Episode 1548 Scott Adams: Racist Democrats, Elon Musk and World Hunger, and Lots More Fun
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
CNN analyst Asha Rangappa on Southwest pilot's joke
Natural immunity, do you need a vaccination?
2% of Elon Musks wealth to solve world hunger?
Algae for food, fuel and other commercial products
Terry McAuliffe's process to hire diverse teachers
Mistakenly thinking Asok is a Black character
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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Well, well, well, welcome to the day after Halloween.
And I hope you're just as happy as I am, because I'm pretty happy.
And good news, good news.
You made it to the simultaneous sip.
Anybody listening to this live, you're on time.
And that means you're going to get to participate in one of the best things humans have ever done.
In the history of humans.
And it goes back a little bit further than that because there were the ape-like predecessors to the humans.
And according to every science I've looked at, they also enjoyed the simultaneous sip.
It's true. It's science.
And if you'd like to enjoy it now, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or gels, a canteen, a jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
Have I mentioned I like coffee?
And join me now. For the unparalleled pleasure.
The dopamine of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
Especially what?
That's right. Antibodies.
Here they come, antibodies.
They need caffeine, too.
Ah, yeah.
Antibodies. All right, well, I'd like to see a report from each of you in the comments on how your Halloween went in terms of number of trick-or-treaters.
I've heard that some places were much higher than normal, or at least higher than recent years.
Mine was down maybe 80%.
How about yours?
A lot of people saying zero and none.
Wow. Ran out of candy.
Yeah, it looks like it was all over the place.
In some places it was tripled, I'm saying.
Some places it was tripled, some places you could barely move, the street was so full of people.
And in other places, a dud.
Yeah, I got a dud. So I was all ready, all prepared, and we got a bunch of kids.
Now here's a little mystery for you.
I don't know what it means.
And this is not a negative racial comment.
So if you think it is, don't think that.
So I'm going to make an observation that is not negative.
It's just an observation. I don't know what to make of it.
The number of people who came to my house for Trick or Treat was down probably 80% from normal.
But the composition of the kids...
It was overwhelmingly Indian-American and Asian-American.
Now, I live near Silicon Valley.
It's a high-tech place. We've got a pretty big population of both Indian-American and Asian-Americans.
But it was crazy.
Like, the ratio of that or those two demographic groups...
And I don't know what it means.
I mean, I don't have a theory about why that should be.
But it happened. I don't know.
In other news, Rasmussen is reporting that 57% of likely U.S. voters think that Biden is a weaker commander-in-chief than Trump.
57% think Biden is a weaker commander-in-chief than Trump.
Now, let me ask you this.
How many of you are surprised by that?
Is that the least surprising thing you've ever heard?
Pretty unsurprising.
I don't think that people quite appreciate that having a commander-in-chief who looks like a wounded elk...
Basically, if your top person of your military looks like he can't find the car keys...
It doesn't make you afraid of the military.
I mean, it should, because the military is still going to be lethal.
But 57% are already in favor of Trump as a stronger commander-in-chief.
And apparently that's changed from 43% in May.
That's a lot. So can we say with some certainty...
That the Biden administration is a failed administration?
Is it too soon? Now, I think a lot will depend on whether Biden can get any big legislation through, you know, any trillion-dollar spending bills, but I'm going to bet against that.
I'm going to still bet against it.
I don't think anything's going to get passed in the over-a-trillion range, but, you know, I could be wrong.
But we'll see. So I think that Biden will have no domestic success.
He will look like a weak commander-in-chief.
He will look barely functional.
The border's a mess.
Ah, it's going to look bad.
All right, so I see all of your prompting, and I know you want me to talk about a rumor that President Biden had a, let's say, a bowel-related accident on his European trip.
Now, Here's my take.
Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't.
It's not going to be my topic.
I want to say it as clearly as possible so you stop asking.
I'm not going to talk about that.
I just don't like that topic.
It's not entertaining.
It's not a way to start the day.
And it's probably untrue.
And if it is true, it's his business.
You know, I'm happy to criticize Biden for his cognitive problems, because that matters.
And I'm happy to criticize him for his policies and blah, blah, blah.
But that's really just a private health issue.
That's a little too far, right?
I just don't think that's our business.
I don't think it's cool.
And if it happened, it happened.
If it didn't, it didn't. I mean, he's a certain age.
You know, if you're going to accept that you have a president at that age, you've got to accept the whole package, right?
If we've said we'll take a president who's this age, don't act like it's a news story if he has health issues that are exactly what people have at that age.
Let's not make that a thing.
Anyway, I know it's fun and you enjoy it, but it's not my thing, so I'm not going to do it.
Christina, my wife, had an interesting experience in one of the local Starbucks.
She got her product and sat down with her sister and was asked for her papers in America.
She was asked to show her vaccine card.
She didn't have it with her.
I think she's misplaced it.
And by the way, if you misplace your vaccine card, I don't know what you do about that.
Do you? Can anybody tell me what happens if you lose your vaccine card?
Because I don't think there's a process for getting it back, is it?
If you lose it, are you not shut out from society?
Oh, it was at Starbucks.
It was the server-esque. CVS has a record.
If you got it there, you can get a digital one.
Yeah, she's got pictures of it, but I don't know if they suffice.
I'm not sure a digital one even works, does it?
Yeah. I don't know.
But I've heard that other Starbucks are not requiring this, so it might be a local thing.
I can easily imagine that they have an employee who's unvaccinated or something, so maybe there's something special about that one.
Now, they don't require a vaccination to buy things, just to be clear.
Apparently you can go stand in line and buy things without proving you're vaccinated.
I think you have to be vaccinated and wear a mask.
But I don't think you have to prove it just to buy stuff.
All right. Well, that's pretty shocking and terrible.
I saw something in a comment on Locals just before I got on that I'm going to steal the joke and extend it, okay?
So there's a meme I saw, and I liked it so much that I wanted to borrow it and modify it a little bit.
It goes like this.
I didn't tweet it, but if you want to tweet it, you'll have to race to see who could be first.
I said, you could use Scrabble tiles and shit something more coherent than a Biden press conference.
I just like that.
You could eat Scrabble tiles and shit something more coherent than a Biden press conference.
It's not bad. Not bad.
And thank you for the meme that inspired it.
You all want me to talk about the story about the Southwest pilot who, on his announcement, said, let's go, Brandon.
A joke, obviously.
But since it was a political joke, there was some blowback on the pilot.
I forget what it was.
The exact blowback, whatever it was, was wrong.
But here's the story.
The story after the story is jaw-dropping.
This is jaw-dropping.
A current analyst for CNN, one you've probably seen, named Asha Rangappa.
I hope I'm saying that right.
She tweeted that, as an experiment, and apparently the pilot kept his job, but as an experiment, I'd love for a Southwest Air pilot to say, long live ISIS before taking off.
My guess is that, number one, the plane would be immediately grounded.
Number two, the pilot fired.
And three, a statement issued by the airline within a matter of hours.
As Ted Cruz, who seems to be much smarter than Asha, tweeted in reply, you just compared a pilot making a joke to ISIS. Really?
A pilot making a joke, pretty much the same as an international terror group.
What the hell is wrong with her?
What the hell?
Is wrong with her. Now, it's one thing just to say the analogy is crap, but to even have a thought like that...
How do you have a thought like that?
Exactly. Somebody...
There's a CNN analyst who literally thought that other people would think that sounded reasonable, at least reasonable as social media.
Social media is never reasonable, per se.
But within the social media reasonableness...
To compare a Trump supporter to a member of ISIS or a supporter of ISIS. A CNN reporter tweeted this just like this is something we'd all agree with.
Well, that's true. Yeah, I see your point.
I see your point. Trump supporters, ISIS, very similar situation there.
I don't even know what to say about this.
This is, like, shocking.
Because I don't even recognize what this is.
Is it cognitive dissonance?
Confirmation bias? I mean, this seems so extreme that it looks like a prank more than a mental condition.
I don't know what to think of this, honestly.
I can't even figure out how to interpret it.
Is it an intentional lie?
Or does she really think that...
A political joke about a president on an airplane is pretty similar to supporting ISIS. Really?
All right. Here's an observation that nobody had made yet, and I feel it was my responsibility to be the first.
And it's just one of these, you know, dog-knot-barking situations.
You know...
Oh, you're welcome for posting to a bit shoot.
Um... And I'll just say it.
As far as I know, actor Robert De Niro has never accidentally shot anyone.
But don't you feel it's overdue?
Is it just me?
Now, I don't know if it's just because Robert De Niro is basically the poor man's Alec Baldwin.
That joke could be reversed, too.
I like a joke that could be reversed and it still works.
Yeah, Robert De Niro is the poor man's Alec Baldwin.
But I could have just as easily said that Alec Baldwin is the poor man's Robert De Niro.
It works both ways.
Very rare. Very rare that your joke can work in both directions.
I don't have another comment on that.
I will just tell you that when I first heard the news about Alec Baldwin, I imagined Robert De Niro because I just thought that was more likely.
Like, I confused the two in my head, and I realized that maybe I've been confusing in my head for a long time.
They both seem like, you know, angry older actors with TDS who are, I don't know, somehow similar.
All right, that's about it on that.
In permanent news, I like to give you the news that never changes.
In addition to the news that has changed.
Now, you might say, if it never changes, is it really news?
Well, it's in the news.
If it's in the news, it must be news.
And you're not going to believe this, all right?
I've told you a lot of shocking things.
But, you know, put on your seatbelt.
This one's just going to blow you away.
If you have any kind of a hat that has a strap that you can put around your chin...
Put it on now. Because your head's going to come clean off when I tell you this.
Hold on, hold on, here it comes.
There's a Hollywood actor who came out as gay.
I didn't see it coming.
It's Kai Penn.
Yeah, he came out as gay.
And thank God, thank God our news industry is on it.
Because I woke up this morning not knowing what kind of genitalia he preferred.
And having that curiosity all day long.
And then I pick up the news and I'm like, wow, this is a coincidence.
This is exactly what I was wondering.
Kaipan is his name.
K-A-I, Kai Penn, who's a delightful actor.
I like him a lot. Now, the fact that he came out as gay, my point is, why is that still news?
I realize he's famous.
He's an actor, so we know who he is.
But why are we still treating that as news, really?
Maybe if the president or a senator came out as gay, that would have some meaning, because then you would look at their records on voting and stuff.
But if a Hollywood actor comes out as gay, why do we need to even know?
Like, am I going to like his movies more?
It's like, you know, I didn't like his movies a lot, but now I know about the butt stuff.
I'm all in. I mean, how is it even related to anything?
You know, I guess the way this is hitting me is very much the same way as when the news reports the first black anything.
Right? Doesn't that just feel offensive at this point?
Like, that it's news that there's a first black whatever, whatever job, success, you know, accomplishment.
I mean, I'm proud for, you know, happy for the person.
Right? But why is it a story that it's the first black person to do it?
I mean, really? It's 2021.
I'm willing to stipulate that black people can do stuff.
Oh, it's Kalpen, not Kai.
Yeah, thank you for the correction.
Kalpen. K-A-L. Yeah, if a black person was the first black grand wizard, it might be newsworthy.
Well, there was a...
Wasn't there a Rachel Dolenz?
She was white and she was a leader in the...
Was it the SPCA? Or no, the NA... Not the SPCA. The NAACP? No, I'm going to get cancelled for that.
I've been waiting to figure out what it would be that would take me down.
Because don't you figure...
Are you surprised I haven't been cancelled yet?
Is anybody surprised I haven't been cancelled yet?
Because I feel like the obvious one to be cancelled, right?
I don't know how it could be more obvious that I should be on the list.
And I know I'm on the list.
It's not like a bunch of journalists haven't done hit pieces on me.
And I feel like every now and then somebody will take a run at me, but it hasn't been serious yet.
I feel like there have been warning shots.
I feel like maybe I've had some brushes with it.
But... I'm not exactly sure why I'm still here.
I'm actually genuinely confused.
I could come up with some speculation.
I mean, maybe because I try to play fair.
But I don't think people notice that.
The people who would cancel you wouldn't care if you ever tried to play fair.
I don't know. It's kind of a mystery.
Biden's spokesperson, Jen Psaki, tested positive for COVID. As did.
And by the way, we could try to make a story about how she maybe infected Biden and maybe he infected the Pope.
I like the movie idea.
Where somebody intentionally infects the president because the last booster shot was a fake booster shot and the last one was actually full of virus right before he did an international trip.
And the real play was to kill the other world leaders.
So, you know, they send Biden over there and he's, you know, a full spittle man.
You know, he's like getting up close to people and just spitting in their faces with his COVID. I mean, this would be a good movie anyway.
And then he shits his pants and dies.
That would just be a perfect ending.
So, anyway, Jen Psaki tested positive, and also Tim Ferriss.
Tim Ferriss just tested positive.
Now, Tim Ferriss is, you know, young and super healthy and fully vaccinated, or at least two vaccinations, I guess.
But I guess he's still having a little trouble, it sounds like, just from an Instagram post, that's all I know.
But it looks like he said he was, I forget his exact words, he said he wasn't flattened by it, but it's not easy.
That's with two vaccinations.
And he's still got some heavy symptoms.
So here's my take on this.
Think of how many celebrities there are in the world.
How many celebrities are there in the world?
A lot, right?
Because it's sort of our pastime.
And famous people as well, politicians.
Are we about to enter a phase where every single day there's a story about a famous person who got COVID-19?
We are, right? The news is just going to be non-stop.
Famous person gets COVID. Famous person gets COVID again.
And another famous person got COVID. So it gives you a lot of those.
Question. Do you believe it is proven that natural immunity is superior than vaccinated immunity?
Go. In the comments.
Your understanding of the science.
Is natural immunity better than vaccinations, including boosters?
Oh, not sure for the individual.
Now, that was a good answer.
So there's somebody on Locals who's making the distinction, and I think it's a smart one, to ask yourself first, is it a question about an individual, and would you get a different answer than the question about what to do about policy?
Because those could be different.
Yes, almost always.
Yes. Now, my understanding is that natural immunity...
It protects in more ways, whereas the vaccination does something with the spike protein.
So it protects in one way, but a natural immunity could protect in a whole constellation of ways.
And we think it would last longer, right?
So it lasts longer and protects more.
But are those the only variables?
Is the only variable that will last longer and protects more while it does it?
No, there are other variables.
And one of the variables is, are you intentionally getting infected or it just happened to you?
If it just happened to you, then that's the end of that story.
But if you intentionally avoided the vaccination so that you could get infected instead, then I'd say the cost-benefit changes, doesn't it?
If you did it intentionally, meaning intentionally avoided the vaccination.
It's the same thing. Then you have to add in the extra risk of the comorbidities, or not the comorbidities, the extra risk of dying.
Because, correct me if I'm wrong, an unvaccinated person getting natural immunity...
It also has the risk of dying from the disease itself.
Small, depending on your comorbidities.
It might be a little bit bigger. So you'd have to throw that in there.
But you'd also have to throw in the risk of the vaccination itself.
So there you've got two big unknowns.
So you've got some stuff you do know, which is natural, is wider than vaccination, and probably lasts longer.
And when I say that's known, there are some randomized controlled trials and observational ones that support it.
I don't know that we're 100% sure, but it looks pretty strong at this point.
But you have to factor in the other stuff, the risk of getting the disease itself, the long-haul COVID symptoms, etc.
So I don't think it's cut and dried, but I'm on the side that says if you have natural immunity, you don't need a vaccination.
Are you all happy? I say, if you have natural immunity, you don't need a vaccination.
That's my non-medical opinion.
Now, it's non-medical opinion, but it's based on what the medical experts tell us.
If there's something they haven't told us, I would factor that in, or I would say, oh, I don't understand the topic.
There's stuff you didn't tell me, but I wouldn't understand it anyway, so you decide.
But if the only thing that we're deciding on is the stuff they've already told us, I wouldn't get a vaccination if you have a choice.
I wouldn't get vaccinated if I had natural immunity.
Because that would be adding a risk on top of your immunity.
I don't know why you do that. All right.
Here's a fun story.
The director of some UN food organization...
Made a provocative statement that said that if Elon Musk donated 2% of his wealth, it could solve world hunger.
2% of his wealth.
Now, that would come out to $6 billion.
How many of you think world hunger could be solved for $6 billion?
Now, keep in mind...
You have to solve it every year, I guess.
I don't know how long the $6 billion is supposed to last, but I would think you have to keep spending $6 billion every now and then.
Well, Elon Musk rose to the challenge, if you will, in a sense.
He said, if WFP, and I don't know who that is, but that must be somebody associated with this claim, can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6 billion will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it.
How much do you love that?
I mean, seriously.
I love that.
So you have the most capable person in the world, I would argue, Elon Musk, who's the richest in the world, which largely makes him more capable than he already was, saying, if you can tell me how to do it, I'll do it.
Just tell me how to do it. Tell me how to do it and I'll do it right now.
I love that. Because that's exactly the way you should approach it.
So instead of saying, you know, it's not my problem or almost anything else, he just says, show me how to do it and I'll do it tomorrow.
That's an excellent, excellent answer.
And so, I too rose to the challenge.
And I decided to figure out how Elon Musk could solve world hunger with $6 billion.
And I'll brainstorm a few ideas, and maybe I'll see a few more coming through on here.
But the first thing is, don't limit your approach to buying food.
If that's your approach, buy a bunch of food, or I'll fund some farms, Or I'll help the distribution of the existing food, because we do produce enough, we just don't get it at the right places.
So Adam Dopamine on Twitter said quite reasonably that Musk could offer an X-prize.
That's my paraphrasing of it.
Offer a billion dollars to whoever could solve the problem.
Then if they solve it, he's at 1 billion, he keeps 5 billion for change.
And if they don't solve it, well, then it wasn't solvable.
Because nobody can solve it.
Or at least it wasn't solvable with the brains and resources we have.
So, oh, there it is.
Thank you. Thank you, Howard.
Howard gets the award on YouTube.
Because I really was wanting to talk about a different topic altogether.
But until Howard's comment, I didn't want to do it.
There are such things as...
I'm going to get back to the Elon Musk thing.
But I set a trap.
I set a trap and I wanted to see who'd fall into it, and Howard did.
The trap is this.
I believe that the world is filled with NPCs, people who are programmed to only think in movie terms.
And if you bring up feeding the poor, those people will reveal themselves because they can't avoid saying Soylent Green.
If the topic is food...
And how to feed people, the NPCs will go into the comments and start just screaming Soylent Green.
Soylent Green! Soylent Green!
Did you see my comment yet? Soylent Green!
Soylent Green! Soylent Green!
Now there's another kind of movie thinker that whenever you mention the idea of the simulation or reality not being what it is, the NPCs become immediately activated and what do they start typing?
If you talk about this simulation, what do the NPCs start typing?
The Matrix. The Matrix?
That's just like the Matrix.
And you know what? It's never like the Matrix.
Whatever it is that is the topic is never, ever like the Matrix.
You're just reminded of it.
And so if you want to figure out who the NPCs in the crowd are, just bring up The simulation theory or feeding the poor and just wait to see who says Soylent Green and The Matrix.
And then just never talk to them again.
Because they don't have anything to say.
They're just NPCs.
Sorry, Howard. I think most of you know I'm kidding.
But let me say not kidding.
For everybody who mentions The Matrix or...
Soil and green. Everybody else is bored with you.
We're all bored with you.
Like, seriously bored.
Just so you know. Your friends can't tell you when you say it in person, but I can say it because I haven't met you in person.
All seriously bored by those two references.
All right, let's get back to how Elon Musk could produce, could somehow feed the poor with $6 billion.
One would be an X Prize, so maybe somebody else can figure it out and collect the prize.
But I put my own idea here because although I'm not somebody who could build a A multi-trillion dollar company, which I'm sure Elon will do eventually.
I think it's worth a trillion or so.
Whatever it's worth, it's a lot.
Or his combined companies, anyway.
So here's my idea, because I'm more of an idea man.
More of an idea man.
Oh, WFP is World Food Program.
Thank you. And I suggested on this same thread with Elon's question that he could spend a billion dollars developing algae farms.
Algae farms.
Now the idea is that you just make one prototype that is economically successful and you could either form a business around it, but that's optional, Or you could just release the plans and say, look, I made an economically feasible, the best ever algae farm.
And I'll talk about what the benefits of an algae farm are in a minute.
But now I'll just release the plans, and anybody who wants to make them in any country, go make your own algae farms.
Now, I also said robot tendon.
Now, I don't think you need necessarily the robot part, but it might lower the prices and make it more interesting for somebody like Elon Musk.
So here's the thing about algae.
Number one, there are all kinds of different algaes.
Some would be edible, some wouldn't be...
Here you go.
I'm deleting this guy again.
Persistent. You're very persistent.
So there are lots of different algaes and they can be used for different things.
Some can be turned into various products and fuels.
So some kinds of algaes can be turned into fuel.
And you can sell it for a variety of commercial products, things you can make out of it.
So, you can make food out of it, that's one thing, and it would be high protein and high yield.
But there are other ways to make food.
So why is algae a good idea?
Here's why. It grows 10 times more rapidly than regular plants on land.
So it's 10 times faster.
I mean, if you're looking at economics, 10 times, that should catch your attention.
Less than a tenth of the land is needed.
So it grows 10 times as fast on a tenth of the land.
Am I doing the math right that it's 100 times more economical?
If you're only looking at those two variables, you know, there are other variables.
But if you're only looking at those two things, it's 100 times better.
Am I doing that right? If it's 10 times more productive and you only need one...
Am I doing that right? That feels too easy, all right?
It feels like there's something wrong with that.
I think I'm not doing that right.
Somebody do that right for me and tell me what the real number is.
All right. So that's...
It grows on nonproductive and nonarable lands.
So you could put your algae farm...
And by the way, they're not in the ocean...
They're sort of on land in some kind of container or in some kind of a recess that you've built into the land.
So you can build them anywhere.
And even if you don't have a lot of water where you are, it doesn't matter.
Because it turns out they reuse the same water.
They don't have to filter it.
So you can just put the algae in whatever water it's in and just keep that water there and replace whatever evaporates and that's it.
So it's not a big water problem.
Yeah, and it can be fertilized more efficiently than land crops.
That's another advantage because it's in water.
And there's no wasteful fertilizer runoff, so you have environmental advantages.
And remember, it's not in the ocean, so you're not polluting the ocean.
It's self-contained.
And... And it could be a source of biofuel and blah, blah, blah, and co-products.
And the thinking is, at least a few years ago, that you could build a prototype that would give you food, but also commercial products that could be sold for profit, and that it already looks profitable on paper.
Now, the only thing I would ask somebody like Elon Musk to do is figure out the smart way to do it.
There's probably a smart way to do it that isn't exactly the way it's being done, don't you think?
Just like there's a smarter way to build a rocket and a smarter way to build a car.
So if Elon Musk could put a billion dollars into algae farms, primarily for the research and then the engineering of it, to build a prototype that's economical and reproducible...
There you go. Five billion keep to change.
So he's got six billion to spend.
I feel he could get there with a billion.
Now, why couldn't somebody else do this?
Why couldn't somebody else figure out the best way to build an algae farm that could solve world hunger?
Because they're not Elon Musk, right?
It's not an accident.
That he continuously does things that other people can't figure out.
I mean, not just personally with his engineers.
It's because his main skill stack is engineering.
And I guess he's really good at it.
And he hires people who are also really good at it.
So I don't think that letting farmers build algae farms is the way to produce them.
The problem with farming is I don't think it attracts engineers.
High tech does, because that's where the money is.
But how many top engineers are going into agriculture?
I don't know the answer to that, but I'm guessing you're not getting the best and the most of them.
So you take somebody who's clearly capable and can finance it and just say, okay, build a team and go see if you can make some algae farms.
First, figure out if it makes sense.
But if it does, go see if you can build the best one.
It might require...
Robots. Might require robots.
But if you're putting them in poor places, the labor is cheap, so maybe the robots are too expensive there.
I don't think hydroponics is anywhere near as efficient as algae.
Now, what does the algae taste like?
I don't know. I think you can grind it up and turn it into a protein product that could be added to anything.
My guess is that you could flavor it and put it into protein powders and all kinds of stuff.
So you're not going to be eating it the way seaweed tastes, right?
It's not going to taste like algae when you're done, if you do it right.
All right, yeah, you can make oil out of it.
You can make all kinds of stuff. Terry McAuliffe, who's running for governor, has gone full racist.
And he said he's calling for the old Dominion state.
Well, let's call it Virginia.
That is such goofy writing.
I don't know where I saw this.
On one of the websites. Don't write like that.
Don't ever be the person who says, the old Dominion state is Virginia.
He wants more diversity in the teacher space.
Lamenting. That the Commonwealth, there again, a douchebag way to write, the Old Dominion, the Commonwealth, is Virginia, has proportionally more white teachers than the population would suggest.
And he's promising a program aimed at attracting non-white teachers.
Let me ask you something.
Isn't that a racist dog whistle?
Actually, it's not even whistles right in front of us.
Because what would be the process for changing the mix?
There's only a few ways that I know.
You either are going to have programs that are excluding white people, that are promoting other people.
So you're excluding white people from whatever programs would promote teachers.
You're probably not going to hire as many white people, so white people are discriminated against that way.
And maybe you wouldn't promote them, because you probably have an administration problem that's the same as the teacher problem, in terms of diversity.
Now, I'm in favor of diversity, even when it's sometimes painful and bad for people like me to get there.
Because I think it's a big enough problem to have that That you need to take an axe to it, not a scalpel.
But if somebody's running for government and they're saying right out loud that they're going to discriminate against an ethnicity, that's disqualifying.
Isn't it? Isn't it?
Isn't it disqualifying to say you're going to treat the races differently?
How is that not disqualifying?
I mean, the difference between woke and racist has just disappeared.
If you get woke enough, I guess you're just a racist, right?
If you're over-woke, you're so over-woke, you're just a racist.
And I'm not even talking about this as some, like...
Hypothetical, philosophical way that by analogy and in some way that you can imagine in a literary sense you could call him sort of racist?
No. No, this is direct, explicit, public racism.
He's saying it right to you.
I'm not interpreting anything.
Am I? Am I over-interpreting this?
I don't think so. It looks like direct racism.
Now... The other problem, and there's so many problems here, is when did we stop making children a priority, or their education at least?
Don't we need, as a civilization, to do a good job with the children?
It's not really optional, is it?
Is it optional to do a good job raising children if you want to be a strong civilization?
It's not really optional.
And while I am fully on board with having more diversity, it does give you two objectives, and you can't have two top priorities.
So if your top priority is educating the kids, and you've got, let's say, your available pool of teachers has more white, available people, maybe just from demographic reasons or whatever, are you going to not hire the qualified teachers so you can accomplish this other goal?
Hire somebody who's maybe less experienced or has lower recommendations or something?
Now, of course, I'm not saying that that's some kind of racial difference.
Of course. I'm saying that you could have many situations in which if you restrict the number of people you can look at to hire, just as a concept, as soon as you narrow the number of qualified people you're willing to consider, you should get fewer qualified hires.
Because you've got a big pool, and you're excluding a whole bunch of people without looking at whether they're qualified or not.
That should give you a lower quality teaching pool.
Not because they're ethnically different than the other people.
It has nothing to do with race.
It has to do with limiting the pool.
Right? Oh yes, I have seen when wokes and racists agree.
I'm not the only one to make that point, that's for sure.
Anyway, I think this racist dog whistle should be disqualifying.
We'll see if Terry McAuliffe wins.
I guess... I guess this race is being treated as the canary in the coal mine.
It's the early warning for what's going to happen in the midterms and beyond.
Yes, Ryan Long made that observation about being woke and being racist.
It ends up looking the same. So that is what I wanted to say today.
Now, I should point out that Terry McAuliffe sent his own children to private school And I should also point out, just because I like to cause trouble, that one of the main reasons that anybody in America sends their kid to private school is to get away from certain ethnic groups.
Now that's not me saying it, and I've not sent anybody to private school, and I've not been to private school.
So I'm speaking of it from the outside.
But, you know, there are lots of reasons for private school.
One of them is a religious education.
One of them is a better education.
One of them might be more involvement with the parents, for example.
So lots of good reasons to do it.
And as someone responded to me on Twitter, in my town, people are not using private school for any racial reasons.
Because we don't have enough racial diversity here in the first place.
So you wouldn't be escaping from anything.
But, as I also pointed out in the comments, My town has the highest-rated schools in California, I think.
They're among the top.
Highest-rated public schools.
And people still put their kids in private schools.
So there's still good reason.
It has nothing to do with the quality of the school, per se, or the mix of the school.
There's lots of reasons to do it.
Control, etc. But I think Terry McAuliffe's got a big problem because he's prescribing more racism for schools that he wouldn't send his own kid to.
And I think that's a problem if you're running for office.
And the teachers' unions.
Do you predict if McAuliffe will win or lose?
Well... You know, I made a prediction about Trump, famously, in 2016, because I could see something that I didn't think other people could see, which is his persuasive skills.
It wasn't obvious to anybody who didn't have that specific talent stack.
But in this race, this is really just basic politics.
So it's going to come down to enthusiasm, which apparently is lacking on the McAuliffe side.
Maybe that's the only variable that matters.
It could be just enthusiasm. But I don't think that's predictable.
Every time I hide this user, it comes back with a new name.
Somebody's saying on locals, we're going to get another black mayor in New York City, presumably, and it will be noted as the second black mayor.
You're right. We'll act like that's something we need to say in 2021.
It's the second black mayor.
We've got to just stop saying that.
It just can't help, right?
Am I wrong about that?
Is there anybody who wants to weigh in on this who is watching, who is black and American?
Do you find it offensive every time the news calls out the first black ice skater gold medal winner or whatever?
Yeah, by the way, tell me.
I'll need to know. I see lots of white people saying it's condescending, but I'd rather hear from black Americans.
Is that insulting to you, yes or no?
I see no, but I don't know...
Well, I can't tell from the comments.
I can't tell exactly who's responding.
Yes, I identify as black.
That's correct. Yeah, but I don't think you want my opinion on this.
Stop putting color on something, yeah, when you don't need it.
At some point, and I've said this before, at some point, all the things that worked to handle the big racism, you know, the big clubs, you know, everything from civil wars to civil rights legislation and the legal system and all that, you need that for the big problems.
But as the gap narrows, the discrimination gap narrows, it may never close the gap, just because that's how the world works.
But as it narrows, I think you've got to change your tools.
And I think you have to be smarter about how people, let's say, process any kind of a change.
And sometimes the helpful people are just making it worse, I think.
It's not a lie if you identify it that way.
That's right. How will we know who wins?
Well, yeah, you've got that problem.
Are those Virginia election systems, are they fully auditable and instantly?
I would love to hear your take on the $450,000.
I think there's some fake news about...
Illegal immigrants would get a bunch of money if they're illegal or something.
That's fake news, isn't it?
The $450,000 thing.
I saw it, I think I saw it only on social media.
As soon as I saw it, I just thought, oh, it's fake.
I didn't even look into it.
It just looked so obviously fake.
So I'm seeing people say it's not fake.
It's being considered...
Oh, you're talking about a settlement.
Okay, that's different.
As a settlement for...
People separated at the border during the Trump administration.
Oh, okay. Okay, so it's not really even about the immigrants, is it?
So it's really just an anti-Trump thing, isn't it?
I think to make Trump look worse, they have to do some reparations to people he had an impact on.
So I don't even think it's about the dollar amount.
It must be just some way to make Trump look bad, right?
It's based on a lawsuit.
So there's a lawsuit out right now that's asking for that much?
Yeah, I don't know if they get that number.
The 450, well, if it's based on a lawsuit, that's just somebody guessing what they can ask for and then finding out.
So you don't really...
I'm not sure it matters how they calculated it.
So it's real. Okay. I didn't realize the context of it was that it was a reparations.
I thought it was something else.
So if it was something else, it would have been fake.
But as reparations, yeah, maybe.
I mean, maybe it's real.
But I'm going to say I don't think it's going to happen, so it doesn't matter.
You don't think it's going to happen, do you?
Lisa says, about me, she says, I can't be canceled because I'm the poor man's Bill Maher. - I'm the poor man's Bill Maher.
I think I'm the poor man's Bill Burr.
I'd rather be the poor man's Bill Burr.
One million per family. Amen.
Were you challenged to be more diverse in Dilbert?
Yes, I was. And continually.
So I've often been challenged to be more diverse in Dilbert.
And let me tell you why I'm not.
And this will explain a lot if you haven't heard this explanation.
So Dilbert has mostly white characters, except for Ashok, the Indian-American intern.
Now, why don't I have black characters in my comic strip?
Does anybody know? Can you guess why I don't?
The first reason, hard to draw.
Are they hard to draw in general?
No. Are they hard to draw if you're white?
No. Yes.
Not because I don't know how to draw, although I'm not good at drawing.
But if a white person draws a black person, what is anybody going to say about that drawing?
How is anybody going to take it?
How do you make them look black?
Now, the way Charles Schultz did it, he introduced a black character, is he drew him to look almost identical to the white characters, and then put crosshatches in it so you'd see that his skin color was different.
Do you think that's right?
Do you think you should draw your black characters to be facially exactly like the white characters and just change the skin color?
Does that feel like you've done your job, you know, putting diversity into the strip?
It doesn't to me. To me, it just looks like you...
It's almost like blackface.
To me, it's almost offensive.
You know, but I can't judge for other people.
But to me, it would feel offensive to do nothing but just, like, change the color.
So it's really hard to draw a black-and-white drawing and show color, although it could be added later.
But it doesn't run in color everywhere, so that's a problem.
All right, that's the first problem.
What's another problem? What's the second reason that I don't have black characters in Dilbert?
Because I would be called racist by black people.
How do I know?
Because the Ashuk character, who's Indian-American in the strip, is often seen as a black character.
And people complain to newspapers that I was making the black character look bad in one way or another.
So without even testing it, I already know the blowback.
Mistakenly thinking I had a black character was enough to get me almost cancelled.
Just think about it. Mistakenly thinking I had a black character almost got me cancelled.
Imagine having an actual one, you know, where I can't say, oh, you just got that wrong, that's not meant to be a black character.
Of course it would be worse.
Now imagine all the jokes I do.
Do I do jokes that make the character look good?
Which of my characters do I make look good?
The boss? Nope.
Nope. So I can't make the black character the boss, or a boss, or senior management, because I mock senior management the most.
So I can't introduce a black character that would just look racist, because I'd be mocking that character just like the other characters.
How about I just add a black engineer to the staff?
Do I treat the main character, Dilbert, As if he has all good qualities.
Nope. All of the Dilbert cast have major flaws.
Personality flaws. Or they're dumb, or they're something, right?
Now, if you take that away, there's nothing interesting.
It's their flaws that makes the comic, right?
It's all about the flaws.
But if I were to add a flawed black character to Dilbert, do you think I could get away with that?
Not a chance. Because people would only see that one comic.
People who had never read Dilbert before would be sent that one comic, and they'd say, oh, I can tell from this one comic who I'm dealing with here.
He is clearly making this black character look stupid, and that's all you need to know.
Racist. Cancel him.
Because you can't broadcast context...
When people can so easily take one comic and forward it.
So I can't keep the context.
If they understood that the context is all the characters are mocked for their flaws, well, then I might get away with it.
But I can't. That's not doable.
It would be taken out of context immediately.
Let me give you an idea of how dangerous it is.
The Nancy comic, a very ancient comic called Nancy.
I once talked to the creator who took it over from the original...
And he talked about how he did a joke that was based on how photographs, if you take the negative of a photograph, it reverses the colors.
And so one day he reversed the colors of his comic and made all the things that would be filled in with black, white, and made all the things that would be normally left blank with no color, he filled them in with blank.
And that included the main character.
So the main character was, you know, black, as was, you know, the background and everything around her.
So you could tell that it was like a photographic negative.
And this was the punchline.
The punchline was, she was feeling a little negative today.
Because the joke was, she was drawn as a photographic negative.
She was feeling a little negative.
And he got cancelled from a major newspaper.
Because... Black readers wrote in and said, really, really, the black character is the negative one?
Oh, really? All the white characters are positive, but just one black character, the only one you've ever had in the comic, one time, and that's the negative one.
I see what you're doing with your racist whistle.
Canceled. That's how sensitive it is, right?
So, I do have a plan for introducing a black character, but I haven't figured out how to execute it without being more cringy than I can handle.
And here's the non-cringy part.
I would get some black activists, especially if they have any artistic background, to design the character for me, including the flaws.
That's the important part. So the flaws would have to be designed by somebody who's clearly not a racist, and then I could maybe execute on those flaws.
I would still get almost cancelled, but I could always pull out the card that I didn't design the character.
It might protect me.
It might protect me.
And it might actually make things interesting, right?
People would watch just to see if I'd get cancelled.
But... Oh, good.
You like the micro lessons.
Yes, I might lose creative control of my comic.
That's true. Now, there are a number of black artists who have black characters.
Now, they, of course, don't have any problems.
That would solve the problem, is just be black.
Yeah, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
I was actually thinking about him, yeah.
It would have to be somebody who has maybe some artistic background, right?
I wouldn't want, you know, an engineer to design it for me.
Chappelle! Interesting, although...
Yeah. I don't know, but Chappelle's not an activist.
I'd rather have somebody like, you know, Kendi or somebody.
You know, somebody who's really got serious activist credibility.
Darren Bell. Darren Bell, yeah.
Black cartoonist.
Very successful. I could have another cartoonist design it.
Yeah, Aaron McGruder. Very successful cartoonist.
S. Terry Crews.
All right. Don Lemon.
Bill Cosby. Not all of your suggestions are winners.
All right. Didn't Kendi do a Superman comic?
There's something like that going on.
That sounds vaguely familiar.
Somebody says, Coats already ruined Marvel Comics.
He's a great choice to destroy yours.
Well, you don't think you'd watch...
If I partnered with somebody who is, you know, a prominent black activist, you don't think you'd watch what came out of that?
I think you'd watch.
And remember, it's art. You know, cartoons are art.
So if I can make you watch and make you interested, it doesn't matter why.
You know, it's still art.
Interview Chappelle? I don't know.
I mean, Chappelle is amazing, but I don't know that me interviewing him adds anything to the world.
I mean, I'd love to meet him, but beyond that, I don't think it would work for you.
I would rather talk to somebody who's just really on the other side of things.
That would be the most fun.
All right, that's all for now. I'm going to run.
I hope you had as much fun as I did today.
Because if I haven't said this before, and I don't know why this should matter to you, but I'll tell you anyway.
I really enjoy this.
Often it's one of the best parts of my day.
And I don't know why exactly.
It's very human and it's flawed and I don't have to work too hard.
I don't even shave before I come on here.
I'm literally in my pajamas.
And if you could have this experience in your pajamas, I think you'd like it too.
