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Aug. 9, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

59:52

No One's Laughing: Cancel Culture Is Killing Comedy

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	Thanks for watching!
	It's this weird thing happening in the circles of comedy.
	People like Sarah Silverman suddenly realizing that cancel culture is bad.
	Louis C.K.
	realizing that cancel culture is bad.
	Dave Chappelle realizing that cancel culture is bad.
	And you're saying to yourself, wait a second, none of those people are even remotely on the political right.
	I mean, Louis C.K. is mostly famous for shouting about Sarah Palin's private zone, and Sarah Silverman is mostly famous for shouting about how Donald Trump is the worst orange man who ever was orange and also a man.
	So, what exactly happened here?
	The answer is that the radical left lost its mind, and they took over a lot of the liberal woke sphere.
	And what they've decided is that jokes are now forbidden.
	If you make a joke, then you must be canceled.
	I mean, and it's everybody.
	Everybody in comedy world is scared of this.
	Aziz Ansari has a whole bit about cancel culture in his newest special.
	And ultimately, I just felt terrible that this person felt this way.
	This made not just me, but other people, be more thoughtful, and that's a good thing.
	Like literally every comedian is now obligated to first apologize for all the bad things they've done, and then deride cancel culture, which they should, because cancel culture is the death of comedy.
	See, comedians have to exist on the edge.
	Comedians have to say the unsayable.
	They have to say the taboo.
	A lot of comedy lies in saying a truth that everybody finds deeply uncomfortable, or in saying something shocking.
	So much of comedy is shock comedy, where the shock itself is what drives the humor, or saying something that nobody thought you would say because it just was something that you couldn't say, that when you get rid of those aspects of comedy, not much is left.
	And this is why you have seen so many on the political left attempting to overtly redefine comedy.
	You see this in the reviews of Hannah Gadsby.
	Hannah Gadsby's entire comedy routine is saying deeply unfunny things over and over and over, while telling a sad-sack story about her life to the rave reviews of the reviewing community.
	The feedback, apparently.
	She said, I was very disappointed in your show this year, Hannah.
	I just don't think there's enough lesbian content.
	Laughter I've been on stage the whole time.
	Laughter Those folks say that she has redefined laughter.
	She hasn't.
	She simply has transformed the role of the comedian into a sort of social voice.
	By the way, nobody highlights the crisis in comedy like my friend Matt Walsh.
	He's done a few videos going through the routines of these SJW so-called comedians, and I won't spoil it for you, but let me say he is just one million times funnier.
	His new one on Hannah Gadsby just came out yesterday.
	You should check that out over on his YouTube channel and watch his suffering.
	It used to be that comedians did both.
	Comedians did social commentary and they also did comedy, but the comedy came first.
	Now, the comedy has gone completely out the window because you might offend somebody.
	And here's the thing about most comedy, most comedy does offend somebody.
	Conservatives for a long time have talked about the fact that most of the comedies made in the 1970s, the Mel Brooks comedies for example, none of those could be made today.
	Airplane could not be made today.
	So many funny movies could not be made today.
	Everything has to be cancelled because it's offensive to somebody.
	And comedians are starting to pick up on this.
	That's why Jerry Seinfeld says he is no longer going to perform on college campuses.
	Why bother?
	There's just nothing in it for him.
	Well, in this episode, we talk with a bunch of extraordinarily famous comedians that people have made their living making people like you and me laugh.
	The episode's really funny.
	There's a lot of humor in the episode.
	But what the episode is really about is Americans from all areas of America's political life recognizing that comedy simply cannot survive an intolerant environment.
	I mean, if we can't laugh at ourselves, then who exactly is going to be able to tell a joke?
	See, here's the thing.
	It's not enough for a comedian to be funny.
	It's that you, the audience, you have to be self-effacing.
	You have to be willing to take a ribbing.
	As a member of sort of the public sphere, as a person who's in the public eye a lot, I've been targeted by comedians regularly.
	And honestly, I kind of find it amusing.
	The reason I find it amusing is because most jokes about me tend to be kind of true.
	I talk too fast, I spout facts really quickly, I make arguments that stack up one on top of another really, really fast.
	Here's what a single-payer healthcare system would actually do.
	Okay, folks?
	It would actually make doctors literal slaves who would have to live in cabins on a plantation somewhere.
	Alright, folks?
	And the idea... And the idea that doctors are just your slaves who you can, you know, marry without their consent and then make half-doctor, half-regular people babies with.
	Okay, well then what happens to the babies?
	Are they now doctors?
	Are they slave doctors who have to be doctors?
	Are they free?
	Now what, gang?
	Okay, so that's why that system would just never work.
	There's a lot about me that's funny.
	Because there's a lot about everybody that's funny.
	But the American people seem to have lost a sense of humor about themselves.
	The only people who are expected to accept jokes about themselves are Christians, white males, straight people.
	That's pretty much it.
	Otherwise, if you're a member of a historically marginalized or victimized group, no one can ever make a joke about you.
	And not only that, if we find a joke about you, From like five years before.
	And you don't like that joke?
	You can cancel the person.
	So we will cancel Kevin Hart on the Oscars.
	He just won't be on the Oscars anymore if you find a joke that he made a long time ago about not wanting his son to be gay.
	If you are a comedian who made a joke years and years ago, where you dressed up as Carl Malone, as Jimmy Kimmel did, then you will be forced to go on a leave of absence because the thing that was completely inoffensive when you did it has now become offensive.
	The lines are shifting, the lines are moving, and comedians feel like nothing is safe.
	And they are correct.
	They are looking back at their old work and realizing that that can get them canceled.
	The purpose of cancel culture is to destroy a sense of humor.
	A society without a sense of humor is also a society that can't look at itself and recognize human flaw.
	A society without a sense of humor is a society seeking utopia.
	The Soviet Union was not famous for having a sense of humor because anytime you seek utopia, you first have to get rid of the basic human understanding that people are flawed.
	Because if we recognize people are flawed, utopia is impossible.
	So if you want to make utopia possible, first, wipe away any vestige of humility, of self-effacement.
	Wipe away any expectation that people are going to make fun of you.
	And instead, put in place an arrogant assessment of the world in which no one is entitled to laugh at you.
	And if anybody does laugh at you, that's because the system needs change.
	Well, in this episode, we're going to talk with a bunch of comedians about precisely these topics.
	I think you're really going to enjoy it.
	It was fun to talk to all of them.
	This episode is pretty hilarious.
	We're going to get started in just a moment.
	But first, let's talk about a simple fact.
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	The answer?
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	Shopping around for life insurance can be pretty stressful and annoying.
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	PolicyGenius.
	When it comes to insurance, it's nice to get it right.
	Larry Wilmore has been a television producer, actor, comedian, and writer for over 25 years.
	Many people probably recognize him most as the, quote, senior black correspondent from his time on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
	He also hosted and wrote his own The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore at Comedy Central.
	He created The Bernie Mac Show, for which he won an Emmy.
	He helped launch Black-ish on ABC.
	And he's one of the creators of Insecure over on HBO.
	You can hear him on the podcast, Larry Wilmore, Black on the Air, where he combines humor and the issues of the week, encompassing sports, politics, entertainment, and culture.
	So, Larry is just a delight.
	I mean, we were so glad that he decided to cross the aisle and have the conversation with him.
	I warned him, like, several times that he would receive blowback from his own side, simply for being in the same room with me, because that is the way that it works.
	Whenever somebody from the left comes into the studio, I warn them, Tell anyone you are here, because you're just going to get crap from people.
	But Larry was like, you know what?
	I don't even care.
	I just want to have a good conversation with you.
	It was fantastic.
	And for that, I really thank Larry.
	From episode 55, listen to Larry and me discuss how comedy has become politically one-sided, how no one made jokes about Obama for eight long years, and how, nowadays, comedians are going more for claps than for laughs.
	So, I want to talk about the comedy side now.
	Sure, absolutely.
	Wait, this hasn't been funny?
	Guys!
	How much time do we have left?
	Can we go to another commercial?
	No?
	Not yet.
	We're out of commercials?
	Sorry.
	They're more coming.
	We have to monetize you to the fullest possible extent.
	But let's talk about the comedic world.
	So I'm going to give you the conservative critique of the comedic world.
	Yes, I've heard some of your critiques.
	I am sure you have.
	So I did one just a couple of days ago on Stephen Colbert.
	Can I ask you a question real quick?
	Why do you have a conservative critique on comedy?
	Like, what is their conservative critique?
	I think when you hear the critique you'll understand.
	Okay, alright.
	I'm like, what does that have to do with anything?
	The critique is that today's comedy has become politically one-sided.
	That's the conservative critique.
	Okay, got it.
	I understand.
	But if you look at Late Night, what you're seeing is Jimmy Kimmel, who I have, I will say I have used the term woke pope to describe him, that he is the pope of woke.
	But he started on the Man Show.
	He did start on the Man Show, but he's come a long way since his roots.
	Since he was bouncing boobs out with Adam Carolla.
	And then you've got Jimmy Fallon, who's basically been excoriated for the great sin of touching Donald Trump's hair.
	So Fallon isn't, he's not in the category that you're talking about.
	No, he sort of moved political after that happened.
	Specifically, I mean, he had to come out and he had to apologize for it and all this kind of stuff.
	And then you have Colbert, who's obviously very loud and proud.
	Right.
	Very much to the left.
	For years did a Bill O'Reilly routine to mock him and all of that.
	And so a lot of conservatives look at the comedic world and they say, why is this so one-sided?
	Why isn't there, they'll even look back fondly to Jay Leno and Johnny Carson and say, at least these guys made jokes about both sides.
	Sure.
	And, you know, as a conservative I can say that when I watch a lot of these shows I feel the same way.
	I look at them and I say, no one made a joke about Barack Obama for eight years.
	Now that I agree with you.
	I talked about this very recently, the Obama part.
	And I felt that, first of all, white comedians, especially comedians, definitely on the left, were afraid of making the wrong joke about Obama.
	And when they did make jokes about Obama, they were flattering jokes.
	You know, like nobody really made real observational jokes about Obama.
	That's why the impressions of Obama weren't that good, because nobody was making really good observations about him, you know.
	And someone said, well, what about the angry translator?
	He said, that is an observation on black culture, not really about Obama.
	And it was flattering to Obama.
	The whole thing was, Obama's so self-controlled, he's so poised.
	Which is fine.
	It was funny, but I mean... Yeah, but people were so precious with him, and I wish there was more of that, you know, because to me, that's part of a comedian's job.
	Now, the other part of it, I believe we're in a cycle.
	A lot of these things go in cycles, and I think what's popular now is that.
	It's kind of maybe the Jon Stewart effect, because Jon was just very good at that.
	But remember, when Jon did it, nobody was doing that.
	You know, we did it on my show, The Nightly Show, going with that approach, and John Oliver certainly in his show.
	But, you know, I think these things go in cycles in the marketplace, and I feel, you know, when you feel like you're on the outside of it, how come I can't be in on the joke?
	But I don't think all of it is like that.
	I think Saturday Night Live really tries its best to be fair in that way, you know, as much as they can, and they've gotten criticized for some of that, you know.
	And by fair, I mean really trying to poke holes at both sides, you know.
	Um, but I think a lot of it is driven by the marketplace and what seems to be popular and that sort of thing.
	As well as, that's what, you know, someone like Colbert, that's what he wants to do and that's what he wants to talk about as well.
	So both of those things line up.
	But the zeitgeist can be very picky.
	The zeitgeist can turn on you in a moment.
	That's one thing I learned about showbiz.
	Two years from now we may be having a different conversation.
	It's like, what happened to all those political comedians?
	And I wonder if the zeitgeist is moving against comedy generally.
	So one of the things that I've noticed and commented on I saw Hannah Gadsby's special.
	Not a fan.
	And one of the things that I saw is the critics basically saying that Hannah Gadsby, she didn't make you laugh, but she made you think.
	And it was a new kind of comedy.
	And so it seemed as though she was moving for what on my show I call claptor.
	It wasn't really for laughs.
	It was more for, oh, that's amazing.
	You know, and sort of sympathetic laughter as opposed to the laughter of recognition of a reality, which is usually the best kind of comedy in my observant opinion.
	It's tough to say, Ben, because many times these kind of critiques are resisting something as well, you know, because sometimes these critiques are people want something to be like what they've seen already, you know.
	And many times when you're doing something new, people don't like it because it's different and it doesn't conform to rules that they like.
	I'm happy with these rules.
	Why are you doing something different?
	And so I think a lot of critiques are born out of that.
	To me, I'm like, who cares if she does something different?
	Like, there's a lot of other comics out there, you know.
	Oh no, listen, more power to her.
	I'm happy for her that she's earning wealth and fame, all that's fine.
	But the redefinition by critics of comedy itself, in order to meet somebody who they agree with politically, I find troubling, simply because it used to be that you would watch something that was either funny or it was not funny.
	Like, I can acknowledge that Jon Stewart, who I disagree with politically, is a deeply funny human being.
	I mean, he's really funny.
	Right, but you may not laugh if you don't agree, and that's where the claptor comes in.
	Look, Tina Fey used this same term, by the way.
	She was making her same observation years ago.
	People, because they get laughs with that, those are laughs.
	You know, people do think it's funny.
	Now you can say, yes, but it's agreeing funny, which is also true, but that's what they're doing.
	I just wonder if we're moving away from a time when people can make even most kinds of jokes.
	So Seinfeld refuses to go on college campuses now because he's afraid of being shouted down.
	You make certain kind of jokes and YouTube will demonetize you.
	It depends on the kind of joke.
	The other night, my wife and I made the mistake of watching Airplane again.
	And Airplane is a very funny movie, but it's a time-bound movie.
	Like, you watch it now, and you can watch it sort of in the privacy of your own home, looking around to make sure that nobody else is watching you.
	No, absolutely.
	I did a show called The PJs years ago.
	It was an animated show with Eddie Murphy.
	It was like Claymation type of thing.
	And we did a joke on there with this observation 20 years ago, where Thurgood, the head of the projects, he finds one of Richard Pryor's old albums.
	And it's like, that N-word is crazy.
	And he's like, and they're like, Super, can we play this?
	I said, play it?
	You can't even say this anymore!
	You know, it was a joke.
	So believe me, this is something that's been happening over a long period of time.
	I mean, are you worried about that?
	Because I've always been worried about that.
	But I realized in some ways there's nothing I can do about it.
	Look, I ran into this in the early 90s.
	I told you a little bit about this on the phone where, you know, another comic kind of shut me down not airing something because didn't agree with what I was saying, you know.
	And to me that was like, how is she making assault on speech?
	You know, what's going on here?
	Why are we being precious about this?
	ABC just the other night aired, you know, their tribute to All in the Family and the Jeffersons, you know.
	And they actually bleeped a couple of words that weren't bleeped back in the day.
	There's no way All in the Family makes the air today.
	It's insane, you know, so this cultural shift has been happening for a long time.
	I blame it all on Alf, you know?
	Came on in the 80s, changed everything up.
	Damn Alf, he's an illegal immigrant.
	I mean, what can I tell you?
	Alf was responsible for most of America's ills.
	He's an illegal alien.
	Illegal alien.
	Exactly, there you go.
	Just build a wall.
	Well, if you've been a fan of my show for a while, it's likely you've heard of Louder with Crowder and their ridiculous inferior crap mug.
	Leftist tear stumblers are by far the superior beverage vessel, as has been established by multiple scientifically verified studies.
	That show's host, Steven Crowder, started doing stand-up comedy at just 17.
	He spent three years at Fox News before hitting his stride with his own YouTube channel.
	His early videos found an audience, which brought about the popular internet comedy show Louder with Crowder, and the incredible meme changed my mind.
	If you haven't seen Change My Mind, Steven sits down with folks of differing political persuasions to have a civil discourse on the latest trending issues.
	And it gets wild.
	So I've been friends with Steven Crowder for a very, very long time.
	In fact, the first time that Steven Crowder came over to my condo, he put me in a chokehold and nearly knocked me out.
	One of the things that I despise about Steven, one of the highlights of my life was actually watching him waterboarded during one of his live shows.
	It was pretty spectacular.
	I just sat there drinking and watching the man being waterboarded.
	Crowder is fearless, he is utterly insane, and he somehow showed up wearing essentially underwear to our interview, which was deeply uncomfortable.
	For everyone.
	Stephen did make that unfortunate decision when he joined me in episode 19.
	You can see that if you want your eyeballs burned out the back of your head.
	But that aside, we had an interesting discussion on where comedians should drive a line, if President Trump is a comedian or just kind of rude, and how Stephen grades the impact of the president on his younger conservative fans.
	So let's talk about the fact that you do a lot of really controversial comedies.
	So where do you draw lines?
	There's a lot of talk these days about where comedians ought to draw lines.
	You mentioned Owen Benjamin.
	Owen Benjamin has been taken to task for using the N-word in one of his comedy routines.
	Where do you think it's appropriate to draw lines as a comedian?
	Do you think there should be any lines as a comedian?
	Obviously, there are certain things that you won't do, even though you're the guy who paints Muhammad with menstrual blood as Bob Ross on camera.
	Yes.
	Where do you decide where those lines are, and when is it appropriate to cross them?
	Well, okay, that's a good example.
	Because context is more important than content.
	Let me preface this with, I don't know if it was Phyllis Diller who said this, or it might have been Dennis Miller who repeated it.
	I don't know the original person to whom this quote is attributed, but basically nothing is off limits except the helpless.
	So in other words, you don't go down to a special needs baby and ha, unless you're a liberal and you want to abort the Down syndrome baby.
	Apparently they're okay with that.
	So nothing is really off limits.
	Now, I have limitations as to what I'm comfortable doing, and everyone will have their own line.
	As a society, I'm very uncomfortable with saying, this is, these are the list of appropriate words, these are the list of inappropriate words, like we were just talking about before, uh, on DMX.
	You know, I was listening to his music, the N-word, MF-er, B-word, talking about killing people, and the, do we have to bleep me?
	Well, we can bleep it.
	Okay.
	It's the explicit version.
	That's the one word they eliminate now.
	I'm going, really?
	These are the words that we're picking now?
	And of course N-word would be included if you weren't black.
	So it really is a political tool and I never want to play a role in that game.
	That being said, you know, I think that's a good example.
	So you talk about painting Muhammad in menstrual blood.
	Let's take the context of that.
	That on its surface sounds bad, granted, right?
	It sounds pretty bad.
	But BuzzFeed's Boldly, the land whale women there, you know, the fat pride feminists, they were painting in menstrual blood.
	And they had done a lot of, you know, of course always anti-Christian, anti sort of Judeo-Christian videos for a long time.
	So we did a parody, Bob Ross painting Muhammad in menstrual blood.
	And it got worse when the Bob Ross estate threatened to sue us and then we drew them eating from a pile of fecal matter next to Mohammed.
	We never heard from them again.
	We never heard from them again.
	What I've always said is we're not necessarily a shark in the comic world, but we can be a puffer fish.
	We'll make them wish they picked somebody else.
	Even if we get torn off of every platform, we'll make them wish that they picked somebody else.
	That's kind of our motto.
	Contextually, when you look at that, you go, oh, this is satire.
	This is parody.
	We didn't just do it out of the blue.
	It was featured on YouTube.
	Women painting with menstrual blood.
	We didn't start it.
	We didn't start a trend anew.
	It was them.
	They painted first blood, not me.
	What do you make of the merger of sort of comedy and politics?
	So you're a comedian.
	You label yourself a comedian.
	Everybody knows you as a comedian.
	But you do see political actors.
	President Trump's basically a stand-up comic.
	Most of what he does is Political comedy disguised as politics.
	And what this means is that he crosses lines that you will cross, but people are not sure what to make of it.
	Are we supposed to take it like comedy or are we supposed to take it like politics?
	Is he being politically incorrect as a comedian or is he just being a jackass?
	I think he's thoughtless.
	I think it's a big difference.
	I mean, there's no question that I know where the line is and I know how to walk up to it and dance on the line and pull it back.
	You know, if I cross the line, it's very deliberate.
	I don't think that's the case with President Donald Trump.
	I genuinely don't think he knows.
	But one thing that I do think is interesting about Donald Trump, because obviously you weren't a big fan of his, and in a lot of ways still aren't, and I was not at all during the primaries, and in a lot of ways I'm still not.
	I think we're seeing a transition with President Trump that you've seen with a lot of young conservatives who we reach.
	I think he was a guy who gave to Democrats for most of his life.
	He was doing business in New York.
	I don't really think he was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat either.
	No.
	I think he was whatever he needed to get his latest structure with his name emblazoned across it erected.
	And I think what you're seeing now, though, is he's come in, he thought the left would play ball a little bit, and they've been so vicious, which we've known them to be, they've attacked his family personally.
	We're now just, okay, screw you!
	And he's becoming more conservative.
	I think we're seeing a genuine transition of him becoming more right-wing.
	Kind of like, I hate to say it, but Ebeneezer Scrooge later in life.
	Everyone can kind of be redeemed.
	We're like, I got it wrong all these years!
	I think we're seeing that with President Trump.
	I do think there's some of that.
	But how do we deal with the fact that he's, You're not toxic in the same way to young people.
	So young people watch your show because they know you're a comedy guy.
	They're willing to give you the benefit of the doubt when you say something that's offensive because, as you say, you know what's offensive, you know what's not.
	And if you're being offensive, it's generally being deliberately offensive for comedic purposes.
	President Trump just sort of says things and he's very toxic for young people.
	I mean, there's no question.
	You look at the polls and among young people, he's wildly unpopular.
	How do we continue to maintain lines or draw lines?
	What do you think we ought to do there?
	Well, here's one thing I'll say.
	He's unpopular in the sense that a lot of your fans and my fans probably aren't huge Trump supporters.
	That being said, they do like that someone has sort of thrown the gloves off a little bit.
	So I think it's important to look at how the question is being framed.
	You know, kind of like when they say, oh, 90% of Americans are pro-abortion.
	But then when you give him a cutoff or you show him a fetal chart, they got a fetal development chart, that changes, right?
	So I think with Donald Trump, if you were to ask me, are you a Donald Trump fan?
	I'd probably answer no.
	But if you were to ask me, do you think that Donald Trump has done a relatively good job as president?
	I'd probably say yes.
	If you would ask me, I think we would both agree on this, culturally, definitely he's opened the door for conservatives to not be so ashamed of what they are, even though he's not one of them.
	But I don't think Marco Rubio would have done this.
	I don't think even Senator Ted Cruz, I don't think Chris Christie obviously would have gone after the media in the same way that Donald Trump has.
	So I think even though, this thing is squeaking, is this being caught up on your, is it okay?
	It's totally fine.
	Alright, alright, fine.
	I'm just making sure, it's the replication, it's not me, I just want to make sure, hold on.
	You're okay, dude.
	It's fine.
	No, no, no.
	I'm making sure that people know it's not me, is my point, Ben.
	This is important for me.
	It's not everything is about you.
	There you go.
	You can hear the squeak.
	It's the chair.
	Okay.
	So I think that's what's important about President Donald Trump.
	I think even though people may not like him, I think a lot of young people are happy to see the burdens, the shackles of political correctness kind of be thrown off, and he has helped pave the way for that.
	We heard from Joe Rogan just a couple of weeks ago in our Best of the Intellectual Dark Web series.
	I was also just on Joe's show to discuss my brand new book.
	You should check both of those out.
	They're both spectacular.
	We're bringing him back for our discussion on Roseanne Barr and the enormous implosion of her show in the midst of being a smash success after a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett.
	Joe, himself a comedian, has been doing stand-up since the late 80s, still regularly doing shows out here in LA before the pandemic.
	He's also acted on several sitcoms.
	He's filmed and released several comedy specials.
	It's really interesting to see how Roseanne Barr never came back.
	It's really fascinating.
	If you are cancelled and you're perceived to be on the right, you never get the comeback.
	If, however, you're like Ice Cube and you just tweet randomly anti-Semitic stuff repeatedly forever, You'll just continue to get jobs.
	So, Roseanne Barr has done her time in the wilderness.
	She has repented her sins.
	Doesn't matter, they're still not going to let her back on TV because repentance is not available unless you fully embrace all of the woke culture.
	In episode 4, Joe and I talk about how people can survive making jokes for a living in a cancel culture environment, and what happens when the mob chooses a victim.
	What do you make of the Roseanne Fodson?
	Do you think that ABC was right to dump her show after her bizarre tweet about Valerie Jarrett?
	Well, what's interesting is just saying that she was going to be on my podcast, she said it, and then I got all these tweets that were saying, boycott Joe Rogan, the UFC should fire me for having this racist on my podcast.
	No, I'm gonna have a conversation with one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time.
	A person who I deeply respect, who I think is mentally ill.
	She is on a host of different medications.
	She's taken Ambien and drinking.
	She was pushed to the brink of exhaustion doing that television show.
	And she's made some very poor choices with some of the things that she said.
	She would be the first to tell you that.
	And I don't think that you... I don't think you could get an understanding of her from a tweet.
	Or from, you know, a one sentence description of what she did.
	I think you need to hear her and hear her talk.
	She's going to be the first person to tell you she's crazy.
	And she is.
	She's essentially, at least, Functionally mentally ill, you know, but it's also why she's such a brilliant comedian and she's always been what you would call a shister, you know, if people don't remember like when she used to when she sung the national anthem and grabbed her crotch and spit on the ground and everybody went crazy.
	That's Roseanne.
	You know, and I think people wanted to turn her into this lovable mother.
	There's this, like, thing that people do when life gets weird, which is, like, where it's at right now, where they want to look back to the past, where things just made sense.
	Can't we just bring back the Roseanne of old?
	Look, John Goodman's there, too.
	This is amazing.
	Everything was safe when I was a kid.
	And that's what they're trying to do, and they don't realize, like, She's tweeting crazy shit about someone looking like they're from Planet of the Apes, which, by the way, she said she didn't even know that that woman was black.
	And she's just telling this to me on the phone.
	She goes, I'm not stupid.
	Do you think I would say that about a black person?
	I thought she was Jewish.
	She goes, look at her.
	She looks like my relatives.
	It's what she said to me on the phone.
	I believe her.
	You make jokes for a living, right?
	You make lots of jokes for a living.
	How are you going to survive in this environment making jokes for a living?
	Just piss people off.
	I mean, you're going to always have people, you're going to have more people upset with you and there's more righteous indignation, I think, than I've ever seen in comedy.
	I've had more people furious at me for what are clearly jokes than ever at any other time in my career.
	And this is the hardest thing, right?
	Because you make something that's clearly a joke and then somebody writes down the transcript of the joke and now you have to explain the joke.
	Right.
	That immediately kills it because as soon as you explain a joke, it's no longer a joke.
	So if you make a joke that's politically incorrect and then they write it down, and everybody who heard you at the time knows that you were making a joke, if they write it down and then you have to explain it, we've automatically exited the realm of jokes and so now you're trying to explain the statement as true or decent, and that's not the point of the joke in the first place.
	Yes, exactly.
	Yes, exactly.
	And you miss the context, you miss the way it was delivered, you miss the tone, you miss everything.
	But what they're doing is they're just trying to find targets.
	And I think that's one of the things that's happening with Roseanne, that's one of the things that's happening whenever anybody screws up in the media.
	You just get these people that they want a target.
	It's a game.
	And the game is take someone down.
	The game is call someone out, take someone down, shame them, you know, get the Twitter mob and the Facebook mob.
	Get them after them.
	Let's go.
	Let's move.
	Let's start a hashtag.
	Let's attack Morgan Freeman.
	I heard he told a joke.
	I mean, this is like... I mean, did you read the woman's account on CNN?
	With her interview with Morgan Freeman?
	I think we covered it, but I can't remember it.
	He was playing God in a movie.
	You know, he's played God in a movie.
	And she asked him, if you had magic power, what would you do with it?
	And he said, you wouldn't have a stitch of clothes on.
	That was the joke.
	That was it.
	And she was like, God, you mess with the wrong girls.
	And I'm number 17 out of all these girls that have come after you.
	And it's like, wow.
	You know, like, he was on the spot.
	He's being interviewed.
	He's on a red carpet.
	He tries to crack a joke about you being naked.
	Like, is this really the worst thing that's ever happened to you?
	Is this really this?
	Or is it just a joke?
	And when I'm looking at it, even in text, I find it to be silly.
	But just a joke is dying, obviously.
	Just a joke is still just a joke!
	It's just a joke!
	Well, I think there is that backlash happening.
	It's one of the reasons why you've become incredibly popular, because you just don't care, right?
	Well, I feel like if you have f* you money, and you don't say f* you, then who's going to?
	Who's going to?
	Like, I'm a good person.
	I'm a nice guy.
	I pay my taxes.
	I have a bunch of great friends and loved ones.
	You have kids.
	I have kids.
	I try to be nice to people.
	That's what I try to do.
	But if I see something that's ridiculous and I make fun of it and people get mad at me for that, that's on you.
	From episode 8, one of our first guests was my friend Adam Carolla.
	Adam got his start on a sketch comedy series called The Man Show, which he co-hosted with Jimmy Kimmel.
	It was later succeeded by none other than Joe Rogan for a season.
	Now, Adam is the host of The Adam Carolla Show, the number one daily downloaded podcast in the world, and the author of the new book, I'm Your Emotional Support Animal, navigating our all-woke, no-joke culture, out today anywhere you purchase books.
	Since being on the Sunday Special, he also partnered up with our friend Dennis Prager on the documentary No Safe Spaces, where they travel the country and expose what is happening to free speech in America today, particularly on college campuses.
	Adam is just a delight.
	One of the wonderful things about Adam is that Adam is not I would say he's supremely conservative.
	He just has values that say that basically everybody should leave each other alone.
	And as a comedian, I feel like that should be your central value.
	Leave each other alone and make jokes about anybody.
	The fact that Adam has become controversial for those very non-controversial opinions shows how crazy things have gone.
	Listen to Adam and me discuss the power of not apologizing for a joke, how you can beat the woke mob, and the dishonest argument we're seeing in woke culture that if you don't share somebody's political viewpoint, you have some sort of deep, dark character flaw.
	Thanks for watching.
	For you, it's a lot harder because you're in comedy.
	I was going to ask you this from the beginning.
	How do you do comedy in an era of political correctness?
	Because it seems like everybody is getting slaughtered right now.
	Every comedian Yeah.
	Gets to a certain point and then the long knives just come out if you make the wrong jokes unless you are properly woke or you're Amy Schumer and you're just going to make a bunch of feminist jokes or something.
	You can say whatever you want.
	But if you're anybody else, I mean, you're a white dude who's relatively conservative on politics or at least is perceived that way.
	And that means the knives come out.
	So how do you deal with that?
	You know, it's kind of interesting, but I do feel like they do as much as they think they can get.
	Meaning, I've had plenty of that in my career.
	I think if the attitude is, I don't apologize, I don't care.
	Attacking me is not gonna be satisfying for you.
	There needs to be every, I was just talking about this on my podcast, which is, I used to fight in the street a fair bit.
	Not a lot, but I definitely had some street fights.
	And I knew how to fight.
	And I was just like, I don't know, 22, and I was like, I would fight.
	And I always knew I wasn't a mean person and I would not pick a fight with anybody.
	But I knew if somebody wanted to fight, I knew exactly how to get them out into the street with me to fight.
	Like, we want to leave this party and we will go fight.
	I would tell them I don't wanna fight.
	I don't want trouble.
	Like, I really don't want trouble.
	And their answer would be, oh, you found trouble.
	And I'd go, yeah, but I'm really, I'm kind of a mellow guy, and I just, I'm sorry if I stepped on your foot or something in the kitchen, but I don't.
	And they'd be like, yeah?
	Well, this is a bad day for you.
	And I'd go, okay, well, I guess we gotta fight.
	And we'd go fight.
	And I'd beat him up.
	But all I had to do was take a step or two backwards, and they took two big steps forward.
	If you step forward, they don't step forward.
	They realize it's no fun going after Adam Carolla.
	It's much better getting this guy fired, or that guy fired, or this guy.
	that people issue the long-winded, sort of crafted by their publicist, apologies and all.
	It's like, it's so much better.
	And really all you do is you just kinda tell them to shove off a couple of times and they just kinda go like, all right, he's no good.
	Like he's no good, cause he doesn't issue these long-winded apologies.
	So there's like that.
	And I'm also just, at a certain point, you will be who you are.
	Like, no, Howard Stern can say whatever he wants whenever he wants, and no one ever demands that Howard Stern apologize, because Howard Stern is Howard Stern.
	Or it's my Snoop Dogg can smoke weed wherever he wants.
	So if I went into like an AIDS hospice, I couldn't spark up.
	Snoop Dogg could fire up a hookah pipe in the middle of an AIDS hospice and they'd be like, that's no, that's fine.
	He's Snoop Dogg.
	You know what I mean?
	Like he literally can smoke pot wherever he wants because he's Snoop Dogg.
	So once you establish yourself as I'm the person who says things that offend people, they sort of leave you alone.
	It's also a weird world where you can't speak logically to people.
	Like, I've had a million... Like, some of the stuff I get thrown back in my face is like, uh, look, if something happens to me and my wife, I'd like a mom and a dad, a male and a female, to raise my kids, because we both offer very different things.
	But, that being said, I will take the lesbian couple or the gay couple who's doing a little better, who has a better minivan that's a little newer and a little safer, who lives in a better part of town with a better school system, I will take them over the heterosexual couple if they're marginally better.
	If everything is exactly the same, This is weird world we live in.
	It's like everything's the same.
	I'll give them the male and the female because traditionally, I figured out through nature that works a little better.
	And everyone's like, oh, so you don't think a gay couple should be able to raise?
	Like, no, that's not what I said.
	And then they do this one, which is always insane.
	And I don't, I wonder this out loud all the time.
	And I'm gonna pose this question to you because I believe I have to be intellectually honest.
	One of the biggest problems I got into is when somebody said to me, who's funnier, men or women?
	I didn't think I was allowed to say they're both exactly the same.
	I had to answer the question.
	I said men are funnier because they're trying to get laid.
	But so they've evolved that way.
	Think about all that.
	All we put into getting laid.
	But also, I said that being said, I know plenty of women that are funnier than every guy I went to high school with, but if you're just going to ask me, I'll go with men.
	And I got a ton of crap for that.
	But here's what I don't get.
	Every time I say to somebody, look, All things being equal, I'll take the heterosexual couple.
	Now, if the gay couple's doing a little better in their tax returns and lives in a safe neighborhood, I'll take the gay couple.
	And then they go, all right, so you're saying...
	The heterosexual couple could be strung out on meth, and they could, the woman is, she's a full-time prostitute.
	He's pimping her out.
	They're cooking up, they're making meth in their bathtub of their apartment, which by the way, is in a very dangerous part of town.
	And the gay couple, that's David Geffen, and he's out on a yacht in San Francisco.
	You would take, and I said, no.
	I think I was insanely clear.
	I said all things are the same.
	All things are the same, I would take this.
	But if the other couple, then they go, well, that's a flawed premise because you can't make everything the same.
	And I'm like, just make them have the same job, live in the same neighborhood.
	I don't know, some may think one guy likes Jeopardy, the other likes Desperate Housewives or something, but just make everything the same, would you?
	They're like, no.
	Are these people stupid?
	When they say to me, so you would take this couple that raises rabies-infested raccoons in their camper, in their double wide, over David Gama.
	No, but why did you say that?
	Why would you say, like, are they insane?
	Are they intellectually dishonest?
	Are they lying?
	Like, I can't... And where do they expect me to go?
	Right.
	Oh, you caught me.
	Like, I said the same.
	Everything's gotta be the same.
	I do think that they're looking for a world in which they need an answer.
	And the answer is always going to be that it's their political viewpoint or you have a character flaw.
	And so if you do not repeat their political viewpoint, then it must be that you have a character flaw.
	And that character flaw means that secretly, even though you've already said this stuff, secretly you do believe that the rabies-infested double-eyed with the heterosexual couple is better than David Geffen because your secret motivation is that you like gay people worse than you like straight people.
	You like straight people more than you like gay people.
	And so even if you say all things being equal, deep down in your heart, you know secretly that what this is really coming from is animus for gay people.
	I think that's really what it is.
	Because having spoken with more people on the left than anybody that I know in my lifetime, it seems to me that when people are being intellectually dishonest that way, and you see it with Cathy Newman and Jordan Peterson, for example, where Jordan Peterson is talking about earnings and Cathy Newman is suddenly just recasting everything that he's saying, she knows what he's saying.
	It's just that she doesn't believe that that's really his motivation in saying it.
	It's them attempting to read your heart, I think.
	Right, right.
	So if you're comfortable, It goes back to what you were saying earlier.
	If you're comfortable in who you are, it's hard for them to come back at you because they want to say that you're homophobic or you're racist or something.
	You say, well, I'm not that, and they don't have any place to go from there.
	For them, that's the only place that they can go.
	Dennis Miller has been in the entertainment business for almost four decades.
	He spent six of those years as Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update correspondent before exiting in 1991.
	Vulture.com, in fact, rated Dennis as the best Weekend Update anchor of all time.
	That's the only thing Vulture has done right.
	And Comedy Central rated him 21 in the list of greatest stand-up comedians of all time.
	He's a five-time Emmy Award winner for his live talk show, Dennis Miller Live, which had a nine-year run on HBO, had an eight-year run with his nationally syndicated talk radio program, and he hosted CNBC's Dennis Miller, a topical interview talk show, as well.
	I met Dennis when I was much younger.
	There's tape of us when I'm like 21.
	He's written four New York Times bestsellers.
	He's now the host of The Dennis Miller Option, a podcast where he has on his famous friends and gives uncensored takes on current events.
	So, we love having Dennis Miller on the radio show.
	We have him on all the time.
	I may be the only person in America who actually understands what Dennis is talking about, and I will say that I get a perverse kick out of trying to make Dennis laugh on the show by also making extraordinarily arcane references.
	He's got me beat on that front nearly every time.
	Dennis joined us in episode 47.
	47. We discussed how comedy should always be first and foremost about getting the laugh, how that isn't what we've been seeing, how the late-night show hosts stack up, and Dennis shares the story of when he laughed the hardest he ever has in his entire life.
	I look at AOC in the same way that I look at some of the comedians that I see working today, and that is enthusiasm over skill.
	Do you get that impression also?
	That there's a real draw toward the enthusiastic and the authentic as opposed to the craft, like actually working through things?
	Well, the craft, I think, is—listen, there's some guys who are beautiful technicians, and they literally would do syllable counts and peel it back.
	But the main directive, obviously, with comedy has always been getting laughs.
	Now, you can go out and do it in a myriad of ways.
	There are physical comedians.
	You know, intellectual comedians, you see some guys and you think, wow, that's so smart.
	But for the most part, it's all about the prime directive of getting laughs.
	I've noticed the change is more tectonic in that it's turned everybody's comedy act almost into an impersonator act.
	Like impressionists used to do, they'd go, what if Jack Nicholson was working at the Burger King?
	And I was always bridal, I had that, I lacked that gene where I could go with that, where I'd say, time out, he's one of the highest paid actors in the world.
	Why is he working at a fast food place?
	You know, I could even go there.
	But they do it, and then at the end, people applaud.
	And that's sort of what humor is now.
	Like, people will make a bold statement and get applause instead of big laughs.
	That's weird to me.
	It's sort of a short-circuited, the primal thing that it's an involuntary gesture where somebody says something funny, and you don't have to intellectualize it.
	You just find yourself... And that's the cool part of it.
	Now it's people going, hmm.
	And so that's a big change for comedy.
	The term that I've heard used about this is clapter, that people are not actually laughing anymore, they're just, they're clapping and this is the Hannah Gadsby version of comedy where you have think pieces now about why for thousands of years we've actually been getting the entire concept of comedy wrong.
	It's not that we're supposed to laugh at things, it's supposed to, if we laugh at things it's actually bad.
	We're supposed to think about things and then the thinking is the humor.
	It seems to me that we are reshifting the entire nature of humanity around what a bunch of very politically driven people want it to be because, I mean, I'm old enough to remember when Jay Leno was on television and trying to be funny and now you've got people on TV in late night who I don't even know if they're trying to be funny anymore.
	I mean, legitimately, I think that Fallon may be the only late night host who's even making an occasional attempt to be funny.
	I don't know what your opinion is of the I think Jimmy's a great entertainer and I like that about him.
	I think that you have to understand if you want to, at some point you would lose those jobs if you, look how good Jimmy is at it, Jimmy Fallon.
	I've been on Jimmy Kimmel, he was nice to me, so I don't have an axe to grind there.
	I disagree with him on many things, but he's also great at it in his own way.
	But Jimmy's the entertainer to me.
	Look how much trouble he got in for a simple hair fluff with Donald Trump.
	It's almost over for him at that point.
	Really, he's had the rally.
	There is an individual's choice at some point to keep a great job.
	Now, listen, you can say you should make your statement, you should speak your mind.
	If you're a 45-year-old Jimmy Fallon—he seems like a delightful guy, the times I've met him over the years, good kid, makes me laugh offstage, deadly funny—he's got the catbird seed.
	He hosts what Johnny Carson used to do.
	They didn't even make him leave from New York.
	He loves New York.
	He's probably knocking off $30 million a year all in.
	And they say to you, well, listen, no more pro-Trump stuff.
	They won't even state it, but it's like the old mob hit movies where they compartmentalize it.
	They'll have to deal with you with extreme prejudice.
	You would eventually not have that gig.
	It's just the truth.
	Jimmy could not go out there now and espouse anything on that side.
	I think at that point, with Deion Sanders, whenever he does NFL football, somebody won't stretch out for a pass, they'll short-arm it so they don't get lit up, and Deion Sanders goes, business decision!
	And that's the purest thing, at some point you have to understand the hierarchy would whack you if you went out every night and did okay.
	pro Trump show.
	But, I mean, and this is where I feel like, contrary to your own perception of yourself, I think that there probably is a growing market for somebody like you actually saying things that are both funny and somewhat conservative, simply because if you look at Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy, like, I remember when he used to do the sports thing on Kevin and Bean on 106.7 out here and was, you know, a funny guy.
	And when he was doing his show with Adam Carolla on Comedy Central and the humor came first and now he's the Pope of late night, right?
	He gets up there and he's going to rail about Obamacare and cry on TV about Obamacare.
	And I just think to myself, well, isn't like, where's the other side of this equation?
	Where are the, every funny comedian seems to be Being read out, and if you're moderate, that's not enough.
	You have to at least make overtures toward being politically woke if you're going to survive in this.
	Even guys I like, like I think John Mulaney is really funny.
	I think Mulaney, he will have to at some point in his show just dump on a certain portion of the country so that he can get his woke cred in order so that he can go about doing his normal business.
	I mean, isn't that leaving half the country out of the equation?
	He has to check that box for a cloaking mechanism.
	If he doesn't, everything else in his act will be shot through the prism of Is he not woken up?
	So yeah, is it easier to strew it throughout so you look woke for an hour and you're doing some type of jokes?
	Or is it better just in the middle like a sorbet, you cleanse your palate with just come out with a thing and hold a picture of Trump with horns and a trident?
	It's odd to me how it's demanded that you establish that.
	But in the middle you've laid... it's odd to me how it's demanded that you establish that.
	I won't do that.
	I think the hardest I've ever left, I have a good memory.
	I can't say he always worked for me, but I loved him, and he made me laugh.
	The single hardest I've ever seen was Sam Kennison.
	I don't know if you're as familiar with Sam, but it was just so wrong.
	Sometimes he'd be so wrong that you'd sit there, and this is what we talk about with political correctness.
	Like augured out a huge bit of what makes you laugh.
	Sometimes wrong or unfair or mean is what makes you laugh the hardest.
	I remember Sam convulsing me one night.
	There was a group of people in from Decatur, Illinois or something, and we're in the comedy store.
	It's like two in the morning.
	He's the last guy.
	Sam comes out.
	He hasn't broken big yet.
	He's getting big, though, but he comes out.
	He's like some pissed off golem.
	He's got the beret on and the coat, and they don't quite know what to make of him.
	Where are you in from?
	And he starts talking to them, and they think he's nice Sam or something.
	I'm like, oh Christ, they have no idea they're dealing with the Antichrist.
	And then he said, what are you doing?
	And the guy describes it, and Sam says, yeah, sounds good.
	Hey, listen, around three o'clock, after hearing that story, around three o'clock tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to be doing some yard work, and if there's anybody else in the crowd who wants to drive by and put a Because I'm dead!
	Like him!
	I'm dead!
	And the people were like, it was like the beginning of The Mask or something, where the eyes are coming out.
	And that's, now looking back at that, that's the hardest I've ever laughed.
	I remember thinking this is, I was with a comedian named Jeff Cesario.
	No, I look back on that.
	I don't have any choice in that.
	I look back on it.
	Is it like great moments in comedy?
	No, it's not exactly deft, but it was just so wrong, and the equilibrium was so thrown off.
	Maybe it was nervousness, but it just made me laugh my ass off.
	And I often think, now all that's dead.
	Sam would be out of the business today.
	So would Rickles, I mean.
	I think Rickles might get through because he was a softy.
	He had a good heart.
	Sam had a good heart, but he was more malevolent.
	I don't think either of those guys could work now, and that's a weird place to be in.
	That's what I was going to ask you next, is about the modern standards.
	You know, it seems to me that we've actually returned to a sort of puritanism about comedy, where if the only jokes that you're allowed to make are basically sex jokes, all the other jokes are out the window because they rely on stereotypes or they rely on observations about reality that could be offensive to somebody.
	Sex is inherently funny, so you can make a sex joke and get away with it, or you can just shock somebody by cursing or saying something incredibly lewd or vulgar.
	But it seems like that's It's either that or probing social commentary, meaning just leftist social commentary you can watch on Maddow.
	So, is there a future for comedy in this world?
	You know, there always is, but I can't foresee it.
	You know what I mean?
	Something's going to happen in this country that's going to uncap this pressure.
	What was the guy's name?
	Ray Donovan?
	Where do I go to get my reputation back?
	I think there was a guy named Walsh who one time said, have you no shame?
	Hollywood's running the tightest Torquemada type thing now.
	It's not McCarthyism.
	It's like Jenny McCarthyism.
	You can be kicked out in a second for saying something wrong, supposedly, by the cool kids.
	I never thought I'd see that coming.
	And now I can't say how I see it going, but I do think there'll be some moment where something is overplayed, somebody has a rang.
	It might almost happen with Monica Lewinsky, but she saved that dress.
	I mean, when you look back on that, people always say, that's such an odd thing.
	I mean, thank God.
	They would have driven that young girl, I think, into A nervous break?
	You know, something's going to happen that's going to make us all step back and go, oh, that's heavy, you know?
	And that's weird.
	And we've got to start.
	But I can't foresee what that is.
	But it's not going to be a minor thing.
	Something's going to come out of this perpetually uptight attitude that's going to make everybody shake their head and think, oh, we've gone too far.
	Greg Gutfeld is a New York Times bestselling author, libertarian political satirist, and humorist.
	He is the host of The Greg Gutfeld Show and co-host of The Five, and hosted the legendary cult TV phenomenon, Red Eye, on Fox News.
	Prior to joining Fox, Greg was editor for several magazines, and was one of the first contributors to the Huffington Post, writing sarcastic pieces poking fun at anything and everything, which is what eventually got him on Fox News.
	He tells me about how it all went down.
	In the full episode, you should check out that story.
	Greg is absolutely hilarious, shockingly self-effacing, and he and I go a long way back because, of course, he really got his start thanks to Andrew Breitbart.
	From episode 15, listen to Greg and me discuss how social media is bleeding into real life and making the culture worse, how we have decultivated the individual mind into a mob, and Greg's thoughts on if the culture can make for cross-isle discussions in the country.
	But by the same token, it's hard to balance that with, you know, let's not destroy people just because we can.
	And the fact is that we now live in this.
	You're exactly right.
	I mean, I remember, you know, it was probably three weeks ago now where that actor-director Mark Duplass just tweeted out something nice about me and suddenly he was deleting it and apologizing in this malice fashion.
	It was the worst.
	And then James Gunn jumped in and then I destroyed half the MCU by literally sitting here doing nothing.
	Right?
	I'm doing nothing.
	And suddenly James Gunn loses his job.
	And I thought to myself, like, if this stuff doesn't stop, then, like, the internet is bleeding into real life.
	The social media are bleeding into regular life.
	I used to think, and it's a depressing thought when you spend your life in politics and doing political commentary, trying to inform people.
	I used to think that the future of the country lay in the informed 40%.
	There are 40% of the American public who are into politics and very informed and following the news.
	I'm starting to think that it might be the opposite.
	That maybe the future of the country lies in the 60% that absolutely watches nothing that any of us do.
	And all they do is, like, go to baseball games, and they watch a little TV at night, and they mainly spend time, like, doing other things.
	I really hope that's the case.
	Yeah, I hope so, too.
	Because if not, we might be screwed.
	No, but it is this new kind of, like, If you have a bad day, your life could be over.
	So let's say you get in an argument at Walmart.
	Somebody films that.
	Yep.
	Like I said this a couple weeks ago on The Five that if this social media stuff was around with my parents, my mom would have been a meme.
	She would spank me if I was acting up in public.
	If somebody catches that, you're gone.
	It's a nation of narcs.
	We're all catching, we're all like, I got him, I'm going to put that up there.
	I remember when this was with Paula Deen, right?
	She said something racist.
	20 years ago.
	She used the N-word in the 70s.
	It's like, okay, now let's destroy her entire business now because of a racist thing she said in 1973.
	And then they just disappear.
	Like, people are, they're vanished.
	She's vanished.
	Yep.
	There's a few other people too.
	I mean, that you just go, where did they go?
	Is there an island where you, and can people, and also can people come back?
	Right.
	You know, can Louis C.K. come back?
	I don't know.
	I'm one of these people who I think Louis C.K.
	should come back.
	What he did was bad, but it's not like the guy was, you know, trying to portray an image of himself like he's a priest or something.
	He talked about this stuff.
	Right, he talked about this stuff.
	And, you know, once he's done his time and done his repentance, it seems to me that he should be able to, like, he didn't actually rape anybody.
	He did some really bad stuff, but that's not rape.
	And I think that we also have no gradations, right?
	Even for me saying that he did bad stuff, but it's not rape, I'll get destroyed for that because all of these things are rape.
	Everything is equivalent to the worst.
	Yeah.
	Even when you ask for a spectrum, people will see that as dismissive.
	It's like, I just want to like, because they say, no, there's no there's no spectrum.
	Bad is bad. That is bad.
	Yeah. Unless it's like an Asian person saying bad things about white people, then of course, not bad at all.
	And once you divide it into this dichotomy of good versus bad, as opposed to here's a spectrum of bad, right?
	There's like anti-black racism, which has historical connotations that are really bad.
	That's bad racism.
	And then slightly less bad racism, but still racism is Asian people saying that all white people should die.
	Like that's still pretty bad, but it's not like quite on the level of like the KKK.
	As soon as you say that sort of stuff, people lose their minds because everything has to be equal to everything else.
	It's interesting.
	I was reading a book over the weekend about Rwanda.
	A really light reading over the summer.
	And about the Rwandan genocide.
	And one of the things that struck me is when you're talking about the Rwandan genocide, basically the government said, your neighbors are now your enemies.
	Go murder your neighbors.
	And in three months, 800,000 people are slaughtered.
	And it occurs to you, the development of the individual mind, the idea that you are an individual and not just a member of a collective body that is designed to go hit this other collective body.
	That's actually relatively rare in human history and it only exists in certain places at certain times.
	And it feels like we're now in reverse cultivation.
	Like we spent literally millennia trying to get to the point where we thought of ourselves as individuals with independent thoughts and motives and who could stand up to the mob.
	And when I look at the world now, I think that we have this weird idea that all bad people The Nazis were basically monsters who were not actual human beings, who were just bad, who did bad things.
	They weren't human beings who did monstrous things.
	They were monsters who weren't human in any way.
	And so when you look at it, that's a very self-flattering point of view.
	Like, we're all good people.
	We would never do anything like that.
	I don't buy that at all.
	I think that pretty much everybody is capable of doing really terrible things.
	Peter says that.
	I mean, it's like, this is like, what is it that, like, and there's a dude, Do you ever read any, is it Rene Girard?
	Does that ring a bell a lot?
	Yeah, that's his name, yeah.
	Yeah, the whole idea of just like imitation.
	It's like, and I think social media, I've been reading that and I've been thinking about, why is it getting worse?
	It's because social media is enabling the repeat behavior, being able to imitate each other, and that's creating more of a mob rule.
	Like it's disseminating these memes and these feelings so we can all just join in and swarm.
	And like if I don't like Ben Shapiro, I can get 100,000 people or 4,000 people who feel like 100,000.
	I think that's why it feels like it's regressive.
	It's going back because I think social media is making that possible.
	Maybe it doesn't result in anything bad.
	Like, nobody gets killed.
	It's not Rwanda, because it's social media.
	But I noticed that social media does destroy careers, and that's physical.
	Yeah, like Justin Sacco, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	The famous, yeah, where she flew to South Africa before making an AIDS joke, or after making an AIDS joke, in which the joke was about, like, AIDS, Do you think there's any hope that there's going to be any cross-isle discussion, you know, any time in the near future?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, it wasn't like a negative, it was, she was making a political point.
	Right. That liberals would have loved.
	Anybody would have, you know, and she got totally, by the time she landed, she was over.
	Do you think there's any hope that there's gonna be any cross-isle discussion, you know, any time in the near future?
	Because it just looks, I mean, there's some people, but it just, it feels uglier and uglier.
	I know, I don't, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	The only upside I could think is that maybe we just are moving away from politics.
	Hopefully.
	Like most of America is.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I hope so too.
	And I think that one of the things that you do that's so great is that you bring a lot of culture into what it is that you do.
	And that is space where I think that So long as the left doesn't destroy our common cultural space, too.
	I think that we can actually have some space.
	So, what do you want to do over the next few years?
	I mean, what's your goal?
	I know these are weird questions.
	I actually like doing what I'm doing.
	I enjoy writing every day.
	That's the thing that I like to do.
	And I'll probably do, as long as Fox will have me, I enjoy, I mean, I don't know many people who are doing what I do.
	I'm the only me at the network.
	I can't think of anybody.
	And so I like the being unique.
	Not a lot of funny conservatives.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	They're coming.
	There's a few though that I found on my show that I'm like really, like I had a few last week, you know, and I would say that they're non-liberal like Joe DeVito and Joe Mackey and Chris Freed.
	These are all young guys that, you know it's funny, I don't like even labeling them because I don't want to hurt them.
	Right.
	You know what I mean?
	I don't even.
	No, we get noticed.
	I know a bunch of major Hollywood folks who listen to the show, watch this kind of thing, and I'll legitimately say to them, you cannot let people know that you ever watch any of this stuff.
	I have a buddy who is super hip in the music world, probably one of the hippest people who was more excited about the podcast when you did with me and will be excited about this.
	But I'm not going to say his name.
	Yeah.
	I'll tell you after.
	But I'm not going to say his name because it would just not help him at all.
	I mean, this guy is so hip.
	He's like, if people found out about it, Pitchfork would be, you know, Pitchfork Media would freak out.
	Oh yeah, no question.
	I mean, the list of people who have actually been to the offices who we will not take pictures of because we'll say to them, like, this was Duplass's mistake.
	He came in.
	I told him, dude, don't let people know that you were here.
	He did and he got destroyed, right?
	I mean, that's how bad it is.
	But, you know, I think that hopefully there will be a rational middle that, not even in terms of political viewpoint, but just a rational middle where people can actually have these discussions again that will be very helpful.
	If you've enjoyed hearing from our past guests in this collection, be sure to check out their full episodes and hear more of The Conversations.
	Links to those are in the description below.
	Also, be sure to leave us a comment about who you'd like to see me talk with next season.
	We'll see you next time.
	Our guests are booked by Caitlin Maynard.
	Post-production is supervised by Alex Ingaro.
	Editing is by Jim Nickel.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Coromino.
	Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.
	Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo.

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