WTW19: Fox News vs. Halloween Costumes

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:42 Thomas: Welcome to Where There's Woke spooktacular. That's right, we're squeezing in a spooktacular. And how's it going, Lydia? Yeah.

0:00:50 Lydia: Spooky. It's, uh, it's gone spooky over here.

0:00:52 Thomas: Definitely this this is is Halloween this is Halloween which our Our kids, especially Arlo, loves Nightmare Before Christmas. So frequently that is in my head. Okay. First off, I thought, you back when I thought we had this thing called time and physical health, which we didn't have for October.

0:01:18 Lydia: Not the month of October.

0:01:19 Thomas: Not at all. Ambitious plan was, oh, yeah, I can do the Christiakises. This is the famous Yale Halloween thingy that I did cover back in the day, and I'll pair that with, you know, the Halloween special, and then it was too much. So Lydia, because were not as sick as I was, and, you Now, you're the better student among us. You had your part of the deal ready, so I think it's still worth doing that for a Halloween special. And then I think maybe, early next month we can tackle the Christiakos. I don't actually remember how much of a story there is there. There's obviously at least like an episode, but I don't, I didn't like follow it too closely after it happened. So I'm excited. We'll dig in and we'll see what we find, you Know, so it's, it'll either be like a brief, like, ah, here's what happened. Remember this old controversy, um, maybe it'll be more, we'll See. But in the meantime, are you going to spook us with some Halloween

0:01:20 Lydia: Yeah.

0:01:37 Lydia: I wasn't.

0:01:54 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Oh

0:02:12 Thomas: Wokeness?

0:02:13 Lydia: It's, yeah, it is ghoulish. Get ready. I hate everything you think about this.

0:02:19 Thomas: What? You don't like a spooktacular? I thought you would love a spookedacular. Here I thought I was doing a thing that you would be into.

0:02:21 Lydia: I OK. Oh, I mean, I do like spooktacular. I like hocus pocus and things like this. And so what you made me do was have to watch a lot of Fox News.

0:02:33 Thomas: Yeah. Fair. Oh, gotcha.

0:02:37 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, so I'm not not super happy about that. But that's OK, because now I'm going to subject everybody to it. And this is like my version of trick or treat. And I'm tricking everybody. So So I went on a journey and searched with so many terms, folks, on how to find out, you News and how they have felt about Halloween costumes, something that has been a topic in the last few years anyway, for sure, about, you know, being sensitive to your choice of Halloween costumes, understanding if you are appropriating someone's culture or if you're donning something offensive. There's something even worse than Fox News' takes. No spoilers.

0:02:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:22 Thomas: Can't wait this

0:03:24 Lydia: And we'll get to that a little bit it later in the episode, but I'm not going to answer that question. We're going to go back to 2016 and we have a variety of different characters we're gonna meet on this journey. And this is the first video that we have. And is related to Halloween costumes being policed at a college campus.

0:03:26 Thomas: Is the hitler what is it

0:03:47 Clip: HALLOWEEN JUST A FEW WEEKS AWAY, THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IS ISSUING A WARNING ABOUT OFFENSIVE COSTUMES. THIS IS A COLLEGE, MIND YOU, TELLING STUDENTS TO BE CAREFUL OF OUTFITS THAT REINFORCE RACIAL, CULTURAL OR RELIGIOUS STEREOTYPES. UNIVERSITY LEADERS EVEN SETTING UP A 24 -7 HOTLINE WHERE THOSE WHO ARE OFFENDED OR TROUBLED BY A HALLoweEN COSTUUM CAN, YOU KNOW, TALK WITH A COUNSELOR. Carly Shimkus joins us. Fox News headlines 24 -7. Reporter, she joins us now. Really? We need counseling because of a costume? Halloween is supposed to be a time to dress up and have fun, right? But the University of Florida is really taking costumes quite seriously. They wrote a blog post warning students or urging students to really think about their costumes because some could promote negative stereotypes. And like you said, They're also providing around -the -clock services for students. Yeah, but there's Elvis. I mean, you can't be offended by Elvis, right? Or Wonder Woman.

0:04:50 Thomas: What What? What?

0:04:51 Clip: Wonder Woman, that's a great costume. I love that. I'm going to wear that. But put the blog up there because it is a valid point that if people

0:04:51 Thomas: They're just, I'm sorry. They're, what's happening is they have some like be real. That's just, this is like, remember in, yeah.

0:05:01 Lydia: Yeah. They just got it from a stock footage website.

0:05:08 Thomas: And he's reacting as though that's connected to her story that she's telling. He's like, "Well, hold on though, I just saw Elvis, so" and that's in the time dimension with what you're reading this, this is like fucking Whose Line Is It Anyway where Colin Mockery's got the green screen behind him, and so she's got their green screen, she doesn't know what, what costumes are flashing yeah behind her, he's like, "Hold on, Elvis though," she's like, "Yeah, that is what's on the TV, I suppose," but yeah, sorry, I'll continue.

0:05:12 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Picked. Yes. Like newscaster or something like that. Yeah

0:05:44 Clip: Are engaging in negative stereotypes of race, gender, culture, or religions, I mean that's, that that's a problem. And, you know, if you think that the universities are being a little bit too sensitive, it's not entirely their fault, because so many colleges in recent years have gone viral because students have hosted parties where there have been costumes that have been deemed racist, right? And maybe the University of Florida is trying to sort of protect themselves before that happened. All right, now we've only got 30 seconds left. What's microaggression? A microagression is kind of an unintentional snub that sort of marginalizes someone, so that happens every day to me unintentionally, intentional and unintentional. Well, so, uh, so this sort of, uh, potentially racist costume would fall under the guidelines of a microaggression, which colleges are definitely putting a huge emphasis on. All right, Carly Shimkus, she's all over the story, including the killer clown scare. And "fear can't" dress up like a clown, it's

0:06:06 Thomas: Oh, okay.

0:06:07 Lydia: Yeah. Oh, my God.

0:06:42 Lydia: All right. You can cut it there.

0:06:43 Thomas: Yeah, you don't want to hear about the class. Lady's like, oh, please stop it. I don't even want...

0:06:44 Lydia: I about killer clowns. I hate clowns

0:06:48 Thomas: Part of me is like, is she pretending to be... Like, she could almost be an undercover liberal...

0:06:48 Lydia: So much. She's not. No, she hosts Fox and Friends now and she's like a frequent guest on Gutfeld.

0:06:55 Thomas: Oh, OK, damn. That's too bad. Well, that

0:07:00 Lydia: Yeah.

0:07:00 Thomas: Sucks.

0:07:00 Lydia: Yeah, I know. But that take towards the end was like, oh, OK, this is sort of reasonable. But remember, this is 2016. And what I'd like to show you is how the language has grown over time. So 2017, we're

0:07:10 Thomas: Oh, yeah, OK. Oh, we're taking a tour through history. So you didn't debunk that or anything.

0:07:15 Lydia: A tour through history. No, I mean, I think ultimately, it's you probably accurate that there were resources available to students. And you what it was is that it.

0:07:17 Thomas: OK. Going to go ahead and say I doubt there was a 24-7 hotline. Can I say that? Do schools have the resources to

0:07:29 Lydia: So sorry.

0:07:30 Thomas: Have it, go ahead. So

0:07:31 Lydia: So what I think it was, what I imagine it would be just from my own personal experience. And I went to school in Florida, so I'm claiming expert status there. Um, yeah.

0:07:42 Thomas: You must have seen Elvis and Wonder Woman and everything, oh

0:07:45 Lydia: Yeah. But I think probably what it is, they have existing resources like hotlines. And it's probably like you can also use this resource for instances in which you feel, you uncomfortable in a situation on Halloween, which could include microaggressions or an instance where.

0:07:45 Thomas: Yeah right yeah there might already be like a therapy hotline or whatever mental health emergency hotline so

0:08:04 Lydia: Exactly, and I, I imagine that's what it is, and they just reminded the students it's available to them. I sincerely doubt it

0:08:10 Thomas: It's not like they set up a specific Halloween one where, like, a girl in a witch costume can has the fun and there's like some candles everywhere and they're like, this is our, in case you're offended by a costume hotline but if they did do that, that'd be pretty cool. All right, so we're escalating

0:08:16 Lydia: Yeah right right so now yep we're going to 2017 and we're gonna visit our favorite Mr. Gutfeld talking about Moana, yeah.

0:08:25 Thomas: Uh

0:08:33 Clip: That time of the year when losers lecture us on unacceptable Halloween costume for kids that aren't even their own, this

0:08:40 Thomas: Sorry, I'm sorry, I just, you think we should lecture you on on our kids' Halloween costumes? Greg, my kid is wearing an offensive costume. What do you have to say for yourself? What

0:08:50 Lydia: Yeah.

0:08:51 Clip: Time, Redbook editors demand you don't let your little girl dress as Disney's Moana. They write, maybe think about using this Hallowe´n to teach your kids about the importance of cultural sensitivity.

0:09:03 Thomas: Redbook?

0:09:03 Clip: If your kid wears a racist RACIST COSTUME, YOU'RE KIND OF WEARING IT, TOO. OH, GOSH. SO SOME MISERABLE EDITOR WHO CAN'T EVEN PUT HER NAME ON THE PIECE ACCUSES YOU OF RACISM WHEN IN FACT SHE'S THE RACist FOR PROMOTING CULTURAL SEGREGATION. A CHILD DRESSES UP AS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER BECAUSE SHE LOVES THAT CHARACтер. OR HE. RATHER THAN ENCOURAGING EMPATHY, RED BOOK ENCOURAGES SEPARATISM. SO ALL RACES SHOULD JUST STAY IN THEIR LANE? I GUESS A POLINESIAN CHILDREN CAN'T BE SNOW WHITE. And what if this were not about ethnicity, but gender? What if I wanted to dress up as Moana or Wonder Woman or Susan B.

0:09:05 Lydia: I'm just a magazine website.

0:09:42 Clip: Anthony? Would Redbook deny my non -binary gender identity? How cisgender can you be, you bigots? That's identity politics. It turns on itself and gobbles all the weak thinkers up.

0:09:42 Lydia: I thought they didn't like drag.

0:09:54 Clip: And yet the media still embraces this junk. Why is that?

0:09:48 Thomas: What? You can't. That was just

0:09:57 Clip: Well, I worked in magazines.

0:09:57 Thomas: Word vomit that you did. You can't say, like, that's, that's them over there, that's what they say. Why

0:09:59 Lydia: Yes.

0:10:03 Clip: I know. These editors despise their feeble contributions to society, so they use attention -seeking pronouncements of moral superiority to impress their peers. Fact is, a child dressing up as Moana doesn't make her racist. It means she sees past ethnicity to choose someone to emulate. Yes.

0:10:21 Thomas: He really is struggling with

0:10:23 Clip: Unlike these nameless Red Book editors, I'd go as one of them on

0:10:23 Lydia: Yeah,

0:10:23 Thomas: That word. I think he's gonna add a syllable to it each time, ethnicist of this, of thisitude. By the end it'll be, they're

0:10:31 Lydia: Yeah.

0:10:32 Clip: Halloween, but we have enough zombies out there. Hey, well done. Thank you. And I'm all phlegmy, Kimberly.

0:10:40 Thomas: Being paid to do this his show, right? They can't even, oh, oh, what, where is he, done, hey, uh, oh God.

0:10:47 Lydia: That's back when Kimberly Guilfoyle was on that show too when she was working for Fox. Yeah.

0:10:50 Thomas: Is

0:10:53 Clip: One of your best monologues of all time. I mean, children get it. They're more evolved than the rest of us, to be honest, because they're not second -guessing it. They are pure. And thought and love and emotion to say, this is somebody I like watching, whether it's boys or girls love Moana, everybody loves Moana. They did this now with this like hyper -cultural sensitivity because on Saturday Night Live, you had like, you know, Melissa McCarthy, Vic Spicer doing the whole travel ban with the Moana doll and be like, oh, Moana we're reading all your emails and you're not right, boom, and they toss Moana in the box, you're gonna get in. And then they did regular Barbie, et cetera.

0:11:27 Clip: So that's what's happening here. It's like a knee -jerk reaction. Yeah, you know one you wanted to go as Madonna, but they're not that because you're not a woman. You can't well Jesse wouldn't go with me He's not putting up with that. Yeah

0:11:27 Thomas: Pretty funny what go where, where are you go, or do you go, to yeah, do you do you I mean, I recommend don't go on blackface, because that'll come back to to haunt all you. Yep.

0:11:42 Lydia: Think a Halloween party. Yeah. But he didn't finish the sentence. That's coming up.

0:11:52 Thomas: Um, Phoebe dressed as Moana, at least for something, right? Yeah.

0:11:55 Lydia: When she was two. Two. Yeah Mm-hmm. I don't mind the conversation happening, though.

0:11:58 Thomas: Cool I actually don't fucking, who cares, like yeah of

0:12:04 Lydia: I think it's perfectly fine. It kind of all stemmed from a website, a mom who who has a blog titled Raising Race Conscious Children. Dren. It did get picked up by magazines like Red Book. I think people wrote about it as well. I I don't mind people discussing that if it's something that they that don't think is is appropriate, you know, or they're wrestling with that in their mind, like when it is and when it isn't appropriate. They obviously Greg Gutfeld just couldn't help himself. He just took it to this insane position.

0:12:11 Thomas: Course, it's

0:12:33 Clip: But you know, so I was listening cuz I I don't like political correctness, but I was thinking as I was listen to you. What would you say about blackface, where you had white people who for much of our history were, you know, thought, "Oh, great, I'll just act like a stupid black person," mock black people? And you know, oh, if you complain about it, you're politically correct. So a little girl dressing up as Moana is the equivalent of blackface? No, I'm saying, is it cultural appropriation is the term used these days, but is it the case that if you put on a headdress, you say, "Oh, it's just a hat." You don't think, "Oh no, but to the people who created it, it has great significance." You're playing a fictional character. Okay. You're not putting on blackface. No, it is completely separate and distinctive. It was a great monologue.

0:13:15 Lydia: Jesse Waters is like, all right, we're done. Know, it was interesting that they they were kind of getting into that question, which I think I wish that they explored I think that would have been really good.

0:13:25 Thomas: I mean that's Juan Williams, the one non-white person there, so he's asking, he's like, oh, do we want to have like any sort of actual intellectual conversation? Oh, no, we don't. Oh, fuck me, okay. Yeah, sorry, fuck me, yeah.

0:13:28 Lydia: Right, right. And I, yeah, yeah. The person of color that's on the show talking about cultural appropriation and that blackface used to be thought of just, you know, as putting on a costume, too. And, you Know, like, let's have a conversation about it. Jesse Waters is like, all right. Right. And off we go to commercial break.

0:13:52 Thomas: There literally might as well been a cane coming around around his neck, to like pull him off of the set like the old timey thing where you're like, dude, Juan Williams, we don't do that on this network, you can't be like, oh, that raises an interesting question, where is the line between, you know, racism and cultural appropriation and just good old-fashioned fun. That would be like, real, oh, conversation. We can't do that. You have to just yell, make it out to be like these, entire group of the left is fascist morons who want to, like, come for your Halloween costumes and then commercial break. That's what we do. How many times do we have to explain this to you, Juan Williams?

0:13:56 Lydia: Yeah.

0:14:25 Lydia: The article that accompanies this coverage has a line in it that says, what's next? Perhaps mandatory DNA testing to determine who is allowed to wear what on Halloween.

0:14:35 Thomas: Yeah, definitely.

0:14:35 Lydia: Wayne.

0:14:36 Thomas: We have that now, right? Because this was, let's see, this was six years ago. Yeah.

0:14:39 Lydia: 20, 2017, 2016.

0:14:41 Thomas: Yeah. So, well, shit, six years ago. We've had that for, now it must be, what, five years, probably. I imagine. Did you do that? Did you do the swab, the cheek swab for our Halloween costumes tonight? I'm not sure I did.

0:14:41 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, I don't think we're allowed out then if we don't get that done. Yeah. Article also says that University encouraged its students to report any inappropriate and offensive costume to the police. Well, it's not true.

0:14:53 Thomas: Damn it. Okay.

0:15:06 Lydia: Yeah so it It says, article that appeared on The College Fix says members of Tufts University's Greek system have been told they could face serious disciplinary sanctions, including a possible investigation by the campus police for wearing Halloween costumes that offend peers or make the campus community feel threatened or unsafe. So I wonder if, you know, someone wore a Hitler costume or, yeah, exactly, then that could cross the line to, yes, I'm going to report this to the police. But yeah, there's nothing in there.

0:15:05 Thomas: There's no way they did that.

0:15:27 Thomas: Yeah. Threatened or unsafe. Yeah. And campus police, right?

0:15:35 Lydia: Yeah. Campus, please.

0:15:36 Thomas: Big difference, but yeah.

0:15:37 Lydia: Exactly. Exactly." So that was hilarious to me, just the coverage there. And then now we're going to go over to, yeah, we're

0:15:46 Thomas: I love this chronological trip. This is a great idea. And Said we shouldn't do a spooktacular. Oh,

0:15:54 Lydia: Right. Now we're gonna just do a quick little clip from 2019. We're going go visit Laura Ingraham and see what she has to say about Halloween costumes and and cultural appropriation.

0:15:59 Thomas: Please. No. What? If we didn't, though? Well, Also,

0:16:05 Lydia: I'm going to make you.

0:16:07 Clip: Were an accomplice when I was the Joker. I wore a full white dress. Oh, you did wear white face, Raymond. Very risky. The albino community is up in arms. No, no, this is, but I'm telling you, the cultural appropriation argument has no, I mean, if you're an Eskimo, even an igloo, because one kid's one year, they did, not my kids, my neighbors, had an igoo. They would walk around in an igsoo. That could be, just wearing an igloo could be cultural appropriations. Salt and pepper shakers, what are you really getting at there? I hope they stop this. All right, all right, we gotta go, we Gotta Go, we Gotta go, We Have One Life.

0:16:34 Lydia: What? Just nonsense. Salt and pepper shakers. What are you really getting at here? Okay.

0:16:44 Thomas: I love this. The logic is, well, my neighbors did this, so it's fucking stupid if you say there's anything wrong with that. Like, That doesn't follow.

0:16:48 Lydia: Yeah. Also, she was like, how

0:16:53 Thomas: Hollow. Yeah,

0:16:54 Lydia: Quick she was, like, not my kids. She's like, I don't want to deal with the backlash because someone's probably going to be upset about this because, you know, it is kind of interesting. And then this focus on whiteface because that's not a thing.

0:16:56 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:17:05 Thomas: Jokes on white.

0:17:06 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, because he dressed up as the Joker. Okay.

0:17:06 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Also, think it would be hilarious if her neighbors were just doing some sort of igloo related costume that has nothing whatsoever to do with... the, what I'm pretty sure, Eskimo is now a racial slur, isn't it? Aren't we not cool with that? Yeah, that's

0:17:20 Lydia: Yes, it is. Yeah I'm pretty sure back in 2019 we weren't cool with that. Yeah yeah

0:17:24 Thomas: True. Yeah, I think that's been a while, so I would love the idea that, like, her neighbors saw this and were like, "Jesus fucking Christ, she's that racist that she interpreted this as that?" That wasn't even, we're just doing a fun, like, penguin something, you know? Just something completely different. Yeah, this

0:17:33 Lydia: Yeah yeah happy feet. Uh, we have to go back to Greg, sorry, 2021, Mr. Gutfeld and Squid Games, uh,

0:17:47 Clip: SCHOOLS ARE INTERVENING, NO SQID GAMES COSTUMS THIS HALLOWEENING. BUT ARE THESE ADMINISTRATORS MEAN FOR TAKING THE FUN OUT OF HALLoweEN?

0:17:54 Thomas: Sorry.

0:17:57 Clip: THREE UPSTATE NEW YORK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, AREN'T THEY ALL? HAVE

0:17:57 Lydia: Thing is always rhyming. Okay. Just recycles the same. Does

0:18:03 Thomas: Is that, is That just, okay, if that's an ongoing bit that makes it make more sense, but what's the bit? Upstate on, aren't they all, okay, need to find the first one of that, then I need to know what

0:18:17 Lydia: It, we gotta watch all the Greg Gutfeld. Okay. Why does Greg Gutfeld always say aren't they all

0:18:23 Thomas: Angry, they all angry are they all upstate Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, maybe it is some sort of recurring joke, which would probably be the funniest thing he's ever done.

0:18:32 Lydia: Okay It might be, because in 2022 there's an article that says, uh, on Fox News, a New York City judge, aren't they all, has ruled that polyamorous relationships, relationships, a Japanese man, aren't they all, yeah, okay, so, yeah, it's a recurring thing, but I don't know what it means.

0:18:49 Thomas: I know, I, yeah. But I think it's okay But it, so, here's, I want to clarify in my mind, because I'm not an asshole, it would be like an absurdist comedy where you're saying, aren't they all, in a way that's like, that, that makes no sense, you know, like, that would be funny to me. Is it, like, the first time he ever did it, it was a joke that made sense. You know, it's a word that, like, you could reinterpret in two ways. And so when you say it, aren't they all, it like, makes you think, "Oh, that's funny," because I didn't interpret the second way.

That would be like the ideal form of the joke. And then the absurdist continuation of this, that would, would be what I would do, would be to start saying that all the time, or in ways that doesn't really make sense, you know, sort of like a wrecked them, damn near killed them, like, you'd start do, like, though, like, stuff like that, was, but I think they're just doing it. If it's New York or any liberal place, that's all it is. New York, aren't they all, yeah.

0:18:56 Lydia: Okay okay Yeah, Interesting.

0:19:47 Lydia: But then but Then it was like, Japanese man, aren't they all, on a different article, like, what I don', says, "You can't help but admire a man who does nothing for hire, and what price is fair to hire a man who just doesn't care, a Japanese man, aren't they all, kept being criticized for doing nothing, opened a Twitter account called Do Nothing Rent a Man back in 2018, it has since turned into a career."

0:19:52 Thomas: What that related to

0:20:12 Lydia: He's so good at doing nothing, right?

0:20:12 Thomas: All would still argue that there's... there's no way it's the harmless, absurdist version, because you're still invoking some weird racist thing, you know, or at least racial thing that is not. I don't know. I don't I'm so I'm unclear, but that does reveal a lot. Yeah, I know. Was this the actual point of the episode?

0:20:20 Lydia: Mm. -hmm, my My next deep dive. Yeah.

0:20:34 Thomas: You really could have sold this hard. Like, I'm going to answer sort of a question we've had burning in our souls ever since that episode. But that.

0:20:41 Lydia: Yeah, and I don't have the answer yet, but folks, I'm going to find it out.

0:20:43 Thomas: OK. That's amazing. Here's what I want to do, though. Let's not specifically look for it. Let's just, over the course of this show, this is going to happen because we're always watching this fucking idiot. And we'll just, yeah, we'll Just, like, organically see where the origin of it was.

0:20:56 Lydia: Catalog. Yeah? Sure. Okay?

0:21:10 Thomas: That's really funny.

0:21:16 Clip: THEY WERE NOT ACTUALLY KILLING EACH OTHER ON THE PLAYGROUND. THAT WOULD BE FUNNY AND WEIRD. ACCORDING TO SUPERINTENDENT CRAIG, NO ITEMS THAT CAN

0:21:27 Lydia: Yeah.

0:21:26 Thomas: What? It's so, who doesn't know what comedy is? It's like I could study this for hours. Course. Like, it's just so funny. Look, I'm not a fucking brilliant comedian over here, but like, I, this is something I do have to think a lot about as what I do and to try to do a good job. And also not in editing where you're like, oh, that came across this way or like, oh, that the timing on this will be better. You know, like I think a lot about this. And so to see just a fun house mirror version where it's like, you've just got nothing dude, like you're doing, you're sort of doing the sound of jokes, but all the parts are in the wrong place. It's just I, it captivates me. Okay, I'll stop.

0:22:08 Lydia: And quick plug, quick plug for patreon.com/wherethereswoke to get our bonus episode coming out for Rob Schneider and hear Thomas rip on the stylings of Mr.

0:22:09 Thomas: Oh, my god, very soon. Very soon, comedy legend, talk about comedy.

0:22:24 Lydia: Rob Schneiter.

0:22:25 Thomas: Yeah, enough of this Gutfeld, we're gonna hear from a real artist, Rob Schneider. So, yeah, definitely, yeah.

0:22:29 Lydia: All right, back to it.

0:22:31 Clip: INTERPRETED AS WEAPONS SHOULD BE BROUGHT TO SCHOOL AND THAT COSTUME SHOULD NOT BE TOO GORY OR SCARY. WELL, I GOT TO SAY, THAT COVERS A LOT. DOESN'T LEAVE US WITH MANY OPTIONS, DOES IT? I MEAN, A, YOU CAN'T BE DARING. YOU CANNOT BE SCARY, YOU CAN'T EVEN BE INTERESTING.

0:22:38 Thomas: Okay, well, that's not what it said. It's not where it said it's

0:22:47 Clip: AND THEN YOU HAVE THE OTHERS I

0:22:47 Thomas: Not what it said it's

0:22:48 Clip: GUESS

0:22:47 Lydia: Is also at like a school. I

0:22:48 Clip: THAT LEAVES US WITH ONE OPTION.

0:22:54 Thomas: But up a picture of Jimmy Kimmel, okay, so it's like, oh, he's not interesting, not did he say not funny? Though, cuz I feel like that would be important to the bit you're driving at now. I got to see, I got a review, the, the tape. Okay.

0:22:55 Lydia: Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Daring. Yeah,

0:23:07 Clip: I THAT COSTUME SHOULD NOT BE TOO GORY OR SCARY. WELL, I GOT TO SAY, THAT COVERS A LOT. DOESN'T LEAVE US WITH MANY OPTIONS, DOES IT? I MEAN, A, YOU CAN'T BE DARING. YOU CANNOT BE SCARY, YOU CAN'T EVEN BE INTERESTED.

0:23:16 Thomas: Not daring. Scary. Oh, interesting.

0:23:20 Clip: I GUESE THAT LEVES US WITH ONE OPTION, OPTION

0:23:24 Thomas: That's so good because if okay, if you were an actual person at all in the realm of funny, you would need to be building that joke earlier. You would need, you didn't need to Be using words that work for both purposes, or you can start with one that doesn't. And then your second one, like you need to start leading into stuff and somewhere in there. Jimmy Kimmel is a comedian. He does a comedy show. That's fundamental. If you want to also say he's not interesting. Sure. But he, you can't lead into the, okay. You had no idea. This was, this was just, you cannot play Gutfeld exclamation point, hon, and not have me do an hour on the, I just can't,

0:23:34 Lydia: Start to lead into it.

0:24:04 Lydia: Yeah. I'm sorry.

0:24:05 Thomas: I can't help it. It's like the last, the first two things were not things you would want to be. If you're Jimmy Kimmel, you can't start with, you can't be scary. You can't do that. You can't, you have to say, can't be funny for this to work. I think that's why the audience takes a beat before they laugh. I'll tell you, you know what? I'm going to tell you when he puts it it up there up there they they took like a second of like oh is that does he have a bit

0:24:38 Clip: GUESE THAT LEVES US WITH ONE OPTION, OPTION

0:24:43 Lydia: Well, they were waiting for their cue because they didn't know it was a joke.

0:24:46 Thomas: I know I know but I want to imagine even the you know the person that lights up the like please laugh fucking light you know in the studio was like is it is that oh that's the laugh everybody laugh and they're like because they got to expect like there's going to be some other joke but there's not do God, you got any any other comedy you've got fell to criticism? What's the episode we're doing? I don't remember.

0:24:53 Lydia: Yeah.

0:25:02 Lydia: There's not. Yeah, no, No. So on this one, you know, they're complaining about kids not being allowed to dress up as characters from Squid Games, which is, you know, their like, hey, it's the parents that let them watch it, not necessarily all kids, and

0:25:16 Thomas: Yeah. What's the criticism of whom? Like, yeah, I don't, I actually don't think kids should be watching Squid Games. You didn't even want to watch it, okay.

0:25:26 Lydia: I don't think so either no I will not watch it. It's too much.

0:25:28 Thomas: So we're all on the same page there. Who's the who's the bad guy, what, no,

0:25:29 Lydia: Right. The bad guy is the school for saying kids aren't allowed to wear costumes from Squid Games. I

0:25:39 Thomas: So his, you, position is they should be able to dress as Squid Games. Hmm.

0:25:42 Lydia: I, I think it's a, the parental, parent rights thing, right? Like if the parent is sending them to school in whatever, then it's fine because it's the parent's decision.

0:25:45 Thomas: Which as you say they might not be, yeah.

0:25:51 Lydia: But the summary on this, you know, it says Gutfeld panel responds to school's coddling kids censoring Squid Game costumes. Yeah. I mean, like, our you masks are allowed, no weapons are allowed. I think that's perfectly reasonable, like these are like yeah it's children, like, why why are we doing that? Yeah.

0:25:51 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Oh. Really? I don't even know that, yeah. Whatever, hey, There, uh, staff of people who have to look after your fucking kid, yeah. Yeah, whatever they need, pretty much. Within reason, if they think something, they need a rule to make it not hell for them to watch our precious children all day. Yeah, you do you.

0:26:20 Lydia: Yeah. And then I thought it'd be funny to jump into 2022 where we get kind of the

0:26:29 Thomas: Our DeLoreans getting a lot of miles.

0:26:30 Lydia: Yeah we're gonna go over to Fox and Friends and we get kinda the other side of this. Yeah, just

0:26:37 Clip: Liberal ladies of THE VIEW played politics even on Halloween. And this year, they used children to make their points. Watch. One of the hugest topics that you guys talked about this year. The raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. Yes. The toilet with our FBI agents. Here we have money on the salsa and supermarket scrubs. These are money, so we put a bunch of money on this costume and we have inflation. KAYLEIGH, I HAVE SO MANY ISSUES WITH THIS, BECAUSE

0:27:30 Thomas: It's important to say, so those were all like, they had kids model the costumes they were talking about. That's the big problem here.

0:27:38 Clip: IT IS QUITE SHOCKING, I THINK, AND GROTESQUE TO USE CHILDREN AS THESE POLITICAL PROPS TO MAKE A STATEMENT THAT AN ADULT CAN OWN QUITE ON THEIR OWN. ESPECIALLY DISTURBING, IN MY OPINION, WAS THE DR. OZ ONE, BECUASE HOW PRESUMPTIVE THAT ALL OF THEIR VIEWERS VOTE A CERTAIN WAY. WHY WOULD THEY ALIENATE, ESSENTIALLY, SOMEONE WHO'S A CANDIDATE FOR U.S. SENATE while knowing and trying to appreciate that their audience might represent a spectrum, let alone a spectrum in Pennsylvania. Why would that not be shooting themselves in the foot in that way? Yeah, well, it appears their audience leans very clearly in one direction, judging by the shouting Ted Cruz got last week and the expletives from the audience. I mean, how sick is this?

0:28:19 Lydia: Okay.

0:28:20 Clip: Like, take a look at that. I mean I did Halloween last night and my daughter was a princess and the debate we had before going out on the streets to trick -or -treat was WAS ELSA VERSUS JASMINE AND SHE KEPT WANTING TO CHANGE AND YOU KNOW THIS IS WHAT NORMAL PEOPLE DO THEIR KIDS ARE FIREFIGHTERS THEIR kIDS ARE YOU KNOW I DON'T KNOW I SAW AN ASTRONAUT THIS IS WHAT NORML PEOPLES DO NOT NORMOL PEOPLE WHO HAVE AN OBSESSION WITH DONALD TRUMP AND DR. OZ AND REPUBLICANS THIS IS WHAT THEY DO AND WHAT A SAD LIFE THAT MUST BE THAT YOU HATE BUT

0:28:46 Thomas: I'm Sorry. Do they do They Think that these were like just they had these costumes normally and they were, oh, Those Are great Costumes, let's put them on a TV show, no, they made that, they had like fucking teams of people, yeah, Working On these for the sake of this bit, what Idiots.

0:28:47 Lydia: It's A joke like Yeah. That A Costume Designer, yeah, Yeah, I know, Yeah.

0:29:05 Thomas: I also, it's so funny to me to be doing a TV show complaining that another bigger TV show isn't geared toward a right wing audience when you're Fox News and you don't gear toward a left wing audience whatsoever. It's just a weird thing. Why do you even feel entitled? Just don't watch the show. I don't, why is it a thing that you would say they need to change that? Like, okay, maybe they're a left. They even acknowledge like, well, they have a left wing audience because Ted Cruz was booed. First of all, it's pretty bipartisan to boo Ted Cruz. Nobody likes Ted Cruz and also that I love that it's particular sickening. She was really, you could see this, this lady, she, yeah, she was actually debating how far do I take this? So I just, I just got to say it was particularly hard to see crudité mocked in this way. Some of my best friends are crudité. Yeah.

0:29:25 Lydia: Everybody Hates Tigris Earnest Yeah, Yeah.

0:29:56 Lydia: Yeah.

0:29:56 Thomas: That, that was A joke to everybody. Nobody thought the crudité video in which Dr. Oz said the wrong story. He combined two names of two grocery outlets outlets together to say the wrong thing and talk about crudity in that way, that was a failure to Everybody

0:30:12 Lydia: He was out of touch with everybody in that moment.

0:30:12 Thomas: Yeah, It's not Like The right Was Like, this is the best video, it's like that could just be a joke in that you're mocking how bad of a gaffe that was and Inflation, one of them is dressed as inflation, that's like the main attack on Biden at the time, yeah, Did they talk talk about that? Were

0:30:14 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Offensive. No, they focused in on on, how dare they up a child as a toilet with a Donald Trump wig. And yeah, I know, yeah

0:30:31 Thomas: Okay. Ever told these people to just get a hobby or something like do, do something with your day. Like this is, this is why I don't watch this. This is the most Fox news I've watched in a long time, which is now a cumulative four and a half minutes. And I can, I'm like, I feel bad for you. Like, I know it's your job and you're all lying, but still like, that's God, that'S got to be exhausting, right? Doesn't this get tiring?

0:30:51 Lydia: Oh, I I know. I know, and so that was last year's freakout on Halloween. This year, I don't have a video for us, but just to let you know, this year has been focused on a particular school district in New Jersey where the superintendent, the title of the article is, Superintendent Cancels Halloween, Bans Costumes in School, Citing DEI and Potential Harm to Students' in quotes, dignity. So it is true that a school district in New Jersey has decided that they are not going to do Halloween celebrations during the school day and that Halloween celebration should be held after school hours. They have been going through there's a New York Times article about it. Actually, they've they've been going through a process of addressing integration issues in their schools in that district. And so they are trying to be very mindful of any potential equity concerns with regard to socioeconomic status. And they don't want kids to feel left out if they don'T have, like, the nicest, newest Halloween

0:31:20 Thomas: Wow. Oh, wow. Oh interesting.

0:32:03 Thomas: Yeah.

0:32:04 Lydia: Costume. Doom. So they're saying, you know, we don't have a way to address this in the school day right now, the focus is on our kids in the schools and making sure that everyone feels like they are supported in the same way, they have access to the same things. So we're just going to cut that out of the school day itself. And, you know, we're happy to sponsor fall festivals. We're happy to do X, Y, and Z, but we're just taking this off the table right now.

0:32:04 Thomas: Yeah. Oh off, I don't remember if I did any Halloween stuff like at school during school hours. I don'T think that's particularly important. Secondly, boy, let me tell you there is nothing more differentiating between those those who have, and those who have not, then stuff like this. As Child who had endless, horrible, homemade bullshit, nothing costumes. Divider. Also, it was harder to get good stuff back then, so it was even worse. Now, at least, there's a lot of Amazon crap that's so cheap, pretty much anyone can afford it. But no, I, I under, I definitely gather where that's coming from, yeah.

0:32:36 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, and it wasn't a decision that the superintendent made, you know, as kind of like the ivory tower, all powerful being they surveyed the principals for All the schools in the district. And that was the overwhelming majority of opinions was we would rather not have Halloween celebrations during the school day and instead focus on some sort of fall festival, autumn festival that we can present in a different manner. Yeah, I

0:33:11 Thomas: Interesting. Plus I think it's also funny again because a lot of the history of this is that Halloween is too satanic, so the, the right doesn't like it, so it's like if anything could be more inclusive to like not do

0:33:35 Lydia: Know. I've been I've also been like really curious, too, on like, two years ago, a year ago, Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly dressed up as like a priest and a nun in like sexual, um, and pictures and very suggestive, you, she's taking communion from him like on her knees and stuff. And like, it's, you know, definitely invokes, you know, something beyond what you would normally get maybe at Sunday. And a lot of people were pissed about it, about like, you, is important for our religion and, you know, you're desecrating this, yada, yada, yada. I wasn't able to find Fox News going crazy about that.

0:33:40 Thomas: Yeah they're policing our costumes now huh, yeah

0:34:16 Lydia: But yeah, but they are policing costumes for grown own adults, too. Yeah. Fox News, we went on that like little storytelling journey. I had teased at the beginning that there's someone worse than Fox News. It's not Ben Shapiro, surprisingly. I did watch a Ben Shapiro video about Halloween costumes and he kind of gets it. Like he's like, you know, yeah, I don't think I it's cool to dress up in this way and that way. Know, I didn't see any problematic costumes that he's done. I might have missed something, but he was like Keith Olbermann one year and like it was a pretty good costume. His take on Halloween costumes is certainly more nuanced than Fox News. But this person is not so nuanced. I'm going to go ahead and send you the link. You're going to start at 323.

0:34:16 Thomas: Yeah oh wow huh yeah here we go I

0:35:03 Clip: THE OFFICE OF SCOLDING JUSTICE WARRIORS HAS DECREED NO HULA GIRLS NO INDIAN CHIEFS NO SOUTHERN BELLS NO No Daniel Boone, no geishas, ninjas, gypsies, mobsters, terrorists. No Cleopatra. Pirates offend one -eyed people. You can't dress as a hobo because it makes light of the homeless. You can dress as Quasimodo because it offends hunchbacks. You can dressed as an escaped mental patient. It offends Kanye.

0:35:07 Lydia: Scolding justice warriors

0:35:44 Thomas: Mean, that's kind of a chuckle, I suppose. It's like one of the funniest things I've ever heard him say. I just love the like disproportionate audience, like, I would, wouldn't you feel embarrassed at a certain point? He's in control of it, like, you, this is your show, you can tell people to cool it, it's not that funny, like, it's, oh yeah, he's crazy, yeah.

0:35:47 Lydia: Yeah Stop

0:36:05 Clip: The sexy Handmaid's Tale costume. THE HANDMAID'S TALE COSTUME HAS ALREADY BEEN PULLED FROM THE SHELVES, AND AN APOLOGY ISSUED LEST SOMEONE BE OFFENDED BY THE IRONIC TAKE ON A CHARACTER THAT DOESN'T EXIST FROM A FICTIONAL WORLD THAT NEVER HAPPENED.

0:36:26 Clip: YOU KNOW, NOT EVERYTHING THAT MERELY ALLUDES TO ANOTHER CULTURE IS RACIST OR CULTRAL APPROPRIATION, REALLY. IMAGINE THERE'S NO COUNTRIES. IT ISN'T HARD TO DO. Halloween

0:36:39 Thomas: He really likes John Lennon as his go-to anti -woke, yeah, like his version of I have a dream, doing it wrong every time.

0:36:41 Lydia: Recycles that man okay

0:36:47 Clip: Fun because it wasn't PC. Not being PC is almost the whole point of the holiday. But now everything has to turn into a federal case of snowflakes versus humor. And then some cultural studies professor will go on TV to try to explain his outrage, and Tucker Carlson will look at him like this. The majority of America is with the Democrats on the issues. They just find the woke people irritating as hell. In a new poll, 80% of Americans find political correctness to be a problem, including 75% of African Americans, 74% of Americans under 30, 82% of Asians, 87% of Hispanics, 88% of Native Americans. If you're not a statistician, let me break those numbers down for you. Nobody likes you, and

0:37:12 Thomas: Okay, yeah.

0:37:49 Lydia: Right, so this kicked off, I was like, where is this coming from, uh, he cites the Atlantic, and I was like, all right, well, let me look that up. The of this piece, The Atlantic, is Yascha Mounk. Yeah. So, you know, anti -identity politics, Yascha Mounk, and we'll do a whole episode on him. I'm sure of it. He's been popping up a lot in some of the things I've been looking at.

0:37:56 Thomas: Atlantic God guy sucks yeah yeah He just sucks.

0:38:19 Lydia: So he cites in here a that came out. This is back in 2018, October 2018, and a report titled Hidden Tribes, A Study of America's Polarized Landscape. And it's from an organization called More in Common. So I went to their website and, you know, nothing's like red flags or anything like that. And I pull up the report and, they are really distilling the findings of the political correctness piece of It's 159 pages, the full report. And it's not just about political correctness.

It's about understanding the different groups of people in America. If we were to define the groups in America, what would it be? And they go through a you approach here. They did surveys of more than 8,000 people. They tried to be statistically representative of the population based on census data. They did six hour-long focus groups, 31 one-on-one interviews of at least one hour's duration with people across the seven different segments of the population that they identified. Participants answered hundreds of questions.

Then they also, you know, asked those kind of open -ended why questions. They wanted to understand qualitatively why people held the beliefs that they did. And they did a statistical called hierarchical clustering to identify those groups of people with similar core beliefs. What they found with the political correctness piece is extremes of political correctance is divided between a group that they called progressive activists, where only 30 percent of progressive activists believe political correcteness has gone too far. And then the other extreme is combining.

0:40:00 Thomas: Nazis. I'm not even joking. Those are the two groups. If you're going to do polar opposites.

0:40:04 Lydia: No, So it's devoted conservatives and traditional conservatives.

0:40:13 Thomas: Yeah. Nazis, I said. That's what I said, yeah.

0:40:14 Lydia: Yes. So grouping them together. And that group of people far outweighs, you know, progressive activists alone. And obviously believe that political correctness has gone too far. But one thing that was interesting is there also is this differentiation based off of race and age within the report itself to identify, you know, like how like different racial groups feel about political correctness, how different age groups feel About political correctness. But what Bill Maher doesn't get into is the cross -sectional stuff, which I think is really interesting. And, you know, the report is quite thorough. It does like a deep dive on all of these different groups that they've identified and how they feel about particular clusters of questions to align that, know, tribal you kind of approach. I had to cut myself off because it was super interesting. I'm going to read it later. You know, I'll probably put it up on Patreon and and share with the group

0:40:44 Thomas: Yeah that actually sounds kind of interesting. It sounds like there's a lot in there and you haven't gone through it all, but But I be curious if they were looking at the population of because obviously if you demonize a invisible enemy, that's not actually fucking real in any coherent sense, that is wokeness or PC. If all you're hearing is how, yeah. This politically correct thing, this principle somewhere, blah, blah. All day. Of course, you're going to be like, yeah, no, that sucks. That's all you're hearing about it. You have created this, Bill Maher. That's part of what you have done by elevating meaningless, small things that are no major part of anyone's life, elevating it to the national stage on your stupid show full of people who laugh like clowns in the audience at everything you do for an hour. It's not even funny. That what you've helped create.

0:41:08 Lydia: Yeah yeah And then there's this, uh, that they do here too, the progressive activists, they have this, um, plot where they plot the political correctness is a problem and the percent that agree within these different groups against hate speech is a program and the percentage that agree there. So progressive activists, uh, is a huge number of progressive activists. It's like 99 percent that believe hate speech is a problem and very low on political correctness is a problem. When you look at the traditional conservatives and devoted conservatives, they are nearly 100 percent political correctness is a problem. But hang in around 50 percent that hate speech is a problem. And then you have the other groups, the other four groups, which end up getting combined a lot in this report and referred to as the exhausted majority. And that includes traditional liberals, passive liberals, the politically disengaged and moderates who believe that political correctness is a problem. They feel strongly about that, but they also believe that hate speech is a program. So there could be a way, you know, if we're going to get into politics to.

0:42:41 Thomas: Yeah yeah and one of those two things is a problem, yeah.

0:43:07 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. And so I thought that report super interesting. We'll probably dig into it later. I'll make it available to folks so they can look at it too

0:43:14 Thomas: We that might be worth an episode. I just, I want to shake all these people by their fucking collars, lapels, and just be like, okay, tell me, what what is a formulation of hate speech is a program that you might realistically have seen or anyone in your life might have seen or anything like that. And you'd say, oh, I know, if I play a single minute of a video game, there's going to be the N word 400 times and probably a bunch of gay slurs and probably, yeah, no, that's a problem.

That sucks that my kids might see that if they play a video game. Also, you're walking down the street and there's catcalling. And then there's probably a gender slur in that, possibly, if you don't go, like, there's all kinds of real world places and times where you or someone, you know, will probably come across this. The same thing about political correctness. Give me a time where did political correctance touch you, show me where it touched you, because it's, there's nothing, it'll be well, I heard on some asshole show that there's a principle in a place, I don't know, that said don't do blackface.

There's nothing, there's something in your life, what is it in your life you're worried about, it's nothing, it's all a fake fucking controversy that is constantly fueled by people like this in Fox News, this. I would love to hear where the real world thing that average citizen, whoever's in this poll, just tell me where are you likely, you or someone you immediately know, where are you likely to encounter this whole PC-ness and how it's a problem and in what way is it a problem? What would they even come up with? Well,

0:43:15 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah

0:44:46 Thomas: I wanted to make a joke that had a racial slur in it, but people said no. It'd be like, I don't know what it would even be. I wanted to dress up as a horrible racial stereotype and then, you know, maybe I thought better of it. Oh,

0:45:00 Lydia: So The other thing that's really interesting, I, you know, this is just from Wikipedia, but it linked me to another article, um, the idea of right-wing political correctness.

0:45:08 Thomas: God Yeah, that's the, they are the originators of it, huh?

0:45:08 Lydia: Yeah right And so Wikipedia says in 2012, economist Paul Krugman wrote that the big threat to our discourse is right wing political correctness, which, unlike the liberal version, has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is one

0:45:22 Thomas: I didn't know, he didn't suck in that way, that's interesting, yeah.

0:45:25 Lydia: 2012. Who knows where he is now? But

0:45:26 Thomas: Yeah he probably will look at him now, the woke leftist oh, fucking everybody, got everybody, yeah.

0:45:30 Lydia: Yeah. The goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of news speak to make it impossible to talk and possibly even think about ideas that challenge the the established order. And I looked at this this that was linked in that section of the Wikipedia article, and it was a journalism teacher that gave a you know, they were talking about free speech. He asked, know the you class, can you give me some ideas about political correctness? Kind of answered, you is often associated with political political correctness. And then he asked them, what is something conservatives are politically correct about? And the class didn't know how to answer that. And so eventually someone said, well, you know, maybe like the topic of abortion, that's kind of PC for conservatives.

And, you know, the example was when Tomi Lahren talked about, you Know, pro -choice, she ended up getting suspended from the blaze, that, know, it was like, how dare you go against, you on being pro -abortion. And so they started talking about like these other things. And it's not something you talk about very often at all. Way that this professor or teacher talked about it in this article is the role that the media has in using political correct as a term only in instances in which the left is bringing up something that is, know, you expectations of positions on things or whatever, right? Blame could be placed in large part on conservative media for using the term as a go -to attack on the left. But looking deeper, the mainstream news media as a whole bears some responsibility, mainly as more left -leaning publications took on a greater burden of balance than their right -leaming counterparts.

0:45:43 Thomas: Hmm yeah yeah yep yep

0:47:11 Lydia: For example, as reporters and commentators debate whether avoiding the terms radical Islamic terrorism or illegal immigrants is politically correct, many within the mainstream media have tacitly accepted the rebranding of white supremacists and white nationalists as alt -right. Who is acting out of political correctness in this case? The left out of a fear of alienating certain audiences by calling out racism, or the right and its instinct to deflect any accusation that the bigotry on its fringes is moving toward the center?

0:47:11 Thomas: Yeah interesting, yep.

0:47:40 Lydia: Yeah, super interesting. Why was there bipartisan condemnation of comedian Kathy Griffin's picture with the bloody Trump head, but no such fear when folks lynched and burned effigies of President Obama.

0:47:45 Thomas: Yeah, it's 100 percent the dynamic that's happening, that you hit on it. That, again, and the New York Times and any sort of mainstream media feels this urge to like, oh, no, but we, here's to how we're super honest and smart, is we'll even criticize the left. And so they find these little things to score points, both sides points on. But the problem is, as you just quoted, when there's only one side doing that, then it, you've got universal agreement on a bullshit problem like PC has gone too far, because that's the low hanging fruit for like the left to criticize the left. You've got universal agreement on that now. And the right has now worked the refs and marched further and you've done nothing to actually police the way worse thing, which is the fucking, you white supremacist right and the racist right and all that. It's exactly true. True.

0:48:24 Lydia: Yeah. Right. If you thought I was just going to leave you there with one Bill Maher, we're going to do one more Bill Mahr, but just a little one.

0:48:49 Thomas: Good.

0:48:50 Lydia: Is from 2022.

0:48:51 Thomas: Assume it's a short one, but then we have to watch five minutes of the audience laughing.

0:48:55 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:48:56 Clip: Finally, new rule. If Halloween is too much for your fragile sensibilities and you're worried about seeing someone wearing something that's on the forbidden costume list, just

0:49:05 Thomas: This... You... I can't... You had a timestamp that was not this, but we have... This is amazing, actually. This is the best. Still... Yeah! No,

0:49:18 Lydia: Okay.

0:49:27 Clip: Stay the fuck home. Every year we go through this bullshit list's of costumes.

0:49:33 Thomas: You do it every year.

0:49:34 Clip: You better not wear less than night of irreverent dress-up spiral into something that resembles fun. I

0:49:35 Lydia: Yeah.

0:49:43 Thomas: It's so sad. Such a pathetic little man. Just... it's all those articles that these scary headlines he has up on his screen. 15 offensive Halloween costumes that shouldn't exist. Halloween costumes you should not wear. 10 problematic Halloween costumes. You shouldn't wear. First of all, all that's clickbait because they know you've primed the whole audience to be mad and have a rage response and click that first off. And it's just a way to get clicks. Secondly, probably just fucking no nonsense, good advice. And it's not a big deal to just not offend people horribly. Horribly, here's the main problem with this whole fucking thing is Bill, just shut the fuck up and go dress how you want, do blackface if you want to, why don't you just do it, go ahead, we'll just, and then yeah

0:50:04 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. And then people will react how they would like to react because it's a free country.

0:50:27 Thomas: I exactly you've done your free speech, go do your blackface thing um I've I've heard you say the n-word on your show back in the day.

0:50:32 Lydia: And see how it works out for you. Yeah.

0:50:36 Thomas: I'm sure it's something that you is top of mind for you, and also then I'll use my free speech, as you say, and uh I'll criticize you. The people writing these articles, they are doing their free speech and just saying I don't think the others should do this. You know what you can do is just say, oh, I disagree, and go wear it. You don't have to turn it into this, car, it's this fucking, it's like a Jesus narrative of like you're being crude, this crucified white man, I'm so hard, they always tell it, I can't do things, Halloween, it's nothing fucking, baby god. I'm I'm so tired of it.

0:51:07 Lydia: Yeah. It's like a BuzzFeed list. Let it

0:51:09 Thomas: Yeah, I can't, like, this is too much. I'm overdosing, hun. I'm ODing on these idiots and they're fucking, they're so, they cry babies. God, it's pathetic. They exactly are the thing they think they're making fun of.

0:51:09 Lydia: Go.

0:51:23 Lydia: Yeah.

0:51:25 Thomas: Now here's the clip that you wanted to play.

0:51:27 Lydia: Yeah.

0:51:24 Clip: Thought. But what better costume to wear this year than the most ridiculous one I could think of? You.

0:51:36 Clip: This year, I'm going as an uber -woke, overly anxious, perpetually offended 20 -something. Would you like to see what I have for this costume? Okay.

0:51:42 Thomas: He has jumped the shark so hard.

0:51:45 Clip: I think you're gonna really enjoy it.

0:51:44 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. It's so bad.

0:51:49 Clip: Okay. First of all, I have my Fuck the Patriarchy T -shirt. Oh, yes. And then I have a check from the patriarchy to pay my car insurance.

0:51:54 Thomas: Why is that funny? What? What? What is, okay,

0:52:00 Clip: Okay, I've got my, uh, my nose ring, my vape pen.

0:52:11 Thomas: You're just saying things. You vape? I'm

0:52:15 Clip: I've go my cloth

0:52:16 Thomas: Sorry. Does he think vaping is a thing only offended woke people do?

0:52:19 Lydia: Only the woke do. Yeah. Yep.

0:52:23 Clip: Surgical mask, my surgical mask my N95 mask, and my face shield.

0:52:30 Thomas: This Isn't 20, this is a year ago, folks, like, all right, man, get over the mask thing, like, come on.

0:52:32 Lydia: Ha.

0:52:44 Clip: Then after I leave the house, I have my Klonopin to take the edge off. My Adderall to put it back on. I have my participation trophy, my cat ear headphones to listen to sad music, the stick that goes up my ass, and the leash for my support animal. And just in case anyone still doesn't get what I'm all about, I have a wet blanket. All right. Thank you very much.

0:53:12 Thomas: We get it, man. Ah, this

0:53:16 Lydia: Ha. Ha, yeah.

0:53:17 Clip: My culture.

0:53:17 Thomas: Is amazing. So good, I, here's what's so funny, and you know, for this show, we've clicked on a lot of Bill Maher videos on YouTube, literally every single comment for all time ever of them is now, you know, "I'm a right wing, but I now I love him," you know, I used to not like him, but I was, as a right way, yeah, I'm starting to appreciate every single one of them, like, duh, yeah, that's your audience now, fucking idiot, oh my god.

0:53:18 Lydia: Isn't that insane, oh, yeah, Bill's really funny you know, yeah, yeah, you know it, It is. Interesting, because, like, you know, I said he was even worse than Fox News, um, of the things that I watched on Fox News was, uh, talking about how horrible Black, you know, we heard a little bit of that in the earlier clip, too, that Blackface is really awful, the Five went on, obviously, when Trudeau, when the pictures of him and Blackface come out. It's a problem, like regardless of what position you're in, what side of the aisle, for example, like it's wrong. It's wrong no matter what. And they've Fox News has taken a pretty strong stance on Blackface. I don't know if Bill Maher

0:53:42 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, They took

0:54:13 Lydia: Would.

0:54:14 Thomas: A strong stance on blackface, oh, because there was a left -wing wing politician for them to, yeah, gotcha, gotcha, yeah, okay, yeah, so like, let's just, we'll take this one just for, you know, yeah, yeah,

0:54:16 Lydia: They were like, this is horrible. You know, this is right. Exactly. Northam. Right. They had all these opportunities for the left. The easy the easiest one, probably, too. But it's just so incredible to me because it's like, you know, in the same way that, you folks on the right have maybe come around on gay marriage, and you ask them 20 years ago and they probably were not fans of gay marriage, but they're really anti-trans, they get it. They get how that can be offensive for Black people and for people who care about Black people. It's just offensive in general. Blackface is horrible. But they can't apply it to other groups of people, then and understand that cultural appropriation and offensive caricatures of an individual's heritage is problematic. They get it for one thing, but they can't apply it to anything else. Yeah.

0:54:55 Thomas: Yeah, well, Take the straw person argument of, they use what we've seen, which is, yeah, blackface is bad, and and people do get somewhat canceled for that, like, that's a big, that's celebrity, or somebody's outed as having done blackface, that's major deal now. I bet, we if we checked, almost every single one of them, they're still fine. But, like, that's a pretty big deal, and then they take that and they do a switcheroo, and make us assume that when they list all these other things, that that's the same reaction.

But it's not you don't have the same reaction to, like, a hobo costume or a Moana costume, that's is that's you you don't get the same reaction because people are not, in general, fucking insane. Like, they're not, like, you want, you need it to be for your victim narrative. One of the funniest things, where it's like, oh, you almost get it, is like, why does Bill simultaneously think there's this cabal of woke people in control of his entire planet that he's subject to?

But also he cites polls, and it's like, you know, a hundred percent of people actually aren't woke. You're like, that's weird, how are those two things both true? You think there's just somehow this tiny sliver of people who you just said we all hate, like, literally everybody hates, wow, they that's amazing, we should research into how they've gained control of our whole society, according to you, or is that bullshit.

Yeah, my main message is you're free to, like, consider these things and make your own decisions either way. Can just disagree if you want. Like, you can even be like, ah, I think you're making too much of this. And then just fucking if you wants to own the consequences or whatever. Like, it's the complaining about the thing. Like, like, not that they, they want free speech. They want no consequences ever for anything they do.

0:55:20 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:56:52 Thomas: They want to be the dominating narrative, they wanted, a, they completely unopposed position without any criticism. And you don't get that. Not that hard to at least consider some of these concerns, concerns, and were somebody who was at all compassionate, I, if you disagreed, you do so in a less shitty way, you know, like, you're just telling on yourself, like, if your reaction is, oh, this offends you, oh, let me just put in your face, like, that means you're juste an asshole, regardless, like, even if, even if I agreed with you on something thing. You're just a fucking asshole. If it was like, well, I think person X is being a little oversensitive, you'd be like, yeah, okay, well maybe I'll, I might avoid that thing around that person. Just, even if I don't fully agree, like, why do you want to piss someone off, or why do you want, it's just an unfriendly thing fundamentally to do.

0:57:11 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, There was another interesting video I watched that had set up, you know, pairs of people from different ethnic backgrounds, and they were looking at Halloween costumes together and kind of having conversations about, like, oh, do problematic from your view, and someone, you know, said, like, I like, oh, would have thought that this was really cute, or like really sexy, or whatever, and I would've loved to wear it as a costume, but hearing about what it means to you, I'm like reconsidering," you my initial reaction to it, because I, I take what you're saying seriously. Then, like, other instances where the person was like, "Hey, does this offend you?" And they were like, "No, not really. Like, this is a silly version" of it. So I don't really care.

0:58:16 Thomas: Yeah. Like you always see those videos and I don'T, again, it'S hard to judge. I DON'T know how representative this is, but like, you'll see like the guy wearing the mariachi thing and then like all the white people are offended. And then And he goes up to like some Mexican people and like, that's fucking great. And it's like, I don't know how representative that is, but I want to at least leave space for like it. It could be like good thing to have some sort of cultural exchange in that way. If it's done in the right way, you know, like if it if it's respectful and in the correct way. In the right context, maybe. But you know that most like ninety nine point nine percent of these people, that'S not what they're doing. They just want to use this as a way to bash anyone who tries to care about someone.

0:58:57 Thomas: And so I definitely definitely room to have a conversation and disagree on things like this, but it's telling how you're doing that. You know, it tells a lot about you, how you do that, if you engage respectfully or not, or if you're just a troll piece of shit like Bill Maher, who just can't stand that anyone ever has a problem with anything he might do. Too, because he's a little fucking baby.

0:58:57 Lydia: Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

0:59:19 Thomas: It's very different things. Right, let's go put on our problematic costumes and get also how important is this to everybody? How like it's so funny. Both sides try to do the like, oh, is this so important to you? And I just want to go right back. How important is Halloween costume to find? It's so easy to find a costume that's nowhere near this. That's not going to be like problematic in any way. And it's probably still still fine. You know, like it's, it's restrictive is this to you? Because it's zero to me. I spend 0 % of my life thinking about Halloween. I don't care that much. Weird.

0:59:19 Lydia: Yeah.

0:59:52 Lydia: Know, Halloween, we should all go up to Bill Maher and say, you're not you when you're hungry and just hand him Snickers.

0:59:59 Thomas: That's a weird reference, but I love it.

1:00:01 Lydia: It's trick or treat candy Snickers I'm ready to to go hand out some full size candy bars.

1:00:06 Thomas: All right, let's go. Oh, by the way, they didn't, um, that box didn't come with any full -size Reese's. It's so weird. I know it has them on the box, but it's so so weird that they didn't come in the box. I don't know why that would be

1:00:12 Lydia: Oh, my God. Neighborhood kids are going to riot. It. Wow, they must have fallen out. I have to hide this stuff from you. Oh, my

1:00:23 Thomas: Yeah No, it might just be like the picture shows, like, "Hey, in general, here's like some candy." I think there's like two left

1:00:30 Lydia: God. All right. Well, happy Halloween, everybody.

1:00:36 Thomas: See you next time.

1:00:55 Lydia: Okay

1:00:55 Thomas: I have food in my mouth, but I was gonna react to that. Hold on, it was the last bit of sandwich. I was trying to get away with it, and I'm done eating. I swear, hold on, I'm so close.

1:00:58 Lydia: All right eli bosnick