Overtime – Episode #611: Wynton Marsalis, Scott Galloway, Matt Welch

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

All right.

All right, we're back.

Are we?

Okay, now we're back on number time.

More of the sausage party we're having today.

For the panel, Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent, oh, yeah, I read about this, sent buses of migrants to Chicago last week, I'll be there tomorrow night,

prompting worries that a continued influx will strain Chicago's resources.

Will this force sanctuary cities to rethink their policies?

It is an interesting question for liberals to be, you know, like, hey, let's have open borders or close to it, and then when they come, but it's not in our states, and this Texas governor kind of called their bluff, was like, well, you like immigrants so much?

Have some of ours.

I think it's worth pointing out that the term sanctuary cities doesn't actually mean people say we want you illegal immigrants to come here.

It's a term that was not invented, but certainly championed by Rudy Giuliani.

in the 90s.

It's the idea of if someone has committed or has witnessed, more likely, a crime in a major city, you're going to see some illegal immigrants there.

So what we're saying is we're not going to share that information with the federal government to deport people.

That is the sanctuary they're talking about.

It's a sanctuary from federal deportation laws.

And we do this because we want illegal immigrants and everybody to be able to talk to the cops.

So Republicans have been dining out on the term sanctuary cities for a long time, even though they used to support it.

And Republicans in Texas,

former Governor George Bush is a prime example, used to champion their border with Mexico as like we're different than the Pete Wilson politics of California.

We actually have a lot of commerce and trade with Mexico.

We like that.

I lament that Republicans no longer have that spirit that you used to see in the Bush family and with Ronald Reagan too about welcoming immigrants.

But that's not really

what this is about.

It's about, there seems to be some hypocrisy about welcoming them, but not in my backyard.

That's what seems different about this.

But this is about terminology.

It's like how education works in America.

You don't see black people in schools, really, but you hear they're going to take all your jobs.

You have to be careful.

These people are coming.

Well, where are those people?

Who are are these people that are coming?

Neighborhoods, people stay poor forever, Democrat, Republican.

Where's all the help?

We backed away from that civil rights movement and ran from it on the right and the left.

We have all these geniuses.

Where's the lower class economic infrastructure that brings blood to fingers and toes?

Oh, you're a finger, too bad.

This is only for the heart.

But we're good with terminology.

Any type of of fake term is sanctuary city.

It sounds good.

Nobody knows even what that is.

Then the expert tells you what it is and you're going, oh, okay.

That's good to know.

We don't want them here.

Back East recently,

first we landed in Newark and drove through.

I never drove through Newark and then we were heading toward the hotel in New York.

So we drove through Newark and then we drove up like Madison Avenue.

And it was like, talk about two

different worlds.

Where's the economic infrastructure for lower-class people from all the geniuses who come up with systems?

Where is it?

My question is, like,

I so understand the cynicism of people because it's what you just said about Democrat-Republican.

That's fair.

I mean,

it doesn't seem to change no matter who's in office.

I sort of understand why people just want to break shit.

Stealing money is the only thing that remains.

And the thing we have to do is not confuse corruption with the systems that are corrupted.

It's like I say, well, I don't like religion because priests do this.

It's not the religion that's doing it.

When people first started taking photographs, it was always of naked people.

So people were against photography.

Oh, we can't have just photography.

It's not the photography.

So we have to, it takes a lot of integrity to have a democracy.

And we're very short on that.

Scott, this is for you.

Is TikTok an existential threat to TikTok,

to American privacy and security?

Should the media be paying more attention to this?

I should be paying more attention to this.

Somebody told me recently, if you only were aware of TikTok what it was a few years ago, which I am only a few years ago, it's really changed.

And there's something for everyone now.

It's like Vegas.

Something for the whole family.

But I don't know.

It's my new project when I get off.

We're going to get into TikTok.

If you believe as I do that there is no separation between the CCP and a Chinese company who can disappear a CEO for four weeks, if you believe that the CCP has a vested interest in the United States.

You're talking about the Communist Party in China.

And if you believe the CCP has a vested interest in diminishing our standing globally, and then you also acknowledge that people under the age of 18 are spending more time on TikTok than they're spending on every streaming network combined.

Are we comfortable, are we down with an organization that wants to undermine America controlling the media our children see?

It should be banned full stop.

Whoa.

Oh, God.

That's going to be hard.

You look at TikTok, Mars Allison?

Man, I don't.

I don't.

I can't even see it.

I can't see the icons to get on stuff.

I don't

classes.

No, but you know, of course, I have kids, and everybody is on TikTok.

I don't

look at these governments that way.

We're corrupt.

We do corrupt things.

We need to get ourselves together.

That's my thought as an American.

And also,

okay, the Chinese, they're Chinese, Chinese, Chinese.

The Chinese are here.

They're getting education.

They're doing what everybody's doing.

I got lost in China.

I got off a plane in China once out of fear.

And I said, I'm going to take the train to the next place.

Man, that's a big country.

You don't understand.

I told you.

No, I had to fly to China.

I couldn't walk.

I couldn't swim.

You can take a boat, you can take a slow boat to China.

But when you get out in the country of China, it's very different from the country of America.

Man, it's huge.

And there are plenty of people who are in a type of semi-slavery in China.

Yes.

We're not talking about them.

We're talking about, man, the evil Chinese are doing this in TikTok.

They're taking our information.

We're taking our own information.

We're providing them with all the ammunition they need, but right now you have young people who believe that socialism is better than capitalism.

And that is just wrong.

And the reason why they believe that is because I believe we've provided them with a lot of fodder.

You have a lot of content that is very pro-America.

A lot of the stuff you talk about reflects us in a positive light.

A lot of the stuff you talk about reflects some of the issues and problems we have here.

I believe the CCP would be stupid not to put their thumb on the scale of content that makes us look bad, such that young people grow up and think capitalism isn't working, that our elections have been weaponized.

And there's some truth to all of that.

But the Chinese, who I think are very smart, have said, Twitter, Facebook, Meta, no we're going to keep that shit out but it's good for you.

No, full stop they're out.

This is an existential threat for national security.

Speaking of stuff that's

not good for us or anybody, they seem to have this lockdown policy, the Chinese now, this zero tolerance policy with COVID.

Let me ask you gentlemen this.

Why?

It's an outlier in the world.

Nobody else is doing this.

Everybody else has come to the finally, I I think, the sane realization that COVID, yes, it's something, it's not good, but it's mostly a disease of the elderly.

Even Bill Gates said that, like the flu, it's more benign than it was at the beginning.

We have vaccines now, blah, blah, blah.

We just learned to live with it.

Chinese have this zero-tolerance policy.

Absolutely, they lock down cities, one person gets it, everybody has to stay in the building for two weeks.

It's insane.

Are they doing this because, one, they know something about COVID, we don't.

There's some votes for that.

Or are they just so in love with their surveillance state

that

they know they can do it?

What do you think?

I think it's why does a dog lick itself?

It's because he can.

An authoritarian

government is going to do authoritarianism because it can.

And also, Xi Jinping has staked a lot of his immediate political future on that.

I know that sounds crazy, like why would we even think about a Chinese dictator, but he's about ready to go for kind of an unprecedented third term.

He's got his 20th anniversary Congress coming up in the fall, and he staked the whole reputation of the country on this policy to say, look, all these other places, they've had bad policies and people are dying and they have strife.

We can do zero COVID because we can.

But also, that shows that the communist system is not...

No one can.

We must know that.

They're not good.

do zero COVID.

You can't outfox a virus.

In the beginning, when it was more lethal and less infectious, there was some logic and some calculus to a total lockdown.

Now that it is less lethal and more contagious, a total lockdown just doesn't make any sense.

And so

it's the correct question.

Why are they doing this?

Because it's hurting their economy.

Right.

So

it's, and we had the same issue here.

One thing we didn't do, and I'm bridging topics, is we didn't do the right calculus on schools, right?

We didn't do the right risk assessment there.

They should have been kept open probably longer now looking back.

Looking back on China,

I think they're going to look back and regret this total lockdown because everyone gets their turn of the woodshed when it comes to COVID.

What was the crowds like in China?

Great.

The difference between China and here is even though people have

not a relationship to jazz, they don't really understand necessarily things about it.

You see grandparents, parents, and kids.

And when you do education, you see more than one generation.

So we have to understand kind of what the difference is.

But also authoritarian people, let's not even go to regimes, they like telling you no.

It can be somebody who needs an idea to backstage, no.

Right.

So

telling you no, because they have the ability to tell you no, and they like to tell you no.

And the question for us, I think, to go back to what you were saying,

I understand your point, but there are many stress tests for democracy now.

And the stress test is, does a democracy work?

Sometimes

we have to have governmental interaction.

We have to be authoritarian.

But we're along the way in this process.

We don't have enough ability to deal with our people and with our freedoms and all that to where we have absolutely no control over our communities, our families, our local governments, nothing.

We need to be like these people in this instance because we believe in democracy.

We believe in choice, but not when it comes to controlling our kids.

We have so much pornography in front of our kids, it ain't coming from the Chinese.

And I teach our kids.

When I asked my students, what is the biggest difference between my generation and yours, man?

I thought they were going to say, man, y'all played on these kind of chords and you were doing this.

And one kid said, pornography.

And I looked around, and the next one said, yeah, porn.

I could not agree more.

Are the Chinese the ones who are putting the pornography in our?

No, in fact, TikTok is quite the opposite.

I mean, you can't get away with anything on TikTok.

It's squeaky clean.

And in that, I'm not trying to counterstate you because

as a jazz musician, my philosophy is very different.

I think if you look at the four of us here, it's exponential power and experience and sharing the space and respecting what you say.

It's easier to get a line to attack you and be and act like there's only one point of view.

There are many ways to look at things, and all of them can be accurate depending on which way you look.

I'm looking at you.

I don't know what's going on over here, over here.

I don't even know what he's doing.

I only know what you're doing.

And I can be fooled into thinking.

What's wrong with you?

I can't even see.

I'm right here.

But, you know,

there's a lot going on.

So,

you know, I understand your passion with that point.

And I'm not a fan of all this kind of social media and pornography and all stuff, the way the ads are selling.

My daughter was showing me a thing the other day of how they sell vaping on TikTok.

Here's something that came up for this to get you to vape with a cartoon.

And I mean, you know, no, I don't like all of that.

But we need to be able to have the type of discipline as a people.

Whoever told you this about porn is onto something.

And that's apropos to our discussion about men

and one reason why they're in crisis.

I mean, when I was a kid, you know, if you found

one.

If you were lucky.

Right.

A Playboy.

We all tried.

Like, we all found grandpa's, like, basements, and we all found the little newsstand out in front of Paul's liquor.

But it was so benign.

I mean, I remember when they went through a whole thing about showing pubic hair.

Hefner was going to lose the General Motors and Ford accounts if they showed pubic hair in Playboy.

And now a 10-year-old can see Bukaki on his phone.

We're engaged in the largest unsupervised experiment of young men in history, and it's porn.

Right.

And the problem beyond creating unreasonable expectations around what it means to be in a relationship with a woman, It quite frankly takes your mojo to get out of the house and meet someone to develop the skills to actually have your own sex.

It takes that away.

Right.

So stop the porn, get out, make your own bad porn.

You know.

All right.

It's ended there.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

Make your own bad porn.

I'm so glad you stayed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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