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Jan. 18, 2024 - On Brand

02:12:23

OB #38 - Russell Embraces Transphobia

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	This is On Brand, a podcast where we discuss the ideas and antics of one Russell Brand.
	I'm Al Worth, and each week I go through an episode of Brand's show with my co-host Lauren B. Hi, that's me, Lauren B. I am the co-host that does not know we're getting ourselves into, but I know it's usually not very good.
	Mm hmm.
	It is almost invariably bad, which is why we do the good thing before the bad thing.
	And Lauren, what is your good thing before the bad thing this week?
	Well.
	Heaters?
	Can it be heaters?
	Yeah, yeah, it can!
	Heaters and my ability to...
	Triangulate them in our apartment in Chicago.
	It's like the outside is the ocean right now, where if you're in it for any amount of time, it's gonna try to kill you.
	That's how bad it is.
	The air is dangerous.
	Which I've never experienced anywhere else in space or time in my life, so... It's pretty remarkable, yeah.
	Yeah, like snow days?
	Oh girl, that's fine.
	Sure, sure, sure, we all do that.
	Not all.
	Above a certain, or below a certain latitude, we all do that.
	This is a new, awful thing.
	Sorry, to complete aside, apparently they don't do that anymore because they just they have to go online and do classes online now and they don't do snow days in a lot of places.
	How crazy is that?
	So they just do... I mean, if they have the infrastructure... I know, I know, but still.
	I'm like, kids, just, you know, go play in the snow.
	If it's snowing, go play in the snow.
	I mean, days like where it is with you right now, fuck no.
	You're staying inside, and that's all that's happening.
	And we found out it's not just schools.
	There's a lot of other services that are on pause because they can't go in to the office.
	And I also don't want them to, but it sure isn't convenient.
	But I have, through trial and error, man, I have mastered the heaters in my home.
	I'm a poor person heater expert.
	Hello.
	So that's my my good thing is where I've is is it's taken years, but I can handle this Chicago moment.
	What's your good thing?
	That's it, gotta say, it's a great one.
	It's fucking cold here as well.
	Not as cold as with you, though.
	Right.
	Yeah, my good thing is that on Saturday morning, my nephew was born!
	Oh, wow!
	Yeah, which is great!
	Holy shit, that's awesome!
	Congrats!
	Yeah, so my sister-in-law, you know, it was Nearly just shy of two weeks overdue, like around there, that kind of thing.
	And so they were like, okay, we're getting very close to emergency c-section here just to get the thing out of here.
	And yeah, ended up having to have a c-section anyway, but it wasn't an emergency one.
	It was just like, all right, let's just cut some, yeah, let's just do this thing.
	Yeah, little baby Loic was born, which I think is a great name.
	L-O-I-C, Loic.
	It's apparently French, but it sounds kind of Norse to me.
	But yeah, yeah.
	Loic Newmaworth, the child is born, and yeah.
	Cool.
	Yeah, super cool times.
	Super cool times.
	Very, very happy for my brother who does not know what's hit him.
	God love him.
	And yeah, I'm like, yeah, I remember that.
	I remember that.
	It's a lot.
	It seems also impossible.
	I don't know, I hear overdue and I know the experiences of pregnant people who are overdue and it just seems like, oh man, it just seems like the absolute worst.
	And my heart could not go out enough to just...
	Be this vessel that still has to exist.
	Yeah.
	Oh boy, that's rough.
	That's rough.
	So I think Roxy, I think she, she went on maternity like early kind of early kind of December, early to mid December, I think.
	And like prior to that, she was like working from home anyway.
	So like, it's gonna be a lot of I don't know.
	And she's not the type of person that likes sitting around.
	So I can't imagine.
	That's extra challenging, I think.
	The mental torture alone.
	But hey, the kid has popped out and everyone's happy and healthy.
	So hey, it's great.
	It's awesome.
	That's awesome.
	I haven't been to see the child yet because it's very, you know, hectic and everything.
	So I'll just give it a week or two and go and see.
	See the child, but that'll be good.
	That'll be good.
	Looking forward to it.
	Very exciting times.
	Right.
	We have a show to deal with, but first we should thank some new patrons.
	So first off, Rachel Lalonde, you are now an awakening wonder.
	You are indeed an awakening wonder.
	Yay!
	I do.
	Oh, that's awesome.
	I'm so glad.
	Thank you so much, Mama.
	Awesome.
	Cool.
	Sweet.
	Yeah.
	Nice to meet you.
	And James Horribin, you are now an Awakening Wonder.
	Awakening Wonder?
	Awakening Wonder is what you are.
	You are indeed an Awakening Wonder.
	There we go.
	You can be an Awakening Wonder as well.
	Thank you so much, James.
	Thank you so much.
	Thank you very much, James.
	And if anyone wants to support us on what we do, become an Awakening Wanderer, join the Invisible Hand, or donate on an elevated tier like our dear, dear Juan Jalapeno.
	We see you, John Juan.
	Head to patreon.com slash onbrand and you will have our eternal gratitude.
	It's this which allows us to be editorially independent and ad-free.
	As a patron, you will also get a shout-out on the show and access to our patron-only show Offbrand, where we talk about pretty much anything but Russell Brand, and also sometimes Russell Brand at this point, but hey, And please note that while you can easily listen to our audio version anywhere you can find podcasts, you can also watch us on YouTube, or if you're listening in the Spotify app, the video should come up there too.
	All right, so what do we have this week?
	Well, also one just little note that I stumbled upon with patrons, any of you lovely friends that I don't I don't know your last name or I've heard it and I don't process it.
	And I'm just as excited whenever you also are a patron and maybe I didn't catch it, so.
	I feel really bad whenever I'm excited and then I realize like, oh no, that was my friend and it just didn't register because I called them something else.
	This is true, this is true.
	If you know us IRL and we haven't mentioned anything, just drop us a message.
	Give us a nudge.
	Give us People are engaging and, you know, dropping their things in the comments, so that's cool.
	And I posted a PDF with, like, a simplified summary, and there's a massive spreadsheet on Google that I will keep updating.
	Yeah, Lauren knows podcasts.
	I thought it was more normal till we talked about it.
	Hey, it's all good.
	It's all good.
	We got series, baby.
	We got series.
	Yeah, we do.
	Really good stuff.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I have comparatively few recommendations, but all good.
	All good anyway.
	The numbers are a little wild.
	Some have said inhuman, but you know, let's leave that to them.
	Right, so this week Russell is back to his usual show, he's back on his bullshit, and he did in fact have his conversation with Greg Gutfeld of Fox News this last week.
	Gutfeld!
	Gutfeld!
	But, sadly, what it turned into was an hour of trading comments about how everything is terrible nowadays because it's all woke.
	And I just, ugh, it was exhausting.
	If we have, like, an A list of content to cover and a B list, Gutfeld's interview was very much B list material.
	Like, if we need to, if we're scratching around, we can get to it, but it is not a priority.
	Instead, what we're gonna do today is tackle an editorial.
	Now, this is one that I have to preface by saying that on this show and in interviews, I have made the case that when it comes to the issues of racism, xenophobia, and being anti-LGBTQ+, Russell is something of an outlier among his class of alt-right grifters.
	It seems like it's gonna be a problem!
	It's just gonna be a bigger problem moving forward!
	His allyship is generally not really allyship at all, because he platforms the biggest transphobes in the business, for instance.
	But when he's had the Jordan Petersons and Candace Owens of the world on his show, he has at least offered meagre pushback to their anti-trans ideologies, even if it's just saying, there are many things we disagree on, and maybe we should all just live in segregated separate communities, which Again, the answer to the issue of racism or xenophobia or people being anti-LGBTQ plus is not in fact segregation.
	To my recollection, we tried the racial segregation thing more than once and it's never exactly gone well.
	But Russell has always kind of stayed on the side of, I support these people and believe they should be free to do and say as they please without anyone attacking them.
	And people should equally be able to say as they please and no one should attack them either.
	Okay.
	That is Until now.
	So what the fuck am I talking about?
	Well, let's let Russell introduce the editorial.
	The legacy media accused Dave Chappelle of punching down and abusing trans people in his news special.
	But why do the legacy media continually remove nuance and dilute joy?
	How do they benefit from people being caught in constant conflict?
	Hello there you Awakening Wonders, thanks for joining us on our voyage to truth and freedom.
	A voyage that surely involves comedy, awakening, bliss, joy, ecstasy, amusement, coming together in transcendent states that sometimes require a genius like Dave Chappelle or Ricky Gervais to bring about curious states by evoking thoughts and notions and scenarios and characters that Many people wouldn't observe, spot or consider pondering.
	Dave Chappelle's special is obviously incredibly popular and maybe marks a transitional moment in the culture wars.
	Certainly what it does mark is that when it comes to it, if something is profitable, people will back it.
	This is going to be an interesting thing that plays out over the next 12 months, I would imagine.
	How can you still deploy the rhetoric of wokeism while acknowledging that there are growing markets for people that are critical of some of the ideals within it?
	One of the things I think is particularly interesting is while Dave Chappelle clearly makes jokes in the special about trans folk or disabled people, he's obviously joking.
	And that makes it okay.
	Yeah, so some weeks I'm having to trawl through and really figure out what of Russell's content is worth serious discussion, and some weeks as soon as I see the thumbnail I'm like, oh yep, we're gonna need to deal with this.
	So yeah, it's about Dave Chappelle.
	To start, and this will come up later, I would like to point out the very clear lens that Russell is looking at this through, which is why we're covering the topic at all, and that is the growing markets who reject wokeism.
	Russell is a trend hound who obsessively leaps upon anything that gets big enough to possibly siphon off some viewers from other media spaces.
	A recent example would be that when the GTA 6 trailer dropped and hit 93 million YouTube views in 24 hours, Russell just had to do a react video to the trailer itself.
	It was pathetic and transparent, and completely unrelated to his show, but at least decidedly lacking in malice.
	What we're covering today, on the other hand, marks a noticeable shift compared to other times Russell has brought up Dave Chappelle.
	Previously, it's been a case of people should be allowed to say what they want, when they want, but also I personally believe that people should be able to be who they want, very much walking the line down the middle, or at least trying to.
	And we will get to how this has developed in just a minute, but first I would like to address the idea that because someone is obviously joking about someone or another human being, that makes it okay, regardless of what was said, and it's just bullshit.
	Firstly, Chappelle is making a joke, but he's not joking about his views.
	He's a transphobe, among other things.
	Further, there is a distinction between having jokes with a certain demographic of people as the subject and punching down or mocking that demographic of people for who they are, especially with, you know, unchangeable characteristics.
	Of all the people in the universe, Dave Chappelle knows this.
	Subjects of race and religion very noticeably don't get the same treatment from Chappelle in the same way, and he knows the difference between punching down or punching across or up.
	Joking at the expense of a demographic for things they can't change is bigoted bullshit and is never ever acceptable.
	I just think that the, um, I think that the, I would never call, I would never deign to call Russell an ally by any stretch of the imagination, but being in the public eye for a long time and as a person who Also, just, like, the thing that I can say, uh, I'm pretty sure about this person.
	Like, you know, there's a lot of, and I think that, rightly so, maybe people don't necessarily take seriously the extent to which he is a sex pest, but people are always kind of like, meh, it's on a line, I get a vibe.
	I don't think Russell Brand has anything personally Against gay, any queer people at all.
	In fact, probably the opposite in his individual experience and in his life.
	There is something uniquely, and also...
	Dave Chappelle is a person that seems like, okay, there's a lot of contradictions, but I don't think you hate gay people or queer people at all, sir.
	So then why are we pandering to this?
	It feels so transparent as pandering.
	Well, in a way that I can't say about a lot of other, you know, like high profile like comedians or whatever they consider themselves to be like, I was like, y'all, this is like, like, we're not seeing the forest for the trees here.
	And you were a big forest for trees person.
	So what are we doing?
	I mean, the idea is like, it's class consciousness, right?
	And they're, they're going to bat for people that are like them.
	But that's not Yeah, it's interesting.
	It's uniquely problematic to me.
	Yeah, I would be surprised if Russell, on a personal basis, got really fucking riled up about any of the LGBTQ community.
	I don't think he would give a single shit, is personally where I think he would land.
	But, obviously, the media space that he exists in means he's gonna start leaning in one direction or another.
	As for Dave Chappelle, yeah, I mean, he's had problems with the LGBTQ community, and which I would say have gotten progressively worse over the last several years, especially since he started bringing it up.
	And the things that he has said about trans people specifically, that seems to be his hard fucking line.
	And yeah, we'll get into that in a little bit.
	But I agree.
	I'm just like, why the fuck, Dave Chappelle?
	That's what I'm saying.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Why have you picked this particular hill to die on?
	It doesn't make sense.
	I don't understand.
	Because the whole joke is in the context of a story about a very close friend who's a trans person.
	So like, Okay, so just extrapolate that to all of them.
	Well, that's an old previous one.
	But I'm saying, we're talking about a history through their career.
	And I'm saying, I think that if you are using that person in your act, then you should have a higher standard.
	The bar should be higher, not lower.
	Well, we will get to that.
	I'm sure, but yeah, it doesn't add up.
	Yeah, no, I completely agree.
	And I feel exactly the same way about Ricky Gervais and J.K.
	Rowling as well.
	I'm just like, what the fuck is wrong with you people?
	Like, just why?
	What a spectacular waste of so many things, including everyone's time and energy, you bastards.
	I think J.K.
	Rowling is a very unique example now that we've examined her body of work.
	It might have been turning a blind eye.
	True, true.
	I don't know that that's- To all the other things, yeah.
	In my head, I don't compare.
	She's a special case.
	Yes, no, I agree.
	I agree.
	What I do appreciate is how everyone has kind of collectively agreed, like, fuck her, but also I'm going to enjoy the Harry Potter movies, at least mostly.
	You know, I'm like, yeah, all right.
	You know, it's, it's, yeah, at some point you got to separate these things.
	I'm glad I don't have that.
	Genuinely though, I'm glad I don't have that kind of emotional connection in the same way.
	And I feel like it's just like a weird age group anomaly thing.
	We all have that stuff, and my heart goes out to everyone that has to wrestle with that.
	Us regular nagulars, it sucks.
	It's true, it's true, and it seems to have to be a thing more and more every single day.
	As to specifically what Chappelle has said in this exact special, we're going to watch a clip in just a moment, but first we have a little bit more of defense from Russell.
	And also, significantly, there's a point in his stand-up special where he talks admiringly of trans people.
	Beyond acceptingly, admiringly.
	And none of the news outlets that are critiquing him mention that because, I believe, to include that nuance would dilute their own arguments.
	In short, they enjoy their own outrage.
	They're high on the smell of their own gaseous outrage.
	They don't want to go, well, actually, Dave Chappelle's probably joking about that.
	Apparently, there's a moment in the Netflix special where Chappelle talks admiringly of trans people and the legacy media are deliberately ignoring that so they can get high on the smell of their own outrage farts.
	Now, I had previously resigned myself to not watching any of his content again, but naturally I watched the Chappelle special, The Dreamer, in preparation for this show.
	I found no such admiring talk of the trans community, nor could I find even any accepting talk, which confused me a touch as to what the fuck Russell is talking about.
	But I think it's something that comes up a little bit later on, so we'll deal with it when we when we deal with it.
	But in the meantime, just know that there is zero admiration or acceptance of trans people within this special.
	That I can say for sure as a person under the trans umbrella who has watched it.
	Now, you and I are comedy fans, Lauren, and here's the thing, when Chappelle made his return, most comedy fans rejoiced, right?
	The guy's a fucking excellent comic in terms of chops and storytelling ability, his form is great, and there's a reason he's been able to do this shit at a high level for so long.
	Um, and then came the trans jokes.
	Like, they started out being borderline acceptable.
	For example, quote, uh, this idea that a person can be born in the wrong body, they have to admit that's a fucking hilarious predicament, unquote.
	And I'm like, well, taken completely in isolation, yeah, kinda.
	You know, just, just completely on its own.
	The concept is, sure, Freaky Friday, sure, let's, yeah, okay, it's funny.
	So, much more punching across than down, but still very much critiquable.
	And then with every subsequent special, the trans jokes became not only more frequent, but more pointed and harmful in nature.
	Yeah.
	And this eventually culminated with Chappelle declaring on stage that he is in fact Team Turf, and stands with J.K.
	Rowling before stating, gender is a fact, which is his way of saying gender is binary and immutable.
	Again, the man is a transphobe, and while he is making jokes, he is not joking about how he feels.
	Yeah, that was fucking nuts.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, we've gone all the way off the deep end.
	But even in that conversation, the things that he chose to say, it was contradictory in that moment.
	To say you're Team Turf, Means that the story you told about your friend who was trans, then you're not.
	Either you are or you're not, you don't get to say both and you definitely don't get to use a tragedy in your act.
	Like that to me was really like, it was, it came off as, you know, there's like an extreme feeling and also like a, man, just like an unfortunate, there's like a, there's a range of emotions Where it's like, come on, man!
	Of all things!
	What I would compare it to is, and we've spoken about this before, you know, the kind of hang out with kind of lovely but fairly hardcore Christians, for instance, who treat you very nicely and will have you around their dinner table and everything.
	But for some of those people, if they're particularly like that, in the back of their mind, they're like, oh, no, you'll burn in hell.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I'll be nice to you, but, you know.
	And for me, it feels like- If you're lucky in the back of their mind and not coming out of their mind.
	Yeah, no, I know, I know.
	But yeah, like Chappelle's treatment of his former friend kind of feels a little bit like that to me.
	It's like, oh no, I disagree with you as a concept, but you as a person, yeah, okay.
	That was very, yeah.
	That's what I'm saying.
	It was a really dissonant moment.
	Yeah, it is.
	It's very odd.
	But, you know, it's very difficult for me to speak as to someone else's feelings, but it seems that way from a distance anyway.
	So we're going to watch a clip from Chappelle's special now, taken directly from Russell's coverage, complete with, at some point, a little React square of him showing up.
	Great.
	So I've no idea if we'll get a copyright hit on YouTube for this or not, but screw it.
	Here it is.
	So let's have a look at some moments from Dave Chappelle's special and talk about the way that the mainstream media likes to use deliberately denuanced attacks on cultural artifacts in order to stoke tensions and conflict.
	And the only thing that got me out of that space was a comedian friend of mine, the late, great Norm Macdonald.
	That's right.
	Shout out to Norm.
	And what Norm did, which I'll never forget, is he knew that I was the biggest Jim Carrey fan in the world.
	Now, I'm not going to go all into it, but Jim Carrey is talented in a way that you can't practice or rehearse.
	What a God-given talent.
	I was fascinated with him.
	And Norm knew that.
	And he called me up and he goes, Dave, I'm doing a movie with Jim Carrey.
	Do you want to meet him?
	And I said, fuck, yes, I do.
	And it was the first time I could remember since my father died being excited.
	And the movie was called Man on the Moon.
	I didn't know any of this.
	And in this movie, Jim Carrey was playing another comedian I admired, the late, great Andy Kaufman.
	Yes, and Jim Carrey was so immersed in that role that from the moment he woke up to the time he went to bed at night, he would live his life as Andy Kaufman.
	I didn't know that.
	When they said cut, this nigga was still.
	Andy Kaufman.
	So much so that everybody on the crew called him Andy.
	I didn't know any of that.
	I just went there to meet him, and when he walked into the room where we were supposed to meet, I screamed, Jim Carrey!
	And everyone said, no!
	Call him Andy.
	And I didn't understand.
	And then he came over and he was acting weird.
	I didn't know he was acting like Andy Kaufman.
	He was just like, hey, how you doing?
	And I was like, Hello!
	Andy?
	Now, in hindsight, how fucking lucky am I that I got to see one of the greatest artists of my time immerse in one of his most challenging processes ever.
	Very lucky to have seen that.
	But as it was happening, I was very disappointed.
	Because I wanted to meet Jim Carrey, And I had to pretend this nigga was Andy Kaufman all afternoon.
	And he was clearly Jim Carrey.
	I could look at him and I could see he was Jim Carrey.
	Anyway, I say all that to say, that's how trans people make me feel.
	[Laughter and applause]
	Mmm.
	Yeah.
	I think he should be way more concerned about all the people hooting and hollering about, like... Great that you landed a joke, but... I think this is a... I don't know, I almost feel like it's an accountability issue?
	Those people in that room, you need to acknowledge all the reasons and why is it they're screaming that and taking that back home and using your bit to justify their behavior.
	Mhm, yeah.
	Yep, agreed.
	So that's one of the various anti-trans jokes he makes throughout the special, and just what a fucking disappointment, right?
	It was a great story and a great bit, right up until the punchline where he just takes a big ol' swing at the expense of the trans community.
	It happens within the first five or so minutes of the special, by the way, so like, pretty much coming out the gate with this.
	Sets the tone.
	Uh-huh.
	Before he then goes on to make fun of people with disabilities, saying that, oh, they're not allowed to make fun of trans people anymore so I'm changing it up and I need someone to punch down on and I'm gonna go for the disabled community instead because they're less organized and nobody ever comes for them.
	And he could have left it there or made some innocuous joke about bathroom sizes or something, but instead he then decides to do a physical impression mocking someone with cerebral palsy.
	So he's doing like the Trump arm and the limp and all that, right?
	And then he takes the piss out of people in wheelchairs and is, you know, purposefully glued to his stool while doing so.
	Specifically, he actually goes for Madison Cawthorn of all people.
	Well, yeah, but instead of taking the guy's politics to task, he makes fun of the idea of someone in a wheelchair being invited to an orgy.
	Great stuff, Dave.
	Real glad you're still here.
	Like, fuck me.
	Anyway, here's what Russell has to say about that bit.
	Even that taken at face value, it's plain that what Dave Chappelle is doing is playing with the outrage of previous comments around trans people and trans issues.
	Obvious that it's a kind of mirth-oriented endeavour.
	It's comedy, after all.
	And I sometimes feel that the new Puritanism that's at play in our culture is deliberately trying to extract aspects of our nature that are rather beautiful.
	The ability to playfully ridicule, the ability to joke, Yeah, there was nothing playful about that joke.
	There's nothing playful about a man standing on a stage with an audience of tens of millions saying, I'm Team Turf.
	Like, that joke was a cishet guy saying that being around trans people makes him uncomfortable.
	And Dave, I fucking guarantee the feeling is mutual on that score.
	Good lord.
	Well, you know, I think that taking this as a playful ridicule.
	Mm-hmm.
	And the argument that I've been, you know, we've been hearing this for a number of years now, right?
	This is well-tread territory that Russell is now finally booping a toe into.
	And the playful ridicule Might be a way to talk about a difficult issue, but we flipped the coin over and it's a way to minimize and hide your feelings.
	It cuts both ways.
	The sword cuts both ways.
	And ignoring half of that, that we all fundamentally as adults understand.
	To ignore half of that device of humor is obviously the issue and disingenuous, truly.
	Yeah.
	Like, bleh.
	Oh boy.
	It's like, Russell, what are you?
	Okay.
	I know why.
	Yeah, yeah.
	No, no.
	I found myself asking that very question a lot of times through this editorial, I promise.
	Just like, what are you doing?
	This is a what are you doing day.
	This is a what are you doing day.
	Absa-fucking-lutely.
	And what we're looking at from Russell here is absolutely an economic component, but more than that, he very clearly just likes Dave Chappelle.
	They're around the same age, they've both done stand-up, they've both lived the Hollywood life, so it's not terribly surprising.
	Might come on his show if one star starts lower enough.
	Exactly.
	Definitely possible.
	Plus, yeah, class solidarity and all that.
	Yet again, a reminder that Russell Brand is among the 0.01% of the wealthiest people on the planet and Dave Chappelle is higher up the food chain than that.
	Taken with his clear enjoyment of Chappelle, describing him as a genius, it's also painfully obvious that Russell does not think that what was said was harmful.
	And if someone can't see how that joke could be harmful to the trans community, it's probably because they're also a member of Team Turf.
	That's also motivated reasoning.
	Like, yeah, we see why you We see why you're falling on the side that you're on, because you want to be able to say shit, too.
	And not get held to account for it.
	Like, you don't want to be accountable for the impact of what you do and say.
	It's a great day for staying free.
	This is what's happening.
	Free for me and not for thee!
	Yeah!
	So, Chappelle gets a bit more of a tongue-fucking from Russell in this next clip.
	The areas that are seemingly most under attack include humor, Sexuality in an extraordinary way.
	And I think that's about shutting down natural impulses, making people feel constantly concerned, twitchy, paranoid, uncertain.
	And figures like Dave Chappelle, who meddles in and directs, rather artfully obviously, Chaos and uncertainty and ambiguity are under attack precisely because they're willing to walk into these areas.
	We can't bring you this fantastic content without the support of our partners about the willingness and grace that you offer us on a daily basis.
	God damn it, Russell.
	Transphobia and shitty ads.
	What a day, what a day.
	Yeah, I genuinely don't understand why sometimes we get the nice whoosh bumper to break it up and sometimes we get the beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep So before we get to low stakes conspiracies, before we get to this ad, what Russell just said was that humor and sexuality is under attack somehow, and believe me it's not sexuality he's talking about, and also any pushback on bigoted comments and jokes made by Chappelle is actually about shutting down natural impulses and making people feel paranoid, twitchy, and uncertain.
	The implication here being that there's a form of control being exerted by a media presentation rather than real human beings actually getting upset at this shit.
	Interestingly, it seems to echo Chappelle's stance on the matter.
	Here are some comments made from him after 2021's The Closer was released.
	Quote, It's been said in the press that I was invited to speak to the transgender employees of Netflix, and I refused.
	That is not true.
	If they had invited me, I would have accepted it, although I am confused about what we would be speaking about.
	I said what I said, and boy, I heard what you said.
	My God, how could I not?
	You said you want a safe working environment at Netflix.
	It seems like I'm the only one who can't go to the office.
	I wonder why.
	And if you want to meet with me, I am more than willing to, but I have some conditions.
	First of all, you cannot come if you have not watched my special from beginning to end.
	You must come to a place of my choosing at a time of my choosing.
	And thirdly, you must admit that Hannah Gadsby is not funny.
	Hard disagree, by the way.
	I want everyone in this audience to know that even though the media frames it that it's me versus that community, that's not what it is.
	Do not blame the LGBTQ community for any of this.
	It's about corporate interests and what I can say and what I cannot say.
	For the record, and I need you to know this, everyone I know from that community has been loving and supportive, so I don't know what this nonsense is about.
	Now!
	Yeah.
	Corporate interests?
	Yeah.
	Netflix is letting this continue to happen while also publishing tons of LGBTQ plus queer content because it gets views.
	And that is genuinely like that is like the if we're looking at the platforms that are responsible.
	I think it's fucking rich how, you know, Disney and other corporate media are being, you know, accused of like, go woke, go broke.
	Hilarious.
	Okay.
	Like y'all are feeding and like everybody's feeding into this.
	This is all.
	Come on.
	Because yeah, oh, there are corporate interests.
	Not how Russell talks about it.
	Nope.
	Uh-uh.
	Uh-uh.
	No, no.
	Interestingly, since then, Chappelle has gone on to brand all of his critics as transgender lunatics and told a sold-out crowd that he has been the victim of cancel culture.
	Jesus fucking Christ.
	You told a crowd.
	You told a sold out crowd.
	You told a gigantic crowd.
	You told a sold out crowd after his, you know, fucking millions of dollars Netflix special, you know, was aired.
	Shut the fuck up.
	Well, if we agree on the, if we do agree on the definition of cancel culture as people reacting accurately, like people being able to express how a piece of content makes them feel and enough of them Agreeing and being able to, you know, speak their mind on social media or whatever.
	That's the thing is, like, cancel culture, this whole thing came about because, you know, Twitter allowed you for, like, allowed us And then the proliferation of smartphones for the first time, for marginalized voices to have a place to, you know, also for better or worse, it's often a runaway train in a bad direction.
	Also, like, genuinely.
	Like, there are issues at the root of a lot of these criticisms.
	Eh, what are we doing here, though?
	Brigading can be a problem.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Or even just kind of, so many kind of like sparks of outrage are very often,
	there's plenty of misunderstandings.
	There's also plenty of like people that have way less of a voice that are, you know,
	that do lose their job, lose, you know, like lose their education.
	Like there's all these, you know, lose their income because there's a misunderstanding
	or there's a motivated reason behind someone attacking them.
	And then it's just easy to whip folks into a froth.
	Too easy, some might say, but the basis and often the The issue taken with cancel culture flattens all of the nuance, where that's a place where marginalized voices have been able to express their displeasure in a way that like, you know, I think that the predominant
	You know, folks in charge were like, oh, yeah, well, show me.
	And they're like, well, we're going to show you a lot.
	And they're like, yeah, I show me don't like I take it back.
	Stop.
	Stop showing me.
	Stop showing me things.
	Oh, God.
	Oh, no.
	Well, it's not that it's like, well, no, that's not good enough.
	You know, it's like, oh, all the evidence that you are like, well, I want I want proof.
	Show me receipts.
	Show me evidence.
	And you're like you unroll your CVS receipt.
	That's five feet long.
	And they're like, not good enough.
	That's not what I meant.
	And that happens over and over again.
	And I think that if we agree with the actual definition of cancel culture, it's people genuinely expressing how they feel and trying to be heard in a larger conversation.
	And someone who has tons of power and wealth and resources feeling attacked.
	If that's what cancel culture really is, then sure.
	Then sure!
	I remember it kind of coming to prominence, at least in my head anyway, around when the Me Too movement was properly taking hold.
	And I was like, ah, there we go.
	That's what they've settled on.
	That's where they're going to roll with, oh, we're all being cancelled!
	Well, that's because you did horrible shit to people.
	Getting Me Too'd.
	Yeah.
	Even that took a long time to... I mean, there's... What sucks is like boycott and protest, like demonstration, protest, boycott, divestment.
	Those are all powerful.
	They were powerful tools in the civil rights movement, and they're still powerful tools, but they're so diluted because of this like goofy, you know, kind of surface level flattening conversation.
	All right, let's get into this ad that Russell has shoved in our faces.
	And I warn you, it goes full Alex Jones right off the bat.
	Did you know that the New World Order is poisoning your food, your water, and even your skincare?
	Wait for it before you call it a conspiracy theory.
	Did you know, according to the FDA, companies in the US are allowed to market skincare products as non-toxic while still containing up to 49% Toxic ingredients.
	These ingredients are illegal in Europe and other countries.
	These toxic ingredients and plastics could penetrate your skin and immediately enter your bloodstream, disrupt your hormones, become embedded in your organs and may eventually give you terminal illnesses.
	What's the solution?
	Well, Charlene Bollinger, former model, current wife and mother, founder of The Truth About Cancer and Vaccines, has created a solution and it's all within this magnificent pink box.
	Her work has been so effective, it's difficult to get into it.
	I'm just trying to get in there.
	Right.
	For heaven's sakes.
	How do we?
	I mean, this is impenetrable.
	I've got it.
	I mean, her work has been so effective that the Biden White House has put them on the disinformation dozen list just for telling the truth.
	Yeah, in a way, I'm actually kind of grateful that this bullshit ad is here so I can take a break from dealing with the bigotry.
	But yeah, good lord, that opening, right?
	So first thing I want to pick up on is that This is a beauty kit that Russell is selling, and the ad itself is aimed at women.
	It does speak to the notion that more of Russell's audience is female than his other alt-right counterparts.
	Obviously, we don't have exact figures, but seems to validate it at least a little bit.
	I also think, by the way, that that is not his copy that he is reading.
	I don't think he wrote that.
	I think that is the assigned copy for the ad.
	Right.
	I could be wrong.
	I could be wrong.
	I mean, that sounds, that's normal.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, no, I know.
	It just, it doesn't, it doesn't sound like, His usual self.
	I'm like, yeah, I think that's copy, I think.
	Well, also struggling to get into a box of whatever is a very unboxing moment.
	That's a YouTube unboxing.
	That's definitely, yeah.
	Now, who the fuck is Charlene Bollinger?
	As Russell mentioned, she's one of the disinformation dozen alongside RFK Jr.
	and Joseph McCullough as one of the 12 people producing up to 65% of all anti-vax content on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic.
	Because she's a right-wing Christian trad life mom, she's best known as counterpart to her husband, Ty Bollinger.
	And who the fuck is Ty Bollinger?
	Now, It's rare that I get to look at a Wikipedia page that is able to factually and accurately destroy a human being, but here it is.
	Ty Bollinger, born 1968, is an American misinformation marketer and conspiracy theorist who promotes alternative medicine treatments for cancer and vaccine-preventable diseases.
	Bollinger has no medical training and has a history of disseminating misinformation about cancer treatments, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, promoting ineffective or unproven cures, and other conspiracy theories on social media platforms.
	For Wikipedia, this is a fucking takedown.
	With his wife, Charlene, he runs the website The Truth About Cancer, which was established in 2014.
	It promotes misinformation about cancer, notably that chemotherapy doesn't cure the disease, and functions, yeah, And it functions as a merchandising platform for their numerous instructional videos, as well as food supplements, alternative health books, and treatments.
	The reach of the videos can be considerable, some having been viewed millions of times.
	The Truth About Cancer videos present a variety of pseudoscientific treatments to supposedly remove toxins from the body, an approach long discredited as being incompatible with what is known about human physiology.
	Again, whoever wrote this.
	Just lovely people selling lovely things.
	And it makes complete sense as to why the ad immediately tells you that other skincare products might give you an unnamed terminal illness.
	The toxic ingredients thing, by the way, is partially true.
	With the beauty industry being far less regulated than it is in the EU, you guys can still find formaldehyde in your cosmetics.
	That's what I was gonna say.
	It's like, no, yeah, that's all, that's all fucking absolutely goddamn true.
	100,000 million percent.
	And a big part of the problem is the unregulated marketplaces that even if The FDA is already pretty toothless when it comes to this kind of thing.
	Any kind of regulatory body is toothless because there are ways to undermine their regulatory power and their reach because enough of these loopholes through deregulation have been hunted down and expanded to where Amazon You know, like Amazon can just, basically anybody can just put whatever up for sale and then that kind of created this precedent where you could have, you know, factories in China or wherever that were just kind of making something and putting it out there and it didn't have to, the way that you would have to
	Invoke any kind of FDA regulation or recall or anything is you would have to take the product prove that it caused a problem.
	There's there's a number of documentaries about this and Documentaries, I think are specifically useful because you can see you can see the physical damage done form cosmetics on human faces usually women also FDA is has a bad track record for Caring for the health of women through their, you know, taking women as seriously as far as their being targeted and exploited by a company for harmful business practices.
	But basically, you can go in and sell the thing and then you gotta take it to the FDA and you have to say, okay, FDA, This brand is making this product.
	I have proved that it's harmful.
	I have evidence.
	And then a bunch of people have to do that for the FDA to be able to act on it and take it seriously because they're also massively underfunded and understaffed.
	So that brand can just change.
	And then the FDA is like, well, this is...
	Okay, well, even when they agree and they order a recall or whatever, the brand itself is a bit of a slippery fish because it's not Dove, it's not Pantene that you find on every single shelf in America.
	For the lack of a better term, Back of a letter term is fly by night.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And they can just kind of shut down or just put it in a different bottle or whatever.
	Put a different fucking label on it and there we go.
	Exactly.
	And then just keep it rolling.
	And the documentation of the damage that's being done is wild and outrageous.
	Also plastics.
	Also plastics.
	Yeah, as we as we went into the last episode.
	But yeah, formaldehyde, not great.
	But yeah, that's that's in some of your cosmetics apparently.
	Asbestos, lead.
	The Bollingers either way have have amped things up a little bit along with a scary graphic of plastics getting
	into your blood and embedding into your organs And the implication that moisturizers will give you cancer
	So they can sell this charlie face collection for the low low price of 389
	Yeah Yeah, I am I took I took bless my sephora over that one
	Yes, I took a look at the ingredients list out of curiosity and I couldn't find anything that was particularly alarming
	They do seem to be chock full of chemicals, but nothing that's particularly, you know.
	Yeah, I mean, the thing is, especially in, I mean, if it's coming from America, like, I don't know what the, the regular, I mean, I would assume that since he's in the UK and that it would, that EU regulations would apply.
	I don't think this is available.
	Because in America, that's not going to be any more regulated than anything else.
	The ingredients list is voluntary.
	The ingredients list is you can say whatever the fuck you want.
	Yeah, that's true.
	I don't think these are available in the EU or the UK.
	I don't think... Well, that would give me pause in and of itself.
	Thank you so much!
	Yes, yeah, I didn't check or try to get some shipped to my house, but maybe I'll have a look and see what the options are.
	Out of curiosity, but yeah.
	At the very least, it's definitely a fucking overpriced product that they're trying to sell with fear.
	Anyway... I mean, there's cosmetics also.
	The beauty industry is... Yipe stripes!
	Let's hear a little bit more as to what is in this stuff, according to Russell anyway.
	I'm telling you all this because she has developed the most luxurious, toxic-free, anti-aging skincare line on the planet.
	Charlize.
	Charlize is second to none.
	The Oxygen Serum.
	Which one is the Oxygen Serum?
	That's anti-aging overnight.
	It's a damn good serum.
	This is a body lotion.
	This one, face moisturizer.
	Naturally tinted.
	The oxygen serum is an infusion of oxygen, which your body and skin need to be healthy and fight early signs of aging.
	It also includes the powerful ingredient, apple stem cells, which dramatically halts early signs of aging and stops wrinkles in their tracks.
	The Charlize toner not only lifts the skin, but also lifts your mood by boosting serotonin levels.
	So you will look great and feel great.
	Charlize is packaged in beautiful, high vibrational, So I've just noticed the tagline there.
	ever plastic to preserve the quality and efficacy of these ingredients. So stop supporting companies
	that are slowly killing you with poisons.
	So I've just noticed the tagline there, they've got "because you are worth it". Like surely
	that's L'Oreal's...
	Yeah, that's L'Oreal.
	Yeah!
	Surely they can't take that!
	Grrr.
	You paid somebody to do this!
	Maybe because it's not, um, it's not contracted, you know?
	That's what I'm saying!
	Because you are worth it!
	I don't know, man.
	I feel like that's actionable.
	But again... Might shoot L'Oreal a quick email.
	Even to... Like, that's the thing, is so much regulation and the rules to impose on these systems, and that's an excellent example, even though it seems kind of piddly, is a contraction versus a you are versus a you're, but it's all...
	To bring attention to the fact that all of these regulations are so profoundly voluntary, and if L'Oreal gives enough of a shit, I can't imagine they even would.
	I mean, L'Oreal's probably...
	Busy enough like chasing down copycat laureate like that's another thing that's really really that is exploded in the I mean most industries beauty industry as well of quote-unquote dupes and you don't even know if it's a duplicate or not and So L'Oreal can get sued if somebody is selling a package of L'Oreal as a lookalike, but it's not the actual product.
	And L'Oreal can get sued for that shit.
	They're probably busy with that.
	They're not worried about a tagline.
	But that would be beneficial as standing in the way of someone that is like, those tiny, tiny bottles for all that money.
	And none of that shit works.
	None of it.
	No, I'm not going to say none.
	95 or more percent of every claim on health and beauty, unregulated anything, is bullshito, man.
	Like, it's not even a real ass thing.
	Well, well, Russell thinks you need to stop supporting companies killing you with poisons and instead buy these apple stem cell serums packaged in high vibrational Italian glass.
	I would love to know what makes it high vibrational.
	We don't get into it, sadly.
	Vibes.
	Vibes, yeah.
	I'm getting good vibes from this bottle.
	It's vibes.
	It's high vibes.
	Yeah, so there's a lot of shit packed into that one ad there, but the thing that did catch my ear was the apple stem cells.
	Immediately I was like, But we're not apples.
	Surely we would need to be apples for that to work.
	So I looked into it.
	Jordan Wang is a medical research director at the Laser and Skin Surgery Center of New York and a board-certified dermatologist who has published several papers on stem cells in dermatology and he had a few things to say.
	Quote, Frequently, the marketing is over-exaggerated and solely meant to increase sales, irregardless of the science.
	Unfortunately, the term stem cell is highly marketable, but the products do not have robust peer-reviewed science behind them.
	The studies I have seen are very small and appear to be aimed at convincing an audience that has no scientific background.
	There is less convincing data on the benefits of plant-derived stem cells as it pertains to skin health, and there are many questions on if their use truly translates to worthwhile and noticeable results.
	There is no theoretical reason why this would have any benefit on human skin.
	Another issue is the stability of stem cells in topical formulations, where breakdown and viability are significant concerns.
	The way they are maintained in labs is to keep them in a dish at 37 degrees Fahrenheit with a very specific soup of substrates, enzymes, etc.
	which are constantly being changed.
	Even so, they have a limited lifespan in this environment.
	The likelihood of a cosmetic formula being able to replicate this is pretty small.
	There's also another issue.
	Stem cells aren't particularly known for being absorbed through the skin.
	Yep.
	Quote, skin is a barrier and the stem cells would not penetrate the barrier.
	Unquote.
	So there we go, everybody.
	If it says apple stem cells on the front, ask yourself, am I an apple?
	And if the answer is no, leave it on the shelf.
	Yeah.
	And even just any amount of cursory looking into the stem cell, like even stem cells are They're not, what's unfortunate is they're not very well understood because of legislation and whipping of people into a froth about not exploring stem cells.
	About human stem cells.
	About human stem cells, but there are still clinics and sometimes true crime content has your back.
	And if there's scammy doctors out there, I believe in the over my dead, but there was, I don't know if it's Dr. Death or another wondery joint.
	In an over-my-dead-body season.
	But stem cells, they do something.
	We don't know enough.
	It could very much be a clinic in a strip mall that's playing fast and loose, and they're not putting it on top.
	They're injecting.
	So yeah, there's a vague notion of stem cells being beneficial that's floating around, so that's why they're using it in marketing.
	It's marketing.
	It's all marketing.
	Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
	And there is a canyon of difference between this and stem cells in a medical context.
	Exactly.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And what I will say also, I do like the shout out to the Wikipedia debunking.
	I have found that, just as an aside.
	The Wikipedia debunk, because you've got a lot of people and a growing community of Wikipedia editors and people talk shit, whatever.
	People talk shit about everything.
	There's a lot of effort being put into it.
	I've seen a number of Entries in Wikipedia that are debunking up top.
	Debunking up top and not in a way that I think we have been used to kind of getting couching language and softening language in, I think, mainstream media.
	You know, if you look up, there's maybe some Also, we have more proof now that is easier to access.
	I think it's a really good thing.
	So yeah, shout out for me as well.
	I think that's fantastic.
	Yeah, no, I'm a big fan because often it goes the other way, where things are too soft.
	And to be fair, I haven't checked his wiki recently, but Russell's was definitely suffering from that.
	The reason being, if you looked in the edit history for it, there were a lot of people trying to add things, and then other people being like, no, because they clearly liked Russell Hawkins' brand.
	Well, I think it's a new trend, and I think it should be celebrated.
	I think that's cool.
	There being a victory for truth always needs celebrating.
	The tide is turning, I'm here for it.
	She's turning.
	I haven't checked recently, but I'm eventually hoping that Russell, when you Google him, it will change from actor and comedian to Predator?
	Conspiratorial predator?
	Yeah, there we go.
	Thank you, more accurate.
	Good.
	It might as well be your top Google result!
	So we need to get away from selling bullshit through fear and instead go back to, uh, defending transphobia.
	Fucking frying pans and fires all over this show.
	Okay, let's get back into the story.
	As I said to you, elsewhere in the same special, Dave Chappelle talked admiringly of trans people and like what it takes to be a man and what it takes to be a dreamer and how you don't need to be able to understand somebody in order to be able to respect them.
	In any honest critique of that show you would have to say he does also say this so plainly he's got a quite evolved perspective.
	He brought this back.
	So the supposed point where Chappelle spoke admiringly of trans people, right?
	Do you want to know what really happened?
	Dave Chappelle does start talking about dreamers and the power of having a dream, you know, to motivate you and push you forward, right?
	And he does say, I don't need to understand someone else's dream to be able to respect it.
	He does say that.
	He then tells a long story about him having a confrontation with a Russian mobster in his early days of stand-up and the power of dreaming big and how that ultimately saw him through.
	He then, incredibly sarcastically, says that he can think of no bigger dreamer than a trans man.
	That is supposed to be admiration for the trans community, according to Russell.
	There's not too much to say to that other than fuck that guy and fuck Russell.
	Even when you're like examining the like, oh, it's just a joke.
	Like, the rule that you should bring to, like, if you do want to have a nuanced conversation, and I think that there's a place for nuanced conversation to some degree, but what you're looking for is who is the butt of the joke.
	Yeah.
	Dave Chappelle is not the butt of that joke.
	Trans men are the butt of the joke.
	So who's the butt of the joke?
	That tells you the harm that could potentially be caused and the motivations of the person telling the joke.
	And you can't tell me that Dave Chappelle doesn't know who the butt of the joke is.
	Yeah, no, he absolutely knows.
	I'd say he's an expert.
	The expense.
	Yeah, exactly.
	He absolutely knows at whose expense that joke is at.
	Yeah, there's a litany of other shitty jokes in there as well.
	Chappelle talks about when he was attacked on stage last year and that apparently the guy was bisexual, which Chappelle uses to say, oh, I could have been raped.
	Which is fucking great.
	Trigger warning for transphobia and sexual assault and regular assault, I guess, incoming.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah, that'll do.
	Okay.
	He also said, quote, God forbid I ever go to jail, but if I do, I hope it's in California.
	Soon as the judge sentences me, I'll be like, before you sentence me, I want the court to know I identify as a woman.
	Send me to a woman's jail.
	As soon as I get in there, you know what I'mma be doing?
	Gimme your fruit cocktail, bitch, before I knock your motherfuckin' teeth out.
	I'm a girl, just like you, bitch.
	Come here and suck this girl dick I got.
	Don't make me explain myself.
	I'm a girl.
	Boy, I wish we would've had a trigger warning before that, because that was upsetting.
	That's really out- Sorry.
	Sorry.
	Out of pocket for him to say!
	I'll add one in post.
	Because, yeah.
	So, yes, Dave Chappelle, girls can have dicks.
	And no, that's not the way going to prison works for trans people at all, you despicable fuck.
	And the part about threatening and sexually assaulting a woman That's all you, Dave Shippley.
	That's you making up that scenario.
	Like, this is fucking Rob Schneider jokes being told by someone with better delivery.
	That's what this is.
	Well, I mean, we don't need to, you know, Rob Schneider's, come on.
	Like, Ross Schneider and Jim Brewer, they're doing their thing, and we can- They're doing their thing.
	They're very easily cordoned off into their little- They're in their tube.
	You know what I mean?
	Yeah, no, no, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	They're in their tube.
	Dave Chappelle has- That's what I'm saying.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Why is Chappelle using similar material?
	I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ.
	I mean, it's, I think being sensitive, you know, I feel like we all are on our own journey.
	Listen, this is going to sound qualified.
	Stick with me until the end.
	We're all on our own journey and we have to, you know, learn and grow.
	And I think that maybe we're not all on the same wavelength as far as what the popular tone of conversation or the woke We're not always all plugged in to every aspect of what would be appropriate to say, what would be appropriate to think and feel, or even having the tools to grow and to move forward.
	I don't think that someone of that stature has that excuse, but even just to entertain the idea and to hear... Also, I think that being sensitive can come off... This is a toxic masculinity thing all over, because being sensitive and being considerate is...
	Not manly.
	So, here we go.
	That's toxic masculinity.
	Ding.
	Check that.
	And also, I think – this is why I'm saying this – popular kind of conversation has gotten away from the getting ARD in prison joke.
	Like, we've kind of collectively been like, That was too common.
	Let's not do that anymore.
	And I think being plugged into that, even the basic, that's not like hyper woke.
	You know what I mean?
	That's not out of the realm of like, yeah, guys, that's wrong.
	That's wrong and it's bad for so many reasons.
	I'm stoked that That examining the carceral state in the prison-industrial complex has brought that conversation to the fore, and I think that in other aspects Dave Chappelle is very well-versed
	And other critiques of that system.
	So allowing for and perpetuating sexual assault within prison.
	Let's talk about the myriad problems that cause, maybe it's not a funny fucking joke, maybe it's actually a really serious, terrifying, awful problem.
	Let's go.
	We all kind of don't like, that's not like a good feeling joke anymore.
	That makes my tummy hurt because I'm concerned with other people's suffering and trauma.
	Yeah, no, there was nothing good about that joke at all.
	And the purpose of it is to demonize trans people at the end of it.
	And you're like, oh, oh, okay.
	This is just a whole A whole fucking reel of bullshit.
	Oh, great.
	Thanks.
	Thanks for this.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, Legacy Media are terrible for not recognizing Chappelle's apparent admiration of the trans community and any criticism of Dave Chappelle and what he said in this special is just designed to create anxiety among the masses and control our thoughts.
	Apparently that's that's that's what's actually happening.
	But they don't want evolved perspectives.
	What they want is a kind of state of stasis and nervousness and anxiety.
	There's a kind of relish behind attacking other people.
	As a person that's been subject to public attacks myself, what I recognise is that nuance is stripped away.
	Anything that doesn't make a situation look as bad as possible is extracted, diluted, denied, removed, eliminated, as if what's being offered is objective analysis from a group that have no skin in the game.
	When in all actuality what you have is participants in a cultural endeavor offering a very particular perspective on a subject in order to achieve a particular result.
	In the case of Dave Chappelle, that result is just ongoing tension, conflict, creating disorientation around where people are supposed to stand with their social roles.
	Creating disorientation regarding- Feel disoriented!
	And then unfeel it!
	Learn!
	Like, feel disoriented!
	Understand that it's not like- If you're getting called out, and it feels bad, you don't get to then bitch!
	About that bad feeling that, like, oh, I don't like feeling wrong because someone told me I did something wrong, and now my pain trumps any harm I may have caused, then and how that works!
	That is not how that works.
	I'm the victim now.
	Reckon with your disoriented feeling and then learn about it.
	And listen, maybe you do come out the other side thinking like, well, you know, I know what my intention was and now that I have learned about it, I can deliver it in a different way or I can be more thoughtful or considerate.
	But also maybe that makes my fucking, my sad little dick soft that I have to be considerate of other people.
	And that's like, Well, that's a whole other problem.
	Back to drawing board.
	Back to learning lesson.
	Yeah, goddamn.
	Yeah, and him going off about, you know, I've been attacked when he was talking about the media trying to shut down discussion of sexuality.
	That's what he was talking about.
	He wasn't talking about actual sexuality.
	He means sex in of itself and him being, yeah, a predator.
	Um so yeah uh Russell and and stick with me here what if someone who works for a media organization takes issue with Chappelle and they are trans?
	What then?
	Is there still no skin in the game?
	Like what if what if they love someone who's trans?
	What if they have family who are trans?
	What if they're just a decent fucking ally?
	Is there still no skin in the game?
	Because I can all but guarantee everyone knows at least someone who is under the trans umbrella somewhere.
	And if you don't think that you do, that just means you don't know.
	Yeah, you do. You absolutely do. Does defending the people we care about not count as skin in
	the game? Should we not be defending and protecting other human beings from harmful? Stop. Like it's
	been a while since we dealt with Candace Owens. But as Dave Chappelle shares and espouses a lot
	of the same fucking views, let's look at some statistics again, shall we?
	LGBTQ plus youth are four times as likely to attempt suicide than their heteronormative peers.
	The Trevor Project estimates that more than 1.8 million LGBTQ youth ages 13 to 24 seriously consider suicide each year in the US.
	That's 45% of the total, including more than half of transgender and non-binary youth.
	At least one attempt suicide every 45 seconds.
	The black transgender and gender non-conforming community has been found to face discrimination to a higher degree than the rest of the trans community, which is due to the intersection of racism and transphobia.
	A survey by the National LGBTQ Task Force found that among the black respondents, 49% reported having attempted suicide.
	41% of respondents reported homelessness at some point in their lives, which is more than five times the rate of the general US population.
	That is who Dave Chappelle is attacking and denying the existence of in every single fucking
	show he does. Yep. And the average life expectancy of a black trans woman, I don't know if it's
	across the board. Shockingly, yeah.
	It's like 35. Yeah, no, it's outrageous.
	It's like ancient Roman drinking out of lead pipes, like cholera epidemics.
	And what I, you know, and I, I, growing old is a rebellious fucking act for trans people.
	It is an act, yeah.
	It's a political act, absolutely, because you think about it like, you know, I think that statistics are absolutely great and very useful, and I think that pairing them with, like, this is a thought experiment that I, you know, occurred to me a long time ago, and it's very simple.
	Imagine you have to get a job, And your ID says something different, like your government issued ID says something different than how you appear.
	Imagine trying to get work.
	If you are walking into a business and you're saying, I would like to apply for a job and your gender is different on your government issued ID than as you present and maybe check on a form because that's how you're living your life because that's who you are.
	It's not rocket science to understand how all of these How all of these statistics have come to be.
	And there is something to be said for the, like, and what I've been talking, I feel like I've been talking about till I'm blue in the face, is the, I mean, I guess mostly off-brand, but maybe in general.
	The technology that allows, like, kind of the surveillance technology and just technology in general that allows people to be followed throughout their lives with our, you know, our information that is kind of established with the government.
	It's why government ID laws are such a fucking, like, being able to change your gender is, like, such a fucking big deal.
	It's also why conservatives know to attack them is...
	There was a lot of instances throughout history where people were absolutely persecuted, harmed, killed, everything, because they were something different than what society imposed upon them.
	However, When you didn't have this, like, extensive surveillance system and extensive, like, records that will follow you regardless of what you do about them till the day you die.
	I mean, you think about, and to use a different example that might be more understandable or relatable, and I'm sure a lot of people have heard about these stories, is like, and they are anomalies, but it's a good, another good, like, kind of example that when people are, like, the government If she, like, basically decides that you're dead and then changes your paperwork to you being dead, you know, a hundred years ago, that'd be a lot easier to rectify.
	But today, to go get that change, to go get, like, basically be alive, like, you're like, no, I'm alive.
	It's not a question of going to the social security office and being like, JK, I'm alive.
	I don't know what you're talking about.
	It is significantly more complicated than that.
	So if you use that type of story and that type of example, I think it was This American Life like a million years ago, like talking about people going through those kind of scenarios, it's like kind of wild.
	And just to think about, you know, going back to that kind of like, what can apply to you personally in your daily life?
	Just imagine you having to go do the same thing, to go get employed.
	Yeah, I think... These statistics have a practical application, is what I'm saying.
	I feel like that exercise will work well among our audience.
	However, I think it requires at least a degree of empathy and being able to think, you know, outside of yourself.
	And I think a lot of people in Russell's audience might struggle with that.
	That's on them!
	Yeah, absolutely.
	We can, but continue to try.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So what Dave Chappelle used to be able to do was couch his transphobic bigotry by saying, oh no, I have a trans friend and she thinks I'm great.
	He was specifically speaking of Daphne Dorman, a trans comic who he had worked with at a show and befriended.
	He discussed her in his award-winning 2019 special Sticks and Stones.
	After plenty of transphobic remarks and comparing being trans to wearing blackface, Chappelle joked about making out with Daphne while anxiously inspecting her anatomy.
	Initially, Dorman was thrilled about the recognition in the show and then received a fair bit of backlash from the LGBTQ plus community arguing that Chappelle was using her to excuse his transphobic nonsense.
	Barely two months after Sticks and Stones was released, Daphne Dorman died by suicide, leaving behind her infant daughter.
	Shortly before, she had posted an apology note to Facebook saying, quote, to those of you who are mad at me, please forgive me.
	To those of you who feel like I failed you, I did and I'm sorry and I hope you'll remember me in better times and better light.
	In Chappelle's subsequent special, The Closer, he talks about this, as you mentioned.
	He says Dorman went against her tribe to defend him, after which they, quote, dragged that bitch all over Twitter.
	It wasn't the jokes.
	I don't know what was going on in her life, but I bet dragging her didn't help.
	Maybe you're right, Dave.
	Maybe, just maybe, shitting on trans people on public forums isn't going to help them out.
	Study after study has shown a direct connection between the type of perceptions of gender identity that Chappelle is performing and anti-trans violence, and as mentioned, the trans community are in general far, far more likely to die by suicide than any other demographic.
	This all could have been a lesson to Dave Chappelle that maybe the people with the biggest fights don't need anyone adding to the pile by denying and mocking their existence.
	Yep.
	But no.
	Instead, he keeps coming back to cause harm.
	And I would bet money that if I asked him, do you think your jokes are harmful to the trans community?
	He wouldn't be able to deny it.
	Like he might say, oh, it's woke and sensitive and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	But he wouldn't be able to deny it because he knows what he's doing.
	This isn't a man standing on a stage and joking, even if that's the format of his presentation.
	This is a man saying exactly what he believes and making millions of people accept it without even thinking about it because he made them laugh in the same moment.
	Well, but also fundamentally, he is denying his role in the harm.
	Yes, yeah, yeah.
	At the same time.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	No, you're right.
	Because I would say if someone's a victim of cancel culture, she was.
	That to me, that's a perfect example of how the dog pile and the brigading, it can be harmful.
	And I think obviously fucking was.
	And I think that Dave Chappelle insisting and calling for nuance in the conversation on its face.
	I don't think that's what you're doing, it's what you're saying.
	You're calling for nuance and you're insisting that this type of harm change without acknowledging your role in the harm.
	And listen, call for nuance until you're blue in the face.
	But if you're not facilitating and you're not trying to at least help, and if the nuance isn't there, it just isn't there.
	Maybe we'll get there someday.
	And I'm talking about any number of subjects because Russell does this shit all the time.
	You can call for nuance again.
	You can shout yourself hoarse.
	But if it's not happening, and if you're just calling for it, but not also helping, like, if you're not contributing, like, if you're part of the problem instead of the solution, then your call for nuance is performative.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And that is absolutely...
	Absolutely what Chappelle was doing.
	With regards to Daphne Dorman, I'm hesitant to say that A led to B and led to C in the scenario of her death.
	Some media spaces claimed that actually it wasn't that bad, what happened online.
	I'm not interested in litigating that, to be honest.
	You also can't ask her.
	Yeah, exactly, exactly.
	And whether it's that bad to you and whether it was that bad to her, we will never know, is the reality.
	I also think the reality is acknowledging that, I'm sorry, anybody, like, it doesn't even matter the amount.
	I think that we've learned a lot more, even in subsequent years, acknowledging that it's who says it, who gets in your head.
	It could be one person.
	That you care about, that, you know, who you respect and you care about going after you.
	And it doesn't matter if it's a hundred.
	It could be one that really, really hurts and drives a nail in that, you know, drives a nail in that coffin and you can't escape.
	Or even just like having an environment where you feel like where you previously got support and then feel completely unsupported.
	Again, it could be a fraction of your fans and the people who You know, who care about you, um, you know, and follow you and all that kind of stuff.
	Like it doesn't need to be a lot.
	And I think that we're at least, I think that conversation is changing a little bit now because enough people have been able to say like, Hey, this happened to me and it's how it made me feel in a way that even a few years ago we didn't really get that.
	Yeah, it's true.
	It's true.
	And yeah, we can only hope that that continues and things change more drastically.
	Now, Russell has something of an optimistic perspective on humanity in general in this next clip.
	I feel that most people from across the political spectrum are generally speaking, if they're living lives where they're free from agitation and oppression, broadly kind and polite to other people.
	I think it's very rare that you see people hyped up into states of hatred.
	Indeed, I think it requires a What did I say?
	What did I say?
	to create it. But if your cultural environment is one of uncertainty, censorship, doubt,
	denial, removal of nuance, removal of humor, it I think increases the problems that these
	legacy media outlets are claiming to address. He's plainly joking when he says I love punching
	down. All of the stand-up around disabled people is ironic and layered and nuanced and sophisticated.
	What did I say? What did I say? What the fuck did I say?
	OK, well. You look cool.
	You look like you have feelings.
	I just said it!
	I don't need to say it again!
	No, it's true.
	Oh dear, yeah.
	By the way, the sophistication of doing physical impressions of people with disabilities, the layers, the
	nuance...
	Rich!
	Rich.
	Oh god. So the argument that Russell is making here is that actually legacy media and any media
	at all pushing back on Dave Chappelle's bigotry is in fact removing nuance and humor which is
	then creating the conflict around trans people and in turn creating transphobia as a response.
	There is a degree of truth to that second part, but it doesn't stem, I would say, from the public at large on their own.
	In fact, where it comes from, Russell, is people like you, who have literally said, you know, whatever the legacy media is saying, the opposite is probably happening, and will go against anything that a respectable media outlet says to act as a reactionary contrarian, because you know it gets eyeballs on your content.
	Which then means if the media say, hey, trans people are people, maybe we should just leave them alone, your peers like Jordan Peterson, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson all go, wow, that means we have to go extra hard against the trans people now, doesn't it?
	And you just stand there promoting and supporting it all while pretending to be some kind of fucking ally, when in reality, you are the cause of a lot of this problem.
	Or like, contributing!
	Like, even if you're not the cause, you're piling on!
	That counts!
	Don't pile!
	Like, even if your views, you know, and I think that everybody's on their own journey, keep them in, like, if you know that it's going to, or at least like, if it's not gonna cost you anything, Why you gotta say it?
	You don't always gotta say it.
	You don't always gotta say something like fucking negative and tearing down, or like, maybe just keep it.
	And let it simmer!
	You may regret it later!
	It may not cost him anything, you know, but he's thinking about gains.
	That's all he's thinking about.
	He's thinking about like, hey, I could really bring some people on side with this.
	Well, I'm saying what maybe we should think about, not what you're gonna do.
	Not what's actually happening.
	Not what you wanna do, what you're gonna do.
	Yeah.
	Oh dear.
	Next, the mask slips just a little bit.
	And this nuance and sophistication is going to be necessary if we're going to continue to navigate territory like this.
	What is the ultimate end of the culture war?
	Do you think that one side's going to win and one side's going to lose?
	You're going to eliminate all people that are traditional, eliminate all people that are conservative, or eliminate all people that are progressive?
	Of course not!
	It's more or less a kind of, I don't know, it may not be 50-50, I don't know, because one thing I've learned is professional metropolitan biases are loud voices, but potentially small demographics.
	ALICE O'CONNOR Coastal elites!
	Oh!
	LIAM Professional metropolitan bias is a loud voice- ALICE Is that British for coastal elites?
	LIAM I think that's his version, yeah, yeah.
	I think we just got Russell's alt-right shift in a fucking soundbite.
	Absolutely incredible.
	Absolutely incredible.
	Yeah.
	With regards to what he's calling the culture war, which I call civil rights, the aim, no, is not to eliminate all the people who are, as Russell calls them, traditional or conservative.
	Odds are I'll never be able to change their views on a lot of this stuff either.
	But what I do want to Well, here's the thing!
	at the very least, try and get back to a pre-2016 mentality when at least racists were ashamed to be racist out loud
	and bigots were ashamed to be bigots out loud for the most part.
	Like that would be a fucking start for me.
	Just reminding people that, hey, saying openly hateful shit in public is not acceptable
	and we're gonna collectively jump on you for doing it.
	Here's the thing, that's freedom.
	You're free to say whatever you wanna say.
	Go ahead.
	Honestly, I would prefer that people are at least fucking up front.
	I mean, but also, like, that's a lot to ask, because a lot of people aren't self-aware.
	But, like, say whatever you – say it.
	Let us know exactly where you are.
	It is my right to react.
	We all get one vote.
	It's as much my right to say that I don't agree with you.
	And I think that saying it and being nasty or hostile or whatever, it is what it is on either side.
	But if you want people to meet you on the merits of what you're saying, I don't think being nasty or hostile or condescending is going to help your argument from any side.
	But The onus is on the person saying the first thing and wanting to say whatever they're going to say.
	Okay, well, I'm going to say whatever I'm going to say.
	Honestly, that is one of those cognitive dissonances that, in conservative pundit spheres, drives me the most fucking crazy because it's the most obvious thing.
	Yeah, freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
	They're not the same thing.
	Exactly.
	And the thing for me in that scenario is that the problem that we have very obviously encountered post-2016 and post-Trump is that all of these voices, because they feel enabled by all of that, are much louder, and in doing so they get more people on side.
	That's where I take issue with it.
	I'm like, no, no, no, I miss when racists were fucking quieter about being racist because they were far less likely to be able to drag people into the same fucking... No, you're absolutely right.
	You're absolutely right.
	And it's exposure, and it's a lack of consequences.
	Like, there used to be more consequences for saying things publicly, and that barrier has been removed.
	Because the people that are, you know, kind of like, are responding are demonized and are, you know, like, discredited and are treated like they're mind controlled.
	Just like how we were talking about earlier in the episode that like, that's the other fucking wildly condescending thing is like, you're not disagreeing with me because you disagree with me.
	You're disagreeing with me because someone else has convinced you or brainwashed you or groomed you or, you know, there's, you just don't know.
	And that's why you're disagreeing with me.
	My feelings are valid.
	I know where I'm coming from, but you are too stupid to know how you actually think.
	And someone has programmed you to think that or whatever condescending version that is honestly very subtle.
	It can be very subtle.
	It can be very subtle.
	It can be.
	Yeah.
	It ain't all invasion of the body snatchers, you know what I mean?
	They're all brainwashed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.
	Yeah. And, you know, I, yeah, I miss the days when there were consequences for any of it.
	Because, you know, I don't even know if it's really possible to get back to that, you know, kind
	of putting the genie back in the bottle, let alone providing and legislating the support networks
	that are so very clearly necessary for for the LGBTQ+ community.
	Because as long as these people are allowed to say this shit out loud, the right wing are going to promote and support it.
	And the legislators are going to reflect that as well.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Telling me, brother.
	Geez.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's just like, oh, God.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	I don't know if there's a way back to that in any in any kind of immediate future.
	I don't know.
	People are trying though.
	It's going to be a case of time.
	Yeah, people have to try.
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's the thing is the those steps have gone backwards.
	But also, I think that If it were me, if I were a conservo, you know, conservo bro out in the world making all these claims, I would have, and I think that like there is a degree of like Rupert Murdoch kind of
	Going this way is like, I don't want this to come back on me if the pendulum swings.
	And there are people that are working really hard to swing that pendulum back to having consequences for being terrible.
	And I don't think it's a long game.
	It just doesn't strike me as a long game.
	It seems risky, I think, in the long run, because the pendulum can swing back again.
	Granted, The pendulum is going to swing, but we still have to be active and we have to be constantly kind of trying to change the world that we live in, not just assuming that it's going to get better because of the passage of time.
	The speed of the pendulum does kind of come down to us, at least a little bit.
	Absolutely.
	I don't think it's- I mean, and being on the wrong side of history or whatever, I think that, to a degree, I feel like conservatives used to be better about being wishy-washy enough to be more slippery.
	This is the stuff, like, they're saying, you know, the Marjorie Taylor Greene's of the world are saying in no uncertain terms, staking very bold claims, shall we say.
	And those are set in stone.
	There's no wiggling.
	Yeah, no, it's true.
	It's true.
	Yeah, you can't, you can't, without something radical, you can't come back from that, you know?
	Yeah.
	Oh, dear.
	It's there.
	It's there.
	It's shocking, though.
	So what is the answer in Russell's view?
	Well... But nevertheless, the obvious answer is we're going to have to become tolerant of one another, tolerant of people that live differently, even if that living differently means conservative, or traditional, or taking time with one another to understand that at the deepest possible level, a level that can indeed be attained by using the sophisticated type of thinking and analysis deployed expertly by a genius like Dave Chappelle, that we actually can find common ground with one another.
	Who do you think has a better, more open-hearted perspective on cultural issues?
	Oppression, personal change, personal transition, corruption, bias, prejudice, bigotry.
	Dave Chappelle or a legacy media hack that's plainly there to generate and amplify hatred.
	It's pretty obvious, isn't it?
	But what's required is more of this kind of comedy.
	More exploration around the complexity, around sexuality, power dynamics, different emergent cultural groups.
	Fuck me.
	So we're not just defending and promoting it.
	We need more of this bigoted bullshit, according to Russell, and that is going to fix society and bring us all closer together.
	Wow.
	I mean, that list at the beginning of the clip is why I'm disappointed.
	Because I've also watched, like, Dave Chappelle, you know, platform civil rights activists and be very involved, you know, in, you know, his own, like, lens of obscuring oppression and how it How it manifests in society in ways that were kind of funny and tangible and relatable and made a difference as far as the conversations that were happening.
	And it's like, OK, well, then why is this different?
	And there's a lot of reasons why.
	why. And I don't think that it's like, Russell just, you know,
	read off this kind of resume, and was like, that's why we should listen like this. No, that's that it's striking me
	as the opposite. And it's it's fucking disappointing. Because
	that's the person that should be on side, even if it's not graceful, the way that like, the thing is, is it's again,
	it's who's the butt of the joke.
	Like, even if someone is not graceful but trying, which people have, it's rare, but people have been trying and trying to grow, and the double down is the problem.
	And I think, honestly, a lot of people, if a whole lot of people, even, you know what, the argument is not, well, we're gonna throw Dave Chappelle away.
	I don't think that that's, like, that's not what anyone really, like, I mean, I don't think it's even an option, to be honest.
	He's too big.
	Of course.
	But I mean, even the people that are like, hey, you could come around, and it would make such a difference.
	And you wouldn't have to change much of yourself, or your act, or whatever.
	It's this kind of double-down defiance.
	In fact, you could just shut the fuck up about it, you know?
	I mean, that's part of it.
	At the very least.
	That would be part of it.
	Do you know who I loved on this subject was Terry Crews.
	I can't remember exactly what he said, but there was something he said off-handedly about trans people on Twitter.
	And a bunch of people were like, fucking wrong!
	You got this shit wrong!
	And almost immediately Terry Crews was like, I was wrong about all of this.
	I have since been better educated.
	I'm really sorry, everyone.
	And I was like, yeah, great.
	Thank you, Terry.
	I just saw a clip, Dana Gould, one of my favorite comedians, and has been funny since I've been alive, and said something, I don't remember what the actual statement was, but it was like, yeah, I said something on a podcast and people called me out, and I was like, you're right, I'm sorry.
	Yeah.
	It's not dead, didn't burst into flames.
	He said it in a much funnier way, I apologize for butchering the bit, but the bit was also made a bit that was funny and was paid to say it on stage.
	And obviously, I mean, granted that his body of work reflects this, it's not outrageous for him to be quote unquote woke, but like, okay, it's really actually very easy to accept When you see that you've been hurtful, and then you're like, ah.
	Regardless of how, you know, I feel like being, I'm shocked.
	People fuck up.
	Yeah, we fuck up, and then you can just say, man, I'm really sorry.
	That's like, I see where you're coming from.
	But that's the thing, is even saying, hey, I don't know enough about this, and I'm gonna shut the fuck up.
	That is a step that I think would go very far.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like, that's not just shut up.
	Say like, I should shut up.
	Can you imagine if the right wing did that?
	If Russell did that, there would be no show.
	If just Dave Chappelle did that, that would be fucking massive!
	And then stuck with it, was consistent, that would be fucking huge.
	It would be such a blow to the toxic masculinity that's swimming around in it, you know what I mean?
	I don't think that he thinks that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
	Well, obviously.
	I think that's the first hurdle.
	Yeah, that was kind of granted within my statement.
	Yeah, that was assumed.
	Lord above.
	Anyway, Russell's line about Republicans and Democrats and people with differing political views, Like, you know, that used to have a semblance of truth to it, or at least one of possibility, but now I'd say because of the last decade of politics and your boy DJ Trump, we've gotten to the point where one side is perfectly fine with letting the LGBTQ plus community and people of color and anyone who isn't Christian basically die, and the other side is, I don't know, maybe trying to get cheaper health care or something, who the fuck knows, but
	Like, when Hillary Clinton talks about deradicalizing Trump people, that's precisely what she means and why.
	Like, extremists by their very nature are not tolerant of other people in society, and Trump's cabal are extremists who have been led down a merry road of sedition and conspiracy by a bunch of grifters who fucked an entire country over for profit.
	How precisely are we supposed to engage with or live with these people at that point side by side without any tension?
	It's just not possible.
	Right.
	You know, another, like, there was a point that someone made that I think was, like, really struck me is, because so often, and this is all sides, All sides do this, and it's bonkers to me that, you know, Jesus says to turn the other cheek, right?
	And that's what Jesus would do.
	That is what the religious kind of, you know, that appeal to religion as a moral structure of any kind.
	And saying turn the other cheek is the moral, is the right thing, is the high ground.
	That statement assumes the person that's doing the slapping has empathy and is in good faith and has empathy, because if they don't, you're just gonna keep getting slapped.
	And frankly, there's a lot of other things that Jesus said that don't agree with that.
	Like, you got two cheeks, you got two tries.
	The third, we got a problem.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I mean, Jesus didn't turn the other cheek to the moneylenders.
	Exactly.
	That's what I'm saying.
	He fucking hooted them out of the temple.
	Plenty of counterexamples.
	Yeah.
	So that informs kind of what that statement is about.
	And I think that, like, imploring everyone, you know, prioritizing peace As in placidity on the surface, you know, like being or appealing to that kind of like, okay, now let's all be civil.
	It's like, you can't be civil with someone that's trying to stab you under the table.
	Yes, no, exactly.
	Or smiling at you on top of the table.
	It's not- Yeah.
	Yeah, you can't be peaceful and friendly with someone who is trying to legislate you out of existence.
	Which, again, guess how easy it is to find civil rights activists for decades talking about that exact thing.
	It's not hard to do the work.
	It really isn't.
	It does take some time, it does take some effort, but let me tell you, it's easier than ever to find.
	I was going to say, not even that much.
	You know, like, really?
	You'd think.
	Lord, lord above.
	You'd think.
	Anyway, Russell bolsters this idea that we're discussing with a familiar narrative in this next clip.
	For hundreds of thousands of years, we've lived in tribal groups that wouldn't have known very much about the cultures and customs of other groups.
	For hundreds of thousands of years, we've known that members of communities have different ways of identifying that don't fit within narrow biological parameters, and it hasn't been cause for outrage or aggression or condemnation.
	There's no question that there's prejudice and bigotry across society, but by continually highlighting a particular type of prejudice and bigotry, you once again veil and marginalize A greater set of inequalities that are practiced at the economic and class level.
	And rhetoric like Dave Chappelle's again offers us the kind of jell-o-gnite to reimagine the kind of territories that we live within.
	And also gives us all a degree of interpersonal and social freedom to engage in discussions and conversations with one another in good faith.
	Look, it's your favorite subject.
	Gestures to History Corners on Off-Brand and how Russell knows literally nothing about the interaction of culture and the time period he's hearkening back to.
	It's fake.
	Any time period.
	It's a fantasy.
	Even if we want to take his argument on his face, I got two episodes that pick that apart pretty well.
	I mean, even just in that clip, just the concept that no tribes have ever had a conflict with each other.
	Fuckin' bet.
	Also.
	But even the management of conflict.
	I think it's just really easy to talk about military history because there's a lot of numbers that people wrote down.
	Truly.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	No, absolutely.
	Anyway, so we're all talking about trans issues to distract from the economic issues of inequality.
	It's not that someone said something fucking hateful, of course.
	Because, I mean, it was Dave Chappelle who brought it up.
	No one asked him.
	He could have gone the whole special without mentioning trans people, and I can guarantee the entire world would have been better off.
	Except, perhaps, for Dave's bank balance.
	Because, let's be honest, he loves the attention he gets by being a piece of shit.
	And it puts more eyes on the special.
	And Netflix.
	And Netflix puts more eyes on his special.
	But no, the special helps us reimagine our society together and any of this talking about trans people stuff is just to distract us.
	Once more I am forced to ask Russell, why can't we do both?
	How about we address economic inequality and we can start by making your locals channel free and redistributing your tens of millions of dollars.
	How's about that?
	Let's address economic inequality and oppression and protect the trans community.
	No, we can't do that.
	Because reasons.
	Yeah, okay, that seems legit.
	Yeah, okay.
	Fucking... I do think that there's, like, kind of this social con... Like, there's way too much, I'd say mostly in government, but also generally people beating their head against the wall with the same system that they think has always worked.
	Cause like, you know, to use, go back to the carceral state and to, you know, the prison industrial complex, we know beyond a shadow of a single doubt that punishment and consequences that are, you know, like, Causing harm, threat of consequences does not deter crime.
	No.
	It doesn't work.
	Why are we pretending that it works?
	There are so many structures that we know don't work.
	So why are we still doing it?
	Why are we still doing it?
	That's what I'm saying, right?
	We know it doesn't work.
	Sure.
	We know it doesn't work.
	We already did the insult people and frighten them so that they revert back to the closet, right?
	We're already there, and we knew it was bad, and we can listen to the people that had to live through it to tell us what their experience was.
	Going back to that isn't gonna work.
	And if you think you're not going back to that, that means you haven't done the work and learned from people who are more than happy to tell their story and back it up with statistics and all that shit.
	It's ignoring so much, just volumes of evidence.
	Just my good old PBS local station, you know?
	It has more than you could ever possibly want.
	It's right there.
	It isn't hard.
	Yep.
	No, it's not.
	No, it's not.
	But Russell solidifies his position in this next clip.
	I think that the culture war is utilized in order to generate conflict and division to distract us from issues that are more significant.
	And when I say more significant, I don't mean that identity issues or the struggles of oppressed people across the world are not important.
	Of course they are.
	What I'm saying is, is the people that are using these arguments don't care about them and they care even less about developing movements that could generate actual change, that could prevent Congress being so beset with corruption that you can't do anything to stop people investing in stocks and shares of companies and organizations that they regulate.
	Yeah, let's not talk about trans people being repeatedly attacked by a shithead with millions of viewers, because while that is important, it's not as important as a group of old white men profiting from weapons manufacturers.
	Well, and what is allowing them to get in those places of power?
	They're exploiting what they even call quote-unquote culture war issues to get that power in the first place.
	And because they are marketing specialists, not public servants, they are getting in those positions to be obstacles because that's their whole plan.
	Like, what is allowing these people other than, like, systems to support their immense fucking privilege?
	Yeah, the biggest way is getting them into seats of power and gerrymandering and all that kind of stuff.
	Like, it's getting there to stop the wheels from turning in the first place.
	So we gotta figure out what the real problem is and not distract to something else.
	One would think!
	Russell is also making a big fucking leap by saying that anyone engaged in this conversation doesn't care about the outcome.
	I can absolutely promise you, Russell, there are LGBTQ plus people in the media and plenty of allies in the media too.
	Just because the ones that you hang out with are bigots doesn't mean the rest of them also are.
	Right.
	There's also a serious flaw in Russell's argument, which is one of process.
	See, dealing with Congress people having stocks and shares in companies they're supposed to regulate is broadly an issue I agree needs addressing, but of course the only way to do that is through legislation.
	It's a legal process that by its very nature has to go through legislators and most probably the courts eventually.
	Dave Chappelle, on the other hand, well, he's done nothing illegal in what he said.
	He's just been incredibly bigoted and harmful to an already suffering demographic of people, which then has a ripple effect through society.
	The way to deal with it does not require going through legislators or the Of course, it's something that we as a society must come together to say, fuck this guy.
	And if Chappelle isn't going to change his views because of societal pressure, which he's made it clear he won't, or God forbid, actually listening to people who know more than him, then piling pressure on Netflix and any other company willing to platform these views to millions of people is the next step to prevent more harm being done.
	Netflix quite famously don't give a fuck, however, so it's gonna take quite a bit of that for anything to change.
	Nonetheless, like, one thing requires a social shitstorm to get done, the other requires somehow getting turkeys to vote for Thanksgiving.
	And in this situation, I feel like getting Chappelle to shut the fuck up is actually the easier of the two tasks.
	Which, depressing, but there we are.
	So, hey, like, one does not really have any kind of effect on the other, really, particularly, you know?
	Well, that's about finding the actual, like, finding the roots of these problems and being realistic about it, not being reactionary and distracting for profit.
	Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
	I've made a pretty clear case that Dave Chappelle is a piece of shit these days.
	But Russell, unsurprisingly, has a different view.
	There's no possibility of developing meaningful cultural change as long as we're all at war with one another under the most bogus of pretenses.
	In this case, the pretense being that Dave Chappelle is a malign and malignant force.
	I don't think anyone who watches that special could come away thinking anything other than, oh no, he has respect for trans people and he's making jokes.
	He's simultaneously joking about the culture, the reaction to a previous special, the Ludicrousness of the situation that Jim Carrey was in, playing with the idea of identity itself.
	He makes loads of jokes about race.
	He's clearly interested in creating conversation and a dynamic set of circumstances.
	And that's what good comedians are able to expertly do.
	And if you watch that special, that's what you'll see happen.
	What you won't see happen is the generation of division and hatred.
	Yeah, Dave Chappelle's got loads of respect for trans people.
	He's made that abundantly clear.
	As for what he's saying, I'm... The generation of division and hatred is in the audience!
	You can see it!
	It's right in here!
	It was right there!
	Yeah, it's kind of nice, isn't it?
	I'm not going to tell our audience what to do on this score.
	The guy's already profited it from it financially, so it doesn't matter that much, but it will boost his viewer numbers, whatever the hell they are.
	But if you do want to watch it, watch it, and if you don't, don't.
	If you can't find a way to steal it, sure, go for that.
	Just, yeah, brace yourself either way, because you will have hateful shit presented in an incredibly slick and charismatic package, and it's quite jarring.
	I dare say about half of the special is what Russell says you won't see, which, yeah, is the generation of division and hatred.
	It's about half.
	Speaking of which, just from the things that I've highlighted and said, and that's not all of it by the way, it is immensely clear that Chappelle lays some horrible and hateful shit out for his audience by way of making jokes, and either Russell hasn't seen the damn show, or more likely he doesn't believe it's harmful to anyone.
	The trans jokes, the disabled jokes, like they're all fine and dandy according to this guy.
	That's obvious.
	I know.
	I know it's obvious, but I'm like... But also, at least he's also here sitting and explaining his rationalization.
	Yeah, that's true.
	We know exactly what he thinks about it, and he's telling us.
	That's how he has found a way to rationalize For himself, because genuinely, straight up, of all of the conservative pundits, and I'm going to point to the pink box of skincare that we just saw, I don't think Russell... I know that I'm making an assumption.
	This is a far-off notion for me.
	I think Russell, much like a lot of people that are my contemporaries, I really like gay people and like hanging out with gay people.
	Russell strikes me as a person in previous moments of their life that was like fucking cool with groovy like everything was cool and groovy and this it feels especially it feels self-serving and cynical in a way that he's talking through in front of us right now.
	I'm not sure I agree, but this is just down to our personal assessments of the man, I think.
	I don't think he has anything particularly against them, but I don't think he's the type of person to really like gay people or hanging out with gay people.
	Especially as, like, he's always had kind of an obsession with, um, kind of hyper-masculinity and, like, trying to live up to, like, his dad's kind of representation of what a man is, what a bloke is, what that should be.
	Which is why he does all the, you know, football and Brazilian jiu-jitsu and all the other stupid shit that he does.
	Well, that's a now Russell.
	I'm talking about the Russell that I like, and this was, you know, obviously this was like a while ago.
	I'm talking to like, you know what I mean?
	Like a very different, effeminate, like kind of the, his presentation was.
	His presentation was that.
	Yeah.
	That's what I'm saying.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Yeah.
	He has long had that psychology though.
	I think of, of kind of chasing that masculinity, um, in that way.
	But like he could, he could kind of couch the, um, The kind of foppishness of being like, well, yeah, I have lots of sex.
	So, you know, that that's, you know, that's my presentation because, you know, it it gets me laid and it does all these other things.
	I also remember a lot of jokes that were like calling out that.
	The thing is, is like you can call it out and you can.
	Like I'm not saying that there's not hypocrisy, but I'm saying as far as like, I'm saying if this if this dude is getting gussied up to go out to a club on a Saturday, And genuinely, picking a straight club or a gay club, they're gonna pick a gay club because they think it's more fun.
	That's just something that, I'm sure there's a dissonance.
	I don't think it would be.
	Again, this is just... I mean, I remember talking about all this stuff, but this is a long time ago, and I mean, it's just...
	It doesn't.
	I think there is a degree, and especially, I don't think Dave Chappelle using that story about their trans friend as like, it's that kind of like, oh, well, I have gay friends, so I can think whatever I want, and they like me, so that's the exception.
	And it's that tokenism, and you're not realizing that you're tokenizing your social group or your friend group.
	I think that's a disparity that I think allows for... It's that chink in the armor that allows for this rationalization to get to the point that he's at right now.
	I bet this has been... I mean, it's either a long process or, like you're saying, falling back on a toxic masculinity base that he can call up and then find these rationalizations for.
	I just, I feel like if he liked gay people, like there would be, at any point in his life, there would be more of a defense, you know, of this community in general, but I don't know.
	But yeah, maybe time and tide, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I think that whatever, well, you have to boil down the person.
	He likes money the most.
	Money and attention.
	Money and attention.
	That's what I'm saying.
	But even just the crowds he was running around in were often very androgynous and effeminate and all that kind of stuff.
	I think that whatever behooves him in the moment is what he's going to do at the end of the day.
	Yeah, that has always been true.
	Right.
	All right, we have one final clip and Russell has one final stupid point to make.
	Where you will see the generation of division and hatred is in the legacy media outlets that are claiming to be policing, curtailing, controlling it.
	We're here to help you.
	No, what you're here to do is to amplify the message of the powerful, disempower ordinary people primarily by turning them against one another and not highlighting the many, many thousands of issues around which we could be galvanized, mobilized and united.
	So stick with me on this.
	The legacy media are amplifying the message of the powerful and disempowering ordinary people by being supportive of the trans community.
	The message of the powerful is apparently that trans people are cool.
	I've got to say, having lived in a system that fucks trans people at every turn for literally my whole life, it's news to me!
	You'd have thought they'd have built it differently if they like us so much, you know?
	And I've also got a question for Russell.
	Why is it that the issue of trans people existing isn't something around which we can be galvanised, mobilised and united?
	Why can't we all Just collectively come together for that.
	Why do you suppose that is?
	Oh, I think that's just just a thought experiment for you, Russ.
	Well, to me, that's that's like evidence of like, oh, you can just plop any old word in there you want.
	Like, OK, that's your that's your you've already decided what you're going to say, like to get on your soapbox, like you got your your rote kind of soapbox thing and then you can just plug and play.
	You can love it.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Oh boy.
	Oh boy.
	I do want to clarify that why I would even bring up how someone appears as if they are presenting this groovy, androgyny party boy, as I perceive Russell to be whenever he was popular, and I was siphoned this kind of information at fucking 10.
	Years ago, or more.
	I'm mentioning it because I think that we can take those skills in our own lives as far as examining how people can appear to be groovy, because we want them to be.
	Because if you are surrounded with other groovy people, and then you can say, And let me tell you, I've had this experience very often in my own life, way more than I'd like to, is that I, you know, I want to think the best of people and I want to give people the benefit of the doubt.
	And so I'm like, well, these are, I feel like these groovy, you know, like, these are my groovy convictions in the world and how to be fair and moral and honest.
	And then someone just can be like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And not really, like, they don't have to do, like, they don't have to make a declarative statement.
	They should be like, I'm here too.
	And they get a lot of benefit of the doubt by being around, like, you know, immersing yourself in a groovy kind of miasma, you know?
	Jimmy Dore.
	Jimmy Dore is the example of this.
	When you look back at the things he used to say, I'm like, you were never left wing.
	You just hung out with people who were.
	And then you said things into a microphone and everyone just kind But that's another person that's like, they're, you know, he had more left views that were like, that he was absolutely saying and still he says, he says left-wing words, but then all the other guts, like you have to look at like words versus deeds, like words versus like the impact, the harm or whatever the impact is, the intention.
	Well, but not just the intention, but also, yes, the intention and the results.
	You've got to look after a while.
	You know what's funny?
	I think that it's useful for me to compare larger issues to the microcosm of Drag Race, because it's a thing that I know.
	Topical for this. They also fight it all about like, yeah, right. Also listen to gay people and
	listen to queer people, but fighting it all out. Also, they fight it all out in public.
	I mean, it is. That's true.
	Yeah. And so all that messiness, and they can also work it out.
	They can say, "Well, I was wrong and I learned. I I, you know, said something that I thought was correct because of what I learned before, and I have since grown, and I'm going to change my view very publicly, and I hope that you come with me, but you don't have to.
	Very specifically, and I'm talking about, like, how much influence even, you know, this, like, subsect of, I think it's still the best show on TV, but not a lot of people, you know, like, I mean, they're, as far as Dave Chappelle, using their kind of, like, their reach, What they do hold people to is like, you can say something very subtle.
	And we talked about it in the, I think it might've been off-brand, but like Jeffree Star being able to like give a look on a Snapchat and that mobilized this whole brigade of fans to go ham.
	And so there's this kind of, yeah.
	And it's all under the radar for most regular people.
	So that kind of like that secrecy or even just that like just by nature of itself is not being that visible.
	A lot more fucked up shit can happen, unfortunately.
	So that's kind of like why they do call it out with like drag queens that are on TV because there's, you know, if you be a little shady.
	On your social media or you're a lot shady on the show and you don't and you're like yeah I said it what of it fight with her drag her I think that there's you know and there's a lot of jokes to be made and a lot of like jovial kind of nature but when harm is persistent and you're just even if you're just silent but your fans are doing the brigading or are are being vicious um Valentina is one of these kind of examples of like, and that was, it was a very public kind of disagreement when like, you could just try to tell him to stop.
	Be caught trying.
	Like, try to tell him to knock it off.
	And I understand that you don't want to identify with the most vitriolic section of your fans, but if they're saying they're your fans and they got your name in their mouth, then like, tell him to knock it off.
	At least try.
	What is it going to do to you to try?
	You have that responsibility, you know?
	It's something you can do, and yeah.
	I think, very obviously in Russell's case, he's like, well, I don't want to potentially do anything that impacts my income, so I'm not gonna do that.
	That's the thing, he's climbing a whole different ladder.
	Speaking of that, Russell had the Tucker editorial that smacked very much.
	It was the Tucker worship editorial and then Tucker was on the show.
	I think this is a pretty concerted effort to get Dave Chappelle on the show.
	It kind of might just be.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I think there's always an element of that to anything that he does.
	There is always a level of starfuckery when he's covering anyone bigger than him.
	We have one.
	On the books.
	Yeah, we do.
	It's true.
	I'm just going to make that prediction.
	I would be shocked if that ever materialized.
	Me too!
	I guess nothing's impossible in the world we live in today.
	Either way, I am curious to see how Russell kind of embracing transphobia develops.
	That's going to be interesting to track to see whether he goes back on anything, which That would be better, or whether he carries on down that line because people in his audience agree with him, which they do.
	The rumble comments were not fun for this video.
	But he was still real soft and squishy and wishy-washy about it.
	That's what I'm saying, at least coming out and Marjorie Taylor greening it up, you know where she's at.
	And she's not giving her constituents language to make it squishy and wobbly and giving them tools to be a slippery fish about it and to give them a rationalization that sounds maybe to the untrained ear or the, you know, like, Or the seeking ear to sound reasonable and to be more acceptable.
	Because this is all about, genuinely, for everyone, this is all about patterning and modeling behavior.
	And if you're learning this more nuanced, more sophisticated sounding rationalization, you're going to put that in your pocket and keep it.
	And you're going to use it.
	Why else would you have this content?
	Aside from just, you know, reinforcing your own feelings.
	There is something to be said for, like, Winston Churchill, for instance, you know, he openly said, well, yes, I am racist.
	I believe that white people are better than black people.
	And you're like, Alright, I know where we stand in this conversation, and I understand your politics a lot better.
	I understand why you think that you should starve India.
	Okay, fair enough.
	Right, and why you think that's okay.
	Yeah, this makes so much more sense to me.
	Okay, at least we can approach things from the same level.
	So yeah, there is that.
	There is absolutely that.
	Well, I don't think it's better.
	I'm just pointing out the differences because I think there's... Yeah, it's better from a perspective of, I don't know, public discourse, I suppose.
	I don't know.
	I think that he might be... He's gonna be able to wriggle out of the most extreme accusations he's even, like, in Alex Jones or even like... You know what I mean?
	Oh, God, yeah.
	That's what he set himself up for.
	Yes, yes.
	And I would say he does that less in this editorial about this subject than he will have done previously.
	But yeah, in every case with Russell, it's painting the outline of something and then expecting the audience to fill in what's in the middle.
	But also the outline is the intention to obscure his... To protect himself.
	To protect himself from the accusations that are in the media.
	It's a wonderful thing for him, and it's also the reason that our show is so fucking long.
	Because it takes a while to paint that shape, and we've got to demonstrate every point.
	We've got a good shape today!
	Don't you come for that today?
	We're doing it, and we're killing it out here in these streets today.
	Today is a shorty for us.
	Don't you insult yourself like that.
	Girl, you're worth it.
	You are worth it.
	I love it.
	Well, you know, what I have been thinking about as far as like, as far as the, um, yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, uh, sorry.
	That, that could be a good button, but I, I do want to think about it because, um, what I've been struggling with lately, and I think that this is a really good example of what like, and, you know, and bringing up the Darvo stuff in the last, um, off brand that, you know, like that Mike very kindly joined me for is, um, Talking about how, like, assuming that anyone that is being manipulative in that way is a malignant narcissist, and to think about, like, oh man, there's no way that this many malignant narcissists are walking around.
	It just seems, just like, percentage-wise, it just seems real high.
	As far as, because there are these like, you know, the manipulation tactics and the emotional kind of abuse tactics.
	They happen in most workplaces, you know, and I don't think it's just a question of identifying the most malignant narcissist.
	I think that what Popular conversation and understanding and also science has proven, I think, that CEOs are more likely to be sociopaths, that kind of thing.
	But just calling it CEOs being the problem, I think, is Again, flattening the conversation, oversimplifying, because I think that capitalism in general rewards antisocial behavior.
	So even if someone isn't a malignant narcissist through and through, they are rewarded for even just part of that, you know, that That group of behaviors, even if they're not exhibiting all of them or using all of them, there's one or two behaviors that maybe a very nice normal person could have learned and adapted into their own, you know, day-to-day experience that, you know, you can't accuse them of like being a malignant narcissist and having them put away, you know, like in an asylum somewhere.
	Just protect the public I think there's a lot of varying degrees of those behaviors that are reinforced by capitalism and competition and dehumanization and isolation all of these elements that are being rewarded so I think that it's it's hard to.
	Differentiate between, you know, I think that it's tough to, you know, accuse people of being sociopaths out and out.
	I think that everything is, if gender can be on a spectrum and sexuality can be on a spectrum, I think everybody, everything kind of can be.
	And to acknowledge that like, okay, well, You know, capitalism is rewarding, like in the crab bucket where crabs are all pulling each other down, the crab that gets to the top is the one that's rewarded.
	So they're going to do the behaviors of, you know, fighting and violence and malice in whatever form that might take to get them there.
	And so I think that And even that argument is used about queer people and trans people especially.
	It's like, well, there can't be way more of them now because there didn't used to be so many.
	And like, well, there can't be that many sociopaths now.
	There didn't used to be so many.
	It's like, no, they're identified now.
	Yeah, I was going to say that.
	They're safe.
	They're allowed to be out.
	Always there.
	Look at the graph of left-handed people.
	Only now is it being measured, much like autism and a whole bunch of other things.
	Totally!
	And I think that identifying that as one of the causes that... I think that, I don't know, I've just been thinking about it and I could be wrong.
	Yeah, no, we are dealing with a bucket of asshole crabs is what we're dealing with.
	And watching the financial rewards roll in for the crab that got to the top.
	Yes, absolutely, for hating the hardest, pretty much.
	Good ol' capitalism.
	Oh look, we're back here again.
	I'm nothing if not consistent.
	Uh-huh.
	Uh-huh.
	Same for this show.
	Good lord.
	All right.
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	Look for the blue logo.
	It says on-brand real big and there's a lot of hair.
	A lot of stylized mane.
	So much hair.
	And personal socials, I'm at Alworth Official in most places, and Lauren is at maid.buy.lauren.be!
	That's me!
	Yeah, come and say hello.
	All right, everybody, that's our show.
	Yeah, we'll see what the hell we've got in store for next week.
	It's probably going to be unexpected.
	All right.
	We love you very much.
	And yeah, we'll speak to you soon.
	Speak to you soon.
	Thank you so much for your time and attention.
	Have a good weekend to care.

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