Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss the reaction to the death of Hulk Hogan and also how we can see the evolution of American culture through his public life.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man who is the realest American that I know, Tunde. Yohgonlana Tunde. You ready to show us what you're gonna do, man, when the spotlight of the podcast is on you?
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Of course, man. That was a great honor.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: I appreciate that.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: I'm a great American.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: I will take that. Just so you are, man. So now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe, like the show on YouTube or your podcast platform. Doing so really helps the show out. We're recording on July 29, 2025, and we saw last week that Hulk Hogan passed away, whose real name was Terry Bollea, and he passed away at 71. And as one would expect it for someone in the public eye for so long, we saw many obituaries and reflections on him as a man and his life.
Some of these seem to try to see him and reflect on him in a positive light, while others didn't shy away from discussing or contextualizing the more controversial or even ugly moments in his life.
But the through line that we saw through all of this is that a lot of people had a lot of thoughts and, you know, had an opinion on this and had stuff that they had, you know, built up over the years on it. So I want to discuss the idea of Hogan, you know, who was, you know, somebody who was not like a world leader or business titan or anything like that, but an entertainer, you know, and how our society, like, looks at that now in this modern era. But first, you know, I wanted to get to you and, you know, look at Hulk Hogan as unquestionably a man who was very popular in the United States over the last 40 plus years. And so what stands out to you as far as, you know, some of the super high highs and also some of the lows that we've all witnessed.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's great intro, man, because I think that that encapsulates Hulk Hogan's, like you said, like the public journey that we've seen him for from the outside. I mean, I can't get into his personal head of how he felt about his own life. But for specifically me, I mean, you asked me straight up, so I'm born in 1978.
So by the time, let's say 1985 rolls around, I'm a seven year old kid and I'm watching Hulk Hogan flying off the ropes and he literally is like a superhero to me.
I think for our generation. He was like what Superman was for kids in the 1950s who were reading comic books.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah, well, no, I like. Or a Marvel superhero, like an Iron man for like a millennial or something like that.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Or early. It's, it's. Yeah, just someone you look, you look up to. You don't even understand why you're looking up to this guy. Right. Like, meaning you're so young. He was just cool. He was the embodiment of everything that we were taught to believe was good about America.
And I think I didn't realize it back then because I was just a kid and I bought into it with a big smile and, and I look back at that fondly, actually. So, yeah, in, in, in.
I know in this conversation we'll get into some other parts that we feel represent the American culture and, and what America kind of has become to represent. But at this part of my nostalgia here, talking about it, I can think of Hulk Hogan as a very kind of. For me, it was like a lovable figure, like, like a guy that was a hero that would, that would always get the bad guys and the kind of things that we were indoctrinated to believe that we were as Americans, I think that kind of Post World War II, we beat the Nazis and the Japanese, we saved the world, and we were promoting all this democracy and pluralism around the world. And Hulk Hogan maybe personally didn't embody that. And he wasn't walking around talking that stuff, but the idea that he was in Rocky 3, that he was beating up the Iron Sheikh, he was beating up, you know, guys from other parts of the world that we didn't like. So it was this kind of this macho ness, you know, of American muscle.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: He was sold as like a real life Captain America, so to speak, you know, in that sense that he was, you know, again, the song, you know, I'm a Real American and you know, all this other stuff, like that's how he was sold. And so him as a baby face was definitely that. Like, to me the thing that really stands out, the high highs stand out, but also the lows. Because what I see the story of Hogan is, you know, how, what I see in that is how it mirrors our culture and our entertainment evolution over the last 40 plus years. You know, like Hulk Hogan was kind of the pinnacle, or close to it, of the monoculture that existed up until a certain point. Because this Guy was again, by any reasonable measure, he wasn't an important person, you know, he wasn't a world leader. He wasn't, you know, some business titan that changed the world with some invention, Steve Jobs or something like that. Like, he, he was an entertainer, you know, like he, he, he participated in, you know, professional wrestling, scripted professional wrestling. And, you know, so he might as well been a soap opera person, you know, with big muscles and with violence, you know, so. But he's known by everyone, you know, like of a certain age. Everybody knows who that is, you know, like, and so he's one of the more popular people in the world. And so that is kind of again, the pinnacle of monoculture. And then monoculture starts to break apart, you know, and, and we go into something that, you know, like the reality TV phase. Well, Hulk Hogan was involved in reality TV and in doing that stuff. And then we end up now in a place where polarization kind of defines our current modern in both entertainment and cultural. You know, like these two. One of the things we might talk about today is how those two have kind of blended to form really, you know, where the entertainment, the culture has followed the entertainment, but the, the polarization piece. Like now he, at current, you know, where he was in the past few years was a polarizing figure. And that's very consistent with the times in the United States right now where, you know, there aren't many people who are well known and aren't very polarizing, you know, so. And the more well known you are, the more likely it is that you're going to be very polarizing in many respects. So that he went through that whole thing and you can see that in a high profile person, you know, kind of how our culture developed, devolved, however you want, however you want to term it, you know, depending on where, what your perspective of it is, but it's reflected in him and how people received and understood him. And also just kind of related to that is how much more about him we got to know beyond the public Persona. You know, part of the reason why, like he's the baby face of the 80s and early 90s, we don't know much about the guy. We only know what's being curated and presented to us. Whereas, you know, once you get into reality TV and the polarization type eras, then you actually start knowing a lot more about your quote unquote heroes, you know, like, and what they're really about, so to speak. And you can't. Or it becomes harder to separate those two and say, okay, well I Like this public Persona, even if the private person is not somebody who I would rock with.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, to add to that, I would say this, he himself. And like you said, the life that we've watched him live is like, to me, he's the one human being that kind of personifies America, both the kind of long term cultural arc of America as well as the modern.
I would say what some of us feel might be a decline of the American story that maybe we revered at one point. And so when I say the long arc of the culture, I wrote down a term here and the term is confidence man, but it's not in the term that is traditionally used like a con man, like he was conning people or something. What I mean is actual confidence, meaning the idea of a carnival barker, a guy in the 1800s, you know, that's going from town to town being bold and loud and selling some story and people just gravitating to that type of individual. And we could think of people back then like, you know, P.T. barnum, just the, the idea of getting people's attention, being a loud entertainer and following that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Best way to say it. Thank you. Because you mentioned something earlier which was. There. It was. He got famous from scripted wrestling. And the term scripted is very important because unlike Greco Roman wrestling in the Olympics, let's say that's not scripted. That is the meritocracy, the, the best athlete wins, that kind of thing.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: The most resourceful, the strongest or the most. Like all of these, like competition. Real competition.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's what I'm saying is that. Think about this. I mean, I don't know of this. I know that let's say this, this form of wrestling entertainment, wrestling has spread to other countries. So I know that now in the modern world, but I don't know of another country that founded a type of Sport that is 100% scripted. I'm not saying it's never happened, but it's pretty, it seems to be pretty rare. And so it's. It seems like that's part of an American culture, which is one part is something did happen.
The other part is willing, like you said, willingly accepting another version of the reality and, or even being aware that the reality that you're watching is scripted and being okay with that and being a fan of it and wanting more. So that's, that's. That to me is interesting. I wouldn't say that's deep than you.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Think, though, because if you think about it, professional wrestling in the United States is basically Theater for Jacks, you know, because if you can watch the same kinds of themes, you know, like, there's good guys and bad guys, there's baby face and heels, kayfabe, you know, like, you got to stay in character while you're doing these things. Like, really what it is, is. Is theater, you know, And I mean, that's another thing actually, that we can see how that has permeated our current culture is that, you know, part of the leadership style we see that's very successful, adopts a lot of the professional wrestling kind of ethos and that approach to. To. To getting people emotionally invested in storylines and, you know, hey, these got these. These enemies that are trying. That they're cheating and they're trying to, you know, to thwart me and so forth, and people get behind and become. As opposed to becoming, you know, like. Like we're in a democratic society. So instead of becoming voters and citizens and so forth, we people are just fans. And it's like, hey, I'm just a fan of this person. It doesn't matter what they do, you know, like, if they do something. And that must mean that I'm down with it because I'm a fan. And so, you know, like, I think that if anything, something was discovered through the explosion of professional wrestling in that this is a way that people like to have stories told to them, you know, and. And whether it be real stories or fake stories, like, this is.
The people that came up with the soap operas are on to something in terms of, you know, there's this constant drama and this constant kind of, you know, presentation of the. Oh, yeah, that's the. That's the lady that you got to watch out for, or that's the. The guy that is going to save the girl, or this is the girl that'll stab you in the back. All this stuff like the soap opera people were onto something and that's kind of permeated. That then permeated into professional wrestling. Now I can go into politics and so forth. The one thing I wanted to mention real quick before we got off of this part, though, was one other.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: I got something for it too, so let's stay on.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Well, one other piece real quick, though. One other piece that I think it deserves a mention here because this also to me tracks the 80s is, you know, the 80s and the mentality of America in the 80s, coming out of the. The 60s, 70s, you know, then we had this New Deal mentality where you had the biggest middle class in the history of the world where you had One earner households, all that stuff achieved through solidarity amongst the labor class to get a more fair shake of how the spoils of society are going to be shared. Well, in the 80s that started to, that starts to really reverse. And one aspect of that was there one high profile aspect of that, you know, people point to, oh, you know, the, the, the, you know, there's this, there's this union that gets broken by Reagan or anything like that. But there's also in wrestling, in professional wrestling, the wrestlers, as that entertainment form became more prominent, more profitable, people like Jesse Ventura started to try to agitate for better conditions for the wrestlers. And Hulk Hogan, being one of the top guys at that time, actually threw his weight behind management. He sided with management as the lay part of the labor, but a highly paid part of the labor. So he started this schism that you see that it's kind of. We don't even blink at it now, where a lot of times the higher paid labor parts of the labor force side with management, side with the capital and so forth, and are complicit in trying to keep down. And they're not. There's no solidarity with labor in general to where, hey, all of labor, we should try to get ourselves a better shape. And, and so, yeah, people look up and throw complaints around, oh, Elon Musk, he was about to be a trillionaire in a couple years. And they're mad about that. And it's like, well, but sitting around being mad about that, like, there's a specific reason for this. This stuff isn't happening because of fortune or dumb luck. This is because the system has been changed. And many people who used to have solidarity with labor and saying, hey, we want to have a fair shake for everyone. We want people to be able to share in the spoils of society.
That agreement is gone. And so now it's like you got people fighting over sustenance and everybody else is living, you know, living their best life beyond the means that they, you know, that they could possibly ever, you know, need to have.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think, I mean, look, you're onto something with this goes back why I think Hulk Hogan actually is fascinating representation of the direction of the United States because like, yeah, I'm not.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Like, we can't blame him for that necessarily.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, we can't.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: It's more direction.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we can't blame him personally for the demise of unions and things like that. But you make a great point. Right. He represents as someone who was a star in a certain industry and was the highest paid person. He had an opportunity to go one of two directions. He could either look to the other people that were doing the labor with him and saying, hey, I know you guys are. You know, I'm hearing the chatter about collective bargaining. You know, let me. Let me use my position as the biggest star here to help in this endeavor, help all my fellow wrestlers with sharing some of the spoils that is coming from all this new revenue that's coming because the 1980s was also the explosion in cable TV technology, satellite TV, all these things. So you had all these new lines of revenue, just like with the NBA and NFL and other sports, just technology allowed for that. So he had a choice. And like you said, he chose to side with Vince McMahon and management for whatever reason. But to Your point, the 1980s is when a lot of people that were at the top of their respective industries or being paid very well decided that they were gonna side with the capital and industry class and not the labor class. And that's just. That's just a fact. It's not necessarily a good or bad thing. It's just an explanation of, like you said, why we're here, where we're on the cusp of having maybe a human being become the first trillionaire, and. And Americans not understanding what happened, right?
[00:15:17] Speaker A: And then other Americans live in, like, they live in a third world country, and they're like, how did this happen? And it's like, well, yeah, there's a.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Very serious explanation, but that's what I'm saying. So that's a good explanation, because that gets me thinking about where we were as a country in the 1980s, because, again, you and I were kids. Ronald Reagan was president. He was a very inspirational president. I mean, I still go back and see some of his speeches now and read them and think, wow, this guy was a great orator.
But we know that there was a little bit of rot underneath the system that he was overseeing, right? And there was a lot of dismantling of the things you alluded to, what was prevalent in the New Deal that brought us the largest middle class by the 60s, so on and so forth. And I think part of that was able to be done on the backs of division, divide and conquer by those, and I would say elite upper class, however you want to call it. The wealthiest folks at the time saw a lot of what happened in the 1960s as threats to their position. So not just civil rights, but the feminism movement, you got the Vietnam War, the anti war crowd that, that. That. That disrupted maybe some of the military Industrial complex's ability to, to do things. Then you had things in the 70s like the Malaysia, the 70s, the oil embargo, the tough economy, and then also more distrust of the government from things like the Pentagon Papers that end up with the church committee hearings. Right. About all the assassinations by the CIA and all these things in 1976. So you had this decade. And then here comes this guy named Ronald Reagan talking about mourning in America and a term that has been used since, which is make America great again.
So Ronald, I mean, sorry, Hulk Hogan, as someone who looked apart. He's a 6 foot 8, blonde guy, kind of looked like Thor. Right. And a lot of Americans, whether they look like him or not, envisioned themselves or a perfect American to look like him. So he came in at the right time from a marketing and a sales kind of point in American culture where the culture was looking for someone to make them feel good about being American again.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: And he was an amazing, you know.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: And he's going back. Yeah, yeah. And that's what I'm saying. Like the long arc of American history, showmen have always been present in America, right?
[00:17:39] Speaker A: Like.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: Like it's part of the story.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: So you got.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: It was like a perfect coming together.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: We shouldn't minimize that though, because that also, that's important. You know, like a lot of times people who have a more kind of intellectual or brainiac understanding of, you know, nations and, and cultures and tribes and all that kind of stuff focus on, you know, kind of the mechanics of it. But, but the vibes are very important and just people feeling good to be a part of something. And so a lot of times you can see if that stuff is neglected, then even if things will be, are going well, people will feel bad about it because nobody's attending to making them feel good about what's going on or what they're a part of and so forth and so. And Hogan was that, you know, in that time period.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. And the other part, James, that I think for me, and I'll say this, I'll speak for me, you may agree or disagree, not everyone listening may have the same perspective because, you know, we all have different lives here. But I would say is he's very American for me, as a black American, meaning he's a very, He's a very present in my mind as my own experience with America when I watch him, because of what came out, because I know, you know, people watching this may have known of some of his ups and downs with the controversial stuff. And one of Them was, you know, he was taped using. Being very racist, using N word and all this kind of stuff. And so that, to me, also was like, man, this is also a part of being American and a black American, which is.
Hulk Hogan was my hero when I was a kid. Literally, when I was in elementary school. Kid.
And like many of us have with other American heroes or just prominent people in the American culture, as we grow up and get older, sometimes these parts of their character come out, and it's almost like a disappointing. It's like a letdown, you know, Like, I wasn't upset at Hulk Hogan when he used the N word. I wasn't. Like, you were an adult at that.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: Time, you know, like, if that happens when you're a kid, it breaks your heart, you know. So when you're an adult, you're kind of used to the fact that you're heroes as a kid, depending on where they're from or what kind of America they really buy into. When you had a more simple understanding of the world, those same heroes turn around and make you feel really bad about yourself if you're not careful. So you're probably, as an adult, already hardened to that, you know, like, hey, this. You know, any of these guys at any point, you know, for all I know, not again, not all of them, but any of them could. Yeah, I could find out something about what John Wayne said, used to say or what, you know, anybody said and be like, oh, man, you know, that's not what I wanted to do.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: John Wayne's a good example because I grew up watching westerns, and I love them. And then as I got older and. And read interviews of what he said about black people and all that, I realized, man, he looks at us the same way as he looked at the Native Americans as savages.
And there's a part of it that's disappointing, and there's a part of it that you're kind of like. And that's how I felt with Hulk Hogan. I was like. When I found out what he had said behind the scenes and his racism, it's just kind of like there was a part of me, I was like, oh, man, you too? Like, just disappointed, you know, like, not upset, not hurt. It was just kind of like, okay, I get it. And so it's like that, to me, is also very American, right? Because just, like, he said that stuff and people heard it, and it may have hurt, damaged his reputation a bit. But there's also a big part of America that if me and you talk about that, they Want us to shut up? They just don't want to be told about it. They don't want to hear about it. Oh, shut up. Why you keep talking about. He said, well, I'm talking about it because, you know, it's pretty relevant to people like me, but you don't want to hear that. And that's also very American.
And that's what I'm saying is like, he's just representative of the whole thing.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: And then that has been reduced to a card, you know, so, you know, it's like, okay, yeah, yeah, you're playing this card. I'm like, oh, man. I mean, it's not a joker. It's not an any.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: You know, it's funny. It's not a winning card, but, you know, it's funny. James, people with that attitude are the same ones who play the victim card today about ideas like the great replacement.
Like, they.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: They.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: You and I aren't allowed to talk about when a hero of ours disappoints us, but they can sit there and, you know, talk about everyone that.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: And always be a victim of other things.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And they're always right. And so that's just. It's just American. That's what I mean. Like, we're not allowed to talk about this stuff. And you and I kind of accepted and put up with it. Not necessarily.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: I mean. I mean, just. I don't know that we accepted and put up with it as much as we just going to be the background noise that, you know.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: Correct. That's a better way to put it. Yes, that's a better way to like.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm gonna go to the bar. And if my wife doesn't like me to go to the bar, there's gonna be some background noise when I go to. If I go to the bar. All right, well, I'm out. There it is.
[00:22:22] Speaker B: I'll keep moving. You know, so if I talk about Hulk Hogan in this way, you're right. This is. I know.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: It's gonna be like, yeah, whatever, dude.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: So even though he said it and it's on him, he's the victim.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: But. But there's one other thing I wanted to get to in this, you know, and then. By the way, that was well said. You know, I think that it's. It is definitely something that.
From a maturity standpoint, I think your experience, though, and the way you reacted to it as far as how you said, is a disappointment. Not like, that's because of your maturity, because.
Excuse me. At all points, we. I say that, like, black Americans, a lot of times we're forced to confront and deal with that kind of stuff, you know. And so once you do it a couple of times, it's like, okay, yeah, yeah, okay. So he's one of these guys. So, you know, don't want to put. Don't want to invest too much emotion and happiness over there, you know, or don't want to put any, you know, like, so to speak. And so you just know, you know, that that's on the.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Can I say one more thing?
[00:23:14] Speaker A: No.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Because his last name is Bolaya. I looked it up. His dad's half Italian, half Panamanian. And I just thought of that too, James, that for us black Americans, it's another example of someone that kind of wouldn't be considered white when I was a kid because he's not a pure wasp. It's almost like he passed. And by passing, what does he do? He beats up on. You know, he's trying to, like, distance himself in that way. And that's a very. I think that we as black people collectively understand as well that people immigrate to this country and kind of.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Well, yeah, you know, a lower or underclass and then they kind of assimilate in and then turn around and say, oh, yeah, yeah, forget the blacks. You know, yada, yada, yada, the blacks are the problem. And so, I mean, yeah, that's. That's part of it too. But I just.
Yeah, I wanted to keep us moving. The. One of the things I wanted to. Where I wanted to close actually was talking about, you know, I was talking about the monoculture and how popular Hogan really was. I mean, like, again, on. On one hand, you could probably list the people that are as popular as him and also had. But he also had such a high approval rate, you know, like at various times, you know, you 80s 90s, so forth, like, he's such a highly thought of guy. And it's. It's just rare to see someone who's that popular who also is that well thought of across all spectrums of society or so many spectrums of society. And some of that is because, you know, again, we only knew what we were allowed to know at that time.
But it's something that I don't know that we're ever going to see again. But the rarity of it, I would illustrate with Muhammad Ali, you know, in the sense that Muhammad Ali. We all look bad. Oh, yeah. Ali is beloved and he's very popular. One of the most popular people in the world. But it's like when he was alive. And when he was kicking and when he was talking, he wasn't beloved, you know, he was, you know, disliked by a good chunk, if not a majority of the country. And then, you know, eventually they came around and was like, yes, this is a great man. We love this guy. And then he's universally beloved at the end, you know, and so forth, so. But the question really is, is can anybody right now? As I said, we went from a monoculture to kind of a reality TV thing where you get to know more behind the curtain about people, to now just polarization, where it's kind of like everybody's picking a team. You got to be a baby face or you got to heal. I have to view people as a baby face or a heel. I can't just receive information and kind of keep him, you know, put that into my brain, mix it around, and then keep it moving. And so the idea of, is it even possible now for someone to be so popular, yet not a hero or a villain, you know, but not be polarized in that way? What do you think, man? Do you think that's even possible?
[00:25:48] Speaker B: I think with the way information.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Is.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Disseminated and just online and all that, I don't. I don't know if it's possible right now. Maybe we'll have some sort of order and. And some sort of curation of this information landscape at some point in the future, but today, I don't know, because I just think that, yeah, there's enough, you know, Hulk Hogan, along with a lot of other people, Michael Jordan and others we could talk about that were stars of the 1980s, let's say, and 90s, like you said, the monoculture is something that I think led to that, right? Like these men being so liked. The fact we don't have a monoculture and it's. And it's more of a fractured culture because of the information networks that we don't all share. Remember when. When you and I were kids watching Hulk Hogan, there was another 40 million people watching Hulk Hogan at the same time, right? And so. And the population of America might have been 200 million back then. So it's just very rare. I mean, the super bowl, he was.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: What we were watching was selling him as a hero as. As the guy, like ex, and with a guy on the other side who was exaggeratedly bad, you know, like, again, in a soap opera, drama, theater kind of way. Like, so it's like, yeah, we all would identify with the hero in the story and then be happy when he defeats the villain. In the story as it's been curated for us, as it. As it's been narrative created for us.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: That's what I was going to say. I think in the year 2025, that we sit here, and I think the super bowl might be the last communal kind of cultural thing we do as Americans. And in recent years, that's become an area where culture wars have permeated because the halftime shows, people complaining all the time about whether they like it or not. And so. And so.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Well, I think people complain about the halftime shows for a long time. Like, I.
I remember when Janet Jackson did the halftime show.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: Well, that's what I'm saying. I'd say this generation, right. Like this last 20, 25 years, people didn't used to complain about the halftime shows in the 90s and 80s.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: Well, they might have. That they might not have had the ability to complain and be heard also, though, because that's the other thing I'm.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: Getting with the information networks. That's why I think that we're at a different time now where one person may not be able to have a 90% approval rating by society just because.
Yeah. Too much. Disruptive voices.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah. For that reason alone is that the idea of being a contrarian is appealing to a lot of people. And so even if someone's behavior was one that would warrant a 90, 95% approval rating, they won't get it because there's going to be too much. It'd be too lucrative to go the other way, you know, for something. There are going to be people who are the way. If they go the other way, that'll be a lane you can carve out, like carving out a lane, saying that, oh, yeah, LeBron James, great basketball player. I'm a carve out a lane that LeBron sucks. And I'll be able to get, you know, like, a lot of attention to myself.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: 20%, 30% of people. Yeah.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Accepted. So.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: But maybe that's the thing, right. Maybe this is the reality and we were living in a fantasy before.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: That's. That's exactly what I was gonna say.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: Is that what it really likes by 90%.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: Yeah. What it really reflects is, sure, there were people who, you know, maybe thought it was a little too much or a little too cheesy or, you know, whatever. Or like, oh, this is all scripted anyway, so who cares. But it wasn't lucrative to go on the networks at the time or to. To really make that. To take that corner and be the one. That's what you're arguing and that's what you're known for, so to speak. And so I think the appearance of the monoculture, or, excuse me, the appearance of a high approval rating was due to two things, mainly.
One is we didn't get to see behind the curtain. And so we don't know necessarily what's happening. Even with somebody like Michael Jordan, who I would say had a very high approval rating, he would have gotten a lot more criticism if it was known at the time widely. His gambling, for example, you know, like, that would have been. There would have been people who would have been criticizing that or, you know, being skeptical of this and that and so being. Being behind the curtain a little bit more. And then also, like I said, more voices competing for attention means that every angle of anything is going to be hit. And so if the angle is a contrarian angle, it's going to be hit. So it's just at this point, we're not set up to all generally like the good guy. I mean, to the extent that, I mean, you talked about this. I think we both talked about it. To the extent that you got people saying Jesus was too nice. You know, like, Jesus was too nice to be a Christian. It's like, okay, there are no universal good guys anymore. If amongst Christians, Jesus is not seen as a universal good guy and the way he behaved is not seen as a universal good, then, yeah, there is no more super high approval rating anymore. It's not possible if you. And then same thing with, you know, the flat earthers or whatever. Like, if, if we can be on this, this little ball and then in the space and be like, yeah, it's actually flat. If some of us can think that, then, yeah, it's, it's. There's no more agreeing on, so what? We might even consider the basics. So. But yeah, man, I think that ultimately though, it is an opportunity to have a window back and see kind of where we come. And that's not to say that we need to go back there, but that's just, you know, it's interesting to see the evolution because a lot of times these things happen and if you never take a step back, you can't get perspective on kind of where you've been, where you, where you are, and also where, where you may be going. So interestingly enough, you know, this gave us the opportunity for that. So, you know, you and I, I know there's been a lot of people out there, you know, with negative wishes towards them, people, positive wishes. You and I didn't even want to look at it. From that standpoint. Like, we don't want to wish anybody bad, you know, but at the same time, there is something we can look at ourselves from a cultural standpoint from. So, yeah, you know, we. So we appreciate R 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. Till next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: I'm tuned in with Mana.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
