New York Times writer, David Brooks, finally asked himself a question
a little late, but still he's wondering, are we the baddies?
Now, this is an op-ed that he wrote in regard to the state of journalism and
how the mainstream media covers Donald Trump, his supporters, and elitism.
Now, I wanna just get this caveat out of the way.
We know that there is some portion of Trump supporters
who are in favor of his unsavory and bigoted rhetoric,
we're not making any excuses for that.
However, there does seem to be this tendency among the press to
make blanket statements about all Trump voters.
And it's interesting because David Brooks kind of took a step back to ask himself,
well, are we being fair to these people?
Are we being fair in our coverage?
And so the piece is titled, what if we're the bad guys here?
So there it is, I highly recommend you read it.
>> Speaker 2: For the first time in a quarter of a century of me covering news,
one person in mainstream media finally had a light bulb go over their head,
I wonder if the American people are upset with the elites?
>> Speaker 1: Right, by the way, so
it centers on the way Trump supporters are covered, but
it's really a broader commentary about elitism in the media, right?
And I think that there's so many interesting kernels in this piece.
So,I'm wanna read >> Speaker 2: Can I just say one quick
thing about that?
David Brooks is a conservative.
So he says it about Magaides doesn't like Trump, but
he's saying, Republicans maybe are misunderstood.
But if you gave that same David Brooks the same exact argument about how he and
others cover progressives, you go, no way.
No, they deserve to be smeared, and etc.
They don't even realize their elitism against the left wing flank at all.
No one at New York Times or anywhere else has ever acknowledged that,
when that is 10,000 times worse.
But it's also true of some of MAGA.
>> Speaker 1: So with that said, I wanna read a few excerpts for you.
He writes in his piece, quote,
members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized,
but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.
>> Speaker 2: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
We have a winner, finally.
>> Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other,
work at high-paying professional jobs and pour enormous resources into our children,
who get into these same elite schools, marry each other, and
pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation.
And he argues that this class privilege has become
ingrained into the rhetoric of the Democratic Party.
Now, I'm gonna pause here and actually go to a video because there is
a behavioral psychologist by the name of Rob Henderson, and
he talks about something called luxury beliefs.
I came across his talk a few weeks ago and I thought this was so
on point in regard to some of the things that the Democratic Party promotes in lieu
of incredibly important economic policies.
Let's watch.
>> Speaker 3: So luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on
the upper class while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.
,class of the past.
And today it still happens, but they might play golf or go beagling or something,
whereas today, a lot of the leisure class, they spend a lot of time on Twitter,
they spend a lot of time on social media, sort of signaling back and
forth at each other to keep up with whatever the latest trends are.
Vablen wrote about this, too.
He had this the way that he wrote in the late 19th century.
He said something like,
the upper classes are afraid of the odiousness of the lower classes.
They don't want to come into contact with those ideas for fear of contamination.
I don't want you to mistake me as being one of the pro-polls or the pleads or
whatever.
And so one way I can do this is to show you just how much I despise Trump or
how much I condemn the sort of Brexit movement or whatever.
>> Speaker 1: I thought that this piece by David Brooks really perfectly
coincided with the theory that you hear from Rob Henderson there.
>> Speaker 2: So, look, I think Rob Henderson and I and others at the network,
like Wosni Lombre, if I can speak for him just a tiny bit based on my previous
conversations with him, have something in common.
Which is, we've gone to these good schools,
we know folks in the top 10%, right?
But we were poor at one point, and we were middle class at one point, and
we've struggled, and we've lived in the real world.
And when we come across people in those different places,
Washington is filled to the rim with them.
And the Ivy Leagues also have a lot of them.
And I remember at the Ivy Leagues,
the left was like, homeless are angels, etc.
I'm like, guys, no, they're normal human beings.
They're not angels, right?
So they ran into hard times, you don't have to hate them, right?
But they're like, they never commit crime.
And I'm like, that's ridiculous.
Of course they do.
They're regular human beings, and they're on tough times, and
some of them have addiction issues.
So should you be careful?
Yeah, of course you should be careful, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't help them.
Let's go help them together.
Let's give them food, etc.
But be smart about it, be reasonable about it.
Because if you've grown up in an area where there's plenty of homeless folks,
you're not like some weirdo that from planet wherever who's like,
I hear they're all angels, coz you never interacted with anybody who's real, right?
They're not angels, they're not devils, they're normal.
Except they ran into bad times because of mental health, addiction, etc.
So they talk in a way that just doesn't sound real.
>> That's out of touch with reality.
>> Totally.
Coz they haven't lived in reality.
>> Speaker 1: But the things that they signal to people in the same class is
meant to increase their social capital, which actually offset, it
puts the costs on marginalized communities while they're promoting these things.
You get what saying?
Anyway, but that's kind of a tangent.
I wanna to go back to Brooks here because he also points out that Obama
used the word smart over 900 times when referring to his policies,
thereby implying that we're the wonky smart people,
we know better, we know what we're doing.
Brooks gives a great example of how the American economy and
media has transformed by also discussing his own experience as a journalist.
This is, in my opinion, the most important part of his piece.
He writes, when I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s,
there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom.
Now, we're not only a college-dominated profession,
we're an elite college-dominated profession.
And, he continues, only 0.8% of all college students graduate
from the super elite twelve schools, the Ivy Leagues,
plus Stanford, MIT, Duke, and the University of Chicago.
A 2018 study found, I didn't even know this, found that more than
50% of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal
attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, so >> That's crazy.
>> Speaker 2: And they're super proud of that.
Here's what the New York Times doesn't understand.
Their audience is mainly the top 10%, and they also have audience capture.
It happens online, but it's also happened in mainstream media.
So what do they tell the top 10% that buys a subscription to The New York Times?
Everything is great.
The status quo is wonderful.
You don't need change, change is radical.
Right wings are radicals, left wing are radicals,
only the current corporate status quo is great.
Well, part of that is because of the advertisers that
provide a financial incentive for them to be in favor of corporate rule,
but part of that is because they get their subscription money from the top 10%, and
the top 10% is usually doing pretty good.
And they don't want big change, and
they want The New York Times to call anyone that is a change agent a radical.
Now, in the case of Donald Trump, that's why I pull all my hair out.
We get a populace, but it's a populace without a cause, and
it's a populace who's a con man who's only serving himself.
So then The New York Times and all the other elites get to be smug and go,
see, we told you.
Anytime somebody looks like they're not doing the status quo, they're evil.
And God damn it, Trump, you were the one outsider that broke through, and
you're a goddamn con man, and you ruined it for all the other outsiders.
>> Speaker 1: I got to give you more.
Okay, let's go to Graphic 6.
Like all elites, the self reflection here is incredible.
Like all elites, we use language and
mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others.
Using words like problematic, cisgender, Latinx, and intersectional is
a sure sign that you've got cultural capital coming out of your ears.
Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells,
because they never know when we've changed the usage rules, so
that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.
>> Speaker 2: Look, those two things are overwhelmingly true, and
I've said them for years now.
And every time I say it, people get mad at me.
But even intersectional, like, it's a benign word,
I get why things are intersectional.
Somebody could be suffering from racism and sexism at the same time.
Institutions can be advocating for both of those things at the same time.
And we've discussed how they do that, and we show it to you guys.
But when you use the word intersectional, what you're saying is, I'm smart and
sophisticated and really well educated, and I know better than you, ha,ha.
But the people saying it, they don't know that they're saying that.
It's all of these social cues as these guys are refering to.
>> That's exactly right.
>> Speaker 2: And so, guys, if you're a politician,
you should never use the word intersectional.
And it's not because it's a bad word or it doesn't poll,
it's just real people do not talk that way.
I've never heard someone at a bar going, hey, that's intersectional, and
let's ask our Latinx friends, okay?
It's just not how people talk.
But they're so proud that they talk that way that when I say that,
they take personal affront at it.
You see what I'm saying?
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, but listen, it goes even further than that sometimes,
because if you reject the language or you push back or question the language,
and look, let's keep it real, at the end of the day, that's all it is.
It is changing what is considered or
is not considered appropriate language, right?
If you try to challenge it even a little bit, sometimes it goes even further,
where it's not just about cultural capital or social capital.
They will try to literally destroy your reputation as someone who is
actively working against that marginalized community that they are changing
the language around.
>> Speaker 2: And unfortunately, some folks have gotten so personally
invested in that, that they are now doing some of the right wing strategies.
So, look, guys, and every situation is a little bit different, intersectional
is a perfectly good word, but I wouldn't use it in a political context.
It separates you from real people, and it's not helpful to do that in politics.
Cisgender, I've said it.
Now, it's like a big thing to say it, and Elon Musk took it on a weird rant, right?
But five years ago, ten years ago, whenever it first came out,
I was like, I get the meaning of it, and
you need a word like that, but you all get that it sounds funny, right?
Again, regular people never say cisgender, and
it doesn't mean you should never use it, it depends on the context.
It's not hurtful, there's nothing wrong with it,
except that you're trying to prove that you're part of the in-group, right?
But maybe that helps you, but it doesn't help them.
But then there are words like Latinx, which are actively harmful.
Like, no one agreed to it, you pretended that Latinos wanted to be called Latinx,
and then we said, that's not true.
And then we got our face ripped off from the left on it, and
they're like, how dare you?
You're not even Latino.
You can't speak for Latinos.
>> Speaker 1: Well, neither can you.
>> Speaker 2: Neither can you.
And then when they polled Latinos, it turns out 96% of them made it.
We told you.
Did anybody learn anything from that?
No, back to elitism, etc.
And especially progressives.
We should not be anywhere near elitism.
We should be the exact opposite of that.
Yet so many people who went to these colleges, live in this bubble,
they pride themselves on using words that no one else ever uses and
alienating themselves more from people.
But the second part is just as important, Like Anna said something the other day
about, hey, people are having trouble talking to one another, right?
And people thought it was outrageous.
And look, maybe you phrase it in a different way, but the bottom line is,
are people afraid to say certain things?
Definitely.
If you don't realize that, you're living in an alternate reality.
Look, we did this shoot the other day, I'll talk about it too.
Forget the fact that it's anecdotal.
To me, it confirmed every other piece of data that I have seen where the very first
thing that the guy who's a Republican but doesn't like Trump, but doesn't want to
vote for Trump, the very first thing he said in that shoot was pronouns.
I'm afraid that if I use the wrong pronoun, I'm going to get fired.
And almost everyone, when you ask them, they say,
I'm afraid if I use the wrong pronoun, I'm going to get fired, right?
And people on the left are like, no, that's not true.
They're all making it up.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
>> How does that help?
How does it help to alienate everybody?
And guys, I've said this for 20 straight years.
I said Don Imas shouldn't get fired, I said Megyn Kelly shouldn't get fired,
every time we take heat for it.
Why?
It isn't coz I like Megyn Kelly or Don Imas?
I didn't like either one of them.
Or at least I don't agree with their policy positions.
I don't know them personally.
But it's because instead of firing Megyn Kelly, if you had a conversation about why
blackface is so bad and you talked about the history of lynchings connected
to blackface, you talked about Birth of a Nation and how blackface led to so
much violence against African Americans.
Then you're having a conversation and people are learning.
But our side now is joining the elites on the right wing,
the establishment, etc going, no, we will not have any conversations.
Our side is the correct side, and no one is allowed to disagree.
That doesn't work.
>> Speaker 1: I'm gonna push back.
I do not see that on the right the way that I see that on the left,
keeping it real.
>> Well, for a long time, right?
We have a different version of authoritarianism, right?
Like dissent from Trump is not allowed, which is different, right?
But it is the same idea of you cannot question orthodoxy, right?
But the people that are the most guilty of it is not the left or the right,
if you ask me.
And that goes back to the original point of David Brooks.
It's the establishment.
If you think orthodoxy is bad on the right and the left,
wait till you get a load of the establishment.
And that's what we've been fighting against for a quarter of a century now.
And the establishment says, no, these are the things that are right, and
you cannot divert from them.
If you divert from them at all, that is very bad and populist and radical, right?
And so I'm sick of it.
And David Brooks, I don't agree with him on 98% of what he writes.
But apparently, he's at least one of the very few people in
mainstream media who's like, wait, maybe all those polls
that show popularity of Congress down at 7%, media down at 9%.
Maybe they really don't like us.
Of course they don't like you, you are the establishment.
At least one knucklehead finally figured it out.