00:04:17.900The article, which chronicles a dysfunctional group of queer people trying to keep a small lesbian bar in western Massachusetts financially afloat,0.89
00:04:26.540wow, none of these words are in the Bible,
00:04:29.500became the Boston Globe's most-read story of the year and drove a record number of subscriptions, I believe a thousand,
00:04:37.220inspired secondary coverage from other national newspapers who sent photographers to the bar to photograph its patrons from the outside
00:04:44.680and is, according to The Hollywood Reporter,
00:05:40.360oh everyone hates that everyone hated that who would you play in the adaptation of the lesbian
00:05:49.740bar story in the hollywood movie i would definitely be the bartender who was like0.53
00:05:55.380sorry we can't do gaga night she's a scientist
00:05:57.780i would want to be the co-founder who quit to go to clown school
00:06:05.260that would be my dream role yeah classic you both took my answers so i guess the only role0.99
00:06:12.580the only role left for me is the person who did the lesbian sex act while fully masked on the0.98
00:06:18.080opening night well you've you've provided quite an intro for yourselves but uh0.95
00:06:27.940to cover uh something that is in the words of naomi klein too absurd to take seriously and
00:06:36.520too serious to treat as just absurd i am so excited to be joined by two friends two lesbians
00:06:45.540sorry that was kind of degrading outed outed by matt bernstein i'm so offended
00:06:51.980we have moira donnegan host of in bed with the right and kat tenbarge writer of spitfire news
00:07:00.440and relatively new to youtube welcome both of you i'm so excited to talk about this thank you for
00:07:07.020having us thank you so much matt it's always a pleasure to spend time with you and with kat i
00:07:12.820think we're going to have fun and maybe learn something along the way we have a lot to talk
00:07:18.660about today. Before we get into it, top line thoughts go. Oh, you know, I've had to explain
00:07:25.840this story seven times in the past five days to people who are no longer like on Twitter.0.64
00:07:33.400Every time I think the phrase that really activates people is secular hijabi accessorization.
00:07:41.080i think there's a lot here in terms of like real dynamics within like queer and leftist spaces that0.91
00:07:49.740can be counterproductive to say the least and like you know maybe malignant at worst and then
00:07:55.820there's the kind of meta story about the media use of this sort of intra-community dispute in
00:08:04.000a small town and the way that these i guess human interest stories or the way i like to think of
00:08:10.220them is like news stories without any news value get weaponized because they seem like symptoms
00:08:16.120of a broader phenomenon and because they can be items in a bigger culture war right so it's like
00:08:20.700a both and situation where if you're like okay do these people who are talked about in the story
00:08:25.660act badly yeah do they act badly in ways that i've seen other people act badly also yes does
00:08:32.400it matter or does it deserve to be a national news story where they're mocked endlessly and
00:08:39.660made into these symbols of a bigger culture war like no like this doesn't this doesn't warrant
00:08:44.840any of that right so like there's a ton of people behaving badly in the story and i hope that we can
00:08:49.840look at the people with the most power and see how they're behaving badly more than you know0.67
00:08:55.240just getting caught up in the admittedly very very funny secular hijab inspired accessorization0.98
00:09:00.740of it all it's it's time to for us all to go to clown school but we're also going to go to real0.93
00:09:05.700school the first thing i'd like to say about the story that we are about to tell you is that it was
00:09:14.260not first reported and made public through the boston globe it was made viral by the boston globe
00:09:20.460but it was actually first reported on a podcast called blocked and reported the blocked and
00:09:26.420reported podcast is a collaboration between two writers named jesse single and katie herzog
00:09:34.060They're like cancel culture warriors, right? They're these people who sort of rode this wave in the 2010s, trying to paint themselves as reasonable and somewhat like ironic chroniclers of social justice excess.
00:09:52.160Jesse Singal in particular is kind of like the bigger star of the two I would say and he's really
00:09:58.280made a career for himself in transphobia he was the author of a viral I believe 2018 article on
00:10:05.840trans kids which was really instrumental in like kicking off the moral panic about trans children's
00:10:13.260health care and then Katie Herzog like I don't know she worked for Dan Savage for a long time1.00
00:10:18.880She's one of these people who I think should be expelled or rejected from lesbianism.1.00
00:10:48.420She have for years has been writing about lesbian bars and why they are like disappearing, even though in recent years, there's actually been a resurgence of lesbian bars.
00:10:58.720But what has struck me about Katie's writing about lesbian bars that I have unfortunately read for a long time is that she doesn't even like lesbian bars.
00:11:08.960She writes about them very, very dismissively and kind of as like places she would not personally ever want to go.
00:11:15.420it's very much like i'm not like those lesbians like i'm like a disaffected like cool lesbian
00:11:21.440and she also ties up this argument about lesbian bars with this idea that lesbians as a whole are
00:11:27.240disappearing because women don't want to be lesbians anymore they want to be non-binary or
00:11:33.240like these spaces are being overtaken by trans women instead of cis lesbians or the famous all0.57
00:11:39.480the lesbians are becoming trans men yes yes oh yeah she's been a big pusher of that for a long0.66
00:11:44.500time and I'm just like she's very clearly and openly disconnected from actual queer and lesbian0.92
00:11:50.980spaces and it's like as someone who spends a lot of time in queer and lesbian spaces there are lots
00:11:56.220of cis lesbians out there we are not an endangered species we are not we are not going away anytime
00:12:02.400soon and I've mainly had pleasant experiences at lesbian bars that have cropped up in recent years0.80
00:12:09.460except for when they only have like one bathroom and the line is like 70 people long.0.99
00:13:34.540oh my god why did i read greenfield do you want to reread it yeah i do did i make up
00:13:39.500greenfield i think i don't know if there is a green all of these places just sound fake sorry
00:13:45.020okay wait now i'm looking at the actual article and it says greenfield it is wait so it's greenfield0.95
00:13:53.140i think it is greenfield so the boston globe fucked it up the boston globe fucked it up i'm0.77
00:13:57.700looking at that same paragraph in the story and it has since been corrected0.97
00:14:00.440i'm sorry it's not you it was the globe in their rush to demonize
00:14:07.620our community they couldn't even get the name right that's so bad they're a local paper
00:14:16.960all right damn take two greenfield is close both physically and spiritually to northampton0.95
00:14:24.220sometimes referred to as lesbianville usa in the pioneer valley every bar is a lesbian bar0.98
00:14:31.580a friend who lives there told me so last year three housemates in their mid-20s opted to open
00:14:37.360a covid cautious lesbian bar called last ditch where masks would be required to enter they were
00:14:45.020motivated by the recent closing of two other queer bars in the area from the globe quote one of the
00:14:51.220trio asa rosario a drag performer who uses it slash its pronouns envisioned a venue where it
00:14:58.020and its friends could perform no one would be turned away from the space for lack of funds
00:15:02.760poor and unhoused people are welcome in the space the police were not when the bar first opened it
00:15:09.540did well and the globe notes how opening night was a big hit opening night by the way uh involved a
00:15:17.020a simulated sex performance. And I highlight that because that is the character, of course,
00:15:23.500which Kat claimed she would be in this story if it is adapted to film, which my God, I hope it's
00:15:28.180not. But over time, foot traffic to the bar slowed. More and more visitors said they didn't
00:15:33.880have the cover fee. The bar let them in anyway. The owners fell behind on bills and couldn't pay
00:15:39.760themselves or the people who worked there. So after consulting with the Massachusetts LGBT
00:15:45.140Chamber of Commerce, they came up with a plan to bend one of their rules and hopefully attract
00:15:50.940more customers. That plan, my listener, was to make one night per week, Saturday nights,
00:15:57.180mask optional. And while that might strike one as a betrayal of the bar's stated mission,
00:16:03.860the hope was that they could attract a broader audience on Saturday nights because the financial
00:16:08.080situation had become dire. From The Globe, quote,
00:16:11.280But by the time of Last Ditch's monthly community meeting on September 11th, just coincidence, only one of the original founders, Jacqueline Mattelian, is still involved.
00:16:23.340The two others stepped back from the daily operation months before, Mattelian says, citing various pressures and health issues.
00:16:53.140And, like, it is punchy and it is engaging.
00:16:55.560And I also think that reading this, there is no doubt in my mind that the journalist behind this story wanted people to make fun of the subjects in the story.
00:17:07.800And as I was reading it, I was like on the plane as I was reading this and I was eating it up.
00:17:13.820And I also thought, oh, no, because while this is perhaps great fodder within the safe confines of like a queer friend group's group chat, I do not trust the general public and the big, broad Internet to handle this story with care, especially the way it's been written, which, to your point, obviously encourages harassment towards the people.
00:17:37.620it's describing. And I was right for feeling that way. Really, the clown school and the focus on0.53
00:17:45.240the it slash its pronouns are where I was like, yeah, I mean, this is going to make anti-woke
00:17:50.740commentators absolutely gleeful. And it did, as I'm sure we will get into, like literal opinion
00:17:57.480columns written by center-right anti-woke thinkers were so thrilled to be able to take these details
00:18:31.940a few patrons, and a few volunteer mediators, one of whom was a licensed therapist. They began,
00:18:38.640as the Globe notes, with a breathing exercise. Quote,
00:18:42.440Almost immediately, the proceedings are derailed. One of Last Ditch's most vocal critics,
00:18:48.060the head of another queer COVID-conscious collective in Western Massachusetts,
00:18:51.840a performer and artist who goes by the name Zoe Noir, has been posting complaints about0.54
00:18:57.320last ditch for days. Now Noir joins the meeting on Zoom. He and other critics began to flood the
00:19:03.300Zoom chat with irate messages, which are dutifully read aloud to the group. The therapist mediator
00:19:08.820tries to diffuse the frustration between members, which does not work. It's messed up that the
00:19:14.920mediator is dismissing those attending virtually. That's not accessibility, someone responds in the
00:19:20.540chat. A lot of people are calling for an acknowledgement of harm, and I'm hearing a
00:19:25.080white therapist centering the feelings of a majority white and white adjacent staff,
00:19:29.620writes Noir, who is black. Moreover, the Zoom attendees speculate that the mediator's licensed
00:19:35.580status makes her a mandated reporter, an agent of the state akin to police. One person going by Moss
00:19:43.020asks if the mediator could have them hospitalized against their will, adding that her presence is,
00:19:48.860quote, wildly unsafe. Some of these are like interesting inclusions. Like there's no reason
00:19:55.420other than to mock this person and to note that they go by Moss. Yes. Yes. But then on the other
00:20:00.520hand, what does white adjacent mean? Right. White and white adjacent stuff. I'm like, what are you0.89
00:20:05.640talking like? Bro, what are you talking about? Like, be specific. Define your terms. I'm torn
00:20:12.380in so many directions here and i basically like do sort of feel everybody is behaving badly except
00:20:19.420for jackie who needs to be like rescued from this situation but like these are a lot of rhetorical
00:20:25.280choices that are meant to display what is considered this like non-sequitur contempt of
00:20:30.660these meeting participants but then it's got so much contempt for them itself right and i'm like0.98
00:20:36.840almost like, okay, if the whole world is treating you like you're this ridiculous, contemptible0.96
00:20:42.780person, I kind of understand why you're behaving badly. Like, it sort of starts to make sense to0.99
00:20:48.060me. It's like, okay, if this is the treatment you're getting from mainstream institutions,
00:20:51.280if this is the treatment you're getting outside of your very, very narrow community where you're1.00
00:20:56.160just like mocked as ridiculous, like, of course you're a dick. Like, that would make anybody0.99
00:21:00.180and bittered and weird and like probably a little paranoid.
00:21:03.660Additionally, I read local news coverage that has since come out about the virality of this
00:21:10.820Boston Globe piece and has interviewed people within it who were like, I'm a patron of this
00:21:16.000bar. Specifically, there was an interview of the person who's the manager of the upstairs
00:21:21.380restaurant who would sometimes go downstairs and grab a drink on their way out from work.
00:21:26.120And they were like, I talked to the journalist from the Boston Globe and they seemed really
00:21:30.020nice. They told us essentially that they were going to write this glowing piece of our bar.
00:21:34.640And this is not what we expected at all. Yeah. And that doesn't surprise me because I think a
00:21:39.720lot of people in the queer and immunocompromised and disabled community are very accustomed to
00:21:47.080being treated this way by members of the general public. Hence why this space exists to begin with,1.00
00:21:53.420because there are not very many truly safe spaces for people existing within the most
00:21:59.140marginalized spheres of society. And I imagine that in order to gain that trust, the journalist
00:22:06.160did spend a lot of time talking to people about their concerns and on a very interpersonal level,
00:22:12.320and then did turn around and write this very short piece that is extremely flippant toward
00:22:19.960what these people are struggling with. And I can imagine that that felt like a huge betrayal from
00:22:26.260the people who actually were talking to this journalist and giving her their time.
00:22:31.060The other thing I was going to say is just as a journalist, you do oftentimes engage in rapport
00:22:38.140with your sources and with the people who you are talking to that can be like friendly,
00:22:44.200even though you know that your story is not going to portray them in a light that's going to make
00:22:48.640them happy. And it's not your job as a journalist to make your sources happy. It's not what you are
00:22:54.260there to do, especially if you're covering someone with a lot of power. But what I find so striking
00:22:59.540about this is it's like you are pulling out all of the stops to kind of maybe manipulate these
00:23:05.780sources into giving you information. But this is not holding power to account. These are not people
00:23:11.600who possess any structural power. They behaved badly in this interpersonal conflict. But imagine
00:23:18.480if journalists treated like actual fixtures of power with this type of skepticism and like
00:23:24.980passing this kind of judgment. Imagine if people treated the cops like this or politicians like
00:23:29.960this. Like imagine if journalism chose to use this type of reporting to actually hold power
00:23:35.960to account more frequently. Back to the struggle session over the debate of what to do about masking
00:23:43.080on Saturday nights. At this point, Jackie Metellian, the sole owner, begins crying under
00:23:48.940her mask, explaining how she only ever got involved in the bar project to support her two
00:23:54.100roommates, those roommates who are no longer involved. Quote, I never really wanted to do
00:23:59.540this, she says. I don't think I'm doing a very good job. The Globe writes, the online critics
00:24:05.940are unmoved. Quote, you chose to use your time to spill tears and center your feelings. Noir
00:24:12.320posts in the chat. This is incredibly racist and deflecting behavior. Eventually, after three and
00:24:19.200a half hours of discussion, the meeting wraps up. Noir has more to say, but when someone suggests
00:24:24.900he come to the next community meeting, he refuses. Quote, there's a lot of emotional and physical
00:24:30.700labor that goes into this. So for you as a white person that asks for me to stay for another
00:24:36.120meeting for free is incredibly disingenuous and racist. I'm not doing that. Noir spends the
00:24:42.040hours after the meeting, posting furious Instagram stories about Mattelian and Last Ditch.
00:24:47.820Mattelian, who uses she-they pronouns, has been shedding, quote, white they-them tears, he writes.
00:24:54.400The bar was not, quote, a safe environment nor interested in revolutionary praxis. The Globe
00:25:01.200reporter asks Noir if he has any sympathy for Jackie, given the financial strain she's under,
00:25:06.540to which Noir says no. So out of necessity, Last Ditch opts to go mask optional on Saturday nights.
00:25:15.220They announced this on the bar's Instagram account in a rainbow-colored graphic which read,0.96
00:25:19.920It is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights0.76
00:25:26.260as mask optional. This post drew a total of 400 comments at the time of the Boston Globe's
00:25:33.340publishing this article. Some of those comments were supportive. Others were critical.
00:25:38.240Just say you're being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with,
00:25:42.760wrote one commentator. People like you killed disabled people in the name of your own leisure0.50
00:25:47.900and convenience, posted another. And lastly, the comment which the Boston Globe blasted in huge,
00:25:54.740bold text at the top of the article, the comment which was quoted in subsequent coverage everywhere
00:26:00.420from Fox News to the New York Post quote I hope your venue gets firebombed and that is the whole
00:26:09.600story uh this is dark I'm just I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that firebombing seems a
00:26:20.800little disproportionate to to me what do you mean no I'm just kidding I'm just kidding0.94
00:26:26.760My biggest frustration with the people who were leaving these comments on this post are there seems to be a real gap in understanding here that this bar and Jackie Mattelian are not like capitalist owners who are trying to like get every last drop of money out of the disabled immunocompromised population.0.94
00:26:52.440this is literally someone who has been unhoused for periods of time because she is pouring every
00:26:59.800single resource she has into trying to create this community space and yet she's being treated
00:27:06.000out of as if she's like target or like this massive corporation this woman has actually
00:27:11.800sacrificed so much this wasn't even her idea to start this bar she's been put in this like0.97
00:27:16.560horrible position. And so the level of cruelty is very, it was, it was, it was quite depressing
00:27:23.860to read. Yeah. I want to like, I want to have a talk with Jackie. I'm like, girl, we have to get
00:27:28.560you, you got to have some self-respect. We got to get you out of here. Right. Like, cause she got
00:27:32.060left holding the bag financially. Yep. She got left holding the bag organizationally and she
00:27:38.540got left holding the bag for like everybody's feelings and like trauma and baggage. All of
00:27:44.100This is getting unloaded onto her.0.99
00:27:45.960And she's like, I didn't even want to open this fucking bar.1.00
00:28:08.640She's not their enemy, but she's being treated like their enemy.
00:28:11.620And that is, I think, something that is happening for a reason that we can probably tease out. And then there's this kind of like additional mockery and punishment that's being imposed not just on her, but on like everybody in her world, because this is a useful gag. It's a useful satire.
00:28:31.840It's a useful exaggeration where there's this whole media apparatus on the right that wants everybody who's queer and everybody who's disabled to be pointed out as somebody who's like laughable and unserious and overwrought and hysterical.0.59
00:28:49.020There's like so many layers of wrongdoing in this story.
00:28:51.460And I wonder like how we can tease them all out separately, because that's not really what I'm seeing happening in the discourse.
00:28:57.600Fortunately for us, I have written a 20-page outline that will hopefully allow us to tease out these different aspects of this story separately.
00:29:06.640And, you know, I just want to say a few things up top, one of which is that I agree everyone is behaving poorly here, including the author of this story.
00:29:16.100I will say, and I'm not holier than thou, and it took me a second to gather my thoughts on this because I had some similar reactions to everyone else who read this story, which is, this is nuts.
00:29:25.740But then I had the reaction of like, wait, the post, the announcement post that they would go mask optional on Saturday nights, that post to their Instagram story had 400 comments. That's not that many comments. Why is this getting a Boston Globe feature?
00:30:58.460I don't even live in your town, but I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans
00:31:06.960just to scrape extra revenue from ableists.1.00
00:31:10.840Sorry disabled people aren't making you enough money or whatever.1.00
00:31:14.300You are functionally following the business plan of Target.1.00
00:31:17.960Hope your business crashes and burns with love.0.90
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00:39:15.080But with all of this in mind, I'd like to have a good faith discussion about what made this story
00:39:21.280so immediately captivating, not to the right, who we know will take any chance to bully people they
00:39:27.220find cringe, but too many people left of center. We all know people who behave like
00:39:35.360maybe, you know, albeit a less extreme version of this. People who make worst-faith interpretations
00:39:43.080of what other well-meaning people say and do, who co-opt progressive political language to
00:39:49.180behave in ways that are controlling or even abusive, who turn personal persecution, real or
00:39:55.800imagined, into social currency they can wield against other people in their communities.
00:40:00.660this type of behavior also I think was more common among liberals like 10 years ago which is why to
00:40:08.720me so much of the story also immediately felt like a relic of the past yeah it was a 2018 Atlantic
00:40:14.780story it's like oh look at what these crazy college kids are doing now story it reminds
00:40:19.320me of that time where they're like Oberlin cafeteria can't sell banh mi yes like that's
00:40:23.760that kind of it's like very low stakes it's meant to be laughed at and it's meant to sort of like
00:40:28.860reassure the audience's sense that like the left is out of control and only interested in like
00:40:35.960things that don't matter. So you can dismiss all of their concerns as trivial. I also like with
00:40:40.880regards to the strain of discourse that I saw from a lot of prominent leftist accounts that was like
00:40:46.860these people are real and you will encounter them when you do organizing work or when you are in
00:40:53.460leftist spaces. There is obviously truth to that in the sense that there is truth to that in any
00:41:00.140community everywhere. It's just that the language is different. Like I saw some interesting discourse
00:41:06.360about how some of the people in Jackie's life are taking advantage of her to an extent that could be
00:41:13.020abusive. They are putting her in a position that is so expletive and then they are using it to
00:41:18.780further like belittle her and yell at her for crying and things like that and i'm like that's
00:41:23.940a really interesting argument but it's also not whatsoever obviously limited to leftist spaces
00:41:30.300there are abusive people in every community and the language that they use and the tactics that
00:41:36.540they use are just going to be different like one of my first responses to reading this story was
00:41:40.980i was like i bet there are even crazier stories in like church potluck communities around the nation
00:41:48.120I bet that the bullying and ganging up on specific people in religious communities, in right-wing communities, in military spaces, on sports teams, in sororities, you could go to any insular community and I'm sure you could find a story like this.
00:42:07.100What made this story so palatable to the masses is that it was like we all hate these people because we all have that like inner ableism or lesbophobia or trans misogyny or whatever it may be that like that's what we all share.
00:42:23.120But if you told this story about a fraternity or a sorority, a ton of people would come out to defend it.
00:42:28.760or just like wouldn't be news right because like the bad behavior of like frat boys like
00:42:35.160entitlement the bad behavior of like church ladies isn't it's like well you know like1.00
00:42:39.820she gets to bully the new divorcee in town because that is her prerogative as a church1.00
00:42:45.860you know like these people are seen they're a representatives beyond themselves right their
00:42:51.380types so like as matt said like everybody who shares any kind of characteristic with these
00:42:56.400people is going to be like held responsible for their actions but like they are understood as not
00:43:02.600having an entitlement to like basic human flaws anything they do is like of course they are doing
00:43:10.200something shitty because we shouldn't let them have bars or we shouldn't let them you know have
00:43:15.560these identities or we shouldn't let them you know live together in any kind of community it's like
00:43:21.380it gets sort of conscripted back into this repressive narrative i agree so much with everything
00:43:26.020that both of you said and i would just like to return to this point of like we are all familiar
00:43:30.680with the phenomenon of like leftist purity testing i think the thing that felt so sort of like
00:43:38.220interesting about this to me is like i said this feels like a story out of 10 years ago like i find
00:43:43.740that that attitude and i'm very happy about this has seemed to have lost a lot of cachet in left
00:43:50.040wing spaces over the last decade as someone who spends a lot of time in these spaces you know
00:43:55.880organizing for candidates and also like involved in online discourse and whatnot like i have felt
00:44:01.620especially over the last couple years that people have gotten so much more open to giving each other
00:44:08.140the benefit of the doubt to giving each other grace to taking opportunities to educate rather
00:44:14.800than oust one another. What's interesting is that for a long time, the line was, you know,
00:44:21.200on the left, we do all this litmus testing and this and that. And on the right, they just fall
00:44:25.480in line. And there's issues with both of those. But at least on the right, they know how to build
00:44:29.720power. And I think there was a point in time where you could make that generalization. And of course,
00:44:35.460that is the type of generalization that a story like this would encourage. However, to anyone who
00:44:40.860really earnestly believes that in 2026 have you spent time in right-wing spaces they are eating
00:44:47.780each other alive over a host of litmus test issues that none of them can agree on whatsoever
00:44:54.500did you all see how the turning point conference played out in 2025 these people hate each other
00:45:01.640and cannot get their shit together no i think that's such a good point and i also feel like
00:45:05.800that is one of the reasons why they've been pushing this story so hard is because it's like0.73
00:45:10.360a good old fashioned like remember why we all left the left type of like call to action that's why
00:45:16.440i'm like why is jk rowling because jk rowling was posting about this story awesome that was one of
00:45:24.700the first things i saw was jk rowling was in somebody's replies being like yeah blocked and
00:45:29.640reported got the story first and i'm like why do you british billionaire care about what's going
00:45:35.340on in a town of fewer than 20,000 people in a state, in a city that you will never set foot
00:45:41.980into. But the reason why J.K. Rowling cares about this is because she constantly needs
00:45:47.420justification for why her crusade is righteous. And no matter how ridiculous that justification
00:45:54.300is, like she is desperate for it. And a lot of these like libertarian heterodox, but actually0.77
00:46:01.260just like center right people they need this it fuels them and look i do not agree with the
00:46:09.240behavior exhibited by the people in this story but also like this is a family issue but on the
00:46:16.360internet i'm not blind to the fact that a lot of the people who are watching are not family
00:46:21.960megan kelly is not family fox news is not family neither is bill maher our current political reality
00:46:30.640is so online and so destabilized. And as participants of the digital town square,
00:46:36.500I think it's really important that we understand how this town square works so we can behave
00:46:42.120responsibly within it. Which brings me to chapter two or three. I always want to sound fancy with
00:46:48.920my chapters, but I always forget what we're on. In early September, the Socialism 2026 conference
00:46:55.200convened at a Hyatt hotel in Chicago. It hosted about 3,000 paying attendees, masks required,
00:47:03.000who flowed from panel to panel and listened to activists, authors, artists, and organizers talk
00:47:08.200about issues like Marxism, climate justice, and labor strikes. It was organized by the left-wing
00:47:14.960book publisher Haymarket Books, which has published a host of incredible books, including Perfect
00:47:20.920Victims and the Politics of Appeal from my recent guest, Mohamed Elkurd. Shout out, Mohamed.
00:47:25.880At one panel, a disability writer named Beatrice Adler Bolton spoke about the overlap of fitness
00:47:32.980and fascism. Here is a clip from that panel that has since gone viral.
00:47:37.960You have to give up the fantasy of being fitter than the fascists. It's not just that it's cringe
00:47:44.800or strategically bad, though it is, I think it's also politically revealing. Fitness is a measure
00:47:56.740of relative disposability under capitalism. Our task is not to become less disposable,
00:48:03.520to become more useful to the ruling order. What we all need to be doing is rejecting disposability
00:48:10.080in all of its forms. The point is not to beat the fascists at their own game. It is not to lay a
00:48:19.240better claim on their own territory by being fitter, more eugenic. In fact, the more dysgenic,1.00
00:48:27.500the better, I think. Revolution is not a contest between optimized and properly prepared bodies.
00:48:35.560That idea is fascist in and of itself and erases the history of left struggles around the world.
00:48:44.120So Beatrice's argument in simplified terms is that fascists subscribe to an ideology where certain people are considered worthy of life while others are disposable.
00:48:55.360and that physical fitness is a way people attempt to prove their strength and worthiness under
00:49:03.360fascism, which is a framework that we should fundamentally reject. This clip was made viral
00:49:09.880by a man named Stu Smith, an investigative analyst, he calls himself, at the Manhattan Institute,
00:49:18.080a right-wing think tank with annual expenses of $27 million. Stu not only made this viral on
00:49:25.020Twitter, but also did a media blitz with it, feeding an article to the New York Post where
00:49:30.160he is quoted as a quote expert. He said, these are people who are just so unhappy with anything
00:49:36.200that resembles the status quo or normalcy, they have to signal against anything they think is not
00:49:42.360their revolutionary project. But this clip was also shared online by many on the left,
00:49:47.820including the left-wing journalist Ryan Grimm, whose work investigating Israel at DropSite News
00:49:55.140I have a lot of respect for. Of the clip, Ryan wrote,
00:49:58.500Now that the left is actually within reach of attaining real power,
00:50:02.280this kind of antisocial behavior should be thoroughly shamed.
00:50:06.200When asked why he's giving it any attention at all, Ryan wrote,
00:50:10.800I genuinely think ignoring it isn't enough. There needs to be a stigma associated with
00:50:15.360this antisocial behavior okay but this is the thing this is the thing this is the thing there
00:50:21.240is stigma attached to people who make arguments like this already yeah first of all this argument0.99
00:50:29.780that beatrice is making in this clip you know physical fitness is a way to try to uh obtain a
00:50:37.640a body worthy under fascism and fascism divides people into optimized versus not optimized and
00:50:46.380only the optimized people should survive, etc. Naomi Klein made the same argument in her book
00:50:52.360Doppelganger. This is an argument that a lot of leftist thinkers have made. Beatrice is talking
00:50:59.560about this at a leftist socialist conference. And the audience for that conference is not the same
00:51:08.680as the audience on Twitter. I don't think my mom, God bless her, I don't think my mom could hear
00:51:15.500that argument and get on board with it. I don't think most people would. But this is being said
00:51:22.780at a conference for people who live and breathe left-wing political theory. And the idea that we
00:51:30.320on the left need to heighten scrutiny against these people and create stigma, these are already
00:51:36.760people living on the margins. These are already ideas existing on the fringe. These aren't people
00:51:41.140with social capital. Ryan Grimm went on to do a whole feature about Beatrice Adler Bolton and this
00:51:47.620idea that she had on breaking points their youtube channel and i couldn't for the life of me
00:51:53.140understand why we were giving it such airtime and in that segment he argued that like the
00:51:59.040non-profit industrial complex which at the time included a lot of the cia money funds this to
00:52:05.280undermine global communism right global communism doesn't exist anymore but the idea of the working
00:52:15.600class uniting in order to fight against the billionaire class is still a threat and so
00:52:23.440the cia we don't know how much they're involved with it anymore doesn't matter the the foundation
00:52:29.840world which flowed directly out of that and is still doing it like it's the foundation the
00:52:35.500foundation world is out there funding all of this stuff these people have all of this funding and
00:52:40.360they're going to derail the left unless we crush them under our boot and i'm like where these people
00:52:45.980have no capital at all doesn't she like have a podcast right it's death panel and it's not a
00:52:51.900massive money maker it's like i'm sorry you want to come after her patreon money this is not like
00:52:56.520something that is taking resources away from your own project there's this weird policing where the
00:53:02.100notion is like okay well bad faith actors can now monitor basically everything anybody does
00:53:09.020And that creates this obligation for every leftist everywhere to be in like a Truman show style state of surveillance and having to be policing themselves.
00:53:20.080You can never say anything, even at the socialism conference in Chicago, that could possibly make Tucker Carlson mad.
00:53:26.820I'm sorry, that's like anti-intellectual.
00:53:31.780And it's just like not I don't think that's what the responsibility is.
00:53:35.960Like, do I think this message should go in like a campaign ad in Michigan? No. But do I think like nobody should ever say it because a right wing podcaster or like YouTube show host could potentially run away with it? Like that doesn't make any sense. That's not reasonable.
00:53:51.540ironically the person who's giving this idea more airtime than it otherwise would have received on
00:53:57.540the left is ryan grimm himself in his attempt to quash it but also my favorite response to this
00:54:04.500was someone was like ryan grimm take your shirt off and post pictures of your body right now if
00:54:09.940you are going to make the argument that we all need to be like at the utmost level of physical
00:54:14.660fitness in order to combat fascism because i am like what are you talking about like unless you
00:54:21.000have like an eight pack and you're like regularly doing combat sports like what do you disagree with
00:54:26.860here do you actually believe that we all need to be spartan soldiers to physically tackle donald
00:54:33.100trump like i think it is just this fear that like we're getting a little too woke and i just can't
00:54:39.400i can't uh interrogate that seriously i also just think this kind of fits neatly into a pattern that
00:54:45.440I'm trying to demonstrate in this episode, which is this like constant punching down at especially
00:54:53.080disabled women. Yes. But people who fall at all sorts of intersections, typically that include
00:54:59.980disability. And to me, it's so often comes across as just bullying. But then the people who do it
00:55:08.180the loudest, especially if they identify with the left, feel the need to retroactively apply some
00:55:14.660like moral or political strategy lens to it. Beatrice Adler Bolton speaking about fitness
00:55:21.000fascism at the socialist conference in Chicago is not derailing the leftist project. No one
00:55:28.600would even know about this except the couple thousand attendees at the socialist conference
00:55:33.840at Chicago, all of whom probably already agree with the basic points she's laying out. I think
00:55:40.820that we just want to mock people we think are cringe. But what political goal is that achieving?
00:55:50.820And also, how is that not antisocial behavior to create a business model around mocking people
00:55:57.300who fit into certain spheres of marginalization who you find to be cringe? It is significantly
00:56:03.520more antisocial to punch down on marginalized and disabled women than it is to simply talk about how
00:56:11.440our society should not be ordered around like spheres of superiority based on things like0.99
00:56:17.740physical fitness. Like it is an argument that has totally lost the plot. I mean, it's partaking of
00:56:23.620just like libidinal gratification, right? It just feels good to point and laugh, particularly at
00:56:28.380people who are like your inferiors on these hierarchies right these are women they're often0.68
00:56:33.560younger than at least ryan grimm they are you know disabled there's a lot of like i'm on top
00:56:39.640of a hierarchy and you're lower on it and it gives me satisfaction to point that out and i'm sorry
00:56:44.440that is the emotional core of the right that is a right-wing impulse this reminds me of last
00:56:50.740ditch a little bit in that like i think all of this is a symbol of the people who have actual
00:56:55.340power and the institutions and structures that have actual power being sort of beyond the reach
00:57:00.300of leftist influence. And so there's this reaching instead for the people you can hurt and the people
00:57:06.500you can get a response out of and the people you can get to like recognize your pain. Those
00:57:11.220customers at last ditch, they're disabled. It's a really scary time for disabled people. It's a
00:57:17.080really, really scary time for queer people. They've been like abandoned and marginalized
00:57:20.760in a way that they didn't think they were going to have to do again. And they don't have the ability
00:57:26.560to reach out and punch like RFK Jr. Right. What they can do is they can bully like Jackie,
00:57:32.040the bar owner. And there's something to that, too, with Ryan Grimm. Like Ryan Grimm, like
00:57:36.120can't make Bernie have won the 2016 presidential primary and he can't make there be Medicare for
00:57:42.840all. And he can't make this be a like like robustly social democratic country. But what he
00:57:49.980can do is punch down at some woman wearing a mask he saw on the internet you know and it's just like
00:57:56.060okay like the broader political struggle has been like placed beyond your reach and you've or you've
00:58:00.420like given up on trying to get there and therefore you're just doing what you can do to like get your
00:58:05.620own rage out in this way that's just kind of like impotent and sad so in returning to our
00:58:12.260conversations about our favorite massachusetts covid cautious lesbian bar i think it's worth
00:58:18.220remembering that you might find the behavior of the commenters on Last Stitch's Instagram post
00:58:25.080abhorrent and abusive. You might think so noir is grifting Jackie the bar owner, and that the bar
00:58:32.380owner needs a good therapist to help them establish boundaries with their community, and that of
00:58:37.520course serene necrosis might be missing a few marbles. I wouldn't disagree with you. But what
00:58:43.640I am asking you to do, and I know that the internet is not an easy place to express nuance or
00:58:48.760complexity, is engage not just with the content, but with the form. The content is a story about
00:58:55.720a dysfunctional group of queer 20-somethings trying to keep a bar afloat, but the form is an0.76
00:59:01.400online media apparatus that the right is adept at weaponizing so as to sway public opinion,0.94
00:59:07.220break up the left, and achieve their political goals. Goals that, as objectionable as you find
00:59:13.260Last Ditch's disgruntled patrons, you do not want to see pass. Chapter next. Last Ditch becomes a
00:59:21.980lull cow. For whatever good faith critique of this story people on the left had within their own
00:59:27.220circles, it quickly, and I mean immediately, became a content mill for every right-wing media
00:59:33.400outlet, big and small. If you search lesbian bar on YouTube, you'll get hits from Greg Gutfeld,1.00
01:00:06.840Ben Shapiro, the best story of the last 10 years.
01:00:09.720The list goes on. Helen Lewis, an anti-trans writer at The Atlantic, wrote an article about
01:00:16.560the saga wherein she said, quote, so noir rampaged through Greenfield's LGBTQ community
01:00:23.880like a dose of the clap. Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. Oh, Bill Maher even got his licks in0.74
01:00:32.800on his HBO show. And Michael Knowles talked about it on a segment he titled LGBT Civil War.
01:00:40.040Do we see what's happening here, my friends? Oh, I just have to say, like, when this story was
01:00:46.800going viral, a lot of the people who were interviewed and named in the piece went private
01:00:52.520on Instagram, no doubt because of the massive wave of harassment that they were experiencing.
01:00:57.780and the bar also had to like on google reviews were paused because of the amount of spam
01:01:05.420reviews that were being left but so noir did not go private and he continued to post and out of
01:01:14.160partially morbid curiosity and also genuine interest in the story i was like let me follow
01:01:20.020what's going on here with this with this person and he at one point was sharing screenshots of
01:01:26.040commentary, things that people were sending into his personal website. And it was deplorable.
01:01:32.020The horrific threats of sexual violence. People were sending him racist slurs. They were sending0.72
01:01:38.460him death threats. And he was just sort of screenshotting them and like putting them up
01:01:42.260on his story. And no matter how objectionable I find his conduct, and I do think it was
01:01:48.060objectionable. It is just so disproportionate, the level of hatred that these individuals are
01:01:56.620now receiving and the way that national mainstream conservative media titans are using all of their
01:02:03.680power and platform to direct this bigotry their way. Towards somebody with no power. None. And I
01:02:10.720I also saw leftists, including people who I follow and like, joining the pile on and mocking his art and mocking him and making jokes about him. And as much as I understand that impulse, I also just feel like in the year of our Lord 2026, I've seen how much this type of harassment, we've all seen how much this type of harassment can wreak havoc on someone's life and create nothing productive and in fact make them even meaner and angrier and
01:02:40.720and hateful i don't know i just i guess i wish people would think twice before joining what is
01:02:46.880a largely conservative pile on on a queer person of color yeah i mean like the critique of this
01:02:54.160last ditch community group is that they were behaving like wildly disproportionately towards
01:02:59.380somebody who basically should have been their friend and then everybody else now is behaving
01:03:04.140wildly disproportionately towards them like none of this is important enough especially to you
01:03:09.540living far away, not a part of this at all, to like go seek out some stranger, like rando
01:03:15.520strangers Instagram and like leave them a nasty comment. Like this is not like how you should be
01:03:19.620spending your time. I want to play one particular clip from Megyn Kelly's conversation with the gay1.00
01:03:25.600libertarian Glenn Greenwald about this, which I found both grating and revealing where Glenn
01:03:32.500contrasts the admirable gay activism of the 90s to the lesbian bar drama, which he thinks is
01:03:39.500representative of gay activism today. Here's the thing. Like when I went to college,
01:03:45.240actually, when I went to law school, it was like the early nineties, I went to NYU.
01:03:48.440And this was at a time when like that group act up, the activist group act up was,
01:03:52.700was really starting to become powerful. And these were like very serious activists,
01:03:56.780you know, like gay and lesbian activism was very serious. They weren't just screaming
01:03:59.760and yelling. They had like learned the science. A lot of the lesbians who led it were like
01:04:03.300nurses and scientists and they developed this expertise. And at the time the villain was1.00
01:04:07.940anthony fauci he was the head of infectious diseases and they felt like they weren't doing
01:04:11.580enough to push big big pharma to get you know so i was so impressed with like gay and lesbian
01:04:16.460politics it was serious it was confronting power centers for like noble causes they played a big
01:04:22.020role in getting experimental this is like good politics like now like lgbt politics is about
01:04:28.960attacking like the most marginalized powerless people like impoverished bar owners over this0.87
01:04:35.900I'm sorry. This is fucking ahistorical. That is not what happened with ACT UP. ACT UP famously worked because they had both those educated pharmacology experts, guys like Peter Staley and Matt Harrington, Mark Harrington, rather, these like nice white Harvard boys.0.99
01:04:52.720And they also had a screaming crowd of desperate people outside, right? You had both the liberals who were buttoned up and polite and experts and who would go in and talk to the pharmacy executives. And you also had a large crowd of angry, crazy people who could threaten chaos, right?
01:05:15.820that was the combination that made act up successful is because it was a popular front0.98
01:05:21.860if he knew what the fuck he was talking about if he had ever left the i like that love that he drops
01:05:28.660in that he went to a fancy law school if you ever left the nyu law library and actually went to one0.99
01:05:33.680of those meetings you would know that that's not how it worked i'm sorry that pisses me off no
01:05:37.720everything about this pisses me off and i kind of just wanted to include it to rant from many angles
01:05:42.020because also the recipient of what he's saying here is meghan kelly
01:05:48.100he's saying this to meghan kelly's face trying to appeal to respectable gay activism
01:05:56.400as if meghan kelly would now or then respect any of it as if meghan kelly would have been
01:06:05.060receptive to act up in the 1990s but also and this is really plays into my thesis this episode
01:06:15.740as if so noir or serene necrosis are emblematic are representative of gay activism today
01:06:26.320they're not but right-wing pundits and think tanks and journalists making this go viral
01:06:34.980is with the very explicit, I think, made explicit here,
01:06:59.660at the time he believed, dying from AIDS.
01:07:02.860Peter Staley is now in his 50s or 60s and participates still in Jewish Voice for Peace
01:07:09.300demonstrations to end the genocide on Gaza. Those activists still exist with a new generation of
01:07:17.000younger activists who are still very serious, who Glenn Greenwald, according to his own definition
01:07:23.880of what respectable activism is here, would respect if he even knew about them or God forbid
01:07:28.400joined them, which he never would. And the last thing I'll say is that, you know, we're making
01:07:33.240this very intra-community, this tiny intra-community squabble between a bunch of people
01:07:40.140in Western Massachusetts representative of gay activism. You don't think there were catty queers0.77
01:07:45.100in the 80s and 90s who had tiffs like this in their underground gay bars all the time that the0.98
01:07:51.760boston globe just didn't even publish like newsflash we've been fighting forever and we0.98
01:07:59.300will keep fighting forever over bullshit that doesn't matter sorry glenn greenwald0.95
01:08:03.820the other thing i found really interesting from that is he highlights how gay activists0.96
01:08:11.660fought against power and the medical establishment and what was going on with the aids crisis
01:08:18.240Interestingly enough, what's currently happening with the Department of Health under RFK Jr. also poses a huge threat to disabled and marginalized and queer communities.
01:08:30.480And it's people like Beatrice Adler Bolton who are arguing against RFK Jr.'s rhetoric and the rhetoric that is currently like part of the Trump administration's fascist crackdown on marginalized people.
01:08:43.980But this is the group of individuals who attack those activists who are actually doing that work like they are the ones they claim to be against.
01:08:55.180Additionally, Rosa DeLauro, the 83 year old Democratic U.S.0.99
01:09:00.200Congresswoman representing Connecticut's third district, sarcastically tweeted, getting a group together to visit the weird lesbian bar in Western Mass.
01:10:08.820So a low cow is a term that really originates from spaces like 4chan and Kiwi farms, spaces
01:10:17.340that are more typically associated with the far right.
01:10:20.920But basically, a low cow is an individual who is eccentric or unusual or weird a lot
01:10:28.640of times because they are neurodivergent or disabled or marginalized in some way.
01:10:34.420And it refers to these internet communities that obsessively hyper fixate on these individuals who sometimes have very small social media followings and are almost always extremely niche online figures who post frequently online.
01:10:51.760And you have low cows themselves and then the act of, quote, milking the low cows, which typically looks like provoking them in some way, shape or form, whether that's harassing them or engaging in their content, pushing them to do things that this crowd of harassers is going to find funny.
01:11:13.160I would say it originated in spaces like Kiwi Farms, but it has since become a much more mainstream Internet phenomenon.
01:11:19.960Yes. And, you know, the people who track and obsess over these lull cows, spelled L-O-L cow, like a cow that you can milk for the lulls, are typically extremely online themselves.
01:11:35.040That's how they found these communities of stalking and harassing random, oftentimes autistic or queer or sick people in the first place.
01:11:44.600I find that the people who engage frequently in these communities are oftentimes also any number of those things and are engaging in this lull cow harassment to make themselves feel better about their own insecurities.
01:11:59.060This is a psychological process that manifests itself with a lot of what we could pretty plainly describe as insecure bullying.
01:12:06.380I bring up the lull cow because the people involved with the last-ditch lesbian bar over the last week or two essentially became socially acceptable lull cows, but not for terminally online trolls.
01:12:22.740No, for people who consider themselves well-adjusted, who have cushy jobs at national media outlets.
01:12:29.020A few days after the story went viral, the New York Times decided to write their own piece on Last Ditch, wherein they sent a journalist to the town of Greenfield, Massachusetts, to stand on the sidewalk outside of the Last Ditch bar and wait for people to come out.
01:12:43.340I want to read some excerpts from that article, which starts with a few locals stopped by the Last Ditch lesbian bar early Saturday evening.
01:12:54.500if you are a journalist at the national paper of record and the pressing article that you're
01:13:01.020writing that you received money to go and report starts with a few locals stopped by the lesbian
01:13:09.560bar early Saturday evening, you need to reconsider the type of journalistic work that you're doing
01:13:16.440in your own integrity as a writer. It's a good sign that your editor does not trust you to do
01:13:21.420anything serious if this is the kind of assignment you're getting like oh do you want to go do bottom
01:13:25.300feeding on another publication's human interest story like that's how you know you're not respected0.97
01:13:32.080by your colleagues if you're getting this vulture shit this is the point in time where i think0.96
01:13:37.540people really started to reckon with the spectacle that they had participated in because they were0.97
01:13:43.460like if the new york times is now parachuting into this town like the the plot has officially
01:13:49.240been lost. And I was like, oh baby, the plot was lost a long time ago. This is just the natural
01:13:55.840inevitable conclusion is now that the New York Times is standing on the sidewalk outside the
01:14:01.200last ditch. The article continues. Around 6.30 p.m., four people in masks came out of the last
01:14:07.900ditch and confronted a small group of journalists hanging around outside. When one photographer
01:14:13.040snapped a flash photo of them, they demanded he delete the picture and threatened to call the0.98
01:14:17.880police if other journalists didn't leave so that sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing for
01:14:23.960private people who are being harassed by the national media to do yeah i think that's actually0.55
01:14:28.240like completely proportionate like please don't fucking take my picture i did not consent to be0.76
01:14:33.420like mocked and degraded in the new york times just because i am like i happen to be wearing a0.95
01:14:40.560mask you know it's just like it's kind of crazy i think this is the ugliest side of journalism and
01:14:46.440the media industry and you see it in so many different ways but this is a particularly absurd
01:14:52.220case because it's like I've watched in horror as journalists have like surrounded a grieving family
01:14:58.780whose child has overdosed but the fact that this level of hounding is going towards someone who
01:15:04.880literally just attended a lesbian bar in again a town of fewer than 20,000 people that a bunch of
01:15:12.220transphobic podcasters like decided was worthy of their coverage. This is ridiculous. It's just like0.99
01:15:19.860it really, really gets to a point. It was not acceptable when the media hounded and surrounded
01:15:25.220celebrities or grieving loved ones of trauma victims. But it's particularly absurd to me that
01:15:32.440they would do this to people who are literally just trying to enjoy a night out while also being0.94
01:15:37.740queer and immunocompromised the article continues patrons were required to wear kn95 or better0.91
01:15:46.100masks the face coverings ubiquitous during the heights of covet 19 and which most of the country0.94
01:15:51.860had left long ago to dental hygienists and people who don't want anyone to sit next to them on the
01:15:58.220train uh this pissed me off what are we doing it's not true and it's not true a lot of people
01:16:10.420wear masks for a lot of different reasons people have are undergoing chemotherapy like i just i
01:16:16.140don't i don't exactly this whole thing very quickly but also not quickly enough that a lot
01:16:23.980of people realized that they were participating in it just became all of these people with right
01:16:30.680wing impulses feeding into those right wing impulses in public. And it became, I think,
01:16:37.120so transparently cruel so quickly. And for what? Why? Why are we sitting outside talking about how
01:16:44.600weird these lesbians in Western Massachusetts are for wearing masks? Who gives a fuck?1.00
01:16:50.000It's such pointless editorializing in a supposedly national news piece, which is,0.99
01:16:54.980I believe, the section that this article is in. And again, it's just not it's not true.
01:16:59.500It is factually incorrect. People when I see someone wearing a mask on the train,
01:17:03.780I know it's not because they don't want anyone to sit next to them. I assume it's because they
01:17:08.360cannot afford to miss a day of work and therefore they do not want to get sick. Like there are so,
01:17:13.880so, so many reasons why people continue to mask. Also, it's like I still mask sometimes like when
01:17:19.220I recently was on a plane and the guy next to me was coughing. And I was like, thank God I have a
01:17:23.660mask because I don't want to get sick on this flight. The author of this New York Times piece
01:17:27.800mentions every single encounter he has with a homeless person. Excerpt one. Greenfield,
01:17:34.600a Western Massachusetts town of about 17,000 is not accustomed to the national spotlight.
01:17:39.220As darkness fell on Saturday evening, downtown went quiet. One man with a long stringy beard
01:17:46.000sat alone on a bench, eyes cast downward. Another man, in some distress, yelled obscure questions at
01:17:53.640passersby, such as, how do you build a skyscraper? And what kind of music is jazz? Someone called the
01:18:00.300police on him. Excerpt two, not much. This is a short article. These all come in very short order.
01:18:06.900Friends from all over the country have been sending me the articles about it, said Hallie
01:18:10.900Abelman, 34, of the last-ditch controversy. While she was being interviewed outside the bar,
01:18:17.060a man tried to bum a cigarette from her group. And excerpt three, while she was speaking to
01:18:22.300reporters, a man approached and asked if anyone could give him exactly 55 cents. He accepted a
01:18:28.040dollar and offered to give back change. Not to get lost in the details here, but I do think it's
01:18:33.200worth it. Like, I do. I do. I think it's so revealing. This is a reporter who traveled from
01:18:38.020new york city to stand on the sidewalk in western massachusetts and describe an unhoused person
01:18:44.140asking for change it's ridiculous now they're just like looking around for other suffering people to
01:18:50.100mock yeah you know it's just like surely there's somebody here i can make fun of and you found a
01:18:56.080homeless guy congratulations the article concludes two visiting professors at smith college said they
01:19:01.960tried to get into the last ditch bar but were turned away because they didn't already know
01:19:06.420anyone who was inside they were told the event was a private party come back on another day
01:19:11.760they were advised once the hubbub has died down and that is the whole article what a waste of a
01:19:18.880trip to massachusetts huh the new york post also sent not only a journalist to go write about what
01:19:26.380was happening on the sidewalk outside of the last ditch bar but a photographer named david mcglynn
01:19:32.320who took paparazzi photos of the queer people loitering around this bar in several of the
01:19:40.040photos they're covering their faces with their hands so as to not be captured by the cameras
01:19:45.440everybody looks really cool in these paparazzi photos i have to say they look really good
01:19:50.020i'm like they're great outfits i hope they all have a nice time i'm sorry you're being harassed0.92
01:19:55.180by the fucking murdoch rag at your bar that was literally my first thought was i was like jackie0.95
01:20:01.020looks amazing she looks so good jackie battalion if you're listening to this podcast you ate0.98
01:20:07.940i was also like she's giving like and i mean this in the highest compliment in form of flattery0.99
01:20:14.480possible she's giving the most archetypal lesbian of all time because she has a carabiner she's got0.99
01:20:20.740a hammer and a carabiner with like a bunch of random shit hanging off of it and i'm just like0.99
01:20:27.580sly jackie we love you we love you jackie i also like not that clearly these people care like these0.94
01:20:36.440photographers and like the new york post doesn't give a fuck about this but i'm like it is genuinely
01:20:40.600dangerous to photograph queer people leaving a bar considering that like you don't know these
01:20:45.640people you don't know their life stories you could be outing them you could be like exposing them in0.96
01:20:51.400the national news to family members who have no idea what their identity is like it's just a very
01:20:55.860blatant disregard for i would say professional ethics the hollywood reporter then published0.89
01:21:01.220an article titled viral lesbian bar article from boston globe is piquing hollywood's interest0.56
01:21:07.220the article has spurred thousands of subscriptions to the paper now uta or united talent agency
01:21:13.520which represents the boston globe is fielding inquiries about tv and film adaptations
01:21:19.960are we not just lull cow cowing these people i feel like the only studio that would have genuine
01:21:29.800interest in this is ben shapiro's like daily wire production yes where he can waste a bunch
01:21:35.860of money creating something that nobody's gonna watch exactly who else i mean like this is a very
01:21:41.020online story and obviously it had significant traction but also i do not think that this is
01:21:46.160the kind of story that would get butts in seats in the theater to be like, let's watch COVID1.00
01:21:51.040conscious lesbians fight on screen. I mean, I feel like it has so far outlived the normal timeline0.95
01:21:59.540of virality, right? This was published over a week ago from when we're now recording. And it's
01:22:05.260still got this weird life. And normally these things are over in 24, 48 hours. Whenever there's
01:22:12.000like a big pylon or cancellation i think of that scene in madmen where uh he tells peggy to just
01:22:18.560like give the baby away and he's like it will shock you how much it never happened that's how
01:22:22.760i feel about like every viral news cycle like it will shock you how much this never happened0.86
01:22:26.520and that's what that's like the advice i would want to give to the covid cautious lesbians of
01:22:30.480western massachusetts it's like this will be over and one day people who laughed at you will not
01:22:38.180remember that they laughed at you and it will just be kind of in this weird forgotten background
01:22:44.220of your past and you'll have whole other things to worry about i hope that there will still be
01:22:49.780truth to that like i hope that in a year's time all of these people will be back to their normal
01:22:55.100lives but i also think that it it reminds me of what you brought up moira which is the oberlin
01:23:00.780cafeteria story which had enormous legs because it became a very useful rhetorical way to say like
01:23:10.100the left is crazy and i feel like that has been kind of the utility of of this story thus far
01:23:17.240to conclude i want permission from both of you to put my halfway tinfoil hat on
01:23:24.380do you guys know what cointel pro was all right all right all right i didn't know if i should
01:23:32.820include this because i knew people were gonna laugh at me i love it i love it let's go full
01:23:39.020tinfoil hat let's put the whole thing on no well it's half tinfoil hat i promise but i i have to
01:23:44.460make sure that people know what cointel pro was so cointel pro if you don't know it was a largely
01:23:52.580illegal, unconstitutional series of secret projects conducted by the FBI during the 50s and 60s
01:24:00.560with the goal of turning primarily left-wing groups against each other and undermining them
01:24:06.800from the inside. This involved spying, forging letters, publishing articles with fake information,
01:24:14.920spreading rumors designed to break activists apart, splitting up marriages, promoting rivalries
01:24:21.040between groups, destroying careers, you name it. Now, I am not saying that the last ditch
01:24:29.420COVID cautious Western Massachusetts lesbian bar controversy was fabricated by the United States
01:24:35.880government. I very much don't think it was. I very much believe that all of these figures are
01:24:41.500real and struggling with each other. But I also don't think that the government needs to fabricate
01:24:47.360If it can achieve the same effect by blasting this irrelevant story about a tiny community of people to every right wing bad faith actor in media and then have it carried further by good faith people who take the bait.
01:25:02.940Yeah, no, it's like if you just have one person behaving badly, which to Kat's point, every single community has at least one, usually more than one, and you amplify that and you try to make them into a symbol of the whole thing, like you'll just have these groups, these spaces, these communities sort of like collapse without you having to, you know, send somebody undercover to like seed weird counter propaganda, right?
01:25:28.300It's like actually very simple to just sort of make a mockery of it in a big media apparatus and have that be that.
01:25:36.280One of the tweets amidst this controversy that went viral was by someone who wrote,
01:25:41.780I read the full Western Massachusetts COVID cautious lesbian bar article and then attached a photo of themselves holding up a bumper sticker that says leftists against other leftists.0.99
01:25:53.380Sorry, but a lot of you are just really fucking annoying.0.96
01:25:56.260and i get it i do i really get it but also this whole thing feels very divide and conquer amidst0.95
01:26:04.720a midterm election year where the left has built unprecedented power in the united states so i'm
01:26:11.400more inclined to complete my thesis with another viral tweet from user esoteric fat boy who wrote
01:26:19.260just explain the covid cautious lesb can't say this anymore i'm gonna bolt up right in the middle
01:26:25.720of the night and just be like, the COVID-cautious Western Massachusetts0.66