Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 242: Bad Boys of American Letters

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

This week we touch on a really strange article about cancel culture in The Atlantic. It doesn't go down well. Also, this episode contains discussion of sexual violence, blackout drinking, and consent. Listener discretion advised. Go support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

imagine if the end of it was you know like those sinks in the 90s that had those i don't even know what they were they're like filters you could take them out and use them to put into a coke can to smoke weed out of yeah you know what i'm talking about yeah well like a faucet that has one of those on the end imagine if that's how it came out. Just kind of like that stream. You know what I'm talking about? Like it's a specific kind of faucet flow. Yeah.

It's not like just a straight stream of water that you would expect to see in like an old house from like the 50s or something. It's like it's got that filter on the bottom and it's got all that calcium buildup on it yeah yeah it's got that detritus hardened on it like a layer of it yeah i felt his pain when he was talking about it and talking about peeing on his balls all the time then so i do the same thing but for a different reason dude that has got to be a very arduous and annoying condition to have i guess you would have to pull it back so that it's vertical with your body how often do how often would you say that you um

how often would you say that you like how often would you say that you, like, cause almost every time I pee, I dribble a little bit on my underwear. You know what I mean? Not 100% of the time, probably. Yeah.

Like I have like every time I pee, I leave a little bit on my underwear, just like a little dribble. That's, I hate admitting that, but I do. I read this story about Charles Dickens the other day, and it described him because he died at the age of like 58,

and it described him as having aged prematurely. I was like, damn, is that what? That's hard living. Like, I mean, that's how I feel like I have aged prematurely. How did Dickens age prematurely? Alcoholism I'm guessing I don't know from the way I understood it

he he like had an affair and he was really concerned about how he would come across to his audience like his fan base like once the press found out about it and so i think he kind of like sold his wife down the river and like i don't know like something like that happened but like he

like sort of stuck to his guns or whatever but it like caused him an immense amount of stress so much so that he embarked on like a 10-year year talk reading tour where he made like 600 appearances in a matter of like a couple of years and it drove him to a complete exhaustion. And that's how I died. So he felt the need to go and smooth things over with his audience in person. You've pretty much.

Yeah. And he overextended himself. God damn, dude, that is stressful. But audiences loved it. Audiences loved it. It was apparently a massive hit because he did all these voices of his various characters.

People were like, have you seen the latest Dickens? Yeah. I always imagine that shit. I always imagine Tiny Tim sounded different, but that's how he sounds. Oh, man. Have you seen the new Dickens? Yeah, it didn't Mark Twain do a similar thing toward the end of his life.

Did he go on a speaking tour because he had an affair and he was? I don't know about this i'm not gonna get into his personal life but like uh i know he did like a lot of like live shows and stuff like that so anytime you think live podcasting is weird just remember that like dickens and mark twain stuff you should just get out there and do like a little weird half-assed one-man shows oh yeah they just talk to an audience, basically. Yeah, that was entertainment back then. Where are we at on Mark Twain?

Is he gone? Did we lose Mr. Twain in the culture wars of the last 20, 30 years? I don't know. Mark Twain is one of those guys that's hard to pin down in the culture wars. Could easily see him going either way. Being claimed by either side. Yeah. There was like a biography that came out of him like 10 years ago.

And I just remember like that's what the joke about it was that it was the book everybody was buying their dads. And I probably bought it from my dad. There was like several of them, right? I think so. Maybe. Several volumes of them right i think so maybe several volumes of it yeah i'm living in that guy did he uh did he have some retrograde things to say about people i don't know i don't know what the thing with mark twain is um well i think he used a lot of slurs in his book and I think that's part of it.

That's how he ends up on the banned books list. Well, but isn't there also something in... So I know he was an anti-imperialist, whatever that means, but I don't think he was a radical by any means, right? I might have to go to the tape on it. Mark Twain politics it's like he was

a libertarian and wanted to bring back the gold standard Mark Mark politics Mark Wayne Mark Ron Paul Twain many of his individual views are fairly legible he was an abolitionist anti-imperialist he supported women's suffrage he was pro-labor unions he was essentially in

favor of laissez-faire capitalism disparaging the government's attempts to rape please liberal you could have yeah pretty much yeah pretty much you're right yeah he was just a liberal interesting the radical politics of mark twain radical tea towel us why has the american bath towel become a such a site of so much conflict in contestation. Have you noticed this? I've noticed it dating back from when it's like the most the item most people fight over it like Black Friday and stuff like that.

That's one side of struggle. Well, then there is also like the Mike Lindell guy though, and he believes that like his towels get you drier because there's been this long-standing conspiracy by the chinese government to make us more wet i guess to make sure we can't get he believes the china the chinese are giving us crappy towels bad towels he thinks they're giving us bad

towels because there's some advantage china gets from making us just a little, just slightly inconvenienced. Yeah, because you had your shirt stick to you slightly. I mean, I don't know. It's the bath towel. It's a contentious sight. Oh, man. it's the bath towel it's it's a contentious sight oh man well i've got these waffle knit towels thinking they were gonna do you know something for my excessive wetness but they're

not really that good i'll be honest with you yeah i'm not a fan of those i don't like them i don't know why they get wet they like they do get all the wet but they don't i don't know it's like i feel like drying off with the waffle towels like drying off with the towel it's already wet you know totally totally it's just a weird material too it feels like you're drying off the rope yeah nobody wants to do that why would you do that that is true i don't know the anyways the well i can say like that kind of towel sucks but a family member gifted me some mike lindell my pillow bath towels back in december and they get a kick out of that they think there's something funny about gifting you i guess lunatics wares right just like like grifter got some fresh pillows for you it's all michael and dale brown i've got a lot of stuff like that like i told you about like when

my grandpa got me like the it was like a play in that Howard Zinn book People's History of the United States of America it was like a Patriots history of the United States of America hey just you know just want you to hear both sides of this man man oh man oh man I miss that bastard. You ever think about that? But how much you miss my grandpa? Every day of my life. Yeah. So, Mike. Oh, so. But the bath towels.

All right. So, like, I used them, though. And, dude, they if it was possible that a towel could get you too dry, this would be that. Like, you're willing to endorse mike lindale's towels no i'm saying that like he over corrected like everything in the culture war everything is a massive massive over correction basically like he's way over corrected like it actually sloths your skin off while you're dry making you very dry yeah it's

too dry like a little bit of moisture this man if it was possible to be too dry this would be it this would be it it's an over correction greatly that's the latest item in the culture wars

today I saw the least talented of the Van Zant crew have written Ron DeSantis a new anthem called Sweet Florida damn really yeah

what do you mean Van Zant are we talking ronnie van zant hardly who's the van zant johnny and dot they're his brothers okay i didn't know i didn't realize he had brothers and that they wore like right wing how do they stack up to them? What do I search for? Ron DeSantis Van Zandt. Ron DeSantis.

The thing that they are... I just got back from the gym and they always have Newsmax on in the gym. The thing that they are worked up over today is Disney. Like, they have been really fucked up over Disney, man. This is another Rufo thing, isn't it? It is.

And DeSantis is leading the charge, too, saying now he's threatening to pull Disney out of Florida or something like that. Yeah. They might be getting a little bit out of their depth here. I mean... Fucking with the Democratic Party

is one thing. Okay? Yeah, but... But... Fucking with Disney's... Disney's got to kill you money. And they really don't give a damn who the governor of Florida is.

I will say, I i like this i support it because if those people could be if the battle lines could be drawn right it would be like the crt people uh you know sex moral panic people or whatever on this side. And then the crazy like Disney warrior cry when they see like Mickey Mouse tchotchkes. Yeah, dude, like people who would literally die. Do people

people do get these weird sort of ties to it, man. I remember being some friends of mine went as the Flintstones for Halloween one year and we went out to get some drinks beforehand before we went to this party and this woman saw us and started bawling crying and i was like whoa and she was like it's just the warmest memories from my childhood of the flintstones and this is just what I needed. And I was like. I'm telling you, like a golden horde of those people would be unstoppable. That's the thing.

Like, that's the thing, like about these like CRT, like sex, you know, sex ed, like moral panic people is that these are ultimately keyboard warriors. Like the Disney fans, they're the people who like would they ride on horseback and they like brand shit into you know what i mean like mickey mouse icons whatever into their skin you know what i mean to like test their resolve they you know like uh you know what i'm saying they'd like oh yeah they're all these people fucking nuts and i'm telling you man i i don't think these guys could fuck with really any fandom because when you start encroaching on somebody's lifelong fandom that's a whole different animal

you know what i mean and ultimately all these people are broke boy losers kind of like really and truly you know what i mean yeah like they just they they're miserable with their lives they don't like how things shook out for them and i understand that i can relate to it but you don't get to go around making everybody else fucking miserable the disney adults are weird too that's goes without saying yeah i think i think they're on the hook with not an insignificant amount of damage to society in a lot of ways but they're both bad really really bad yeah so like them going head to head would be good i think well let me tell you what the disney adults have wrought these are the people whose basic framework of the world is goodies fight baddies for the fate of the universe

and those are the type of people that are like have brought us to the brink of nuclear war most recently with russia and ukraine that mentality yeah yeah yeah you know so do do desantis and rufo and the boys want to go fuck with that i don't know if they do really i think they should try it out and just see they should try it out but it's a no win i mean no one's going to actually emerge from that victorious i mean i don't know it you know they'll just fight to the death yeah that's man you know what let the best person win i guess there but they're really worked up about it man uh i wonder what desantis is thinking with that

like that like threatened disney and all that stuff that seems counterproductive to the i'm sure they have a whole calculus of something like maybe some old codgers that watch fox news are mad about a disney princess being black or some shit like that and that's probably what it is it's probably completely orchestrated like they're literally probably working with the disney people because like the disney people are like you know everybody's got to come out of this looking you know everybody's got to do what they need to do play the role they need to play you know to me and like yeah this is probably unless something crazy happens i could be wrong but maybe it was all orchestrated to just get to this point where

disney's gonna be like and then you're gonna say that we're you know turning the frog the frogs gay and etc and we're just gonna good for everybody yeah and so and you going to say you're going to pool our special status. What is their special status? I don't know. I think they're like the Vatican or something. They've got their own self-governing. I think so. I think it's like they've got their own zip code or some shit.

That would be crazy if once you step into Disneyland, you're actually subject to Disney's law and courts. You pretty much are i think like what happens to you if you like break the law of disney like are you do you get extradited back to florida and california i guess in the case of disney which one disney world is florida right disneyland is cal. I think so. It's such a disgusting brand that I don't even

have a hard time even thinking about it. That is weird, isn't it? It's disgusting. Absolute freaks made that brand. This is absolute freaks. It's disgusting. I saw a video going around recently of these

grown adults, people older than you and I, like in this room, in this like Star Wars exhibit thing. And, you know, OK, like granted, if I was stoned and if I was just open minded and wasn't such a cynic, I could probably have fun with this. But it was like they were doing this like lightsaber like simulation thing. And, dude, they were creaming their pants. They were so fucking crazy about it. They're like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. It's just like when I was a kid.

Does Disney own Star Wars now? Is that? They do. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think that's right right I don't keep up on who owns what product anymore I just see things

it's like either Disney or Marvel that are good although I do I do want to see more of this though yeah I've heard it's pretty good I've heard that's not right to me it's got 17% I was like it. I saw it right today. It's got 17%.

I was like, hell yeah. I said, no, it's going to be awesome. Damn, dude. Definitely. Definitely. That dude sucks so bad. Leto? Yeah.

What are Leto's crimes? I always hear people like, Jared leto is a literal fucking predator and he keeps getting roles and it's like that's like like i don't know if there's like an actual crime he's ever been like i know he's like part of a sex cult or whatever which is right and he definitely needs to go to prison for starting 30 seconds to mars but uh i just i don't know if there's are you taking the contrarian stance on leto dog no i just like it's one of those things like i know this is a bad guy but i don't know exactly what he's accused of i say wow well if i it's not my job to educate you sir well i need okay all right

i'm gonna sit my sit my non-italian ass down and listen i don't know i think he like i think he has a sex cult and they hang out at a former military base i think that that's the thing in my head that i think of when i think so i mean so it's like every celeb has this right and i was trying to remember what mark twain's was a second ago obviously charles dickens is he cheated on his wife with a mistress in victorian england and it was a scandal uh so it's like, what is, yeah, I don't know what Leto's thing, but that is the thing that I think of when I think of him. Yeah. Starting the band Polyphonic Spree.

Was that him too? No, but they all dress like him. Oh. Did you ever get into that band? Huh. Damn, you missed out. Oh, is that that Christian band you band? Huh? Damn. You missed that. You missed that. Is that that Christian band?

A wonderful chapter in American pop music. Oh, yeah. They were really bad, dude. Yeah. There's a lot of guys that are like vaguely bad, but but sometimes I'm like, are you sure you're not mixing him up with James Franco in terms of like his crimes? Wow. So you don't think Frank?

Dude, I can do this. I'm not saying let us. Yeah, I'm just saying that sometimes in the in the sort of knee jerk reaction to point out everybody's bad. You just forget that. OK, maybe. And I don't know somebody's probably gonna chime in and say actually he's like a known rapist and pedophile whatever in which case i'll say okay then i whatever i'm just saying like some people just have the stink of having done wrong but they've

not committed a crime and you know or not been accused of a crime wow wow i see i see i mean i could see leto chatting up 17 year old fans on instagram when like 30 seconds to mars is coming through des moines iowa or something like that well i can see that so what you're what you are advocating for here is do i'm not advocating for anything first and foremost i i just want the dirt man just tell me what it is i bet you can't just say somebody's like a known predator like you gotta zero in on like what exactly was like the thing that makes him a predator i think franco was that he was teaching in school and using his like position to he was being a creepy prof, a creepy, a creepy professor. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, come on, dude. Like, yeah, I mean, so if everyone is, you know, of age and everything, everyone's consenting. I think that's fine. There are critiques to be made of it for sure. But but well, maybe it's not. No, I don't know. I guess not like you are in kind of a position of power over somebody. But at the same time, but if you're as beautiful as jared leto you're always going to be in a position there's always going to be an imbalance you know what i mean that motherfucker is a literal vampire he's like 60 and looks like he's 25 so are you saying that being hot

is inherently being a predator this is the line i wanted to walk you up to this whole time no i've just i was throwing that out there for fodder i think the whole thing is ridiculous and i'm there again i don't even care for jared love not defending anything i just i see like uh another jared leto movie and everybody's forgetting that he's a literal fucking predator and i'm like okay well then what was it that makes him that you know what i mean i just want to know point it out but i think a lot of the people that tweet shit like that have actually forgotten themselves the thing is dude the reason that we don't know what is that noise can you hear that

the reason that we don't know i think is because we never open the tweet and read into the thread me personally i don't i see through i see the thread and i'm like i gotta get out of here no yeah yeah yeah yeah doubly worse if they put the thread emoji in there yeah definitely damn i think my mic is fucked up. All right, we're good now, I think. But I had that moment when House of Gucci came out. I was like, man, how does this motherfucker keep getting rolls? And then I realized after I was throwing shade at him, I was like, actually, I don't even know if this man's done.

The sex cult's bad. Okay, let's just say that right up top. Are you talking about Adam Driver? That's no good. No, Jared Leto is Paolo Gucci. Yeah. talking about Adam Driver that's no good no Jared Leto is Paolo Gucci yeah well it's funny you mentioned that because I read a really great article this morning about challenging the dogmas and narratives that are dominant in culture right now do you want to read an essay about cancel culture how do you feel if we must i i mean i'll do it with you okay i think you're gonna like this one

i think it's what only if you're game if you're not game okay there's plenty of other you've you've tricked me into jared leto apology apology so that's what i was trying to do dude see i'm fucking i'm i'm manipulative like that dog i can i can like just move people around like a master chess man oh god damn just let's read i'm just i'm i can just i'm just i'm uh shrewd it's macavelian that really what it is. That's the first adjective comes to mind when I think about just Machiavellian. Yes. Come with me.

Oh, Mary. OK. All right. Let's try this article. But first, I'm going to switch this mic cord out and I'm going to go for. I remember the Alamo. No, I don't.

Just kidding, because it never happened. Man, oh, man. It is crazy how much I love beverages, you you're drinking fluids these days i'm just well you hydrated these days i've got the sparkling water i've got tea god damn son yeah still flat and tea dude this is why i need like a alex jones type situation i could just go all day man i just i could just sit at a desk all day with sparkling water put a catheter in you and just like let it roll yeah man this is my dedication to the craft all right i get really into it i would i want to like basketball player who's like that brings like a power rate,

a Gatorade. Yeah. Three or four different bottom and water. Right. But also maybe a coffee. Yeah. Just perk him up. There's no equivalent to me.

What I am to podcasting. There is no equivalent out there in the sports world i'm the only one who does it like me really i wish guys still smoke cigarettes in the locker room for athletic contests that would rule yeah oh yeah dude oh yeah don't say that much anymore it kind of went out with like the tight shorts you know yeah just walking out of the uh tunnel just like smoking just having a drag before you go out there and play 48 minutes yeah flaking it flaking it into fucking some shit fan yeah let's do this oh man

um all right dog i had i read something this morning that i thought my friend tom might like to read this on our program we have together on the program we do it again all right this is in the atlantic this is in you know i'm going back to an old trough um as a hunter gatherer you know you of content you go to the places that you know you're gonna find some good shit that's right baby and so i went to the ideas section in the atlantic they had a pretty good article and so let me just stay right out the gate uh i don't think this is an awful article i guess but the tone of it is so i don't i can't really pin down what it is but it is a very strange i mean obviously it's about kind of being a martyr so like I mean obviously it's about kind of being a martyr so like any time that you write an essay about how much of a martyr you are and I'm saying this from lived experience having

written essays about how much of a martyr I am and how bad it is for me I you know it's a hard line to walk it's hard to pull that off without signing and sounding inherently whiny. Right. Right. But this one kind of this one sort of fails to do that, which I thought was kind of surprising. Anyways, it's a lot of buildup. This is in the Atlantic. It's called The Things I'm Afraid to Write About.

Fear of professional single. It's not. I wish he is part of the milieu that I think that a lot of these writers come out of fear of professional exile has kept me from taking on certain topics what gets lost when a writer mutes herself by sarah hipola all right sarah what do we got all right one evening i sat on the brown leather couch of a younger man who admired me for my writing and maybe other things if these salty text messages were true salty salty i thought that was a kind of a strange thing too i was like maybe salacious might work better there but salty

salty seems like he's mad at you he's like being short with you right whatever i get what you're going for i get it sarah you're hot it's kind of a fumble right out the gate you kind of hate to see it oh fuck so i don't know just you know keep that in yeah i could see salty being shorthand for salacious like in 1968. And to be fair, it could be like an editing thing. Like maybe it just got past an editor and she was like just too shy to like send him like an email like, hey, you got this wrong. Because, you know, I'm I don't do that either. I'm like too shy to do that. But you just got to let it ride unless it's something really, really important, like the first sentence of an article, then you might have to.

He came from a different generation, but I was pleased to discover that he shared many of my unconventional opinions and favorite authors that taste and perspective weren't necessarily a matter of the year you were born. Joan Didion, Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens, though I had more reservations about that last one. Books were a common pleasure point, and I was eager to tell him about a literary party I'd recently attended in New York City before I'd once lived and often visited. Haven't we all had enough of the Verso loft

by now? Come on. Yeah, yeah. You're cool. We get it. You go cool. We get it. You go to literary parties. You go to cool literary parties. Okay. Where I'd once lived and often visited in the before times,

before times is capitalized. I kind of consider that like a hack thing. You know what I mean? Like, you know, I mean, it's fine, but it's kind of annoying. It's kind of just like a saying that like, would have i wouldn't have gone with it as an editor i would have pushed back a little bit on before times yeah before what christ what we're going for here right you covet may have been the single most traumatic thing in your life. But for me, I've 78 B.C. COVID wouldn't even raised any eyebrows in Judea. This was 2018, and the party was an informal gathering at the sumptuous Brooklyn Brownstone of a writer deemed problematic.

Even before that word went mainstream, the funniest goddamn thing about this article is, or the paragraph is that by the end of this paragraph, you will know exactly who she's talking about, but I can already tell you it's Junot Diaz. Close. Close. I was,

that was my guess, right? I thought this was kind of like a weird way to flex. Is Junot Diaz a cancel guy, cancel culture guy flex. Did you know Diaz is a cancel culture guy now? I don't think he's a cancel culture guy. I think he kind of got canceled for a bit. Cancel, yeah. For some advances or whatever.

This was 2018, and the party was an informal gathering at the sumptuous Brooklyn brownstone of a writer deemed problematic even before that word went mainstream. Okay, again, I take issue with that problematic mainstream charles charles dickens right her place was filled with hardback books and writers who had been invited because they danced on the precarious edge of what was considered appropriate like dude oh so this these are the bad these are the bad boys of the literary world they're hanging out just the edgiest motherfuckers alive these are the these are

the bad boys of the bad boys of letters of american letters right yeah um her place was filled with hardback books and writers who had been invited because they danced on the precarious edge of what was considered appropriate a new york times columnist who would eventually be publicly excommunicated like okay this is obvious obviously very wise correct it seems like it would be yeah i mean like i don't i can't really think of any new york times calling this in recent memory who have been what was that what was the dude there was that dude that was handsy at parties that kind of got the axe what was his name jonathan oh you know i'm talking about i thought yeah I thought that this wrote. This feels closer to Barry Weiss, though, deemed problematic.

Publicly excommunicated. Is what she said. She was publicly driven out of society. A letter. Driven out of society and right onto the Bill Maher program. Hmm. onto the Bill Maher program. A journalist who's delightfully combat of Twitter account.

I read regularly like an episodic novel. I didn't deserve to be there, or at least that's how I felt as guests exchanged war stories about the scolds on social media where I mostly posted upcoming appearances like a bot run by a PR firm. But in what? But in 2015, I'd written a memoir that introduced some controversial ideas about women and drinking, and I badly wanted to be a part of their rogue outfit,

even as I clung to the more doctrinaire one I'd long considered my own. I was so proud of this small private act of civil disobedience that I brought it home to Texas to show it to the younger man like a prized pelt. But the conversation didn't go as I'd planned. So now we break into a dialogue. So why were you there again? He asked. And like, this is kind of confusing to me. There's kind of like an error in continuity here. Like, I thought she was having this conversation at the party but apparently maybe she was on a

date later with this young guy who never comes back up in the novel or in this story by the way like it's just like a character but like it does come back once towards the end and so like you think that there's going to be some resolution to this part of the story but there's not sounds like he's getting ready to do do a classic blunder that's knock himself out some pussy by talking about christopher hitchens by talking about my my goat leaning too hard into his belief system that's just my prediction i don't know keep going so why were you there again he asked because i wanted to talk to other writers about the things you can't write about anymore his eyes narrowed what things can't you write about gender sex politics the things you and i

discuss he ran a hand through his hair i think think those were the most. I think those would be the most interesting things to write about. I gave him a mix. This is also this is also the problem with 23 year old dick, too, as somebody that once was a 23 year old dick and did things like this. You just think you're Joe Cool, man, and you're really dumb as shit. Right. I'm losing the amount of hair i can run my hand through and that's called wisdom so that's called wisdom yeah um i love i love that though that sentence right before that uh he his eyes narrowed what things can't you write about her gender sex politics the things you and i discuss like who talks like that oh we talk oh i think those are the most interesting just you were just imagining you or i doing that with our like fading hairlines yeah top of my head looks like somebody just drew lines

on it at this point and it's like me just doing this and they coming down the handful of like hairs that have left my scalp yeah running my hands through my hair it looked like somebody blew out of one of those goddamn,

you know what I'm talking about? Oh, my fucking God. She can see straight through, like, just the sheen of your scalp. Yeah. Oh, God, dude. Just a little hair loss humor. Just got to laugh through the pain. Yeah, yeah. Just got to laugh through the pain yeah just gotta laugh through the pain oh boy um yeah i think those would be the most interesting things to write about i gave him

an exasperated look are you kidding i'd get killed his look wasn't judgmental i'd say it was disappointed what he said was slow and careful and i've never forgotten it but i thought that's what writers do okay one right writers is a group and just anyway keep going dude you're right like uh uh the most self-serious like it's like you write a book and it ends up in the fucking bargain bin unless your name's fucking... You're like one of five people. You know what I mean? It's like, chill out.

Just writers as a group. Yeah. I thought that's what writers do. Yeah. You're shirking. I see what she's done now. She's what she's doing. She's preying on the younger man,

but the younger bookish guy, handsome guy that still thinks the pen's like a sword, you know? Dude, it is true. Like she met me at 22, presumably by her like bio in this. She's quite a bit older. I mean, I'm not hating, you know, I mean, me and you just discussed James Franco's activities like candidly and honestly for the audience to hear. And if you didn't like it, well, I'm sorry, but we did it nonetheless.

And why? Because we're writers and we tell the truth because we tell the truth. So, yes. So she's pointing out that she has a social responsibility here. Right. Her social responsibility is to tell the truth, to talk to not only that, to talk about the most controversial things, gender, sex and politics, those those famous things you could discuss at dinner. That have just slowly over the last 10 years become the only things that don't talk about. oh man um yeah i can remember a time in the 90s if you asked somebody who you voted for that was considered rude right um like me the younger man had fallen in love with art because it was the place where people told the truth i grew up let me just tell you about this younger man he isn't in love with art

he is in love with the aesthetic of the man of letters and he's trying to get some pussy just make it from experience bottom line reading sucks well she like lets it slip earlier that this is a tender date and so it's just like very much it's even more obvious and maybe that's what she was going for i guess i don't know maybe maybe that went over my head maybe i am such a puritan that i was like well oh man but i don't know it was just like imagine uh being a young woman getting on tinder and landing a date with like fucking dean coons or i don't know james patterson one of those guys that just like writes a book a week you know right and then winding up in an article uh like me the younger

man had fallen in love with art the art because it was the place that people told the truth i grew up reading edgar allen poe poe sorry edgar allen poe alcoholic married his 13 year old cousin dancing to james brown domestic abuse alleged rape watching woody allen movies is woody allen like these are asides after each one man damn. Damn, that was brutal. Even doing it out loud was really hard for me to do. Artists were the weirdos and the scoundrels, the square pegs who never fit the round hole of society.

And the result was typically a bucket of addictions, perversions and bizarre predilections born of life on the outskirts. But my cohort and I had grown up wanting it both ways. A safe career and an artistic one. We wanted the premium scotch

and the bragging rights of being an outsider. This is good shit, dude. You have to understand that when I read this article this morning, I savored every drop of it. Like you didn't want it to end, so you just read it real slow. I know. I read it slow. I savored every drop like you didn't want it to end so you just read it real slow i know i read it slow i say for every content it's so bad and it's like such a sort of exhibition or look on to the

interior life of someone and they have no idea that they've just kind of like you know what i'm saying like you're kind of embarrassed for them. Like, damn, like an editor lets you. Oh, fuck. So you don't know this. Somebody did you a disservice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I carved out a journalism career doing an era when that was not so hard to do.

My friends and I at the Altern paper in austin texas the austin chronicle by the way which is like i used to live in austin it's a pretty ubiquitous thing in austin but like i don't know like i didn't really read the politics parts like i guess they could have been all over the place politically over those years i thought they were just like liberal um my friends and i at the old paper in austin texas sat around long communal tables at dive bars arguing about pop culture trying to one up one another with off-color jokes as we downed pint after pint when i could quit okay i have to note before i go on that earlier she mentioned she had written a controversial book about women and

drinking. Did you hear me say that earlier? Yeah. I don't know what is in this book, but she refers to it multiple times as this controversial thing that stirred up controversy. Her book about women drinking?

I guess so. It it's called are you there god it's me chelsea hanley um blackout it's called blackout remembering the things i drank to forget and i don't know man maybe it's kind of like uh for sarah hipola alcohol was the gasoline of all adventure it's like it's about getting sober but i think it's about maybe about like the kind of brock turner stuff remember that the swimmer rapist yeah and then like the brett kavanaugh stuff too but you know what i'm talking about like like it was kind of like it was kind of like this conservative line that like well if if they didn't want this to happen women shouldn't get blackout drunk or something like that you remember you remember that when they were like saying that stuff around like

the right right yeah like in the yeah the Kavanaugh here right right right right I think it was it may have been playing off that like discourse a little bit yeah know what i'm saying yeah all right um so anyways uh when i quit drinking 2010 bringing to an end a dark history of blackouts and tumbles down staircases i thought i might lose my writing career it's kind of mind-boggling to contemplate that not pouring a beer on a stranger's head would be the bad career move but such was the fierce community forged by booze that I feared exile. Instead, my writing grew better, stronger, more clear-headed, and the writing community changed. Fewer open bars, more closed DMs. But admitting what I really thought, what I really

believed about these complicated issues, I feared a similar exile. As jobs in this industry diminished, issues i feared a similar exile as jobs in this industry diminished journalism had become even more cutthroat writers gathered around the long communal table on of twitter and some days it felt like the last scene of reservoir dogs everyone turning their guns on one another i'd spent the past wow wow thanks maybe i hadn't seen reservoir dogs i Dogs. I'd spend the fast. I'll allow it. I'll allow it just because it's such a widely. It's a reference that everyone's going to know. And I guess if that's the audience you're shooting for. But it goes back to the use of before times earlier.

I don't know. Can't have it both ways. I spent the past five years or so watching celebrities, pundits, friends, and internet randos fall from grace for reasons as varied as sharing dumb jokes, making clumsy writing errors, accidentally showing their dong. What? Yeah.

Like Anthony Weiner slipped on a banana peel and showed his dick to a teenager. And someone with a dong, it's generally pretty easy to keep it contained and i guess unless you've got the particular you got mine if you've got the one with the hole on the bottom i mean that might be the one instance where that guy's so inconvenienced it might it might just have to be you know it might require a little extra maintenance. That's all right. Hey, listen, and that's all right.

Don't apologize for it. Accidentally showing their dong and expressing controversial, though often widely held opinions in the public execution chambers of social media. The problem. OK, there's a few things. You have an inflated sense of what exactly twitter is okay exactly it's not a public execution chamber exactly and like this is the thing that they can never thread this this article is a prime example in this central contradiction like if cancer if cancel culture is real then it means cancer culture i'd say that's pretty well established this point cancer culture is real and at this point

it's doing pretty good um but no there's like this disconnect between the fact that like as she just said here accidentally showing their dong and expressing controversial, though often widely held opinions in the public execution chambers of social media. Like they're always saying that, like average everyday people actually hold these views. This is the way the average everyday people talk. The elitist are the ones who are imposing woke culture on that. Or, you know what I'm saying? But like when it's actually the exact opposite yeah when you're going to uh parties with the bad boys of bad boys and girls of american letters maybe it's you that's not you know sharing like the

normal sort of takes and opinions and stuff right right right that's a that's the thing like they kind of always claim to be like the tribune of what people really think you know what i mean like a tribune of the plebs culturally like oh people really think this but it's just like okay a nobody knows who you are but b the only re the only yeah that's right one you haven't inflated sense of self that's number one right but b i feel like every time a writer writes one of these articles and i've seen it happen to many people many writers who were gen x writers over the last like writers who were popular when we were like in high school and in the year in college you know i mean like taibbi and greenwald and all these others like every time they write an article like this like a screed it means it's like a it's like a layer of detritus or something like in the rock layer or you know

what i mean like you can see where they've aged out of a certain audience you know what i'm saying like they've become disillusioned and they can't keep up any longer with the social media and the discourse and everything so yes it's it's the classic meme of what's his name on Simpsons. Like, oh, surely it's the kids who are wrong. Right. Well, that's the thing that kills me about, like, oh, the public execution chambers that are Twitter and social media or whatever. The thing is, like, everybody else is an asshole,

but one thing that's never taken the task is your own impulse control. Right. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, you can't say anything anymore. Well, it's not that. It's just that people can feel they want to. Exactly. Exactly.

Like, if you want to say anything, fine. And that's the way it actually already is. It's like the New York Times editorial board wrote, you know, like they wrote like an editorial a couple of weeks ago about like how. Like free speech should mean that you should be able to say anything without consequence. It's just like, OK, you already can, basically. But to the extent that that's completely warped and absurd, like, no, I mean, yeah, you should. The state should not repress you from saying anything nor should corporations or anything like that but at the

same time if you want to say something that you think is going to piss off a lot of people if you want to play fast and loose like we've done if you want to breathe be brave truth tellers you just got to go for it shoot from the hip you just gotta go for it in consequences fall where they may i face consequences for things i've seen no yeah we all have battles i mean i mean honestly that's the thing it's just like yeah like we all if you actually honestly want to engage with something then you will uh go through that process i mean like if you're an honest writer operating in good faith obvious the only people I don't engage with are the people that start sentences with yaks. And as a insert or the people who start sentences with,

I mean that. Yeah. Anything you're getting after. I mean, it's not, there's a lot of, there's a lot of preambles to takes that I just don't engage with. And those are like the three biggies.

So anyways, I spent the past five years or so watching celebrities, pundits, friends, and internet randos fall from grace for reasons as varied as sharing dumb jokes, making clumsy writing errors, blah, blah, blah. There had been more grievous allegations, of course, rape, pedophilia, physical abuse. But so many of these spectacles could be grouped under a more mundane heading. You can call it cancel culture. You can call it justice. All I know is that I hated it for five years. I kept very quiet about it. Everyone kept quiet, save for the brave few who did not.

My writer friends and i huddled backstage at panels in green rooms filled with chocolate chip cookies and veggie platters whispering her barry weiss jordan peterson just a veritable who's who you know of the weary of the cancel culture thing and they're just like getting in huddles that one two three break like has it never occurred to her that these people all hang out together because they all share similar views it's not because they're all like brave truth tellers and they've all been cordoned off like that by society like people just gravitate to each other when they have similar views um yeah yeah just the image of them huddled backstage with chocolate just the details too man just like

the little details like chocolate chip cookies and veggie platters like that youth that you know what i mean like you know we're put in there to make it seem more riderly and more like i'm a fucking badass whispering about everything we couldn't say out there in the scary beyond during the resistance movement of 2016 a friend's book about feminism got dropped in part because her feminism wasn't the right kind for the trump era it is very wise surely yeah in the pandemic madness of 2021 a journalist friend who enjoyed sounding off on science and homeopathy decided to stay the hell away from covid like oh right that that's not punishment it's just like deciding not to talk about something because you haven't fully formed your opinion on it yeah i don't know i understand

kind of the outrage just having a show where you have to like go out there and have an opinion on things um but i mean i think most people are generally pretty patient and just pretty understanding like yeah day to day week to week like your idea on something it changes a lot probably based on our own upbringings and experiences but like sitting down to write about something like writing is a very intense creative act it takes a lot of concentration you know what i'm saying like it is something if you want like i said earlier you want to be like good and take it in good faith and like honest like you'll spend months and months on it uh so it's like you know if you feel like a certain way about a controversial thing and you

go and you spend months and months trying to flesh out that idea and write about it like you should be subjected to some pretty like severe criticism or at least intense criticism yeah it's like do you really want to like what are you asking for right right i mean are you asking are you just asking for everybody to just take your arguments whole cloth without any criticism do you think people are being unjustly mean like what is it like right it's all incoherent yeah like it is with all these like barry weiss and jordan peterson and all of them. It's all incoherent all the time. Right. All around me, people were folding. Not that project, not that story, not that controversy.

Oh, boy. The people falling like flies. The reasons were simple, at least for me. Careerism, fear, a nagging sense that I did not know enough about any given controversy to weigh in publicly, though that never stopped so many.

Yeah. Jordan Peterson's not sold any books. Amazing. Joe Rogan. It's as funny as it is under scrutiny. It doesn't hold like all the cancel culture. Joe Rogan has the number one podcast in America. Jordan Peterson's New York Times bestseller.

Right, right, right, right. All these people are killing it. At a certain point, you just might have to face fact. You might not be. You might not have the appeal that you think you should. Well, I mean, in a certain sense, they're all kind of bemoaning the loss of like. A consensus reality where people have to debate the same things and ideas, and you kind of see this with the Florida and Disney thing. Right. Like they want an entirely different experience.

But at the same time, I don't think they do because they really like triggering the libs too a lot of them have that impulse where they need to know that they've triggered the libs so they would be very very bored and unsatisfied if they really did live in the world that they want yeah yeah that's true ultimately but she said she's a liberal i mean this is an interesting obviously this is a interesting case because she says she's a liberal. But I don't know. Maybe these I feel like that is another kind of trick that a lot of these people resort to. Like I was I was a liberal. You made me do this. I was a liberal until you made me not be. You brought me to this.

You brought me to this. I've abandoned everything that I say I believe in. Because you were a little bit mean to me on a platform one day. Right, right. Back in 2015, I was putting out my first book, and then I was promoting that book, and then I was struggling to write a second book, and I could not risk the personal and professional blowback that might accompany stepping into the wrong lane.

I'd long considered myself a liberal and a feminist but i'd grown terrified of being banished for views i considered reasonable or at least worth disgusting i couldn't i couldn't i couldn't face the professional blowback that that jd vance suffered from i couldn't i couldn't face the professional blowback that caused J.D. Vance's book to be a horrible failure. He worked so hard on it. It's just like if you want to write about these things, then fucking write about them. OK, a no one is stopping you. But B, you have to understand that they are.

Like controversial or whatever, for a reason, we live in a capitalist society that just erodes you know all culture and sense of decency anyways on a daily basis so i mean i don't know you just i don't know um let's see every day i scrolled the endless river of outrage in all caps watching people express similar views to mine only to be pounced upon once celebrity once celebrated writers were being published i'm sorry once celebrated writers were being publicly rebranded as ghoulish pieces of trash red-pilled the unwritten rule of the elite media tribe seemed to be this you spout the company line or you shut up And that's why midway through a career built on speaking out, I shut up. A writer's life is financially precarious.

A single woman's life also precarious. There were the pressing matters of rent, exorbitant insurance, and the occasional glitter hills. I simply could not gamble with my future. I'm not going to die in that ditch today, I often said to a like-minded friend when we spoke about these scandals, which was daily, both of us getting into a lather because the topics were so rich consent completely but also like a lot of that stuff is like why would you even want to weigh in you know like a lot of the cancelable stuff like i get like i get a lot of the sex stuff because that's like different you know what i mean like you're saying consent and all those sorts of things that's different but there's also some topics that people will just like float out

there that's like it wouldn't make any difference one way or the other what you think about this and you voluntarily just what it is a lot of people like this have a contrarian streak that they just they they just get like a little dopamine hit from that contrarian streak that they just they they just get like a little dopamine hit from that contrarian streak because i've been that way before yeah it's like at a certain point it's like you're right you know what i mean that's what it is ultimately they like the little either i have something to teach people or like you know what i mean that's what it is it comes from a sense of superiority dude you're right you are absolutely right 1000 oh my god i used to be like that like hell i'm still like that i might i mean we both have that choices in the group chat

all the time all the time we both have that streak for sure i mean i think everybody does to a certain extent well not everybody but maybe this is why I was defending lead earlier. It was a, what do you call it? Yeah, it was kind of like an ODD thing. You kind of have like oppositional defiant disorder a little bit. You're like, well, no, it was what do you call it when you're not a canard? A charlatan? No, not a straw man.

I don't know. Red herring? No. Not Straw Man. I don't know. Red Herring? No, I forget what it was. But I said the Leno stuff to set up this point, so I'll say. Yeah, consent, complicity, moral trespass, power dynamics. This was the stuff of doorstop novels, and yet people were working it out in 280 characters dashed off in line at Trader Joe's.

Privately, I was wrong. Her career must be in the toilet if she's like, you know, like doing that. Oh, liberal shop at Trader Joe's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. of like doing that like oh liberals shop at trader joe's yeah yeah yeah yeah um i mean again like okay so the the thing is i guess the primary difference between me and this writer is that like i agree there are some things in society at this point that like you can't i'll tell you the primary difference is you won't sit your white ass down and listen she will or maybe that's what you both have in common you both won't sit your asses that's true we would not take several seats all right definitely not but like i don't i mean it's

just like you're not going to convince anyone of anything anyways and that's the thing about like talking about these controversial ideas or whatever it's like if you want to write an impassioned essay about it write an impassioned essay about you want to write an impassioned essay about it, write an impassioned essay about it. Don't write an impassioned essay about how you can't write about it. Because like, again, it's just more whining. And if you're going to. And it's also cowardly because it's like you really want to say all these things, but it has to be through the lens of, well,

I can't talk about these things. So this is like how I'm going to talk about them without talking about. And again, as someone who has written articles, I do understand the frustration of writing something and being tired of taken out of context or being taken in bad faith or being, you know, quoted out of context or whatever. But but if you are being honest with it, you won't have any. You'll be able to look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and said,

like, at least I engage with it honestly. Like I wasn't out to hurt anybody or make society worse or anything but blah blah like um but i mean but don't write an attached essay about not being able to do that because again no one is stopping you and apparently the they're paying pretty well for those types of essays these days so right i mean obviously like i mean this essay in and of itself is kind of a symptom of what she's talking about how like everyone just has vapid conversations now and nothing is like blah blah blah it's just like yeah that is i guess true when we're having conversations about how you can't talk about things rather than just having conversations stupid ass meta conversations about how you can't talk about things rather than just having conversations about stupid ass meta conversations about what you can and can't say exactly yeah it is boring yeah you're right but like just taking those conversations and putting them in essay form

is not any better um blah blah blah um yeah probably i worried i was wrong that was another reason for the science silence perhaps i had internalized my own misogyny whatever that means perhaps my thinking steeped in the classic liberalism of 90s slacker culture was unevolved one of the great mistakes of our moment is being deemed on the wrong side of history but has anyone read ahead in the book so they know how future generations will see this stuff i don't that's a great question sarah i would hope that people in the future aren't nazis really that's not the case holding out hope that they just uh they do they just let that go um uh so, they can. Can they please tell me so I can choose my stance accordingly?

Gender, sex, morality, everything is guesswork. I grew up in a conservative part of that. That's the thing. It's just like all these writers, like even Joan Didion and stuff like some writers did engage with these questions seriously. And like you go back and read some of your stuff, you know, like, oh, well, you know, whatever. But like they have a larger body of work. I mean, like, yes, like some writers I do enjoy. You go back and read their stuff and you're like, OK, these are some pretty retrograde views on gender and stuff.

But like there were also parts of the human condition that these books were trying to address. You know, it's like as adults, i think most people should be able to say well we're not gonna throw out the entire thing but everything i don't know it's just i don't know i guess social media thinks media makes people think i guess that everything is so high stakes like yeah i don't know um then she talks a little bit about herself growing up in conservative Dallas in the 80s. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I understand such moral panics to be the product of generational hand-wringing and the religious right, which was then gaining ground. She's talking about like the censor campaigns of Tipper Gore and shit. And so it came as an unwelcome surprise to watch

the intolerance that my liberal friends once decried on the censorious right fled to our side of the street. Public scolding, all caps, hyperbole, a stubborn refusal to understand another point of view. Intolerance. OK, chill out, sir. Here's why I say that. They're currently waging a war on Disney. And it ain't the form the formerly censorious republican shut the fuck up it's just like but her central kind of like the the opening image

to this article it's sad man again it kind of shows you that it's like it provides a window on her interior life a little bit because this goes to show you that she doesn't have any real meaningful or compelling conversations in real life. You know what I'm saying? That like she's got these very like surface level vapid conversations with people she meets on Tinder. And then she like gets online and sees people typing in all caps and stuff. You know, a problem with the problem with all of this is loneliness. Yeah, dude. I mean, a problem with the problem with all of this is loneliness. Yeah, dude. I mean, that's enough.

That's the thing. It's the road. It's the erosion of like actual in-person community, not like online community. Like, I'm sorry. Like the actual. No, dude. The thing is, is like if I'm sitting in a room with someone who's saying something that I disagree with, I generally have to make a mental calculus and say like all right i'm outnumbered here like 10 to 1 i'm not trying to get my ass kicked tonight so generally that's at the basis

of most of my decisions am i gonna get my ass particularly in the south where you have to make your calculation every time somebody makes a racist joke you're like oh god damn everybody's had that moment you know it's like hi what do you do here I mean but no but seriously like you just show that you disagree you don't laugh and you walk away it's not I mean you know what I mean it's just like it's not like the

right yeah it's like it makes you because it's like you don't you want to do what's right but you also don't want to look like judgy or whatever like that but it's like you ultimately just do the right thing you just keep moving but like when there's no real in-person community and most of your meaningful conversations around these topics happen with strangers online or people that you recently met you know vis-a-vis dating apps or whatever like it can feel that way so it's like the central problem of cancel culture is not that anybody wants to censor anybody it's just the community has eroded

and you can't talk honestly in real life with people where nuance tends to get through there and all these different things yeah yeah yeah you just have to do it online where there's a high probability of being misunderstood or whatever and then you have to be indignant that people are mad that you said that well we should have nazis in the future so we need baddies in the future right right right right right right yeah um from 2015 to 2021 my private conversations were some of the best i've ever had i love that sentence dude dude. I'm telling you, that went down like the cherry. What did she say? She said from 2015 to 2021, my private conversations were some of the best I've ever had.

It's like, OK, did you lose a friend in 2021? Like, why are they suddenly bad? Who says something like that? That is just a weird sentence. Like. I don't know. I guess someone that's like in the dating pool. Okay, I'll admit, you know, I've not had to date in a while.

So it's probably pretty rough out there. Maybe that's partially what she's talking about. She did begin this with like a Tinder thing, right? Right, right. Dude, maybe it's just. I also, I don't what didn't mean to cast aspersions at like online dating or anything or even this particular person's dating life or anything like that it's just that i i feel like she's upset at like a like a thing that's kind of uh a condition of society now and that like you know things just don't really happen organically

in real life much in the same way anymore for a lot of people who have like sort of you know and all of us you know have to some degree outsourced our social to the internet or whatever right yeah you're right um taboo subjects have always been delectable but suddenly we were living in a time when so much that was once considered fair game for discussion, education, biological differences, the benefits of policing had become dangerous phone dates with writer friends and other parts of the country stretched to two and three hours. As we worked out essays,

we would never write toggling between outrage, despair, and armchair cultural analysis of the latest dust up. Louis CK and Al Franken became Andrew Cuomo and Dave Chappelle. Okay. despair and armchair cultural analysis of the latest dust up louis ck and al franken became andrew cuomo and dave chappelle okay there's a big difference between louis ck and dave sounds like y'all just gossip about pop culture yeah no seriously i hadn't also yeah yeah also uh dave chappelle didn't yeah there's there's a big difference between saying something in bed and doing something bad. Right. I hadn't gossiped so enthusiastically since middle school.

The Me Too movement, which felt like a necessary corrective when it began, was starting to feel like an arrow pointed at her own agency. Couldn't always tell the difference between activism and protectivism, valid critique and frivolous complaint. The notion that men were the ones who needed to change, not a bad idea, in my opinion, had a stubborn way of relinquishing women from the burden of their own choices and behavior. And though the area of expertise I'd staked out as a writer was the complications of women's independence and the nuances of sex, and my

own personal brand was blunt honesty. Oh my God. The worst... know what i i there's nothing i hate worse than when people say i'm a blunt person i'm fucking blunt as shit i'm just blunt like i'll just listen i don't it's like okay cool that's i don't think that's what you think it is i could not bring myself to say one word one about these episodes in public what was i a rape apologist a bigot some kind of moral monster i mean it's like the blunt honesty thing it's like you you should be honest with people if it really matters so you know what i mean if you love them and they love you back and you're dedicated to improving each other's lives, you should be honest.

But like as a like a brand, it just means you're racist. I'm honest. I guess I mean, I don't know. Maybe that's why I held so fast to the younger man I'd met on Tinder. Of all places early in our correspondence, he expressed great affection for Jonathan Franzen. It's a shame the Internet hates him. I messaged. Oh, wait, this isn't even.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. She said I messaged. Oh, no. OK, so she said early on in our correspondence. My bad. our correspondence my bad that was my bad i missed that um the internet hates franzen he said he was not an online creature despite being 29 but again the little details yeah online creature uh he worked in a factory with his hands okay he did not work in a factory with his hands. OK, he did not work in a factory with his hands.

Well, has the this guy doesn't exist. I'm sorry. This is sad. This is really sad. This is in the Atlantic, though. And so I'm going to make fun of it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

If women wanted. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Well, has the Internet read the corrections? That's what he said. He wait well has the internet read the corrections that's what he said he said has the internet read the corrections i was charmed and would continue to this is not real this is this is exceedingly sad now dude it's depressing uh but once again if you're an editor at the atl the blood is on your hands, my friend. I was in a hipster bar and overheard. That's what it reads.

It really does have that vibe to it. You're right. I was charmed and would continue to be the younger man. And I could talk in an antic way. I'd come to find quite valuable. Was the gender gap? Was the gender wage gap a myth? What was trauma?

Really? What the fuck? What was trauma? Really? What the fuck? What was trauma? Really? It's kind of like the Supreme Court definition of porn. If you've had it, you know, you know what it is. If women wanted equality in the bedroom, why did so many confess to being turned on by domination and rough sex? Whoa.

I was not writing much about this stuff, except in the journals where I always stowed my secrets. Every once in a while, I'd get a head of steam about some scandal, and I'd start a big swing essay only to bench myself a few days later. The whole thing kind of has this like little bit. It has kind of has like this like sort of sexual sort of like tone to it, too. You know what I'm saying? I'd start a big swing essay only to bench myself a few days later.

It kind of has like a Harlequin romance novel kind of vibe to it. Yeah. I kind of respect that. Not going to die in that ditch today. That's italicized. A couple of years ago, I was asked to conduct an interview at the Texas Book Festival with Malcolm Gladwell. He had a book coming out, Talking to Strangers, which included a well-researched chapter on alcohol and blackouts in the context of a college scandal. I knew better than most, having met some of the people involved with the case, often called the Stanford rape.

having met some of the people involved with the case often called the stanford rape although the ghastly episode was under california law at the time considered a sexual assault and not a rape it became famous after the young woman at the center wrote a blistering victim's statement that was published on buzzfeed and went supernova she eventually identified herself as chanel miller but at the time of the statement's publication, it was anonymous and identified only the other key figure, a swimmer named Brock Turner, whose ubiquitous mugshot helped turn him into the poster child for every smug athlete, every

entitled deuce bag. So you remember this, right? Like, I feel like it kind of faded pretty quickly. Well, this was like 10 fucking years ago now that I think about it. Yeah, he got a slap on the wrist for it and nothing really ever ended up happening to him. Right, right. And I don't know the particulars of this case,

but what's funny about it is Malcolm Gladwell's role in this. Miller's account is searing. She writes of waking up in a hospital with no idea how she got there and only a handful of clues, a grim scenario that is nonetheless a familiar one for blackout drinkers like me. And then she added here, I have no reason to suspect that Chanel Miller is a chronic blackout drinker, but my research taught me that blackout drinking can be chronic in college environment. It's just like, fuck you, dude. Just like, fuck you. It's just like, I mean,

it's kind of insinuating that she it's it's this it's this mealy mouth kind of like cowardly way of sort of throwing some doubt and kind of making her look like an unreliable sort of narrator. Right. But at the same time, giving credit to what she's saying, it's completely fucking cowardly. It's just like what it's just okay and i knew blackouts so intimately that i literally wrote the book okay uh yeah i mean it's just anyways it sympathized deeply with miller my book opens with an episode in paris where i came out of a blackout in the

middle of having sex with man i did not recognize that shook me blackouts might be the freakiest neurological occurrence that also happens to be casually category categorized as another Friday night. Let's get blackout has been a college rallying cry for many years, but the social, immoral and criminal consequences can be grave. Okay. So the thing about this issue is like, yes,

it is a kill somebody while she was blackout. And it was like, this is her like, I've just been like, no, listen, things things can you know what i mean yeah no it is a serious issue i think it is a bad oh yeah totally so many people drink not a lot of people have a healthy relationship to alcohol that drink particularly when you're that around that age right and like doing it in a group of other men as a company as a you're right as a as a sort of like you know societal ritual thing like i think that that's going to lead to some bad stuff

but at the same time there's also like norms that people take into those settings and that they operate on and some of those norms are very bad and And I've just, you know, that's just a part of society that, you know, I think you should be able to critique all the various parts of it. You know what I mean? Like, I don't understand why it has to be like. I don't know, it's just like kind of like moving the ball a little bit, you know what I mean? Or so like moving the goalposts a little bit.

I sympathize deeply with Miller. My book, I already read that. Miller's victim's statement evokes the confusion, the shame, the soul trespass of this harrowing moment. If you've never experienced a blackout, it might be hard to understand the icy wrongness of waking up to find a blank space, where three hours should be.

Again, agree, blah, blah, blah. But the unsavory truth is that as someone who has done very stupid things while drinking i also sympathized with brock turner what the unsavory truth is that i sympathize with many of these men johnny depp ryan adams brett kavanaugh every boo boo so dumbass who has been accused of doing or saying things he may or not remember. I do it. It's just like, OK, the Kavanaugh thing is like, OK, again, like the like all he had to do was say, yes, I did this as a young man doing this thing. This is bad. Society should you know, we should address this as a societal phenomenon. And like I apologize deeply for hurting and you know, we should address this as a societal phenomenon. Like, I apologize deeply for hurting.

And you know, he did not do that. Right. That's the thing. Like, but like, this is the thing that all these writers do with this specific axe to grind. They all lump to the same. They all look like people with wildly different things into the same category. It's like, see what's happening to them. Like, and that really gives a pass like imagine if you're someone like cavanaugh or like robin polanski or someone

and you're and you're like oh yeah yeah yeah yeah uh brett dave chappelle he's he's bad too i'm just like it gives i mean it lets you off the hook you know what i mean it's fucked up imagine robin polanski and dave chappelleade he's bad too anyways just carrying water for assholes I mean yeah no I mean like there is nuance for sure like um every yeah anyways

but being sympathetic to these fallen creatures a trait instilled by literature my mother and Oprah had been declared a sin I toyed with the idea of writing a book about Brock Turner maybe it would get me into the New Yorker but I was Yeah, for somebody whose mantra has been, I'm not dying in that ditch, you're picking just a dumb ditch. The dumbest possible ditch. Well, now it's kind of like you kind of are dying in the ditch. I mean,

you kind of just gave away the ball game. These people are so dumb. Just write the fucking essay about Brock Turner. You know what I mean? This is like snitching on yourself. Like, come on, dude. Yeah. I think you can sympathize

with yourself and others that might have a problem drinking or whatever and certainly uh yeah i've done said dumb things drinking all that kind of stuff but like just because you did something you might not otherwise do while you're under the influence does not mean that you did not play a role in like hurting somebody else you know what i mean right right absolutely in some cases irreparably right yeah yeah i mean humanity is a very complex thing like you can hurt people deeply and badly and spend the rest of your life trying to atone for that but also you know what i mean like work i don't know this there's things there's obviously there are there's nuance humanity is very complicated but

um it seems like for the job brett kavanaugh was being hired for he just could have been a little more fucking honest right right and not saying this weird hissy fit and again i don't even care i don't use the fucking supreme court fuck it all it's all gonna it's all burning anyway yeah but it's just like if you're gonna fucking die on the hill just be honest um ours was not a moment to explore the other side the fast-typing egalitarians of the internet age wanted social change. Vengeance, a megaphone for their righteous anger. Going against the online outrage machine could be a career sign.

Okay, so anyways, I went through all that just to get back to the Gladwell. So I was relieved that someone of Gladwell's stature had broached the topic. He would take the hits. Like, okay, Malcolm Gladwell. would take the hits like okay man i'm glad well like one of the most successful popular media writers podcasters like media makers of all time it's just like okay so like so so you can say things to an audience that's the that's the brave truth taylor the guy that sold more books than anybody else in the world right it's just it's so yeah that's that's you cannot in the same breath say i would not be silent about my controversial take about like bad men because i was worried about the social consequences and then just like point out that you're in

the same club as a veritable who's who of the biggest selling media figures on the planet right yeah she said the reviews were mixed but the hits didn't really come maybe because by the time the book came out during the cresting wave of black lives matter the culture had is this is this her trying to reckon with why her book didn't do shit maybe it could be it could be or another theory i had is she trying to gin up some like paperback sales or something like maybe another theory i had was that she had a friend who in their private dm they said all kinds of fucking crazy shit to each other and like and now she's worried it could be subpoenaed or yeah and they had a falling out story yeah she read the bad art friend story yeah she's like well i gotta get in front of this in

case somebody turncoats me but it's like in those situations it's like it's like mutual destruction right yeah yeah somebody's not going to dime you out if they're just as cold well um or or she had a falling out with that friend i don't know because she said my my private conversations between 2015 and 2021 it's like yeah it's like she had it stored away with like a little label on it like My God, I don't get the spicy stuff. She's got the little emoji with the the fuego sweat drip running down. Or maybe because nobody felt

like tingling with Malcolm Gladwell. See, he skillfully reframed a rape culture narrative as a tragic misunderstanding fueled by the distortion of boots. I mean, again, I mean, I know we've talked about this on the show, like society is a very complex thing, but I think it's pretty indisputable that there is a kind of like normative patriarchal culture that I kind of feel like incentivizes and

encourages predator type behavior right like that's i feel like that's just part so i mean well you see i mean you see like you can also kind of tell something with her frame of reference to how prior to 2015 probably when we were in college like that type of sort of like drinking to excess and like the blurry lines of consent and those things was called hookup culture afterwards it's called rape culture yeah yeah like when and it's not that like somebody just woke up one day and had a oh wow well maybe this isn't totally consensual it was never okay but like more people were talking about like the dimensions of consent and all those kinds of things and bringing it to the public consciousness more so it's like that's funny that she lays that out because that's about the same

timeline i would say yeah a lot of young people were done a disservice like with the promotion of hookup culture even in like our media products and everything else and then one day you it's like you know you get further along and it's like well actually um you know there's like some a lot of issues with consent with all that stuff too yeah it's um but that's the weird thing about this article. It kind of feels like it was written like five or six years ago, too. I mean, so I don't know who is truly the the ass here. Me for reading it. I mean, I share some of that blame. I'll take some of that on.

Yeah, Oprah had him on to talk about the book, and exactly two weeks later, she sat down with Chanel Miller, whose own memoir, Know My Name, had become a sensation. Oprah managed deep conversations with each of them, never pointing out that one account brushed uncomfortably against the other. I had to imagine that Oprah, queen of empathy, was having a hell of a time in this day and age. Backstage at the Texas Book Festival event, I chatted with Gladwell. I'm dying to talk about the Brock Turner incident. Imagine coming up, just telling someone that in a conversation, man,

I am dying to get, man. I'm just like chomping at the bit to get out there. Put me out there coach, like going to Malcolm Gladwell. Y'all put me out there coach. I'm dying to talk about the Brock Turner situation. Yeah. Oh man. to Malcolm Gladwell. Y'all put me out there, coach. I'm dying to talk about the Brock Turner situation.

Yeah. Oh, man. I have a million things to say, but we'll talk about it after the event. Let's talk about it out there, he said, gesturing to the quarter that led him to a packed audience. And I gave him that look,

the same look I'd given the younger man who asked why I didn't write about these things. Oh, I can't, I said. And it's hard to read Malcolm Gladwell, but his body language expressed something like, then what are we doing here? Perhaps he was disappointed in me or in an environment where writers save the best and

juiciest controversies for private conversations. I just thought this was how it was done. We said one thing in public and backstage, we said what we really thought. Also, I fantasized about having lunch with him and then later being able to say that Malcolm Gladwell and I were friends fuck what the fuck was that

that is a bizarre I didn't even notice it the first time that was like it was tasty nice little treat but there would be no lunch after the show we had a wonderful onstage conversation because gladwell is one of those wind-up toys of public speaking who go wow any crowd it's just this article has just become about how cool mal does how much of a pimp just a player he is he just got his audience eating out of the palm of his hand.

Oh, my God. Outside on the sidewalk, he thanked me politely and sauntered off in the other direction, and I was left wondering why, indeed, we do these things. The selfie with Malcolm Gladwell I posted to Instagram did get a ton of likes, though. In the two years since, I have tried to drum up the courage to be someone different

from the writer I had become. I just need to point out everybody this is in the pages of i think what is what isn't the atlantic like the oldest magazine in america i think yeah that are harpers but they're both like extremely old like almost 200 years old right this rules this is awesome somebody you think somebody that's like cotton mather's nephew was like pontificating about these things back in like the early days of colonies i don't know man but um yeah this rules definitely i don't know yeah were they right the atlantic was started as an abolitionist magazine i'm pretty sure so actually the atlantic well i think it was probably more like a kind of liberal abolitionist one i don't think they were like um you know i don't think that they were i don't know theodore

stevens types guys or whatever yeah in the two years since i've tried to drum up the courage to be someone different from the writer i'd become but the world kept exploding and i was only retreated further into my hidey hole i listened to podcasts on which controversial figures interviewed controversial guests engaging in those delicious conversations i held so dear i would dump the kitchen table yes exactly or i would pause the recording to offer i would thump the kitchen table at the joe rogan program dad this is sad this person needs a friend i feel bad now or i would pause the recording to offer my own opposing view like i was part of this conversation and not the passive listener dog okay i gotta stop that's yeah that might be the point i have to tap out dude i'm

sorry i didn't realize i mean i didn out dude i'm sorry i didn't realize i mean i didn't think that someone would i didn't think the atlantic would post something this like embarrassing for the person you didn't have you ever read Jesse single dude that's their business model they're fucking crazy they're ruthless stay away from them they will let you fucking say anything yeah sure I'll let you have 3200

words about as long as you reveal your first problem right right right right as long as you reveal your personal life to Right, right, right, right. As long as you reveal your personal life to be as sad and lonely and depressing as possible in a compelling way that sadists like the Trillbillies will want to read for content. This just bummed me out at a certain point.

Yeah, it's kind of bad, man. I mean, because honestly honestly we're the we're the bottom feeders that chose to read it we're like this in and of itself is a reflection of how bad off we are because i mean like truly you are what you eat and if this is what we're putting in our bodies that's not very good oh man yeah that just took a heart out oh man this is yeah last year marked a low point for me blah blah blah three guys i grew so deeply uncomfortable so royal the shame that i've been plotting new careers oh dear in the, I did what I have done for the past 25 years. Whenever I hit some crisis in my career, I kept going. I stayed on a podcast about

the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders that I feared everyone would hate. And I braced myself to be popular to take the hits, which never really came. I surrounded myself with people who reminded me I was loved no matter what the firing squads on Twitter said. One of the common arguments made, at least about me to scandals, is that the men and women behaving badly rarely face legal punishment. No jail time. It's a fair point. But me personally, I choose a lot of gnarly punishments before I choose to lose the status and career I've built over more than two decades. Public shaming is the worst kind of shaming as the Puritans. Jesus motherfucking Christ. So this is my resolution as I trudge from this dark place to speak out more, not to engage in call-outs

or scolding or eye rolls, which are not my style, but to express my own deep ambivalence, my own point of view on subjects that matter to me, not because anyone asked for it, but because this is the career I've chosen. And if I'm not doing that, then what are we doing here? I suspect I will lose followers blah blah blah i know this i'm finally ready to have a conversation with the world man i flinched all through the fucking last couple minutes of that i'm sorry i'm sorry it didn't go down i threw it back up yeah it's yeah it was fucking it didn't go down. I threw it back up. Yeah, it's it was fucking didn't go down

a wet bar. I mean, that that really was written for us to read on this show and just demonstrate how truly low this medium can get. Oh, man. Oh, man oh man oh man well so anyways

someone go she needs a tender for friends someone get a you know just falling alone man it's pretty rough well anyways that probably about covers it for this week. Yeah,

I think we've done enough. Yeah, I think you're right. Well, thanks for listening everybody. I don't know when this is coming out. If it's coming out before Saturday, the second go to Al's bar at 8 p.m. to see a show.

Tom and I will be there. Or at least I will be. I may not be. Alright, so go out to that show. It's $5 to cover. You get three bands. Appalachia Tari, Slut Pill, and Tenure. That's the band I'm in. If you want to go listen

and learn all the songs before the show you should do that um but if not i'll see you or wait if so i'll see you there regardless i'll see you there dude that fucking article fucked me up man it was like drink it was like huffing gas or something it just got sad at the end man i was like god i i always hate like i mean it's you know obviously she's a much more successful media person than we are so that's not punching down yeah but the loneliness made it feel like punching down you know what i mean might be a paywall episode might be a paywall might have to be it It felt, it didn't feel good.

It felt good. It felt good until the end. And then when she's like, I talked back to podcast. I was like, nah, I can't. Oh man. Oh man.

All right. Well, thanks for listening, everybody. We appreciate you listening and we'll talk to you next time. Peace out.