Overtime – Episode #592: Frank Bruni, Batya Ungar-Sargon

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Okay,

here we are on overtime.

These are the questions from people.

We wanted to talk about this on the show.

I'm glad somebody asked this.

Is Florida's don't say gay bill designed to trap Democrats into saying they support teaching young children about sexuality is the question, but we can broaden that to anything about that.

I mean, I was reading about it today.

It's a, it's, I mean, if people don't know, this is something DeSantis is about to sign.

And I guess it's a reaction to Republicans who feel that there's too much talk in lower grades.

I think it's only, they're talking about kindergarten to third grade.

So we're talking about very young kids who, you know, as always with this stuff, you know, there's

not like there's no kernel of truth in that maybe kids that young shouldn't be thinking about sex at all.

I I don't think it's

specific.

I think don't say,

you're not allowed to literally not say gay, but they just don't want teachers talking about it.

They think it's the province of parents.

What do you think?

What do you think, Frank?

I'm curious.

I mean, that sounds reasonable on the face of it.

I mean, I'm not, my main concern as a gay man who advocates for gay rights is not that second graders know who Harvey Milk is.

That is not the key.

That is not the key to LGBTQ equality.

But I mean, I also question, I mean, does this really need to be at the top of these politicians' lists?

I mean, this is a total.

This is, no, it's a wedges.

This is not going to improve Floridians' lives.

This is not an urgent problem.

This is a dodge.

It's another culture war that's meant to score cheap, easy points rather than really solving Americans' problems.

That's why.

Well.

You disagree?

I disagree a little bit.

Yeah, a little bit.

I think that there is a class element to this.

I'm sorry, Bill, I'm going to do what

you just accuse everybody of doing, which is bringing their favorite thing to every issue.

I'm not going to talk about it right now.

This seat ejects if you talk about Bitcoin.

You go like that.

Oh, then talk about Bitcoin.

No, I think that

Republicans are trying to position themselves as,

first of all, the party of the working class, which is a little bit facetious, although few are making inroads on economic issues, but also the party of like everyday Americans, average Americans, and parents, people who are not going to let parents, you know, who are going to represent parents who say, we deserve to have a say in our child's education, in whether they go to school, in what they're taught in school.

And I don't think that that's really a culture war battle or a wedge issue.

Parents are a constituency like the working class who deserve to have that representation.

So I don't know if this, I read the bill also.

But seriously, do we know that this was an enormous problem,

pervasive in Florida schools?

No, but like

this reeks to me of something that happened on a few occasions and has been blown into the middle.

Well,

I don't know about that.

The same thing with the race, with the CRT thing.

I feel like it's disingenuous when the liberals say, you know,

we just want to teach history.

And like, no one's against that.

Well, I'm sure there are some.

fucking rednecks who are against that.

But most reasonable people are not against realistically teaching history.

It's not like you can't mention slavery.

They're talking about something else that is going on.

I've read too many reports, too many first-person reports from teachers who say, I can't go on teaching like this because this is insanity what I'm doing in this classroom, separating kids by race and oppressors and non-oppressors and they're little kids.

It is going on.

I don't know what is going on with the gender as much.

Let me read what something, what part of the bill, it says, the measure would, this is from CNN, would

require districts to adopt procedures for notifying a student's parent if there is a change in the student's services or monitoring related to the student's mental, emotional, physical health, or well-being.

Okay, then it says something LGBTQ advocates argue could lead to some students being outed to their parents.

That phrase

struck me as odd.

Like, outed to parents?

Like, shouldn't parents know everything

anyway?

The concept that

without,

fell out of the bill.

I think that's actually a good idea.

No, it's that.

Well, the one that I read right before the show was that the vast majority of the bill is about that, is about parents' right to know if their child is identifying, changing the way that they're presenting, if the teacher is calling them identical name, this kind of thing.

I think in California,

the school has more of those rights than the parent.

Well, that's not right.

That's not right.

That's right.

Okay, great.

Oh, yeah.

Well, that's not how everybody feels out here.

It's like we need to protect the student from the parents with the school.

The school and.

Yeah, that's a political winner.

Yeah.

Oh, you should live out here for a while.

You'll see some crazy shit.

Okay.

And yet,

as I always say, The climate is a disaster and the weather is delightful.

Frank, you write in your book about how we should be more open with our vulnerabilities, which you coined as the sandwich board theory.

How can we create our own sandwich boards both online and in real life?

Your book is fantastic, by the way.

Thank you.

I know my friend Carol Leesler.

Yeah, we did an event last night.

She told me it was worked great.

I wish I could have been there, but I had to work on my day job.

Well, I don't want to explain the whole sandwich board thing, but my basic point is that if we were all a lot more honest about who we were, who we are, you know, if we showed our full selves to the world, and if we all looked for the fullness of everyone around us, we wouldn't lapse into the caricatures that we do.

We wouldn't treat people as abstractions.

You know, I love the beginning of the show.

I'll mention it a second time because you all were talking about tribalism, which I think is the curse of our times right now.

Tribalism hinges on us not seeing each other as fully, full, full, multi-dimensional, fully-fleshed human beings.

It hinges on us seeing everybody as either pro or con, ally or enemy, friend or foe.

People are more complicated than that.

Life is more complicated than that.

And we have lost any talent for nuance nuance in this country.

Well said.

I can't top it, so I'm going to end it right there.

Thank you, Tu.

Thank you, audience.

You were terrific.

Okay.

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