If you would have told us on April Fool’s Day, 2016, back when this lil’ podcast emerged from the eternal darkness, that eight years later we’d be hanging out with special media ladies in fancy Manhattan studios cackling like hyenas about the news, well, maybe Moynihan and Kmele would have said, “Well, duh.”
Me? I’m grateful (and very amused) just to be here, and want to give a birthday thank-you to each and every one of you 34,817 subscribers, especially the nearly one-quarter who help fund our operations (and cushion our career choices) through the generous shelling-out of your hard-earned scratch. (NFC’ers, you know you know.) Gracias, y’all!
* We have unlocked something truly special in our monthly meatspace meetups with Megyn Kelly at SiriusXM. Kmele has to fly across country, Megyn has to get out of her pajamas, Sirius honcho Liz Aiello has to make us delicious chocolate chip cookies, the Green Room has to produce such marvelous WTFery as a 20-minute conversation about health care price transparency with Fat Joe (totally not making that up), and that’s all before the on-mic magic happens. We were THEEEES close Thursday to starting Megyn’s show without her (“Hey everyone…SURPRISE!”), because the star was stuck in Biden-fundraiser traffic and some of us are old enough to remember Al Haig…. Maybe next time. At any rate we talked about the tale of two presidential NYC visits, the Vanderbilt tampon sit-in, MSNBC’s Ronna (Romney) McDaniel freakout, and most spectacularly (YouTube-views-wise) our friend Coleman Hughes’s winning unflappability on The View. Whole show:
* Here is young Coleman (veteran of Episodes #121, #144, #181, #188, #201, #379, #412 & #442) handling angry-lady incoming:
* Then there was the night before….
Finally got Kat Rosenfield (rhymes with wield) on the pod, and used the opportunity to break in the new penthouse studio (including kibbitzing/casting couch w/ drink-holders) for #448. Moynihan showed up with an eye-crossing hangover, Kmele had just ingested 20 milligrams of something, our generous host was pouring pitchers of Negronis, and everyone had apparently forgotten to eat all day, so what I’m saying is we understand fan service.
Here's that #143 tale of Moynihan getting arrested, here’s a reddit Jesse Singal appreciation thread, and here’s some related Rosenfieldia from the month of March: “How MeToo Became Too Cringe for America,” “How Old Do I Look?: A new TikTok trend promises that millennials will age about as gracefully as they’ve done everything else;” and “Is Black Trauma Porn Over?” Oh, and here’s Kat’s “scenes from the beach,” her appearance this week on the pod of Ethan Strauss (#185, #333, #383, Members Only #151, #408), and another recent discussion with Comedy Cellar honcho Noam Dworman:
* Sad news! After seven insane and occasionally sober years, Compound Media has axed the terrific/shambolic Mornin’!!! show with hosts Joanne Goodhart and Bill Schulz (#79, Special Dispatch 72). You will see many a familiar face on the inevitable farewell montage:
* Speaking of which, our pals Nancy Rommelmann (#79, S.D. #27, S.D. #30, #198, #203, S.D. #34, S.D. #50, S.D. #64, S.D. #111) and Mike Pesca (#343, #418) and gave a talk/Q&A 10 days ago at the Brotherhood Synagogue in Manhattan about their respective post-Oct. 7 reporting trips to Israel. Muchas Fifdomas were in the casa.
* Our one truly "lost” episode -- as in, the conversation wasn’t even recorded; IT DO NOT EXIST -- was a few years back with the straight-shootin’ criminal justice thinker (and ex-cop) Peter Moskos. Reason’s Just Asking Questions podcast with Liz Wolfe and Zach Weissmueller recently had Moskos on to talk New York City crime, broken windows policing, and the state of various reform efforts:
* Hey, events!
Moynihan is apparently one of “The world’s leading thinkers,” since he’s participating in the Dissident Dialogues May 3-4 in New York City, along with a host of former Fifth Column guests, including Anna Khachiyan (#219), Eli Lake (#52, #65, #141, #174, S.D. #51, #326, #368, #407, M.O. #184), Greg Lukianoff (#216, M.O. #183, #427), John McWhorter (#84, #121, #188 & #366), and Jacob Siegel (#36, #70, #193). Tickets start at the low low price of … $349.
Somewhat more affordable if less ambitious is the Free Press/FIRE debate on immigration in Austin Dallas, Texas, on April 11 featuring Ann Coulter and Sohrab Ahmari for Team Restrictionist, Cenk Uygur and Nick Gillespie (S.D. #72 & #379) for letting them in.
* Comment of the Week (because I thankfully have no clue on the subject matter), comes, with light editing, from pgwermer:
Candace Owens backstory -- she didn't come out of nowhere, she came out of Gamergate, and if you want the backstory of that early culture war blowup, listen to the latest episode of Blocked & Reported. Interestingly, she started out on the social-justicey anti-Gamergate side, building a database of pro-Gamergate "harassers." This was seen as a grift by the folks she was supposed to be allied with, and long story short, she ended up flipping sides and took a rapid trajectory toward far-right politics. Ian Miles Cheong was another figure that stared out as an obscure anti-GGer, and underwent a similar trajectory to Candace Owens. Milo Yiannopoulos was yet another right-wing culture warrior who gained greater notoriety on the coattails of support for Gamergate. On the other side, anti-Gamergate launched the careers of several ultra-progressives, notably Arthur Chu, Brianna Wu, and Zoe Quinn, and also raised the profile of feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian. However, the latter bunch all seem to have a much lower profile these days -- basically, their high-profile opposition to Gamergate gave them a proverbial 15 minutes of fame that they couldn't sustain once that cultural moment had passed.
* Email of the Week comes from Scott M.:
Gentlemen. . . .and Moynihan (gotta play the hits),
I was working my way through some old episodes and in the middle of Special Dispatch #75 from July 2021, Kmele responds [beginning after the 64-minute mark] to a very stupid tweet from Cori Bush about the 4th of July. He speaks extemporaneously for approximately three straight minutes about America as an idea rather than as a place and while I won’t say it moved me to tears, I will say that I’m considering getting the entire transcription tattooed across my back (Matt simply responded to Kmele by saying “Wow”). I found it so awesome that I gifted a friend of mine a month’s subscription just he could listen to it (I’m friends with a few cheap reprobates, what can I say). I first became aware of you guys after Moynihan appeared on House of Strauss last year and listened to approximately five minutes before subscribing as fast as I could. While I’m sure you three don’t define yourselves (at least totally) by the number of congratulatory listener emails, I hope the inbox is inundated with messages from people like me who have found you to be a voice of reason and, to use a Strauss-ian phrase, a market inefficiency to be exploited for people who are just sick to death of all the fucking bullshit from whichever corner of the media to which they turn. As I left the gym after hearing Kmele expound, the sunny morning was that much brighter and it led me to hope that one day this country will in fact live up to its ideals and that my work will pay for me to fly everywhere first class so I don’t have to count on upgrades to experience basic human decency.
Much appreciated
The much appreciation is ours, Scott! For the rest of you, the Gift Subscription Link is right here! As a bonus, here’s Kmele being awesome last year on a Megyn Kelly overtime deal about the National Anthem:
Walkoff music: I had forgotten in the course of prior micro-tiffs to advertise my latest seasonal playlist, from whence comes this banger:
I will always remember the Moynihan arrest story as I totaled my Mazda CX-5 while listening to it.
Preach, Scott M.! It's exactly how I felt when I found TFC.
Congratulations on 8 years, grateful for so much back catalogue to still go through.