Blocked and Reported

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Bonus: Jesse Interviews Ben Burgis, Author Of "Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left" Jun 06, 2020

Show notes

For this, the first-ever patrons-only Blocked and Reported interview, Jesse interviewed Ben Burgis, a philosopher, prolific writer for Jacobin and other outlets, and the author of Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left. Among other subjects, the duo discussed self-sabotaging messaging on the left, the flaws in Jordan Peterson's conception of 'post-modernism,' and the class element missing from the police-reform discussion. At the end, Jesse tried to get Ben to turn him into a socialist. Did it work? Only one way to find out.

A few articles by Ben: "Socialism and Human Nature," "Capitalism Isn’t Working. But What Would a Viable Socialist System Look Like?," and "Why Jordan Peterson Is Always Wrong."

Below you'll find a guide to what is discussed at which points in the podcast. Enjoy!

12:15 - Ben on the problem with Oxford-style debate

20:30 - Jesse and Ben discuss the dangers of assuming people who make ‘bad’ political choices are fundamentally evil or broken

26:15 - on “if you criticize U.S. foreign policy, you are pro-al-Qaeda” - style argumentation, and the frustrating extent to which the left is now adopting it

29:00 - online, staying chill is the best revenge

31:45 - IT’S JORDAN PETERSON TIME

49:20 - the silliness of the fight over ‘platforming’

52:38 - the problem with making maximalist positions like “abolish the police” the face of leftist movements

56:50 - “DURING PRIDE?????”

1:02:00 - NYC DSA’s deplatforming of Adolph Reed, who stands accused of “class reductionism”

1:04:45 - another DSA controversy, this one over “white saviorism”

1:08:00 - Ben on the overlooked class element of the police-reform debate

1:15:20 - you don’t want to broadcast the myth that white people, particularly poor ones, have nothing at stake in police reform

1:19:55 - Jesse wraps things up by saying, “It’s better to be a wussy liberal than a socialist — CHANGE MY MIND”

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

Episode 13: The Best Podcast Of All New York Times Jun 05, 2020

Show notes

In today's episode, the hosts zero in on an obscure, under-covered newspaper known as "The New York Times." Specifically, they discuss an explosion of employee anger over the paper's decision to publish a column by Sen. Tom Cotton, and what it can (maybe) tell everyone about internal dynamics in some media companies at the moment. Then, they shift gears to a Times article about a nonbinary 7-year-old and discuss the ways in which a certain subgenre of storytelling could be obscuring the nature of gender-identity development. In the show's final, patrons-only segment, Katie tells Jesse about an Instagram controversy involving white liberals trying to show how much they care about racial injustice, but digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole as a result.

Show notes and links (* denotes stuff that happened after our episode went up):

"Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops" - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html

* "Senator’s ‘Send In the Troops’ Op-Ed in The Times Draws Online Ire" - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/business/tom-cotton-op-ed.html

* "New York Times Says Senator’s Op-Ed Did Not Meet Standards" - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/business/new-york-times-op-ed-cotton.html

* "The Inside Story of the Tom Cotton Op-Ed that Rocked the New York Times" - https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/tom-cotton-new-york-times-op-ed-inside-story/
(An article in which Cotton's camp strongly denies the idea of an unusual editorial process)

* "Yesterday two dozen of us who make @nytimes publishing tools called out sick in solidarity with our Black colleagues & in protest of the Cotton op-ed. I was harassed on Twitter all day for it." - https://twitter.com/nzle/status/1268906487377801218

* "The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same. (Thread.)" - https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1268628680797978625

"The Hardest Part of Having a Nonbinary Kid Is Other People" - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/parenting/non-binary-children-support.html

"What Is Gender Identity?" - https://arcdigital.media/what-is-gender-identity-10ce0da71999

"Attention white people: Your #BLM memes are not enough" - https://www.kuow.org/stories/a-letter-to-her-white-friends-on-their-blm-memes

"Blackout Tuesday posts are drowning out vital information shared under the BLM hashtag" - https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/2/21277852/blackout-tuesday-posts-hiding-information-blm-black-lives-matter-hashtag

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

Episode 12: Protests And Riots Everywhere, Media Insane, Things Bad, And So On And So Forth Jun 02, 2020

Show notes

There's so much going on that Katie and Jesse are back again, already. In this episode they discuss the protests and riots popping off all over the country in response to George Floyd's horrific death, the media's predictably sloppy handling of some of the complexities of police reform, and the difference between meaningful and performative activism. Should they appoint themselves leaders of the nationwide movement for criminal justice reform? Hard to say. In the patrons-only segment starting at 41:00, the hosts discuss everyone's antifa obsession and why Jesse is so frustrated with the bougie liberal antiracism that is exploding in popularity during this crisis. (CORRECTION: In this episode we wrongly state that Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential race in a landslide. It was the 1972 race he won quite easily.)

-"The Case for Black Optimism" (Quillette)

-"Police Are Killing Fewer People In Big Cities, But More In Suburban And Rural America" (FiveThirtyEight)

-Samuel Sinyangwe on legislation that might help (Twitter)

-The Fight to Redefine Racism (New Yorker)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

Episode 11: CPK (Central Park Karen), Racist Policing, And The Endless Battle Over Online Shaming May 31, 2020

Show notes

In this week's episode, Katie and Jesse discuss the Amy Cooper/Christian Cooper incident in Central Park. Is this different from other instances of online shaming? Do we lose something when, in trying to understand a complicated problem like police shootings and other abuses, we focus in on individuals rather than institutions and structures? Why are white women so often pilloried these days when white men, like Jesse in particular, are obviously so much worse?

Program notes/links:

-"White People Behaving Badly" (Arc Digital)

-"Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America" (Amazon)

-"Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment" (Amazon)

-"From Power to Prejudice: The Rise of Racial Individualism in Midcentury America" (Amazon) [not mentioned in the episode but Jesse is a fan]

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

Episode 10: "Ronan Farrow, Jia Tolentino, And An International Network Of Powerful Lesbians" May 23, 2020

Show notes

Before jumping into a truly brutal week for media news involving journalists who are younger and more attractive and successful than they are, Jesse and Katie are interrupted by their newly installed Alison Roman Controversy Alarm, forcing them to briefly update listeners on the latest twist in that eternal tale. Then they turn their attention to a PinkNews article positing a global conspiracy of lesbians who are sexual abusers and human traffickers and explain how that ties into the broader, white-hot culture wars involving gender-critical feminists and so-called TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). In the final two segments, the hosts discuss Ben Smith's claims about Ronan Farrow's lackluster fact-checking and Jia Tolentino's blog post about her parents' guilty plea in a human-trafficking case, as well as the telling and arguably disingenuous responses from major media figures to both stories.

Show notes/links:

-Alison Roman’s NY Times Column ‘On Temporary Leave’ After Chrissy Teigen Feud (The Daily Beast)

-The ‘gender critical’ feminist movement is a cult that grooms, controls and abuses, according to a lesbian who managed to escape (PinkNews[!])

-Is Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True? (New York Times)

-Ronan Farrow admits he ‘misspoke’ about his Weinstein reporting. How many times? (Washington Post)

-Is Ben Smith’s Column About Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True? (Slate)

-Jia Tolentino's blog post and tweet about the controversy

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

Patrons Only: Go Team War Eagle, Fight, Fight, Fight! May 22, 2020

Show notes

In their first-ever edition of "🥱 or 🔥," a game in which one cohost tries to convince the other that a given internet controversy is interesting, Jesse regales Katie with the tale of a leftist African-American studies professor who decides to kick off his new lecturer gig at Auburn University by insulting one of the university's football traditions over Twitter. Spoiler alert: His opinions are not well-received! Also in this episode: Jesse's touts the efficacy of "Irish goodbyes" and Katie gives an update about her island hideaway.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

Episode 9: Layoffs And Teigen And Roman And Kondo And Feel-Bad Liberalism May 16, 2020

Show notes

Here's Blocked and Reported, Episode 9: Layoffs And Teigen And Roman And Kondo And Feel-Bad Liberalism.

Our week-to-week schedule varies a great deal. Sometimes the free weekly episode isn't ready until Sunday night. Sometimes, like this week, it's ready significantly earlier. As an extra perk to you, our trusty patrons, we're going to give you early access to the weekly free episodes when our schedules and other obligations allow us to. Enjoy!

Summary:

Katie leads off the show by discussing her layoff from The Stranger and reflecting on her mixed feelings about her time there. This some broader commiseration about just how deeply, profoundly screwed journalism is right now. To lighten things up Jesse reads Katie a poem he wrote for her (it's really good). Then the hosts tie up some loose ends about that whole Chrissy Teigen/Alison Roman/Marie Kondo thing, including the weird, flattening language of "woman of color" and Roman's apology. After that, Jesse unpacks a viral tweetstorm that seems geared at antagonizing sympathetic would-be white anti-racists and explains why he views it as an example of what he calls "feel-bad liberalism." In the final segment, the hosts unveil the show's new Patreon page and ask listeners to empty their banks accounts to support Blocked and Reported.

Show notes/links:

-An email from a listener suggesting we were too dismissive of the race angle of Teigenghazi (Twitter)

-Alison Roman's apology (Twitter)

-Ally Henny's tweetstorm about would-be white allies (Twitter)

-Jesse's original ranty tweetstorm defining feel-bad liberalism (Twitter)

-Feel-Bad Liberalism at the Victoria, BC women's march (Singal-Minded)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

Patrons Only: When Your Training's Shut Down / And It Causes A Frown / That's Damore May 15, 2020

Show notes

In our first-ever Patrons-only episode, we break down an NBC News Article about the latest diversity brouhaha at Google, which leads into a broader discussion about what we expect of diversity programs, whether conservative complaints about the wackier ones have some merit, and the media's coverage of James Damore's memo (which argued, if memory serves, that female employees at Google should be kept in pens like livestock). Plus: What to do when your in-laws think you're hellbound, and a promising left-versus-right format for future eps.

Other lnks: Jesse's article on the IAT, Katie's article on Starbucks' implicit bias trainings, Jesse's newsletter about New York City's controversial Department of Education diversity trainings, Jesse's article about the Damore memo, and the Guardian article in which Cordelia Fine appears unconvinced of said memo's Hitlerianishnessitude.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

We Were (Joe) Biden Our Time But We (Candace) Owens You An Episode About Tara Reade May 11, 2020

Show notes

After Jesse gets things off to a fantastic start with an uplifting story about dog feces, the hosts finally relent and discuss the Joe Biden/Tara Reade situation. Does this case reveal the limits of "believe women"? Of trying to pretend long-ago accusations can be hashed out apolitically? Is anyone acting in good faith here? Then the hosts move on to Candace Owens and her censored-by-Twitter tweet calling for her Michigan followers to defy the government. What is the proper role for a private but exceptionally inlfuential institution like Twitter in a situation like this? The episode finishes with another story from Jesse, this one about his extremely unpleasant online run-in with Owens in 2016.
Show notes:
-The agonizing story of Tara Reade (https://www.vox.com/2020/5/7/21248713/tara-reade-joe-biden-sexual-assault-accusation) (Vox)
-UPDATED: 'Governor-turned-dictator': Candace Owens suspended from Twitter for encouraging Michiganders to go to work (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/governor-turned-dictator-candace-owens-suspended-from-twitter-for-encouraging-michiganders-to-go-to-work) (Washington Examiner)
-What Should Twitter Do About People Like Candace Owens? (https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/what-should-twitter-do-about-people) (Singal-Minded, paywalled)
-The Strange Tale of Social Autopsy, the Anti-Harassment Start-up That Descended Into Gamergate Trutherism (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/how-social-autopsy-fell-for-gamergate-trutherism.html) (NY Mag)
-New York Magazine's Jesse Singal Commits Fraud: Article In Question Should Be Recalled (https://www.change.org/p/new-york-magazine-new-york-magazine-s-jesse-singal-commits-fraud-article-in-question-should-be-recalled) (Change.org)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

BONUS EPISODE: Chrissy Teigen Vs Alison Roman Vs The White Women Of Twitter May 10, 2020

Show notes

During an emergency session of Blocked and Reported, Katie and Jesse discuss the controversy sparked by Alison Roman's decision to go hard at Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo. Just how racist is Alison Roman? Just how woman-of-color is Chrissy Teigen? Is the phrase "please to buy" anti-Asian or anti-Eastern-European? These and other highly sensitive questions, answered definitively! Plus: Katie and Jesse reveal their favorite appropriated foods.
Show notes:
What Alison Roman wants (https://newconsumer.com/2020/05/alison-roman-interview/) (The New Consumer)
-You can email the hosts at blockedandreportedpodcast@gmail.com (mailto:blockedandreportedpodcast@gmail.com), or follow the show on Twitter at @thebarpod (https://mobile.twitter.com/thebarpod).
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

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