If Books Could Kill - The Worst Takes of 2023 [TEASER]

00:00:00.000 Peter. Michael. What's your first nominee for the worst take of 2023?

00:00:04.280 I think it's Vulture putting us as the number four podcast of the year and not number one.

00:00:22.680 So a few weeks ago, we put out a call on the Patreon for the worst takes of 2023.

00:00:30.000 and we received a number of excellent nominations.

00:00:35.580 There was one that just said,

00:00:37.020 if books could kill defending Hillary Clinton.

00:00:38.960 I know.

00:00:39.640 That was funny.

00:00:41.480 That was funny.

00:00:42.380 I liked it a lot.

00:00:43.100 You know what?

00:00:43.660 There was also one person who said something along the lines of,

00:00:47.320 like, this is just going to be a rundown of Mike's Twitter beefs, LOL,

00:00:50.720 which, like, first of all, how dare you?

00:00:52.900 And secondly, that's correct.

00:00:54.060 My only real criticism, and it's not anyone's fault,

00:00:57.560 is that the recency bias is severe.

00:00:59.780 Yeah. All of them were from like the last three weeks. And I like knew that that was an issue. But myself, I had no memory of anything that happened more than a month ago. So I know I don't know how we get out of this cycle, but we're just inundated with too much news. And I feel like as a society, we need to pick maybe like one every two weeks story that we talk about for two weeks and then we all move on.

00:01:24.860 So as usual, I have overprepared for this and Peter has underprepared for this.

00:01:29.600 I have three nominees and then an extremely obvious winner.

00:01:34.980 And then I have a bunch of honorable mentions.

00:01:37.900 And then I have like the worst just like discourse.

00:01:42.020 I also have some some sort of primaries and some honorable mentions here.

00:01:46.940 Yeah, I think I think we're on probably on the same page.

00:01:49.780 I am I am underplaying how much I read for this a little bit.

00:01:52.820 OK, yeah, I read a lot.

00:01:53.860 I fried my brain reading the worst takes for like three days straight.

00:01:58.000 My first nomination is this was a year with a lot of talk about like how marriage is good.

00:02:07.020 I feel like this is kind of already the memory hold, but there were all kinds of like studies and like books that came out this year that were like, well, the data is in and like marriage is really good for kids.

00:02:18.820 And one of my most worst takes is an Atlantic article by Melissa Kearney, who wrote this book called The Two-Parent Privilege, How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind.

00:02:31.500 And I am going to send you the opening paragraphs.

00:02:36.580 Earlier this year, I was at a conference on fighting poverty, and a member of the audience asked a question that made the experts visibly uncomfortable.

00:02:43.620 What about family structure, he asked.

00:02:45.360 Single-parent families are more likely to be poor than two-parent ones.

00:02:48.820 Does family structure play a role in poverty?

00:02:52.120 The scholar to whom the question was directed looked annoyed and struggled to formulate an answer.

00:02:56.420 The panelists shifted in their seats.

00:02:58.380 The moderator stepped in, quickly pointing out that poverty makes it harder for people to form stable marriages. 1.00

00:03:03.580 She promptly called on someone else.

00:03:05.920 I sighed.

00:03:06.600 As an economist who studies inequality in families, I have often found myself in the same position as the questioner.

00:03:12.640 I have suggested in similar settings that we need to consider how marriage and household structure affect children's life outcomes,

00:03:17.700 only to be met with annoyance and evasion.

00:03:20.520 You can't even talk about how two parents are good for kids anymore.

00:03:24.140 I'm not, I don't, I'm not like 100% sure that I believe this happened.

00:03:27.400 I know.

00:03:27.760 Oh, visibly uncomfortable.

00:03:29.120 The moderators like stammering like, oh, the parents of kids, I don't know.

00:03:35.680 They've revealed that that conservatism is correct.

00:03:37.920 This is like, this is a thing that I think conservatives actually believe that like,

00:03:41.660 that liberals secretly know that conservatism is right.

00:03:44.320 and so if you like ask them a prodding question they will just literally shake and and be and

00:03:50.300 cry the thing is i found this discourse extremely obnoxious all year both because like it it just

00:03:55.880 comes up like on kind of three-year cycles it just like well we're doing it again like when i was

00:03:59.740 looking up takes on this there was like a wave of takes in like 2016 as well and like we've as we

00:04:05.600 talked about in our success sequence episode this thing of like oh you need to be married

00:04:09.020 this just keeps happening people it's literally the same people saying literally the exact same

00:04:13.800 thing all the time. I don't want to go over too much of what we said in that episode, but it's

00:04:17.860 this entire thing seems to misunderstand correlation and causation, which the data

00:04:23.620 itself cannot really untangle for you. It's very obviously true that kids raised with two parents

00:04:30.620 are more likely to graduate from high school, they earn more in life, whatever. But that doesn't

00:04:37.340 tell you whether marriage itself is doing it. It could be that when you're married, you're more

00:04:42.100 likely to be rich it could also be that when you're rich you're more likely to be married right

00:04:45.860 and as kearney actually admits in like a lot of her interviews what she's really talking about is

00:04:50.760 cohabitation like when you live together you're better at raising kids because obviously you're

00:04:54.660 sharing resources sharing child care again nobody really disagrees with this it's easier to raise

00:04:59.420 kids with two people than with one person duh right but like how many people are living together

00:05:04.400 and raising kids is much more difficult to measure so it's like the data is kind of garbage to begin

00:05:08.760 with and it doesn't really tell us anything she's talking about evasion what these pieces all

00:05:14.220 actually evade is what is your prescription here exactly right some conservatives will admit that

00:05:20.280 what they want is like no no-fault divorce yeah and you know basically social pressure to marry

00:05:28.100 and marry young but not a lot of people are willing to admit that and so it's sort of a

00:05:33.380 situation where what they're actually doing is just sort of like poo-pooing other causes of

00:05:38.320 poverty right and being like well maybe maybe the real problem is something that is sort of

00:05:43.080 specific to these individuals and is not solved by you know welfare payments yeah exactly and that's

00:05:49.580 it actually the thing that i kept thinking was what me and aubrey keep saying on maintenance

00:05:54.180 phase about like fatness that there's this entire debate of like how bad is it for you to be fat

00:05:59.140 blah blah blah and like the data is more complicated we've done a million episodes about

00:06:02.920 it, but we also kind of hate doing episodes about it because the answer to that question

00:06:07.840 is kind of irrelevant, right?

00:06:09.820 Because even if it's straightforwardly true that being fat is bad for you, people cannot

00:06:13.860 stop being fat.

00:06:15.180 People can't lose weight, right?

00:06:16.280 And so telling a 300-pound person, hey, you'd be healthier if you lost weight is not useful

00:06:21.280 because chances are that person has tried losing weight a million times.

00:06:24.940 And if they try losing weight again, they're going to engage in a bunch of unhealthy behaviors.

00:06:28.620 And two years later, they're going to be 350 pounds.

00:06:30.740 And it's the same thing with marriage, right?

00:06:32.040 That it's like, OK, we've proven that it's good for kids to get married, like to have their parents be married.

00:06:37.100 Fine, whatever.

00:06:37.940 Even if that's true, it's not like there's some reservoir of like well-earning, well-educated, great dudes out there. 1.00

00:06:45.260 And single moms are like, oh, no, I don't want a partner. 0.86

00:06:48.720 It's like, what are people supposed to do with that information? 1.00

00:06:51.020 Marry incels.

00:06:53.320 You'll eventually get there if you ask enough conservatives what's the solution.

00:06:56.640 Or like the weird sex robot thing that they sometimes come back to.

00:06:59.780 Yeah, right.

00:07:00.520 We need the Jordan Peterson milking video to be public policy.

00:07:04.680 I don't know.

00:07:05.180 That was also a contender for one of the worst takes.

00:07:07.220 Yes.

00:07:07.480 Someone appears to have attached a machine to Jordan Peterson that is milking him for the worst imaginable takes.

00:07:13.180 But then like she also mentioned in this op-ed that like only 1% of the federal budget for like welfare or whatever goes to promoting marriage.

00:07:21.920 That sounds like too much of the welfare budget, frankly.

00:07:24.100 And the thing is, this is actually already a large component of our poverty alleviation strategy because in 1996, they made welfare be like block grants to states.

00:07:34.380 States can decide how they spend it. 0.99

00:07:36.040 And a lot of states, especially conservative states, spend their welfare budgets on these fucking asinine promoting marriage. 0.99

00:07:42.580 Like this is why marriage is good classes, which are one of the least effective poverty alleviation strategies. 1.00

00:07:48.320 Wow. What's what's a less effective poverty alleviation strategy?

00:07:51.360 Did you know that it's good to settle down?

00:07:54.100 They're basically asking, they're using irrelevant data to promote more of something we're already doing and doesn't work.

00:08:00.920 Yeah.

00:08:01.120 And then another one, this is recency bias, but then there was a couple weeks ago, this sort of, this discourse has kind of been around, bouncing around all year.

00:08:09.940 And then this has now culminated in this atrocious Washington Post editorial, which I'm sure you saw.

00:08:15.260 This was my first one because this is like popular demand.

00:08:18.620 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:08:19.140 Walk us through it, Peter.

00:08:20.600 All right.

00:08:21.020 So, yeah, the Washington Post editorial board, the headline is, if attitudes don't shift, a political dating mismatch will threaten marriage.

00:08:32.080 Threaten marriage.

00:08:33.600 And I guess even though you read it as well, I will send you some of the choice quotes.

00:08:39.100 Choice.

00:08:39.480 I wonder if we highlighted the same paragraphs because I have three yellow, yellow paragraphs.

00:08:44.340 I only have two.

00:08:45.200 Oh, yeah.

00:08:45.400 This is the one where they're calling for a vibe shift.

00:08:47.160 Okay. Americans have increasingly sorted themselves according to ideological orientation.

00:08:52.920 They are working, living, and socializing with people who think the same things that they do,

00:08:57.180 particularly on college campuses. A culture of seeking sameness has set up young Americans

00:09:02.360 for disappointment. They expect people to share their own convictions and commitments.

00:09:06.740 A cultural shift might be necessary, one that views politics as part of people's identities,

00:09:11.540 but far from the most important part. Americans' ability to live together,

00:09:14.940 quite literally might depend on it i love that they threw college students in here yeah like 0.99

00:09:19.980 this broad sociological phenomenon fuck these kids they can't resist like there's no like data or 0.97

00:09:26.940 anything that like they mention that links us directly to college campuses in reality there 0.98

00:09:31.720 is some some data about younger people drawing like harder lines about what political identities

00:09:37.240 they're willing to date but in my mind the subtext here is like no one wants to date republicans

00:09:43.980 anymore yeah totally yeah which is basically women because men are much more likely to be

00:09:47.940 conservatives yeah right and i feel like this is unsettling in two ways first in the micro it's

00:09:54.400 essentially like look ladies you should be open to dating people who believe that you should not

00:09:59.940 have reproductive autonomy spend your life with someone who just doesn't respect you at all uh

00:10:05.980 that is and you know that's like the sort of solution being offered here implicitly and then

00:10:10.460 second, like in the macro, we have this broad problem of political polarization, which has all

00:10:15.960 of these complex systemic causes. And this is sort of like putting the moral responsibility for

00:10:21.640 that issue onto individuals as if polarization would go away if we all just pretended to like

00:10:27.520 each other. Right. In reality, what's happening is like as politics polarize around you, you are

00:10:33.780 forced to make choices like this, no matter what you do. Right. Like as your median conservative

00:10:39.840 gravitates towards being a QAnon guy, you know, even a moderate woman on a college campus

00:10:48.780 is now forced to make a choice that she didn't previously have to make, right? 0.79

00:10:52.300 Do I want to date a QAnon guy or not? 1.00

00:10:54.660 Or do I want to treat him as a fixer-upper, which always works? 1.00

00:10:58.860 Ladies, you can fix him. 1.00

00:11:00.260 That should have been the headline.

00:11:02.420 I also think that kind of on a logistical note, it's very funny to me that they bring

00:11:06.520 up college campuses because, of course, college campuses are relatively like ideologically

00:11:10.360 coherent.

00:11:11.420 Like most people do subscribe to like more left wing beliefs.

00:11:14.460 But that's kind of the breakdown of this entire article is that like we are sorting

00:11:18.820 along ideological lines.

00:11:20.460 But a lot of that is kind of geographical and institutional.

00:11:23.460 Right.

00:11:23.640 If you're a conservative and you live in a conservative state, you can date conservatives

00:11:27.180 because they're all around you.

00:11:28.060 And if you're a liberal and you live in a liberal city, you can date other liberals

00:11:30.500 because that's who's around you.

00:11:31.700 Yeah.

00:11:31.900 It's like they're linking this to this kind of this thing that like threatens marriage.

00:11:36.520 Like, is this the end of marriage as we know it?

00:11:38.560 And like, as we discussed in our rules episode, people have been fretting about this since

00:11:42.320 the literal 1700s.

00:11:44.160 We're not going to stop like coupling up and like having babies anytime soon.

00:11:48.940 And the fact that people have different ideological beliefs has nothing to do with falling marriage

00:11:54.740 rates.

00:11:55.160 Marriage rates are falling because people are waiting longer to get married, basically. 1.00

00:11:58.200 Right.

00:11:58.460 And like the divorce rates are also falling because like people might actually be in happier

00:12:01.960 marriages than they used to be in previous generations.

00:12:03.780 This is not – the sort of underlying crisis is not really a crisis.

00:12:09.160 They also – I don't know if you noticed this, but they're talking about like the ideology gap and like women are more likely to be liberal and men are more likely to be conservative.

00:12:16.680 And they say the ideology gap is particularly pronounced among Gen Z white people.

00:12:22.280 And they talk about like white conservatives, whatever.

00:12:24.100 But Gen Z is only 50% white.

00:12:25.920 And so like it's weird to sort of I don't know how like explicitly or like consciously they're doing this, but it's like white people kind of quote unquote resorting to like marrying minorities because they have the same ideological beliefs as them is not bad.

00:12:44.200 There's also – there's just something fundamentally weird about this, like, broad implication that you don't have to vote for Republicans, of course, right?

00:12:52.660 This is a democracy.

00:12:53.840 But you should be willing to spend the rest of your life with one.

00:12:56.740 Yeah.

00:12:57.500 That's a sacrifice that we all need to think hard about for some reason.

00:13:01.760 In the same paragraph that you sent me, they also say – they're talking about these, like, ideological divides.

00:13:06.600 And they say, unfortunately, Americans have not equipped themselves to discuss, debate, and reason across these divides.

00:13:12.700 And, like, this is something that people just kind of say now.

00:13:16.000 I don't actually think that there's any evidence that this is the case.

00:13:18.600 A lot of people are fine with, like, their more conservative family members and even having, like, more conservative friends.

00:13:24.400 I think most people are adults and, like, if anything, are, like, too reluctant to draw lines in the sand about this.

00:13:31.760 Also, one of my favorite things, because, you know, I read these, like, reactionary centrist substacks, like, this whole kind of substack world I find darkly fascinating.

00:13:39.980 What's your Substack budget just for reading Substack psychos?

00:13:44.720 I do not pay for any.

00:13:45.760 For the record, I do not pay for any.

00:13:47.640 I'm imagining you writing off like $400 a month in like Barry Weiss Substack subscriptions.

00:13:55.060 My Jesse single budget every month sending it to the IRS? 0.99

00:13:59.320 No, fuck no. 0.99

00:14:00.420 But one thing that these people are obsessed with is how leftists will sometimes be like, 0.99

00:14:06.280 it's not my job to educate you, right?

00:14:08.320 Like, sometimes you're kind of debating with somebody and you're like, what's your evidence for that claim?

00:14:12.220 And they're like, it's not my job to educate you.

00:14:14.340 But, like, they often use this as evidence for, like, nobody wants to debate anymore. 0.99

00:14:19.220 But I think the key distinction is that people don't want to debate on social media with some fucking just-asking-questions asshole. 0.97

00:14:28.500 I think that it's totally legitimate to have, like, different standards for behavior online and in person. 0.99

00:14:34.300 like in person i do actually have friends that are like relatively conservative and i'm

00:14:38.180 perfectly happy to like walk people through data on like oh actually like the trans right stuff

00:14:42.760 like it's not really the case that kids are getting surgeries without assessment like let's

00:14:46.220 let's talk about i'm actually totally happy to do that online i'm not though online the 0.97

00:14:50.060 fucking slightest hint of transphobia you are fucking blocked right that's not like oh ideologically 0.96

00:14:55.180 like mike can't handle debate or whatever it's like that's that's not the experience that i want 0.99

00:14:59.580 to have online right when you're talking politics on social media you're sort of constantly 0.97

00:15:03.880 debating and so everyone hits their wall right and it's like yeah i don't want to fucking talk 0.77

00:15:08.260 to this with some with some person who's probably not acting in good faith and who it wouldn't 0.84

00:15:13.020 matter if i change their mind anyway right dude i was did i i think i already told you this when

00:15:18.060 we weren't recording but i was in an uber the other day talking about the weather and then he's

00:15:22.500 like oh my my daughter like runs when it's sunny or something he mentioned daughter or something

00:15:27.640 something and i was like oh how old's your daughter he's like oh she's 35 now her mom's 0.99

00:15:32.100 a narcissistic bitch zero to 60 and then he's like uh ranting about like queer people and stuff 0.97

00:15:43.560 and it was just like okay i guess we're just like doing this but i was nice good for you 0.99

00:15:49.920 not being immediately clocked as gay i don't even know how that's possible but i was so proud that

00:15:54.860 was all i could think oh my god do you think i'm straight oh it's like flipping my hair around i'm

00:15:59.600 like the straightest but anyway i i didn't like have a meltdown right right sorry i'm dying at 0.93

00:16:06.420 this guy i'm dying at this guy who's like see see his little little twink mike hobs in his back seat 1.00

00:16:12.120 and it's like i'm gonna first i'm gonna tell this guy how about about how my ex is a bitch 1.00

00:16:17.420 and then i'm gonna rant about gays only a straight person would refer to a 41 year old 0.98

00:16:23.540 five foot six man as a twink very adorable of you peter thank you i thought that twink was entirely

00:16:28.700 about being short and skinny uh speaking of which this is my next this is my next nominee which i

00:16:34.400 don't think i don't think you would have clocked this okay so this is we're reaching back through

00:16:40.040 time this is from june there is a new york times op-ed by a person named richard morgan who i've

00:16:47.160 never heard of before and the op-ed is called as a gay man i'll never be normal and there's been

00:16:53.900 this kind of wave this year of basically straight media plucking gay men out of obscurity to be

00:17:01.780 like, wow, gay rights has really gone too far. The entire piece is pushing back against like

00:17:07.320 over-representation. So he actually like says this at one point and he starts out by saying,

00:17:13.160 you know, there's all this discourse about how like the percentage of LGBT people is like growing

00:17:17.780 and it's now 7% of the population identifies as LGBT. And he's like, well, you know, it sounds

00:17:23.220 like it's so big like it sounds like we're kind of everywhere but actually if you look into the

00:17:27.360 numbers more than half are bisexuals and if you take the bisexuals out it's only three percent 0.64

00:17:34.040 i'm always controlling for bisexuals yeah why would you remove the bisexuals though 0.98

00:17:39.400 they're in the fucking acronym and like the danger that he's warning against he has this absurd 0.99

00:17:46.340 fucking thing about how like the aclu has tweeted out like trans people belong everywhere which is 0.99

00:17:51.880 like a nice little phrase and then he fact checks it he's like actually trans people are only one 0.98

00:17:56.920 percent of the population they'll never be everywhere i don't think that's what they mean

00:18:00.600 yeah that's not what they mean when they say trans people belong everywhere they don't mean

00:18:04.500 100 of the population physically uh trans people could not be everywhere at once

00:18:09.840 keep that voice peter that's good save it i can i can only do um like a super nerd from like the 0.99

00:18:19.620 symptoms basically or the brooklyn tough guy that's it it's just like shut the fuck i love 0.97

00:18:25.720 that he's not counting you know how sometimes weirdly racist people will be like did you know 0.98

00:18:30.060 that obama's actually half white you know these guys are half straight keep in mind like that's

00:18:35.760 that's how they view bisexuality as just being half straight he says the make-believe of over

00:18:40.940 representation is a kind of reverse closet where instead of pushing queer americans to pretend to

00:18:46.240 be heterosexual we ask the broader culture to costume as more queer than it is i feel i haven't

00:18:52.620 talked about this on the podcast but i feel like it's us straights in the closet now

00:18:56.760 the whole piece i was just like just say you hate yourself this is taking forever it's exhausting

00:19:03.160 and like this is the same year where we had david sedaris being like they want to call me queer 0.98

00:19:09.000 and that's bad i'm gay and like david no one fucking cares what you call yourself right just 0.99

00:19:14.660 a fucking word you know fucking andrew sullivan has been banging this drum forever he's like 0.99

00:19:18.280 he's like gatekeeping queerness he's like oh these aren't like real queers but it's like 0.99

00:19:23.420 this is actually the future that liberals want right i think it's fucking great that more people 0.90

00:19:29.320 are identifying as bisexual and like exploring that and like it's so demeaning to say that like

00:19:35.340 that doesn't count right when like a lot of people like i know people who are in sort of

00:19:39.260 quote-unquote heterosexual relationships like opposite sex marriages and they're monogamous

00:19:43.700 There's this weird move to be like, oh, well, they're not really bisexual. 0.86

00:19:47.740 Right.

00:19:47.940 But why?

00:19:48.660 Why would you take that away from somebody?

00:19:50.200 That's actually fine for them to identify that way, even if for the rest of their lives,

00:19:54.380 they're monogamous with an opposite sex partner.

00:19:56.440 It doesn't mean they're not bisexual anymore.

00:19:57.960 I'm married to my wife, but it doesn't mean that I'm no longer like, quote unquote,

00:20:02.240 interested in women. 0.98

00:20:03.040 Like, I'm not. 0.98

00:20:03.460 Yeah, exactly.

00:20:03.800 I'm still straight there.

00:20:05.220 Just because I've committed to one person doesn't mean doesn't like invalidate my sexuality

00:20:09.760 in some way.

00:20:10.320 And, like, the reason this feels like dog whistle transphobia to me is because there's this panic about, like, what if kids are identifying as trans?

00:20:16.860 And then it turns out they're not trans.

00:20:18.860 And, like, that's not a bad outcome. 1.00

00:20:21.080 That's actually fine.

00:20:22.140 If more people are open to, like, maybe thinking they're bisexual and then they explore that and then a couple years later they're like, oh, it turns out I'm heterosexual.

00:20:29.580 That's fine.

00:20:30.120 That's like a future ally to me. 0.93

00:20:31.680 I think a world where people are able to explore their sexuality is better than one that we've had for most of human history where people just had to tamp this shit down and never really know that part of themselves. 0.93

00:20:42.440 Like, it's so weird to me to see actual gay people being like, oh, some of them aren't even bisexual. 0.99

00:20:47.780 Who fucking cares, man? 1.00

00:20:49.180 The greatest argument for LGBT rights has always just been who gives a shit. 1.00

00:20:52.940 Yeah. 0.99

00:20:53.160 This is not your problem.

00:20:54.760 Just move on. 1.00

00:20:55.980 Go, like, have sex with straight presenting gay dudes or whatever you're doing. 1.00

00:21:01.680 Have a blast. 1.00

00:21:02.460 Do the Andrew Sullivan where you try to try your best to present straight and then have

00:21:06.880 an extremely dark online life.

00:21:10.960 By which you mean his writing career.

00:21:12.560 There's nothing else that you would be referring to there.

00:21:14.540 OK, but then, Peter, the entire reason we're talking about this is so that we can read.

00:21:18.560 This is not the worst take of the year, but this is the worst paragraph of the year.

00:21:23.120 So I'm going to send this to you. 1.00

00:21:24.760 Do it in a gay voice, Peter. 1.00

00:21:25.980 Do it. 1.00

00:21:26.440 No problem.

00:21:27.360 Do it.

00:21:27.580 i know you have one in your back pocket i don't even know what you mean

00:21:33.360 i still don't fit in and not just in the straight world i don't watch exhausting exhausting i don't

00:21:42.140 watch rupaul's drag race i've never been to fire island my skincare routine is soap i wear old 0.65

00:21:50.960 navy and a raggedy bucket hat queer folks ask me if i'm a top a bottom or verse and i give the most

00:21:56.920 unpopular answer why wouldn't i want to love my partner every way i can 0.98

00:22:01.140 so verse yeah thank you the whole internet erupted when this fucking thing came out like 0.99

00:22:09.440 verse that's verse that's verse buddy i'm sorry but this is so fucking stupid first of all use 0.99

00:22:16.620 moisturizer every straight guy i know for the past decade has been rocking at the very least 0.99

00:22:24.340 a basic moisturization routine it is very funny to me when gay people like do this like straight 0.99

00:22:29.640 fitting in shit and then straight people like you're overdoing it you know you can wear skinny 0.99

00:22:34.300 jeans man it's fine now we're we're moisturizing every every street guy has one bravo show we're 1.00

00:22:41.000 well past this this this is just like i'm cultureless and nobody likes me yeah and i'm

00:22:47.300 completely unwilling like as a matter of principle to engage in anything that i associate with modern

00:22:55.360 gay culture yeah i hate myself so much i've invented a bizarre fourth category that doesn't

00:23:01.580 fall under top bottom or verse yeah i'm tired of people asking me whether i'm like left or right 0.97

00:23:05.980 handed but wouldn't i want to hold a tennis racket any way that i can he's right that that is the

00:23:10.760 most unpopular answer because uh it's the worst way to answer the question exactly just tedious

00:23:16.940 God. Imagine hating yourself so much that you wear bucket hats and I was just like an adult gay man. 0.95

00:23:25.240 I also I really do blame the straights for this whole thing more than I blame like this individual person, because like what he's expressing here is a very typical stage of coming out of the closet. 0.91

00:23:38.400 it. I think that like for gay people, if you're growing up gay, there's certain kinds of 0.89

00:23:42.420 representation that you see. And like when you go to gay nightclubs, you're seeing a certain kind

00:23:47.100 of gay person. And like, it can make you a little bit uncomfortable because you're like, I don't 1.00

00:23:50.840 look like these people. I don't really feel like I fit in with these people. But there's this,

00:23:54.400 this stage where you're like, I don't want to put a label on it. I'm not, I'm not like those other

00:23:59.460 gays. I'm into sports. Like I don't watch, I don't watch RuPaul's Drag Race. And honestly, 1.00

00:24:04.200 eventually you outgrow that. It's like white people having a libertarian phase. You eventually 0.62

00:24:10.180 realize that no one cares. There's no pressure to watch RuPaul's Drag Race. I don't watch RuPaul's

00:24:14.740 Drag Race. No one fucking cares. It's not that interesting. What he thinks he's doing is 0.99

00:24:19.460 challenging straight people's bigotry. He's doing this like, look, not all of us are these effeminate

00:24:25.320 prancing queens. That's what he thinks he's doing. What he's actually doing is reinforcing

00:24:31.720 their bigotry. He is giving them a license to, when they see those prancing queens on the street

00:24:38.780 or as a barista or whatever, to go, hey, why can't you be like this other gay guy? Why can't 0.98

00:24:44.140 you be like this guy in the New York Times? He's not so effeminate. I can't even really tell that

00:24:48.880 he's gay. He's like wearing fucking flannel or whatever the fuck he's bragging about in this 1.00

00:24:52.360 stupid op-ed. He is throwing other gay people under the bus in an effort to demonstrate his 1.00

00:25:00.080 proximity to straightness maybe i mean you probably have stronger opinions about this than 0.99

00:25:04.920 me but there is in my view sort of like a like a young gay monoculture to a degree and now that's

00:25:12.220 not like unusual like there's a yeah there's like a young straight guy monoculture too it's just that

00:25:18.060 we don't like wrestle with it as part of our identity because because we're all quite comfortable

00:25:23.820 sliding in and out of it oh don't say sliding in and out after we just talked about top bottom

00:25:28.340 verse Peter what's the problem what's the problem with loving whatever terminology

00:25:32.380 yeah I think I mean this is something that like I don't think any straight person would ever

00:25:41.540 describe what they're doing as like exploring my heterosexuality right that is something people do

00:25:46.920 right and you kind of figure out what kind of heterosexual you're going to be and for gay 0.99

00:25:50.860 people this process is oftentimes delayed because you're in the fucking closet yeah and then there's 0.99

00:25:55.440 also this weird second coming out of the closet where you're like i have to now be among gay 0.99

00:26:00.080 people and like that can be really traumatic because we all see these fucking movies where 0.98

00:26:03.340 it's like oh we're just all gonna be at nightclubs all the time and having a great time and that's 0.89

00:26:06.240 only like 20 of it yeah exactly and people just beat you in the street if you're like i don't

00:26:11.800 watch rupaul's drag race just explosion of violence leave leave this brunch right now

00:26:16.260 but that that is a a real like it's something that oftentimes like the broader culture because

00:26:23.640 that culture is filtered through straight people culture doesn't prepare you for as a gay person

00:26:28.740 right and so we all figure out like what kind of gay person we're going to be and that means like

00:26:34.000 trying on different identities for a while and for a lot of people trying on this like oh i'm not i'm

00:26:39.880 not like the other gays it's like part of that identity formation so it's like this person is

00:26:45.080 arguing against exactly the thing that could make him happier right a future where they're you know

00:26:51.480 7% of the population identifies as LGBT and like, ooh, half of them are bisexual.

00:26:56.840 Let's get that up.

00:26:57.720 Let's get those numbers up, right?

00:26:59.120 Because a world where there's more queer people is also a world where there's more

00:27:03.800 types of queerness and it's easier to explore the kind of queer person that you want to

00:27:08.340 be, right? 0.97

00:27:09.220 This was published the fucking month that we had like the Target pride display meltdown 0.99

00:27:13.680 and the Bud Light meltdown. 0.99

00:27:15.560 And it's like straight editors are commissioning these fucking pieces and being like, well, 0.99

00:27:20.220 isn't hasn't it all gone a little too far like kids are all identifying as bisexual now let's 1.00

00:27:24.940 get our worst dressed gay on the case let's get our our flakiest skinned gay to write a column 0.96

00:27:33.520 about this that was the most heterophobic thing you've said on the podcast i'm proud of you 0.99

00:27:39.800 you're a self-hating straight person when i'm watching um below deck i uh i have to be looking 0.55

00:27:46.700 at pictures of hot chicks on my phone to balance it out okay what is your next one peter my next 0.97

00:27:52.800 nomination is not a single take as much as a series of takes by the same organization and

00:28:01.000 really the same person and this is basically best summed up as the last month and a half

00:28:07.300 of the adl oh under the helm of jonathan greenblatt

00:28:13.240 .

If Books Could Kill - December 21, 2023

The Worst Takes of 2023 [TEASER]

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