In this excerpt of their Patreon show The Weekender, Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the manufactured outrage from the right over things as trivial as Hasbro renaming their spud universe "Potato Head." Plus, they take a deep dive into the documentary "Room 237" which is a film about conspiracy theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. While these theories pertain to a seminal pop culture touchstone, it's also easy to trace how this thought process can permeat the political landscape and lead to the toxicity we see today.
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I'm Nick Hauselmann and this is an announcement to let you know that we are going to be doing a new series called The Weekender over on Patreon that will appear every Friday.
And this is a little sneak preview so you can get a handle on what it's like and why you'd want to go over there and join the Patreon and be part of that community which has been incredible and amazing with a lot of people there and a lot of great conversations.
So Here it is check it out and feel free to check out the actual patreon as well at patreon.com slash muckrake podcast Hey everybody, welcome to the Patreon exclusive Weekender edition of the Muckrank Podcast.
This episode we're going to focus on a documentary called Room 237, which was made in 2012 by a guy named Rodney Archer.
And we're going to be talking about conspiracy theories, we're going to be talking about how people are seeing Patterns where there aren't any and and sort of diving into how that's affected our culture.
It's gonna be a good time but unfortunately we have to start this on a Sad note.
I mean a really serious rough little thing that we have to address And that is of course everyone knows that Mr. Potato Head is No longer, Mr. Potato Head Nick, how have you been coping in these rough times?
I sat in the corner for a few minutes, but then... Are you sure?
I feel like I saw the tweet from Hasbro that said, don't worry, they're not going anywhere.
It will still be Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.
So now I'm confused.
So to get everybody up to speed, I wanted to talk about this for a second because I think this is really...
First of all, amusing.
Second of all, telling about where we are in this current political climate.
For those who maybe haven't seen it yet, there's been a firestorm that has taken off today.
And it just totally shows how absurd our political moment is.
Hasbro, the toy maker.
If I'm not wrong, Nick, G.I.
Joe, correct?
Hasbro?
Am I right about that?
I think so.
Yeah, Hasbro, who via G.I.
Joe has helped the military-industrial complex, went to some really incredible heights.
Hasbro came out and said that they are rebranding the Mr. Potato Head brand.
Which is, the title of the brand is Mr. Potato Head, and within Mr. Potato Head, there is Mr. Potato Head, and Mrs. Potato Head, and, I mean, God knows how many other.
I assume there are Animal Potato Heads, there are Franchise, Ghostbusters, Transformer Potato Heads, you name it, Potato Heads.
And they're actually just changing the name, the overarching umbrella, Mr. Potato Head to Potato Head.
And they're also still going to have Mr. Potato Head and Mrs. Potato Head.
So they've done it to get a little bit of press to sort of frame themselves as being a little bit more progressive than they are while keeping everybody and not trying to offend anybody.
Meanwhile, by the way, I'm looking out my window right now and my conservative neighbors are burning cars in the Well, here's the question.
turning streetlights.
If you look on social media, people are losing their damn minds.
It is the biggest non-issue ever, and somehow or another, this has once again captured the zeitgeist of our stupid culture.
- Well, here's the question.
Who are the snowflakes again? - Who are the snowflakes, Nick?
- You know, it's the outraged right.
They're just looking to create like... Actually, let me throw this out there because I'm kind of thinking that the Democratic agenda that Joe Biden's going to lead and they're going to parade all these different things they're going to try and get passed in Congress, some of these are progressive enough that it's going to force the Republicans to have to take these awful stances against truly open society kind of things that are supposed to be to
Uh, welcome more people under the tent and we're gonna I think this is what they're doing I mean, I think that Neera Tanden almost is like one of those float that out there to kind of like just expose it And then they're going to continue to do this and get all these republicans on the record saying these heinous things Well, I mean, we've even seen, and speaking of everything that we're going over right now, this isn't about, you know, Mr. Potato Head, obviously.
This is actually about a larger issue of trans rights, right?
We actually had today Senator Rand Paul, who, God, what a piece of shit this guy is.
Like, what just a terrible human being Rand Paul is.
I was speaking to Dr. Rachel Levine, who is a trans woman, and was asking about genital mutilation.
Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene, what did she get elected for, Nick?
Did she have like a real platform that she was going to follow?
The alphabet sometimes eludes me, Jared, but I think there's a better... It's more about QAnon, which we're going to talk about extensively here in a little bit, but also to just make money and gain power and influence people by, quote-unquote, triggering the libs, who has gotten in a bizarre
Like tit for tat matchup with her neighbor in Congress who put up a trans flag so she put up a statement that there are only two genders and then immediately tweeted it because she thought that would get a lot of response, which unfortunately it did.
We're now dealing with a Republican Party that literally has no other objective beyond power, profit, and pissing people off.
That's literally all they have to do anymore.
And meanwhile, the country, by the way, is in shambles.
It's falling apart.
People are suffering and dying and these people they're literally having flame wars that you would see in online forum.
I in no way wish to defend the senator from Tennessee.
Is that where Ann Paul is?
Kentucky.
Kentucky, forgive me.
God damn it.
Sorry, guys in Tennessee.
In Kentucky, I knew that.
But, you know, he tried to do this, this like, you know, anecdotal story about a person who had had a transgender surgery to become, to transition from a man to woman.
And then, you know, a few years later, as a teenager, and then a few years later, realize that it was a mistake and wish that she hadn't done that.
And then that suddenly becomes this whole thing where how would you ever let anybody who's underage You know, go through this process.
I think it's basically what he's saying.
It certainly is red meat for any of the really ultra-right.
I mean, listen, the way he phrased it, it does sound somewhat reasonable that, like, you probably would want to have some parental guidance in this.
But he doesn't need to talk to her about it!
Okay, fair enough.
Okay, the subject did need to come up, first of all.
Second of all, he said transsexual.
Mm-hmm.
Like, come on.
Like, he is pushing an agenda and all of this.
And again, it has nothing to do with a legislative plan whatsoever.
Right.
I mean, there's nothing.
They're not doing anything.
This has nothing to do with anything.
And by the way, we haven't talked about it yet, and I want to talk about it more extensively, and maybe we'll do an episode about it coming up.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr., Lauren Boebert, They're just making videos left and right of themselves standing in front of giant displays of weapons, looking like members of Al Qaeda, by the way, releasing, you know, their newest threat towards, you know, the Western devils.
And all that this is about is perceived aggrievement.
That's all it is, is they're continually trumpeting this idea that something awful is happening to them.
With Donald Trump Jr., it's that he thinks he's not getting enough likes and retweets and impressions on his Instagram.
With Boebert, it's because I don't know if you know this, but her restaurant, Shooters, has a long history of making people deliriously sick with their food.
And people are like, hey, you probably need to watch the temperature that your food is kept at.
And she's like, don't tread on me.
I'll make people sick all day long.
Marjorie Taylor Greene was thrilled to be removed from her committees.
She's thrilled because it gave her more time to shitpost.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like that's what this party is.
She's a martyr.
She becomes that martyr.
But you have to do it.
You have to take away the comedians from her anyway.
But yes, it just riles them up.
I mean I just saw this horrible video.
This woman and her three-year-old daughter in a car were getting menaced by a guy who's like tailgating them all because she had a Biden sticker on her bumper.
And when he pulls over and she films him, he is just fully like, yeah, I was totally tailgating you because you had a bumper sticker and I'm really happy that you were freaking out and scared and I made you scared.
He's like, come on, keep driving.
I want to keep doing it.
And it was like such an insight into what the mindset is.
It's like they don't exist for anything legislatively.
They're simply trying to like, you know, own the libs.
Well, I have to tell you one thing just to show you how my mind works.
So, you know, with Junior doing this, you know, to the camera with all the guns behind him.
All I took from that instantly was the gun over his right shoulder, one of them, there's a number of them, is a Remington XP100.
Are you aware of why that might be significant in my line of work?
Tell the good people at home.
The Remington XP100 is the gun that supposedly was used by the Grassy Knoll shooter in 63 to kill for the headshot on JFK.
And there must be something going on there.
Again, if you want to try and connect threads, And post the red string across your walls, that's something right there.
So, speaking of, and that is as good of a transition as anyone could ever ask for.
Thank you.
Let's go ahead and jump into, and again, for those of you who maybe haven't seen Room 237, Rodney Archer's documentary, I recommend it.
Absolutely recommend it.
I think it's a hell of a viewing experience.
But for those who haven't, this was a documentary that I think was well ahead of its time and really, really telling of who we are as a species, who we are as a society and culture and pretty much gave us a blueprint for the type of thinking who we are as a society and culture and pretty much gave us a blueprint for the And the conspiracy theory thinking and narrative connecting that we're dealing with now.
But for those who haven't seen it, and again, you should.
I mean, I would go watch it.
This is a documentary that concerns Stanley Kubrick's horror movie adaptation of the Stephen King book, The Shining.
How do you feel with The Shining?
I think it's one of the greatest horror movies of all time.
I was really reflecting because I wanted to try and remember what it was like the first time I saw it.
I can't even put it into a context when you think it would be easy because it would lay such an impression on you.
I know I saw so many movies when I was way too young to see them and this had to be one of them.
It came out when I was 8.
I wouldn't have seen it until VHS which would have been at least 9 or 10.
But there's no question that when you take a guy like Stanley Kubrick, who is probably the finest filmmaker of his generation, you know, from between 1950... Possibly of any.
Yeah.
I mean, the quality of movies that he made, it wasn't obviously in volume, but the quality is... He is just a genius.
And when they mentioned that... So what's an average IQ for people?
I think it's right around 100, isn't it?
So you might have like a 110 or 120?
Yeah, something along those lines.
Alright, and so he had a 200 IQ apparently, like... Wait, wait, me?
Did you ask me my IQ?
Yeah.
Oh, I don't know.
I don't know, man.
He snuck it in there.
He didn't hear it.
Yes.
No, no.
That's a test.
So either way, he is orders above most people and even of the smartest people.
So if you've ever been involved in filmmaking and you realize how every decision is a decision, there's almost nothing random about when you are going to set up a shot, right?
That you realize that this guy was operating on another level than everybody else.
And, you know, I think a lot of what we saw in Room... I got to go with Room 237.
I'm sorry, that's how they say it in the movie.
Not 237, 237.
So, when you talk about that and you realize how they exposed what was going on here, it's as artistic as, you know, when you go through, you know, they mentioned Lolita, but when you pull back some of these novels we've known in the past, it also, almost like, what's the movie?
Sixth Sense?
No, shoot.
Yeah, Sixth Sense, right?
With the big reveal?
I'm not gonna ruin it.
But it's like, you go back and watch it again, and you realize, oh my god, all the Easter eggs.
This is what he was doing and planning them, and like, it took, like, it was a long game.
No one realized for years and years what he did.
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