Episode Transcript
The following is a computer-generated transcript.
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Hello. Welcome to the Call It Like I See It Podcast. I'm James Keys, and in this episode we'll call it like I see It. We're going to take a look at some of the revelations that have come out in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox News. And in light of these revelations, revisit a theme we've touched on several times over the last three plus years. Whether fake the fake news that we see is something that's driven by a demand for it, or whether it's something that's driven by the willingness or desire of certain actors to supply it. And later on, in light of March being Women's History Month, we're going to going to discuss Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and someone who's easily one of the most influential Americans of the 19th century of any gender. Joining me today is a man who, if you catch him on the right day, can give a little rich flex for you. Tunde Ogunlana. Tunde. So tell me, do you feel like showing off some flashy takes today? Every day. All right. You shouldn't have to ask that. Of course not. Now we're recording this on March 13th, 2023. And over the past few weeks, we've seen a steady trickle of information be released about what Fox News knew during the time between the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, which was that Trump lost and what they reported or otherwise led their viewers to believe, which was that the election was stolen from Trump. And we've also been able to see kind of some insight into what the decision makers and the the show hosts at Fox were concerned with during this time and what their priorities were when trying to figure out how to discuss the election. So to get us started. Tunde What's been your overall reaction to just seeing this trickle of revelations coming out? Great question.
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I would say I'd like to say I was surprised, but I'm not surprised. No. And. I think let me just put it this way. I think it confirms feelings that a lot of us who watch, you know, some of this type of news and these information ecosystems suspected that a lot of the people who disseminate and traffic in sharing certain information, you know, that it was proven that they just don't believe it themselves. And I think it brings another it brings a new level. Uh, to the discussion for those of us who respect different ideologies and different political points of view and want to see an open kind of square of discussion, but recognize the danger when there's opportunists who maliciously provoke and stir emotions in our society. Um, and I think just for the first time, it's been proven that that at least these messengers just don't believe what they're selling. And that's just interesting to me. Um, so, you know, not for sure I'll pass it back, but I know I'll get into a little bit more as we go through.
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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to me, what was very interesting about this is how concerted of an effort it was and how high up it went. Like that. This was like, okay, here's what we know, but if we go down this road, we will our ratings will suffer. We got discussions of stock pricing and, you know, you know, these decisions are being made. And what we can talk about, who we can talk about, there's been revelations about, oh, okay, well, you can't have Pete Buttigieg on because he's able to convince people of certain things. And we can't convince. We can't allow him to do that. And so this was all very like, you never know when something like this happens. Is it a bunch of individual actors who have like incentives ending up at the same place, or is it like everybody working in concert, like, Hey, everybody, memo from the top. Don't do this or we need to do this. And this seemed to be the latter. This seemed to be like, okay, yeah, memo from the top. Here's what we can do, here's what we can't do. And everybody kind of fell in line. And there's even some conflict on people who didn't want to do it and so forth. So to me, it really does. It conclusively answers the question that Fox is deceiving when they call themselves a news organization, you know, like and that's not to say that they shouldn't be in the media.
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They are a media company and they're an entertainment company. They are just not a they're not news media. They are entertainment media, you know, And that's how like that's how they have to be looked at. Like if you're looking at them and saying, oh, they're just they're out here just reporting, that's not the case. And that's not you know, we see that from time to time when Chuck Tucker Carlson gets sued and he puts in court filings that no reasonable viewer would believe that he's just telling the truth. You know, like we see that stuff from time to time. But this stuff is not a legal argument. This is actual their communications, their state of mind at the time this stuff was happening. So, I mean, to me, it's just okay. Got it. You know, like you guys, what you're doing, you know, you're doing it and, you know, so we just need to figure out as a society how to deal with it from the standpoint of like I said, the issue is not that they shouldn't be on the air, but maybe they shouldn't be calling themselves a news organization.
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Well, and the problem I can see because, you know, it's almost like I can see someone listening to us right now who. Consumes, you know, that that kind of media ecosystem on the right with a lot of the disinformation and looking at us and saying, you know, well, you know, all the media lies, you know, let's say just last 20 years, you know, the WMDs in Iraq, the, you know, the the the whole thing we talked about in last week's show about the lab leak. And, you know, some people feel like the media, you know, was the corporate media was or mainstream media was was reticent to to to to to look at other theories just because it's the media and it hates certain groups and people in America. And I want to stress that what we learned and that's why I said I'm not surprised, but I'm kind of surprised at some of the stuff we learned. Because, you know, there's first of all, I would say when you look at things, whether it's the Gulf of Tonkin or the Iraq war and things like that, I mean, I think we can all acknowledge that nobody in the media probably really knows what's going on because it's the people in the government who have the access to intelligence that really know could the corporate media or mainstream media done a better job pushing back on what appeared to be falsehoods in the Iraq lead up? Yeah, I think they could have. Yeah. Yeah.
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You're getting to the I think you're getting to the right thing here. Yeah.
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Did they fire people like Phil Donahue or I think it was ABC or CBS that fired and canceled Bill Maher's show politically correct, Because of pressure from the Bush administration because he was openly calling and questioning the war? Yeah, that happened. And you had to go on HBO, you know, to have his show continue. So all that is true, but I still think that there is a line and it's different.
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Because like.
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You know, what we learned with Fox was that these people didn't believe that people they were bringing on TV. So that would be like if someone from CNN or NBC or even Fox at the time were to bring in a general like Colin Powell or or some guy from the intelligence services and communities and they're just interviewing them, if that person is saying, look, our intelligence is telling us, then that the reporter really doesn't know. But this would be like if the reporter was literally sitting in the National Security Council meeting and they were saying it's not true that there's WMD. And that reporter went out and said, yeah, it's true. This is like.
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Totally. Yeah, Let me say this a little more concisely, because it's the key point here. It's not great. We want the media to to to challenge authority. That's their. That's their job. You know, like when people get out there and say, hey, this is what's going on, We want the media to challenge them. The examples you give, you gave of other examples where the media failed, including the with the the COVID stuff, whether it be the mask or the lab origin, it was taking people's word on it because you like the people. It's like, oh, okay. Or even the the Phil Donahue and the and the Bill Maher stuff is always the that's always the examples to get thrown out when people say, Yeah, the media is liberal. And it's like, well, hold on. The liberal media was very pro-war then. Yeah, I don't know. That's media's corporate, you know. But either way, the, the point being that it's one thing to to not to uncritically allow someone to just get out there and say someone who is in a better position to have information than you are, which is your point. Like they have more information than you. You're not challenging them on what they're saying or hey, we'll explain this a little better. How did this where did this come from? You're not asking the right questions and so forth. That's one thing. It's another thing to be and again, caught on tape or, you know, communicating amongst yourselves like, oh, this guy is full of shit.
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Like, we can't believe we got to bring this guy on. This guy is a liar. He's a known crazy person. And so to know that the person who's who you're bringing on is going to say something that is false and to still bring them on, to still try to incite the doubt. And again, it's one thing to to outright just say, hey, this is what's happening. It's another thing to lead people to believe, to to to put stuff out there that, you know, is incorrect. And so to me, and the rationale that they did it, which is given and look, if we don't, then Newsmax is going Newsmax is going to run with this. And if we don't put this stuff out there and if we start, we are we are losing viewers if we're doing that. And so we cannot lose the viewers. You know, there's stock price will go down mentioned specifically a stock price. And so it's like, hey, we have to provide the narrative that our viewers want. We have to provide the we have to provide I'm going to use a word. We have to provide the content that they want. This is a content game for them and they're providing the content. So and again, it's not to say that this is these are the worst people in the world. It's just to say, okay, we got it, you know, like, yeah.
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No, they're opportunists.
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Yeah. You're showing us who you are through this stuff and I don't want it like the, the, the issue that it is, is really gets down to, like I said, getting into the media, the news aspect of it, news media versus, you know, like there's a bunch of people who get out there and tell stories in the media. You know, that's a big part of the media. The Oscars was last night. A lot of people telling stories in the media, you know, but they don't tell you, hey, this is real stuff here.
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It's we draw a line between fantasy and reality. And like you're saying, the Oscars, I mean, look, we're supposed to. Well, and that's where I'm going. I mean, the Oscars make movies about real things sometimes, right? Like biography, movies and stuff. And they make a bunch of these and they make a bunch of nonfiction stuff. But we know that it's generally entertainment. The difference with what we've learned here from Fox versus at least other media, look, maybe if they somebody sued CNN and they subpoenaed all their stuff, we learned a bunch of stuff, but we haven't. Right. So we only know what's right now with Fox. And I just find that interesting because I'll read a quote from one of the Carlson. Tucker Carlson messages, which is, quote, The last four years. That's the last four years. Sorry. We're all pretending we've got a lot to show for it because admitting what a disaster it's been is too tough to digest. But come on, there isn't really an upside to Trump. I mean, that's really fascinating to see. Tucker Carlson put that in writing because it explains a lot.
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First of all, I said this to you privately, which is, you know, the only thing I could think of is like if a preacher is in the pulpit and we know that there's a lot of history of some preachers getting a bad reputation for either stealing money from the congregation or, you know, banging chicks when they're married, you know, and knocking up, you know, women in the congregation and stuff like that. But I feel like, okay, there's a couple different ways that a preacher could be you could have a preacher that gets to their position. They still really believe in the faith. They believe in God and they believe in their, you know, their religion. They just maybe let some of their grandiosity and stuff go to their head about their position. So maybe that's where they got fast and loose with the women or with the money and things like that. But but they may be salvageable because in their core they still believe in what they're there for at the at the high level.
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Or what if you.
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Saw somebody that was leading a mega-church and you and they got, for whatever reason in a similar thing with a with a legal dispute that required discovery. And we saw text messages where this person actually said, I don't believe in God. I don't even believe in what I'm talking about. And I think that's what I realized here. This is the equivalent of that where it's not even just a journalist.
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But you got to take it the step further, though. Let's take it two step further because it's like, okay, I don't believe in God, but I can't tell my my congregation. Yeah. So I'm just going to hurtful for them. So I'm just going to continue to to tell them what I think they need to hear so that they can feel okay about where everything is. And so that's pretty much what you see there.
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And here's where I want to get at too, is some of the delusion that that that this brings about when you go choose to go down this road, when you're actually truly dishonest with yourself, because then you've got to spin stuff. Because another quote that's before that in this article or I'm reading because he's he's he's complaining to somebody who's texting to about why their lawyer suck on the Trump side for the election stuff. And so he says, quote, It really explains why the left wins so much. They have Marc Elias and lawyers from every major firm. We have Lynnwood and Powell. So what he's doing is he's complaining that, you know, the left wins so much because they have all this firepower and we got, you know, these crappy lawyers. And I really thought is, again, they spin it to play the victim. No, the reason why no serious lawyer would take this case is because it was BS, You know what I mean? And the only lawyers who would get it were literally delusional people who just were looking for the spotlight.
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And those lawyers now are in front of disciplinary boards. We just had someone in Colorado have to admit that like to avoid severe discipline and to admit that. But that's what I'm saying, that they had no they were saying in court saying things that weren't true or that they couldn't prove and so forth. So, yeah, I mean, the people that didn't want to do that didn't take the case, basically. But that's what I'm saying. I want to go too far into that because that stuff is kind of the embarrassment or that's that's just the state of mind stuff. That's not the actual stuff where it says, Hey, I know this stuff is not true, so to speak. But what it leads.
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To, to understanding is that because they created they have already created this fake alternate reality where everything about the last four years was so great and how the other side is so terrible. And that's why Joe Biden wasn't allowed to be perceived as a legitimate winner, then he can't go and tell the group what he wrote in the text, which is admitting the last four years is a disaster. He was right. It's going to be a lot to digest because he fed people for four years how great everything was. And now he's saying in writing there isn't really an upside to Trump. So in reality, he's kind of again, the only way, instead of being honest, he's saying, well, and this is why the left always wins, because, you know, they have all these great lawyers and all and playing this victimhood. And I just feel like, well, you kind of understand why they're winning is because you just said it was a disaster. There's no case here. There's nothing there. And so but because he can't go to or let's say he can't, well, it sounds.
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Like he can't even admit that to himself, though, from the. That's what I'm saying about the delusion.
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The need to create a new narrative in your head. So it's just it's just interesting because he won't tell his viewers the truth. So he has to keep spinning.
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Yeah. No, I mean, Well, but you go down that path and that's where you end up, so to speak. And I did want to mention that, like it's the natural reaction, if you would prefer to see Fox vindicated, if that's the narrative that you you you subscribe to or whatever that you want is to say, oh, well, they all probably do it and stuff like that, even though like this is actually what's in front of us now. But the thing is, is that we have seen examples of how other other organizations have dealt with it, you know, with dealt with things like this. Part of these revelations that came out recently was that the when when Biden would do would put ads with Fox. They would tip off the Republican Party about those ads before they would come out. And that's something like that was met with a lot of ho hum, surprisingly to me. Like, I mean, again, people's expectations of Fox may not have been messed up by this, but nonetheless, I remember when it was it was alleged that Donna Brazile was tipping off the Clinton campaign with debate questions or something like that. She got fired. You know, she got taken. She's out. And so it's still this issue of, okay, well, somebody got caught with their cookie. Like I'm sure there are people of all stripes. There's individuals of all stripes who are willing to skirt lines. But the question is, from an organizational standpoint, when you find out someone is skirting lines, do you just say, okay, that's just how it rolls? Or do you discipline them? Do you create an incentive for people not to do that? And to me, the incentive, like human beings, are human beings.
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And so it really matters the kind of incentive structure that's in place because that's going to determine how the vast majority of the people operate, because they're going to operate to maximize the good and minimize the bad in that incentive structure. So to me, the question I want to ask you, though, moving from that is just what part of this and you might have already gotten into this, but just what was more meaningful to you as far as these like these or concerning, I guess, in these? Revelations was just the overt efforts to operate kind of as an extension of the Republican Party, like the stuff saying, hey, we have to get to work to make to make everything right in Georgia so we can win these elections in Georgia. Like, that's how the people in the news organization are talking versus just the more salacious aspects of how people decided, oh, you know, like, hey, stock price, we can't we can't tell people what really happened because that's going to hurt our stock price and so forth. Like which one of those either was the most concerning or meaningful to you?
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Yeah, I mean, the stock price thing.
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Is what do you mean by that is like, we have to be dishonest. I get it. What I'm saying is I want to make sure it's clear for the question I'm asking. We have to be we're going to have to be dishonest, because if we're not, then it's going to hurt our bottom line. You know, it's going to hurt our ratings, which is going to hurt our advertising, which is going to hurt our stock price.
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What I'm more concerned about is what I mean, again, I think it's, again, something that has been felt maybe seen with evidence. But I think this again, the discovery from this lawsuit makes it blatantly clear. But then other things that have happened just in recent weeks, I mean, what concerns me is something where it's really obvious that there's a hand in glove now between a major one of two major political parties in the United States and a news organization on cable TV that appears to now be a full propaganda outfit.
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And for that political party. Yeah, and.
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I'm usually not this direct in when I talk, but I mean, there is no you got to call the spade a spade if we can say that and or you saying call.
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It like you see it. I guess maybe there's a.
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Show that could that.
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Could that show that you could go on. You might be able to go on that show and kind of, you know, go down that road.
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They invite me. Let's see. But and so here's what I'm getting at is this recent thing where the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, gives 41,000 hours worth of tape to only one network for the purpose of only one talk show, cutting it up and disseminating it so that they can create another narrative for their audience and people who don't want to believe facts.
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And so or at least the facts that have been established thus far. So it's like, hey, we need to.
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And and well, those seem to be facts. So, you know, I mean, there's only one set of them. And so the and that's where I'm saying is this if we look back now into kind of the roots of this and it's been well documented that it was the roots were during the Watergate era post Watergate. And there were some people, you know, I would say I don't even want to blanket like all Republican voters and people like that. I'm just going to say there are some people in the Republican leadership from the political angle that didn't like the idea that President Nixon basically was forced to resign in a sense because the truth came out about his behavior behind the scenes and his abuse of power, period. And so and so they worked from that period on to create a separate lane of information. And we could see it beginning in 87. So let's call it 13, 14 years later, they finally were able to get rid of the Fairness Doctrine. Then you fast forward that with some of the technology in the late 80 seconds, early 90 seconds into AM talk radio, and then you you know, you continue as technology progressed.
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And now we have that technology through cable TV. And of course there's a whole bunch of Internets and social media kind of ecosystems. And you know, that that to me is the interesting part, because if you think about it, the the speaker of the House was beholden for his gavel and his in his role in leverage and pass it back in a second was was was made a negotiation that we still don't know the details of. I think about this with people in the Congress, a very small percentage, about 20 people who themselves has been well documented. Were involved with some disruption and planning for disruption in January of 2000. January 6th of 2021. And so and I'm not speculating on that, and I'll get into it later on, but it's well documented. So my point is, is that it's understandable that there now has you know, these people now want to create a separate narrative because the narrative that exists, again, is the narrative that. Tucker Carlson we only saw the honesty in the text, which is the last four years were terrible and we have nothing to show for it.
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So yeah I mean and that's and that but that divide is one interestingly enough that is it exists in the Republican Party and it's the Fox News, so to speak, is supposed to stamp that out because part of the issue that was had to the point time period you're talking about that post Watergate period was that Republicans turned on Nixon and not all of them, but a large number of them, a significant number of them said, yeah, you got to go. They were they didn't they didn't all go in lockstep with Nixon. And so and they had there was no way to be able to pressure them from the right to all stay in lock step. And so and now even with this, you saw McConnell come out against McCarthy saying, no, this is this is not a good look, so to speak. But where I wanted to go with this actually was, to me, the I think it's more concerning the aspect of to operate as an extension of the Republican Party because you said the word propaganda is the word for that. You know, So that's what it would look like in an open society, basically, where you have a news organization, not that is that may see things similarly to a party, you know, from a just kind of an ideological standpoint, but a news organization that considers it part of or part of the part of the party or part of the party's communications apparatus, you know, it's like, okay, here our job is to go move, move the needle here in Georgia for this election so that more Republicans get elected. Like for them to see themselves like that, I find to be more concerning because then you get into that ends justify the means thing where you can justify making everybody watches. Think that an election was stolen even though you know it wasn't because your ends justify the means. And that is to for for more power for Republicans, so to speak. And it's it's more of a structural issue with the stock piece. You know, like that's more salacious to.
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Me is lesser.
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Of a. Well, let me let me. Because it's still bad, but it's just it's a structural issue. There's no way to get rid of it because I can put this in economic terms and it'll make completely complete sense as far as what Fox is and what they do, it's more salacious. I owe Tucker Carlson, you know, called, you know, these, you know, the whatever Sidney Powell crazy person or whatever. Like people love that salacious. But what it is, if you look at it, you know, like in a market system, if news media is if it's a for profit system, then you're better off finding some market inefficiency. And if a market inefficiency was that there's narratives that people want to hear regardless if they're true or not, but they're narratives that people want to hear, and you can provide them to that and they'll watch. Then actually, that's very brilliant from a marketing marketing standpoint to say, Hey, you know, like let's well, if nobody's telling this narrative because, you know, news media, they're trying to tell things that are true. And, you know, this narrative sometimes requires you to not say things that are true, as has been demonstrated here. Then, hey, if we just tell this narrative, we can have viewers. But that's why the threat of someone coming from the right, a Newsmax and sticking to the narrative, even though the facts weren't there, was such a threat to Fox.
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But again, that's structural, though. That's structural. That's as long as we have for profit media or excuse me, for profit news media, then there will be opportunities for organizations to see and find market inefficiencies and then cater their message to that to and then to try to capture that market basically that wherever that target market is, you know, and that's a concern. We're going to have to deal with that because as we can see here, that creates incentives to be dishonest when necessary, you know, or when when it's found to be something to do. But yeah, the extension of a party apparatus in a in a media organization is something that is like that's that's something that you go back into, you know, 100 years or whatever, and you got a town and there's one newspaper and it's owned by the rich guy. And then whoever the mayor is, is cool with that dude. And so everything, all the information is controlled like that's happening on a national level with a segment of society. And that's something we're gonna have to reckon with and.
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Think, Oh, go ahead. Sorry.
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No, I was gonna say that's something we're gonna have to reckon with and I don't know necessarily how you unwind that if it doesn't come from public pressure where it's just say, Hey, no, we actually want anybody who calls themselves news to focus on giving accurate portrayals of information and not narrative based ones because I'll throw this at you real quick, because what we see now basically is like there's this right wing narrative universe that exists that's been built, and that's just that you have to people have to stick to that in order to, you know, get their to keep their audience.
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Get their fix. Um, no. And I think it's it's look, I'm going to go back to leadership in a minute because remember, that's my favorite, you know, punching bag these days, how important leadership is. Right. And it goes back to even leadership within a party. Right. You mentioned, interestingly, about Watergate, how at some point it was one of the Republican senators, I think Goldwater Barry Goldwater was one who was one of the main guys that kind of went into Nixon's office and said, Dude, we can't save you, man. Not after the tapes, not after this. That and Nixon did the.
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Because the facts became so overwhelming. Yeah. And he did the right thing.
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By resigning and not taking the country through something more painful. And so, you know, he he. Expected his role and his office more than his own narcissism to save himself. And so for that, I think he actually should be commended. Looking now, looking back at what it looks like when someone doesn't behave that way. But but let me let me kind of back this up and then I'll get back to the leadership thing from here. So if we're looking at what we just discussed, right, that there was a plan after Watergate to create this separate lane, because remember, this was also Watergate came right after a very traumatic time, I guess, for our culture in America, which was the 60 seconds between the Vietnam kind of era and protest, the feminism, the civil rights, the stuff that everybody kind of knows was going on back then. Right? So then you get. The idea. Remember liberal media and all that was just because, you know, the the media was being sympathetic to people who wanted equality, whether they were blacks, whether they were women, things like they were listening to other people's points of view.
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So and remember also that also arose when the media stopped being so generous with their Vietnam coverage as well. When the media then, too, initially the media was very compliant with the Vietnam coverage. And then over time they stopped being very compliant.
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And it's all and we can also, in a sense like now maybe blame technology because that that time that was the first time that Americans were seeing a war more in real time. Remember the big war prior to that were Korea and World War Two. And we just didn't have the television technology where, you know, if a if a like the Battle of the Bulge, people weren't watching it on TV 48 hours later, whereas with the dropping bombs on Hanoi or in Cambodia, people saw it. Right. You know, within a week. So it's interesting how the yeah, the technological change did cause some of that social disruption. But fast forward now to what's going on in today's world. So like I just said, there's a representative and the audience look it up. This is again, I'm not making this up. This is already factually documented representative named Barry Loudermilk from Georgia. He was found to have given a private tour of the Capitol on January 5th, the day before January 6th. The Capitol at the time was closed because of the COVID restrictions, so no one was giving public tours or anything like that. So he had to work hard to get a group into, you know, meeting. Somehow he got people in there when no one else could. Me And you couldn't go there and just go do a tour of our Capitol, right? Then when he was accused of doing this during the hearings, he denied it vehemently. Then a video surfaced of him giving the tour. The tapes. The tapes not only did the video show him giving a tour to a bunch of people, it showed people taking pictures with their cell phones of things that I don't think you or I would have much interest in if we were going to the Capitol, which was things like staircases, things like emergency exits, hallways. I mean, that stuff when you're at the basement of the Capitol doesn't seem like it's the sexiest thing you want to tactical type stuff.
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Correct.
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You weren't not not pictures of, you know, the paintings of George Washington or the beautiful statues and things like that. So then what happens is he is. Accused of this stuff, right? And think about it. He's one of the 20 that negotiated with McCarthy for. Macarthur to get his perch in leadership. Then we have a few months later this tape going to Tucker Carlson to try and change the narrative. And Mr. Loudermilk himself is now the chair of the subcommittee that's investigating the January 6th hearing. So think about how we've gone from Watergate, where you had leadership in the party of the president because of the inability to go back to the people and say we should just continue to ride this guy out. The people had seen the truth. And enough of the people, even on the Republican side, were saying, we can't have this. Fast forward 50 years later, almost, and it's almost complete. This project that they had where we have all of this stuff going on. Recently in his last few years, and yet half this country is in denial. That tells me that the project has been successful, let's put it well.
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But they're not in denial, though. They're in this this narrative universe, this right wing narrative universe, where they're.
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In denial because they're getting alternative facts.
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Well, but there's nothing for them to deny, is what I'm saying. Like they are in a different universe of information. And so, I mean, and that was kind of the point is, like you said, the separate lane of information and you know that it happened in an area, you know, in a place and like in open in the open, you know, so to speak, is, you know, but again, if it's if that's what is being demanded, then there's going to be someone to do the supply, you know, so to speak. So and that's the last point I wanted to get to on this, was, you know, and this this is a theme we've had, I believe, since our second show or third show, third show going back. And then we've touched on it from time to time since then. Just the question of whether, you know, we see fake news is out there like people you know, this is a great example. I know this is false. That the election was stolen, but I'm going to put it on the news and I'm going to to give the appearance that it's real and that it's something we have to take seriously. That is kind of the definition of fake news. And so is that being driven because Fox was willing to provide the supply or Newsmax was willing to provide that supply, or is it something that is being demanded, you know, that the viewers want that, you know, for whatever reason. And so do you think that what we're seeing here supports one of those or the other? You know, like this is another piece of information as far as our our deep dive on this issue. So what does this show Does this tell you anything more about it?
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Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, it's still hard to disseminate because we've we've also in that period of time, you know, this last couple of years of doing the podcast have have have done discussions and in covering about how people change you know imperceptible small changes will move them over time in a big way and.
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How social media and media is good for that. Yeah.
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And also how they've done actual studies, right, where we've read where they take people off certain cable channels and off certain ecosystems online for like 4 or 5 weeks and all of a sudden those people are back to being more moderate in their views and less extreme. So I do think no.
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And the study you're referencing there, at least one of them was when they had, what was it, Fox News viewers watch CNN for like 4 or 5 weeks and then their their views like they they remained ideological in the same kind of place. But the extremism was was vastly, vastly, vastly moderated. Like they no longer saw whoever didn't agree with them as a mortal enemy, so to speak.
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Yeah. So so just on that theme about the supply or demand, I think I think it's a little bit of both. But this is where I'll bring in some of the analogies that I've brought to you offline is, you know, like the food industry or tobacco, things like that, where, yeah, we crave food because we have a natural need to eat and stay alive and power our bodies with nutrients and energy and all that. But we you know, most people in today's world have been educated enough to at least appreciate that a lot of the industrial food companies create food in a way that that kind of causes us to over consume it. Yeah. And which we talked about.
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Two weeks ago.
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Yeah. Almost against their own will like, like, you know, the amounts of salts and sugars and they know how to make them appeal to our palate in a way that we over consume these foods. And it has a long term detrimental effect on many people. And I think.
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Just just I don't think it's against our will as much as unbeknownst to us, like we don't know that it's making us eat more of it. But it is.
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Yeah, yeah. And so and so the thing is, is that is that what do you call it.
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Well if you analogize that to, to this, you know, as far as like a kind of fake news thing, you can kind of see where there's a natural like probably if you say, let's say it's an 80 over 20 type thing, like maybe 20% of people, even if these processed foods weren't made for you to over consume them, 20% of people might over consume them. You know, just because that's just, hey, that's human beings. But the 80% wouldn't. But when it's marketed a certain way and people aren't aware of these properties, then maybe you're getting a more 50 over 50 or over consume or 60 over 40 or over consume. And so I can see from that standpoint, I think it's it's something that is the the the increase over just from a straight like there's always going to be extremists. So to speak, that don't care what the facts are or just want what they want or just think what they think and they don't. None of that other stuff matters. Always going to people like that. But I think it's the what we're seeing where that's out of whack, where we're having large numbers of people unresponsive to real facts and only wanting to hear something that's in their kind of narrative universe is I think that's something that's supply driven for that reason.
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Yeah, the same thing can happen with the food. Like you're saying about subconsciously people getting pushed to over consume certain things that they may not otherwise do through marketing and through the tricks of corporate America and the food industry side. So too has from a mental standpoint, people have been going down that road from the tricks of the corporate media side of things. And so that's where I just think, yeah, yeah.
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Because what I was going to say though, with that is that I think actually I think your analogy holds up, but only if you incorporate kind of all modes of extremism. And when I'm saying extremism, kind of what I'm saying is that the kind of mindset of my side or myself has all the, the right answers to everything and no one else has anything to add to the discussion. And so there are people who have that kind of mentality innately or that kind of lean more into that on any side of any political spectrum, so to speak. But what we're seeing right now is that that kind of mentality is being catered to on the right. I don't think that's being catered to on the left from a mainstream, large scale media organization. And so but I'm sure it could be, you know, so to speak. I'm sure that somebody could like say, hey, you know, I'm going to target these people that only think that they know everything about the environment. And then we have to stop immediately. We cannot burn another ounce of oil. You know, like I'm sure you could find if you could put that on on news somewhere and have an organization cater to that and say, we're just going to everything's going to be from that frame that you could loop some people in more people who ordinarily might not say that they have all the. So but what we're actually seeing is an action. You know, like that's not what I'm saying from a climate standpoint that's theoretical. But we're saying it like in actuality in action here where there's been just a decision and say, look, we're going to present these things as if one side has all of the answers and the other side has nothing to add and is only a detriment. You know, like let me go ahead.
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Go ahead, finish. Because I wanted to jump in. Right on that one. Well, just go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. No, because it's a great point you bring up that the you know, this this whole contrast of us versus them, because going back to where we started with this, with some of the quotes from some of the current people in the media ecosystem there, and also talking about the Watergate experience and the need to create this separate lane. It's very interesting because, I mean, like you're saying, right? I don't think if all Republicans or people on the right because I don't just paint this as politics, right. But the people who consume this type of media and who believe it, I think, just like you said, with the food, there's always going to be 20% of a population that may just go, like you said, extreme, extreme eating, extreme, you know, ideological views, whatever. But like we have in our country, we have 70% of this country is obese. And that's because a lot of people don't realize they've been kind of manipulated into eating a certain way. And I think as we've been talking about with this, a lot of people have been manipulating into believing certain things. And this is how effective the ecosystem has been, because I've thought about this as I was preparing, going back to Nixon and all that, I think about what did he really do? Okay. He tried to break into the political opponents psychiatrist's office to see if they could, you know, find dirt on the person being crazy. And then the tapes come out and you hear him sounding crazy sometimes. You hear him talking about using the CIA or the FBI to go intimidate some political enemy. And he's got his enemies list and all that. That stuff is bad. But I was just thinking, like the stuff that we just lived through in the last five, seven years is like dwarfs any of that stuff.
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Because I.
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Mean, look at what I just said earlier.
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About there's a guy in Congress right now that there's evidence that he may have let people in to take pictures of the Capitol the day before January 6th. And he lied about it, went out of his way to let people in. Correct. So he lied about it. That reminded me of both Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, and Michael Flynn, who was the national security adviser, just lying about meeting with Russians during the beginning of the prior administration. And that seemed to be just okay and swept under the rug. Then I was thinking about President Trump's 2019. Well, hold on. Hold on. It wasn't okay, but it was defended in this lane. That's what I mean by. But that's what I want to go here because it was okay in the ecosystem. That's my point. Yeah. Yeah. And and then I was thinking about President Trump's first impeachment in 2019. Think about what that was about. You're talking about Nixon abusing power and someone like Barry Goldwater going to him and say, Man, we can't do this. President Trump, we saw the transcript that that that they wrote and they gave out, meaning the administration. So the real transcript might have been worse is.
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In 2019, before even Joe Biden announced he was running for president, The United States Congress as a proxy for American people, voted to support Ukraine with missiles, and he tried to basically extort the president of Ukraine to come here and get involved in our politics or he wouldn't give the missiles. If you want to talk about an abuse of power compared to Nixon, just trying to break into his opponents, you know. You know, doctor's office. But that's what shows me that this worked, because by 2019, the Roger Ailes plan and the Rupert Murdoch plan and all these guys who wanted to create that ecosystem were successful. So unlike what happened in. I'm just going to finish off, unlike what happened in Watergate, where the senators could no longer defend Nixon because the voters, the Republican voters had the integrity to say, we can't have a guy like this leading us. Now, they didn't like you're saying it was successful that the voters now don't want the Republican Party to go against anyone doing wrong in their party.
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Well, because here's and here's the insight that if you if you look back at, you know, like kind of that that post Watergate time and then the lead up to Fox News just then Roger Ailes was involved both of those both of those times basically was just it was the idea that people are in by and large, not all people, but a lot of people are lazy and kind of want to be told what to think. And so having that extra that additional lane will influence a lot of people who want to buy in to what you're selling, so to speak. Your overall what you're selling. And then the second piece, which is that people don't want to be informed. They want to feel informed, which is, you know, Roger Ailes as well, you know, like which lends into the idea of providing this type of information in a news like environment or calling yourself news so people can feel like, yeah, this is this is the news, even though, like I said, they'll go into court and say, no, no, no, we're not news, you know, like we're out here. This is opinion, this is entertainment. This is not news. So it's both of those put together, create that situation where you can be allowed freely to influence people that you know are influenceable and curate the information that they see, like, say, create this narrative universe that they can operate in, where all the answers are simple. The people they don't like are always wrong and the people they like are always right, you know, like. So that's kind of what we've seen and that's how it's developed so. Well, don't want to.
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Well, I just want to finish with this, I think. And that's where people like us get a little bit frustrated. But that's why we keep having the culture wars in the in the mainstream narrative of our of our discussions in this country. Meaning, I mean, Syria. I thought about him preparing today, the Dr. Seuss scandal, the Mr. Potato Head, the gas stoves. It's always this this rolling theme of of crises and outrages. And that's when I saw that Tucker Carlson text. Going back to that, that's when I realized that's why they got to keep talking about this stuff, because even they know that they got nothing to show from from kind of a true like. Like, you know, think about it. President Trump was actually excited that maybe we get an infrastructure bill or some serious stuff that the country that can move the country forward, but instead we get nothing but culture wars because it's all about defending the.
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Tax cuts and a culture war.
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Yeah, yeah. It's all about defending these bad actions of people who just want to win. And that's the issue is. Well, but when you don't have anything to deliver and you want to win, then you behave this way. Well, also.
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Though, the other piece of this and I do want to get out of this topic, but the other piece of this is that stuff also keeps people engaged from a ratings standpoint. You know, like it's the constant.
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Like the clickbait.
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Yeah. It's the constant urgency. There's this issue that if we don't win this issue, then all is lost. And that issue just it's always a new one. Every you know, every day, every time there's a new episode, there's always a new episode. So or excuse me, issue. So but moving on from there, it's it's something that I.
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Just want to say this because I shared this with you privately, that I had somebody in my life who I really care about, who's in their 70 seconds, call me last week and be really upset that the Biden administration, it might pass legislation that would force pharmaceutical companies to have to compete with the US government. And basically, you know, not, not not gouge price gouge the US government when selling pills to Medicare and Medicaid and all that. And I just thought the effectiveness of the ecosystem because here's someone who is on Medicare and here's someone who would benefit from getting not only the US Treasury.
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And who is a tax payer.
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That's why I was going to say not only the US Treasury and the taxpayer getting relief and not getting gouged from this Medicare Part D that's been going on literally 20 years from 2003. But also as a patient that would consume these drugs, also pay less for it. And that's when I realized how effective the ecosystem is, is because I'm not saying that that's good or bad or I'm not saying that we should like it because it's Joe Biden. I'm just saying that that appears to be maybe the role of government is to make sure that private companies don't price gouge the government itself or fleece people right. When they're selling, especially in something important like medications. But because of the strength of that ecosystem, because the messenger was a Democratic administration and not a Republican one, he just hates it.
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Even though everything has to be bad. That comes. Correct. Even though actually.
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That was one thing that President Trump was also and I supported when he said it was that he was going to go after pharmaceutical companies that ripped off, you know, every.
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President since Bush did it. I know they're going to do it. But, you know, so this is.
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How effective it is that I got a guy who in his 70 seconds who would benefit from this and he hates it just because he was told to hate it, because it's not his team. And it's just, you know, what do you do with that?
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But that's the objective, so to speak. But our second topic this week, we wanted to discuss, you know, now March is Women's History Month, and this now Women's History Month. They do a theme each each year has a theme. And this year's theme is celebrating women who tell our stories. So we decided to take a look, a closer look at Harriet Beecher Stowe, who is the author who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, which as you've you've actually pointed this out on the show, was the the second most selling book in the US in the 19th, the whole 19th century, but only behind the Bible in the.
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World, not just the in the world. Okay.
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The world only behind the Bible, you know, which is like you know that let's you know the scope of when you're talking about fiction work or however you want to classify the Bible. It's the most, you know, like just a novel. It's the it's the best selling in the world. And so and it definitely was something that was very influential. It's obviously someone who told stories, and it was something that was very influential in the sense that it had a huge effect on how slavery was seen and talked about in the United States from the mid 1800s on. And so we wanted to I wanted to just kind of get your thoughts on her, someone who, I mean, if anything, seems to be under undersold or under shot as far as how influential this person was, you know, but I mean, it doesn't get much. I mean, considering race and slavery have been like the defining issues of the United States since it's been founded, that mean that she had such a such a role in it would seem to put her pretty high up in the hierarchy as far as influential Americans.
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Well, remember, the Florida legislature hasn't gone in session yet, so we can still talk about this. Let's see what happens in a couple of months when we're not allowed to talk about when freedom of speech is no longer a priority for all.
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Of these.
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Constitutional loving Americans. Yeah.
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There's nothing like freedom but banning something you don't like. No.
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No. So no. So here's the thing is, it's as we're joking about, it makes me realize how just we can't escape the fact that this history just is continually not talked about. Think about what you just led in with. An American woman. Had the highest selling book for a whole century. Yeah. Again, I'm pretty sure that there's a lot of people that haven't wanted to celebrate this record because then it would force people to have to discuss why. Why was the book popular, right? And what was the book about and so on and so forth. So I find it fascinating.
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What were the depictions in the book of what slavery was like? Yeah, well, and it's a good.
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It's a good example as we're talking about it, too, as to what we mean. Again, not not to go backwards for the first topic. Right. But why is it so important for some people to believe that owning the narrative matters? And we see how after things we've talked about in other shows like like the Lost Cause and other successful attempts, especially in the early 20th century, to just erase and no longer discuss this part of American history. I feel like she's also an innocent bystander of that, where, you know, we all know about Mark Twain and about other great American writers, but somehow this lady is left out from kind of the greater conversation. But she has the most selling books of that whole era. Yeah. You know, it's just interesting. And I just read here, just to her credit, she wrote 30 books. So that was just one of several. So that's what I mean. It's not like she just got lucky and just wrote one book and got it published and that was it. I mean, this lady was a prolific writer for her whole life.
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And so and let's not get this is this is not like 2010 where there's books, but I mean, there's also social media and TV and radio and podcasts like books is pretty much what that was media then, you know, there's books and then there's newspapers and pamphlets and stuff. And so like to be the biggest author is like to be the biggest. Everything now mean and so the way but the influence, you know in terms of also looking at what the times were like then like people did not know people were living in New England or, you know, certain areas of the country had no idea what things looked like in South Carolina or Alabama or whatever. And so and honestly, it was so disconnected from their lives. That may not be something that they spent much time thinking about. And so when something like this gets published and put in front of people and something, they're like, whoa, whoa, this is not what we want as Americans, you know, like, so to speak. And so it actually galvanized a lot of support against slavery where there was a lot of apathy before that because, you know, what you hear about slavery was just what the slaveholders wanted you to know, essentially. And, you know, oh, no, we're all cool. You know, we all just hang out, you know, and, you know, just just take everything easy and slow in the South, you know? But no, no, that's not how it was happening. So, yeah, you know, and and the point I'm going to lead you into it because one of the fascinating things about this book is that it was so influential. And you've talked you've mentioned this once or twice on one of our shows before, too, that she had to do a follow up piece to it. I'll get you to talk about that.
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Yeah. So that was she had so much criticism, which I'll get into in a second and so many. It's so funny the parallels of today, but I guess it's again, because we've got human beings and we don't and we don't change. So but the parallels to today because she comes out with this this novel talking about the realities and the harshness of slavery. And then there was so much pushback, especially in the South, of course, because they were offended that someone would question their peculiar institution, as it was called, that, you know, she was being discredited left and right, like a lot of messengers are. And. And again, not to get into ideology. Right. We mentioned it briefly, in fairness to people that were questioning the, you know, the idea of a wet market for COVID. Right. They were being attacked at the beginning. So this happens. And what happened was she actually then said, you know what, screw it. I'm going to show you guys where my I get my information from. So she actually wrote a follow up book, which is around 900 pages long, with all of her sources where she listed the slave, she spoke to the places she visited, all that kind of stuff. And again, it's just like someone who denies the Holocaust. Right? Someone who denies the Holocaust. There's enough evidence that you can go see that to happen. You can even go visit the concentration camps that they have, as you know, as museums now. But if someone really just doesn't want to believe something, then they won't. So no matter how long that book was that she wrote or how much she cited, there's still so many people that pushed back.
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And that's it's good you set me up for this because that's where I was going. It's just a show. How interesting it is. She also was a very interesting person campaigning for women's rights. So apparently married women didn't have rights either back then. So I'll quote from her. The position of a married woman is in many aspects precisely similar to that of a Negro slave. She can make no contract and hold no property. Whatever she inherits or earns becomes, at that moment, the property of her husband. Though he acquired a fortune through her, or though she earned a fortune through her talents, he is the sole master of it and she cannot draw a penny. And what I thought of is like the Taliban and the recent discussion we had about how they roll in all the women's rights back. And it's just a good reminder that this was she wrote that in 1869. So 150 years ago, we weren't that far removed from the Taliban. And so it's just this idea that, you know, again, we've talked about this in other shows that we can look back at our history and see some of what we might consider ugliness or flaws without hating the country. I mean, again. And I wanted to mention that just so that we can say that she was more than just someone with Uncle Tom's Cabin and talking about, let's say, slavery. That's a good point. She that she she was just a pioneer of people's rights, whether it was blacks or women's and all that. And and it's just a.
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Really someone who, you know, like subscribed to a lot of what America from the beginning has said, that it is regardless of whether or not it actually has lived up to that the whole time. But that, again, is part of that progress of it becoming more and more towards that. And the pushback that people who try to move at that direction experience. So yeah. So that's it. Yeah, we can wrap from there. We appreciate. All right for joining us on this episode of Call it like I see it subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. And until next time, I'm James.
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Keys Tunde Ogunlana.
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All right. We'll talk to you next time.
