Episode 38: "America This Week," with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn
2023-05-12 00:30:16
Welcome to America This Week, with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, the national news wrap-up so true, we recommend you stow all sharp objects before reading. <br/><br/><a href="https://www.racket.news/s/america-this-week?utm_medium=podcast">www.racket.news</a>
All right, welcome to America this week, I'm Matt Taibbi.
And I'm Walter Kern.
WALTER A lot of stuff to talk about this week. We're going to stray a little bit, I think, from the big news path, although I guess we should, you know, we should talk, I guess, about the big story. Tucker moving to Twitter Do you have thoughts about it? do you want to, do you want to say anything about it? or?
Well, to me, it was inevitable. Probably. There's only one castle large enough on the landscape to shelter a runaway. At this point in the media, and that he would end up there didn't surprise me at all. It's a it's a fairly interesting, dramatic move because he's still on the payroll at Fox, though he has. He has eschewed taking payment, he's given up his multimillion dollar contract and said, I'm going solo. Over at Twitter from Elon, we hear that he will have no special deal, that he'll simply be another paid Twitter account. Probably instantly the largest one or most remunerative.
And so so, though, I'm not surprised it does wake one up to see somebody, you know, turn down tens of millions of dollars on principle, even though he may easily make it again and incur the wrath of the entire, you know, Murdoch empire. Legally, because I think there's already, I think there's already lawfare between them starting.
Yeah, so so I don't know when that's going to start as an actual program.
And I do look forward to it. I look forward to seeing what can be done in non-traditional media to showcase these big talents. I think it's unprecedented.
I mean, yeah, I mean, it's. It's an attempt to kind of create a third pole of of of media, which hasn't been done at scale. We'll see how that works out.
The fight back against it is going to be interesting because it will not only come from Fox. Tucker will take his legacy of, you know, haters and enemies and institutional doubters, and so on. Over to Twitter, where Elon has already accumulated quite a fine set of adversaries himself. And when they combine, I I don't imagine they will go unmolested. I'm sure there'll be advertiser further advertiser boycotts.
Yeah, I think that will step up to a significant degree even.
Elon has also named a new I don't know if he's named her, but her name has come out. A new CEO for Twitter, a woman from NBC. I forget how to pronounce it.
And I don't know if that was in any way synchronized with the Twitter, I mean, with the tucker move to have a big TV executive suddenly on the scene. But something's happening there and, you know, we'll break up the ice flow. I hope somewhat, you know, to play, to show my card. I like to see change in this landscape. I I think it's reached its sort of logical levels of absurdity and and really requires.
A rearrangement, whether that, whether it will be successful or whether it will even be allowed now, is all up in the air.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, a part of me wonders, has always wondered if our system would work better. Not as a binary, which is what we've done for so long, you know, we have. We try to divide the entire world up into two modes of thought, you know, neither of which are wholly attractive to most people. And you know, it's become a stricter and stricter over the years. Would the system be better if it was actually three big political polls? There was more and more horse trading went on. And yeah, that's a possibility, but we have to see whether that's tolerated or not. Because the entire direction of modern politics is to make sure that, you know, there really isn't a whole lot of choice, not real choice.
So well, I mean, on a microcosmic scale, the media landscape in the U.
S may be experiencing the same move from unipolarity to multipolarity that we're seeing on the global scale. Maybe the BRICS countries are coming, an equivalent to the BRICS countries is coming in in in the domestic landscape, you know, just as you know, just as China, Russia, India and Brazil, et cetera have.
Started rearranging the global landscape. Maybe there's going to be a more power diversity in the domestic media landscape. I don't know. So far, it seems to me that the mainstream has done a pretty good job of protecting its turf. I saw last week that there is a New York Times Google deal where Google is going to pay the New York Times a hundred million dollars to. I'm not sure what favor it with content or something.
Yeah, exactly exactly, and this is the kind of competition averse situation that is. It's the only way that these gigantic media organizations can continue to exist because they don't have an organic draw. I don't think, but they can certainly live off the breadcrumbs of Google's advertising empire.
But what was interesting is the directionality of this deal. It's Google paying the New York Times, it's not the New York Times paying Google for preferred placement, it's the it's Google paying the New York Times for preferred placement. I'm not sure.
Right, we'll have to figure out how the money flows work in that. But at this point, ever since they started doing this thing with Project Owl, where they're elevating authoritative content and suppressing alternative content. That started really in the first year of Trump administration. What we've seen is that if you go on a Google search and you enter almost any term. The first 40 or 50 things you get are going to be from sources that you probably don't like very much, or you don't entirely trust. There's very little idiosyncratic media that's in there, even if you directly search for something that they've written about.
And maybe they just need to subsidize these organizations a little bit so that they continue to exist. Even though people have learned to stop clicking on the first search result and are going to other media and getting their media from other places. I mean, I don't know.
But in many ways, we live in a post-market economy in terms of media, in which now we are to prefer the bigger, more authoritative establishment adjacent outlets. Because they're better, rather than because we like them, or we want their product, or they do a better job. And they might in many cases. But that's the old way of thinking. You see this in Hollywood, too, where a lot of writers, I know, gripe that Hollywood is pushing content on the country, that the country doesn't necessarily want. Witness the shrinkage at Disney and other places. And so ideology and sort of regime adjacency and synergy with the other big corporations seems to be at a premium over serving the customer. Or, and that this seems to be a case of that.
To me, I don't know how the New York Times covers the technology landscape in anything like an objective fashion. When it is literally being paid by Google at this level $100 million.
Yeah, and this is not to be too self-referential here, but this is a constant theme of what we've seen in the Twitter files. Which is the sort of regular downranking of competition or trying to dissuade would-be competitors from acting like competitors. You know, we found a document that Harvard had sent to Twitter to share. It was actually recommendations to the Biden administration for how to handle content. And there's some pretty weird stuff in there.
And it's not a breaking news story, only because this letter was actually published at some point, nobody noticed it. But one of the things it talks about is we're encouraging information sharing between industry and government. Companies should be encouraged to participate more vigorously in information sharing programs. With a commitment to disseminate corporate intelligence on foreign and domestic disinformation activity, the industry should also provide this intelligence to federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
And this just gets back to the whole shared endeavor thing that gets repeated over and over again in a lot of these anti-disinformation theories of how the media is supposed to work. We've seen it with the industry meetings inside Twitter, where they are getting together with interest, and Wikimedia and Instagram and all these other companies. Meeting with the FBI and each other. And then they'll go to conferences and they'll be representatives of big news media organizations there. The idea that they're all going to kind of work together in some way, they're going to share information and market intelligence with each other. And it's an anathema to the way media used to work.
But this is the new vision, I guess, but it won't work with, I don't think it's going to work with Tucker, Carlson and Twitter.
Well, thus my interest in seeing that project to develop.
I'll be honest, I don't use Google that much anymore. I'm tired of that first page of BS and the second page of BS. I try to refine my searches such that I can get past that into a more focused set of results, or I go elsewhere.
Across the board, in terms of my media use, and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. I have adjusted my behavior because I know that I am looking at a monolith that wants to blot out much that's of interest to me, at least at every turn. And so counter-programming that thing has become part of my behavior. Because I really, you know, people say, well, why don't you watch the news? why don't you watch cable more?
And it's because I know what they're going to say. I don't need at this point to keep getting the same results, the same harangues, the same.
Approved message battering me into submission. I can already write it myself in my head before I even get there. And I'm trying to learn something new about the world, and that's getting harder.
So that very behavior that you describe is the kind of thing that would arouse the suspicion of this new program that we're learning about. That came out this week courtesy of the Foundation for Online Freedom, or Freedom Online, by way of a group called What is it, America First Legal?
Yeah, America first legal. So I don't know much about this organization, I'm assuming that it's conservative. It bills itself as an answer to the ACLU, which is something that we've seen before from other kind of right-leaning organizations. It doesn't matter.
They filed a FOIA.
A freedom of information request, basically about programs within the Department of Homeland Security, I can imagine where they got the idea for this freedom of information request. Because DHS for a while now has been producing some very weird stuff on the kind of quasi-entertainment front, where they put out their own versions of public service messages in the forms of graphic novels, they have one called bug bites. That's just creepy beyond belief.
What's it about?
So, first of all, it's written by Clint Watts, who's the Hamilton, 68, ex-FBI guy. But it's this graphic novel where disinformation ends up causing some gigantic piece of infrastructure to explode somehow, and I can't even remember the plots, they're so ridiculous.
Where does one obtain these wonderful, government-produced graphic novels by former law enforcement agents? I mean, I'm so very moved to want these on.
Yeah, but I believe there's a version that's like it may even be animated. I'm not sure that you can find on YouTube, you can find it if you look for it. Let me see if I can actually pull it up right now.
Anti-propaganda propaganda cartoons can't wait for that new wrinkle in the entertainment landscape. They should just do a movie of the week brought to you by Homeland Security.
Well, right, yeah, exactly, that's what it is, man. It's hard to find. Maybe I remember spelling bug bites wrong.
Maybe it's B-y.
Oh, I bet it is, I bet they're using those puns there at the government writing shop.
Here it is. Bug Bites, a CISA graphic novel. Celebrate Infrastructure Security Month by reading Bug Bites, our second graphic novel in our Resilience series.
When was Infrastructure Security Month? I missed it.
I guess it must have been November 2021.
Wow, we're gonna have to go back in time and catch up.
Follow Ava as she uncovers a hashtag disinformation campaign set to damage critical communications infrastructure. And so distressed, so is a sick here? It's s-e-w, according to CISA. Get your copy here and let's hang on a second.
Can you hear that?
This is for kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Can you hear that? Can you hear that audio?
My name is Ava Williams. Welcome to the beginning of my journey for truth. My father works at the local communications company and was ambushed in a tower he was called out to fix. His attackers were incited to violence by disinformation.
They wrongly believed there's a link between 5G and Covid-19.
Disinformation has caused too much pain, so I'm taking the problem head on.
This is the chairman.
We don't have much time.
It's so horrible that it's like, beyond funny.
So kids in their kid use of the internet are supposed to somehow come across the promotion for this cartoon about disinformation, and then they're actually supposed to order the thing over online.
No, I think they're just supposed to adapt their behavior, you know, yeah.
Oh, you watch it online?
You watch it online, it's like smokey the bear for disinformation, basically.
Smokey the disinformation bear.
Right, yes, exactly. Wow. So they've been doing this, they have this thing called the resilience series.
And I even sent out a FOIA about this, which they've to date ignored, although I didn't send it that long ago. And I can imagine that America first may have done something similar. To try to find out what other games or interactive things there might be in the works. So I can't find the original FOIA letter, but anyway, what they produced, what they got back.
Was something called the DHS OT VTP? Choose your own adventure online.
And it's a proposal for a series of videos. They want to create 15 total scenes. And I guess I should just read from some of this. Bystanders are presented with three different. This is DHS copy, by the way.
Right, right, so this is from the proposal. Bystanders are presented with three difficult choices that approximate real life decisions at the end of each scene, at the end of each branch, after viewers have made three choices. Impacting the potential radicalization of others, a DHS employee reviews the path they have chosen and highlights key learnings in an interview that expands on how radicalization and potential violence may occur in the scenarios. And so, basically, the proposal lays out that this is all about.
Finding ways to intervene, it's interventions to stop radicalization, and so they have all these characters who are possibly being radicalized. And you are presented with a series of choices about what you would do in that situation.
Can I guess? Can I guess what you do? OK? So who are the bad guys again, the putative people undergoing radicalization?
Well, what do you want? Do you want me to just read you? One of them? Yeah, I'll introduce you to one of them. Hang on a second.
One of them is really interesting. This is anti-gov, anti-gov slash authority. Abusive parent stepdad radicalization. Suspects name is Pete. He is a late 30s white man, and he is surrounded by the following bystanders a friend, neighbor and bartender.
Profile set up visually, we see a portrait of our protagonist, Pete, along with stock footage that you can associate with a suburban dad, lawnmower, lazy boy, et cetera. Sound effects help build Pete's environment. Then there's a picture of Pete, and he's kind of got like a sort of trimmed beard and folded arms, looks a little defiant.
Anyway, voiceover This is Pete, a married guy with two children, two small children. He's been in the neighborhood for five years, but really hasn't gotten to know any of the neighbors. He works nine to five, and he's often seen hanging out at the local bar afterwards. He seems like a quiet guy and mostly keeps to himself.
First scene at Chris's home, You are Pete's friend Chris, sitting in front of your computer, looking at Pete's social media posts. You've been friends online for a couple of years, and Pete has always seemed like a decent guy, but recently you've noticed changes in his behavior online. That alarm you.
You've even seen him post on some radical sites with violent tendencies. Friend Bystander Choices, Choice 2a1. Contact Pete's wife and ask if she's noticed any new activities.
A kid is supposed to contact the wife of a local grown man.
No, you're his friend, so I'm assuming you're a peer. Choice 2 is to wait until you see Pete at Softball next week to ask if he's really interested in these new groups. And then maybe you could guess what choice 3 is.
Break into his house, steal his computer and send it to the Department of Homeland Security.
Almost choice 2a3. Keep closer tabs on Pete's online activity.
And then there's a whole series of these, and a lot of them end up with choices that involve talking to authority figures at the end.
So let's see if I can find a good one.
So what we're talking about, just to keep the audience abreast, is a quote. Choose your own adventure series of tales put out by the Department of Homeland Security. In which the reader, the audience, is supposed to learn to identify potentially radical people by superficial characteristics, like white, close-trimmed, beard, abusive, it was even said in the setup.
Yeah, they didn't really clarify where the abuse was, what the abuse was.
A new white guy with a close-trimmed beard in the neighborhood is doing things on social media that aren't kosher. In some way. It isn't specified. And then it gives you a tripartite action plan for how to neutralize or get Pete in trouble, and or stop his radicalization.
Exactly.
But, as in most literature, all the real points are in the setup, and then what happens later is just kind of secondary. It is the portrait of Pete that they put forward in the beginning. That will, you know, burn itself into the minds of those 17 people who actually go to Homeland Security for directions in their real life. Right, right, who else besides the 30-year-old white guys who go to, you know, local ballgames and have suspect social media profiles?
Are we to watch out for Matt? Are there any other?
There's a whole bunch, there's a teen who doesn't get along with an ethnic teammate on some kind of sports team, I think it's soccer.
There is one kind of left-leaning person, and she's portrayed as kind of multi-ethnic. But she goes away to college and starts experimenting with veganism and just gets too intense about it, and starts accusing people of being murderers because they eat hamburgers.
And you're supposed to chill her out somehow and get her to eat meat. I doubt that. Oh, ok, yeah, they threw that one in.
Yeah, I think they, you know, it's they don't want to have it be too monolithic. My favorite, though, is Ann, the middle-aged pro-life advocate.
And again, we are to see her presented with stock footage that we would associate with the suburban mom, laundry, minivan, et cetera. Ann is a resident of Elkville in rural America. She has always been religious, but since the death of her mother, she's become increasingly devout. She's a regular in the small town community, active in several church groups. While she's always been protective of her four kids, she's become increasingly more concerned about the welfare of other children, including the unborn. Which is a strange thing to say, by the way.
Remember when liberal? Remember when the liberal establishment used to warn us about profiling people? I mean, here, you know now, minivan laundry. Recent death of Parent are three strikes that should cause extra scrutiny from just civilians. I can't wait for the first DHS detective movie in which, you know, a well-balanced 17 year old starts to notice in her neighborhood. It's like a reverse invasion of the body snatchers, various people becoming, you know, starting to read the Bible. I don't know, putting a flag sticker on their truck and so on. And she penetrates.
Well, that's what this is. It's invasion of the body snatchers, right?
Yeah, how to be a narc and how to see signs of behavior that it is implied we will reward you for narcing on. I mean, because the whole, the whole premise of this thing is, hey kid, detective, or, you know, volunteer neighborhood watch. Anti-radicalization mom. Here are the things to look for. And you probably won't suffer, at least from our realm, for turning these people in.
Right right, yeah, exactly.
And I mean, they're unbelievably explicit about the steps that you should take when you start noticing certain behavior. Maybe you could guess the three choices that come up after this scenario.
How to deal with minivan mom, who has become religious following the death of her parent?
Yes.
I've never heard of any more outrageous crime than that. But let's see. I suppose you can go up to her and talk to her. That's always one of them.
But you have to, you have to, you have to hear the scenario.
Oh, ok.
Yeah, you're Anne's hairdresser, you've been Anne's hairdresser for years. During one of Anne's visits, she brings up pro-life arguments and begins ranting, saying something should be done to put a stop to the planned parenthood office in the next county. She shares videos of violent protests on her phone, and you notice increasingly more militant language from Anne. After you wrap up the appointment, you and then there are three choices.
Take a scissors and jab it in her right ear, call DHS and have her body bagged and taken down to headquarters.
Let's see. I mean, you are in possession of a weapon, as as her hairdresser, so you can end this right away.
Yeah, that's right, you could, you could solve this right here and now, all right, right?
Oh boy, I'm, you know, shut up at the hairdresser is the moral of this one. I mean, this is an ad for the flowbee, man. I'm going to get the flowbee and cut my own hair lest I be stabbed by my hairdresser. For talking about, you know, pro-life issues.
If I were even surfing.
Yeah, I mean, I don't tend to talk about pro-life issues at all, let alone at the hairdressers. But I'm sure that, you know, as this thing gets a bigger budget, the number of suspect behaviors will multiply. In fact, DHS will probably provide us with an AI program where we can put in three behaviors and find out if we're in the presence of a dangerous radical.
Yeah, they'll merge it with Google Glasses so that we can. We can instantaneously detect whether we are in the presence of radicalizing behavior.
We have a Google Glass, we're walking down the street, we see someone get out of a minivan. That's Click one. If you're hearing this message, you're listening to the Free Version of America this week.
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