Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we take a look at this potential ban of TikTok and consider whether what we're hearing from the politicians on this one really does add up. And later on, we'll discuss the controversy over Cheryl swoops and her comments about Caitlin Clark. And also swoops thoughts on whether or not she is a racist.
Hello. Welcome to the call like I see it, podcast. I'm James Keats, and riding shotgun is a man who questions whether there's too much message discipline in podcasting these days.
Ogon Lana Tunde, you think you're going to stick to the script today?
[00:00:51] Speaker B: No, you called me out correctly.
Right. All right, I'll make sure I stay on the actual topic this time.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: There we go. There we go.
Now, we're recording this on March twelveth, 2024. And Tunde, for a few years now, from time to time, we've seen the idea of banning TikTok or pushes to ban TikTok legislatively, primarily either federally or coming from states. Just recently, in late 2023, Montana passed a ban, and that one has been held up in the courts.
And right now, we're in the midst of one. They're discussing it federally. These efforts typically seem to point to two main factors as necessitating some type of protective action against TikTok. There's a component about spying and the collection and use of people's data, and then there's also a component about the ability to manipulate or propagandize people with the use of algorithms and with the knowledge of that data. So, Tunde, what do you make of this potential move to either force TikTok out of chinese hands as far as its operations? Chick TikTok operations in the US or off phones in the US altogether, or out of the US altogether. Do you think this is a natural outgrowth of people's attention and data being something that's such a premium right now, or do you think something else is going on here?
[00:02:17] Speaker B: I think it's probably a bit of both, but I think there's something else going on. Meaning, I get it, that there could be something going on with the battle for the commodity that is data between big players globally. So I could totally appreciate that. Just like a few hundred years ago, it was large nation states and kingdoms fighting over commodities like gold and copper and all that. And today, data is the most widely traded commodity in the world.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: You remember a few years back, data surpassed oil as the most valuable commodity in the world?
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not going to deny that could be a part of some of these efforts. But I do think that something else here is just kind of what I call China phobia, because I've been looking at this issue for years, since it first came up under President Trump in 2020, and I still don't see, besides the idea that, yes, I appreciate the concern that the chinese government has the potential to manipulate the algorithm because it's a chinese based company.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Typically, the chinese government exercises some level of control over chinese based companies is what the concern would necessarily be.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Yeah, but other than that, I don't see any overriding risk that other social media platforms don't already present and the disruption that they've already shown us that they can have in society. So that's why I do think that I lean towards something else, that this just is kind of saber rattling by our side and a lot of fear mongering, to be honest with you.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Yeah. To me, it seems like our governmental officials have been, are being manipulated by our social media companies. I think you made a key point, but I want to connect the dots. The commodity, that is data. If data is such a valuable commodity, then it's understandable why, one, the companies that trade in data, the Facebooks or the Twitter exes of the world or whoever else, Snapchat or whatever, that those companies would want to restrict other companies ability to collect a lot of data on people and, or to manipulate people. And two, from a geopolitical standpoint, it makes sense that the US would want to have the companies that have the most data on people around the world to be our companies and not companies. So it's almost trying to force China out of, prevent China from being able to collect data on people or chinese company the way that we want to do seems like, it definitely seems like all the concerns for all of the stated reasons, I agree with you. All the stated reasons they're giving on the surface are like, well, why aren't we concerned about that stuff with our companies? Like, if we're concerned about privacy and data, let's pass a privacy and data law that says no social media company can do X, Y and Z, which I've heard that from some democratic congresspeople. It's like, well, hold on, if this is such a concern, let's just pass a prize. Let's protect people's privacy. And that's not the answer that's coming up here. We're worried about everybody's data, but we don't want to just say, hey, companies, you have to respect people's data. Because, again, I think that I don't know if our people are being manipulated, if this is wittingly or unwittingly, but I think that this is driven by behind the scenes either, again, by meta and its portals or Twitter manipulating us and our leaders to say, oh, Twitter is the problem, not Facebook and Instagram and all these other things, but because they just want to have a monopoly on the data and the ability to manipulate. To me that sort of seems like that. Because again, there are other ways to go about this, ways that would seemingly be more constitutional. Just saying, hey, you can't do XYz with people's data, or your algorithm has to do this and this, or it has to be publicly disclosed or whatever like that. There are a lot of ways to go about if you're trying to avoid the manipulation or this exploitation of the data, but this is the way you would do it if you were trying to selectively go about it, if you wanted to let some people do it and not let other people do it.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think it's interesting because if we look to another part of the world where they do regulate things in a different way than we do, and we've talked about this in different discussions about how food is different when you travel overseas, right? Like, you go to european countries and there's like 100 plus different chemicals that they ban over there that they don't have banned here in terms of food and how food is processed and all that.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Chemicals that have been determined by a certain number of scientists and medical people to be harmful to people. That's why they're not banned. Just for fun, again, because one country is selling them and another country is not selling them. It's like, no, no, these are deemed to be bad for health, so we're going to ban them here in the EU. But the know they don't ban that for some reason.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and that's where I'm going. So you can go to the different continents and immediately feel that difference when you just take a bite out of food in the US versus Europe. And I think that I was in preparation for today, I found some articles that talked about the European Union and how they are looking to regulate social media because of exactly what you alluded to in the similarities with chemicals and food. They've deemed that the way that social media is allowed to just disseminate information and the algorithms, the way they are now, is harmful for human psychology in general.
And we have the studies from the negative impacts of Instagram and Facebook on teenage girls, that was done in England. All the way to all the research that's done about how misinformation has been used by certain state actors like the russian government, to foment dissent on the european continent and to cause more distrust in democracies and things like that. So the European Union has, you know, we want to regulate you guys, blah, blah, blah. What's interesting is that they asked companies to sign a pledge, and Google, which owns YouTube, Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn, and a few other major ones have signed onto this and acting like they're going to go in the direction the EU is asking. Twitter, which is now X. Elon Musk has refused to do that. Now, I guess he has a right to. But what I'm getting at is it's the same thing as what's happening with TikTok here. And I just find it interesting how Americans, we as Americans, we play this kind of baby face and heels game. Like it's WWE, where now the baby face is someone like Musk. And Twitter, for a lot of Americans, they think he's cool because he lets people say whatever they want and he doesn't stop any flow of information, or let's say he stops flow of information that he personally doesn't like and he disseminates things that he personally is okay with. So he's a king of Twitter, and he makes the decision, and he makes.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Everybody see his tweets and all that stuff.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Exactly.
But Americans are being led to dislike the idea of a chinese company basically being accused of potentially doing the same thing. And what I'm saying is, Elon Musk, you did a good job reminding me in a private conversation, he's South African. He's not even american. And so that's what I mean by I feel like this is more of a China phobia thing because we don't know what Elon Musk is using that data, who he's selling it to, behind the know. We know that he's allowed his starlink to be used both by the Ukrainians and the Russians during a war. So he's playing all sides.
Know, that's my point about me going back to this idea that this seems like it's more an ideological driven thing and not something that's saying this is really to benefit Americans, to make their life better from an emotional, psychological state as relates to, as how Americans relate to social media, just like you alluded to chemicals in the food.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: But I don't think you could say it's ideological, though, because this is something that shockingly has bipartisan support and I say, shockingly, only because our politics has been so polarized over the past 20 years or so, and increasingly so. So this is the thing that everybody gets together and not everybody, but you have politicians on both sides of the aisle saying, yeah, this is what we want to do. Let's come down and restrict some company.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: Smiling because now Donald Trump is against it. So it's going to make it interesting.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: And there are bipartisan anymore. Well, no, but it's bipartisan in the sense that there are people on both sides of the aisle who are in support of it, and then there's people on both sides of the aisle who are against it for different.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: No, I agree. It's just interesting now.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: But see, to me, I think the China phobia piece is kind of the hook. I think that's how they're able to kind of get people on board with this, because what's really happening is it's like, okay, yeah, we can say it's the big bad Chinese as to why we need to do this, but I think that's the sleight of hand, is what I'm saying. The issue that's going on is this is a battle over the, this is like saying, hey, let's pass a law saying that a chinese oil company can't drill for oil in the United States. That's pretty much what you're seeing here from a fundamental level. And it's like, okay, yeah, we don't want them drilling for oil, this valuable commodity data. We don't want them mining data out of this country. And from a fundamental level, that's what's happened. We're okay with musk manipulating. We're okay with Musk drilling for data and taking all this data. We're okay with.
Yeah, yeah, we're okay with Exxon doing it. So fundamentally, that's what's happened. It's like, well, how are you going to get people on board with this? Okay. Yeah, China. China is a good way to get people. We can say, we can make China out to be the big bad and then in that know, public support get. Or we can get more public support behind it. But the ideological piece I wanted to get back to real quick, because this is quite shocking of all the things that Americans, whether they come in the democratic party, republican party, all the things they can agree on. We were doing a couple of shows a week or two.
Apparently, you know, Republicans no longer agree that Russia doesn't like, like, it's like, okay, well, I thought to Putin talks about, he doesn't like us. So of all the things we can't agree on, this is what we can agree on now is having that government have heavy handed coming down on commerce. And that's, that's what Americans are about now. Tunde, what's going on here?
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Well, I was doing a joke and say, apparently Putin only doesn't, he only doesn't like the woke Americans. So that means the real Americans he likes. So you got to get straight. And that makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy.
And that's what I was going to say. My point on ideology was exactly that, which is the ideology of fear. You're right, because I think about how we learned, I think generally in the population, I've learned over the years historically that when we've had the first U two spy plane fly over Russia in the 1950s is when the United States government realized Russia couldn't compete with us at all because they could just see the landscape and what they had. And I was like, all right, these guys don't even have manufacturing that can compete with us. Similarly, right now, China's stock market is down about 33% over the last year. They're hemorrhaging their economy. They cannot compete with us for real. Their population in terms of having a billion plus people. Yes, they can. If we had a hot war and they sent over 500 million troops, we'd have a problem. But I'm sure that logistically we'd see them coming because that would be thousands of ships and cargo planes with people in them.
So this idea that, I think that's what I mean by the idea of the ideology of fear. Remember, we got scared in the 80s with crack babies and two live crew, was going to ruin the world. Remember? I mean, this idea of fear in american politics and in our kind of psychology is not new. So this is another one where I think in a bipartisan way, whether, like you said, intentionally or unintentionally, maybe this is more intentional, that both parties can find common ground, and maybe there are people that just say, we got to do something bipartisan to make it.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: In this sense, fear is not an ideology but an emotion. And what you're saying basically is that the human aspect is that Americans from all stripes apparently are able to be made afraid of China.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: Well.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: You can get a lot of Americans to be afraid of China.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: But think about this. You made a good point that today's America, not the one you and I grew up in 30 years ago, but today's America. You're not punished as a politician by not fear mongering over Russia, right when we were kids in the, it was under Reagan. Imagine if a politician would try to be soft on Russia and appease them. So I think today that's part of it, too, is the politicians themselves are scared to not get on board because you don't want to be that politician seen as being soft on. So, and I want to say this as I'm talking here, because maybe someone's watching saying, oh, this guy doesn't get it. And China is a threat. I know. China spies on us. They steal our defense secrets. They do espionage all day on our corporate interests. Which is also why I feel like this TikTok thing, again is a straw man because it's already been well documented where the Chinese have hacked us extensively. They've hacked Microsoft, they've hacked Facebook, they've hacked Google, they've hacked the CIA, the Defense Department. So the Chinese already got access to our data.
And I just find that this hand wringing over this one company, which is a social media company, again, it goes back to, this doesn't seem that serious. And the last thing I'll say before I hand it back is the last bipartisan thing we had in recent months was the immigration bill. And that's what I'm saying is it's just interesting that when the parties seem to come together, we have now a slice of the electorate that wants to punish the politicians that are trying to do something bipartisan.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: So this is all kind of, they came together in that instance over fear as well, which is an interesting note. But that didn't go through, that got blown know, bipartisanship wasn't enough to get that through, which is bizarre. But I think, yeah. To your point, the idea that China is an adversary is well established. The question is whether this move is fundamentally changing that power balance. And it seems to me what you want to do if you really want to protect Americans trying to target this company in a way that has already, the way Montana did it was already deemed to be unconstitutional. So now we're going to do it federally. That's still going to be deemed unconstitutional. Trying to do it this way really suggests you're not serious about it. If you want to stop companies from being able to use social media to manipulate, to collect data and exploit it, then you say no company can do it.
The issue is not that China isn't an adversary or that we shouldn't be concerned about what they may want to do or trying to do with TikTok. The issue is going about it this way suggests you're not serious about solving the problem. Just to be clear. Now, the other piece about it, to me, what's interesting is the interdependence of the US and China in that both countries, their adversarial positions relative to really jockeying for power and dominance around the world, which is understandable. If they want to be a big dog, then obviously we're going to look at them sideways and they're going to look at us sideways. But at the same time, the countries are so interdependent in the sense that just fundamentally, China makes a lot of stuff without us buying it, they have a problem. They have no need to make all that stuff anymore. And a lot of that stuff has been what they've been building their economy based on. Conversely, we need to buy a lot of stuff that we don't make anymore. And so beyond mean in terms of us funding our government on debt nowadays, or in large part on debt nowadays, there's an interdependence there, and also them using that to continue to finance their operations. So there's a lot of interdependence here which we don't want to talk about, which we saved that conversation for the quiet, like the serious people have quietly, like, okay, how are we going to do this? In the sense that because the fear piece apparently is such a prime motivator and China is such a good thing to do that with, that this is just what we get consumed with when we're talking about this publicly. But ultimately, again, it's not really doing something that is fundamentally changing what's happening or the standing American versus China or whatever, there are ways to do that. And whether we beef up our security, whether we protect the privacy of Americans more, things like that, that we're just not looking at doing right now either, again, because our leadership has been and is being manipulated by the people who, the social media companies who want to continue to do that, or that people are on board with that. Hey, let's have social media companies being able to manipulate people, but only the ones that we can control or we feel like we can control at minimum.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: So last piece, let me jump on that real quick, because I actually wrote a note down and I'll just say it now because you just hit it. That's what I was going to say, is that what this tells me? And the lack of energy to actually regulate all of these companies to stop messing with our brains and disrupting the narratives in our society and causing young ladies to have more suicidal tendencies and all that kind of stuff, right? To stop that, we should be regulating all of them, just like we regulated tobacco and alcohol and other things that can harm people.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: I think you're right. The reality is that to me that this reflects is unfortunately, because we've allowed this stuff now for the last 20 years, almost a generation of it. We now have people in positions of power who have gotten to that power through the use of this disinformation. And so it goes back to who's going to police the police. It goes back to know, on a separate topic, just no one seems to like the insider trading that Congress does with the stock market, but yet we can't seem to stop it because they're the ones making the rules and they're benefiting from insider trading completely.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: No one outside of Congress likes that.
People in Congress tend to like, yeah. Which is why they aren't passing any rules.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: I keep thinking, as we have these kind of conversations, that I need to run for office for some reason, but that's a whole different conversation. That's a different.
No, but that's what I'm saying. And just to finish off the thought, that's why I want to stop. There is, yeah, I'm starting to see the evidence, just like with insider trading, that, yeah, there's no energy and desire to really clamp down on the ability of social media companies to manipulate people's minds, because a lot of the people in power that have gotten there in the last ten years have been using these tactics.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: They would like to continue to use these tactics.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Presumably, they just don't want China to use them.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: They want to collect the data and they want to be able to try to use the algorithms to manipulate and to, so. And that can be, again, manipulate and or influence. Like there's something to. Yes, we just want to go after China. China is red meat for people that are fear inclined or whatever. Or again, China is an adversary. So, hey, maybe it can just be short sighted and say, oh, well, let's go after China for this. Let's not address the overall, just, we can limit the damage. But the thing, and this is the next piece I wanted to get to, kind of the last piece I wanted to get to, is this is being done in the name of protecting Americans, so to speak, and protecting american interests, which is a worthwhile goal. Now, the question is, though, that I have is whether this actually will ultimately be something that can help Americans in the long term or whether this might harm Americans in the long term. In the sense, here's the construct, really, America has and you talked about this in many shows, and I know you want to talk about it right now. America's derived a lot of benefit in the past for being the type of government that tends to be. This isn't something that's absolute, but tends to be more hands off with business.
We talked about the food regulation. That's part of it as well. Like, hey, yeah, you can put poison in your food in America. No big deal. We'll let you do it. As long as you lobby the government, as long as you pay, as long.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: As people don't die right away.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Out the time period between when they do.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: The stuff, kill someone over 20 years by clogging their arteries, that's okay, then. That's okay.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: So this is quite a departure from that in the sense that, okay, so now it's normally a government like a Russia or a China that will do these type of strict handcuffs on companies or businesses or arbitrary site seeming regulations and things on businesses where the US has always taken the opposite approach, which to your point has always been, that's always drawn more capital here. It's drawn more people trying to do more business here. So do you think this is something that long run could harm, you know, in the sense that, oh, yeah. So America now is just going to play these games like a lot of these other more restrictive governments in the world that are doing things, playing favorites and so forth, as opposed to letting business happen?
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it could. I mean, this is why it's interesting to see the american right go the direction that they always blamed the american left and kind of communists and that kind of crowd to do, which is trying to attack and dominate the private sector for ideological purposes.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: The american right kind of abandoned that a while ago. Like, look at what DeSantis was doing in Florida.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: That's where I was going. This is a trend. And so this is a trend that started. This goes back to, if you remember, I actually been doing some, just preparing for today. I was reminded in reading some articles that in 2020, when this first was proposed by President Trump to ban TikTok, one of the things that they tried to do is a few companies wanted to bid on it. One of them was Microsoft. And after President Trump personally got involved to turn down the prior bidder, it was like a strong arm move. He was going to force Microsoft, if they did buy TikTok, to then pay a fee to the government for setting up that purchase. And I just thought, like, literally, first of all, what is a president or any top politician in the United States doing trying to pick winners and losers in corporate America, again, that's not common. The second thing is, and then this kind of strong arming a company to then pay, like a commission to the like, that's big government in a whole different way than we're used to seeing. And again, somehow I don't know how former President Trump gets away with this behavior and not being called out by people that I would know otherwise consider business minded american people. But if this was another country, this would be called a banana republic. And yes, I'm concerned that if this is allowed to continue, and like you said, I'm not just beating up President Trump here. I'm talking about, like you said, very well, Ron DeSantis attacks on Disney, which led Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, to say they weren't going to invest $1 billion and create 30,000 jobs over the next ten years. The rest of this decade here in Florida. Ron DeSantis attacks on the cruise ship industry during COVID coming from his ivory tower in Tallahassee, telling an industry where people are close together how to deal with a pandemic instead of letting that industry figure it out and do whatever they felt was right.
Now, last year, I was doing this. So this is my rant here.
The attacks on, you know, we got to the point where in our state, our governor decided to open a formal investigation, and he used the pension as an excuse because the pension has an investment in Anheuser Bush. Then I saw an article where Senator Ted Cruz in July of 2023, opened up an investigation on Anheuser Bush in the Senate. Why? Because Anheuser Bush, somebody in their marketing department, decided to give a transgender influencer who has 10 million followers a beer can. That's why. So this is, to me, it's not that different than the young lady who gets killed in Iran by the government for showing her hair in a hijab.
We don't think that America could go that direction. This is why we don't talk about history. There was a time it wasn't that direction for a certain group of Americans, and it can always come back and be like that for all Americans. So, yes, coming in today and seeing that TikTok is being attacked, and then think about this. Now we've got former President Trump saying that they're not to be attacked and that they should be allowed to work. Why? Because his excuse is, I want to damage Facebook.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: Which is a whole nother. What is it?
[00:27:06] Speaker B: Why is the politicians even talking about, let these companies be left alone and run their businesses. And this is dangerous.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: Or let's create a regulatory environment that is about the industry and about the risks presented by the industry.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: But it's also because Americans don't appreciate that the world's capital is comfortable here, because we haven't behaved like that, because America has strong laws, strong judicial processes that protect corporations. And the political class has traditionally left business alone in that sense. Now, I'm not talking about policy fights over taxation and the corporate tax rate and all that. That is normal stuff for politicians and to deal with because that's public policy. But I'm talking about picking winners and losers based on mergers and acquisitions. Remember when, because Donald Trump doesn't like Jeff Bezos, he totally blocked the Defense Department from allowing Amazon to bid on the cloud thing, which is something they.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Do very well by the, hey, you know, maybe we want the best people bidding on this kind of thing.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Exactly. So that worries me that in the long run, the world's capital could find another home because someone else could make their home attractive to the world's capital. Other countries could say, hey, look, you know what? We'll change our judicial laws. We'll stop behaving differently. If you want to send trillions of dollars a year over here, I'd say.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: To me, the issue is, and you stated, but I want to say it more explicitly, the issue is it's the merger of the kind of political considerations with these type of acts more than anything. Like, I'm okay with discussions on regulations and how we want to regulate companies. Again, I prefer it more industry wide than looking at individual and looking at individual companies.
That, to me, is where you start looking at it with the side eye. Like, hold up, there's something else going on. But if you're talking about regulation, I like the idea of, hey, let's regulate in terms of protecting Americans. I would like to have those discussions. Not to say that I would think everything we think about doing, we should actually do, but I think those conversations need to be had. That's what these dudes are there for in government, is to try to figure out, okay, what are the loopholes? What are the ways that people are being exploited?
When people are being exploited by businesses, the only people that can come in and stand in the way is the government. So that's kind of what they're there for. But when they're doing it for arbitrary reasons or for political calculations, when they're doing it to try to settle scores, that to me, is where we're getting into. Like you said, you use the term banana republic. That's where we're getting into a different kind of space, which I'm concerned about. And in this case, it's not completely that, like I said, I think actually we're looking more at a case of manipulation, whether it would be intentional or unintentional, just everybody getting caught up in this hoopla of this fear of China thing. But the idea that we have to look at this one company in particular on practices that they do, that everybody else in the industry does, is something that, okay, well, I think we're not going in a way that has been very beneficial to America this whole time, which has been a tendency, again, you can always find example, a tendency to not let the politics of the day or the political issues of the day dictate how the government is going to regulate and or treat business. And that's a concern because like you said, that's something, one of the reasons why America, it has had economic advantages over the course of decades and centuries and so forth is how its relationship with being friendly towards enterprise. Hey, yeah, start businesses and so forth, a lower regulatory environment, which, again, I'm not saying you want, quote unquote, no regulation, but just saying that not regulations. Like, hey, if you don't give me a tribute to my political campaign, I'm going to shut your business down if I get in power. Not that kind of regulation.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Well, let's be honest, though, right? That's not at least what you and I and I think traditional american definition of regulation entails.
That is what an authoritarian regime looks like.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: But that's how an oligarchy works.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Well, that's what I was going to say. And that's why I hate to go there. Right. Because this word is beaten around a lot, but that's what a fascist state looks like. Like you said, whether fascism, oligarchy, and this kind of quasi authoritarian, still having some capitalism within it looks like.
The point I'm saying is, and this is interesting, the projection that we have from a lot of people in our government, this idea of weaponizing the government, right.
We've been hearing that projection against people who actually did commit crimes, whether people want to acknowledge that or not. Meaning, for example, the January 6, quote, unquote hostages, that's offensive to people in the world today who are real hostages, but they are people who broke the law by trespassing and storming the Capitol so they'd had due process and.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: PATRIot well, just real quick with the projection because I do want to keep us moving. The projection piece is interesting because this is the kind of thing that we would accuse the chinese government of doing. You're showing favoritism with companies and stuff like trying to promote your own companies versus other people.
[00:32:21] Speaker B: That's where I'm going, is that this is the danger of it is that Russia, China, Iran, that's how they run their countries, is companies that they don't like, that aren't loyal to the party, so to speak, they don't get to operate, and those people get pushed out of windows and those people's businesses get shut down and assets just get compensated, just like Fidel Castro did when he took over Cuba. Americans say they don't like, I mean.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: And like I said, that's something that we look at, like the reason why, or one of the reasons why we consider ourselves adverse to the Chinese Communist Party and all that is that they do stuff like that. So the fact that this is the approach we've taken here, again, it says a lot to me. That's why when you see that, that's why you should need to look below the surface and see what's happened, again, acknowledging that that's a nation that is considered an adversarial and that they are trying to, like you said, they've been hacking our stuff and everything like that. So all of that being true, but with this act in particular and the way we're going about it, are we doing what we say we're doing or is something else happening? And that's really the question that I think people need to ask with this. So I think we'll close up this topic from here. We'll be back with part two of our discussion here shortly.
All right. Coming back with part two of our discussion today, Tunde, we've heard a big controversy about, well, first off, I should know Caitlin Clark in women's college basketball for Iowa. She has been, for over a year now, kind of a national story.
She's an impressive player, great shooter, great scorer. Iowa has been going to heights that they don't necessarily normally go to. I think they were the runner up last year in the women's championship. This year they're shaping up for another run. Recent comments by Cheryl Swoops, who is a Hall of Fame basketball player, player back in the so forth, top of the profession, one of the best women's basketball players of all times. The comments that she made, she questioned Caitlin Clark, breaking the all time scoring record, and she was factually incorrect, thinking that she had played for five years when she had only played for four and just kind of throwing some doubt on, oh, is she really as good as she's made out to be, drew, a big backlash.
I know you were a college basketball player. Your thoughts on this? Kind of the Schwoops's comments? Is she kind of like, oh, just missing her glory days or was there some insight to there? What was your reaction to this? And also more interesting, like the backlash that we saw to the comments?
[00:34:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it's an interesting thing.
I know we'll get into the conversation and there's some sensitivities I think that we'll recognize. But in general, I think at this era of going, just not really touching on part one, but this idea of kind of the social media, the Internet, the way we disseminate cable news, everybody seems to feel the need to have an immediate response. Well, not everybody. Some people feel the need to have immediate responses at all times to everything.
Other personalities can kind of sit back and be patient and let things play out before they get into these verbal kind of things. And I think for me that the first lesson before getting into the specifics between the two of them is for some reason I'm thinking about recent people that have, to me, had a very positive, elevated stature in our culture within their specific silo of whatever they do. So, for example, I'm thinking of Will Smith. I'm thinking of Scottie Pippen recently. You know, it's gone sideways about the whole playing with Jordan and all that. And now Cheryl Swoops is another where I never thought anything about Cheryl swoops negatively at all. I never really thought anything positive or negative. But when I'd see her, I was like, okay, I know she's one of the greatest women basketball players ever. I love basketball. And she always seemed like a good, jovial personality whenever I saw her on TV. That's pretty much what I know. And so my feeling is like, here goes another person with a big mouth, now that I think about it, that's hating on someone that's younger and successful. And we got a 52 year old lady beating up a 22 year old lady. And that kind of just looks messy to me. So that's my first reaction. And then I'll hand it back because I know we'll get into some of the other nuances.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: But, I mean, messy is okay, though. The thing I didn't understand about this, well, I would say the thing that I thought was really, people were just taking this in a really weird way, is that this is sports, this is fandom. If she wants to minimize, know, like she's an all time great. She can do that. If she was just a commentator, she could do that. People do this all the time in know, people minimize LeBron James. People argue LeBron James versus Michael Jordan. People do this stuff all the time. And so to me, there was a sensitivity on this idea that she was going after Caitlin Clark. That to me was just very, what's, what's happening here? Like, Caitlin Clark is a big girl and has done a lot of great doesn't, she's not some shrinking violet that needs the public to protect her, so to speak. So people can disagree as well, and people can vehemently disagree. You can't really impeach Cheryl stroops'own career, but you can say, hey, she doesn't know what she's talking about as a commentator, which she said things that were wrong, like factually wrong in her actual initial comments. And so to me, this was kind of like, to your point, social media, this was just more like one of these kind of stories that anything that involves race in America, you can usually get people fired up in some way about. And I think that's really what this was. Cheryl Swoops is a black lady and Caitlin Clark is a white girl. And so in that sense, and I guess, I guess lady talking, I'm implicit in there. I'm talking about their is, you know, an older lady, one is a younger of. But I think that's really the piece that drove this. If Caitlin Clark, there was a sensitivity in Suarez wanted to protect know, because it's, know, she's, she's coming out here. She's doing great. We want to protect her. And then the controversy, once Cheryl swoops got a blowback, people were like, well, people wanted to protect her and say, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't come at her like that. She's an all time great and so forth. So to me, this part about it is supposed to be fun, though. This is the sports part where we get to debate about this. Oh, is Caitlin Clark overrated or is Cheryl swoops just mad that she wishes she played in this era and of wide open basketball and so forth? So to me, I looked at it like that. This sounds like 90% of other debates I hear, whether it be basketball, football, it's like these debates about sports and sports figures and so forth, and particularly talking about different eras. But I think the racial component really gave this more life because with each blow from one side or the other, people got very protective of the person who they felt was being attacked.
[00:39:18] Speaker B: Yeah, no, look, we're in the United States. The idea that race doesn't excite people would be like me saying that I'm not wearing a Thundercat shirt today. Right. Or something like that. For the people watching that are watching the video, we all know that anyone being honest and looking at America, that race is a polarizing topic in general. And so I guess we're not. Are we allowed to say that now that DeSantis isn't running for president here in Florida?
[00:39:51] Speaker A: Because I know he's totally, like, gone.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: Off of his woke crusade since.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: Hey, man, shoot your shot, man. You got your spot. Now shoot your shot.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: So.
But, no, I mean, look, I think. Yeah, that's clearly a part of it. I would say this also. People generally tend to be protective over things that they consider their group is known for or good at. Right. So it reminds me, black folks can get sensitive about topics relating to non black basketball players, just like white folks get sensitive to non white country singers that try and come into the space. Right. I think there's a natural tribalism at play, which doesn't have to be malicious. It's just the know, most of us humans are wired.
But that's where I was saying that. For me, it's just more disappointing to, like, that's why I felt like the kind of the Scottie Pippen Michael Jordan thing. Like, you got two great people, right? Like Cheryl swoops, probably the Michael Jordan of female basketball, right? The best basketball player in the WNBA history and one of the best in NCAA history. And now you got this young lady, Caitlin Clark, who appears to now be the best player in NCAA history. And just to have any tension between the two, to me, is like watching your parents go through a divorce. There's certain things that just make me uncomfortable. And when you have two of the top in their respective field, I'm more comfortable when I see them getting along than not getting along, if that makes sense. That's more of a personal bend for.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: Me, but that looks at it completely wrong. You mentioned earlier in our part one, talking about baby faces and heels, the quote unquote rivalry between magic and Bird is what animated the NBA. The NBA went from tape delay broadcast to big time entertainment live, and then millions of people watching live and so forth on the strength of magic versus bird.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: They never beat each other up themselves, maybe other people beat the other guy up and all that, but them together?
[00:42:00] Speaker A: Well, that's. To me, that's what I mean by the two greats. The biggest unfortunate piece about this is that they can't play each other.
This would be great if they were going to meet in the finals or something like that.
To me is, again, that's sports. It's like, oh, yeah, this person thinks that. This person is overrated and yada, yada, yada had that last year with LSU and the women's LSU team, which thought Clark was overrated. And then they beat Iowa in the finals and it was know, and then we got to have some more fun with that. When Jill Biden wanted to invite both teams to all of this stuff, though, to me is what is kind of like the soap opera that accompanies sports that gets our attention, like that gets us more into it and so forth. And so to me, I look at all this as kind of like a positive, like more people most likely are going to watch now because she said this to everyone that's taking all this stuff so personal. Sure, that's fine. Again, that's why it gets people going, so to speak. But if we take a step back, this is kind of the point. This is kind of the point of if you have people out there talking about sports, if they're just saying the obvious, they might as well not even be there. Oh, yeah, she's a great player. She scores a lot of points and yada, yada, yada, there's nothing interesting about that. It's like, yeah, I could see that with my own eyes. And so her saying this, whether you agree, disagree. And again, some of the stuff she said was actually just objectively wrong. And then some of the stuff was just her opinion. Like, oh, she might think that the way they play now is softer or whatever. And in her day, it was this and that. And again, that's what animates sports conversations. That's why people sit around and talk about this stuff, is to say their opinions and this and that. But again, to me that people got so protective of it was very interesting. And even calling Cheryl swoops a racist, people were saying, oh, you're a racist. You don't like Caitlin Clark because she's white and yada, yada, yada. And again, that's where you see that defensiveness like that people got and saying, you take it to the next level. Then Cheryl Swoop says, oh, well, I'm black. I can't be.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: Just, I'm going to go on that in a second, but I'll finish off from the initial points. Is that, no, but that's why to me, the difference here is they're both the greats. And that to me is the sad part when you have. That's why I say bird and magic themselves always treated each other with respect and cordiality. And that's, to me, I compared to the Scotty Pippen, because Scotty Pippen, not only opinion, but false facts. I've seen him interviewed now saying Michael Jordan was a horrible player. Like, come on, dude, really?
You can have not like a guy. And my point is, I appreciate that Michael Jordan is following one of the 48 laws, which is always say less than never, which is, I'm glad that he's not responding to Pippen and making this a whole thing, because, again, these two are two of the greats. Why should they be picking at each other? And so that's kind of what I look at. Cheryl swoops and just say, why are you picking at this young lady? And you're 52 and she's 22. It's a whole different dynamic. But to get to the can black people be racist? Question, we could have a lot of fun and a lot of jokes right now. We could also be serious. So I'll lean on the serious side for now. Number one, like I said, I want to point out, in respect, deference to black american women, that I can appreciate that that's one group in our country that has taken a lot of the s, end of the stick historically in the american culture, period. End of story. And so there's no need to make a show about that right now. But the idea that a black woman could be sensitive to someone from outside the group that she might feel is kind of encroaching on the group's territory, in a sense. I'm not going to condone that, but I'm going to say it's not out of the realm of reality. Right. So that's one thing. The second thing, can black people actually be racist? My answer would be yes, because black people are human beings, and all human beings have the potential for all these kind of behaviors.
Now, in preparing for today and reading a few articles, there is a different school of thought that defines racism as a power imbalance. So in people who take that definition, in their mind, blacks can't be racist because blacks don't have the power to affect the system to go against whites in the way that whites have had the power to affect the system to dominate blacks. Historically in America, that's a little too nuanced for me. I just think that, yes. Can various groups of humans be racist or prejudiced against others? My answer would be yes. All of us have.
[00:46:52] Speaker A: Well, but part of that definition is distinguishing between prejudice and racist. And so that was the point a lot of times, is that everybody's prejudice, but you can only be racist if you add the power to it to affect someone from a political.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I just don't understand that definition. Compared to president.
[00:47:09] Speaker A: I understand the definition. I mean, that's an intellectual definition. It looks more from a societal context. And I think that's what's at play here. This concept that black folks can't be racist. It comes from, like, a study that Congress did 40 years ago, or I guess 50 years ago at this point, and they defined racism very narrowly. And I think the problem, though, with this conversation, because this kind of blew up once she said that, is people like, oh, what do you mean? But the problem with the context is that even if there's this definition, this intellectual, academic definition of racism that involves power dynamics and so forth, that's not what people think when they think, okay, someone is racist or someone is not. That's not the ordinary and customary meaning that people think of for racism. So when you say black people can't be racist, people aren't in their mind saying, oh, yeah, well, of course, because of the power dynamic. That's not where people's minds go.
And I don't think that that's something. I'm not saying that that's where white people's minds go. I'm saying that's where Americans minds don't go. Because nobody looks at a poor white dude in some rural county who calls somebody the N word and be like, oh, yeah, that guy's not racist, actually, because he doesn't have the power to vitally impact your life. And it's like, nah, people look at that dude and say, he's racist. So to me, because the kind of ordinary definition that most people walk around in their head of racist is this racial animus towards someone else. Or you look at someone of another race and say, I don't like that person and I wish ill on them, or I don't wish well for them. I think that's kind of a more general definition that people walk around in their head. And then by that definition, to your point, anyone can be racist. Because we all have tribal impulses. And I've always thought, in general, growing up in american society will give you a tendency to be racist. You actually have to work against that. Because we all have. Human beings have this tribal instinct in us. Our society teaches us that our tribes are based around race in many respects. Not around nation or not around state or region or whatever. And so therefore, then the messages you're going to get repeated overall all the time are going to oftentimes try to lock in those tribal instincts. And so it actually takes work within some kind of introspection to be able to remove yourself from this conditioning that you're subjected to all the time and say, okay, I'm going to be above this kind of instinct that I have that's being reinforced in my society in a particular way. So, again, can black folks be racist? Well, it depends on the definition of racist that you have. But in my opinion, the definition of racist that we're going to operate on is the one that everybody has in their head, not that some poindexter came up with. And it's some book somewhere that nobody else is thinking about.
[00:49:59] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's interesting, man. I think that you make a good point about the narrow definition given by Congress. That was in 1968, three years after the civil rights legislation was passed, and in the same year that, I think the Fair Housing act or the Voting Rights act, one of those. So I think this is an example as well, that so much has changed in such a relatively short period of time historically in the country. And that's where I'm getting at, is in maybe two to three generations, we've come from.
Really.
Again, I hate to talk about my own country like this. Right? But prior to 1965, America wasn't a full democracy. It legally had a group of people that it kept as second class citizens, which were black Americans through laws, Jim Crow laws, redlining, all this stuff, segregation and the reason why that was all overturned was really holding the country up to the Constitution in the 15th Amendment and 14th Amendment, and that it wasn't separate but equal. It was separate but unequal. Sorry, separate and unequal. So that's that. And that is what it is. And I think hearing you talk, it made me feel like, yeah, this is another example where we as not we as black people, I'm talking about we as Americans, all of us together, need to begin to mature out of the understand that. Because this is one of those where I feel like black people saying that black people can't be racist is actually playing into the kind of narrative that black people are simple and that we're not complex human beings, just like white people and other groups, chinese and other ethnicities, that somehow we are still on this totem pole in the United States where we can't affect society and therefore we can't be racist. We can't do this. Like you said, whatever.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Just real quick, set another way. Saying that black people can't be racist is kind of a white supremacist thing to say.
You're putting blacks lower on a kind of a human hierarchy, like, oh, yeah, they're not capable of this thing. Type of thing.
[00:52:10] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And that's what I'm saying.
I understand in 1968, that definition probably was more appropriate because of exactly what I said earlier, what the times were.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: Let me add something in real quick. I'll get back to you. But the thing is that for Congress's purposes and for what that committee was trying to do, that definition works just fine. They were looking at the idea of systemic racism and how that was leading to violence and rioting in the. So for them, what can we do about it? Well, they're defining racism in a way that relates to how they want to try to address it. But again, that doesn't mean that that's the definition of racism. When people say the word racism, that's not what they're thinking about going around society. And I think when we have the conversation, we can't get hung up on some definition that people don't actually walk around within their head.
We have to take people where they are. And if this is what people think it is, then don't tell me that. Oh, well, actually, it's not that because some definition that some congressional committee came up with, that's not relevant to the conversation at this moment.
[00:53:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And another interesting, as you're talking, example, I'll give, remember a few years ago, this is one of the early signs of Kanye west going sideways in many ways, when he made the comment about 400 years of slavery was a choice.
[00:53:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:32] Speaker B: And I was very offended by that because, again, my concern is he has influence, and he's going to influence people that already want to take the mental lane that black Americans complain too much and that all this historic stuff doesn't matter and that it didn't influence the position of where people are today. All that stuff that I just talked about with the laws and redlining and all that. And so my point is saying that to say that black Americans don't have influence in our society today, to influence people's thoughts about whether their own group or other groups, to me is, again, asinine. And it is, again, playing into this idea that we're not nuanced, that we're somehow this big monolith that still is a victim of America. And again, I say that fully recognizing that America still has to live up to the full ideas of equality. But I'm also saying it in recognition that we've come a long way since 1960, 819, 65. And that has to be acknowledged. And part of that acknowledgment is that, yeah, black people can be racist. We're complex human beings and individuals just like white people. And so for black people to say that, oh, we can't be racist, and that to me is, again, a different type of delusion. That's just a different way of categorizing yourself as different than other people.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: And I don't understand what purpose it serves. That's the other thing about it is like, well, what are you moving forward? What ball are you moving by standing on this hill and saying, are you trying?
[00:55:07] Speaker B: Because it does for comfort, like to say, I can't beat like, a lot of people on the right have comfort by saying all the election was stolen. Right.
[00:55:13] Speaker A: Well, in Cheryl Swoops's case, which I don't particularly knock her for this, because, again, she's trying to have a different conversation than everybody else is. And what my point is that don't do that. Don't try to have a different conversation than everybody else is without telling them you're having a different conversation.
I'm actually going to responsibility for these two influencers to the academic version of this. And then by that, she's using the word in kind of its normal parlance, but actually defining it in a way that is with this academic parlance or this legislative perspective.
So the thing is, she's like, okay, I'm not racist.
If she says I'm not capable of racist, I'm like, okay, I don't like that. But then she gives all the reasons why she's not racist. And I'm fine with that. I'm not calling her a racist. I have no reason to believe that she's racist. It looked to me like she's just not a fan of Caitlin Clark's game, which again, to me is, that's kind of the point of sports. I don't buy into this. Everybody has to think the same thing. And I would think that most of us don't want that and most of us don't like that. Messi is okay for me in say, we can all look at Michael Jordan and LeBron James and argue, and some people can say one is better. Some people can say the other is better. There doesn't have to be some answer at the end that somebody's right and somebody's wrong. That's the point of these sports things, is that this is entertainment we can argue, we can debate, we can fight, and none of it really matters. And so to me, in this instance, the point isn't to say that Cheryl swoops is racist or like I said, she's given me no reason to think that she's racist. That we went there was weird to me anyway. But it shows, again that level of how people are trying to protect.
First Caitlin Clark. When somebody doesn't, it's like, oh, everybody has to like Caitlin Clark. And it's like, well, no sports. You play sports. Some people can like her, some people know, and then on the same hand, and then when the people come at Cheryl swoops, then people are trying to protect know. So then you get certain things like, oh, I can't be. So. To me, it just went in a direction that it didn't need to go. Because again, let's just have these sports arguments until we're blue in the face and none of it matters ultimately, whether somebody's national champions, whether somebody's the greatest of all time, whether somebody did this, did that, who would have won between somebody now and somebody 40 years ago. All of these are academic questions. We're not supposed to come up with an answer. For real. There is no answer. For real. Who would win between Shaq and Chamberlain? We can argue about that. There's no answer.
That's the point of forts.
All right, well, we're not going.
[00:57:43] Speaker B: Michael Jordan's the Goat.
Just for me to say it.
[00:57:47] Speaker A: We'll have those arguments offline.
[00:57:49] Speaker B: I respect LeBron. He's great. But MJ's the goat. But no, I was going to joke and say, because we're doing a rare sports show, so I got to get it all out. You do use the word messy. Did you mean unkept and untidy, or did you mean the soccer player?
[00:58:03] Speaker A: I better be clear about what definition I'm using, right?
[00:58:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:07] Speaker A: Or else I'm going to fall into this same trap. But no, that's real. But ultimately, I think that, again, sports is sports, so let's keep sports kind of passionate. But ultimately, it's not really getting into, we got to solve all these problems because there is no solution. But I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody, for joining us on this episode of Call. Like I see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:58:34] Speaker B: I'm tunde in one liner.
[00:58:36] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
