Ep. 143 - The 'Speaker Drama, NOPE, and The Langley Files' Edition

The 'Speaker Drama, NOPE, and The Langley Files' Edition

Episode Transcript

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This is the FCB Podcast Network.Okay, hey y'all, welcome back to

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another episode of Marble Halls and SilverScreens. My name is Sarah Lee.
I've got a short and sweet onefor you here tonight. Um. It
is a the end of a verycrazy um work week. Uh So I
want to talk about just a fewthings before I send you guys off out
into the wilds for your holiday plans. Uh So, First, we're gonna

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talk a little bit about the McCarthyspeakership drama that has been unfolding over the
last week. Um. It seemsto be the thing that's, uh that
everybody's talking about. Um So I'mto give you my thoughts on it and
tell you why maybe it's not sucha bad thing, and that if you're
a conservative or a Republican, youshould see this as possibly a good thing,

(01:11):
despite what mainstream press and the leftwould have you believe. Second,
I'm going to give you my thoughtson a fantastic film that I finally watched
called Nope. Jordan Peel is quicklybecoming one of my absolute favorite directors,
So I'll talk a little bit aboutthat. And then finally, just a
very brief chat about the CIA's podcast. Reason did a nice, short little

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piece on it, and I thoughtI would just bring it to your attention
because it made me laugh and isalso just I don't know, something maybe
you might want to listen to inthe future. So sit back here,
these comments from our sponsor, andwe'll be back in just a few minutes.
Okay, and we're back. Iapologize and off the top for my

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voice. I've had a cold thispast week. Nothing serious, not COVID
or anything like that. I don'teven think it's the flu. It's just
been this weird little cold certainly hasbeen going around. So I feel fine.
I just sound like I don't feelfine. So I hope that's not
disturbing to you as you listen tome chat. Let's talk about the McCarthy
speakership. So, as we know, the House has been taken back by

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the Republicans, and there has beena lot of drama surrounding the nomination and
confirmation I guess of McCarthy for speaker. A lot of the press accounts surrounding
this. Essentially what's been going onis there were about twenty hardliners who wanted
some concessions. I think some ofthem did from McCarthy about the processes and

(02:46):
how the house is going to work. It is true that McCarthy sort of
kind of walked in. I meanhe moved his stuff into the Speaker's office,
like on day one, before hehad even gotten a job. There's
a slight bit of arrogance. Ithink to all of that, he felt
very confident that it was his turnto do this. Personally, I think

(03:07):
he's probably the right guy. Imean, he's very good at raising money.
I know that doesn't need to bethe only pre wreck with it,
but you know, let's just faceit, who else wants to, as
Tucker Carlson said the other day,spend the next two years living in hotel
rooms, traveling the country raising money. A certain kind of person wants to
do that. McCarthy wants to dothat. I think he's probably pretty good
at it, So he's probably theright guy for the job. But what

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these twenty holdouts were doing, Ithink they had different ideas about it.
But many of them who have now, as it turns out, kind of
changed their votes and they're now votingfor McCarthy. I think, as I
record, he's only like two votesshy something like that. They've voted to
it's about almost seven o'clock on aFriday night, they've voted to adjourn until

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ten. McCarthy has been very confidentthat he'll have the votes tonight. He's
been confident in days prior that he'shad the votes, and that has happened,
So we'll see. But some ofthese hardliners have gone ahead and change
their votes, and those are theones that I think we need to watch
as potentially the guys that are goingto get things done in the House as

(04:15):
the Republicans take over. Others MattGates and Lauren Bobert. I think Gates
the rumors, of course that hejust does not He just personally does not
like McCarthy. He cast a votefor Donald Trump to be speaker, which
is just pretty absurd on its face. So there's a little bit of animosity
there. But you know, thenthere's on the other side, you've got

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people like Dan Crenshaw who are callingpeople in his caucus terrorists. And it's
very disappointing because I've no ill willtoward Crenshaw. I think he's probably fairly
representative of his state, but hewas pretty pretty bad about coming down on
these people for holding out. He'sseeking some agreement about how the processes work

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in the House, and it waspretty it was pretty nasty some of his
language. You can see those tweetsif you just followed Dan Crunchhall on Twitter.
I mean, he called them clowns. He called them these effing people
like you can kind of understand whereus people like Gates and Bobert are coming
from when you know that's the oppositionthat they're meeting from their own party.

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That said, I think that theholdout, if it's personal, is not
done in the right spirit. Ithink most of the people Byron Donald's Chip
Roy of Texas, they have changedtheir votes. I think their intent was
a good one. And it's kindof summed up by Rep. Perry who

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said tonight that he knows McCarthy andhe likes McCarthy's known him a long time.
It was never anything personal. Itwas about changing the way things are
done in Congress and the status quojust doesn't work for the American citizens.
That's a quote Perry says. Ikind of saw potentially that this moment was
going to come where the margins weregoing to be tight, so they just

(06:13):
wanted to be included, I thinkin the discussion, and they held out.
And that the reason I don't thinkanyone should be particularly concerned about this
is because that is how things aresupposed to work in our federal government.
There are supposed to be debate,there are supposed to be negotiation. The
Republicans in the House are sort ofshowing you how that's done. It's actually

(06:35):
really good to see. Now.It's been spun quite a bit by the
national press that it shows that theRepublicans can't govern and it's chaotic. But
if you look at the Democrats,you know their whole thing is silencing dissent,
get on board, or be ousted. It's not really the way our
government is supposed to work. Itwas not designed to work that way.

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The debate is healthy. There's anargument that our government was actually designed to
force some gridlock. So the Republicansin the House are doing it the right
way. The problem, of course, is that the Democrat parties moved so
far left and gotten so radical thatthey see any sort of you know,
resistance to what they're doing as fascismor how whatever. Their most you know,

(07:23):
pejorative terms are for anything that's notexactly what they want, So that
seems to be their party line.It has been for quite some time.
They're going to have to moderate,I think if they're going to survive as
a party, and the Republicans arekind of showing them how to do that,
how to have intercaucus debate, howto hold out and make negotiations.

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I think the disappointing thing with DanCrunshaw is that he looked a lot more
like a Democrat by just demanding thatthese terrorists relent than he did a Republican
congressman. So I hope, Ihope he takes that to heart and he
learned something from it. I don'tthink he made any friends on the hill
really out of the people that supportedMcCarthy or didn't, because they're going to

(08:09):
remember that the next time they haveany kind of disagreement on policy with him,
that this is how he, youknow, characterizes people who disagree with
him. It's it's not a goodlook. So the long and the short
is McCarthy is very likely to takethe seat. He's flipped a lot of
votes. We should know something maybeabout that by ten thirty or eleven o'clock

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tonight. The other thing is is. This is not a bellwether of anything
except for the Republicans or are startingoff kind of strong. People will forget
about this drama. It's not goingto factor into any future races. And
it certainly doesn't mean that Republicans don'tknow how to governn or that they're chaotic.
It's actually a really good sign.I think people should probably look at

(08:54):
it that way. You know,I don't know. Just take the press
with a grain of salt. That'sthe best device I can give. Okay,
as I said, I'm keeping thisone short tonight. I need to
get it. I need to rushit over basically to my producer. So
let's go ahead and move on intothe movie section. This week. I

(09:16):
had not seen Jordan Peel's film Nope. I didn't even see US. I
saw get Out and thought it wasbrilliant. Meant to see US, haven't
seen it yet. Kind of scaredme. The commercial scared me, and
sometimes I don't do horror very well. But Nope, I was intrigued by
because just the backstory, like thecharacters were interesting. So oj and his

(09:37):
sister m Emerald I believe it's hername, played by the amazing Oh Gosh
I can't even I can't pronounce theactor's name. Let me see if I
can phonetically pronounce it. He wasin Get Out, so you know him.
He's a fantastic actor. His nameis Okay, see if I can

(09:58):
get this right. Uh, let'ssee. Oh, Keki Palmer plays Emerald,
so I can go ahead and saythat I'm trying to just phonetically Daniel
Kaluaya. I think kalauayyam Daniel kalKaluaya. And if I'm mispronouncing that,
my apologies. Anyway, He's justthis, uh, you know, a

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sort of stoic actor. He's reallywatchable. Just he's got a sort of
a beautiful face and he expressions tendnot to give much away. He's great
for film because everything comes out ofhis eyes. Um, he's really really
good in this anyway. Daniel playso j M. Is played by Kekey

(10:43):
Palmer. She's great in this.They are a brother and sister and they
are ranch hands who actually train horsesto be used in Hollywood and commercials and
films. And that's sort of thebrilliance of this movie. Um, this
is a deep, deep y'all.Um. Jordan Peel I'm starting to think

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he's just quite literally a genius.His directing style reminds me this is a
scary film. I think it's technicallyclassified as horror, but it's not.
It's not like the slash or films, you know, Friday thirteenth, under
that nonsense, even some of thebetter ones that are still slashery, it's
not like that. It's more likeM. Knight Shamalan signs or um kind

(11:28):
of got a cerebral fear factor thatyou see in like The Shining Um and
those are just great films. UmNight Shamalan's hum. Oh, what was
the movie I See Dead People?What was the name of that film?
Anyway, it's got sort of thatvibe to it. It's quiet, um,
it develops the storyline. You havefear, not because of the horrible

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images that you're seeing. He reallydoesn't give you too much gore, but
just it's the sort of the intellectualrealization of what's happening that makes you go,
oh goodness, gracious. So it'sgreat. It's really good. He's
got a very um cool style,a lot of long shots. Some cinematography
is really nice. You know,it's a ranch, so you get a

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lot of the scenery and um,and this one has you know, animals
in it. It's got the horses, so there's there's some animal acting and
he utilizes the animals quite well.UM. So it's and it's written well,
it's there's not a lot, there'snot a ton of dialogue. So
the action is really what you're watching, um, what you care about,

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and the actors like how they playtheir parts. UM. So basically the
backstory is that, um, theseranch hands discover a living extraterrestrial predator uh,
devouring their horses. So but thebrilliance of it is that what Peel

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seems to be telling the story abouthas to do with fame and attention seeking
and maybe the right way to approachhow you how you conduct yourself in your
craft versus you know, literally theTMZ guy make sure you get a picture,
Hollywood's need to get the perfect shotand the dangers with that. I

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also think he plays with race inthis one quite a bit, just like
he did obviously with Get Out.This is way more subtle, way subtler,
i should say, but it's verywell done and it's very very deep,
and if you don't pay attention,you'll miss the real story sort of
the subtext. I think the storyitself is interesting enough. You know,

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how they deal with this ex extraterrestrial, How OJ's character relates it to other
predators that we know that he's workedwith, trying to break animals. How
how you break an animal that isspirited? How why you don't want to?

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What does he say? There's oneline where he says, you don't
he don't control a predator. Youcome to an agreement with it. And
I think there's a lot of howdo I put this? He's talking about
people too in the industry right,Um, what it's like to be a
human and maybe a black man.I think I read that in there in

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Hollywood. So it's a very veryvery interesting film. I enjoyed it tremendously.
It makes me want to see usright away, and that you know,
the performances are fantastic. Like Isaid, there's not a ton of
dialogue, but the dialogue that's inthere is pointed and cool, and it
actually has a happy ending, whichI was glad to see. Um.

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You know, I think far toooften right now in our culture, we
just sort of thrive on this negativelike everything's crap. We deserve the giant
meteor and that's it, and heupends that a little bit. You know,
they win. So really good film. I recommend it. Like I
said, I think this you know, we talk so much about race right

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now in our culture, and Ithink this film has said more about it
in a sort of subtle way,but also in a very there's a lot
of strength in this film. Thepoints he's making are not they're controversial,
they're not intended to make anyone feelcomfortable if they're very strong points. So

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this film, I think, doesa lot to talk about the things we've
been talking about with a lot ofviolence and rage in a very subtle and
cool way. I mean, it'sjust just a cool film. Really,
it's just cool. So that's mythought on that film Sceneope, it's great.
I'm sorry I waited this long tosee it. So moving on from

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that, and as I said,keeping this one quite short, I hope
this is enough for you. It'sonly going to go maybe about twenty minutes
or so. I just want toI've talked about the CIA's podcast on a
different show, but I wanted tobring it up again because Reason magazine,
which is you know, a veryLibertarian media outlet has a very funny,

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very short piece on it that's fromthe January twenty twenty three issue, and
the headline basically says it all reviewwhy does the CIA need a podcast?
And what they discover or where theycome to in their very short review is
that this is just a PR stunt, right, But the question is why
does the CIA need to address publicrelations? They should just be doing their

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job quietly, which does not includespuying on a Americans. But some of
that, some of those covers havebeen pulled back lately as we know,
and we've seen a lot of itnow come out with like the Twitter Files.
So this, according to Reason andI think they're right, it's called
the Langley Files and it's a thirtyminute it's a thirty minute podcast interview style

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podcast. CIA director Burns. BillBurns was the first guest, and he
said, according to Reason, thathe hopes the show will demystify the famously
opaque agency, you know, toshow what it actually does versus what Hollywood
says it does and that kind ofthing. But the thing is, again,

(17:40):
why does the CIA. We shouldn'treally know too much about what they
do. We've just unfortunately been informedthat they haven't been doing great things when
it comes to surveilling Americans, andwhich is really not that's definitely outside their
purview. They're not supposed to bedoing domestic stuff at all, as I
understand it. So Burns is alsoquoted in this piece. Trust and institutions

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is in such short supply that he'strying to address the erosion of trust.
Its kind of strange against sort ofa strange thing for the CIA to get
into, you know, I thinkmost Americans just want them to back off
of them and get back into thebusiness of protecting us from foreign enemies,

(18:27):
right and domestic to the extent thatthey work with foreign agents. And they
do say this really funny thing.The hosts sign off with, we'll be
seeing you friendly, farewell or threat. So yeah, I don't know,
maybe the Langley Files is worth checkingout. I think it's strange that the
CIA wants a pr podcast. Youknow, the less known about the agency,

(18:52):
at least as far as most peoplehave been aware, the less known
about them is the better. That'ssort of you know, they're in the
end intelligence business. They're not supposedto be out front telling you that they're
they're great, and you don't haveto worry about them. You know,
they're just supposed to be doing theirjobs and we're supposed to trust that they're
doing it without interfering on Americans,you know, constitutional rights to privacy and

(19:18):
things like that. So yeah,So anyway, that's the Langley Files podcast.
I'll probably check it out. I'lltell you why. I'll check it
out and let you guys know whatI think on a different show. But
given that I'm still getting over acold, it's Friday night, and I
am ready to just shut things down, I'm gonna let you go there.
It is right around twenty minutes.That's a good that's a good, good

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amount of time. So as always, I hope your holidays were really great.
I hope you are starting things offreally well in the new year.
Try to stay positive. If you'rea conservative and you're watching the house Speaker
situation, see it as a goodsign. Try not to let it negatively
affect what you I think, umand as always, be safe, be

(20:02):
kind, be nice to each other, be nice to yourself. We will
talk against him. The night Watchfrom the Psychiatric Cords faces up on the

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bulletin board with the reboard. Thishas been a presentation of the FCB podcast
Network where real talk lifts. Visitus online at FCB podcasts dot com.