The Snoopy In The Vestibule

It's our last GLoP of the year, and we're in something of a melancholy and reflective mood this year. But that doesn't mean we can't make of get some laughs, starting with (trigger warning) a couple of antisemitic jokes, the New York Times, a tribute to A Charlie Brown Christmas, Galaxy Quest and of course, Switchblade Sisters. Also, John explains his behavior on Twitter, Rob defends not caring about anything, and Jonah meets GLoP fans nationwide.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Okay. But Rob, if yourpoint is it's so boring to talk about
this and Jonah hasn't read it,that, I don't think we should go
home. Incidentally, I know howyou feel about all this Christmas business getting

(00:22):
depressed and all that happens to meevery year. I never get what I
really want, what you want realestate? Ho ho ho. It's Christmas

(00:45):
time and that means it is timefor the three Sansas of Block to present
to you at their end of yearloves of coal and what's the good thing
presence, what's the opposite glumps ofcoal? Well, you know, good

(01:07):
things and lumps of coal. I'mJohn pod Horns in New York, Jonah
Goldberg and Washington Hi, Jonah,Hey John, and Rob Long elsewhere in
New York. Rob, I think, is the only one of us who
truly fits the Santa mold, beingactually a full blooded Christian. Yes I
am. I am a nod bloodedChristian, and Jonah has some Christian blood

(01:30):
along his veins. So, butI always loved Santa. I particularly always
loved it on Thanksgiving watching the DetroitLions when Nouralko would add the seasonal commercial
in which Santa came down from theNorth Pole on the Nolko electric shaver.

(01:52):
That was what really said Christmas tome. I guess that doesn't really exist
anymore, right, is there?I mean there's no does anybody even use
an electric shaver anymore? People?I use that. I use them now
because it's got the beard trimmer function. Yeah. It was always too harsh
on my face, so I alwayswanted one, and then it hurt too

(02:14):
much. That keeps it from I'mnot talking about the beard one. I'm
talking about just the when you useit was like too irritating. I also
think it's remarkable instance we've already begunin the period of the times to talk
about whose blood is pure on Hehe's got Christian blood in them. But

(02:35):
uh, how rob in the spiritof renewed antisemitism is his assumption that the
opposite for peor it's for for coaland your stalking is gelt. I'm just
feeling my way here, I don'tI mean, I'm trying to be inclusive.
Yeah, I'm spreadly just in sayGerman bearer bonds. I do I

(02:59):
have a okay, all right,can I can? I'll invite you for
pass over. What blood type areyou anyway, all right, if we're
gonna do this, no, I'mdoing that. I should be telling right
now, let me finish this.I heard a great anti Semitic joke the
other day. Oh great, well, go go right ahead, because everybody

(03:23):
else is doing it for real.Jonah is so embarrassed by what Rob just
did that he turned his camera offand he's on mute. So I don't
want to do it, want to. I was blowing my nose. I
thought I would spare you is,but suddenly it was like, I'm going
to tell an anti Semitic joke.And then just said, Jonah Goldberg,

(03:47):
if if you three, if youare you two things to say? You
know what? No, then I'lltell you what. We'll just cut it.
Okay, I think you're gonna likeit. Go ahead. It's so
terrible, but I think I thinkwe have to make one deal. We
get to decide whether we cut itor not, but we have to leave

(04:10):
in you saying if you don't likeit, we cut it. And so
if there's just that la yes,exactly, yeah, exactly, Okay,
here it is. What did theJewish child molester say? I have room
on my private jet? Hey,little boy, do you want to buy

(04:31):
some candy. One of the reasonsthat I do not insist that that be
removed from the show. It's ananachronistic Jewish joke because it's about you know,
Monday and greed, and it's notabout you know, like, didn't

(04:55):
discriminate killing of non Okay. SoI will tell tell you the Jewish joke
that I've been telling that I thinktypifies the Jewish attitude that in part led
to the Masker of ten to seven, which we won't go into in great
detail, but I think I've toldit before, but it's my favorite Jewish

(05:15):
joke. To Jews. In frontof a firing squad, Hamandan says any
last requests, and one of themsays, I would like please a blindfold,
and the other one says, Sam, don't make trouble now. So
that's the leave us, leave mealone, and I'll do whatever I can
not to make trouble for you.And that turns out that that isn't working

(05:39):
very well for the Jews on thisplanet right now. But we can move
on from the anti Semitic Jewish jokesand the self hating Jewish jokes, and
we can talk about Leonard Bernstein ifyou want to. Because I'm in the
middle of writing a review of themovie Maestro, which opens this week on
Netflix, and which is terrible.I'm now going to say that it's terrible

(06:03):
because everybody is going to tell youthat it's not terrible and that it's a
masterpiece and that Bradley Cooper has donewonders and he's an amazing director, And
actually it's terrible, and you areallowed to think that it's terrible. If
you watch it, do not beintimidated by sort of sort of like the

(06:25):
English Patient. We are all expectedto love it. Now. I like
the English Patient. But yes,there was that whole Seinfeld yeah about them
saying, what the hell is theEnglish Patient? I this is a different
thing. Scott emmergot. Our producersasked me about the nose and the fact
that Bradley Cooper went through hours ofmakeup every day in order to play Leonard

(06:46):
Bernstein, which was a very oddchoice because who cares what Leonard Bernstein looks
like? And I will say thisthat old when he's playing old Leonard Bernstein,
the makeup is uncanny and staggering.And when he's laying young Leonard Bernstein
which is in black and white,because you know that's what Therefore, in

(07:06):
black and white you see. Andthen it moves into the present, which
is the seventies and eighties, andit's in color. Just such an amazing
directorial flourish to separate the past inthe present in that fashion. I just
can't imagine the genius that is representedby that. I often wonder how World
War two would have gone if ourtroops could have fought in color. Yeah,

(07:28):
exactly so anyway, but when it'sin black and white, he looks
terrible. It's interesting, like youwould think that it would be better in
black and white, but like heactually looks like he has I don't know,
like gum on his face. Muchof the time. He's supposed to
look twenty five years younger than heis in fact, and he is not

(07:51):
twenty five years younger. So it'salso youthening him, jewishizing him, and
he would be he would have beenperfectly fine with his own face. And
it's a you know, act ofsome people love all that stuff. They
like to sit in the chair orthey want to like it. It takes
so long, and especially if you'redirecting the movie, there's so much waiting
around. I'm sure you though,Oh it's not waiting around while they put

(08:13):
a fake nose on. But soit's not just does he do the does
he do the weird? Does hedo that weird like mid century American kind
of English accent? Well, here'sthe funny trying to do Bernstein's accent,
so which he must have listened toone hundred hours weird. You know what
he sounds like? You know whathe sounds like Robert Evans. He could

(08:37):
be like, you know, that'swhat I said to get out of here.
Get out of here. You're nota good hip anymore. You're not
cool anymore. He sounds exactly likethat, trying to sound like. But
it's like English New Yorky kind ofIt's like fifties New York right, like
that kind of English. I'll tellyou what I'm going to try to say.

(08:58):
He keeps calling his wife played byCarry Mulligan Darling, so it's like,
you know, no dolling dogg wholeft the snoopy doll of the vestibule
dollar like that. But he reallydoes sound like Robert has euphem scene in
the movie where one of the greatlines of dialogue in the movie, which
takes place during the Thanksgiving Day parade, when he and his wife have this

(09:22):
I thought that okay, is isthey're all waiting to see the snoopy because
they live in the Dakota, theapartment building at the corner of seventy second
Park West, where you can seethe parade as it goes by your window.
And he says, John N.B was already snoopy was left in
the vestibule. But he comes andhe says, I don't understand who left

(09:45):
the snoopy in the vestibule. AndI don't know. For me, this
is gonna be like one of thoselines of dialogue that I will remember forever.
It does sound like bout those WorldWar two spy things, where like
that's the who left the snoopy inthe vestibule? A chair, the door,
A chair, A man comes tonight, ask linus, you know a

(10:07):
fat man bait is in the dirtymoonlight. Yeah, that's actually really what
happened. One of the funny thingsabout the movie, and this is something
that I always object to, alwayswhen you make movies about people from sort
of the New York intellectual living printsocial world, which is the world that
I grew up in is that theyimagine these people who are not part of

(10:31):
that world and write and direct themovies about it. That everyone is very,
very cultivated and refined, and sowhen they speak to each other,
they speak without contractions, and theyarticulate their letters highly as they speak,
like in a witty Allen film wheresomeone says suddenly, I was hyper aware
of my body and that sort ofthing. And let me tell you that

(10:54):
the New York intellectuals of the nineteensixties and the nineteen seventies did not talk
like that. You know what theysaid. They said the F word every
three words. They they they threwdrinks in each other's faces. They were
drunk, they were stoned, theywere behaving very badly, and they they
spoke in plenty of contractions. Thegreat movie on this point was Game Show.

(11:18):
Wasn't that what it was called?Charles Van Dorian, Yeah, Quist
Show, right, which what's hisname? Joseph Epstein did a wonderful piece
for Commentary about back in the day. But they all talk like that.
They had Sir Thomas Moore, ais the guy Ben Dornan's dad, right,
Yeah, as his father, right, As as Charles van Dorn's father,

(11:41):
the great Mark Van Door, andthe Columbia professor. Yes, and
he's like, oh, dear,this is very difficult. It is extremely
difficult to watch this television program throughthe Catholic gray tube and the orange and
in destination of the Voyage of theBeagle. That's right, biology for six
points. Good God, the pressure, all those lights, the money,

(12:05):
those strange little booths. That mantalking so fast by being in a bull
ring. I don't think I couldremember my name. I always had a
good head for that kind of stuff. It's just amazing that you could make
it look so easy. I could, I could give you an extension on
your term paper, But what wouldthat mean for civilization? Yeah, exactly,

(12:26):
Yeah, yeah yeah. Leonard Bernsteinin fact, said things like when
the Black Panther was at his apartmentsaying We're just gonna take over this country
and rape your women, that hewas like, I dig I dig them.
I mean that's what That's what Wolffand Charlotte Curtis revealed about the party

(12:50):
at Lenny's, which, by theway, does not appear in Maestro.
So this movie that's hours long,yeah, does not have the party in
it because as the Bernstein family wasparticipated in the making an approval of this
movie, and according to his daughterJamie Bernstein, her mother Felicia, who

(13:11):
died like eight years later of breastcancer, which is shown extensively in the
movie, never recovered from the embarrassmentof the party and being humiliated by Tom
Wolfe the most in the seminal essaymaybe of my lifetime. I'm trying to
think, actually sort of an interestingquestion. That piece was published in nineteen

(13:31):
seventy. Is there a greater essayin our lifetime or an essay that more
resident in our lifetime than radical sheI'm heesogastic. But if you don't really
care about Leonard Bernston, first ofall, but that essay wasn't you probably

(13:52):
have that essay, It wasn't reallyabout Leonard Burns, you probably aren't still
listening, right. But if ifone doesn't care about Leonard Bernstein, the
movie seems like a you know,kind of a you know, a kind
of a costume act, right,like a right doublin. The movie is
about what it's like for a nicewoman to be married to a gay man

(14:13):
who can't keep it in his pants. That's actually what the movie is about
It's about the suffering and torment ofFelicia Montellegray Bernstein, dealing with her husband
as he finds it increasingly difficult tolive within the confines of a bourgeois life
that he asked of her. Andin that sense, it's kind of interesting,

(14:35):
but it's not that interesting. Andhe Bernstein, if you didn't know
we was, I'd be very interestedto know. And people maybe can email
me about this if they can makeheader tail out of the movie, which
is very elusive. So we're interestedin the stupid in the vestibule. Well,
the snoopy in Vestuel is, ofcourse the highlight. I think it
is the hinge moment of our culture. Who would have to snoopy invest because

(15:01):
also I feel like that that wouldbe a great you know, listen,
there's all sorts of phrases that couldreplace like you know, uh so uh
you uh? How many dates haveyou been on? Three? Have you
uh left? The snoopy? Idoctor, I need to I don't know
how to put this, doctor,but I do. I need to see

(15:22):
you urgently. You left stoop inIt's a snoop in the there's one in
a million shot doctor Anyway, theone really good direct toil moment in the
movie takes place in that scene whenhe and his wife are having this horrible
fight about him being gay basically,and as they're talking through the window,

(15:43):
suddenly you see start coming there liketwo coming across the balloon, not the
not the not the stuffed animal version, but the actual balloon. Half to
it was clompaut coming across the windows. Is very funny. Anyway, That

(16:03):
is the hot movie coming out fromNetflix. Avoid it unless you want to.
Again, as I say, what'sinteresting to me is whether anybody will
know what the hell is going onin it. I had the same experience
with it. There's a TV showcalled Shmigadoon on Apple TV Plus which has
two seasons which I have watched withgreat profit and rob you would love because

(16:26):
it is a mashup of Broadway musicalsunbelievably literate, like unbelievably detailed mashup of
Broadway musicals. This couple ends upin a town that they can't get out
of where they're living in a musicaland the first one is nineteen fifties musicals,
and the second one is like nineteensixties and seventies musicals like Hair and
Cabaret and Chicago and it's called Schmicago. And I don't know who this is

(16:51):
for except me. I literally don'tunderstand how they spend ten million dollars on
this show with the thought that therewere more than two twenty five thousand people
on this planet who would even beginto get the jokes. I won't get
the jokes. I never know ithad I never know. I mean,
like you go to like a pianobars in New York, the people think

(17:14):
piano, then people calling out requests. It's always like these baffling these songs
like play play the the second actopener to Waitress, I'm done, I
don't play next Top Pottersville. Yeah, right, exactly. But streaming is
like this, and you know,there's all this talk about how you know
the suddenly the streaming era is overand peak TV is over because now these

(17:36):
companies have to make a profit.And for a while Wall Street didn't demand
profit. Now it's demanding profits andall this and I'm actually thinking, you
know what's interesting is for ten years, all anyone ever does about anything is
covetch and complaints. So there's toomuch TV and there's too many shows.
There's too much of this, andthere's too much of that, and you're
going to go back if you workin the field that Rob worksenter the people
who do this, and they're goingto look back on the years between,

(17:57):
like twenty eleven and twenty twenty two, and say we were making six hundred
television shows a year, like peoplewere making shows. My friend Walter Kern
was on a show, a wildlyexpensive show on the National Geographic Channel called
bark Skins about seventeenth century missionaries inLake San Luis that I'm guessing seventy five

(18:23):
hundred people watched in total, andit probably cost one hundred billion dollars.
And this happened over and over andover again, and all anybody ever did
was only every in Hollywood and viewersand everything was complained that there was too
much, or it was too something, or it was and there'll never be
anything like this again. There willnever be fifty billion dollars spent making preposterous

(18:48):
numbers of television shows, right,which is good? Yeah? No,
I mean, of course not.I mean you can't we maybe if they
figured out a way to make themfor the of a podcast or a YouTube
channel, but no, obviously not. But then they all went out on
strike. You and you're the actors. Well everyone, who are you yelling
at me? John? That wasthe ancient history? Iren't doing anything?

(19:12):
I know, I'm I thinking aboutthis, like there was this like six
month strike because everybody had too muchwork or something. I don't know,
Like it's it's insane. People areare insane, That's all I can say.
It doesn't sound very christmasy. SoI actually have I have a serious
question, John, uh in youtwo Rob since you lived in New York?

(19:34):
Now, like that that quiz showcrowd right, the like remember mister
Pitt from Seinfeld, Right, hewas like the last of the Mohicans when
it came to these mid Atlantic waspkind of character kind of things. Right,
the people we were making fun offfor the first time minute when I

(19:55):
was growing up, there were stilla lot of those people still in publishing,
right, And where do they livenow? Like? What what what
occupations are they in that? Dothey still exist? Are there are there
people over thinks over Christmas dinner?Are they going to get into a big
fight about the Leonard Bernstein movie?I mean, who are these people?

(20:15):
Where are these people? They areI can tell you where they are.
They're in assisted living facilities. That'swhere they are. Yeah, but so
their kids just have become deracinated,and no one's raising their kids to be
highwile anymore. No. Well,it's very expensive. I understand that.
And also the kids can't go toyou know, they're not going to go

(20:36):
to Princeton or Yale. Suddenly,they're going to be going other places.
Part of the joke of the careerof somebody like Leonar Bernstein is that he
became world famous in the nineteen fifties. CBS made him a huge television star.
He had these young people concerts.He also had shows in which he
explained classical music. He was atthis glamorous New York figure thirties. He

(20:56):
was an orchestra conductor, He wasa Broadway showtune writer. He wrote the
music on the Waterfront. He waslike an omnibus star of television, right.
And then the thing was that itnever occurred to anybody until the rating
system was really purified, that nobodyon earth gave two damns about classical music

(21:19):
like they would put on classical musicconcerts. David start Off, the head
of CBS, would insist on thembeing on on Saturday nights. And then
when they actually figured out what peoplewatched on television, that was the end
of it. But for a whilepeople had this fantasy that everybody was interested
in Broadway and everybody was interested inclassical Van Kleiburn. You think it was

(21:42):
they thought everybody was interested in this, or they just thought, well,
we have zero competition. It's reallyonly two networks radio and television. At
the time. We have to wecan be as highbrow as we like,
and we're highbrow grandees and we youknow, we go around New York City,
I mean, your your general starand offer you're Bill Paley and you're

(22:03):
going to openings and everything, andso we're gonna put that on TV,
on on TV or radio, andno one is going to have the guts
to say it's horrible and boring becausethere's no competition. Like you're just gonna
know the NBC radio orchestra, andthen you have to you have to listen
to that because you're there was awar, honor, there was a war,
just just we just had one.There's nothing else to watch. But

(22:26):
but there's there's a third possibility.When I was a Teleigi producer. We
got the rights to Omnibus, whichwas this variety show on I think the
CBS. Some amazing stuff in there, scenes from Macbeth, concert stuff,
Vausville stuff, all that kind ofthing. It's sort of like in the
early days of digital video stuff,people just went to where there was content

(22:51):
that they could transfer over quickly.And so like the early writers for like
Twilight Zone, some of them werefantastic fiction writers because no one knew that
she was beneath them yet. Yeah, right, and so there was just
a lot that's where the content was. And so they were like, Okay,
there's a new way to get contentout there. We know this has
been vetted on Broadway. We knowthis was veted you know by Shakespeare one

(23:11):
five hundred years ago. Let's justlet's just put it out there. And
then they figured out that wasn't stickingthe right way when they had competition,
and so this what I love LucyNo, I mean, well I have
Lousey right, No, I meanthat's that that is real and Omnibus is
one of the places that made LeonardBernstein legendary. And yeah, if you
go on YouTube, you can seeamazing things that were on television in the

(23:33):
fifties and sixties, And you're right, it was the same when sound came
in with the movies, which isit's like, let's adapt every play that
was ever written. We have totake every novel that was ever written,
because we've been making this entirely visual. We've been in this medium. It
has been entirely visual for twenty years. And now we actually have to tell
plots and with dialogue. So we'llmake David Copperfield and we'll make a Tale

(23:55):
of Two Cities, and we'll makeit. Will literally buy every play that
was ever on Broadway just to haveand yeah, and then TV developed its
own language and its own system,right the sitcom and right in the Western.
The way they did it evolved,and then that was that was the
real thing about television. That's Isaid. There was this idea that there

(24:15):
were highbrows. There were a lotmore highbrows in America than there were in
fact highbrows in America. Well,I think there were a lot of people
who wanted who knew that being ahigh browt with something somebody who aspired to
and pretended to be. So,I mean, I haven't heard any of
that great anti TV snobbery a longtime. I remember when I was in
film school and I wrote a scriptin a writing workshop and you had to,

(24:37):
you know, then you bring itin was these long class like the
five hour classes, and people werebringing their work and you'd all read it.
You'd read a scene or something.And so I had a scene with
somebody who's reading it, and thenthis woman in my class looked at me,
you know, and she said,this just sounds like television to me,
which at the time I was liketoo dumb to know that she meant

(24:57):
that as an insult. I thought, oh, yeah, oh yeah,
it does, thank you, Butthat was not considered okay to be intelligent.
I remember like when somebody there's afamous theater I guess opera director who
was I went to my high schooland somebody saw him at a reading or

(25:18):
something and said, oh, doyou know he lives? He lived?
No, do you know Rob Longhe went to high school too, and
now he and then he now hewrites for television. And uh. This
guy's response apparently was ah, whata trajectory, which was like the last
like in a way jerky, alsolike wow that that it's like, uh,

(25:40):
that's sort of interesting, Like,I don't think anyone that's an artifact.
I don't think anyone would say thatnow, right, of course not
maybe they should, though I don'tknow. Maybe maybe we're missing Nobody wants
to writer. Nobody wants to bea screenwriter anymore. When when I got
out of college, if you wentto l A, your goal was to
be a screenwriter, right, adissolute novelist or something. I was thinking

(26:03):
of going to LA and becoming ascreenwriter, and my PJ Wark, who
was my friend, said to me, you are not going to LA to
be a screenwriter. I just cameback from LA. I was there for
five years. I made a fortuneof money. I got one credit,
and it was awful. It's anawful life. You are not used to

(26:25):
this, writing things that are deliberatelynot produced and having your work disappear.
You will not like it. Don'tdo it. And I didn't. And
that was the best piece of adviceI ever got. But if I hadn't
gotten that advice, who knows whatwould have happened. Who knows how rich
and have you be? You'd haveliked it, you would have enjoyed it.

(26:47):
Just writing credit, I mean there'sno way of doing good. Yeah,
you have the temperament. My favoritestory of this time involves someone I
think I can now tell the story. I think I've never told the story.
I was then a writing regularly forthe American Spectator, and there was
someone else who wrote regularly for theAmerican Spectator about religion, and his name

(27:08):
was fran Mayer, and he wasthe editor of the National Catholic Register,
which was the right wing Catholic paper, and it was published out of la
And fran Mayer had been a screenwriter, or like an attempted screenwriter, and
he had one credit, and asit happens later in life, that movie

(27:32):
became a favorite of Quentin Tarantino's.And Quentin Tarantino has been a champion of
this movie forever and shows it inhis movie Theater and talked about it,
and it's written about it, andit's called Switchblade Sisters. So when I
met fran Mayer, and he hadthis office in Santa Monica, and I

(27:52):
went into his office and I said, it was like nineteen eighty one,
and I said to him, hey, I understand that you wrote a movie
called Switchblade Sisters. And he said, because his bosses at the National Catholic
Register could not know that he hadwritten a movie called switch Sisters, because

(28:15):
they would have fired him for beinga purveyor of immoral and licentious entertainment.
And his screen credit, I thinkwas FX Mayor, and he now went
by the name Francis Mayor or somethinglike that, and so there was no
way for them to find out thathe had in fact written Switchblade Sisters.

(28:36):
I didn't know this from Quentin Tarantino. I knew this through my own psychotic
knowledge of everything that was made inAmerica in the nineteen seventies. But think
about that, like there was aworld in which you needed to keep silent
the fact that you wrote a screenplaybecause it might actually injure your career prospects

(28:56):
on the right as the author ofSwitchlade Sisters. Now, as I say,
a cult favorite and of Quentin Tarantinos, we should take a quick break
so that I can talk to youabout our first advertiser, Tommy John.
So there are exactly two kinds ofgifts in the world. Oohs and ohs

(29:18):
want guaranteed. Oohs, be bold, give the gift of Tommy John underwear.
When you give Tommy John, yourloved ones are that much more comfortable,
so they can do everything better thissoftness season. Why I give the
gift of comfort to everyone on yourlist, including yourself, a new Tommy
John Underwear lounge wearing pajamas with overtwenty million pairs sold and thousands five star
reviews giving Tommy John as a holidaytradition, ninety seven percent of women and

(29:41):
men love getting the gift of TommyJohn. That's why Tommy John doesn't have
customers, they have fanatics. OneTommy John fanatic raves fantastic a Christmas gift
that went so right. She lovesthe pajamas. So shop Tommy john dot
com slash glop right now for theholidays and get twenty percent off your first
order. Everything covered by Tommy John'sbest pair You'll ever wear or it's free

(30:06):
guarantee. So save twenty percent fora limited time at Tommy john dot com
slash glop Tommy john dot com slashglop c site for details, and we
thank Tommy John for sponsoring. Ohcan I just add one thing about Tommy
John's please Yes. One of thegreat things about Tommy john is that there
is no product out there that morecomfortably. Lets you leave Snoopy in the

(30:26):
vestibule. There you go. Isthere a better Christmas special than the Charlie

(30:55):
Brown Christmas? There isn't, rightit is. It is the best Christmas
Office. But it is bizarre towatch it today. It is bizarre.
It is it's so great, it'sso but only the last three minutes.
Only the last three minutes, right, and that's why it's so beautiful.
Well, but it's really more thathe's he's gotta he's got to memorize this

(31:18):
thing for a Christmas pageant, whichbecause you never do now, I mean,
you know, they it's like,imagine these kids today, they'd be
going to like the you know,Bible Fire Christian preschool. They were memorizing
some Viking texts for the winterstice.Yeah, right, right right instead and
it's a lovely I mean all thoseare really great there. I was a

(31:40):
huge I actually feel like Charles Schultzin general, but we think him now
it's just a guy who put Snoopyin the vestibule. But some of those
strips are brilliant. I mean he'sa great, great writer. I know
people who really hate peanuts, butit was a huge huge, huge people
who hate Yeah, the people whothink that that wasn't funny or wasn't funny

(32:01):
enough for all they had lots ofThere are lots of critiques out there,
but I actually feel like it's MarkTwain's style genius. Like it's unbelievably important
American humor. And it was abig part I read every single Me Too.
A compilation he had a Peanuts Classicsof Peanuts Treasury are the two sort
of the best of hardbacks that cameout in the mid seventies, and they

(32:22):
there's some stuff in there that isin screamingly funny in four panels, pretty
pretty amazing, which is weird becauseand John knows this, but like he
worked very closely with my dad.My dad was the head of this,
was this right editor of Peanuts essentially, and and dealt with Charles Schultz a

(32:45):
great deal. And Charles Schultz waskind of a miserable guy. He was
not a backslapping and then that's andthat that's one of the things that I
think comes out of a lot ofthe strips is is there's a right,
there's a kind of like there's there'sthe I mean, Lucy in the football

(33:06):
all these kinds of things that there'syeah, Charles Oults has a tragic vision
of life and total that's yeah.That is great material for writing funny things
about kids, and it's just doesn'tget really appreciate it. I mean,
I don't know a lot about GARYL. Larson, but I think girl Larson
probably has some similar sensibility that allowedhim to sort of look at the world
as such a weird place and comeup with that thing. But the story

(33:29):
about rawal Dall. At a party, you go to the writer of the
trust, did he kill a Jew? Did he kill a Jew and eat
him? Roll jowl? Not nota fan of the Jews, roll doll,
okay, all right, But hesaid something like, my anti sentitism
is so extreme that I can sometimesbarely get out of bed in the morning.
I extreme. Wow, that's Imean, we've heard that's a hymn

(33:51):
problem, not a problem. Right. Where was he living at the time
anyway? At a party, notat the not a that, but another
that other party, someone said somethingabout how asked him you know this incredibly
boiler play anti I question about writingfor children must be really hard. They're
quite you know, they're very they'revery they can be very picky, and

(34:14):
he was, I guess had afew drinks. He goes, oh,
no, it's so easy. Theylike anything. Little morons. They'll just
take anything. Is write whatever youwant. They're not it's easy. He's
writing the world. And then hesuddenly realized that he had spoken the truth
for his truth, and the persontalking to him was just aghast. And
he said to Oh, of course, that's I'm just kidding. They're they're

(34:36):
quite Oh they're little geniuses and theyand they're very they're very If you can
entertain children, you can entertain adults. Ha ha. But he had just
revealed himself to be the worst personin the world, which is probably he
was got to be, you know, he was. Yeah, his wife
had a stroke, so he tormentedher for two years on the under the
guys that he was tough, lovingher into recovery. Then, but his

(35:00):
wife wrote a book after their divorcedsaying that he was a pathological sadist,
not a good guy. Very tall, very good looking. Doctor kept coming
in and saying, he's say,I'm gonna I'm tormenting her and brutalizing your
back from her stroke, and shejust had her consoles out, no,
no, no, I'm gonna screamat her and yell at her and yeah.

(35:22):
But what the genius of Peanuts isthat Charlie Brown is an anxious little
boy. And that figure of ananxious little boy I don't think had ever
appeared in any media ever. Boysresourceful, they were mischievous, they were

(35:44):
cute, they were mean, theywere bullies. Charlie Brown was is a
bundle of anxiety. And that asa reflection, speaking myself as having been
a bundle of anxiety as a sixyear old boy, the resonance of that
for me was unbelievable. It was. And everybody else is kind of calm,

(36:05):
you know. Linus is very calm, and and Schroeder is just sitting
there playing the piano and all ofthat, and there is Charlie Brown,
like he can't understand why he doesn'thave the Christmas spirit and what's wrong and
the commercialization. And then to explainto him the reason why he didn't have
the Christmas spirit was because he's secretlyJewish. He's this little boy, he's

(36:30):
anxious and he's gonna he goes tosee a psychiatrist. He's like, here's
why, you know, you're Schultzwas a was a Lutheran of some vintage
who actually built a church on hisproperty. And that's the genius of that
special, right, the genius ofthe special is Charlie Brown knows something is

(36:50):
missing, something is missing. Whatis missing, it's fun. They're catching
snowflakes on their tongue, they're havingadvances, they're doing. What's missing is
Christ. No, what's missing isthe birth of Christ, which is what
Linus recites the passage in the Gospelsin which he's definitely the he's definitely the

(37:12):
the the clergyman, he's definitely theminister of the team. But the but
the great character is like is Lucy, who's like this fantastically gleefully unmotivated cruelty
which is just hard to hard tomatch. It's like, it's so incredibly
hilarious, just the total unmotivated crueltyof this will to power. She's pure

(37:37):
will to power. Things must goher way always. She pulls the she
pulls the football out. There's there'sno profit in that, there's no benefits,
she doesn't get anything out of it. It's just a sheer. It's
you knew I was Lucy when westarted this, right, exactly right.
Anyway it is anyway, So theCharlie Brand Christmas Special, which I think

(38:00):
is on Apple now and anyone canwatch it at any time. I was
just on a bus or somebody wasin a mall or something like that,
and and that that tune that thatis played when the kids. No,
not that one, that's the danceone, the dancing snowflake. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, but I wasthinking of the one where they say,

(38:22):
oh my god, look you cango cat that. Don't say oh my
god. They say, but let'sgo catch snowflakes on our tongue. Trying
to catch snowflakes on your tongue.It's fun means sugar, it's Juary.
I never eat December snowflakes. Ialways wait till January. A sugar crib

(38:45):
to me and it's just this littlepiano rift and it was like I was
suddenly it was like a medal.It was proofed and madeleine and I was
like five years old, you know, feeling anxious, five said, feeling
actually quite quite happy at that atthat moment. The as as as Scott

(39:08):
immigrant reminds us Vince Garaldi trio,which which which was responsible for the for
the legendary music to a Charlie BrownChristmas like nothing. The other genius thing
about the cartoon rather than the strip. I don't remember how Schultz did schults
just ignore the existence of adults inthe strip, but in the in the

(39:31):
cartoon, the decision to have theteachers just want want write this. It
was a muted a muted a trumpetlike a trumpet with a butte miss Harson,
could you repeat her assignment a fivehundred theme on what we did this
summer? Right? But the wholeidea, all the stuff that adults were

(39:53):
saying was just irrelevant to the liethat these kids have lived in a sort
of a different There was only oneparent. There was only one adult whose
name we ever knew. That wastheir teacher. Miss Othmar is the weirdest
ever, Yeah, Miss Othmar,who was probably Charles. I read the
biography of him that someone wrote,but I don't remember if that like if

(40:15):
that was like his teacher's name orsomething like that. Right, But it
was a world bereft of adults,and it was the world. It was
like Lord of the Flies, youknow, in a in suburban Minneapolis or
wherever wherever it's it was sort ofseen, Well, so who does who
do? Who does? Right?So who do the kids become in real
life when they're growing up? Right? So like, obviously Peppermin Patty becomes

(40:38):
a professor of women's studies and amember of a resistance cell Trump, But
like, like, who does CharlieBrown become? And Charlie Brown becomes Charles
Schultz. So that that's that's theeasiest, that's the easiest question to answer.
Uh, is a session musician?Well, I think it becomes Letter

(41:00):
Burnstein. I don't know. Ithink he becomes a session musician and in
in like in Nashville, Like,let me put it this way. I
don't think Lucy is ever gonna convincehim, right, I just think he's
well, Lucy, Lucy. Lucysimply becomes the woman who runs the PTA

(41:25):
and the bake sale and the condoassociation and writes the restrictive rules regarding the
painting of the houses. So Schroederis in Virginia. Yeah, yeah,
right, Lucy. If they growup to be people of you know,
people of I mean otherwise, butwhatever, whatever the case is the great

(41:50):
thing about peanuts, of course,and talking about this, is that it
brings up memories and that always happensduring the holiday season. And so this
holiday season, I want to givea gift to my loved ones that may
that feel special and unique, justlike the relationships we share. That's why
I'm giving everyone I care about storyWorth. Story Worth is an online service
that helps you and your loved onespreserve precious memories and stories for years to
come. It's a thoughtful and meaningfulgift that connects you to those who matter

(42:14):
the most. Every week's story Worthemails your relative or friends of thought,
provoking question of your choice from thevast pool of possible options. Each unique
prompt ask questions you've never thought toask, like what's the bravest thing you've
ever done in your life? Orif you could see into the future,
what would you want to find out? Or are what are the photographs that

(42:34):
you have that you don't think anyoneelse has seen in the family. After
one year, story Worth will compileall of your loved ones stories, including
photos, into a beautiful keepsake bookthat you'll be able to share and revisit
for generations to come. I havea couple of relatives have done that and
it's sort of amazing because it's youknow, it's like almost like Rachamon.
You get different visions, different memoriesof the same family and the same family

(42:55):
events. It's kind of terrific you'rereading those weekly stories. Helps connect you
with loved ones, no matter hownear or how far apart you are,
and also whether they're still with usor not. I mean, my mother
brought to Thanksgiving some incredible photographs thatwe had not seen of my grandfather and
grandmother on the beach in Cape codlooking like movie stars. It was pretty

(43:19):
amazing, and it's one of thosethings that just prompt more memories. With
story Worth, I'm giving those Ilove most a thoughtful personal gift from the
heart and preserving their memories and storiesfor years to come. So go to
story worth dot com, slash blopand save ten dollars on your first purchase.
That's story Worth All one word dotcom slash glop and save ten dollars
on your first purchase. And wethank story Worth for sponsoring our podcast.

(43:43):
Jonah, you and I we're bothfans of the Amazon show The Boys,
which I think has been through threeseasons and is now apparently going into a
fourth. This very Brillian satirical,very violent, very dirty show about what

(44:04):
the world might actually be like ifthere were superheroes and they had the flaws,
foibles and pathologies of ordinary people,just manifested in the ability to do
extraordinary things. And I highly recommendit's It's an amazing show if you can

(44:24):
take the violence. And this hasbeen taking filthly good still filth right.
So they have a knockoff show,a spinoff show called Generation gen V,
and I was so excited by genV. The first two episodes of gen
V, which I think is eightor six or seven something like that,
because it was the first show thatIt's about the college where superheroes go to

(44:50):
train in the world of the Boys. And the first episode is the single
most brilliant power already of wokeism thathas yet been produced, because it is
a this is this college is acorporate conspiracy created by this corporation that makes

(45:12):
people superheroes to do all kinds ofdifferent things, but all of it is
under the cover of the language techniquesand totalitarianisms of wokeness. So everyone speaks
in this arget. Everyone talks abouttheir truth and diversity and and and everyone

(45:35):
is very diverse and all that.Meanwhile, of course, basically this is
all in service to to a fascist, semi fascist, semi totalitarian corporate dictatorship,
and it's fantastic. And then Ithought, as I watched more and
more and more of it, itjust got gross. It was like it

(45:55):
just like the gross level went upand the satirical level went down. By
the time it was over, itwas just nauseatingly violent and sexual and gross
and had lost the satirical spark.Scott Immigrant tells me that you'd feel differently
about this. Yeah, I'm not. I think those are all defensible physicians.

(46:19):
I enjoyed it more. I agreewith you, got worse and grosser
towards the end. I still enjoyedit because I like the world building of
the whole thing, and like we'releaving out, it's not just the what
a superheroes were real. It's alsoa really almost Marxist, biting indictment of
the military industrial complex of sort ofthe Marvel Universe, Hollywood system of celebrity

(46:44):
culture. They get into a lotof like the evils of it's almost like
a black mirror episode about the evilsof social media. And when it does
the kids and so I thought allof it was was interesting. I agree.
I think part of the part youguys remember the movie P see You?
Yeah, yeah. So I haven'trewatched in a long time. I've

(47:04):
now run into people who really likedit. I thought it was terrible at
the time because it was sort oflike what what was the Adam Sandler movie
Zohan, Right, So like inSolon that the end of it, they
have to make the bad guys sortof white industrial capitalists, right and like,
and that's what's going to unite thegood Jews and the good Palestinians.

(47:29):
In PCU, the villains end uphaving to be the preppy white fraternity,
and so instead of making fun ofall the PC stuff, they end up
making the PC people kind of heroes. They can't let go of this idea
in in in gen V that youknow, the college kids are kind of
awesome and like, you know,and it's just too bad that the system

(47:50):
is keeping them from being like theseauthentic, sexually liberated kind of people.
And I think it was one ofthese things of sort of like audience capture
where they kind of lost the plotabout mocking you know, young people,
which I think is just such arich vein and mocking sort of fads,
and so like, yeah, Iagree with all that. I just still

(48:13):
I was still sorry when it ended, and I will because I don't know
we'll have a chance to say,bring this up again. In the original
Boys Thinking one of my favorite singlelines. It's almost a throwaway, barely
hear it when they're saying it.They're trying to figure out who they're going
to get to join the the Seven, you know, the the the Avengers
of this whole universe, the eliteteam, and they've done all this market

(48:35):
research and they've got a heavy set. I think Arab woman who has some
superpower and then wanted to join theteam, and Arab American woman. And
at one point one of the guysfrom marketing says, oh, she just
checks all these boxes, you know, Muslim this, this, that body
positive yet still doable. But thatis that is the brilliance of the show.

(49:00):
Is that language, right, Butit's in plays with the language when
it does that. When both ofthese shows do that, they are they
are golden and they actually show howscience fiction and fantasy can be used for
satire, which is something that Americanfantasy and science fiction doesn't do very often,

(49:20):
but which certainly Soviet there was awhole world behind the iron curtain of
satirical attacks on the Soviet regime thatwere written as works of science fiction.
You know, we by the AvgeniZiman, which was which is essentially the
inspiration for nineteen eighty four, thewriter Stanislav lem who wrote for who was

(49:44):
a Poll? Who wrote these satiricalnovels and all that, like it's a
it's a it's the perfect vehicle.And American science fiction is so humorless often
and so you know, sort ofI don't know, pompous or something or
pious that it doesn't get at whatyou can do if you tweak you know,
you tweak it a little bit.I am, yeah, one of

(50:07):
the greatest greatest comedy sci fi thingsever. I it's I find it amazingly
rewatchable. His Galaxy Quest, Ohyeah, oh it's so good. Oh
my god, on so many levels. The performances are fantastic. Is it's
it's loving of sort of trek nerdomwhile at the same time brutally mocking of

(50:28):
it. Such a good movie.The greatest also the greatest throwaway line in
that movie when the Spock character isagrees to make a television commercial even though
he's a Shakespearean actor who feels ashamedof ever having done this great Alan Rickman,
even though Alan Rickman was really badon Israel. So I hope he's

(50:51):
having a great purgatory. Okay,I can't help myself, God yourself.
He was wonderful. But but buthe was an ass on this. But
anyway, when he has to saybye bye by grab thaws, habit,
what a savings? How did Icome to this? Not again? I've
plued Richard the third five curtain calls, Number five curtain calls. That was

(51:14):
a natural one. It Now,look at me, look at me.
I can't go out there, andI won't say that stupid line one more
time. I won't. Well,Alex, at least you had a part.
Okay, you had a character peopleloved. I mean my TV Guide
interview with six paragraphs about my boobsand how they fit into my suit.

(51:37):
That look on his face. Yeah, Galaxy Quest is just is a wonderful
movie. John and Jonah and alsoall of our longtime listeners. You may
know that I've been drinking ag onefor almost twelve years, and when I
started drinking ag one daily. Igot I guess I learned about it from
Tim Ferris's podcast, and I gotinto Big Tin and I shook it up

(51:59):
every morning. It was delicious andI noticed instantly a change in my health.
And that's because ag one is afoundational nuditional supplement that supports your body's
universal needs like gut optimization, stressmanagement, and immune support. Since twenty
ten, ag one has led thefuture of foundational attrition, continuously refining their
formula to create a smarter, betterway to elevate your baseline health. So

(52:20):
I've been taking it forever. It'salways been helpful, but it is never
more helpful for me than when Itravel, which I would do doing recently,
and you it absolutely takes all thatI usually get a cold when I
travel or just get other kinds ofillness, and to the travel packs are
the secret. From me. Agone is the supplement I trust to provide
the support my body needs daily.And that's why they've been a partner for

(52:40):
so long, not just of thispodcast, but of a lot of podcasts
on the Maxtine network. So ifyou want to take ownership of your health,
it starts with ag one. Tryag one and get a free one
year supply of vitamin D three,K two and five free ag one travel
packs your first purchase, which youwill probably fall in love with as I
have. Go to drinkag one dotcom slash that's drink ag one on one

(53:00):
word dot com slash glop and checkit out. And we thank ag one
for a great product and also forbeing a very very loyal sponsor. So
James Bennett, the former editor ofthe editorial page in the op ed page
of the New York Times, droppedthis enormous essay this week or the end
of last week on the eighteen fortythree website, which is part of the

(53:24):
Economist about Hit the story of hisdefenestration at the New York Times, which
came about, as people will remember, in twenty twenty when the Times published
an op ed by Tom Cotton abouthow the military should be brought in to
calm the streets as a result ofthe George Floyd protests, and that after

(53:45):
three days of activism and fighting andscreaming inside the New York Times, his
boss, A. G. Sulzberger, who had been supportive of the publication
of the piece, turned on atime turned on Bennett and told him,
told him to quit, and thenBennett said, you should. You're going

(54:06):
to have to fire me because Ididn't do anything wrong. And then Bennett,
in a supreme act of institutional selfabnegation toward an institution that had actually
just destroyed his life, decided hewould resign anyway and take responsibility for this
because he was not yet sort offree of the malign influence of the Times

(54:28):
is importance and how it needed tobe protected and defended. I think it's
a great, great, great essay. It's a great piece of writing.
It is kind of the definitive portraitof what happened to these institutions and why
in the course of the twenty tens, what the temptations were that led the
New York Times to abandon even thesemblance of some idea of how to present

(54:52):
the news in a fashion that wasnot simply cheerleading for a progressivism and went
full bore into that because they gotsuch financial rewards from it, because of
their their success with subscribers and stufflike that. But Rob, I bring
this up in part only because whenwe were talking about whether we're going to

(55:13):
talk about this, Rob was Robas he often does, took the Chekhovian
position that nothing matters. Eh,why are we even talking about it?
It is on the nothing matters.I don't say nothing matters. The fact
that very construct John is my point. Nothing, Matt, No, I

(55:34):
just it's so boring talk. Goto New York New York Times, what
they did, this, the slackchannels and this and that. But it's
so it's just a snooze. Andthis is so old news. Anyway,
What do were talking about? Somethinghappened three years ago, more than three
years ago, right the summer oftwenty twenty. What could be more tiresome
than that? I don't know.I just can't. I can't gin up
any enthusiasm to read a breathless TikTokabout what happened the New York Times editorial

(56:00):
and the various calls with his soul'sbugger at Burger and this it just and
I wasn't going to resign whatever itwas. I don't care. I just
don't care. It's not I careabout some things. Some things are important,
but I don't care about what arethose? Let's talk about what's Let's
talk about what you already did?The ag one ad so what he's got

(56:21):
nothing left? Yeah, well,what's what's true? Yeah, I don't
know. Pick something. We'll giveRob a second to think of what he
wants to change the top or two. Just my two sense on it.
Yeah. My defense of the relevanceof it now is that and I have
not read the piece. We talkedabout it a lot at the Dispatch,
though it seems to me the pastis kind of prologue here and we don't

(56:45):
we were not going to get inthe weeds on the Israel stuff, but
the that should have been one ofthe moments, much like the firing of
Kevin Williamson from the Atlantic, wherethe guardians of these various institutions realize we've
created a bunch of young maoists fromthese elite schools right who have are drunk

(57:12):
on all the suppress or narrative nonsense, drunk on the safety ism thing,
and convinced that their feelings should trumpany institutional obligations, any norms, any
arguments about procedure, in favor ofindulging their feelings. And I think that
the way that happened to the NewYork Times, you know, in retrospect,

(57:35):
historians, a good historian will lookat that and say this was a
sign of what was coming right wherethe slack channels of the New York Times,
it was one of these things I'mkind of obsessed with. One of
the reasons why the French Revolution goesoff the rails and the American Revolution doesn't
is the American Revolution we had mostof our important meetings in secret, behind
closed doors. And the French Revolutionall the big meetings were done with the

(57:59):
gas full of drunk radicals who hootedand hollered and said and rewarded the people
who went further than they should haveright, and people started like like Leslie
Nielsen and Naked Gun playing to thecrowd when he's the umpire. These people
just started committing themselves to more andmore radical stuff, pandering to a mob.
And the slack channels at the NewYork Times were like the Peanut Gallery

(58:22):
and the French Revolution, where idiotsfrom the Friggin' Truck Union were given equal
weight to everybody else because of intersectionalityand all this kind of nonsense. And
they ginned themselves up like radicals andsalons in Paris and spilled out and like
almost overthrew this this story newspapers.I think that's interesting in a bigger sociological

(58:44):
I think we have a G file, But I say, a G file
that is so good, that analogyis so good, so leave it,
leave it here in the room.And then the other point all mega is
going back to Rob's complaints about theNew York Times, which we talked about
before we started recording it does I'mvery sympathetic to this. We like we
talk about the New York Times becauseit's the thing we need to talk about

(59:06):
and we need to talk about something. And my dad always used to say,
why doesn't anyone talk about shuffling thedeckchairs on the Lusipitania? Right?
Why is it always about the type? Right? You know, other ships
went down. It's like the same. The metaphor works otherwise. But we
got to talk about the du Danic. I no, We've got to talk
about you know, about the NewYork Times. You know, there are
other important institutions in this culture.And the only reason why it's as important

(59:29):
as it is is because we talkabout it as if it's so important and
if it's like it's. One ofmy problems with so much of right wing
media criticism these days is they theyneed the New York Times to be really
important to sustain a lot of theirgripes. So they talk about the mainstream
media like it's so freaking powerful,when in fact, maintream media has never
been weaker in American history, nevercertainly not in the last hundred years.

(59:49):
But they need sort of like theyneed to They need to prop up Mitch
McConnell, who's like one more fallaway from being a character for a remake
of Weekend at Bernie's, into thisincredibly powerful, you know, avatar of
the establishment who controls everything, becausethey need villains to justify their own victim
thing. And so the right hasa lot of this sort of New York
Times slack channel crap going on too. Everyone needs to be the main character

(01:00:13):
in their historic rebellious nonsense, andso we inflate the things we don't like
to being much more important than theyreally are. Sermon over, Rob Hey,
I am I I am I basicallyagree with Joanah. I mean,
I don't know why suddenly I amthe stoopy and the vestibule here, but

(01:00:36):
it's just I actually think it's interestingthat we talked about that. It's interesting
that this this piece came out andthree years later, just I think it's
interesting, and like I think Jonahis right, it usually depends on who's
who's on wood, which bottom railson top, Like, but nobody was
writing this piece about Kevin Williams andnobody's nobody's doing any of that stuff.

(01:00:57):
It's just like, but it's likethree years later. It's like it took
you three years to put to shortyour feelings out come on. Yeah,
I mean. And by the way, that is part of the piece,
which I think is one of thethings that makes it so valuable, is
that you are watching somebody, inthe course of a piece, wrestle with
the fact that he is an institutionalistand the institution that he loved and respected

(01:01:22):
and revered and that he did everythingto climb to the top of had become
something other than he thought it was. Maybe it always was something other than
what he thought it was, andthat it turned on him, and that
this is sort of like an accountof a relationship in which he is the

(01:01:45):
betrayed. And it's very interesting inthat respect because I myself don't have a
relationship to a workplace or you know, anything like that. But a lot
of people do. And it's sortof You've Levin's point right about how institutions,
when they are successful and possible andpowerful, are formative. They form

(01:02:09):
the people within them rather than thepeople using them as a platform. And
Bennett was one of these people whodescribes his formation by the New York Times
according to its precepts and the thingsthat it was most idealistic about. And
then he turns around in twenty twentyand it has become this thing that was
then basically about to destroy him simplyfor following the rules that he had been

(01:02:36):
taught by. It was it's likea student. It's number one student.
And then they said, I'm sorry, you can't be here anymore. And
that as a psychological drama in thearticle itself, is pretty interesting. I
would say, maybe maybe only becauseI'm in media, and therefore I find
those sorts of things interesting about media. But I just think as a human,

(01:03:00):
as a portrait of human sort oflike, how could I ever have
been so foolish as to have believedthis the all? Or was I ever
right? Was it all nonsense?Was it all a fantasy? Or was
it better? And then it gotworse and he kind of says both,
and it's interesting, but I stillwant to end this. But oh before

(01:03:22):
we ended, I also have oneother thing to talk to you about,
which is Ladder. If you're anythinglike me, have a certain tendency to
put things off until the very lastminute. And while most of the time
that works out, the one thingin life you cannot afford to wait on
his setting up term coverage life insurance. Maybe you've seen those life insurance commercials
on TV and thought, yeah,I'll look into it later. No,

(01:03:43):
no, no, no, thisisn't something you can weigh on. Choose
life insurance through Ladder today. Ladderis one hundred percent digital, No doctors,
no needles, no paperwork. Whenyou apply for three million dollars in
coverage or less, just answer afew questions about your health and an application.
You just need a few minutes ina phone or lap top to apply.
Ladder smart algorithms work in real time, so you'll find out if you're
instantly approved. There are no hiddenfeeds. You can cancel any time,

(01:04:08):
get a full refund if you changeyour mind in the first thirty days.
Ladder's policies are issued by insurers withlong proven histories of paying claims. They're
rated A and A plus by amBest. Finally, since life insurance costs
more as you age, now isthe time to cross it off your list.
So go to Ladderlife dot com slashglop today to see if you're instantly

(01:04:28):
approved. That's l a d der Life dot com slash clop Ladderlife dot
Com slash glop. So I guesswe ought to go. But before we
go, does anybody have anything toshare about where they might catch you toward
the end of the year as weapproach New Year's Day. We have,

(01:04:54):
of course Jonah on the Dispatch podcastI believe, Are you gonna be on
this week? Yeah? And Ido the Remnant and all that kind of
stuff. I'm also on Jake Tapper'sshow The Lead, I think every Monday
in January except New Year's Day.And I'll be on Chris Wallace's show a
couple of times, which airs onSaturday mornings at ten thirty. And I

(01:05:15):
will say this, but I wantedto get this in before, so I've
checked my box and self promotion.I've put snooping the vestibule on that.
But I did a meet up,a Dispatch meetup thing in Bellevue, where
I was chastising, going Yes,I was chastised for equitting that with Seattle,

(01:05:36):
and lots and lots of GLOP listenerscame and they all had very nice
things to say, and a bunchof people asked, when are you going
to do an event like this forglop? And I said, we have
a hard enough time figuring out howto sit at our own desks for an
hour to record this podcast, right, But it's something we in theory would

(01:05:58):
like to do. It has thathas to make business sense and all the
rest. But there is there isa market out there, there's there's there's
an interest out there. So Ijust want to get that out there.
People do people. People do likeMiracle. People do do like this show.
Even though even though Rob still hasn'ttold us what he cares about,
I'm still maybe on our next programwe can open Yeah, I mean an

(01:06:24):
all Rob show. Could we doan all Rob show where we just talk
about the things that you care aboutthe most and you get met out and
talk about you how much you careabout your affectation of not caring. I
can I could give you a shortpreview anything but the internal office politics of
the New York Times. How aboutstarting? How about doing about Game of
Thrones? So head and shoulders abovethe internal politics of the New York Times

(01:06:48):
from three years ago. I promise, I promise, I make a New
Year's resolution. I am not eithergoing to watch or discuss House of the
Dragon because that was eight hours.I'm not going to get back and I'm

(01:07:09):
not gonna let them trick me intowatching House of the Dragon second season.
I don't believe which is coming up. I'm sorry, it's not going to
happen. I wired very differently,I am. I'm a walking dead completist.
I have watched every spin off,including the limited runs, and I
will watch the Game of Thrones franchisefor as long as they make them.

(01:07:30):
And if it requires me sitting therescreaming at the TV, so be it.
But I'm riding that dragon right downto the fiery pits a head.
Okay, well, on the waythis works? Is it works this way?
You say? I am telling youright now, I am not watching
this ridiculous show. I'm not wastingeight hours more of my life. There
is absolutely no way that's going tohappen. And then this frame goes and

(01:07:51):
it cuts to you, let's watchthis Game of the Dragon show and then
it's just that's how that works.You know what you did is that we
actually we have it. We havea phrase for that in COMU we called
snoopy in the best of you.It's also I should just I don't want
to. I don't want to.I don't want to poke the bear here.
But you have been declared about leavingTwitter a couple of times. Now.

(01:08:18):
I returned and I was off Twitterfor four and a half years,
and then I didn't have a drinkfor four years. Sorry, I just
want to say, and this isactually true that I left Twitter and I
came back four and a half yearslater because Hamas invaded is real and I

(01:08:41):
wanted a good part of this conversationand to promote things from commentary that we're
on it. And I can't helpit if my personality, my bullian's personality
can't help but come through. WhenI see a nice, fat target like
Shaddy Hamid and his Hamas and hisHamas shilling, I can't keep myself from

(01:09:03):
uh from poking that bear. ButI I really, I really do feel
like I was betrayed by House ofthe Dragon and I'm I just don't know
that I can. I'm disappointed bythe way, just to I really love
this show Slow Horses with Gary Oldman. It's now in its third second and
I'm not liking the third like Iwatched yeh, it's halfway through the fourth

(01:09:27):
episode or something like that. Ihave to stop watching it. I haven't
gone the first season. Second seasonwasn't that great? Was? I still
still do it? And now I'mworried that I'm so I put it off.
Okay, but I'm saving it towatch with my w It could just
be Gary Oldman. This is thething, like it was just Thomas.
Yeah, a bunch of loses,you tough like that, that's all you

(01:09:50):
want to see, and then everythingelse is filler. Everything else. That
guy could not only literally he couldread the back of a diet Snapple Bottles
ingredients and I would give him anoscar. He is his favorite ever,

(01:10:10):
very small, my very my favorite, very small touch on that which I'm
sure has gone over the heads ofmany people younger than us is but I
know Pod knows what I'm talking about. And Rob, you know, I
thank you. Uh that raincoat thathe wears the whole front of it where
he buttons, it is stained withnewsprint from his fingers, which is such

(01:10:36):
a perfect thing, which was sucha real thing, you know people,
Yeah, where the old newspapers wouldget stuff on your hands and like my
dad was, my dad had thatproblem. The people who work with him.
It was just a thing. Andit's it's glorious that they've added that
touch because it's it's so authentic,and part because the trench coat he's wearing

(01:10:59):
is probably forty you're old. Idon't think newspaper's once a beautiful berbery coat,
and it is now. It isnow the the object, the objective
correlative of his character's degradation, althoughof course his character is a print in
gin. Yeah, yeah, anyway, it is a great performance. I'm

(01:11:20):
just like I'm I'm I'm having thisuh problem with it. I'm I hope,
I hope. May I'll get backto it. Maybe I'll maybe I'll
catch back up. But all right, So that that's the that's the bad
news. The good news is thatI hope everybody has a wonderful, wonderful
holiday season. Turn off the news, try not to pay attention. It's

(01:11:43):
too awful. Things are best.So I can't, but you can,
so go ahead and and we'll beback in the new year. Yeah,
I'm sorry. Wish you could saylonger. I go to run. I
got a stupid the best of youall. I gotta take care of