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This week, the men of GLoP try to teach the kids in the audience (yes, we have some young listeners) about what it’s like to live with inflation, Rob is taking a sojourn in a place that’s big and easy, Jonah does a deep dive on movie bad guys, and John has an Israeli TV show that he wants everyone to watch.
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The Roger Van Zandt subplot in Heat revolved around Bearer Bonds
A million-dollar lottery for getting vaccinated, meaning that in case there’s an adverse result?
The way I hear it, all such damage claims have been waived because of the “emergency.”
This is a little off topic but it deals with something Jonah talked about in his other solo podcast (which is not distributed by Ricochet anymore to almost nobody’s protest). But he talked about his latest column, “Is ‘banned on Facebook’ the new ‘banned in Boston?” Clearly, the point of the article is to counter the conservative claim that free speech is under assault in America. Since ‘banned in Boston’ wasn’t really serious censorship then such things as ‘banned on Facebook’ are also not really censorship either.
And while taking in all the caveats, just the breadth of exposure shows Jonah’s argument is another one of his failed attempts to pass him off as an intellectual nowadays.
While Boston never has reached a million people in population, as of 2019 about 70% of American adults used Facebook, that is roughly 140 million people. So, to Jonah being ‘banned’ by an entity of 500,000 is roughly the same as being ‘banned’ from an entity of 140 million.
Take a person like Gavin McInnes, who is banned from every social media platform you can think of. He has started his own media entity, Censored.TV, which has roughly 25,000 subscribers (including myself) but would he have more if he was not banned on a platform that literally reaches hundreds of millions of people? He was very popular when he was a guest on Greg Gutfeld’s Red Eye and had one of the most watched interviews with Joe Rogan (which were before what Jonah would call a phony censorship campaign against him). There is a giant market for his personality and views yet you can argue his success has been throttled by the culture of censorship.
A thought experiment; if Joe Rogan had Jonah or McInnes, which interview would get more views? We know the answer to that. Of course, that only would be because Rogan has yet to be cancelled (interestingly, when Rogan moved to Spotify, the powers that be forced him to delete his popular interview with McInnes from his library).
This is Jonah’s contribution to the conversation; censorship is not really a problem, free speech is doing great in America. This might be a reason his relevance is fading.
Interesting how Jonah never misses an opportunity to defend the Biden Administration.
I live for GLOP monetary policy conversations:)
The point of the “banned in Boston” riff was not that the loss of books sales in the Boston metro area was a burden. It was that publishers used the phrase to sell books everywhere else. Buy the book that Boston politicians don’t want you to read! That sort of thing. Jonah’s larger point was that with so many competing platforms, being banned on Facebook isn’t really an impediment to reaching an audience, but it’s a pretty good marketing hook to a certain demographic.
And if Joe Rogan’s new employer has veto power over his guest list, then clearly he traded editorial independence for a big (very big) payday. Not sure why we’re supposed to find it admirable that once upon a time he was edgy and fearless.
If I have misstated Jonah’s argument and your clarification is correct then I believe the argument is even less plausible. We could then come up with some examples of people who have been banned from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and the like and their popularity increased. I don’t think that has happened at all.
So being ‘banned in Boston’ may have helped some people but there seems little to no evidence that ‘banned from Facebook’ has helped anyone.
Which goes to Jonah’s cozy nook in contemporary conservatism; free speech is alive and well and those that object are somehow being disingenuous (because if Jonah wants you to know one thing, he tells the truth as he sees it).
“Banned in Boston” was usually a sexual thing. Boston was filled with both traditional Catholics and the home of Protestant Puritanism. Anthony Comstock, who was the US Postal Inspector and the impetus behind the Comstock Act which banned pornography from the mail, had a huge following in Boston.
I remember a MASH episode about that. A movie was “banned in Boston” because one of the characters used the word “virgin?”
OK, but if you’re arguing that people banned from social media benefit from getting kicked off, then you’re agreeing with Jonah.
But sure, let’s see your list.
P.S. Has anyone seen Milo Yiannopoulos lately? How about Charles C. Johnson? And where has Roger Stone been hiding?
And yes, I am purposely leaving the Big Example out of this.
33:00. So did Rob say, “The only subject now is me?” I am worried for his mental health.
I am sitting on my front porch in suburban St. Louis and enjoying every moment of this podcast. I live in academia and non-profit land. Thank you for talking about whatever in the hell you talk about every month. It makes me immensely and ridiculously happy! It also makes me want to add these three adorable men to my list of “who would I like to have dinner with” in addition to a handful of NHL players with no teeth. Take that for what it is.
I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. I’m arguing precisely the opposite. I don’t believe there is anyone who benefits from being systematically banned from social media. People like Gavin McInness and Milo Yiannopoulos survive but have considerably smaller followings which is precisely the point of social media platforms banning them.
I don’t have any examples and neither does Jonah or it would have really helped his argument in his column to provide examples, or just one example of someone banned from social media and then went on to greater popularity.
It seems Jonah started with his conclusion and worked backwards. His conclusion is that social media bans don’t really stifle free speech because some people just go off and start other ventures that are just, if not more popular. The step before that is to show examples but Jonah skipped that step because those examples don’t exist in the real world.
In the King of Queens “Jung Frankenstein” episode, Leah Remini (Carrie) gets Kevin James (Doug) to see a shrink to help control his eating habits. After that succeeds she works on the doc to change his other bad habits.
“the Moon Is Blue”
Yes, I remembered the name, but wondered what a porn-czar would have against “virgin.”
Ace had a headline about him a month or two ago. Supposedly the homosexuality was an act.
If true, that shows some real dedication.
In the commentary track to The Sum of All Fears (2002), Tom Clancy is surprised to discover that the director wasn’t just pandering to the Arab lobby by changing the villains.
He actually believed in his Eurotrash neo-Nazis terrorists.
P.S.: The Big Easy (1986) is a terrific New Orleans crime drama. Dennis Quaid as an affably crooked cop, and Ellen Barkin as a straightlaced prosecutor, have great chemistry. If you only know Barkin from her recent, battleax roles, you’re in for a pleasant surprise.
Ellens are always hot, aren’t they? At least when they’re young.
Inbar Lavi was also cast in the 4th season of Lucifer, as Eve.
“Swastikas? They’re just plus-signs doing cartwheels!” – Dennis Miller
I believe Bearer Bonds played a minor plot role as far back as The Thin Man in 1934.
“Easy ” is great. “Electric Mist and the Confederate Dead” is pretty good, too. James Lee Burke is a trip.
I saw them open for Gary U.S. Bonds.