A sober first segment about war and death is interrupted by our chaotic and fatphobic friend Ben Dreyfuss, who joins the Fifth to discuss his insane Twitter account and why he keeps making people really mad.
As a “self-styled” Ben Dreyfuss super-fan (after all my Fifdom fantasy football team is named Dreyfuss’ Good Eye) I can say with authority that this was a banger. Thanks gents!
Only partway through the podcast (Sorry guys, Smoke Em came out first today so that was the priority) but I wanted to post a correction. France did not lose 22% of its population in WW1. They had 1.4M deaths among the armed forces (or 18% of men who served. That might be the figure Matt was remembering. That was enough though. Their prewar population was barely 40M. On August 22 1914 27,000 French soldiers died (even more than Brits on the first day of the Somme. The bloodiest day in French history. And it was only the beginning.
I guess I am the only one who remembers that Matt Yglesias’s fatal error was signing the Harper’s Letter along with mean scary ladies JK Rowling and Katie Herzog.
Specifically, in a fit of narcissistic delusion, Yglesias’s former colleague Emily St. James (born Todd VanDerWerff) alleged that, in addition to the “presence” of “prominent anti-trans voices,” the Harper’s Letter contained “dog whistles toward anti-trans positions,” which made St. James “feel less safe” and “my job slightly more difficult.” St. James was publicly supported by fellow transgender Vox editors Katelyn Burns and Aja Romano, and Ezra Klein sold Yglesias down the river.
(For the record, St. James is a heterosexual male in a twenty-year heterosexual marriage to a heterosexual female and began to publicly self-identify as a transwoman in 2017; Burns is also a heterosexual male who self-identifies as a transwoman; Romano is a heterosexual female who self-identifies as “non-binary”; and Klein is a dickless male-impersonator.)
Sean McMeekin's Stalin's War details what we gave to the Soviets during WWII and the quantity is just mind-blowing. Roosevelt bent over backwards to give Stalin whatever he demanded.
Am I nuts or has he finally jumped the shark? I have always loved the man's films. The way he always sprinkles in social problems of the past and of today in baseball, the civil war, even the national parks it always seemed like medicine in the sugar for me. But it seems to me over the last few he is tipping more and more medicine in there. I have yet to see the doc, and I will totally be watching it. But, the kind of dancing he does with Bari about drawing parallels between the nazi's and the holocaust to america today really made me... idk, wobbly? Just tell me I am nuts, and I will go back to my bourbon.
It felt so odd to me. I totally get Bari not going completely HAM on him as she would someone else, I mean its KEN BURNS. I would LOVE to pick that dude's brain. But at the same time, it felt like he was totally dodging, and did his best to only heavily imply, not outright state, what we should think about the current politics. It's gonna be in my head for a while, so I guess that is something.
I do not get the Ken Burns love. I've only seen the National Parks and the baseball documentaries (and I'm not sure I watched all of the baseball one). I learned some things, but beyond that I was thoroughly underwhelmed. The narratives are just OK and the visual style is so boring. Slow-panning over still photographs just isn't visually engaging for me. The National Parks especially disappointed me. We're talking about a collection of some of the most stunningly beautiful natural scenery on Earth, and the production quality seemed like something out of the 1990s. It often felt like there were using stock footage. I was shocked when I saw that it was made in 2009.
I have yet but it’s in my queue. For the reasons you mentioned I’m wary. I couldn’t bring myself to watch his latest on the Holocaust because it felt too politicized.
He has always had that politicization habit, but in his earlier docs it never seemed all that, idk, ham fisted? What really worries me is that at some point, getting on in years, he might decide to revisit his catalog of work and kind of "update" things to be more "of the times". Gonna be downloading those series now in any case cause the baseball, civil war, national parks and the New York one (was that his brother?) really are gems.
Tár is pretty straight forward. Its about an individual who lost themselves along the way to success. Its a story about renewal through self destruction.
Tár was in love with music when she was young but in following after the composers who inspired that love she got wrapped up in the position, the power, the prestige. . .the bullshit. . .and it hollowed her out. The affected accent was entirely on purpose. She was, in every way, a fraud, manipulating and abusing everyone she encountered. That was why her family gave her so much shit when, having nothing and noone, she returned home. Her name, her accent, all of it, totally contrived. That was what lay at the root of the matter even though you are three quarters of the way through the film before the vital piece is shared. It was that hypocrisy and contradiction that drove her to possess, prey upon, or ruin anyone who was able to make their way through talent alone or retained a sense of authentic individuality. She felt justified having sacrificed so much of herself to conformity to arrive at success in exacting from them this specific emolument.
I thought it was a pretty solid little film because it is a very human thing to become overwhelmed by accomplishment and get so wrapped in the things we are doing that we lose sight of how we got there, why it was important to us, what he had hoped for, and who we really are. Obviously this is an extreme case, both in terms of the success and the descent, but that exaggeration is necessary to make the themes palpable enough to grasp on an initial viewing. Cate Blachett is a chick playing a chick playing another chick and she absolutely killed it.
You guys should have Andrew Heaton on the pod to discuss Ukraine. He’s a libertarian comedian with an international relations masters (and I think has some affiliation with reason?). He considers himself a foreign policy realist and is skeptical of Ukraine intervention but very anti-Russia and not a conspiracy theorist. Would be very interesting to hear you guys discuss the war
Oh, I back this HARD. I love Heaton's podcast, and the only reason I know it exists is because they mentioned it on an episode of the Reason Roundtable a few months ago.
I think it'd be great to have Heaton and Dave Smith on the same episode to talk about the war. Doubt it'd ever happen, but a dude can dream. I'm pretty septical of a lot of what Smith says and I think he and his cohost Rob are kind of dumb, so I'm definitely coming at this from a pretty biased perspective. But I think it'd be interesting to hear Heaton's and Smith's differing perspectives.
A day or two ago Dreyfuss Jr. tweeted something along the lines of “What if we just agree to run a moderate Democrat who can win?” and I thought to myself “oh, THAT’S why you got fired from Mother Jones.”
Ben on Rocky is everything we need and didn’t know to ask for.
yes but I hope this doesn't mean we get Woke Rocky punching the TERFS
The Terven won’t be tolerating any of that 🤨
As a “self-styled” Ben Dreyfuss super-fan (after all my Fifdom fantasy football team is named Dreyfuss’ Good Eye) I can say with authority that this was a banger. Thanks gents!
Fuck thats a good team name. I will steal that for my personal leagues and probably not credit you, but thank you for your service Bill.
There’s a bit of subtle and great follow up to Rocky getting the advice “Take her to the zoo. Retards love the zoo”.
In Rocky II, Rocky actually does take Adriane to the zoo. She’s clearly bored while Rocky can’t get enough.
https://youtu.be/UCZNyjhoINE
God I love those movies so much more than they deserve to be loved.
"We take a great deal of time preparing for these dispatches"
We all know this means hitting a bottle of tequila for two hours.
Only partway through the podcast (Sorry guys, Smoke Em came out first today so that was the priority) but I wanted to post a correction. France did not lose 22% of its population in WW1. They had 1.4M deaths among the armed forces (or 18% of men who served. That might be the figure Matt was remembering. That was enough though. Their prewar population was barely 40M. On August 22 1914 27,000 French soldiers died (even more than Brits on the first day of the Somme. The bloodiest day in French history. And it was only the beginning.
Great show. Love you guys.
Fuck yes. Thank you
My exact response anytime I see “Ben Dreyfuss is here”
I guess I am the only one who remembers that Matt Yglesias’s fatal error was signing the Harper’s Letter along with mean scary ladies JK Rowling and Katie Herzog.
Specifically, in a fit of narcissistic delusion, Yglesias’s former colleague Emily St. James (born Todd VanDerWerff) alleged that, in addition to the “presence” of “prominent anti-trans voices,” the Harper’s Letter contained “dog whistles toward anti-trans positions,” which made St. James “feel less safe” and “my job slightly more difficult.” St. James was publicly supported by fellow transgender Vox editors Katelyn Burns and Aja Romano, and Ezra Klein sold Yglesias down the river.
(For the record, St. James is a heterosexual male in a twenty-year heterosexual marriage to a heterosexual female and began to publicly self-identify as a transwoman in 2017; Burns is also a heterosexual male who self-identifies as a transwoman; Romano is a heterosexual female who self-identifies as “non-binary”; and Klein is a dickless male-impersonator.)
😂🔥❤️
Sean McMeekin's Stalin's War details what we gave to the Soviets during WWII and the quantity is just mind-blowing. Roosevelt bent over backwards to give Stalin whatever he demanded.
Did anyone catch Bari's interview with Ken Burns?
Am I nuts or has he finally jumped the shark? I have always loved the man's films. The way he always sprinkles in social problems of the past and of today in baseball, the civil war, even the national parks it always seemed like medicine in the sugar for me. But it seems to me over the last few he is tipping more and more medicine in there. I have yet to see the doc, and I will totally be watching it. But, the kind of dancing he does with Bari about drawing parallels between the nazi's and the holocaust to america today really made me... idk, wobbly? Just tell me I am nuts, and I will go back to my bourbon.
You aren't crazy. I listened to it also. I think Bari tried to call him out on it and his answers were very disingenuous.
It felt so odd to me. I totally get Bari not going completely HAM on him as she would someone else, I mean its KEN BURNS. I would LOVE to pick that dude's brain. But at the same time, it felt like he was totally dodging, and did his best to only heavily imply, not outright state, what we should think about the current politics. It's gonna be in my head for a while, so I guess that is something.
I do not get the Ken Burns love. I've only seen the National Parks and the baseball documentaries (and I'm not sure I watched all of the baseball one). I learned some things, but beyond that I was thoroughly underwhelmed. The narratives are just OK and the visual style is so boring. Slow-panning over still photographs just isn't visually engaging for me. The National Parks especially disappointed me. We're talking about a collection of some of the most stunningly beautiful natural scenery on Earth, and the production quality seemed like something out of the 1990s. It often felt like there were using stock footage. I was shocked when I saw that it was made in 2009.
I have yet but it’s in my queue. For the reasons you mentioned I’m wary. I couldn’t bring myself to watch his latest on the Holocaust because it felt too politicized.
He has always had that politicization habit, but in his earlier docs it never seemed all that, idk, ham fisted? What really worries me is that at some point, getting on in years, he might decide to revisit his catalog of work and kind of "update" things to be more "of the times". Gonna be downloading those series now in any case cause the baseball, civil war, national parks and the New York one (was that his brother?) really are gems.
Tár is pretty straight forward. Its about an individual who lost themselves along the way to success. Its a story about renewal through self destruction.
Tár was in love with music when she was young but in following after the composers who inspired that love she got wrapped up in the position, the power, the prestige. . .the bullshit. . .and it hollowed her out. The affected accent was entirely on purpose. She was, in every way, a fraud, manipulating and abusing everyone she encountered. That was why her family gave her so much shit when, having nothing and noone, she returned home. Her name, her accent, all of it, totally contrived. That was what lay at the root of the matter even though you are three quarters of the way through the film before the vital piece is shared. It was that hypocrisy and contradiction that drove her to possess, prey upon, or ruin anyone who was able to make their way through talent alone or retained a sense of authentic individuality. She felt justified having sacrificed so much of herself to conformity to arrive at success in exacting from them this specific emolument.
I thought it was a pretty solid little film because it is a very human thing to become overwhelmed by accomplishment and get so wrapped in the things we are doing that we lose sight of how we got there, why it was important to us, what he had hoped for, and who we really are. Obviously this is an extreme case, both in terms of the success and the descent, but that exaggeration is necessary to make the themes palpable enough to grasp on an initial viewing. Cate Blachett is a chick playing a chick playing another chick and she absolutely killed it.
"Cate Blachett is a chick playing a chick playing another chick..."
Chef's kiss...
Wait does Ben still have a nanny?
Haha no. But we’re still very close.
Please please please ask her about the adventures of the young communist Welshman in Binghamton, NY
https://twitter.com/ingelramdecoucy/status/1616411419674804224?s=46&t=H99W7lVtasWvPA-n5a2L7w
You guys should have Andrew Heaton on the pod to discuss Ukraine. He’s a libertarian comedian with an international relations masters (and I think has some affiliation with reason?). He considers himself a foreign policy realist and is skeptical of Ukraine intervention but very anti-Russia and not a conspiracy theorist. Would be very interesting to hear you guys discuss the war
Oh, I back this HARD. I love Heaton's podcast, and the only reason I know it exists is because they mentioned it on an episode of the Reason Roundtable a few months ago.
I think it'd be great to have Heaton and Dave Smith on the same episode to talk about the war. Doubt it'd ever happen, but a dude can dream. I'm pretty septical of a lot of what Smith says and I think he and his cohost Rob are kind of dumb, so I'm definitely coming at this from a pretty biased perspective. But I think it'd be interesting to hear Heaton's and Smith's differing perspectives.
"In the future, everyone will be a queer icon for 15 minutes."
~Andy Warhol, probably.
I can't believe Ben lasted as long as he did at Mother Jones. He must truly be the greatest social media marketer the world has ever seen.
Loving the new Ben
Underrated remark from Moynihan, in regards to Ben's four-poster bed: "The Lion, the Witch and the Glass Eye".
A day or two ago Dreyfuss Jr. tweeted something along the lines of “What if we just agree to run a moderate Democrat who can win?” and I thought to myself “oh, THAT’S why you got fired from Mother Jones.”
😂❤️