The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 242 (Best of 9/5/22-9/9/22)
Episode Date: September 11, 2022The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's season 253 (9/5\22-9/9/22)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
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I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports.
Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry.
Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.
Every great player needs a foil.
I know I'll go down in history.
People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game.
Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports.
Listen to the making of a rivalry.
Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.
And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed.
Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films
and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk
Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.
There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career.
That's where we come in.
Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.
And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do,
like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour.
If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation,
then I think it sort of eases us a little bit.
Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the
making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. People are talking about women's basketball
just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball.
And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture.
Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke.
Hello, the Internet, and welcome to this episode of the Weekly Zeitgeist.
These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one nonstop infotainment laughstravaganza.
Yeah. So without further ado, here is the weekly zeitgeist.
We're thrilled to be joined by a creative and political activist who has gone viral a number of times,
including creating the video in which Ellen DeGeneres' non-apology monologue about being friends with George W. Bush
was juxtaposed with footage of his war crimes.
And Ellen was not thrilled, tried to get it taken down,
among many other things.
That's just the one that you might know him from.
Please welcome the brilliant and talented Rafael Shmunov.
Raph, in the building.
Hello.
I'm still recovering a little bit from,
I think you shouted something in German to this Jewish person.
Yeah, I shouted away from the mic though so i was being sensitive you did muffler but
my ancestors put their hands on my shoulders
steady steady what about my howard dean scream did that take you back
that one is just always reminds me of how little it took to sink someone. Yeah. Nothing can sink anyone anymore.
I know.
That's I honestly,
that's why I love that clip.
It's like the dude literally is just like saying he was so stoked on the
idea of being the president.
They're like,
yikes.
He's unhinged.
Have we gotten the deep dive,
like journalistic deep dive documentary about the Dean scream?
Because I think it's,
it's both a testament
to how little it could take to sink someone and also how little it can take to sink someone
when the mainstream media is cooperating and don't like their policies.
There has to be one out there.
And the Dean scream is the, is the exact name that it should be.
Right.
You know, some people know, as the I have a scream.
It's just good memeing.
This is bullshit, man.
It's on the Wikipedia page.
It doesn't remind me of wrestling.
Like WWF, WWE.
Oh my god.
I know there's the documentary about
where they look at the audio and they say that he actually didn't scream that loud. And the that might have been an episode of This American Life or something that I'm remembering. But I want to see the one about the general agreement behind closed doors by the mainstream media to be like let's kill him with
this should we kill him with this yeah let's let's get rid of this because he anticipated so many
things about modern politics and moving towards progressive ideals and also online fundraising
but i'm sure they're that jack but that, dude, what a nerd, huh?
It was when the mainstream media was an internet, an approximation of what the internet would become and also just bullies in a lunchroom.
They keep doing and they keep blaming.
Now they say it's Twitter, the Twitter mob that does it. But they did it with Dukakis where he had this helmet on and he was in a tank.
And he's a man of normal stature or smaller stature.
And they used that to ridicule him and then on Kerry.
Yeah, Kerry was.
So they killed Dean with the scream to make room for John Kerry, who they then killed with the flip flop.
But John Kerry did it to himself
in a lot of ways. Maybe they made room for
Dean, or made room for Kerry
because they knew, oh, we are going to
rinse this fool.
They also have a picture of him in all this
PPE going through a tube, like an
HVAC tube that was circulated.
It was just wild. But yeah, he did
a lot to himself.
And now they can't do shit about trump
unfortunately probably those two are probably related them just doing shit at a whim based on
who they thought had the best odds in the horse race for the democratic nomination and people
losing faith in their opinion of things might be related.
What is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are or what
you're up to?
Well, in my search history right now, I think it's foolishness.
I've been arguing with my friends that Eeyore is Black from Lady Boo, and so that's what
I'm on right now.
I'm on which cartoon characters are actually black wait i like that wait okay now that i'm thinking about this does he live in the forest
with them no no he does not live in the hundred acre woods i'm glad i'm glad you asked he lives
on the outskirts okay by himself go on yes i don't know if you've noticed if you just look
at the sheer infrastructure
of Eeyore's little Snoopy house
versus everybody's full home
and state.
They got a land, right?
Everybody else lives
in 100 Acre Woods.
They don't even see Eeyore
until the end of the episode.
They spend all day
frolicking amongst
the 100 Acre Woods.
And after they're done
doing everything they do
with eating and partying
and going by rabbit,
then they're like,
who are you?
What's your brand?
He's like,
I just got off my shift on the sanitation department. What the fuck are you talking about? Listen, Eeyore be calling about Then they're like, who are you? Why so sad? What's your problem? He's like, I just got off my shift
on the sanitation department.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Listen,
you already be calling them out.
They be gaslighting them all day.
They're like,
he's depressed,
but no one asked why.
Nobody asked why.
They're like,
Eeyore,
you get really angry really easy.
Listen,
I knew it was up as a child.
Me and my grandma,
we peaked immediately.
Eeyore was black.
I remember they came to him
at the end of the episode.
He's like,
hold on. You know, this just the adventures of winnie the
pooh and everybody else do adventures but not er yeah immediately white flight white flight that's
why everybody lives in the hundred acre woods and he lives there where does christopher robin live
right in the burbs with them you notice that right right oh and he's just kind of he's like yo
oh this is my backyard yeah yeah exactly white christopher robin and all the rest of them live
in the same community there's that new horror movie winnie the pooh blood and where you were
dead first yeah you were dead already at the start
and they apparently they like the implied backstory is that
Winnie the Pooh and Piglet
ate him.
Did I make that up?
They marked him in some way.
All I know is...
Horror movie, Black person dies first.
Winnie the Pooh horror movie starts out
with Eeyore already gone.
Or it's like the magical donkey
man Eeyore. They're like, tell us of your
ways, magical man.
Listen, they got my mans out of there
because he's one of us. He's a brother.
Okay.
Shout out Eeyore.
What is something you guys think is
overrated?
Google.
This is my and i'm not just saying this because i didn't get the answer about dev chubb but in general and you know i think this has been reported on google is just
less and less usable like you it just does not show you the information you're looking for in
the way that it used to because it's algorithmically
trying to show you some other shit and it's so frustrating to me i really have you tried duck
duck go that's what i've been using lately yeah it doesn't it doesn't like track you and duck duck
go also has does not have answers about dev jump but it is less overrated than google yeah i would ask jeeves honestly jeeves might know what happened
to him here's the thing about ask jeeves that i i think i have probably bored lisa with this already
but so i have been reading a bunch of the pg woodhouse books pghouse, who was the creator of Jeeves the butler. Uh huh. And like there are humorous old timey books from like, you know, the 20s about this dumb rich guy and his butler.
And every one of those stories is about him asking Jeeves for help and Jeeves going in a very circuitous sort of counterintuitive method to get it.
And it all backfires and i don't understand why
we're presenting that character as a reliable problem solver like naming your glasses after
mr magoo yes yeah oh so he's like the original like nathan fielder like
kind of yeah like okay the plan make this frozen yogurt taste like shit or whatever well he's also he's just trying to ignore his rich boss and his rich boss's dumb ideas
oh okay he's a working class hero kind of yeah a little yeah push pull but he's weirdly i mean
i recommend reading the books they're really funny but uh it it always strikes me as odd that we're asking Jeeves to get us something directly.
Right.
What are the books called?
Like, what's the most famous Wodehouse?
Oh, my gosh.
I don't know what the most famous one.
He wrote like hundreds of them.
Okay.
I can try to.
I'm sorry.
This is so boring.
I'm like, I'm looking in my.
Jeeves in the offing.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Right ho, Jeeves.
Right ho, Jeeves is a really good one.
Right ho, Jeeves.
Right ho, Jeeves.
Ring for Jeeves is pretty good.
It's really hard to tell them apart because there's just so many of them.
You just make up some titles.
Jeeves special day.
Big outing for Jeves an evening with jeeves yeah yeah what's something emily that you've like you've noticed you're like
i used to be able to find this on google and now you're like what the fuck happened
that's a i should have come prepared with something like that aside from curious about
aside from the fact that like looking up deb chubb bird
doesn't reveal anything about her talking about birds not being real what are you good for yeah
sometimes it'll just be something where you're like okay what's the biggest country by population
and it'll just like tell you the biggest country by area right away where like it just has started
ignoring search terms i feel like that's something
that is frustrating to me gotcha it's like i think you mean by area right yeah but it won't even say
by area it'll just like put up a picture of what they think the answer is without the information
that disqualifies it i think one of the most frustrating things is like, you'll look up something like, can my dog eat blah, blah, blah. And it'll be like 10 foods
your dog should not eat. And the food that you listed is under the actually it's okay section,
but then it tells you that they can't eat it. And so I just I'm constantly thinking of poison my dog.
Yeah. Yeah, Google's bad. Just in general, evil.
Very evil.
I feel like DuckDuckGo is still finding its sea legs,
but it's definitely less intrusive
and less likely to track you.
Yeah.
What's something you think is underrated?
Underrated.
Oh, yes.
So is doing just like the whack thing
when you're visiting somewhere. I have been in New York about like, I don't know, 10 hours now. No, 14 hours now. No, 10 hours now.
got a like egg and cheese on a roll and like walked around and got a slice of just cheese pizza and ate it just like a like a just like a real doofus tourist and i know it's like not cool or
like interesting but i'm like i don't care i guess it helps that i used to live here so i'm like uh
what am i gonna do yeah well you know what you want to do i don't think that's i mean those
things are good and they're good in new york so yeah i don't think that's i mean those things are good and
they're good in new york so yeah i don't think it's like stupid it's like it'd be dumb if you
went to sparrow right and did that whole dumb bit of a thing that i see too many people do and they
think it's funny and they're like i went to sparrow in new york but like that shit is done but get
your bagel get your fucking you know i don't cheese. I just like doing the thing.
I like when I go on vacation or I guess this is technically work,
but kind of vacation, but definitely more vacation.
For tax reasons, work.
Honestly, kind of.
The IRS loves our show, by the way.
Just be careful.
Shout out to the 80,000 new agents.
Yeah.
I just like anytime I visit somewhere,
I just like acting like what I would do if i just had a pain in the ass but not terribly taxing job in that city right so just
like go eat at the boringest place and like i got out of four i'm just gonna go to happy hour
somewhere close to the hotel or wherever i'm staying like i don't care yeah i like i like living as if i
have given up but in a different city right well what is what is the version what's the antithesis
of what you're talking about look like i i think this is part definitely like partially like the
people i know in los angeles but it's like we made reservations at the best the cool place every
every night and we're doing this and like oh oh, there's a party here. And like, oh, my friend from this is doing this. Right. And I'm just like,
I guess I will. And do not get me wrong. I'm here for another two days. If anyone's got anything
going on, hit me up. But I, for real, I'm just like, I don't know. I never I never care enough
to do it myself. I just like doing the boring thing, but in a different place.
Right, right.
For sure.
And you don't feel the sense.
I think those people really get the FOMO and you're like, I can't believe it.
I was in New York for 36 hours and I didn't go to this top seven restaurants.
Yeah, exactly.
But I mean, part of it is like having lived maybe in New York.
It's just like, especially this cruel assass city, like, the top seven restaurant
changes every month. So, like,
what are you experiencing?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's all ephemeral. Yeah.
Is that more interchangeable
with, like, LA's top seven restaurants
than would be, like, just
a local bar and an egg and cheese
on a roll, you know?
Yeah.
That's what I prefer.
Yeah, yeah.
I like that the LA version is just like,
yeah, yeah.
Just like doing the thing that actually I would do
as opposed to like, maybe that's it.
If I lived, like I live in LA and I'm never like,
oh, I gotta, what I gotta do is make sure to hit up,
blah, blah, blah.
But that's just a personality thing
because there are plenty of people who are.
And you know what? Good them good for them i like to go down to the
docks and get into a fist fight yeah you know at whatever place i am just see that's how i
short elbows short elbows is the key in a doc exactly yeah i like to go just around brooklyn
and yell at people for playing their ethnic music too loud. Like a true Brooklyn.
Like a true New Yorker.
Like a true New Yorker.
That is so loud.
I'm sorry.
That is so loud.
What is going on?
Gentrified even harder than the last time I was here.
It is.
Man, I was there and I could.
I'm not joking.
I saw a woman chastising a dude for playing like Dembo like out of his fucking car.
Wow.
And she was like,
I have a baby in a
stroller. It's like you're pushing
your stroller towards this fucking
parked car. Right. Also,
fuck your baby, lady.
Also, your baby could use some play. Rule number one.
Listen to some bit of music.
I was at a bar
yesterday where
every white person or every white guy was dressed like Harry Potter and every not white guy was dressed like Mero.
And I was like, this is gentrification at its finest.
Oh, no.
It was really like, oh, the line.
Everyone seemed to be getting along.
But, you know, what do I know?
I've been outside.
Yeah, right. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Oh, the line. Everyone seemed to be getting along, but, you know, what do I know? I've been outside. Yeah.
Right.
All right.
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series,
Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.
And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the
host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper
into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that
has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between
high control groups and interview dancers, church members and others whose lives and careers have been impacted just like mine.
Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives.
Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration.
It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of
abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk
Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions.
Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed?
Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job?
Girl, yes.
Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions.
Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.
And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner.
The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies.
Yeah, I think a lot about that quote.
What is it like you miss 100 percent of the shots you never take?
Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself.
better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal
for you. Come up here and document my project. All's too late for that. I have a proposal for you.
Come up here and document my project.
All you need to do is record everything like you always do.
One session.
24 hours.
BPM 110.
120.
She's terrified.
Should we wake her up?
Absolutely not.
What was that?
You didn't figure it out?
I think I need to hear you say it.
That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.
This machine is approved and everything?
You're allowed to be doing this?
We passed the review board a year ago.
We're not hurting people.
There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.
They're just dreams.
They're just dreams. far, far away. No, babe, that's taken. We're in our own world, remember?
Right, in our own world.
We're two space cadets.
And totally normal humans.
Sure, totally normal humans.
Embark on a journey across the stars,
discovering the wonders of the universe one episode at a time.
We'll talk about life, love, laughter,
and why you should never argue with your co-pilot.
Especially when she's always right.
Right.
And if we hit turbulence,
just blame it on Mercury retrograde.
Or Emily's questionable space piloting skills.
Hey!
Join us on In Our Own World
for cosmic conversations, stellar laughs,
and super corny dad jokes.
Listen to In Our Own World
as a part of the My Cultura podcast network
available on the
iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts and don't worry we promise to
avoid any black holes most of the time and we're back and school just got a lot easier.
Holy would be too easy.
Yeah.
Look,
so there's a new AI that helps write essays.
And I just want to say,
look,
when I were a boy,
you know,
I spent a lot of time trying to not do a lot of schoolwork so I could just be outside having fun and fucking around.
So that would manifest into me being like,
what's this test?
Oh, that teacher's old. I know how to fucking cheat on those tests i'll buy all the fucking old tests from the people two classes above me who saved everything and it was like this is like a
commodity in my high school they're like yo you got his tests and somebody would have them each
year you could be like i'm sorry homie this is 200 right here if this is this is it this is the
whole year you don't have to do shit so anyway back then it was like old scantrons or like you could see an old quiz to get a level up like as a
studying guide but now you know things were very lo-fi back then but now because of all of this
fucking technology man we are now looking at students being able to write whole fucking essays by sending like by feeding this ai uh just
by giving it a sentence or two and these programs allow students to create entirely new fucking
essays that can't like traditionally you could be like you'd feed it through a plagiarism detection
service or whatever software and it would try and find some similarities and be like ah this is this
other thing that's on the internet with this because it's wholly new work. It completely can sidestep a lot of those
things that are in the plagiarism detection software. And it's pretty sophisticated.
It's taking your style, like your writing style and the information you've provided. Is it using
going out and researching? I even did a thing where I put it, you know how you see the doc,
Yeah, like going out and researching.
I even did a thing where I put it, you know how you see the doc, you know, my writing style.
Like, it's very conversational. I all caps shit out of nowhere for like emphasis.
It's like in my own head.
And I put that in there and it kind of gave me back like a flippant story about Donald Trump and his legal team, like not giving a fuck about the legal process.
It wasn't like it didn't it didn't have like swag
but you could tell it was trying to do something so in that sense i'm like okay if you're very if
you're a very creative writer your your shit is still safe um but i just want to show you so there
is this article in jacobin about uh how trader joe's is also starting the union bus right now
because they are they're fucking you know they're looking at starbucks and they're like all right
homies we know we know the play right here is to illegally bust these fucking
unions so this is the this is the first two sentences from this jackwood article quote
trader joe's workers in minnesota minneapolis won their union in a landslide vote august 12th
making theirs the second store to go with the new independent trader joe's united the win raises the
question of whether the grocer with its 530 locations and progressive image, could be the next Starbucks.
So I just put that into the fucking machine. It gave me back two more paragraphs, but I'm just
going to read you the first paragraph and a half. So this is how it wants to continue what we just
fed it. And that's no small feat. Last year, Starbucks baristas notched a huge victory when the coffee chain agreed to pay higher wages and give workers a say over the chain's social media policies.
But unlike Starbucks, which is a global chain with thousands of locations, Trader Joe's only has about 15% of the grocery market, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Standalone, non-unionized shops are actually more common with the grocer, which has opened about 50 shops in cities over the last year.
That's fucking AI that just kept going with that and granted it's also like analysis yeah
that stuff's all true they aren't just making that up they're like pulling that off the internet
where what's the input from other articles and it will even tell you where it pulls from
wow and you can and you can alter shit right? Like you can dumb your shit down.
So let's say, you know, obviously, you know, an article like that is probably not for Mrs. Schultz sixth grade English class.
But like if you wanted to, you could put in a very, very simple, like dry explanation of the themes in the Disney film Toy Story.
And it will come back to you with about the same level
of like rhetorical style.
It's over. School is over.
I don't know. I think you could turn that
Jacobin thing into Miss Schultz and she'd be
she'd just be like, whoa, damn.
Okay. All right.
I'm going to get in touch with Columbia's
journalism school.
I was passing
love letters and being a class clown.
So I'm like thinking now, like, how would AI would have helped me?
Right.
Probably like I would pass a note to someone and she'd be like, she opens it up and reads it and says, like, wherefore art thou, Jessica Rodriguez?
What light from your school desk breaks?
Here, Raph, right now, give me like two sentences from a Raph in sixth grade love letter and we'll let this shit continue.
Let it cook.
Dear what? What's her name? Jessica, you said?
Oh, man, Jessica Rodriguez. My God.
Dear Jessica, what would you say? I have a crush on you.
Are we allowed? Yeah.
I'm like 15 year old self allowed to think about 15 year old.
We'll just, okay, we 15 years. We'll just,
okay.
We'll pretend we can,
we'll,
we'll,
we'll just say Jessica.
Dear Jessica.
I have a crush on you.
17,000 Jessica Rodriguez.
Okay.
I have a crush on you.
You are the most beautiful student at school.
It was funny too.
She was so funny.
And you are so funny
i'm just gonna give it that dear jessica i have a crush on you you're the most beautiful student
at school and you are so funny it's going to continue with drum roll please you cheer me up
when i am sad i hope you can like me sean showed the card to my mother and she said, okay, now it's getting wild.
Alright, it just got real
aggressive. It started writing, like, details
into your life. Oh, so now
it's doing a story. It said, so you said, dear Jessica,
I have a question. You're so funny. Then it said, would you ever go out with
me? But then it said,
Susie's heart starts beating faster.
She thinks for a moment and then writes, dear
Mark, thanks for the nice poem. You're a sweet task.
You know, like, eventually they're going to monetize this and there'll be like an ad in it.
Like, Jessica, you may also be in need of a 20% discount.
Right, right, right.
Just shifted to fiction.
But OK, so on one hand, it might seem like that is the AI breaking down.
On the other hand, it could be a brilliant hedge where that just comes up in the middle of the thing.
And so if Jessica is like, nah, you're like, no, I was just showing you a short story I wrote.
Why are you acting like I meant this?
That's kind of.
AI is the ultimate wingman.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Four dimensional chess.
So this is kind of like brought up a whole debate with educators
because they're like, what the fuck are we supposed to do?
Like, do we shift policies now to say, like,
using AI is against the fucking ethos of this school?
Fuck around with it.
And if we find out, you will find out as well.
But then they're like, we also don't want to put it in students' heads
that this is a normal shit that they can start using.
Then other people are like, well, what are the limits?
Right. Because people use spell spell check or other like sort of like smart tools that help people's writing.
And there's already AI that detects plagiarism.
So this is just the latest salvo in the arms war between students and teachers.
The old school way was you feed your shit to the,
the plagiarism thing,
and then you swag up every sentence.
So now it's not,
it's not going to hit anymore on that.
That used,
that was like,
I think the way to grind it out using this kind of shit back in the day.
But now we're looking at just,
here's three topics I need.
You know,
it's about these.
If you like,
if the first paragraph is succinct enough,
it can kind of know where you're headed.
Maybe this is the new phase of education because you like, if the first paragraph is succinct enough, it can kind of know where you're headed. Maybe this is the new phase of education because you have the article generated, but then you have to go and fact check the article that was generated for you.
So you go and read the entire L.A. Times article to make sure that it's giving an accurate.
So it's just basically generating research work for you without doing the writing.
The newest kind of curriculum and education through Common Core, because I have a kid, and it is to not just go and find facts and regurgitate them, but to actually be a journalist and get multiple sources around places and actually report back on what society was thinking at that moment, what were the opposing viewpoints. So I could see a creative kind of curriculum that can kind of pull this in, but it's still pretty frightening.
Well, maybe the way we're educating kids needs to change if it's as simple as feeding an AI. And we need to think a little bit more with our brains here to find new ways to begin to say, OK, this assignment means you have actually understood the curriculum.
Like how to operate in a new world. Right. That's what we're trying to educate them for.
So you're they better know how to plagiarize with AI.
You step behind yeah
yeah i mean the new common core shit is really messing me i'm in the midst of a massive cover
up with my six-year-old is trying to is going through files trying to prove that santa claus
doesn't exist and it's yeah they call it uh the right it comic art, which is really funny.
What do you mean everyone in the country has to learn the same thing?
But then I get. Yeah, I mean, I wonder if I'm trying to think of what I mean.
Look, I'm not an educator, so there's no way I could have a constructive idea to how they navigate this but it does feel like yeah i guess if if it is that easy to just merely say okay you want me to write something watch this then what is that next step i know plenty of educators
listen to the show please let me know all right are y'all worried all right is everything changing
so rapidly or like that's the least of their problems right now yeah like do if they use this, I'm just trying to picture a way to take this into account and still have them learn, you know, because that that is if if it's doing a good job of sourcing the articles, that is a way of finding articles, you know, that are relevant to the subject that you're talking about. Right. That is just easier, right? So that, but you do have to fact check them, I guess.
There's this other social thing that's going to occur,
I imagine, because what's the algorithm?
What is it doing?
How is it weighing what it's finding?
If just something is repeated enough on large accounts,
does that make it true?
Sure.
And now it's just regurgitating things
just because very powerful sites or entities kind of repeated the same the same thing.
I know like Amazon, I work opposing Amazon.
They send canned, they know that local journalists are really like on a shoestring budget and they don't have time.
So they send them canned reports and canned footage and it makes it and then they report it out.
Like it's almost like like you spoke yesterday about propaganda it's also like this propaganda where they they just make it look like
they were inside this amazon facility and everyone loves working there and everyone's fine when
really they just regurgitated something written for them and you know played a video that was
given to them right because it's a cheap way to generate what what appears to be objective
reporting so it's basically doing the exact generate what appears to be objective reporting.
So it's basically doing the exact same thing.
This is going to have impact that way, I think.
It's going to start.
The echo chamber is going to be on steroids.
Yeah, it's a nightmare. I was just tinkering with the toys and this AI because you could have it do different styles.
You're like, yo, I want something fantastical, upbeat, authoritative, conflicted, sensual, romantic.
I switched your line to romantic and said, dear Jessica, I have a crush on you.
You're the most beautiful student at school and you are so funny.
I don't know if you feel the same way about me, but I just wanted to let you know how I feel.
I hope you have a great day. Sincerely, your secret admirer.
Get the fuck out of here.
Nailed it. I mean, they nailed it.
Fucking killed it.
That is so good.
They provided emotional transparency, emotional maturity to...
I mean, right.
And then they were like, his Netflix, Quay, matches 76% yours.
Please subscribe for a 20% discount.
So, yes.
Oh, man.
Just shows you.
Rocky Road.
Rocky Road ahead.
Can you imagine?
Because then I also see like a version two where like, you know, like men are so fucking bad at expressing themselves.
They start relying on AI and shit.
Just fucking stop talking.
Right.
Yeah.
We're obsolete.
We're obsolete.
That just proves we're obsolete.
Just like the curriculum is obsolete.
Yeah.
And this episode is brought to you by a recurring segment brought to you by Rocky Road ice cream from Haagen-Dazs.
It's the Rocky Road evidence of a rocky road ahead.
And what goes better with Rocky Road than some delicious Rocky Road ice cream?
Yeah.
And they all and they use 100 percent organic dairy cream.
So, you know, shout out them.
Shout out the sponsors for this week's Rocky Road.
This week's segment. This week's Rocky Road is brought to you by...
Easy fact, yeah.
I can only hear it in Bill Simmons' voice every time there's like a branded segment.
Anyways, Republicans, not quite sure to campaign.
I think they have figured out what not to campaign on.
Yeah.
But they don't have anything to really replace it speaking
of ai yeah you fed all the gop talking points from 2009 fuck it even before from the 90s to today and
you asked it to create a sentence it would say obamacare is bad health care should be replaced
with guns abortion is the worst thing to ever happen right and that's all they're
consistent with that's literally quite simply the few things they've been really consistent on
and these again these aren't the words of a party that are interested in trying to lead the country
into some positive future obviously but we already knew that but when you couple that with like the
results in recent special elections especially since the dobbs decision and you couple that with like the results in recent special elections, especially since the Dobbs decision, and you look that you have a group of people that are trying to figure out like a thing they can talk about that won't be spectacularly unpopular.
Right.
You know, so many of the Republicans now that, you know, that are trying to make a red wave this November, we talked about another candidate who like completely sanitized his website.
It's like a
boy i've never heard of nothing about a forced birth never no don't don't tell me about that
don't look don't go on the way back machine either or the internet archive and see an old
cached version of this website that says the opposite but many of like the kill obamacare
crowd have had to pivot to well i'm definitely into protections for pre-existing conditions. I mean, let me get that much straight at a minimum.
And like the forced birth fanatics are also have not said a single thing out loud in public.
And it's just odd.
You know, well, look, ACA has become more and more popular over the years and simply
trying to use like racist dog whistles like Obamacare, like are no longer connecting.
And we've yet to see anything
resembling what a republican health care policy would look like but we don't have to guess it
would just be all privatized everything you know what i mean and then it's like i don't know did
you ask jeff bezos uh if you know if you deserve more hypodermic needles yeah your physical brought
to you by amazon and provided by amazon yeah like in the middle of the eye test, you got to watch a fucking trailer for Lord of the Rings and shit.
You're like, what the fuck?
They're like, okay, who do you see?
I don't know.
90% of people with bad vision love this movie.
But like a few consultants on that side, they've all said, we really got to steer the conversation back to gas prices and inflation.
But the main issue for voters, as we've seen in like a lot of the just anyone ask around going into November seems to be all about health care and abortion.
Around where they are just epically unfit to discuss with non-ghouli type people.
So it's like, I mean, I get that the voter suppression shit is probably going
to be on their side in certain instances but it it's it's just interesting to watch like them be
like fuck man we've been saying this shit for so long now most people are like actually i i would
like to have like i would like to not go bankrupt because i have diabetes right and they're like
shit um okay let's just shut the fuck up about it.
Right. And, you know, yes. Allow the opponents to create the conversation.
The worst part of that is that the more Republicans do that, the more Democrats feel they have they don't have to do anything.
Exactly. So Biden, he campaigned on canceling all of student debt.
He just gestures. Yeah. And then the average is like 33 000 and now you know now it's like yeah let me take that back uh how about how about we wet your beak
a little bit yeah right exactly it's like i might you guys might be desperate enough i could get
i could get through to 2024 off this shit too i don't want to give y'all everything i went back
to the boss and uh they couldn't really figure out that number yeah right by the way that uh eviction protection thing yeah let's get rid of that right
it seems like everybody is waking up to the fact that they are in favor of leftist policies that
are helpful to the vast majority of of people but they, again, there is an allergy
to being at least self-consciously socialist,
like being conscious that you support a leftist policy.
How right-wingers actually get away with calling Biden
and the centrist Wall Street Democrats left
because that erases the left.
Because if the left was platformed in any way
in this country, there would be a lot it would
we would resonate with a lot of people because we would be talking about material needs that
appeal to basically everybody people's ears would be smoking and their tvs would explode
well actually there is a uh we've mentioned before there is a movement in the democratic
party to offer an alternative option let's not say that's whatever that is yeah well
i guess it's both parties coming together to offer a different option that is the andrew yang we
the whatever party the whatever the the democrats are too far left party so the last time i was here
i spoke about yang when he was running for mayor of New York.
And we were talking about how awful it would be to hire the AI president who was still modeling how to pick up a banana.
That's right.
How to buy a banana and what a bodega is.
Oh, man.
When we criticized that, he immediately, like a few hours later, correct it just like an AI would and,
and went and actually found a real bodega.
And it was like,
I am now in a booth.
Yeah.
Hilarious.
Nice try.
I am in a bodega now.
Y'all have loose new ports or not in here.
My guy.
So for a loose new port.
Localize.
My guy. Justport. Fuck. Localize that AI.
Oh my God.
Just send it into the AI.
Yeah.
It's so funny that that keeps coming back and getting people is just the inability to shop in grocery stores to even like exist in a grocery store.
It's just like this kind of clean slate that he wants to present.
And like they're presenting this party, the forward party as.
The forward party. That's right. Sorry. It's not left left it's not right it's forward forward what else do we have to explain doesn't mean anything
so what are the policies on the left that you're too critical of well so the thing you have to
understand is we're not left and we're not right we're forward that's the only time i've heard
that's the only problem is every single person behind it is a right winger,
either a Trump right winger or a neocon,
like warmonger from the Iraq era,
from the Bush era,
from the Bloomberg era stuff,
like all of them.
100%.
There's one governor,
Christy Todd Whitman.
She was infamous for stopping a black New Jersey and on the street with
police,
with state troopers,
so that she could get a photo op of herself frisking him.
Wow.
You know, like these are the type of people who fought
healthcare, fought rights, abortion rights, fought everything.
And now they're like cosplaying as this thing
in order to siphon off.
And I've seen, like, I actually have this mixed
kind of relationship with Yang supporters.
A lot of them are new to politics and they kind of make sense to someone who's just like peeking in.
It's like, oh, logical.
He's going to be organized.
Yeah, we have the same thing during the election.
A lot of people were like, you actually need to give Yang more of a shot.
But when you do talk to them and you give them space and you actually,
they like logic and they like things portrayed that way. So when you do, this is the one group
that I don't feel like most of them are driven by like some hidden agenda, like racism or far
right ideology. I don't think many of them are. I think they're actually just low information and
just getting in. And there's a great opportunity to really just be like, OK,
that's how you want to talk. Let me bullet point this for you. And I've had a lot of success,
a lot of success with that. Right. And it's because, I mean, it's so vague, everything's
so vague that I think it probably does act as like a Rorschach test for like someone who's
newly engaging with politics where you might come like, don't know both of the main parties seem dumb and this one what's their like their the sense like the first
the landing page after years of working in parallel to unite americans and strengthen our democracy
the forward party the renew america movement and the serve america movement are pleased to announce
the formal merge of our three organizations we are coming together from a clock across the political
spectrum to build a new and transformational american political party blah blah blah operating
under one name forward i mean again i think what this is it's that the smart republicans are like
bro this brand is getting toxic and you need to find a way to get some people that are gonna not
go full left but give them something that sounds fucking flowery but we'll give them fuck all in the end
but we need to message it differently because simply going out here and be like gay people
are bad health care's fucked up fuck poor people they're like that shit is not working it's not
1970 anymore well yeah i'd be surprised if yang people who supported gang in the last election
are still about this shit like This feels like less of a thing
where he's moving his people
into this category more
where he moved in,
and I'd be surprised if anybody follows him
if they are truly just motivated by the argument.
I don't see the same energy.
Yeah, it feels like a thing,
a party that is purely motivated to get the New York Times to write pieces about it.
It's setting The New York Times up.
Because it's all based on mainstream media, both sides-ism and the stuff that doesn't actually exist to voters or really matter to voters.
And there's just no support.
Not only is there no support for their policies, there are no policies for their party.
Like they don't really have anything they're willing to say out loud, I guess.
A lot of policies of their founders.
Another one is Barbara Comstock.
She was the one that said we should build a wall in front of Canada, too.
And we should track immigrants and migrants like FedEx packages.
Her words.
Amazing.
Shit.
It goes real deep. track immigrants and migrants like FedEx packages. Her words. Amazing. Shit.
It goes real deep.
The amount of Republican funding, the Trumpism, that guy who wrote that, all these anonymous figures that were in the White House that became whistleblowers.
Right.
Only when, not when it mattered, but when they could sell a book, they waited to when
they could sell a book.
I'm sorry, but one of them is called Miles. i know taylor he's anonymous yeah and he's part of it too it's just like if it
was a real movement they wouldn't have merged with these other things yeah they just knew the
brand was fucked up they just they just like yo we gotta rebrand this shit man right and they're
gonna split the vote they did that in new York just now. They got a Congress member, probably Daniel Goldman, this like billionaire heir to the Levi Strauss fortune.
And they basically he bought a congressional seat so far.
And that was based on splitting the vote, the progressive vote, and just, you know, pandering, pretending you're a Democrat.
Oh, so he actually used this forward party to get elected?
No, just like the same formula.
OK, got it, got it.
You know, well, we're the reasonable people in the middle.
Got it.
Yeah.
I mean, that's been that's been working since Clintonian triangulation.
And I forget there's this guy who ran for president against Trump and was kind of a
centrist.
Oh, Joe Biden.
Joe Biden.
That guy doesn't doesn't actually support any
progressive policies saudi arabia is a pariah state oh come here muhammad i love you man
what you want some more guns and shit i got you baby i got you all right let's take a quick break
we'll be right back i'm jess casaveto executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series,
Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.
And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church.
And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed.
Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films
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Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high-control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine.
Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts,
the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives.
Forgive Me For I Have Followed
will be more than an exploration.
It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring
these types of abuses never happen again.
Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes.
Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions.
Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.
And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do,
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The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies.
Yeah, I think a lot about that quote.
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It was December 2019 when the story blew up.
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And we're back.
And, you know, as we were talking about before the break,
like this kind of brings up the question of,
you know, now we had,
I think I've heard you talk about the fact that like the,
allow me, that like the aliyah me that like the Black
Lives Matter movement in 2020
was could be considered like one of the largest
like social civil rights movements
and now the
main way we hear about in the mainstream
media is
like these things being like we don't got to defund
the police we got to fund the police
and like NPR like
blaming it for a straight-up murder
so this like kind of raises the question why is this particular lie so just deeply like so hard
to shake that like violent armed police and human caging are the only way to deal with things and
you know there's it's structurally integral to our society it's like a lie that is
that's the answer undergirds all of the white supremacy everything and that's your answer
it's structurally under that's why something doesn't become the status quo because the
majority isn't invested in like defending and maintaining yeah that's the why but one of the
like how i guess questions of like how they got everybody to like kind of go along with it That's the why. like Law & Order, the TV show, and just, you know, copaganda in general being, like, creating this standard narrative
where the cops are the protagonist.
Yeah. I mean, it's an average.
So I guess I tried to look at it commonsensically,
and I think of the benefit of my family's Bahamian.
They live in the Bahamas, so this isn't their society at all.
But we watch the same things.
My mother so often responds to me, who is in the Bahamas. So this isn't their society at all, but we watch the same things. We watch it. My mother so often responds to me who is in the Bahamas. She don't vote here. She don't live here.
She don't have no reason to be invested here, but she is child. And my mommy and them is a heavy,
a heavy cop again in the house. My mom and them law and order, snapped, all of it. My mommy is
watching it all and she loves it. her boy uh stabler and them she'll
she'd be ready to fight me in the house over this stuff and i recognized you know and i thought about
it early on from jump is one of the first things we teach people you know it's like oh this you
know 9-1-1 we teach little children you know this is not here's your parents number here's 9-1-1
you know you play cops and robbers cops are the good guys robbers are bad everything you watch
has you know protagonist antagonist antagonist is automatically treated as the villain and in so
many things beyond just the amount the share volume of shows that we have is just direct
propaganda like law and order csi and even like lucifer tv shows like so many of them have this
but i thought about this even the other day i was like cartoons you watch and you don't even realize it like i was a big pop of girls like big big into pop of girls like
love me some pop of girls okay and i realized the other day and i'm like why didn't i notice that
these three little gals was agents of the states beating people out into the white meat the minute
the mayor called them up like you ain't never noticed that like the whole that's literally what
it is the the the pop of girls the mayor calls them up red button hey hey we just heard something fuck him up
the men can see him there's a whole this episode they see mojo jojo in the food store mojo jojo
is trying to buy some groceries they beat him and they beat his ass down and everybody right like
if you think about mojo jojo the whole townspeople all the townspeople look like the pop of girls apricot colored white people just like professor x right all all of the
all the villains uh mojo jojo green fuzzy lumpkin pig the the the gang green gang is green the
boogeyman is blue him is red all the people of color are villain criminals again they ask whoop
24 7 and you realize like eventually everything you watch is kind of treated like this.
Like, this is who we've designated as good.
And this is who we've designated as bad.
And nothing in between really matters.
It don't matter.
You don't see no due process in the part, you know?
And you watch, like, you know?
But it really is like that.
How much of things you watch and it shows you, even when it shows you that the police
are breaking the law, like their right to be inviolable, it's showing you how the police has
to because this bad guy or they're constrained.
I watched the Chippendale
rescue movie the other day
and it was the same shit. Like, oh,
the police were working with Chippendale
to try to get Peter Pan in them.
And the police are like, oh, we want
to do something, but we can't, Chippendale, because
you have these constitutional rights and stuff.
So Chippendale, we're dale we're like ah shit all these damn past always yeah due process is
treated as like it's never been good in a single movie it's like yeah right due process the only
person the only person who brings in up due process is like about to get their head smashed
into their desk by russell crowe before he like goes out and catches the bat yes yes and like all jokes aside like that that is something like we don't realize
how much we're like how we're taught to perceive the world as ingrained and stuff like even
lucifer lucifer is the literal fucking devil like he's satan he's literally satan and for
for satan to be redeemed in the eyes of god in the world he works with the lapd
like i'm dead ass that's the plot of the show like that's the plot of the show and you know
the only person they matter of factly is saying is gonna go to hell the defense attorney and in
order for her to go to heaven she had to quit the defense attorney and go become a da and then they
kill her she goes to heaven because the the
defense attorney is just trying to get bad guys off the hook yeah and like it's all a world yeah
yes and you realize when you watch tv and you think about it more you see it in everything
that person they're always the bad guy or the poor character whoever it is they're bad they're this
it's like that it's like that yeah it's funny that you bring up the LAPD right because uh Trisha you point out like the kind of LAPD kind of has a kick it all off
in the beginnings of all this yeah right exactly so I mean I read your article first of all your
work is amazing it's so cool but yeah so I just started going a little bit deeper into this propaganda in TV shows around crime.
And one interesting thing I found out was, of course, like the media has always supported the police through the U.S., the history of the country.
But in the 1950s, it was actually formalized because this actor, director Jack Webb, he made this deal with the LAPD where if the LAPD would allow him to access
police equipment and quickly approve permits and get off-duty officers as extras in his movies,
he allowed the LAPD to read over his scripts and basically just veto anything that they didn't like.
So of course they're not going to approve anything where the cops are portrayed as bad.
And then this has just been the standard set in Hollywood and just set in TV and movie industry where the police is literally controlling what we see on the screen in a lot of ways.
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. You realize it so much more.
I have a friend who was writing a script the other day, like entertainment, and he like, just not even thinking about it because it's so like into shows.
And when you think about how public defenders
are depicted in all media
and where they're depicted as bums, right?
Like bums.
Anytime you see a public defender in anything,
like they're dropping their files,
they're disheveled.
And it's a way, it's how-
They need foot cream.
And it's how the system like goes and balloons.
And it's so funny because that has so much, you know, a lot of how your relationship plays out with your clients has everything to do with their initial even perception of you is.
And if a public defender gets blamed, like when you think the money is attributed is in these ways deliberately.
A public defender is underfunded, but the prosecutor's office is not.
But we're funded by the exact same entities.
We're opposite across the aisle.
We're doing the same level of workload, but it's deliberately set up where the public defenders
are ill-equipped, right? And even within that system, like public defenders get blamed for
plea deals or present you with a plea, which is, you're obligated. You have to present whatever
is the plea offer, but the plea offer is made by the prosecutors. The reason why you even have to
tell them, oh, you should probably take a plea because this is what's likely to happen at trial
because of the determinant sentencing done by legislators and what the judge is going to punish you.
It's so many different ways. The system is actively doing all these different things,
but how does our media spin it to people? Oh, if you could afford to have, it's these broke-ass,
bum-ass public defenders that are causing you to go to jail. And again, and it all relates back to
poverty in general, because even in a world where we pretended the problem was the public defender,
the problem is this public defender. That's still a reflection of the fact the majority
of the people in the criminal system are poor, you know, and they're being represented by public
defenders as opposed to can't afford paid representation. Not that it's true that public
defenders are ill-equipped, but even if that was the case, and it's not like the court doesn't know,
I think something people forget too. And I appreciate that people are optimistic or they have, I don't know, more faith
in their actors. But the court knows. Everything else that you tell the rest of the society that
shocks their conscience and gets them to see like, oh, the system is messed up. And they think, oh,
we need to get that information. Like the people in power, the people doing it don't know.
I'm assigned by the court. The person who sets the bail is the same person that just said this person has no money.
They can't afford a lawyer.
And I'm also going to set a mad money on them for bail because you're going to now you're
going to go to jail for something you haven't been convicted.
They know it's deliberately done that way.
And I want I actually in law school, I went to a prosecutor mill for law school.
I was like the only public defender in my class.
Everybody else was prosecutor.
But in going to that. Oh, yeah. Trust, it's stress. In going to that prosecutor mill,
you know, they pressured me to do an internship at the DA's office one summer and it went the
way you would think a person like me in the DA's office. It was terrible. But I remember the one
thing I appreciate is I confirmed that all of the horrible things that I think academically you think like, oh, you have to parse out racism.
You more so think it's like, oh, if I statistically look at the numbers, you'll realize it's racist.
Nah, it's up front, like up front there.
They're actively like trying to force and muscle people aside, supporting their positions because people don't know how it actually works and the maneuvers and what, you know, what happens from on the legal end.
So they'll be like, you're bringing people in. They're like, oh, I don't want to. I don't want to press charges. I don't want how it actually works and the maneuvers and what you know what happens from on the legal end so they'll be like you're bringing people and they're like oh i don't want to i don't want to
press charges i don't want a criminal case or i want them to have you know uh therapy i want them
to get this and they'll be like oh well you need to support if you sign supporting that position i
could get them counseling or whatever but they really mean is sign this and now i have the
document i need to proceed on this criminal case with this person and in the case of there's a
certain amount of days where if that's not signed or they don't have that paperwork if you have somebody in on bail
they have to come out you have to you have to get them out so what they do is they force muscle
these people sign it sign it now you know and then now this person is stuck in jail so now they're
forced to take a plea or want to you know negotiate with you a plea because they're literally going to
sit in prison until on a case they were you were never going to be able to prosecute. They were never going to be able to get
convicted of it or whatever, but now
they're in this position. And so
that's the unfortunate reality. Like people
in Rikers, people, they hear
about places like Rikers, but they don't realize Rikers
is a pre-trial detention center. If you hear about
something that's this infamously awful place, you think
it's for infamously awful people.
You don't realize it's anybody that gets
arrested in New York City for anything. Traffic infraction, jumping the turnstile, whatever. You don't
have money. That's where you're at. And Rikers isn't even the worst of its kind. You have Cook
County in Chicago where the average person is waiting for their trial in prison four to six
years, eight years. Some people in there 11 years doing full bids on things they have not even had
a trial on. It's absurd, but that's how they stack it right and we and i think because of that like sort of gap between what the
the lived experiences of the people who are actually grappling with the system and then like
the writers rooms that are then like i don't know like i'm rich and like we got off because we got
a rich like a good lawyer yeah i think it probably feeds into this problem as well right my dad got me a good lawyer when i was arrested in college for pissing in the street oh right and
that's and that's another trope you see a lot because i think you're seeing these writers
reflect back what even their own experience was like i fucking ran over a homeless guy but i got
how many how many times you watch a white show and the character gets arrested and they're out the next scene
and you never hear about it for the rest of the show?
You know what I mean? No charge, no case.
That's how it's treated
because that is often very much
in a reality. Even on the rare occasion,
like I said, I've represented over a thousand people.
I probably have not represented
30 white people. There were that many.
I remember all my white clients
by name because they're few and far in between and they're always fucking outraged outraged
that they're in this i can't listen no one more outraged to you than a white person that's been
arrested they will call you every i used to have a white client call me every day and go
so people can just lie on me and i can go every day she she couldn't believe couldn't wrap her head around it and that's
often with the experiences because even
when I'd have them they'd dismiss it at arraignment
they'd dismiss it right then they would offer them
I once had a white guy
was on a motorcycle
did a high speed chase
he high speed chased on his
motorcycle I mean he was really
he was really on 10
gets into an accident jumps off the bike,
keeps fucking running, jumps the fence.
They eventually get to him. They dismiss
it at arraignments.
They would never have done that shit.
One time
I represented back-to-back.
Same arraignment shift, literally.
I have their files. Did this one. Immediately
did it. Same judge, same prosecutor.
Represented a black guy who's accused of having one blunt.
They asked for like $3,500 bail on him.
Right?
Right?
Immediately.
Right after, represent a white guy who was filed with a bunch of drugs.
The dealer, dealer, white dealer, consent to release.
Like they'll do.
Jesus Christ.
And what's the ground?
Or one time I represented a white girl who was accused of
some wild shit like some wild shit and i remember looking i could see the prosecutor next to me you
could see their files right like across i could so i could see the pictures of the victim in the
in the case in who was an arab guy i could see the pictures of the victim in the hospital so
when i see him that this is at bail i'm like oh fuck she
going to jail like they about to show those pictures like they about to you know what i mean
there was a white prosecutor she just closed the file and consented to release she just didn't
say shit about the picture and i'm not gonna say like that's my client but i'm like right
i remember that day being like wow an application like oh this is a different fucking system this
is not something i have to academically parse out
this is happening real life like i'm looking at them like and yo y'all know that i saw y'all just
not do this for the black people like i'm here i'm witnessing it and it's like
or they'll call you yeah they'll literally call you when it's your white clients the way they
talk about it the prosecutor is entirely different they'll they'll like that same case with the white
girl with the with the arab victim the prosecutor was like entirely different. They're like, that same case with the white girl, with the Arab victim, the prosecutor
was like, it's advantageous, and they called me
because they wanted to prosecute the Arab
guy that was in the hospital based on
what she's saying. They
know, to some degree, that she fucked
him up. He's in the hospital.
She's just saying that he did something to her
too. And now they call me like, oh, they want to charge
him for a felony because they can't talk to
my client, you know, without my permission. And the prosecutor said to me, well, like,
oh, well, you know, you know, she's accused of whatever to him.
But, you know, apparently, you know, he lied. I've never had
that's my story. My story is always my client didn't do it. I've never had the prosecutor
credit my story to my client as innocent. Only when I have a
white client and they're like
yeah must be some misunderstanding believer yeah yes absolutely white supremacy yeah like
with the copaganda like i know we see like we're talking about there's like all these
terrible tropes like cop equals good uh you know get your good lawyer and things like that tricia
what are like other like because i think those are like, and I think those are the most broad versions
of things we see,
but so many other ways that I think this quote unquote
criminal justice system is represented,
which I think is a total misnomer.
But what do you, what else,
what are the other ways that like those things are made?
Yeah, right.
So of course there's that overarching idea
that like when you have this protagonist who's a cop,
who you're really emotionally attached to and kind of manipulated into supporting in these movies and TV shows,
if they do bad things, you still don't consider them bad.
So that really affects just the public perception of police violence.
But then looking a bit deeper into it. So there's a study
called normalizing injustice that was conducted by a nonprofit called color of change. And so
they just dive deeper. They do this great numerical study and look at several different shows. And so
one thing that I read about was just like disciplining cops who are violent or who do really step out of line
and harm the people that they're interacting with. So in this study, they found that only 3.7%
of onscreen wrongful actions faced any investigation. So that totally normalizes
cops stepping out of line, hurting people, and then never being punished for it and actually usually being supported for it
right and um i think this feeds a lot into cases like brianna taylor's where the cops it's like
should they be like are they going to be punished i mean it takes the system so long to like
condemn someone for murdering and it and it usually doesn't and also we need to remember
that even when there is right like when people get their civil settlements they the cops aren't punished
we pay for that the cops can't nothing we're paying for that yeah so we're paying nothing
nothing is happening at all yeah and the average funding yes all the fun yeah they don't and a lot
of cops just get away scot-free. Like there's nothing done to them.
Another thing that I looked into is sexual violence.
So shows like SVU, they portray these really great detectives working on behalf of survivors of sexual violence.
But in reality, like cops perpetrate a lot of sexual violence.
Exactly. Cops perpetrate the sexual violence.
And then when people who experience it come to the cops, because that's what we're constantly told to do
again, like since we're little, we see all these things that, oh, we'll call 911 and the cops will
save us when that's just so far from the truth. When we do report sexual violence, well, first of
all, people are just scared because they know how fucked up the system is. But then when you do file
a report, the police rarely, rarely do do anything and most people who have already survived this very traumatic
experience are just dissatisfied with the response yeah and then finally so in terms of just reforming
the criminal justice system there is basically no discussion of that in TV and in movies. No.
And if it is, it's like a rabble rouser hippie.
And that's the thing, right?
They fight against any, like they completely dismiss any discussion of, you want to talk about abolition, right, of the criminal system. They completely dismiss that as though that's so radical.
We should be talking reform.
And anything, the slightest thing you suggest, reform, the media then commits all of its energy
to attacking that 24-7.
You try to do bail reform.
You try to do things.
And then suddenly they create entire, you know,
propaganda and waves and discussions and stuff
around fighting that.
So what it really is, is they don't want any change at all.
They like the system as it is.
And I think that's an important part.
It's like whenever they're trying to say, you know,
the bad apple discussion, I'm like, well, the police disagree with you, right? In a different
world. If I have a, if I have an organization and one person in my organization was a, was a
fuck up. Right. And I really, I believe that person, what they're doing does not represent
this organization. I'm not going to fight you unless you get rid of that person or,
you know, these people are bad, but it's the police department. It's the police unions that say,
no, it was okay. Did they kill them? When did when did they ever when did the police unions when did the police departments
when did the politicians get out and tell you yeah that's a bad apple yeah that's bad they never they
stand with that officer to the very end to the very end and then they do everything that they
can everything that they can around beating the rest of the community into submission right we
get let's say it was a bad apple so every time time we have a bad apple, and let's think about the numbers on that. Every year in America,
this is just shot and killed. This is just who police are recording as they shot and killed.
So that's not all your George Floyds. That's not your Elijah McClain's. That's not your Eric
Garner's. That's not your Alton Sterling's. That's none of the people that are being killed in another
way. And that's none of the police brutality that does not rise to death. So exclude all of that, all your Jacob Blakes. The average police
kill, shoot and kill over 1,045 people every year in America. So let's say we got, right.
So we got all of those bad apples and what, maybe five of them, 12 of them for the year,
maybe best case, get some kind of like large media
attention. And that was the response. They immediately send out militarized police to go
beat the protesters, go arrest the protesters, curfews. And you get a bunch of charges. You get
a bunch of videos showing police brutality on video. Even remember when they knocked that old
white man down, that old man split his head open. Nope, no charges there. None of them. We just saw, what, yesterday?
Yesterday or the day before,
NYPD punched and beat up a 19-year-old girl.
And Eric Adams came up and said,
oh, the officers showed great restraint.
Or a few months ago,
NYPD shot an 18-year-old in the head
because he ran through a red light.
And Eric Adams defended that too.
So you see what I'm saying?
Even if you wanted to go with the bad apple narrative, let's okay so we got thousands we got thousands of bad apples and our police
departments the police unions our media our politicians and everybody in power says no
they're not bad so then what then right exactly yeah you lost lost the messaging war. Yeah. Right. And then to to think about, like, how can we use media to change that?
Like, how can we change that in movies and TV? And well, yeah, as we talked about, it's just like so racialized.
Currently, out of the 27 shows that the study covered, 81% of the showrunners were white men. Out of 275 writers,
more than 75% were white and only 9% were Black. So the people who are creating these shows
largely don't have any experience with the system that we're dealing with in this country.
And so in terms of just what we can do to change it, I mean, one option is just the personal option to not watch shows that depict cops as heroes, as good
people, as people who are not violent and coercive. And this could also be, you know, a signal to
networks that we don't want to watch cops who are portrayed like this. Another idea is to cancel TV
shows with cops in general. And this has actually been happening.
Like the series Cops, which ran for around 30 years, was canceled, I believe, in 2020.
And some other networks have also cut police reality series.
But a lot of people are also saying...
Cops is actually back, though.
Yeah.
Is it actually?
Came back in September of last year.
When people aren't paying
attention they announced it yeah they slowly like on fox nation like on their TV
live pd and they just they they changed the name to live pd to like on patrol or some other dumb
euphemistic or not even oh my gosh that's that's another slick thing they do with propaganda too
and enough people don't call it out but what they love to do when they portray
jails and prisons and any of these shows
they have a lot of white people
they have a lot of white people in the prisons and the jails
so it looks, people think
the system is up
no fucking way, Rikers is
New York City, think about how big
New York City is, Rikers is
over 95% black and brown
Jesus Christ it's not this Think about how big New York City is. Rikers is over 95% black and brown.
It's not this. I saw this actually
the other day. I was not watching The Flash anymore
because The Flash is terrible now. I was watching a video about
why The Flash isn't good anymore.
And in the season
they got The Flash
in jail now, which is some bullshit.
Riverdale did this nonsense too, but
The Flash is in jail and he all around the jail with men but white people whole jail just full of white people and i'm like
even a federal correct right for people in white collar it's like or when inventing did
y'all watch inventing animal when that came out on netflix last was it last year this year i don't
know the time is on yeah you know with them with the yeah that's supposed to be right yours whole
nice white clean environment.
Just, like, some white girls
chilling or whatever.
You think that's what Rikers look like?
You think you can get into...
You think it's a bunch of white what?
A bunch of anisotropins at Rikers?
No.
Like, that is not the case.
But they make it look like that
because people become so comfortable with it.
But it also becomes ingrained.
You don't question it. There's so much
to it. Even, to me,
the scariest parts or the scariest
things when it comes to developing our
consciousness, our racial or shared consciousness
as a society, isn't what
they explicitly tell us. It's what they don't.
And we don't pay attention to it. It's like, when you think
about the fact that the criminal system, it's a legal system,
it's called the criminal justice system,
that's intentional. That's inherently because if you the first thing you
learn you associate justice your whole concept of justice is criminal prosecution that's where
you know what i mean that's what it is you taught that from the very beginning it's like no yes for
you justice is like people don't even think of any other way to respond or that there are other
ways to respond to anything or crime or problems, right?
Justice is police arrest you and put the bad guy in jail. That's what justice is to people. And
it never even occurs to you to question it. And I realized that in college when my professor, I was,
you know, running on like I usually do about the system being racist and yada, yada, yada. And my
thesis advisor, who's a white lady who was just like, um, you know, you sound like you'd be a
person who would be into abolition. And I was like, you mean
abortion? Getting rid of the prison altogether?
No jail? Like, you know,
even as a person who thought the criminal
system, I knew the criminal system is
racist and is unjust. I was taught,
like, to think of the criminal system like how you think
of water and air and oxygen, you know what I mean?
We have a civil society, like, you think you have to,
like, that is a foundation that
must exist and you have to work from there on how do i correct this thing rather than the thing being
bad because you're taught that this like man-made institution this is just you know vital and that
to me is a great issue but i think as far as how do we how do we stop seeing it
then at the end of the day they do what we like right like media if you think about it media
just what we're watching our shows, how things are cast, has changed
drastically present
day to what it was, shit, just
10 years ago, let alone even
as a kid. There's so much things that's changed just because
we've changed as a society, how we respond to it.
You think all these diverse ensemble
cast, they keep getting in stuff just because they want to?
You think they diversify in the
Gossip Girl and all these shows because they
think it's cute? It's because people respond in a particular way.
So if you start, you know, calling this out, bitching and da da da, yeah, the right little bitch didn't moan on Twitter and true social or whatever, they'd be making their noise.
But the reality is people who want to lie in their pockets, they will start making the corrections and the changes because you don't want to watch it like that.
So I think we got to call out propaganda, but not just even in the shows that explicitly have cops.
It's the way, even just the idea
of these kind of systems or
hierarchies are put in everything else.
And that's what really, to me, is the more
dangerous. All the things that you're watching and you don't
realize that it's like this. It's enforcing
the exact same kind of dynamic
and power relations, even
without the explicit police.
Right. Seems Right. Exactly.
All right.
That's going to do it for this week's weekly Zeitgeist.
Please like and review the show if you like the show.
It means the world to Miles.
He needs your validation, folks.
I hope you're having a great weekend, and I will talk to you Monday.
Bye. Thank you. I'm Carrie Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry.
Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. naked sports up first i explore the making of a rivalry caitlyn clark versus angel reese every
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