0:00

Michael. Peter. What do you

0:02

know about political pundits? All I know

0:04

is that the only job easier than their job

0:06

is doing a podcast about political pundits. We

0:24

were bouncing around premium

0:26

content for our dedicated

0:29

listeners, our paying customers. We

0:32

are, at the end of the day, a media

0:34

criticism podcast that has taken a

0:37

firm position against opinion

0:40

columnists. An anti-pundit position, anti-pundit

0:43

stance. So what better way

0:46

to highlight that stance and dig

0:48

in than to have a series where we

0:51

explain some to each

0:53

other and to our audience. Where

0:55

we introduce each other to specific

0:58

pundits and their punditry. Yeah, especially because

1:00

I think a lot of these people sort of

1:02

blend together in my mind, right? Where I

1:04

have a sense that if I hear a name,

1:06

oh, that's a dummy.

1:10

But I couldn't quite pin specific opinions on

1:12

them. Also, I think there's something interesting with

1:14

punditry and maybe with everybody on the internet,

1:16

where it's like they just come to you

1:18

fully formed. You're like, this is just a

1:20

political pundit whose views I'm hearing. And oftentimes

1:22

you don't know, like, wait, who is this

1:24

person? I feel like this is also an opportunity to

1:26

go into the background of some of these

1:28

people. Yeah. Although I won't be doing

1:30

that too much. I

1:33

was subtweeting my own segment, but maybe we're not going to

1:35

do that for yours. Well, my

1:38

pundit portrait is Kathleen Parker, columnist

1:40

for the Washington Post, who

1:42

is pretty distinctly uninteresting in terms of her

1:44

history. Just like as a person. So what

1:47

do you know about Kathleen Parker? I literally

1:49

know nothing. You said you wanted to start

1:51

this series with some like more obscure pundits.

1:54

And like, this is as obscure as it gets. I literally

1:56

know her name and where she works. That's it. Yeah.

2:00

a columnist since 1987. She started off

2:02

with the Orlando Sentinel, eventually makes her

2:04

way to the Post where she remains,

2:06

because that's the kind of job you

2:08

get and you die with. It's like

2:11

a Supreme Court appointment. It is really

2:13

weird to me that this is just

2:15

background noise of these fucking columnists. They

2:17

just have their jobs for life. And

2:20

you will see, as we go

2:22

through some of her greatest hits, it

2:24

doesn't matter how wrong you are. If

2:26

anything, being wrong about a past column,

2:28

that's a new column. So

2:33

she's now just over 70

2:35

years old, so has spent half of

2:37

her life as an opinion columnist in

2:39

major newspapers. And you can

2:41

see the effects of that on her

2:43

brain. She's mostly just like

2:46

a generic, moderate Republican, which I

2:48

guess is sort of like the

2:50

most common kind of opinion columnist,

2:52

right? She is really

2:54

just sort of a window into

2:57

the politics of like insulated, wealthy

3:00

suburban Republicans. I

3:02

have selected some writings of hers to

3:05

show you. It's possible that when I

3:07

send you these columns, you

3:09

will remember it. I just love that the editors

3:11

of these pages are like, we've heard from

3:13

lots of people who are correct about things, but

3:16

what about balance? What about the people who are

3:18

incorrect all the time? That's

3:20

what's great about the selection that I'm

3:22

going to show you, because Parker does

3:24

have plenty of like just dumb, fluffy

3:26

columns in the same way that most

3:28

columnists do. She's very

3:30

weird about race in like a very

3:33

conventional older white person way. Black

3:35

white or purple. But what I think sets

3:37

her apart a little bit is

3:40

her willingness to make very bold

3:42

and specific predictions. Ooh. Leading

3:45

to her being proven very

3:47

wrong repeatedly and publicly for

3:49

years on end. I'm

3:52

going to drop a piece that

3:54

was published by her on November 4th,

3:56

2016. Okay.

4:00

Oh, nice. Go ahead and read

4:02

me that headline if you will.

4:04

It says, calm down.

4:06

We'll be fine no matter who

4:08

wins. And it's a photo of Hillary Clinton

4:10

and Donald Trump. This is right

4:13

before the election. And she's just being

4:15

like, can you all relax? Everyone chill

4:17

out. Everything's basically the same. Nothing

4:19

matters. She says, as November 9th

4:21

dawns, Americans are sure to be mad

4:24

as hell. Those happy with the victor

4:26

will be re-angry soon enough when

4:28

they realize they won't be getting what they

4:30

were promised. This is the good

4:32

news. Thanks to the brilliance of our

4:34

tripartite government, nobody gets to be a

4:36

dictator. Hell yeah. And despite what nearly

4:38

everyone seems to believe, our

4:41

quote, broken government works

4:43

pretty well most of the time. I love

4:45

that it's like I've dedicated my life

4:47

to political punditry and also politics

4:49

doesn't really matter, you guys. I'm

4:52

going to send you a specific

4:54

excerpt. I like that mine is like this kind

4:56

of three-dimensional, like tragic figure, and yours is just

4:59

like a one-dimensional dunk fest. It's like, look how

5:01

much this lady sucks. If

5:04

you go into a pundit portrait looking

5:06

for three-dimensional characters, you're not going to

5:09

find that many. I've misunderstood the brief,

5:11

potentially. Okay. She

5:14

says, if Trump wins, he'll be held more or

5:16

less in check by the House and Senate because

5:18

that's the way our system of government is set up.

5:21

Not even Republicans are eager to follow

5:23

Trump's lead. There won't be

5:25

a wall. He won't impose any

5:27

religion-based immigration restrictions because even

5:29

Trump isn't that lame-brained. He'll

5:31

dress up and behave at state dinners and

5:33

be funny when called upon. He'll even invite

5:35

the media to the White House holiday party.

5:38

He won't nuke Iran for rude

5:40

gestures. He won't assault women. He

5:42

and Vladimir Putin will hate each

5:44

other respectfully. Holy shit! This is

5:46

like eight for ten of

5:49

this, like, wrong prediction. How?

5:52

Like, you could flip 100 coins and everything. You

5:56

know what I mean? This is like, this

5:58

is just an insane series. of

6:00

really terrible predictions, and they

6:02

don't make sense. Like, there

6:05

won't be a wall. There already is a wall.

6:07

There already is a wall, and that was like

6:09

a big part of the serious

6:12

people critique of Trump, right?

6:14

He won't impose any religion-based

6:16

immigration restrictions because even Trump

6:19

isn't that lame-brained. What

6:21

is that supposed to mean when this was

6:23

like one of his primary campaign promises, right?

6:25

The Muslim ban. He literally, the nuking Iran

6:28

is the only one that she was right

6:30

about. All the other ones are arguably, like

6:32

she says, he and Vladimir Putin will hate

6:34

each other. That's not really true. I

6:37

mean, I guess he didn't assault women in the White House

6:39

but we, or that we know of, but we have, he

6:42

assaulted, it appears every other woman

6:44

he's interacted with. I love that

6:46

that is like, don't worry. Donald

6:48

Trump won't assault women in the

6:50

White House. Like, I

6:52

wasn't particularly worried about that, I guess.

6:55

Yeah, it's not the specific location of

6:57

the assaulting that bothers me, yeah. This

6:59

is what makes pundits so special. They

7:01

can just be outrageously

7:04

bad at their job, not

7:06

just in view of their bosses,

7:09

but in public, in view of

7:11

everyone. This is cannibalizing my little

7:13

pundit section, but there's also this

7:15

thing of why is it their job to predict

7:18

stuff, right? It's like, I think this person's gonna

7:20

win, or this is what's gonna happen. Well,

7:22

why don't we just wait and see what happens? The

7:26

whole project of people thinking that

7:28

their job is to tell

7:30

people what's going to happen. It's

7:32

just very odd to me. This reminds me

7:34

of a, and I'm sorry to say

7:37

something that you will relate to so little, but this

7:39

reminds me of like a football game pre-show when

7:42

the talking head football

7:44

analysts make their predictions about who's

7:46

gonna win. And

7:48

you might think about it rationally and be like,

7:50

well, why the fuck are we even listening to

7:52

this? The game is about to happen. Let's

7:56

watch the game. But of course what's actually happening

7:58

is that they are just doing it. as

8:00

entertainment. Every relationship I have with

8:02

a straight person eventually culminates in

8:04

them explaining sports commentary to me.

8:06

Here's how I've explained sports to

8:08

straight women. I will

8:11

ask if they do straight women stuff like

8:13

watch Bravo. OK. Do they talk about Bravo

8:15

shows with their friends? Maybe like The Bachelor,

8:17

right? Yeah. The only difference between straight men

8:20

and straight women in this regard is that

8:22

I think you can get most straight women

8:24

to admit that that stuff is stupid. Yeah,

8:26

yeah, yeah. Where men will try to convince

8:28

you forever that there is something about sports

8:31

that is somehow important. It is

8:33

8.45 AM and I've watched three makeup tutorials. So

8:36

I'm not going to sit here and pretend

8:38

that I don't also invite

8:40

frivolous commentary. I

8:42

think that is sort of quintessential

8:44

Kathleen Parker. And the only thing

8:47

I can say in her favor

8:49

here is that in 2020, she

8:51

apologized for this. Oh, did she?

8:53

OK. She was

8:55

like, OK, look, I got it

8:58

wrong. Although what she

9:00

sort of focused on was

9:02

like, look, he has sort

9:04

of eroded and undermined these

9:06

very important institutional norms.

9:09

And she was also very critical of his

9:11

coronavirus response. And so

9:13

she's like, OK, sorry, I got that wrong. She wasn't

9:15

like, oh, by the way, he

9:17

did, in fact, take steps to ban Muslims

9:19

from entering the country. By

9:22

sentence by sentence, yeah. Right. Like the actual

9:24

things that she got materially incorrect, she doesn't

9:26

really address. I also think it's very funny

9:29

with Trump specifically, too, that it's like the

9:31

actual pundit view over and over again is

9:33

like, yeah, he says he'll do a bunch

9:35

of authoritarian stuff. But it's not going to

9:38

happen. Like, shouldn't the

9:40

fact that he's saying authoritarian stuff constantly,

9:42

like that seems like a really big

9:44

deal. We haven't had that before. How can

9:46

you tell me that bad things are going

9:48

to happen when a bad

9:51

thing has never happened to me in my entire

9:53

life? Yeah, exactly. Let's step forward

9:55

a couple of years. September 18, 2018.

10:00

Kathleen drops a heater. This

10:03

is during the Brett

10:05

Kavanaugh nomination drama. He's

10:08

in the midst of his confirmation hearings and

10:11

they have been sort of

10:13

derailed by a very credible,

10:15

very detailed accusation of sexual

10:17

assault made by Professor Christine

10:19

Blasey Ford. Kavanaugh, of

10:22

course, denies the accusation and

10:24

then before either Ford or

10:26

Kavanaugh so much as testified,

10:29

we get this piece which

10:31

I'm going to send you. Oh no!

10:34

It says, is there

10:36

a Kavanaugh doppelganger?

10:38

Was this this fucking deranged

10:40

thing where it's like she

10:43

misidentified someone who was also there

10:45

and it was based on

10:47

like Google Street View analysis?

10:49

That's the Ed Whelan spin-off

10:51

from this op-ed.

10:53

That happens after. Okay. But

10:56

this is basically Kathleen doing,

10:58

I don't want to call

11:01

it analysis, it's something

11:03

less than that, but Kathleen is

11:06

trying to square two things in

11:08

her brain. One, she

11:10

is not a psycho on like

11:13

sexual assault issues generally. So

11:15

when she hears an accusation, she

11:17

doesn't think like, oh this is

11:20

fraudulent, right? She believes her,

11:22

but Kavanaugh has put out a

11:25

statement denying that it happened. Right. And

11:27

Kathleen Parker is a Republican

11:29

who likes Brett Kavanaugh. Right, but also she

11:31

wants him to get confirmed. So how

11:34

can you hold both of these thoughts at

11:36

once and where she

11:38

lands is what if it wasn't Kavanaugh

11:40

but someone who looks like him? So

11:42

she just like made this up? This

11:44

is made up.

11:47

Here's a quote. a

12:00

Kavanaugh doppelganger? The most sets, Michael.

12:03

The most sets. I

12:05

love thinking of all news events as

12:07

basically like a short story prompt. Yeah.

12:09

Just like, well, what if? Kathleen continues,

12:12

could there have been another Kavanaugh-ish looking teen

12:14

at the house that night who might have

12:16

attacked Ford? You've got to be kidding me.

12:18

Cases of mistaken identity are far from rare.

12:21

People with the same name are often confused,

12:24

as was the case with Ford herself. On

12:26

Monday, Drudge Report tweeted a link

12:28

to an article on another site

12:30

that seemed intended to discredit her

12:33

with negative comments by her former

12:35

students. But it turned out that

12:37

the reviews pertained to another California

12:39

professor named Christine Ford. Wait, what?

12:42

This has nothing to do with anything. Mistaking someone's

12:44

name is not the same as

12:46

mistaking someone's appearance. You have to

12:48

really think about this, because this is an

12:51

incredible feat of reasoning. The Drudge Report, of

12:53

course, essentially a far-right gossip

12:55

blog that is a one-hit wonder.

12:57

They broke the Lewinsky scandal. So

13:00

once these accusations were public, they

13:02

tried to smear Professor Ford. But

13:04

they misfire, and they end up

13:07

smearing some other random professor who

13:10

has a similar name. Parker

13:12

is using this as evidence

13:14

against the veracity of Ford's

13:17

testimony when what it actually

13:19

is is evidence that

13:21

people on the right were

13:23

engaged in like a shameless

13:25

effort to discredit Professor Ford,

13:27

an effort that Parker is

13:29

participating in right now.

13:31

Yeah, she's now joining this effort. Yeah.

13:34

Yeah, yeah. She goes on to talk about how in the 1930s,

13:37

John Dillinger famously had a

13:39

doppelganger who was like arrested

13:41

multiple times. What? It's

13:43

literally like, well, what if she was tripping on acid?

13:46

Let's just keep throwing out

13:48

shit that could possibly explain this.

13:50

Yeah, what if she's a Russian

13:52

spy? Fuck it. All this is

13:54

is an attempt to moderate claims

13:56

that she's lying, right? It's like,

13:58

ooh, you actually don't. need to

14:00

believe that she's lying

14:02

or crazy or power hungry or

14:05

whatever, we can sort of thread

14:08

that needle and just say that she's mistaken,

14:10

but the outcome is the same, right? We're

14:12

still protecting our boy. As in all of

14:14

these things, the real problem is with the

14:16

editors, the fact that people looked

14:19

at this and were like, yes, yes, let's put this in like

14:21

one of the nation's most prestigious newspapers, just

14:23

fully just like wish casting of like, this might

14:26

have happened. It's wild that no

14:28

one, I mean, this is always my fucking issue

14:30

with these columnists is that like, no one is

14:32

like, hey, sorry, we really need some actual

14:34

basis for this. They're like, well, you're a columnist

14:36

with lifetime tenure. The basis is

14:38

that Brett Kavanaugh denied it. I'm

14:41

now going to send you the closing

14:43

paragraph. Wait, I know I was just I was just

14:45

about to Google and find the actual text of this

14:47

because I'm like, there's a little part of me that's

14:50

like, this can't this can't really be what

14:52

she's doing. Like, it can't actually

14:54

be this bad. Trust

14:56

me. Okay, she says, giving

14:58

both the benefit of the doubt, it

15:00

seems possible to believe both that Ford

15:03

was assaulted just as she's described, and

15:05

also that Kavanaugh didn't do it. In

15:07

a case without evidence, witnesses or corroboration,

15:09

mistaken identity would provide a welcome resolution

15:12

to this terrible riddle. Anyone?

15:17

I love that she ends like, is this anything? Cool

15:19

rule of thumb. When you have

15:21

to end a column by saying anyone,

15:23

it's probably best to just not publish

15:25

that column. You know,

15:28

what this column should actually be

15:30

titled is like how I sleep

15:32

at night while still supporting Brett

15:34

Kavanaugh. She said, okay,

15:37

a case of mistaken identity

15:39

would provide a welcome resolution

15:41

to this terrible riddle. What's

15:44

the riddle? The riddle is just they can't

15:46

both be lying, but like men lie about sexually

15:48

assaulting women all the fucking time. I

15:50

love that what she's sort of implying

15:52

almost is an alternate reality where

15:54

Kavanaugh immediately confesses. It's

15:56

also weird. It's like she's doing this as

15:59

if Blasey Ford was like, assault. in like a crowded

16:01

subway car. Like she was in a small

16:03

group. It was like a social event where

16:05

she knew who was there. It

16:07

was like a very finite number of people.

16:10

And she obviously feels confident enough

16:12

that years later, she like

16:14

stood up knowing that it would ruin her

16:16

reputation. And for those who aren't aware, like

16:18

she tried to keep her identity private in

16:20

this because she knew she was going to

16:22

get dragged in the mud, which of course

16:24

she was. And then ultimately

16:26

she got up there and testified like

16:28

how confident she felt. You know, I

16:30

know that people on the right sort

16:32

of imagine that there are like rewards

16:35

for people who accuse powerful men of

16:37

sexual assault. But of course the opposite

16:39

is true. That's all incredibly strong

16:41

evidence that she's confident about his

16:43

identity. And Kathleen Parker

16:45

just can't hold those two thoughts at once.

16:47

She needs to be able to support Brett

16:49

Kavanaugh. And so she's just working her way

16:51

there without going off the deep end like

16:53

Matt Drudge. This is me continuing to follow

16:55

Azalea Banks on Instagram. I

16:58

don't want to like her, but I still like her. She's

17:00

not always right, but when she's right, ooh, I know fair

17:03

enough, Azalea. There's just so much going

17:05

on here, you know, like complete speculation

17:08

being published as like a plausible theory,

17:10

the theory itself being a way for

17:12

her to like reassure herself that it's

17:15

okay to support this man. And

17:17

we are now and like on top of

17:19

that, you get in like this sort of

17:22

implicit discrediting of

17:25

a sexual assault victim. It's also an acknowledgement

17:27

that Kavanaugh is basically just like a generic

17:29

white guy. She's like, yeah, everyone kind of

17:31

looks like this fucking guy. That is the

17:34

strongest part of the argument. Just a placement

17:36

level. You could walk multiple Brett Kavanaghs by

17:38

someone on the sidewalk, like one after another,

17:40

and they wouldn't notice that it would be

17:42

weird. There's one more

17:44

article I want to discuss. This one

17:46

is actually from a couple months before

17:49

the Kavanaugh one. This is July 3rd,

17:51

2018. As

17:53

she's writing this, Anthony Kennedy has stepped down

17:55

from the Supreme Court and he's going to

17:57

be replaced by a Trump Brett Kavanaugh. the

18:00

likely candidate although there's been no

18:03

investigation, no opposition research on to him or

18:05

anything. So we're just sort of in the

18:07

early phases here. And she

18:09

publishes this heater. Oh, yeah,

18:11

classic stuff. She says, calm down,

18:13

Roe v. Wade isn't going anywhere.

18:16

God, there were so many of these, Peter.

18:19

Jesus Christ. This is one of the most

18:21

prominent of this type. But first, that

18:23

headline read familiar to you? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

18:26

yeah. Calm down. It's

18:28

like the tactic that angry guys use when

18:31

they're in a fight with their wives. Is

18:33

this a thing like Roberts

18:35

won't destroy the reputation of the

18:37

Supreme Court or whatever? It's almost,

18:39

it's less sophisticated than that. Here's

18:41

what's going on here, big picture.

18:43

Anthony Kennedy was generally considered

18:45

the fifth vote for Roe v. Wade.

18:48

He was a supporter of it. And

18:51

so he's stepping down. He's going to be replaced by Trump.

18:53

Legal legal analyst, notably Jeffrey Toobin,

18:56

flagged the distinct possibility that Roe

18:59

v. Wade was going to be

19:01

overturned. She says, quote,

19:03

what new justice would want to

19:05

be that man or woman who

19:07

forevermore would be credited with upending

19:10

settled law and causing massive societal

19:12

upheaval? What? They would get

19:14

more fishing trips to Wisconsin or whatever the fuck

19:16

Clarence Thomas is doing. Why would someone not

19:18

want to do that? She says, quote, only

19:21

Clarence Thomas would likely vote to overturn Roe

19:23

v. Wade. Swinging amiss. Oh,

19:25

yeah, that's rough. That's

19:27

rough. This is someone who in

19:30

2018 thought that Sam Alito was a vote

19:32

to uphold Roe v. Wade. Sam

19:34

Alito has like six Breitbart tabs open in

19:36

his browser right now. How

19:39

can you look at this guy and be like, no,

19:41

no, he's a lock. Okay, I'm going to send you

19:43

another key paragraph here. She

19:45

says, many Americans, including some conservatives,

19:47

would rather Trump not have access

19:49

to the employee suggestion box, much

19:52

less the Supreme Court. Then again,

19:54

Gorsuch, whom he nominated upon taking

19:56

office, is hardly a radical wingnut.

19:58

And though true that Trump promised

20:00

during his campaign to select justices who would

20:02

send abortion back to the states, he doesn't

20:04

actually get to dictate how they rule. Oh,

20:07

this is again, like, although he says

20:09

explicitly he wants to overturn Roe v.

20:11

Wade. He's not going to overturn Roe

20:13

v. Wade. Yeah, that's why I like

20:15

this paragraph so much, because once again,

20:17

Donald Trump is saying something very specific.

20:20

I'm going to select justices that will

20:22

overturn Roe v. Wade. And

20:25

she's like, no. She says he

20:27

doesn't get to dictate how they rule,

20:29

which is true, but he does get

20:31

to choose the justices. Whether

20:33

or not they would rule to overturn Roe v.

20:35

Wade is the litmus test for choosing them. Right.

20:37

So it's like, it's a distinction without a difference. So

20:40

there were columns, including one

20:42

in the Washington Post itself, that were

20:44

like, let's take a quick review of

20:46

who was wrong about Roe v. Wade.

20:50

They call out Kathleen Parker herself,

20:52

and they contact her. And

20:55

they say, do you stand by it? And

20:57

she says, and I quote, 100 percent. At

21:00

the time it was written, it was accurate.

21:02

It was on the nose. The thing is,

21:05

I can see standing by a wrong prediction

21:07

if you're talking about, like, some sort of act

21:09

of God. Like, I thought the

21:11

next Marvel movie would make a billion dollars,

21:13

but then the coronavirus pandemic happened and nobody

21:15

went to movies for two years. Something

21:18

like that, like, based on the information I had,

21:20

I made the correct prediction. But

21:23

that's not the case here.

21:25

She had the previous decisions

21:27

of these specific Supreme Court

21:29

justices to go on, and

21:31

she just got it wrong.

21:33

At the time that I said that

21:35

you would not be stabbed, the

21:38

knife-wielding maniac was 15 feet away

21:40

from you. Here's the kicker

21:42

if you're ready for this one. Had

21:44

the jackals of the abortion rights movement

21:47

not protested at Kavanaugh's house, Parker said,

21:49

he might well have switched sides in

21:51

the dog case. Oh, fuck off. That's

21:53

the problem of the leftists. So

21:56

not only was I not wrong, but to

21:58

the extent I was wrong. It's sort

22:00

of your fault for being mean

22:03

to Brett Kavanaugh, who by the

22:05

way, just happens to look

22:07

like the guy who did a sexual assault

22:09

back in 1982. Maybe

22:11

they didn't even protest in front of his house. Maybe it was just a guy that

22:13

looked like him. Kathleen, follow

22:16

it through. That is sort of a

22:18

rundown of my quintessential Kathleen Parker columns.

22:20

I do want to be clear that

22:22

although these are three of her most aggressively

22:26

incorrect columns, she

22:28

does have the sort of dumb bullshit

22:30

that every other columnist does too. And

22:33

I'm just going to rattle off some headlines to

22:36

give you a good sense. These are all from

22:38

this year. First, a

22:40

little crossover with a previous

22:42

premium episode of ours. Bud

22:45

Light started a fight. It was bound to lose.

22:48

Subheading, in a time of

22:50

culturally encouraged identity confusion and

22:53

gender fluidity, Anheuser

22:55

Bush tried to exploit a

22:57

26-year-old actress on TikTok. Shame

23:00

on them. Oh my God. That's

23:02

again the thing where she's trying not to be

23:05

like out and out transphobic. Wow. Like

23:07

defending transphobes and like echoing a bunch

23:09

of transphobic talking points. All Bud Light

23:12

did was partner up for like an

23:14

Instagram promo with a trans influencer. Kathleen

23:17

Parker says that is exploiting a

23:19

26-year-old actress. How

23:22

is that explain? It's literally giving her money in a case

23:24

of services. Giving her money to do ads. This is a

23:26

normal... I promise that is the last one that will make

23:28

you angry. The rest of them are just dumb. Dressing

23:31

down for the Senate is just bad manners.

23:33

Oh my fucking... I may have read this one.

23:35

Yeah, this of course is just about Senator

23:38

Federman. Subheading, senators should no more come to

23:40

the chamber wearing a jogging suit than they

23:42

should wear a tuxedo to play tennis. What would she

23:44

have said at your wedding, Peter? You came out in

23:47

the track suit. I think a little bit. It's egregious.

23:49

That was the only reason I didn't invite her. Okay.

23:52

I'm gonna read some more headlines.

23:55

Why I ordered 200 incandescent light

23:57

bulbs. What? And that's just a story about

23:59

how she likes... incandescent light bulbs. Okay.

24:02

That one I'm actually, I'll give her a pass. When

24:04

they're dumb but not harmful, just like, you know

24:06

what, have at it, Kathleen. Here's one I

24:08

like. Want to be happy? Then don't be

24:10

a lawyer. Ooh, that's true, Peter. I mean,

24:12

that's definitely true. I think you go on

24:14

5-4. That's just a full column about a

24:16

poll of lawyers that says that we're sad,

24:18

which of course there's like a hundred of those

24:20

published every year. The real superheroes of TV? The

24:23

makeup artists. Okay. That's just

24:25

about makeup artists. Yeah, maybe we're watching the same

24:27

tutorials. That's really all I have for Kathleen Parker.

24:30

I feel like she is very emblematic

24:33

of a type of very

24:35

insulated, rich white person, you

24:38

know? Yeah. Sort

24:40

of moderately reactionary. On the

24:42

other hand, not totally nuts. She

24:45

was very pro-mask and wrote a

24:47

lot about that during COVID and was

24:49

very critical of Trump's response. But on

24:52

the other hand, she will never get

24:54

behind trans rights whenever

24:56

partisan politics come

24:59

to the front. She's pretty distinctly Republican. Right.

25:01

And this thing of blaming left-wing activists for basically

25:03

everything that the right wing does. I

25:06

feel like this is another very common trope in these columns. And

25:08

I think a lot of what makes her so

25:10

shitty is that a lot of

25:12

what she writes about when she really gets into

25:15

substantive issues is just sort of

25:17

like, oh, it's not so bad. Yeah, yeah,

25:19

yeah. And I think that's just a classic,

25:22

privileged person sort of position.

25:25

Because for her, it's not so bad,

25:27

right? And it won't be bad, basically

25:29

no matter what happens. I like that

25:31

what qualifies for balance in

25:33

the nation's most prestigious opinion pages

25:35

is people who are comfortable in

25:38

a mildly left-wing way and people

25:40

who are comfortable in a mildly right-wing

25:42

way. All right. We can

25:45

do whoever yours is. Okay.

25:48

Are we on me now? I think we are. Okay.

25:50

So you, I have kept this a secret from you. I'm doing

25:53

a somewhat obscure pundit.

25:55

Although I don't actually know if this is obscure to you because you're

25:57

like a Twitter super user and this is a person that

25:59

got it. yelled at on Twitter constantly, which is

26:01

how I first heard of him. So

26:03

we are going to talk about Chris

26:06

Salliza. Are you familiar with Chris Salliza?

26:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course I'm familiar

26:10

with Chris Salliza. He's

26:12

now former CNN, right? And that is sort

26:15

of where he spent the last, I don't

26:17

know, several years? Yeah, 2017 to 2022. I

26:21

don't. This is a

26:23

perfect pundit portrait because I have a

26:25

sense of him, which is that he's

26:28

just sort of like a

26:30

horse brained sort of dummy

26:32

who gives these sort

26:34

of like middling hedging takes

26:37

that are sort of like bizarrely critical of the

26:39

left. But I don't really

26:41

know any actual details. I've never paid

26:44

attention to him. It's true that I've seen him

26:46

get dunked on Twitter quite a bit. But I've

26:48

never like dug in because he doesn't seem like

26:50

the type of person that's worst. Yeah,

26:53

yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I

26:55

think this is like one of the core paradoxes of

26:57

this show is that there's these people that

27:00

just aren't that interesting to talk about, but also

27:02

like his posts on The

27:04

Washington Post would get three million views. And

27:06

he was one of the most popular pundits

27:08

on CNN. So like these are

27:10

worlds that just don't interest us very much. Yeah,

27:12

TV news commentary, like the fucking

27:14

Sunday morning talk shows. Right. So

27:17

like we ignore it at our peril because like these fucking self-help

27:19

books that we talk about, people like listen to

27:21

these people. I mean, I think we're still sort

27:23

of just haunted by the fact that old people

27:25

vote and young people don't. And like

27:28

these people just have like the news

27:30

on in their home. Yeah, just voices

27:32

in the background. And it's, you know,

27:34

are you going to be a

27:36

complete freak and have Fox News

27:38

on? Or are you going to be

27:40

just sort of a common dummy and have CNN on?

27:42

Whereas we get our news in a much more objective

27:45

fashion where we just look at who's getting yelled at

27:47

on Twitter today. Absolutely. Top story,

27:49

Bean Dad. The whole nation

27:51

is in an uproar. I scroll

27:53

my Twitter feed at 100 miles

27:55

an hour picking up keywords as

27:58

I go. And then I stare at it. out upon

28:01

the New York City skyline and I just kind

28:03

of feel what the vibes are and that's how

28:05

I absorb my news every day. So Chris

28:07

Aliza is actually, it turns out, fairly

28:10

interesting as a person. He grows up in

28:12

Connecticut. It appears that he grew up in

28:14

a fairly middle class family, but he also

28:16

went to an elite boarding school whose name

28:18

I forget and I don't care about. And

28:22

he has no interest in politics. He

28:25

gets into it because he gets

28:27

an internship with George Will when

28:29

he's in college and

28:31

the only reason he's even heard of George Will

28:34

at the time is that George Will wrote a

28:36

book about baseball and he's like a sports guy.

28:39

And I actually, I mean we talked about it briefly before,

28:41

but like I think the rise

28:43

of people like Chris Aliza is

28:45

part of this transformation of

28:47

political journalism into essentially sports

28:50

commentary. Whenever he works

28:52

for George Will, he works for something called

28:54

Roll Call which is one of these political

28:56

who's up, who's down things. Then

28:59

in 2005 he gets hired by The Washington Post

29:01

and has a column called The Fix. He

29:04

gets famous when he starts doing

29:06

these videos for Washington Post of like who

29:08

had the best and worst week in Washington.

29:10

Oh yeah. You remember this and there's like

29:12

a wheel that he spins and everything? Yeah,

29:15

yeah, yeah. This

29:18

must have been when I was actually absorbing political

29:21

nonsense like this as a young guy. I

29:25

was living in DC for a

29:28

bit after college and reading

29:30

the hot blogs and absorbing

29:32

trash into

29:35

my brain. So we're going to watch some

29:37

of this trash. Oh God, okay.