293. An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (7)
1 (1h 4m 37s):
Here's a definition of the safe space. When you tell a joke will Smith, can't get up and slap you across the face four worse, Dave Chappelle can't be attacked or even worse Salman Rushdi. Now that is violence.
2 (1h 4m 52s):
Yeah. And by the way, I actually read a brilliant piece from Sarah high. I dunno if you've found her on the show, I don't know who she is in which she talks about. You have an well, I'd like to get her, her in trigonometry. And I, I she'd be a great guest for you to talk with as well, because she wrote this brilliant piece in which she actually says that our belief, that what happens to salmon rust and other people who criticize a mock Islam or certain facets of Islam or Islamist, we are wrong to believe that that is about causing offense. Actually she says Islamists are deliberately using our belief that, you know, being offended or being offensive is wrong to cover up for the fact that in their worldview, it's not about causing offense.
2 (1h 5m 39s):
It's about violating the religious laws of Islam. In other words, it's about blasting. It's not about being offensive, and this is something that is being used against us because we've become so pathetic and defending our own values of free speech, because it's much easier for us to say, well, look, we don't have Blay laws in the west, so this is your problem. But if they say no, no, no, no, no. This isn't about us trying to enforce our religious dog on you. This is about the fact that you've offended Muslims. That sounds a lot more persuasive to the Western air. And that's why, you know, we've got to be careful as I say about Russia and China, et cetera, but also against this ideology, gotta be careful that we do not allow people who hate everything we stand for to use our own stupidity against us.
2 (1h 6m 27s):
And we are allowing them to do that at the moment.
1 (1h 6m 29s):
So maybe an example of that would be the reaction to that Washington post journalist, who retweeted that joke, all women are by, it's just the question of art sexual or, or polar. And, and then, you know, the, he had a, you know, kind of a mobbed attack that went on for almost two weeks until they finally got rid of the woman who was going after him. Would that be an example? I mean, first, would you use a joke like that? Is that crossing the line or is that just the stupid throwaway joke, a dad joke, and it's not a big deal or you know that from the left, maybe you have to,
2 (1h 7m 5s):
I mean, look, a guy saying women are crazy is not exactly the most original joke that anyone's ever made, like is been a staple of comedy for a while. And I'm gonna be honest with you. If women make jokes about men, it doesn't particularly offend me. If guys make jokes about women. Is that the way that I would personally phrase it? I, I do think it's a clever joke for sure. It's a clever joke in that it uses language well, and that to me is always the sign of a written joke. So I can appreciate a joke that I disagree with for the structure and the way that it's it's written. I, I definitely don't think someone should lose their career for making a joke and to have your own colleagues essentially attacking the institution for which you both work in order to get rid of you.
2 (1h 7m 52s):
That seemed to me quite incredible. But, and by the way, Michael, I think that case brings up something that I think is actually really important, which is what happened in the end, which is the stupid woman who was having to go at him, got fired, should have happened day one day one. If this was my company, day one, you get a warning, stop badmouthing the company in public. If you have an internal dispute, come in, we'll resolve it as best we can. You may not be satisfied with the result. And if you don't wanna work at our company after that, the way that conversation goes, that's your right, but don't, you have no right to go and trash this business online as an employee, just cuz you didn't like the decision making, you couldn't run any business on that basis ever.
2 (1h 8m 35s):
And so it's about the people who run these big corporations, basically pandering to a small minority of their employees or more likely to their perceived reaction on Twitter, which doesn't even matter that much. It doesn't really matter whether Twitter likes your brand or not. Cuz Twitch is like no 0.1% of the people alive or whatever it is. No one cares go and sell your widgets. You know, now for media institutions, of course it's different because they now source their material from Twitter. They source their stories from Twitter. They look at how Twitter responds and this is this kind of incestuous echo chamber in which they'll now exist.
2 (1h 9m 18s):
And all of us to some extent I suppose, is not just them. And that's probably why it was such a, such a difficult story for them. But yeah, I think a lot of the answer to all this nonsense is some, some courage and some balls from the people who run these corporations and saying actually, no, you as a lowly employee of our company, do not get to decide the policy of this Ja corporation. No rocket signs.
1 (1h 9m 40s):
Yeah. Now that you mentioned, I was thinking back on female comedians, I've enjoyed and they often riff on male sexuality and stupidity and how bad lovers males can be and on and on and on. And it's actually pretty funny cuz half of it's pretty true. Right. You know, kind of the over of course.
2 (1h 9m 58s):
Well of course, well you you're talking about the human condition and you know, the fact that, I mean, I'm gonna be very controversial here, Michael, and say that it is a, you know, scientifically observed fact that women have a wider emotional range than men and therefore maybe perceived as being less stable perhaps sometimes and men are more sort of like they can't have any emotions and what, you know, as, as a, as a, I can't remember whose joke it is, but you know, men more earn more money, have fewer feelings. That's about it. Like that's the difference, you know, to observe this is not exactly going beyond the realms of, you know, credulity or, or acceptability.
2 (1h 10m 39s):
These are pretty stable staple items on the, on the comedy diet throughout history. Can you make it funny? Can you make it clever? That's the basic thing. I'm not offended by jokes about men, not generally offended by jokes about women, but they are perceived differently by the public. By the way, you can't make the same jokes about men as you can about women. And as a comedian, you learn the skill of doing that. That's that's part of was. And my point is just because you told one bad joke, that should, that shouldn't, might've
1 (1h 11m 6s):
Been a Feld joke. Women need a reason to have sex. Men need a place. And you know, that's, it's kind of funny because it's kind of true. I had David bus on the podcast about his book called men behaving badly and it's a, it's, it's the different, it's kind of male, female differences in sexuality, dating behavior and so on. And he has massive data sets from these dating sites. So, you know, with millions of data points, like for example, you know, what percentage of the profiles that you examined and, and think about, would I want to date this person or not? And for the men, it was like, I don't know, 96.4% are acceptable.
1 (1h 11m 48s):
I would go out with them for the women. It was, you know, the, it was like four and a half percent, you know? So basically if you're a guy you stand next to no chance of getting swiped, right. Or laughter which, whichever one is the it's the good one. Right? And then another one he had that was kind of funny actually was, you know, how many dates would you have to go on before? You'd be intimate with this person and, and for the women, it was an average of seven. And for the men, the average was less than one. So there's a lot of guys that just say, why bother going on a date? You know, let's just do it now. Right.
2 (1h 12m 20s):
Let's get, let's get down. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. It's almost like the differences between men and women, Michael,
1 (1h 12m 26s):
Isn't it. Right. Which is what comedians like you tra again, I mean, so why not make jokes about that difference? Right? That should be okay.
2 (1h 12m 33s):
I, I think so. And look of it depends, you know, sometimes there are comedians who make jokes that I don't like about women and some female comedians who make jokes. I don't like about men. Do I, I remember I was standing in the green room one time, a few years ago and there was a female comic cuz actually a good comic. But she was, she was doing a bit about how she's thinking of having an abortion, cuz her baby's gonna be a straight white male. Okay. Now, oh boy. I didn't think that was particularly funny. Neither did the audience, but it was a new material opportunity for her to try some material.
2 (1h 13m 13s):
She tried it, she didn't get life. She probably never tell that joke again. Like nobody died. Do you know what I mean? It's a joke. It's just a joke. People should be allowed to try things out. Even if I don't like them like that, that that's kind of a basic rule that I have just because I don't like something doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to have. Yeah.
1 (1h 13m 33s):
Okay. And we're coming up on my own heart out here. So let, let's hit two final topics, capitalism, isn't it unfair. I'll just give you the, tee it up for you. So few people have so much money. You know what the, what some tiny percent 0.01% have, you know, 90% of the wealth in, in the west. And so on income inequality, you know, the genie index on and on and on. It's just so unfair. That's the result of capitalism.
2 (1h 13m 60s):
It is unfair and it is the result of capitalism. What's your better alternative to that?
1 (1h 14m 4s):
So, well something like socialism, maybe a Bernie style, you know, redistribution of the wealth through progressive taxes.
2 (1h 14m 12s):
Well, we have a similar version of that in, in most Angliss via countries, the, the America is unique in that the United States has a, a very sort of win or lose attitude to things. It's a product of your history. It's a product of the, the immigrant nation that you guys are. I think it works for you guys. You know, every system has its trade offs for me a little bit more redistribution is good. I also think we have to address areas of corruption, which emerge in a capitalist system. One of them is, for example, in the UK, we have a gigantic housing crisis, which means that house prices rise so much faster than people's incomes.
