Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey guys, and welcome to Normally, the show with normalist
takes for when the news gets weird. Thank you for
being with us, all of our normies. I am Mary
cavin Ham.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm Carol Markowitz. Hey Mary Catherine, how.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Are you And have you had any McDonald's recently?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Oh my gosh, that's a you know, that's an evergreen
yes for me. Really, I thought you're a Vojangles girl.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Oh. I strongly associate you with the Vojangles.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Brand, as you should. But the beauty of me is
that I can be associated with several fast food brands,
among them McDonald's, Vojangles, and waffle House, and I have much,
much love for all of them. Another thing I've always
had love for is Trump's unabashed affection for fast food.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah, he's not at all embarrassed. He's like, bring on
the McDonald's burgers when he's in the White House, you know,
stack them up real high on nice silver trays.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Oh my god. I did enjoy that so much. It
was a what was it a National championship ceremony where
a team was being welcomed to the White House. He
just puts out fast food boxes everywhere you can see
there's what they like. They're arranged beautifully. I thought that
was a wonderful moment. So this was on display this week.
(01:22):
We're doing some trail Shenanigans, they call it. They call
it silly season for a reason, and things do get
silly in October. And I enjoyed this silly very much.
Which is McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Uh A.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
McDonald's in Pennsylvania had former President Donald Trump making fries
and handing out orders this weekend and it was quite
the photo op. What what did you think? Carol thought
it was art.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I mean those pictures of him waving out of the
drive through window. It's just it's funny because obviously he's
running for president again. He's been in our political lives
for a long time. But we all know Donald Trump
for decades, decades and decades. You know, my kids knew
who he was from home alone too. It just there's
some some kind of nostalgia almost for him, like we've
(02:10):
known this man for so long and so many different ways,
The Apprentice, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
And here he is.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
On the campaign trail, leaning out a drive through window,
waving and just he looks super iconic. Norman Rockwell, not
at all, the guy who lives in Trump Tower in
New York City with golden toilets.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
It was just it was glorious, beautifully done.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I thought the campaign was brilliant for making it happen,
especially of.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Course, because Kamala Harris says.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
That she worked Adam McDonald's and has produced absolutely no
evidence of it, like not a picture, not a friend
who worked with her, not you know, anything, zero proof
of it, although of course that's enough for the media.
The New York Times had a fact check on Donald
Trump and they basically said, like, Kamala Harris says that
(02:58):
she did.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So, so she did.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, she did, and we're sticking with that.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah, it's this event was sort of meant as a
troll of her and the idea that she worked there.
And it also you've worked on campaigns, Carol, Yeah, you
know that the job of campaign staff is to put
the principle to put the candidate in a place where
(03:24):
the candidate can be the best version of themselves, right,
And I thought that this on that front was such
a huge victory, which is kind.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Of continues to surprise me.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Right, Donald Trump, Donald Trump again, he of the golden
toilets is supernatural at a McDonald's drive through window. You know,
we were kind of chatting about this before the episode,
and we were talking about how Kamala Harris could not
do this, she could not do.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
This in any situation. And of course there's this whole
thing where, oh it was staged? Really was it?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
He didn't abandon his his campaign to go be the
fry cook at McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Was the stage? Mary Catherine Well, I joked, I'm going
to have to take some time to contemplate this idea
that this might not have been a totally organic event
where the former president and billionaire took a job at
McDonald's in Pennsylvania as a side hustle during his campaign
for president. Obviously, this is a campaign event. Every person
(04:25):
who came through the drive through or was associated with
this was going to necessarily be vetted. Because I hastened
to remind everyone he has been almost assassinated twice now twice. Yeah,
so yes, this was not an organic situation. News media
Newsweek actually has a piece was Donald Trump's mcdonald' ship
(04:49):
quote staged? And it's like a fact check?
Speaker 4 (04:52):
No.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
David from a writer at the Atlantic claims, Hey, all
these people who came to the drive through were vetted
because he can't meet up with people who disagree with him. It's, oh, yeah,
we're all being deliberately obtuse about what a campaign photo
op looks like.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, when they work, when they're eating, like, you know,
corn dog on a stick in Iowa?
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Are all the stories like, I don't know that he
really wanted a corn dog on a stick.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I think he would have preferred sushi. But you know,
this seems a little and authentic.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
They the fact that the liberal media lost their mind
over this is so bizarre. This is such a weird
one for me for them to go crazy over, and
it kind of shows that it landed.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
It hit.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
The pictures were amazing.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
You know, we'll get into into football a little later,
but Donald Trump went to a.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Football game after this. He just he had a fantastic weekend.
And they hate it.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, so one part of this too, you reference the
pictures And I do think that picture of him waiting
out the window looks like if you gave AI a
prompt that was like, what will the customs posters in
a twenty twenty four post twenty twenty four Trump presidency
look like and honestly, they should make them into his
official portrait. I really should just go for it.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Show me America.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I want to read you seth Abramson h takes exception
to this event, of course he does. Perhaps no stunt
in the history of US politics deserves more ridicule than
the grotesquely embarrassing mummerie Trump put on at a Pennsylvania
McDonald's today. The whole country got shi t e ar
(06:44):
I'm I don't want our ess tag.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Because of this, the McDonald's was closed, the customers were fake.
Trump did nothing right.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Where Michael Ducacas in the tank that was him actually
going to war you guys.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yes, I just this reaction adds a layer of success
to the event, right, And I just want to submit
that if you are this angry about Trump being in
a silly campaign event where he's chatting with normal people
(07:20):
in Pennsylvania, yes, betted at a drive through, You're not
the smart, insane person in the scenario, right like this,
When you react like this, the Trump campaign is like, fantastic,
we have we have done what we sought to do.
Let's let's play a little clip of him meeting some
(07:41):
of the people who came through the drive through. Here
we goody, you can't take this.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yes, please don't let the United States become raz my natives.
We'll keep it good.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
We're going to make it better than that.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Okay, thank you, yes, you so much.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Just a nice family of Brazilian Americans coming through the
drive through. He also after. Right after her, there was
an Indian American family that comes through, and he's he
had this line. What did he say to them?
Speaker 2 (08:31):
So they said, oh, you know, it's so amazing for
like regular people like us to meet the president.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
He's like, you're not regular.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
It's like you are not regular Again, when the candidate
can surprise you with their ability to be kind and
sweet and cut against the uh stereotype and the idea
that a lot of people have of them. I think
Vance in the debate was another good example of this.
So you're putting your candidate in a position where they
(08:59):
can show that they are different from the bad take
on them. And look, I don't always have confidence in
Trump to be able to transcend that, but in this
situation he did, and I think that is why people
are upset about it. We'll be right back in just
a moment on normally.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Right, I think if you had asked me, should Donald
Trump go like work at McDonald's and help out with
the drive through window after making some fries. I don't
know that I have the political instincts there to say, oh,
this will be a good idea, this is going to
go well, like this could not go well, but it
went amazing, and you know, so obviously they're mad.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
By the way. Somebody told me on Twitter one of
my reply guys that ten years ago Mary Catherine would
have hated this, and I said, no, contraire. Mary Katherine
Ham has been consistent about her love for fast food
and about Donald Trump's love for fast food full time.
I do not have an issue with any of that.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Right, and come on, hated it? You don't hate that many.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Things, that's true. I mean, my main goal in life
is to get everybody to chill a little bit. So right, well,
there's more shenanigans on the trail that people are mad at,
and these involved Elon Musk, who has made a promise
to give out a million bucks to one rally attendee
(10:23):
who has signed his Constitution pledge. But yeah, right, every
day until the election is the promise. So one guy
actually just got a million bucks, right, I think several people.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Now I think there was a woman also who got
a million. You know, I think normally gets results. Last
episode we talked about how handing out cash works and
here we are so and it's so funny because all
the articles are like, even from like Britain in BBC
and the Guardian.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Are all like is this legal?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
We talked to experts and it's like they have never
back checked, you know, any part of handing out cash
that happens by Democrats. They never went through Kamala Harris's
pledge to give black men twenty thousand dollars to start businesses.
They don't talk about Joe Biden handing out cash to
pay off student loans to the supporters. It's you know,
(11:16):
none of this happens. But Donald Trump's ally Elon Musk.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Now, we got to get the experts in right.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Don't they know that you're only supposed to make these
promises with other people's money. You're supposed to use your
own money, right, right? Exactly?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Although do you remember the New York Times lady who
thought that Bloomberg on TV? She said that Mike Bloomberg
could have given every American one million dollars, so I
think they were open to the idea when it was
going to be a million dollars for everyone, you know,
which of course would have been one dollar for everyone.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
It was just some really poor math.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
And this is the thing, like, if you're going to
soak the rich, go straight to the source, Like, don't
filter it through the federal government. Just take a million
bucks straight from Elon Musk. By the way, that considered
a gift. So maybe there's not too much tax on
it either, So congratulations everyone. I do think if we're
going to do this arms race of just giving cash
to people, I'm so much happier with it coming from
(12:14):
a person's bank account for sure. And I am from
a bunch of taxpayers. That is the that is the
clearly morally preferable, absolutely payoff. Yeah right.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
And it's so funny. Also, Democrats are so mad about
Elon Musk on the trail.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
It's like, do you see this billionaire on the trail
with a politician. Well, we never had that happen before,
And it's like literally happens all the time on the left.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I mean, you know George.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Soros, Alex Soros, you know any number of other people,
Mark Zuckerberg of force in the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
They act as if this is a brand new thing.
But they're like, no, but it's different because Elon Musk
controls X and yeah, so Mark Zuckerberg controlled Facebook and it.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Was all of your dudes control all the other things.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, so they're like, but no, no, but it's different.
So there's a New York Times article. I actually I
was going to predict on the show that there's going
to be like a really serious article come out about
how like this is, you know, this.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Is giving Elon Musk too much power.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
And let me tell you, I just looked it up
and the New York Times does not disappoint US agencies
fund and fight with Elon Musk. Trump presidents he could
give him power over them. And it's like a shadowy
picture of Elon Musk. There's four authors on the piece,
and Elon Musk's influence over the federal government is extraordinary
and extraordinarily lucrative.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
And it's just about how.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
He, you know, has contracts with the Department of Defense
and he's got all this all these federal contracts and
all this influence because that has never happened before George
Soros literally runs district attorney departments all over the country,
but influence Mary Kather this is this is the first
time it's ever happened. And so just one more point
(14:00):
to conclude, my elon Musk is not an aberration, and
this happens all the time. There was a story in
Time magazine February twenty twenty one by Mollyball and it
was called the Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that
saved the twenty twenty election, and it literally illustrated how
the tech companies got together and coordinated to keep Donald
(14:23):
Trump out. So spare me that this is the first
time this has ever happened in the history of the world.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Ye, that's yet another and one of the more egregious
examples of the moment that the conspiracy theory becomes true.
Right like it's it's like we were all that was
just all nonsense until it was reported that it wasn't
all nonsense. But of course by then it was too
late to give anyone credit for the fact that they
were correct about.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Absolutely, and they wrote the story.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
The story was like greeted like, yes, this was an
amazing thing that they did, and it's like, oh, you
guys totally coordinated election you know, electioneering.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
And that's okay, but of course it was.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I got to say that one of the best pitches
for a Trump presidency for me is the idea that
a guy like Elon Musk, who is famous for making
things work, would be given any sort of influence on
the federal government. Really, yeah, because it's bad at working.
(15:22):
It's bad at that.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
It is bad at that, And that's why he's resonating, right,
It's like, we don't really care, or not that we
don't care, but it doesn't get like, oh my god,
Kamala Harris is hanging out with George Sorows or you
know Alex Sorows recently.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
No, but Elon Musk is cool and unique and.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Different and effective, and everybody thinks that's, you know, a
good thing. And the fact that he's supporting Trump is
a huge bonus for Trump.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
On the subject of government inefficiency. He told a little
story the other day on the trail, and this is
another thing. You know, again, there's a stereotype about Musk
that when he he tells a story like this, it
was genuinely hilarious about the things he has to deal
with with the federal government. That cuts against the picture
(16:09):
of him as well, and it goes viral and people
see it, just as these McDonald's clips are everywhere, and
I think it does them good. This one, in particular,
was a story about how the federal government required him
to do a study of what would happen or how
probable it might be that his rockets when coming back
(16:32):
to Earth landing in the ocean would hit sharks for
whales right in the ocean, and Musk being Musk is like,
I mean there's a lot of ocean. I could do
the calculations. He says, can you guys give me the
info on the density of the sharks and whales if
(16:53):
you guys have that, And they're like, no, no.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
You figure that out on your own.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Elon Musk, and then he said, tomorrow I will tell
the story of how SpaceX was forced by the government
to kidnap seals, put earphones on them and play sonic
boom sounds to say see if they seemed upset. Can't
wait to hear that one.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I mean, really, it's beyond parody. But so much of
the federal government is beyond parody that I think it's
I think it's helpful for people to bring light to this.
And I just want to play one line from him
where he calls out the whales. Let's hear Elon Musk
call out the whales.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
But they wouldn't let us proceed with launch until we
did this crazy shock data and then we saw okay,
now we're done this hip, But what about whales? I like,
when you look at a picture of the Pacific, what
percentage of the sofa area the Pacific?
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Do you see his whale? Because I see it.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Look at a picture, honestly, and like you can't wear
as a whale. And honestly, if the ship did hit
a whale, it's like, honestly, that weal had a coming
because it's like the odds are so low, you know,
it's like final Destination, the Whale edition. It's like fate
(18:09):
had it in for that whale, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
So that's Elon and Donald on the trail making people laugh,
and that's making some other people very mad, but it
is going to work with a few voters. They're going
to look at these guys and go, huh, that's a
different picture than I got from the rest of the coverage.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
And again, million dollars if Elon wants to ship it
my way. I will go vote today. Early voting has
started in Florida.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
I'm ready to go here. We go all right onto
the NFL elsewhere in Pennsylvania because that's where everyone's going
to be for the next two weeks. Trump went to
the Steelers game. It was a special Steelers game to
march mark the franchise's first Super Bowl win, and then
he did some rallies with NFL players in Pennsylvania before
(18:58):
this event, with a one time New York jet Le'Veon
Bell and controversial ex wide receiver Antonio Brown. I have
to say that the idea that kind of loopy wide
receivers who are very talented or into Trump is that's
on brand. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Why why is that? Tell tell the audience what that means.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I feel like Trump has that brand, like a guy
who has a lot of talents but isn't super coachable
and in your franchise is going to break some stuff.
I think that's right, one of the Donald Trump brand. Yeah,
I can see that. Yeah, So those guys were on
the trail with him. In response, it looks like Kamala
(19:43):
Harris has recruited some Steelers legends as well. She has
Jerome Bettison, me and Joe Green and the family of
the late Franco Harris will all be publicly supporting her.
So we're we have a face off, not just in
the NFL actual teams, but between the two campaigns. How
do you feel about politics in your football?
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Well, you know, generally not a fan.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
But I think that this is sort of funny because
Democrats usually have all the Hollywood celebrities, and over the weekend,
you know, she had Lizzo in Detroit, and I think
she had Megan thee Stallion in Atlanta, but don't don't
quote me on that she had somebody in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Yeah, that's right. At the beginning of the okay, the
beginning of the campaign.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Oh okay, I thought that was recent.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Lizzo in Detroit made the comment that she hears a
lot that if Kamala gets elected, the whole country would
be like Detroit, and she kind of fought back on
that idea, like, yeah, the whole country will be like Detroit,
resilient and strong, And that's not what people are saying.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
So that's not what they mean.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
They're not like, you know what the whole country will
be strong like Detroit.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, I think this is like this is one of
those moments again where Trump's adversaries are his best hour. Yeah,
because his line about Detroit was not a great idea
because you're in Michigan. People in Michigan recognized Detroit has
a lot of problems. They feel affection for it, right,
and Detroit versus everybody is the slogan. So they're going
(21:14):
to get their backs up about that. And then Lizzo
takes that liability and turns it into kable. Harris is
going to turn the whole country Detroit, which even Michigan
ors must go. I don't want down to be Detroit either, right.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Right, No, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
You know, I'm from New York. I criticized New York
a lot. I you know, very publicly moved to Florida.
But over the weekend, like this older couple started talking
to me about New York and they started trashing it,
and I did not like it.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
I was like, you are.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
From New Jersey first of all, so back up. And
you know it's like I could say it, you can't
say it.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
So you're exactly right. Yeah, but you know, Lizzo came
along and saved him from that particular way. Give us
a second, we'll be right back. Normally. Trump also attended
the game in a private suite. You know, he really
he stepped it up from his day jobs as a
Pride cook and went to the private suite at the
(22:13):
Steelers game. And this is a little bit of his reception.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Yeah, he's greeted like a conquering hero.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
He really is, and he's been going into these kinds
of places getting this kind of reception.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
I just it is. I look back at Republican candidates
in history and I just.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
You know, thinking to Mitt Romney or John McCain or
George W. Bush, they didn't get quite this kind of
level of adoration.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
It is.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
It does go back to the whole thing where Trump
just does phenomenal with men, and so he goes into
these very male orientated spaces and they him and it's
it helps.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah. I think, like George W. Bush would have been
the last one who had I think that sort of
guy's guy crab, right, he could go into this environment.
The first pitch post nine to eleven is a classic, but.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Worrying that first pitch, I like literally remember watching it
shortly after nine eleven and worrying he was going to
get booed. So it's you know, yes, he did amazing,
but like, for sure, the concern was there that he
was going to get Oh for sure.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, for sure. There are some some reply guys excited
about the fact that apparently in that clip that he's
being cheered and people are cheering USA. Uh, that there's
a couple of middle fingers up in the in the shot.
And you know what, I would just say, yay, free speech, right.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
That's that's what has to happen.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
If it was just all people shouting USA, USA, and
not a single middle finger, we'd have to wonder what
was wrong.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
There, You really would. There's one more thing that happened
at the Steelers game was like a very exciting game
on the political front weekend. Yeah, generally generally, by the way,
I do not love politics mixing with my sports, but
I understand that in October of an election year, it's
basically unavoidable, so it might as well be fun the
way we do it. So this was fun. A woman
(24:16):
at a Steelers game rushed the field with a sign
that said Trump colon Secure border, Kamala colon open border.
Let's play a little bit of that. You'll just hear
everybody freaking out. Now. Important context, well, they got her.
(24:48):
Important context is she's wearing a very low cut crop
top situation.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah, you can only do that in a low cut
crop top situation.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
I mean fine and thigh high what looked like hound's
tooth boots. So she's clearly a Steelers fan. She's got
the Yeah, she's got the colors going on and the message.
And she she wasn't tackled brutally. It didn't look like.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
It looked like they moved her to the sideline.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
They were probably afraid of what would happened to the top.
It's a it was. It was holding on by a threat.
So you know what, that's another unconventional political messaging strategy.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
A good time was had by all.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Look, when it's silly season, you got to embrace lean
right in.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yes, So our last topic today is there was a
New York magazine story over the last few days and
it was about.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
How are liberal?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
A liberal woman wrote the story and she asked, are
we messing up our kids by making them so anti Trump?
And this is the part I quoted on my ex account.
And so I'm just gonna read a little bit of it.
But given that most family I know have spent the
last eight years blank talking Donald Trump around the dinner table,
a human caricature who, for that reason alone, seems to
(26:08):
be a particular interest to children, I was not surprised
to learn and a new research project sponsored by CNN
that when you talk to grade schoolers about the election,
children of dem voters are more rigid in their thinking
than children of Republican voters. Children who sympathize with Trump
are more likely to repeat misinformation, but they also express
less hesitance about entering the home of someone who doesn't
(26:29):
agree with their politics. The children of Democrats reacted with
stronger negativity about Trump than the children of Republicans did
about Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. I mean, yeah, we know,
we are fully aware of this, right, we know that
there's a.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Very stark divide on the misinformation line. I know.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
I also I mentioned this on my Twitter, But you know,
the brainwashed children of liberals that I met in New York,
I heard them say just the most insane things, and
they're I mean, misinformation is like a really cute word
for it. So spare me, though, we're really concerned about information.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Part Oh no, I mean misinformation, as I referenced earlier,
is likely a reference to some conspiracy theory that later
became revealed as truth right, And like the conservative kids
have just gotten the bulletin on that a little bit
earlier than the liberal kids did. And look again, even
if there are things they're saying that are not true,
(27:26):
I'm not interested in fact checking my children twenty four
to seven and b which value would you rather them
have as they're working through facts and fiction and figuring
out how to live in the world. I would like
them to be able to be more open to encountering
people who might have these discussions with them than to
be perfectly fact checked by Daniel Dale at the breakfast table.
(27:47):
Like I'm just not into that.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yes, that's exactly it. It's like, what do we want
to be teaching our kids? And I want to teach
them that, yes, they're going to encounter people who have
different opinions, but doesn't make them bad people.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
I know that. Like that, that's the message that they're
getting from a lot of the media.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
A lot of TikTok And you know, you can't you
can't be silent and you can't just have dinner with
your racist uncle, or you know, I show them not
even racist, but you know that's that's the line that
they get right, And I just I want to counter
that in my home and say, we know all kinds
of people, and they have all kinds of ideas, and you.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Should be able to defend your ideas.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
But also you're little and you shouldn't have that many
political ideas right now.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Sox flex I did appreciate, and Carol and I sometimes
have an argument about how much credit we should give
for these things, because it's a pretty basic idea of
humanity that you should the article Mary Catherine me you
should not hate be ready to disagree with you. But
I do want to give her a little bit of
credit for just not having this insane blind spot that
(28:49):
so many on the left have. So she says, Democrat
parents have a bit of a golden rule problem on
our hands. We deplore the dehuman humanizing rhetoric of our opponents,
the way they sneer about cat ladies and immigrants and
trans people. So we often dehumanize our opponents right back,
calling them pure evil and dangerous. Just being able to
(29:10):
see that is good, we're moving in the correct direction.
She then says, we stoke fear and paranoia and then
we wring our hands about our weakening democratic institutions as
though we were above the fray. Yes, you do. That
might be something you should consider. So I do think
that people like you and I need allies like our
(29:33):
friend of hyphenated surnames that I'm miss I'm forgetting at
the moment in an attempt to have people for our
children to connect with in this way. Right, But man,
this does seem like the basics again, like all of
us have been saying this.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Yeah, right, Mary Kata and I were talking about how
we both kind of gave the writer of this article
credit for saying this, but it's like really basic stuff,
extremely basic, and you know, and.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Yet it reveals because I I think she'll get a
lot of blowback for this, and I will stick up
for her how far the left has moved in this
area that what they're going to tell her is like, well,
we're just teaching right and wrong. And what she's saying
is that seeing it so black and white like that
actually is harmful to everyone in the exchange and we
(30:19):
should not do that. But man, it might be a
tough sell in October of an election near to a
liberal audience.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
That's it. That's why we even give her some credit
for being brave. But you know, just generally, I.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Think talking to your kids about politics too young, or
talking too often about politics to your kids just.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Not a good thing. You know, that makes them anxious.
You see these anxiety numbers, Like maybe it's because we've.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Given kids all this adult stuff to worry about that
they really don't need to be thinking about yet, Like
lay down your values of course at home, build your foundations,
but you know, maybe don't talk trash about the candidates.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
In front of your kids like they're too little to understand.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah, we do civics and sort of news awareen in
this house. We do some media literacy, we do history,
but we don't do People might be surprised we don't
do a ton of talking about politics.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
My kids will overhear my husband and I talking, and
sometimes they'll ask questions and I would say probably my
reply guys, if I may reference them again, would probably
be surprised at how even handed I am talking to
my kids, because I actually want them to be able
to think it through. So the other day. Actually not
to not to do the thing where people quote their
(31:29):
kids on Twitter, but my second child was listening to
Kamala Harris promises in the car. It was just on
the radio, and she said, she really do all of that.
And I said, you know what, swee, that's the exact
right question. And I'd love for you to think about that, right.
That's yep.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Yeah, that's where you want them to get to.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
You want them to have critical thinking. You want them
to hear something and say, you know, ask more questions
about it, or just engage deeper with it and just
oh this sounds good or this sounds bad or we believe. Actually,
the writer of this article also made fun of those
we believe signs, so she's really gonna get it.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Yeah. Yeah, everyone with that sign in the yard just
got a memo to go after her on X So
here we go.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Well, thanks for joining us on Normally. Normally airs Tuesdays
and Thursdays, and you can subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts.
Get in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail dot com.
Thanks for listening, and when things get weird, act normally