Overtime – Episode #661: John Waters, David Axelrod, Ken Buck

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, real-time with Bill Ma.

All right, here we are with the New York Times best-selling author and distinguished professor at Vanderbilt University, Michael Eric Dyson,

an acclaimed author and opinion columnist for the New York Times, Time LePole, and a writer for the Pre-Press.

His new book is called Morning After the Revolution, Nelly Bulls.

Okay, here are the questions.

From the people, the people.

Michael Eric Dyson, this is for you.

Your next book is about the right to vote.

Do you think voter suppression will be a factor in the upcoming election?

Well, absolutely.

I mean, the Supreme Court just ruled a couple days ago that the attempt, I don't know if it was Louisiana, to kind of rejigger the map and gerrymander against African-American interests was just plain unconstitutional.

So there are all kinds of tricks in the bag.

People have to continue to stand up.

They have to continue to call that out.

And they have to continue to show up at the polls and vote.

What do you think, what everybody thinks about

the Justice of the Supreme Court hanging a flag upside down outside his house and then blaming it on the wife?

That's the best part.

As a person with a very opinionated wife, I applaud it and I think it's fabulous.

I think that's brave and smart.

They're going to have the real housewives of the Supreme Court soon.

Yeah, that's

lame.

But, I mean, you know, they're ruling on Trump.

The January 6th ruling, the big one.

Oh, my God.

I mean, so that's him and Clarence Thomas, they both have these.

I mean, they're far-right-wing.

And apparently, you know, it's a Lady Macbeth situation also.

We need one more.

One wife.

Oh, good.

Yeah, but it's horrible.

I mean, you think about about these people, at least Katanji Jackson Brown had the presence of mind and integrity to recuse herself on the Harvard case.

I don't think Clarence Thomas or Samuel Lito have any sense of integrity about that.

And that's a shame because the Supreme Court,

among all of us, should be looked up to as the one last bastion of, if not objectivity, at least fairness.

And I think that

Clarence Thomas's wife was actively involved

in trying to overturn the last election.

I mean, it wasn't just, you know, on the sidelines.

Do you get to say, well, that's my wife, that's not me.

I'm not my brother's keeper.

No.

No.

I think that if there were justice, they would both, both justices would recuse themselves from the upcoming decision.

Nellie, what were your thoughts on the walkout at Jerry Seinfeld's commencement at Duke University last week?

Well, first of all, a few facts here.

I mean, it was, I don't know, it was like 30 people.

30 people is what I was thinking.

That many people.

It was.

But I think a lot of people are very uncomfortable with comedy right now, and it's hard for them.

And Jerry Seinfeld is someone who makes fun of a lot of things and who's now kind of weighing in on the Israel Gaza stuff.

I'm not surprised there was a walkout.

Of course there was a walkout.

I feel like with college kids today, if if there's a couple of thousand of them and 30 walk out, that's a huge victory.

Yes, yes.

And they lost out because I didn't get to hear what I thought was a really good speech.

Yeah.

It was a great speech.

Right.

Is there any relationship between Antifa and the protests on college campuses today?

I never thought of that.

I think so.

Okay.

Oh, God.

No, I think the

Antifa got us ready for the idea that there should should be a little bit of violence in some protests.

Antifa said, it's okay if our protests are a little scary.

And I think at the time it was really downplayed that Antifa was part of anything and that violence was ever on the table.

And now, that's not being downplayed.

I mean, the protesters are chanting, Antifada,

there's only one solution.

They're chanting for Antifada.

They're chanting for violence, for war.

They're pro-war protesters.

But I don't think that's the majority of people there.

I mean, look, I'm a professor at a college campus.

Well, it's definitely not the majority.

It's not the majority by far.

And look, you're going to always have among those who are righteously engaging in protests.

And protests can never be comfortable.

That's the whole point.

Martin Luther King Jr.

said, and he began to use in the last two years of his life a term called aggressive nonviolence.

He said, occupy the spaces in D.C., you ain't got a job, come here and protest, and so on.

So people who think they can juxtapose Martin Luther King Jr.'s brand and variety of nonviolent protests against what's going on now, I think are misled.

However, having said that, you don't want to have truck with any kind of anti-Semitism, anti-Islamic belief, anti-Palestinian in terms of as human beings.

You can have principled positions that hold opposition to a state without demonizing human beings at the same time.

And we have to teach young people to be able to express their protests in a very powerful and sometimes subversive fashion, but not to the degree, obviously, where we begin to endanger other people's lives.

That would be a problem.

I also think that, you know, during the civil rights movement, people marched knowing that they might be held accountable.

They showed their faces.

They were proud to stand up for that cause.

So I do find it a little disturbing that so many of the current protesters are masking and sort of getting very upset when you know at the idea that they might be in any way held accountable.

Like people were prepared to be arrested for the cause of civil rights.

So if you really believe in that and you believe in protest, then you go all the way.

But they had a corollary belief, and that belief was we're willing to challenge society because we believe the moral law is above.

the legal limit.

So they had, in their sense, the righteousness of God and history on their side because what the segregationists were doing was wrong and they knew it already.

So we have to grant at least the possibility that those who are protesting now believe the same thing.

But the question is, how do we enact that protest?

I believe in vigorous, subversive protests.

I don't believe in demonizing of the groups.

And I don't believe in the kind of either fast terror where you drop bombs and kill people or slow terror where you daily deal them deadly, destructive practices.

We have to acknowledge both of that going on here and find a way to get away from the power.

But do you think Hamas needs to be eradicated?

I don't.

Look,

I don't believe in any terrorist organization, period, bottom, end of story.

But I don't equate Palestinians with Hamas any more than I would.

But they're fighting Hamas.

Do you believe that Hamas?

Well, but they're not killing Hamas.

They're killing more people.

I'm saying they're not only killing Hamas.

Of course.

They're killing a lot more people besides.

Okay, well,

what war did we ever have where they were only killing the soldiers?

None.

Well, whatever.

Never.

Never happened.

Never will happen.

All I'm saying, Bill, is that if you're going to have moral outrage, as you should, the evil that was enacted on October 7th is undeniable to me, and

I don't apologize for opposition to that.

Straightforward, right?

When I wrote my piece in the New York Times about anti-Semitism,

deeply entrenched in this culture, I believe that.

At the same time, we can't talk about a world in which we can't at least acknowledge that the over-response of Israel that many progressive Jews and others have said is wrong and problematic has to be called out.

That's what I'm talking about, understanding.

I disagree with the premise.

Either you believe Hamas has got to be wiped out.

This is a group that, again, has attacked Israel five times.

Israel gave back that land in 2005.

Since then, they took a lot of money from the world that was for charity and for their own people.

They stole it.

They used it to build tunnels and import bombs and attack Israel five times, including that horrible one on October 7th.

Okay, their charter says we'd like to wipe these people off the face of the earth.

They proclaim over and over again that they are going to do it.

Does that group have to be wiped out?

And if it does, then the idea idea that you know better than the Israeli Defense Force how to accomplish that

doesn't.

It's not that I know better, but I'm saying, are you saying it's justifiable that the 35,000 people who have been killed now in response to what happened there is something that we're willing to live on?

I'm saying

I want both evils to be eradicated.

I want them both to be removed.

And I don't justify

assaults upon Jews anymore than I justify assaults upon Jews.

But it's a fake argument because

if you think Hamas has to be eliminated,

then sometimes people are going to die.

And you can't put a number on it because we don't do that with any other war.

Bill, I don't believe the justification of that occurs.

And I stand tooth and nail against anti-Semitism and the evils visited upon Israel and Jewish people.

And we have to hold them accountable.

Look, if you oppose EDI men, you're not anti-black because you're calling him into question.

Now, we know a Jewish state is different.

We know Zionism is different.

But no, I'm just saying to you,

if we can't have it both ways, it used to be that the argument was to Ralph Ellison and other figures who were black, James, Baldwin, you're mistaking Israel with Jews.

Now we're talking about the collapse of that.

We must protect to the nth degree the ability of people to live freely from terror and destroy that terror.

The terror is operating in multiple forms.

Very simple solution: stop attacking Israel.

Stop attacking women and Jews.

What are the panelists thoughts on the recent suggestion by the founder of dating app Bumble?

That AI could be used to help people find their partners.

I think Alan Iverson would do great helping somebody find their partner.

That's the AI.

I know about that.

No, that's what I love about Overtime.

It's just.

There's no rhyme or reason to it.

It's just.

It could actually work, though.

At random.

I didn't hear about this.

Dating app Bumble is doing what?

They said that AI could be used to help people.

Well, of course, isn't it already?

I'm surprised, right.

I figured it already was.

I think it's a great idea.

Let them get rid of the small talk and then

some of us have made without AI, AI might be a step up.

I think it's a terrible idea.

Really good point there.

It's a terrible idea, and even the kids are coming around to that.

I've read that recently, that they're swiping left on dating from the phone.

And And they finally figured it out.

You cannot, that's not how you can put all your data in there.

It doesn't matter.

You could match perfectly.

You have to talk to somebody.

You have to see them in person.

You have to smell their breath.

Yeah.

That is metaphorically.

I'm with you.

I'm with you with that.

I'm on with you, Robabech.

All right.

Thank you.

We'll see you next week.

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