Ep. #583: Senator Amy Klobuchar, Glenn Loury, Michael Eric Dyson

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

Thank you, my favorite.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Alrighty.

You're very kind.

I appreciate it.

Some Hulliboom.

Okay.

Okay.

So, wait, we got a big show.

Please, it'll uh

thank you.

It'll go to my head.

We can't have that.

We can't have it go to my head.

Thank you very much.

I really do appreciate that.

And I appreciate you also being on the side of optimism.

It was a very strange week.

There's a lot of good news, which I'm going to get to, but it came too late

to help the Democrats from getting their ass kicked all over the country in off-year elections.

Have you been following that?

Virginia was the big one.

Terror McAuliffe was the governor.

It should have been an easy race.

Lost to Glenn Yunken.

Glenn Yunkin, it sounds like the Scotch you buy at Costco.

Glenn Yunken.

Okay, so

the big,

I've been saying this, schools are going to be the big.

That's what happened.

It was a big issue was critical race theory being taught in the schools.

We're going to talk about it on the panel.

I'll just say Virginia people, the only race they want their kids to be learning about is NASCAR.

That seems to be the message.

Now, I think Democrats should study critical race theory, which is the theory that it's critical to win races.

And of course, you know, they're blaming Biden because, you know, his numbers taking everybody down.

You know, they're already writing Biden's obituary, his political obituary, the real one they wrote years ago.

But Biden had another rough week, I gotta say.

First of all, all over the country now, conservatives think it's so funny to say, let's go, Brandon.

Have you followed this story?

There was a NASCAR race, and a driver named Brandon won the same day that the crowd was chanting, Fuck Joe Biden.

And the announcer, either dumb or wanting to cover this up, said, They're saying, Let's go, Brandon.

So now airline pilots are saying it.

It's a big code word for fuck Biden, so that was bad.

Then Biden went to Glasgow, Scotland for the big summit meeting,

gave a moving speech saying that the recent alarming news about melting ice flows and natural disasters should serve as a real wake-up call.

And then he fell asleep.

So that didn't let go.

No, the far left is right.

He's not woken up.

It's got to literally, literally be more what

his disapproval rating, Joe's, was 36%, not that far long ago.

Now it's up to 53%.

And Joe said, you think that's bad?

You should hear about this Brandon guy.

People really hate him.

But this is what's so weird about it.

The actual news is pretty good.

The economy is going through the roof.

We added 531,000 jobs in October.

That's a big number for one month.

The Dow,

there was a book.

Could the Dow ever be 36,000?

Now it is.

The stock market's never been higher.

We're out of Afghanistan.

COVID's going way down.

And they have a pill now.

Merck had it about a month month ago.

Now that was going to stop 50% of this.

Now Pfizer has one, they says, will stop 90%.

So we have a shot and we have a pill.

Could I please return to real life?

I left the coffee maker on in my office.

It's been since March of 2020.

No, I think this pill is going to be a real game changer.

Although it's kind of a curveball to the Imagination people,

because on the one hand it's endorsed by the government, so it will take away your freedom.

But on the other hand, it's a pill, so you can grind it up and snort it in your truck.

Speaking of trucks, do you know who Lauren Boebert is?

She's one of the new

Republican people, let's just say they're, I think she's from Colorado, she spoke out this week, made news.

She said, no one really needs paid maternity leave because, quote, I delivered one of my children in the front seat of my truck.

And she cut the umbilical cord by slamming the door.

This chick is rugged.

And

this was out of Wendy's drive-through.

And then she ordered nuggets for the baby.

I'm telling you, this,

not to be outdone, Marjorie Taylor Greene said, when it's time for her to give birth,

she just crawls under the front porch.

But speaking of paid maternity leave, Democrats are this close to passing their big bill, and family leave is added back in.

Joe Manchin was objecting to that.

And Kurtson Cinema, she's still deciding what to go as for Halloween.

She is hard to really.

And this, I love this.

Did you see this story?

We have hundreds of QAnon followers.

Are there QAnon people here?

Everyone is welcome at my show.

No?

Anyway, if you are, you're welcome.

They were camping out in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, because they believed JFK Jr.,

son of the most iconic Democrat ever, who died in a plane crash in 1999, was going to return, or maybe never died or returned from the dead, I don't know, to lead the Republican Party

or something like that.

One of the parts of the theory was that Trump was going to be reinstated, uh-huh.

And then he would make JFK Jr.

his vice president, and then Trump would step down, and JFK Jr.

would be president, who would then appoint Michael Flynn to be vice president.

Just like it says in our Constitution, like this gentleman that they're always carrying around.

That's something.

So all that's going to happen.

And then JFK Jr.

is going to say, you know, maybe next time we could meet somewhere, my father wasn't assassinated.

Is that

what that fit in?

But they know who this JFK Jr.

is.

I'm not making this up.

They have the, I'll show you the picture.

This is the person they say is JFK Jr.

now

Dead Ringer.

Isn't he a dead?

And by the way, I'm really River Phoenix.

Anyway.

Now, to conclude this monologue,

to bring up an issue.

I'm reluctant to do dick jokes.

I mean, I do them, but believe me, if you saw how many I was submitted, you would be thanking me for only doing a fraction of what I could be doing.

But this is a true thing that I think says a lot about our nation and our mental state at the moment.

Here in LA this week, there was a small dong march.

I am not making this up.

A small dong march to raise awareness about the problem of shaming men with tiny penises.

A march in the street.

Now, I have so many questions.

I mean, if you have a tiny penis,

is the thing you really want to do raise awareness?

That would be my one thing.

And, you know.

I got to say.

Announcing in public you have a tiny penis takes big balls.

All right, we've got a great show.

We've got Michael Eric Dyson and Glenn Lowry.

And first up, she is the senior senator from Minnesota and author of Antitrust, Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age.

Senator Amy Klobuchar.

Senator.

Hello.

How are you?

It's great to see you.

Wow, look at that.

That looked like church.

They were up, they were down.

It's like.

So are you excited about the COVID pill?

I mean, I see you with masks in the paper a lot.

Everybody in con everybody has been.

I think it's really important you point it out because there are some really good things going on.

Yeah.

Vaccine getting out to kids, right?

That's not a good thing, but let's move on from.

Okay, the booster is getting out.

Not a good thing either, but let's keep going.

Okay, let's keep going.

What's good is that it's

over.

Really?

Well, no way.

Yes, I think of it as they say in Duluth, it's the lighthouse on the horizon.

We see it.

It's there.

And now it's time to start working on things that really matter to people.

Right.

And the pill, I mean, here's the thing.

I know you've worked a lot on prescription drug prices as an issue, and we'll talk about that.

But the first one, the Merck pill, which I talked about about a month ago, now Pfizer has one, but the Merck one we know costs $17 and they're going to charge $700

for the pill.

Now, this is the essence of our health care, one of the essences of our health care problem, I think, the gouging.

Why can't you guys do something about that?

It's unbelievable to me.

And I'll start with the fact that there are three lobbyists for every member of Congress from the pharmaceutical industry.

No, it's unbelievable.

It's irresistible to me.

Do you know how much money they just spent going against my bill to allow for negotiation of prices under Medicare?

$28 million.

So that's what it is.

People are bought off.

They're in people's ears.

They're doing this.

So what we finally got done now, once we get the bill passed, is we have started negotiating prices under Medicare.

We are like literally, I want you to picture this.

You would think that 46 million seniors would have some bargaining power, but yet our country is paying more for prescription drugs than any country in the world, yet it's our taxpayers that have paid for all this.

But just negotiating the price,

which is such an easy thing to do, we all, if you buy in bulk, I mean, what is Costco?

It's just that principle.

If you buy in bulk, you get a discount, which we don't do on this level.

And I got to say, you know, the message, even the Republicans,

not maybe the politicians, but Republican voters are for this.

Yeah, 90% of people are for it.

Who wouldn't be?

Instead of, all I heard was your $3.5 trillion.

Instead of just breaking it into pieces and selling the things that are popular,

what people think of Democrats in this year, probably why Biden's numbers are so low, it's all about what it costs and so little about

what it does and the individual pieces.

Why didn't you sell it in pieces instead of one giant

Let me do it?

Politics should be about improving people's lives, right?

And that means bringing costs down for people.

Right now, one, I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, it's hard to afford child care or even find child care for families.

You have got families that have been in schools that are open and closed, open and closed, hence getting a hold on this pandemic and getting through it.

Prescription drugs skyrocketing.

People, if you take Lyrica, it's gone up 50% in the last five years.

Insulin, something that should cost hardly anything.

Seniors taking little drops in vials and saving them from day to day because it costs too much.

That's what we have to help people with.

Things that matter to them.

That's what matters in politics.

And right now, it's just gotten too boggled up with a whole bunch of things and people talking about this and this and this.

So we've got to get on our work and helping people.

Well, you need a messaging czar in your party.

I don't know.

I think we need

a simple message.

And do you think it should be you?

I don't.

Well, I think I.

Actually, yes, I do.

I mean, I don't want the job, but I think I've done it here.

Plenty.

And they never listen to me, and I'm always right.

Well, and then the other thing, there's one other thing you need to say.

They say they stand for freedom, right?

But yet they're blocking people's freedom to vote.

We're standing up for people's right to vote.

They say they're for freedom, but they're blocking women's right to make decisions about their own health care.

We're standing up for that.

And they say they're for families, and they have done nothing to bring down the cost of prescription or make it easier for people to afford children.

Those arguments are never going to work on certain people.

A lot of people care about freedom.

Yeah, but they but I mean you mentioned the abortion thing really when you say I mean obviously the people don't see it that way and they never will you know because it's a tricky issue.

Well let's see how they feel about in Texas where they're you know trying to they passed a bill to make people vigilante is to go after people who are just trying to get

their head.

Well there are like six states now where there's only one abortion clinic.

See, this is what the Republicans also do so well.

They play the long game.

You know, they lost Roe versus Wade in 1973.

They went, okay,

it might take us 50 years, but we're going to like attack this.

And now they're, it's sort of, Rogue versus Wade is becoming almost irrelevant.

If you live in a state with one abortion clinic, doesn't the Democratic Party need a different strategy on this issue?

Well, again, I think on all strategies, you've got to put people first.

And somehow that's gotten lost in all of the archaic Senate rules and the discussion of who's up, who's down, the standoff you're seeing right now.

And we need to move forward.

You know that I've been able to get voters who are Republicans, Independents, moderate Democrats in my state, and a lot of it is getting out and listening to people.

And when you have a kid in rural Minnesota who's got to go to a liquor store parking lot to take her biology test, because she doesn't have broadband, true story,

talk to her mom, not to get liquor, just to take the test.

That just, you know.

I would have gotten it for her if I had been there.

You know, I'd be that, hey, mister, would you buy me some beer?

Of course I would.

You're studying for a test.

That's why we need the infrastructure bill, right?

We need that.

It's going to make a difference in their lives.

So I think that's what you've got to connect it up to.

There are too many moms and dads with their toddlers on their knees, their laptops on their desks, teaching your second grader how to use the mute button, which they do better than senators.

But the point is that we've got to connect to their real lives, and that's what I've tried to do in my work.

Right.

So

and you're

a

reason I thought you'd be such a good candidate last time,

I remember.

I know.

I did a case.

For a minute you were like, you came on, you went up there, and then Biden,

okay.

Yeah.

And

but is that you're an honest broker, I feel, in the party between the progressive wing and the, I mean, there's no non-progressive wing.

in the Democratic Party.

It's just,

well, a couple.

Yes,

there are a lot of moderates that work across the aisle and things in the Democratic Party.

There's certainly moderates out there in the...

But moderate for the Democratic Party, which is pretty far left.

I figure you just got to do your work.

Well, for me, like, I'm taking on the tech companies.

I'm doing that with liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.

Because, you know, look what just happened with Facebook.

You've got parents that literally They can't control what their kids are seeing.

They try.

This one mom told me, she's like, there's like water overflowing a sink, and she's trying to mop it up as she's trying to close off every link her kid gets, pops up on their screen.

That's what's happening, right?

When I was a kid, nobody ever said, you know, parents, they can't control.

My father would have been like, oh, I can't control?

I mean, it's the will of the parents.

I mean, they could control.

They just.

So you would just deny your kids phones, they would have no access.

I'm so glad I don't have kids.

I don't have to control.

I know.

Well, that's what I'm trying to say.

I know.

So I'm saying a lot of.

I mean, there are some parents who do that.

Some parents who don't care about being their friend.

Yeah.

Right.

Who just do.

So what is the answer to breaking up?

You know what my daughter once called me?

She said, you heard of helicopter parents?

She said, Mom, you're a submarine mom.

And I said, what does that mean?

She said, you're always lurking under the surface, and then you come up unexpectedly to tell me what I can't do.

Right.

So, but the point of this is, I just don't think it should be all on parents.

I think that you should be able to allow small businesses to compete, let the market, let the market work.

It doesn't work when you've got dominant platforms all the time.

And that's an example of an issue where I've got six Republicans, six Democrats on a bill that is being commended in terms of what you can do.

Because we have no rules in place right now.

And you're so right.

That's such a great issue to write a book about.

Monopolies are.

It's true.

Monopolies are so out of control.

Who would do that?

Who would write a whole book on monopolies?

No, but you're right.

As an issue, it's so important because they're so out of control compared to what they were 50 years ago.

And, you know, if you can get six, any Republicans to vote with you on this issue, you're good.

You are good.

I thank you for being here.

Thank you, Sir.

Senator Amy Klobuchar.

All right.

All right, I'll see you after.

All right.

Let's meet our panel.

Guys.

Look who's here.

Hello.

Okay.

He is a professor at Vanderbilt University now and author of the new book Entertaining Race, Performing Blackness in America.

Michael Eric Dyson is over here.

And he's a professor of economics at Brown University, who hosts the Glenn Show, available on YouTube, all podcast platforms, and at GlenLarrySubstack.com.

Glenn Larry, great to meet you, sir.

Good to be here, Bill.

Two professors I have on.

So I know I'm going to learn a a lot.

I appreciate you both being here.

Let's just start with the election that we had Tuesday.

I know off-year elections people say, oh, they don't mean that much.

I still think they do, because it's still our best way for people to be heard.

And

we're always surprised on Election Day because we don't know what people are thinking.

It tells us a lot.

Democrats got their ass kicked.

It was called a woke lash in the media.

Some of the places in Buffalo, a socialist named India Walton was alone on the ballot.

The Republicans did not even run anybody against her.

She won the primary.

Tells you a lot about how our system works.

In the primary, she won among the Democrats.

Alone on the ballot lost

to the write-in candidate who was the former Democratic mayor.

In New Jersey, my home state, Steve Sweeney, the number two most powerful politician in the state, lost to Ed Durr,

a truck driver who spent, well, I've read $153, I've read $2,000, but not a lot, shot the campaign ad on his phone.

Sounds like an Adam Sandler movie.

And in Virginia, they lost all, this is state Biden won by 10 points.

They lost all, they lost the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, the state house.

When Republicans lose, they always say, well, you have to do an autopsy.

So what's the autopsy on the Democrats?

It's a center-right country, as Joe Manchin says.

The Democrats have overplayed their hand.

McAuliffe thought that by using the phrase racist dog whistle, he could rebut a legitimate argument from parents concerned about the way in which racial issues were being taught to their children.

He was wrong.

To me, the most interesting thing about Virginia is that that issue could turn the

make the difference in the outcome of the race.

It would necessarily weigh against McAuliffe, but how is it that it made the difference in the outcome of of the race, to which I attribute the general weakness of the leadership of the Democratic Party?

I'm talking about President Joseph Biden, who's something less than an absolutely compelling and charismatic figure.

Well, we knew that going in.

Yeah.

Well, I don't know if I agree with Professor Lowry about the total consequence, but clearly

in the interim, yeah, it was, I don't know if it was quite the Obama shellacking during his first midterm.

But I think it's more of a mixed message because India Walton, of course, did, as you say, ran unopposed.

The Democratic mayor, who was already suffering because he handled poorly the aftermath of the George Floyd protests and the economic recovery of the Buffalo Renaissance, he took her for granted.

He blew her off.

He wouldn't even debate her.

And then he got involved.

So how potatoes were.

Let's talk about the big one in Virginia.

Well, but even with Buffalo, the point is that it was not a referendum on whether a Democratic socialist could govern because she spoke to the issues of the people.

When you think about Virginia,

dare I say that, yeah, you don't have Trump to beat up on.

Maybe one of the lessons was Trump is not a good whipping boy

or sufficient as a whipping boy to get you elected.

I think that's definitely true.

But what's interesting is Trump has been displaced and therefore distributed because now you don't need Trump involved.

It's like Dale's X Mackina.

He's the ghost in the machine.

The point is that parents who were spooked by critical race theory, none of whom can define it, when you ask them what it is, they don't know.

But what they do know is that black people are being centered, their history is being taken seriously.

And if you say you're concerned about history in America, why is it that when it comes to black history, it becomes a better question.

But I find that a disingenuous argument

because

I don't think That is what people are objecting to.

I don't think most people, now of course there are some places in this country where they will and some people who will, but they're not objecting to black history being taught.

There are other things going on in the schools.

Can we just, like separating children by race and describing them as either oppressed or oppressor?

I mean there are children coming home who

feel traumatized by this.

That's what parents are objecting to.

You do know that the beginning, and I know Professor Lowry knows that, the beginning of critical race theory in the modern times is two years ago, Christopher Rufo, a white guy who said, look, I'm reading the anti-racist literature.

I see this critical race stuff.

This stuff will make good publicity.

And he began to drive it home.

It's not critical race theory.

It's the notion of centering black people as historical agents.

And the question is, if you talk about white kids being traumatized, oh, really?

So that black kids being made to portray slaves.

We got stories on both sides.

I do think you're underestimating the anti-black sentiment that's deeply entrenched, that's way beyond Trump, which is troubling to me.

It ain't just Donald Trump, it is the party itself.

Well, first of all,

it's American history that we're talking about.

And the question is, in what register do we tell the story about American history?

Blacks don't have a separate history from America.

Absolutely.

Secondly, I just have to observe,

Buffalo, New York, Socialism, I mean, this is the rest belt.

This is working-class white hard hat on the east side of Lake Erie, Buffalo, New York.

Socialism?

How did you ever think socialism was going to sell in Buffalo, New York?

Thirdly, they do this every time.

By they, I mean the activists on the left who want to push the woke cannon.

They deny that what I see with my lion eyes is actually what I'm seeing with my lion eyes.

I don't have to be able to parse what Derek Bell or Kimberly Crenshaw might have written in a law review.

to know that the race issue has come into the classroom because of what has happened in the aftermath of George Floyd and all of that.

Defund the police?

Come on.

Defund the police when crime is going up, when homicide is through the roof, when people are feeling unsafe

in their communities, and then people say, well, no, we didn't really mean defund the police, we just meant rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

So

I think they underestimate the

determination of the American people to resist a certain kind of

interpretation of the story about the country.

There's many different ways of telling that story, and we African Americans are going to have to come into some understanding with the rest of the country about how we tell the story together.

Look, let me say that.

That's fascinating.

I agree with you that black history is American history if America realized that, right?

The reason there's a segregated Black History Month is because there's been the kind of alienation of the narrative of black people's participation in the American story.

The necessity for then highlighting, underscoring, and spotlighting black people has been precisely because we've not been seen as American.

It started with Thomas Jefferson when he said that black people are unloyal citizens in the Declaration of Independence and that indigenous people were savages.

My point is simply this, to believe that

the critical race theory, it's not a debate, right?

They're not debating Kimberly Crenshaw or Derek Bell.

They're debating the fact that finally, if we look at the textbooks, the textbooks have been doing a horrible job of trying to educate our kids about race.

So here's the thing.

If critical race theory is getting it so wrong and oh, let's go back to a time in history where we taught history right.

The history textbooks that gave slavery one week, Martin Luther King Jr.

a day, and that's it.

So it's not as if what was prevailing before critical race theory was a controversial subject, was a complete and thorough engagement and vetting of black people in history.

I say let's have it as American history, but acknowledge that.

Why is it that there be one?

It's like you make it so polar.

I mean, like, I'm not meeting it,

I'm teaching it.

No, but you're saying we have to go back to when they only taught the words.

No, this is.

No, no, no, no.

The textbooks are being produced now.

I'm not talking about some way back in the day.

I'm saying right now they don't even recognize the full complement of identities, conflicts, and tensions that black people participated in along with Americans, other Americans, to make this nation.

That's all we're talking about.

Give them a story.

That's all we're talking about.

We're talking about

kids who seem to be too young sometimes to fully appreciate all this, I think if they watched you, they probably wouldn't know a lot of those words.

You know, so to ask them to,

as opposed to just letting kids be kids, maybe,

where usually kids are pretty nice to each other if they're not instructed not to be.

Well, I've got a book coming out in May that's called Unequal that's directed toward teens.

They understand every word in there.

I do.

Teens do, yes.

But we're talking younger than that.

We need to be getting beyond race, frankly.

We're in the 21st century, not the 19th century.

Look at the intermarriage rates.

Look at the number of Americans who understand themselves to be multiracial.

Look at how the country is changing.

There are more Hispanics by far than there are blacks.

The Asians are here and they are continuing to come.

We have to look at what we're going to be as a country down the road.

This young generation should not be being put into boxes as black and white.

They should be allowed to do what comes naturally, which is cross the lines.

Look, I agree.

Look, that point I think we can certainly agree on.

The problem is you think that the people of color, especially in this case, the black people, who point to the fact that that has been a failed experiment and that has not occurred, there's not been a, quote, race-neutral approach, a race-transcending approach.

It's been deeply inscribed in race experiments.

Failed arguments.

Failed in the sense that there's been no progress, that things aren't deeply.

Didn't say that.

That's a strong man argument.

Of course there's been progress.

Well, you said failed.

I'm saying failed in this sense.

If you're saying that, look, we need to transcend race and all these boxes people are putting it, black people are not the ones putting folk in boxes.

When we look at American society, black people are aspiring to participation in the larger circle of American privilege.

They're not the ones who want to stay segregated.

But then why do we have to go to the state?

But they developed a lot of that.

Why is that microaggression for a professor to say we live in a colorblind society?

If a white professor stands up at a university and says, I'm in a colorblind society, he can expect a rationale.

Or at least that's what we aspire to.

But I mean, when you say segregation, I mean, a lot of the segregation, I did a thing about this a couple of weeks ago, is working the other way.

I mean, segregated dorms at college campuses, they're not white segregated.

They're black folks who want to live without white people in their dorm.

Separate graduation ceremonies.

Okay, so.

But you know that, you know, it's just like why are all the black kids sitting together?

You pass 25 tables of white kids sitting together to find the 26th table with all black people sitting there.

Is that the year we're living in now?

Exactly.

It's old.

It's old.

But you're like, that's not the year we're living in now, where the white kids won't sit with the black kids at the camp.

No, no, no, that's simplistic and reduction.

You said it.

No, no, no.

What I'm saying is,

I'm responding to you saying there was segregation.

I'm telling you, it's not as if black people don't want to participate in American society.

The barriers are there, and we're being college campus.

I hate to harp on this, but college campus.

I haven't been there in a long time.

I'm getting this from movies and TV and every person and every human being I talk to.

Other than that, I don't know.

But I don't think that on a college campus, it's like the white kids don't want to be with the black kids.

I think they want to

glom onto their coolness.

But that's not where we're at.

It's not white that's cool anymore.

That's not where we're at.

That was a seminar at Brown, hosted by the Political Theory Project there, in which a guy came and gave a paper.

It was a very interesting paper.

The audience was almost entirely white.

Why?

Because the host who invited the speaker is mildly conservative.

What I took from that was, my God, how segregated, self-segregated is the intellectual life of my very campus.

I don't want to point fingers at anybody.

I can just tell you, there were no signs on the door saying blacks keep out.

People simply didn't show up.

Look, look, I don't deny the legitimacy of a self-segregation argument.

What I'm arguing, however, is that people who find themselves alienated in spaces that are not hospitable to them when they're in a majority situation, where if you're a majority student, you don't understand the degree to which your normal experience may be alienating to somebody who doesn't belong there or doesn't feel that they belong there.

It's not the intent of white students.

I teach classes all the time.

The majority of my students are white.

Then African-American, Latino, and so on and so forth.

So I have a rambunctious United Nations kind of way.

But what we do there is we confront some of the issues that in their their other classes they're not going to be exposed to.

The virtue of having a black professor or a professor who studies that issue and culture is to have a very profound engagement with a set of ideas that many of those white students are not used to dealing with.

And that has to the discomfort comes from challenging the histories that they bring with them.

I think that's beautiful.

I think what Professor Lowry said is good.

We should all have the ability to sample each other's cultures and ideas and ways of thinking, but let's not pretend that the

we don't want to live in the same house to do it.

No, but wait a minute, let's not pretend that black students who are talking about living in a themed house are the ones who are carrying the water for a segregationist impulse in America.

That's just not true.

That's just getting older.

That's just not true.

That's just not true.

Everywhere you look, that's called a themed house.

Everywhere you look, a contradiction of what my good brother here is saying.

You look at what's going on in the newsrooms of the major newspapers in this country, 1619 Project, the New York Times and so forth and so on.

You look at what's going on in the foundation world where they give out the awards awards and they give out the grants.

They are definitely politically correct and woke on the racial issues.

Look at what's going on in the personnel offices of the big companies of this country.

They are managing their brands by making sure that they get the window dressing right with respect to the racial issues.

And on and on.

So

look at 1619, the segregation, though.

of a major magazine.

It's Jake Silver's.

No,

I'm not saying it's segregation cohort, but I'm not saying it's black and white together talking about 1619.

No, I'm talking about American.

I'm not trying to debate about the 1619 project.

I'm trying to say powerful institutions are orienting themselves to be open to the very questions that you're saying they're not open to.

That's all we talk about in this country these days.

Hardly all we talk about, but the reason they're doing it is not because all of a sudden one day they say, hey, it's a great idea.

People like a Nicole Hannah Jones present in the New York Times magazine as a black woman journalist winning a Pulitzer Prize makes sure she brings a kind of rhetorical pressure to bear so that they open up.

They don't open up on their own.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

That's been the truth from the New York Times.

From the New York Times, absolutely.

And

it's good that it was written and that we can debate it.

Right.

Okay.

I have to interrupt for one minute because I have to talk about the...

I think we've been chronicling on this show the different permutations that the right wing has been going through to justify the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol.

First it was Antifa that did it.

Then it was liberals dressed as us.

That's my favorite.

It's like a Mikkel's Navy episode.

It's them dressed as us.

Then it was the FBI.

Now they've come around to actually embrace the idea that, no, it wasn't a bad day after all.

Liberals dressed as us.

It was us, and we're proud of it.

Now they're owning it.

Marjorie Taylor Greene had an interesting quote about it this week.

And they're basically saying these were brave patriots to the point where we thought we could make some money in this.

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Pretty funny, wouldn't it?

Okay, so

I have to ask you a question that I should have asked Amy Klovichar, and we ran out of time.

But I wanted to get it out there.

It was part of the election on Tuesday, and it happened in her state, in Minneapolis.

They voted on whether to replace the police department in Minneapolis with a Department of Public Safety, which would include, now it sounds, of course, as always, Democrats horrible at messaging and language, so they should never say defund the police.

It's a bad thing.

This sounds like they're getting rid of the police.

No, they're folding the police into a department that would include therapists, social workers, which I think is great because police already are doing those jobs and it's not really their job.

And then they have to include violence interrupters, so typical of the Democrats.

Give us a punchline

because comedians will run with it.

Yes, violence.

I don't know what that means, violence interrupt.

Here's my question.

A majority of black voters opposed the measure.

to replace the police department, if that's all we're knowing about this.

A majority of white voters supported it.

And this is what I've said before on the show.

To me,

one of the big parts of white privilege, the luxury to be impractical.

And when they do polls, they often find that, you know, it's the white liberals who are way more liberal than the mainstream black person.

And I think...

I think only 28% of blacks self-identify as liberal.

I don't think this is complicated.

I think people who live in high-crime neighborhoods want to be protected from the depredations of criminals.

I think the blacks are living in areas where they are being victimized by carjackings and muggings and homicides and drive-by shootings.

And the police are not a panacea, but they definitely are on the right side of that equation.

The whites are not living in those neighborhoods, they're not having those experiences, and they don't have the same feelings about the police.

No, look, I agree.

And

this is precisely because I would be an outlier, right?

The majority of black people, look, black people call the cops more than anybody, quite frankly, you know, because they're living in such horror.

They're living in such tight situations where their property is at stake, their lives are at stake.

So yeah, they want to call the cops.

But they want the cops when they show up, not to mistake them for the criminal and not kill them.

Yes, of course.

But that's why they are at least open to a notion of reform.

Like you said, I'm not against the left learning some skill and some game.

Do you want the commercial or the product?

So we're invested in certain proprietary language and stuff.

I don't give a darn about the language.

Whatever it is, if we're going to remove resources, look what happened in LA, I think a million, you know, what is $150 million moved.

In New York, about

$100 million moved.

Look, let's put it into right places where cops are not therapists.

They show up with somebody having a psychotic break and they end up killing them.

So I'm all for that.

I think black people want to be protected.

They don't want to get rid of the cops, but they want the cops to be able to determine that they are not inherently criminal, and that's where the issue has been.

That's why people have been calling for challenging the police because they don't seem to make that distinction.

Right.

And

we found out only a month or two ago that actually the number of police killings was actually double what we had thought.

You saw that big

New York Times?

Yes.

A lot of the coroners had been covering for them.

You know, your buddy down at the station house.

So it has been worse, and of course the number of African American killings in that was proportionally or above proportionally higher.

But I'm going to read your quote, what you said in your book last year about the police.

Police forces, you described police forces' unyielding appetite for black subordination.

Now, that phrase, a police force's unyielding appetite for black subordination, if you told me that you were talking about 1968, I would say undoubtedly.

78,

maybe even 88.

I don't know what year it changed to a degree, but do you think that describes 2021?

I mean, George Floyd.

But that's one person in a how many police officers are there?

I'm not saying he's the only person.

Of course not.

I'm saying it's a mindset, Bill.

I'm not saying that individual white people are going around saying, I hate those black people.

This is why, again, if we really studied critical race theory, what it says is it's not about the individual, it's about the institution.

It's not about the sentiment, it's the structure.

And I'm not trying to just blame Derek Chauvin.

I'm saying a system that rewards people for policing and colonizing black bodies.

And it certainly has paid off because that was the first time that a police, it took a police chief, a Greek chorus of witnesses, and people who said this guy is wrong and his fellow police officers just to convict Derek Chauvin.

That lets you know the system itself is corrupt and rotten.

That's all I'm arguing.

I'm not arguing for individual sentiments of prejudice.

I'm saying the system itself underserves black people.

Let me make two points here.

I don't agree with my esteemed colleague.

I think we have to keep the scale of police killings of black people in perspective, and I'm not apologizing for bad policing.

There is bad policing, and it has cost black lives.

I concede that.

But we're talking about a couple of hundred people killed by police, most most of whom are not unarmed innocents, but they're actually in violent conflict with police officers, talking about blacks.

A few hundred in a country of 300 million people, where there are tens of thousands of arrests every year, where there are 10,000 black homicides in the country in a given year.

The scale of the phenomenon is not exactly what Ben Trump would have it be open season on black people.

There are inevitably going to be conflicts between police and citizens.

Twice as many whites as blacks are killed by police in any given year.

Policing can be improved.

It should be improved.

But this is not a first-order threat to the integrity of the black body.

That is hyperbole.

Well, I would argue, look, I have two points.

I'm going to wait for me to second.

No, the second point is,

let's deracialize this conversation, man.

Police who act badly are police acting badly.

Citizens who get hurt are victims of bad policing.

It doesn't matter what color they they are, because once you go down this road of racializing encounters between police and citizens, some of whom are criminals, you invite in the mind of citizens a calculation about, well, how many crimes are being committed by blacks?

And I don't think we want that calculation in the minds of citizens because quite a few crimes are being committed by blacks.

Look, there is no question that when you look at black people who are killed and killed by other black people, like in the 90s, right?

But we know in the 80 percentile, 84 percent I think it is, of white people who are killed are killed by white people.

So people kill where they live.

It's neighbor-to-neighbor carnage.

It's not a racialized carnival.

The scale of it is much higher in the black community.

Absolutely.

It's vastly higher.

Because of the concentration of other effects, poverty, poor education, poor health care, and the like.

So no question about that.

We're going to agree with that in broad scope.

Lack of opportunity.

Tremendous lack of opportunity.

And bad values.

But look at that.

And gangs.

But wait.

But white people, wait a minute.

White people have, white people have, if January 6th showed us nothing, white people have bad values, have bad activity, have bad behavior, and they live to tell the story about it in the face of the cops.

That's the point we're talking about here.

Are you saying, wait, but

are you saying white people are morally inferior?

I'm just asking.

Absidarn not.

What I'm saying,

no, what I'm saying,

I'm saying the bad behavior of white people is not penalized in the same way that the bad behavior of black people is.

So if we're going to be equal about it, let's then penalize black behavior.

What I'm saying to you is that there are a bunch of white thugs who never get suspected because they don't have a kind of profiling going on and they get away with literally murder.

That's all I'm saying.

All right.

Thank you, gentlemen.

I have to move on to new rules, but it was fascinating.

Appreciate you doing it.

All right, new rules.

There we go.

New rules, someone has to tell Dr.

Jill Biden, you you can smile and wave all you want, it's still not going to distract us from the fact that your husband is saluting a baggage handler.

Neurul, if you honestly believe the worst thing a president ever did at a summit meeting was catch a few Z's, tell me what you think is happening here.

Yeah, I don't know either.

What I do know is after Trump touched this orb, he couldn't pee for a week.

But his erections were fantastic.

New rule evangelicals must tell me what will happen to the soul of the OnlyFans model who says she has sex with God.

Is she destined for hell because she's on OnlyFans or heaven because she has faith?

Whatever happens, lady, remember to use a condom because the last woman God got pregnant, he wound up totally ghosting.

Neural, all home printers must come with a hammer you can use to bash the thing to pieces after it prints five pages and then stops working entirely.

In fact, don't even try to print.

Just remove it from the packaging, take it straight to the curb, and leave it there with a sign on it that says, works great.

New rule, someone must tell Kim Kardashian that no offense, but she can do a lot better than Pete Davidson.

Please, I hear JFK Jr.

is back on the market.

And finally, New Rule, now that the latest climate conference is underway in Glasgow, Scotland, and Greta Thunberg has once again shown the world that she is the conscience of her generation, someone must tell her, you may be the conscience of your generation, but you don't represent it.

I really wish you did, Greta, but you don't.

But I can show you who does.

Greta, you have 13 million followers on Instagram, which is great.

But Kylie Jenner has 279 million, which is more.

I mean, seriously, who is the real influencer in that generation?

The model citizen or the model?

The young woman who refuses to fly or the one who refuses to fly commercial?

You see what I'm saying?

Greta gets where she's going on a sailboat powered by the wind.

Kylie takes a private jet powered by Exxon.

And she's 21 times more popular.

Now, this is not a screed against comfort or capitalism.

I'm fond of both.

And I give Kylie credit.

She's built a massive business empire without ever releasing a sex tape.

And like her dad, she's a self-made woman.

But Kylie embodies and embraces a lifestyle that is pretty much the opposite of carbon neutral.

And the younger generations fucking love it.

Last week, Kylie posted a tour of her shoe closet, which houses well over a thousand pairs.

She also has entire rooms of things she's only worn once.

I don't think Greta would approve of that.

In polls, young people always claim to be more concerned about climate change than other generations, but they don't act like it.

They throw around buzzwords like sustainable and shame people who forget to bring a cloth bag to Trader Joe's, but one of their favorite youtubers is Mr.

Beast who's famous for stunts like I gave my 40 millionth subscriber 40 cars

Jason Dorillo celebrated his 22nd millionth follower by eating 22 hamburgers the cognitive dissonance between planet destroying conspicuous consumption and planet saving rhetoric is breathtaking You say you love Greta and her message, but everything else you love is a climate disaster.

Far from rejecting consumerism, young people are so obsessed with labels that venerable fashion houses like Balenciaga have pivoted from selling couture dresses to rich women to selling baseball hats to teenagers.

And where does a 20-something get the money to pay $400 for a hat that borrows the Bernie Sanders logo because

you're like a socialist and stuff?

From mommy and daddy, of course, those huge assholes who ruined the planet.

Oh, and also maybe by trading Bitcoin, the mining of which is worse for the environment than actual mining.

Cryptocurrency uses more energy than Netflix, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google combined, and more than some entire nations.

And yet young people could not love it more if it came with a side of avocado toast.

94% of crypto buyers are either millennials or Gen Z, which makes it ring a little hollow when you're out there chanting for us to put the planet ahead of profits.

And what do crypto fans say about this?

They say, well, yes, it uses too much energy now, but in the future.

Oh yeah, the future.

That's right.

Same thing my generation said.

Let them handle it in the future.

I'll get mine now.

Like Bitcoin, the smartphone is a huge contributor to carbon emissions because the cloud isn't an actual cloud, of course.

It's a vast network of servers using energy.

And all that liking and following and subscribing requires lots of fossil fuels.

And yet you would need the jaws of life to pry a phone out of the hands of anyone under 30.

What would it take to convince Gen Z and millennials to give up their phones?

A pollster once asked.

43% said it would take $5 million

to give up their phone.

One in 10 said they'd sacrifice a finger for it.

That deserves a high four.

Look, I know it would be fire

to be able to both live like Kylie and also save the planet, but you can't do both.

Last year when Australia was devastated by wildfires, Greta reminded us that we still failed to make the connection between the climate crisis and increased extreme weather events.

Kylie, too, was moved by the disaster and tweeted about how the loss of animal life breaks her heart.

Then she quickly followed up with a post of her new $1,500 Louis Vuitton mink slippers.

It's always so sad when fire kills potential slippers.

Kids, you're going to have to make a choice here.

Do you want to be progressive or excessive?

Team drastic or team plastic?

When Kylie's lifestyle becomes uncool and unpopular, and you stop loving Bitcoin and stop thinking that stuffing your face is harmless, I'll take you seriously.

Until then, shut the fuck up about how older generations ruin the planet.

We get it.

Boomers dropped the ball on the environment.

We did.

We dropped it like it was hot.

And for that, I can only say, whoops.

Yeah, you're right.

We dropped it.

But have you picked it up?

I wish your generation was better than mine.

I really do.

But the sad truth is, we're completely the same.

Lots of talk, and at the end of the day, hopelessly seduced and addicted to pigging out on convenience, luxury, and consumption.

So that's it.

You can either be the fake tits and private jet generation or the one that saves the planet.

But you can't be both because fake tits are not biodegradable.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Fox Theater in Atlanta November 6th, tomorrow at the Hulu Theater in New York, November the 13th, and at the Hershey Theater in Hershey, November 14th.

I want to thank Michael Eric Dyson, Glenn Larry, Sutton Ramy Klobuchar, and you.

Thank you very much, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10 or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

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