October 10, 2017 • 49 mins
In episode two, Jack & Miles, along with special guest comedian Jamie Loftus, discuss problematic soap ads, Russian managed YouTube accounts, gun buybacks, gun silencers for millennials, SNL's 'it's a New York thing" excuse & more.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Rat soup Eden honkin motherfucker, Hello the Internet, and welcome
to the Daily Zake Guys for Tuesday, October Night, two
thousand and seventeen. My name is Jack O'Brien. It's October tenth.
I'm joined as always by my co host, Mr Miles Gray.
Thank you. Contrary to popular belief, I am not a
Russian backed propaganda account, So I just want to set
(00:24):
the record straight on that. Yeah. Uh, we we did
deep background on that. It is true. And we are
joined in our third seat by the hilarious Jamie Loftus.
How are you, Jamie? Hello, I'm good good, all right,
So Eric, quick getting to know you session. What is
the strangest thing in your search history? Oh, recently is
(00:46):
twerking Mummy working Mummy. Yeah, it's I already knew what
it was, but I wanted to see if there are
videos of it. It's like this novelty toy at CVS
right now with a little mummy and it's and it
plays a song and then his but shakes and he
smiles and he wear sunglasses. And I've come so close
to bout like I was in CVS last week, like
literally buying Plan B. I'm like I can't get plan
(01:08):
B and Tworking Mummy and have that be the purchase.
But yeah, that would look crazy, I've got like it
would it would imply that the two were related in
some way. But I do want. I'm gonna wait till
like November one. I'm gonna be at CVS. First thing.
I'm gonna get Tworking Mommy, the one century big mouth
(01:29):
billy bess or what kind of fish that's sang on
the wall. Why is everything kind of like like sort
of reinforce these stereotypes, right, like big mouth billy bads,
like sort of like a country like singing fisherman. Sorry,
like mummies are like African and they're twerking. I hadn't
kind of problematic pas that one. Wow, I'm still trying
to get tworking money, and of course you should have.
(01:50):
I have to not. I won't buy it at full price.
I don't know what that means. That probably says more
about me than it says anything about its work. Alright,
One overrated thing, one underrated thing, Jamie over rated blade
Runner slash Harrison Ford. I know every man hates me.
Uh yeah, I did actually see that the demographic breakdown
(02:10):
of the you know, I thought they were saying it
was like I didn't do well. It made thirty million dollars,
which I think is a lot for a Blade Runner sequel.
I mean, but their break even is like one seventy
or something. But yeah, it was like seventy eight percent. Mail.
I know, like you you look at the poster, You're like,
there's no way this movie passes the back one test.
(02:30):
There in no way this movie is progressive for literally anyone.
But I mean, I've especially dislike the first Blade Runner
movie and all Harrison Ford characters, like most of his
popular characters. I watched this really cool video essay recently
about how he's just like really good at playing predatory characters.
There's like you can make a twenty minute montage of
(02:52):
like Han Solo, Indiana Jones whatever. The guy in Blade
Runners name is Steve, who knows it's blade There's Mr
blade Um like making unwanted advances on women and having
it be like look at this cool guy. Like there's
a rape scene and Blade Runner scored to saxophone music.
You're just like, this is this is gross um solo
(03:17):
Han Solo predator seduction scene. We'll call it is just
her being like I don't want to kiss you, and
him like pressing her up against a wall and you
can't go anywhere. There's like she says no eleven times
before and uh. And then at the end of Indiana Jones,
where the one of the female leads was like, I'm
actually like I'm done with this. I'm gonna go and
(03:39):
get on a bus and go somewhere else. And then
he's like not, no way, a bitch, and then he
like ropes her, like literally ropes her, pulls her back
to him and starts making out with her, and everyone's like, whoo,
he got her. She's I don't realize how much Harrison
Ford has messed me up in my relationships. That's the
(03:59):
end of the movie. Me. It's like, oh yeah, I'm
going to capture you with a rope and now you're
my girlfriend. Not that I'm roping people in. Another thing
I'm trying to say is like the first time, like
someone tells me they love me, like he taught me,
you don't have to say I love you back, because
she's like I love you. He's like, I know, I know.
I'm just like now my dad, He's like, I love you, Mas,
I'm like, no, I'm blame Harrison Ford from my intimacy issues.
(04:21):
Harrison Ford, like I don't. I don't know anything about
his personal life. But toxic mal Icon not a not
a fan? Okay, underrated? Underrated? The four for four special
at Wendy's. What is the four for four special? One, dude,
best fast food deal in the game right now? I
don't know because I used to be a big advocate
of the mick pick two for to fifty, which is
you can get to Mike Chickens, and you're like, well,
(04:42):
this rules. But the four for four at Wendy's. You
get a junior bacon cheeseburger, you get small nuggets, you
get small fries, and you get a medium drink. It's
a great deal. I had it just yesterday. How many
times have you had it this week or in the
last I don't live close enough to away Indy's, so
it's like a treat. You're in the right area. And
(05:03):
then like my friend and I parked and we're like,
we can't wait to get to a second location. We
have to eat it in the parking lot. So in
the parking lot, we're staring at billboard for Young Sheldon.
It was like the darkest timeline, but it was great.
It was a great deal, the best way to use
four dollars. And just this other record, Shay, you were
not sponsored by Wendy's in anyway. This is you coming
(05:24):
out an independent consumer. But it was like, I'm currently
dressed in a Wendy. I didn't want to call you,
call that out, but yet no, no, no, no, I
just love I love food. That's bad. I will openly
acknowledge it's bad. I eat the sushi from seven eleven
and it's bad, but I love it. You should start
a podcast about your crazy eating behavior. Stomach goat, stomach.
(05:45):
James also wearing a Chuck E Cheese like teacher with
the evolution of the Chucky Cheese mascot. All right, guys,
let's get into our too sort of top stories. So
there's this dove head um boy that is at best confusing. UM,
but it seems really like wildly aggressively racist. Um if
(06:11):
you if you haven't seen it, UM, I've heard that
it's a video, but the versions of it that I've
seen so far are it's like a four panel, four pictures.
First picture is a black woman, then wearing a brown shirt.
The black one. In the second picture, she's like taking
her shirt off. In the third picture it's the shirt
(06:32):
is like off and it's revealing a white body. And
then the final picture it's like, ah, it was a
white person underneath the black person all along. There's no
video available of it though I haven't seen it was
taken down, but they are saying that it actually came
from a three second video clip. And I think the
last level was her becoming another non Caucasian but like female.
(06:55):
At the end, I was like, is that the only time?
Because it would be extra disturbing if that's the only
time and that happens. But is it a weird infinite
I don't know, right, like the black and White video
and Michael Jackson's black and white video. But I mean
you could shake your hair out and turn into like
a anything you wanted, making guy right. So so she
the white woman does turn into a final form. As
(07:18):
we say in the okay Pokemon community, got it, It
is still like to have a black woman in brown
turn into a white woman in white is problematic for
like what when you look back at soap eds throughout
the early twentieth century and late nineteenth century, you have
(07:41):
like ads where a black baby is washed and turns
out to be white underneath. Um. You. And then there's
also just like if you look at soap ads in India,
India has a whole bunch of things for like skin lightning.
And there there's been a controversy with Laura Reale when
they brought Beyonce on as like their spokesmodel. Uh, they
(08:05):
really whitened her up, Like the picture of her doesn't
really look like Beyonce, like a white woman. Um so yeah,
it's just it's part of a sort of ongoing conversation
with the with the beauty ads or with the beauty industry.
Um and Dove in particular has this lotion. Uh it's
(08:28):
called Dove Summer Glow Nourishing Lotion. And when you look
on the bottle at who it's for, it says normal
to dark skin. Why can't they just say anyone can
use this like it's and it's especially from Dove, who
they're like constantly giving themselves, like patting themselves on the
(08:49):
back for how open and accepting they are of all women.
Like that's just especially like come on, you know, if
you're if you're touting yourself as the company that gets
it and actually attempt to get it. Well. It also
just shows you, like what's going on these ad agencies
where they're like putting it together like yeah, that looks
good to me, let's go with it. Like no, you
(09:10):
think someone might have spoken up to be like, hey,
is it a little weird that the black woman transforms
to a white woman? And then okay, well anyway, I
guess we'll just will air that. Yeah, And Dove really,
I mean there's something even pretty obnoxious about their like
woke ads when they're trying to be awoke and their
beauty is only skin deep or whatever, because ultimately they're
(09:32):
trying to sell you soap and you know, it's still
I don't know. And it's the same thing with always
in there like fight like a girl thing, where it's
it's like I see, yeah, I don't know, a modified
like yeah, yeah, just piggybacking on feminism in order to
sell stuff. Yeah, there's this really dark dove Head where
(09:54):
they had women describe what they thought they looked like
to a uh, sketch artists, a sketch artist, and then
like the drawings were like ugly and then they were like,
now look what you actually look like or something, and
the women were like, oh my gosh, I really do
have a horrible self image and like anyways, by soap
(10:15):
what um to get that dirty feeling away? Another unsuccessful
marketing campaign going on right now is uh where I
guess it was more going on two thousand and sixteen.
So uh as all these different uh tendrils of Russia's
(10:38):
pro Trump, anti Hillary marketing campaign are being revealed from
the two thousand sixteen election. I mean, Facebook has just
revealed some I think even Yahoo was getting some some spend,
which is crazy. But Google Ads got a big spend
and we have this YouTube campaign. Um so, Miles, can
(10:59):
you explain what was going on? Yeah? So in the
Daily Beast, uh, they kind of confirmed what some people
looking at Russian managed accounts we're kind of talking about.
There was a YouTube page and a Facebook page for
Williams and Calvin Who are these YouTube stars and diehard
Donald Trump supporters and crazy anti Hillary, uh, you know,
(11:20):
rhetoric spiters um that claimed they're from Atlanta. Um. But
as the investigation became a little more solidified and they
looked into it, it turns out that this was actually
a Russian backed propaganda account. Um, And I mean, I
guess we can just play a clip they're saying they're
from Atlanta. Just black dudes from Atlanta, according to them,
(11:44):
just kind of talking US politics. Just two brothers from Atlanta, Atlanta,
Georgia Beanie that says Vogue on it right. Yeah, just
to give you a kind of a sample of of
what they were kind of talking about on this account. Hi,
today's going to be one of the wharfs and in
America and we have one of the worst candidates, and
the candidates is Clinton. Most of the black people in
(12:07):
America thinks that Hilary is the one who's going to
protect them and he is the one who is going
to fight for them. But hello, Lara Clinton is one
of the deaths. Is liar. All she wants is power.
All she wants is to luluver America. She doesn't care
about any of Hilary is being found by the Muslim
and she's going to stand for the Muslim. You know,
this woman is very, very deadly, and she's she's an
(12:31):
old witch. She's the old witch. Yeah. So it turns out,
I mean, again, there's a couple of guys from Atlanta
there's a couple of guys from Atlanta, Nigeria. You know.
It's what's funny is like on their people found their
other accounts, like they're they're saying they're from Nigeria. Uh.
But yes, this is another example, I guess. I mean,
this is kind of a big thing because now it's
(12:53):
gone from just sort of like faceless accounts to like
real life actors trying to push this like really, are
I see of anti Hillary pro Trump agenda. It's funny
because they don't mention Trump because the way they describe
Hillary could be so easily applied to him too, if
like he just wants to own the world, he doesn't
care about anyone. I'm like, oh, isn't that you know,
(13:14):
well they do like they do big Trump, they do
big up Trump, and they're like he can't beat it.
It's just because he's a businessman. Like that was like
yeah right, so yeah, this is uh again, I mean
it sort of shows like how deep this uh, this
Russia influence campaign goes. I mean, but to be fair,
like nobody was really checking for this, Like this was
(13:36):
definitely I think, kind of a goose egg for Russia.
But it just shows you, like Yeah, how far they're
willing to go, even prop up like fake s YouTube
accounts with like you know and no nobody, nobody, I
don't know anyone who would probably watched that and was like,
oh ship the old weach right. Yeah. I feel like
they tried thirty different things and a handful of them worked, right,
(13:58):
Like there wasn't there a face book group that was
actually successful? No, yeah exactly. I mean like they they've
they've had a few successes. Obviously, they had that black
Devist account that had more followers on Facebook than the
legit Black Lives Matter account, where they were just kind
of stoking the flames of racial tension. Um so yeah.
And but again even with that account, there were some
(14:20):
like some things that tipped you off that this might
not be Americans behind it. Uh And just like with
this account, I mean one of the things they thought
that Baton Rouge was in l A like as in
Los Angeles. Is that not true? Wait a second, who knows.
They're probably getting a script and they're seeing Baton Rouge
like Louisiana because Louisiana's l a on there and they're like,
(14:41):
rather than like this neighborhood, Baton Rouge in Louisiana and
then they called Lebron James the best basket player of
the year. So a couple of things, uh, you know,
don't don't quite check out, but you know Williams and Calvin.
But what's crazy is their account was up until I
think Monday morning, and then it finally got taken down
(15:01):
like after this article broke. So Google YouTube shout out
to you guys for not being on your ship. And
they they've specifically said we're taking this down because it's
a Russian backed propaganda. Well when you go to their articles,
it says like it's been you know, their accountant has
been associated with like one who violated their terms of service,
(15:22):
so it's been terminating. I don't know who terminated it,
but that's probably because I think there was a little
bit embarrassing for YouTube to now have this kind of
content on there. But I mean it's YouTube. There's a
bunch of shitty content, right, Yeah, it definitely wasn't. There's
a screenshot of her as the Wicked Witch of the West. Also,
like the clip art they use in their videos as
(15:43):
b roll is like so yeah, like first grade, like
using like Sony Vegas, like editing software. Like it's it's
pretty mush, but it's the same messaging that you see
in the more sophisticated campaigns, just filtered through. Yeah, a
second grader whoever they had in charge of this, But yeah,
it's all about making Hillary look bad to the black community,
(16:04):
trying to suppress voter turnout like on the day, and
clearly like Russia doesn't understand like black culture, because I
mean like they were trying to basically like blame, like
trying to say Obama's a legacy was police brutality. Okay,
come on now, I don't know where you got that.
But again, you know, nice trying Russia. They're also not
a very effective use of misogyny either. No, yeah, you're
(16:27):
gonna want to step up your misogyny game. Calling her
an old witch. Yeah, like there's a few waves behind
It was a rough translation from a Russian script. All Right,
we're gonna go to a quick break and when we
come back, we're going to get into our main story
about the Las Vegas shooting. And we're back from what
(16:49):
I think was probably an ad um. So our main
story that we wanted to talk about is the shooting
in Las Vegas, and just sort of this eight of
that story at this point. Um, I was traveling last
week and found myself like personally triggered by old, fat
(17:11):
white men, Like I was like nervous around them and
also kind of hostile towards them. Uh but which which
obviously isn't fair. But um, yeah, but that's that's where
I'm personally at. Not a great year for big, fat,
old white guys. Yeah, it's been been a tough years.
(17:32):
But the media's main focus right now seems to be, uh,
a sort of desperate, visceral need to find a motive.
Like they're just like why we can't figure out write
why this guy did this, and like they need to
attach this to some narrative. When you look back at
(17:53):
our history of mass shootings, we don't even usually get
the motive right. Like an in retrospect Columbine. I think
everybody thinks it was about the two guys were nerds
who were getting revenge on jocks who picked on them,
and I think it like sparked this whole anti bullying movement,
(18:13):
And that wasn't true at all. Uh, they weren't like bullied.
They one of the guys was just a genuine like
psychopath who just wanted to hurt and kill people. And
then the other one was just sort of peer pressured
into it. Um, the Austin Tower gunner, I think people
(18:36):
generally refer to that as like being a guy who
just like snapped under a bunch of pressure. Um, but
he was that That story is actually really interesting and uh,
I'm curious if this is what we're gonna find about
the Vegas one, because so he was just a normal guy.
He had a military background, which is I think how
he had access to guns, but he, uh, suddenly out
(19:00):
of the blue started he was just overtaken by this
urge to like hurt and kill people. And he was taught.
He would like say to his wife and the people
around him, he was like, I don't know why, like
this is I just really want to hurt and kill people,
and like you talked to a therapist and the therapist
was trying to help him, and uh, even when he
(19:21):
went to you know, shoot all these people, he left
a note being like, hey, could you please look at
my brain to figure out like why I'm doing this.
And they ended up finding a huge tumor that was
like affecting the area that causes aggression in human beings. Um,
but yeah, we we generally get that story wrong and
(19:43):
claim that it was like about some dude who was
like really tightly wound students or something. Yeah, this one,
the narrative seems to be we don't know what the
narrative is kind of um, which kind of causes people
to like freak out. I was like reading the this
old story um from from Pacific Standard about um, how
(20:06):
the human brain responds to narrative, and it's just like,
you know, our instinct to want to find a narrative
or any sort of rational now, especially in something terrible
that happens. And it's like when you get a sort
of narrative for something, it there's like a physical response
and you feel a little bit better, even if it's like,
you know, just receiving an answer why or something just
(20:28):
automatically physiologically makes you feel better, and not getting that
sort of narrative rationale is a negative physical response. Yeah. Right, Well,
especially with something so horrible is like a mass shooting,
it's so hard for people to process like why, like
especially with this, like it's so horrific. I mean, even
on my Facebook, I'm seeing people like clinging to some
(20:50):
really out there conspiratorial shit, I think, just for that
need to sort of make sense of why someone would
do something like this, and like they're people, I guess
it's easier for them to think that it's like a
Manchurian candidate type situation where this guy was like an
you know, some kind of puppet of like the state
to carry something out to distract the public. So yeah,
(21:11):
it we're definitely I think the thirst, the the need
to find like a reason to explain all of this
is very very intense, and it's it seems like we're
just kind of coming up empty, and it's, yeah, it's
kind of dangerous because like it's the simpler the rationale,
the easier it will be for like people to latch
onto it, like the like the Columbine narrative of like
(21:32):
losers who didn't fit in, where the real answer is
so much more complicated and kind of and scarier. So
everybody when they were hoping to find out what the
motive was, there was this note that you could see
in a photograph of the crime scene, and you couldn't
really see what was on it. So it turns out
that note was actually just his calculations that he had
(21:54):
drawn sort of the mathematical equation for how he knew
how to like arc the let's to specifically hit the
people he ended up hitting. UM And I read that
in the context of an article about how he was
like a real numbers guy, which made me think back
to UH. I read a Princeton study that found that
(22:18):
the only really predictive detail of personalities of like who
is going to become a terrorist or a mass murder
is that their engineers. Engineers are represented nine times as
much as you would expect based on chance. Is that
is that just because they're looking for order in chaos?
(22:42):
Or like, what is what is the rational? Is there
any like theory behind that? I'm looking for a narrative here? Yeah.
I So I spent a long time thinking about this
and couldn't come up with anything, and then I finally
read uh a explanation and it was what you just
came up on the flies. So that's really impressive. But yeah,
that that engineering like people who are numbers people, UH
(23:06):
strive for specific clean cut answers, and when they don't
get them in reality, it like bothers them and they
try and sort of make reality conformed to the clear
cut rules that they have because there's no ambiguity with math,
like it is what it is. You can't on this
(23:26):
year Terrence Howard, who has his own form of mathematics
Google terriology. Guys, if you don't believe me, just to
give some that up. I think he believes that one
times one isn't actually one but it's too now. But
think about it though, Yeah, that's that's sort of interesting
to think that people with I guess that need for
order find their way to extremism or just that it's
(23:47):
violence or yeah, and there's nothing. There's nothing to do
about it. We can't start profiling engineers or numbers people. Uh.
I think I just like this fact because I suck
at math, just like see it's the people who are
good at math um. So one thing that I do
think is useful in this context is the story of
(24:07):
the Australian Buy Back UM, which is like, basically Australia
overhauled their gun laws after a mass shooting that killed
thirty five people in UM. The Australian Prime Minister, who
was a conservative actually, which I think helped basically in
response to this mass shooting, was like we need to
(24:31):
have fewer guns. We need to get rid of semi
automatic weapons. Um. People were outraged when when they introduced
this idea. The Australians love their guns too. Um, they
do not have nearly as many guns. That's one difference obviously. UM.
(24:52):
They also, uh they had had like many mass shootings,
but they had had like eleven in a decade, which
is still way too many mass shootings. UM. But I
went and looked in America has had eleven since August
twenty one of this year. UM, So it's a it's
(25:14):
probably a more pressing problem and a bigger issue in
America than it is in Australia. I don't think that's
a reason to then say so we can't like even
think about consider the solution because we're too far gone. Um.
But basically, the way they went about getting uh fewer
guns is they uh instituted a buyback where they would
(25:35):
pay people as much money as it took to get
their guns back, and they essentially took a number of
guns out of circulation. I think it was like a
pretty large percentage, and they saw immediate results. Um, the
number of people who the number of gun crimes went down.
(25:59):
But Also the overall number of crimes went down. Uh.
For instance, the firearm homicide rate felled by and the
firearms suicide rate felled by sixty five percent in the
decade after the law was introduced, and there wasn't an
increase in non gun homicides and non gun suicide. So
it's like those crimes that would have been committed or
(26:21):
suicides that would have been committed with guns, uh, just
didn't happen at all, right, without the opportunity, right without
you have no access to the guns anymore, which is
kind of counterintuitive. We tend to think that and and
this is an argument you tend to hear in the
aftermath of a mass shooting that like, evil will find
a way, um, But that tends not to be the
case when you look at statistics, especially if it's like
(26:44):
a very impulsive decision, right, and these decisions are tend
to be actually more impulsive than we like to believe. Um.
There's this thing called the British Cold Gas Study that
I love talking about um uh, but it's about suicide,
so it makes me not very fun at parties. But
(27:06):
basically it's Uh. Coal gas was how people in England
heated their stoves for the first half of the twentieth
century um and this is where you got the people,
where you got the idea of people sticking their head
in the oven to kill themselves because the gas was
highly uh right Sylvia plath uh was highly toxic and
(27:31):
so a person could just, you know, if they were
feeling bad, turn on the gas and put their head
in the oven and you know, be done with it
pretty quickly. So at a certain point, not because of
the suicide problem, but just because it was more efficient,
they switched to cleaner natural gas in their ovens. And
(27:51):
uh so coal gas had been responsible for a third
of all suicides in England prior to that switch, and
after they made the switch, the suicide rate just felled
by a third. It was just took away that mode
of suicide. You took away like this convenient mode of suicide,
and so people were less likely to make that decision,
(28:16):
like they just didn't end up killing themselves, which isn't
how we think about suicide. And I mean the Australian
buyback suggests that the same is true of homicide. That
if people don't have access to you know, guns are
essentially a button, like you can press a button and
permanently and someone's life, or permanently and your own life.
(28:37):
That's what's so dangerous about them is you know that
it's like you press that button and its final answer,
like that's there's there's no taking it back. Well, I
think that the Australian buyback is interesting too because it offers,
you know, it incentivizes giving up your gun too, which
I guess is a little bit different from the British
(28:59):
coal gas says you ration, but you know, like replacing
one vice with with another of like oh well we'll
pay you to have a gun, we'll pay you to
not be a danger to society. Yeah. Well, they're even
quotes from people who at the time sold their guns
and like why did you do? And some people were
clearly just said that like I just want to help society,
(29:21):
Like it's not about me having to own a gun.
I just feel like it's for the good of society,
which is just tough in this country because we look
at guns as being like fundamentally part of the American identity,
like it's in the Constitution, you know, it's the Second Amendment.
It's like my god given right as an American is
to is to bear arms, uh and not just wearing
sleeless teas. And I think like if you know, if
(29:43):
if we're gonna go stick to the letter of the constitution,
like you know, just give people muskets, then I mean,
like you don't need you don't need these crazy ass
assault rifles. And I mean when you look at the
gun ownership statistics in the US, like it's crazy. I
mean there was one study that came out that said
anywhere between thirty five and fifty percent of civilian guns
in the world are owned by Americans. Right. That means
(30:06):
guns that police or the military aren't using, like just
the guns that are available to civilians, we own nearly
half of them, right. And like a statistic. That's also
a statistic people bring up when they talk about why
the Australian buyback wouldn't work in America because in there
were seventeen and a half guns per one hundred people
(30:27):
in Australia, uh and in America it was ninety one
guns per hundred people and now it's up to a
hundred and one guns per hundred people. So they are
more guns than people. But when you actually look at
the ownership, like those guns are spread across only like
twenty two to twenty nine percent of the population. Only
(30:50):
like less than thirty percent of the population actually owns guns.
Um And you know, fifty five percent of people say
gun laws should be more strict in a gallop pole,
only ten percent say less strict. But you have this
really strong lobbying group, And Miles, I wanted to hear
(31:10):
kind of your take on this. The the n r
A is this crazy, far far right wing lobbying group
that gets sort of incorporated into the mainstream conservative viewpoints.
Like it's almost like their PETA. I feel like, like
on the left, like I know, Pete is fucking crazy, right,
(31:31):
I'm unable to admit that, But I feel like the
n r A is sort of, you know, gets incorporated
into the whole sort of right wing ethos. Yeah, I
mean they are so powerful. I mean like just in
terms of like so the n r A spends so
much money influencing campaigns or donating the candidates that help
(31:51):
push their anti gun control agenda, like it's really for
their thing, Like there's no nuance to what they're about.
It's just like any kind of gun regulation where against
like we're not even here to talk about solutions like
don't try and regulate guns in any form or fashion,
which is only ten percent of the US population agrees
with right exactly. And it's but this is how they're effective.
They are because they're built on this idea of like, hey,
(32:13):
they're taking your freedoms or whatever. They have a very
active grassroots arm, so like if there's any kind of
gun legislation on the books, they can flood the offices
of congressmen and senators with cause being like don't vote
or don't vote for it, don't vote or even if
the public polling says a majority of Americans are against it.
And and beyond that, I mean, like when you really
think about how lobbying works, Like you know, these politicians
(32:35):
they count on donations to keep their campaigns running because
if you get outspent, you can lose very easily just
on how much you spend. So you're kind of beholden
to these different lobbyists or industry groups who will give
you your donations. So effective that after Sandy Hook gun
laws got less strict exactly. You know, they also have
a very they have a pattern of whenever they are
(32:56):
these mass shootings, they keep their mouth shut, let the
outrage die down down, and then come through with something
like weak ask gun legislation. Um. You know, they've done
everything they can to make sure that Americans don't really
address the issue of gun violence. I mean, like in
nineties six, they did everything they could to gut federal
funding for the CDC to actually research the effects of
(33:17):
gun violence on the country. And nearly every study that
looks into gun violence draws a direct correlation that guns
equals very bad things or more crime or you know,
more violent death. Again, because they have a lot of
politicians in their pockets, they can actually like they'll literally
write legislation sometimes and they'll just say, hey, you know,
slide this into the bill. Um. And because we've not
(33:40):
really looked at gun violence in this country through the
eyes loans of the CDC or like a huge sort
of organized study on it, we don't really have reliable
gun statistics, which allows this sort of debate to always
get derailed by saying like, oh, the stats are imperfect
and things like that. That's because the n r A
has been behind delegis Asian perfect. But I mean, like
(34:02):
looking at the Australian buy back, it wasn't even ambiguous,
like the rate in states where the buy back happened
quickly fell quickly. The suicide and homicide rate in states
where the buyback happened quickly fell quickly. Uh. In states
where the buy back happened slowly across the decade, the
homicide and suicide rate fell slowly across the decade. Like
it's it's not ambiguous at all. Yeah. By the way,
(34:25):
the n r I just posted a picture of your
head photoshopped on a woman's body. So cool, they're not
you just have a bunch of those, um so Australian
buy back that that would not work in this country,
right because miles is head was photoshop woman's body. Yeah.
I mean so essentially when you look at it, the
(34:46):
n r RAY has basically taken our ability to actually
study gun violence away from us. Uh. They have taken
away the ability for candidates to just sort of run
on something they believe in because they donate so heavily
and also pay so much to run attack ads against
people who are against gun control that they you know,
they control the entire gun argument in this country. Um.
(35:08):
And you know, I think that a lot of that
has to do with the fact that they're able to
spend millions of dollars sort of unrestricted, whether it's through
their actual p a c s or their packs or
through you know, outside spending using dark money groups. They
basically are just they have us hamstrung. They have us
unable to really have a constructive dialogue about gun control.
And these attack ads that they run against the candidates,
(35:30):
they're not necessarily about gun stuff, right, they just might
attack the person based on their character whatever they want. Yeah,
I mean there's no way to know because sometimes if
you look down and say paid for by Americans for
you know, freedoms, you know, and those are those are
like those are five O one C for like dark
money nonprofits where you don't know where the money comes from. Uh,
and yeah it can, it can, and who knows they
(35:50):
could be funded by the gun lobby. And then other
ones are more straightforward that are like they're coming for
your guns. But yea that they're able to attack people
in many number of ways. Yeah, and they're actually doing
a thing now that they've never done before. But it
seems to be sort of a new pretty successful tactic
with that they're actually coming out and saying we're willing
(36:11):
to accept a ban on bump stocks, which are these
sort of hacks of semi automatic weapons that the shooter
in Las Vegas was using. Um. But these are I
guess they're willing to oppose them because they're not made
by any of the gun manufacturers they represent pretty much
who are funding them. Um. And yeah, it's not it's
(36:36):
not really going to help many things. But they have
been able to control the story essentially, Like when you
hear about the story and gun control right now, the
thing that people are talking about is bump stocks, right
and all suddenly people are like, oh, then Ari has
a change of heart. It's like it's non profitable, it
is not problem like it there. That's what the n
r A is all about. Yeah. And uh. And when
(36:57):
it comes to the buy back, I guess we should
say that this has been tried in America, um, just
in very specific, localized cases. Um. And so in Australia
they made the semi automatic weapons illegal, so they were
doing both things. You weren't allowed to have the guns
and when you brought them in they would pay you money. Uh.
(37:18):
Obviously they're not making any of the guns illegal in
the United States, but they have tried just paying people
for guns. Uh. Los Angeles is actually doing this right now. Uh.
And the police say that it's actually been effective. It's
taken a bunch of guns off the street, and they
say that there's been less gun violence. Uh. But of course,
(37:41):
thanks to the n r A, there's no real good
statistics on this because, like Miles said, the CDC, which
would be the branch of the government that would typically
do studies into this, had all of their funding removed
when they started talking about gun violence. Uh. Yes, specifically
they are. They are forbidden to use any of the
(38:02):
money from the federal government to actually do any kind
of public health research into gun violence at all. So
there's no real, unimpeachable evidence that could really kind of
affect the conversation around this, because we're only getting statistics
like raw statistics from the FBI about like homicides and suicides,
and then stats that are either from like the pro
gun and r A or pro gun control stuff from
(38:24):
the Brady campaign. So yeah, yeah, And there are a
couple of studies that's say, like buy backs don't work
in America, but those studies are based on a lot
of times these localized examples, some of them are rural
buy backs, where you know, you just get old guys
selling you back their old revolver that doesn't work anymore.
(38:45):
Um And so I mean you need it to be
uh intelligently done. Um And you know the best example
is still the Australian one, where you pair more strict
gun control laws with the gun buy back. Right. So
it's not just sort of like if you want to
bring your gun by, we'll give you a target gift card.
It's like, if we catch you with these guns, it's
a problem, so you might as well come bring him
(39:06):
in and get some money for it, right, and focus
on specific models, so it's not just like any gun,
we'll we'll take it. Yeah. And if you google like
American gun buy backs things, a lot of them are
just like these crazy opinion pieces from like pro gun
websites or websites that clearly are like right leaning three
on the three on like the first page of results
are about how like arguments that the Australian gun buy
(39:28):
back didn't work and was actually like work failure, right, Yeah,
despite people in Australia being like, no, there hasn't been
a mass shooting since America's first Freedom dot Org right,
sounds legit to me. I mean, I like freedom and
I'm from America. So all right, so we're gonna go
to a break real quick. We're gonna come back talk
really quickly about gun marketing and how they they're marketed
(39:50):
to people, and then go out on maybe some more
lighthearted stuff. We'll be right back and we're back. Um,
so real quick, Jamie, you have some knowledge of a
marketing campaign from the gun industry that caught your attention. Ah. Yeah,
this was a story that was in Playboy magazine about
(40:10):
a year ago, uh, that I did some work on.
It was about this company called Silence or co Um
that is a really big disruptor in terms of marketing
gun silencers to millennials, which is you know, I don't
need to say extremely dangerous, but just the tactics they
use where it's like, I think we have such ingrained
(40:32):
like n r A attack ads are a very specific
thing that almost in a weird way, I think, feel dated.
Uh and like you know, you don't see that and
you're like, oh, that's for people in their twenties, you know,
whereas companies like Silence or co they're like their whole
marketing campaign last year was based on this like Miami
Vice style aesthetic, and they released a bunch of goofy
(40:55):
videos of them dressed up like my Miami Vice things
and then putting on gun stile answers and you know,
shooting and um. They also have worked with Steve Aoki extensively.
I know, it's like, oh DJs with guns, Like after
I do hot sad, I had to go home and
uh shoot stuff quietly. Even though I'm a DJ, I'm
(41:17):
all about volume except when it comes to my guns.
So in conclusion, guys, yeah, I mean, look, obviously the
gun lobby is very powerful, but you know, like I
think people sort of need to look at it like this.
The n r A is spending a lot of money
to prop up candidates who will help, you know, push
their pro gun agenda. Um, but there aren't many groups
that get the same kind of donations. Who are who
(41:40):
are gun control advocacy groups? Um? And I think people
can you know, this is a moment for a lot
of these groups to kind of step up and uh
sort of make their presence known. And I think, if
you know, imagine if these gun gun control groups spent
as much as the n r A, there we might
be able to see some kind of sort of evening
of the scale in terms of what the influence is uh.
(42:02):
And some people have even floated the idea of approaching
candidates for Congress or Senate and saying, look, if you
don't take the n r A money will match actually
what the n r A gives you uh for you
to not take their money, but you can still have
that in your coffers for your campaign. So I think
you know, not to you know, a lot of people
do feel a little defeated by because every article you're
seeing is like the nr A is so powerful and
(42:22):
there's nothing you do about. I mean, Massachusetts is a
is a great example of a state that has not,
you know, bowed to the power of the n r A. California,
Great Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the state of California also
as well. Yeah, but I think, you know, it's important
to know that there are there are there are solutions
out there, aside from just clearly the first reaction is like, well,
(42:44):
let's take all of the guns away. I think this
also can be framed around a conversation around the money
that's going into politics and also becoming aware of how
we can counter that with our own dollars as well. Right,
we're not an anti gun lobby. At the Daily Zy,
We're like, this is just an example of politics and
democracy like not working of people want stronger gun control
(43:07):
and are just like, well, the n r A is
not gonna let us. And that's my impression of you
listeners pussies. Sorry, oh no, I mean yeah, and again
I think people need to go back to Citizens United
when basically it was ruled that corporations can spend on
the mid amounts of money on campaign So yeah, actionable
(43:27):
things stay, We'll call your congress people. And uh, let's
move on to Lauren Michael's sorry as excuse for y
S and L didn't talk about the Weinstein thing. Uh
he claimed it's a New York thing, so he's he's
arguing like, oh, this is too inside baseball to joke about.
It's too too much of a New yormally New Yorkers
(43:49):
care about Strami sandwiches in Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct to
New York. And also, yeah, and there are jokes on
sn O constantly that if you're not from New York,
they will fly over your heads. I feel like that's
almost every Weekend Update segment. There's a lot of New
York in Joe. You know, it's I mean, it's an
excuse to not talk about powerful power, but that like
(44:13):
it's an excuse. My favorite part of sn L thus
far this season. There's only been two but the Weekend
Update characters the guy who just bought a boat and
the guy who just joined Soho House. We're fucking hilarious.
But it was like chock full of like insider New
York stuff, Like you're not going to get that joke
if you don't live in a city that has a
Soho House And what is that just la in New York?
(44:35):
I don't even know what boom, but yeah, it's it's
a it's a very weak as excuse, Laurence, come on now. Um.
And also that's so right, like they're's so ripe for material,
like how could you? Yeah, that's a stupid comedy decision
to Also, I'm kind of mad that like they're constantly
just framing like some of these instanes of like his
alleged sexual harassment, when like they're women straight up talking
(44:57):
like he was masturbating in front of me, Like is
that I think that's a step beyond harassment at that point,
like forcibly, having someone watch you masturbate. I think it's yeah, right,
very strange, and nobody about plants, writes Um and then
last of all, you guys, I'm worried about the Avatar franchise.
(45:18):
Um oh, now we're getting into the real issue. I
feel like I really enjoyed Avatar for the run time
of Avatar, like from when it started to the end,
I was like, man, this is amazing, and then it
just totally disappeared from my mind. I think culturally a
similar thing happened. Like you don't hear people talk about Avatar, uh,
(45:41):
really all that much. It's not even a DVD you
get high to and watch, you know, like some films,
like you'll still like the Matrix, like man, it was Waitress,
but you never like, hey, man, let's watch Avatar real quick. Fine,
it's but it's a goofy It's a doofy little movie.
I don't know. So I am pro film industry and
that I like movies, and I don't want the film
(46:03):
industry to completely crumble. And so I'm a little bit
worried because they are apparently investing a billion dollars in
the Avatar franchise. That's no one's favorite movie, and uh
they just so. I was already worried because it just
didn't seem like a franchise that people were going to
really keep going back to. But um, they just released
(46:27):
a photograph like hyping the next movie and it was
a bunch of child actors standing around Like it's apparently,
uh as if there's anything more depressing than a child actor, right,
it's gonna be like Jake and whatever her name's children
are going to be main characters character right, which so
(46:50):
they're doing like the Muppet Babies for Avatar, Like yeah,
I mean, like there's no better marketing than to have
a poster full of people you never heard of, like,
oh shit, that kid I've never seen before, isn't it?
And their child stars so they might be really hard
to watch amazing. Yeah, I mean go back and watch
Terminator two, which is James Cameron's greatest movie. I'll fight
(47:13):
you Jamie. Oh yeah, we've talked about it, but uh,
but like, go back and watch that, and it's a
great movie. Despite Edward for long, he was just shouting
and nagging the whole time. My mom helped him put
out a CD in Japan. Nice. The album is terrible.
(47:33):
It's trash, but you know, shots Daddy for a long
Miles says, the coolest parents in the world. By the way,
you should ask them about them, um child actors. Man,
I don't know. They're they've they've got to they've got
to go. They're troubling. You're not always gonna get Haley
Joell Osmond. You're not. You're just not like Haley. He's
the best. Was really good, I thought, Jonathan lit NICKI
(47:55):
really crushed again. NICKI, Yeah, there are some good ones,
but didn't you keep doing it? He just have that one.
Maybe he didn't want to write Yeah, live your life
Jonathan lip Niki yea, you know he was like the
game's changed, all right. Thank you so much for joining us,
Jamie loftus. Where can people follow you? You can follow
me at Hamburger Phone or you can listen to my podcast,
(48:18):
The back Delcast is about women in movies and it
is wonderful. Uh. And you can follow us on Twitter
at Daily Zeitgeist. We're on Instagram at the Daily Zeitgeist. Uh.
We also have a Facebook page, The Daily Zeitgeist. I'm
at Jack Underscore O'Brien, Miles I'm at Miles of Gray, Twitter, Instagram,
(48:40):
PlayStation network, you know, Holler and we'll be back tomorrow,
because that's what daily podcasts do. By sp
Rat soup Eden honkin motherfucker, Hello the Internet, and welcome
to the Daily Zake Guys for Tuesday, October Night, two
thousand and seventeen. My name is Jack O'Brien. It's October tenth.
I'm joined as always by my co host, Mr Miles Gray.
Thank you. Contrary to popular belief, I am not a
Russian backed propaganda account, So I just want to set
(00:24):
the record straight on that. Yeah. Uh, we we did
deep background on that. It is true. And we are
joined in our third seat by the hilarious Jamie Loftus.
How are you, Jamie? Hello, I'm good good, all right,
So Eric, quick getting to know you session. What is
the strangest thing in your search history? Oh, recently is
(00:46):
twerking Mummy working Mummy. Yeah, it's I already knew what
it was, but I wanted to see if there are
videos of it. It's like this novelty toy at CVS
right now with a little mummy and it's and it
plays a song and then his but shakes and he
smiles and he wear sunglasses. And I've come so close
to bout like I was in CVS last week, like
literally buying Plan B. I'm like I can't get plan
(01:08):
B and Tworking Mummy and have that be the purchase.
But yeah, that would look crazy, I've got like it
would it would imply that the two were related in
some way. But I do want. I'm gonna wait till
like November one. I'm gonna be at CVS. First thing.
I'm gonna get Tworking Mommy, the one century big mouth
(01:29):
billy bess or what kind of fish that's sang on
the wall. Why is everything kind of like like sort
of reinforce these stereotypes, right, like big mouth billy bads,
like sort of like a country like singing fisherman. Sorry,
like mummies are like African and they're twerking. I hadn't
kind of problematic pas that one. Wow, I'm still trying
to get tworking money, and of course you should have.
(01:50):
I have to not. I won't buy it at full price.
I don't know what that means. That probably says more
about me than it says anything about its work. Alright,
One overrated thing, one underrated thing, Jamie over rated blade
Runner slash Harrison Ford. I know every man hates me.
Uh yeah, I did actually see that the demographic breakdown
(02:10):
of the you know, I thought they were saying it
was like I didn't do well. It made thirty million dollars,
which I think is a lot for a Blade Runner sequel.
I mean, but their break even is like one seventy
or something. But yeah, it was like seventy eight percent. Mail.
I know, like you you look at the poster, You're like,
there's no way this movie passes the back one test.
(02:30):
There in no way this movie is progressive for literally anyone.
But I mean, I've especially dislike the first Blade Runner
movie and all Harrison Ford characters, like most of his
popular characters. I watched this really cool video essay recently
about how he's just like really good at playing predatory characters.
There's like you can make a twenty minute montage of
(02:52):
like Han Solo, Indiana Jones whatever. The guy in Blade
Runners name is Steve, who knows it's blade There's Mr
blade Um like making unwanted advances on women and having
it be like look at this cool guy. Like there's
a rape scene and Blade Runner scored to saxophone music.
You're just like, this is this is gross um solo
(03:17):
Han Solo predator seduction scene. We'll call it is just
her being like I don't want to kiss you, and
him like pressing her up against a wall and you
can't go anywhere. There's like she says no eleven times
before and uh. And then at the end of Indiana Jones,
where the one of the female leads was like, I'm
actually like I'm done with this. I'm gonna go and
(03:39):
get on a bus and go somewhere else. And then
he's like not, no way, a bitch, and then he
like ropes her, like literally ropes her, pulls her back
to him and starts making out with her, and everyone's like, whoo,
he got her. She's I don't realize how much Harrison
Ford has messed me up in my relationships. That's the
(03:59):
end of the movie. Me. It's like, oh yeah, I'm
going to capture you with a rope and now you're
my girlfriend. Not that I'm roping people in. Another thing
I'm trying to say is like the first time, like
someone tells me they love me, like he taught me,
you don't have to say I love you back, because
she's like I love you. He's like, I know, I know.
I'm just like now my dad, He's like, I love you, Mas,
I'm like, no, I'm blame Harrison Ford from my intimacy issues.
(04:21):
Harrison Ford, like I don't. I don't know anything about
his personal life. But toxic mal Icon not a not
a fan? Okay, underrated? Underrated? The four for four special
at Wendy's. What is the four for four special? One, dude,
best fast food deal in the game right now? I
don't know because I used to be a big advocate
of the mick pick two for to fifty, which is
you can get to Mike Chickens, and you're like, well,
(04:42):
this rules. But the four for four at Wendy's. You
get a junior bacon cheeseburger, you get small nuggets, you
get small fries, and you get a medium drink. It's
a great deal. I had it just yesterday. How many
times have you had it this week or in the
last I don't live close enough to away Indy's, so
it's like a treat. You're in the right area. And
(05:03):
then like my friend and I parked and we're like,
we can't wait to get to a second location. We
have to eat it in the parking lot. So in
the parking lot, we're staring at billboard for Young Sheldon.
It was like the darkest timeline, but it was great.
It was a great deal, the best way to use
four dollars. And just this other record, Shay, you were
not sponsored by Wendy's in anyway. This is you coming
(05:24):
out an independent consumer. But it was like, I'm currently
dressed in a Wendy. I didn't want to call you,
call that out, but yet no, no, no, no, I
just love I love food. That's bad. I will openly
acknowledge it's bad. I eat the sushi from seven eleven
and it's bad, but I love it. You should start
a podcast about your crazy eating behavior. Stomach goat, stomach.
(05:45):
James also wearing a Chuck E Cheese like teacher with
the evolution of the Chucky Cheese mascot. All right, guys,
let's get into our too sort of top stories. So
there's this dove head um boy that is at best confusing. UM,
but it seems really like wildly aggressively racist. Um if
(06:11):
you if you haven't seen it, UM, I've heard that
it's a video, but the versions of it that I've
seen so far are it's like a four panel, four pictures.
First picture is a black woman, then wearing a brown shirt.
The black one. In the second picture, she's like taking
her shirt off. In the third picture it's the shirt
(06:32):
is like off and it's revealing a white body. And
then the final picture it's like, ah, it was a
white person underneath the black person all along. There's no
video available of it though I haven't seen it was
taken down, but they are saying that it actually came
from a three second video clip. And I think the
last level was her becoming another non Caucasian but like female.
(06:55):
At the end, I was like, is that the only time?
Because it would be extra disturbing if that's the only
time and that happens. But is it a weird infinite
I don't know, right, like the black and White video
and Michael Jackson's black and white video. But I mean
you could shake your hair out and turn into like
a anything you wanted, making guy right. So so she
the white woman does turn into a final form. As
(07:18):
we say in the okay Pokemon community, got it, It
is still like to have a black woman in brown
turn into a white woman in white is problematic for
like what when you look back at soap eds throughout
the early twentieth century and late nineteenth century, you have
(07:41):
like ads where a black baby is washed and turns
out to be white underneath. Um. You. And then there's
also just like if you look at soap ads in India,
India has a whole bunch of things for like skin lightning.
And there there's been a controversy with Laura Reale when
they brought Beyonce on as like their spokesmodel. Uh, they
(08:05):
really whitened her up, Like the picture of her doesn't
really look like Beyonce, like a white woman. Um so yeah,
it's just it's part of a sort of ongoing conversation
with the with the beauty ads or with the beauty industry.
Um and Dove in particular has this lotion. Uh it's
(08:28):
called Dove Summer Glow Nourishing Lotion. And when you look
on the bottle at who it's for, it says normal
to dark skin. Why can't they just say anyone can
use this like it's and it's especially from Dove, who
they're like constantly giving themselves, like patting themselves on the
(08:49):
back for how open and accepting they are of all women.
Like that's just especially like come on, you know, if
you're if you're touting yourself as the company that gets
it and actually attempt to get it. Well. It also
just shows you, like what's going on these ad agencies
where they're like putting it together like yeah, that looks
good to me, let's go with it. Like no, you
(09:10):
think someone might have spoken up to be like, hey,
is it a little weird that the black woman transforms
to a white woman? And then okay, well anyway, I
guess we'll just will air that. Yeah, And Dove really,
I mean there's something even pretty obnoxious about their like
woke ads when they're trying to be awoke and their
beauty is only skin deep or whatever, because ultimately they're
(09:32):
trying to sell you soap and you know, it's still
I don't know. And it's the same thing with always
in there like fight like a girl thing, where it's
it's like I see, yeah, I don't know, a modified
like yeah, yeah, just piggybacking on feminism in order to
sell stuff. Yeah, there's this really dark dove Head where
(09:54):
they had women describe what they thought they looked like
to a uh, sketch artists, a sketch artist, and then
like the drawings were like ugly and then they were like,
now look what you actually look like or something, and
the women were like, oh my gosh, I really do
have a horrible self image and like anyways, by soap
(10:15):
what um to get that dirty feeling away? Another unsuccessful
marketing campaign going on right now is uh where I
guess it was more going on two thousand and sixteen.
So uh as all these different uh tendrils of Russia's
(10:38):
pro Trump, anti Hillary marketing campaign are being revealed from
the two thousand sixteen election. I mean, Facebook has just
revealed some I think even Yahoo was getting some some spend,
which is crazy. But Google Ads got a big spend
and we have this YouTube campaign. Um so, Miles, can
(10:59):
you explain what was going on? Yeah? So in the
Daily Beast, uh, they kind of confirmed what some people
looking at Russian managed accounts we're kind of talking about.
There was a YouTube page and a Facebook page for
Williams and Calvin Who are these YouTube stars and diehard
Donald Trump supporters and crazy anti Hillary, uh, you know,
(11:20):
rhetoric spiters um that claimed they're from Atlanta. Um. But
as the investigation became a little more solidified and they
looked into it, it turns out that this was actually
a Russian backed propaganda account. Um, And I mean, I
guess we can just play a clip they're saying they're
from Atlanta. Just black dudes from Atlanta, according to them,
(11:44):
just kind of talking US politics. Just two brothers from Atlanta, Atlanta,
Georgia Beanie that says Vogue on it right. Yeah, just
to give you a kind of a sample of of
what they were kind of talking about on this account. Hi,
today's going to be one of the wharfs and in
America and we have one of the worst candidates, and
the candidates is Clinton. Most of the black people in
(12:07):
America thinks that Hilary is the one who's going to
protect them and he is the one who is going
to fight for them. But hello, Lara Clinton is one
of the deaths. Is liar. All she wants is power.
All she wants is to luluver America. She doesn't care
about any of Hilary is being found by the Muslim
and she's going to stand for the Muslim. You know,
this woman is very, very deadly, and she's she's an
(12:31):
old witch. She's the old witch. Yeah. So it turns out,
I mean, again, there's a couple of guys from Atlanta
there's a couple of guys from Atlanta, Nigeria. You know.
It's what's funny is like on their people found their
other accounts, like they're they're saying they're from Nigeria. Uh.
But yes, this is another example, I guess. I mean,
this is kind of a big thing because now it's
(12:53):
gone from just sort of like faceless accounts to like
real life actors trying to push this like really, are
I see of anti Hillary pro Trump agenda. It's funny
because they don't mention Trump because the way they describe
Hillary could be so easily applied to him too, if
like he just wants to own the world, he doesn't
care about anyone. I'm like, oh, isn't that you know,
(13:14):
well they do like they do big Trump, they do
big up Trump, and they're like he can't beat it.
It's just because he's a businessman. Like that was like
yeah right, so yeah, this is uh again, I mean
it sort of shows like how deep this uh, this
Russia influence campaign goes. I mean, but to be fair,
like nobody was really checking for this, Like this was
(13:36):
definitely I think, kind of a goose egg for Russia.
But it just shows you, like Yeah, how far they're
willing to go, even prop up like fake s YouTube
accounts with like you know and no nobody, nobody, I
don't know anyone who would probably watched that and was like,
oh ship the old weach right. Yeah. I feel like
they tried thirty different things and a handful of them worked, right,
(13:58):
Like there wasn't there a face book group that was
actually successful? No, yeah exactly. I mean like they they've
they've had a few successes. Obviously, they had that black
Devist account that had more followers on Facebook than the
legit Black Lives Matter account, where they were just kind
of stoking the flames of racial tension. Um so yeah.
And but again even with that account, there were some
(14:20):
like some things that tipped you off that this might
not be Americans behind it. Uh And just like with
this account, I mean one of the things they thought
that Baton Rouge was in l A like as in
Los Angeles. Is that not true? Wait a second, who knows.
They're probably getting a script and they're seeing Baton Rouge
like Louisiana because Louisiana's l a on there and they're like,
(14:41):
rather than like this neighborhood, Baton Rouge in Louisiana and
then they called Lebron James the best basket player of
the year. So a couple of things, uh, you know,
don't don't quite check out, but you know Williams and Calvin.
But what's crazy is their account was up until I
think Monday morning, and then it finally got taken down
(15:01):
like after this article broke. So Google YouTube shout out
to you guys for not being on your ship. And
they they've specifically said we're taking this down because it's
a Russian backed propaganda. Well when you go to their articles,
it says like it's been you know, their accountant has
been associated with like one who violated their terms of service,
(15:22):
so it's been terminating. I don't know who terminated it,
but that's probably because I think there was a little
bit embarrassing for YouTube to now have this kind of
content on there. But I mean it's YouTube. There's a
bunch of shitty content, right, Yeah, it definitely wasn't. There's
a screenshot of her as the Wicked Witch of the West. Also,
like the clip art they use in their videos as
(15:43):
b roll is like so yeah, like first grade, like
using like Sony Vegas, like editing software. Like it's it's
pretty mush, but it's the same messaging that you see
in the more sophisticated campaigns, just filtered through. Yeah, a
second grader whoever they had in charge of this, But yeah,
it's all about making Hillary look bad to the black community,
(16:04):
trying to suppress voter turnout like on the day, and
clearly like Russia doesn't understand like black culture, because I
mean like they were trying to basically like blame, like
trying to say Obama's a legacy was police brutality. Okay,
come on now, I don't know where you got that.
But again, you know, nice trying Russia. They're also not
a very effective use of misogyny either. No, yeah, you're
(16:27):
gonna want to step up your misogyny game. Calling her
an old witch. Yeah, like there's a few waves behind
It was a rough translation from a Russian script. All Right,
we're gonna go to a quick break and when we
come back, we're going to get into our main story
about the Las Vegas shooting. And we're back from what
(16:49):
I think was probably an ad um. So our main
story that we wanted to talk about is the shooting
in Las Vegas, and just sort of this eight of
that story at this point. Um, I was traveling last
week and found myself like personally triggered by old, fat
(17:11):
white men, Like I was like nervous around them and
also kind of hostile towards them. Uh but which which
obviously isn't fair. But um, yeah, but that's that's where
I'm personally at. Not a great year for big, fat,
old white guys. Yeah, it's been been a tough years.
(17:32):
But the media's main focus right now seems to be, uh,
a sort of desperate, visceral need to find a motive.
Like they're just like why we can't figure out write
why this guy did this, and like they need to
attach this to some narrative. When you look back at
(17:53):
our history of mass shootings, we don't even usually get
the motive right. Like an in retrospect Columbine. I think
everybody thinks it was about the two guys were nerds
who were getting revenge on jocks who picked on them,
and I think it like sparked this whole anti bullying movement,
(18:13):
And that wasn't true at all. Uh, they weren't like bullied.
They one of the guys was just a genuine like
psychopath who just wanted to hurt and kill people. And
then the other one was just sort of peer pressured
into it. Um, the Austin Tower gunner, I think people
(18:36):
generally refer to that as like being a guy who
just like snapped under a bunch of pressure. Um, but
he was that That story is actually really interesting and uh,
I'm curious if this is what we're gonna find about
the Vegas one, because so he was just a normal guy.
He had a military background, which is I think how
he had access to guns, but he, uh, suddenly out
(19:00):
of the blue started he was just overtaken by this
urge to like hurt and kill people. And he was taught.
He would like say to his wife and the people
around him, he was like, I don't know why, like
this is I just really want to hurt and kill people,
and like you talked to a therapist and the therapist
was trying to help him, and uh, even when he
(19:21):
went to you know, shoot all these people, he left
a note being like, hey, could you please look at
my brain to figure out like why I'm doing this.
And they ended up finding a huge tumor that was
like affecting the area that causes aggression in human beings. Um,
but yeah, we we generally get that story wrong and
(19:43):
claim that it was like about some dude who was
like really tightly wound students or something. Yeah, this one,
the narrative seems to be we don't know what the
narrative is kind of um, which kind of causes people
to like freak out. I was like reading the this
old story um from from Pacific Standard about um, how
(20:06):
the human brain responds to narrative, and it's just like,
you know, our instinct to want to find a narrative
or any sort of rational now, especially in something terrible
that happens. And it's like when you get a sort
of narrative for something, it there's like a physical response
and you feel a little bit better, even if it's like,
you know, just receiving an answer why or something just
(20:28):
automatically physiologically makes you feel better, and not getting that
sort of narrative rationale is a negative physical response. Yeah. Right, Well,
especially with something so horrible is like a mass shooting,
it's so hard for people to process like why, like
especially with this, like it's so horrific. I mean, even
on my Facebook, I'm seeing people like clinging to some
(20:50):
really out there conspiratorial shit, I think, just for that
need to sort of make sense of why someone would
do something like this, and like they're people, I guess
it's easier for them to think that it's like a
Manchurian candidate type situation where this guy was like an
you know, some kind of puppet of like the state
to carry something out to distract the public. So yeah,
(21:11):
it we're definitely I think the thirst, the the need
to find like a reason to explain all of this
is very very intense, and it's it seems like we're
just kind of coming up empty, and it's, yeah, it's
kind of dangerous because like it's the simpler the rationale,
the easier it will be for like people to latch
onto it, like the like the Columbine narrative of like
(21:32):
losers who didn't fit in, where the real answer is
so much more complicated and kind of and scarier. So
everybody when they were hoping to find out what the
motive was, there was this note that you could see
in a photograph of the crime scene, and you couldn't
really see what was on it. So it turns out
that note was actually just his calculations that he had
(21:54):
drawn sort of the mathematical equation for how he knew
how to like arc the let's to specifically hit the
people he ended up hitting. UM And I read that
in the context of an article about how he was
like a real numbers guy, which made me think back
to UH. I read a Princeton study that found that
(22:18):
the only really predictive detail of personalities of like who
is going to become a terrorist or a mass murder
is that their engineers. Engineers are represented nine times as
much as you would expect based on chance. Is that
is that just because they're looking for order in chaos?
(22:42):
Or like, what is what is the rational? Is there
any like theory behind that? I'm looking for a narrative here? Yeah.
I So I spent a long time thinking about this
and couldn't come up with anything, and then I finally
read uh a explanation and it was what you just
came up on the flies. So that's really impressive. But yeah,
that that engineering like people who are numbers people, UH
(23:06):
strive for specific clean cut answers, and when they don't
get them in reality, it like bothers them and they
try and sort of make reality conformed to the clear
cut rules that they have because there's no ambiguity with math,
like it is what it is. You can't on this
(23:26):
year Terrence Howard, who has his own form of mathematics
Google terriology. Guys, if you don't believe me, just to
give some that up. I think he believes that one
times one isn't actually one but it's too now. But
think about it though, Yeah, that's that's sort of interesting
to think that people with I guess that need for
order find their way to extremism or just that it's
(23:47):
violence or yeah, and there's nothing. There's nothing to do
about it. We can't start profiling engineers or numbers people. Uh.
I think I just like this fact because I suck
at math, just like see it's the people who are
good at math um. So one thing that I do
think is useful in this context is the story of
(24:07):
the Australian Buy Back UM, which is like, basically Australia
overhauled their gun laws after a mass shooting that killed
thirty five people in UM. The Australian Prime Minister, who
was a conservative actually, which I think helped basically in
response to this mass shooting, was like we need to
(24:31):
have fewer guns. We need to get rid of semi
automatic weapons. Um. People were outraged when when they introduced
this idea. The Australians love their guns too. Um, they
do not have nearly as many guns. That's one difference obviously. UM.
(24:52):
They also, uh they had had like many mass shootings,
but they had had like eleven in a decade, which
is still way too many mass shootings. UM. But I
went and looked in America has had eleven since August
twenty one of this year. UM, So it's a it's
(25:14):
probably a more pressing problem and a bigger issue in
America than it is in Australia. I don't think that's
a reason to then say so we can't like even
think about consider the solution because we're too far gone. Um.
But basically, the way they went about getting uh fewer
guns is they uh instituted a buyback where they would
(25:35):
pay people as much money as it took to get
their guns back, and they essentially took a number of
guns out of circulation. I think it was like a
pretty large percentage, and they saw immediate results. Um, the
number of people who the number of gun crimes went down.
(25:59):
But Also the overall number of crimes went down. Uh.
For instance, the firearm homicide rate felled by and the
firearms suicide rate felled by sixty five percent in the
decade after the law was introduced, and there wasn't an
increase in non gun homicides and non gun suicide. So
it's like those crimes that would have been committed or
(26:21):
suicides that would have been committed with guns, uh, just
didn't happen at all, right, without the opportunity, right without
you have no access to the guns anymore, which is
kind of counterintuitive. We tend to think that and and
this is an argument you tend to hear in the
aftermath of a mass shooting that like, evil will find
a way, um, But that tends not to be the
case when you look at statistics, especially if it's like
(26:44):
a very impulsive decision, right, and these decisions are tend
to be actually more impulsive than we like to believe. Um.
There's this thing called the British Cold Gas Study that
I love talking about um uh, but it's about suicide,
so it makes me not very fun at parties. But
(27:06):
basically it's Uh. Coal gas was how people in England
heated their stoves for the first half of the twentieth
century um and this is where you got the people,
where you got the idea of people sticking their head
in the oven to kill themselves because the gas was
highly uh right Sylvia plath uh was highly toxic and
(27:31):
so a person could just, you know, if they were
feeling bad, turn on the gas and put their head
in the oven and you know, be done with it
pretty quickly. So at a certain point, not because of
the suicide problem, but just because it was more efficient,
they switched to cleaner natural gas in their ovens. And
(27:51):
uh so coal gas had been responsible for a third
of all suicides in England prior to that switch, and
after they made the switch, the suicide rate just felled
by a third. It was just took away that mode
of suicide. You took away like this convenient mode of suicide,
and so people were less likely to make that decision,
(28:16):
like they just didn't end up killing themselves, which isn't
how we think about suicide. And I mean the Australian
buyback suggests that the same is true of homicide. That
if people don't have access to you know, guns are
essentially a button, like you can press a button and
permanently and someone's life, or permanently and your own life.
(28:37):
That's what's so dangerous about them is you know that
it's like you press that button and its final answer,
like that's there's there's no taking it back. Well, I
think that the Australian buyback is interesting too because it offers,
you know, it incentivizes giving up your gun too, which
I guess is a little bit different from the British
(28:59):
coal gas says you ration, but you know, like replacing
one vice with with another of like oh well we'll
pay you to have a gun, we'll pay you to
not be a danger to society. Yeah. Well, they're even
quotes from people who at the time sold their guns
and like why did you do? And some people were
clearly just said that like I just want to help society,
(29:21):
Like it's not about me having to own a gun.
I just feel like it's for the good of society,
which is just tough in this country because we look
at guns as being like fundamentally part of the American identity,
like it's in the Constitution, you know, it's the Second Amendment.
It's like my god given right as an American is
to is to bear arms, uh and not just wearing
sleeless teas. And I think like if you know, if
(29:43):
if we're gonna go stick to the letter of the constitution,
like you know, just give people muskets, then I mean,
like you don't need you don't need these crazy ass
assault rifles. And I mean when you look at the
gun ownership statistics in the US, like it's crazy. I
mean there was one study that came out that said
anywhere between thirty five and fifty percent of civilian guns
in the world are owned by Americans. Right. That means
(30:06):
guns that police or the military aren't using, like just
the guns that are available to civilians, we own nearly
half of them, right. And like a statistic. That's also
a statistic people bring up when they talk about why
the Australian buyback wouldn't work in America because in there
were seventeen and a half guns per one hundred people
(30:27):
in Australia, uh and in America it was ninety one
guns per hundred people and now it's up to a
hundred and one guns per hundred people. So they are
more guns than people. But when you actually look at
the ownership, like those guns are spread across only like
twenty two to twenty nine percent of the population. Only
(30:50):
like less than thirty percent of the population actually owns guns.
Um And you know, fifty five percent of people say
gun laws should be more strict in a gallop pole,
only ten percent say less strict. But you have this
really strong lobbying group, And Miles, I wanted to hear
(31:10):
kind of your take on this. The the n r
A is this crazy, far far right wing lobbying group
that gets sort of incorporated into the mainstream conservative viewpoints.
Like it's almost like their PETA. I feel like, like
on the left, like I know, Pete is fucking crazy, right,
(31:31):
I'm unable to admit that, But I feel like the
n r A is sort of, you know, gets incorporated
into the whole sort of right wing ethos. Yeah, I
mean they are so powerful. I mean like just in
terms of like so the n r A spends so
much money influencing campaigns or donating the candidates that help
(31:51):
push their anti gun control agenda, like it's really for
their thing, Like there's no nuance to what they're about.
It's just like any kind of gun regulation where against
like we're not even here to talk about solutions like
don't try and regulate guns in any form or fashion,
which is only ten percent of the US population agrees
with right exactly. And it's but this is how they're effective.
They are because they're built on this idea of like, hey,
(32:13):
they're taking your freedoms or whatever. They have a very
active grassroots arm, so like if there's any kind of
gun legislation on the books, they can flood the offices
of congressmen and senators with cause being like don't vote
or don't vote for it, don't vote or even if
the public polling says a majority of Americans are against it.
And and beyond that, I mean, like when you really
think about how lobbying works, Like you know, these politicians
(32:35):
they count on donations to keep their campaigns running because
if you get outspent, you can lose very easily just
on how much you spend. So you're kind of beholden
to these different lobbyists or industry groups who will give
you your donations. So effective that after Sandy Hook gun
laws got less strict exactly. You know, they also have
a very they have a pattern of whenever they are
(32:56):
these mass shootings, they keep their mouth shut, let the
outrage die down down, and then come through with something
like weak ask gun legislation. Um. You know, they've done
everything they can to make sure that Americans don't really
address the issue of gun violence. I mean, like in
nineties six, they did everything they could to gut federal
funding for the CDC to actually research the effects of
(33:17):
gun violence on the country. And nearly every study that
looks into gun violence draws a direct correlation that guns
equals very bad things or more crime or you know,
more violent death. Again, because they have a lot of
politicians in their pockets, they can actually like they'll literally
write legislation sometimes and they'll just say, hey, you know,
slide this into the bill. Um. And because we've not
(33:40):
really looked at gun violence in this country through the
eyes loans of the CDC or like a huge sort
of organized study on it, we don't really have reliable
gun statistics, which allows this sort of debate to always
get derailed by saying like, oh, the stats are imperfect
and things like that. That's because the n r A
has been behind delegis Asian perfect. But I mean, like
(34:02):
looking at the Australian buy back, it wasn't even ambiguous,
like the rate in states where the buy back happened
quickly fell quickly. The suicide and homicide rate in states
where the buyback happened quickly fell quickly. Uh. In states
where the buy back happened slowly across the decade, the
homicide and suicide rate fell slowly across the decade. Like
it's it's not ambiguous at all. Yeah. By the way,
(34:25):
the n r I just posted a picture of your
head photoshopped on a woman's body. So cool, they're not
you just have a bunch of those, um so Australian
buy back that that would not work in this country,
right because miles is head was photoshop woman's body. Yeah.
I mean so essentially when you look at it, the
(34:46):
n r RAY has basically taken our ability to actually
study gun violence away from us. Uh. They have taken
away the ability for candidates to just sort of run
on something they believe in because they donate so heavily
and also pay so much to run attack ads against
people who are against gun control that they you know,
they control the entire gun argument in this country. Um.
(35:08):
And you know, I think that a lot of that
has to do with the fact that they're able to
spend millions of dollars sort of unrestricted, whether it's through
their actual p a c s or their packs or
through you know, outside spending using dark money groups. They
basically are just they have us hamstrung. They have us
unable to really have a constructive dialogue about gun control.
And these attack ads that they run against the candidates,
(35:30):
they're not necessarily about gun stuff, right, they just might
attack the person based on their character whatever they want. Yeah,
I mean there's no way to know because sometimes if
you look down and say paid for by Americans for
you know, freedoms, you know, and those are those are
like those are five O one C for like dark
money nonprofits where you don't know where the money comes from. Uh,
and yeah it can, it can, and who knows they
(35:50):
could be funded by the gun lobby. And then other
ones are more straightforward that are like they're coming for
your guns. But yea that they're able to attack people
in many number of ways. Yeah, and they're actually doing
a thing now that they've never done before. But it
seems to be sort of a new pretty successful tactic
with that they're actually coming out and saying we're willing
(36:11):
to accept a ban on bump stocks, which are these
sort of hacks of semi automatic weapons that the shooter
in Las Vegas was using. Um. But these are I
guess they're willing to oppose them because they're not made
by any of the gun manufacturers they represent pretty much
who are funding them. Um. And yeah, it's not it's
(36:36):
not really going to help many things. But they have
been able to control the story essentially, Like when you
hear about the story and gun control right now, the
thing that people are talking about is bump stocks, right
and all suddenly people are like, oh, then Ari has
a change of heart. It's like it's non profitable, it
is not problem like it there. That's what the n
r A is all about. Yeah. And uh. And when
(36:57):
it comes to the buy back, I guess we should
say that this has been tried in America, um, just
in very specific, localized cases. Um. And so in Australia
they made the semi automatic weapons illegal, so they were
doing both things. You weren't allowed to have the guns
and when you brought them in they would pay you money. Uh.
(37:18):
Obviously they're not making any of the guns illegal in
the United States, but they have tried just paying people
for guns. Uh. Los Angeles is actually doing this right now. Uh.
And the police say that it's actually been effective. It's
taken a bunch of guns off the street, and they
say that there's been less gun violence. Uh. But of course,
(37:41):
thanks to the n r A, there's no real good
statistics on this because, like Miles said, the CDC, which
would be the branch of the government that would typically
do studies into this, had all of their funding removed
when they started talking about gun violence. Uh. Yes, specifically
they are. They are forbidden to use any of the
(38:02):
money from the federal government to actually do any kind
of public health research into gun violence at all. So
there's no real, unimpeachable evidence that could really kind of
affect the conversation around this, because we're only getting statistics
like raw statistics from the FBI about like homicides and suicides,
and then stats that are either from like the pro
gun and r A or pro gun control stuff from
(38:24):
the Brady campaign. So yeah, yeah, And there are a
couple of studies that's say, like buy backs don't work
in America, but those studies are based on a lot
of times these localized examples, some of them are rural
buy backs, where you know, you just get old guys
selling you back their old revolver that doesn't work anymore.
(38:45):
Um And so I mean you need it to be
uh intelligently done. Um And you know the best example
is still the Australian one, where you pair more strict
gun control laws with the gun buy back. Right. So
it's not just sort of like if you want to
bring your gun by, we'll give you a target gift card.
It's like, if we catch you with these guns, it's
a problem, so you might as well come bring him
(39:06):
in and get some money for it, right, and focus
on specific models, so it's not just like any gun,
we'll we'll take it. Yeah. And if you google like
American gun buy backs things, a lot of them are
just like these crazy opinion pieces from like pro gun
websites or websites that clearly are like right leaning three
on the three on like the first page of results
are about how like arguments that the Australian gun buy
(39:28):
back didn't work and was actually like work failure, right, Yeah,
despite people in Australia being like, no, there hasn't been
a mass shooting since America's first Freedom dot Org right,
sounds legit to me. I mean, I like freedom and
I'm from America. So all right, so we're gonna go
to a break real quick. We're gonna come back talk
really quickly about gun marketing and how they they're marketed
(39:50):
to people, and then go out on maybe some more
lighthearted stuff. We'll be right back and we're back. Um,
so real quick, Jamie, you have some knowledge of a
marketing campaign from the gun industry that caught your attention. Ah. Yeah,
this was a story that was in Playboy magazine about
(40:10):
a year ago, uh, that I did some work on.
It was about this company called Silence or co Um
that is a really big disruptor in terms of marketing
gun silencers to millennials, which is you know, I don't
need to say extremely dangerous, but just the tactics they
use where it's like, I think we have such ingrained
(40:32):
like n r A attack ads are a very specific
thing that almost in a weird way, I think, feel dated.
Uh and like you know, you don't see that and
you're like, oh, that's for people in their twenties, you know,
whereas companies like Silence or co they're like their whole
marketing campaign last year was based on this like Miami
Vice style aesthetic, and they released a bunch of goofy
(40:55):
videos of them dressed up like my Miami Vice things
and then putting on gun stile answers and you know,
shooting and um. They also have worked with Steve Aoki extensively.
I know, it's like, oh DJs with guns, Like after
I do hot sad, I had to go home and
uh shoot stuff quietly. Even though I'm a DJ, I'm
(41:17):
all about volume except when it comes to my guns.
So in conclusion, guys, yeah, I mean, look, obviously the
gun lobby is very powerful, but you know, like I
think people sort of need to look at it like this.
The n r A is spending a lot of money
to prop up candidates who will help, you know, push
their pro gun agenda. Um, but there aren't many groups
that get the same kind of donations. Who are who
(41:40):
are gun control advocacy groups? Um? And I think people
can you know, this is a moment for a lot
of these groups to kind of step up and uh
sort of make their presence known. And I think, if
you know, imagine if these gun gun control groups spent
as much as the n r A, there we might
be able to see some kind of sort of evening
of the scale in terms of what the influence is uh.
(42:02):
And some people have even floated the idea of approaching
candidates for Congress or Senate and saying, look, if you
don't take the n r A money will match actually
what the n r A gives you uh for you
to not take their money, but you can still have
that in your coffers for your campaign. So I think
you know, not to you know, a lot of people
do feel a little defeated by because every article you're
seeing is like the nr A is so powerful and
(42:22):
there's nothing you do about. I mean, Massachusetts is a
is a great example of a state that has not,
you know, bowed to the power of the n r A. California,
Great Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the state of California also
as well. Yeah, but I think, you know, it's important
to know that there are there are there are solutions
out there, aside from just clearly the first reaction is like, well,
(42:44):
let's take all of the guns away. I think this
also can be framed around a conversation around the money
that's going into politics and also becoming aware of how
we can counter that with our own dollars as well. Right,
we're not an anti gun lobby. At the Daily Zy,
We're like, this is just an example of politics and
democracy like not working of people want stronger gun control
(43:07):
and are just like, well, the n r A is
not gonna let us. And that's my impression of you
listeners pussies. Sorry, oh no, I mean yeah, and again
I think people need to go back to Citizens United
when basically it was ruled that corporations can spend on
the mid amounts of money on campaign So yeah, actionable
(43:27):
things stay, We'll call your congress people. And uh, let's
move on to Lauren Michael's sorry as excuse for y
S and L didn't talk about the Weinstein thing. Uh
he claimed it's a New York thing, so he's he's
arguing like, oh, this is too inside baseball to joke about.
It's too too much of a New yormally New Yorkers
(43:49):
care about Strami sandwiches in Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct to
New York. And also, yeah, and there are jokes on
sn O constantly that if you're not from New York,
they will fly over your heads. I feel like that's
almost every Weekend Update segment. There's a lot of New
York in Joe. You know, it's I mean, it's an
excuse to not talk about powerful power, but that like
(44:13):
it's an excuse. My favorite part of sn L thus
far this season. There's only been two but the Weekend
Update characters the guy who just bought a boat and
the guy who just joined Soho House. We're fucking hilarious.
But it was like chock full of like insider New
York stuff, Like you're not going to get that joke
if you don't live in a city that has a
Soho House And what is that just la in New York?
(44:35):
I don't even know what boom, but yeah, it's it's
a it's a very weak as excuse, Laurence, come on now. Um.
And also that's so right, like they're's so ripe for material,
like how could you? Yeah, that's a stupid comedy decision
to Also, I'm kind of mad that like they're constantly
just framing like some of these instanes of like his
alleged sexual harassment, when like they're women straight up talking
(44:57):
like he was masturbating in front of me, Like is
that I think that's a step beyond harassment at that point,
like forcibly, having someone watch you masturbate. I think it's yeah, right,
very strange, and nobody about plants, writes Um and then
last of all, you guys, I'm worried about the Avatar franchise.
(45:18):
Um oh, now we're getting into the real issue. I
feel like I really enjoyed Avatar for the run time
of Avatar, like from when it started to the end,
I was like, man, this is amazing, and then it
just totally disappeared from my mind. I think culturally a
similar thing happened. Like you don't hear people talk about Avatar, uh,
(45:41):
really all that much. It's not even a DVD you
get high to and watch, you know, like some films,
like you'll still like the Matrix, like man, it was Waitress,
but you never like, hey, man, let's watch Avatar real quick. Fine,
it's but it's a goofy It's a doofy little movie.
I don't know. So I am pro film industry and
that I like movies, and I don't want the film
(46:03):
industry to completely crumble. And so I'm a little bit
worried because they are apparently investing a billion dollars in
the Avatar franchise. That's no one's favorite movie, and uh
they just so. I was already worried because it just
didn't seem like a franchise that people were going to
really keep going back to. But um, they just released
(46:27):
a photograph like hyping the next movie and it was
a bunch of child actors standing around Like it's apparently,
uh as if there's anything more depressing than a child actor, right,
it's gonna be like Jake and whatever her name's children
are going to be main characters character right, which so
(46:50):
they're doing like the Muppet Babies for Avatar, Like yeah,
I mean, like there's no better marketing than to have
a poster full of people you never heard of, like,
oh shit, that kid I've never seen before, isn't it?
And their child stars so they might be really hard
to watch amazing. Yeah, I mean go back and watch
Terminator two, which is James Cameron's greatest movie. I'll fight
(47:13):
you Jamie. Oh yeah, we've talked about it, but uh,
but like, go back and watch that, and it's a
great movie. Despite Edward for long, he was just shouting
and nagging the whole time. My mom helped him put
out a CD in Japan. Nice. The album is terrible.
(47:33):
It's trash, but you know, shots Daddy for a long
Miles says, the coolest parents in the world. By the way,
you should ask them about them, um child actors. Man,
I don't know. They're they've they've got to they've got
to go. They're troubling. You're not always gonna get Haley
Joell Osmond. You're not. You're just not like Haley. He's
the best. Was really good, I thought, Jonathan lit NICKI
(47:55):
really crushed again. NICKI, Yeah, there are some good ones,
but didn't you keep doing it? He just have that one.
Maybe he didn't want to write Yeah, live your life
Jonathan lip Niki yea, you know he was like the
game's changed, all right. Thank you so much for joining us,
Jamie loftus. Where can people follow you? You can follow
me at Hamburger Phone or you can listen to my podcast,
(48:18):
The back Delcast is about women in movies and it
is wonderful. Uh. And you can follow us on Twitter
at Daily Zeitgeist. We're on Instagram at the Daily Zeitgeist. Uh.
We also have a Facebook page, The Daily Zeitgeist. I'm
at Jack Underscore O'Brien, Miles I'm at Miles of Gray, Twitter, Instagram,
(48:40):
PlayStation network, you know, Holler and we'll be back tomorrow,
because that's what daily podcasts do. By sp
The Daily Zeitgeist News
Hosts And Creators
Jack O'Brien
Miles Gray
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