 Sean Spicer says he might be leaving the job of White House press spokesman, unless of course that's a lie too. It's 3 a.m. Tuesday, June 20th, 2017. I'm David Feldman. We have a lot of show, so let's get right to it. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman. DavidFeldmanshow.com. Please friend me on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. Do all your Amazon shopping via the David Feldman show website. We get a small percentage. And for only $5 a month, you can gain access to all our premium content by becoming a monthly subscriber. Go to DavidFeldmanshow.com to find out more. On today's show, the creator of The Daily Show and Air America, Liz Winstead, congressman Alan Grayson, comedian and comedy writer Frank Conniff, comedian Joe DeVito, professor Corey Bretschneider, and she's back, a surprise visit from Buckles the Clown. Last Wednesday, Republican congressman Steve Scalise was critically wounded on a baseball field along with several others after a lone gunman opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon. And the days that followed, both sides of the aisle came together to remind Americans that we needed to dial back the partisan bickering and be more careful with the way we talked to one another. While few politicians blamed easy access to semi-automatic weapons, everyone agreed that the shooting was really the result of the debasement of our political discourse. After Dr. David Gunn was murdered, he was an abortion provider, nobody asked the pro-life movement to cease and desist, to dial it down, to stop referring to people like Dr. Gunn as baby killers or giving out his home address, his car make and license number, and providing everything but the ammunition to shoot him. According to last month's New York Review of Books, between the years 1978 and 2015, 11 abortion providers, nine of them doctors, have been murdered by pro-life extremists. There have been 26 attempted murders of abortion providers, 185 abortion clinics have been set on fire, 42 have been bombed, and 1,534 have been vandalized. Despite the passage of Roe v. Wade in the late 1970s, Supreme Court rulings like Casey versus Planned Parenthood have made it easier for states to limit a woman's access to an abortion. The number of abortion clinics in Texas has been cut in half due to new rules making it financially prohibitive for doctors to reform abortions. Some states now require a mandatory 24-hour waiting period before a woman can have her abortion. Other states force doctors to perform an ultrasound and describe the fetus to the woman before she undergoes the abortion. Last week on this show, we talked with comedian Greg Proups, who traveled to Jackson, Mississippi to report on the last abortion clinic in all of Mississippi. If you haven't heard Greg's proofcast, I urge you to go and listen to it. Greg was also down in Mississippi to perform for Lady Parts Justice League Vaginal Mystery Tour hosted by Liz Winstead. Liz is a brilliant writer and comedian. She created The Daily Show and Air America. If you love Rachel Maddow and Al Franken, you have Liz Winstead to thank for them. And she joins us today in Iowa City. Hello, Liz Winstead. Hi, David Seldman. Thank you for having me. It has been estimated that one third of American women have had abortions in their lives. What's up with abortion? People seem to hate it. I can't get it. So controversial. Calm down. You know, that was a super good, that was a good little synopsis that you did. One thing that I would, the couple of things that I would say is when people say to me right off the bat, like Liz, you've become really active in this movement. And if there was one thing you could say to people, what would it be? And the one thing I would say is being friends with some doctors whose lives have been threatened. I'm friends with Dr. David Gunn's son. He's the son of a gun. He's a son of a gun. Joey Bishop. It is indeed true. Joey Bishop. And that we just never refer to them as pro-life or their agenda as pro-life because these physicians are terrorized, their clinics are bombed, they're blown up, they're set on fire. You know, Dr. David Piller was killed in his church. Dr. Sleppian was killed in Buffalo, New York making soup in his kitchen. These people are domestic terrorists and they don't deserve to be normalized by saying that they have any consideration for life because it seems like when you talk about women, they never come into the equation. So that's one thing I would say. And second of all though, I really like you talking about, you mentioned the 24-hour waiting periods that often people have to go through and in many states that's the best you get. Some states have 48 hours. Some states people have to wait 72 hours because under the guise of women are just like, you know, we're able to shift bags who, you know, if our vaginas weren't regulated, they would just be wandering a muck, you know, like some crazy Macy's balloon that got loosed, you know, it's just like ravaging down to something. And so, you know, it's insulting and it's all, it's all just a crazy, crazy misogyny Ponzi scheme to get people to believe that people actually care about quote-unquote babies. Women don't, they just want to, you know, reiterate this concept that women are incompetent who don't ever think about anything seriously and we're just flippity gibbets running around. So it's all bullshit. And so we just decided to do some comedy shows in these states that are really hard hit who desperately need folks to come and remind them that they're not isolated because they feel incredibly isolated and to help grow, you know, activists and grow their community base around the clinics. And, you know, as performers, Jesus, we can just come and do a show. You know, you get between 150 people in a room and 400 people in a room and you're real fun. And then you go, hey, will you guys spend a half an hour with us hearing about what's happening in your community? And once you do sign up to help these folks because they need it. And they're like, okay, so it's really fun. Tell me when you founded Lady Parts Justice League. So what happened was about five years ago when our friend Mike Pence was still in Congress, I was back, I'm from Minnesota, and I was sort of figuring out what I was going to do next. Was I going to try to do another TV show so that I could get no credit for it? Or was I going to try to do something? You know, I didn't know. So somebody said maybe write a book. So I was trying to do that. And all of these laws started happening in the state legislatures, like literally 27 of them in the course of three months, where clinics were closing immediately. And the right has something that is, and I don't know how politically savvy your fans are, but you know, we know about Alec, this legislative treat. So there is something that is sort of like Alec that deals with abortion law, right? So they create model legislation, they get shitbag, dumb shit, local legislators elected, and then they hand them this legislation. And then it just gets jammed through all these legislatures. And so it happened profoundly. And I was in Minnesota and I was like, holy shit, I finished my book and I needed to get back to Brooklyn. So I decided to drive home and do fundraisers along the way. It's like, oh, I can help out and do that. And when I was doing these fundraisers, I would stop in and visit the clinics. And they literally said to me, you know, no one ever comes here, like, thank you for coming. People think we're toxic. And we treat people every single day. And we, you know, they come into us with, you know, 100 problems and we can fix one of them. And that one problem that we can fix is literally, if we couldn't fix it, it would be oftentimes a crossover between whether or not that person could function in society, be a good parent, actually get that college degree, like so many things, you know, you forget, like, that is somebody, whether or not you want to have a kid is your first decision a lot of times to your economic destiny. You were driving back from Minnesota to Brooklyn. When you say you were going to do fundraisers, what do you just call abortion providers and say, Hey, I mean, it's exactly what I did, you know, it's like, you know, I was like, you know, if I said I'm with Winston, I want to come, I'm traveling across countries, my two dogs, and I want to come into a fundraiser, they'd be like, you know what, we're going to call the police. But it's that, you know, it was kind of like I had my friend Maggie, who is a dear friend of mine, and she's a rock and roll booker. She was actually like, I've got some downtime. Let me help you book this tour. So she called up clinics and said, you know, when she's a comic, she created the daily show, she wants to come and, you know, help raise awareness because these laws are awful. So it wasn't just like some, I'm some crazy vagabond who's like wandering in the clinic going, you know, I want some booze, lots of money. Who's in the audience? Just count, you know, it's like a fundraiser. And so it's supporters of this is what was interesting. It was some were supporters of Planned Parenthood. Some were people who are my comedy fans. And then some were like people who cared about abortion rights. And so the people who are supporters of Planned Parenthood didn't understand that like, while we all love Planned Parenthood and should support them and talk about them, there's such a larger movement of abortion clinics in America. The independent community clinic provides 70% of all the abortions in our country. Slow down, slow down. This is stuff I know nothing about. And until I saw Jeanine from Des Moines, Jane Edith Wilson's movie, I didn't know that Planned Parenthood did mammograms and was where young girls went to get their hoo-hoo looked at. No questions asked. I don't mean to get all fancy with my Latin by calling it a hoo-hoo, but I practically thought you went to med school. Crazy. Like, David, talk to your audience. This is what I said to Greg Proups. And you got to go really slowly with me on this stuff. Okay. Going slow. Because there's a men's room and a women's room. And that door is shut. So you got to help me out here. When you say Planned Parenthood, there are independent mom and pop abortion clinics that sprung up after Roe v. Wade. No. Well, I mean, all clinics, there were clinics, you know, states made abortion legal before Roe, right? So pre-Roe, people were going to New York because the community, the faith community in New York, were the ones that legalized abortion in 1970 in the state of New York because they're, you know, the Jewish community and all these different faith-based groups were seeing their parishioners coming to the local churches desperate, pregnant and desperate, and trying to perform some legal abortions. But a lot of it was trying to get rid of a pregnancy on their own and almost killing themselves. And so it was the faith community in New York that made abortion legal in 1970. Really? The faith community? Yeah. Absolutely. In fact, I just went to a celebration of the, they did a 40th anniversary of, I think, I can't remember the name of the organization, but there was a big celebration at the Judson Church and all these different people who are clergy in leadership told their stories and talked about what it was like and to really fight for abortion rights as a Christian belief, as a religious belief. In fact, I would highly recommend there's an abortion provider named Dr. Willie Parker who just came out with a book two months ago who, his whole book, it's a memoir, he's about growing up black in Birmingham, dirt poor, becoming an OB-GYN and he's a strict Baptist and it's how his Baptist faith led him to the calling of abortion care because he believes being a Christian is about compassion. It's really a beautiful book and it really puts what it means to service people, to help them, you know, live for their full humanity in a perspective that makes like really, really interesting sense. Yeah, he's a really cool dude. How much help are you still getting from religious leaders? Well, there's definitely groups. There's Catholics for Choice and there's a great coalition of, you know, religious partners for abortion rights. But, you know, anybody fighting for it is just completely overshadowed by these monsters and the monsters are such bullies that quite frankly in the fight for abortion access, I think we've seeded so much ground to their language, to how we feel about it, to caveats, you know, it's pretty horrifying, you know. So people say cavalierly, well, you know, you know, only 3% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion and I'm like, I don't care. If 100% of what they did was abortion, I wouldn't care because what that says to the physicians that provide it or the people that have had them is, you know, that dirty thing we do that you had done and that that doctor does. That's only a little bit of what we do. Like, why should anyone care? If you believe it's baby killing, then that's your shit. I happen to believe in science. And so science tells me a different story. Does the existence of Planned Parenthood make abortions fewer? In other words, planning your parenthood. Isn't the idea behind Planned Parenthood that abortion would be the thing you do after, you know, for the last resort? Is that a fair statement or is that a Clinton-esque? I mean, even say, I mean, when we say, I mean, here's the deal, I'm sure they hate Planned Parenthood because it has the word planned in it. There's nothing in politics that's more than a plan because I mean, you have to have a brain to actually execute it and have to be a good one. But I mean, what I would say is when we talk about things like last resort or we talk about anything that has to do with behavioral things, I mean, who hasn't had sex without a condom and just kind of like went, oh, I really hope I'm not pregnant and been freaked out? You know, who hasn't, you know, made mistakes on that kind of front? I don't want to shame anybody for how they got pregnant. I'm not interested in that. But I know that if somebody is pregnant and they profoundly feel they can't be for whatever reason that is, they should have every opportunity to not be and also not be judged or identified by the fact they had an abortion. I'm thinking of the neoliberal Bill Clinton argument that he used in 92 that resonated with me and that was we can both agree, I'm getting a different answer from you, so that we can both agree that there should be fewer abortions in this country. And the best way to guarantee that there are fewer abortions is education and Planned Parenthood and making sure that women understand their bodies. And you're, I think, saying F you to that, we don't need anybody telling us about our bodies. We want abortions. Is that kind of? Well, yeah, well, here's the deal. Since the history of forever, there has been abortion, right? People have had unintended pregnancies for whatever reason. What I would say to people is when we say things like, and I'm not saying, I'm not saying there shouldn't be fewer abortions because you know, it's especially in the climate we live in now where it's like inaccessible to get one. When you have to go through, it's really expensive. You have to go through a throng of hoops. You have to be challenged constantly by government officials. You have to be lied to by doctors. I mean, the whole thing is crazy, right? But at the end of the day, let me ask you this. What is the ethical dilemma around abortion for you, David Talbot? When you say we should, we can all agree there should be less abortions. Why would we all agree to that? Well, because it's murder, because it's unsafe, because it causes you to not be able to have other kids. I have to have sex. And if I can't have sex, I'm going to masturbate. And if you held, if you showed me the Kleenex holding my sperm and you performed an ultrasound and it had a heartbeat, I would say, oh, I definitely hear a heartbeat from that Kleenex. I'm going to try not to masturbate. And then six hours later, well, you know, I'm going to masturbate because I cannot, or I'm going to have sex because I have to hang on for one second. Okay, all right. It is conventional wisdom that women I'm going to make a joke. I'm going to be careful. Because I'm in so much. Please step in it. I can't wait. No, I'm in so much trouble with women. You have no idea. You have no idea how much trouble I'm in. Oh, I probably have an idea. Wait, breaking news. David Feldman is in trouble with women. So now he's going to school me on some Clinton-esque bullshit abortion, shaming stuff. But no, keep going about how jerking off is something you need to do. No, really, this is helpful. Okay. And by the way, you know, pretty much divorced. And the way I proposed to my first wife was I dropped a one knee and I said, I hate you slightly less than I hate all other women on the planet. Will you marry me? And she did. And she did. Anyway, so I think, and I'm just saying, you know, this is, I think a lot of men might think that women don't, I'm going to move on. No, no, no, no, please. So women don't need to jerk off as much as men or need sex as much as men. And they control, this is what this is not what I think, because I'm a, as you know, an enlightened man. So far, proving it profoundly, keeping it 100. Right here on the podcast. This is a conservative older man viewpoint that women can control their sexual appetites better than men can. That's what men believe. Not all men. But also, but here's what's hilarious about that is that it's just hilarious. But second of all, there's some reason that women, if that were true, let's say that were true, your weird thing was true that you're just that like, let's just pretend that wasn't embarrassing. Um, why should they, why should they just told me a whole five minute story about how you would be jerking off in the shower. And then if you're in there, or no, you weren't even in the shower, you're jerking off into a Kleenex, probably was off brand even, jerking off into some probably sandpaper actually not clean. So your cock is in sandpaper. And then when you hear this heartbeat of the sandpaper sperm, you're like, wow, I probably shouldn't do that. But I'm still going to shove my cock into the sandpaper constantly. But here's the deal is women just don't want to fuck guys a lot who would just shove their cock into sandpaper. Now I think the problem is that men are constantly trying to come up with rationalizations why women don't want to fuck them more. And maybe it's because they stick their dick in sandpaper and then wonder if it has a heartbeat. I don't know. That's just a theory. Right. And it's all, but, but okay, so I'm going to put another foot in the shit here. Okay. Both feet. It's really good so far. Okay. I feel like I'm winning. So I'm killing everyone. Of course you're winning. You have no idea what, you have no idea what, what a loser I am with women right now, right now, right now. As though right now, because, you know, before it was just, you were just laying me down on a better road. I would say that men have an ego and they think, well, she doesn't want to have sex with me. So obviously, I mean, you know, it's like lesbo. That's, you know, the joke, but it's also obviously she would have sex with me, but she can control her animal spirits. That's the nature of women. They don't always have to have sex. They're in control of the whole sexual thing that's going on unless they're being raped. That's what I think. They just don't always have to have sex with men and men can't. By the way, I just want to remind you that this, we're doing a podcast on the magical mystery tour and for the past a minute, we just centered men around my whole funny thing. I can't even fucking believe you took me on your shit bath of a story. Liz, I really want to talk to you about your good work, but let's just talk about men and how we can't stop jerking off for 30 minutes. Then we'll plug your thing at the end. Guilty. But I like your theories. I think they're fun. Okay. All right. Lady Parts Justice League. I have a lot of questions or issues. I think I have issues. I think I have issues. Okay, good. Let me just say there's some of them up for you, including why women don't want to fuck you. If you want to get back to that, I'm all I think there's an epidemic of lesbianism. They all just don't want to fuck me. This is the problem. That could be. I would say you could call that an epidemic or you just call that Tuesday. Okay. So we do some important work here because we're having fun, but I want to do important work here. LPJL. Lady Parts Justice League. And I am sweating. I am really nervous. I really am because the Vaginal Mystery Tour, how do people and then I want to ask you some questions. Okay. How do people help the Lady Parts Justice League? How do they reach you? How can they support you? And how can they support women who are having trouble getting abortions? Well, how they can support us. You can go to ladypartsjusticeleague.com. We have a donate button. We also have a bunch of ways on our website listed that you can help reach out to independent abortion providers and you can help out with the people who are really vital ancillary support for clinics, whether they're escorts who were helping patients come in and out to walk through those throngs of screaming vaginal crossing guards who stand outside of clinics all the time who think that they know better than you about your body. A lot of times many states have set up abortion funds for low-income women who might need help getting their procedures or help with travel because so many states, your Medicaid won't cover your procedure. It'll cover many other things, but it won't cover your procedure. And so you can do that. We have a postcard program where we have on the website a list of independent abortion providers and you can just either download postcards from our site or you can go buy some postcards and just send notes of encouragement and support. You can get in contact with the clinic that's near you and that might not necessarily be a Planned Parenthood. It might be one of these community clinics we were talking about and reach out and say, hey, you know what? I would love to meet with you. You can scream me and I'd love to take your staff out for drinks twice a year. I'd love to bring you cupcakes. I'd love to invite you publicly into my social space to let you know that I'm supporting you publicly and in the light. Things like that really matter to them. So when you say how can you support us, one of the things we do on our tour is that we go to each clinic and we assess their needs. Like a lot of times people forget they can't get a contractor to do their lawn or fix their roof because they provide abortion. And so what we do a lot of times is we'll go in and we'll do some repair work around their place. We'll plant a garden, we'll paint a fence, we'll plant bushes, we'll do shredding for them. Companies won't come and just do like normal things a company needs. Or we'll find local people and bring them together to help them do their stuff. A lot of places need a handyman. So any skill you have, people who are at your clinic would probably need it and could be able to use it. And so if you come to our show in one of the cities that we're traveling in, you'll see a really funny comedy show, you'll hear some music. And then we have a talk back with a person that runs the clinic and then somebody who is part of one of the activist teams and they'll tell you what you need and you can sign up right there, meet them, talk to them and start building a relationship right there. So those are many things you can do. And if you're a comic, you could join us on the road. At any point we do this throughout the year. This is like a really concentrated 16 cities in eight weeks tour. But we do pockets. But also if you're just in a town and doing a club, you could totally offer four tickets to your show to the local clinic and say, you know what? I want to give you some comps. You guys deserve to have a fun night out. Like that's easy. Most Americans are pro-choice, right? Yes, 70%. So I'm working off this article that was in last month's New York review of books because I'm in a feet intellectual snob. They wrote a review of two new books out about abortion. What were the books? You know, I don't have them in front of me. I have my notes from the New York review of books. I bet Willie Parker's book was one of them. I don't know. I'm working off my cheat sheet and these facts are cited from the New York review of books. So far you're killing it on the facts. Those are correct. Right. So according to the New York review of books, it's conventional wisdom among men that women suffer severe depression and loss of self-esteem after an abortion. In fact, Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court Justice, actually wrote that, I believe, in Casey versus Planned Parenthood. Yes. He did. And what was interesting about that, first of all, it's medically disproven because you can't, you're not studying the psychology of a person before they have their procedure. So they could have come in with depression and mental illness if they're experiencing those things. People may, people may experience loss after, after a termination or even depression. But does that make it society's problem to, you know what I mean? Like somebody who has, people have depression over bad plastic surgery, too. Or after having a baby. They have postpartum depression. Exactly. Not my problem. But for the most part, that's a scientifically, it's an unprovable thing where they're actually, the University of San Francisco did a like five year research study on the effects of what happens when a woman has denied abortion care and that is startling. The depression, what happens to their life is really incredible. In fact, and the one thing that I really think is interesting about the Supreme Court case that you cited in Kennedy's ruling is that in this ruling, there was the people who were bringing the case and, and what, what Casey was for people who don't know. What Planned Parenthood, the Casey did was after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. The states and Bob Casey, a Democrat is anti-choice from Pennsylvania, said, well, should we just have a woman have total control over her body? I mean, shouldn't the state have some say for her own good? And so they presented the argument that the states should have, should be able to curb access to abortion for the benefit of the pregnant person. And what the Supreme Court ruled was that you could, you could, you could create these caveats if you didn't quote, cause an undue burden. Well, that you could drive a truck, Mack truck through that hole because what the fuck does that mean? And, you know, and so they started these waiting periods and all this stuff. And what swayed Casey to vote with the majority in that was there was many women who had abortions, like a hundred, who filed amicus brief saying, after my abortion, I felt depression. After my abortion, I felt regret. And no one from the side, the pro-choice side filed any briefs at all saying, my abortion saved my life. My abortion gave me my destiny and let me go to college. That's what convinced Justice Kennedy to write. Yes, exactly. And they have found that women actually feel something far different from depression and loss of self-esteem after an abortion, haven't they? Relief is the number one thing that most women say they feel. Absolutely. A hundred percent. And so we just had a ruling when, when these laws got really bad and most people are, are most familiar with the Texas law, which is with that, that horrible on Texas happened in, in some version, in 27 other states around the country. The same year it happened in Texas, when Wendy Davis Filibuster stood up and saw that. And the Supreme Court threw that law out last year. And in that, in the oral arguments, they had hundreds of women filing amicus briefs talking about the very thing that didn't happen in Casey. All these really beautiful stories of how women having access to abortion helped them become better mothers. Because 65% of all women who have abortions already have one or more kids. And they've just made a decision that they can't have another kid. You know, it's, it's the stereotype that one puts into their head that it's some, some young single woman who is like some big whore walking around is not actually the actual prototypical person having abortion. So it's pretty fascinating when you start digging into the details and the facts around it and, and how much shit is thrown around it. And the other thing that's pretty interesting is the sort of that big hobby lobby case that happened where, you know, the Christian craft store who decided they didn't want to cover certain birth controls with their employees because they said they were abortion. They said an IUD is an abortion. It's ridiculous. But when that case was argued, had there not been women on the court, the presentation in that argument, there was 57 incorrect statements about how you get pregnant, what happens when a fertilized egg travels into the uterus, what the timing of that is, like what birth control does. I mean, the arguments themselves weren't abortion because it was like the women had to call out these lawyers so many times and the men on the court just sat there and they would have just taken in all this misinformation. And, and you know, and that's part that's so insane. Yes. By the way, hobby lobby, when this was being decided, it was revealed that they don't provide maternity leave. No, they don't. Also, they're bullshit because they act like it's their first of all, you can't be a Christian store. You're a store. You're not a person. You're a store. And second of all, you know that they're bullshit line of Christianity. It's just they just didn't once you're having a great sex, you just crafting goes way down. So they were just like, we just can't have people jump out of crafting. We have to make make sure they're crafting. So let's have them have less sex, more deco posh. I want to hobby lobby was also what Phyllis Shoffley called her, you know what? So let me play devil's advocate here. Okay. Would you say that personal responsibility is a consistent viewpoint with the Republicans in that they believe if you don't work hard, you should die from lack of health care. They believe this. They don't want to 100% right. Well, they've actually said no one's ever died from lack of health care. So far beyond the pale. So I'm just looking for consistency so that we can't accuse the Republicans of being disingenuous about abortion. We'll get to control and misogyny and jealousy of women. But there are some people who believe that in America, it's all about personal responsibility. And if you get pregnant, it's your responsibility to raise the child and you should have thought about it before you got pregnant. And this is all about personal responsibility. Is that a fair statement that the conservatives really do believe that? Well, I think they do believe it. But what I would say about that statement is, um, so it's not personally responsible to assess your own life and decide that you would be a horrible parent. And so you would like an abortion. You know, that makes it's an argument that holds no water with me because they say it all the time. I mean, I've had people say to me, you, it's about personal responsibility. What are you going to say to the person who's like, had been pregnant three times? And that's three abortions. I'm like, maybe if they can't get it together to get birth. Oh, they shouldn't be parents. It's like a really stupid person who, if they keep having abortions, I'd say, thank you from myself and society. Because the personal responsibility part, I don't, again, it goes back for me is that it's not my job in the world to be, um, judging people on whether or not they're sexually responsible. If they want an abortion, they should have one because it's, it's, it's safe. It's not going to prohibit them from ever having kids if and when they choose to. It doesn't cause any breast cancer. It doesn't destroy any amount of fertility or infertility. Um, and if people want to have them, um, it's not going to be physically harmful to them. And so what the fuck do I care if somebody wants to go spend $400 on having an abortion or, or spend, I just don't care. I mean, you could say, you know what, using a condom is probably smart because it would help you prevent STDs and help you prevent from getting pregnant. Yes, of course, absolutely. But, um, it's like we make a lot of assumptions like people aren't married. You know, it's like, what's your responsibility? Well, if you're married and have a couple of kids and you can't have another one, are you supposed to not have sex with your husband anymore when you've had enough kids because of the risk of, of having one you can't afford or don't have the capacity to take care of? I mean, it's also bizarre because it, the second we start saying personal responsibility, we stop talking about abortion. You know, the argument around abortion should be is it, you know, it should be around the science of gestation and abortion, not around anything else. Okay. But you do agree that there are some people who genuinely are against abortion because they believe, they believe they're wrong, but they do believe in personal responsibility. Oh, that, I mean, yes, I do not think that you're making up fictitious people. I meet those people every day. They call me a whore on Twitter every day. I know them intimately. In fact, they are, they're some of my biggest fans. Yeah. They'll yell at me like how many abortions have you had? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't save receipts. I want to talk, I want to talk to you about that tone in a second. Because it's, for a guy my age, let me get to that in a second. You escort. For a guy your age who jerks off into sandpaper. Let's give, let's put your morality into context again. It's fun to bring it on back. I'm going to step back into it in a second. Before we get to your tone of voice and the way Jennifer, I like my tone, my tone young lady. I want to talk about how Jennifer was perceived Greg's poop cast when she talked to these quote unquote pro lifers, but very quickly, you escort these women from their cars through the phalanx of right wing nuts. What do you think is more traumatic having an abortion? We've just pretty much agreed that justice Kennedy is wrong that women who have abortions say they experience relief. So what is more traumatic, an abortion or walking to the clinic to get the abortion? Well, you know, that's, I mean, I don't know that it's an either or thing only because, you know, the trauma of, of having to terminate a pregnancy, you know, just like anything else, you know, there's people who have many different feelings about it, you know. So I'm not going to disregard, didn't row, didn't before she die say that. Yeah, she a way before she became, she became somebody who, you know, Jane row became somebody who then became part of the anti-choice movement. And there's people who are like me, who've had an abortion, who could not have given a shit about it. And then there was people who had wanted pregnancies who because of a fetal anomaly or because of, you know, it would have taken their life, you know, had these really painful abortions. And then there's people have moral complex about it where they know it's really good for, for their family and they know it's what they need to do. But they really, they had, they felt like, you know, they have, they have religious conflict or more complex. People do have feelings about their abortion, right? And you can't legislate how someone's going to feel about something. You can only legislate whether or not a procedure is safe, should be legal for everyone. And, you know, at the end of the day, you know, no one should drink if some people have a drink and then foolishly drive and, you know, get in an accident. You can't, you just can't legislate that shit. You can't legislate it, but we can create a culture that instills a sense of shame. Absolutely. And that's part of what we do at LPJL, is to try to bust back on that shame and stigma. So when you ask me about whether it's either or, you know, I think, I think the thing for me that was really profound was it takes an amount of privilege to be able to be an escort. You can take time off of work, you know, and so it's, it's mostly white women who are escorting oftentimes women of color from their car, past white dudes who are yelling at them. So you have me, a white woman walking in a woman of color as some guardian for her, which is, you know, kind of weird on some level, and then walking by a bunch of men who are telling her she shouldn't have control over her own body. And historically, that's incredibly fucked up, I don't need to say. But when you think about how many times a person of color has been reminded of that throughout their day every day, on a really shitty day for that person who has to make a pretty tough decision, it's real fucked up. You know, it's real fucked up that these people think that they have the right to stand out there and scream at women of color telling them that they're, you know, creating a black genocide and destroying their own race. And, you know, it's really profound when you hear it. And it's really unbelievable to think that people think they have a power over another person in that regard. We bought mirrors to hold up to them so they could look at themselves when they're yelling at the women. Yeah, you know, because sometimes you just try to figure out how to shake them. And I think the thing that's really the most astounding is when you have a lot of those people yelling and how you really know it's that they don't really care about pregnancy or they don't really think it's a baby. When I and a bunch of women standing outside of a clinic can distract these self-professed carers of the infant, so much so that, for example, when we were in Mississippi, and I was just, Greg and I were talking to these people for an hour and a half, you know, 13 or 14 women went into their appointments without being harassed because they would rather yell at a woman and tell her how stupid she is face to face, you know, instead of getting to the matter of hand of trying to convince somebody to not go have their abortion, you know. And so the second you realize it's so easy to have them lecturing you instead of being really focused and determined to try to get someone to stop having having an abortion because they believe it's a baby, then you just know they're all bullshit. And so it's like, you know, if I can stand outside of a clinic and like and like talk to some guy and make and make him feel like, oh, hey, it's cool because I found this really great religion that says I can use God to sit there and tell women they're horrors. This is like the best thing ever. It's just like you are sitting here telling me I'm a whore. When a, if I was a whore, I would be working, blowing eyes for money. And you obviously don't understand that or you would call me something else. I have daughters, okay. Yes. And so they can call me. Yes. And I have sons. And I can call me. I was raised to be I was a red diaper baby. And I raised my kids to agree with everything you're saying. Okay. Let me get to your tone of voice. Okay. The thing from Greg's proofcast. And by the way, I want to plug your podcast as well. What's the name of your podcast? It's called repro madness. It's a weekly wrap up of all of these crazy laws that just exist around access to abortion. Oh my God, that sounds great. I haven't heard it. It's really fun. It's funny. It's great. It's funny. You know, it's very palatable. It's the outrage of and you know, these locals talk about it. I mean, when you hear the shitstorm of what these people say, I mean, it's incredible. I mean, just last week, a guy like two weeks ago, a state legislator in Missouri didn't want to fund the zoo unless they called it the anti abortion zoo. And that's just like one story. And there's like a bazillion of them. Anyway, let's get back to my tone. Yeah, let's get back to your tone of voice. So I, you know, I'm a dinosaur and I know to vote the right way. This is what I am. Both feet are in the shit right now. Okay. After Hillary lost, this is what men said. Okay. This is what men said. Maybe Lena Dunham and Liz Winstead lost the election for us because of their tone. You've you've heard that, right? Of course. Okay. Here's what I love. Can I just Sure. Go ahead. More to say about that. Sure. Sure. Go ahead. No, go ahead. I I love it. I love that people would say that maybe Lena Dunham and Liz Winstead lost the election for Hillary because of their tone. When the guy who won was like grabbing pussy. I'm not going to really carry the mantle of Hillary to me because I want people to have abortion because Donald Trump grabbed them by the pussy and then shoved his cock inside of them and got them pregnant. Sorry. I'm not really going to take that. I'm keeping my tone. I'm not going to go there. But I have heard that I'm too super serious, not though for real. That's funny. But it's super serious. It is super serious. You know, I mean, that's the part that's just so crazy when I've heard that too. I was a Bernie supporter, and then I supported Hillary after Bernie. And then just to hear Compares and Bernie Sanders endorsing this mayoral candidate who was a very anti-choice candidate who put a bunch of dangerous laws in place in Nebraska saying maybe abortion is an issue where we can compromise. Maybe the right to choose is a place where we can find, and it's like, I'm sorry, you can't be sort of pregnant. Therefore, you can't have sort of options. And for someone to literally not understand this and say, why are you talking about abortion when people care about economics? If you do not fundamentally understand how pregnancy is an economic issue, then you need to go back to the home and eat your pudding and watch reruns of Hardcastle and McCormick. I don't even know why I said that. I've never even said those words in my life. Because you don't understand humanity, and you can relegate reproductive access as to being a woman's issue and not saying that you should care about. And do stay to care about it, because it's like all of us. If you have daughters and people in your life and you think that they deserve every fucking avenue of destiny and to fail on their faces on their own terms, then damn straight, you better make sure that there is not a roadblock in sight for that person with the uterus in your life. And so you better fight for it. Okay, so this is how my daughters were raised and my sons around the dinner table. I'm sarcastic, I provoke, and I would jokingly say, and then I want to get back to tone, okay? Because I'm having problems with tone of voice. I'm going to read you some facts that I got from the New York Review of Books, and this is stuff that was thrown around at the dinner table. We gave African Americans the right to vote. It took 50 years after to give women the right to vote. Until 1936, women could lose their American citizenship if they moved overseas and then married a non-citizen. There was a time when children could become a citizen if only their father was a citizen, but they couldn't become citizens if only their mothers were citizens. And I used to say stuff like, why do you put up with this shit? Like, why are you, you know, what's wrong? I would provoke my daughters and I said, what's wrong with women that they would take this shit from men, right? Well, now it turns out they're not taking this shit from men anymore. They never took it. Well, some of them took it. The point I'm making is I have noticed in my personal life that several women have said to me, if you don't understand, I'm not explaining it to you. Get out of my way. You're irrelevant. I don't care if you don't understand it. I'm not explaining it to you. Drop dead. Well, I think that's that is dumb. And I think that's what second wave feminism did. And I think that. So there is a philosophy. You say it's second wave feminism that says if you're too stupid to understand this, go die. No, I don't think I said that. I think you said that. And I think what I was going to say was what second wave feminism did was say, we don't want to hear from them. And I think that what I think that you can't win any fight that's worse that, you know, that all humanity benefits from, even if it happens just to me or if it just happens to brown people or if it just happens to Jews or whatever, you know, the fight needs to be with everyone understanding that if we all do not have our basic humanity, then no one really has their basic humanity. And I think there was, you know, women's movement, you know, I don't want to hear from men when it comes to this issue. And it's like, I think the tone and the tide and the change needs to be we need men to fully realize that full humanity, we need to support full humanity for women. And what that means is we need to step up and stand next to people and support women in this fight instead of being like, this is a woman's fight and a woman's issue and I don't want to hear from a man. You know, I do want to hear from a man who's defending women's issues. I think it's important, but I think that instead of hearing, I don't need to only hear from men or I don't need to be mansplained, but I would love to, you know, have more men, you know, hear, listen, be part of it, have fun, understand that like we're all happier. We all have better lives if everybody is, you know, feeling equal. Martin Luther King said the enemy of progress is the sane, rational incrementalist who is all for progress, but just slow it down a little. Well, I think, you know, and if you want to even bastardize King a little bit more, I think the one thing he said that rings true a lot for me is, and I'm not saying it correctly, but it, you know, it's really not the horrible monsters who are going to destroy us. It's going to, you know, it's if a loud monster is able to destroy us, it's the appalling silence of the good people. You know, it's the people who sit back and care and say they could do something because they do just sit back and care and call yourself a whole bunch of identifying a bunch of ways, but never stand up, you know, what good are you, you know, because it's not just voting against bad legislation. It's a, it's, you know, who's, who's proposing proactive legislation to expand access to burst control and to abortion and, and, you know, who's doing that? You know, there's a couple people in the Progressive Caucus in Congress, but not really anybody. California just did a thing, but that's about it. What did California do? I think that they, they did a couple of things. They passed a law that said that, this is a whole another episode, but around the country there are something called crisis pregnancy centers, which are fake abortion clinics run by Christians and they get federal funding. They get state funding. There's 4,000 of them compared to the 790 actual healthcare centers that there are. And they're just evil and crazy and they can lie to you about the statistics and they do. They'll show you fake, fake ultrasounds that is not the gestational age of your pregnancy. They separate you from your phone when you're in this fake exam. I mean, it's just the worst. So California passed something that said it was illegal to run a clinic or to give medical advice that was not based in science. So that's pretty cool. Mm-hmm. Good. I like that. Yeah. So that was a good thing. So occasionally here and there, we have stuff. Okay. It's an effective education that states it'll allow you. You're going to come back, I hope. Come back to your podcast. Yes. Anytime. I love it. This is why I would like to just hang out with you too at some point. Like the fact that like I saw you in the Minneapolis airport like seven years ago, and like now I talk to you on your podcast. This is not a way to have a friendship. It's sort of, I know, I'm not going to be a pig. I'm going to let you go because because you got to go jerk off into your sandpaper. How do you know I haven't been doing it while you were talking in that tone that I secretly love? Am I in trouble? Yeah, you probably do get an erection. No, but you know what's really crazy. You say that. We video taped a guy who was, Joy L. Johnson, who was part of our team, incredibly funny comic. She's like almost six feet tall, black woman, super smart and funny. And she was talking to a protester and we had a camera crew with us and she's talking to the protester and someone's camera. They were just holding their camera down and they were filming and they filmed the guy getting an erection while he was shaming Joy L. It was fucked up. Yeah, that's actually part of it. My inner fall. Well, oh, your inner fall. Well, let's go there. I'm a politician, by the way. I've realized that I'm guilty of being in a bubble and thinking like a politician by saying things like when you're being shoved into the oven by the Nazi. Don't you have a responsibility to understand why he's shoving you into the oven? Exactly. That's the part that I love. It's like you really should look at both sides of why they care. Why should I do that? They're irrational, crazy people who don't have a side. The only side is science. Any other side is shit that is not my concern. Right. And Obama kind of encourages that, you know, don't hate the hater. Try to understand. I listened to my conversation with Greg Proups and I asked, how do you tell a toothless white man living in his car when he's standing outside an abortion clinic? How do you ask him to check his white privilege? And that is a legitimate question if you're a neoliberal, if you're an Obama supporter, even a Clinton supporter, even a Bernie supporter. And Greg's silence was like a silent scream, if you'll pardon that reference. It's like, what the f are you talking about? Who cares? You know, if you're standing blocking an abortion clinic and screaming at women, I don't care that you can't get a job. You're traumatizing. So you know, what if you're standing in front of an abortion clinic screaming at women? You aren't looking for a job. Or that is your job. Are these or you are paid? There are many people that are paid. Yes, indeed. When they talk all about the people paid by George Soros, no one's paid by George Soros to go protest. I would love some Soros money. But these people I know for a fact get paid. Yeah, absolutely. So I think some men have an inner gerry fall. Well, and I want to ask or an outer I think the misogyny, I think you talk about the misogyny, I want you to speak to this. There is a misogyny behind the pro life movement. Men, some men are sexual choice movement. Yes, the anti choice movement. They are sexually frustrated men, sexually frustrated men who deep down inside say, if I can't get laid, and I'm telling, I'm not that this makes it better by confessing this to you. And I don't think all men have this, but I just, I, there is a little part of me that says, if I can't get laid, then the people who are getting laid should suffer. I see it in myself. So how much you think of this, like this inner gerry fall. Well, and me is the pro life movement writ large where the I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Yes, okay. No, I mean, I think that that's here's the deal. Anybody, I mean, I have to agree because anybody who's had good sex is trying to gap it again. So if you can like tell people to not have sex, you really reveal a lot about who you are. Because it's like, how could you possibly say that if you've ever had sex that was worth a damn? I mean, wow, you just really, or you just jealous have jealous or you are a compulsive weirdo who has no impulse control whatsoever. And so you have to try to demonize sex and make everyone stop having it so that because left to your own devices, you would probably be having sex with like minors or some creepy ass other a non consenting thing. And I don't want to hear about it. And so they're like freaked out. You live in Brooklyn, right? Yeah. Okay. There's this amazing party going on downstairs. There are young people, they're drinking, they're smoking dope. They're attractive. They're making out in the hallway. They're having sex. They're having the time of their lives. It's Saturday night. And I'm upstairs with my Kindle reading the Korematsu decision. And I want to call the police, not because they're making too much noise for me to focus on the Korematsu Supreme Court decision. I want to call the police and say, there are people who are having fun and I'm not come and break it up. I think to some degree that's the anti choice movement writ large. Except they're saying I want you I want to get on your lawn. I want to get on your lawn. Like the first choice people should be saying get off my fucking lawn. Literally get off my lawn. How do people reach you? They reach me. You can find me on Twitter at Liz Winstead. You can go to Lady Parts Justice League. We're real fun on Twitter. You can get a lot of information that's hilarious. And that's LPJ League on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and go to our website and check out and see what we do. It's like it's kind of fun to be just as a group of people who are telling jokes and trying to do some good in the world and it's working. And Iowa City is the corn as high as the what I'm as corn is Kansas in August and August. Is it as high as the moon in the month of July? No dude, the corn here is just bullshit until like July. Yeah, knee high by the 4th of July. And then it's not really that good until right after the 4th. I'm from Minnesota. I can tell y'all about corn. Thank you Liz. Can you stay on the line for one second? Yeah. If you're enjoying today's show, do me a favor and subscribe to it on iTunes Stitcher. We have a YouTube channel. It's just audio but some people like to listen to this show on YouTube. So subscribe to our YouTube channel and do me a favor and give us a good review on iTunes. You'd be amazed how much that helps giving us a good review on iTunes moves us up. That's the way their algorithm works. So when you give us a good review on iTunes, you're really helping out. It's going to be very antagonistic between me. It's sound like you're in a mood, man. Well, it's we're like a gay couple. This is what I've decided. I'm the bottom. I'm a power bottom though. They say that's who controls the action. Let me know when we're rolling, Alex. Are we rolling? We've been rolling? Aren't you supposed to point? I didn't see you point the finger at me. The middle finger doesn't care. Can you hold a pen in the future and do that? That's it. I know it's yeah. It sounds pretentious. It looks pretentious to point a pencil at me to let me know that we're rolling. But that's what people do in professional show business. Do you want me to slate myself? Yes, please. Joe DeVito appearing on the David Feldman podcast. Are we actually rolling? Okay, I had to get my own coffee today. What an insult. He a man of your stature. He is so over me. I'm telling you, finding good help. He's just like I walk into the studio. He's just he's got bigger, bigger fish to fry on. Joe DeVito joins us. Are we rolling? No, we're not. Until I see a pencil aimed at me. Take 38. Joe DeVito joins us. Thank you for coming back. My pleasure. Had a great time last night. You were amazing and you that taxoplasmosis. The Toxoparasite, I love it. You kind of explained a lot of stuff to me with that. I think it's true. I think some women, not men though, right? It doesn't. And men, the Toxoparasite encourages impulsive risk taking behavior. So they find it in guys who die in motorcycle crashes a lot. They found they have toxo a lot. Cats. This is cats who are doing this. Yeah, it's from rats into cats and then back through that cycle again. Cats are killing us. They're murderers. That's what they do in so many ways. They wipe out wildlife. They're coming for us. They have a parasite that they give to us as a gift and it affects the way we perceive things. Yeah. Yeah. Through their turds too for the ultimate insult. You're not making this up. No, no, it's great stuff. It's great stuff. I try to pitch it to a friend of mine, a movie where the Toxoparasite somehow merged with rabies and that's how we got our zombie outbreak. And he was not in favor of that movie. I find cats to be hysterically funny. Oh, I love them. I love cats. But you're playing with fire. They're dangerous. Yeah. They are capable of doing horrible, horrible things to us. Joe DeVito is the Italian Andy kindler. I'll take it. You are the Italian Andy kindler and you open for Andy, right? Yeah, I've worked with him a bunch of times. That was one of the big thrills when I first got to meet him. You know what fun it is when you meet the people when you're doing comedy, like, oh, that's a guy that I looked up to. And of course, Andy is such a gregarious lunatic offstage too. So he has a new podcast that's doing really well, Thought Spiral that he does with J Elvis Weinstein. Everybody should subscribe to it. It's fantastic. Let's talk about being Italian. Do you like my pronouncing it Italian? I've come to terms with it. I can't say I'm a big fan. I noticed that it seems to bring you a great deal of joy. So I've learned to live with it. Would you like directions to the Pizza Hut for something authentic? When did you meet Andy kindler? Because it is like talking to the Italian. Should I be hunching forward as I deliver these punch lines? But what I find interesting is that Andy sees himself in you. There's a bit of narcissism. Really? Well, he must because you open for him. Yeah. Yeah. If I, so it means that Andy loves himself. Could be. Because if I, if I saw myself in another comedian, I would try to crush the skull. Yeah, exactly. I would see it as a threat. Yeah, because I hate myself. But Andy obviously loves himself enough. He enjoys seeing himself on stage. How similar onstage are you to Andy? Because it does feel like I am talking to the... I'd say a little bit. I mean, it's always the tricky thing when you find a comic that you like so much when you're first starting out to not mimic their style. I think you see that with... Did he have an influence on you? I would say so. But I remember watching him way before he even thought of doing stand-up on Dr. Katz and thinking disguise hysterical. That was a drawing of Andy. That was... It was, but it was still his voice. Right. His voice. You just know that was a cartoon. I didn't think he was squiggly through advanced Parkinson's that he recovered from. I met him actually when I did Montreal 2006 for New Faces. He's an OmniPop guy and my manager introduced me to him. That was really a thrill. Yeah, that's what's pretty cool. It was one show, I remember. Did you ever work comics when it was in Manhattan? No. It was on 14th Street and they booked a show. Listen to this show. It was me hosting Maria Bamford in the middle and Andy closing and I just was thrilled. Was that an OmniPop show? No. It just happened to work out that way. And it was very interesting because as much as I love Andy, I know some people just... They don't understand what it is he's doing on stage. And for the first three of the four shows, it was... You're more likely to have Japanese businessmen get his jokes before Middle America gets... Yeah, and it's interesting to watch a crowd at one of his shows because a third of the room is laughing hysterically. A third is in and out and a third is completely baffled. And you'll see different groups represented at the same table. So you'll think, oh well, people have friends must have the same sense of humor. But yes, three of the four shows was people who came to see Maria and Andy or that kind of act. And I, you know, I've been around. I can hold my own. But then the last show was just people came to a regular comedy club, which is my audience. You know, I'm a road guy. And they liked Maria. They didn't quite understand her, but they liked her. And Andy, they just did not know what the hell was going on. And as much as I love Andy, there's something about watching when he's not doing well. It's a million times funnier than his regular set when he turns on the audience. Well, yes. What's funny, that's, I say this all the time on the show, but when I take a break from stand up and come back to it, I always go into the kill zone until I realize you're not supposed to kill. You're not a guy who kills. Your job is to not kill. It's funnier when a comic isn't killing because it's authentic. Yeah. It's real human. It's dangerous. He's obviously not doing, if you're bombing, you're either not doing your tried and true stuff or you're telling the same jokes. But the act now is in the moment because you're trying to figure it out. You have no choice. Yeah. That's always the challenge. I find that lately it's a positive thing, although it's definitely some growing pains that last week I did a show on a Saturday night. It was a fundraiser. And you know, the people on the way out tell me what a wonderful time they had. But the whole time I was on stage, I was thinking, what am I talking about? I don't give a shit about any of this stuff. And then the next night I went up and I just talked honestly about what's going on in my life and took some risks and all that. And it was infinitely more rewarding, although there were some moments where even I was like, I have to do something to pull them back in now. But then they would because even jokes that are jokes in my act, they now seems different once I've done that other stuff up front. I don't know if that explains it, but you know what I'm saying? Like once they're aware of me, oh, this is an act. This is an actual person. And that's the direction I want to eventually go in. Mm-hmm. Is it fair to an audience to have material that they don't get? Interesting. I think you have to respect the audience that... Is it fair to have a reference to Gary Powers? You don't have a reference that nobody gets, but I don't know. Are you opening for you too at the moment? That's pretty intense. That's a funny joke. I'm not going to laugh, but that's a funny joke. Where I get nervous about... It's a rainy day and I'm kind of... Yes, I appreciate it. What I like is a reference that enough of the people in the audience get, that the rest of the people are aware that something happened that they didn't understand. So are you making the audience feel stupid? But I'm not talking about Andy. I'm talking about referring to things that the audience, quote unquote, should know. Is that fair to...? Well, that introduces a good variable to it. Yeah, there are times where I ended a show the other night, the crowd was so miserable and I told my last joke and I said, I'm not fucking explaining this joke to you people. And then that was good night. But so when you get older, you become a grammarian. I think you become more rules or rules. Because when you're young... Go on with that. Well, when you're young, you want to be a rebel. And old rebels kind of pathetic, because an old rebel, that's when you want to have a little stability. When you're young, you can be wild and reckless. And I think I even feel as I get older, rudeness and poor customer service make me insane. Even I think the heat too, when it was really hot the other day, someone in front of me was walking too slow. And I had to resist the urge to hit them in the back of the head. And I don't think as a young man, I wouldn't even have been aware of the outrage of someone stepping too slowly in front of me. So I think when you get older, you do... You become, dare I say, a little bit more conservative in that way in your approach to things that you kind of like when people adhere to certain rules. I'm a rebel, but I color within the lines. I believe in the temple of democracy and having a common discourse, where there are 435 congressmen and 100 senators. And you use that framework to rebel and discuss and scream and argue. But you have to have the rules of the road. And it feels like there should be rules of the road when it comes to stand up. Well, again, I'm a road guy. Are there rules to the road? I think so because... What are the rules to the road? You don't steal jokes from people. Absolutely not. But even that now has become... That'll always be around. Because there are just some people who... There's some people who getting the love from the audience at any cost is why they're in this. But the rule is you don't steal from your fellow comedians. No, you don't. Even though the internet says... Go for it. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me about that for a second. Well, the main difference I've noticed is that it seems like in New York City, there's much more an emphasis on you tried to do something. And if you didn't quite pull it off, that was still okay. If you're... If what did they say? Your grasp exceeded your reach or whatever. Whereas on Long Island, where I do most of my work, people got babysitters. They paid for parking. They had dinner. You're there to deliver. You're not... They don't give a shit about try. You're there to do. So I think you have to cross train a little bit. Whereas you have to come to Manhattan to be creative and work on the new stuff. But everywhere outside, you have to respect them enough to try and give them some sort of a good show. In Manhattan, you're playing a tourist. Yeah. Well, it depends on what neighborhood you're in, too. And the tourists tend to be forgiving. And they want you to try something. I have found in Manhattan that you could bring in the most racist, homophobic, tourist, but they will be accepting of anything because what the hell, I'm in New York City. They're on your turf. And they're saying, I want to experience New York City. So I can't... I'm going to be non-judgmental. I'm here to eat food that gives me diarrhea. And I'm here to listen to material that would otherwise make my head explode. But in Long Island, this is my home. Yeah. And you have to come through. What are the rules to the road as a comedian? How long have you been doing comedy? This month is actually 16 years and full time since 2007. What are the rules? Are there rules you... Because there were rules when I was starting out. Do you mean on stage or like rules of conduct? Rules of conduct in terms of on stage. On stage, I would say... I guess because I was older when I started, you know, my young days, I had long hair and played guitar and bands and I got all that crap out of the way then. So I never was tempted to be a party guy. So when I see guys go on stage drinking, it's bad. All the other weird tics. Why is it bad? Because it's disrespectful, I think. To home. To the audience and to the club. You're not there to party. You're there to work. If whatever substance abuse you want to do, you do that after the show. That's what I think. But suppose it's part of my persona. Drink apple juice. Like Dean. Like Dean did, yeah. Sometimes I'll go on stage with a glass of wine and I'll do a joke about it. But to me, it's... I saw too many people I started with who thought because the shows were in bars, that meant you just got loaded and then they fell by the wayside. Suppose you go on stage with wine and do shots throughout your act and you continue to kill. Well, good for you. Although I did learn about a great scam a friend of mine told me. She saw this headliner before the show said to the wait staff, five minutes in my act I'm going to tell a certain joke. When you hear it, come to the stage with a shot of whiskey. And when I ask you who it's from, say someone in the audience bought it for you. Okay. And we were like, well, what does this mean? Well, the guy's an alcoholic. So he tells this joke, gets a big laugh, waitress comes with a shot of whiskey and he goes, oh, what's this? And she goes, someone in the audience bought it for you. And he goes, oh, you people are so nice, buying shots and sending them to the stage. So the audience wants to participate. A whole rest of the night they're sending shots to the stage. So the guy can barely stand by the time he's done. Oh, wow. And he didn't even pay for a single drink. He used his drink ticket for the one up front. For the, what a perfect, what a devious mind. Now that's, that's a comic who is not writing in a notebook. He's not coming up with new bits, but he figured out a way to game the system to feed his addiction. There was a waitress at the punchline. Her name was Kristen Stanley. This was like 20 years ago. And when I was headlining, I would work this out with her. I'd say, I'm going to ask you for a Greyhound. And then when you bring it to me, just as you're, with the outstretched hand, I'm going to say, thanks, honey. And then just throw it in my face. And then just pretend there's some history between us. But it's not, it's not because I called you a honey and it's sexist. There's something going on. And we did it a couple of times. It really freaked the audience out. Sure. I had to stop doing it because I think they, I was afraid I was going to hurt her tips because they were thinking what happened between these two. Because I, you know, I don't like not referring to it. Just, I would just take a long pause, ask for a napkin, wipe my face down, just let the audience try to figure out, is he, is she suing him? What is going on? But she had to go back to waiting on tables. Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't, it was funny for me and she was willing to do it. I don't really understand. This may not be bad. I think audiences like surprises, but they don't like something unresolved like that. They don't like, because then how could they focus on the rest of your jokes? Uh-huh. Well, yeah. But I always, you know, you mix it up. When you're bored on stage, you want to mix it up. So the rule is you don't steal. You don't go on stage drunk. Obviously, things like respect the light. Don't go way over your time. There used to be a rule I was told, which I don't buy into, because Andy Kindler's made a career out of it. You don't acknowledge a joke didn't go over. Keep going, keep going. That was one of the rules. Have you ever heard that rule? I've heard of it in the sense that there's some guys who their whole act is savers. And at a certain point, it always made me think, just write better jokes and don't have to talk about how your jokes are bombing all the time. But what Andy does is a deconstruction, so that's different. Yeah. So what do you do when you're bombing? Usually, I try to not get too deep into my own head about it. One of the things that's- Do you define a bomb? Do you say this is a bomb? Or do you say, well, it's second show Friday night? I will rarely admit to bombing on stage. To yourself. And to the audience. What about to yourself? Yeah, I'll know, like, oh, this isn't good. How do you define a bomb? I would say, well, I'm pretty free. Is a bomb a subjective thing, or can it be measured? I think it's a feeling of, oh, what I do is not right for this audience. And I don't look at it as, oh, they're stupid. Someone, I don't remember who said it, but the idea that, well, if you're so smart and they're so dumb, you figure out how to make them laugh. And I think there's a lot of truth in that. Is bombing existential? I think it's existential in that you define it yourself. You can actually be bombing and then move the goalpost and decide it's a kill. Well, I'll agree. It's up to the comic to decide whether or not he's bombing or she. I think it's definitely become an existential experience. There was one time I was on stage at Danger Fields, which is not an easy club, and it was 20 minutes of eating shit. And you really start to think, you go beyond, oh, this isn't going well to my whole life's a fraud. How could I ever think I was going to pull this off? And then then you come offstage and someone goes up and is doing the arms behind the back bit with someone from the audience. And then you're like, well, the hell with these people. But it's up to you to decide. Sure. I was on stage the other night eating shit, and it just went on and on and on. And I thought, you know what, I'm full. I'm going to put this shit away. Maybe I shouldn't be eating shit on. Gorging yourself. On shit. How are you making a pig out of yourself? I do think even this podcast is existential because people criticize it and say, why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? And I'll go, I like doing this. I still want to have this guest on the show. Don't listen. Yeah, no one forces anyone. No, and I think the same applies to stand-up. I've watched a lot of comics not get huge laughs, but because they decided it was going well, they were killing. And they turned it around? Or they weren't going by the laughs. Huh, interesting. There are certain comics who don't define themselves by the level, the decibel levels of their laughs. I could see that. See, I usually see that in the negative of the person who goes up in tanks and then comes off stage and they're so delusional. They think they have laugh ears. They think they killed. When you're on the road, you have an opening act. It's usually a local guy. I don't, you know, I'm in a position to bring people. Are you measuring the decibels? If you, before you go on, do you determine? You know, I'll listen mostly to hear, oh, do we have any things in common? If we have common topics, then I try and make my adjustment. I'm either going to drop the block of material or think, oh, so and so talked about this, and here's what I have to say about it. But what I've learned is, when I first started to work the road was 2008. And at that time, if I was closing outside New York, the middle act was an established road guy and the MC was the funniest guy in town. And then of course, as soon as I started getting paid, the economy collapsed, which I took personally. And then that meant because the budgets got cut, the MC, the funniest guy in town is now the middle and the guy who won the open mic contest is now hosting. So sometimes they sit through 40 minutes of pretty bad comedy before I would go up. So sometimes it's good, they have soft expectations, but other times they're watching a shitty show and you feel bad for them and they look at you a little suspiciously when you go up. Right. And then you have to say, I find in that situation, I try to say something funny as fast as possible so they can go, oh, thank God. And then they relax. I'm thinking of a dickens, soft expectations, small penis joke. I'm sorry, forgive me. What would you rather have? A lot of laughs or a couple of really big ones? It depends on the nature of the laughs. If it's something honest, if it's a joke that I think is really funny, that's I'll take the few big laughs as opposed to killing with stuff that I don't really care about. I mean, it depends where like when I worked family resorts and stuff where I have to work clean, I go heavy on Italian stuff or Italian material as it's also known. But I like the jokes I've written about it, but I don't particularly feel a compulsion to talk about lasagna and family dinners. Whereas I'd rather be up and down, talking about depression or suicide or something like that, like the things that I'm actually thinking about. So I know that those kind of laughs will go in and out, but when they hit, there's an extra resonance to them. It's so interesting when you say playing family resorts. When I was starting out, I thought, yeah, I'm in my early 20s. If I could just put on a tux, I'm serious. And go on a cruise and play family resorts and play Vegas and have that kind of act, I would be so happy. But I never wrote an act that would allow me to do that. There's still time. And people have said to me, well, you'd be cursed then, because you'd be spending the rest of your life playing cruise ships and family resorts in Vegas. I think, well, how is that a curse? I think as long as you're not wishing you were somewhere else, I know when I do those kind of shows, I look at them as a challenge to say, how can I be me and express myself in a way that works within these constraints? And there's a pleasure in that. There's a censorship on cruise ships and family resorts. I always say, well, what's offensive now? How do you define inappropriate for a family? Everything's inappropriate now. Everything that makes somebody laugh. I actually sent Brian Kiley, the great comedy writer slash comedian, a joke today. I texted him. I said, is this funny? Somebody must have done this. And the joke is, I've been divorced for 10 years, but I still send my wife a box of chocolates every Friday because she's a diabetic. I said, now somebody must. That's a fine joke. That's a fine joke. That I thought the only the only problem with that joke is, I hate my wife. I'm trying to think, you know, and that's that's like from the 50s. So that joke is, but if you like that joke, you love me. How old are you? But I love Borschbelty. Yes, it is Borschbelty, right? So I just went. But it's not wrong. You can certainly hate your wife in 2017. But that's a cliche. So Brian Kiley, who's a saint when it comes to comedy. Yeah. Wrote back, you're probably going to piss off women. Yeah. And I wrote back, hello. I'm David Feldman, pisses off women. But is that offensive? Could you do that at a family resort? I wouldn't do that joke there. But I'm more concerned about saying something that's going to piss people off in a comedy club than I am in a family resort. I'm interested. Let's go down the family resort because I'm interested in this. Because it's a type of censorship that's different or maybe close to the kind of censorship that's going on with Kathy Griffin and now Eliza Schlesinger has taken to Twitter and Facebook to ask women to stop talking about their vaginas. And then Felicia Michaels, who I have to have on the show again, wrote a very conflicted piece for tango about women talking about their vaginas. Because since no women are here, I think you and I should. We can probably work this topic over too. And decide whether or not women should talk about their vaginas. So if there are any female comics listening. Listen up, lady. Listen up, because Joe and I are going to tell you. Pencils out of your vaginas. I think it's a very, I don't even call it censorship. When I, this is what makes me laugh. This one particular resort I work at, there are times where I show up and they'll say, oh, just so you know, tonight's age is seven and up and not age is 10 and up. And I laugh because I think, what adjustment do you think? How finely calibrated do you think the act is? Who's Milton Bradley? They're never going to get the eight year olds. I'm going to lose them. But I like going there because to me, I look at it as if I were to have a. Did they really say that to you? Yeah. Yeah. Well, hold it for one second. What is the difference between a seven year old and a 10 year old? In terms of what I do, absolutely nothing. Right. But I look at it as. By the way, Gary Glitter used to say that as well. That's terrible. Yes, it is. I look at it as they've hired me. They know who their audience is. They have to respect that and I respect that as well. I look at it this way. I can. You really offended me, Mr. I'm only seven. Well, I did have my older sister. She's 10. She was okay with it. But I'm only seven. Nobody plays Twister anymore. That's weird. Where are your pants? I look at it as just if I were to speak, if someone were to introduce me to their grandmother, I would speak to them as myself, but in a different way than if they introduced me to their son or. Well, you'd probably be talking a lot louder. I would. I'd do that big horn she's holding in her ear. I find it more of a concern in the clubs because I don't know what it is people. My grandmother was so deaf, she had to put the horn in her ass. To speak or to fart? I was going for an anima joke, but I think that's better. Hang on. Go ahead. I'll give an example of a joke I do in the clubs. That was just... Can we edit that out? I know we go live to tape. That's okay. We just edited it. Huh? Yeah. But it wasn't funny. Yeah. The good news is we haven't even started recording it. It was a joke about my... Hang on. I'm sorry. Hold that thought for one second. It was a joke about my beloved grandmother putting an ear horn in her ass. Can we take that out, please? No, please. It's horrible, okay. He's actually holding up a pencil now, but stabbing it into the side of his neck. Here's a joke I tell in the clubs. I talk about women being dishonest with the online dating and when they brag about their kids. And the joke is the woman says, mother of a great son, and I say, well, I'll be the judge of that. And the follow-up is, besides if the kid's so great, why did his dad leave? And what I've learned is sometimes they'll tell that it gets a groan. But if I pause and take a very long sip of my drink and look at them, that gets a huge laugh. Wow, because they're there. They're realizing, oh, this guy's not messing around. Now, that's a kind of joke other comics think is hysterical. Right. But you have to be... If you tell a joke in just a comics and back laugh, usually you have to think, what have I done? I think it's amazing. That's what makes it so thrilling is that you take a sip of water and you get a laugh off that. And you could never have written that without doing the joke. There's no way I could have written a joke where I would have thought, and here's where I take a sip and that gets a laugh. There's no way you can... You can't reverse engineer jokes that way. Okay, so what is too offensive for a cruise ship? Well, the ships I don't know, I know that with this family resort... Because here's my complaint. Okay. That people who claim to be family comics are rapists. Bill Cosby could play a cruise ship. Sure. Vince Champ. Yes. The pretty prolific rapists too. Well, they don't know who Vince Champ is. Vince Champ was a college comic who used to rape the college women. And do you know what he finished with? The rape with? No. Was it the hands behind the back bit? Please tell me it wasn't... No, this is... I'm ashamed to tell you this because it's really creepy. He used to finish his rape with pray for me. Oh, God. And they're... All right. Well, I heard he got caught because a woman heard his voice on the radio doing promo and they recognized the voice. So, yeah. And there was a squeaky clean, almost like a preachery type act. So... You're like Bill Cosby. Well, Bill Cosby was lecturing people on their morality. Right. And well, we'll see. Good thing that's all resolved. But it's interesting to hear the divide on that. I was in a doctor's office. There's a divide on Bill Cosby? There's a divide. Older black women support Bill Cosby. Huh? I was listening to them talk about it and they... And these older black women were like, these women coming out after all these years, they're just trying to get money. And I thought, oh, this is interesting. And I also knew better keep my little mouth shut because the chances of me saying something wrong here about 150%. Yeah. It reminds me of the OJ verdict, where we didn't understand why African Americans were cheering. Is Frank Conif here? So, are we going to take a break? Oh, hey, Frank. You sit at the head of the table. I love your t-shirt, the trip to the moon, from the earth to the moon. Yep. Frank Conif is here. Hi. Hey. I would have sent you a car. I prefer to walk. Frank Conif. I don't want to be beholden to David Feldman for a lift. Do you know the Italian Andy Kindler? We've met at Eastville once before. Hey, how are you doing? Let me do the introductions. I'm not going to introduce Frank Conif because he needs no introduction. He needs a cup of coffee. I've got a Mexican Coke. I'm fine. Thank you. This sounds like a sexual act. Mexican Coke. The old Mexican Coke. It has... That was a scandal with Cantaflas and the Twins. Virginia Rapé. Mexican Coke. Little fatty art buckle reference. So Joe DeVito is Andy Kindler's favorite comedian. Next to you, Joe DeVito opens for Andy. And as... Have you ever met him before? Andy Kindler, yes, many times. Have you ever... Have you ever met... We met once before. Yeah. And I know the name, of course. So think of Andy Kindler, drained of all his Judaism. This is Joe DeVito. And replaced with a Pomodoro sauce. Fine, marinara. Well, Joe DeVito came on the show last week, Frank Conif. May I just tell you how much... How glad I am to see you. I'm glad to be here. I came on the show last week, too, but you just never saw me. What show? This show. I showed up last Saturday because I thought I was supposed to be here. Me, too. Yeah. I thought... Then Alex said no. Oh, wait a second. Alex made a mistake? No, I made a mistake. He told me the right date, but I assumed it was this coming... That coming Saturday. Alex is just really messing up today. You know how Jackie, the joke man, would write jokes for Howard? Alex just told me to do a joke about putting an earhorn in my grandmother's anus. So she could fart louder. I told it because I trust Alex's instincts. We've been getting a lot of calls about it. We've been getting a lot of calls. Cats. What is the name of your new book? My book is called Cats v. Conif, and it's about my cat suing me for defamation of character. Because I... If you follow me on social media, you know that they're the stars of my social media feed. Barney. And Barney and Millie, and I exploit them, and they finally had enough, and they took me to court. And this book is a chronicle of that whole thing that everybody already read about in the papers. It's like a Cory Feldman kind of situation. Yeah, yeah. You know, I did read about in the papers, but there is insight now, because enough time has passed after the trial. Right. You're giving your verdict. I'm giving... Well, I'm giving a straightforward version of what happened. You are a cat person still. Yes, I'm a dog person too, but I just living in the city, I haven't had dogs. In my adult life, I really haven't had dogs. I grew up with them. All right, I'm going to ask you a serious question, because I remember this vividly. You were sitting on your bed reading. That's about a year ago. And Barney, for no reason, clawed your hand. Yeah, he actually did that last night too, when I was sleeping. He just attacked my foot. And I'd been away for a few days, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but... And you said, fuck you, Barney. I remember this vividly. You said, fuck you, Barney. I want to know if he understood, fuck you, Barney. He understands if I yell at him that I'm upset, that he does understand that. I think maybe he takes a while to figure out what I'm upset about, but he'll like, you know, run away and stuff if I yell at him. Joe DeVito, tell him about taxoplasmosis. I'm a huge fan of the Toxoparasite. We talked about that last time, the one that's passed on to the cat feces to the rats, and pregnant women have to avoid it, and all that in the psychological sense. And I've heard that someone told me the other day that everything in our homes are what give cats liver problems, that all the toxins in our homes, if you have a house cat, that that's how they get liver problems. That's what I was thinking. I thought it was from the drinking. I was just going to go to the house. Scotch. All that, too. Meow mix. As you know, it's okay to give them scotch. Don't give them Brandy Alexander's, because it's the milk that's bad for them, and also chocolate. They can't eat chocolate, cats. Well, dogs can't eat chocolate. I don't know if this is true with cats, but I know it's true that it's really bad to give a dog chocolate. Yeah, but cats don't really like sweet stuff, usually. Yeah. Dogs eat anything. Yeah, exactly. Once you've crossed the eating your own shit barrier, I think you really can't get too fussy with the rest of the menu. Right, right. I've eaten my own shit many times in this business. When my dog Cody used to lick my son's face, I used to say, he'd go, he loves me. I'd say no. He misses the taste of his own shit. Now, those are the memories. That's the real cats in the cradle moment for your son right there, huh? Why do you like cats, seriously? Well, I like animals in general, and cats are... How do people buy your book, by the way? They can get it on Amazon. It's on paperback on Kindle, and very soon at Whole Foods it'll be available. And also, when I do my live shows, I merge the shit out of all of it. When we trace Puglio and I do our live, the Mads are back. Movie riffing show. We have a table set up in the lobby before and after the show, and we just sell all our stuff. I have another book, too, that I also sell. That book is called 25 Mystery Science Theater Films. It changed my life in no way whatsoever. My merch table is my store, really. That's where I do most of my business. Outside shows, I just have a coffee can. And an empty guitar case. There's no guitar, but they can feel free to throw in any buttons. Well, there's some kind of merch to sell. What do you think of Amazon now putting all these mom-and-pop monopolies out of business? It's just an unfortunate aspect of the world we live in, of so many stores getting put out of business, and it's really a shame. I mean, remember how we always used to be like, oh, Barnes & Noble borders. They're evil corporate. Go to the mom-and-pop bookstores, which is true. You should go to mom-and-pop. But now the mom-and-pop are the only ones that have survived. But now, like, don't you miss the days when there were Barnes & Nobles all over the city? Yeah, yeah. When you see an empty borders now, I'm always amazed by how they're all the size of a penitentiary. They really bit off more than they could possibly have chewed. Yeah, and so I think, you know, and record stores and bookstores and all that stuff has just become a specialty thing now. And, you know, it hurts the culture of a city that you live in, you know, because like on the one hand, like everybody now can have an entire library of classic films on their phone or on their iPad or on their computer, but now there's no Bleecker Street Cinema anymore. There's no Talia Theater. There's no, you know, the Theater 80 that used to show movies. Is this it? Those things were just a part, when I grew up in New York, those were such a part of New York culture. If you wanted to see a classic film, you went out and you saw a double bill at the Carnegie Hall Cinema or at the Bleecker Street Cinema or at the New Yorker on the Upper West Side. And now it's great that you can see all those movies much easier now, but the presence of those things in a city, in a neighborhood, really enhanced the culture of the geography of the place. And it's a shame that all of that has gone away. You used to be a boulevardier. A boulevardier. You were flannur. I remember you would put a flower in your lapel and you'd have a walking stick. I would, but that was because of my cow. And you would just walk the streets of Manhattan. Which I still do. I still am what you would call a boulevardier. I still walk the streets. And walking the streets of New York is still really great, but if you grew up in New York like I did, there's ghosts of things everywhere. Everywhere you go is a ghost of something that used to be that isn't there anymore, but it's now a pinkberry. Pinkberries are gone, too. Is pinkberry going out of business? Most of them have left. There's a couple of them. Because now you can eat yogurt digitally. Delivered by drone right down your throat. Oh, I was saying, like me, you eat with your hands. The problem with New York is a lot of retail space now is empty. Yeah. They can't afford the rents. Right. And the rents are exorbitant. The rents are exorbitant. So the city is becoming empty for us flannous and our boulevardiers. I put on my three-piece suit and put the flower in my lapel and went to, like, the Paramus Mall to be a flannur and a boulevardier. They do have a rule about spouting verse at the Paramus Mall though. They ask you kindly, but the third time you have to leave. And those are becoming empty as well. Yeah, it's, you know. Is it all Jeff Bezos? Is it all Amazon that's doing? Not all him, but he's a big part of it. And, you know, he's just a, you know, on one hand, he's just a guy who started a business and it's successful. But really, are you that forgiving? Well, I'm not free, but I'm just like, we can't stop change. You know, we can't stop the world we live in is the world we live in. That doesn't sound like the Frank Conniff. We can't make it go back to, we can't take the internet away and make it go back to the way it was before. This sounds like the new Frank Conniff who's been on the road making money and part of the 1 percent. That's what my, I wish my agent would just take 1 percent. But, you don't think we should break up? I honestly believe. Yeah, I mean, I kind of, you know, in my part of arts, I don't think he should be, one corporation should be able to own. And that's like been really devastating in, as you know, in the world of television and movies and news, you know, that one corporation used to be, if you had a newspaper, you couldn't have the TV station, you know, or vice versa. Rupert Murdoch changed all that. He had special rules made for him so that he could buy the New York Post when he already, and then so he could buy the local station. So that actually, I think it was the Boston paper, not the New York Post. Maybe, but he did buy the New York Post. I remember that. So yeah, I don't think that's a good thing at all. I don't think, I don't think networks should be allowed to own studios. And it was better before when the studio would try to sell their stuff to a network, as opposed to being a production company that's part of the network. You know, that's just, you know, about 20, 30 years ago, that kind of deregulation became okay. And the conservatives just want more of that. There reason, I think in my new book, I'm going to be writing about the Sherman Antitrust. The Peabody and Sherman Antitrust. Yes, where you go back in time. Yes. Client, you. And you buy up companies before anybody knows they're going to be successful. And then you have a monopoly. The Sherman Antitrust laws were, I believe, and this is the theory of my book, came about because of Darwin. Because Darwin explains that in evolution, things in motion stay in motion. It's Newtonian. I have just confused everybody. But nobody knows what the fuck I'm talking about right now, including me. What I'm saying is there's a reason antitrust legislation started in the early 1900s because you understood evolution. And what evolution teaches us is things in motion stay in motion. A powerful animal not stopped will devour everything. The T-Rex will eat everything. The human being will destroy everything unless you put impediments. That's the nature of evolution. So when you say Amazon will eventually stop by itself, no. Once this thing starts, it's Newtonian. It just stays in motion and Jeff Bezos will gobble up. It seems like that's his. He will gobble up everything. The only reason Microsoft didn't gobble up everything is because of the threat of antitrust violations. Thank God for the EU because they're going after Google. They have to be broken up. They have to be. I think Bezos mistake was posing in that giant mechanical Iron Man suit. Did you see when he did that at some conference he posed, he was inside a giant mechanical exoskeleton moving around. And we don't really need to see you as a mad scientist, superhero like that. Let's use our imagination. And I think that was kind of terrifying to think. Oh, that's a comic book guy actually taking over the world walking around inside a giant robot. I'm going to be quiet, Alex. I promise. He said, don't tell me you're going to be quiet. Just be quiet. This is my theory that I'm working on for my book. The reason we allow, and then I promise, but I want your reaction to this, the reason we allow Amazon to be a monopoly and Google to be a monopoly is because they're American companies. And it's the same reason we spend half a trillion dollars a year on defense because we say if we don't spend this money, another country is going to come along and spend all this money on defense. And we'll no longer be the most powerful. And we've now transposed that to our economy where we say, well, we have to have Amazon be this bulldozer because some other country will create an Amazon and they'll get all the business. We use other sins to justify new sins. The sin of half a trillion dollars on defense now is used to justify allowing Google and Amazon and Apple to be monopolies because we have to protect the American economy, even though these three companies don't pay any taxes. I'm done. Thank you. Goodbye. And also they employ relatively few people compared to how big their companies are. But if we don't do it, somebody else is going to do it. The reason people are okay with Amazon is not because of what it does for the economy because it makes it easy to buy shit. Yeah, they are pretty amazing. I have Amazon Prime. It's the closest you can get to thinking of something and then having it show up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. My friends make fun of you. I get toilet paper from Amazon. I tell them by the time I get myself to the store, I actually do anything. I could just just click something. Are you... By the way, and full disclosure, the listeners of this show know that one of the ways to help me is by doing all your Amazon shopping via... Right. Oh, you're an affiliate, huh? I'm an affiliate and it's a great way to help out the show. I get a monthly check from Amazon. I don't know who the people are who are shopping. I don't know what they're buying, but a little money comes in and so... And also, I'll say another thing about it is it's enabled a person like me to go into business for himself because I publish my books on CreateSpace on Amazon and it's just a really great way to get my stuff to the public, you know? Well, defend Amazon then. Well, I'll just defend it on that level, but anything you're saying about how wrong it is for it to be so huge and to have its fingers into everything and to have a monopoly I'll agree with, you know? But they're making... But I'll publish my books through CreateSpace and I'll watch movies on Amazon Prime, you know? And I'll buy every book I have... I have like 100 books in my pocket at this moment in my iPhone that I buy off of, that I get on Kindle. So... On the Kindle for iPad. So I'm supporting two corporations. I'm supporting Amazon and I support Apple, which is also evil. I support them like crazy. I have like three of their devices that I'm completely relying on. Is the answer to see them as a utility that provides infrastructure for entrepreneurs like you? It can be, you know, there is positives to it, but it is a dangerous thing though, you know? It's dangerous. They will say it's creative destruction. They'll say we're mowing down the mom and pop bookstores to free up the entrepreneurial spirit. So somebody like Frank Conniff can... And the thing about it, what it does for me too, is because I'm able to take the initiative and put out my own stuff, I'm not reliant on the gatekeepers of the entertainment industry to give me permission to have a body of work. Now I can go out and have a body of work just because I put in the work to do that. I don't have to go through a bureaucracy like we all do in TV and with studios where there's a whole bunch of red tape. If you have any kind of idea that you're trying to get out and if you're trying to entertain the public, there's this whole bureaucracy you have to go through. Now I don't have to go through that bureaucracy. I can just put the stuff out there and promote it on my own and see what happens. It's got... That part's pretty great because I think of bands that I love from, you know, 70s and 60s that because they never got a record deal, their canon doesn't exist. You just can't find it anywhere. There's a band I love called Sonic's rendezvous band. It was Fred Sonic from the MC5. And they pretty much released one single. So anything else... MC5, Pump Up the Jams? Kick Out the Jams, yeah. Yeah, and it's... Oh, I was thinking Pump Up the Jams. You're thinking of Technotronic. God damn you for knowing that. But yeah, so there was like a great band like that and you have to hunt around for these relics and stuff whereas now everyone just records it themselves and puts it online themselves. And then it's out there. And then... How much of this is a myth? I was watching an author, a British author who says Google and Amazon and Apple are selling the myth of entrepreneurial endeavors when in fact they're just sucking up all the money. Well, I'm sure they are just sucking up all the money. So, but I don't know if I may... You know, I've served my whole career has been based on self-delusion. So I may be deluding myself to think that I have some control over... Over my work, but it feels that way to me. You know, but I'm also lucky because I have a following that... Like I have an audience that I can market my stuff to. You know, so I have a leg up that way. But it certainly seems to me like I'm taking things into my own hands and I'm expressing my... I'm not talking about Pornhub. I'm talking about... That's a whole other thing. It's the most democratic place on the internet. How are you going to talk? If I get you an Uber to... Yeah, I got like five minutes, five more minutes. You can't stay for a little longer. I got to catch it in a train. I love this guy. He's leaving us. I blame the weather. Are you catching the Amazon train? I actually have a drone. It takes me back to Long Island. It just drops me on the LIE. I have to fend for myself in there. The way I understand you, Frank, and you are a recipient of this new economy. You've been a beneficiary of this new economy in that when we first met, you were a comics comic. You were living in L.A. And then, is it fair to say you took off on Twitter and Facebook? I don't know if I ever took off. I think just in the sense that other comedians have developed a following for their jokes. I'm one of those people. There are a lot of comedians with much bigger followings than I do, than I have. But your following is based purely on the jokes you write. Well, on Twitter, yes. I would say I think I started with a base of nerds and Mystery Science Theater fans and comedy nerds. But I've built up my following, which is at this point is about $65,000, which compared to John Fugl saying it was a quarter of a million or Patton Oswald who has $3 million or whatever. It's not much, but it seems a lot to me because I've really literally built it up one joke at a time. Right, right. And it's great. What I love about it is it just gives you an audience for jokes that you write. And so when I go and do shows, people, when I go to do Mystery Science Theater related shows, people come up to me and they're fans of Mystery Science Theater, but then they also say, oh, I love your Twitter. Oh, I love your Facebook page. And then for a comedian who's trying to reach the public somehow, that feels good. You know. Especially since it's an opt-in. There are people who get you. There are people who understand what it is you're trying to do. Yeah, yeah. And then there's other people and they troll me every day. I hate what I do, but the people who like it are kind of the more positive. You're an example of the cream rising to the top. I do enjoy cream. You're like, right. Is it fair that only the cream can survive? I mean, what if? The cream rises to the top, which is why Chris Christie bought a stepladder. He's a large man. Is it fair? In other words, we... Nothing is fair. Yeah, you gotta let that go. Life is not fair. Show business certainly is not fair. So what happens to the people who can't move up in a meritocracy? There are, I think in any, I only know about comedy, but I think in any business, there are people who don't move up for whatever reason, and there are people who fall by the wayside. I think in terms of comedy, it's all about just sticking with it and not giving up, despite the many setbacks that I've felt I've had through the years and the disappointments and the feeling of utter rejection that you go through in this business. I had utter rejection. My mother wouldn't breastfeed me. I know, that's the worst, but I had utter rejection because they didn't find me attractive, but... Oh, I thought it was an animal house trip. Not breaking up seashells on their chests? Yes, but yeah, I mean, and I was telling someone the other day that I think I finally sort of think of myself as a success only because I'm still doing it. I'm 60 now, and I still am just kind of like I was when I was in my 20s, where I just had all still looking towards things, coming up with ideas for things, coming up with projects, doing shows, being a part of comedy, which I've always wanted to be a part of, and I'm still a part of it. So that feels like I've achieved something just by the very fact that I'm still doing it. The gatekeepers, I was talking to a comedian who is, on par with you guys, unbelievably talented, just in respect, I'm not going to mention the name. And he said, well, it's just a given that because of my age, Hollywood isn't going to touch me. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I think that's true. There's also all that watermelon smashing he does. I think it's a little dated. Yes, that's true. What is this ageism about? I don't know. I think it's completely, it's just a thing people have made up in their minds because you, like me, you perform in New York comedy clubs and it's always a millennial audience. It's always like a really young audience. I don't feel ageism. And once you get up there and once you say something that makes them laugh, then they're like, oh, this guy's funny. No one in the audience is going, oh, this guy has gray hair. I'm not going to laugh at him unless I'm not making them laugh with my material. And so once you're laughing, there's no prejudice at all. You're just, once you think something's funny, you're going to laugh. And I've seen really blatant examples of people who should know better, like saying really ageist stuff about comedians who get past their freshness date and, you know, and, but what is the mistake people our age can make to create a jizm? A jizm? No, we're talking. That's if they're lucky. That's actually that they're able to pull that off. I don't get it. It's a lot of D vitamins. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm talking about ageism in this business. I think it's people who have not, even though they've gotten older but their act has stayed frozen. I see a lot of comics like that who go up and it's almost like they've been in a coma, right, at the showtime. They go out and they're doing, you know, you know, Bill Clinton impressions and things like that. So that's not ageism. That is just laziness. That's just staleness. Yeah, that's like a that's like a band that never writes any new song. Right, you know. Become a nostalgia actor. That doesn't work for stand-up. Because I have found that I can play the old guy on stage and get laughs by talking about what's going on right now. Right, right. And they're cool with that because an audience, I'm the sick uncle that they know or the crazy father with the ankle bracelet on stage. But people in the gatekeepers, none of them are giving us a sitcom anytime soon. Because they can't control us. Well, no, because they look at us and they go, that guy is old. He's not going to appeal to 18 to 34 or whatever they think the prime demographic is. And they're not giving us sitcom. Maybe you guys both just got sitcom deals. But I'm just saying that in general, in the business, your age is a factor with the gatekeepers. Yeah, I think there's an emphasis now on they're always looking for who's going to be the next big thing. Right, right. As opposed to who's the person who can deliver now. Why do they want the next big thing? Because they see you as an investment. They see it as taking credit for it. They can take credit for it. And they can put in a little bit of money now that'll pay off a lot later, whereas someone who's good now is just what's happening now. And I don't mean the sequel to what's happening. Which would be awesome. Which would be great. If they did a what's happening now, now. Joe DeVito. Yes. Your father was probably not part of the greatest generation. No, he was a little bit, he was born in 46, I believe. No, he's not. Okay, your father. My father born in 1914. Wow. And he served in... Well, he was a war correspondent in World War II and in Korea and in Vietnam. Let me read you the obit for a guy who died. Arthur Jackson just died at the age of 90. Wow. He was given the recipient for WWII Medal of Honor. His one-man assault at, I can't pronounce this, Peleu against the Japanese. Jackson, 19, was with the 1st Marine Division on the Western Pacific during one of the most grueling battles. In the struggle for Pellew, his unit was ordered to clear the southern end of the island. And he loaded himself up with grenades. He stormed what they call the pill box. That's where the... Yeah, sure. And he was hit with automatic fire, but he continued to throw white phosphorus grenades, killing 35 Japanese injured. He went on to kill another 200, saved the lives of 50 of his fellow soldiers, and was given all the accolades that he deserved. Interesting, here's someone who, in about three minutes of their life, accomplished more than I have 48 years. I know, I've only killed like about a dozen Japanese in my time. Yeah. And that was at a sushi restaurant. Yeah, because they lost. I guess the message is, when you look at life, you just, you have to kill Japanese where you can. Yes, you can. You have to, it's very true. Well, I hate to leave early, but I'm motivated now to stab my dry cleaner. Will you come back? Absolutely. I didn't have enough time with you. I know, it wasn't enough. I'm just passing through on for sure. Okay, come back. Joe DeVito, let's plug some gigs. Just go to JoeDeVito.com. I know I got coming up next month, a week in San Antonio at the improv there. And I always have Long Island stuff, so I got my whole schedule there. And you can, it's at JoeDeVito.com, on Twitter and Instagram. Great. Got all kinds of other things going on. Thanks, come back. Thank you. I'm sure we didn't get to feed you. Next time. Thank you. Yes, I have my reading glasses on. Who's here? Who is this? Against my will, obviously. Oh my God. Look who stopped. Oh, I am. Oh my God. Oh, the cats. Oh, the cats are good. Oh, good. We were just talking about them. Hi. Hey. How is everyone? It's buckles. I stole Alex's car for a few weeks, so I was just returning it begrudgingly. I'm so glad to see you. You know buckles? Yeah, we did a show. We did a show together. What show? With you. Yeah. We did your broadcast. When? Right here. Oh my God. Is my pudding here? I'm just pleased that the tables have turned. Is this clock right or wrong? Are we on Chicago time? Chicago time. Oh, really? Yeah. But how much time do we have? We'll do another 30 minutes. Okay, thank you, Alex. Hi. Let's talk about the greatest generation. No. Let's talk about... What have we been talking about? I heard it's been fairly boring in here. Well, we were talking about the greatest generation, and I said to... We had Annie Letterman on the show. Okay. Do you know Annie? No. I know her. And she was talking about her generation's sexual appetite, and I called my mother afterwards. And started jacking off. That's my mother you're talking about. I don't jack off to my mother. I have photographs that I... Alan, what am I doing here? So I said, I would rather... I said this to Annie Letterman on my show. I would rather storm the beaches of Omaha, Omaha Beach, Normandy, than have to try to figure out how to have sex with Annie Letterman. That... Really? Wow. I understand D-Day. Sure. That I understand. But a woman in her late 20s, I would have no idea how to have sex with them. Well, that sounds bad accurate. Anyway. It's like riding a bike in that there's not a woman involved. And that you would never be in that situation, so that's fine. I'd more likely be riding a bike. Hi. Hi. Eliza Schlesinger is on my topic. I'm not bringing this up because you're a woman. Look, Toxoplasmosis. I see. Republicans under 40. And Eliza Schlesinger, women talking about their oo-hoos. Okay. Eliza Schlesinger tweeted out that women... She could close her eyes, walk into a comedy club, and she could hear every comic talking about their pussies. Sure. And she's gotten a lot of flak for saying that, that how dare she be a gatekeeper, how dare she criticize women for talking about their pussies. Right. I was hoping to make a ruling. I didn't know you were here. But I had Joe DeVito here. I know, it's a surprise. And I have Frank Conniff, and we were going to rule as to whether or not female comics should or should not talk about their pussy on stage. You've kind of thrown me for a loop here by being here. I think that's a very simple answer to that. Yeah. I think anyone or a woman, if they're going to talk about whatever, if they have something funny to say about it, then they should talk about it. If there's a good punchline or a good observation or a funny, even just a dirty, funny thing that's just silly and dirty, then why not? You know, as long as the comedy is there, why wouldn't you talk about it if you had a funny thing to say about it? Maybe your dad is in the audience. Tight dad. The stench would be a little strong, because my dad's been dead for 40 years. But that's like any, I mean, so many comics work blue, you know, and in fact, a lot of the comics that get HBO specials work blue. You know, so that's a whole separate issue of like, should you work blue, because your dad might, because someone's dad or someone who's prudish about it will be in the audience. That's an issue that applies to any comedian. But the issue of should you, if you're a woman, should you specifically talk about your vagina? Yes, if you have a funny bit about it, of course you should. Buckles, just start talking. We got this Buckles. Yeah, please don't fuck yourself. Anyways, I don't know. I think that, yeah, I mean, I'm the same. If it's funny, then yeah, go ahead. I don't think you should or shouldn't do anything. I have some Jew jokes that are funny. Sure, yeah. That doesn't mean I should be telling them on stage. You do tell them on stage. Yeah, here we are. But I shouldn't be. I mean, I have racist jokes that are funny. I have jokes about... Are they felbin', are they felbin'? I have a joke about going as a Jew, going to a whorehouse and strangling a hooker and saying, stop me when I get to $300. I know that's funny. It doesn't belong on stage. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. But why would a pussy joke be offensive? You know, I mean, maybe a joke about Jews or a joke about black people, it's about their ethnicity and people to be offended by it. What is offensive about talking about pussy? There's nothing offensive about it. Because we have Liz Winstead and Greg Proups on the show in the past couple of weeks talking about a woman's right to choose. I have a feeling that the more women talk about their pussies, I'm being serious. The same way men talk about their dicks. Which they have been every day since I've started doing comedy. And way before then, I started in the 80s comedy boom and heard nothing but dick jokes. A parade of nonstop dick jokes throughout all my years of doing comedy. So that's been that's been happening for a long, long time. And I think if women talk about their pussy. And Johnny Carson did dick jokes. Yes. There was innuendo in them, but he did stuff like that. So. Right. I think if women can do jokes about their pussies, I mean this. And this is I'm coming around to this. Okay. So this is good news for women, because Frank and I are about to issue a ruling as to whether or not. Thank God Feldman. Don't crowd me in with you like I'm on your team. I decide whether or not women can joke about their pussies or not. It's up to me to decide. Okay. And I'm I have an expert. It's not up to me. I just go for it. It's up to me. And we have an expert witness here buckles. Sure. You've seen a pussy. I've seen a pussy. Yes. Okay. So I'm going to issue a ruling. I got my robes on. Great. I'm beginning to believe that if more and more women talk incessantly about their pussy, we will eventually stop closing abortion clinics. Is that a fair statement? It's fairly broad. Yes, it's broad. But I what I would agree with is if we can ever get to the point where people are not hung up about sex, we're just talking about it in any context is just something you talk about because it's a part of life. That would be a very healthy thing. And on the radio show that I do with John Fugel saying we have people come on who talk about the harm that porn has done to people and that the harm porn has done to younger people because it's all they've learned about sex is just from watching porn. And and what I mentioned snuff videos. Yeah, well, that's that's all I learned about it. But but I always make up the point that whatever however bad porn is for for young kids growing up watching it and learning about sex for it. It's not nearly as bad as learning about sex from religion, which is what my generation and the generations previously learned learned about it from people who the basis of their entire religion was that was that their Messiah was was born was a virgin birth. That's who we learned about sex from, you know. Immaculate conceptions. Yes, immaculate we learned about sex from people who knew nothing about it. And we're afraid of it and lived in in mortal fear of it. And so as harmful as porn can be, I think that's actually a step forward that people that that that it leads to a little bit more openness about sex than just the religious repression that we all grew up under. Now, I don't even understand virgin birth because I'm Jewish. But I thought, well, if it's a virgin, I thought when my wife went into labor, I dropped my pants, whipped at my dick and try to have sex with her because I didn't want her to have a virgin birth. That makes no sense. Well, it makes no sense. But the term virgin birth, I thought you're supposed to have sex. So it's not a virgin birth. Right. If you haven't had sex and you give birth. Immaculate. Oh, I see. I thought, I see. Okay. So asking somebody to blow you while she's giving birth. As you considered of portes. That would be bad. That's the one that has nothing to do with the virgin birth. Yeah, no, not that I know of. But like I said, I grew up learning about it all from religion, so I don't know anything. Let's get back to talking about pussy. I thought I was. Do you think a mother, this is just, I'm throwing this out there. If my mother comes and sees me talking about my dick. If your mother come, no, never mind. You're talking about a woman who's who I put an ear horn in her ass so she could fart louder. This is the woman you are making. Yes, it is. That's a reference to a joke Alex came up with that I sneaked. You gave me that joke. You said, do a joke about your mother being hard of hearing. Alex, you're scruffy. And I had to put an ear horn in her ass so she could hear her own farts. That's actually funny. I fixed it. I fixed it. I fixed your joke. There's no time for editing. I, yeah, the problem was she complained about how loud I was chewing. Can you, do you think a mother going to see her son telling dick jokes is more comfortable than a father going to see his daughter talking about her pussy? I'm going to just make a sweeping generalization. I'm going to say a father is more likely to be uncomfortable watching his daughter talk about her pussy than a mother is talking about her son's dick. That might be true, but you know what? If you have a certain kind of, that shouldn't even be an issue because if you have a certain kind of act and your parents are a certain kind of way, the whole thing is tell them, Mom, Dad, don't come to see my show because you're going to be upset. Don't come to see my show. I feel like parents are very just open about, I mean, at least my generation, you don't run into many parents that are really uptight about that kind of thing. Yeah, that's probably a current generation kind of thing because my and my parents' generation was uptight about everything. My mother was like, you know, wouldn't even let me masturbate at the table. Terrible. Could kind of repressive household would you grow up in? It was very Victorian. What are your thoughts? I mean, I just think that we, I don't care. So anything. Oh, God, all right. I'm good. All right, Alex. Can I get out? Now, what are your thoughts? No, I just think that my generations, a lot of our parents don't aren't. Yeah. Like I said, aren't they like don't care? They are. They support that kind of a thing, even if it did make them uncomfortable, they would feign supporting, you know, and that's a good attitude about it. I was talking to Greg Proups about white men who are poor and they are told to check their white privilege, even though they're convinced they have no white privilege. I'm leading to Pussy. I'm going to get to Pussy in a second. Can you understand how a white man doesn't understand how he should check his own privilege if he's broke, living out of his car? Why should he have sympathy for anybody other than himself? Can you understand that? I can definitely understand that. I feel like that just being a white male, your life is just naturally easier. But if you're a white man who is, all the jobs have disappeared, he's broke, he's about to lose his house. Can you understand why he's turning a blind eye to the plight of everybody other than himself? I think anybody would be, yeah, I mean, I guess I could see where they're coming from, but not really. Because I think with a lot of white people who voted for Trump, who are in economic distress, and that might be why they voted for Trump, but there's a sense with them that their problems, it's more important that they're having their problems, that the fact that they're hurting financially is a much bigger deal than the fact that other people are hurting financially because they're white men, they're not supposed to be hurting financially. And also the media, the New York Times, every week they do an article where they go to a rural town to talk to white voters who still support Trump because their white, their opinion on things is looked at is more important than anybody else's. And so they get more attention and it's considered a bigger deal to a lot of people, the fact that these white men are in distress. Okay, so moving the, I'm talking about moving the ball forward politically and socially. Obama is of the mind that you have to understand the people who are sometimes oppressing you. Can you understand how a certain generation of men and women would be uncomfortable hearing a comic talking about her pussy on stage? I can understand why somebody might be uncomfortable about it, but if it makes you uncomfortable then leave. Yeah, don't go to the show. You have a host of entertainment options available to you, thanks to our friend Jeff Bezos that we were just talking about. You can stay home and watch Amazon. You can watch the Bells of St. Mary on Amazon Prime. You don't have to go to a comedy club and hear Dick and vagina jokes if that's not what you're into. Most, the majority it seems to me of people who go to comedy clubs who they've grown up watching HBO specials. They've grown up watching Comedy Central, watching South Park or whatever. They are watching Chris Rock. They go to a club expecting this kind of thing. They have no problem with it. That's the comedy club audience. So if one or two people who are parents or whatever are uptight with it, and there always are those people in every comedy show, there's always a couple people who don't know what they've gotten themselves in for and they get up and walk out, but an entertainer has the right to gear his material towards an audience that wants to be entertained. You shouldn't have to think about those people that are uptight about it. Can you understand? Let me have Buckle's answer to this. I did answer that. But let me ask you this question. Let me ask you this question. Let me ask you this question. Oh my God. Can you understand how some people fear that Valgarians are informing the entire conversation? You mean like Trump? Well, yes. That when people say whatever they want to say with no filter, they talk about their pussy, their dick, their bowel movements, you know, everything that I do on the show that informs what goes on in the classroom, what goes on at the dinner table, and that it's the end of civilization, that civil discourse breaks down when you have superstars making millions of dollars talking about their cock, their pussy, and their bowel movements. Can you understand why some people might say, let's keep these things as taboo and fight it so we'll force people to talk about more important things? Or maybe talking about the uterus and your vagina is important. Is it important to talk about the vagina? I think so. I think especially now that we're actually getting threatened to get some of our rights taken away, that we might not have access to abortion clinics, and not even abortion clinics, but the fact that we might not, I mean, if Planned Parenthood goes away, I have no idea how I'm going to go, how I'm going to be able to afford. You know, Mike Pence is probably the epitome of a person who thinks our culture has gone to hell, and that there's the lack of civility, and that people are talking about taboo subjects that would be much better off without. But Mike Pence is Donald Trump's vice president and supports any number of things that I consider to be vulgar and offensive. So it's like, who gets to decide that? I was actually, I actually had a discussion with a group of people a couple of weeks ago. It was brought to my attention that recently in grade schools, middle schools, and high schools, they're now telling girls that they're not allowed to wear yoga pants to school because they're too tight and form fitting, but they're like workout pants. And so, and they're, and they're saying that they can't wear these pants at school anymore because it's too distracting for the boys. Is this a public school or private school? Public school. Public school, okay. Which I thought, in my opinion, and I disagreed with everyone at the table, in my opinion, it's like, why are we, why are we teaching the girls that their bodies are these like sexual, there are sexual things and they're meant to be hidden so that we don't distract, you know, beavis and butthead and they're fucking, you know, and on the football team. Like heaven forbid, we distract those boys from getting good grades, but heaven forbid, we don't teach those kids that that's that these girls are just wearing workout clothes and they need to focus on their work. Do you, this is very interesting to me because I had conversations about what some of my daughters wore. Of course, it didn't matter what I thought. Can you understand? Still the same. Can you understand how a father, I agree with everything you're saying. I'm just asking you can you understand how a father might not want his daughter to dress a certain way and is that wrong that the father says, you know, maybe you should wear this blanket. You should wear this to fully, this is what he pajamas. Well, it's apparent you have, you know, you have a right that that's your purview. That's your right as someone who's bringing up a kid who isn't an adult yet to impose your views on them. That's your right. I think it's a different thing with a school with something like yoga pants, which is so they're just making it dirty. They're sexualizing it. They're sexualizing it. Yeah. But I mean, is it possible? I'm just asking. Oh, for like the parents to be. Is it, do you think it's fair for a, for somebody to say to a young girl, you're showing too much skin? I mean, in some context, I guess, I guess, yes, for like, like really little girl, like, especially like, there's a bunch of stuff now with like Snapchat and Musical.ly and all these different things. And some of these girls are like eight and 12 and they look like they're 17. They wear so much makeup. They wear no clothes. Do you have a right as a parent? As a parent? Yes, absolutely. As a public? No, it's none of my business. As a politician, if I'm running for office. Absolutely not. Okay, I'm running for office. Absolutely not. Well, let me tell you what I would say and I believe this. Okay. And this is what I said. You have choices in your life on how you want to be seen. Do you want to be respected for your brain or your body? Do you want to draw attention to your body or to your brain? And that goes for men and women. Right. But why is it that when a girl gets dressed up or that like when I... It's a double standard, I agree. No, but I'm just saying like, why, like, it's the same thing happens to me. Like sometimes I just like, I just want to wear a skirt because I, because it's hot outside and I feel good in the skirt. But then automatically it's like, oh, somebody wanted to get their legs seen today. It's like, no, I wore a fucking skirt because I'm hot. Okay. Can you under, let me ask, let me... I wear short pants every day in the summer. And I always look at your legs, Frank. I know they're pretty, pretty sweet, but... Our men... It's, but if a woman wants to wear shorts and it's hot out and as a man, if her legs are nice, men are going to look at it. But that's, it's really up to the men to, they can look at it fine, but to not be all salacious about it. Absolutely. And a woman, and an intelligent woman who's attractive shouldn't have to think, oh, well, I'm, I want to be known from my brain. So I'm gonna... I better cover up. So I'm gonna wear baggy long pants out because otherwise people won't respect me from, I mean, that's bullshit. Okay, okay. Hang on for one second. I agree with everything you're saying. I'm just an old man. You're younger than I am. Are men rapists? Are men, are people rapists? Are men rapists? Sure. When you put men in prison with other men, do they rape each other? Yes. Do women rape men? Yes. But it's not as prevalent as men raping women. No, but it certainly doesn't not happen. It's an anomaly. Yeah. Right? Men are rapists, correct? Not all men, that's a sweeping generalization, Alex. Men are rapists. Men are rapists, women for all intents and purposes are not. Is that a fair statement? We'll be back in a minute with more of the Andrea Dworkin show. She believed intercourse was rape, just whatever, you know. And 20 years ago I would have said it's not. But now I'm enlightened. No, I mean, yeah, okay. Okay, if men are rapists, which they are, do men murder women out of jealousy? Do men murder women out of jealousy? Yes. Are men dangerous? It's been known to happen. But are men more dangerous than women? No. I think so. I don't think so. Physically, yes, physically, yes. Physically, so when you're walking down the street and you see a woman, do you feel threatened? No. When you see a man, is there a possible threat? I mean, the context really depends. But yeah, if it's the street in the middle of the night and I see a guy, I will feel more threatened. Right. So men are more dangerous than women in every way. That's a fact. I feel like you're backing me into this weird corner. Yeah. And I don't know where I'm going. Appropriately enough. Who knows more about men being dangerous than men? Aren't men entitled to be a little concerned about men around women, especially older men? Can you understand how? Sure. Okay, listen. I can see what you're saying, but why are we teaching? The second we tell that little girl to change her pants at school, we are informing that little boy that women around him need to change to make him feel like he doesn't have to fuck something. Well, it's not an either or. That's insane. That's an either. It's not an either or. You conceivably can do both. But I'm just saying, you're immediately teaching the little girl that she's a sexualized object and you're teaching the little boys that that's okay and that by her wearing something different, she's like coming on to him. It's the why does she? I agree with you on that. I'm just saying. Yeah. It's a little, there is, okay. Move on. What is all my God? This is, this is important. So can you understand how Eliza Schlesinger maybe is saying, if you're going to talk about your pussy, talk about abortion, talk about, I mean, art. But yeah, but you know, my disagreement with that is if, if you have a, and I said this before, if you have a really silly joke about your pussy that's just silly and funny, go ahead and fucking do it. I mean, not every joke, even if it's about, you know, why should women have this burden or women comedians have this burden put on them? They're like, oh, if you're going to talk about your vagina, make it a, make sure that it's a point about abortion or about women's control over their own bodies. I mean, and even if you do, even if you make it a point about abortion, if you're a comedian, make sure it's really funny. And also if you have a really funny thing to say about your pussy, that's just, that's just goofy and go ahead and say it, your job is to make people laugh. And if you think it's something funny, then go ahead and do it. Just because people are laughing at something doesn't mean they're right to be laughing at it, right? We have standards. I don't. I just, my whole thing. What about Andrew Dice Clay? You know what, I worked with Andrew Dice Clay in the 1980s before he was a star and there were parts of his act, there were parts of his act even then that was really funny. No, jingoistic and disturbing, but there were other parts of his act that were cartoonish and hilarious. I thought at the time he made me laugh. Okay. And do you approve of his jingoism? No, I don't. I don't, but that's his decision to do that. It's not something. Is it dangerous? It can be. Yes, it can be dangerous. And I think that when he became a gigantic star, he represented something very disturbing. But what I'm about to say about my act, I mean, I do political jokes. I do jokes about all kinds of things. But my goal, regardless of what I'm talking about, is I want to make people spit their drinks through their nose. I don't care about that I'm making some kind of higher point about anything. I just want to make people laugh. Okay, but do you ever wonder why people are laughing at something? I mean, it's worth wondering about sometimes, but I don't, if I'm laughing at something, I don't wonder about, sometimes I know that stuff that makes me laugh, it might be appealing to not necessarily the higher angels of my nature, but I fucking love laughing. And I love it when people say something that makes me laugh. But can it be wrong to be laughing? And I love it when I make people laugh. Can it be wrong to be laughing at something? No. Yes. I don't think so. Absolutely. I think that there's... Have you ever been laughed at? I've heard, you know, girl, doing comedy in the 80s in the comedy boom and on one nighters, I heard stuff that people laughed at that was reprehensible to me, that people were laughing at it. And comics, comics who got big laughs, who were horrible, who were hacky, and who had a really, and in the 80s, and it's in the mainstream comedy clubs, the one nighters that I worked, misogyny, homophobia, you know, was just rampant in comedians. Also the first 20 minutes of the show. Sam Kinnison was extremely misogynistic, extremely homophobic in his act. I guess later on he might have grown a little bit. Right. But that stuff did disturb me. And for my personal choice, I didn't laugh at it. I didn't think it was funny. Right. I don't revere Sam Kinnison the way other people do. I agree with you. Because of that. Whereas Andrew Dice Clay was an act. Well, the thing is, parts of Andrew Dice's Clay's act were like what Dennis Miller said about it, Fonzie with Tourette's. It was like this cartoonish character who was like an over-the-top sexist. But in parts of his act it was cartoonist and it had irony to it. It was if he was making fun of that kind of character. Whereas Kinnison meant it. Yes. Whereas Kinnison seemed to mean it. Yeah. So there is stuff that other people laugh at and that other people do as comedy that, yeah, I find it's horrible. But that's a personal choice that people make. But my goal as a comedian is to, I just want to make people laugh like crazy. And people, there are people who object to what I do. There are people who are mystery science theater fans who don't like that I do political comedy who think that it's a wrong direction for me. And I'm just okay with them thinking that way. I'm going to do what I'm going to do either way. Do you think Ann Coulter poisons minds? She, her own mind is poised. I don't know. She's a lunatic. It's well, it's, but the problem isn't Ann Coulter as much as the people who give her a form, the people who normalize her, the people like Chris Matthews who put her on, who put her on their show, the people like the Today Show they put her on. And it's like, well, now let's hear Ann Coulter's point of view. You don't agree with everything she says and she sure is outrageous, but let's hear what her point of view is. Let's go ahead and hear what she has to say anyways. Yeah. It completely normalizes hate speech and in our culture, in a democracy, you're allowed to normalize hate speech. Do I have the right to? They have every right to do it. I just, I don't agree with it. After the shooting Wednesday last week, Bill Crystal was on MSNBC and I tweeted out MSNBC, stop putting Bill Crystal on MSNBC. Yes. Because I think he poisons minds. And I think he's a war criminal. Yes. Do I have a right to criticize his speech? Yes, of course. So, of course you do. And discuss his speech. Yeah. Okay. And they have the right to put him on, but my thing that I'm always ranting about about the people who run MSNBC and the people who run CNN is that they're very, they're not patriots. They don't care about their country. They just care about putting these people on that are going to be provocative. These are the people who are really demeaning our culture. So, okay. Really, these are the people, it's not the comedians or any of the artists who are demeaning our culture. It's the people in the boardrooms who are normalizing people like Donald Trump. Okay. And Bill Crystal and you, you and all of these and Alex Jones and all of these crazy people. Right. I don't want Alex. Who have a right to say whatever they want, but you don't have to. They have an audience for what they do. You don't have to put them on him. So, NBC is wrong forgiven Megyn Kelly who has a history. A show in the, they're wrong for hiring Megyn Kelly in the first place. They're wrong for giving her $17 million. They're wrong for giving her a show. And they're wrong for letting her put Alex Jones on a show. They're wrong all the way down the line. So, why then? But they have a right to do it. They have a right to do it, but we need, we have a right to speak up. To speak up against. Does Eliza Schlesinger not only have a right, but a responsibility to say, I can close my eyes in any comedy club and hear the same jokes about a woman's pussy. In other words, she doesn't have a right to say. No, I strongly feel that like, yeah, political commentators, crazy people, whatever. You have every right to say like, you shouldn't be saying this. And everyone can say whatever they want about anybody's. But I think that when you start telling comedians what to say, I think that is dangerous. She just has an opinion about, she's expressing an opinion. But I'm just saying that when you start trying to, you know, regulate what comedians are saying. When people start saying, well, I don't feel like, I don't feel like what they said was in good taste. And then people start saying that comedians shouldn't be saying a certain thing. I think that is very dangerous. Is it, what about my saying, I don't believe that Bill Crystal should be allowed on MSNBC? I think that's different. Why? Because it's political. It's politics. I feel like that that that's different. When you're going on like a, no, I mean, like Louis C.K. isn't going on like a political platform and saying, and saying something. He's in a comedy space. And I feel like comedy and like those comedy clubs, those are sacred that you that they should be able to say whatever you want to say. Yes, I do. I feel like if you start telling comedians what to say and not to say, we are the frogs of this environment. If you kill the frogs, the environment will die. Because this is an open forum for people to say what people are actually feeling. And it's okay to laugh. But don't I have a right, doesn't Eliza have a right to suggest? She's right to suggest. She doesn't have a right to say. She's not calling for government censorship. She's saying to women, is it wrong to say it or what? Let me, let me, as a Jew, as a Jew, because we self-police. The Jews self-police. They do. I've said this a million times on the show. You will not see a Jew up on stage reinforcing stereotypes that are dangerous, that feed into the Holocaust. We self-police. Is self-policing wrong? Is it wrong for a woman to say, hey, you know, talk about your vaginas. It's important because I didn't, I'm only hearing about this the first time from you. I didn't follow the whole thing. I guess it was on Twitter with Eliza. I think what Eliza is saying. Because what might be the reaction to it is that maybe women, comedians just, they feel under siege anyway. And it might be upsetting to them that another woman is coming after them when we live in an environment now with Donald Trump as president and with Bill Cosby getting a mistrial, all this stuff that women feel really under siege today. And so it might be just that they were upset that another female was adding fuel to the fire. But not knowing anything about it, I would say. Then feel free to speak. I feel she has every right like anyone to say on Twitter whatever their opinion is. Right. It's like the N-word. Yes. People. Where's this going? Well, because after Michael Richards, a couple of African-Americans swore off the N-word. They said, you know what? We shouldn't say it. Do African-American Paul Mooney said, that's it. I'm done with the N-word. And also, some say they weren't going to watch Fridays anymore. Even I barely get it. Michael Richards was on Fridays. Yes. I have to annotate my show. That was in the 80s. Do African-American comedians have the right to issue edicts saying no more N-word? I don't think so. I don't feel like I have the right position to comment on that. Does Paul Mooney, as an elder statesman, have the right to say, you know what? We should lay off the N-word. He has the right to say he's not going to say it anymore. Right. And I think as Ice Cube said on Bill Maher, that it's our word. We can say it. You, sorry, white people, you can't have it. It's our word. But we can say it. Do you think African-Americans are conflicted about the use of the N-word? I'm not enough. I don't know. Yes, they are. I speak for all African-Americans. I think Alex is losing it. Okay. I think all African-Americans, we're going to wrap it up. I think all African-Americans are conflicted about the use of the N-word. And I think women are conflicted. I don't think all women are on the same page when it comes to pussy jokes. No, but I don't think all men are on the same page about dick jokes. I think we are. I don't think so. I think we go who cares. I think that's a sweeping generalization. That's what I traffic in on this show. All I'm saying is, if a Nazi, and I'm wrapping up, this is my closing... Hang on for one second. If a Nazi is his closing comment. If a Nazi rounds you up and takes you and your family, your Jewish family, to a concentration camp and removes your clothes and your hair. And the train is going at 35 miles an hour. How many do you know? And you're being put in the oven. Try to understand his point of view. That's all I'm saying. That's how I was raised. All right, folks. Try not to go take a shower. As you're being put into an oven by a Nazi. I think anyone listening to the show would agree this must never happen again. That's how I was raised. Try to understand the other side. Frank, let's plug some gigs. I'll be in July. Go to TheMadsAreBack.com and TheMadsAreBack Facebook page to find out about all our traceable UNI, our upcoming gigs. Why don't we do this? Before we go, tell everybody what you're doing and how they reach you. Very quick. Not quickly. Just you'll get the last word. Go to my Twitter, Frank Conif, Facebook Frank Conif. And you'll find out about all my gigs, including Columbus, Ohio and Denver, Colorado in July. Woo-hoo. And buckles. I'm working on Search Party right now. What is that? It's a show that airs on TBS. It should be airing sometime in October, so keep your eye out for that. That was on already. Yes, the season two. We're shooting season two right now. Cool. And then I have a show with Lacey Jekka. We're fighting, and that will be at the Knitting Factory on September 2nd. And how's Colin's show coming along? It's good. Alex just saw it two weeks ago, Alex. Yeah, it's good. Colin Furth, one of the funniest actors. I'm going to kill myself. Good night. Today, Georgia holds a special election to pick a congressman, representing the state's six congressional district. The district was represented by Republican Tom Price until he was sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Will it be Democrat John Ossoff or Republican Karen Handel? And it's turning out to be the most expensive congressional race in American history. For more on this, we are honored to have with us Congressman Alan Grayson, who was the United States representative for Florida's ninth congressional district. Why is it the most expensive one in American history? Well, it's actually for a good reason. What's happened is that small donors who fueled Bernie Sanders' campaign, who fueled my last two House races when I was the only member of the House out of 435 of us who raised most of his money from small donors, small donors who fueled my Senate campaign, who raised more than half of our money from small donors for our Senate campaign, those small donors have poured money into that race more than any other campaign. This is not a situation where the Democratic candidate, likely Republican candidate, is spending all this time on the telephone begging rich people for cash. He's actually free to go out and campaign the same way that I was, and I was free to go out and pass legislation because of the strength of our small donor program and the fundraising from it. Karen Handel has raised a respectable $4 million last time I looked, and our Democratic candidate has raised over $20 million. And by the way, it's not entirely unprecedented that Allen West, that lunatic congressman from one term from South Florida, Allen West actually raised $14 million. No, I think actually it's closer to $20 million for his campaign, and he did that largely almost entirely from small donors. In his case, it was a direct mail. In Asup's case, it's by Internet ads. But in any other case, what you're seeing is something that we ought to cherish, which is the fact that people are putting where their hearts may be, and they're putting their money behind it. They're putting their money behind their hearts. That's an interesting development, which bodes well for progressivism and for democracy. If there is a way forward out of the oligarchy, out of the putocracy, out of the control that rich people, the national corporations have over our political system, it's if we see one candidate after another after another, who has nothing to anybody but the voters. Has it ever been illegal for out-of-state businessmen to contribute to a congressional candidate? In other words, it's against the law for Putin to finance a presidential race. Could it ever be or was it ever illegal for somebody in New York to fund a congressional race in Florida? I can't claim to have encyclopedic knowledge of that, but my understanding is that in state races and in local county type races, there have been restrictions on out-of-state money. I don't remember seeing any kind of restriction like that in house races, and frankly, I'm not sure that it would be constitutional, given what the Supreme Court has said about that. The right that you have according to the Supreme Court to spend your money to participate in elections would not necessarily be restricted to your own personal geography. But that would be a solution, wouldn't it? Yes, but if the Supreme Court says for better or for worse, the Supreme Court says that David Koch has the right to influence congressional and Senate elections, they're not just talking about congressional and Senate elections in his state. They'd be talking about congressional and Senate elections all around the country. If you think of that as a constitutional right, it's an American constitutional right, not a Kansas or Californian or New York constitutional right. People have questioned whether it is a constitutional right at all, but once you reach that threshold, it seems like you'd need some kind of national role, not a state-by-state role. I think I read that a local affiliate down in Georgia had to add an extra half hour of their news to accommodate all the TV advertising that's coming from the two candidates. Did you hear something to that effect? Yeah, I mean, Yossoff, the Democratic candidate spending around $7 million just in the last few weeks on TV. If I recall correctly, Allen West spent $6 or $7 million in his house race on TV, so that doesn't really surprise me. What surprised me and what disappoints me is the kind of ads that we're seeing run. The other side started early making ad hominem attacks against the Democrat. They're particularly enamored of a clip from when he was a college student that shows him dressing up as a Star Wars character. He's 30 years old now. On the other hand, when you look at the ads that our side has run against, Karen Handel, who's the Republican candidate, they're really meek. They're not very persuasive. Karen Handel was Secretary of State in Georgia and instituted a brutal voter suppression program that was so bad that the Department of Justice had to get an order against her to make her stop. She stole votes from tens of thousands of Georgians before they stopped her. She would send out letters to people claiming they were not citizens, when in fact they were. This is related to the national cross-check program that has stolen votes from millions of people around the country thanks to Republicans. I haven't seen any ads about that. Karen Handel was also the number two person and the author of the policy at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure organization, an organization that exists to fight breast cancer when she cut off the funding to plan parenthood from the Komen organization for breast cancer screenings. She cut off funding for breast cancer screenings when she was in charge of an organization to fight breast cancer. What was her title with Susan Komen? Second in command, she was Vice President and she was Vice President for policy. When The Atlantic and Slate magazine looked into this, they found that she was the author of that endeavor to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. They asked her why she said because Planned Parenthood as an organization is pro-choice. They said, well, that's not the point. Planned Parenthood is doing breast cancer screenings for poor women. That's what your organization exists for. She said, well, that's against my convictions. The Komen organization reversed that policy after four days because of the enormous uproar against a cancer organization not giving money to fight cancer. She resigned in disgrace. Again, a very compelling story, one you could tell in 30 seconds. I just did tell it in 30 seconds, but that's not what the ads are. So what I'm worried about is that we're spending a staggering amount of money. The other side knows how to go for the jugular and apparently we don't. How does it look so far? Ossoff seems to be ahead in the polls. I think it's really, really close and I don't think that's how I read the polls. There have been 15 polls done so far heading back to March where they're head to head. There's only two candidates left on the ballot. There's no third party candidates. Ossoff, Handel, and that's it. And in 13 of those 15 polls, undecided held the balance. In other words, neither candidate reached 50% plus one, neither candidate. In two of the 15 polls so far, Ossoff had a majority of 51%. So neither candidate in any poll has reached 52%. That's pretty close. This is a district I think Romney won by 22 points over Obama. So it is a red district. Is it still considered a red district or is it what they call them purple? It's purple according to the last presidential election. If I recall correctly, Trump won it by two. And with early voting ending on Friday, would you think that the news is helping Ossoff? What do you mean by the news? The stuff that's coming out with the special counsel and Trump, would you say that the voters who are voting early are turned off by Trump? Well, I'm worried about the fact that Clinton came very close to knocking off Trump in this district before all of the revelations about Russia and Trump's potential collusion with the Russians to try to swing the election in exchange for releasing sanctions against Russia and everything else he will have to live through for the last five months. And despite the utter misery that the Trump administration has inflicted on America and in part on itself through his shenanigans, nevertheless, it's still a close election. The nationwide polls lately seem to indicate that the Democrats have something like a six or seven point lead nationally. Based upon the fact that he's already turned into possibly the worst president for a lifetime, maybe we should be looking at a 15 point lead. I don't know if John's going to win or lose. I just don't know. I definitely hope he wins, but it's disconcerting to me that it's even close. Right. In terms of the narrative, and I hate to bring that up, but if it's close, it doesn't mean anything. If it's a blowout, then Trump isn't a lot of trouble, right? Then he starts losing all the Republicans who march in lockstep because then they start fearing for their jobs. Well, I think that a win for the Democrats, significant regardless, and I'll tell you why, because of gerrymandering, Trump won 230 districts. You need 218 districts for majority of the house. There's 435 of us. If the election were held and the exact same results came in next year as occurred last year, then the Republicans would win 230 seats and the Democrats would come up 12 seats short of a majority or 13 seats sort of majority. If we take a seat from them that they won last year, a seat that not only Tom Price won as the incumbent congressman, but also Trump won by a narrow amount, whether it was 2% or 1%, whatever it was, then they start to say, well, we don't have much of a margin for error here. We need to hold on to those 230 seats. We start to give seats to them that we won last year. That implies that not only are some of us in danger, but it also implies that we might lose the house. Even a narrow victory in a seat like this is somewhat significant, but a blowout would be catastrophic for them, because if the electorate has moved, let's say 10% from last year to this year or from this year to next year against them, they'll definitely lose the house. I was warned that there would be math involved. Let me go back to the 2016 election results. Are you saying that the political will was there for Trump? In other words, that the if you look at the congressional results that even though he lost the electoral college, there was still a political will for Donald Trump and the Republicans in the last election. Because of gerrymandering, even though Trump lost the popular vote by three and a half million votes or something approaching that, nevertheless, the Republicans won 230 congressional districts. Only 218 are enough for a majority. Right. Because of gerrymandering, the Republicans have a built-in advantage in the House of Representatives that amounts to something like 12 seats. It's my understanding that in the past, the Republicans have won the House, but lost the popular vote for the House. But this time around, they won the House and the popular vote for the House. I would have to look that up. I don't remember. The premise of your question is correct though. There certainly have been times that they've won while losing the popular vote. I think that happened, for instance, in 2012. Right. But it does speak to your concern that Trump is still more popular than he should be. Yes. I mean, for goodness sake, I don't have to tell you the things that we've had to live through since January 20th. It's been a nightmare. I mean, just the specter of a president colluding with the foreign power and offering them favors in order to be elected, just the specter of that is shocking to most people. And then beyond that, the things that Trump actually has done in office. I mean, he has cheered on the House to pass a bill that denies health coverage to 30 million Americans and kill roughly 300,000 of them. That's a horrific number. He said it's mean. Yes, but he held a signing ceremony without actually signing it on his lawn. He invited the Republicans over to the White House to cheer the fact that passed what he now describes the mean bill. He's betrayed our allies. He's tried to provoke a war with North Korea. He stole the Supreme Court appointing from us. He is brazenly violating the Constitution by taking money from foreign governments in his personal business affairs. He wants to hand trillions of dollars in tax breaks to himself and to what he obviously considers as a needy rich. And he wants to deport children from this country who literally can't remember living anywhere else in their entire lives. Not to mention the fact that he wants to legitimate and institutionalize racism and bigotry with his wall between the United States and Mexico and his ban on travel from Muslim countries. Is Karen Handel distancing herself from Trump? She invited him to the district to campaign with her and she also did a fundraiser with him. Is gerrymandering constitutional? The Supreme Court on Monday said that it would consider whether or not partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution. I guess there's such thing as racial gerrymandering that they've said violates the 14th Amendment. What is the difference between partisan gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering if the Republicans are the party of racists, wouldn't partisan and racist gerrymandering be the same thing? Well, in my opinion, the Constitution should be read as prohibiting gerrymandering in all forms, including political gerrymandering. The distinction that you're referring to is the fact that long ago the Supreme Court decided that you could not draw the lines in such a way so that you excluded African-Americans or other minorities from representation. So, I mean, to give you an example, let's say you have a state that is 60% white and 40% African-American. Actually, I just described Mississippi more or less. Those are not too far from the real numbers in Mississippi. The Supreme Court said you can't draw, let's say, five different districts in a state like that. Every single district has exactly 60% whites and 40% African-Americans because the whites may band together and you'll end up with five white congressmen and zero African-American congressmen instead of three white congressmen and two African-American congressmen. So, you now have to draw the lines in such a way so that you dilute the minority vote to the point where people can no longer choose to be represented by their own group. The Supreme Court decided that a long time ago. That was a long-standing Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court has from time to time rejected the idea that it is going to stop congressmen or state senators or state representatives from being directly under the base of a party. So, let's say you've got a state that is 60% Republican and 40% Democrat. According to law up to this point, and we'll see what the Supreme Court decided within this new case, but according to law up to this point, if that state has five members of Congress, it would be constitutional for the Republicans to draw the lines in such a way so that every single district is 60% Republican and 40% Democratic. And you end up with five Republican congressmen and zero Democratic congressmen. In fact, that is essentially what they've done in Michigan, in Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin, in several other states. I mean, to be fair about it, that's pretty much what the Democrats have done in Illinois. But the Republicans they indicated before have a built-in advantage in the House of Representatives because of the net effect of gerrymandering in the two dozen states that they control, where they control the entire state legislature and they also have a Republican governor. So, what was the constitutional amendment that you introduced? I introduced the first constitutional amendment to actually ban political gerrymander, to say that you can't favor one party or the other. The reason why I was familiar with that is because I helped to enact the Florida state constitutional ban against political gerrymander. I was the first large personal donor to the effort to put that on the ballot. And the Florida voters in their wisdom by 63%, 37% decided to end political gerrymandering in Florida, as well as any other form of gerrymandering. We did that by amending our state constitution. So, what I did was I took the successful state constitutional amendment that had passed with my help. And I put it in for, I suggested that we amend the national constitution in exactly the same matter. How do you solve the issue of gerrymandering other than electing every congressman at large and giving up constituent services? I'm wondering if that's not the worst idea. How important is constituent services? It's not bad. It's that that actually facilitates the result that I just described. If you've got a state that is 60% Republican and 40% Democratic and all five members of Congress in this hypothetical state are elected at large, then for sure, since that state 60% Republican and 40% Democratic, all five members of Congress from that state will be Republicans. And in fact, at large representation is one of the tools of gerrymandering that the just department has struck down in many places around the country, including one of our counties in my district. There was an at large selection of county commissioners in my district, in one of the counties in my district that was struck down as being unconstitutional because it diluted minority voting. This requires a lot more time. Well, sure, but I'll just tell you that it's painfully simple. The voters should choose their elected officials. The elected officials should not choose their voters. There it is in a nutshell. I believe Eric Holder and President Obama are dedicating much of their career now to the 2020 census and gerrymandering. We're hearing a lot about civility after the shooting last Wednesday. The issue was we have to dial back the rhetoric. Was that your first reaction to the shooting that we need to watch what we say? I don't think this shooting was motivated by rhetoric. The shooting was motivated by lunatic taking gun and shooting at people. I don't think that the actions of a crazy person are somehow attributable to the actions of rational people who are making persuasive cases in the body politic. I don't think there's the same. I don't think so. Tom Brokaw was on Meet the Press yesterday saying the problem is we just don't know how to communicate with one another anymore. It's infuriating to hear that, isn't it? Let's look at the unibomber, okay? This is a case that most of us ruin. It's a unibomber. Do you think the unibomber was motivated by a lack of political civility? I don't think so. I mean, this is a terrible thing to have to even talk about, but it just so happens that the worst mass shooting in history took place eight blocks out of my district. The pulse shooting in Orlando. 50 people died in a matter of minutes. Do you think that was motivated by a lack of political civility? Right. It was motivated by easy access. A lunatic with a gun. That's right. A lunatic with a gun that shot very quickly. Now look, as I said at the time, you can't control what's in people's heads, but you can control what's in their hands. And I don't think that pearl clutching about political discourse is the answer to all of our problems. Steve Scalise, what's in store for him now? Because we moved on past Gabby Gifford. You know, he was shot in the hip. He's got years of rehabilitation, but we're going to move on. What's in store for him for the next couple of years and his family? Well, already a great tragedy, of course, needless to say. I mean, in Gabby's case, it was blistering because, you know, those of us who are newer, and I knew her quite well, her office is directly above mine. We used to often bump into each other as we were walking across the street to vote. We served on the same committees and on the same sub-committees together in Congress in my first term. You know, Gabby's never been the same and never will be the same. I'm going to ask you a rude question. It's not an attack on Gabby Giffords. It's an attack on the system and why it is the way it is. She was shot. She had political capital when she returned to Congress. She used her political capital, as I recall, to convince Republicans to raise the debt ceiling. She got a standing ovation and I remember watching that thinking LBJ used the Kennedy assassination. He had political capital. He used that to pass the civil rights acts. Some say Kennedy had not been assassinated. Johnson wouldn't have had the political capital to do that. Gabby Giffords had the political capital and she used it to raise the debt ceiling, not speak out on gun control. Why? Gabby started an organization called Citizens for Responsible Solutions. After she quit Congress? Yes, that's entirely dedicated toward gun safety and actually promoting and assisting pro-gun safety candidates. But why could she not do it? That is her issue. But why wasn't it her issue? And again, I don't mean to be disrespectful and I know she represented a district, a pro-gun district in Arizona. That's correct. But why can't a congressperson have a come to Jesus moment while they're in Congress? Why does it have to happen after? It's not really that way. I mean there are members of Congress now who are outspoken proponents of gun safety. There are people who have taken it upon themselves to make that their issue, if you will, and they exist. They don't get a lot of air time because that's not the way they do their work. But there are people who are outspoken advocates for gun control and against assault weapons, for instance. And frankly, after the pulse shooting, I was one of them. I mean, I was on national TV a number of times explaining what I just explained to you, which is that it's far easier to control the weapon in people's hands than the ideas that float into their heads. So I think such people exist, such members of Congress exist, and it is not exactly a forlaw and cause. I mean, we had a 10-year ban on assault weapons in the United States, just simply wasn't renewed. So it's not impossible that such a thing would happen. It's harder over time, I think, but unfortunately, the tragedies keep coming. And the political will within the NRA is for an assault weapons ban. It's run like the Politburo, the NRA. I believe me. I think it's worse than that. During one of the recent election cycles, the NRA did not endorse a single Democratic candidate for Congress in the entire state of Florida. We have 27 districts in Florida. You think they could have found somebody they liked? I mean, basically, the NRA is the sort of the gun arm of the Republican Party to whip up the public to take extreme positions in favor of the Republican Party. It's an entirely partisan organization at this point. The NRA represents gun manufacturers, not sportsmen. Well, if you look at where their money comes from, that seems to be correct. But their motivations, whatever they may be, don't really account for the harm that they do. The harm that they do is reflecting the fact that every year, we have some five-figure number of deaths in the United States that are directly attributable to the firing of a firearm. People in Congress know this. Mike Thompson, who's a congressman in California from Northern California, has been making an issue of this for years. He's not the only one. Sometimes it's somebody like Mike who represents a suburban district. Sometimes it's somebody from an urban district. One of the members of Congress from Chicago has been extremely outspoken against assault weapons because of a huge number of gun deaths in Chicago in the last few years. So, we come to these views from a variety of different places, but what we all know is that these lives could be saved. I'm being told on the congressional election in Georgia's six that the Republican congressmen are watching it because if John Ossoff wins, it's going to scare all these Republican congressmen. And they're going to turn their back on Trump because the way democracy works is Congress people are always looking at for themselves. That's the beauty of the system. And I think if I'm a congressman, especially a Republican congressman, I don't care if I win or lose because if I lose, I'm going to go get a great job over at K Street and become a lobbyist and get even richer. I'll cash out. How many of these Republican congressmen are afraid of losing their seats? Well, the answer to your question is 50. It's not 50. It's funny because if people think politicians never answer questions, I just did. Yes. How many of them? I said 50. Not 49. Not 52. The answer is 50. There's a lot of math on today's show. My head is spinning. Yeah. There's about 50 seats where you can picture in a wave election that the Republican candidate would lose. There's something called the PVI. It's Charlie Cook who's a political consultant created it. And basically it mixes together the results of the last two presidential elections. It's called the Cook Partisan Voting Index, which is abbreviated as the PVI. And the theory is that if the PVI in your district is heavily Democratic, meaning that twice in a row, the Democratic presidential candidate won, or heavily Republican, there's no particular reason why the votes can be different for you. Because in most cases today, people don't know their Congress. And in fact, in most cases people only know the Vice President is. They'll go look it up. You'll find that that's the case. So if you're talking about like, you know, the typical district, people tend to vote the party rather than a specific candidate for Congress. And I think that's true even now. I mean, I think most people meet Ossoff-Handel race who are not voting for Ossoff-Handel. They're voting for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. They're voting for the Trump Party or the anti-Trump Party, as the case may be. So if you're in a district like Jose Serrano's, where in the last two presidential races, the Democratic candidate won by 44 points. That's an actual number, by the way. In the Jose Serrano's district, which is a Hispanic district in Manhattan and the Bronx, the Democratic candidate won by 44 points. You're just not going to lose. The only way you lose is if you don't run. You don't get the nomination. But whoever has the nomination is done. And you know, the same thing is true on the other side. There are districts in Texas and Georgia and Utah and Alabama and Tennessee and Oklahoma, where the nomination is what the race is all about and the race is over way before November. Whoever is the Republican nominee is just going to get into Congress the next time. There's just no two ways about it. So there's only about 50 Republican members of Congress who are in districts that the Republican presidential candidates won by less than 10, or they won by less than 10. That's pretty much the sort of mental dividing line. If you're a member of Congress and you won by double digits, you don't think too hard about whether you're going to win next time or not. If you won by better than 55 to 45, you don't think too hard about what you don't worry too much about it. And the same thing is true on both sides in that regard. We tend to take seats that are less than r plus five. They tend to take seats that we have when they take any seats of ours that are less than D plus five. My seat was a D plus six seat when I had it. Originally, when I ran for Congress, I ran a Republican district in 2008 and I won. I snatched away a seat from them that was an r plus five seat, which was a tremendous coup. My district had not had a Democrat in Congress for 34 years when I won it. That's how stable it was as a Republican district being an r plus five. That's sort of how it goes. There are 50 Republican members of Congress who are keeping an eye on the polls, raising whatever money they can from lobbyists and rich people and multinational corporations and working it for their next campaign. I think I was pretty much know that it would take an enormous wave election to even make it interesting in their districts, much less put them at risk. So the answer is 50. You still didn't answer my question. It was a great answer and I'm honored that you're on my show, but you didn't answer my question. I'm going to rephrase it. Okay. Go ahead. You went to Harvard undergrad. You went to Harvard Law School. You became, I don't know how you made money, but you made money on your own before you turned to Congress because you were interested in the ultimate game, which is I'm being presumptuous here, but I think it's true for somebody like you, where you say, all right, I've won at law. I won at academia. I won in business. Now I want to do some good. I'm going to go to Congress. So you like being a congressman. You're a Democrat. Well, I think I'm pretty good at it. Yeah. I passed 120 pieces of legislation in four years. Nobody else in Congress did that. You're one of our heroes on the show. Now my reading of Republicans, and this is prejudice, but it's true. They're not well educated. If they are educated, they're mercenaries. This new woman brand who's going to be third in command over at the Justice Department, she went through all the right schools, but she was groomed by the federalists. She's a tool of the Koch brothers. They're in it for the money. They don't view government as a good thing. They go there really to take a vacation. That's why you become a Republican congressman. That's the beauty of being a Republican congressman. You don't have to do anything because you're supposed to slow the wheels down. If you're a Republican congressman, aren't you still going to toe the line? Not be afraid of losing because it doesn't matter if you lose. You're in it for the money. You leave Congress and you go be a lobbyist for Boeing or for Citigroup. It's just another job you're going to get. It's all about the money. Are they really frightened of losing their seat, or do they enjoy being in Congress? If so, why? Why would you enjoy being a Congressperson if you're a Republican? That's a lot of questions, but I think you can answer it. Why would you want to be a Congressperson? It depends on the person. There are plenty of Republican members of Congress who, in their own view, want to make the world a better place. I'll tell you, there's a libertarian caucus Congress. They don't call themselves that because they're libertarians. They can do whatever they want. It's a defined group that knows who they are. They're not interested in graduating to become lobbyists. They're motivated people who believe that government heavily restricts individual freedom, and they want to try to change that. It's a coherent worldview that gives meaning to them and their work in Congress. We have progressives in Congress who, on our side, feel the same way. Not everybody is selling out, even among Republicans. I think it's just not accurate to say that they're all just serving time until they graduate to be lobbyists, and frankly, there's an awful lot of Democrats who do exactly the same thing. It is true that there is a divide in Congress between people who want to be something and people who want to do something, but that's true of both parties. If you are a Republican and you're running for office, especially be a Congressperson, your job is to go to Congress, toe the line, not say anything, don't be a troublemaker, and make sure nothing gets accomplished. Your job is to just do what Paul Ryan tells you to do. That's my understanding of it. You're just a tool. I know they're the people like Rand Paul, and you said the libertarians. They're the exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, these 50 Congress people, these Republicans who are afraid of losing their seats, they don't have any core principles other than keeping the money coming in. There are many members of Congress who are Republicans and want to do things. The problem is not that they don't want to do things, the problem is they're all bad things. They're Republicans who want to ban abortion, to give you one example. They're Republicans who want to drive this country into enormous debt so that they can eliminate corporate income taxes. There are Republicans who want to build a 50-foot wall between the United States and Mexico. Trump's not the only one. There are Republicans who want to deport 12 million people, including all the dreamers. There are Republicans who want to make it virtually impossible for black people to vote because so many of them are Democrats, and so on and so forth down the line. It's not like they don't have a legislative agenda. They do have a legislative agenda, and it's horrifying. Right now, right in our faces is their legislative agenda to make it impossible for people who have existing health conditions to get insurance. That's 43 million people for God's sake. So no, it's not that they're simply there to do nothing. I mean, you quickly learned that one reason why the Republicans hate government is that they're so bad at it. They're just not very good at legislating. I put my legislative chops against any of them any time, but that doesn't change the fact that they'd like to. It doesn't change the fact that when they do have power in places like Wisconsin, in places like Pennsylvania, in places like Florida, they use it ruthlessly. Every year, Kansas, another example, every year the Chamber of Commerce in Florida comes out with a legislative wish list and every year of the 10 items they put on our legislative wish list, they get either 9 of them or 10 of them every single year. So yeah, they'd be happy to legislate if they could get their shit together and if they could wish away Senate filibusters and so on and so forth. They're not just like putting in time at all. They have an agenda and it's a bad one. Right. Congressman Allen Grayson represented Florida's ninth congressional district and please come back as soon as possible. Okay, thanks for the invitation and thanks for putting a good show on the air that is thought provoking and honest. If you're enjoying today's show, please share it on Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Dig, Reddit, copy and paste the link to this show and share it with all your friends via email. Spread the laughs, spread the knowledge, spread the love. It's Tuesday. So you know what that means? Time once again for Fridays with Corey. Oh, we switched it so that it would be the right thing. It's Fridays with Corey. I don't know. We can't come up with the right name for this segment. Right. Professor Corey Bret Schneider is one of our country's leading experts on the United States Constitution. He co-wrote a recent amicus brief that helped strike down the travel ban. He appears on the BBC. His writing can be seen in the New York Times and countless law journals and for some reason he's decided to give me a free legal education and I will return the favor by suing him for everything he's got. Welcome, sir. You might hear some noise in the background. They are... Thank you. And it's an interesting way to welcome people that threaten to sue them. I haven't heard you do that before, but thank you. Well, the words of the jerky boys... Sue everybody. Do you remember the jerky boys? I do remember them. Yeah, I do. Should do their podcasts. Next. I love the jerky boys. Let's talk about a couple of things today. We're going to talk about this new trademark case about the slants that I think made it to the Supreme Court. Is that correct? Not only made it, they decided the case today. We'll get to that in a second. We'll talk about separation of powers in relation to our involvement in Afghanistan and the... Do you hear that in the background? I do, yeah. That's not me, though. Right. That's what I... They're doing something to the bricks outside. I'm going to sue them, too. And we'll talk about freedom of speech and John Stuart Mill. We'll talk about Oliver Wendell Holmes, Alexander Mikkeljohn. And do I have everything? Yes. That's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah, we got a lot to do. And I'm reading your book. And it's a lot harder. It turns out reading law is a lot harder than BSing about it. Yeah. It's more fun to just give lots of opinions, I guess, Linda. Yeah. And I had trouble understanding John Stuart Mill. Could not read it. Yeah, that was your main assignment for today, wasn't it? On liberty. Yeah, I read Hugo Black's Supreme Court decision on freedom of speech. That was readable. Couple things in Chapter 2 are readable, but I found John Stuart Mill. We'll get to that later. Let's talk about the Supreme Court they issued a ruling on the slants. Who were the slants? This is a band that is an Asian-American band that took this racial slur and used it in their name as a way of kind of reclaiming it, I think, is the way that they see it. And they applied for a trademark and they were denied. And they contested the denial by claiming that their free speech rights were violated. And this has made it all the way to the Supreme Court. And actually, just a few minutes ago, the decision was released in favor of the band. They won their free speech case. Explain that to me again, because I was trying to pot down the drilling noise in the background. So this band used this racial slur as their name. Are they Asian? They are Asian, yes. And they're trying to kind of reclaim the name, I think, is the idea. That's why they've tried to trademark it and why they use it as their band name. But the trademark was denied to them on the grounds that there's a statute that says basically that you can't disparage people in a trademark. And they fought back saying, look, first of all, we're not disparaging anyone. We're using this name to try to reclaim this slur and to use it in a way that robs it of its hatred towards Asian Americans and that stands up to bigotry. And they also said that we can do whatever we want under the First Amendment when it comes to our trademark. We can express an opinion as we like, not whatever we want, but we certainly are free to express an opinion or as the court tends to talk about it a viewpoint. Now, there's an argument on the other side, which is that when it comes to granting trademark, the government isn't regulating private speech. Some people said they're trying to send their own messages about what's okay or what's not. And in conferring a trademark, you're conferring benefits. And the government doesn't want to confer benefits upon people who are using slurs. That was their argument. So you had these two doctrines opposing one another, the free speech idea of the band and the government's idea that the government itself is speaking. And so they could discriminate based on viewpoints. And the slants won this case just a few minutes ago. So I don't know anything about copyright and trademark. They're brothers and sisters, right? Copyright and trademark. That's right, yeah. The mark is more about the name in particular and trying to get protection for a particular name or yeah. So if I were to say print a poster that has the word slants in it, I would have to put the TM next to it? Now you would. I mean, they were denied the mark, but right, that's the outcome right now, exactly. That's pretty funny. It's got all sorts of complicated issues about, I guess, satire and questions of hate speech. All these things, I think, are mixed in with this one. It's a related case just for listeners to see that it's not just about this one case. Of course, it's about the issue. And the Washington DC football team, of course, has been in a battle about whether or not they should be able to be entitled to use a slur in regard to Native Americans as their trademark. And they've been denied that mark as well. And they might, as a result of this case, there's a good chance that they'll also be victorious. That is not, unlike this band name, an instance of trying to reclaim a slur. To me anyway, it seems like they're just using a slur. So cases have all sorts of implications that aren't an issue in the immediate decision. Who is behind this case? It seems to me, I hate to bring up Dred Scott, but wasn't Dred Scott kind of staged to bring it to the Supreme Court? I think that from what I can tell, it's genuinely the band that just wants this trademark and thinks that they think that they're... Well, that wasn't my question, Professor. Okay, sorry. It seems to me that certain Supreme Court cases are staged by lawyers to get them to the Supreme Court. I think Dred Scott was staged in order to put up before the Supreme Court. I should look into it more, but I think from my understanding of the case, it really, the litigants just want the trademark. And I'm not sure that they would have minded if they just were able to win this at an earlier stage and it wouldn't have required going to this level, the highest level of the American court system. They're making a larger point though, obviously. Maybe. I'm not sure. I should look into it. I shouldn't speculate about what their motives are. Certainly that's true of some people that they bring cases because they want to make law, not because they want to win their particular case. And it's a dilemma in this travel ban case that we keep talking about in depth. Do you want to have the Supreme Court come in and really vindicate your position in a way that will be historic, or do you want to just win in the lower courts? And that's... With all this litigation, that's a tension. I mean, ideally, it shouldn't be up to the lawyers. It should be about the people who are involved in the cases because in the end, that's the people whose rights are at stake. Back to the Supreme Court ruling. If on this show, I have a sketch called The Slants, am I allowed to do that, or do they own the word? I think they own it. No, it doesn't. You can't trademark an idea or even a word or keep people from using it. My understanding is that the intellectual property rules are really about using it as a name. So if you were to try to call your show that name or to create... I don't know if you play music, but to form a band and use that name, then you'd be in trouble because they now have the mark. But no, just talk using the word or trying to use it in a sketch or satire. I think your own First Amendment free speech rights would protect you there. So what is the significance of this ruling down the line? How will it inform the use of the N-word or the C-word? I mean, one immediate thing is this, I think that the Washington football team will win their case. But it also helps to clarify this pretty complicated area of law, the court. My main interest, if you can believe it before Donald Trump was elected, was in free speech and license plates. There was a huge case that was at the forefront of First Amendment free speech law about whether you could deny the Dixie flag being on the license plate of Texas. Texas had denied the Dixie flag. Now, Texas won that case even though it looks like to some like it was a limit on free speech. And the idea was that the government's got the ability to send its own messages or to speak. And that's what this book that I wrote that we've talked about several times is about. And this clarifies that area of law. How do we know when the government is speaking? For instance, when it's putting up public monuments and where it has to send its own ideas. So the government puts up monuments about Martin Luther King. We have a Martin Luther King Day monument. It's not required to put up monuments for Southern segregationists. It's discriminating based on the ideas and approving of some and disapproving of others. Now, government definitely can't do that when it's putting people in prison. It can't imprison you because you criticize the president or for your ideas. But here, this is a complicated issue. Well, the trademark, what is that? Is that like the monuments case or is it like putting somebody in jail? Is it a free speech issue or is it the government speaking? And the court has as it often does started to clarify what is protected free speech and what's an unprotected government speech. And here they've said trademark is clearly private speech that's that's protected when it comes to opinion. Was that clear? There was a lot there. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about separation of powers. One of the stories coming out of Washington is that Donald Trump, commander in chief, for the time being, he is leaving the decisions on day to day military matters to the Pentagon. Afghanistan, by the way, our involvement there is now 16 years. We've been fighting a war in Afghanistan for 16 years. We have 8,800 troops stationed there. Trump has new policy when it comes to Afghanistan, but it was announced by our defense secretary, Jim Mattis, who says he'll be sending an additional about 4,000 troops into Afghanistan. When I ask you about civilian control, there was a thing called the Mattis waiver. In order for Jim Mattis to become defense secretary, the Senate had to pass what was called the Mattis waiver because he had been a general. There has to be, I think, seven years between the time a general leaves the military and becomes the head of the Pentagon because we believe in civilian control of the military. Talk to me about the Constitution. Is that enshrined in the Constitution that the army must be supervised by civilians? Absolutely. Well, the ultimate place that it's enshrined is in the, you know, who is the commander in chief? It could be a military general, it could be in charge of an army. And in our Constitution, it's clear that the president of the United States, who is a civilian, is the head of the, not just the army, but all of the armed forces. Now, there are certain traditions, I think, that come out of that to ensure civilian control. One is to really make the cabinet member who reports directly to the president, now the secretary of defense, also clearly a civilian. But the ultimate, you know, authority of over the military has to rest with the, not with the military itself, but with an elected government official, mainly. In the Emoluments Clause, it seems to me, because I've been studying. I know, you're doing your homework big time. I am. Hard to keep up. Star student. In the Emoluments Clause, as I understand it, you're not allowed to take money from a foreign government, but you're also not allowed to hold two offices if you're the president. You can only be, I'm not sure it's the Emoluments Clause, but I was reading about the Emoluments Clause, and this was also brought up. So I don't know where it is in the Constitution, but if you're president, you cannot have another job in the government. Is that? Well, I mean, it's the same logic as the Emoluments Clause. You're not supposed to benefit from foreign or domestic government. And so, you know, your one benefit is supposed to be your government salary as president, and I would think if you're having multiple positions, and that does look like a violation of the domestic Emoluments Clause. You're going to look like Charlie Rose. It's like his name. You're going to look like Charlie Rose. Yeah. Does he have multiple jobs? Oh, my God. He's on Channel 2, CBS This Morning. He's on Channel 13. So I bring this up because General Eisenhower became president. General Grant became president. Were they concerned that a general would become commander in chief? George Washington was a commander in chief. Yeah. He was the general. What provisions do they place in the Constitution to prevent somebody in the military from also becoming president? You can't have two jobs, in other words. That's one of them. Yeah. I mean, a lot of what's done is done by tradition, I guess, and although we've had military generals who have become president, they've clearly distinguished between their role as president and their role as the head of the armed forces now. I guess one theme that we've been pushing is there's nothing about this stuff that's written in stone. So could a former military official who becomes president at some point really tie together the military and the government in a way that was dangerous? Yes. I mean, maybe it's happening already. That was the famous warning by Eisenhower that there was a sort of informal network of the military and government that were cooperating in a way that was undermining the independence of the civilian government. Interestingly, that came from a general, a former general who knew something about this. All the questions you're asking, I wouldn't want to pretend that just because the Constitution is set up in a certain way that it protects us from the dangers that you're alluding to. It's active vigilance, oversight, tradition, recognition of norms, those are the things that protect us. But there is nothing in the document itself that can absolutely guarantee against it. And here's why. The president ultimately does control the military. And so, you know, there are legal limits, but they could be undermined. He can undermine them. Yeah, that's my worry. Sure. I mean, it's such a powerful office being commander of, I mean, take for instance, we've talked before about the threats at least or the illusions by advisors to disregard judicial orders. Imagine that the president of the United States in the future decided, you know what, I'm not going to listen to the Supreme Court. What is it that actually prevents him from having to comply? In the end, it's just a norm that he does comply or she does comply. But a president who really wanted to go rogue and to just stop basically listening to the other branches, including the judiciary, because they control the military, it's why it's such a dangerous position. I don't know in the end what the ultimate check is. I mean, I guess the military could at one point refuse to comply with orders that it deemed illegal. But, you know, that's not a great, I don't know, reassurance that it won't happen. Wasn't that one of the tenants established after the Nuremberg trials that just because you're issued an order, it doesn't mean you should obey it? Yes. I mean, it's not an excuse to commit a war crime, for instance, if you're commanded to do so. So the Nuremberg defense of many of the accused Nazis that they were just following orders was not, wasn't deemed an acceptable response. But what I'm talking about is on a large scale, not necessarily involving human rights atrocities, but the idea that, you know, in the end, what is it that keeps the president from just sort of disregarding the Constitution? And I guess I'm trying to be honest that in the end, if a president really wanted to do so and was able to get the military on his side, our system has limits in it, but it's not a guarantee against that kind of welcome from happening. This isn't so much a constitutional issue as it is a military issue. We've received assurances from George W. Bush and now Donald Trump that he's going to take his orders from the generals when it comes to wars. I'm going to trust the guys with boots on the ground who really see the situation. I'll let them decide what we need. And that has always had devastating consequences. Whereas you had somebody like Jack Kennedy, the mythology of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I don't know how much of that is Camelot. I think even liberals would suggest that he blew the Cuban Missile Crisis or controlled the narrative afterwards. But the mythology is that Kennedy was able to stand up to Curtis LeMay and the military and not trust them. And Johnson trusted the military. And Vietnam became a debacle. These things are all dependent on who's in power. So during Nixon, the Secretary of Defense, evidently I've seen this reported a couple of places, started getting nervous about Nixon's ability to launch nuclear weapons. I don't remember who it was. It was the Secretary of Defense at the time who basically commanded the military below him to not launch a nuclear attack unless the Secretary of Defense had confirmed it. Now that's a usurpation of the president's power as commander in chief without question. But if it was right that Nixon was really, I don't know, acting erratic and acting in a way that could be dangerous for the future of or existence of the world. I don't know that it was the wrong decision. So ideally you have a commander in chief who has got good judgment and making decisions. But in this case, I guess I'm not sure that it's awful that some of these decisions are being handed to military officials given how erratic Donald Trump has been in his own decision making. It's really a far from ideal circumstance and maybe this is the best solution given that. How long can a war go before Congress steps? And we have a 16-year-old war in Afghanistan. Obama spoke before the UN, I don't know, about four years ago, and acknowledged the state of perpetual war, that America was in a constant state of war and we had to figure out a way to stop this. I thought we had a war powers act, but we're 60 days. 60 days, but now with drones we're sending, we're killing people in Yemen and Kenya and the Sudan. I mean, what are the limits on a commander in chief these days? It's a great topic for us to continue to discuss. The simple, I'll give you the kind of quick answer, is that there is a war power back and forth. That's all we're looking for. It says 60 days until a resolution or declaration of war, but the president, I mean, that's a long time, can launch an attack to preempt. Another attack has discretion in the use of the military to defend the nation up until that 60 days. Now, a president is not supposed to launch anything, is allowed to defend the nation, but is not supposed to launch aggressive war. I think that's a violation of the Constitution and an abuse of the war powers act, but with all these things, I can tell you this is required, that's required. How do you enforce it? The courts have been very unwilling to engage in oversight of the president's power as commander in chief. A lot of these issues are issues that are being worked out between Congress and the president without any clear judicial law or oversight, and it can be abused. On the drone issue, I mean, there were cases brought against Obama saying that this was an abuse of power, that it was a violation of due process because if you're on a drone list, you weren't obviously tried in a court. There was no formal judicial procedure of anything like what it would take to convict somebody on US soil, but I don't know, many of us and maybe myself included, I was not engaged as much in that issue as I probably should have been, and it shouldn't just be when there's a president that you don't like that you try to argue for constitutional limits, and I guess I think in retrospect that was probably a mistake. There were people bringing cases, there was a case brought about a person who turned out to be on one of these drone hit lists and the person was an American citizen and brought a case saying that his due process rights were violated. The case didn't really go anywhere, but the Obama administration at least tried to draft memos saying why they thought that their procedures were constitutional. So there was some pushback, but it's probably something we should think more about. Yeah, and it's for a much longer discussion. I want to turn to the possibility of a weakened executive branch because if the military is making all the decisions when it comes to the war on terror, Congress funds that war. Is Trump doing the Constitution a favor by being a weak president? Doesn't the Constitution provide for an ignoramus running the executive branch and the supremacy of the legislative branch? I mean, isn't there supposed to be cycles to American history where perhaps the legislative branch has more power than the executive branch? Yeah, I like the second way that you put it. I wouldn't say that the Constitution establishes the Congress as the supreme branch. We rejected parliamentary supremacy, for instance. The idea is co-equal branches, legislative Congress, the executive, the president, and the judiciary. But the second thing you said I think really captures that the idea that at different points in history, basically different branches are going to have to pick up the slack and some will become weaker and some will become stronger. When you have a president like this who's really such a disaster and so frightening on so many levels, the fact that these other branches need to step up, the Constitution, thankfully, it's failsafe, it provides for that possibility. Also, I've been very interested in the states stepping up and trying to resist the federal government. That's another way that the Constitution, I think, it doesn't protect us, but it provides mechanisms that can be used by citizens and public officials to limit an abusive president. We started working together, and one of the first things you said a couple of months ago was, you think this could end up being the Constitution's finest moment. I hope so. We'll see. We're counting on it. It's a brightening experiment that we're in the midst of and we're trying to figure out what's happening in the midst of it and how the history will be written. I'm sure it's historic. We've never seen a president in recent memory. I don't think, and I think we've both agreed that this goes beyond Nixon, who's been this really incompetent and frightening and ignorant of the Constitution. Not just that, but also ignorant about basic policy matters, about, I don't know, thinking. So yeah, this is a stress test and we're living it. He's destroying the country. He's destroying the planet. He's destroying the lives of undocumented workers. He's creating confusion with DACA. If you're an undocumented worker or if you're a dreamer, he's giving conflicting signals as to whether or not you can stay in this country or not, it's terrifying. But the American people step up in the next two years. We might look back at Trump as a cautionary tale and an example of why we need to pay attention. I'm just being optimistic. Yeah. Yeah. And we've had, you know, it's not like we haven't had dangerous presidents before. We had Nixon, of course, who we keep talking about. We had John Adams, who passed the Alien and Sedition Act with the cooperation of Congress of its own party and that banned criticism of the president of the United States. So I mean, it's not like we haven't had frightening moments before in American history, but in the midst of it, wondering how this one's going to turn out. Yeah, we're hoping that it will be. Well, let's talk about that because I'm reading your book, Civil Rights and Liberties, Cases in Readings and Constitutional Law and American Democracy. It's written by Professor Corey Brechneider. I'm going to admit that I was able to read parts of chapter two. It's all about free speech. Some of it was way too opaque for me. Very hard to understand, especially the John Stuart Mill. I'll get to John Stuart Mill in a second. You brought up the Alien and Sedition Act under John Adams. He was the second president of the United States. I believe he was a federalist, right? Correct, yeah. Which means he was in the tradition of George Washington. Was George Washington a federalist or he didn't believe in parties? Yeah, he was sort of pre-party, but the party originated from his secretary of state, Alexander Hamilton is usually thought to be the first federalist, and Adams was the first federalist president who self-identified as a federalist. Tell me what the Alien and Sedition Act was. Was it ever repealed? And tell me who was more dangerous, Nixon or Woodrow Wilson? Because a lot of these First Amendment cases in your book, at least chapter two, a lot of it comes from World War I and Woodrow Wilson. Yeah. Alien and Sedition Acts are this sort of weird period in American history where very early on an act is passed. There's a context too of discrimination against the French and there are these acts limiting the rights of non-citizen aliens in the country. What was going on that precipitated the Alien and Sedition Act? There was a problem with France? There was suspicion that there were French spies basically in the United States and there was an alliance that Adams had formed with England and basically he was suspicious that the French nationals in the United States were undermining American democracy. Even though the French had been our allies in the past. That's correct. Yeah, there was sort of a shift and Jefferson I think still remained in his mind allied with the French, but Adams really switched his alliance more towards England. That's one dimension of what's happening, but he does this kind of broad thing in general to stop dissent, which is that he signs this act that really criminalizes criticism of the President of the United States. It allows for you, interestingly, to criticize the Vice President. That's Thomas Jefferson at the time, a member of a different party because the President and Vice President did not Democrat, Republican, right? And yet you go to jail if you criticize the President. So plausibly, the Vice President of the United States could have been imprisoned for criticizing the President at the time. There is no Supreme Court to fight back at the time. There's no doctrine of the kind that you were talking about of the protection of all viewpoints. It's clearly would be unconstitutional under our current jurisprudence, but none of that exists at the time. When was the judiciary act passed? It's passed around the same time, I think a little earlier than the alien sedition acts, but the tradition of judicial review hasn't started yet where the courts are striking down legislation. And there's certainly nothing like the modern tradition of First Amendment jurisprudence that develops much, much later where the courts will say, hey, that's a violation of free speech. You can't do that. And what was it? They have to find other ways of fighting back. What was the Supreme Court ruling that gave the Supreme Court final word on a piece of legislation? Well, what comes later is Marbury versus Madison. I think most people think that's the moment where it happens. And I think we talked about that at a different time. The court just, even though it really doesn't stop the President, this is in the next administration from doing anything, it announces this power of judicial review. And from then on, I think it's pretty accepted that the courts can strike things down. What happened to the Alien Sedition Act? It's repealed when the Vice President, Thomas Jefferson, becomes President. I should say the sedition part. The alien acts remained on the books. Certain aspects of them and throughout American history were used to discriminate, basically, against non-citizen aliens. Fast forward to World War I, Woodrow Wilson, the Palmer Raids, where the Attorney General was just breaking into the homes of communists and anarchists. There were a couple of big rulings coming down from the Supreme Court. What was Schenck? You tell me. You did the reading. That's how this works. Oh, okay. Schenck was, I think, an anarchist who was promoting. Well, I know that the outcome was that Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the justices, coined the phrase clear and present danger, that he ruled that you could suppress speech if there was a clear and present danger. And I think you got shouting fire in a crowded movie theater from this decision. Yeah. Is that correct? Yeah. But I can't remember. By Reddit, I can't remember the rest. I think you got two key things. If you say you can't shout fire in a crowded theater, now people roll their eyes. But when he said that, it was a pretty profound thing to say. Probably the first time anybody had said it. The idea is he sort of uses that example to say, look, free speech is great. But sometimes it presents an immediate danger and think of shouting fire in the crowded theater. That's an example where you can't have a right to do that, or it'll cause death in the immediate result. Now, the decision was interpreted later to be a little broader than that to say, look, free speech is fine. But if it's dangerous to the security of the nation, it can be limited. Now, one thing that Holmes does with that phrase is it looks like he's got a limit in the time between yelling the thing fire and the deaths that might result. They're imminent. They're about to happen. But the court, the reason it's able to prosecute communists throughout the century is that they say what's not important is the time limit. It's that there's a significant danger that this speech might undermine basically the security of the nation. And the court again and again says that communists and anarchists who engage in that kind of speech are really advocating ideas that are dangerous to the security of the country. And that continues until pretty late in the 20th century, the persecution of communists. You hear that in the background? There it is. Yeah, it's back. How are you, I'm going to, this is a serious question. Yeah, I'm in New York City. Yeah, I hear that noise. Yeah. Are you able to concentrate when there's noise like that around you? I'm, I'm quiet, actually. Yeah, that that I mean with, you know, I'm okay, you know, talking to somebody we're trying to read or write with that kind of thing in the background can be tough. But you're a great reader. Could you know I'm distracted. You are distracted. This is important to me. I'm leaving this in. Okay, because so much of my inability to learn stems from not being able to drown out this stuff. Right, right. I just have to focus. It may be if I challenge you a little, then you'll forget about the sound and focus on what. So one thing I wanted to ask you, now I'm going to shift back to my, you know, we talked a lot about the law and I'm going to ask you about comedy. I mean, what, what, one thing that you've been saying throughout the podcast. Oh, come on, let's stick with the constant. Stick to the law. I love to talk about comedy. All right. I'm going to tie it together. All right, go ahead. I mean, the, you know, one thing that you've kind of, on the one hand, you don't like it when people come to colleges who are non experts. But the thing that you're pretty firm on is the idea that free speech should protect all forms of comedy. Right. I mean, is that your view that there really is no limit to what you should be able to say or do? So when it came to the depiction of President Trump with his head cut off, you, you thought, you know, that's, there's no limit to that. I don't like the idea of firing this comic for doing that or even I think criticism of her. And, you know, I don't know, is that, is that your reaction to all of this stuff that when you read it, you think in the end there really should be protection at least for satire of all kinds. I'm all for speech that criticizes government, religion, public figures, speech that's pornographic, that kind of degrades the conversation. I think should be protected. I, as listeners know, I don't care about vulgar speech. I think we've crossed a line where perhaps we'd be better off if there were tab boos so that we could talk about more important things. I think all speech should be protected. In fact, I had a question about this, but I'll let you ask your question. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, it goes back to the, I mean, one thing that I know we were going to talk about is the distinction between content and viewpoint and the idea that you're defending that when it comes to criticizing John Adams or criticizing a president, all opinions should be allowed. You know, that, that's a pretty firm, I think, First Amendment principle. But what's less clear is the vulgarity question or the... Well, can I frame this for my listeners? Yeah, yeah, please. Before you came on, I had a discussion with Scott, not Scott Burgowski, with Frank Conif and Buckles, who you'll meet. Yeah. There is a comedian named Eliza Schlesinger. Yeah. Very successful comedian. She made a statement. She said, I can close my eyes in any comedy club and hear women doing the same material about their vaginas. And she said, I wish women would talk about something other than their vaginas. There's been a lot of pushback from women who are now saying, how dare she criticize us? We should be allowed to say whatever we want. This is censorship. I, because I have to do an entertaining show and keep people engaged, I rolled up my pants and waded into that muck, which is, I find tiresome, but it keeps the conversation going. I get tired of hearing this is censorship, which we know it's not. You have a right to criticize your fellow comedians for being vulgar. I think we need women talking about their vaginas. But we also need people saying, stop talking about your vaginas instead. Talk about how hard it is to get an abortion in America. So you really don't buy this sort of, oh, it's free speech or anything goes when it's in the service of a joke. There's some sort of wider social obligation to try to use comedy for some higher purpose, or does that go too far? I don't believe in censorship. I think you need old farts like me to be an elder statesman, or you need Eliza Schlesinger to say, hey, you know what, what, you know, I'm not calling for government censorship. I'm calling for taste. I'm calling for zoning. I don't want a strip joint block away from where my kids go to school. I don't want it. And I have that. It's community standards. I don't want it. And I have, I feel like you did understand John Stuart Mill because in many ways, I think that's what he's saying that, you know, we're going to have free speech, but it's in the service of some higher kind of conversation that we want good things to win out. We want, you know, ideas of equality to win out, not inequality. We want, well, as he puts the truth to win out, not lack of truth. And the way that you might get there is, on the one hand, not putting people in jail for their opinions, but you need people criticizing each other and engaging each other in arguments in a robust way, not just sort of leaving each other alone or that conversation's never going to happen. I mean, I think that's his point that, you know, free speech is a dialogue. It's not just a bunch of us shouting off in a corner about whatever we want. And most importantly, it's in this, it's in a, it's got a point, which is for the common good to win out. And that's not going to just happen if people are, you know, left to do their, I mean, to go back to your example, to do their act and, and, you know, as they want. You know, it's not, excuse me for one second, because what's more important to me than free speech is clear speech and John Stuart Mill does not write clearly. And it was very hard. So I'm reading it and I'm going, I must be stupid because I cannot figure out what the hell he's talking about. I know he's the most influential English speaking philosopher of the 19th century. What about clear speaking philosophy? Why do they have to write? So instead of English speaking, I find like it's easy to read the Russians for me because somebody translates it into simple English. He obfuscates. It's for his time though, right? I mean, it's like he's not writing for us. He's writing for his audience. And so for the time, I think it's pretty clear. But, you know, I take your point. He tries to lay it out in ways that are clear. You also read my edited version. So maybe I hacked it up in a way that made it. Well, let me ask you a question about intelligence because we hear the noise in the background. Yeah. This is the story of my college years. Yeah. There was noise everywhere I went except the library. People were blasting music and screaming. I could never focus. I could never concentrate. I'm going to, you know, I can pot down when I'm not talking the drilling sound. But this is, this to me is everything that's wrong with America. It's so noisy. Yeah. I can't get peace and quiet. And we're all quiet now. Now they're quiet. I can't focus. Do you find your, so I feel stupid. I've always felt stupid. Do you find yourself reading paragraphs of John Stuart Mill and going, what did he just say? I don't understand. I cannot figure out what the hell he means by this. Do you ever find yourself reading the same paragraph over and over again? I have with some thinkers that I have that experience a lot. But I've read that book so many times. I teach it every year and that I think the first time I did read it, I had that sense. But, you know, another thing is maybe read it again, that with a lot of these kind of classic works, it really don't make sense the first time. But as you reread it, you, you know, you have to believe that you'll get something out of it. But I guess I'd say in this case, you would, that he's really saying something that's so close to what you're saying. And he's giving this pretty broad framework for it that if you go into it, you know, with this discussion of mine that maybe I'm wrong. And you know, let me ask you, this is important to me. This is important to me because you are, I want to remind our listeners, you have a law degree from Stanford, you have a PhD from Princeton, you have a master's in Cambridge, and a degree in auto mechanics from DeVry, which you never talk about. Trying to forget those years. Okay, so we hear about autodidacts. I'm an autoerotic didact. I self educate with a belt around my neck. And by the way, hey, I listen, if I can, anytime I can do that kind of joke, it's to prove a point, Professor. It's in the service of the common good. Yes, it's, it's, but the autodidact, the self educated man, are there really, because I don't buy into this, I don't believe that there's some guy who can pick up John Stuart Mill and start reading it and understand it. I just don't need a, you need a guide, you know, you need somebody to talk to at least, I don't think that these things are interesting if you just pick them up and read them. But if you have a puzzle that you're trying to answer, which you are, I mean, not just in this conversation, but in lots of the ones that you're having over the course of a week about what the purpose of the profession of comedy is and what the use of free speech and pushing the boundaries are, there is no better text. I mean, it's the No, you're not answering my questions, sir. Yeah, you won't get it on your own. No, you need to have a conversation. But I read about these people who go to prison, and they read the great books all by themselves and come out as these fully formed intellectuals. I don't believe that there are people who can buy themselves, read these great books and understand them. But apparently there are, right? I think in those case, I don't know, we should look at those cases like in the Malcolm X case and the autobiography, I think he talks about being turned on to reading by fellow inmates who were educated themselves. And yet Alex Haley had to write his autobiography for him. Well, they co-wrote it, right? It's with Alex Haley. I think he, you know, you look at his speeches and listen to him speak. He clearly was somebody without a formal education who was extremely educated. And, you know, he debated people from every Ivy League college in this debate team and often won. So he was self-educated. Well, I guess that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that he just picked up a book and read it. I think that he has somebody to talk to him about what he was reading and that it was through this sort of maybe informal system of education, but the combo of reading on his own and talking to them. So that's what you and I are doing. I mean, hopefully I've gotten you interested in this book. You'll go back and look at it again and see what it has to do with the limits of comedy and why free speech serves a purpose, which is, you know, to ultimately get to some kind of truth. Now, that's not a theme that's unconnected to what you're talking about. And by the way, I mean, Mill is talking about public conversation. And in the world now, for better or for worse, and people can talk about it, comedy is the public conversation in many, many ways. So it's not a, by the way, you know, example. It's maybe the primary example of what he's talking about. So I think if you go back to it with that, that idea, the sort of looking for what the art, you know, the overall argument is simple. It's that free speech, not limiting people because of their viewpoint, only protecting people from harm, that it will result in the truth. And how can that be given that people say things all the time that are false or ridiculous or silly, and he's trying to defend that simple proposition that if people engage in argument and the government doesn't censor them, that what will happen is that the truth will win out. And, you know, I think that's ultimately what you think too. But I know that in skimming him and pretending to read John Street Mill, did he coin the phrase marketplace of ideas? It's taken from the, that's, I think, a famous way to characterize the argument. My understanding is he never used the phrase, but it's a simple idea that if you have a clash between false and true or partially false and true, that the result will be true ideas went out. And you might think, like, how could that happen? Part of the idea is that in every even bad argument, there's some truth to it. So, think of the Green Nazis. This is a real example. The Green Nazis are Nazi Nazis. They deny the Holocaust. But they're also environmentalists. And there's a real group, and, you know, they're pretty good on global warming. But the Green Nazis, right, are this heinous group. And under European standards, German standards, you go to jail for being a Green Nazi. They don't burn books. They boil them. Oh, my God. That's a good joke. Yeah, that's okay. I like that. Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to comment on the boil books. I'm not going to do the humor part. I'm just going to do the let's see, you know, in a classroom, you can just do a weird example. And that's humor enough. But the professional comedian, they're going to just take it to the next level, aren't they? That's why you have the Emmy. Why allow it, right? And the idea is, there might be some truth that comes out of it. And, you know, maybe the environmental part sticks around, and we get rid of the disgusting Holocaust denial. And that's why you don't put these people in jail. Now, what about an idea that's totally false? So the Nazi Nazis, not the Green Nazis. The idea there is that, you know, you and I are going to learn by engaging that kind of argument, responding to it, and trying to clarify what's right in the world. Now, comedy is some mix of all these things. It's some true, some false, some satire. But I guess the idea that Mel, I imagine what he would say about comedy is that you want to allow it, but for a higher purpose. And that's why you need people to kind of engage it and not just leave it alone, but also not censor it. Well, I've always found with my comedy, I never felt a responsibility to explain what I mean with my jokes. That it's a bad joke, right? If you have to explain it. Or it can mean two things at the same time. I like jokes that have like a cognitive dissonance where people are laughing at it for two different reasons. And that's especially the kind of satire that I used to do, where I would take a conservative point of view and the conservatives would laugh because it had the right amount of hatefulness in it. And the liberals would laugh because of the absurdity of it. Well, that's kind of Colbert, right? Or Colbert? I was doing Colbert before. Before Colbert. Yeah. Did you trademark that? No, he just did it better than I did it. And I, you know, I stopped doing it because people in Colbert ran up against us. A lot of Republicans were watching. You're not going to believe this unless you actually read this because it's true. So unless you read this, you're going to say no. But I found it in the clubs. Republicans were watching Colbert and they couldn't tell the difference between him and Bill O'Reilly. They thought he really was a funny conservative host. Did you know that? Oh my God. I have never heard that before. Yeah. You just saw, how do you know about this? They did studies that Republicans are so stupid that they would watch Colbert and think he represented them, that he wasn't making fun of them. Something else that's really disheartening about Archie Bunker. They studied Archie Bunker and all the family. More Americans were laughing with Archie Bunker than at him. So much for satire. Yeah. That's, that's one of the dangers of free speech. But you say, and I guess John Stuart, John Stuart Mill says, because you've said this on the show before, the prescription for hate speech is more speech. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's his view. And I mean, it's especially interesting given, you know, this, this thing that people aren't getting it. I mean, the onion, I guess, is like that. Maybe there are people out there reading these headlines or, or reductress, which is, I think, a great feminist version of the onion. And people are thinking, wow, you know, this is real. They're reading it literally. Now, one thought is, well, we could censor these things because they're falsehoods. I mean, they literally are, right? What Colbert is doing is pretending to be somebody's not saying things that are false. The onion is all false, basically, or 80% false, and what it says. And one response to that is let's not have any kind of fake news, even the funny kind. Right. But yeah, my instinct is not that. It's that, you know, people need to be included in the joke, maybe, or educated about what's going on with this kind of humor. I don't, I don't know how you do that. I mean, maybe I'll leave that to you. What do you do with the person that doesn't get your, you know, did you just leave, leave them alone? The Republicans that thought you were really doing this character? And I found it, I found it depressing. So I stopped. That's why you stopped doing it. Yeah. And I found it to be a psychological defect of not saying what I really meant. I found it cowardly to say the opposite. I will find, though, in dealing with divorce attorneys, I'm not bringing up the divorce. But I am finding that, and I can't tell if it's irony or satire. On the occasion that I've had to correspond with a divorce attorney, sarcasm, saying what I don't mean is so powerful. Yeah. You know, I wish for you the happiness, peace, and prosperity you deprive all your clients. It's one of my closing sentences with some of these attorneys. Well, you know, it's anyway. I mean, if it works, it works, right? I mean, you watch some of these shows and I feel like watching John Stuart or Colbert or any of these show, you often get more truth than you do with the straight news. Now, let me ask you about John Stuart Mill. He didn't quite know that. He didn't get that part of it. But as I understand it, it was John Liebowitz Mill. But John Stuart Mill changed it from John Liebowitz because he was a self-hating Jew and a coward who hates unions. That's what I heard about John Stuart. I'm confusing John Stuart. Is that your former employer you're talking about? Yeah, he doesn't like it. Did you used to work for John Stuart Mill? I used to work for John Liebowitz Mill. He hated unions. He hates the Writers Guild. I see. But I was anyway, that's neither here nor there. Before you go, you did very well. Thank you. He suited you. B-plus, A-minus. By the way, this is getting much better and more fun. And I live for this. And I don't know how I'm going to sue you, but I will. Just be prepared. Listen, listen, try it. Do us a favor. Do your Columbia mentor as a favor. The court curriculum. You're supposed to read this book in college when you're 18. Go back. And when you read it, though, read it with this lens. What does this have to do with allowing people like me to make these jokes and to go on stage and pretend to be somebody that I'm not and say things that are false in the interests of humor? I think you're going to find that in that book or in those pages, just the edited version, that there's an answer to that. It might not be written to your taste, but it's got a deep idea there that this is a project that we should allow. The only reason why you can do what you do or any comedian can do what he or she does is because we have these enormous free speech protections. And, you know, before Mill, that wasn't the case. I mean, throughout America, not American, throughout the world history, you went to jail for mocking the leader. But Mill wasn't a Supreme Court Justice. He was just a philosopher. Look, we don't have a First Amendment free speech jurisprudence of anything like what we have without Mill. Holmes, who did more to bring the law of free speech into American government and give you the protection that you have, was a devotee of Mill. And that's what he's trying to do is to try to take it and give it legal effect. So it's the most influential piece of writing on the topic. But he is your great-grandfather and that he made it possible for you, David Feldman, to do what you do every day. Can you create Supreme Court precedent based on the great books and not the Constitution? If you're Oliver Wendell Holmes, yes. You know, not everybody can do it, but he certainly did. I mean, there is, you know, he's remembered sometimes for this clear and present danger rule, which was quite oppressive sometimes. It was used to justify putting communists and leftists in jail. But before Holmes, there really was no protection at all for free speech. So it was an important starting point to getting where we are now. And he got it from Mill, I think, pretty directly, actually. Oliver Wendell Holmes, was he the one who said one Cretan in a generation is an, did he uphold eugenics? He had an awful decision in a case called Buck v. Bell that that's not the exact quote, but yeah, he allowed for the sterilization of law that had a correct for sterilization. He, Oliver Wendell Holmes, not a good, not a good decision, awful. And this was before the Nazis, right? Yes. And there was a sort of eugenics movement in the United States and Holmes, there's debate about whether he was defender of eugenics, but he certainly didn't intervene to strike down that for sterilization. And yes, this is before the rise of the Nazis. So we were doing eugenics before the Nazis. Yeah. And I mean, there's some kind, you know, I don't know, there are different people argue about it. But one view of historians is that there was an influence on the Nazis by American eugenics as upsetting as that is to hear. And the Germans had Social Security before we did. Just thought I'd mention that. Okay. Before you go, very this was very good. I'm going to read John Stuart Mill. I'm going to read that. Yeah. I'm going to force, I'm going to find a quiet place, not a crowded place, to read John Stuart Mill and see if I can, I can understand it because let's do it with the question of mine, you know, try to engage it in a conversation. And the question that you're asking is, what is the purpose of free speech? And does it lead to the common good? And why would anybody, I mean, you think about it, right? That's, we hear that marketplace of ideas thing all the time. Now he's trying to actually give an argument for why false ideas of the kind that we've been talking about or that you have done on stage. Why does the, that it will result in a good thing? And he's trying to show you that. And in a meticulous detailed argument to make that case, you know, most people think you have false ideas that's going to result in more falsehood, not result in truth. And he's trying to show the opposite is, is true. Well, the ultimate defender of comedy. Well, I, you know, first there were falsies and they led to breast implants. So do you understand the point I'm making? I know it's a good joke in there. That's not quite getting it. Well, I'm bringing up the slippery slope before you go. The argument that we have on the show before you came on was the slippery slope. And I, the more I read about the Constitution and the more I study law with you, the more fallacious the slippery slope argument becomes, especially when it comes to the First Amendment, because this is what I hear cocktail parties from people who are as stupid as I am, which is when Eliza Schlesinger says women shouldn't talk about their vaginas on stage. It's a slippery slope. You'll pardon the pun. It's a slippery slope. Pretty soon you won't be able to criticize the president. And in reading your book, civil rights and liberties, cases and readings and constitutional law and American democracy written by Professor Corey Brechneider. In reading chapter two, I did not know until I read your book that the Supreme Court has differentiated between First Amendment violations that involve content and First Amendment violations that involve opinion. In other words, there isn't a slippery slope. The Supreme Court has demarked the difference between content and opinion. Can you explain to me what the difference, before you go, what the difference is between content and opinion? The First Amendment, when it comes to punishment, for instance, protects certainly all opinion, all viewpoints. That's the highest level of protection. Think about criticizing a president, for instance. That's almost certainly protected. But when it comes to certain kind of, I would say, content or another word for it is topics, there are some exceptions to that protection. There are some instances where you can limit. Now, one of the most famous ones, which is relevant to your profession, is obscenity. And if the court has deemed a statute to be regulating obscenity, and it's done carefully, the definition of obscenity, then that can potentially be limited. One of the definitions of obscenity, by the way, is that it has no political value, no viewpoint in it. No redeeming, no redeeming value. Right. Yeah. I mean, you can't just be faking it or no scientific value. That's part of it, no literary artistic value. And that's meant to guarantee that this isn't a slippery slope into the realm of viewpoint. But, yes, obscenity, for instance, can be limited. Now, there are all these famous cases that we can talk about where those two things did get tricky. So think of, it's George Carlin, right, with the famous routine about the... My radio station, Pacifico, KPFK, yeah. Right, with these words. And in Carlin's monologue, when you listen to it, he's making a point about free speech, and he's using the words in the service of free speech. And he's trying to challenge, I think, this sort of idea that there might be decency exceptions, where there might be obscenity exceptions that are allowable. But the court has said, at least when it comes to obscenity, things about sex that don't have political, artistic, literary, scientific value that they can be limited. But I think the deeper response, though, like if you want a take on this discussion that you're having is that sometimes people use free speech to say, I can say whatever I want. If you try to criticize me or stop me from doing so, that's the slippery slope. And I think you can say back to them, rather than citing the law, is you might be protected in your right to say all sorts of stuff. But look, you've got a podium, you've got a place that you're standing up in front of people, try to use it to affect the good in a way that's positive. That's the purpose of free speech. That's why we have it in the first place. So I think that's kind of really what you're up to, rather than just denying, citing distinctions in the law. It's about the obligation of comics to try to use their audience and their moment in the spotlight to do something good rather than something bad. But that might be done in interesting ways. For instance, using satire or using falsehood or characters. But I think it has to be in the service of not to get the protection, but to be worthwhile. It has to be in the service of some higher ideal. Right. And I think a civilized, well educated culture can differentiate between speech that's important and speech that's trivial. We don't need to pass laws. But if you've been accepted to Harvard, this just happened, and you join a chat room of new members of that club of the Trilateral Commission, Harvard, and you start doing Holocaust jokes and racist jokes. Harvard has every right to say, we don't want you to be part of our school. Yeah. If it were a state college, that's for next week. Right. Yeah, that might be an issue for next week. Well, you did very good. I'm going to read John Stuart Mill. I'm going to try. This was great. And we didn't get to Alexander Mikkel-John. Maybe next week. Great thinker. Equally good. Maybe better. And probably the second most influential person in the law. Okay. And we didn't get to Hugo Black, who I did read in your book. He writes very clearly. Hugo Black. No relation to Justice White. Did Black and White serve? That's a good comedy routine right there. I don't know how to do it, but it's a good premise. When I first started doing comedy, I used to do a joke about Justice Berger and Justice Felix Frankfurter. I like that already. You could really be a hit. And like if you come at conference with me. Did Black and White serve at the same time? I have to look. You know, there was Black, there was Black men, and there was White. And I don't know what the dates were. I don't feel confident saying. Okay. And no Black woman. Just Black men. Justice Berger and Frankfurter, did they serve at the same time? I would relish an answer. That's an example. So you laugh at that, but the audience? That's great. I gave you like a premise and then you had to laugh. Oh, this is terrific. This is like, you know, I always want somebody to come. I imagine that I could kind of sometimes it would just be nice to be able to make an argument. Then I'd have like a kind of assistant that would give the facts or the argument with you. It's sort of, you know, I give a premise and then you make the joke funny. I can't do that on my own. I often come up with a premise like a dinner and it doesn't go anywhere and you get that blank stare from everyone, but I have you around that, you know. Well, Solomon, when he was going to cut the baby in half, he had a beautiful assistant who was going to cut the baby in half so people could applaud. But they, the mother decided to give the baby up. She didn't want the baby cut in half, but it would have been much more entertaining had Solomon had his beautiful assistant cut the baby in half. It would have been beautiful. Well, anyway, I went over my head, you know what? That's, I should take that one out. Yeah. No, we're going to keep everything in. Professor Corey Brett Schneider, you kept it clean. And I thank you. Yeah, I'll talk to you next week. Thank you, David. Thanks for listening. Please share this episode with all your friends and don't forget to do all your Amazon shopping via the David Feldman show website. We get a small percentage of everything you purchase from the show. Briss studios in downtown Manhattan, Medicare for all.