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Podcasts, comedy, and the election

"WTF?"
-Marc Maron watching this whole "we need a Joe Rogan for the left" conversation

There’s been a lotta talk this week about Trump, the manosphere, and comedy-ish podcasts. (I got into this stuff last week too ICYMI.)

It reminds me of how mainstream media and online talking heads always assume SNL is some kinda weekly State of the Union for comedy. (Nah, it’s mostly for high school kids and pundits.)

Well, now they're doing it with bro comedy podcasts. A lot of the takes are about how comedy codes conservative. Um, actually…

1. Please consider that comedians are not actually right wing but just desperate for followers/audience/attention and will go wherever and talk to whomever in order to gain them.

2. Standup contains multitudes. Go see it live and you'll see a wide range of styles/views that can't be reduced for some simplistic thinkpiece. The comics I see nightly in NYC overwhelmingly skew left (if they skew at all).

3. Keep in mind mentally well people don't go into a profession where you crave the approval of strangers nightly.

4. It’d be wise to stop calling us "modern day philosophers" and remember we are merely clowns who sling zingers to sell chicken fingers.

5. Whoever will let comics say anything they want will enjoy our support. Comedians are the first ones to take it on the chin from both government censors and/or the easily offended.

As for the podcasts that hosted Trump:

Joe Rogan has mentioned several times how badly he wanted to talk to Kamala. So why didn’t it happen? Her team insisted on him traveling to her, doing an interview that was 45mins max, and having others in the room during the discussion. So, basically, it was the Harris campaign's way of saying, "Call her daddy."

As for Theo Von, he got both Donald Trump and John Mulaney to be more vulnerable than any other interviewer ever has. The back-and-forth about blow was the most I've ever seen Trump interested in another human being. Genuine curiosity! I didn’t even know he was capable of that. And Mulaney revealed more to Theo about the actual lows of his addiction than he did in his own hour special on the topic. Give Theo some credit. He might just be the Chauncey Gardiner of interviewing.

And re: Andrew Schulz, he burst out laughing when Trump said he was “basically a truthful person.”

But if you never listen to these guys, it’s easy to misinterpret them. See: What Democrats Don’t Understand About Joe Rogan.

What they do largely share is a natural distrust of authority, a belief that most politicians are lying to them and a vested interest in glomming on to whatever can help their personal brands. Those are qualities that draw them to Trump and his continued insistence that he’s a bomb-throwing outsider coming to Washington to drain the swamp. They are also qualities they share with their dedicated audience, made up largely of young men who have constructed their own identities in large part around the personalities of the online creators they follow.

It is a model of political engagement that is not political at all. Any morsels of political ideology are cloaked entirely within a lifestyle that these content creators are selling — and young men are buying. So far, Democrats have been unable to disrupt or replicate this idea, in large part because the problem they confront is more cultural than political in nature.

It’s not fair to put any of these guys in the same category of true ideologues as, say, Tucker Carlson. (Btw, it recently occurred to me what “Tucker” rhymes with and what his childhood musta been like. Given that, his psyche kinda makes sense.)

Is there a way to do a publication/podcast for men that skews left? For starters, don’t make it explicitly about politics (yawn). Make it about things men actually like (e.g. sports, button-pushing comedy, cars, or anything else that Maxim woulda put on the cover in the lad mag era). And if there's nothing that codes left which men actually enjoy…well, maybe that's the answer to “Why aren’t men voting for Dems?”

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Btw, keep in mind that despite all the toxic language he used, Trump actually gained more women, Hispanic, and Black voters in 2024. If you’re wondering how they could have voted for him, allow me to point you to another comedian: Chris Rock. This bit he did years ago about hip hop pretty much sums it up: “He ain’t talking about me!”

And you know what's wild? If you mention to a woman that the song is disgusting and misogynistic, they all give you the same answer:

"He ain't talking about me!"

Smack her with a d*ck, smack her with a d*ck. Smack her with a d*ck, smack her with a d*ck. Now put a d*ck in her ear, a d*ck in her ear.

"He said your name!"
"No he didn't."

Women, Hispanic and Black voters in 2024: “He ain’t talking about me!”

Related:

• Here’s more from me about the election and masculinity from an interview on Dr. Lisa’s radio show…

• I took down the paywall on this old Rubesletter which feels newly relevant: Ubuntu, hoops, and the antidote to toxic masculinity.

So what’s the antidote? What is the positive form of masculinity we want as a society? Who are the men we want to point out as role models to little boys?

Working Methods

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Working Methods Advice from legendary artists to kickstart your creative process. Curated by Matt Ruby. By Matt Ruby

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Up ahead: More on free speech, the attacks on Jews in Amsterdam, Bezos and the WaPo, the lack of Gen Z rebels, and more...