, to be frank. I mean, it's got done a lot in the last few years. It's expensive to do, but a lot of people still smoke. And a lot of people who smoke would prefer not to. But, you know, there's that whole nicotine thing. Well, listen, if 2020 has taught us anything, you need a good set of lungs. And if you smoke, you know, it's not really helping. So let's talk about Lucy.

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maybe rubbed a little menthol. They taste dreadful. And the more you do it, the more you just don't want to. Lucy, my friend said, was completely different, was a flavor that just made it enjoyable. And they thought more about the flavor than they thought about the nicotine. Okay, here's the real deal. Subscription to Lucy comes directly to your door each month. It's simple. You don't have to leave your house because Lucy has delivery down pat. Ricochet podcast listeners go to lucy.co, not lucy.com, lucy.co and use promo code ricochet to get 20% off all the products. And that includes the gum or the lozenges. That's Lucy.co promo code ricochet at the checkout morning. This product

contains nicotine derived from tobacco. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. And we thank Lucy for sponsoring this, the ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Shelby Steele and Eli Steele. Shelby is the Robert J and Marion Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. He was appointed a Hoover Fellow in 1994. Eli Steele is the father of two and an award-winning filmmaker and documentarian. And if you thought, I've heard that the man is deaf, how are they doing a podcast? Because we did it on Zoom, so we could read our lips, which he does quite well. They've made a film, and their latest film, which Shelby wrote and Eli directed, is What Killed Michael Brown? Eli, we'll get to the premise and the pith of

What Killed Michael Brown in just a second, but as Rob Long will probably tell you, sometimes the story of getting something to the screen is as interesting as the story itself. We understand that Amazon balked. As a matter of fact, Amazon refused to stream your movie. Yeah, Amazon reached me to film to Amazon, and they rejected the film for quality purposes. And that was a shocker in a way, because the film has no violence, has nothing to warrant being rejected.

And so we went, we, just like Asian Americans, they said, no, you should move on to another opportunity. So we found another place, Bimeo. And we did great there, and unbeknownst to us, Amazon put the film

on the platform without my permission. I mean, they said, no, sir, you forfeit your right to the property. So they were right to have two days later to put the film up. Well, obviously, I think they did that because of all the publicity. The Wall Street Journal really came to our help, Fox News, too. So that put a lot of pressure on Amazon. And so we told them to take it down because our principle, you know, you're not going to have your way,

you're not going to make a six-day pool. And so they took it down. And then on Tuesday, one of the top executives reached out to me and basically gave his side of the story. I told him my perspective gave his story. I told him my perspective of the story. He's never going to get a full admission

from a test giant, you know, just because of the politics and stuff like that. But it's very clear that the only reason why this happened was the politics, the point of view in the film, which completely goes against the whole woke movement,

the amplified Black voices that Amazon currently has on the streaming platform. Well, it's all there in the title. When you ask the question, what killed Michael Brown, the woke crowd is going to say say it's obvious what did, racism and a cop. But this is more about this. So let's ask the two of you,

was it really racism, Ben, that killed Michael Brown? Not to give away the film, but was it? No, it was not remotely racism. There were two grand jury investigations, two Justice Department investigations, an FBI investigation. None of them found a single piece of evidence that would support the idea that racial animus played a role in the shooting. The shooting was, in and of itself a tragedy, simply a tragic coming together of misunderstanding. Michael lost his temper, hit the policeman, wrestled him for his gun,

ran away, turned around, ran back, charged him, obviously with wanting to kill him. Policemen at that point shot in self-defense. And that's what happened. And all the evidence supports that. Eyewitnesses support that. But in America, what we call the poetic truth, which is this idea that a version of what actually happened that supports my claim on entitlement in American life. And if in fact Michael Brown was killed and this was a victimization of a Black, then wow, the amount of power that is in an event like that is overwhelming.

And people from all over the country, all over the world, come into this little bitty town, suburb of St. Louis, Ferguson, looking for that power. And it is a considerable power when you think that groups like Black Lives Matter, which come out and sort of organize to exploit that power and later usecessions in American institutions, political, educational, universities. Their curriculums, their way of doing business is these days very much determined by a spirit of Black Lives Matter, which comes out of the poetic truth that Michael Brown is a victim of racism. Boy, they've taken over education in America on that presumption. So a lot was at stake. A lot was based on a conspicuous lie that he was killed because of racism.

Shelby and Eli, Peter Robinson speaking. Listen, here's what I think I know about Michael Brown. He was shot by cops in Ferguson, Missouri. The Ferguson Police Department was disproportionately white. The Justice Department, the Obama Justice Department did an investigation and found that the Ferguson Police Department needed to be reformed. And the killing of Michael Brown, hands up, don't shoot, that famous phrase is associated with Michael Brown is, have I got that right? And the killing of Michael Brown is one of the, what's the right way to put it? It's one of the foundational events in the current Black Lives Matters movement. And so, question number one for Eli and Shelby, why did you want to take this on? And the question number two is, even if he wasn't killed in the way I told you is in my head, just from following news reports and just a casual listener, Even if it's not the case, does it really matter?

Don't we know that there's a problem with police departments across America? And all right, maybe the details are wrong, but the killing of Michael Brown ignited an important and just movement. Why did you guys do it? Why did you guys want to shoot this documentary? And what difference does it make? You're causing trouble, you know. Yes. We were talking about making movies together. What attracted us to this step here, the Ferguson, was that it had, this is probably 2017, the Michael Brown died in 2014. I think then in those three years, Ferguson had become, as you said,

like a new foundation, a new Selma. The new Selma, yes, that's right. That's what it is, in a sense, the new Selma. Exactly. But the difference is Selma is very real. There's no dispute. Ferguson, the two narratives, I mean, that's the reason why Eric Holder had to do two reports. One report for the truth and one report to prove systemic racism.

And so therefore, if you should prove systemic racism, the cop is guilty of racism. Michael Brown is the victim of racism and that was the that was the main attraction for us was that we wanted to go in there um i kind of believe that you have to kind of go into the fire you know kind of dive into it that's the only way to come out through the other side and so what we wanted to do with this was go further go go deeper, the inner folder. His conclusion was very political. And we wanted to go beyond that into more of the human problem. And that's why Michael Brown, that's why he called,

what killed Michael Brown? We wanted to get much deeper than that. And so that's why we wanted to go into all the politics, because, yes, Black Lives Matter is a big movement that's not denying its power. But you also have to remember that Black Lives Matter grew out of this trade bond money thing. They were very disappointed, and their way of thinking was, we will never, ever let that happen again. We will never let someone like George Zimmerman get off. So they were waiting and waiting and waiting,

and they make a plan to happen. And it was the perfect formula, because there was no video, there was nothing, so we could fight over this. It was like a Rashomon by Akira Kusawa. It was like that, where you have different versions, and who did in that battle.

And so, but the problem is, and the Achilles' heel of the movement is that it's based on focusing on that lie, on that false narrative. And so that's why I think it prevents them from really getting into the root causes of the problem. We always say, well, why doesn't Black Lives Matter go into Chicago? Why do they care about these 20 kids that are shot in St. Louis? They're stuck in this political mode of always proving that narrative is systemic racism.

They're just stuck to that, and they can't move off of that. And that's why we can't get to a larger place where we can reconcile American views. Yes, we should be having police shootings, and police shootings affect my people. They affect all these other people. We should be addressing police brutality in a way to bring all of

this together. But that's not happening. Well, it's Rob Long in New York. Thank you for joining us. Why do you think that's true? And let me suggest an explanation and tell me that I'm full of it if I'm wrong. You mentioned Selma. For white progressives,

I'm just speaking now about white progressives they kind of miss the days of selma they kind of miss that sense of clear purpose and so every every every event like ferguson becomes another Selma, another chance to March, another chance for this sort of self dramatics. These events are catnip for white progressives. And at the end, Ferguson is still Ferguson, right?

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Bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie I think change, I mean, are the people happier, safer in Ferguson now than they were before? I guess my question really is, who benefits the most from Black Lives Matter? Is it Black citizens in cities that are run maybe by racist cops that

could be true or is it white progressives all right well okay i'll run with it i want to hear from both of you by the way first in a sense one of the things that fascinated us was that in America, black victims since the 60s, black victimization in itself has become a tremendous source of power, very often destructive power. I would count Black Lives Matter as a part of that. And people rush into a place like Ferguson in order to get it, and you're absolutely right. No, it doesn't change anything. People are worse off in Ferguson today than they were when this happened.

The police force is cut in half. People can't sell their homes. Most of the businesses are gone, broken. So this is the pattern for riots generally. They leave behind a mess that is almost impossible to clean up. So there's no way to see what happened there as legitimate. On the other hand, what fascinated me, I speak just for myself, was the idea, again, of victimization as power. And when blacks came into greater freedom in the 60s, and we in a sense balked at freedom we we had no experience of it we had no

no uh easy way to what do we do now uh i've been manipulating around a racist society all for hundreds of years now you're telling me i have to live in freedom what What does that mean? One of the things people do in moments like that is go back and say, the truth is, I'm not really free. Racism is systemic. And so racism goes on and on. And so to your point, you begin to build or erect an artificial world that is based on the old victimization world of the past. You say it's here right now. It's here today. And so Michael Brown, the desire is to make Michael Brown into Emmett Till. And there's a certain, you ennoble yourself

by mimicking the past. The protests represent a kind of mimicry where you pretend that this is the march on Washington all over again, when really what you're doing is burning down a gas station and calling it a noble event. So all of that is what fascinated us, and the fact that America remains in the grip. Everybody knows there's something dishonest fundamentally about the take on Michael Brown

in Ferguson, Missouri. Nobody says anything about it. Nobody challenged Obama. Why are you taking this view? And that, of course, gets into the area of white guilt, which is also a force, a power that makes events like this happen. Because Black Lives Matter know white guilt will give them the room to operate. White guilt will clear the way for Black Lives Matter.

Give them millions and millions and millions of dollars. Amazon canceled Eli and I's film and gave Black Lives Matter $10 million. That's interesting. And I ask Eli, Eli, I'm trying to say this as politely as I can. What did you expect? Oh, maybe I'm naive.

Maybe I am. I mean, honestly, honestly, it never, never occurred to me that this would happen. Because I view Amazon as an egalitarian platform. You should pretty much move on as long as you're not a fugitive, not a minor, or anything like that. You should pretty much move on. And so now, clearly, they probably have in that company, which I've seen in a lot of

Hollywood companies, you have the business people and you have the ideal law. And so I think Amazon right now probably has an imbalance between the ideal law and the business people and you have the ideal law. And so I think Amazon right now probably has an imbalance between the ideal law and the business people. And so we got banned by the ideal law. But wait, can I just interrupt? Do you think

you were, I mean, this is a real question. Do you think you were hurt by the ideologues or by the businessmen? Because as an ideologue, I agree with you. But if I'm a businessman, why look

for trouble? If you're a businessman and you're in Amazon and you're looking at Twitter, you're looking at the United States government, you're looking at Twitter, you're looking at people, States government. They're looking at Twitter. You don't want to be included in that company. Right. Good point. So I think that's what happened. Yeah, it just kind of came

down. Let's make a pretty movie up on there. And, you know, the movie is making money. They get 50% of our money. So why not? Sorry, let me just go through this again, because I'm in show business and I always like hearing the phrase, the movie

is making money. You're making money. There's an appetite for the truth is what you're saying. We were worried that Amazon would overwhelm the movie. What we found was that people would say,

oh, I heard about this movie because of the Amazon dispute. Then they would go and talk about the movie, which is the best thing to be asked for. Okay, so I have one more question, and then I've got to run because I've kept you too long. I imagine white conservatives

will love this movie. I imagine moderates of both races will like this movie. How much of an impact do you think this movie and this story will have in the African-American community? And I'm asking this because i've all i've often felt that the most conservative eye rolling hip to the bs of the black lives black lives matter movement can be found among African Americans. The people who are the toughest,

I've heard about Jesse Jackson or Reverend Al Sharpton, are always Black Americans who can smell BS when they smell it. Is this going to help any, is this going to help that population speak up? Or is this really a movie that is for everybody?

That's a bad question, but do you know what I mean? Yeah, I think it's a great question. I mean, my father and I have talked about this all the time. You know, I mean, in his position position he probably about i was probably about 15 when he started speaking publishing and i would kind of notice

that you know white conservatives would kind of come up to him and use him as a way not to think about race right but that's not what he's saying you know you gotta dive and you have to understand but there's a kind of use in the way to kind of run away. Just like you might see on Fox News, they always say something like, I'm sure we should have a drinky game because every time somebody says the content of our character, then you notice the conversation literally just leaves. The issue of race is over there. And that's a big problem on the conservative side and um but we ultimately

if my father always does we also we made this movie for a blast teenager together and i think the power of this movie is we don't deny the effects of white supremacy redlining blockbusty which our own family was part of we don't deny. But what we say is there's a much bigger problem that the left is not telling you about. And that is the liberalism. That's the effect that it's had on Black people. So I think that, and that's what we're working on right now, is we're getting into the

Black community so they can see that and understand that. We've had at least two Black critics write about the movie. One of them very liberal, and he's saying you cannot deny anything in this movie. Wow. Wow. Great. Shelby, you have five grandkids. This is for them?

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, the whole film is for them, for that generation. I hope we'll be free. Can get some... Can move away from this idea that their talent, their charm all has to do with victimization. You know, we

I don't want them, I want them to grow up with certainly understanding what American history has been and so forth. But we've as a race been forced into looking for power through all that was weak in us, all that was that was oppressed in us, all that. And that's really all we sort of represent in the American psyche. I don't want my grandchildren to feel it. I want them to identify with the self-determination of black people, with what was strong, with the Frederick Douglases of the world who insisted that we ask for nothing from whites, that we achieve on our own. The biggest corruption that blacks have had to deal with is the seduction of liberalism, which keeps taking the agency over our fate out of our hands. Lyndon Johnson, I'll fix you up.

I'll redeem you. I will bring you into. So we've been just destroyed by that. London Johnson, I'll fix you up. I'll redeem you. I will bring you into the... So we've been just destroyed by that. We're in many ways worse off today than we were when I was growing up in segregation, where they didn't ask for your soul. They segregated you, but they didn't ask for your soul. Liberals really want you. They want you just literally a sort of icon of

their innocence and nothing more dehumanizing than that. And that's the effect of 60 years now of this dehumanization. The film is What Killed Michael Brown? And I have it up on my computer right now on the Amazon website. After first refusing to carry it, Amazon is carrying it. It's an hour and 49 minutes long. It is a serious piece of work. The director is Eli Steele, and the narrator is Shelby Steele. I'm watching it this weekend. It already has five stars out of five on over 100 reviews. Good work, guys. Good work. Gentlemen, thanks for joining us in the podcast today.

Good luck with this one and the next one. We expect to see follow-ups as well. You know, if you go to the Amazon site and take a look at the page for it, you'll notice something, and I'm not sure if this was intentional on the part of the designers, but the font choice, the typeface they use for this is very 70s it's it's all it's what you saw in the tarantino foxy brown movie it's almost it's

it's what you find in a lot of blaxploitation movies and i thought i wonder if that was intentional because there's nothing quite as polarizing among some communities as 70s fonts for some people to really summon i'm serious i'm absolutely no i i know you're right i agree they summon up an era for some they're misused by others but you love them you love no no i love them for their usefulness they're a tool because they do like all typefaces summon up an era and you know then you can debate after that so yeah within the visual arts community there's a lot of division that goes on between the appropriate use of fonts. And you're a unifier, but that's a division. I am, and I like to think that I do in the cross-platform when it comes to these things.

I can tell people why a reconstitute. I am like not a unifier. I'm the person I divide. For instance, I'm dividing you from the segue right now. That's what I'm a divider. I'm not a unifier. I apologize. We could talk about severability here because you've done that just quite well.

But it's true. I mean, when you talk, I mean, at the beginning of the show, obviously, Rob and I had some different ideas about the future and optimism versus not, even though I'm an optimistic guy, even within the optimism of American community, there's division because America is growing increasingly divided. You thought we were so before? Ha, just wait. Well, The American Story is a podcast narrated by Chris Flannery at the Claremont Institute. It aims to unite listeners with true stories about Americans and the American experiment in freedom and what a unique thing it is. These weekly stories of immigrants, statesmen, poets, soldiers, athletes, inventors, pioneers, and ordinary citizens reveal our rich history and shine a light on a path forward. Each episode of the American story reminds us of our

shared inheritance of freedom and what we must do to preserve it. So listen to the American story and rediscover why America is worthy of love. Yes, of love, admiration, faith, all these things, and love. This week, it's Bullets and the Ballots of 1776. Now, we hold elections in America because, as the Declaration of Independence says, we think, quote, the just powers of the government are derived from the consent of the governed, end quote. But what divided the American people from the British crown and parliament in 1776 could not be decided by a vote alone. Bullets and Ballots of 1776. You'll find that story and dozens more right on the Ricochet Audio Network here, or you can visit theamericanstorypodcast.org,

theamericanstorypodcast.org, and subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform. We thank the American Story for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Susan Fauricio, the Washington Examiner's chief congressional correspondent. Hey, welcome, Susan. Thanks for joining us today. We'll get to the politics in a second. But first, oh boy, it was just a thing of joy that went around on Twitter the other day when Brian Stelter actually got a little steamed at some things that you said. Let's play the clip. There isn't anything real in them. Yeah, but that doesn't stop any from reporting the Mueller and the dossier and all that stuff. I understand that you have a lot of resentment about this.

Now we have ethics. Okay, now we have ethics. Don't you dare. Don't you dare act like newsrooms didn't have ethics in 2017 and 2018. Well, I know they did. You can don't dare me all you want, Brian. I've been doing this for 30 years. So say whatever you want. It's my view. And I have a right to say it. I was that the news media was unethical with Mueller. question. The Mueller documents, the Steele dossier, everything was given rapturous attention

and believed from the get-go. But yet we find with the Hunter Biden story that NPR is refusing to touch it because, well, it hasn't been verified and it's disinformation and we're not going to sully our airwaves with something this salacious. Why the double standard or is that a really stupid question? Well, there is a double standard. And one thing to point out when you're talking about the differences between what Brian and I were discussing, which is how the media is handling the Hunter Biden laptop story that the New York Post broke versus all of the dribs and drabs of information that came out after the president took office that led to this whole Russian collusion story

that the mainstream media put out. What's the main difference? Well, if you go back to those stories from the very beginning, a lot of it is all based on anonymous sources and things that they heard or saw. So people, readers never got a sense of where it was really coming from, what the motives may have been, and what the solid evidence might be behind these very serious allegations. That's what it was based on. And of course, it took over the news cycle. It took over Congress. It took over Trump's presidency. There was a two-year-long investigation by Bob Mueller that ended up yielding none of the information that the mainstream media said there was on President Trump colluding with Russia. And now we look at the

Hunter Biden laptop story. Well, OK, who's it coming from? Rudy Giuliani, all the reason to be very wary because he's obviously working for Trump and maybe trying to make the Bidens look bad two weeks before the election. So you take that information, and then you start going through it. Is there anything realistic here? Is there anything we need to take a harder look at? Well, the mainstream media isn't interested at all. And it's turning out to be that all this stuff, the laptops were his, it's looking like, and the emails are not fake. They're not Russian disinformation. But from the get-go, the mainstream media was, instead of saying, let's see these emails, let's see these laptops, they are instead trying to cover for Biden instead of trying

to be reporters. I mean, it's really incredible. They're so incurious about what this is all about. They're just saying, oh, well, this is a great example is if you open the New York Times where they where they say rather than rather than really going after the story like they would if this was about Don Don Jr., they open you open up the pages and they write a story, this bland story. It says, where what do we know about the Hunter Biden laptop story? Well, it's almost like they're covering it in the passive way instead of the active way, which is what the New York Times would be doing if this was about Trump.

They would have a team of 20 reporters on the story if this was about Trump. Susan, Peter Robinson here. Let me read to you something that also made the rounds yesterday, along with your glorious clip of giving Brian Seltzer what he deserved. Question to the office of the public editor at NPR, a guy called Terrence Samuels. And the question was from a listener, how come you guys aren't covering the New York Post's Hunter Biden story? And here is the way the public editor of National Public Radio, which we note receives a lot of public funding, taxpayers pay for the operations of NPR.

Quote, we don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories. And we don't want to waste listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions." If you had to make the best case you could for what Terrence Samuels said just there, what would you say? What I'm getting at is what are they thinking? How do they justify? These people are your colleagues, not at the Washington Examiner, but you're in Washington. You know these people. As you said, you've been at it for 30 years. How are they justifying this in their own minds? They're not saying we're such partisan hacks, we won election that it's politicized disinformation, that it's just disinformation from the Russians through Rudy Giuliani. A lot of people in the mainstream media really buy into the Russian collusion story. They really believe that the president and Vladimir Putin are on the phone every day conspiring together. They really buy into it. They think the president is no good and that he is a corrupt president and it skews their thinking

you know i don't i know that the press sees itself as independent and objective they really do and they get very insulted when you uh test them on it like i did did during the BBC interview. They don't like to be challenged on that. But they can be very dismissive of stories like the Hunter Biden laptop story. And it's very dangerous. It's a very dangerous approach, because now look what's happening. It turns out that that laptop and some of the emails are pretty damning and they do involve the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden. They do potentially involve him and it could be very serious. And then you have the mainstream media sitting on the sidelines and potentially trying to cover for Biden. Look at what the Post wrote the day after this broke in the New York Post.

The Washington Post immediately dismissed it by saying Biden had nothing to do with, there were no politics involved with firing the Ukrainian prosecutor. Even though Biden was on camera saying he did it, he threatened them to do it. I mean, it's just really incredible to me. So Biden last night had a clear chance in the debate to issue a straightforward up and down denial, that laptop never belonged to my son i don't know where you got it but your side is making stuff up hey he did not say that he he issued it he stated he denied that he made money but he was very careful what he cut out of that denial he didn't he didn't say a word about those allegations to reject them so i'm sitting there thinking okay every reporter in washington just heard joe biden take a given a clear chance to deny the laptop

story to deny all the emails that tie his son and him to dealings in china and he refused to do so so has that changed the temperament in Washington among journalists this morning? No, but he did that. The reason he did that is because he knows the media is not going to pursue this. Democrats in Washington... He's totally confident they'll cover for him. Well, the Democrats in Washington get the media more than more than we perhaps realize. They realize that the media is pretty much on their side and gives them softball questions and doesn't go after them the way they do it to the Republicans. They use that to their advantage. That's how they got the whole Russian collusion thing going. They knew who to leak the stuff to, how it will come out and that they would accept it and run it and not question it.

That's the way the dynamic works works they feed off each other that's that's really washington for you um i know a lot of my colleagues will be angry to hear me say that but um it's i think it's true um and the reason why biden was able to say last night that that's not that none of this is true it's all russian disinformation and garbage uh is because he can even now that more of this is getting verified now you see the mainstream media trying a new way of covering for biden they go on and on about how presidents historically have family members using the name of the president the last name of the president the billy the billy carter thing no big deal no big deal i mean this is how this is just how it goes in washington it just and that's the excuse for today and that's going to excuse them from taking a much harder look at biden and whether or not he is the big guy or whoever they're

identifying these emails receiving a cut of this big guy or whoever they're identifying these emails receiving a cut of this money who knows who they're talking about there the FBI is interviewing the man who was giving the press conference last night who worked with the Bidens and came out as a whistleblower but Democrats will say oh it's all politicized because it's the president's you know administration and Susan I have I have one. I have one more for you. I know Rob wants to Rob Long wants to get in. Here's my last question for you this morning. I mean, I'd love to talk to you for hours, but here's my last question right now.

You've been at this, as you said the other day, 30 years. So when you were when you were coming into the business of journalism, there were still some of the big, great old editorial titans around. I think Abe Rosenthal by then had probably retired from the New York Times, old editorial titans around. I think Abe Rosenthal by then had probably retired from the New York Times, but he was still around New York. Abe Rosenthal was still a figure in town. Ben Bradley was still a figure in Washington. Clearly, both Democrats. Ben Bradley, a personal friend of John Kennedy. But what I'm getting at here is, has journalism changed?

Would Ben Bradley have said, nah, that's no story. Let's not cover it. Would Abe Rosenthal have said, yeah, you know, you're right. Let's sit on that story. Or would they have said, go ahead. Covered for Kennedy all the time. I don't think that's really new, but I do think that the advent of social media, all these journalism schools now that kids go to. I didn't go to journalism school. And they get brainwashed there. Some of these journalism professors are just god-awful. I don't know what they're teaching these kids.

They're teaching them to be activists, basically. They're getting into the field now, and they've really changed everything. It's changed the way journalism, you know, it's not about accuracy. It's not about objectivity. It's not about making sure you're doing hard hitting stories that, that, that hold everybody accountable. It's, it's a lot different now. It's more, more about clicks and entertainment and agenda. And also, and also the, if I, if I may, it's, it clicks and entertainment, but also making the rates, the, the proper social point. I mean, if we're having a debate in newsrooms about

objectivity being an old concept that is no longer necessary and is, in fact, harmful because objectivity pretends there's two sides to an issue, and you've got a whole generation of journalists who doesn't believe that that's actually the case. Let me say this. If you're a conservative in a mainstream newsroom, when I see mainstream, I say whatever's left of the big papers, and I've worked at some of them. If you are a known conservative, you will not be popular there. You will be run out of that newsroom. They don't like it. You won't, you will be shunned. And that's just the fact. Well, the fact that actually I am in a large newsroom and I'm pretty much known for what I do and I'm not shunned. And I take that as a testimonial to my colleagues and also to the people for whom I

work. But I'm not working at the New York Times. New York Times is much bigger and it's a different story. You're absolutely right there. You'll have the mean little click behind your back, post all sorts of things on the company Slack until eventually like Barry Weiss, you say, am I really wanted here? No, no. Rob? Thanks, Susan. This is Rob Long in New York. Thank you for joining us. So I was going to ask a bit about your colleagues. Are you ever all together? And do they ever, I guess what I'm hoping is that they actually say to themselves, there's a lot that's true to the Biden story, but we hate Trump so much we don't care because at least that's honest. Or are they so in a bubble that they didn't even bother to read the Mueller report?

They didn't even bother to read any of that information that essentially revealed that as much as you might hate him, Donald Trump was in fact correct that it was a put up job. Or is it is it total delusion is it a cult or is it a cynical power grab and i'm hoping it's a cynical power grab it's neither it's really i think their antennas go up their antennas go up to the highest point when you're dealing with trump and republicans they're on the lookout for you know know, these stories. But if it's a Democrat, they they soften their approach. They're not as interested. They're not as they're not as suspicious or doubtful of the sourcing. For example, there were many reasons to question the veracity of the things coming in about the president. I mean, I remember doing a segment on Fox where the anchor asked me if I if it was true that the president may in fact be a Russian agent in the White House.

That was a story that came out in The New York Times. You guys remember that? That's how far it went. I mean, truly, Trump derangement syndrome, which is a real thing. You know, where did it come from? Where was the initial spread of the disease? I think it was in Congress. And and it included the media, too. And they don't they hear him differently. They see him differently. Like he'll say something. I heard so many reporters walking around saying to other to Republicans. Well, what do you say about the president calling coronavirus a hoax? Well, why didn't they listen carefully that's not what he said now they would say well that's because you you must like trump so you interpret it no no listen

to exactly what the words listen to what he said same thing with his embrace of white supremacy listen carefully that's not what he said i i can't tell you how many times i just mutter that to myself i know that's not what he said or that that's not what she said. You have to be extremely careful. I do that with Democrats. I cover too. I hear people misinterpret. You need to be extremely careful when, when you cover politicians to really get what they're saying. So the people we do or listen to you have a, don't have a clear picture of what's going on and not just your agenda. And I think on Capitol Hill and, you know, in the national media trump they view trump in a different way they they take them way too literally sometimes they interpret him wrong like

remember a few weeks ago when he was at walter reed and he was putting out videos at one video where he made some joke about melania being younger than him and doing better and everyone it was amazing how people misinterpreted that in the mainstream media but that that's a great example because that's a great example because i am not a fan of the president as everybody listening to the podcast knows i'm not a supporter of this president but i thought that was charming i thought he was like yeah i get it i get why he's like popular with people like that was a charming thing to say like i don't know if you know my my wife's a little younger she's a lot younger but that's that was cool so can we just talk about um um just get a little

bit political horse racy here you cover congress you've been watching the election i'm you know what i'm gonna ask i'm gonna ask whatever everybody every observer asks every other observer what's gonna happen in in the senate what's gonna happen in the big house? Well, it's it's I think one the first important question to ask is, will we know on November 3rd? We're going to the problems with the mail-in balloting and the fact that many ballots can be accepted after Election Day. We already know that if they're postmarked, it's expected, at least on Capitol Hill, what what the Democrats tell me and Republicans tell me, it's expected that this will not be immediately known in some cases who wins certain races. Now, that could obviously mean the White House. We may

not know because they're still counting ballots. It could mean some key Senate races. Obviously, the balance of the Senate is very competitive right now. There are a lot of seats that are in jeopardy for veteran Republicans for Democratic takeover. They only need four seats and they're at 47 now. So Democrats need to get to 51. So that's where that's where things are in the Senate. It's it really hangs in the balance. And now as we get down to the final less than two weeks and you look at some of the polls and you see things shifting in favor of the president, some of these battleground states closing the gap that had been that had been there. But I always say, even though Biden is ahead in some of these places, I always say be wary of the hidden Trump voter who is not showing up in these polls and either not being reached or not willing to talk to anyone about their support of the president. And I think polling data now has been accurate. Polling data is getting tricky these days now that the way we obtain it has changed.

So I don't know how reliable the polls are. And it makes it hard to say, well, geez, this is going to be a blowout or boy, Trump is doomed or Biden's going to lose. It's very hard to say just based on not only the lessons we learned in 2016, but just on the idea that maybe we're not reaching the Trump voter. Maybe we're not hearing from them. And a lot of these polls obviously skew to Democrats. When you look at the data, there are more Democrats responding. That's always a problem. So I don't know. So Peter here once again, what you're saying about the polls is I have a couple of friends

out here in California who study polls extremely carefully, political scientists, and they agree with everything you said. Polls are, we got used to polls in the 50s and 60s when two things were true. Everybody had a landline and everybody always answered his phone. All those things have been, those things have been true for a long time. At the same time, I call pals in Washington and they, oh no, you don't understand. The mood here is the Democrats are going to win. It's going to be a blowout.

They're going to take the Senate. You can't, the lobbyists are figuring out. They're going to take the Senate. The lobbyists are figuring out who they're going to approve. The town has already gotten used to the idea that there's going to be a turnover. Is that true? Oh, yes, but people are also wary because of what happened in 2016. That was a real lesson for everybody. That was a devastating lesson for the pollsters and for the pundits here in Washington who said Hillary had a 99.99, whatever, chance of winning. Right. The same chance she has of surviving COVID, by the way. And people see the rallies and they see the enthusiasm for Trump.

I think there's less of that now, but they're still saying there's every indication that Biden will win and that the Senate is at least threatened. I don't necessarily believe that. I think I don't I don't know. I think those are all individual cases. But President Trump is weighing heavily on the ticket. There may be fatigue for Trump, but there may also be people who last night heard a lot more about this Hunter Biden situation and Biden may become less appealing to them for whatever reason they were favoring him in the first place, that he was a more moral character than Trump. Well, hey, guess what? Maybe he's not. Maybe that's more of a level playing field. Susan, the president said last night a couple times that he thought the gop was going to

take the house was that sort of was that sort of borderline humorous or is there do you yeah i i know that's that would be too hard just because the district it's just not it wouldn't be um really possible to do that this cycle um it certainly could happen to pay you have to have a lot of retirements by veteran democrats. You have to look at the individual districts. There just aren't enough opportunities there for a takeover for Republicans right now. So nobody's really expecting that. There can always be a blowout. People can just say, hey, I've had it with Democrats. I hate the Green New Deal. I've gotten wind of all this stuff and I'm not going for it anymore. I don't get that sense right now. I've seen that happen. Boy, we've had pendulum election

after pendulum election. And I don't feel that that's going to happen this time. Most people don't. The president has always talked optimistically that way, not necessarily realistically. So, you know, I think the best they can do is to hang on to the Senate and the White House. Susan, any last broad, huge prediction? If you're right, we'll have you back all the time. If you're wrong, we never heard about you. There's money on this. There's money on this. Just kidding. We make wrong predictions all the time and we show up. Yeah, no, that's okay. I would say my best prediction is it may be a very long night, November 3rd. It may be a long night that lasts a few weeks. Oh, great.

So 2021. Oh, come on, make another one. 2020. Make one we like. Yeah, make one we like. For the same seamless bolt of cloth. Susan, thank you so much for joining. We'll talk to you again, we hope.

Follow everybody. Thanks, Susan. Thanks a lot, Susan. Bye-bye. Yeah, I know. the idea that somehow 2021, that there's going to be the calendar is going to change and life will change is one of those things that we've thought for some reason we still do. We celebrate in January 1st and believe that there's a new day ahead, but that's never the case. Never is.

It's like when we were talking before about seventies fonts, when did the seventies begin? You look back at the f 50s, people think that as soon as 1950 clicked into place, all the women put on pearls and housecoats and set about living an Ozzie and Harriet life, which brings us to... Damned tight for once. Yeah, nice. Credit where credit is due. I was like I was ready to talk.

But I'm going to be spoiled now for the rest of our duration. Don't get used to it. The post of the week comes from Jenna Stocker, who wrote 1950s of the future. Freedom land versus Stepford Wives. An excerpt. When the 50s and early 60s are discussed by the retrospective experts of academia and PBS hushed tone documentaries, traditional families are generally portrayed as vehicles for oppressive patriarchy. They are nothing more than little

capsules of conformity, individual bulwarks against personal expression and freedom, a suppression of human nature and appetites, end quote. Later on, she writes, they had it backwards from the beginning. The American trajectory from the 50s and 60s was headed to prosperity, equality of opportunity for the sexes, and declining racial disparity. But a funny thing happened on the way from baby boom to Woodstock, a growing federal government, quote, safety net, end quote, and conscripted cultural conformity. For all the high hopes of a rebellious hippie generation, the protests, fighting the man, questioning authority, the left grew up and became exactly what they purported to be against. What the left is doing now is whitewashing history to advance their own agenda and using fear of a return to a false history to do it.

Boy, I love that post. I just thought the whole thing was just spot on. Yeah, especially the notes about how somebody I believe she did or in the in the comments referenced the movie Pleasantville, which just was real american dynamism was to be found and that those ticky tacky little houses were just places where people were shoved into heteronormative boxes against their willing force to live these lives gentlemen yes i love this post i also feel like it's it's one of those things that like um if you're kind of a free thinking interested person in the world around you you come up with you you have this observation which janice docker had and then you think well i think some people think well this is not about um the the republicans in the senate this is not about um you know what tucker carlson said yesterday so is it is is it interesting and the answer is yeah it's interesting

it's not only interesting but it's lasting i mean this is a post that you want you could read a year from now two years from now you could read it under president kamala harris which i can't i can't i can't it's like a scab i keep picking it only you are laughing i get what else can you do you gotta laugh right um but you and it still is true and what i loved about it also was that what it reminded me of something that i've been like kind of trying to remember like it's like a vague thought which is why i love ricochet so much because sometimes like somebody will write something and remind you like i was like something was been kind of like itching at me which is that um the idea that in the 50s or we've now discovered through progressive liberalism that families are toxic is that is

literally the subject of all western literature from the beginning of western what there is no family more toxic than Clytemnestra and Agamemnon that is the most toxic family ever and the idea that this is somehow oh my god we've learned this new thing, and we can fix it. Like, oh, well, if we have the right Department of Bureau of Family Affairs, the right Secretary of the Bureau of Family Affairs Department in the federal government, then we won't have troublesome families, we won't have mean stepmothers, and we won't have all of the tropes and the characters and the stories we've been telling each other around the campfire to start with and in the novels of Jane Austen forever. And I just find that so irritating about the progressive intellectual left. I just find it so irritating.

The idea that human weaknesses and failings and all sorts of things are they can be like we can figure out a way to suppress that. How do you do that? It's like saying you shouldn't be hungry. You shouldn't, oxygen is like, is trouble. No, it's how we are. It's what we are. We're not voluntarily suppressed by a great individual effort because everybody will realize the virtues of the collective to which they wish to belong. So everyone will behave nicely and human nature will evaporate.

I know it's absolutely preposterous. But I, you know, I also feel like it takes away any possible happy ending. I mean, I, you know, I love my grandparents, my father's parents. They were, I love them. They were great, but I know that they were completely different and much more withholding and much more arm's length with their son, my father, than my father ever was with me. And the truth is that, you know, there are cycles you can break, and there are cycles that you don't have to repeat, and there are ways to be a better parent

and a better friend than the parents and the friends that you grew up with. There's always ways you can be better. And that is one the reasons why charles dickens sold so many novels but the idea that like you look to the 50s and you have this disdain like it's so stupid and i i'm sure there's a better word for that but i just the the first word that came to my mind was stupid it's like willful why would you just anyway it's a great post as you can see because to me it's i'm more animated by that than I am by somebody trying to explain to me how actually in Wisconsin the polls are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, every era in the past must be judged against the standards of the future. And if it's held wanting in any degree, it must be cast out or reformed or reshaped in the histories rewritten to reflect the fact that they were bad.

You know, it's interesting. Now we live in an era where a lot of 1984 and also Brave New World seem to be meshing together into a wonderful little DNA strand. And it's remarkable, especially if you consider Facebook and Google and Twitter and the rest of them to be some sort of equivalent to Big Brother. I know it's all different, different between private and public and the rest of it.

But it also makes you think, when Winston Smith got his little diary book out of that niche that he'd carved in the wall and positioned himself so he was out of the way of the interrogating view screen, the telescreen, he was in a way like tapping into his own personal VPN when he wrote to the future. And we're not there yet, but when it comes to privacy and making sure that you are private, I won't even interrupt this segue. Cause I find the segue really smart. I won't even interrupt it. So I'm not even going to interrupt it.

The segue is up there with Dickens and Tolstoy itself. I think you're right. And that's, and that's why that is an example of why I'm not even going to interrupt it. This is a bloody money Python. I'm not going to interrupt you. I'm not why I'm not even going to interrupt it. This is a bloody Monty Python. I'm not going to interrupt you. I'm not.

I won't. No, not this. Watch me. Not listen to listen closely to me as I don't interrupt you. Or it's Eric. My non interrupt. Eric.

Idle sticking his head into the frame saying just here to say that I won't be interrupting this segue and then dipping. Exactly. Enjoy. If you're done, I was talking about VPNs and the need for privacy and the rest of it. You probably heard about them. You probably get an awful lot of deals about them. Forget about those deals. You can get great deals, sure, but what you want is the best VPN possible. And that's why we're telling you again about ExpressVPN. Use ExpressVPN to secure all your devices,

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Here we have for you a special link. ExpressVPN.com slash, are you ready? Ricochet. It's the number one rated VPN provider in the market. Trust me, you're not going to find anything better. Here we have for you a special link, expressvpn.com slash, are you ready? Ricochet. That's right. Go to express.com slash ricochet right now, and you can claim an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. Support the show, protect yourself. That's right. Expressvpn.com slash ricochet for three extra months free. And we thank ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, gentlemen, as we close here, do we have to talk about Jeffrey Toobin? No. Can we do so and say that this was the moment in which the Me Too era was clearly over because he's had so many defenders saying, oh, come on, who among us hasn't? Glass houses, all that stuff.

Let him back on. He's valuable. I found a lot of those articles hard to take. I mean, usually they would just wait for him to be quietly reinstated three months later. But apparently not. No? Nothing? I would say only this.

In response, actually, to Jenna Stocker's Lilacs Post of the Week, and I'm just happy now that every time we say Lilacs Post of the Week, we don't have to hear the theme, but okay, is that there are benefits to a slightly more repressive, oppressive society and one of the benefits is that even in your own home you have certain uh uh customs and rules that you do not violate and um that that the gentleman in question would have been well to have been more had a greater sense of propriety and a reticence, even in the privacy of his own home. Like there was a time when you could you could be happily upstairs in your privacy and someone could knock on the door and you you could say, you could open up your window and lean out and say, I am not at home. It didn't mean you were not there, it just meant you were not receiving. And there was a sense of, even in the home, there were public and private spaces, and very private spaces, and then very public spaces, and we would be well to return to that. I would say that in a Henry James, Edith Wharton world, which I would frankly prefer to

live in, this kind of thing would not have happened. Even with Zoom, even with technology, it just would be unthinkable because people would not have misbehaved in such a way. Well, one of the horrible things about this COVID, it's great. It's quite good. One of the horrible things about this lockdown and the fact that we've now swapped the office for Zoom is that it has turned our private spaces into extension of the public realm. We're expected now to have meetings with our boss in our home office and dress up accordingly as opposed to having a distinction between the house and the place that you all go to communally get together and do the thing that you're all doing. And the more we get away from that, the more people become comfortable with working from home is injurious to society on so many levels. Can I just add one anecdote? Yeah.

I once had an agent. Well, I was represented by four agents at a boutique-y agency in L.A. And one of them was sort of a very kind of funny guy, and he had gone to Princeton. And they're all different kinds of partners at this agency. They're all very, very rich when I met them when I was young. So they were extremely rich even then and now very, very rich. And he always wore – he went to Princeton. So he had always kind of – he wore a suit and a bow tie.

So he was like – he's a Jewish guy from a Jewish family in Brooklyn, but he made money and he collected unglazed Chinese pottery from a thousand years ago. They lived in Hancock Park, which is kind of a fancy old part of los angeles and i once said to him um uh we were talking about something about hancock park and he said well here's what you need to know is that uh 15 years ago my wife and i made the decision to live formally i was like what does that mean is we use our dining room we dine we never ever eat anywhere we never not dine um and we dress i dress i wear my tie for dinner she dresses up for dinner and we live formally and that is why and i said that doesn't sound very comfortable and he said there is nothing comfortable about marriage and there's some i think it's kind of true like there's nothing i don't know about marriage but there's nothing it is that we we have we have over emphasized the values of comfort and i think forgotten that there are enormous values to discomfort i when i go to the office i wear a tie

i'm alone i'm alone at the office i'm alone walking through the skyways i'm alone walking the streets but i'm if i'm going go downtown, I'm going to wear it. I'm going to put on the uniform. I'm going to pretend because otherwise you just... Good for you. Slacks and goes to hell and the rest of it. So what Gelertner calls the difference between the 30s culture where you were expected, dad was expected to have a tie and shirt at dinner. Now you can say that that's a costume And that leads me to my next question, which I'm going to ask both of you in just a second. But first I have to tell you that this podcast was brought to you by Lucy

nicotine, the American story podcast, fascinating and express VPN, support them for supporting us and get lots of great stuff for your own life as well. Listen to the best of ricochet radio show hosted by Jim Lekas. I guess that's Jim Lekas, right? You can hear it this weekend on the Radio American Network. Check your local listings for time, as they say.

And please, do I have to do it? I mean, I could stick a Rob member promo ship in here, but no, I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you, you have to go to Apple. Because if you don't go to Apple Podcasts and give us five stars,

a huge electrical bolt will come out of your device, whether you're listening to it right now, and render you stunned for five minutes. So I'm done asking. Nice. I'm just telling you. Go there, give us five stars, or a huge debilitating bowel-emptying electrical shock will be yours.

Just kidding. Please do it. We like it because then more people discover the show, more people discover Ricochet, which is a great thing. So last question, gentlemen, what are you going as for Halloween this week, Peter, or this year? We will see where she comes down in the next couple of days. But at the moment, my wife, I think I mentioned this last week, our big development here in the Robinson household is that we have no children. We're empty nesters for the first time in our marriage. And I said to my wife the other day,

oh, I'll go pick up a pumpkin. And she said, don't you dare. She is so sick of the pumpkin carving and then they rot and the kids never, okay. So, may be we may just skip up my guess is that by next year she'll have come back around she'll be missing kids and want to see the neighborhood kids but i think this this year we may just keep the windows and the keep the shades down in the front of the house and hope the kids just pass us by i think there may be no halloween in the robinson household at all this year. Rob? Well, I don't know. I mean, I usually get it.

We usually get an email in the neighborhood around here about, like, which streets are really going to do it and which streets aren't. A lot of my neighbors have decorated, and it's kind of cool because it's already kind of a spooky neighborhood. I don't know. Like, I myself will not dress as anything i i find that undignified but uh i i probably will buy some candy and be prepared because i at the moment i'm just i'm just picturing kids i'm just picturing little kids at the bottom of your building pressing the buzzer to apartment b7 and leans out the window and says, I am not receiving! I am not to home, sir. No, I usually sit on the stoop.

Sit on the stoop. Oh, do you? Sit on the stoop, because that way, otherwise it's like you have to go up and down the stairs. I live on the third floor. So sit on the stoop, and then deliver the candy to the mostly adorable kids. I think I told you last year, there was an eight-year-old boy,

a nine-year-old boy in a blue suit and a white shirt and a red tie that was dangling down dangerously low and a Trump wig, and he was walking around, and his father was behind him saying to everyone, as like kind of clearing the way, he's just kidding. It's just a joke. It's just a joke. It's just a joke. It's just a joke. I can see Rob sitting on the stoop with a cigar

ashing in their bucket as they leave. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, we'll discuss a little bit more about Halloween next week. My costume is pretty much in the bag. I'm going to paint my tuchus orange, go pantsless to the parties as the November surprise. We'll talk about these and other details next week. For now we're gone thank you for listening rob peter it's been a joy we'll see

everybody in the comments at ricochet 4.0 next week boys oh Oh, Suzy Q Oh, Suzy Q Baby, I love you Suzy Q I like the way you walk I like the way you talk I like the way you walk I like the way you talk

Suzy Q I like the way you walk, I like the way you talk, suits you. Ricochet. Join the conversation. God damn it. That was long, but it was good one. Yes.