The Folly of Progressivism with Nellie Bowles

Summary

Conversations With Coleman: The Folly of Progressivism with Nellie Bowles

Release Date: June 20, 2024

In this compelling episode of Conversations With Coleman, host Coleman Hughes engages in a profound and unfiltered dialogue with journalist Nellie Bowles. Drawing from her extensive experience reporting on technology, culture, and now through her incisive weekly column at The Free Press, Nellie delves into the complex landscape of modern progressivism. Their conversation navigates through pressing societal issues, offering sharp insights and critical perspectives on the current political and cultural climate.

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1. Launching a Book Amidst Personal Milestones

Nellie Bowles impressively launched her new book, Morning after the Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History, just weeks before giving birth. This dual achievement underscores her resilience and dedication.

Nellie Bowles [02:00]: "If this book does well, I want it to do well. ... That's like the Pulitzer Prize. It's like a tiny baby. That's the best thing ever, right?"

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2. Homelessness and Drug Addiction in American Cities

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the grim realities of homelessness and drug addiction, particularly in affluent cities like San Francisco.

Coleman Hughes [10:52]: "For him, it was like a trade-off. You get less racism, or at least less white racism. And, you know, every 20 minutes or so you have to go stop a crime in progress."

Nellie highlights the disconnect between the progressive rhetoric and the harsh realities on the streets, questioning the effectiveness of current policies aimed at alleviating these issues.

Nellie Bowles [09:12]: "We're just gonna let people's natural goodness finally express itself. ... It's cruel in practice."

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3. The Idealism and Limitations of the Progressive Left

The conversation delves into the inherent idealism of the progressive movement and its clash with human nature. Nellie argues that the progressive agenda often overlooks the primal aspects of human behavior, leading to flawed implementations.

Nellie Bowles [34:34]: "If you don't believe in abolish the police, then something's wrong with you because it means you see people as bad, right?"

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4. Human Nature vs. Idealist Projects

Coleman and Nellie explore the tension between utopian ideals and the unyielding facets of human nature. They contend that systems built without acknowledging self-interest and inherent societal behaviors are doomed to fail.

Coleman Hughes [39:14]: "We are to some extent constrained by our genetic inheritance, right? ... Systems that presuppose that we can change ourselves always fail."

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5. Origins and Evolution of Antifa in Seattle and Portland

A detailed examination of Antifa's rise in cities like Seattle and Portland forms a core part of their discussion. Nellie recounts the formation of autonomous zones and the collaboration between Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM), highlighting the subsequent chaos and militarization of protest movements.

Nellie Bowles [22:10]: "A group of Antifa took over a neighborhood of Seattle ... They were very much working together."

The episode critically assesses how these movements transitioned from idealistic protests to violent confrontations, drawing parallels to historical revolutionary behaviors.

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6. Financial Corruption of Black Lives Matter and Patrisse Cullors

Nellie confronts the financial malpractices within the Black Lives Matter organization, particularly focusing on Patrisse Cullors. They discuss the accumulation of wealth by BLM leaders and the lack of financial transparency, which contrasts sharply with the movement's altruistic rhetoric.

Coleman Hughes [61:27]: "They bought themselves a $6 million mansion, which is a sick mansion."

Nellie emphasizes how mainstream media's reluctance to scrutinize BLM allowed these financial discrepancies to persist unchecked.

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7. The Decline of Political Comedy

Transitioning to cultural reflections, the duo critiques the current state of political comedy. They lament the loss of incisive humor that once effectively lampooned political absurdities, noting a shift towards less impactful satire.

Nellie Bowles [73:05]: "Innocent comedy is not good comedy. ... If you can't make fun of Trump, ... that's really challenging."

Their conversation underscores how political correctness and shifting media landscapes have stifled the comedic critique that thrived in previous decades.

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8. Additional Insights and Conclusion

Throughout the episode, both Coleman and Nellie provide nuanced perspectives on the intersection of media, politics, and societal change. They advocate for a more grounded approach to progressive policies, one that reconciles idealism with the pragmatic aspects of human behavior.

Coleman Hughes [56:48]: "I think a lot of them either don't really know or care what they believe and go along with the flow, ... and a lot of people just won't provide the counter argument for themselves."

Nellie concludes by highlighting the importance of independent media in challenging established narratives, asserting that platforms like The Free Press play a crucial role in uncovering truths overlooked by mainstream outlets.

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Notable Quotes

• Nellie Bowles [34:34]: "If you don't believe in abolish the police, then something's wrong with you because it means you see people as bad, right?"
• Coleman Hughes [39:14]: "Systems that presuppose that we can change ourselves always fail."
• Nellie Bowles [73:05]: "If you can't make fun of Trump ... it's really challenging."

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Conclusion

This episode of Conversations With Coleman with Nellie Bowles offers a thought-provoking exploration of the pitfalls of contemporary progressivism. Through candid discussions, the duo sheds light on systemic issues, urging listeners to critically evaluate the efficacy of well-intentioned but flawed policies. Whether addressing political movements, media dynamics, or cultural shifts, the conversation underscores the necessity of balancing idealism with realism to foster meaningful societal progress.

Transcript

[Coleman Hughes]

Foreign. Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Nellie Bowles. Nellie Bowles is a journalist who used to report on technology and culture for the New York Times. She now writes a hilarious and incisive weekly column for the Free Press. In this episode, we discuss her new book, Morning after the Dispatches from the Wrong side of History. We talk about the reality of homelessness and drug addiction in American cities, the idealism and limitations of the progressive left, how human nature dooms idealist projects, the origins and evolution of antifa in Seattle and Portland, the financial corruption of Black Lives Matter and Patrisse Cullors, the decline of political comedy, and much more. As always, if you'd like to support the show, you can do [e-mail] ColemanHughes so, without further ado, Nellie Bowles. Okay, Nellie Bowles, thanks so much for coming on my show.

[Nellie Bowles]

Oh, we're rolling. Yeah, let's do it. It's a pleasure to be here.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. Yeah. And it's. I was just telling you before the recording how incredible it is that you can launch a book mere weeks away from giving birth. And any one of these things is usually enough to take up somebody's full emotional mental bandwidth. But you're. You're doing double duty birthing two things.

[Nellie Bowles]

It was not planned this way. It was definitely, I mean, like, not that we got pregnant accidentally, obviously, but I didn't, like, think it through, I would say, in terms of calculating the months and the timing. But it's been good. It's been good because in a way, the pregnancy sort of puts everything in perspective where I'm like, oh, this is nice. If this book does well, I want it to do well. I really like the book, but also, like, a few weeks after the book comes out, then I'm gonna birth a baby, and it's like the fucking Pulitzer Prize. It's like a tiny baby. That's the best thing ever, right?

[Coleman Hughes]

So you're a very interesting writer to me because you were a science writer at the New York Times for a while, but you're also one of the funniest political writers in my view. You have a weekly column at the Free Press, which I never miss and which just is, you know, Tom Wolfe is really the only person I can compare it to that people will have.

[Nellie Bowles]

Like, a dime store, like a bad version of Tom Wolf, and I'll take it.

[Coleman Hughes]

No, no, serious, seriously. Just absolutely hilarious, understated comedy. It's just. It's actually laugh out loud funny. And the whole book is that way. And it was just such a pleasure to read. It's been a pleasure to read you for a long time. But you're interesting in part because I don't associate being a good science writer with being a good political comedy writer, let's say. Do you find there's a difference in your mind between science writing and comedy writing? Are there two different parts of the brain or is it all one, one big thing for you?

[Nellie Bowles]

I have stumbled into my current situation of doing this column that's like a funny news send up, but it's not what I thought I'd be doing. So I started in right after college. I thought I was going to go on and get a PhD actually in. I wasn't sure, but I was thinking neuroscience. I was also working genetics. I was just having a lot of fun doing weird science. But it turned out I was really bad actually at the work of science, like the detail orientation and the spreadsheets. And so then I ended up in the Times and I was doing like tech coverage and business coverage and political coverage. And then, yeah, now I'm doing this weird, very fun column. And it's basically a send up of the news, hopefully sending up the left and the right every week. And for the Free Press, the best publication, the only publication where Coleman and I are both writers. Although Colman, I need your byline more. Yeah, I need a lot more Coleman. Yeah, like I need it like a hit. And yeah, it is different. I mean doing like let's say business reporting, which is what I was mostly doing at the Times for a while and doing what I'm doing now, it's totally different. Like now, now I'm just allowed to riff on whatever. Now I don't need to know that much about a topic. I just jump in and weigh in and say some nonsense. It's really fun.

[Coleman Hughes]

So for some reason I thought you were a science writer at the Times.

[Nellie Bowles]

I started. I did science research before the Times, but then ended up doing business and tech and having a lot of fun and doing like random political features here and there and all that. By the end of my years there I was doing like long form features and trend stories and things and having a blast in a lot of ways.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. So I don't actually know much about your background. Before you were at the New York Times. How is it that you got there? Where are you from originally and what was. What was kind of the quick version of your life story that got you there.

[Nellie Bowles]

Okay, so I'll take like 45 minutes on this perfect. Okay, so I was born at 4:01am.

[Coleman Hughes]

It all started in the year 8:32 when so called Ukraine.

[Nellie Bowles]

Oh my God. That was really the wildest. Okay, okay. No, seriously, seriously. I'm from San Francisco. I born and raised and my family's all still there. And I started the San Francisco Chronicle like a lot of newspaper reporters do. I once I realized I was really bad at the actual work of science and got fired from my first job, which I now see as a rite of passage for all 22 year olds. I ended up as an intern at the San Francisco Chronicle and kind of went from there. It was a pretty traditional path, although I bounced around to a bunch of new media startups that during the height of the tech boom, everyone was opening a bureau in San Francisco. Everyone was like, we're going to have a bunch of tech reporters. And so I worked at the Guardian when they had a big office there for like a hot second. I worked at a tech news site called Recode that since was kind of half shut down, half absorbed. But I was always in San Francisco writing about my city, my hometown, and writing about the changes I was seeing there, positive, negative and funny. A lot of the stuff that was going on with the tech boom in the city was really, really funny. You had all these idealistic young people flooding in with really wild notions of how to live, how to make money. The companies, the companies themselves are often inherently hilarious. Like the idea of Uber, before Uber was a thing is absurd sounding, just hopping in a stranger's car. And I, yeah, that's how I started out. And then when I got hired at the Times, I was still in San Francisco and then only now we're in la because I couldn't quite convince my wife to move to San Francisco. It's a little too small town for her, I think, which is what I like about it. But Bear needed more of a city. But I did convince her to leave New York, which was I consider a huge accomplishment.

[Coleman Hughes]

I see, so you were responsible for that?

[Nellie Bowles]

Yes, I'm a California chauvinist. I'm a California supremacist, if you will. I love it and I love writing about it. And it's really like writing about San Francisco is what kind of started me on the path towards the funny political column or the funny, what I hope is a funny book. Because I was living in a place where I was seeing a lot of wonderful rhetoric and a lot of wonderful people making a city that was turning into a real shit show. And I was sort of Trying to figure out what was going on. Like, what was the difference between what I was hearing and what I was seeing? And why was it so vast? And so it opened my eyes a little bit to my own. To my. To some of my own wrong ideas and to some of my own kind of misconceptions about the world or naivete. Naivety. Naivety.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. Yeah. So last time I was in San Francisco, I went to. I recorded a couple podcasts and then went to a nice place for dinner with a couple of friends. And the waitress comes over and says, hey, look at the menu, blah, blah, blah. And then she goes, hold on a second. She looks out the window, leaves the restaurant mid sentence, does something. I can't really tell what she's doing. She's talking to someone outside. I'm like, kind of shocked that she just ditched us mid sentence. She comes back two minutes later, resumes taking our order like nothing happened. And I asked her, what. What was it you just did out there? And she goes, oh, I just had to go make sure that that woman wasn't getting robbed. She had a shopping cart, looked like she was getting robbed. So I just kind of had it to. I just, I just had to see if she was. She was okay. And I go, does that happen often around here? She's like, yeah, every day. And then I kept talking to her about where she was from. I think she was from Pittsburgh, funny enough, or somewhere in Pennsylvania. And I was like, well, how do you like living out here with that kind of a reality? And she goes, you know, it sucks, but it's better than where I came from. Because she felt where she came from was a really racist town that didn't align with her values. So for her, it was like a trade off. You get less racism, or at least less white racism. And, you know, every 20 minutes or so you have to go stop a crime in progress. But half, half a dozen of one, you know, six of the other.

[Nellie Bowles]

I mean, no. San Francisco, the reason it's such a great city to write about is because it matters. It's so goddamn beautiful. It's so special. There's all the money in the world, there's all the ideas in the world. There's all. It has everything. And so it's not like when you're writing about San Francisco, you're writing about a place that. That ought to be so great. And that's why it's fun to write about, because it's not. It doesn't feel like punching down because it has everything Right. And there's a reason it's worth fighting for. And so, yeah, the streets of the city, I mean, it's a mess. And for a long time, I mean, now people talk about that and they can say it as of the last basically year, two years. But for a long time it was the progressive take and the sort of righteous take in San Francisco. And I was of course, a good member of the righteous take tribe. I'm San Franciscan lesbian journalist. I fit all the ticked off all the right boxes and I had all the right politics to fit it. And to say that, hey, maybe the petty crime situation's gotten outta control. Maybe the laws that say we don't, you know, anything basically under a thousand bucks stolen from a shop is considered misdemeanor, like a little ticket basically not prosecuted. We're not going to go after petty crimes, lifestyle crimes, they call them. But then what that leads to is the kind of breakdown of brick and mortar shops. The city more or less has done a drug legalization program where drugs are, I mean, people are just using on the streets. And that was fine when it was a small few blocks, it was basically always the tenderloin. But then that started to expand and expand and expand, especially over the pandemic, especially as the fentanyl epidemic has, has grown. You saw that in all cities in the American west. But in San Francisco, it's the most sort of shocking because of its beauty, because of its wealth. And so you're there among some of the richest people in the world with all the best ideas and you're walking down the street with them, walking past people who are just dying on the street right there. Just limbs exposed, skin rotting. I mean, just horrific scenes that you are sort of become inured to. And you know that your tax money is going to those people. You know that there's every proper service is being given to them. It's not that, it's not for lack of funds that this is happening. And so it, but. But somehow it's not working, right? Somehow like the ideas behind all the services, the ideas behind the programs aren't working to actually make things better. And so you and. Sorry, I just burped.

[Coleman Hughes]

That's okay.

[Nellie Bowles]

Guys. The pregnancy has given me all kinds of strange things.

[Coleman Hughes]

If you go into labor on this podcast, this will be the best episode of Conversations with Coleman ever recorded. And I will digitally hold your hand throughout it. I promise.

[Nellie Bowles]

We'll push on three. It it. Yeah. You're constantly struck with the reality that's really different from all the Ideals. And it just. You can't be a person in San Francisco and not slowly wake up to that unless you're really, really a committed ideologue. And you're just like, no, we're just gonna push through. Like, utopia takes work. Eventually these streets will get more beautiful. All these people on drugs will like magically correct themselves and get off drugs. I don't know how. We just need more money, more time. But if you've got any sense in the city, you're waking up to some of the reality.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, it's so difficult seeing people struggling with drug abuse in broad daylight, nodding out, this kind of thing. I remember the first time I saw it as a teenager in New York City. I was from a nice suburb outside of town, nobody nodding out there. And probably When I was 14 or 15, I came to the city by myself for some reason and I saw my first person properly in the throes of opioids and heroin. And I just stood there looking at the person like, you know, obviously everyone else in New York just has seen it a million times. And I remember a woman stopped and saw me looking and she said, you know what that is, right? And I said, no. And she said, that's heroin. And that memory stuck in my mind. I think when people see that for the first time, the natural belief, if you have any amount of empathy, is what are we doing to help this person, right? Like, what does this person need in order to get off drugs and rejoin society? That is the natural first impulse. And it's from that impulse that you get every policy designed to make that person's life easier, right? Like, okay, let's give this person, maybe this person is poor, right? They probably don't have very much money. Let's give them a monthly cash stipend. Well, looks like this person doesn't have a place to sleep. Let's give them, this person a homeless shelter and let's try to make it less shitty. Let's make it something less than, something better than a warehouse. Let's give this person a proper bed. And so on and so on and so forth, in the hopes that once you check off the last box of state sponsored kindness to their person to this person, they will wake up and say, holy shit, I gotta get off this drug. I'd be so much happier if I wasn't in a cycle of, of heroin use and withdrawal my entire life. The, the sad realization, I think, comes when, you know, and there are documentaries to this effect to this guy channel, the Channel 5 news guy on YouTube has some of the best ones, and he has a great one on San Francisco. I don't know if you've actually seen that.

[Nellie Bowles]

I don't know if I have.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. But so much of the time, if you stick a microphone in front of many of these people's faces and ask them, you know, what are you in a lucid moment? What are you up to here? What are your goals? What are your struggles? Talk to me. So many of them will just say, look, I'm in too deep. I'm going to be an addict. I'm probably going to die doing it. And, you know, and sadly, many of them will say something like, actually, I'm not even from San Francisco. I came here because I heard it's. It's a lot easier to live this life, this addict lifestyle out here, that the drugs are fantastic and the authorities don't bother you. They actually keep you kind of comfortable. So I actually came here from somewhere else and. And that's, you know, when you see enough people say that, that can change your attitude towards the problem of homelessness and drug addiction, because it turns out all those kind of boxes you were checking to make life easier rather than get people off drugs, incentivized drug addicts from other places to come here.

[Nellie Bowles]

Yeah. I mean, my politics on this still, my feeling on it is still that of what I think of as a good liberal, which is basically like, I want these people to receive support and health care, and I don't want people dying on the street. But the obsession right now on the left is to deny that this is a drug problem, to deny that these people are struggling with drugs at all. And to say that's just sort of a tertiary thing. It's really capitalism, it's really racism. It's really all these other issues that they're struggling under. Neoliberalism. It's not about drugs. It's not about drugs. They always. They're obsessed with saying it can never be about drugs. And it's like, it might be about drugs. Like, fentanyl is a hell of a drug, and we should just acknowledge that. And there's no appetite anymore. In the American West. On the east coast, it's a little different. But in the American west, there's no sort of emotional appetite for the really difficult scene of taking someone off the street and forcing them into rehab. And that's what ultimately it looks like. If you're gonna say, we're gonna give you food, we're gonna give you healthcare, we're gonna give you a Monthly stipend. But to get better, you also have to come to rehab. And a lot of people respond to that and say, no, I don't want to. I don't wanna get clean. I like using fentanyl. And you can't pretend like they're not gonna say that. Like, all the advocates of the left now, they'll argue, basically, no, you just need a more beautiful shelter for that person. You just need a more beautiful meal. You just need more funding, more. It's like, no, you need to help them get clean. And one of the things I write about in the book is, like, I talked to one of the moms of a kid who. Who's on the street. All of the kids you see on the street, all the kids who are dying of overdoses in San Francisco, which, by the way, for the years of the height of COVID more people died of fentanyl overdoses on the streets in the city than died of COVID Wow. So it really is killing a lot. And so you talk to the moms, and they're desperate to get their kids into rehab. They're desperate for their kids to be arrested because the only time they get dry and clean for a minute is when they're arrested. Now, that shouldn't be the option, but whatever. We can talk forever about, like, the, you know, the closure of the asylums and the closure of kind of forced rehab facilities. I'm sure there's a more PC term than forced rehab, but that's what it is. And it just, to me is like the willful blindness to just the reality and an inability to talk about the actual facts of the matter. Like, it's not neoliberalism and capitalism. It's not this, it's not that. It's drugs. And it's okay to talk about. And it doesn't mean you're not sympathetic and doesn't mean you don't have a heart. And I would say that the kind of empathy that's driven the politics of American cities, which is this sort of new progressive empathy, is quite cruel in practice. It leads to quite cruel situations. And. Yeah, I just.

[Coleman Hughes]

It's a real shame moving from city to city here.

[Nellie Bowles]

Yeah.

[Coleman Hughes]

From San Francisco to Seattle.

[Nellie Bowles]

Oh, my God, my favorite town.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. I was pleased to find in the book, which I didn't know, is that you were actually in the infamous Chaz Chop Zone, the autonomous region.

[Nellie Bowles]

I went as it was wrapping up. I wasn't there. In its height, which I'm still mad about, it's the real peak of It.

[Coleman Hughes]

I imagine most people listening will remember what that is. But for those who don't, can you kind of describe what Chaz was and what kind of social experiment it was and how the experiment turned out?

[Nellie Bowles]

So starting in 2020, in that famous summer, as part of what we think of as the BLM protests, also rising, was a kind of antifa call to action. And Antifa deciding, oh, hell yeah, this is our moment. And so what happened in the Pacific Northwest, what happened across the country? But really the peak was in those cities was. And the peak was in Seattle, which is the best one. So a group of Antifa took over a neighborhood of Seattle, and specifically they took over the gayborhood, the gay neighborhood, if you will, and they declared it an autonomous zone. And the mayor of Seattle, as many mayors throughout America did, basically embraced this chaotic moment and said, actually, the chaos is good. And so she said this new autonomous zone that put up borders, that declared no cops allowed, that declared it had its own new, new set of laws for these city blocks. She said, this new autonomous zone, we're going to endorse it, we're going to embrace it. She called it like a summer of love. She put up using city funds, put up, helped reinforce their existing barricades, gave them porto potties, went and would do sort of media tours, wandering around, looking happy in. So needless to say, all of her text messages from that era magically disappeared in later lawsuit discovery. Magically. And she has since promised better data retention methods for the next time there's an uprising. But so they took over this area and for a while they held it. And it was basically. I mean, now when I think about it, I think a lot about the antifa because of what I see, what you see on college campuses and what you see in terms of like, comfort with violence. Like, I think that at the time it was very important to deny that Antifa was involved, that there was any kind of violent element, that it was anything but a 1960s style summer of love hippie movement. It was very important to deny that there were guns. It was very important to deny that there were shootings. It was very important to deny all of those sort of basic facts of the reality of what obviously happened in a power vacuum. And now when you're looking at these protests, what I see that came from that time in 2020 is that Antifa introduced the idea that violence should be part of the American protest conversation, that a little bit of fear is okay to add in that it's okay to have a gun sometimes. And at the time, we had to all sort of journalists were on message denying that fear and that threat of violence was becoming part of the protest movement. And now you see it so clearly when you hear Intifada revolution, or like, there's only one solution, Intifada, revolution and calls for armed violence, calls for war. And anyway, so, yeah, I was a reporter at the Times then, and it was a little bit. The beginning of my journey to writing this book was. Was trying to cover Chaz Chop. And I found there was a ton of pushback internally. And I was sort of like, guys, this is the most interesting story happening right now. Like, I gotta go. We should have a ton of people there writing about what's going on. A section of Seattle has been taken over by a group of anti fascists. But to write that, of course, would be to go against everything that we were supposed to deny. And it would also be to implicate that Black Lives Matter was working with Antifa in any way that there was any sort of collaboration between these movements, which there certainly was. And if you went there, you just saw it, it was just clear. It was just. They were quite open about it anyway, so eventually I managed to get up there and report on it and report on what was going on there for a week. And it was everything you'd imagine in a power vacuum. It was small militias that had risen up that were wandering around sort of selling defense to different store owners and different residents. You would have, like. There was the official BLM security team that you could pay. There was the. There were, of course, pay to play security guards who entered the space and you could pay them. They looked like official security guards and bulletproof vests and stuff. And then there were like, Antifa guys who you would have to kind of pledge allegiance to them and they would protect you, literally, they would ask you to pledge allegiance. In some of the subsequent lawsuits that have come out, it was like they wanted staff to raise their fists and say, we all agree to your demands. We all support your demands. And then they would protect you. Otherwise they're breaking your windows that night.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Nellie Bowles]

And that. And that was kind of accepted. And that was happening in a lot of American cities, these little autonomous zones and these little.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, I mean, I was always really interested in the fact that I felt many businesses would throw a BLM sign in the window just in the hopes that when the riot came, their business would be passed over.

[Nellie Bowles]

Exactly. Oh, and they did. And that's exactly what they did. And it was the only thing you could do. And if, I mean, I remember there were signs in windows that said things like, single mother owned, please don't break this shop. It's all I have. Or there'd be signs and windows that would say, black owned, please pass. Like, basically, please pass this over.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right?

[Nellie Bowles]

And this was all held up as the beautiful utopia of the future, this new village that was created there. But I think, yeah, they would have like a little community garden and a little medic station and it would all be talked up a lot. It was talked up in the media as like. And by the media, I mean mostly the left wing media. Like you'd see in NPR in the Times, like all of these glowing reports of their beautiful, of their beautiful community garden or whatnot. And then the right wing media you also couldn't totally rely on because the right wing media would be like all caps. Like, right. Hundreds, Seattle, like hundreds have died every day.

[Coleman Hughes]

I mean, that's how I felt in 2022, which is why I went to so many BLM protests. I went to many in New York and one big one in D.C. because I just knew that I could not trust what either side was telling me. I. The Fox News was not going to give it to me straight and CNN was not going to give it to me straight.

[Nellie Bowles]

And so CNN was the craziest.

[Coleman Hughes]

CNN was the same.

[Nellie Bowles]

I used to like CNN until the last couple years. I mean, it was. CNN used to be like, pretty good. Yeah, yeah, they really showed their ass.

[Coleman Hughes]

Wow. But, you know, it's interesting how these little autonomous experiments, whether Chaz Chop or the recent encampments at Columbia, the liberated zone, how quickly they devolve into precisely the features of small totalitarian states. It's like they, they literally, they're, you know, they're autonomous for five minutes before they start shutting down. Journalists that want to, oh, you know.

[Nellie Bowles]

Like, no one does border control better than a left wing autonomously build a.

[Coleman Hughes]

Wall to start with. There's no, there's no debate about whether to build a wall because they start by building a wall.

[Nellie Bowles]

Their border control is truly impressive. You saw at ucla, a public university, they literally started giving out wristbands almost immediately. They're like, they're like, if you want to walk by the library, you got to wear one of our, like, anti Zionist wristbands. And like, here's you've got a bunch of tough guys standing, doing border control. I mean, this is like more than.

[Coleman Hughes]

We'Ve got to send them down to the southern border. No, literally, I solve two problems at once.

[Nellie Bowles]

I'M like, guys, guys, I think we're kind of aligned here. I think we're seeing some similar things. Honestly, they're going a little far for me. It's not what I would necessarily. It's a little much as for a loyalty test to get into the country, I would say. But I like the energy, I like the ambition. Yeah, no, the thing about the last four years and this movement that you and I both have been writing about a lot is that it's based in this true idealism, which I know is not new for left wing movements, but it is just every generation. It's fun to see. It's based in genuine idealism about human nature. It's based in the idea that if we get rid of police, if we get rid of capitalism and patriarchy and heteronormativity, people will be kind to each other, that they won't hurt each other. That if we, if we just release people from the shackles of these bad influences, these sort of evil forces, neoliberalism, sexism, that they will be kind, that they won't steal, that they won't hurt each other. And this is behind all of the Abolish police movement. This is behind all of the Defund police movement too. And you end up sounding like the asshole because you're sort of like, well, I don't know, people might still kind of be bad. And you sound like a jerk because you're like, what do you think? You think people are? You think people are bad? You think they're mean, right? And I mean, or all their arguments, like, it's as though they don't believe that rich people will steal. It's like, rich people love to steal. Like, you can't. They truly believe that if you meet everyone's needs that they won't ask for more or they won't demand more, or they won't do harm to each other. And anyone who's been around rich people knows there are a lot of people who have their needs met and they're still assholes to each other and they still would steal from each other and hurt each other. But that's kind of been the setup. It's that. It's that if you don't believe and abolish the police, then you. Something's wrong with you because it means you see people as bad, right? And so each of these settings that they've built over the last few years, and really some of the efforts, some of the citywide efforts during the height of defund and abolish, some of the citywide's efforts were based on this notion that, you know what, it's the cops who are causing the problems. We're going to just, we're going to just let people's natural goodness finally express itself.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right. I remember I used to say, and I think other people have said this too, the big idea during 2020 was let's get rid of the cops and replace them with social workers.

[Nellie Bowles]

Yeah.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay, so what happens when the first social worker goes to a person having a mental breakdown and just, you know, gets beat up by that person? Because the person is, you know, having a meltdown. The person is scared. The person thinks you're a dragon. These are stories I've actually heard from cops on this podcast. And the social worker gets the daylight speed out of them. Then all the social workers get together, they have a meeting. They said, okay, we need a little bit of protection. Okay, let's just, let's bring a flashlight and, and, and some pepper spray, something light. Okay, we're not cops here. And then the first person deals with someone on PCP who gets pepper sprayed, doesn't, doesn't even phase them, and beats the daylights out of that social worker. Okay, well let's not go straight to guns. Let's, let's try tasers, right. And just slowly, step by step, you end up reinventing the cops.

[Nellie Bowles]

Yeah. I mean, and so many of the solutions in lieu of cops, like the Violence Interrupters and stuff, I talked to a couple Violence Interrupters for the book. They're put in the most dangerous situations. Violence Interrupters are this program that many people, many progressives in many cities got behind as here are these non cop figures who are in the community who know everyone and we're just going to let them get involved with violent situations and help interrupt that violence. And that's gonna be their, their MO and they're not armed because like, yeah, why would you bring a gun in? They don't even wear bulletproof vests because like that sets up a weird vibe. And of course they suffer enormous amounts of violence. Way more than the average cop, of course. And, and meanwhile, they're not in a union, they don't have a pension, they don't have body cameras on, they don't have any protections. And so in a weird way, the American progressive movement has created a thing that not even the most right wing capitalists would have. I mean the libertarians would love to have totally un unionized, like fight for yourself, you're on your own in the city vibes. It's just a very bizarre. If you step back and look at the politics of it, it's a very bizarre impulse to want non unionized, non pensioned. It tends to be middle aged black guys sent into the most dangerous situations for little pay. I mean, it's crazy.

[Coleman Hughes]

And it also presupposes that it's possible to stop every fight with your words. Which in reality, the very few times in my life that I've been around fights or like in close proximity to fights, it's very difficult to get two guys to not fight if they want to fight with, with. It's actually difficult. I mean, I remember once I was in a bar late at night, everyone was drunk, and for some reason two guys just went at each other. I, I never actually learned why. Never learned why, doesn't matter what. But it took like seven guys to get them apart from each other. Like seven of us, three and four pulling on either one. And the idea that there is such a skill, that there exists a skill that you can cultivate in yourself, you can become great at just kind of like Jedi mind trick, you two don't really want to fight. And I'm so good at this skill of talking people, talking grown men down that I'm a violence de escalator. The problem is there is no such skill. And I think it strikes me as such deep common sense that that skill doesn't exist really. I mean, there might be a few people in the world that actually really are great at it in particular scenarios.

[Nellie Bowles]

Yeah, I believe there are experts who can talk down a terrorist or something like that. I've seen enough movies to believe that there must be some individual who does reflect what the mov tell me exists.

[Coleman Hughes]

But that's a far cry from this is a reliable skill that we can train normal people to do that will reliably work. I mean, that's absolute fantasy. That really is the stuff of Star Wars. These aren't the droids you're looking for.

[Nellie Bowles]

How did it win, Coleman? How did it win so thoroughly? You and I sitting here, we agree with each other, we can talk. But how did this win?

[Coleman Hughes]

Well, I have a few theories. One is obviously people hated the cops so much and were blinded by that hate that they were willing to entertain things they would never entertain in normal times, in revolutionary times. I think human beings are kind of like locusts. When you learn that grasshoppers and locusts are actually the same thing, but when they get into an excited state, they behave totally differently. And that's what we call locusts.

[Nellie Bowles]

Whoa. I did not know that.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, I remember I was mind blown when I, when I learned that. But we're not that dissimilar. I mean, when we get into groups and get into revolutionary times like the summer of 2020, we behave totally different. This is what the Cultural Revolution was in China. You read about these times in history, but we, we lived through a kind of a version of that on a smaller scale. In fact, I'm not even sure it was on a smaller scale. But then the other aspect of it is why people are so vulnerable to the ideologies that negate the mean aspects of human nature. Obviously Steven Pinker has the best book on this called the Blank slate from probably 25 years ago or so. Still the best book on the topic, I think. But the question is why do people, intellectuals in particular young people, activists, deny there is such a thing as human nature? That we are in the animal kingdom, we are to some extent constrained by, by our genetic inheritance, right? Like we're not infinitely malleable. We can't all behave like Kumbaya all the time. We're always going to have an aspect of self interest. Most people, most of the time are going to be driven by self interest to a large extent. We're going to be protective of ourselves. We're going to care more about our family members than we care about our children, than we care about other people's children. And that, that can't be educated out of us. And so systems that presuppose that we can change ourselves always fail. That's why communism fails and capitalism doesn't. Because capitalism builds in self interest as a given fact that can't be changed, and leverages it in order to, at least in principle, make things a little bit better for everyone over the long run. And my view is that I think a lot of people, because they grow up in a family context. There's this quote I love. I always forget who it's by, but it's everyone is a communist with their family, a socialist with their friends and a capitalist with the world. I love that which is, which is true. Because the logic of communism, the logic of communism actually is true of a good family. It's two each children, each person, each child gets what they need and does what they can. And you don't get a bigger lunch if you do more chores because you're a five year old or your uncle is disabled and he can't work, but he eats the same as everyone else. That is communism. And it actually works, but only in the context of deep familial kinship bonds or extremely deep friendships. Yeah, that's, that's, that's how limited we are. But I think because people, you know, we, most of us hopefully grow up in such a context, people have the false belief that we can just extend that. Well, it works like that for me and my friends. Well, how come it can't work like that for all of society? How come we can't act like one big family? And so that makes them so vulnerable to these belief systems which say actually we can't act like one big family. All we have to do is get rid of all of these systems that presuppose human nature and self interest, the greedy capitalists, the cops and all that. And then the rest of us can just be like one big family, just like your big family was. And we can give to each other and we can share and everyone will have enough and everyone will be nice. Or if people aren't being nice, we'll sit down and have a family meeting and talk about it and we'll resolve it that way and it'll just work. The problem is it never works.

[Nellie Bowles]

I love that. Where's that quote from? Who said that?

[Coleman Hughes]

I have to find that out because it's a fantastic quote and I think it's very true.

[Nellie Bowles]

That's really true. So then the solution would be for people to have happier family lives or actually maybe less happy family lives. They stop trying to mimic that.

[Coleman Hughes]

That's right. I mean what it is, is obviously it's too family and friends. Gives you that fuzzy feeling inside that makes life worth it for most of us. And so I think people want to have that fuzzy feeling about politics and society building. They want it to feel like a family feels, which is extremely naive and why people are so susceptible to communism, idealism and all of these other sorts of things.

[Nellie Bowles]

I know we're all susceptible to idealism. It's true. Colvin, I love that explanation.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. I wanted to ask you, speaking of Seattle and Portland, do you know, how is it, what's the story of how those cities became such hotbeds for anti fascist, so called anti fascist politics? Because if you're not in those two cities, it's even hard to believe some of the stories of things that have happened with antifa. What's the story there? How did Seattle and Portland become that way?

[Nellie Bowles]

I'm sort of obsessed with those cities and the Pacific Northwest in general. Because if you think about it like let's say Seattle, so many great American businesses were started in that little City in the Rain and the Overcast and so many great American music movements, I mean, they have outsized cultural impact. I would say to start. So the anti fascists started with, and I'm stealing a little bit from Andy Ngo here, who wrote a great book on exploring the history of antifa. They started as a anti racist skinhead movement called the Sharps. And the Sharp movement was pushing back against what was. And I don't know how active they are right now, but I think remains a white supremacist movement that was acting up there and that was gathering and that was armed and living in little neo Nazi friend groups up in the Pacific Northwest. And so you saw these two groups of white activists in opposition with each other. And the anti fascists were the, as I said, the anti racist group. As the white supremacist groups of that region became a little less relevant or faded away or whatever, you then had this group of armed young people and a culture of gun clubs and a culture of using violence to escalate for political goals. And you had them up there training how to go to actual battle. I mean, it sounds ridiculous because they're these skinny white guys and it sort of seems like they're not like signing up for the Army. They're not, they're not vets or something. It's not like the sort of January 6th former Marine that you might imagine being frightened of, but more of a extremely thin, pale young man with a squirrely energy and scraggly facial hair. And. Yeah, so that's how they evolved. It was as a response to the real skinhead movement that was going on around the Pacific Northwest. And then they latched onto the BLM movement as a really effective way to spread. And the BLM needed them too. They worked together. And so the Antifa would escalate a situation to make it a little more fiery, a little more wild and helped bring that energy. Because BLM was a grassroots movement, but also kind of glossy corporate movement funded by big companies and endorsed by universities. And it was a little bit like it didn't have that rebellious flare that would go and light a city on fire. That was the energy of Antifa. And at the time, for like years, the mainstream media flat out lied and said that Antifa wasn't involved with any of this, that it was all fake news. But as I said, they were very much working together. And eventually you see Antifa try to start coming out of the woodwork. They start doing interviews with mainstream media outlets, obviously backlit. And all this for anonymity they're always. They always have their faces covered. And you start to see the open embrace of them by mainstream liberal media outlets, where you have New York Times reporters tweeting that if your grandfather fought In World War II, he was an antifa. Right? You have the Lincoln Project come out fully in support of antifa, saying, anti fascism is as American as apple pie. You've got the total embrace of this very violent political movement by the American intelligentsia. And that, to me, was the most stunning part of the last few years, was like, a group of people who basically believe the same things as the January 6th rioters, where they're like, we believe in armed revolution and we're going to do it. And it doesn't. It's not about, like, technocratic change and votes are fake and all this. A group of people who believe that, and you have the American press saying, these guys are great and we support it. And actually, anyone who fought in World War II was Antifax.

[Coleman Hughes]

That's funny. I must have missed the epilogue in Saving Private Ryan where they all come home and start burning cop cars. That must be in the director's cut.

[Nellie Bowles]

And burning cop cars. I mean, you had. You had, like, ambitious young people who now we look and we realize they kind of threw their lives away. They. They burned cop cars. They did all this. And it's all on video, and it's all. And now they're in jail. And it's like people. People in this movement a little bit lost their minds in the same way that a lot of the guys who are getting. Going to jail for the January 6th stuff. You. You. In both cases, you can't help but feel a little bit bad that they're living in these echo chambers that tell them, now is the revolution. Now is when to do violence. Burn the cop car, light it on fire, record it.

[Coleman Hughes]

They're all given delusions of grandeur in these moments where, like.

[Nellie Bowles]

And the Jan6 guys, they're being told by their media, light it on fire. Yeah, do it. This is the moment. And it's like, I feel bad for both of them. There's these two young lawyers who, like, lost their careers because of lighting a cop car on fire. Anyways, so, yeah, the embrace of antifa. The total embrace was one of the most stunning parts. And funny, too. Just like, very funny. Because it's like all these effete writers living in the Upper west side, writing and endorsing the. I can say a feat because I'm a lesbian. Only I'm allowed to call People gay writing, endorsing, like, really radical, violent methods, and groups that make their games quite clear.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right. And often from, like, a gated neighborhood or of course.

[Nellie Bowles]

Oh, well, that's a given. I mean, my favorite part again, of the last few years is the idea that you have, and this is. I'm stealing a little bit from Rob Henderson's idea of luxury beliefs, which now is, like, broken through as a mainstream concept in a great way. And it's the notion that it's very easy when you're rich or upper middle class to argue for things that sound very nice, but that have a bad impact, but that don't impact you. So, like, abolish the police or defund the police was a classic one. Because most of the people arguing for it live in New York City. They live in either doorman building or buildings or in a city that's very heavily policed, like New York. You're really safe in New York City. For all the talk of the random punching and whatnot. It's a very safe city, actually, technically. And you have people arguing for things that don't impact them at all.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Nellie Bowles]

The people arguing to abolish elite public high schools, which was another thing we've seen over the last few years. The people arguing that the existence of Stuyvesant is racist or the existence of Lowell High School in San Francisco is racist, but they send their kids to private school, so it's irrelevant to their lives. They don't need public schools.

[Coleman Hughes]

They don't need a good public high school.

[Nellie Bowles]

Yeah, it doesn't matter for them. And you see this in basically all of these kind of very trendy chic topics that you and I are called all sorts of names for being like. I don't know, like, Stuyvesant seems maybe like, a good idea.

[Coleman Hughes]

My mom went to Stuyvesant.

[Nellie Bowles]

That's awesome.

[Coleman Hughes]

She was born in the South Bronx in 59 in a terrible situation, complete poverty. And she tested well, got into Stuyvesant, and then was the first of her family to go to college.

[Nellie Bowles]

You know, amazing.

[Coleman Hughes]

So, yeah, I mean, absolutely. This is. And, you know, standardized test scores is another one, which what people don't understand is it actually helps poor kids. It helps smart core kids because they don't have extracurricular activities. They don't have their parents. You know.

[Nellie Bowles]

The idea behind getting rid of the sat, which, again, I think we have to, because you and I agree, we have to, like, ask ourselves, why did our sensibleness that you and I are both on the same page about how right we are. Why did our sensibleness not win? Because for years, let's say, let's talk about the sat. The satisfaction was banned. Not banned. The Ivy League announced they wouldn't be using the sat. Many, many universities followed and that instead they would use the far less racist methods of teacher recommendations, extracurriculars, and essays, which are. As anyone who went to a private school with college counselors knows, those are the easiest things to gain.

[Coleman Hughes]

That's right.

[Nellie Bowles]

Those are the best things to rely on. If you have a teacher who only has 12 students in their class, they can write a very personal, very long and beautiful letter of recommendation. You can get your essay worked on by the best writers for a very small fee. You can. Or extracurriculars. Like, if you have a job after class, you're not doing a ton of extracurriculars. Me, I grew up in a privileged environment. I had a ton of fabulous extracurriculars. I was doing the newspaper, I was doing the literary magazine. I was doing. So for me, it's like, eliminate the sat. That's great for rich kids. It's fabulous. That's the hardest thing to game. They talk about test prep and whatnot. Test prep is easy and cheap. Actually, you can buy one of those SAT. That's what I did to prepare for the SAT was I just bought one of those 12 real SAT books and I just took them a bunch of times and I took the test. That's the hardest thing to fake.

[Coleman Hughes]

That's right. That's right.

[Nellie Bowles]

But this idea, but somehow it won. Okay, here's my question. Sometimes I get. I'm not going to say conspiratorial, but I'm not going to not. Do you think that some of these ideas, like that one, like, abolish the sat, do you think people genuinely believe that they're making a better world by dropping by successfully abolishing the SAT from elite public, from elite college life? Or do you think that they know that it helps them or that helps their children?

[Coleman Hughes]

Like, I think most of them are genuine. I think most of them really believe it. I mean, if you look back into history, into times where people have, like whole societies have done delusional things that didn't work and it took them a few years to realize it wasn't working. And just one by one, people lost faith in the thing. Usually they really believe it, you know.

[Nellie Bowles]

Yeah.

[Coleman Hughes]

And. And I think it. We'd like to think that people are smart enough that they all see through it and they're actually like evil Mustache twirling kind of cynics. But I think a lot of them either don't really know or care what they believe and go along with the flow, or it makes a kind of superficial sense to them. And so. And the people that disagree with it are either too afraid to speak up or, you know, they see a few examples of people getting canceled, and so they just keep it to themselves. And so nobody hears good sense. Everyone hears art. You know, the argument that SATs are bad for black people and Hispanic people, and no one hears the counter argument. And. And a lot of people just won't provide the counter argument for. For themselves.

[Nellie Bowles]

So that the SAT is bad for little. For little Hadley.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. Yes, that's right.

[Nellie Bowles]

It's bad for your little Nepo baby. Little Thomas iv.

[Coleman Hughes]

That's right. That's right.

[Nellie Bowles]

He's fucked.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yes, that's right. Okay, so the other part of this that you talk about in the book, which is a story I have paid a lot of attention to, obviously, is Patrisse Cullors and the. I think what you call, like, BLM llc.

[Nellie Bowles]

Abolitionist. No, abolitionist. She actually called her LLC Abolitionist Entertainment llc.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah.

[Nellie Bowles]

So Patrisse Cullors is one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, the sort of Black Lives Matter corporate movement. Now, I know you've talked and written about the situation a lot, but from a humorist perspective is like. It is, like, wildly, insanely funny. What she managed to do and the, like, amount of grift and amount of theft they managed. I mean, it's. It's. Yeah, it's this group named themselves Black Lives Matter. So it became really hard to be skeptical of the group. Cause it's like, what are you skeptical about? Black people's lives mattering?

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, it's the best political slogan of my lifetime.

[Nellie Bowles]

It's genius. And it was a separate slogan. They just kind of, like, made it. They made it their. The name of their nonprofit. I think there are people who genuinely chant Black Lives Matter. I mean, Black Lives Matter. They're not thinking about the organization.

[Coleman Hughes]

That's what makes it. Well, would argue the vast majority are not thinking about the organization. So Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, was the first one to type that on Facebook and police Patrisse Colors, turned it into a hashtag, commenting on it. And then they got together, formed the Black Lives Matter Global Network foundation, which became the flagship nonprofit, which I put in quotation marks. And they got a trickle of money between, like, 2014 and 2019. And then in 2020, they were, you know, in. In, in a legitimate sense, the co creators of Black Lives Matter, the slogan and the flagship nonprofit. And so the white guilt money and the corporate money just absolutely poured in. They raised an obscene. Almost $100 million in a year. Just an obscene amount of money. And they weren't even a legitimate nonprofit. They still had an intermediary, which means they hadn't been. They're not. They were not an accredited nonprofit. They were just basically a bank account and an LLC controlled by one person that used a nonprofit at arm's length to get.

[Nellie Bowles]

To get the cash infusions and their.

[Coleman Hughes]

Boyfriends and their money paid their family millions of dollars, bought a secret $6 million mansion, which is a sick mansion.

[Nellie Bowles]

You look at that listing. Yeah, they bought themselves with the funds a $6 million.

[Coleman Hughes]

They did very well for themselves.

[Nellie Bowles]

A gorgeous mansion in the hills of la. And you know, you can do that with nonprofit money. But then it has to like, be for the public interest. Like, it has to be like open to the public in some way or like that's to serve. Of course it wasn't. Of course it was used as like a party house, which is what I would also do if I was given a bank account with a hundred million dollars and no oversight. No, no oversight.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah.

[Nellie Bowles]

I mean, I'm like, I'm not saying they made bad choices. I'm saying they made very good ones.

[Coleman Hughes]

And they got away with it to this day. No, no, I mean, the. Of course, journalists publicize all this in 2022 in New York magazine. And I noticed he did an amazing, fantastic job. Guy's name was Sean Campbell.

[Nellie Bowles]

And yeah, it took two years though, and it took. Even then it's not. I mean, it was briefly shut down. I know in a lot of states the attorney general said, you can't operate anymore. And then that was lifted and now things are all hunky dory. I mean, this group was allowed to fundraise for years without any scrutiny because the idea within mainstream media was that to scrutinize this group was racist. That's right. And so. And they cultivated that. They would say having us do these nonprofit IRS forms about financial transparency is white supremacy. This is racism. And the mainstream media was like, yeah, you're right. And so for years, they could raise all of this money and they could raise it in a really ghoulish way, which is to raise it off the names and faces of dead black children, like murdered black kids. Right. Like to raise this money off the name and face of Tamir Rice.

[Coleman Hughes]

And the families took exception to that. Many of the families saw exactly what was going on and spoke out about it and said, you are collecting money on the name of my dead child, name, my dead relative. They haven't. Those families saw none or almost none of that money.

[Nellie Bowles]

Of course.

[Coleman Hughes]

Of course. And it was, it's quite a. I mean, in another world, a world where you were allowed to look into such things because it wasn't considered racist, it would have been a massive scandal. And a Netflix miniseries.

[Nellie Bowles]

Oh, definitely. Oh my God, I would love to watch the Netflix version. And yeah, there was basically a agreed upon silence on any concerns about the finances here for years of one of the biggest nonprofit stories of our time. And so it allowed for all of that good intention, all of that good energy, all that cash to be basically siphoned off. I mean, I think now with the free press, one of the things that I'm so glad about is basically this, the grip that the mainstream had on clenching on a narrative like this and saying, we're not talking about this and it's not gonna be aired. This isn't something we authorize. So the mainstream press could basically shut down a topic and you would see social media accounts, I mean, social media companies completely endorse the censorship, get all in on it. And so you would have this sort of agreed upon silence on really the most, all the most interesting topics of the last four years. And now we're seeing that silence be much harder for them to hold. And in part that's because of people waking up. And in part that's because of places like your podcast or the free press or publications that are saying, we actually will cover this and we're not scared to touch this. I mean, there's a topic I keep or a phrase I keep trying to make happen, which is the idea of time laundering the news. And basically what a lot of the mainstream media did for years and still does, which now I'm grateful for, because now we have a business of making, doing our own media and doing our own stories. But is a thing called time laundering, again, a phrase I use just in my head, which is the idea that like the mainstream media can touch something after it's been chewed over for about two to three years by the outside press or by the free sort of weird world of press like substack, or even by the conservative press, then the mainstream media is allowed to touch it. So something like the lab leak theory.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yes.

[Nellie Bowles]

Right now you might find a story about the lab leak theory in the Times or in the. Whatever one. NPR even. I don't know if NPR has covered it, but I'm sure there's something that's not like, totally dismissive. But it was only like four years after all of us in the free world and in the sensible land that whatever you want to call what we're all creating here had, like chewed over it for years. So now it's like old news. But now the mainstream media is allowed to touch it. Or like adolescent gender dysphoric, adolescent puberty blockers and maybe the complications around those topics that was only allowed to be touched after years of all of us talking about it and chewing it over and reporting on it. And, and in a way, it's really annoying. It's really frustrating. And when you're in one of those institutions, it drives. I mean, it drove me crazy because I was like, I want to talk about these and write about these things. But now in the outside, it's, it's, it's kind of fun to watch.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah.

[Nellie Bowles]

Because you're like, you're like, oh, my God, you guys finally touched that. Oh, wow.

[Coleman Hughes]

You're years talking about years after it kind of mattered most.

[Nellie Bowles]

Yeah. Like, we're all really bored by that.

[Coleman Hughes]

Now, you know, years after you could have had a significant impact by reporting on it. Honestly, now that you're probably not going to pay a price for talking about it. Now you talk about it.

[Nellie Bowles]

Exactly. Exactly. And all the people who were early to talk about it. Oh, we'll still call them conspiracy theorists. We'll still call them.

[Coleman Hughes]

You'll never apply that label. Doesn't change to Abigail Shrier.

[Nellie Bowles]

Exactly.

[Coleman Hughes]

In fact, you'll kind of pretend that you weren't part of the censorship machine over this topic the past few years. You'll memory hold that and casually start talking about it.

[Nellie Bowles]

But Abigail will still be smeared.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah.

[Nellie Bowles]

And the person who was early talking about the lab leak will still be smeared. And the person who was early talking about BLM corruption will still be smeared. But now we kind of agree. And the vibe is. Well, obviously we always were, we always were a little wary about giving hormones to gender dysphoric 14 year olds. Everyone was always aware that that was complicated and worthy of debate. I mean, it's like, it's like the best gaslighting you can imagine.

[Coleman Hughes]

Definitely.

[Nellie Bowles]

Yeah. And the reputations are never repaired of the people who lost their jobs over this or that. Different topic. I mean, yeah, Abigail's a great example. She didn't lose her job, but she was smeared. She was smeared for raising Questions that now are taken as a given on issues that now we basically collectively pretend were never the case. Like, oh, what do you mean? Kids were given cross sex hormones after one therapy session. That. That was never the case.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Nellie Bowles]

And it's like, well, yeah, no, it was. Yet you argued for it. You called anything else gatekeeping. Like, we have whistleblowers who say, these are things that happened. Anyways, it's, it's. But. But in a way, I think you and I now, this is. Once you're free of these old legacy institutions, you look at it with a little bit of. It's more curious and also kind of helpful because we get a running start on, like, basically any interesting storyline.

[Coleman Hughes]

That's true. That's true.

[Nellie Bowles]

We get to cover it, we get to have some stories about it. I get to make some fun in tgif and then the mainstream kind of clods along a year later and.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, I forget which comedian sort of works.

[Nellie Bowles]

For our business, to be honest.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. Which comedian it was that actually said wokeness is. Is good for comedy because the more topics they make off limits, the more topics become hilarious to a comedy audience.

[Nellie Bowles]

Exactly. It's like watching. It's right now, it's like watching your competitor, like, tie their own hands behind their back and be like, okay, all of these storylines, we can't touch and we won't touch. And it's like, okay, go for it, guys. Like, I. I like that about you.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right. All right, I'm going to end. Last question. In the, in the 2000s, something I think about, I found left wing political commentators extremely funny. And I'm thinking about the glory days of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert making fun of various aspects of Republican nonsense in the Bush years and early Obama years. Now there is very little of that that is funny. Truthfully, Trevor Noah's show I never found even remotely funny. And that was partly because of the person, but it's also, there's a whole machinery of writing behind it and joke writing that just slowly went from hilarious in the 2000s to insufferable by. By the mid 2010s and late 2010s.

[Nellie Bowles]

Stephen Colbert used to be hilarious. Yeah, he was amazing. And now it's like he's more likely to look at the camera and be like, today is no time for joking anymore because we need to focus on the priority of the vote that's gonna happen tomorrow and, like, start to shed a tear. Like, it's like, guys.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. And what's funny, it didn't quite shift to the Right. Per se. Like, it's not for me. What's funniest is not something like Gutman on Fox, but it shifted to like whatever Andrew Schultz is. Right. Like Andrew Schultz, he's not a Republican. I don't know if he's a Democrat either. I don't even know if he votes. But whatever he is politically, whatever his vibe is politically, that's where a lot of the funniest energy is. And it's something that is very comfortable making fun of. Wokeness.

[Nellie Bowles]

Tim Dillon.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, Tim Dillon, another great example. So what happened?

[Nellie Bowles]

Innocent comedy is not good comedy. Like, if you're trying to do propaganda for your cause, right or left, it's fundamentally not going to be as funny. You just can't, you just can't do. You can't. If you can't make fun of Trump if you're a Gutman. Listen, I don't watch Gutman, so I can't really like comment on him specifically. But for the right wing comedy guys, there's blind spots and then for the left wing comedy guys, there's enormous blind spots. Especially, especially when Joe Biden is president.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Nellie Bowles]

It's really hard for the, like the Stephen Colbert's, all the mainstream American late night shows and whatnot. It's really hard if you have to pretend that Donald Trump is still the president and that he's the only one you can make fun of and ignore the actual sitting president because it doesn't help your political agenda of the moment. That's really challenging. So I think that's why you see. Is it, wait, Gutman or Gutfeld?

[Coleman Hughes]

Oh, Gutfeld. Did I say Gutman? Yeah, Gutfeld.

[Nellie Bowles]

Sorry, I think it is Gutfeld. Yeah, you're right. But that's why you see his success. Because sure, he's coming at it from a right wing perspective, but he is lucky right now because the President is a Democrat. So it's actually like he can make fun of the sitting president.

[Coleman Hughes]

So many jokes that present themselves because of, you know, Biden is a grandpa.

[Nellie Bowles]

Yeah. But so speaking of tying your hands together, I mean, not being able to sit and make fun of the sitting president is really, really a hard thing to ask a late night comedian to do. I mean, I know they make a little joke here and there, but it's really, it's so fearful and their writers are so scared of the whole. Of anything that might not help it. And I don't know, I think it's pathetic. I think it's so boring. But I think it's why you see the rise of, like, our obsession, Tim Dillon, and of the kind of new, untethered comedians who aren't coming from corporate media or legacy companies. They're not at CBS or whatever.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Nellie Bowles]

And, yeah, it's just depressing. It's just so boring. Like, Jon Stewart, he's still sometimes good now that he's off Apple, thank God.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, he's definitely got better.

[Nellie Bowles]

But like, oh, my God, Jon Stewart on Apple. It was dismal. It was dark. It was like, I don't want all my comedians just telling me their political who to vote for and why and how. Today is no day for comedy. That works maybe once or twice. But, like, you can't have every night be another. Today is no day for comedy. We need to all understand the threat coming from the Republican Party this morning. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, you know.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. Well, your book is part of the solution in being absolutely hilarious. Here it is.

[Nellie Bowles]

Oh, man.

[Coleman Hughes]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and I think there's just a certain tone and storytelling and just mastery of just the most subtle, hilarious jokes and observations there that people will have a really fun time reading. And you'll also learn a lot about stories that may have passed you by over the past four years. So it's the best way, really, to take in some of the crazy aspects of our political culture over the past few years. So I really encourage people to buy it, and it's been a pleasure to have you on.

[Nellie Bowles]

Nellie Coleman, it's so good to see you, and thank you for having me on. And let's hang out more. Have me on anytime, Sam.