Join Jim and Greg as they stock the Friday 3 Martini Lunch with four stories. They discuss Democrats trying to blame President Trump for record-high grocery prices, young men supporting Republicans far more than just a few years ago, the U.S. withdrawing from Middle East ceasefire talks, and the loss of three hugely prominent celebrities this week who were household names for kids of the 1980's.
First, they get a good laugh as the Democrats post a graph of grocery prices since 2019 showing how prices are at a record high. The Democrats captioned the graph "Trump's America." The backlash was immediate as the graph clearly showed the vast majority of the inflation took place in the Biden years - as we all know.
Next, they welcome new numbers from the Pew Research Center showing male voters aged 18-29 now favor Republicans by a 52-34 percent margin. Men of every age group prefer Republicans by double digits and women over 50 are split pretty evenly. Women under 50 strongly side with the Democrats, and Jim offers a cultural explanation for the gender gap.
Then, they roll their eyes as French President Emanuel Macron announces France will recognize a Palestinian state when the United Nations General Assembly opens in late September. Meanwhile, ceasefire talks have ended after the latest Hamas counteroffer was so ridiculous that the mediators would not even pass it along to the U.S. negotiators.
Finally, they reflect on the deaths of '80s legends Hulk Hogan, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, and Ozzy Osbourne. They explain what a cultural phenomenon Hogan was back then. They also remember Warner's very memorable years on The Cosby Show, and how Osbourne's reputation shifted from heavy metal music to a quirky dad once his family got a reality show.
Please visit our great sponsors:
Upgrade your skincare routine with Caldera Lab and see the difference. Visit https://CalderaLab.com/3ML and use code 3ML at checkout for 20% off your first order.
First, they get a good laugh as the Democrats post a graph of grocery prices since 2019 showing how prices are at a record high. The Democrats captioned the graph "Trump's America." The backlash was immediate as the graph clearly showed the vast majority of the inflation took place in the Biden years - as we all know.
Next, they welcome new numbers from the Pew Research Center showing male voters aged 18-29 now favor Republicans by a 52-34 percent margin. Men of every age group prefer Republicans by double digits and women over 50 are split pretty evenly. Women under 50 strongly side with the Democrats, and Jim offers a cultural explanation for the gender gap.
Then, they roll their eyes as French President Emanuel Macron announces France will recognize a Palestinian state when the United Nations General Assembly opens in late September. Meanwhile, ceasefire talks have ended after the latest Hamas counteroffer was so ridiculous that the mediators would not even pass it along to the U.S. negotiators.
Finally, they reflect on the deaths of '80s legends Hulk Hogan, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, and Ozzy Osbourne. They explain what a cultural phenomenon Hogan was back then. They also remember Warner's very memorable years on The Cosby Show, and how Osbourne's reputation shifted from heavy metal music to a quirky dad once his family got a reality show.
Please visit our great sponsors:
Upgrade your skincare routine with Caldera Lab and see the difference. Visit https://CalderaLab.com/3ML and use code 3ML at checkout for 20% off your first order.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America
and Jim Garrity of National Review.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Free Martini's coming up.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
So glad to have you with us for the Friday
edition of The Three Martini Lunch. We have made it
to the end of a very long week in a
number of ways, as we'll talk about towards the end
of the podcast today, but we do have at least
two good items today bordering on three. You're really going
to get three and a half quasi four martinis today?
Why not? It's Friday, so let's do that. And this
(00:34):
is the Democrats their Twitter account, their x account, and
because US grocery prices reached record highs in twenty twenty five,
they put the chart that stretches from October of twenty
nineteen to a little past October of last year and
then says Trump's America. And they absolutely got obliterated for this, because,
(00:56):
of course, from October of twenty twenty one, when inflation
really kicked into October of twenty twenty two and even
a little bit beyond that is where the massive jump
actually happened. And so you had people taking screenshots and
circling it. Hey, what's going on here? And so the
Democrats ultimately had to take it down. Nice attempt at
rewriting history. But our memories aren't that short.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
The other thing is, like you say, our memories aren't
that short? How the topic of high prices, how do
you forget twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, Like, wasn't
that long ago. We'll have some more nostalgia later in
the podcast, but like this is just now and like
how do you look at that chart?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
And not? But when does that chart end? Again?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
The last that's listed is October twenty twenty four, but
the bar graft does go a little bit further to
the left October twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Who was president then?
Speaker 5 (01:46):
Right?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I know they extended it, but you know, but yes
it was Joe Biden.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
So look, you know, if you want to argue Trump
has not, we have not certainly haven't seen prices go
down since January, and that the tariffs might be adding
to to that. Okay, fine, fair. I think probably there's
more of a frustration. It's not that we've had another
about of runaway inflation, and I think the perception that
cost of living had grown prohibitive in this country really
(02:10):
kicked in right around twenty twenty one two.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
The Biden team would tell.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
You, ah, this is just a reflection of the end
of the end of COVID now actually has somebody do
with the fact that you put trillions and trillions of
dollars into the economy without an equivalent increasing goods and services.
You know, value of the money goes down, goods and
services stay the same, money supply goes up, inflation happens.
That's you know, that's basic economics right there. But hey,
(02:34):
you know, look, they're just they're just social media team.
They can't expected to know these things.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah, I do wonder if this was interns with literally
memories that don't go back three or four years that's
kicked in and then once they got the blowback, you
had somebody, you know, racing out of their office. What
did you do? Or or they're just lying to us?
Speaker 4 (02:53):
But also for that matter, why are you giving the
interns access to the social media account? We have done
good interns at least you see to have really good interns.
Actually we'd sure reviews good ones, but don't work them
very much, but great like we do do we just say, hey,
just just just say whatever you want on the social
media account.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
What's the worst that could happen?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
No, I, you know, most so, Yeah, now the blame
still goes to the higher ups because they probably saw
the headline grocery prices reached record highs in twenty five's like, oh,
let's put that out there and try to try to
get some momentum off of that. The inflation reports have
actually been pretty good, pretty quiet, pretty low so far
in the Trump administration. We'll see where they continue to
(03:32):
go from here. But yeah, the obvious jump happened during
the Biden years, so I wouldn't even say nice try.
That was a pathetic try by the Democrats to try it.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
That was not a nice try.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
That was the point on that. That was really really bad.
But all right, well, let's talk about another piece of
good news for the right, and that is from the
Pew Research Center, which broke down different age groups, both
men and women, and whether they're solid Republican, solid Democrat,
lean Republican, lean Democrat men aged eighteen to twenty nine. Jim,
(04:06):
I don't know what it was, you know, in the
last decade or two, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't it.
It seemed like the guys were almost as left as
the girls on college campuses and elsewhere. But now it's
fifty two to thirty four in favor of the guys.
Thirteen percent still don't lean either way. Women though, fifty
eight to thirty seven in that demographic, which is the
(04:27):
largest gap of men or women in any age group.
But men are double digits to the right in everyone again,
fifty two to thirty four for the youngest voters, fifty
one to forty one, for thirty to forty nine, men
fifty to sixty four, fifty six to thirty seven in
favor of the right. Gen X doing some heavy lifting.
Yet again, women in Gen X dead even forty six
(04:49):
forty six sixty five plus men fifty four to forty
in favor of the Republicans, and women all again very close,
forty seven to forty four in favor of the Democrats,
women between thirty and forty nine, fourteen points in favor
of the Dems fifty three to thirty nine. So, Jim,
the ladies under fifty who are keeping these elections close?
Speaker 4 (05:08):
They are, And right now I can hear a chunk
of our listeners probably saying this is because the government
has taken the role of the male provider in a
lot of a relationship. We'll get to that in a second.
Trust me, I know, but I know there's a whole
bunch of guys like that that's like jumping.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
On their last nerve.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
It's interesting, you know, we've talked about since the twenty
twenty four election, Democrats have said, how do we appeal
more to young males? Why are young males growing more conservative?
Why are they voting in higher numbers for the Republican Party?
And they said, ah, you know, why can't we find
our own Joe Rogan. Never mind that a couple of
years ago there was a guy you know who was
supporting Bernie Sanders named Joe Rogan. So they had one
(05:47):
and they not only they drove Joe Rogan. There are
a whole bunch of these podcasters who are I would argue,
not necessarily or at least as of a couple of
years ago, we're not down the line Republicans, you know,
certainly traditional they were not quoting William Buckley, you know
that kind of stuff. That there was kind of this
libertarian ish leave me alone, sports girls, pop culture, you know,
(06:10):
vibe to it, but they kind of recognized that what
was coming from the Democratic Party was this demonization of men.
This you constant talk about toxic masculinity, that the idea,
if you were a young man, there was inherently something
wrong with you, all right. The other thing is that
came out this week which drove people crazy was this
New York Times long front first person essay, The Trouble
(06:32):
with Wanting Men by Jean Garnett, developing the concept of
hetero fatalism, and the idea is that if you're a woman,
men are just so frustrating and it's very hard to
have a happy heterosexual relationship if you are simultaneously trying
to fight the patriarchy in all of its forms and
(06:53):
constantly on guard for anything that could be construed as
a heteronormative or if you believe that men and women
are different, how could you possibly have a happy relationship. Well,
lots of people do, lots of It's not in an error.
The fact that they're different doesn't mean that necessarily one
is better than the other, or that one always has
to be in charge or figure out what works for
(07:14):
you and your spouse, and it'll probably be fine.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
You know.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
I think my big fat Greek wedding, the argument that
the man is the head of the house and then
the mother saying yes, but the wife is the neck,
and she determines the direction that the head is facing.
I suspect there are a lot of married couples who
would say, yeah, you know that really there is this partnership,
that there really is this perception of the male running
things is not always the way they you know, there's
(07:40):
there's often a little more subtle nuance to that than
than things are. But this essay, the trouble with wanting
men just seems like this classic of the genre of
blaming the men. You know, men today for the problems
in all relationships, that there's no taking a responsibility. There's
no sense that you know, if you're constantly having unhappy
your relationships with men, maybe it has something to do
(08:03):
with the men you're dating. Maybe you keep picking a
particular type of guy who's not gonna be able to
meet your needs in the way that you want. But
I also just kind of feel like that there is
this culture of anxiety, depression, frustration. Someone might say irresponsibility,
some might say constant blame. Shifting flourishing in that. And
(08:25):
just look at whatever young women's media you prefer, Team Vogue,
the New York Times magazine section, whatever, look at the
way they talk about relationships, and then go onto these
podcasts and YouTube shows and see how they talk about relationships,
and they're completely different. The male shows are often, or
very often this is like, hey, this is how you
get your life together, Jordan Peterson much go cleaned your room.
(08:48):
You know this idea of empowerment. It's up to you
to make your life better. Whereas you know, again I'm
not the target audience, but a lot of these programs
to targeting at women are very much by how everything
is terrible and none of it is your fault and
this kind of this mentality of victimhood and all that stuff.
So I look at this only well, I'm not surprised
things are shaking out this way. And if you're looking
(09:09):
for the Democratic Party and tell you the Democratic Party's
messa is you need us, you need government to help
you out. You can't make it on your own. A
Republican Party, with some exceptions, has very much been government's
not there to make your life better, The government's not
there to fix every little problem. You're supposed to do that.
That's what freedom's all about, That's what responsibility is about.
Go go out there, kick the ass of the world.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Go do great.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
You know, you'll be fine. And it's not surprising that
each each gender would be gravitating towards particular party. I
think it's a formula for a lot of disappointed Democrats,
and of course, by extension, a lot of disappointed women.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah, and there have been polls over the years showing
that single women lean far more to the left than
married women. Hillary Clinton, of course, would chalk that up to, Ah,
you're just doing what your husbands are telling, right, I
do or or hear me out. Maybe those men married
people who think similarly to that on various political issues.
It's just possible that they figured that they had some
(10:04):
things in common before they got married. I'm just spitballing here, Jim.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Yeah, do you think Hillary always does what Bill wants?
I'm just coloredly skeptical. I just got the vibe.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Overall, it's plus one for Republicans right now nationwide. It
used to be plus six for the Democrats. So definitely
a little bit of a shift going on. Here all right,
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Speaker 4 (10:44):
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(11:49):
Jim quasi good Martini here double fisted. In fact, we
go to the Middle East. Here's the bad part. Hat
tip to town Hall for this one. French President and
Manuel Macrone announcing Thursday that France will recognize Palestine as
a state at the UN General Assembly in September. Quote,
consistent with its historic commitment to a just and lasting
(12:12):
peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France
will recognize the state of Palestine, Macrohn wrote on x quote.
The urgent priority today is to end the war in Gaza,
to bring relief to the civilian population. Piece is possible,
but he got plenty of blowback here, including from Benjamin Netanyahu,
says we strongly condemned President Macron's decision to recognize a
(12:33):
Palestinian state next to Tel Aviv in the wake of
the October seventh massacre. Such a move rewards terror and
risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became a
Palestinian state in these conditions, would be a launch pad
to annihilate Israel, not to live in peace beside it. Meanwhile,
the effort to get that ceasefire in the Middle East
(12:53):
has completely fallen apart. Mediators from Egypt and even Katar
basically told Amas their latest offer was ridiculous. The Times
of Israel saying mediators last week were bullish about the
chances of an imminent agreement after Israel came down from
some of its demands. But upon reviewing Hamas's response, Egyptian
and Katari mediators told Hamas they would not even present
(13:15):
it to the US Special Envoy in the Middle East,
Steve Whitcough. Whitcof, for his part, now has told his
negotiators to leave. This is pointless and so here we
are again. So Emmanuel Macron still, I guess looking at
rainbows and unicorns there in his office, Jim. But in
terms of reality and the idea that Hamas actually wants
(13:37):
peace in the Middle East. These people are still in dreamland.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
So I am not always the biggest fan of Mike Huckabee,
the current US Ambassador to Israel, but I did like
his response to this. He says, you know what, actually,
we'd be open to a Palestinian state as well. Why
don't we put it right in the French riviera. You
like that, you want to do that there, and you know,
obviously no one in France thinks that's a good idea.
It's always yes, there should be a state, and you
(14:03):
guys give up the land for it. Were just going
to cheer from it over here. In the second part,
I have taken to the habit in the last few
months of referring to our chief presidential envoy as Steve.
Maybe Hamas duped me Witkov being very underwhelmed with his
first round of negotiations and his subsequent excuse that he
thought he had to deal with Hamas, and then Greg,
(14:24):
I'm glad you're sitting down so you're ready for this.
It turns out Hamas was not being honest, was not
negotiating good good faith, and when push came to shove,
they backed away from the promises they had made. I
again to think, you know, in terms of his negotiations
with Russia, I've had a great deal of frustration with Witkov,
and he comes across as a guy who seems to
(14:44):
think because he handled big budget, you know, the real
estate deals in New York City, he's prepared to handle
some of the thornist and most difficult negotiations in US
foreign policy all around the globe. But I guess I'm
kind of coming around, not just because of this statement,
which I think he's just being very blunt in saying
that Hamas is not negotiating in good faith, I think
(15:06):
it does kind of reach the point where when even
Steve Whitkov says you can't be trusted and can't reach
a deal with you like Hamas, You're never going to
find it easier negotiator than Steve Witkoff. If you can't
make him, if you can't convince him that you've got
a reasonable offer on the table, then you can't convince anybody,
and nobody in the Middle East things you're doing it seriously.
(15:26):
So by that standard, Steve Whitcov actually maybe he is
the right guy to send to this almost as a
litmus test to see is this person a good faith
negotiator and are they serious? And do they want to
get a deal? My sneaking suspicion isn't a bunch of
these figures, you know, Hamas Vladimir Putin don't want a deal.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
They want to keep fighting, but they want.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
To appear reasonable, which is why they will show up
for the negotiations. Joe, we just can't seem to get
there either way. Good for you Witkov to getting it,
you know, a little bit late, but for calling it
as it is and for using it in really blunt language.
I guess it's another advantage of not having a career
diplomat to you know, express great disappointment in a pinstriped
(16:07):
suit or something like that that you know, Woodkov comes
out and says, this is this is getting a ridiculous
and infuriating So a rare case of good for you, Wouldkov.
Maybe US diplomatic efforts will be more productive just as
a realistic expectations and a recognition that not everybody in
the globe is a good faith negotiator.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what's going to happen
at the un I'm sure that crowd's going to be
pretty supportive of Macrohn's idea. Here, Macrone says he's, you know,
hashed out this idea with mak Mu debass with you know,
Palestini authority hasn't been negotiating with Hamas, but good luck
getting anywhere close to a resolution on that without involving
Hamas or anything like that. So, I mean, it's just
(16:45):
all you're doing is killing more trees with papers here
as far as I can tell here, until until they
actually get serious about allowing Israel to exist in renouncing terrorism,
which they won't do. They won't even pretend to do it,
but they definitely won't do it for real. And so
until that point, why even.
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Speaker 3 (17:33):
All right to our final Martini of the Day and
the Week and Jim, I haven't checked my social media
feed since we started recording here, but hopefully no more
prominent celebrity from the eighties has died. This has been
a terrible week for gen X, with three very prominent deaths.
It started with the shocking news that Malcolm Jamal Warner,
who played theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show, drowned while
(17:55):
on vacation and Costa Rica over last weekend, just fifty
four years old. As odious as Bill Cosby's reputation is now,
there are still some just absolutely classic clips from that show,
including the one where theo said it didn't matter where
he got good grades and if you haven't seen the
clips on that it's just absolutely fantastic. Then It's just
a day or two later that we found out that
Ozzy Osbourne died after just a couple of weeks after
(18:18):
his final concert. He had been battling Parkinson's disease I'm
not sure if that was the official cause, but I'm
sure it was a factor. He was seventy six years old.
And then yesterday we're all shocked, especially as eighties kids,
on the passing of Hull Cogan from cardiac arrest at
the age of seventy one. I mean, talk about a
cultural phenomenon for over forty years. I mean, Hull Cogan
(18:38):
came up as a wrestler was already pretty prominent from
the early eighties, because by nineteen eighty two, I believe
it was he was thunder Lips and Rocky three, and
soon he was the face of the WWF, which was
their name before the World Wildlife Fund tried to sue
him and so they changed it to WWE. But then
Hogan becomes the champ. You get the whole Hulk Mania thing,
the Red, White, and Blue, the train, say your prayers,
(19:01):
each your vitamins. And then of course there's the epic
show down in wrestle Mania three against andre the Giant,
and I'm sure you've seen the clips if you're into
this story at all, of him lifting up Andrea the Giant,
slamming him to the canvas and then dropping the leg
to get the pin in just an incredible moment. I mean,
everybody talks about how wrestling is fake. I was into
it very much for about three years, and that was
(19:22):
part of that era. You don't fake picking up Andrea
the Giant and slamming him down. That was just an
incredible moment, but an absolute cultural phenomenon in a number
of ways in that era when Hogan was the champ
in the face of the WWF for so long. My
friend Brad and I went to a store in town
because I was looking for those Hulka Mania T shirts
that he'd always rip as he entered the ring. My
(19:43):
mom did not like the idea of me ripping shirts,
so there's no way that was going to happen with
my existing wardrobe. So I go into this store asking
if he sills Hulka Mania T shirts, and of course,
Hulk Hogan's got to twenty four inch pythons, Jim, I
had about three inch pythons if that, and so garden snakes,
and this guy just absolutely loses it, laughing. He I
(20:04):
think that made his weak. He did not sell them, unfortunately,
but just a little taste of what hull Comania was
like in our little town and you know, there are
people our age and beyond who are thinking about so
many different things with the passing of Haul Cogan. And
we'll talk in a moment about his moment from last summer.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Well, I just want to point out Greg that when
you know, hul Cogan lifted up and threw Andre the Giant,
a lot of people said that that was the single
most devastating blow that Hulk Hogan dealt out to anybody
in his entire career, the first of course being taken
down the website Gawker. I allude to a bit more
(20:44):
to that later about the idea of these Generation X figures,
who you know, stars at the eighties who ended up
coming back later in life. It's strange the passing of
malcol Jamal Warner, you know, best known as THEO would.
I found myself that that hit me on a level
I didn't expect too, because if I say to you, Greg.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Dennis, you know exactly what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
And like half of our listeners are like, oh god,
the shirt episode, right, we wanted this fancy designer was
Pierre Cardrell or whatever, you know, this is this fancy
and Denise is like, oh, I can make you, and
she makes the most ridiculous looking shirt of all time.
And he goes out and the girl he wants to
impresses in the living room and he's flipping out, and
she likes it.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
She thinks this by some other.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
You know, one of the things that you and I,
being the ages that we are, have witnessed is the
era of the monoculture when we were kids and teens
and growing up, the arrival of the Internet, and then
kind of the end of that era. And look, there
are a lot of advantages to having a podcast with
two guys, and it's more than just three television networks,
and you can find anything on the internet. You can
(21:48):
find anything on YouTube. Amazon sells a bazillion books, like
there are a lot of really big advantages to this.
But one of them is we don't have that kind
of shared thing where you go into school, you go
into the office, you know everybody else was talking about that,
or who shot Jr. Or who killed Laura Palmer or
any of these things. And the Cosby Show, look, you know,
(22:09):
Bill Cosby's a rat bastard who did all kinds of
terrible things. But the Cosby Show stands out as arguably
the greatest families sitcom of all time, and it was,
you know, eight o'clock on Thursday nights, you were watching NBC,
and it was just this lovely, enjoyable portrayal of American life.
People talk about what a landmark it was for a
portrayal of a successful African American family. Dad's a doctor,
(22:33):
a mom's a lawyer. But I think also just to
sheer universal element of it, the degree to which people
could recognize, oh god, my mom had a look that
was like Claire Huxtable, or if you messed up, or
your dad's exasperation or bickering with your siblings or like
all of that just felt so relatable. Malcol Jabal Warner
remained as a working actor throughout all the years, and
(22:54):
I'm sure he probably made a bundle all the years
of The Cosby Show, so he didn't distalely need to
so God. In Community, he appears He's wearing a very bright,
colorful sweater and one of the other characters says, hey,
nice sweater. He's like, yeah, I got it from my dad.
Nice little shout out to the Cosby Show on Community. There,
So Ozzy Osbourne, I can't say I was a diehard
(23:14):
fan of his kind of metal in the metal music
in the eighties. But I will point out though, when
he came back as a reality star on The Osbourne's
I think there's something about watching these celebrities who had
a certain rebellious, unstoppable image in their youth and then
(23:35):
they come back and you see them and the depressing
but universally recognized middle age comes for us all. And
the degree to which he was, you know, obviously dealing
with some hearing issues and shared you know, this kind
of general like hard living had taken a toll on him,
and the degree to which everybody who you know worked
with him, Donnie Osmond talking about how great it was
(23:56):
to work with him, all these other guys who were
completely at awe with the bat beating, which, by the way,
looking back from the perspective of COVID, wasn't that dangerous
Greg to bite the head off a bat? There was
something particularly as those portrayal and you watched his relationship
with Sharon and his relationship with his kids.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
There was a sweetness there. There was a recognition that
here's a guy who was like, yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
I'm here to destroy mainstream white bread Christian America and
then he comes out to be kind of his own
kind of sitcom dad. So you and I talk about
we kind of joke about the idea that in our
minds Diehard as a Christmas movie that came out just
a few years ago. The eighties were just a little
while ago. The nineties weren't that long ago. And this
recognition that like, okay, yes, technically allegedly some of us
(24:41):
are in the neighborhood of fifty years old, and that
the eighties were forty years ago, and that doesn't seem possible.
And when you see so many of these big figures
from your childhood passing into the next world, it is
a reminder that it is and it's un you know,
those of us who lived through it, it was a special time.
I think we who grew up in the eighties have
this advantage. It's said that if you grew up with this,
if you remember the seventies, then you weren't really there.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, I mean it's hard to believe, but nineteen eighty
five is now halfway between us and the end of
World War Two, and that's that means it's a long
time ago, now forty years now. The interesting thing about Ozzy.
I think that's one of the few marriages that didn't
blow up as a result of having their own reality
TV show. Ye had Jessica Simpson and Nicholas Say. Hulk
Hogan's marriage didn't last that one. You had John and Kate,
(25:27):
you had the Palins had their own even I think
the duggers are still together, but they've certainly had their
issues over time, and it's just it's just odd that
they were the ones to make it. But good for them, obviously.
But then the Hulk Hogan last year, of course, was
at the Republican National Convention, which, honestly, other than maybe
(25:47):
Trump embracing the fire coat of Corey Comparatur in the
beginning of his speech, Hogan earlier that night was probably
the one that got the most clicks and the most
retweets and everything else over the next couple of days.
Here's how that went down.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
But what happened last week when they took a shot
at my hero and they tried to kill the next
president of the United States, enough was enough, said, Look,
trop Omania bron while brother, let trump.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Omania rule again.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
Let Tchopamania, nke Amica cry again.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Oh Man, and of course Trump's no stranger or the
wrest League World either. He was love it every second
of that, and Jim, I hate to be even more
of a downer. But we also got news this week
that Phil Collins is not doing well. The rumors I
believe this morning that he's in hospice were untrue, So
thankfully that's not getting that bad. But we also learned
this week that our beloved Bruce willis from die Hard.
(26:51):
His dementia's progressed to the point where he can't speak
or read and now has even trouble walking. So it's
just an era that's getting further in from there. In
the rear view of Mirria, even if it doesn't seem
that way.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
You find yourself wanting to put a protective bubble wrap
around mister T Michael J. Fox, And I'm sure I'm
probably thinking I'm forgetting some other ones the darkest day
for us eighties kids since Optim's prime died. The other
thing I'm just gonna observe is that, like watching that
footage of Hulk Hogan, you know, we're now in an
age where a decent number of people who cover politics
(27:24):
are in the ballpark of our age. Some people would
argue that Greg, you and I are on the older
side of people covering politics, But for every even if
you are like a diehard progressive liberal, every guy who
was a kid in the eighties watched that segment and said, oh,
that was awesome. Politics disappeared and the funny you look
at that, you would have thought Hull Cogan would have
lived in decades and decades that he just looked like
(27:46):
he was so full of energy and full of life
and just just shocking and just kind of this recognition,
you know. Like, again, I think by the end of it,
people having enjoyed all the stages of Hull cooked his career,
you goann talking about a guy who like figured out
who he was and what he stands for and knew
that not everybody was gonna like him. You know, we
(28:08):
talked about his faith and perhaps that's why he called
everybody brother. But this kind of the sense of the
degree to which he certainly seemed like a man utterly
comfortable with who he was. He figured out who he was,
what he wanted to do, what he was supposed to
be doing on this earth, and I think by his
own measures, you'd say he did it pretty darned well.
So we're talking about, you know, three figures who are
(28:30):
who will be missed, and who definitely left their mark
in the world about as much as anybody could.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Jim, on that somber note, have a terrific weekend and
I'll see you again on Monday. See you Monday, Greg,
Jim Garretty, National Review. I'm Greg Corumbus of Radio America.
Thanks so much for being with us today. Please be
sure to subscribe to the Three Martini Lunch if you
don't already, tell your friends about us as well. Thanks
also for your five star ratings and your kind reviews.
Please keep those coming. Get us on your home devices.
All you have to say is play Three Martini Lunch podcast.
(28:56):
Follow us both on X He's at Jim Garritty, I'm
at Greg Corumbus. Have a fantastic weekend. Join us again
Monday for the next Three Martini Lunch
Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America
and Jim Garrity of National Review.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Free Martini's coming up.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
So glad to have you with us for the Friday
edition of The Three Martini Lunch. We have made it
to the end of a very long week in a
number of ways, as we'll talk about towards the end
of the podcast today, but we do have at least
two good items today bordering on three. You're really going
to get three and a half quasi four martinis today?
Why not? It's Friday, so let's do that. And this
(00:34):
is the Democrats their Twitter account, their x account, and
because US grocery prices reached record highs in twenty twenty five,
they put the chart that stretches from October of twenty
nineteen to a little past October of last year and
then says Trump's America. And they absolutely got obliterated for this, because,
(00:56):
of course, from October of twenty twenty one, when inflation
really kicked into October of twenty twenty two and even
a little bit beyond that is where the massive jump
actually happened. And so you had people taking screenshots and
circling it. Hey, what's going on here? And so the
Democrats ultimately had to take it down. Nice attempt at
rewriting history. But our memories aren't that short.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
The other thing is, like you say, our memories aren't
that short? How the topic of high prices, how do
you forget twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, Like, wasn't
that long ago. We'll have some more nostalgia later in
the podcast, but like this is just now and like
how do you look at that chart?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
And not? But when does that chart end? Again?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
The last that's listed is October twenty twenty four, but
the bar graft does go a little bit further to
the left October twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Who was president then?
Speaker 5 (01:46):
Right?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I know they extended it, but you know, but yes
it was Joe Biden.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
So look, you know, if you want to argue Trump
has not, we have not certainly haven't seen prices go
down since January, and that the tariffs might be adding
to to that. Okay, fine, fair. I think probably there's
more of a frustration. It's not that we've had another
about of runaway inflation, and I think the perception that
cost of living had grown prohibitive in this country really
(02:10):
kicked in right around twenty twenty one two.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
The Biden team would tell.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
You, ah, this is just a reflection of the end
of the end of COVID now actually has somebody do
with the fact that you put trillions and trillions of
dollars into the economy without an equivalent increasing goods and services.
You know, value of the money goes down, goods and
services stay the same, money supply goes up, inflation happens.
That's you know, that's basic economics right there. But hey,
(02:34):
you know, look, they're just they're just social media team.
They can't expected to know these things.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah, I do wonder if this was interns with literally
memories that don't go back three or four years that's
kicked in and then once they got the blowback, you
had somebody, you know, racing out of their office. What
did you do? Or or they're just lying to us?
Speaker 4 (02:53):
But also for that matter, why are you giving the
interns access to the social media account? We have done
good interns at least you see to have really good interns.
Actually we'd sure reviews good ones, but don't work them
very much, but great like we do do we just say, hey,
just just just say whatever you want on the social
media account.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
What's the worst that could happen?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
No, I, you know, most so, Yeah, now the blame
still goes to the higher ups because they probably saw
the headline grocery prices reached record highs in twenty five's like, oh,
let's put that out there and try to try to
get some momentum off of that. The inflation reports have
actually been pretty good, pretty quiet, pretty low so far
in the Trump administration. We'll see where they continue to
(03:32):
go from here. But yeah, the obvious jump happened during
the Biden years, so I wouldn't even say nice try.
That was a pathetic try by the Democrats to try it.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
That was not a nice try.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
That was the point on that. That was really really bad.
But all right, well, let's talk about another piece of
good news for the right, and that is from the
Pew Research Center, which broke down different age groups, both
men and women, and whether they're solid Republican, solid Democrat,
lean Republican, lean Democrat men aged eighteen to twenty nine. Jim,
(04:06):
I don't know what it was, you know, in the
last decade or two, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't it.
It seemed like the guys were almost as left as
the girls on college campuses and elsewhere. But now it's
fifty two to thirty four in favor of the guys.
Thirteen percent still don't lean either way. Women though, fifty
eight to thirty seven in that demographic, which is the
(04:27):
largest gap of men or women in any age group.
But men are double digits to the right in everyone again,
fifty two to thirty four for the youngest voters, fifty
one to forty one, for thirty to forty nine, men
fifty to sixty four, fifty six to thirty seven in
favor of the right. Gen X doing some heavy lifting.
Yet again, women in Gen X dead even forty six
(04:49):
forty six sixty five plus men fifty four to forty
in favor of the Republicans, and women all again very close,
forty seven to forty four in favor of the Democrats,
women between thirty and forty nine, fourteen points in favor
of the Dems fifty three to thirty nine. So, Jim,
the ladies under fifty who are keeping these elections close?
Speaker 4 (05:08):
They are, And right now I can hear a chunk
of our listeners probably saying this is because the government
has taken the role of the male provider in a
lot of a relationship. We'll get to that in a second.
Trust me, I know, but I know there's a whole
bunch of guys like that that's like jumping.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
On their last nerve.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
It's interesting, you know, we've talked about since the twenty
twenty four election, Democrats have said, how do we appeal
more to young males? Why are young males growing more conservative?
Why are they voting in higher numbers for the Republican Party?
And they said, ah, you know, why can't we find
our own Joe Rogan. Never mind that a couple of
years ago there was a guy you know who was
supporting Bernie Sanders named Joe Rogan. So they had one
(05:47):
and they not only they drove Joe Rogan. There are
a whole bunch of these podcasters who are I would argue,
not necessarily or at least as of a couple of
years ago, we're not down the line Republicans, you know,
certainly traditional they were not quoting William Buckley, you know
that kind of stuff. That there was kind of this
libertarian ish leave me alone, sports girls, pop culture, you know,
(06:10):
vibe to it, but they kind of recognized that what
was coming from the Democratic Party was this demonization of men.
This you constant talk about toxic masculinity, that the idea,
if you were a young man, there was inherently something
wrong with you, all right. The other thing is that
came out this week which drove people crazy was this
New York Times long front first person essay, The Trouble
(06:32):
with Wanting Men by Jean Garnett, developing the concept of
hetero fatalism, and the idea is that if you're a woman,
men are just so frustrating and it's very hard to
have a happy heterosexual relationship if you are simultaneously trying
to fight the patriarchy in all of its forms and
(06:53):
constantly on guard for anything that could be construed as
a heteronormative or if you believe that men and women
are different, how could you possibly have a happy relationship. Well,
lots of people do, lots of It's not in an error.
The fact that they're different doesn't mean that necessarily one
is better than the other, or that one always has
to be in charge or figure out what works for
(07:14):
you and your spouse, and it'll probably be fine.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
You know.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
I think my big fat Greek wedding, the argument that
the man is the head of the house and then
the mother saying yes, but the wife is the neck,
and she determines the direction that the head is facing.
I suspect there are a lot of married couples who
would say, yeah, you know that really there is this partnership,
that there really is this perception of the male running
things is not always the way they you know, there's
(07:40):
there's often a little more subtle nuance to that than
than things are. But this essay, the trouble with wanting
men just seems like this classic of the genre of
blaming the men. You know, men today for the problems
in all relationships, that there's no taking a responsibility. There's
no sense that you know, if you're constantly having unhappy
your relationships with men, maybe it has something to do
(08:03):
with the men you're dating. Maybe you keep picking a
particular type of guy who's not gonna be able to
meet your needs in the way that you want. But
I also just kind of feel like that there is
this culture of anxiety, depression, frustration. Someone might say irresponsibility,
some might say constant blame. Shifting flourishing in that. And
(08:25):
just look at whatever young women's media you prefer, Team Vogue,
the New York Times magazine section, whatever, look at the
way they talk about relationships, and then go onto these
podcasts and YouTube shows and see how they talk about relationships,
and they're completely different. The male shows are often, or
very often this is like, hey, this is how you
get your life together, Jordan Peterson much go cleaned your room.
(08:48):
You know this idea of empowerment. It's up to you
to make your life better. Whereas you know, again I'm
not the target audience, but a lot of these programs
to targeting at women are very much by how everything
is terrible and none of it is your fault and
this kind of this mentality of victimhood and all that stuff.
So I look at this only well, I'm not surprised
things are shaking out this way. And if you're looking
(09:09):
for the Democratic Party and tell you the Democratic Party's
messa is you need us, you need government to help
you out. You can't make it on your own. A
Republican Party, with some exceptions, has very much been government's
not there to make your life better, The government's not
there to fix every little problem. You're supposed to do that.
That's what freedom's all about, That's what responsibility is about.
Go go out there, kick the ass of the world.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Go do great.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
You know, you'll be fine. And it's not surprising that
each each gender would be gravitating towards particular party. I
think it's a formula for a lot of disappointed Democrats,
and of course, by extension, a lot of disappointed women.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah, and there have been polls over the years showing
that single women lean far more to the left than
married women. Hillary Clinton, of course, would chalk that up to, Ah,
you're just doing what your husbands are telling, right, I
do or or hear me out. Maybe those men married
people who think similarly to that on various political issues.
It's just possible that they figured that they had some
(10:04):
things in common before they got married. I'm just spitballing here, Jim.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Yeah, do you think Hillary always does what Bill wants?
I'm just coloredly skeptical. I just got the vibe.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Overall, it's plus one for Republicans right now nationwide. It
used to be plus six for the Democrats. So definitely
a little bit of a shift going on. Here all right,
talking about a shift. Maybe it's time for a little
more skincare, especially if you're a guy, and maybe you
know you're starting to see some lines on your face
when you look in the mirror in the morning. But
most guys' skin products just don't work great. But Caldera
(10:39):
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Speaker 4 (10:44):
You know, Greg, I'm sure someone out there is going
to say that this podcast is very sexist and also
very heteronormative, because we're a bunch of heteronormative guys. But
why are they always talking about men's skincare. Well, it's
because of just how good Caldera Lab is. It's an
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(11:05):
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mushroom for deep hydration and a matte finish. And yes,
these are products that are formulated for men. It's not sexism,
it's just that they're created by expert cosmetic chemists who
specialize in men's skincare.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah, exactly, and so I've tried the cleanser. I think
it works great. It's very thorough. The skin feels fresh
and clean when you're done. Skincare doesn't have to be complicated,
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(11:49):
Jim quasi good Martini here double fisted. In fact, we
go to the Middle East. Here's the bad part. Hat
tip to town Hall for this one. French President and
Manuel Macrone announcing Thursday that France will recognize Palestine as
a state at the UN General Assembly in September. Quote,
consistent with its historic commitment to a just and lasting
(12:12):
peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France
will recognize the state of Palestine, Macrohn wrote on x quote.
The urgent priority today is to end the war in Gaza,
to bring relief to the civilian population. Piece is possible,
but he got plenty of blowback here, including from Benjamin Netanyahu,
says we strongly condemned President Macron's decision to recognize a
(12:33):
Palestinian state next to Tel Aviv in the wake of
the October seventh massacre. Such a move rewards terror and
risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became a
Palestinian state in these conditions, would be a launch pad
to annihilate Israel, not to live in peace beside it. Meanwhile,
the effort to get that ceasefire in the Middle East
(12:53):
has completely fallen apart. Mediators from Egypt and even Katar
basically told Amas their latest offer was ridiculous. The Times
of Israel saying mediators last week were bullish about the
chances of an imminent agreement after Israel came down from
some of its demands. But upon reviewing Hamas's response, Egyptian
and Katari mediators told Hamas they would not even present
(13:15):
it to the US Special Envoy in the Middle East,
Steve Whitcough. Whitcof, for his part, now has told his
negotiators to leave. This is pointless and so here we
are again. So Emmanuel Macron still, I guess looking at
rainbows and unicorns there in his office, Jim. But in
terms of reality and the idea that Hamas actually wants
(13:37):
peace in the Middle East. These people are still in dreamland.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
So I am not always the biggest fan of Mike Huckabee,
the current US Ambassador to Israel, but I did like
his response to this. He says, you know what, actually,
we'd be open to a Palestinian state as well. Why
don't we put it right in the French riviera. You
like that, you want to do that there, and you know,
obviously no one in France thinks that's a good idea.
It's always yes, there should be a state, and you
(14:03):
guys give up the land for it. Were just going
to cheer from it over here. In the second part,
I have taken to the habit in the last few
months of referring to our chief presidential envoy as Steve.
Maybe Hamas duped me Witkov being very underwhelmed with his
first round of negotiations and his subsequent excuse that he
thought he had to deal with Hamas, and then Greg,
(14:24):
I'm glad you're sitting down so you're ready for this.
It turns out Hamas was not being honest, was not
negotiating good good faith, and when push came to shove,
they backed away from the promises they had made. I
again to think, you know, in terms of his negotiations
with Russia, I've had a great deal of frustration with Witkov,
and he comes across as a guy who seems to
(14:44):
think because he handled big budget, you know, the real
estate deals in New York City, he's prepared to handle
some of the thornist and most difficult negotiations in US
foreign policy all around the globe. But I guess I'm
kind of coming around, not just because of this statement,
which I think he's just being very blunt in saying
that Hamas is not negotiating in good faith, I think
(15:06):
it does kind of reach the point where when even
Steve Whitkov says you can't be trusted and can't reach
a deal with you like Hamas, You're never going to
find it easier negotiator than Steve Witkoff. If you can't
make him, if you can't convince him that you've got
a reasonable offer on the table, then you can't convince anybody,
and nobody in the Middle East things you're doing it seriously.
(15:26):
So by that standard, Steve Whitcov actually maybe he is
the right guy to send to this almost as a
litmus test to see is this person a good faith
negotiator and are they serious? And do they want to
get a deal? My sneaking suspicion isn't a bunch of
these figures, you know, Hamas Vladimir Putin don't want a deal.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
They want to keep fighting, but they want.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
To appear reasonable, which is why they will show up
for the negotiations. Joe, we just can't seem to get
there either way. Good for you Witkov to getting it,
you know, a little bit late, but for calling it
as it is and for using it in really blunt language.
I guess it's another advantage of not having a career
diplomat to you know, express great disappointment in a pinstriped
(16:07):
suit or something like that that you know, Woodkov comes
out and says, this is this is getting a ridiculous
and infuriating So a rare case of good for you, Wouldkov.
Maybe US diplomatic efforts will be more productive just as
a realistic expectations and a recognition that not everybody in
the globe is a good faith negotiator.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what's going to happen
at the un I'm sure that crowd's going to be
pretty supportive of Macrohn's idea. Here, Macrone says he's, you know,
hashed out this idea with mak Mu debass with you know,
Palestini authority hasn't been negotiating with Hamas, but good luck
getting anywhere close to a resolution on that without involving
Hamas or anything like that. So, I mean, it's just
(16:45):
all you're doing is killing more trees with papers here
as far as I can tell here, until until they
actually get serious about allowing Israel to exist in renouncing terrorism,
which they won't do. They won't even pretend to do it,
but they definitely won't do it for real. And so
until that point, why even.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
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Speaker 3 (17:17):
They lied to you there.
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Speaker 3 (17:33):
All right to our final Martini of the Day and
the Week and Jim, I haven't checked my social media
feed since we started recording here, but hopefully no more
prominent celebrity from the eighties has died. This has been
a terrible week for gen X, with three very prominent deaths.
It started with the shocking news that Malcolm Jamal Warner,
who played theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show, drowned while
(17:55):
on vacation and Costa Rica over last weekend, just fifty
four years old. As odious as Bill Cosby's reputation is now,
there are still some just absolutely classic clips from that show,
including the one where theo said it didn't matter where
he got good grades and if you haven't seen the
clips on that it's just absolutely fantastic. Then It's just
a day or two later that we found out that
Ozzy Osbourne died after just a couple of weeks after
(18:18):
his final concert. He had been battling Parkinson's disease I'm
not sure if that was the official cause, but I'm
sure it was a factor. He was seventy six years old.
And then yesterday we're all shocked, especially as eighties kids,
on the passing of Hull Cogan from cardiac arrest at
the age of seventy one. I mean, talk about a
cultural phenomenon for over forty years. I mean, Hull Cogan
(18:38):
came up as a wrestler was already pretty prominent from
the early eighties, because by nineteen eighty two, I believe
it was he was thunder Lips and Rocky three, and
soon he was the face of the WWF, which was
their name before the World Wildlife Fund tried to sue
him and so they changed it to WWE. But then
Hogan becomes the champ. You get the whole Hulk Mania thing,
the Red, White, and Blue, the train, say your prayers,
(19:01):
each your vitamins. And then of course there's the epic
show down in wrestle Mania three against andre the Giant,
and I'm sure you've seen the clips if you're into
this story at all, of him lifting up Andrea the Giant,
slamming him to the canvas and then dropping the leg
to get the pin in just an incredible moment. I mean,
everybody talks about how wrestling is fake. I was into
it very much for about three years, and that was
(19:22):
part of that era. You don't fake picking up Andrea
the Giant and slamming him down. That was just an
incredible moment, but an absolute cultural phenomenon in a number
of ways in that era when Hogan was the champ
in the face of the WWF for so long. My
friend Brad and I went to a store in town
because I was looking for those Hulka Mania T shirts
that he'd always rip as he entered the ring. My
(19:43):
mom did not like the idea of me ripping shirts,
so there's no way that was going to happen with
my existing wardrobe. So I go into this store asking
if he sills Hulka Mania T shirts, and of course,
Hulk Hogan's got to twenty four inch pythons, Jim, I
had about three inch pythons if that, and so garden snakes,
and this guy just absolutely loses it, laughing. He I
(20:04):
think that made his weak. He did not sell them, unfortunately,
but just a little taste of what hull Comania was
like in our little town and you know, there are
people our age and beyond who are thinking about so
many different things with the passing of Haul Cogan. And
we'll talk in a moment about his moment from last summer.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Well, I just want to point out Greg that when
you know, hul Cogan lifted up and threw Andre the Giant,
a lot of people said that that was the single
most devastating blow that Hulk Hogan dealt out to anybody
in his entire career, the first of course being taken
down the website Gawker. I allude to a bit more
(20:44):
to that later about the idea of these Generation X figures,
who you know, stars at the eighties who ended up
coming back later in life. It's strange the passing of
malcol Jamal Warner, you know, best known as THEO would.
I found myself that that hit me on a level
I didn't expect too, because if I say to you, Greg.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Dennis, you know exactly what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
And like half of our listeners are like, oh god,
the shirt episode, right, we wanted this fancy designer was
Pierre Cardrell or whatever, you know, this is this fancy
and Denise is like, oh, I can make you, and
she makes the most ridiculous looking shirt of all time.
And he goes out and the girl he wants to
impresses in the living room and he's flipping out, and
she likes it.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
She thinks this by some other.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
You know, one of the things that you and I,
being the ages that we are, have witnessed is the
era of the monoculture when we were kids and teens
and growing up, the arrival of the Internet, and then
kind of the end of that era. And look, there
are a lot of advantages to having a podcast with
two guys, and it's more than just three television networks,
and you can find anything on the internet. You can
(21:48):
find anything on YouTube. Amazon sells a bazillion books, like
there are a lot of really big advantages to this.
But one of them is we don't have that kind
of shared thing where you go into school, you go
into the office, you know everybody else was talking about that,
or who shot Jr. Or who killed Laura Palmer or
any of these things. And the Cosby Show, look, you know,
(22:09):
Bill Cosby's a rat bastard who did all kinds of
terrible things. But the Cosby Show stands out as arguably
the greatest families sitcom of all time, and it was,
you know, eight o'clock on Thursday nights, you were watching NBC,
and it was just this lovely, enjoyable portrayal of American life.
People talk about what a landmark it was for a
portrayal of a successful African American family. Dad's a doctor,
(22:33):
a mom's a lawyer. But I think also just to
sheer universal element of it, the degree to which people
could recognize, oh god, my mom had a look that
was like Claire Huxtable, or if you messed up, or
your dad's exasperation or bickering with your siblings or like
all of that just felt so relatable. Malcol Jabal Warner
remained as a working actor throughout all the years, and
(22:54):
I'm sure he probably made a bundle all the years
of The Cosby Show, so he didn't distalely need to
so God. In Community, he appears He's wearing a very bright,
colorful sweater and one of the other characters says, hey,
nice sweater. He's like, yeah, I got it from my dad.
Nice little shout out to the Cosby Show on Community. There,
So Ozzy Osbourne, I can't say I was a diehard
(23:14):
fan of his kind of metal in the metal music
in the eighties. But I will point out though, when
he came back as a reality star on The Osbourne's
I think there's something about watching these celebrities who had
a certain rebellious, unstoppable image in their youth and then
(23:35):
they come back and you see them and the depressing
but universally recognized middle age comes for us all. And
the degree to which he was, you know, obviously dealing
with some hearing issues and shared you know, this kind
of general like hard living had taken a toll on him,
and the degree to which everybody who you know worked
with him, Donnie Osmond talking about how great it was
(23:56):
to work with him, all these other guys who were
completely at awe with the bat beating, which, by the way,
looking back from the perspective of COVID, wasn't that dangerous
Greg to bite the head off a bat? There was
something particularly as those portrayal and you watched his relationship
with Sharon and his relationship with his kids.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
There was a sweetness there. There was a recognition that
here's a guy who was like, yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
I'm here to destroy mainstream white bread Christian America and
then he comes out to be kind of his own
kind of sitcom dad. So you and I talk about
we kind of joke about the idea that in our
minds Diehard as a Christmas movie that came out just
a few years ago. The eighties were just a little
while ago. The nineties weren't that long ago. And this
recognition that like, okay, yes, technically allegedly some of us
(24:41):
are in the neighborhood of fifty years old, and that
the eighties were forty years ago, and that doesn't seem possible.
And when you see so many of these big figures
from your childhood passing into the next world, it is
a reminder that it is and it's un you know,
those of us who lived through it, it was a special time.
I think we who grew up in the eighties have
this advantage. It's said that if you grew up with this,
if you remember the seventies, then you weren't really there.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, I mean it's hard to believe, but nineteen eighty
five is now halfway between us and the end of
World War Two, and that's that means it's a long
time ago, now forty years now. The interesting thing about Ozzy.
I think that's one of the few marriages that didn't
blow up as a result of having their own reality
TV show. Ye had Jessica Simpson and Nicholas Say. Hulk
Hogan's marriage didn't last that one. You had John and Kate,
(25:27):
you had the Palins had their own even I think
the duggers are still together, but they've certainly had their
issues over time, and it's just it's just odd that
they were the ones to make it. But good for them, obviously.
But then the Hulk Hogan last year, of course, was
at the Republican National Convention, which, honestly, other than maybe
(25:47):
Trump embracing the fire coat of Corey Comparatur in the
beginning of his speech, Hogan earlier that night was probably
the one that got the most clicks and the most
retweets and everything else over the next couple of days.
Here's how that went down.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
But what happened last week when they took a shot
at my hero and they tried to kill the next
president of the United States, enough was enough, said, Look,
trop Omania bron while brother, let trump.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Omania rule again.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
Let Tchopamania, nke Amica cry again.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Oh Man, and of course Trump's no stranger or the
wrest League World either. He was love it every second
of that, and Jim, I hate to be even more
of a downer. But we also got news this week
that Phil Collins is not doing well. The rumors I
believe this morning that he's in hospice were untrue, So
thankfully that's not getting that bad. But we also learned
this week that our beloved Bruce willis from die Hard.
(26:51):
His dementia's progressed to the point where he can't speak
or read and now has even trouble walking. So it's
just an era that's getting further in from there. In
the rear view of Mirria, even if it doesn't seem
that way.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
You find yourself wanting to put a protective bubble wrap
around mister T Michael J. Fox, And I'm sure I'm
probably thinking I'm forgetting some other ones the darkest day
for us eighties kids since Optim's prime died. The other
thing I'm just gonna observe is that, like watching that
footage of Hulk Hogan, you know, we're now in an
age where a decent number of people who cover politics
(27:24):
are in the ballpark of our age. Some people would
argue that Greg, you and I are on the older
side of people covering politics, But for every even if
you are like a diehard progressive liberal, every guy who
was a kid in the eighties watched that segment and said, oh,
that was awesome. Politics disappeared and the funny you look
at that, you would have thought Hull Cogan would have
lived in decades and decades that he just looked like
(27:46):
he was so full of energy and full of life
and just just shocking and just kind of this recognition,
you know. Like, again, I think by the end of it,
people having enjoyed all the stages of Hull cooked his career,
you goann talking about a guy who like figured out
who he was and what he stands for and knew
that not everybody was gonna like him. You know, we
(28:08):
talked about his faith and perhaps that's why he called
everybody brother. But this kind of the sense of the
degree to which he certainly seemed like a man utterly
comfortable with who he was. He figured out who he was,
what he wanted to do, what he was supposed to
be doing on this earth, and I think by his
own measures, you'd say he did it pretty darned well.
So we're talking about, you know, three figures who are
(28:30):
who will be missed, and who definitely left their mark
in the world about as much as anybody could.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Jim, on that somber note, have a terrific weekend and
I'll see you again on Monday. See you Monday, Greg,
Jim Garretty, National Review. I'm Greg Corumbus of Radio America.
Thanks so much for being with us today. Please be
sure to subscribe to the Three Martini Lunch if you
don't already, tell your friends about us as well. Thanks
also for your five star ratings and your kind reviews.
Please keep those coming. Get us on your home devices.
All you have to say is play Three Martini Lunch podcast.
(28:56):
Follow us both on X He's at Jim Garritty, I'm
at Greg Corumbus. Have a fantastic weekend. Join us again
Monday for the next Three Martini Lunch
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