Tim Miller: Here’s Why You Need to Shut Up

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is February twenty fourth two thousand thirteen. Happy Friday And because it’s Friday, it means that Tim Miller is back with me. How are you doing, Tim?

Are you ready for the weekend? I’m doing good. Unfortunately, we taped these in the mornings,

you know. So if you don’t get the full Friday Tim experience. Right? Maybe one of these days, we should tape one of these, like, at eight thirty after I’ve had a happy hour. We should acknowledge that in fact,

we’re not even doing this on Friday. This is Thursday. And the reason I’m mentioning this is that I’m scheduled to do that one on one event later Thursday with Paul Ryan. So by the time you and I are officially talking, we’ve already had it. But I can’t I can’t tell you anything about it.

You know, what happened? I don’t

know. But we can imagine, like, is he battered and bruised? You know? No. It’s it’s do we think at this at this moment?

Who’s to say? I’m excited for

you though. There’s going to be tough love. Tough love has love, but it also has a toughness in it. Okay. So there’s a bunch of things I wanted to get your take on I have to admit that I am not totally up to speed on all of the rules and the regulations and the bureaucratic decisions that were made, that were not made, involving that horrific train derailment in in Ohio, the Palestinian Ohio.

But it’s become the usual political firestorm of finger pointing from a PR point of view. So here we have Joe Biden going to keve, and you have Donald Trump going to Palestine, Ohio. And he’s really making the point I’m here. The president’s not here. Why has Pete Buttigieg not showed up in Ohio.

So again, I don’t know a lot about the underlying issues here. Should Biden have gone to Ohio? Should Pete Buttigieg have gone to

Ohio? Thank you for just teeing me up for a PR question. Because boy, I I’m not here to talk about rail regulatory policy. I’m sure that there are things that could be tightened up on that front. I did once consult seeking a PR for a a private rail, and I’ll just just throw this out there.

Rail accidents are more common than you realize. And I think this this comment relates to the PR side of things, and I think the mistake that Pete and the Biden administration made was — Yeah. If you are the person at the comms department at the Department of Transportation and you’re just getting a little memo every time a train derails, like, you’re getting a lot of memos. Right? And, you know, train derailments and train crashes and even deaths happen way more often than you realize, don’t make the news.

Maybe don’t know. Maybe it should be on the news more. I mean, it’s just like it’s like a car accident. Like, car accidents on the highway don’t don’t make the news really except unless it’s local news and there’s a backup and I ninety five that people need to hear about before they leave work. Right?

So I think that that is my impression based on Pete’s early comments is what was underlying this mistake, like, of this political mistake of just not getting out in front of it a little earlier. Now, I think that

substantively. He had it just turned on television and seen it was a BFD. Yeah.

Well, no. No. There are a few days where it really was a little delayed on television. I mean, it was on the night when he was, I think, in the second night. And I think that, you know, substantively, you know, at least what my understanding is.

And I think if you listen to what Governor DeWine says in his press conference is that federal government, like, offered help immediately. Right? And and there’s the Hawaiian press conference a few days after the derailment where he says, where, you know, they ask him what he needs from Joe Biden and he says nothing. Right? You know, he says that they’ve they’ve offered help.

You know, we have this under control. Yada yada. That’s what the governor of Ohio says — Mhmm. — which seems like political mistake by the governor of Ohio. So I I think that that is what this sort of you know, the commonality of train issues aligned with the fact that, like, they felt like they were doing what they should, right, led them to, I think, have a little bit of a PR blind spot on this one.

And, you know, Pete going there today, three weeks feels a little late. And and I think that it is it is important, like, in politics, You too have to understand that dealing with the merits of the case is the most important part of the job. Right? That the policy part of this, the governing part is most important. But the optics part is part of it.

Right? You have to win. Like, that’s just part of the reality of this thing. And, like, you have to you have to send a message, and I think that — Mhmm. — in this case, what you see is the Republicans, I think, like, really disingenuously in a lot of ways, trying to do this reverse Katrina situation.

Right? Which is which is, like, you don’t care about white people. Right? You don’t care about rural white people. Like, well, you you didn’t respond to this because it’s a cholacha and these are maggas and these are trumpers.

Now that’s bullshit. Yeah. But responding to that, you know, requires both substantive response to actually care about these people, as well as optics response, right, to go there, demonstrate that you actually share it. And I think that let yeah. Showing it.

I think that letting Trump get there first was, you know, a little mistake. I I just one really quick thing for you chime in. I do not abide the fucking bullshit about how Biden should have gone to Palestine before Ukraine. And I’ve seen a lot of reasonable actual even centrist kind of center you know, centrist commentator saying this and I’m like, that is insane Biden could have sent Pete or Kamala or someone else to Palmyra, he tried this, like this is the biggest landmark in over a half century. This is, you know, tens of thousands of people dead.

Just absolutely critical world historic event. Thank God, Biden went there. And that’s just petty smallball bullshit. To try to hit him over that. So what about Trump?

There was certain nimbleness before

we get into the fact that he’d rolled back train safety regulations, which we have to mention here. She did show up with his apparently ten year old bottles of Trump water, which he distributed. At least she wasn’t handing out the old steaks I mean, are you sitting around the comm room and your candidate goes, you go, hey, this is good. This is a good photo op. Why not?

Any downside for Trump showing up?

I’m in an uncomfortable situation. You’re coming on this podcast. People are gonna be like, dude, is there a body snatcher situation criticizing the heat and and saying Trump did something good. But look, your friend Norma Desmond and the people that listened to your Olivia and Newsy podcast does work going back and read. Listening to it, by the way.

Her her Norma does in Trump comparison. I am ready for my close-up. Old Norma barely left South Florida since he announced for the presidency. I mean, literally, I think he left to sit in Florida one time on he did that little South Carolina. I think one other state campaign, John.

I mean, he’s barely left his house. You know? I mean, he’s like, only showing up to be the wedding singer at Mar a Lago weddings. You know, and I think that it’s demonstrated a, for lack of a better term, low energy, effort at the beginning of this campaign. And I think that he’s gotten out this is a great Jonathan Chate, peace.

And Alex Roydy has peace about this in Miami, Harold, today, about how does scientists kind of really beat Trump in his own game about, you know, getting out there, you know, making news, a lot of it bullshit out of its performative BS, right, but you’re getting on news and people would be like, oh, this guy’s a fighter. Like, that was Trump’s bread and butter. Oh, he’s a fighter. It’s, you know, it’s just a PROM, but he’s he’s doing the optics part but not the substance part. So this I think was his first really good move politically since he launched Yeah.

You might say maybe standing with Kevin in congress j J. V. I’ll mention that to me as as another one, but maybe those are the only two that you can even think of, and Trump’s had a really sluggish The

problem is the bar has been so low — Yeah. — because he’s done nothing. So by saying this was the best move, that’s really not saying much. Here’s the counterspin that I’m reading in political this morning. Donald Trump’s visit to the site of a toxic train derailment in Ohio is offering a political opening to battered Biden administration officials.

By calling new attention to the former president’s record of rolling back regulations on both rail safety and hazardous chemicals. Trump’s administration withdrew an Obama era proposal to require faster brakes on trains carrying highly flammable materials, ended regular rail safety audits of railroads and mothball depending rule requiring freight trains to have at least two crew members. He also placed a veteran of the chemical industry in charge of the EPA’s chemical safety office where she made industry friendly changes to how the agency studied health risks. Of course, this is the moment where we remind people that Donald Trump superpower is complete lack of shame. So none of that came up when he was tossing the bottles of Trump water.

In Ohio. And

so we’ll see how how Pete does getting a he’s in Palestine today as we’re as we’re taping this and and making those arguments. We’re grown up, Charlie. We can carry these two thoughts together than I had at the same time. Obviously, Trump didn’t give a shit about the EPA. You do not have to be a regulatory expert on on rail policy to understand that, like, the priorities of the Trump administration was not, you know, rail safety and environmental safety.

I that was not their priorities. Clearly, there were some things done that could have been done to shore this up with who the hell knows. Right? We wait the actual report on this trained. That said, okay, there are gonna be a lot of people out there that don’t understand the intricacies of real in environmental policies.

You can make these arguments, but you also have to demonstrate that you’re fighting for these people. You’re on the sides of these people. Look, you’ll Clinton got this. Right? George Bush got this.

Like and Biden has at times really done well with this with old Scranton Joe. And, you know, maybe that’s unfair or, you know, maybe that’s know, BS or just doing kind of figure skating judging here. And that’s a fair criticism, I guess, of media. But the people in rural America need to see, okay, there’s a problem in your neck of the woods. We really care.

You know, host the old George h w Bush was someone who struggled with this. What was the old thing in the teleprompter message I care? You know, I you you need to actually show them that. And I think that, you know, you can do both. Right?

You have to do both. Right? Which is to say, wait a minute. Actually, it was these assholes that that stripped back the safety regulations around this. And at the same time, I’m gonna be here and make sure that we help these communities rebuild.

You

gotta do both. Okay. So since we’re on the topic of PR advice, I have rained and railed about this now for because this probably would be the third consecutive day started on Twitter, talked about it on my podcast briefly yesterday with with Brian Rosenwald. But I wanna tee this up again this four person from the Florida Grand jury who who embarked on this press tour headline in a drudge she jeopardizes Trump indictment question mark coy, cryptic cringe, exclamation point. So, Tim, how did this happen?

I

would like to know. I’m just throwing this out there. Look, I’m I’m retired from PR. Okay. Except for when you or Stephanie Ruehl asked me to give PR advice on TV for free.

Okay. So I’m retired. And that said, this is such a bad situation that, you know, if somebody knows the poor woman, you can give her my number. And I’m happy just to get have a PR call with her. Just a pro bono, just one call maybe director to somebody else that’s that that’s still in the in the

biz. Would advice be shut up, and I’ll send you my bill? Mean, that’d be

my main advice. Yeah. But sometimes be doing PR, you know, I know that we’re we get a bad or apple PR folks, but there’s also some hand holding that’s required with that. Right? Like, shut up.

And also, here’s why you need to shut up. And let me talk you through why you need to shut up. And oh, maybe here a couple little things that we could do to, you know, make you feel like you’re you’re shaping the narrative because right now you’re letting the narrative shape you and she she was asked this by an MSNBC reporter why she’s doing this? And and apparently, she said, I don’t know, the direct quote, but something to the effect of know, I don’t want other people out there telling the story about what happened in this grand jury, you know, before we do, I wanna be able to, like, get the facts out there. And it’s just like, which she not doing, but going.

Yeah. I mean, what you’re doing is just you’re not executing on that goal at all. And and all you’re doing is making yourself a punching bag for all these bad faith maggas, you know, who want to muddy the waters and find excuses for Trump. And and and and there’s a reason that jury should be kind of like the wizard of Oz behind the curtain. Right?

Like, you don’t wanna know the d j. Like, we don’t wanna see all twelve jurors that that made this decision because then you can make it about

them and not about the merits of what Trump and these other folks did. There’s a reason why we keep these proceedings secret and what the fourth person usually is secret. But, you know, on a number of different levels, I don’t know whether this officially, formally, legally taints any indictments that come down. We won’t know that for for some time. What we do know is that we’re already getting signals from some of the targets.

Of this investigation that they will in fact move to quash any indictment because of her comment, so it’s become an issue. Also, I think it’s naive not to realize that all of these cases play out in two different venues, in the court of law where these technicalities matter a great deal. But also in the court of public opinion. And she certainly has done herself and the prosecutors and the jury no favors at all. What a surprise the Trump world would have, you know, seized upon this because she does not look serious.

She does not look credible. She does undermine this. She certainly taints this recommendation. Now, again, just to remind people, the grand jury in Georgia only makes recommendations. It is up to the DA Fannie Willis to make the decision and, you know, she will walk it through.

But, you know, again, this is just this is just not helpful. And and I’m not sure that there’s much that can be done about it. And as I said yesterday in the park, I’m not blaming the media for having her on. I mean, that’s not their job is to cover up for it. But I think that the way the story played out sounding like it was really, really, you know, newsworthy and important, and then it just keeps going and it becomes more and more ridiculous.

Really almost like a gift. And she did her several other interviews. I just just just two I think one compliment and then one thing that might be a little mean, but, you know, that’s the weekend pop. Fannie, Willis, I’ve heard just nothing but overwhelming. Like, the people that are, you know, legal experts, you know, that are are friends George Conway’s of the world and Bikari Sellars on this podcast while back was talking about it.

I mean, she seems to be taking this seriously in a way that some of the early criticism of Marek Garland you know, she moved. She was a fast mover on this and and deserves credit. So hopefully, you know, it’s now been almost a month since they said the indictments are coming. So fingers crossed, hopefully, that that she does her job and that this little kerfuffle with the four woman doesn’t ruined, you know, I think a lot of real work that’s come out of Fulton County, DA’s office. Am I just one other observation?

He’s like, doesn’t it make you wonder who else is on this journey?

You’ve selected the forward. I’m sorry if that’s mean, but I it does. But See, this is the problem. You actually don’t wanna see this. Imagine if we had interviews like this in every single case like this, it would be like, oh, okay.

You know, we keep telling ourselves the jury system is working, and it’s all wonderful and everything. And, anyway, I don’t care. Alright. So let let’s talk about another big story that we would need to get our heads around. New York Times has a very interesting analysis about Kevin McCarthy’s decision to give all of the January sixth capital surveillance footage exclusively, not just the Fox News, but exclusively to Tucker Carlson.

So the headline is insuring video with Fox House. McCarthy hits rewind on January sixth, in greening exclusive access to a cable news host vent on rewriting the history of the attack. The speaker effectively outsourced a politically toxic re litigation of the riot. This is really fascinating. I mean, obviously, this is his latest move to appease the right wing of his party.

I think it’s an interesting way that Luke Broadwater and Jonathan Swan put this that he’s effectively outsourcing a bid to reinvestigate the riot to his favorite cable news commentator who has circulated conspiracy theories about the assault. See, Tim, this is one of those cases where this looks bad, but I think the reality is much worse than it even looks.

Yeah. I think it much more than looks. And here is we finally get some synergy. We have all these topics where the policy and the politics are both bad. I guess I understand in the narrow sense why McCarthy’s doing this.

You know, it’s nice to get in good with the biggest host on cable news. It is nice to shore up, you know, the crazy caucus, the margetail grains, and, you know, the Jim Jordans, and the people that want to reinvestigate January six. And, you know, want justice for the rioters and all this nonsense. Mhmm. And so I get why he’s doing that to shore up his own conference that that this is part of the demands for why,

you know, he got to be the speaker and name only. Any promise I promised McCarthy said on Wednesday in a brief phone interview. I promised I was going to do this. These were part of my gonerads that I was carving off to give to these people.

Yeah. I think the politics of this is really bad, though, for them. I mean, why would they want to do this? Taking away all the merits of all this, and just just thinking of this as, what are issues that are good for Republicans to talk about? Like, what is good for the party that is, you know, if this is in the news?

Immigration, maybe this train derailment, inflation. Like, when people are talking about that, the Democrats are on the defense crime of the border. When we’re talking about January sixth, like, that is a loser. Like, did you not learn anything from the midterms? I just think that this is a nightmare.

We’re talking about this now. They’re talking about in the news. Whatever Tucker puts out, that’s gonna cause another round of you know, recriminations and analysis. I just think this is a massive loser in the biggest picture even if it’s a small ball win in keeping his conference happy. I I think the question is it’s also an opening for the Democrats.

Should the Democrats now release this footage? And because they have it, there are Democrats that have access to this, which is not as it as it’s only the speaker, and they’d had the January sixth committee to other media outlets. I think maybe so Well, I I think the

other media outlets have to immediately make requests to get them as well. I mean, that’s the only check on this. Right? Otherwise, you know what you know what You know

what? Charleston’s gonna do. And there’s forty one thousand hours of footage. You know, he’s gonna take the eight hours where you have, like, people looking silly, walking through the hallways, you know, hootin’ and holler in, or I’m sure there’s some video, somebody cleaning up the poop on the ground. Right?

I mean, like, you it was forty one thousand hours of footage I do think that we’ve as we’ve all said from the start, you know, there were different levels to this kind of riot. There were people that were actively there to riot and caused harm. There were people that got caught up in the moment. And there are people who are like, where am I right now? Oh my god.

I’m in the capital. Right? And I’m loosing around and think that the DOJ has done a good job of making sure that the people that were actively there to harm police officers and riot and, you know, are being held accountable. So you know what Tucker’s gonna do is just focus on that supporting evidence of that last group and and I’m sure he’ll probably come up with some other conspiracies, which is always supporting evidence that somebody was a Fed or that the cops let them in or something. You know, there are plenty of ways to muddy the waters here if you just get down into the super micro, and that’s what he’s gonna try to do.

I mean,

the power of editing. I mean, we’ve we’ve seen what you can do with this. I mean, look, you you have mildly talented editor and and you can make January six look out like the berrymansello concert. I mean, it’s just whatever he wants to do. The importance is is I think for other eyes to be on this, to be able to point out the kinds of edits that that he makes, not that it will matter, not that there’s any shame at Fox.

And not that the Fox audience actually gives a shit about any of this.

I think they were surprise him rock as baring men alone concerts back in the early eighties. You know, people, you know, ladies throwing their

undergarments at him. I I never went to a very man-in-law concert. No? I picked him completely randomly

surprising. I would’ve I’ve leaned into your expertise on

You could’ve bust me. You could’ve said, well, you know, what about the berryman level concert in Altamonte where, you know, twenty people work out. I never so I forgot about that. I just didn’t know. I I was just trying to think of, you know, it would be very mellow in which the demographic would skew, you know, not scary.

Our people would

never do this. So our so as I was around Johnson said our people would never do this. The berry man alone people would never write it. It’s only their people. Yeah.

Tifa’s. Black Lives Matter.

He meant that very sincerely. You have to understand that he meant that very sincerely. They were people people who look like me, you know, somebody from Oshkosh, not the kind of people that we ought to be I dare not lock you.

No. I’m not interested.

It wasn’t That’s that’s the conspiracy theories. Paranormal. UFO’s During the entire nineteen seventy one debacle of this red die number two, parents all around America were buying Frank and Berry, so only a few days after the cereal was released, kids all across the country. Started being rushed to hospitals. All of them had one symptom in common.

Fairees of the third kind on YouTube or wherever you listen. Okay. So I I know that you wanna talk about the Rolled All story. The vandalism of Rolled All and I think

it’s nice when we can have a disagreement. That’s

why I wanted to do it. We agree all the time. Right, Joe? You

know, this podcast. People love the Friday pod, I think, maybe because it’s just often a dunk session. Then after time to time, we gotta mix it up for folks who don’t think we get bored. It said, are you ready for my my pitch on why the roll doll thing is not a big deal? And we’re we’re maybe overstating it.

Well, you could tell me why you’d disagree with me. For starters, so I’ve got a little quick trivia for you. Maybe you’re ready for this because you seem to be doing a lot of reading on this. But in in the original Charlie and the chocolate in nineteen sixty four. The opal lupus were when it was written in nineteen sixty four, do you know what the opal lupus were?

Yeah. Yeah. African pigs.

No. They

weren’t born faced, but green haired people. And they made the change in seventy one for the movie. And I think that was probably a great change. I don’t think Charlie and Chocolate Factory, which is one of my favorite movies. I love Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.

And I don’t think that would be canon, probably. These days if it was African pygmy. So I think they made the right decision to strip that from the art. And, you know, life moved on. Was nothing.

It was not like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. It was something that, you know, made a change to go at the times. And here we are. I don’t think that these I I have not, like, looked at every single change. I don’t think these changes are that.

I think that okay. Could we talk about this

picture? This is an interesting thing. And, of course, doesn’t necessarily provide a justification for the vandalism by the, you know, the inclusive children with hammers in the China shop that we’re having right now. Helen Lewis writes about this in in the Atlantic, you know. And one of the inadvertently funniest amendments is a passage in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Which once explained how the Oompa Lumpas, whom Dall originally wrote specifically were African pigmies, had actually come to work for Willie Wonka. It was easy the deranged capitalist inventor used to say in the prebaldurized version that I smuggled them over in large packing cases with holes in them. In the newly sanitized version, Wonka, instead, tells his audience that the Oompa Lumpas were volunteers and quote, they’ve told me they love it here. Yes, the sensitivity readers have somehow recreated a classic trope from colonial literature If those slaves are unhappy, why are they singing all the time? Thank you for the clarification, mister Wonka, and now perhaps your PR firm.

Could explain why the Oompa Lumpas are not allowed to leave the factory. No. They had slaves anyway. I I

I think that there’s a lot of as someone who has that five year old has to suffer through children’s movies and literature, there’s a lot of inconsistency, so you know, other children’s are. Oh, look. My point is if we wanna have a new version, I I I liked the I always forget what his real name is. I’ll opend it. The Nick Catagio.

Yeah. Nick Catagio. If we’re gonna reprint this we need to at least, you know, write that it was, you know, roll all as edited by inclusive media or whatever. So, you know, if there’s a version of it out there and they don’t wanna call agoustis fat. Okay.

I don’t I don’t know. I mean, should should we have a little bit more sensitivity towards fat kids? Are there some fat kids whose feelings get hurt reading this? Who, you know, are are fat not because of their

gluttonous, but just because of their gee model. Probably

Is it okay? Is it like it? Is it that big of a deal, though? It doesn’t matter. Is this not the government’s sensors?

Okay. I am not gonna accuse you being what? We’re not going. Library to library taking out all the old Charlie and the chocolate factories. We’re not banning the original from TV.

You know, this isn’t Russia. You know, we don’t have art department somewhere deep inside the government where somebody’s airbrushing over photos to get land and out of them. Like, that’s not what this is. It’s a new version by a company that may or may not be misguided. Is that that big of a deal?

Well, no. See, here’s the big deal, because I don’t use the word censorship. I know that some people like, you know, Salman Rajdi, who disagrees with you, you know, thought that it was absurd, that it was sensitivity. It is not censorship. It is vandalism.

It is the stupidity. It is how bad it is. It is the way they have inserted just completely irrelevant stuff into it. They do not have any literary talent. You know, and I understand that there might not be a legal right they know that legally, they have the right to do this, which is by the way, is a dumb argument because there’s a lot of things that we have the legal right to do that are not right to do.

The brits actually recognize some moral right that writers have to not have their work destroyed. But I think the larger point here, Tim, is that we’re talking about rolled doll. These books are not sweet. They are not in offensive. They are not happy.

And in fact, because I knew we were gonna talk about it. I wanted to bring in somebody who really, I think, really gets the rule doll culture and everything. Oh my god. Is this a special guest? This is like we’re on

Sally Jeff Jesse Raphael and you’re gonna bring in like Tim. This is your life.

That’s right. Okay. Open the door here because here is to explain why this was like doubly and doubly stupid. Here’s Alyssa Rosenberg. From the Washington Post who actually said this on Sunny Bunch’s podcast.

This is Alyssa.

This sort of bolderization misses the point, which is that the deep nastiness of Rolled Doll’s work has nothing to do with sort of one off references or which books Matilda is reading and everything to do with the sort of deep sort of sense of cruelty and unfairness at the heart of the stories themselves, and that’s what makes them great. Right? Rolled All’s books scared the hell out of me when I was a kid, and they were some of my favorite things to read. You know, the witches, for example, which has the, you know, the really egregious example of editing you mentioned, where you have bizarre line about women’s, like, wigs and gloves and everything. That’s a story about witches who have basically like an international plan to genocide children and they are competing against each other to see who can kill the most children.

The happy ending involves the narrator being turned into a mouse and realizing that this means that, like, he won’t outlive his grandmother because he’s probably only gonna live another nine years, and she’s probably only gonna live another nine or ten years. And he doesn’t really want anyone else to take care of him. So it’s like, they’ll both die when they’re, you know, at the same time and he’ll be a mouse forever, but they’ll have, like, done insurgency against the witches. Right? I mean, Charlie in the Chocolate Factory is a book about a, you know, desperately poor child who is thrust by the totally capricious and insane whims of an incredibly rich man into the company of just these awful other children from, you know, terrible families.

You know, Matilda is a story about a child who is sort of basically unwanted and unloved until she meets someone who helps her understand her specialness. I mean, these are very much books that are not built around, you know, building up reader’s self esteem or even necessarily sort of identification with the characters, but are about introducing the idea that the world can be cruel and disgusting and unbeatably unfair and that what you have going for you is sort of your wits and your gumption. And they can be really upsetting. I mean, I remember the the original illustrations in the witches. Scared the hell out of me when I was a kid.

I mean, the, like, illustration of the grand which is rotting face frighten me so much that I literally had a posted note over it in the book because The book scared me. That image gave me nightmares, but I found the tension and the stakes and the creativity of it magnetic. And so I wanted to read it over and over and over again. I made the part of the book that I couldn’t handle bearable on my own terms even as I was allowing it to challenge me as a reader in other ways. And, you know, I think that a healthy diet of kids’ books is never gonna be one thing.

Right? I mean, there are gonna be stories with genuinely happy endings. They’re gonna be the Hermione Granger’s the literary world who are smart and grow up and figure out how to be pretty. But there are gonna be parts of life that are dark or unfair or upsetting, and dolls books are a really perfect early encounter with that. And The idea that you need to clean up these books around the edges strikes me as a double failure of literary stewardship because you’re defacing the text, but you also are demonstrating that you don’t understand that the nastiness of the stories is what makes them powerful.

It’s not just that you’re essentially committing an act of vandalism, but you’re demonstrating an ignorance of the importance of the work in the first place. Doll’s books, and not just his books, but his memoirs, you know, boy and going solo, which are great, and I highly recommend to anyone who hasn’t read those real life stories because they give you a real sense of where all the hell is coming from. If you don’t understand the work and what makes it great, you shouldn’t be the steward of it, and it’s just incredibly disappointing.

Incredibly disappointing. And by the way, that was Alyssa Rosenberg from across the movie aisle. So I I guess the the thing is Tim, you know, if if people don’t like Rolled Doll’s books and this night, you said, don’t read them, but but don’t pretend that hacking, chopping, and flattening a few words and saying taking out words like fat and black and everything. He’s gonna transform them into something soft squishy safe and inclusive because there’s just I just don’t So that’s a podcast that’s about the, you know, movie and culture industry. And and I think

that a criticism of what’s this company called Insights or whatever for having no talent in in editing them and for not understanding the underlying value of Doll is fairness as well. That’s fine. Expanding that out into, like, this being part of some politicized like local culture and we need to have Fox News segments about it and people are trying to take doll away from you. Nobody’s trying to take doll away from anybody. And I think that updating things for the times.

I I tell you not to get too personal or whatever here, but, like, the number of old nursery rhymes and old stories that are racist is like pretty alarming and like pretty jarring. And as I, you know, go back and read some of these things and have to read it to a five year old that is black and that has gay ads. A lot of them have had to be changed you know, any, me, my name, Moe used to be about the n word. Okay? Yeah.

So, like, a lot of that stuff has had to be changed. A lot of the stuff that do you sand it down. There are a lot of TV shows and movies that if you watch it on TNT on Saturday afternoon, you know, it doesn’t have all of my favorite customers. If I wanna have to watch pulp fiction on cable, it doesn’t have all my favorite customer. It’s like there are a lot of examples of this.

And I just like from a political standpoint, this is problem for politicians if people are saying, no. You cannot read your child, the original Charlie, the Chicago factory. And we’re gonna take it out a school library. And we’re gonna replace it with this terrible, like, newspeak orwellian woke version. Like, okay, that’s something to be mad about at a local school board.

But, like, what this is is a critique of this company. Like, that’s fine. A cultural critique of this company is fine. But, like, trying to expand into, oh, it’s not a good thing. To trying to update some of these old nursery engine stories, so they feel more inclusive for kids that are reading them.

But that’s where this all gets a little bit to me to be way over the top and I get uncomfortable with the arguments that are being put

forth. Well, I’m not gonna deal with this strong man there because I think that clearly you know, some of the the updating is is completely justifiable. I mean, you should take out the n word. You you don’t need to, you know, have those cuss words on Saturday television. I get that.

But simply because some things need to be changed is not an argument for saying that it’s okay to change everything merely because there have been some edits in the past does not mean that every edit by the inclusion collective in the future is a good idea. And I guess what you’re seeing here is the and and Mona and I talked about it on our podcast. There’s sort of this notion that We have to bubble wrap children. Okay. It’s one thing, just take out the overt racism and we can have a discussion about that, but I would not have a problem with that.

But it’s the bubble wrapping the notion that, boy, if somebody read about somebody with a double chin or they were fat or we had to look explain why some people wear wigs and all of this. It’s like, people at some point in our culture, can we understand that we cannot protect children from everything that might even theoretically make them uncomfortable. So leave out the politics and simply because some jerk on Fox News is gonna demagogue this. Doesn’t mean we can even say, you know, that’s really not a good idea. Isn’t isn’t one of the things that we’ve learned, Tim, is that it’s important to call out people on our own side is to seek, you know, bad trends and say, okay, even though you might be subject to some unfair criticism, this is still really not a good idea.

As a rolled out editor’s on

my side, I’m saying, I don’t I don’t think so. I don’t know. I don’t I don’t know that they need to be called out by me. I I guess that’s my point. I think that maybe that these are some well intentioned people with no literary talent, and that’s a fine criticism, I think.

But I I think that we can really you know, once we start to expand it out beyond that, I I get a little bit of skeptical of some of the arguments that are big weight. This is a sign of culture that our kids can’t take bad news. Kids get plenty of bad news. There’s plenty of bad there’s plenty of bad shit in the world. Kids have plenty of bad experiences.

If you’re a fat kid and you don’t wanna read a book, about a fact that the game made fun of. I’m sensitive to that. I think

that that’s fun. Okay. That is okay. I can’t wait till I get to buy the copyright to your book, see how you feel. One.

I own the country. Yeah. You

have one. Nobody should change a single word of why we did it. Okay. That is a masterpiece. Alright?

I will not have my art vandalized, Charlie. I

think we will update it to include everyone that you don’t like, I’ll call them a poopy head. Just edited right. Okay. I’m sorry. This deteriorated because I wanted to be the defender of high literature.

Okay. Rhonda Santos, we haven’t talked about him yet. He went to New York to give a big law and order speech, and you had a great story about the politics of law and order. So What is your take on? Rhonda Santos, who’s on the road, who’s commenting on stuff, and who’s going around the country basically saying, I’m the guy who’s gonna back the blue.

Well, I think that the democrats need to start to really aggressively prosecute this fight because the reality is if we just look at the stats of what is happening in our cities and what’s happening across the country when it comes to crime. There are two main problems. Like one, is not a lot of police departments are actually defunded, but if you talk to any urban police department, if you talk to any cop, I have friends or cops, Like, the culture around policing in urban environments has, you know, I think they feel like there’s a lack of support. There’s less policing happening than there used to be. This is not as long as we go back in line to write Brook Jenkins interview.

There’s a way to, you know, have more policing and more comps and not you know, support dirty cops and not support cop killers and all that. But, right, there there needs to be maybe greater support for policing. In our cities. And that’s a criticism that Republicans wield against Democrats to blame them for crime. Okay?

Meanwhile, there’s another big problem which is we have this massive proliferation of guns that is just unlike anything in the history of the world as far as the amount of firepower that we have in this country and unrelated to any other, you know, first world country. Nobody else, you know, the exception of, you know, countries that basically have no rule of law, have this level of you know, firepower in the hands of the citizenry, and that’s causing a lot of deaths. And so if you look at the actual stats, Madagascar has been really good about this, The highest crime states are often red states, like the top five highest crime murder states are mostly in the south and south eastern Missouri. If you look at Florida, Rhonda Santos flies to New York to lecture New Yorkers about law and order and how they’re not supporting comps enough. Meanwhile, The big cities in Florida have a much higher crime rate and murder rate than New York does.

Why? Because they have lax gun laws. Right? And so we just have two days after Ronda Santos goes to lecture New Yorkers about law and order. We have a shooting in Orlando where a nine month old dies and then local news goes to cover it.

And the local news reporter that goes to cover a catch shot. Jeez. And they get killed. That happened in Florida. Like, where is the law in order for that?

Part Glint happened in Florida, Pulse happened in Florida. Like like the democrats need to go on often to this and not allow Republicans to lecture them about

this. And have to say, no. We need to support police, but, yeah, you are making a really interesting point here. Because The Republicans and the right and the conservative media have done a really masterful job of portraying cities like Chicago and New York and Los Angeles as absolute freaking hell holes. Right?

That is the image and and the focus on crime. And now there’s a certain justification for the fact that there are a lot of murders. But your point being Look over your shoulder at some of these red states, including Rhonda Santos’ state, and look at the amount of violence, look at the amount of mass murder and everything. And look how he is responding on a policy basis that, you know, rather than doing anything at all, that seems reasonable to confirm this, what are they doing? They are passing laws that I think are frankly textbook insane.

That’s this whole idea of, you know, constitutional carry without permits, background checks. Anybody, you know, can stick a handgun in their pocket and walk around anywhere. I mean, this is madness. And yet somehow, the Republicans have been successful in saying we are the party of law and order. We are the anti violence party, which is in many ways, ludicrous.

Yeah.

And it’s and part of it is, look, there is a racial subtext to this. There’s a lot of people in cities, and so you hear more about city crime. Right? And and, you know, things are less spread out. But look, here’s I’m just pulled up this a glacier threat, which is really good on this.

Brooklyn has more than twice as many people combined as Miami plus Jackson built the two big cities in Miami that have Republican mayors. It’s not even it’s not even like, oh, it’s the blue parts of the red states. No. These have Republican mayors, Miami and Jacksonville. And Brooklyn has twice as many people and fewer murders.

Queens has more people than either city and fewer murders. Right? So, you know, you have this impression that, oh, these democratic big democratic cities are law less and and, you know, there’s just crime happening everywhere. And there has been a crime of tech in in some of these big cities, but New York is actually significantly safer. There’s been a lot of these other

places.

And Democrats have to make that case, not as a not as a way to say, oh, we don’t need to do anything. Oh, we’re perfect. Like New York is safer than Florida, but to say, look, you know, there’s some things we’re doing right here. Which is trying to have some reasonable laws about firearms while not doing gun confiscation, but reasonable firearm laws. And, you know, there are other things we could do a little bit better, you know, as far as supporting the police and, you know, making sure they have the resources they need.

I think that’s a winning argument. And it’s something that Joe Biden incidentally believes and, you know, they just can’t be scared to make it because they’re worried that people don’t get mad at them on the left line. Why do people get mad at them on the left line? You know, because I think that anytime you say, oh, we need to support police and have more resources for police, there’s gonna be a there’s gonna be a cadre of people within the Democratic coalition, not really a ton of elected officials to cancel, that will say, no, actually, we need police abolition, you know, we need to fully reform and there do need to be some

placing reforms. Right? Isn’t that an opportunity for Biden to stand up and say, okay, no, I disagree. Do not conflate me with these guys. We disagree on this.

Yeah. I don’t we don’t need police abolition. Sure. We need accountability for bad cops. You know, police unions need to stop protecting bad cops.

Of course. But we also need funding and resources for the people that are keeping our community safe. And meanwhile, we need less we need less AR fifteen. Yeah. Constitutional carry is insane.

It’s insane. Like, no permit.

I think he did to write this again. I think I think this is a great point. I really do. I think this is a very, very relevant point. You know, particularly since Ronda Santos flies out of his state to lecture other states about this while you have the carnage, you know, in his rearview mirror.

This ought to be pointed out, Tim. I I just think. That’s what I’m saying. Take it to him. I know that you’ve already addressed this question, and maybe it’s been beaten to death.

And and I understand the people who say, you know, why do you paying attention to Marjorie Taylor Green? Well, the answer is she’s on the Homeland Security Committee. She holds the speaker to the House of Representatives. Testicles in a lockbox, and yet she’s not backing off from this whole idea of national divorce. The idea that we should have kind of a quasi civil war where separation between the blue and red states.

I mean, it’s an insane idea. It’s an impractical idea. It’s an unserious idea. But she’s getting airtime for it. She’s getting some traction for it.

Sean Hannity is taking it seriously. Charlie, Kirkland is taking it seriously. What should we make? Should we should we mock this or say, this is kind of scary because we’re moving from sedition to secession at warp speed. Can we do both?

Mark? And so so here’s the thing to be worried about. Right? Is

that you get whatever the number is. I think you had Will Sommer on the podcast pretty scary podcast

that’s queuing on.

And so he said there are ten million queuing on people out there. Okay. Well, let’s say one percent of those people. Are potentially able to be spurred to violence. It’s a hundred thousand people.

Let’s say that’s point one percent. It’s ten thousand people. Ten thousand people can cause a lot of problems. Right? So I think there’s reason to take this seriously and and to be appalled, frankly, that Fox would give voicedness that nobody within the Republican Party seems to want to slap her down, that they just want to eye roll.

I you would think that that they would learn that oh, let’s pretend the crazies don’t exist. I roll it away. Strategy doesn’t work, you know, after the capital was seige, but I guess they haven’t learned that. They’re sticking with the same strategy. I also think it’s worth mocking.

I mean, we can have a little bit of fun here. I should just you know, when I think about the national divorce, the only part of it that appeals to me at all, and I’m is completely disgusting and and and I don’t. But just if if we’re gonna indulge the fantasy for a second, having to think about like the soft boys you know, we’re making fun of Josh Hollie on the next level podcast, which was which you can listen to on Wednesdays. So please go subscribe to that. We make fun of Josh Hollie, but you can think about all the other people.

Like, I think about the National Review Masterhead, like, you know, the original honorees, and where are these guys gonna buy their artisanal tomatoes. How are they gonna go to the opera? Red States is gonna get what? Florida, maybe they get Miami. That’s the nicest thing that they get.

But Jacksonville and Fresno, Like, you know, I assume that they’re not gonna be a globalist. The red country isn’t gonna be a globalist country. It’s gonna be a protectionist country. So there’s gonna be a lot of great American, you know, ingenuity and resources and that they’re not gonna have access to, you know, live you know, they’re gonna have plenty of cracker barrels. That’ll be nice, I guess.

A lot of cracker berry

omeals. I have other questions though. So Marjorie Taylor Green is from Georgia Is Georgia right now? Hey, red state or a blue state? I I don’t know.

She’s gonna have

to move across the way to Alabama. That’ll be too bad. You won’t be able to drive into Atlanta to go do your crossfit. You know, unfortunately, because that’ll went into the blue country. How are you gonna get your lululemon?

Are there any lululemon in Latin America? I don’t think so. What’s aren’t you gonna wear? I think there are a lot of practical issues. I like to to sort of imagine, you know, all of the luxuries of Blue America being denied, the people that like to live in New York, in LA, in D.

C. And pretend like they’re part of the sculpture war, pretend like they’re, you know, out there living. Whatever, Midland. Maybe we should do it by counties

rather than states because you look at the map of most states, including California and Massachusetts, and they’re not uniformly blue. Right? You have your red pocket, so maybe we’ll just do this in our town by town. Yeah. There are more Republicans in Los Angeles County than they are in Wyoming.

That’s literally true by the way. That’s the part that

I like to think about. I like to think about their the trail of tears for the Los Angeles Republicans who’ve got to enjoy all the wonders of Los Angeles and Now they’ve got to move to Laramie. I would like to visit Laramie. Enjoy guys. Little steinbeckian trip for them to move to to their part of the country in the divorce.

That part is is just kind of warms me up a little bit, but the practicalities are are just not there. Yeah. They think the practicalities might be a little

bit complex They got

some people on their side of the divorce in my life. I don’t I’m not looking for civil war. You know what I mean? I

don’t wanna be on the opposite side of my meaning. We can be in the same country. I think civil war would be extremely awesome. So what what is your not my party about this week? I’m looking forward to it.

Not my party is up. It was fox. We had to go deeper on the Fox texts.

Oh, I love

this one. I’m not my party. Like, the Jackie Heinrich thing, I think, got a little bit lost. Yes. And so I really wanted to focus on that, and not my party this

week. This is the reporter who fact checked a fake Donald Trump tweet and Tucker Carlson witnessed demanding that she be fired for telling the truth. Okay?

And Hannity emailed the CEO, Suzanne Scott of the company, it’s a chastiser, and he talks about how the stock price is going down. And, you know, there’s there’s been a lot of discussion around, you know, how their full ship and it’s kind of like dog bites man. News at a lot of the Fox News hosts are are stirring up animus and rage about something they don’t even believe. We all know that that’s happening. There was something for me about the fact that, man, there was one person at the network actually doing their job, you know, reporting the news, reporting what was factual and as punishment for that.

She had the biggest stars of the company trying to get her fired, to me, I I think that shows like a level of depravity that is kind of beyond, you know, the normal stuff we already know about Fox. And so I I focused on that

a little bit this week on on on on on on on on my party. Oh, I cannot wait to watch. We’ll listen. Have a fantastic weekend mister Miller? You too, Charles.

And we will talk shortly. And again, thank you all for listening to this weekend’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back on Monday, and we’ll do this all over again. Biller podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

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