Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we react to claims that there is a double standard in play in the way that Kamala Harris is treated by voters and the media relative to Donald Trump. And later on after that, we'll consider what the decline in sex in movies says about our culture.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast.
I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man who may not be known as a chef, but is always cooking up some good takes.
Tunde, are you ready to show off your verbal intercourse skills today?
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Of course.
Only built for Cuban links for those who know who. The real. Who the real chef of the hip hop.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: The real chef, yeah. So, yeah, you don't claim to be him.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: No, I'm not him, but I'm dating myself when I talk about him, knowing.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Who he was because, hey, so am I. Failed reference now.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: A generation of the past.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and hit, like, on YouTube or your podcast platform. Doing so really helps to show out. Now recording on October 29, 2024, and we have a big election coming up here in the US and at this point, we've reached the stage where most people's views on things are pretty set.
But in looking at these views, some observers have recently started to call attention to what they call as a double standard in a way, in the way that the presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are judged. And Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas said recently, we've got one candidate who's allowed to be lawless, while the other has to be flawless, which was a cute way to put it together. But she's not alone in this sentiment. Sentiment. We've seen people like Michelle Obama talk about this. Van Jones and even Eugene Robinson over at the Washington Post wrote a big thing on it, and, you know, really laying out the case. And so just to jump right in, Tunde, what do you make of the claim from many that Harris is, you know, that there's a double standard, you know, between how she's treated. Kamala Harris is treated by the public and the media relative to how Donald Trump is treated by these same people?
[00:02:19] Speaker B: I mean, I would say it's a great question, because I would say from my perspective in the media that I consume, I think that's an accurate statement. And I know that today's discussion will be, you know, us laying that case out and giving our examples and so on and so forth. But as you wind up the question, it makes me realize that yet, for Those of us, I would say, who, you know, have the desire or the benefit of viewing different sources of information, we can make a better comparison of this. And I do think that there are some people out there that would hear this conversation, and because of the information ecosystems they're in, they would just basically call us people that are projecting and that, you know, that. That there's a double standard. But it's not in Kamala Harris's tour of detriment. It's all. It's all on Donald Trump, so on and so forth. So I think. I think even this discussion can't escape the kind of. The divisions that have been sown in this kind of discourse about even how two candidates are being covered. But to answer directly, yes, I do see a double standard.
And, you know, I know that's what we're here to talk about.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Well, the quote. The quote, you know, he's allowed to be lawless, while she has to be flawless. I think pulls out because. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I.
Pointing to partisans, people who are just so in the bag for someone. And even with the quote that I gave, you know, that's from a Democratic representative of Congress, that's not even necessarily where this is most interesting to me. Like, I'm looking at the people that are supposedly trying to be fair. Like, I would say the mainstream media, so to speak, which, you know, many Trump supporters will say that that's in the bag for the Democrats, so to speak. I would say that's incorrect. But the people are pointing to the mainstream media as saying that they have a double standard as they apply it to Trump. People are pointing to kind of voters who are. Who at least claim to be less partisan that are looking at the candidates and applying different standards. I think this is real, but I actually think this has less to do with Kamala Harris. I think that since 2015, we've seen that the people who either are supporting of Trump and it probably comes from them, but then it filters out to the public at large. I just don't think that Donald Trump has held to any standards whatsoever. Like, and we've seen this, you know, like, whether it would be, you know, the. The Access Hollywood tape, and everybody's like, oh, my gosh, you know, this is going to be the end. If there was. If he was held to the standards of a normal politician, he would have been out then. Or, I mean, all the way up to you. You follow that all the way through. And all the things that he says, rapers, rapists, and murderous murderers about, you know, Whole types of people. And all of these things that by the standards we normally hold politicians to would have been wipeout material have been things that just brush right off of them. So, yes, there's a double standard, but the double standard is a result of the fact that Trump gets held. Trump has been held to no standard by his own supporters. And what's end up happening is that the media then takes a cue from that and says, all right, well, if we talk about all the bad things, if we talk about Trump's crimes, if we talk about the fact that he tries to overthrow the government or things like that at January 6th and incites an insurrection, things that there are no comparable thing to say, oh, well, Kamala Harris did this. I know Donald Trump had cited an insurrection or I know he wouldn't accept a free and fair election, but Kamala Harris did this. There's no, like, two sides of that. It's just one person doing wild things. But those things don't seem to move the needle for people. You know, like, the people who see Donald Trump as a threat already know all that stuff. And the people who are kind of, who don't see that are kind of unfazed by that because they don't look to him as be having to be held to any standard. You know, like, and I've been taken aback. And you saw, you know, I brought this to you several times. This, you know, in the past week or so. I'm blown away by the on the record quotes that we've seen from, like General Milley, from John Kelly, who was the chief of staff with Donald Trump during his first term. Like, this stuff is stuff I've never seen even read about before in terms of the staff or the people who worked for the president that, you know, our president from 2017 to 2021, Donald Trump, saying that this guy has contempt for the Constitution, this guy wants to rule like a dictator, that this guy is a fascist. Like, these are the, this isn't the, these aren't Democrats saying this stuff. These are people who are either military generals or, and, or part of Donald Trump's staff that are saying that this guy is bad news and that this doesn't phase either the center, the center of the country or, you know, anybody even in the right center or anything like that. Obviously, the pure partisans in the tank aren't going to be phased by this because they've long ago decided that nothing he does will affect, you know, like, the way they view it. But part of this is, and this is where I wanted to land this, is that a lot of times other people can't hold you to standards. What really comes down to it, once you're an adult, it comes down to the standards you hold yourself to. And so what we're seeing here, really, is that the Republican Party, and apparently this is filtered into the mainstream media, many voters have decided that the Republicans don't need to hold themselves and don't. And the Republicans have decided not to hold themselves to a standard when it. When it reflects to their presidential candidate, at minimum. And the other parts of the country have just come along with that, like, say, all right, well, these guys don't care about whether this guy does anything unethical, illegal, unbecoming, hostile to the Constitution, you know, which, again, I thought was the whole thing we were doing here. But nonetheless, it just. It showed. Like, the standards you hold yourself to is the one that I think is really revealed. And there is Kamala Harris's side, so to speak, still is trying to hold themselves to a higher standard. And I just don't think that the people lining up behind Donald Trump are interested in holding themselves to a high standard anymore.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think there's several crosscurrents here. One is, I think, authoritarianism and the type of people that fall in line into that type of way of being or system or however we can call it. So clearly, you know, you're right. There's some people that just. They either they don't care about the double standard when it's on their side, or they just do some sort of mental gymnastics to give themselves the emotional out that they don't. That they don't need to. And I think that's where the.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: That's where the other side something. Well, that's where it comes from, where it said, oh, it's a double standard. That. On the other side, actually, without pointing to, like, specific instances. But, you know, just.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's. So I think there's a couple things. I think there's some projection with some of that, but I think there's some of it which is just like, look, I've had people in my personal life in the last few weeks really tell me that they genuinely believe that Kamala Harris will give transgender surgery to illegal immigrants and whatever. Right. And people in prison.
And that's why, again, I'm glad she pointed out in her 60 minutes or sorry, in her Fox News interview, that that was a policy started in 2018 under the Trump administration. So, again, it's a double standard. So something that started under the Trump administration, everyone was quiet about until 2024 and the election. And now all of a sudden it's, you know, and it goes back to, you know, as much as I'm not a fan of Hillary Clinton, to be fair, it was the same with her email server. Remember, we learned that Colin Powell and Dick Cheney and all these other people were using their private servers. And then we learned after the transition of the administrations that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were using their private Gmail accounts to do government business when they were White House advisors getting taxpayer salaries. So again, it is some sort of double standard in that way.
And I don't know. That's what I mean. I'm sure there's, there's, there's multiple motivations from it that, that we can't get in everybody's head. But I do think that it's, it's, it's something that's undeniable and I think that it's something that when you kind of look at it, it's just like, okay, so what is, what is the motivating factor here? And I think that's where the divisions just get deeper and deeper because then you either always have to say, well, the other side is so bad, and begin to believe lies that are being told by Donald Trump. Like that you'll send your 10 year old kid to their fourth grade class, you know, at 8 in the morning today and by 3pm your boy is coming home with a vagina like, you know, like the worst lie that just is so unbelievable it doesn't even, you know, make sense. And then, but, but someone will say, this is why I need to avoid Donald Trump and what he just said or how he behaved or whatever. Because I want to believe that even though there's no proof of anybody just said, just like the patients eating pets.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: Yeah, just tying it to the outlandish conspiracy theories, I think is a good connection because that does, because again, it is this ends justify the means thinking like in many respects, again, it's ends justify the means when people still have some conflict about supporting a man who is a convicted felon, who is unethical by every measure and everything like that. Again, who tried to overthrow the Constitution, you know, like documented and has talked about now, you know, like ruling as a dictator and stuff. But again, so there's some of that. If you still face some type of dissonance with that, then yeah, the conspiracy theories give you a place to go to, then resolve that and say, okay, well these other issues, because of these other issues. And, but again, that stuff still is avoiding it, you know, so to speak. I'm still trying to avoid it. The, the, the person who, and I want to get to this to a different point because I don't want to sit here and stay in the same part. The, the other piece about this though, would not be the partisans like there are. It's beyond the partisans. And so we spent some time on the partisan part. But I've seen, for example, the, the, the what I would consider a double standard where we're talking about Palestinian Americans or Muslim Americans who look at Harris and are like, I just can't support Harris because of what's happening in Gaza. And so that is basically the connection that I see there is that, okay, well, because Netanyahu, who is the leader of Israel, is doing certain things in Gaza and Biden hasn't stopped him. I guess Commander in Chief Biden, which Kamala Harris is a vice president, wouldn't be able to do anything directly about that anyway. But Biden hasn't stopped him. Another sovereign nation where Biden has continued along his support of Israel along the same path, then therefore that makes Kamala Harris hostile to the people in Gaza or something like that. That logic, though, doesn't follow when by throwing, by saying I can't support Harris, they either will support Donald Trump, who's the man who moved the embassy to Jerusalem, who has done overt acts that are hostile to Muslim Americans, saying we're going to ban all Muslims, things like that.
So I don't see how that's not someone who, at least on the surface is coming from a partisan lens. They're saying, I'm hurt by what this, what's happening here. So therefore I'm going to take it out on this person. But all of the other things that may have happened, I'm just not going to apply that same thing to this other person. You know, like in a winner take all election, if you withhold your support from one person, you are de facto supporting another person. So it's, to me, that part is interesting because I'm trying to follow the, the mental gymnastics that's followed there again by somebody. I'm not taking them as overly partisan. Now, maybe it is. Maybe there's other stuff going on we haven't mentioned yet. The idea of sexism, you know, which, and kind of like masculine, like the toxic masculinity thing, like, oh, well, I'm uncomfortable voting for a woman, so I'm going to find things that I can say out loud. I don't want to say that I'm uncomfortable voting for a woman. So I'm going to find things that I can say out loud that will justify me not supporting her because I just don't want to support her because there's a woman, there's, that there's potentially race issues, things like that. But, and I don't want to minimize those. But those are the things that unless people are coming out and saying that, it's hard to detect. So, so to speak, you can look at incongruity in people's arguments, but that does still doesn't necessarily mean it's one of those. So I mean, beyond the partisans, you know, beyond the partisans, beyond like looking at even the media, the mainstream media, again, which you and I look at as corporate, but some people look at it as left wing, you know, which is just bizarre as those for profit entities, those capitalist entities. But like they'll even again, they don't. When Trump says gaffes, when Trump does different things, it gets less scrutiny than if Kamala Harris has detailed her policies enough, you know, again, against Trump who just says, hey, I'll solve all the problems without much detail. So what do you think about the partisan lens?
[00:14:38] Speaker B: Yeah, there's, there's a couple of things. So I want to break it up two different parts of, you know, where I'm going to go from here. And I want you to jump on both, but separately. One is the idea of projection. The other is just a conversation about journalism or like thereof. So with projection, just quickly because one, and I'm just going to back it up a bit. And it amazes me whether like you're saying a double standard where because we see this unprecedented step down of a president during the election cycle in a campaign a few months before, you know, and the vice president takes over, we see a shift in the strategy of attack from the Trump side. So for example, when Trump was going through all his legal problems post January 6th and the stealing of the documents and the stuff with the New York case or the felony stuff, what was the other side trying to do?
[00:15:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. When those. He was going hot and active.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Like when he was going through his legal stuff, the other side did, spent, we did discussions about this. The whole Congress, you know, the Republican Congress, all this used all this time and resources instead of governing and doing their job of helping American people, they were doing all these witch hunts against the Biden crime family. Right. And all this, they had all this stuff and, and that was a phrase.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: That we would Hear all the time. Yeah.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: So it was, it was trying to say for their viewers and their base and their fans of Trump, hey, don't worry about whatever our guy's doing here. Whatever they're saying is a lie because look at how much of a crying family this is. Now, that case, that whole conversation totally collapsed because, number one, there was no evidence. Number two, the only evidence that was being provided, it was found out, was from a Russian spy. So again, that's.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: Well, and also, they, once, once the cases weren't that active anymore. They didn't need that, that deflection anymore also. So it kind of.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: And that's the whole point.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Served its purpose.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And so now with Kamala Harris, it's, you know, they don't have the background. They didn't have the time. You know, I'm sure do like this whole opposition marketing. So it's not that she's a criminal. What is it? Because Donald Trump is incoherent, rambles when he talks. He, he does the famous weave. You know, he starts changing subjects. He can't, he can't. He's like a squirrel. He can't even answer a question without going into three different topics. Now, the projection is that she's dumb as rocks, that she's does a word salad. You know, all this stuff. So I find a lot of the, the double standard is actually a, A calculated attack. It's that whole thing of attack your opponent's strength or whatever. Your weaknesses.
Yeah. Onto the opponent. So everyone's looking over there. So that's one thing I think is going on in the second.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: It cancels out. Well, let's stay there for a second.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: Because then I want to go to.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: So you're saying that. So in that sense, the point would be that it's the non part where we see this in non. Overtly partisan spaces is a result of the success of a marketing campaign, which is interesting. That's. So that, that's. These messages have been driven home. Bipartisans.
Good enough basically that it kind of gets adopted in kind of the, the, the mindsets of people, whether they realize it or not, that they're, they've adopted these, these, these partisan memes in their mind, even though they themselves haven't become overtly partisan or at least.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: And let me jump in here. And I want to let you go, but because I wanted to.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: I'm trying to make sure I'm summarizing your point correctly.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah, no, but think about the book, because as you're talking makes me realize in the book Sapiens, what was the one important glues for a human community? Myths and gossip. Yeah.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Shared.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: So that provided right for partisan people. A myth of the messianic figure and Donald Trump being attacked wrongly. And it kind of goes on that that's why the religious people are very attracted to it, because it's a messianic message. And then the gossip, right? You think about it, you're on Fox News every day. You're on social media with your friends, you're gossiping about, you know, the Biden crime family and how it's so unfair what they're doing to Trump and these investigations and all that. And it satisfies something in a lot of people. And so, and I'm not saying that actually as a right or wrong thing. I'm just saying that's just like you said, it's a smart marketing campaign for people who otherwise aren't going to win elections through popular vote, through showing their strength in governance or growing.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: But I still think you're gravitating more to the partisans here, though, because I'm truly trying to look at this at the people who aren't overtly partisan. But I still, I think the point holds up, you know, because let me jump to journalism when this is in the ether. Well, let me, let me respond, though. When this, when it's out there enough, and we've learned this from the different, you know, the fire hose of falsehood, for example, when you get certain messages out there enough and then you can target them into and this is a term that's used a lot nowadays when we're talking about quote, unquote, low information voters, so to speak, then if you can get to them first and get to them often, then you actually can shape their perceptions of candidates, you know, and so if it's people who aren't following the news and saying, oh, okay, well, this is a substantiated allegations. Oh, this is kind of just made up. And every time they try to bring this up, they fail to produce any evidence. You can't really tell the difference between that. So I think it's a good point. I mean, and I hadn't looked at it like that, just the idea that the work being done by the partisans is able to influence the people who maybe pay less attention, who aren't partisan and pay less attention, because that's what they keep seeing is they like, oh, well, if I keep seeing people saying that she's dumb, then I guess she's probably dumb, you know, so to speak, even though I I don't really listen to one guy. So if you listen to both of them talk, you wouldn't even, you know, one of them is what was a former attorney general and the other was born into wealth. You, that's not something you would necessarily, that would stand up to any kind of scrutiny, you know, but nonetheless, you know, like, that's why. All right, to your media point.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: No, but that's. You give a good segue there to journalism. Right, because that, that speak number one. And I want to, you know, we could bifurcate this into different silos. Like, one is, it's not all the mainstream media's fault and all that because we just have this plethora of new technology that offers all these new platforms. Like, I mean, think about it. Trump just did the interview with Joe Rogan.
[00:20:42] Speaker A: Let's stay focused, though. Let's stay focused, though, because, like, just looking at what was I going to get to it?
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Because I was just going to mention that it is a new thing. Like, Joe Rogan interview with Trump had 30 million viewers. I mean, that's just not something that was happening 20, 30 years ago. Because we had the double standard, though.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: I don't think we're talking about Joe Rogan.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: What I'm saying is a double standard.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Like, people hold themselves up as. But Joe Rogan's not a journalist. He doesn't hold himself up.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: I know, that's my point. But, but a lot of people, he's got 30 million people that will trust him like journalists were trusted in the past. And I think that is because where I'm getting at is it doesn't allow people to see when, when Trump goes on Joe Rogan. And this is why Trump avoided a second debate, why he avoided 60 Minutes because journalists would ask him about to explain how he came up with the fact that you're going to send your boy to school, elementary school, and they're going to come home a girl. They would ask him to really articulate more his tariff policy, which when he's been asked, he can't articulate it. They would ask him more and more about why he keeps calling Americans internally enemies that are going to be chased down by the military, that he'll sick on them. And they would ask him about 2020 and an insurrection 21 and all that. So the. I think that that is also what's happening, is that Trump, for whatever reason, is being given a pass where he can hide from the mainstream media. But when Kamala Harris wasn't doing interviews, what was it? It was Complaining about, oh, she's not doing interviews. Oh, she's not discussing her policies. And that's the thing, she discusses her policies. Just people don't want to highlight them. But then this guy discusses his policies that he literally wants to abolish the income tax and they don't like. No one really scrutinizes and follows up with a question, okay, so how are we going to pay for the infrastructure of the United States? We got a $900 billion defense budget. How are we going to pay for that? So the lack of journalism, I think, is part of this as well.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Well, but that's the what. So that is, that's what, that's the phenomenon we're talking about. It's not that he went on Joe Rogan, it's that he completely can avoid scrutiny, people asking him tough questions about those things. But what I'm saying is that it's bigger than that because what I think is that the mainstream media essentially has been beaten down by Donald Trump. He has basically gotten them to the point where because they tried to raise so many, they tried to raise alarms about the, again, Access Hollywood, they try to raise alarms about all these things for all this time. And the response they got wasn't necessarily one, like they got a passionate response from some people and then kind of the rest of the response wasn't what they were looking for, particularly if they're trying to make money. They remember the mainstream media and again, why it's silly to call it a left wing media or liberal media because they're a money driven enterprise. They are out there trying to get dollars. And so when you're talking about CNN or whoever, it's like they're trying to get viewers. So they're doing things that they think are going to create engagement. And I think what they have determined is that trying to call Donald Trump on the deficiencies, oh, hey, you're not explaining this or anything like that doesn't drive engagement. And so I think that they just don't do that anymore because they don't see it as a strategy to maximize their political or, you know, like their political viewership. And whereas again, this goes back to the standards you hold yourself to. Kamala Harris does hold herself to a high standard. And so she does not shy away from or attack the media for asking her tough questions. Whereas Donald Trump, if you ask him tough questions, he starts attacking the media, which then he, that drives engagement for him. He says, oh, I'm a cbs wants to ask me tough questions. Okay, I'm going to take away CBS's license is not even when I get into office.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: He avoided the interview. He's too scared to go on. And for that he wants to take their license. They didn't even get that.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: But what I'm saying is that I think that as long as the supporters of, as long as the partisans, you know, the supporters of Trump accept that, you know, as long as they've lowered their standards, I don't think he has any standards. So they've lowered, they've gotten rid of any standards that they may have had as it relates to him in terms of the kind of person they could support. As long as that happens, then I think the signal that the, the, the mainstream media, like the, the big meeting, you know, again, cnn, New York Times, all those Washington Post, which again you, we, we've seen some interesting things on that about as far as how they approach politics now. But I think that they just don't see being, trying, trying to hold the candle, hold, hold a fire to Donald Trump's feet as being something that is, that makes money. And so therefore they don't do it because, you know, journalism right now, and this is a, you know, this is an issue, you know, in terms of the larger entities because it's such a profit driven thing. And again, it does, it wasn't always like this. Like if you go back, if you go back 40 years and before large news organizations were required to have journalistic type entities, news bureaus within them that they weren't required to make money. Those news bureaus, they weren't, they didn't have to be profit centers. And now just from a regulatory environment, the news bureaus have to be profit centers as well, which affects the kinds of news that we will see and the things that will be investigated and the things that won't, you know, all to our detriment.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's true. And you know, that's why I just, you know, I just think it's a combination of everything we're talking about and then the mindsets like you're saying, of people themselves that receive this and because I feel like a lot of people I know that display this type of behavior of the true double standard because I find myself, I'm sure that someone could point out where I have double standards personally and things like that because I'm a human being. But I tend to think that even if it's a politician I like, if they started behaving a certain way, I would call them out mentally on it.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: There would be a certain Point that you would.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: Yeah, like, I can't see it.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: And it's just. And it's again, like.
And I don't understand his mindset because I'm thinking, like, okay, and you're right about, like, the journalism. I'm thinking about the recent uproar in the Washington Post because apparently the whole staff wanted to endorse Kamala Harris, and Jeff Bezos goes and puts a squash on it.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Now, that reminds me, right before or right after, right? Like the same. Within the same day or two of him meeting with Donald Trump about the space company problem, by the way. But we won't.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: That's my point in saying this, that we got that happening, which clearly is him putting his thumb on the scale of the journalistic integrity of one of his properties, which is a newspaper and a media company, to make sure that his other entity, which is a space thing and Amazon's defense contracts and all that doesn't get hurt. So it got me thinking about, okay, he's like, the second richest guy in the world. And then the richest guy in the world owns one of the largest media companies called X, formerly Twitter, who. He's openly got his thumb on the scale for Donald Trump. So we've got the richest guy in the world openly pouring money into a presidential candidate. The second richest guy in the world being kind of kowtowed into, you know, hanging back from, making a public opinion about the election. And it's like, again, the double standard. And then I still got to hear from people in my life somehow about that. George Soros is funding Kamala Harris. And I'm thinking we got, you know, this guy, Timothy Mellon is given 165 million. You know, you got that lady like, yeah, like, all these billionaires lining up to just feed Donald Trump money.
And Kamala Harris has raised $1 billion mostly of small donors. But again, still, the perception is that somehow it's not the Republican Party that's captured by elite billionaires. Like, you know what I mean? And then when you have things like, you know, the Supreme Court and. And all the. You know, it's just. Anyway, man, I need to stop. It's.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: I need to go get a cup.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Of coffee, a cup of decaf, man, but maybe a shot of whiskey.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: How about that? Yeah, there you go.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: That's even better. So, no, I mean, I do want to wrap this up from here, but I think that I agree with you, though, that the double standard. This isn't something that's new in our political discourse. You know, like, like you talked about, even with the, during Clinton's impeachment for the extramarital, extramarital stuff that was going on during his White House term, you know, the guy leading it, new Gingrich, was having an affair at that moment with one of his staff members. And like, it's so it's really. But it really does come down to, though, you know, both for the individuals and the groups, the standards they choose to hold themselves to. And I think that that's really, you know, us as Americans can try to hold each other to a higher standard, but that it can't be something that we don't like. People have to voluntarily do it. You know, we have to try to inspire people to hold themselves to a higher standard. Not we can't force people to hold themselves to a higher standard. You know. And so just like we try to, we, we all work to have allegiance to the Constitution, you know, like talking about, you know, paraphrasing, you know, General Milley, you know, like, we, it's the Constitution, you know, it's not, it's not loyalty to the country or to the leader or anything like that to the Constitution. And we should encourage each other and we should try to inspire each other to all have that loyalty to the Constitution, but we can't really force it. And so if a person starts saying, hey, yeah, you know, like, Constitution's in my way, or I need to get rid of the Constitution like Donald Trump does, if other Americans are willing to go along with that, then we can't turn around and force them necessarily to say, hey, you know, like, maybe we should stick to the Constitution like we said we were doing here, and not follow this demagogue into wherever they want to go. So I think that the voluntary aspect of it is what we're really seeing, and that if one person or if one group have decided that they're not going to hold themselves to a higher standard anymore, it causes imbalances. And we see those and we got to live with those imbalances. We can complain about them, we can push back against them, but ultimately we would just need some reason or they need some reason to come back into the fold and start doing the America that's based on the US Constitution again, which admittedly, the US Constitution is a high standard. It is meant to hold you to a high standard. You're in power. You want to shut somebody up. Well, you know what, there's freedom of speech. You can't really do that. You know, and so that's the higher that's the kinds of things that are higher standard. That's what those are. You know, can't unreasonably search and seize people. You know, like the government can't come and take away all your guns, which is, you know, one that I know some people, that's the only one they really care about. But nonetheless, it's a whole package. So I don't think we can wrap from there. But again, it's a really about the standard that people hold themselves to, I think, more than anything. And yes, there's a double standard, but that double standard is because the Trump side has decided they, they're not going to hold themselves to a higher standard anymore. And while the Harris side is still holding themselves to that standard, that traditional American standard of, hey, you know, what's your policy? Or what are you going to do? Hey, release your tax return or all these, all these things that, you know, just are traditional American standards.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think, look, it can't be escaped. You made a brief comment. I know we're wrapping up, but also about the fact that she's a female, fact that she's a black woman. I think that comes into it as well, just in the American Story, because again, we just had a recent Madison Square Guardy rally, Garden rally where there were some really racist things said. And I watched JD Vance, as a vice presidential candidate, follow up on that the next day and say, with a group of Americans behind him clapping when he says this, you know, we need to get off all this stuff and, you know, stop being so sensitive about what everybody says, this and that and the crowds cheering behind him. And you know what I'm thinking of? I'm thinking these are the same people that literally stopped our country, the whole cultural conversation because an NFL player took a knee during the anthem in 2017. And it's always like, that's what I feel like this group of Americans is always gaslighting the rest of us because they're the ones going nuts about when a transgender person was on the Bud Light beer can or about anything that they don't agree with in the Dr. Seuss. Yeah, Dr. Seuss and all that. So they, like have a hissy fit and start crying. And then when actually there's a guy who's introducing the former president, United States, who's running again for BB President, and the guy is literally saying that Latinos are like having babies like rabbits. And they say, come inside me. Like, they come inside the country. That there's not an issue with that. Like that, that, that's appropriate.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: We should just look the other way.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Yeah. We shouldn't say anything for the guy. The guy introducing the guy about to lead the country, and he's totally disparaging many groups of Americans.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: I think there's.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a double standard evidence.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: The evidence of the double standards are. We're confronted with that every day. But the source, like I said, is really, it's coming from the inside. It's about the people are holding themselves to. I mean, and that's. Yeah, that's something that, you know, hopefully we can, we can reach, you know, our fellow Americans at some point and they can, you know, stop or start holding themselves to a higher standard.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: Than the one that they're doing now. Because we kind of, again, we're all in this together, so we kind of need most of us pulling in the same direction and trying to live up to a higher standard. So I think we can wrap this topic from there. We appreciate everyone for joining us on this episode. Join us on the second part as well, and we'll talk to you then.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: All right.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Our second topic today, we wanted to take a look. We've seen that. We'll put this in the show notes. There was an article in the Ringer talking about the fact that in movies nowadays there is less and less and less sex scenes going on and trying to figure out what's going on with that. Like, well, why is, if you run the database for the last 20, 25 years or so, just a steady decline in how much sex is in the movies. And it's something happening in our culture, not necessarily something that's good or bad, but just something that's interesting happening that, you know, the art form in that way, you know, and this is not talking about, like, PG movies. This is just looking at apples to apples, so to speak. And so, you know, in the piece, like I said, we'll have in the show notes, it lays out the numbers and so forth and gives some ideas on what they think may be happening. But just from a cultural standpoint, what do you think is happening in American culture, where you go from, you know, rated R blockbusters like Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction to stuff like that nowadays wouldn't, would not see the inside of a theater, especially from the standpoint of a blockbuster, you know, kind of movie that's expected to get a lot of people going to it?
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought this topic was very interesting because I actually thought about this in recent years.
I think I told you in a private conversation that when my family and I were going to watch Top Gun Maverick, I think a year and a half ago, whenever it came out, you know, we decided the night before to watch Top Gun, the original. And you know, I forgot there's that love scene with Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis that goes about, you know, it's probably six, seven minutes.
And I found myself like, you know, I had my 13 year old at the time, was probably 12 and my wife there, you know, and I found myself getting a little uncomfortable after like a first minute or two.
But then I find myself like thinking about, man, I was like 10 years old when I saw the first movie and I saw my mom and I don't remember being uncomfortable at 10, sitting there watching the same Top Gun scene. Because back then that's what I realized, man, every single movie back in the 80s and stuff. Like when I was a kid, like they all had love, like serious movies. I'm talking about comedies. But, but yeah, even, actually, even Revenge of the Nerds, remember, had a little. When they were on the little moon scene, they had a little scene. So even the comedies had love scenes. And that's what, that's.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: It was much more pro forma. It would be like PG 13 and up. You'd have some type of.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: If it wasn't Rambo or Commando. Yeah. If there was a, you know, characters that were male and female that had some sort of relationship at some point in the movie, there was going to be a love scene. And so you're right. Like, like. And that's what I started thinking. Like. Yeah. In like just lately, the last, you know, 10, 20 years, I don't remember seeing love scenes like that. Like intimacy and the kind of stuff like that and not porn. I'm just saying, like a love scene, like it used to be an old, you know, 20, 30, 30, 40 years ago. Films, we don't see that anymore. And you're right, it is curious. So I'll hand it back to you. I mean, I know that the article we're referencing had some interesting insights which, which we'll discuss. But yeah, that was my thought, is it's something I noticed before, so it's interesting to see it, you know, but.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: Also that you noticed that you felt a discomfort when it happened. And because you don't consider yourself a prudence, get prudence guy. But you're like, yo, why do I feel a certain way about that? And I think that, you know, and I'm a parent as well and so I have two kids and I'm looking at that. I noticed that, you know, like when the expectation I have when I'm watching movies with my kids is generally speaking that, that, that there won't be love scenes and things like that. Except when I, whenever I watch them, like, oh, let me show you this movie from when I was younger. You know, I'm always like, I wonder what this is going to have in it. Let me, let me try to remember. But a lot of times I won't remember the loves because they didn't stand out to me like that. And again, because it was so, so common, it was just like, oh, yeah, there's probably something in there, some kind of intimate scene or whatever. And so, I don't know, I think that there's something about like the, the, the, the, the, the piece mentions as far as like, you know, the, the idea to take these things. A lot of times the films will go international, things like that, you know, like the, the availability of porn, you know, also affects. And this is what I, I came to previously when just thinking about this idea was just like, hey, you know, like, maybe that was considered a draw in movies before, but I don't know that that itself, like, oh, there's, you know, a couple and you know, the woman is like, oh, come see this movie with me. And the guy's like, oh, I don't really want to see this movie. But, oh, you know, I heard that what's her name is in there, you know, going wild and maybe I'll go see it with my girlfriend or whatever. So. But nowadays, you know, just with the way the Internet set up and the availability of porn on the Internet, maybe that's not the same draw in terms of what's happening, happening culturally, though, I think it does reflect something, you know, like, I don't know if we're becoming more prudish in terms of kind of out. We're becoming more bifurcated, I should say.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna say it's more departmentalized. Yeah.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Like, so if we're looking, if we're looking at kind of standard stuff, we want less intimacy. And if we're looking at kind of intimate stuff, we want it to be buck wild. Like, I don't know, you know, just kind of all the way and, but less of this kind of holistic, like, hey, there's a little bit of this, a little bit of that and so forth like that to me. And that fits with a lot of. Kind of the way society is going now. Because most things are compartmentalized now and algorithms further compartmentalize it. Like where oh, yeah, Netflix. There's great algorithm that can tell you movies that you'll probably like, but it also shuts off a ton of movies that. It shuts off your exploration as well, basically. So it compartmentalizes you yourself. And I'm not picking on Netflix. Just that's the nature of an algorithm is that it's going to keep narrowing and narrowing your interests to try to just give you these things that stimulate you at that moment, and there's little growth can come from that.
[00:39:18] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's a great observation. I think, you know, that's, that's. I think that's part of it is, is we do have other outlets for, you know, getting. Getting that type of stuff and just going all the way with it. Right. With porn and things like that. Whereas maybe back in the 80s, you had to go to a shop and get a. Get a videotape, go home, pop it in or get a magazine, you know, now it's like everyone's got a phone, an iPad, things that can, that can. They can access whatever they want if they want to have that. Yeah. That intimate or sexual stuff and in their, you know, media space. And then they can go to the movies and other. Because that's another thing that the article did mention that I just found interesting was also the reduction in the amount of rated R films in general since 1999.
And so it's just like. Yeah, there's a certain. And I think you mentioned it, and that's what I wanted to bring up today as well. I thought that was a very interesting observation because it's one I wouldn't have seen just being, you know, living in America. That part of the issue is just that Hollywood is truly global. And it's almost like just like there's other kind of cultural, maybe victims to globalization. I never thought that the way that we consume films and the way that films are not made, but I understand it. They were saying how the US market, I think, is almost 10 billion based on the numbers, you know, and when they cited them from. In terms of revenue for films. But China's at seven and a half billion.
I think India, there's like one and a half billion. And it's a growing market. Japan's a huge market, over a billion dollars. So, yeah, when Hollywood. And they're making movies now, they got to think about all the other cultural nuances around the world and maybe if.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: They want those movies to be shown. Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: And so maybe the. The.
In. In, you know, maybe in India and China, just the type of love scenes that we used to have in movies would be inappropriate. And I found that interesting, James, because besides the topic we're on specifically about love scenes and intimacy in films, they said that there's been a massive decline in comedic films as well. Because comedy, us comedy films don't cross over as well internationally, which is understandable because we have our own cultural nuances for comedy and comedy plays on.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: Yeah, plays on these nuances that may not be present in other.
[00:41:41] Speaker B: Correct. And as opposed to, they said the sci fi genre, action movies, things like that play well across the world. And that's because those are more universal themes for all humans, whether it's aliens coming out of space or, you know, action movies about war. I mean, that's more things that are more common to two more cultures. So, yeah, I wouldn't have never thought without reading it, the influence of the globalization of films and how that has now kind of maybe changed the landscape domestically of how films are made.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: The other piece that I want to bring up that was mentioned in the article that I think that I thought had some credence as well is the rise in like peak TV or just, you know, prestige tv, I should say. TV is different, but just kind of the rise. And so because in those environments you still will get a lot, lot of like sex scenes and nudity and so forth. So, you know, but that's more in depth storytelling. A lot like movies now that maybe the storytelling, because you're trying to fit everything into a two hour window, you know, you're, you're telling stories in a different kind of way than necessarily you might over a seven or eight episode, each episode, 40 minutes or an hour or so kind of arc where you do get more intimacy kind of, you know, from a interaction standpoint in addition to a physical standpoint point. And so you're at, you're able to explore more and do more in those settings than you are in a movie. And so just from a storytelling standpoint, it may be deemed like, I, I don't, I'm not out here saying that this is the problem or that there's something wrong with us necessarily. I think that it's really, it's just looking at the cultural evolution, you know, like movies were the prime way to tell long stories, so to speak, in the 90s, you know, and like, I guess, you know, towards the turn of the century. Whereas now, if you want to tell a long story with some intimacy, you're probably doing a four, six, eight episode, you know, series, you know, like. And that's where you know that you're gonna get plenty of nudity in those, and so, you know, like it. But I do think kind of the compartmentalization, what you. What the, the feeling you experienced where you're talking about the. Your experience with the Top Gun thing, I think that goes to that compartmentalist, compartmentalization thing, because if you were watching some, you know, adult series on, you know, some streaming service and that happened, I don't think it would have struck you the same way. But when you're watching movies now, we just don't have that expectation really as much anymore where there's going to be how, how. How much intimacy you're going to get, or, you know, they'll probably do a little bit and they're just going to cut away, like kind of accepting what's about to happen. Whereas, you know, again, you go back to when we were kids, you know, in the 80s, 90s, like, no, you know, they drove home the point.
Here's what happened, you know, and so it's. But it's interesting, though, again, though, from the cultural evolution standpoint. You got anything else on this one?
[00:44:21] Speaker B: No, no. I think it's a good observation about the series because I've. I don't watch really serious shows, but my wife watches a lot of them and I actually been surprised with how aggressive some of them get. What they're. With their intimate scenes. I'm like, damn. And, yeah. And, you know, it's like. And I get surprised too, as, again, as a heterosexual guy that's not homophobic. You know, I'm still not used to seeing certain scenes. And remember, like, the scene like Last of Us. Remember that series? And, you know, it's just like, okay, you know, I was like, all right, you know, let me. Let me forward through this one. But.
But it was just interesting that. That, that's things that I don't think would have been in movies before. You know what I mean? So it's interesting that as you bring it up, I didn't realize that maybe that kind of the streaming series and those things have actually brought in something that maybe wouldn't have been able to come out in a film. You know what I mean? Because that might have been too, you know, the fact that this is so compartmentalized and not that many people see it, allow it to be brought out.
[00:45:22] Speaker A: You know, only the people who want it, who really seek it out. It's not like general consumption stuff a lot of times.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Correct?
[00:45:29] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I think that. And that's whether that ultimately is better or worse, you know, that gets into kind of like the loss of the monoculture, so to speak, that we. We people. Some people complain about and just some people observe or whatever and just, you know, like, there's a lot that's going on at all times and. But there's not, you know, a movie playing, you know, Back to the Future, playing for 30 weeks straight at the movie theater, and people just go see it, you know, yada, yada, yada. So. And it's something that vast numbers of people experience and everything else, everything is very compartmentalized, you know, like. And so, you know, like, I look at even like something like the Sopranos, where, like the finality of Sopranos is like a. A cultural event, but it's viewed by so few people relative to, you know, like the. The cultural of events that we think of or even like, you know, Seinfeld or, you know, things like that. Like, those cultural events are just much larger. So, you know, that the loss of the monoculture is really what we might be looking at here. And that intimacy beyond a certain point in movies, because movies a lot of times are still more general, particularly movies that go to theaters are more general.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: Audience then anymore because we might be. Be creating more of a global monoculture with all this shared all around the country's media, but then that'll increase maybe some subcultures of still, you know, differentiation, you know, within the various areas of the monoculture. So, yeah, it's interesting, man. It's gonna. It's. It's. It's ever, ever changing world. That's all we can see. Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: The only thing that's constant is change and. Yeah, like that. It's unfortunate when people fight so hard against change because, you know, well, I'm getting.
[00:47:01] Speaker B: I'm getting started. I'm getting to the age where I'm starting not to like it. So.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: No, no, you're getting to the age. You're gonna start playing against change.
[00:47:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm gonna start shaking my fist at the cloud soup.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: So it's a losing battle, man.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: I'm about 10 years away from that, but that's a different story.
[00:47:16] Speaker A: But no, I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode. Call like I see it. Check out part one as well. When we looked at the double standards that play in politics. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: I'm Tunde.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: We'll talk to you later.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: I'm.
