WTW94: Sure Kimmel Got Censored, but Whatabout When Whatabout Whatabouted? Yeah, That's What I Thought.

Transcript

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

0:00:03 Clip: What's so scary about the woke mob? How often you just don't see them coming. Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed. Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down. The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.

0:00:33 Clip: Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.

0:00:42 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas. That's Lydia. How you doing?

0:00:47 Lydia: Wokies rise up. Hi.

0:00:49 Thomas: Stop trying to start a revolution on our podcast, okay? Do that on your own time.

0:00:55 Lydia: Says who?

0:00:55 Thomas: Wokey uprising. Yeah.

0:00:57 Lydia: The government? Oh, man.

0:00:59 Thomas: Yeah, I'm going to censor your uprising right now. You're not allowed to say that.

0:01:02 Lydia: There you go. I'll see you in court. I'm doing well. How are you?

0:01:07 Thomas: Excited? Hey, patrons have already heard this. Normies, we finally got out our Sidney Sweeney's boobs episode.

0:01:14 Lydia: We finally got out Sidney Sweeney's boobs. Yeah.

0:01:16 Thomas: Yeah, I've been trying for so long. But in seriousness, it's what Sidney Sweeney's boobs tell us about the anti -woke outrage industrial complex is basically what it is. And we finally got that out and we also talked a bit about some behind the scenes stuff of what happened there. So please patreon.com slash where there's woke if you'd like to check that out. In a similar vein to what we talked about there, this was another episode we tried to record and recorded a lot on it

0:01:18 Lydia: We did it. We've won. Fun yeah yeah

0:01:42 Thomas: A week ago I don't know more and it's just like quality control stuff and just letting you know that sometimes when stuff doesn't come out or most of the time when stuff doesn't comes out it's because we've put a lot of work in and not quite gotten it right and so held it back so just just wanted to mention that this is yet another one of that so I wish we'd had this out earlier but I think it's still very much relevant because I've realized that the sort of like how the atom bomb basically changed war forever and like permanently altered the landscape of the planet and of politics geopolitics I feel like the whataboutism it's always been around I guess that's not a perfect analogy but the what about ism as unlocked by trump as shamelessly as trump has done it I think it's just fundamentally ruined us because no matter what happens Trump could have a fucking foreign leader. Trump could Have the prime minister of Canada assassinated and the right would go. The forensic historians would go try to look. OK, when's the last time? Well, in 1978, Jimmy Carter, he they authorized an attack on, you know, they'll just find some fucking

0:02:53 Thomas: Bullshit that is like sort of loosely related to the thing Trump did, but not. And then the minute they can find something that just kind of sounds like it, like has some of the same syllables as whatever nonsense fascism Trump just did, then they're fine. That's it. It's agonizing because what do you do? What do you doing? No matter what, no matter how you try to fight that, it's an uphill battle because if it's like a decent comparison, then it's, like, okay, yeah, acknowledging maybe Obama, you know, his drone strikes. Yeah, Obama with the drone strikes is bad. Okay, yeah. Acknowledged. But taking it 50 steps further is bad. You know, blowing up boats full of people because you say they might be smuggling drugs or whatever is fucking worse. Yeah. And maybe the drones were too. I don't know.

0:03:41 Thomas: But both of them bad. But it's this 24 -7 and it puts you on the back foot. And what can we do except, I guess, what we do here on the show is try to actually look at these things and debunk them. But with this particular thing, with the Jimmy Kimmel censorship, I think they were really really struggling because this was just flat out, categorically censorship by the government under threat of government, you know, and they tried their hardest. And we wanted to look at one article in the Federalist where they tried real, they tried really hard and we'll see how they did.

0:03:38 Lydia: It's a war crime yeah yeah exactly yeah oh god

0:04:11 Thomas: So that's what we're going to talk about today. Do you want to tease anything?

0:04:13 Lydia: Yeah uh lots of layers for this what about is and we're gonna get some historical clips that I think is gonna be really fun I can't wait to show you that that ties in so many layers of this together uh and And yeah, I think it's going to be super fun. But you're going to have to wait until after the break.

0:04:31 Thomas: Oh, I don't want to wait till I, oh, them. Okay. Yeah. Who?

0:04:34 Lydia: You know who doesn't have to Wait until after the break? The patrons.

0:04:36 Thomas: Oh, those geniuses. How did they fucking think of that they're so good looking too like man, men want them women want to be them and men want to be them and women want them

0:04:38 Lydia: I know they're so smart. Premier Wokies is what I call them. I know. Jeez. Yeah, it's like it's everybody.

0:04:50 Thomas: It's everybody men and women and non -binary folks want to be them and want them is what I heard patreon.com slash where there's woke and they don't you know you know why they'reso great that productivity gain from not listening to the ads you know they're just like I'm gonna take that two minutes or whatever and I'm going to lift weights or something uh -huh over time yeah smart just like interest

0:04:52 Lydia: And non -binary folks. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it compounds, though, you know, over the course. Yeah, exactly. It's very smart. Economic geniuses.

0:05:17 Thomas: Yeah so if you want your retirement to perform well oh

0:05:21 Lydia: Don't make promises we can't keep.

0:05:21 Thomas: No patreon.com slash where there's woke guaranteed millions of dollars guaranteed hold me to it all right where are we gonna start

0:05:31 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:05:27 Lydia: Well, we're going to start just very, very brief background in case anyone was living under a rock. I would find this very hard to believe. I'm going to make it super short. So Charlie Kirk was murdered on September 10th.

0:05:38 Thomas: Yeah make it short what oh my god I didn't hear about that holy shit it. Tell me everything.

0:05:48 Lydia: Yeah, I know. I know I'm not going to tell you about his murder, but I am going to talk about when Jimmy Kimmel briefly spoke about it on his show on September 15th, which was a Monday. And also a tiny little bit on September 16th, a Tuesday. The indictment for who allegedly killed Charlie Kirk came out on that same day, Tuesday. And based off of what he said, apparently, we're thinking from the Monday primarily bit, he said we hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. And then he also had a little bit Tuesday. Tuesday. And the following day, Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, went on Benny Johnson's podcast and said that what Kimmel said, what I just read you, was some of the sickest conduct possible. That's quotes. Yeah.

0:05:53 Thomas: Okay. To Google it, I guess. Sick. I agree. That was fucking sick, Jimmy Kimmel. Bitching.

0:06:44 Lydia: And he basically mafia bossed in the interview and said we could do this the easy way or the hard way.

0:06:49 Thomas: Yeah. I love how in any other era, in any other time ever, people would hear what you just said and be certain that you were doing hyperbole.

0:06:57 Lydia: No, that's literally it.

0:06:57 Thomas: Oh, he did the like, we can do it the easy way or the hard way and be like, okay. Yeah, so that's you characterizing what he said. Hey, what did he actually say? What were the words he actually said oh okay so exactly that and I think this is old news we had a lot I had a lot of funny and insightful and interesting things to say about this in the one we didn't use but I think it's kind of old news by now but but like let it suffice to say first off number one I don't even want to engage the conversation of what jimmy kimmel said because it's invalid to even go down

0:07:00 Lydia: Yeah, frankly, when you see stuff I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Yeah. I know.

0:07:31 Thomas: That road there's no reason to even do that you should stop at and this is what we need to do This is what we've been advocating on the show. Somehow, rhetorically, somehow as a nation, as a people, we need to stop before we even do that. Well, but OK, he didn't really say it doesn't matter. His comedy show doesn't fucking matter what he said at all. Now, it would matter if we're just talking about people complaining because people complain about what people say. No problem. That's normal course of business. I have plenty of complaints about what People say from a woke perspective. No problem having complaints. When we talk about the FCC chairman threatening and saying we can do this the easy way, the hard way, we don't even need to look at what the content is. You shouldn't be doing that. That's government censorship.

0:08:13 Thomas: Short of like he led a coup against the government on national TV or something. Maybe I could think of like a couple things, but we're nowhere near that. So absent that level of extreme, we do not need to be parsing out the wording of Jimmy Kimmel's jokes To see whether or not this was OK. It's not even close. Having said that, it's also I will grant, yes, this contained probably a false premise, because at the time this was before the charging documents came out. It seemed pretty clear. I've talked all about this on SIO, so people listen to that. But it seemed pretty clearly that he was either like far right or maybe nihilist. And so I think that's where Jimmy was coming from. And then when we got the charging document with the text, I mean, it seems like maybe maybe not quite that, you know. And so, sure, Jimmy Kimmel's thing might add a bit of a false premise. But even with that said, the focus of what he was saying was about the conduct of the president.

0:09:01 Lydia: Yeah exactly he went on to criticize how Trump responded to questions about Charlie Kirk's murder and how Trump just was like the ballroom constructions going great that's his response to someone like that that he claimed was you know a friend someone who helped him get elected someone who like changed a lot of folks in gen z their political choices

0:09:13 Thomas: It's so fucking funny. God, it's so funny.

0:09:24 Thomas: Can we play that one just in case people haven't heard it? Because it's så fucking funny, and I just want to hear it again. I've heard it 20 times. I'll never, I will never get tired of a narcissist, a literal narcissist, sociopath, failing to be a human. Human and then later I think because of this he tried to be human on one of the fox talk shows and go through the like what happened when he found out charlie kirk died and it's just nonsense like he starts to do an impression he's like well when they told me I said what what what he does that what and that's it he just said that a bunch of times you're like that's It that's all you got like any human would be like yeah I couldn't I was in disbelief I couldn'T fucking believe it oh here's another thing I want to say as we start to play this clip I realized I said this in the, it sucks that we're going to have to say that a lot. There was stuff we said in the, in the false start episode that wasn't exactly a start. It was like a while,

0:09:27 Lydia: Yeah let me find it yeah it was like an episode and then we

0:10:15 Thomas: But it was more than an episode. Sorry.

0:10:18 Lydia: Yeah we just needed a little more time to finish it and then everything changed in the course of like a day and a half.

0:10:22 Thomas: Yeah. It just, yeah, it just sucks. But point is, uh, one point I made that as I was surprised to find out, I don't like any of these nighttime talk shows. I think they're lowest common denominator and they're boring and they make people, even geniuses like Stephen Colbert turn pretty unfunny, honestly, in this format. Cause the jokes have to be very boring and plain and what, and there's, you know, it's better and worse. Don't at me. I love Stephen Colbert and I think he's very talented, but when I watched the clips, I'm like, yeah, okay.

0:10:48 Thomas: It turns out, and I swear to God, this is not just because I'm a fucking wokest trying to celebrate whoever's anti -Trump. Watching Jimmy Kimmel, I was like, oh, this is actually kind of funny. Like I laughed at like quite a bit of this. I still don't think I would go so far as to watch it, but, but in, in reviewing these clips, he's got some good jokes in this that that I almost would go through more of it. So, you know, hats off to Jimmy Kimmel. It's pretty funny.

0:11:11 Clip: We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism. But on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this. My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. May I ask, sir, personally, how are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir? And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks?

0:11:46 Clip: They've just started construction of the new ballroom for the Whitehouse, which is something they've been trying to get as you know for about a hundred and fifty years and it's gonna be a beauty yes he's at the fourth stage of grief construction demolition what is racist because because truly you do get

0:11:48 Thomas: It's so good. I'll never get tired of it,

0:11:55 Lydia: This is insane. Yeah

0:11:57 Thomas: It's so good. It's a good line, it' s a good line.

0:12:04 Lydia: Yeah it's great. So the reason why Brennan Carr you know was doing this we could do this the easy way or the hard way is because broadcasters had a pending merger in front of the Trump administration right. They had some leverage there that they could play with because they didn't like what Jimmy Kimmel said. So what ended ended up happening was shortly after that podcast interview with Brennan Carr on Betty Johnson.

0:12:23 Thomas: By the way, take a moment to say, the FCC fucking chairman is going on a Russian propaganda paid guy's podcast. What the fuck?

0:12:34 Lydia: What are we doing here?

0:12:35 Thomas: It's so weird. Yeah.

0:12:36 Lydia: Yeah. So Nextar and Sinclair own a lot of, you know, ABC affiliate stations. They're the broadcasters here. Nextar has a pending merger in front of the Trump admin. Sinclar and Nextar both have regulatory changes they want to see happen. And then Disney also announced that they were pulling the show indefinitely. And Disney has a deal that they're working on where they own ESPN. ESPN's trying to buy the NFL network.

0:13:02 Thomas: It's so distressing. The fact that we have done nothing about monopoly on both sides. And this is one of those places where we can say this is a both sides problem. I mean, the right's the worst, don't get me wrong, but it is a both sides problem. We have done nothing on monopolies for so long that it's like, okay, now these two fucking companies are going to literally censor Jimmy Kimmel for nothing, for absolutely nothing because they're like, well, we need our deal to go through and we let the fascists in and the fascists are willing to be mob bosses and fucking blackmail us. So, all right, well if I have to choose between the fucking the bottom line and all of our democracy I'll go the bottom line on that so fucking short -sighted too yeah

0:13:37 Lydia: Yeah. Exactly. Profit. It's gross. It''s honestly very gross conduct at a human level, you know? So thankfully, after this happened and Jimmy Kimmel was pulled off the air, people were pissed. And I mean, like a lot of people.

0:13:43 Thomas: Yeah

0:13:50 Lydia: People, even like Ben Shapiro. He was like, what is happening here?

0:13:50 Thomas: Give him an ounce of credit yeah I will ted fucking cruz

0:13:54 Lydia: Yeah, an ounce of credit. Ted Cruz also called this out. So, you know, credit where credit's due. Thank you guys for standing up in that way.

0:13:59 Thomas: He's just worried about being able to get his stepmom porn during 9 -11 though he's like hey if they come for

0:14:06 Lydia: They're going to come for this, too. Yeah.

0:14:06 Thomas: This maybe I can step sister I don't know something weird something weird on 9 -1 -1 just saying that's what ted cruz's motivation was Yeah.

0:14:13 Lydia: Yeah, but like incredible backlash. And some folks on the right were really trying to like diminish the role of the FCC in those things. And we're going to talk about that with the article.

0:14:21 Thomas: Such a pathetic attempt to,

0:14:24 Lydia: But thank you to everybody who participated in pushing back on this, because this was like a horrible, horrible stain on democracy when this happened. It is not going to be the only time this ever happened. But Disney announced shortly after they pulled him off, it was a few days later on September 22nd, that he would be back the following day, September 23rd. And then Nexstar and Sinclair tried to hold the line and said they would not broadcast it.

0:14:48 Lydia: His return show drew more than 6 million viewers, which is incredible because over a quarter of U .S. households didn't even have it available to them across the country because Nexstar and Sinclair blocked it. So I think that's remarkable. After that happened, Sinclaire announced on September 26 that he'd be back. Then three hours later, three hours earlier, Nextar said the same thing. So Jimmy Kimmel's back and the broadcasters have backed off for now. No.

0:15:00 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah, crazy. And not out of the kindness of their hearts. It's they lost a bunch of ad. I think companies were pissed that they would want to advertise, but then they were advertising on a fucking, you know, whatever, whatever Sinclair and what's a face.

0:15:31 Lydia: Sinclair tried to do Charlie Kirk memorial stuff. Yeah, they backed off of that.

0:15:33 Thomas: Well, at first, yeah, but then they ended up with something else, I think, and it's like, those advertisers are like, hey, we don't want advertising space on whatever the fuck you put, yeah. Reruns of Three's Company, I don't know, whatever. What's on TV anymore? I can't name a thing on TV, I'm realizing. I was trying to do a joke. I don'T know what anyone would watch TV for.

0:15:40 Lydia: But reruns. Yeah. Okay, that's an objectively great show. Young Sheldon.

0:15:53 Thomas: It's stupid. Oh, fuck, you're right. Yeah, young shot.

0:15:57 Lydia: I don't know if that's ABC, but yeah.

0:15:58 Thomas: Two and a half men or whatever, yeah? Something like that.

0:16:01 Lydia: Now that we have kind of the basics and the background out of the way, let's talk about how one of these right -wing entities tried to respond to all of this. So this is out of the Federalist, and this is titled, Six Times Leftists Melting Down Over Jimmy Kimmel Were Happy to Deny Conservatives' Free Speech.

0:16:21 Thomas: Which seems tough because it's like, how are those two groups even doing those same things? You know what I mean? Like pretty much a wide swath of the country was upset about the Jimmy Kimmel thing. I don't imagine they were in a position to deny conservatives their free speech. So I'm already a tad skeptical, shall we say.

0:16:35 Lydia: And so the author's through line here, which she puts up front, this is Breonna Lyman, she says, the left doesn't really care about Kimmel or free speech. It's just about exploiting a convenient storyline to keep their narrative of Trump is authoritarian humanitarian alive so I think that's how she can parse it yeah

0:16:53 Thomas: Boy, that sure is a lot more complicated than, you know, actually just Trump's an authoritarian and he's doing authoritarian shit and people don't like that. I think that's the simpler. Occam's razor would say, I think, that.

0:17:02 Lydia: Yeah I think if you ask brianna lineman she'd be like oh no well ben shapiro ted cruz they're consistent because they care about free speech so they're upset about kimmel because of free speech whereas the left the entire left is not upset about kimmel and free speech it's because of this yes

0:17:04 Thomas: That yeah and and that's what's really important here is not the fascist takeover of our country but like are the people complaining about it always consistent in every little thing that's what's real I think in hitler times they're like yeah hitler's bad but like were you complaining when they first they came for the whatever in the first part of the poem were you complaining no well then shut

0:17:39 Lydia: Yeah I'm gonna skip through the very beginning of this because it's basically rehashing what what I just discussed, the background of what happened here. But I am going to read a little bit that she wrote before we get into the six items from this list. Nonetheless, the professional censorship class on the left has suddenly discovered the First Amendment.

0:17:45 Thomas: Up

0:17:56 Lydia: Harry Sisson took to X to claim,

0:17:58 Thomas: Professional censorship what does that mean stupid

0:17:59 Lydia: I took to x to claim quote, we are witnessing the most brazen attack on free speech in modern American history. Elon Trump and MAGA said they were free speech warriors. It's the exact opposite.

0:18:03 Thomas: Okay who is that does it matter

0:18:11 Lydia: Harry sisson is a like left wing young podcaster, I think influencer. You've heard of this person, Matt Iglesias.

0:18:15 Thomas: All right never heard of him oh god oh so also fucking right wing chodes

0:18:21 Lydia: The left. Wrote an entire article about quote MAGA's scary clampdown on free speech.

0:18:24 Thomas: Yeah wow if even that fucking asshole is doing

0:18:31 Lydia: David French called Kimmel's removal a quote direct attack on free speech.

0:18:34 Thomas: It why are you doing david here's my question to this author federalist person I'm sure there were good examples of people who are actually leftists right

0:18:37 Lydia: Yeah, this is what she came up with.

0:18:44 Thomas: Are they almost trying to go after more like center right people in case

0:18:47 Lydia: And kind of like calling them out a little bit, like try and get them to realign.

0:18:48 Thomas: Just to maybe I guess to try to like what's that phrase trim the you know no never mind god what What is, you don't know. It's an idiom. Nevermind. Yeah. Anyway, not important, but it just seems, it seems like too weird for that to be coincidentally who she picked as her example. You know, it's bizarre.

0:19:04 Lydia: The other example that she gives is from Vox, Zach Beauchamp, that Kimmel's removal is the, quote, most brazen attack on free speech yet. And then, okay, so now we're going to get into the six examples of where was the left when these things happened. But where was this?

0:19:15 Thomas: Here we go. Where was Gondor? Where was Gundor?

0:19:20 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. But Where Was This Passion for Free Speech When ABC Cancelled the Hit Sitcom Roseanne in 2018 after Roseanne Barr referred to former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett as the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes.

0:19:29 Thomas: Where was Condor when they canceled Roseanne? Where was God? Jesus fucking Christ. What? Sorry. I do remember that.

0:19:43 Lydia: Yeah. So do you remember? OK.

0:19:46 Thomas: I don't mean to, I do, but like my, what is, where was, so I have so many levels of what But step one of this debunk is going to be, yeah, did the chairman of the FCC do this? Oh, probably not, because for one thing, it was 2018. So we already you would just be blaming the same people who did this for censorship. For two, what do you expect the left to have done when someone was a super fucking racist? Like, that is awful. Why would we defend that? Why would anyone ever defend that?"

0:20:12 Lydia: It's cool. Yeah I know. Horrible horrible. Yeah when people start criticizing that tweet as being racist because it clearly is racist. Barr apparently was initially defensive and then later posted an apology, quote, for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks.

0:20:32 Thomas: And then she pretended to not know the person was black.

0:20:35 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, she said that that she believed Jarrett was Saudi, Jewish and Persian.

0:20:39 Thomas: Does that make it better?

0:20:41 Lydia: I don't know. And then later released a video.

0:20:42 Thomas: Someone tell me. Some wokest tell me if that makes it better. I don't even know.

0:20:45 Lydia: And then later release a video where she claimed she thought the quote bitch was white. Yeah The other element of her defense for this tweet was that she was taking Ambien and she was Ambien tweeting at 2 a .m. And the manufacturer of Ambien actually tweeted and said, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication. So good. Yeah.

0:20:53 Thomas: I do remember that part of it. That's right. I remember that. Oh, man, that's a good one. Yeah, that is good. And I, but it's also true. Like, look, I have some amount of sympathy for addicts and whatever, whatever, if there's like, but like, like I made a point recently on whatever it does, you don't invent this kind of behavior out of nothing, you know? Like that's, that's pretty fucking crazy.

0:21:24 Lydia: It exists within you somewhere. Yeah and you know like when you look at kind of the overview of what happened here it usually just says like ABC you know canceled Roseanne and removed the show's content from the network website. But what it's missing in kind of this back and forth situation is Wanda Sykes was a producer for it. And she said, I'm not coming back.

0:21:45 Lydia: I will not be working on the show anymore. Please remove my name.

0:21:45 Thomas: Good call. Yeah. Yeah.

0:21:48 Lydia: Additionally, some of the cast responded and said that they were going to leave the show.

0:21:55 Thomas: No, in order to be consistent, we have to, uh, re recast them and make somebody else do a show with Roseanne so that she doesn't get cancer free speech. Fucking dumb.

0:22:00 Lydia: So yeah, so the actress who was playing Darlene's daughter, so I guess Roseanne's granddaughter, Emma Kenney, she tweeted, as I called my manager to quit working on Roseanne, I was told it was canceled. I feel so empowered by Wanda Sykes, Channing Dungey, who's, you know, the ABC, the first African -American, by the way, African -american leader of ABC and anyone at ABC standing up for morals and abuse of power. Bullies will never win. So they were seeing that kind of fallout. Yeah.

0:22:26 Thomas: Until 2024 yeah asterisk for at least another six

0:22:37 Lydia: One of the writers for the original Roseanne series in 1988, Danny Zucker, said, said, hard to believe a woman who supports a man who calls Nazis very fine people would turn out to be a miserable racist bag of shit. I'm definitely team Wanda Sykes. Now Roseanne Barr is coming out now that Kimmel was potentially canceled and then brought back. As he was coming back, she has been calling this a double standard.

0:22:49 Thomas: Years

0:23:00 Lydia: And she is taking this opportunity to speak out, I guess, and that she had her whole life ruined over this single tweet.

0:22:59 Thomas: Oh yeah sure over this super racist thing so dumb yeah so that doesn't seem at all the same to me at all

0:23:09 Lydia: Super racist. Horrible. Just completely horrible. No, no.

0:23:17 Thomas: This is the normal course of business where if an audience doesn't want something they don't want something here the jimmy kimmel thing is he didn't do anything wrong at all and the audience wanted him and the FCC commissioner chairman whatever threatened people to take him down like it's so not even

0:23:37 Lydia: Here's a here's a good little snippet before we move on, though. So John Goodman, you know, Roseanne's co star for the show, love him has consistently said since the Jarrett incident that he does not believe Barr is racist. But former presidential advisor Susan Rice is quoted here too. And she is also black. She retweeted something that Roseanne Barr had said about her back in 2013. And it was Susan Rice, a man with big swinging eight balls. Ape. A -P -E.

0:23:41 Thomas: Close love him

0:24:06 Lydia: So yeah, sorry, John Goodman.

0:24:04 Thomas: Oh my god holy shit

0:24:07 Lydia: Love you so much. Roseanne's a racist. Deeply, deeply racist.

0:24:10 Thomas: Yeah that's a oof that's someone who has a blind spot for their friend probably I'm guessing if they're still friends I don't know yikes well that one down I think we we got that one I'm gonna go ahead and say declare we won that one

0:24:18 Lydia: Okay, so what else, what else do we have here, Brianna? Yeah. Where were the hysterics when, when President Donald Trump was deplatformed in 2021?

0:24:27 Thomas: Where was god uh yeah

0:24:32 Lydia: Okay, let's see. It says the left celebrated. Iglesias reportedly had no problem with the silencing of free speech, posting, quote, it's kind of weird that deplatforming Trump just like completely worked with no visible downside whatsoever.

0:24:44 Thomas: I remember that okay so now does this answer my question actually she picked these specific people because she found like good double standard quotes in her mind that must be it I don't know I still feel like you'd have better examples these aren't leftists what are you talking about anyway keep going

0:24:52 Lydia: Probably. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about what that deplplatforming was about.

0:25:01 Thomas: Oh that time when trump tried to do a coup and we're like and the amoral fucking people even at facebook were like maybe a coup is too far maybe or Twitter or whatever.

0:25:11 Lydia: Well, yeah, it was Twitter. It took a while for Facebook to get on board.

0:25:13 Thomas: Oh, that's right. It was Twitter. So back then before, you know, Elon, there's like some semblance of like, maybe might be a good idea to take down the fucking insurrectionist. And that lasted a little while.

0:25:23 Lydia: Let me read a little bit from Twitter's statement on this. Permanent suspension of at real Donald Trump. This was posted January 8th. So two days after the attempted insurrection. After close review view of recent tweets from the real Donald Trump account and the context around them, specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter, we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.

0:25:49 Lydia: In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter rules would potentially result in this very course of action. Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials, yada, yida, yoda. However, we make it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement. And then they share their analysis of their policy enforcement with regard to this case particularly. So they basically warned Trump and Trump continued to violate this policy. And on January 8th, he tweeted, the 75 million great American patriots who voted for me, America first and make America great again, will have a giant voice long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form. Shortly thereafter, the president and it tweeted, to all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the inauguration on January 20th. And then they wrote, due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, these two tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the president's statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence. They basically said that we have determined that these tweets are in violation of their glorification of violence policy, and he needed to be immediately permanently suspended from the service.

0:27:02 Thomas: Yeah, what date was that again?

0:27:04 Lydia: January 8th.

0:27:05 Thomas: Okay, so not immediately after Jan 6. And mind you, I'm glad they did this, although, you know, didn't last a lot of good that did. But this was long overdue. He should have been taken down long ago. For one, this is again, I do get there's some nuance here, but it is a private company and they have their user agreement, whatever.

0:27:24 Thomas: So to some extent, like I do think that's not always like a blanket excuse. I think there can be unfair uses of that. But when it comes to something like incitement to violence, can this author agree in a vacuum, like just without anything that incitment to violence would be one of those exceptions to, you know, unlimited free speech. Like if someone's actually telling people to do violence, wouldn't that be an exception? And then, then your problem is just with, do you disagree with their analysis?

0:27:48 Lydia: Yeah. Mm -hmm.

0:27:53 Thomas: Because this is not censorship for a political statement or a view or a blah, blah, blah. This is, they're like, after two days, they took two days after January's, after a fucking insurrection, when he made more inflammatory statements, which by the way, Well, no, sorry.

0:28:09 Lydia: Calling for Mike Pence's head, basically. Oh, yeah, yeah.

0:28:13 Thomas: I mean, after Jan 6th, like they made more inflammatory when like it's possible that if Trump had shut up right after January 6th that he wouldn't have even gotten kicked off for January 6.

0:28:21 Lydia: I agree with that.

0:28:22 Thomas: But because Trump makes them money, these are fucking heartless corporations and Trump had a huge following and tons of engagement. It makes them funny. They wanted to keep Trump if they possibly could. But finally, it was too far. So when he made more statements that further encouraged possible violence after an attempted armed insurrection in which people died, they're like, OK, fucking finally, I guess we can't. We do have a line

0:28:49 Lydia: Yeah well and I think what's interesting too is like you get to have this luxury of like you don't just have to take his tweet in a vacuum, right? They got to analyze how is this, how are these tweets being interpreted by his audience, by the folks who follow him, like what are their words, how, what's the common interpretation as a result and, And, you know, they really just landed on him not attending the inauguration as being received by a number of his supporters as confirmation that the election was not legitimate and potentially like encouragement to people who might be considering violent acts that he's not going to be there. So it's safe. He's not gonna be there for a while. He's going to get hurt if they engage in violence on that day. It's just kind of like these elements and stuff about how people were talking about these tweets from his camp. And they also, when they banned him or permanently suspended him, they said that they would be on the lookout for ban evasion as well because he's still, you know, they still have the POTUS account. They still have The White House account.

0:29:43 Thomas: That's gonna be pretty tough oh okay yeah

0:29:46 Lydia: And wouldn't you know it, Trump or someone acting on his behalf tweeted from the Potus account basically right after. As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech.

0:29:53 Thomas: Wow holy shit wow wow

0:29:58 Lydia: And tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the radical left in removing my account from their platform to silence me. And then Twitter took that down like as quickly as they could.

0:30:07 Thomas: I forgot about that detail they had to ban the POTUS account what a what an age

0:30:14 Lydia: Obviously, he wasn't happy. And so now we have Truth Social, right? His media company started Truth Social. He was the first post on February 16th, 2022. And I just want to call out like when we're talking about social media censorship, there's plenty of allegations of censorship over on Truth Social as well. The platform has been widely accused of it.

0:30:17 Thomas: Yeah

0:30:34 Lydia: Several accounts were banned after posting about investigations into the 2021 insurrection, like the actual attack on the Capitol. There was a report from Public Citizen, which is a consumer rights advocacy group that aligns progressively in August 2022. And True Social was found to shadow ban liberal and progressive users that disagree with the site's narrative. And they've banned content mentioning abortion, just like a variety of things that just do not align with what they want. Yeah. They literally create an echo chamber on True Social.

0:30:33 Thomas: Oh yeah where was Gondor when they yeah and number one one, here's the thing we're going to get to. I'm sure I haven't read the article because Lydia is steering. She's in control. Feminism. Anyway, we're gonna get you I'm Sure the like, probably Hunter Biden's penis and the maybe some COVID stuff where you could at least consider that the government in the Biden administration might have been involved in some way. And fair enough, we can like look at that. This there's no even allegation that this involves the government. This one.

0:31:30 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. No, it doesn't.

0:31:30 Thomas: It's just Twitter who finally was like, fucking, we want to keep you, but we can't. Yeah.

0:31:33 Lydia: Explicitly saying, yeah, you violated our policy, right? Like, I mean, and it's very clear and very obvious. And if we don't do this, then our stock's going to start hurting. No.

0:31:43 Thomas: Yep. And there was no. And you know how I know it wasn't the Biden administration. They weren't fucking inaugurated yet.

0:31:48 Lydia: No they weren't. Yeah, exactly. If the government was pressuring Twitter to cancel Donald Trump, it was Donald Trump's administration. So that makes no sense.

0:31:53 Thomas: God, which they probably weren't. Yeah. The only thing I can think of is, I don't know this and it's not important, but I could almost imagine that, like, maybe law enforcement agencies at that time would be like, can you please, we don't want to get more people killed in an insurrection. I don'T know if that happened, but even still, that wouldn't be censorship. And tell you what, when law enforcement agencies tell a platform to take down, I don't know, child exploitation material, are you going to cry censorship at that? Like sometimes there's good safety reasons that the government or at least government agencies, law enforcement agencies would be, I think, entirely correct to ask a private company to take something down.

0:32:06 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah could be. Right. Yep. Yep, agreed.

0:32:29 Thomas: And it's no one would disagree with that in the case of child exploitation.

0:32:37 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:32:37 Lydia: All right. You're ready to see what we're going to be talking about After that? You are, you are.

0:32:40 Thomas: Well, I'm undefeated. I think I'm 2-0 on this. I'm just totally, I won't take credit for it. We, we are 2 -1.

0:32:45 Lydia: Okay, let's see what story number three is. When Megyn Kelly was fired by NBC in 2018, after Kelly questioned whether blackface Halloween costumes were always racist, the New Yorker's Dorian St. Felix mocked her, writing, but Kelly is shrewd in plenty of other ways. In the next phase of her career, perhaps she will use her firing to fashion herself into a martyr for the so -called suppression of free speech. Speech. Wow. Prescient. Yeah, that's exactly what she did.

0:32:51 Thomas: Oh, during the Trump administration. So it's not already. I don't even need to go. Don't even continue. Next.

0:33:13 Thomas: Oh, she did. But why are they including that quote? So somebody New Yorker mocked her. But that doesn't that doesn'T mean that that person caused the censorship that you're alleging.

0:33:24 Lydia: No, but I think it's that they're excusing it and saying like, oh, it's not a big deal. You know, she'll be just fine. So from the Federalist point of view, if this is the government canceling Megyn Kelly or like her free speech, you know, rights are being taken away or whatever, they're like, instead of being in an uproar, the New Yorker just like made fun of her and said, oh she'll Be a, you you know, that she's a martyr for free speech, blah, blah. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. No defenders of free expression. No cries about censorship. Just applause. Yeah.

0:33:49 Thomas: So they use their free speech to say some stuff. Is that what you're saying? OK, gotcha.

0:33:55 Thomas: Because it wasn't. It was a company that got rid of her.

0:33:59 Lydia: So now I want to do I want to do some videos because like this is a kind of a fun one. We haven't touched on this one before.

0:34:02 Thomas: Oh, we already knocking that one out. Are we done with Megyn Keller? Or are these about Megyn Kelly? Oh, okay.

0:34:07 Lydia: No, no, no. This is about Megyn Kelly. We're going to spend some time on Megyn Kelly because Megyn Kelley, I mean, yeah, she's she has turned herself into a martyr her for suppression of free speech. So let's let her have her time.

0:34:10 Thomas: I fucking hate Megyn Kelly. Hey, sorry, everybody. We're a bit into BDSM and this is Lydia's way of punishing me because I fucking hate this person so much. Jesus Christ.

0:34:27 Lydia: Yep. So I have two clips that we're going to do from the Megyn Kelly show that she had on NBC. And this is them talking about, you know, political correctness. This is them talk about political correctness with regard to Halloween costumes.

0:34:34 Thomas: Guess I've been a bad podcaster. Okay, here we go. All right. Hold on. Do we agree on a safe word ahead of time? Fuck.

0:34:44 Lydia: Classic dub -dee -dub. You don't get one, sorry.

0:34:52 Clip: In trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface Halloween or a black

0:34:55 Thomas: Yes. What? I don't care about that.

0:34:56 Clip: Person who put on whiteface for Halloween like back when I was a kid that was okay as long as you were dressing up as like a character if If somebody feels like something is offensive to them, then you should say it, and that's fair game, One of the things they mention is people dressing up like Nazis and this, if you think it's offensive, it probably is. Yeah, yep. And one of my big complaints just about society right now is whatever happened, and I know how you were raised, Whatever happened to just manners and polite society?

0:35:28 Lydia: All right. We can stop up there yeah megan kelly's like yeah you have guys running around with an axe hanging out of their head like polite society what does that mean so then she continues if you want to skip to like 522 we'll hear another

0:35:30 Clip: On Halloween, you've got guys running around with faces.

0:35:43 Clip: There was a controversy on the Real Housewives of New York with Luann as she dresses Diana Ross and she made her skin look darker than it really is and people said that that was racist and I don't know I felt like who doesn't love Diana Ross she wants to look like Diana Ross for one day I don'T know how like that got racist on Halloween it's not like she's

0:35:57 Lydia: Comment do you hear like the murmuring in the audience

0:36:01 Clip: Walking around I have not seen it but it sounds a little racist to me and by the way I haven't seen the other but if she really wanted to look Like Diana Ross, she should have dressed as michael jackson because they

0:36:09 Lydia: Anyway

0:36:10 Thomas: What oh just a joke trying to yeah

0:36:11 Lydia: I don't get it yeah um so everyone around this table is white by the way or no one's black anyway I guess I don'T know exactly everybody's heritage but this was considered problematic by a whole lot of people. That was October 23rd. The following day, Megyn Kelly came onto the show and she had done an apology internally to folks at NBC. And then when she came on the show, she did a public apology. And so I just sent that to you so we can hear what she has to say there.

0:36:25 Thomas: The more you know in

0:36:46 Clip: Good morning everyone and welcome to the show I'm megan kelly and I want to begin with two words I'm sorry you may have heard that yesterday we had a discussion here about political correctness and halloween costumes and that conversation turned to whether it is ever okay for a person of one race to dress up as another a black person making their face lighter or a white person making theirs darker to make a costume complete I defended the idea saying as long as it as it was respectful and part of a halloween costume it seemed okay well I was wrong and I am sorry one of the great parts of sitting in this chair each day is getting to discuss different points of view sometimes I talk and sometimes I listen and yesterday I learned I learned that given the history of blackface being used in awful ways by racists in this country. It is not okay for that to be part of any costume, Halloween or otherwise. I have never been a PC kind of person, but I do understand the value in being sensitive to our history, particularly on race and ethnicity. This past year has been so painful for many people of color. The country feels so divided and I have no wish to add to that pain and offense I believe this is a time for more understanding more love more sensitivity and honor and I want to be part of that thank you for listening and for helping me listen to

0:38:26 Lydia: All right. Very moving apology, I thought. And they went on to do the show which was a discussion with Black journalists Amy Holmes and Roland Martin talking talking about the controversy surrounding blackface. And then I saw that same day the Hollywood Reporter reported that Megyn Kelly had left her agency, Creative Artists Agency, and had hired an attorney the same day that she did that apology. And that attorney is Brian Friedman. So anyone who listens over at Gavel Gavel knows freaking Brian Friedman, she did not come back to the show after this.

0:38:28 Thomas: Blackface wow hmm hmm hmm that's interesting oh god after

0:39:01 Lydia: So that day, yes, she Did that public apology, sat down to talk with black folks about the controversy surrounding blackface and then never came back yeah

0:39:02 Thomas: That day huh that's really weird yeah which I think would have been I would think it would have received okay I mean I don't know if I'm remembering this or not but I would there's something about me that that says people would would have criticized like I'm sorry it took until yesterday for you to hear about blackface like I don't really think that's possible so I could imagine that being a criticism but as far as apologies goes like I mean as far as public apologies for stuff like this goes the bar is low because people are very bad at it that was like one of the better ones

0:39:35 Lydia: I I thought it was moving like it seemed like it was expressed with emotion yeah yeah

0:39:36 Thomas: Yeah she seemed affected yeah yeah she seems authentic I think I think she I mean she came across as like pretty emotional about it I mean some of that is like she's upset at having been criticized but yeah or whatever but But like, I would have thought that would, I don't know. If I had been watching in real time, I'd have been like, yeah, she's probably going to keep her job. Seemed fine. I don'T know. Unless there's another incident. Pretty weird that she got canned that day or she left or what? Okay.

0:39:46 Lydia: It's embarrassing yeah yeah so I don't I don'T know exactly what happened there yeah exactly so I don't know I've been trying to like figure this out like we don't have time to get into all of that today? Exactly. Exactly. 100%. But I do just want to highlight a couple things here. From what I was piecing together, it sounded like she didn't really want to do this show anymore. She really wanted to do NBC News Correspondents. And she still had time on her contract, but I think they were going to be like trying to negotiate what that would look like.

0:40:09 Thomas: It's not important to the claim because this isn't censorship. It's NOT the same. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Hmm.

0:40:28 Lydia: And this seemed like it could harm those negotiations. So I guess she decided that she instead would just leave and sue. And it was effective.

0:40:32 Thomas: Wait, sue. Yeah. What exactly suing for though? Because if she wasn't fired, because this was settled, right? Right. So we don't really know exactly. I mean, we should know what the suit was for.

0:40:43 Lydia: I don't, I guess I don't know exactly. I would need to look into like, like primary documents. It was settled. Yeah.

0:40:54 Thomas: I don't know if it's worth looking up now, but.

0:40:54 Lydia: Yeah, so it says that the show was canceled, but her contract goes through 2020.

0:41:00 Thomas: What show? Because I thought you said she left.

0:41:02 Lydia: She left. The Megyn Kelly show.

0:41:03 Thomas: So how was the show? Oh, is that called The Megyn Kelly Show?

0:41:06 Lydia: I think, oh, Megyn Kelly Today, I think.

0:41:08 Thomas: Oh, I thought that was a different show. Maybe that's my problem with it. Hmm.

0:41:12 Lydia: Yeah could be, but I think what's interesting is like, I donT know know exactly how the lawsuit began, but I do know the way that it settled and how it got through there a little bit. She ended up getting her entire contract. Brian Friedman was able to get her full $69 million payout, even though she was no longer going to be on the show for the next two years, or I guess a year and a half or so. That's a pretty big win, I would say.

0:41:38 Lydia: But now, listen to some of these paragraphs from a piece talking about the negotiations and the settlement talks and what was going on there. In an unusual move, Kelly's lawyer, Brian Friedman, is talking about it publicly. Okay, first of all, hilarious, hilarious. I don't even think it was unusual then. And he says, Andy Lack, who's over NBC, needs to stop, Friedman said Tuesday, accusing the NBC News chair of leaking information about the negotiations.

0:41:51 Thomas: Not unusual anymore. Yeah?

0:42:04 Lydia: Despite my efforts to handle this process confidentially, NBC News is allowing the media to run with completely false and irresponsible reports that disparage Megyn by erroneously claiming She has ever asked for more money than her contract requires. If NBC News is not the source, then they have a responsibility as a news division to correct these false claims. Or are they somehow attempting to use these fabrications for some fictitious advantage in the discussions we're having? If Andy Lack has lost control, my hope would be that Steve Burke, who is NBCUniversal CEO, can step in and not permit blatant lies about our discussions to remain uncorrected.

0:42:39 Thomas: That's a weird specific thing.

0:42:41 Lydia: Yeah, NBC responded. And they said, unlike Mr. Friedman, it says a few minutes later, unlike Mr. Friedman who has repeatedly commented to the media throughout the negotiations, we respect the confidentiality of the process and will have no comment until it reaches its conclusion. Yeah.

0:42:44 Thomas: Wow. Wow. Wait, and what? Is that the settlement process or the con? Okay. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. Yeah.

0:43:00 Lydia: Settlement process. Yeah. It's just so funny to me because it's like it's the same tactics we see lively Baldoni.

0:43:06 Thomas: Sorry, this is a little inside, but if you've listened to Gavel Gavel, this is very relevant. But if you haven't, sorry. But Friedman is a fucking dirtbag who does this exact thing every time. He's like the most take the law dispute to the media guy in the world. So it's just pretty rich to be like NBC's leaking. You know, it's like, which is more likely them doing that? The bajillion dollar company, you know, who's negotiating this like one thing or you whose whole shtick is this?

0:43:25 Lydia: I know. Yeah. Yeah. And so knowing how Megyn Kelly responded the day after and then went and sued NBC and, you know, fought for her contract amount and also to not have to sign an NDA, I think I wanted to play this clip of where she talks about this about a year ago.

0:43:53 Thomas: Well, sure. Okay. Yes. But where's the cancellation? You know, because like she, she did an apology. It seems like some people would have accepted it. I'm sure some people wouldn't. I think there's good reasons to not be super in love with it. But also it wasn't like terrible. I think if I was grading on a curve of media apologies, I'd be like, yeah, okay, fucking whatever. Fine. But it sounds like she left.

0:43:57 Lydia: Yeah, I know. There's nothing. Yeah. Yeah.

0:44:15 Thomas: Where's the cancelation? What did, what did I do? What did fucking Matt Iglesias do? What did stupid? Stupid.

0:44:20 Lydia: It's so it's so interesting. Like, I would love to know more details. And maybe there is something out there and I just didn't find it in my research. But like, if she just wanted to leave. She still went on the air that day to do the public apology and do a show and then didn't come back after that. If she just wanted to leave, she could have said, I'm not doing a public apology.

0:44:39 Thomas: So I think, I'm not going to say that she was genuinely contrite, but I think she had enough blowback that I think she would have wanted to be able to apologize on that platform. Cause like she, to repair her, I don't think it took, we, we know her now as full fucking ghoul, MAGA, right -wing conspiracy theorist on her fucking YouTube channel. She's truly scary now. Like she's a scary person back then. I think he probably at the very least, if not genuinely feeling can try at the very least probably recognize like I fucked up and need to fix this and being able to fix it on the that big platform would have made sense you know

0:44:48 Lydia: Yeah. And then not to stay with that platform necessarily. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:45:14 Thomas: So that that's how I would imagine it went

0:45:16 Lydia: All right. Let's see what she has to say about this more recently.

0:45:19 Thomas: I'm just telling you I don't want to hear her again you

0:45:22 Lydia: No, this is just a year ago.

0:45:24 Thomas: Said it was a year after a year ago okay gotcha who the fuck was that sorry

0:45:31 Lydia: She's where she said she's going to turn herself into a martyr for the so -called suppression of free speech. Here we go.

0:45:31 Thomas: Oh yeah yeah yeah she totally called it yeah let's

0:45:37 Clip: I was on every newspaper and every television program in the country as a racist. That is what they did to me as a result of my one comment, truly. And then they drudged up old Media Matters nonsense about like me calling these guys

0:45:48 Thomas: See other racism just using the n -word blah blah blah

0:45:55 Clip: And try to build a narrative about you to try to take you out. And thank God they didn't keep me out. But yeah, look, I wasn't the only one. And smeared them people who haven't been able to come back, who maybe didn't have as great a foothold in their career as I did when they tried to take me down, who really struggled to get back out there.

0:46:00 Thomas: Wait they didn't

0:46:19 Clip: Like they're terrible people and you can see it.

0:46:21 Thomas: Who which people uh celebrities I don't know if you bothered to look into this was she on every paper as a

0:46:24 Lydia: Hollywood celebrities, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. No. I mean, people were.

0:46:32 Thomas: Racist yeah I mean people probably would have covered the comments

0:46:35 Lydia: Yeah exactly because that's what the news do.

0:46:36 Thomas: But newspapers newspapers don't fucking ever call anyone racist. Like, it's a whole journalism thing where they have to say, like, racially tense or racially, yeah, possibly racially insensitive hate crimes, lynchings. That lynching was maybe a little racially questionable.

0:46:45 Lydia: Yeah insensitive. Yeah so like thugs. Thugs was one of one of the things that was brought up but also her comments about like Like Santa's obviously white, Jesus is white, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So just kind of like these little things over time and then blackface people were like, okay, enough.

0:47:08 Thomas: Yeah. We've got the picture.

0:47:10 Lydia: And then this I just think is, is so funny. So after she was quote canceled from NBC, Ben Shapiro commented on this and compared it to, compared Megyn Kelly to Jimmy

0:47:18 Thomas: Oh, here we go. Here we go, drum roll, Martin Luther King, Jim O 'Keefe. Oh okay, OK, gotcha.

0:47:25 Lydia: Kimmel. Yeah. So I like this, like,

0:47:27 Thomas: Sorry, I was in the wrong. I thought we were still in the past on this. We're in now times. Gotcha.

0:47:29 Lydia: No, we're in like a, like this is a whole parfait sort of thing we're dealing with all these layers yeah

0:47:33 Thomas: I lost focus. My fault. So there's no comparison there. Why would why would what is why would he make that comparison?

0:47:38 Lydia: Well so so this is back in 2018 so what he's calling out is megan kelly's comment about blackface versus no

0:47:43 Thomas: Oh, so I'm so fucking confused. So you're saying you said, oh, about Jimmy Kimmel. So I assumed you were saying he's saying that now about Jimmy Kimmel's cancellation. So now I'm re correct in that I was interpreting that as at the time he said it was like like Jimmy Kimmel, but what? This is so confusing.

0:47:59 Lydia: And he's saying if you're mad about megan kelley where's the outrage about jimmy kimmel

0:48:00 Thomas: Ah, here we go. Because of something he did. Yeah. And also, well, I mean, there's a lot of comedians who did blackface things as a bit pretty recently because it wasn't societally quite looked at as disqualifying yet. And then there's an awkward time where I think we got there, which is good. That's looked at as disqualified, but it's like shockingly recently. So there's going to be examples examples of people doing it. It was always wrong and they shouldn't have done it. I'm not saying that was okay that they did it, but it is a little bit slightly different when they did it with the knowledge that it was like a joke. Like some of it is actually a joke and they're like, the joke is that it's racist. Like, like in a way where they're trying to communicate that racism is bad. Yeah, that's one. That's a tough one. I don't really, I guess I'm not entirely sure about the intent of

0:48:03 Lydia: Because of blackface he did yeah yep yeah like in tropic thunder yeah

0:48:50 Thomas: That one. I'm like super familiar with it, But I think there's distinctions you can make between like there are blackface skits or jokes people did where the punchline is against racism, like it's actually against racism. There might be others where it's like they were caught doing blackface and it's actual mocking black people, which is fucking horrible. Like even there's no one within our lifetime who shouldn't have known that that was bad. But then there's also a sense where it'S like maybe someone did it for a little bit for a show. Like there's a lot of those where it's like someone did, oh, they dressed as a black person as a punchline within like a SNL or within a skit show or something. There's little ones like that where it'S like, I'm going to go ahead and say they should apologize. This is my opinion, by the way, everyone can decide for themselves as always. But in my opinion as just a white guy, I would think that if they apologized, it would be different because they're acknowledging like that was done in the media environment. It was back at the time and like that Was wrong and they shouldn't have done it. But like it was a bit of a different paradigm just in terms of like editorially what you thought was OK to put in your clip show or whatever. So I feel like there's some nuance there, but no nuance around blackface being wrong. That's wrong. But like nuance around like the timing of when these people who actually there's a lot of beloved celebrities who did

0:50:00 Thomas: Blackface 15 years ago or something where it was like it wasn't quite at the level of disqualification that we eventually got to now.

0:50:12 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:50:12 Lydia: So just to kind of let you know like Like, what we're going to be setting up here is Megyn Kelly's blackface comment in 2018, comparing it to Jimmy Kimmel's skit, including actual blackface, which is pretty bad, from the early 2000s on Comedy Central.

0:50:27 Clip: And let's point out the media's hypocrisy When it comes to these sorts of issues, every Democratic male is considered a non-sexist in reality. When it comes to the media, when it comes

0:50:31 Thomas: Know what sorry what the fuck was that when it comes to hold on I guess I just want to parse that what are you saying dude what was your little rat voice saying I can't

0:50:38 Lydia: I don't know.

0:50:45 Clip: To these sort of issues. Every Democratic male is considered non-sexist in reality. When it comes to the media, Megyn Kelly happens to be a person right of center.

0:50:46 Thomas: Even no it's not

0:50:58 Clip: Jimmy Kimmel is a person left of center, has anyone brought up the fact that if we're going to talk about blackface, Jimmy Kimmel in 2000 did an actual blackface routine team on national television on comedy central this is Jimmy Kimmel in blackface not only mocking black people he's mocking Karl Malone specifically mocking Karl Malone for not being able to speak english properly this is a lot closer to insulting black people than megan kelly saying I don't mind if someone dresses up and darkens their skin as diana ross to honor diana Ross okay Jimmy Kimmel is somehow is a show on abc no problem here's Jimmy Kimmel circa 2000

0:50:57 Thomas: True okay well now oof really jesus

0:51:18 Lydia: Yeah, it's bad.

0:51:29 Thomas: Oof let's play because I don't know if I'm going to comment I don't I remember vaguely this but that wow it's one of those things I haven't thought of since since the time. So it's like content note, this is probably racist as fuck, but I kind of want to know what we're talking about.

0:51:35 Lydia: It's not great.

0:51:47 Clip: Sometime at night, Carmelone look up in sky and say, what the hell going on up there? Do UFO live on other planet, phone and home like E.T.? Carmelon read on TV about white people getting deducted by alien, sticking all kind of hell up they butt.

0:52:05 Thomas: Ouf.

0:52:05 Clip: Listen up, E.D., you better stay the hell back. You know is that a problem apparently that wasn't a problem for jimmy kimmel but it's a serious problem for megan kelly to suggest that dressing up as a black person to honor a black person uh is is not that bad she actually has to lose her job over it right they're gonna pay her out but she has to loose her job again the polarizing environment predated president trump it will it will go far beyond president trump because that

0:52:31 Thomas: So again, did she lose her job?

0:52:33 Lydia: No.

0:52:33 Thomas: What actually, what actually happened? Okay. What actually happened with, why can't, it doesn't seem like you have a solid answer and I'm kind of, I don't get it.

0:52:35 Lydia: I mean, no, it is. It's complicated.

0:52:43 Thomas: So we're trying to, just cause it becomes relevant. We're trying To take a second to figure out what really happened. It's just unknown what happened. I guess I will say I don'T fault Ben Shapiro in that moment for thinking that she she got canceled by NBC, to be honest, because it is confusing. But the reporting seems to be, as you've already said, that she was going to end it anyway. It wasn't working. She had already been talking about ending the show and focusing on a different part of NBC, like going to a more of a correspondent thing.

0:53:07 Thomas: And so it sounds like it's a culmination of that. But then we're not sure why she she eventually had to end her that to negotiate. Like maybe they didn't want her anymore. Andso you could argue that. I mean, I guess that's a fair argument if you're like, like, well, she was under contract. She made these comments and maybe they were going to cancel the show anyway. And Megan Kelly actually wanted to stop doing that show anyway, and so they're like, Well, might as well stop that. And then she probably wanted to do something else, like be a correspondent or do whatever. And they were like, Eh, maybe. Yeah, this is all me speculating, but you could

0:53:27 Lydia: Mm -mm. Mm -hm. Not willing to do that. Yeah.

0:53:41 Thomas: Certainly look at that as that network canceling her over this. But it it also looks like there was other stuff because she had people around NBC were not fans of her. Like she apparently kind of was allegedly pretty shitty to people. And she also talked shit on the network a lot. And She criticized how they handled like the Weinstein reporting when it came to like the Southern, I don't. So like, it sounds like she just did not make friends at the network and enough was enough combined with this. They're like, we will make a business decision. And by By the way, if they're going to make a business decision that they would rather just pay someone $69 million and not get any labor from them, then like at a certain point, you got to be like, well, it sounds like they are making a business decision. There's no way that was them just making this decision on like the bottom line alone because of the cancellation. Like, cause you made the apology. It seemed like it was pretty well received. It sounds like there's just a culmination of reasons. And they were just like, look, fuck this. It's not worth it. You know, it's not. It's just not worth having you working here. And that's their right to do so. But I guess I will retract and say it is a confusing situation.

0:54:49 Thomas: So I understand why Ben Shapiro would have looked at it that way. And I guess you can look at it as them no longer wanting her to work there, I suppose, but it's just, it is, I see what you mean. That's like, there's not really great info on that either way.

0:55:01 Lydia: Yeah. It's tricky to track down exactly. And, you know, and again, to the the basic fundamental here, though, the government did not intervene and say NBC, get rid of Megyn Kelly.

0:55:06 Thomas: Of course, yeah. Not even close.

0:55:11 Lydia: Right. They had no rule at all in that. Now, I do want to call it Jimmy Kimmel a little bit because he did not apologize for this for a very long time. And that's pretty shitty.

0:55:16 Thomas: Yeah, fuck. Okay, clarify. Does that mean like he didn't make comments about it or were there times where he would still defend it, you know, because those are kind of two different things try

0:55:28 Lydia: No, I don't think he defended it. I think he he just wasn't addressing it. And yeah. And right. Yes. It was June 2020 is when he finally apologized for this, which is not not great. I mean, Ben Shapiro is explicitly calling him out here in 2018.

0:55:31 Thomas: To like yeah like kind of make it go away sort of thing which is not great but I'm just saying it's different it's slightly better than if you had been like no fuck off it was funny you know forever oof oh okay yeah probably around yeah yeah that's pretty bad I mean that that's that's you know he it is but it's also like he was on the man show he was like I don't know what his apology was I don'T know if we're gonna go over it but he was a a different guy, you know? And so there's a, there's an extent to which, and maybe again, this is me as someone who grew up in a Fox news household and came a complete three 60. No, just kidding. Complete one 80 away from that.

0:55:52 Lydia: It's a little disappointing. Yeah, yeah.

0:56:12 Thomas: Like I have some sympathy for like, he just wasn't the same person. Like he was, he was kind of a kind of shitty dude back then. And like, I don't know what his apology was, but I also wouldn't blame people who are like, Holy shit, that was fucking racist. I don'T like him. You know, I wouldn't claim people at all. It's going to be kind of, You know, and so, like, I don't know what the hypocrisy is that you think you're calling out. For one, that was in 2000. And again, not saying blackface was like ever OK, but Megyn Kelly pretending she didn't know what blackface wasn't 2018 versus in a completely different like fucking era of the country in 20 or in 2000 doing this skit like those are different things, you know, like the Kimmel one is still terrible and probably still. I mean, I guess worse because he actually did the blackface. Then it's hard to compare than Megyn Kelly defending it in 2018, like way after she should have known better. But like, I don't know. I feel like you should have know better by 2018. And I don' know, all in all, if anyone out there, especially people of color want to be like, no, fuck Jimmy Kimmel forever for this. I'm not going to criticize them for that.

0:56:12 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah yeah very very different. Yep. Yep yeah

0:57:12 Thomas: Like you do you like that's valid, totally valid. I think it would be a question of does his employer, whoever it is, find that there's more people who want them than don't. And they're going to make the business decision there.

0:57:22 Lydia: Disney.

0:57:22 Thomas: And everyone else can use their free speech to say whether they think you should be on the air or not. That's always how it was. This always was allowed. We always can do that. It's fundamentally different than the government canceling you.

0:57:34 Lydia: Yep agreed.

0:57:35 Thomas: End of part one. All right. Well, we really thought that we were going to get all that done in one episode, but we're exactly halfway through the article and we're at more than one episode. So we'll come back and do the last. Maybe she saved her good good stuff. This author for the final three, for the back nine, you know, we'll see. Maybe she has some good examples of times where Obama's FCC chairman killed a bunch of people. We'll see, you know.

0:57:57 Lydia: Yeah we'll find out we'll find out stay

0:58:00 Thomas: Ah, bated breath. I don't know. Thanks for listening, everyone. And really excited to tackle the next one. Patreon .com slash where there's woke. Get that Sidney Sweeney's boobs bonus and other stuff. Thanks so much for listening and supporting.

0:58:10 Lydia: Tuned all

0:58:34 Thomas: Stupid. Oh, fuck. You're right. Does that make it better?

0:58:33 Lydia: Right young Sheldon I don't know yes

0:58:39 Thomas: She's in control. Feminism. Anyway.