Will It Ever Be Cool to Be Conservative?

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Will It Ever Be Cool to Be Conservative?”

Podcast: Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
Host: New York Times Opinion
Guests: John Caramanica (NYT pop music critic), Joe Coscarelli (NYT pop music reporter), Ross Douthat (NYT opinion columnist & podcast host)
Date: December 18, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode is a crossover with Popcast, focusing on a provocative question: “Will it ever be cool to be conservative?” As pop culture and politics increasingly intermingle—especially in the Trump era—the hosts and guest Ross Douthat probe how conservatism is depicted, coded, and received in today’s music, Hollywood, and comedy scenes. The discussion orbits recent cultural flashpoints (Taylor Swift, Sydney Sweeney), the ongoing political realignment, and celebrities’ complicated relationships with ideology and image.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Framing the Question: Celebrity, Politics, and Pop Culture

• Intro (03:00): The conversation sets out to interrogate whether celebrities can plausibly be openly conservative, and what "conservatism" even looks like in pop culture.
• As culture shifts, younger audiences, streaming, and social fragmentation have all changed the old liberal consensus of Hollywood and music.
• Quote: “Can a celebrity be conservative? This is something that we talk about and we allude to... but we determined it was time for a real episode.”
  — John Caramanica (01:49)

2. The Era of Cultural Consolidation and Fragmentation

• Ross Douthat (07:43): Describes the 2010s as an era of consolidated, “woke” culture, where only a handful of studios & tech companies set the tone.
  • This created a “party line” many had to follow—or risk being canceled.
  • Now, fragmentation reigns: “Anything goes in politics,” with podcasts and outsider media thriving.
• Quote: “People who would have been on the left in the 1990s suddenly are on the right because to be on the right is to be against scolding and party lines and litmus tests.”
  — Ross Douthat (08:55)

3. Sydney Sweeney & Taylor Swift: Coded Conservatism?

• Sydney Sweeney Case Study (13:38): Sweeney embodies a lightning rod dynamic: starring in films coded both left and right, ambiguous branding, family rumors of MAGA ties.
  • Her “I just love jeans” response to politicized questions becomes a meme for apoliticism—or quiet resistance to progressive pieties.
  • Much right-wing attention appears to be projection due to her all-American star persona.
  • Quote: “You can be a celebrity without performing progressivism in certain ways. And that is a change.”
    — Ross Douthat (11:02)
• Taylor Swift’s “Life of a Showgirl” (17:00): Her openly romantic, heteronormative lyrics in the new album are read by many critics as a “right-moving” stance compared to the industry norm.
  • The group discusses double standards around gender: female stars have their domesticity or conventional relationships coded as right-wing; male stars (e.g., Austin Butler) are rarely politicized this way.
  • Quote: “To be America’s most famous female celebrity and sing a bunch of songs that are pro suburban domesticity... does code as right wing.”
    — Ross Douthat (17:29)

4. Coolness, Conservatism, and the Lame Factor

• Why Don’t Celebrities ‘Come Out’ as Conservative? (26:51):
  • Open conservatism is still widely perceived as “lame.” Even right-adjacent comedians, podcasters, or actors avoid explicit political labels.
  • “It might be easier to say, ‘I’m pro-Trump’ than ‘I’m a Republican.’” (28:15)
  • John predicts the next generation may break this mold as YouTube and podcast culture normalize alternative political postures.

5. Trumpism, Rap, and New Coalitions

• NBA YoungBoy & Rap’s Trump Moment (30:24):
  • Trump’s outreach to young rappers in legal trouble is reframing right-wing politics as “cool” among demographics that once would have shunned it.
  • NBA YoungBoy’s tour, pardoned by Trump, is cited as “the defining rap tour” of the year, the tour named “Make America Slime Again,” with lyrics and visuals embracing Trump.
  • Quote: “Nobody’s cooler in America to young people, especially young black people... than NBA YoungBoy. He’s not out here saying I’m a Republican or I’m conservative. He’s saying Trump, that’s my guy.”
    — Joe Coscarelli (31:19)
• Connection drawn to the “transactional” aspect of pardons and visibility in youth culture, with contrast to a lack of excitement around establishment Republicans (DeSantis, Rubio) post-Trump.

6. Cultural Transgression, Gender, and Political Coding

• Women Penalized for Ambiguity, Men Rewarded for It (18:12):
  • Female celebrities attract political projection; traditional or ambiguous presentation coded as right-wing.
  • Men (actors, rappers, etc.) typically evade this scrutiny, suggesting a gendered double standard in pop culture’s political interpretations.
  • Rise of “right-wing cool”: to be outside progressive orthodoxy is increasingly a badge of authenticity or rebellion.

7. The Dasha Nekrasova/Red Scare Controversy (41:27)

• Nekrasova (Red Scare) “cancelled” after hosting Nick Fuentes: The group dissects how the “lines” of acceptable edgelord behavior are still enforced in Hollywood, even amid greater overall fluidity.
  • Discussion of the blurry line between “offending to offend” (comedy, edgy art) and actual political advocacy for harmful ideologies.
  • Quote: “There’s a big difference between saying offensive things to be offensive… and saying offensive things as part of a concrete agenda.”
    — Ross Douthat (48:43)

8. Art, Offense, and Political Consequences

• Reflection on the independence of art versus agitprop; the importance of ambiguity and multiple readings for truly “great” art.
• Example: South Park lampooning the Catholic Church in ways that would be taboo regarding other groups—but as Douthat notes, he separates satire from outright advocacy for persecution. (52:15)
• Conversation around the rehabilitation/cancellation cycles for figures like Mel Gibson, Kanye West, and Clint Eastwood—pointing to art’s staying power over ideology.

9. The Talent Gap and Alternative Institutions

• Conservative Pop Culture’s Weak Bench (59:25):
  • When tasked with counter-programming against a Bad Bunny Super Bowl moment, the right lacks artists of similar stature; attempts to counter with Morgan Wallen, Kiss, or Gloria Gaynor feel diminished.
  • “To win culturally, the right needs true institutional power... not just marginal alternatives or protest events.”
    — Paraphrased from Ross Douthat (62:52)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the “Party Line” Era:
  “We got rid of the old right wing puritans and now we've got the left wing puritans.”
  — Ross Douthat (08:47)

• On Taylor Swift’s New Album:
  “To be America’s most famous female celebrity and sing a bunch of songs that are like pro suburban domesticity and pro Chad, football player fiancé... yeah, it does code as right wing.”
  — Ross Douthat (17:27)

• On Celebrity Conservatism as ‘Lame’:
  “Being an overtly conservative celebrity is still lame, don't you think?”
  — Ross Douthat (27:22)

• On the NBA YoungBoy/Trump Alliance:
  “Trump becomes the ‘free so-and-so’ candidate, and his politics by extension become the ‘free so-and-so’ politics.”
  — John Caramanica (32:04)

• On the Right-Wing Cool Factor & Art:
  “If great art interacts with politics... ideally, you shouldn’t be able to fully tell. It should be open for interpretation because reality... has components that vindicate the left and components that vindicate the right.”
  — Ross Douthat (64:49)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:33 – Ross Douthat introduces the crossover and key themes.
• 07:43 – Douthat’s analysis of cultural consolidation → fragmentation.
• 11:02 – Sydney Sweeney, memeification, and “doing jeans ads.”
• 17:00 – Taylor Swift’s new vibe and the politics of heteronormativity.
• 26:51 – Why being openly conservative remains “lame.”
• 30:24 – Trump, NBA YoungBoy, and right-wing cred in rap music.
• 41:27 – Dasha Nekrasova, Red Scare, and the politics/edgelord line.
• 48:43 – Differences between “offensive for offense’s sake” vs. agenda-driven politics.
• 59:25 – The lack of big conservative cultural stars: the Super Bowl dilemma.
• 64:49 – Douthat’s fundamental belief in artistic ambiguity.
• 67:01–68:56 – Lighthearted snack-tasting and closing banter.

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Tone & Takeaways

The episode is conversational, witty, and self-aware, mixing sharp media criticism with pop culture gossip and a dash of humility. Ross Douthat’s blend of political seriousness and pop culture fascination is matched by the Popcast hosts’ expertise in hip, online cultural trends.

Main takeaway:
While the boundaries between politics and pop culture have eroded—and right-coded “rebellion” has never seemed more marketable—there are still steep reputational and institutional barriers that keep most stars from openly identifying as conservative. For now, “being a conservative celebrity” is still coded as “lame”—and true mainstream cool belongs elsewhere, at least until the next generational shift.

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Further Listening

For Ross Douthat’s continued reflections on culture and politics, subscribe to "Interesting Times with Ross Douthat." For more pop culture analysis, check out "Popcast" (NYT).

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Ads, snack test, and outro not summarized.

Transcript

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[Ross Douthat]

Hey listeners, Happy Advent and Happy Hanukkah. Today we're bringing you a special episode where I'm the one in the hot seat. We talk a lot on this show about the big ideas driving today's politics, tech, religion, and more. But recently, I got a chance to talk about another favorite subject of mine, pop culture. Between Taylor Swift's allegedly reactionary new album and the entire discourse around Sydney Sweeney, one question keeps popping. Is it possible for a celebrity to be a conservative? My colleagues recently invited me on popcast to ask me that question. Popcast is the New York Times show focused on music and pop culture criticism. And I think we had a pretty fascinating conversation about how Trump era politics fits into those worlds right now. I hope you enjoy.

[John Caramanica]

Welcome to the New York Times Podcast. You are interrupting my pardon. Weekly cultural review. I'm John Caramonica. And I'm the critic.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I'm Joe Coscarelli and I'm the reporter.

[John Caramanica]

It's a special episode today. Big theme conversation, big ideas. No knock on our other guests, but we had a big thought. You and I were texting a couple weeks ago. Sydney Sweeney, the memes, the discourse, sending tweets back and forth. Can a celebrity be conservative? This is something that we talk about and we allude to a lot on this show. And I think we determined that it was time for a real episode on the topic.

[Joe Coscarelli]

This is something that I think has threaded through a lot of our our thoughts on coverage. For the last couple of years, this has been a moment in which pop culture is changing a lot. The center of what I think the American mainstream is has moved in alignment with the current presidential administration. And there was basically one person we wanted to chat with about this, literally just one. And he happens to reside professionally in the same building as us. Ross St. Is here on popcast. Ross is the host of Interesting Times with Ross St. Ross is a opinion columnist at the New York Times.

[Ross Douthat]

You guys needed needed to know if a celebrity could be a conservative. And here we are here. And here I AM that's our show.

[John Caramanica]

That's our show. That's the show. It's great.

[Ross Douthat]

Yeah, we're over.

[Joe Coscarelli]

This is a crossover episode in multiple segments.

[John Caramanica]

Marvel Team up, kind of.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Yes. Flintstones Meet the Jetsons. That's my go to.

[Ross Douthat]

I think I'm the Flintstone.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I was going to say.

[John Caramanica]

I was going to say that's a pretty late. Pretty late in comparison. I. I was not going to go.

[Ross Douthat]

To the side by the end.

[John Caramanica]

Okay.

[Ross Douthat]

I think.

[Joe Coscarelli]

But Ross, we've been on parallel journeys not only as New York Times employees, but as video podcasting experimenters. Ross has a YouTube channel. We have a YouTube channel. Subscribe to both oral culture. Yes.

[Ross Douthat]

It's here. It's here to stay.

[Joe Coscarelli]

We're thinking of this as a conversation among colleagues, among people with slightly different vantages. But you are a pop culture consumer. We want to touch on Hollywood, but also the way that MAGA and the current Trump administration and conservatism more generally are weaving their way through music. Country and rap in particular, have embraced this era of politics, dare we say.

[John Caramanica]

Leveraging the moral fluidity of some of these cultural spaces.

[Joe Coscarelli]

The Taylor Swift album has lightning rod for conversation about conservatism. Small C, I would say, that you've covered on your show, but I'm also.

[Ross Douthat]

A conservative dad, which means I'm not that appreciative of the new album's coarseness.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I think people who might know you from your. You have a column this weekend about Trump's polling numbers, right? That's a very different thing than the column you wrote a couple of weeks ago about Sydney Sweeney's viability as a movie star. So where do you sit? Where do you sit in this?

[Ross Douthat]

I mean, to the extent that I have any, like, any background, I've always been a movie guy. And as TV transformed and became more movie like, and the movies went into a kind of decline, I became more of a TV guy. I'm less of a pop music guy, except for Taylor Swift and other things that my daughters listen to. So my, my opinions on that subject are maybe slightly narrower. But I've written a movie review column for National Review for a long time. And then, you know, probably for 10 years or so in this job, I've tried to work in a fair amount of cultural writing. I did a movie dialogue with my colleague Frank Bruni many years ago.

[John Caramanica]

And you had Tony Gilroy on the show recently?

[Ross Douthat]

I had Tony on the podcast, and I'd like to do more of it. It's challenging, but, yeah, I had Tony Gilroy on to talk about andor as a left wing show, but also a left wing show that conservatives really like that is not seen as didactic. He didn't want to say that andor was a left wing show you were.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Pushing over and over.

[Ross Douthat]

He really didn't want to say that for understandable reasons. But then he also wanted to say that, well, if by left wing you just mean it's on the side of peace, truth and understanding, then how could anyone.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I don't think it's left or right at all.

[John Caramanica]

He hit you with The Republicans watch TV2 line.

[Ross Douthat]

Well, he did.

[Joe Coscarelli]

That part was implied.

[Ross Douthat]

There's sort of a, a two step of universal storytelling. I'm not political on the one hand and you know, artists are left wing because that's because duh. Because duh. Right, yeah.

[John Caramanica]

Which is I think what we're here to trouble a little bit today. Also, I think maybe even before Sydney Sweeney, there was that news article you sent me last night about Trump trying to force is it Warner to relaunch the Rush Hour.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Which, which.

[Ross Douthat]

Comedy.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Right.

[John Caramanica]

Not.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Not just anybody comedy, but spec.

[John Caramanica]

The Rush Hour and the Rush Hour series, occasionally racially fraught buddy comedy series.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Directed by the canceled disgraced director Brett Ratner, who just so happens to have recently completed an Amazon documentary about Melania Trump.

[Ross Douthat]

Oh, so that's the circle. So Brett Ratner thinks my ticket back to Hollywood is someone rebooting.

[John Caramanica]

Well, it's through Mar a Lago.

[Joe Coscarelli]

But when you see a news report like that about Trump wanting to sort of reach back to the 80s and 90s pop culture, that is most familiar and comforting to him. The other proper noun in this semaphore story was Bloodsport, the Jean Claude Van Damme movie. Where do you see the relationship between the Trump administration and conservatism more broadly and Hollywood at this point? Moment of transition.

[Ross Douthat]

The first thing that you could say that happened in the last five years is that you had this moment of kind of maximal cultural consolidation where there was sort of an intersection of technological consolidation and also commercial consolidation. And it felt for a little while like you could have a world where most important culture was filtered through a small group of studios, a small group of tech companies. There would be a sort of Silicon Valley Hollywood arrangement. And this sort of, I think, mapped onto a world where everyone was seemed to be on the same couple of social media platforms. I think what we talk about as, as wokeness. Right as that kind of moment was in a way an attempt to sort of use that consolidation and say all right? And through this sort of consolidated environment, we're also going to have an enlightened party line that people are going to agree on and further and push and people's behavior and, you know, mores and so on should conform to this as well. And if not, they'll be eased out or canceled. And I think everything we have right now is a reaction to that sort of normal political, cultural reaction where people got tired of it and said, you know, I feel like, you know, I feel like we got rid of the old right wing puritans and now we've got the left wing puritans. And people who. Who would have been on the left in cultural battles in the 1990s suddenly are on the right because they feel like it's. To be on the right is to be against scolding and party lines and litmus tests. And you see this obviously, like, with comedians, especially older, you know, the whole sort of Dave Chappelle, Bill Maher, older generation of sort of left libertarian comedians who suddenly become, Are they right wing? Who knows? What does right wing even mean? But that happens at the same time that there's then a kind of further technological shift where that brief moment of consolidation ends, and suddenly everything feels totally fragmented again. And this is what I think you see, like, in the landscape we're in right now. Right. But like the video podcasting realm, it seems like anything goes in politics. Like, there's no guardrails. You can have, you know, an incredibly popular podcast on itunes while announcing that, you know, Emmanuel Macron's wife is really a man and that the Israelis killed Charlie Kirk.

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It is time for you to wake up. I don't know who specifically came out.

[Ross Douthat]

And said that Bibi killed Charlie Kirk. You know, just. Just to take a purely hypothetical example, so the guardrails go away. And so I think there's a lot of people who aren't even sure what right wing or left wing exactly means. There's sort of a sort of bunch of outsiderish cultural elements that are sort of right wing, that are in the, like, mixed martial arts, bro podcasting range. But then it's also just to end with Sydney Sweeney, right? So the Sydney Sweeney meme that everyone was talking about, where she was asked an incredibly awkward question about alleged white supremacy in her jeans ad.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Yeah, she says, I did a jeans ad.

[Ross Douthat]

I did a jeans ad. I love jeans. You have become very swept up in politics. I did a gene ad. It was I. I love jeans. That's less, I think a right. A statement like Sydney Sweeney is now a right wing celebrity and more a statement of you can be a celebrity without performing progressivism in certain ways. And that's. That is a change.

[John Caramanica]

If you look at the online response to that particular or it's by no.

[Ross Douthat]

Means it was a statement that received other statements in response.

[John Caramanica]

Yes, it is by no means universal acclimate like a voice vote of support. Also, just to your point about consolidation and kind of what's happening at the margins, when that Trump story last night, what it immediately made me think of was I spent some time earlier this year going to a few Theo Vaughn shows, like live comedy shows. And one thing that came up at the live shows is he's been working on this movie, some kind of like comedy with David Spade. He's showing the trailer and he kept being like, studios don't want it. Slash. I don't want studios to touch it. And I think in his like the, the implied radicalism of working outside the studio system is aligned with this kind of right wing freedom or what we're thinking of as right wing cultural freedom right now. Now, I'm not sure that I buy the Obana's right leaning. I think he's a much more flexible political valence than that, but I think he's leveraging.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Political. Yeah.

[John Caramanica]

Potentially apolitical.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Yeah.

[John Caramanica]

But I think he's leveraging, you know, it's a wave to ride and I think it's a convenient wave to ride.

[Joe Coscarelli]

And I think that's why Sydney Sweeney as the sort of crux of this conversation is so interesting because she's at the intersection of what you guys are describing, this sort of wild west and then the old Hollywood system, the idea of movie stars and box office. And Sydney Sweeney has had this very interesting journey from starring in Euphoria, a debauched, lawless, lawless youth culture show. I feel like often Alighted is her come up in the Handmaid's Tale. Quite, you know, I think plainly left leaning allegory for the loss of women's rights in a dystopian society. She starred in independent films like Reality, the reality winner movie where she plays a whistleblower.

[Ross Douthat]

Her horror movie Immaculate Immaculate is let's say not, not favorable to the Roman Catholic Church. I think it's, I think it's fair to say so.

[Joe Coscarelli]

This American Eagle Genes campaign comes out earlier this year and the New York Times did great reporting on sort of the idea that the backlash was more or less imagined or dreamed up. The left wing backlash to this ad. Yeah.

[Ross Douthat]

Do you think it was dreaming. I don't think it was dreamed up.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I mean, our reporters who, who parse through where these online conversations start, I think did a pretty good job laying out the idea that the backlash to the backlash from the right was much, much, much larger and better organized than whatever sort of stray woke 1.0 reactions there were to the ad itself. So I think Sweeney, what she's done is sort of played this game of projecting, heterodoxy, projecting, you know, this idea of, you don't really know what I think, but I might wink at you sometimes.

[Ross Douthat]

You know, my family wears MAGA hats.

[Joe Coscarelli]

My family wears. I'm, I'm, I'm a registered Republican. Was reported ahead of the 2024 election that she'd registered as a Republican in Florida. And at least from the people who have come to champion her, they see a fellow traveler, they see somebody who can both fit in this liberal Hollywood system and even do movies that might have that valence. You know, her, her latest film, Christie is a, about a closeted lesbian boxer. All these things that might seem like typical Hollywood ingenue, liberal Hollywood stuff. And then she's complicating that picture. So I think this idea of a mainstream celebrity, a very popular cultural lightning rod who also, who also is in conversation and maybe even alliance with the dominant political party in America like that is scrambling people's brains.

[Ross Douthat]

There's a long standing tradition of a kind of pathetic right wing search for celebrities who agree with them with all.

[John Caramanica]

Jon Voight for 20 years, Trump inauguration concert.

[Ross Douthat]

And it's just a bunch of online MAGA guys desperate for a white all American blonde person to project their fantasies on in the way that you had like far right racists who loved Taylor Swift back in the day.

[John Caramanica]

So you've been on the Internet.

[Ross Douthat]

We'll get to Taylor, right? We'll get to Taylor Swift in a minute. But then there's also a weird dynamic, right, where again, there are things in the culture now that would not have coded as right wing 20 years ago that code as right wing. And one of them is just like, you know, intense public heterosexuality. Like there's. Which is a very, very weird thing to say, but I think is part of the reality that there's this odd dynamic.

[John Caramanica]

Is there someone else who embodies that, like outside of Sydney?

[Joe Coscarelli]

Taylor Swift honestly is like, well, so.

[Ross Douthat]

All right, yeah, we'll go, we'll just go to Taylor. So Taylor Swift does an album that, you know, where she's like, I'm in love with my boyfriend. Yep, I Want to get married to him and have kids with him. I also really enjoy having sex with him outside of the context of wedlock. Right. Like not, you know, this is not. This is not an actual sort of, you know, evangelical Christian purity ring kind of, kind of album. Right.

[John Caramanica]

First. First Jonas Brothers album.

[Ross Douthat]

It is widely interpreted by critics, by people who are disappointed in the turn Taylor has made as this kind of like, if not right wing, at least sort of right moving thing. And I think that, I think that's correct. I think that's a correct interpretation in the current cultural moment to be America's most famous female celebrity and sing a. Sing a bunch of songs that are like pro suburban domesticity and you know, pro Chad, football player fiance with a big reproductive organ is generally. Yeah, it does code as right wing.

[John Caramanica]

But how much of this is gender, though? Because we're talking about Taylor, we're talking about Sydney, we're not talking about Austin Butler, Jacob Elordi, you know, we're not talking about.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Those guys do not have politics, as far as we can tell.

[John Caramanica]

But they're not. But no one is ascribing right leaning politics, politics to their rather conventional expressions of heteronormative sexuality, which obviously we can trouble a bit at the margins. But in essence, is this something that the right or this sort of like formless online quasi community puts on women and female celebrities?

[Ross Douthat]

Again, I don't think it's the right putting anything on Taylor Swift, I think I'll give you that. There's like a right wing Sydney Sweeney cheering section, but the reaction to Life of a Showgirl. Yes, I made my own video about it and I, you know, I contributed. Okay, fine.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Guilty.

[Ross Douthat]

Guilty as charged.

[Joe Coscarelli]

No, I agree that Read was coming.

[Ross Douthat]

From movement, was coming from her fans and generally a kind of. Yeah, a kind of left amorphous, left wing Internet that was reacting to this as something that was a little bit too right wing for comfort. Now, part of that. So the other thing that's happened in our culture that's totally unusual is men and women are younger. Men and women especially are politically polarized to a degree that's never existed before. It was all, you know, when we were young. Not that we're not young, but, you know, when we were younger, right. There was a gender gap and women voted slightly more Democratic and so on. But there, there was not this huge, this huge divergence. And that also, I think, has some kind of cultural manifestations that. Where you have these sort of distinct forms now that are seen like, you know, MMA or You know, there's war, the endless wars over video games. Right? But sort of video games are sort of coded as young male pop culture and pop music is coded as young female pop culture. The biggest stars, there are male stars, but the biggest stars in pop music right now seems to me are female. And there's like, you know, you get movies about Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan bringing in Timothee Chalamet. Right, so we can get some. Yeah, but, but it's all like, that's the past. In the old days you had these, you know, male heartthrobs, but that's, that's not where we are. If you are a prominent female artist and you're seen as sort of making gestures of reconciliation towards trad bros or whatever in any form, then you're either gonna get a lot of unwanted attention or maybe wanted attention, but a lot of attention from the right or you're gonna get a lot of angry attention from the left.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I think the Sidney and Taylor example is interesting because it's a lot about art versus commentary. Like what you're saying is that Taylor has made an album in Life of a Showgirl that has been received as, again, small C, conservative, potentially in its pursuit of heteronormativity, whereas Sydney Sweeney has generally made, and even as a producer, not as an actress, made projects that fit more in left Hollywood, but as individuals.

[Ross Douthat]

But crucially also with Sydney Sweeney, nobody saw those movies.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Well, I want to get, I want to get to that because I do think there's, there's business considerations here for both of them who are not only individuals and Personas but also corporations in and of themselves. But in real life, Taylor has, you know, come out against President Trump. She is, she's campaigned for Democrats here and there. Whereas Sydney Sweeney, insofar as she's made any sort of comments about her own, you know, ideological leanings are more implied. Again, sort of winks and nudges towards a, towards a right leaning base. Chrissy, for instance, the new Sydney Sweeney movie, Gigantic Bomb. Right. So her, her left leaning work not connecting with those audiences, her right leaning fans not rushing out to see her movies.

[Ross Douthat]

Well, except, so Sweeney, it seems to me, has had. Yeah, she's in part, you have to understand her career just in the other context that is part of this, which is just the ongoing collapse of normal Hollywood as a center for the culture. Right. So she's, yeah, she's doing a bunch of normal Hollywood things in an environment where nothing, nothing is selling. Nothing Hollywood is doing is selling successfully, no matter what Stars are involved. Our own paper had a story just last week or the week before about the long, you know, her boxing movie was just one of a long list. 25 movies with allegedly big stars that, that are doing 4 million on opening weekend and dying. Right. So Sweeney is trying. And that's distinct from Taylor Swift, who's not, you know, whatever else is going on with Taylor Swift, her mainstream way of making money is working. So Sweeney I feel like is sort of in this weird position where she has this incredibly, incredibly potent stardom as not a model exactly, but as a face of female sexiness, an influencer, whatever else. And then she has a movie career. And I think the two are important to each other. I don't think Sydney Sweeney would just be famous as a supermodel. She's too short, I think. I'm not making. Just kidding. I mean I have to watch what I say because I'm a serious political journalist, you guys.

[Joe Coscarelli]

We're allowed to make jokes.

[Ross Douthat]

Uhhuh. It's all one Internet, man.

[John Caramanica]

That's true. It is.

[Ross Douthat]

It is.

[John Caramanica]

That is true. But it's all Theo Von's Internet.

[Ross Douthat]

But, but then also unlike Taylor, right. Like Taylor Swift has a core fan base of women. There are many men who listen to her, myself included. Right. But her core fan base is female. Sydney Sweeney's core fan base right now is probably pretty male.

[Joe Coscarelli]

But they're not. Right, but they're not a ticket buying fan.

[Ross Douthat]

They're not.

[John Caramanica]

They're meme consumers. They're meme consumers.

[Ross Douthat]

But then her one genuine hit movie was itself a kind of semi traditional rom com with Glenn Powell.

[John Caramanica]

Right.

[Ross Douthat]

So the most heteronormative thing that Sydney Sweeney has done as a Hollywood celebrity is also her biggest success. I also think Euphoria, like her first two TV shows, Euphoria and then her role on White Lotus where she was sort of an obnoxious woke adjacent college student. Right. One euphoria codes as left wing TV in 1997 and maybe even when it came out. But again, in an environment where conservatism just is like anything that's not wokeness, even Euphoria. And there's all sorts of, of course like you know, me too adjacent complaints about that and many others.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I mean Sam Levinson, the creator of Euphoria's other work, is often criticized for being anti woke in.

[Ross Douthat]

So I guess all I'm saying is if you, I think Euphoria, White Lotus and anyone but you, those are Sweeney's three most successful actual like actress, cultural products and all of them are in some way, like non woke, I think. So even there, I think you can say whatever Sweeney is trying to do, she's trying to have a conventional career, but none of those movies make money. She exists as an influencer whose fans are not all Republicans, but like young men in an environment when young heterosexual men have moved somewhat. Right. And then she has a few hits that are. Yeah. That are sort of their own. Their own thing.

[Joe Coscarelli]

All of which leads me to the central question, which is like, then why can't she just say, I'm a proud conservative.

[John Caramanica]

Yes. Like, why doesn't she lean in? Because really, the interview that we're talking about is her deflecting.

[Joe Coscarelli]

And I want to play this. I want to play this clip where she says, you know, essentially, if I wanted you to know what I believed, I would let you know.

[Ross Douthat]

I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.

[Joe Coscarelli]

So again, why can't she just be openly conservative, especially if the traditional structure of Hollywood isn't working for her?

[Ross Douthat]

Being an overtly conservative celebrity is still lame, don't you think?

[John Caramanica]

Lame is a. Be more. Give me a different word than lame.

[Ross Douthat]

Let me put it this way. The word conservative, who are you thinking of? Well, so look at all the people. The ecosystem of celebrities who are now on the right would not describe themselves as on the right. Like, you get Dave Chappelle in this chair and you say Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K. you know, Bill Maher, the sort of Jerry Seinfeld, like this sort of that group. Right. Would any of them say, I'm a Republican now? No. Exactly. Nor would. And then like in the, Like Theo Vaughn. Right, Theo Vaughn, Joe Rogan, like that. That's a distinctive novel form of novel kind of celebrity ecosystem.

[Joe Coscarelli]

They hate being labeled if they have anything.

[Ross Douthat]

And in a way, maybe it's easy. Right. But it's easier to say, well, not this. Not the comedian, certainly, but like, it might be easier to say, I'm pro Trump than I'm a Republican. Or that, like that Trump guy, he's got, you know, he's got something going on. Trump himself is obviously part of celebrity culture, but I feel like there's an old world where in Hollywood you could be either liberal, left wing or apolitical, and there's a newer world where you can be sort of effectively right wing, but there still isn't a world where celebrities want to say, I'm.

[Joe Coscarelli]

But I feel like.

[John Caramanica]

But the dam is going to break. I think the damn. Here's the Thing, I think what you're seeing in YouTube culture and that level of celebrity or commentator who becomes celebrity simply by dint of the hundreds of millions of views that they get, they are softening a generation of fans, viewers, listeners to be potentially open minded to a centrist celebrity. I don't mean politically centrist, I mean like structurally industry centrist. To say I also share these views. It's why that collision I think is coming. But I think if it's not Sydney Sweeney who's going to rip the band aid off, I do think somebody else maybe of the next generation younger will rip that band aid off and say, yes, I make left leaning Hollywood product, yes I make a cool TV show or film, but also my political valences are more complicated.

[Ross Douthat]

They can say that. I think it's these explicit identification with conservatism. Conservatism.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I think you're right. But that's why I think that the Trump example is so complicating in this because he does provide a way for celebrities to be like, I'm cool. But I also ascribe to right leaning beliefs. And I think you see this in rap music, for instance.

[John Caramanica]

Rap music.

[Joe Coscarelli]

John recently wrote a big piece about NBA youngboy who had, you know, the defining rap tour of this year. He's, you know, the biggest non mainstream star. He doesn't have songs on the radio, you don't see him on television. But the youth is obsessed with him. His tour is called Make America Slime Again. His tour exists in part because earlier this year he was pardoned by President Trump after pleading guilty to weapons charges. He'd been on house arrests. He'd had a very complicated web of both federal and state charges that he's been broiled in since he was a teenager. And in a music video, we should play a little bit of it for a song. Xxx he's performing and background dancers are dancing in front of slime green graffiti that says all hail Trump. He says, Trump is, I'm with him. He's good for the youngins. He throws a shot at Joe Biden and he was performing for sold out arenas. Again, you mentioned this idea of uncool. Nobody's cooler in America to young people, especially young black people, young people of color than NBA young boy. He's not out here saying I'm a Republican or I'm conservative. He's saying Trump, that's my guy. And I think that there's an interesting question about what happens to Trump aligned youth culture with the MAGA movement post Trump and if it attaches itself to someone, say, like J.D. vance, which I'm not sure that it does, especially if you're a rapper.

[John Caramanica]

And also what I would just to add one more level of detail, which is Trump's partner of NBA YoungBoy, obviously part of a long running Trump charm offensive with young rappers, particularly young rappers in legal peril. A series of pardons, Kodak Black, among others, essentially making him the candidate of, you know, in any number of. Yeah, in any number of hip hop contexts, so and so's in jail. Everybody chants free so and so. Trump becomes the free so and so candidate and his politics by extension become the free so and so politics. And whether it's Trump's idea or whether it's one of his side folks, that is Trump identifying a segment of popular culture that is hospitable to him and his ideology. And then it's that wing of popular culture, essentially abandon. You didn't see rappers out there for Kamala in 2024 outside of like the most obvious 90s centrist kind of left leaning rappers, young rappers said, no, we're voting for Trump, or to the extent that we're voting, we support Trump. That is an example, I think what Joe said is correct, of cool culture embracing something that is explicitly right, but.

[Ross Douthat]

Not saying, I'm a Republican.

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[Joe Coscarelli]

Is there a way that you see the right trying to build on its currency in popular culture right now? Like, what do Trump, NBA Youngboy and Sydney Sweeney have in common? Like, is that a coalition that can hold?

[Ross Douthat]

I mean, that might be a coalition that can hold, but then the Republican Party is also the party of boring, white, suburban, married. Like. Like that. That is the weird thing about the Republican Party under Trump is that it just, it became a coalition of people fed up with progressive culture for completely different reasons. Right. A culture of conservative normies and the transgressive. And so it makes sense that once you, once your coalition is a place of transgression and the other coalition has no room for transgression, you're going to get people in culture, in art, who are pulled towards your coalition. I mean, maybe I'm hung up again as someone sort of from an earlier era on the idea that the way you get politics in pop culture is the sort of expression of certain pieties by a prominent movie star. And I still think we're infinitely far away from a prominent movie star saying, saying, like, I believe I'm pro life and I believe in limited government. The way prominent, the way prominent celebrities would say, no, I support, you know, the environment. And, and no, no person is illegal or something. Right.

[John Caramanica]

I don't think anybody's going to come out for deregulation. Like, I don't think so.

[Ross Douthat]

Right. Okay, so that's. And, and, but then it's like, all right, so you have this transgressive space. How stable is that transgressive space? I think there's a scenario where that transgressive space persists but depoliticizes a little bit after Trump. So whether it's Vance or someone else, you get a kind of reversion to the Republican mean. And then you have a lot of people out there who still no longer want to identify with whatever progressivism is, want to be seen as sort of outside the lines of official liberal decency, whatever that means. But they're not going to identify with Ron. Like, in a world where Ron DeSantis or Marco Rubio or someone else, like that was the Republican nominee for president, you're not. Nobody's going to be like, oh, why won't Sydney Sweeney say she's voting for Ron DeSantis? And no, certainly no one's going to do a rap tour about Ron.

[John Caramanica]

I don't know who DeSantis is going to pardon. We don't know about that.

[Ross Douthat]

But you mean it isn't just the pardon? So the pardons are the transactional side. Right. But Trump has always, first of all, he's always had some subset of sort of people in African American pop culture, Don King, like, these kind of people he was friendly with. Right.

[John Caramanica]

Great story in vibe magazine in 1997 or 1990, 1998.

[Ross Douthat]

Trump has always just had a celebrity identity. So I, Yeah, I just don't know what the kind of sort of equivalent of that explicitly right wing energy is after him now. Maybe it's in, you know, maybe there's something in religion and religious art. Right. Like the, you know, that that makes a comeback or not even one of.

[Joe Coscarelli]

The most beloved albums of the year, the Russelliya album Lux, which we discussed with her on this very show, is explicitly, explicitly about female sainthood.

[Ross Douthat]

Right. But that's an example of sort of. And I think you will see more of this, a kind of non. Ironic portrayals of religiosity where the goal is not the kind of Madonna like, you know, I am using Catholic iconography in order to subvert and deconstruct it, but sort of more since. Yeah, I think you will see more religious sincerity in art and pop culture probably in this environment than you would have 20 years ago, which is conservative coded in some way.

[John Caramanica]

Can I get back to the piety question? Because you're talking about post Trump, you're talking about a vance or a DeSantis who obviously seem like potentially a reversion to more traditional conservative values and more traditional expressions of political conservatism and presumably less appealing to edgelordy, people on the Internet presume despite.

[Ross Douthat]

Well, the edgelords having. Well, edgelords are different. So you do have now something that I think will persist that didn't exist 15 or 20 years ago, which is a kind of right wing counterculture that has its own weird little literary factions. It has the dime square scene in New York that I'm sure, you know, no longer exists the way it did a couple years ago. But like, you'd be surprised, you know.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Right.

[Ross Douthat]

That has. Okay, all right. But. But a world.

[John Caramanica]

We still have to go out. We still gotta go somewhere.

[Ross Douthat]

Yeah, sorry. I mean, but a world that looks a little bit, I mean, part, part of what happened in all of Western culture is that fascism and Nazi Germany sort of completely culturally discredited all forms of like edgy right wing aesthetic stuff.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I think that's probably rightfully so.

[John Caramanica]

Yeah.

[Ross Douthat]

I mean, not so.

[John Caramanica]

Yeah.

[Ross Douthat]

They also did other bad things. Right.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Besides, besides make art. Yeah.

[Ross Douthat]

Well, I mean, did it discredit? I don't know, like. So if you go back to the 1920s and 1930s, you have a lot of like high modernist literary figures who are right wing. Sure. And by the time you get to like the late 20th century Western world, it's, it's very difficult to imagine that. Right. In. In any Serious numbers. You do have like David Bowie has like a phase of sort of pretending.

[Joe Coscarelli]

To be in playing with.

[John Caramanica]

Visual, visual play.

[Ross Douthat]

If you want to say that all extremes of politics should be discredited by totalitarian evil, then you can say it's good that, you know, it's good that the Nazis discredited right wing extremist literary figures. And it would be good if, you know, the legacy of Mao and Stalin had discredited extreme left wing literary figures. Which is not to say that I'm here to tell you, oh, we need to, you know, Ezra, Ezra Pound was totally misunderstood for his shilling for Mussolini or something like, you know, to, to be clear, like the, you know, the fascist anti Semitic artists were bad. But I guess I would say like, if you're entering an era of cultural unsettlement, you should expect some kind of right wing counterculture.

[Joe Coscarelli]

And with the emerge as this place of transgression, I'm curious what you think of the consequences insofar as they exist within the traditional spheres of major label system. Hollywood Studios Center. Which brings us to, you know, sort of a relatively niche figure, but someone who is touching a lot of the things that we've been talking about for the last 45 minutes, which is Dasha Nekrasova, co host of the very popular Dime Square heterodox cultural commentary show Red Scare, also a, you know, aspiring actress, has had succession part time materialists, small role materialists, made, made a film of her own about Jeffrey Epstein and has now been quote unquote, canceled for hosting Nick Fuentes. The Holocaust denying white nationalist Internet celebrity on her, on her podcast was, you know, reportedly dropped from a film dropped by her agents as part of a campaign which was reported, I believe in the Hollywood Reporter, that there had been an individual who had long kept up with what she said and what others said on her show and that eventually it culminated in her being stripped of these opportunities. She appeared over the weekend on Glenn Greenwald's podcast on Rumble saying that in.

[Ross Douthat]

Fact it's just one, one podcast after another.

[Joe Coscarelli]

She would basically said, I'm surprised this didn't happen to me earlier. I'm already blacklisted. It's already hard for me to find work.

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[Ross Douthat]

And that's been made clear to me.

[Joe Coscarelli]

You know, interviewing Alex Jones and appearing with Steve Bannon over the years, et cetera, et cetera. So I guess that structure of pieties of consequences from the Hollywood studios remains intact, even though as Glenn Greenwald said in his discussion with her they felt like these days of cancellation were over in the second Trump administration.

[Ross Douthat]

Yeah, I mean, Fuentes. Fuentes has become a test case more in politics than in culture, I think, but also in culture. Right.

[Joe Coscarelli]

And met Donald Trump.

[Ross Douthat]

Met Donald Trump with Kanye West.

[John Caramanica]

Kanye.

[Ross Douthat]

Kanye West.

[Joe Coscarelli]

So this is something that's been percolating, I think at the intersection of culture and politics for years now.

[Ross Douthat]

Yeah. But in politics, Fuentes has become the place of attempted, attempted line drawing. Right. Very, very clearly there's a sense of like, okay, we sort of the right opened things up and the right became kind of a menagerie of strange ideas. And right now you can find basically any wild idea that a normal person 20 years ago would have considered insane somewhere in the right wing ecosystem. And this has, again, as with art, it has both given the right a dynamism that I assure you it did not have when Mitt Romney was running for president. Right. It is since Trump was elected in sort of different ways, it has just become way more interesting to be engaged in right wing political debates.

[John Caramanica]

Well, the ultimate non pious figure.

[Ross Douthat]

But, but it, but it has also obviously like given platforms and audiences to genuinely evil people. And so with Fuentes, it's like he's the place where it's like, okay, you know, this is a guy who doesn't cross one line. He crosses, you know, every available line. And he is sort of straightforwardly toxic though, also has a kind of comedic, performative bent.

[Joe Coscarelli]

All of which he has in common with Kanye west. Which I think is interesting that someone like, like NBA Youngboy, even someone like Morgan Wallen and country music. Jason Aldean, another, you know, potentially controversial right leaning country singer. But, and those people are not only.

[Ross Douthat]

Allowed, but Jason Aldean, correct me if I'm wrong, is not saying like, I'm here to defeat world Jewry. No, no, no, Kanye, Kanye is. But Kanye is.

[Joe Coscarelli]

But that's what I'm saying. And that's the L. Much like Fuentes, Kanye was cast out. You know, even with the comedy, even with the decades of, you know, beloved work, that was where people drew the line, much like nicuentes. While these other strain of people that we've been discussing have been allowed to continue and even be embraced by a left leaning audience despite their sympathies for, you know, ideas or people that might be seen as evil by even a large portion of their fan base.

[Ross Douthat]

One, one thing there is just that you have a more fluid cultural environment and the guardrails move or the lines move. But there are still going to be some people who are outside them. So you have people who would have been canceled five years ago who don't get canceled. So part of it is just, it's like a kind of discovery thing. It's like you've opened things up. So it's like, okay, where are, you know, where are the lines? We're gonna discover the point at which people freak out. And that point right now is Nick Fuentes. The other thing, though, is that, you know, Kanye West's career spirals down and so does his art to some degree. I mean, I'm not like, I don't have really strong views on Kanye's music, so I'm just.

[John Caramanica]

Can confirm.

[Ross Douthat]

I'm just gonna follow.

[John Caramanica]

Right, can confirm.

[Ross Douthat]

So, so that's always been part of it. Like even you've always had figures who are sort of able to navigate even constrained political cultural environments while having outre opinions if they find a way to make art that lots of people are interested in. Nick Fuentes is not, I mean, you could argue his entire career is art. You could say that. Right. But explicitly, he is calling for a, you know, white nationalist groper take over the Republican Party. That's what he's doing. He's a political actor. So it's not like you're like, well, you know, I like, you know, I like the art from, I hate, I hate Nick Fuentes politics, but I love his blue period or something. You don't, you don't, you don't have that.

[John Caramanica]

The other thing that I wanted to note about the Red Scare Fuentes episode is I think what happened on that interview is not radically different than what's been happening on Red Scare for many years. And the kind of, dare I say, overly performed reaction to it and the sense that this was the red line. It makes me wonder if there's an implicit handshake agreement among folks who are making conservative or conservative leaning, edgy content that it is theater first, politics second, and that all of this conversation that we're having about piety, part of being not pious, is also saying we know that we're playing a game here and we're all sort of greasing each other's we wheels a little bit.

[Ross Douthat]

I mean, I don't want to present myself as an expert on everything that's said on right wing podcasts. I think that would, that would be a mistake, but very clippable mistake. Well, yeah, I mean, I, I, I do think though, that there is a, there's a big difference between saying Offensive things to be offensive and to shock people. And saying offensive things in the context of claiming to have a concrete agenda that involves a political takeover. Like, again, like someone like Fuentes, whatever the performativity is, what he is performing is highly anti Semitic, racist broadcaster urging a particular politics of white nationalism. That is, it seems to me quite different from, you know, we're on this show and we want the freedom to make a racist or anti semitic joke. Right.

[John Caramanica]

I mean, are they not unrelated projects in the sense that, yes, obviously someone with a more explicit focus on politics and legislation and organizing may not be functioning on the same level as someone who is trying to manipulate and convince minds in a social setting. But are they not the same project?

[Ross Douthat]

I think that they're related in the sense that if you have a world in which people feel more comfortable saying offensive things generally, then that world will provide openings for people who want to build a politics around, around racism in its varied forms at the same time. Like, just to go back to the examples of comedians, right, Someone like Dave Chappelle built a long career sort of saying offensive things around racial issues and then became the guy who was saying offensive things around transgender issues. Right. I think it would be weird for me to say Dave Chappelle and Nick Fuentes are engaged in the same project. I don't think they are. Now, I agree that, like, once you're in a territory of people say I am explicitly right wing and I'm against immigration and so on, like, or whatever, whatever else you're, you know, you're, you're closer to Nick Fuentes than Dave Chappelle is. But I think if you're trying to analyze what's happening in culture, you don't want to say everyone who's trying to offend is also ultimately doing the same thing as the people who want a white nationalist ethnostate.

[John Caramanica]

Though, I would say there is a direct line between offense, dehumanization and policy. And I think that when you see political figures engaging in, you know, J.D. vance is sometimes a Twitter comedian at this point, in addition, addition to being the vice president, you see a direct. That is a direct line.

[Joe Coscarelli]

In my mind, that's the sweet spot for right wing pop culture. Do we mean this? Do we not mean this? Is this political? Is it ideological? That's why so many of these shows are working and that's why there's allegiances, alliances between people who are on different sides of this.

[Ross Douthat]

But wouldn't it be we. I just, I wanna stay on this for a second.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Sure.

[Ross Douthat]

Wouldn't it be like, I have lived, lived in a mostly left wing and liberal popular culture for a very long time. And over the course of that lifetime, I have seen beliefs that I hold sacred, a faith that I belong to, all the rest held up for mockery and ridicule and scorn on many, many occasions. Including the Sydney Sweeney movie about the Catholic Church. Right. I don't think it makes sense for me to look at that stuff and just say, anyone who's like, like, I want to have a lot of space to make fun of the Catholic Church and make fun of Christianity should be seen as like, we're all in the same project as people who want to overtly persecute Christians. If I did think that, I would have a difficult time relating to pop culture. And again, I agree that the more political the art is, the more that it's like, hey, we're a far right podcast and we support Trump and we want to board the Build the Wall or whatever else. Yeah. The further you go, the more you can say, okay, they and Nick Fuentes ex. Some sort of continuum. But I also want to say we should be protective of the, you know, if the independence of art. The way the south park guys approach the Catholic Church is often very funny and often, like, presents the Catholic Church in frameworks that, if you applied it to Judaism, would be seen as, like, profoundly anti Semitic. It's like we're joking about how the Catholic Church is a global conspiracy, you know, to rape and molest children. That's like a South park joke. And I can accept that this is a free society. The Catholic Church did have a problem with sex abuse. Like, I can accept that. But I, I don't want to say like. And we should be analyzing all comedy in terms of, like, its maximalist political implications or interpretations, because I think that's a just a bad way to experience people making fun of things we hold dear.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I do think there's a blurry line, though, and that there are people who have a symbiotic relationship on either side of that line. I'm thinking of, you know, I saw Shane Gillis perform in Las Vegas this year. Probably the most culturally relevant thing I did all year.

[Ross Douthat]

And apart from this podcast, apart from.

[Joe Coscarelli]

This podcast, and Tony Hinchcliffe opened for him and Gillis did a thing where he was very. As he always does, he's very careful to be like, oh, you think I'm right? Well, actually I'm left. Oh, you think I'm left? Well, actually I'm right. He has this down to an art. He's like, for everything. He switches, he swings both ways. And then you have Hinchcliffe come out. Somebody who has openly campaigned for Donald Trump ahead of the election, most famously here in Madison Square Garden. And he's doing a much different thing than Shane Gillis is doing. Yeah, but they're. But they're working together. And again, goes to these podcasters who are having friendly chats with the candidate Donald Trump ahead of the election. Like, that's a little different than Dave Chappelle just wanting to make his jokes. And I think everyone wins in that. And it sort of helps that it takes a very, very savvy consumer to be able to tell the difference between who is doing politics and who is doing, to John's Point, theater.

[John Caramanica]

And also that, you know, Donald Trump ultimate sort of fuzzy character in this being as at home with Aiden Ross as with Zoran Mamdani.

[Ross Douthat]

Like, if you look at someone like, like Mel Gibson. Right. Mel Gibson is an incredibly talented guy who has politics extremely far outside the Hollywood mainstream.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Politics and also morals.

[Ross Douthat]

Right. And really. Right. And he was able to navigate that.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Up to a point while he was making.

[Ross Douthat]

While he was making strong work. Great. I mean, to my mind, Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto back to back are just as remarkable a pair of movies. And I say that like Passion of the Christ, like the people who said this movie plays with anti Semitic tropes were right. The movie does play with anti Semitic tropes. It's also an incredibly powerful work of art.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I'll take Goodfellows and Last Temptation as my pair.

[Ross Douthat]

Scorsese and Gibson as parallel Catholic artist responses to Modern culture is its own.

[Joe Coscarelli]

We'll come on your show for that one.

[Ross Douthat]

Okay. But no, I think Gibson crossed, you know, but he. Then he was canceled. But he also was rehabilitated again because it be. But because of the work.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I mean, I think that that's an interesting. You know, I think I've long liked to say that all cancellations are cumulative. And I mean that in the sense of a lifetime of potentially small infractions of moral or behavioral things, but also in terms of the quality of your work. There's a reason people go down at a moment when they're powered culturally, when their cultural capital dips. I think you refer back to the Mitt Romney era. I think Clint Eastwood is an interesting example of this. Somebody who spoke at the RNC was sort of pilloried and laughed at by Hollywood, pushed aside. And then as a. The politics got more Extreme. And B, he had a late career renaissance creatively was sort of welcomed back in by the left leaning film bro contingent. He's, he's, you know, he's, he's one of our guys again, you know, quote, unquote speaking general in the royal. We. And I think that, you know, we're even seeing baby steps towards something like that from Kanye west who is, you know, recently been on an apology tour. Reportedly, reportedly appeared with a notable, with a notable rabbi. Yes, a rabbi who want to meet with rappers. And I think that that could work if it comes hand in hand with.

[John Caramanica]

A beautiful album, strong music.

[Joe Coscarelli]

And I think that.

[Ross Douthat]

And this works the other way too, right? To the extent that there is any kind of right wing canceled culture now or sort of attempts by Trump himself or anyone else to kind of weaponize any advantage that the right has in culture. It, I mean one, I think it's just not that effective or not that effective in the pop cultural sphere. I think even.

[John Caramanica]

You mean like canceling, like trying to get Kimmel fired or Seth Meyers.

[Ross Douthat]

Right. But the people. It worked to the extent that it makes any progress. It has worked against guys working in late night comedy which is seen as sort of, you know, a dinosaur in a dying industry. Stephen Colbert, his network was not excited about what he was delivering for him.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Was able to say, look at all the money we're losing.

[Ross Douthat]

Right. Whereas south park can make fun of Donald Trump till the cows come because.

[Joe Coscarelli]

It'S bringing, because it's bringing drivers to Paramount.

[Ross Douthat]

And no one, no one in the White House is like, oh, I bet if we brought the hammer down, you know, we could get those south park guys off the air.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Yeah, right. To your point about south park and how they're able to get away with, with everything they do because they're winning so handily. I do wonder if part of the thing that is holding back more conservative pop culture in the mainstream is the fact that there's just less talent on the bench. You have Donald Trump this year attempting to assert himself in cultural institutions. We alluded to this idea that he's going to make Paramount, Warner Brothers, remember, make Rush Hour. He also took over the Kennedy center and wants to make, you know, the honors thing something more aligned with, with.

[John Caramanica]

His taste, neoclassical architecture and George Straight.

[Joe Coscarelli]

But yeah, and then you end up, you end up with George straight and.

[John Caramanica]

Then a great American artist. Just for the record.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Sorry. But then very quickly down from George Straight, you have Kiss or Gloria Gaynor, people who maybe don't have the Bonafides that some left leaning celebrities do. And we're seeing this again. I think this is all going to to a head. Early next year at the super bowl you have Bad Bunny scheduled to perform. Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rapper and singer who has been, you know, open, very vocal, vocal about his political beliefs, you know, says he isn't touring in America for fear of ice raids on his fans or collaborators. And he's like, but the one US show I'm going to play is, is going to be the biggest stage available. On the flip side, you have Turning Point USA saying, well if that's the guy who you're going to put up there, somebody who's going to, you know, potentially make an anti Trump statement on this large stage, we're going to do our own thing, we're going to plan our own show, we're going to counter program. And then the question is, who do you have that can stand up next to Bad Bunny? So you know, I guess I wonder if it's possible to compete on that level if you just don't have.

[Ross Douthat]

Yeah. And the answer is no. You know, in a fragmented culture with sort of the centers of cultural power weakening, you're creating an environment where there's going to be a lot of artists who have unusual political brands. No political brands at all. Maybe at some point you'll get a set of important cultural figures who are conservative coded. But it's like for that to happen, the wheel would have to turn. I think it's a long journey a few more times. Well, I mean, and art like all these things, it's still institutional, right? Like yes, you can be sort of a self created figure on the Internet and that, you know, that can get you so far. That can get you so far. But I still think the institutions themselves would have to be transformed. Before you had a lot of celebrities who wanted to take the risk of being fully identified with conservatism or what.

[John Caramanica]

If they were alternate institutions? I've thought about this Turning Point USA question, alternate half sign show quite a bit. What if they're calling Morgan Waltz now? We don't 100% know Morgan Wallen's politics. We know obviously he had to go through a cancellation for using a racial circle.

[Ross Douthat]

Why would you want to be seen as the guy, he's doing the lesser thing. I guess in the end, like the right wins culturally. If the super bowl exists and it becomes normal to have an artist playing halftime who's known for having conservative politics. I feel like if you're the artist and you're Doing the. The anti super bowl halftime show, you are establishing that. That one, you're sort of self. You're marginalizing yourself. And two, you are pushing the world where you get to where you actually get to play the halftime show further, further out. So if I was like advising any really prominent singer, celebrity who had vaguely right of center politics, I'd be like, do not do, you know, do not do the show that is organized to protest the super bowl halftime show.

[Betterment Ad Voice]

Show.

[Joe Coscarelli]

John, before your counterpoint, okay, we gotta feed Ross a snack.

[John Caramanica]

We do have to feed Ross a neck. We've extracted maximum cultural value, so much content. But yes, show this. Okay, I bought this snack. It's Thanksgiving week.

[Joe Coscarelli]

It is Thanksgiving week.

[John Caramanica]

It is. We're thankful. We're thankful for this conversation.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Thanksgiving by the time you see this.

[John Caramanica]

Yes, but it is Thanksgiving week.

[Joe Coscarelli]

But we'd be remiss if we did not make you eat a snack with us. Every episode of podcast ends with a snack test. This is Keough's Grown with Love in Ireland potato chips.

[John Caramanica]

Are you up on this brand?

[Joe Coscarelli]

No, I've had this brand. Secret stuffing.

[John Caramanica]

You're up on this brand, Ross.

[Ross Douthat]

No, these are Irish potatoes. So it's like the salmon is over. We're making potato chips.

[John Caramanica]

We're making. Making millions.

[Joe Coscarelli]

So, John, before you make the point that Morgan Wallen should play.

[John Caramanica]

I didn't say alternative half.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Could. Could. Could viably play an alternative.

[John Caramanica]

I'm simply saying a Joe Rogan comedy set and a Morgan Wallen music set as an alternative. Nobody would be watching.

[Joe Coscarelli]

But the end of the Joe Rogan comedy set. He's a great podcaster, not a great comedian.

[Ross Douthat]

Shane Gillis. Shane Gillis.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Shane would never do.

[John Caramanica]

This is why Shane Gillis is a poet. Respectfully.

[Ross Douthat]

Well, no. And this is when you were saying, like, Shane Gillis is moving back and forth and you can't tell if he's right or left. And that's art. I mean, this is my. My actual fundamental belief is that when great art interacts with politics, not always you can have great art that's sort of like agitprop. That's real. But ideally, you shouldn't be able to fully tell what should be open for interpretation because reality. The artist is trying to capture reality. And in fact, reality has components that vindicate the left and components that vindicate the right. And this was why, you know, again, one reason I like, you know, one reason I had Tony Gilroy on my own show and like to talk about andor is. I felt like it is a left Wing show that is engaged with a recognizable world in which I, as a conservative, can sort of see the world that I see. Whereas if you watch the Handmaid's Tale, especially after the first season, once they got away from the book, you're like, okay, I am in somebody's agit prop fantasy of what reality actually is. And so I'm sure Shane Gillis voted for Trump.

[John Caramanica]

You are?

[Betterment Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[John Caramanica]

I'm not. I'm not even.

[Ross Douthat]

You're not really?

[John Caramanica]

Absolutely not.

[Ross Douthat]

All right.

[John Caramanica]

I'm not sorry. Yeah. And I am not sure. Okay, I take back the Joe Rogan thing. What if it's a kill Tony session followed by a Wallen show? I think that's another YouTube video, but.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I don't know if it.

[John Caramanica]

I think it does millions.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Super bowl competitor.

[John Caramanica]

I think it does millions.

[Joe Coscarelli]

But does it do tens of millions or hundreds?

[John Caramanica]

I think in order to prove the point, you would need to prove it would do significant enough numbers. I do think that if Puppy bowl does numbers, I think that.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I think Ross's point about marginalization, again, I'm not saying they should or shouldn't one way or the other, but I just think in terms of if you want to play on the biggest stage, you have to play on the biggest stage.

[Betterment Ad Voice]

Don't these just taste tastes?

[Joe Coscarelli]

These do not taste like Thanksgiving. This is just a.

[Ross Douthat]

Tastes like barbecue.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Salty chip.

[Ross Douthat]

This is a barbecue.

[Joe Coscarelli]

This is an extremely salty chip.

[John Caramanica]

This company does a flavor. I want to say it's like sour cream and shamrock.

[Joe Coscarelli]

What is shamrock flavor?

[John Caramanica]

Who the hell knows, dog? But I enjoy that flavor.

[Joe Coscarelli]

This is a great, sturdy potato chip. I'm into these Irish potatoes.

[Ross Douthat]

If you handed this to me without the bag, I don't say this is a take on barbecue.

[Joe Coscarelli]

I don't taste Thanksgiving in this at all. Like, at all.

[John Caramanica]

What is the flavor?

[Ross Douthat]

Stuffing, secret roast turkey.

[John Caramanica]

Roast turkey stuffing, secret stuffing. The secret is barbecue.

[Ross Douthat]

I mean, I can. Yeah. If a stuffing spiced in a particular way, maybe chip.

[Joe Coscarelli]

But based on the advertising, this is like a 2 out of 10.

[John Caramanica]

Because this is such a but as a chip without. What if? I. To Ross's point, if you handed it.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Cold, it's a little salty. I'm gonna say, like maybe a 6 out of 10. Again, a great potato chip.

[John Caramanica]

So sturdy.

[Joe Coscarelli]

But I don't like the flavor at all. Really.

[John Caramanica]

Especially.

[Ross Douthat]

Yeah, I'm not a barbecue guy. I would give it. I. I would say 5 and 5 and 2. Like a fine barbecue chip that I would probably not buy and not not selling me on Thanksgiving. I don't feel no festive. I'm left after eating it, you know.

[John Caramanica]

What about after talking to us?

[Ross Douthat]

So, you know, I mean, career ending, you know, whatever. Whatever it may be for us.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Yeah.

[Ross Douthat]

You guys will never be cast on succession again. Again after having. After having me on.

[John Caramanica]

Okay. I want to be this. For me, the sturdiness of the chip, the richness of the potato is trumping, no pun, The. The ambiguity of the flavor. Okay. I'm.

[Ross Douthat]

Do you like barbecue? Are you a big.

[John Caramanica]

I do, but I don't find this to be an excellent barbecue chip. I'm gonna say six and a half. It's. I would not reject. I will finish this bag.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Okay.

[John Caramanica]

But also, I haven't eaten. It's early in the day. I haven't eaten. I'm gonna say six and a half. Half. And I think that this. We can all agree, even if we don't always agree on our political valences or our cultural products, that this ship could do more.

[Joe Coscarelli]

Yes, we're in. We're in alignment.