Hey, Brian, Hi Katie. So, in today's episode, Ladies and Gentlemen, we're getting into some very touchy subjects. We're talking about political correctness and cultural sensitivity with our guests New York Times op ed writer Frank Bruney. So, as you know, Frank has worked as everything from a white house correspondent to a restaurant critic for The Times, and lately he's been devoting some of his twice weekly columns to a new subject, the debate over political correctness on college campuses. You know, Frank has written a lot about how he believes terms like safe spaces and microaggressions or a macro mistake. Now, he's a white man who grew up in an upper class household, and as such, he's well aware that he's expected to quote unquote check his privilege at the door and perhaps even question his own credibility when it comes to matters of social justice. But I thought this was pretty interesting. Frank questions the wisdom of what he calls turning categories into credentials when it comes to politics and public debate. He doesn't think life circumstances prohibit sensitivity and sound judgment, while other conditions guarantee them. This conversation, by the way, comes on the heels of the final episode. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the final hour, there were six of them. Hope you all watch of my Nati called America inside Out because I don't know if you've noticed, Brian, but it's almost in everything we talk about, every subject we tackle, there is this heightened sensitivity. And I wondered, is it about time many marginalized communities called people out on insulting them or on demeaning them, Or have we gotten so sensitive you can't say anything in this day and age. So I was really interested in kind of the yin and yang of this conversation. So in our conversation with Frank, we talked about his own life circumstances, about trigger warnings and safe spaces and snow flakes and all these buzzwords, and about the college campuses across the country that have turned into powder kegs, with speakers literally being shut down and shut out before they can even speak. I started by asking Frank about political correctness, the term itself, which I'm almost hesitant to use because it's been co opted, weaponized, and politicized since we started hearing the term in the early nineteen nineties. It's kind of surprising to me we haven't come up with a replacement for it because it's just not able to carry all the baggage that people are putting on it right now. But yeah, what term would you use if you have to do well? We're talking about a kind of ideological orthodoxy, is what we're talking about. I think when most people talk about political correctness, they're talking about an ideological orthodoxy on the left. That's what I think they mean. That's I think a good way of putting it. Let's start by talking about college campuses, because I know you've written extensively about this. In my hour, I spent some time at Northwestern and extaposed it with the University of Chicago to two different approaches when it comes to things like trigger warnings, safe spaces, micro aggressions, etcetera, which just miles geographically apart. So very well, totally so it was it was really interesting. And you're not a big fan of intellectual safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggressions, etcetera. Are you? Is that a safe assumption? That's totally fair to say, because I think that I certainly think that every campus should be a physically safe environment for students. I mean that goes without saying, um. They should not have to worry about sexual assault. They should not have to worry about being physically bullied or being bullied in other egregious ways. But when we're talking about safe spaces, and when we're talking about trigger warnings, and even when we're talking at times about the prevalence and the spread of affinity groups, we're talking about constructing a world for students that is nothing like the world they're about to go in. And I'm not sure that's consistent with the with the mission of college and the greatest use of college. So do you think there's snowflakes? I don't like that term because I think it's so dismissive and I think it takes people. It mashes everyone together from people who are offended reflexively by everything uh. And and that term I think is meant to connote that, um, but it mashes them together with people who are wrestling in a very earnest and I think important way with how we construct universes that are respectful without being ridiculously uh censorious of any kind of speech or any kind of behavior that colors outside of somebody's lines. You know, let me push back on you a little bit, Frank, because I had the same attitudes that you did. And then I went and talked to some of these students, and I'm not saying I did a total about face, but I did come away with a better understanding of some of these terms. For example, trigger warning, Uh. To me, it's almost like what you used to see before you saw a film at the movie theater, you know, whether it was G P, g ARE. It's basically a warning that some of this content may be upsetting. And young woman at Northwestern told me that her professor said, we're going to be discussing black face today. Now, that might make you uncomfortable, and I just wanted to kind of give you a heads up. She said, Oh, no, I'm fine, but I really appreciate your thoughtfulness. To me, if that is what a trigger warning is, that's perfectly acceptable and really just I think an example of being carrying and thoughtful to your students, I wouldn't disagree with you. And if that, if that were every trigger warning, the problem is we don't know what every trigger warning is. We also don't know how prevalent they are, so, you know. I think one important thing to say in this discussion is, sometimes, um, I think we extrapolate from stories that get out there and we assume that this is happening onege campuses, and it may really only be happening on fifty Now, it is a real thing. Trigger warnings are a real thing. Safe spaces are a real thing. Um. We may exaggerate how widely they've spread. But here's the thing. If trigger warnings are a little prevalent, we don't know exactly how prevalent they are, if they're not all delivered in quite the way that you just described. Does life give you trigger warnings? Is it setting up an expectation for the way you can navigate the world that's unrealistic, And is it sending a message? And I don't know the answer. I'm asking the question. Is it sending a message that you can go through the world with a kind of emotional bubble wrap? And that worries some of us in particular because the way a lot of kids have been raised today is an extension of this over helicopter parenting and over I think I think it might beybody gets a trophy. I think it might be and I'm saying might be because I'm glad you began the conversation. That's where I think we do need to be careful with our language. It's so easy in the world of Twitter, and in the world of right left media and our ed columns like the one I write, it's so easy to kind of paint stark realities. It might be an extension of that kind of child rearing. It might be part of that point. Frank Um. We have a clip um from last year of Van Jones from CNN, who's also a liberal. He was in conversation with David axel Rod on my University of Chicago. I love I've quoted this a million times, he says it best. Yes, yes, and we're gonna play what he said in response to a question about how progressive students should react to ideologically offensive speakers on college campuses. I don't want you to be safe ideologically. I don't want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong. That's different. I'm not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. You are creating a kind of liberalism that the minute it crosses the street into the real world is not just useless, but obnoxious and dangerous. I want you to be offended every single day on this campus. I want you to be deeply aggrieved and offended and upset, and then to learn how to speak back. For rank. All right, well, I'm so I'm happy. He doesn't even describe how I feel about the fact that you included that clip. I'm exulted. I'm I have I have quoted almost all of those words. They didn't fit easily, but I've quoted most of that in a column that I wrote in The Times. I quote them in speeches that I give. I think Van says it as well as it's ever been said. And yes, he's being a little bit provocative when he's saying your liberalism is obnoxious, etcetera. But he does need to use strong language to make that point. The point being that the world of ideas, the world of knowledge, it's it's a rough and tumble world. It's meant to be. That's how we grapple and hash our way to the truth. And I think everything Van says there's really really important. Well, isn't this really about bringing things to the extreme? For example, saying a trigger warning for the Merchant of Venice because it's anti Semitic, or saying, you know, to kill a mocking bird or Huckleberry Finn. Now, how do you feel about those two great works of fiction? You know that both use the N word. And for African American students who want to feel a part of the conversation, want to be I think acknowledged and heard. Is that appropriate to say, Hey, this language is tough or it might make you uncomfortable. I think it's absolutely appropriate and that circumstance to acknowledge that this language is in here um and might might well offend, and it's coming from a much different era, you know, so be prepared for it. But I also think here's the problem again, the way that said is it actually kind of patronizing and emotionally caught Like I, I actually think people are smarter than we often give them credit. The college students are smarter than we often give them credit for. I'm guessing a lot of college students realize they're reading a book from a much different era with terms and realities in it that don't at all reflect a much more enlightened and fair and just era. Um it's probably a good idea to give them a warning, but are you sure, kitty, they really needed that warning and wouldn't have understood that they're reading something in the context of its time, and that no professor in the world and putting this on the syllabus is endorsing that language. No, of course not. But you know, I interviewed an African American sensitivity reader, which is another area where we're seeing this kind of heightened heightened sensitivity, and she said, you know, people don't understand how incredibly uncomfortable I felt, as the only black girl in school as to kill a mocking bird as the class read this novel. And I think sometimes it's just even acknowledging that discomfort is a positive thing. It's not, I understand what you're saying in a patronizing way. But to hear her talk about that, she frank, I was never cognizant. It didn't really cross my mind that she When I read this in high school and there were some black kids in the class, how did they feel about that? I just wasn't within my realm of consciousness, which is bad on me, but it made me realize, you know, we need to pay attention to how different people are receiving the same information. Yes, no, And I think it's all a matter of comes back to these subtler distinctions of how are you doing it to what degree with what sort of message? You know, are you not over doing to the point where you're telling someone they should be inoculated from anything that might be upsetting. I can't speak to what it's like to come across one of those words because I'm not black, you know, but I mean I'm gay. Um. And to this moment, I run across all sorts of stuff from the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, um, ten years ago that traffic and sorts of stereotypes and language that are now understood to be very offensive and not used. Um. I mean, I'm older now, but even when I was younger, that didn't I understood that I was seeing something from an earlier era. I may not have liked it, but I'm not sure I needed a trigger warning for it. And to your point, Frank, trigger warnings maybe a result or emblematic of a big shift in the culture that you've written about, where people are judged not by the argument they're making necessarily, but by their qualifications to make it they're racial or ethnic or sexual qualifications. Um, there's a great quote from one of your columns that I just want to read briefly. You wrote, firmly in cheek, I'm a white man, so you should listen to absolutely nothing I say, at least on matters of social justice. I have no standing, no way to relate my color and gender nullify me, and it gets worse. I grew up in the suburbs. Dad made six figures. We had a backyard pool from the tent through twelfth grades. I attended private school. So the only proper way for me to check my privilege is to realize that it blinds me. Are you concerned that that's where we're going as a society and how do we think about that? In a way, I feel like, Frank, we've gone from identity politics to identity conversations or identity discourse. Well, I it's funny. The other day was talking with a friend and I wondered if we were in the era of identity journalism, And that was the phrase I used, because I read a lot of journalism, especially in opinion sections, where the writer is not necessarily making an argument, the writer is just saying, this is how I experienced this, this thing that happened as a transperson, this is how I experienced it, you know, as a black man, or as a black woman, or as a Latino woman, like and and they're interesting articles, and it's important that we have the diverse voices, absolutely, but sometimes they don't say much more than that. And I think we have to come to a place where we are being even more cognizant and even more proactive than we are now about making sure we have a diversity of voices, you know, demographically, socio economically, racially, geographically, all of those things, because that is really important to understand how as many different kinds of people in the world. But I don't think, UM, we should be judging what is said by um the classification, the designation, that taxonomy, whatever of who is saying it, independent of what argument they're making. I mean, there are privileged white people who have served in politics, who have done some of the most trailblazing social justice things, because that's that's who they are character a lotically, and there are some people from backgrounds of much less privilege, UM and people who are not white, who I would say in terms of the policies they advocate, what they had to the public square are not serving the cause of social justice. So you can't judge the quality of someone's contribution or the relevance of their contribution based merely on gender or gender orientation or sexual orientation, or skin color or anything like that. That was the point of that tongue in chief thing, because if if Brian had continued reading it then said, but wait a second, Now you've dismissed me. Now let me tell you something else. And who grew up in an era when you had to be very, very nervous about this, So now you're thinking, oh, he can be sensitized to oppression. The thing is I could be a good voice on issues of oppression or a bad voice on issues of oppression, having nothing to do with whether I've ever been oppressed. I guess the big question is have we become so restrictive in terms of who can not only talk about said subject, but who can write about it, Who can be the creative force behind anything that deals with a particular group. I interviewed Laura Moriarty, who wrote a young adult novel about Muslims. She was worried about the Islamophobia. She saw surfacing in the two thousand sixteen election and wrote a novel about it. She had too Muslim friends read it. She had a couple of sensitivity readers, and the Muslim community not the entire I know, I know not to generalize, but some people were very upset that it was a white savior narrative and that a Muslim wasn't writing about this. And it seems to me increasingly, Frank, we're hearing that and her fears white people will only be able to white about white people. On the other hand, you talked to people from marginalized communities and they feel they have been kept out. Now the gate has been closed to them, and opportunities have not been available to them in a whole host of professions and arenas. And they're saying, well, this sucks because why should a white person have to write about this experience? And I understand both sides totally. This is this is complicated stuff. I mean, both of those things are true. I want to hear more voices. I want to hear more different kinds of voices. That is how I learn more about the world. That is how you learn more about the word. That is the world. That is how we all learn more about each other. That is how we help talk to each other. UM. So that goes without saying um. And if you just assume a white person can illuminate the truth of everything and you never concern yourself with the lack of diversity of voices, you are oppressing people. You're leaving people out of the conversation. But you're also doing the truth and the ideal situation a disservice. I mean, it's bad on every level. It goes too far though, and it's counterproductive in another way to say a white person should never write from X perspective or a black person should ever write a white person. One of the things that fiction certainly does, but I think that journalism does too. Is it traffics and encourages empathy. And what is empathy but the effort to see and the ability to see the world through another person's eyes. Um. I think if you say X person can never understand or write why person because they're not in that group, you're saying empathy is impossible, and you're discouraging the sorts of connections that we really want to make. So this is complicated because you have to acknowledge that white people have commanded a disproportionate amount of the stage and the front of the stage, and you need to make sure you push back against that, and you need to make sure that's not no longer. So I'm not sure the best way to do that is to say you cannot right outside your race or gender. But how do we deal with moving beyond empathy to real understanding? So you don't know what it is, nor do I to be treated differently by the police because you're black, or to be profiled and an airport because you're Muslim. I mean, you can take the position that these things are terrible and that we're sympathetic and that we wish that they didn't happen. But how should white writers, commentators, politicians, sis kind of confront their own lack of experience on these issues. Well, journalistically, the way we always have interview people, you know, I mean, that's what we do. We enter, We interview people who have um who are the products of situations and experiences that we can understand. And then what we do as human beings as we go into our own trove of experiences and all that we go into our own ability to kind of imagine beyond ourselves. We then take that information um and then we understand better, if not perfectly, what's been going on. You can certainly articulate if you inform yourself, if you do some of that journalism, you can certainly articulate the injustice of it. And you can certainly mold some of the solutions without having gone through it. And it's important that you can do that because most of our lawmakers haven't gone through because most of them are white and most of them have come from privilege. Hopefully that will continue to change. I mean that is changing slowly, and I think it will continue to change, and it must. I sympathize with college students when Richard Spencer gets invited to speak at a university. Yes, white nationalists, I would call him, and maybe white supremacist. I think neo Nazi work. Neo Nazi. He's a bad guy, yes, And when college students really get upset that he's coming there, they do something called no platforming. They'll they'll basically shout him down so he can't speak. I guess the question is hate speech free speech? Should it be kind of like an open invitation even if you're a neo Nazi to come and speak at these campuses. I don't think so. I'm not a I'm not an absolutist. I don't know what the terminology is like a free speech. I don't I don't go that far. Um. I think there's a world of difference though, between Richard Spencer and Charles Murray, who was the you know who prompted all that stuff at well, yeah, but he wasn't even going there to talk about the middle at middle at middle of there. He was going there to talk about um work he's done. Subsequently, and fascinatingly, after of that all happened, the Times did something brilliant. It was just online. I think, I don't know who did well. It's such a big organization. I can take credit for nothing, No, really for nothing, but they did something. Someone in the online opinion universe did something brilliant where they boiled down the talking points that Charles Murray was going to make in that speech, most of them I think from his bookcoming a Part I think I have that right, which is on white working class um. And they asked a bunch of academics to place the sentiments of his on the political spectrum from left to right, like is the center is the center left if it's center right, And I believe most people placed him dead in the center or a little bit center left. This was what he was going to speak about at Middlebury, so he was no platformed. But if anyone had bothered to really listen to him, they would not have heard something beyond the pale at all, and they might have heard an interesting lecture. But there was a decision made about who he was as a person based on the Bell curve. But I remember listening to the Chance and they were saying, like, you know, racist, sexist, homophobic, go away. Um. The complaint about the Bell curve was was that it was racist, but I mean it was a key. Was all of these terrible things encoded because someone had just decided to put that mantle on him when he was coming to talk about some ideas, some important ideas that are not even far to the right. And you think that that people could have challenged him in a more appropriate way. I mean, that was just a ship show at Middlebury when he came. On the other hand, I interviewed a student at the University of Michigan who was getting his PhD who protested went and Charles Murray invited him on stage, and his argument, Frank, is that Charles Murray's philosophy and the Bell Curve itself has been used. In fact, I know it has because when I talked to Jason Kessler in Charlottesville before the quote unquote Unite the Right rally, he used some of Charles Murray saying, philosophy, it's been used to base sickly buttress this incredible racist vitriol and white supremacy. So so I can understand that too. But what would you disinvite him then, Katie? Would I disinvite him? I don't think I would. I would like to have some debate him. How about what you just said, how about some student um actually kind of getting that deeply engaged in the material, educating himself for herself on all of that, and standing up during the quick Q and a period and I'm pretty sure there was a scheduled Q and a period and saying the things you lay out in the Bell Curve are not only um bitterly and wildly when widely disputed and in many ways discredited, but they have become the foundation for some of the most horrible thinking and some of the most horrible proposal. How do you feel about that? And how do you defend that? That would have been fascinating. I think so much good would have come out of that discussion. But that discussion was never had because they shouted down so that he couldn't speak. Middlebury, there are many ways you can handle that. First of all, Middlebury, mind you, is very sensitive to the way this might play out. They were having Charles Murray not just kind of give, you know, an unchallenged speech. They were having somebody questions question A liberal professor questioned him on stage. He was going to be answering questions if I have this correctly and if I if I don't forgive me by students. You could have come. You could have come with signs. You could have done what has been done at some speeches like this. You could have come to the speech and turned your back while he was speaking, without still allowing him to say what he was going to say, allowing him to answer what I presume would have been tough questions from the professor. That's all different and a hell of a lot more civilized than shouting someone down. Shouting someone down says we are not living in and promoting an arena of debate, and we're not interested in the battle of ideas. We're interested in telling you how our universe should be purified and purged, and you don't belong. It's time to take a quick break. We'll be back with or Frank Bruney right after this. And now back to our conversation with Frank Bruney. Frank, I want to ask you about another definition of political correctness, which is the one that President Trump uses, and in my view, he basically applies the term as a cover for racially charged, if not racist, views that it's okay to say anything if you can dismiss criticism or controversy around it as mere political correctness. And I'm curious what you think about that. It's one of the reasons why I think we have to retire the term, you know, because I think it has been co opted in misused. I think we all know President Trump in that regardless being hideously cynical and opportunistic, and he's just it's just, I mean, we know the answer to that. He believes that if you simply kind of say that person is being victimized by the sanitized type of conversation we're all supposed to have that, then all of these sorts of sentiments, in any sorts of remarks, all fit in the same basket. And that's not the case. That's not the case at all. We have actually a clip of President Trump or then candidate Trump, speaking on Face the Nation in December of two thousand fifteen. Let's take a listen to that if we could. So, everybody wants to be politically correct, and that's part of the problem that we have with our country. Have people been too politically correct with Muslims in America? I think so. I think so, and with maybe other things too, but I think certainly so. And as you know, I came out with I want vigilance. I want real vigilance, and whether it's mosques or whatever, it has to be. What's your reaction to that conversation That was three years ago? And hate crimes against Muslims have risen dramatically, And of course he's talked about a Muslim registry. He's obviously the travel ban with majority Muslim countries. To what end as President Trump using this term to ignite the fears and anger of his base, Well, I think to a large extent, and I think what he's jumbling is some some less heated, less provocative questions about our conversation that that people the conservatives or even people in the center have asked, he's jumbling that together with permission for people to engage an actual hate speech. So you mean, well, what I mean is like when he's talking about political correctness and and and Islam and terror, and he's referring to all there are people like Bill Maher who have said, we're not talking honestly enough about certain things that seem to be encouraged among certain factions of Muslims. And there are people who have said, I mean, Barack Obama battle with us all the time. There are people who said that if you if you purge the word Islam or Muslim from some of the discussions of some of the kinds of terrorism we're seeing, you're not actually having an honest debate about what's giving rise to it. So there are plenty of people who would say that's political correctness run a monk, because we can't have an honest debate. Um, And I'm just telling you what people would say, we can't have an honest debate, and we can't like actually kind of bring in everything that needs to be bringing because we're so afraid of offending. Um, it is not political correctness or I mean, that's very different from saying that those marchers in Charlottesville we're channing things that are absolutely hateful and and unconscionable and impermissible. And he's jumbling all of that together. He's saying, I mean, I'm saying, Katie, and that's it's a really dangerous thing, and it's a really cynical thing. And I think he knows what he's doing, is doing it deliberately. Bill Maher and other comedians, Frank a number of them. I think Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock are among those who just don't want to perform on college campuses anymore. And that brings me to another comedian. And this may be slightly dated by the time our podcast airs, but I have to ask you about Michelle Wolf and her performance of the White House Correspondence Dinner. Um, what did you think of it? And I just it's been fascinating for me to read the reactions by Maggie Habrman was very dismissive of her and then got attacked yes, and then of course Mika Brzynski was very upset with her, and then Jimmy Kimmel and other comedians came to her defense. What did you think of that? I think so many things about that that are disconnected, one of which is I think the amount of attention we're lavishing on this is an example of why so many Americans see the media is so disconnected from their lives. A. Um, this is this is about a set of remarks from a comedian at a fancy, self indulgent, self celebratory dinner. You know, let's not let's not get carried away. Um. I also think that the White House correspond Association dinners should be retired forevermore because it exists primarily not as some touchy feely bipartisan can't we all get along? It exists. It exists as a kind of exercise of vanity. Um. And it is a New York Times no longer wins. Well yeah, and by the way, and I'm not saying this because I think The New York Times did. I mean, I think we made the right decision. I think it was back in two thousand eight, and before then I went, I haven't been back. Sense. Um, I don't know. Sometimes employees go as other people's guests. I think, but we don't buy tables there, we don't do anything like that. Um. I think that's one of those situations where we made the right call, because I think it has become a sort of you know, Oscar's manque for journalists. You know. Um, I don't think anything noble is being accomplished by that dinner. Um. I think it is an exercise and self indulgence, and this sort of thing is bound to happen. I've never understood why a centerpiece of this dinner was a comedian who more often than not is bound to do some offensive stuff standing up there and ridiculing the people in the room. I'm not sure what the message I mean, is that supposed to communicate a noble self effacement in this crowd or you know, I mean it's at a at a very a very great risk. Um. On the other hand, at a time when journalism is being so kind of trashed by the president, the First Amendment kind of questioned by the administration, fake news, the moniker. Just do you think the w h C A is the answer to that? No, not necessary there just what But I guess the rest of my question was or statement was at a time when these are being so challenged. Is it a time for solidarity and for members of the press to say, Hey, we believe in a search for truth and we think that we're a really important part of a democracy. I don't know. I don't, yes, And I mean, I'm just I'm just giving the opposite point of view. Well, but but I don't think that point of view has anything to do with the actual fact and details and mechanics of the White House Correspondence Association dinner. I mean that dinner brings together right there on the days the very people who are trashing us, you know, Sarah, how could be Sanders, Kelly and Conway. So how does that dinner represent a solidarity act in defense of our utility to our essential role in democracy? That dinner is something is a bit of frippery entirely to the side of that. Let's talk about this now, penchant for evaluating past works through a modern a lens or sensibility. Most recently, Molly Ringwald wrote in The New York Or a piece about sixteen Candles and other John Hughes movies. I Guess the Breakfast Club, Breakfast Club, and and sort of talked about some of the themes and some of the characters and some of the dialogue in those films, and uh, you know, she in retrospects thinks they were offensive. What say you, Frank Bernie. I think everything that she pointed out in those films was offensive and that was interesting. Um. And she's right to look back and say that those weren't necessarily constructive or ideal situations. But I found myself a little heartsick at the selectiveness of the reading, because you can also go back and look at those movies if you're just in a different spirit, and see a hell of a lot of good. I read that whole Molly Ringwald thing. I was riveted by it. Smack in the middle was the passage to me that was the most interesting. She talks about a black gay friend of hers who she was sort of filling him in on her processes on how bad she felt. And I may be misrepresenting the essay a little bit, but I think I'm close to the mark. It's not right in front of me. And I read it a week ago or two weeks ago. Um. And she talks about her concern about movie stuff whatever. And he says to Molly Ringwald, he says, as as a black gay man, your movies saved my life. And she's puzzled by that because she's thinking, there weren't there wasn't racial diversity in the movies. There was the horrible caricature of the Asian American character and I think that was sixteen candles, and so she's sort of surprised. But what he's what he kind of says to her, And you know immediately, if you if you're if you're familiar with the movies, is that so many of those movies were portraits of outsiders and people who were shoved by the in crowd to the margins, figuring out how to forge a separate piece, how to find dignity, how to navigate the world. And even if that character was fair skinned, red haired Molly, heterosexual, Molly Ringwald this black game and saw himself in that character and took great heart from it and took inspiration and as he says to Molly, your movies saved my life. Now let's go back to what we were talking about before, about kind of person in one group right as another person. The things we're talking about, empathy, you could Shakespeare lives to this day, not because he provided us, you know, with a perfect array of diversity and all that. But because the human conditions, the human strivings, the human cruelty, is the human foibles that he wrote about. Those transcend all distinctions of gender and class and race. Those are universal things. And what this friend of Molly's was saying to him is, you may now be concerned about some of these details of those movies, and that's a noble concern, But they were so universal, um in what they were capturing and in their consequence that they saved my life. I thought that was just such an important passage that we should not let go of easily. Hold that thought. We're going to applause for a moment because we want to hear from those of you who see things a bit differently than Frank does. Here's what some of you had to say. Hello there. I am Jeffrey Marsh. I am an activist and an author and a non binary and I travel around the country helping churches and corporations in schools make respectful spaces for LGBTQ folk, and PC spaces or so called safe spaces, are sometimes the only spaces where people like me find respect and has PC culture gone too far is a really great question, and I think enough the great question is why in the world do some human beings need to be strongly encouraged to see the full humanity and other human beings and show kindness and respect. Thank you, Hey, this is this just leaving my thoughts on PC culture having recently graduated from a super liberal research university. I think that PC culture is a sign that we are progressing as a society and we are paying attention to how we could have been hurtful to other perspectives in the past. So I think it is something good, and it's something that needs to continue, and it's a way to make people feel more comfortable in the society that we live in, and we're fare that being said, I often did feel at college, specifically that PC culture sometimes prevented us from haveing a fair debate for the fear that I think that we might just agree with the other side. And I think it's important to keep to make sure that PC culture isn't used to stiful discourse. Thanks thank you to everyone who called in. Clearly there's more than one way to look at these issues. And now back to our conversation with Frank two other terms, frank, have become hot button issues, and I deal with it in my hour on which I called the Age of Outrage. One is cultural appropriation and the other is white privilege. When does cultural appreciation become cultural appropriation? And how do you feel about that conversation that's going on, whether it's on fashion runways or celebrity magazines or musical performers like Bruno Mars. There's a lot of talk about this right now. Yeah, I think that's another one of those conversations where people tend to go to extremes. You know, we should never the whole idea of cultural appropriation is ridiculous, as one camp you know, another camp you know, says everything is a cultural appropriation. Um. I think this is another tough one where there are many many ways, um to show cultural appreciation that people in one extreme call cultural appropriation. And I think they're being a little bit too quick to take offense. And I think that, um, there's sort of being a little bit blind to the way the world invariably works. I think the real complaint here goes back to who's been shut out and and and so I have I have no problem with I'm going to use the phrase because that's what we're using. But I don't like. I have no problem with cultural appropriation because I think it's often um a sign of a very important integration and it's a sign of respect. I do have a problem when the only people who get to showcase and benefit from the distinctive fruits of a culture are the outside of that culture. And I think that's the real problem and the real tension. And sometimes the cultural appropriation argument starts to be about the things and forgets that what really is an issue here, what's at the root of it. This is the group's excluded from recognition and from benefiting from the things that they in fact brought into the world. I interviewed Elaine welter Roth, the former editor of teen Vogue, and she told said something that really made me think. She talked about minstrel shows, and we should add she as an African American woman, yes, and she she was talking about how how that was stealing a culture and mocking a culture. It was mocking a culture. And you know clearly and that that was sort of one of the primary examples of early cultural appropriation. Of course, has been going on forever in terms of if you look at fashion and all kinds of things. But but I don't even think cultural appropriation is even the right word for that, because that's something much different. It's mockery, it's caricature. I mean, it's designed to make fun of. And so how you relate that to say, the debate on some campuses over hoop ear rings. You know, a white girl wearing a big hoop ear ring sometimes is put in a defensive crouch about cultural appropriation. She's not mocking or making a caricature of a culture that you had first worn an ear ring like that. She's actually paying a kind of compliment. Now we can talk further about whether it's an appropriate compliment. Um, But I mean, I don't see a problem with it. But that's nothing like black face, is right, I mean, I know, I think you're right. And you know, Mark Jacobs was criticized because he put some of his models in dreadlocks one season, and he later put them in turbans, and people were offended by the fact that he didn't seem to include the Muslim community, for example, in wearing sort of head scarves or turbans. It was primarily turbans, if I recall, so you know to me, I said to some of the folks I interviewed, isn't that in a way an homage to that culture? But I think you hit the nail on the head, Frank when you mentioned the people who have been excluded from the table, that have not been brought in on the conversation, who are not benefiting financially or otherwise from the use of any given culture. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know about that fashion show, but let's say you did a fashion show where you were putting your models in a certain kind of hairstyle or head dress or whatever, and what you your rationale was, I think this is beautiful. I think this is part of the beautiful tapestry of humanity. But not a single one of those models belongs to the cultural group, the ethnic group from which you're taking. Well, that's a problem with that, because it's like, if you think this is so beautiful, and if this is a gesture and gesture of inclusion, where the hell's the inclusion. That's where African Americans feel, like, why is it only beautiful when white people start donning it? You know? Why are corn rows only great when Miley Cyrus wears them? Or I think they were. I think they were always great, and you know, but you know what I mean that they're feeling. It's like you're robbing us of our identity. You're benefiting from it financially and otherwise. And you know, where was your appreciation for this look when it was being warned by African American women. It's just so interesting. The whole thing is very and every and every single situation is a little bit different because in all cases, like you know, is it a homage or is it a trivialization. Sometimes that's an exploitation. Sometimes that's in the eye and the beholder. Sometimes it's pretty clear. And so one of the problems with the cultural appropriation debate is we are mashing together a lot of different situations for which your answer would be very different about is this trivializing, is this exploitation, is this homage, etcetera. Yeah, Frank, this may be a bit of a leap from political correctness, But before you go, I wanted to ask whether you're concerned about a backlash to another movement, which is me too. And ever again, where there seems to be a very quick jump from the allegation to the career death penalty, and are you concerned that we've become extreme on this issue as well? You know, I I have a hard time talking about this one because again I'm I'm a man, you know. I mean, I I certainly have thoughts about this, but I have not been I'm not a woman who has worked in a workplace as most of my female friends have where they have felt, you know, some form of sexual harassment or worse. So I really in this in this one, I don't think I'm the most appropriate voice. Um, does it feel like there are some situations where things are happening very quickly in terms of judgment and in terms of punishment. Sure, But I've got to say when I take several steps back and I think about what has happened over the last year and what has been accomplished, well, we have not gotten it perfect. I think we've made a leap forward as a country. And I think that when we're talking about this, certainly a year from now and this is all settled down a bit, I think we're all going to agree that what we've gone through in this period in terms of making sure the workplace is respectful to women and making sure they have equal opportunity in making sure we're safeguarding a certain you know, human dignity. I think we're going to agree that this was a good period um and that we made a very very important advance for whatever small things were done wrong on the margins, I hope. So. I think the devil will be in the details and the policy changes that are ushered in as a result of this sort of reckoning. If you will, I wanted to ask you, I took a privilege walk at Columbia Privilege. What a privileged walk have you heard of that? I don't know the privilege walking. So basically, you get with a bunch of different people. I think there might have been, gosh, ten or twelve people of all different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and you're asked seventeen questions about your life experiences and you take a step forward or take us up backwards depending on your answer to the question. And things like your parents came here of their own free will, came to this country, or you can find a band aid to match the color of your skin, your parents told you you could do anything you you know, one parent has been fired. All these just different questions and you take a walk, you close your eyes and then you open your eyes and you see kind of where you are. Well, I know it'll come as a shock to you, but I was smack in the front of the group, and we we really just sort of used it as an opportunity to talk about white privilege, which I think is a is a term that really rankles a lot of people. And I noticed that there was a young woman sort of in the middle of the group, and I said to her, while I'm surprised you're there, and she said, well, I'm from North Carolina, working class parents. My parents worked nights and weekends, and whatever the answers were it she ended up sort of in the middle. And one of the young ladies said, this reminds me of trying to explain white privilege to my parents. It doesn't mean you haven't struggled just because you have white privilege. It just means you have certain advantages. And I'm curious, like, why does that rankle so many people, the term white privilege. Um, I think it rankles some people for a bad reason. I mean some people for reason that I don't find much sympathy for. And then I think it rankles other people for a reason that I do have some sympathy for I think it rankles some people, and this is the wrong on something reason, just because they don't want to be told or they don't want it suggested to them that any facet of their achievement or life is anything but entirely earned. You know, it's it's a matter of kind of ego. You don't want anyone to say that you you know, yes you occupy this professional station, yes you have this lovely whatever, but you didn't really get that that was for ordained by the circumstances, by the way you. I don't think people want to hear that, and that's something I think they do need to hear, not that that's the sole thing, but that they need to feel like they had a leg up. Right, So, some people don't want to be told they had a leg up because they want to believe wherever they got was entirely, entirely of their own doing. So that's one reason that rankles people, and that's the one I don't have sympathy for it, because you absolutely need if you want to be a truthful person, if you want to be, you know, a person on the right side of social justice and awareness and all that you need to be aware of how you ended up where you ended up. It doesn't mean you had nothing to do with it, but you had advantages. It rankles other people for a reason I'm more sympathetic to, which is they hear white privilege as something that is supposed to pivot them toward an apology. They're supposed to apologize for the circumstances of their life and birth as opposed to be aware of it. Well, you know, when they asked me, Frank, how I felt when I found myself in the front of the line, I said two words, lucky and guilty. Okay, Well, most people don't want to feel guilty or apologetic. So white privilege as a tool for awareness, great white privilege as a tool for apology gets a little bit more complicated. Um, because a lot of people who hear that phrase, I think I'm a good person. You know, I'm actually voting in ways that I believe are going to make society more just. I'm volunteering my time, choosing where to live in some cases, um, you know, giving my money to charity in ways that acknowledge, um, the unevenness of the world, the inequality of opportunity, and are my effort to make up for it. But if I'm doing all of that, I can't unborn myself. I can't unchange the way I grew up. So why are you making me feel like I should apologize for it when through my awareness I believe I am living in all those ways that are in the service of a world of more equal opportunity. Should I have not said guilty? No, that's your reality. Honestly I feel guilty too, But because I I think I would have ended up like you in the front of the line, you know, I mean, really high up. I mean, but you know, everything is complicated. I would have ended up really far up. My father grew up with no money, with parents who didn't speak the English language, you know. So someone who looks at me and says he grew up in a suburban I mean my my awareness and my consciousness is a little bit more nuanced than that, because I do not have to look far at all into my past to see an entirely different world. And I'm not saying that I still wouldn't end up at the front of that walk of privilege line like you, Katie. But we're all much more complicated, and let's you know, let's be generous in our judgments of each other. I agree allelujah to being generous in our judgments. But how else can we make this a little less fraught? How do we get to a place where we're not at each other's throats about this? How do we lower the temperature and get rid of some of the divisiveness around these issues. I think the way we do it is when we meet somebody who doesn't immediately seem to be or to think like us. First of all, don't immediately move to hang various labels on them. Second of all, um to the extent that they do have different views, ask yourself, ask them why they have those views, and try to listen with some empathy, generosity, and with an impulse toward common ground before you retreat to your separate corners and begin tweeting at each other. I mean that metaphorically more than literally. Everybody is so on the attack. I think it just makes people recoil and dig in their heels even more. I feel like the desire and the quest for common ground has taken a back seat to this sort of desire to shout as loudly as you can, or to come up with the snarkiest, most clever put down right. Um, you know, look at it. The you know, the Republican Democrat pendulum of power keeps swinging back and forth, and one group gets into power and just wants to quash the other group, and the other group gets into power and wants to quash that group. And you know, at some point, you know, we've got to stop letting the perfect be the enemy. They're good, and we've got to, um, we got to develop a new respect for the concept of compromise, and we've got to develop a new appreciation for common ground. I don't know if you watch Homeland, but the season finale was last night, and the character of the President who don't tell me spoiler alert, Are you going to ruin it for people? No? I'm not, But I'm going to tell you this. I'm gonna tell you because I won't tell you the context or the end of it, but I will tell you that she gives a speech about precisely this and about how we are being very shoddy, great ungrateful caretakers of our democracy by dint of our lack of interest in common ground. And it was it was an interesting and I think extraordinarily Germaine speech. And I've given nothing away about it the way it ends, and you just know that she's going to give a speech. That's it. Thank you, Frank, Frank, Bernie, thank you Frank for coming in. And I always love talking to you. And it's these things are kind of I don't know even the way to describe it. When you're kind of trying to unpack these complicated issues, and people bring so much baggage and personal variance to the table. Sometimes you have to let that go to right and that's not easy. I agree, and I thank you because I think you've allowed us to have a conversation about these things that was nuanced and that and that did justice to the fact that there is no right wrong, you know, cultural appropriation always good, always bad. These are these are really kind of chewy, sticky, complicated matters, and um, I wish more people would think through them without just taking an instant position that they think is the position of their tribe. That does it for us today and actually that does it for our podcast episodes delving into the topics I covered in my series America Inside Out on Nacio, also on Facebook, also on YouTube, also on Hulu. I hope you enjoyed digging into these thorny issues with me and Brian. Well. I certainly learned a lot, and I know that's why we're here, just so I can learn a lot anyway. Next that's my goal and like to teach you, young man. Next week, very excited, we'll be talking with the actress Julianna mark Ellis. I'm a big fan from Ere to The Good Wife. Julianna has made a big mark on the small screen. Do you like what I did there, Katie? Big mark small screen? Very clever, Brian, very clever. What questions do you all have for her? Leave us a message at nine to nine to two four six three seven, or as always, you can send us an email at comments at currect podcast dot com. As usual, our thanks to our team at Stitcher. Producer Gianna Palmer, assistant producer Nora Richie, who, by the way, has an incredible voice. Nora, you knocked my socks off. She's an incredible singer, and you're the one who should be singing on this show, not me. Nora. Also audio engineer Jared O'Connell. I'm not sure, Jared, if you sing, but if you want to Okay, I guess not. He's shaking his head. Special thanks today to Josh Richmond in l A and my team at Katie Correct Media, Alisan Bresnick, Betha Moz and Emily Beena. You can find Katie on social media under Katie CURRK Big Surprise I tweet from the hand Goldsmith B. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. You'll get our episodes fresh off the presses every week and we'd love a review from you on Apple Podcasts if you feel so moved. Thank you as always for listening. And since I mentioned Nora Richie and her singing ability, She's gonna sing us off the air today. Hit it Nora, trusted Heart. She tells us the favors Ben was strong stories of love. We feel it in our guts. We have been here before, all action history, cheerful to see and tell it again. Tell Mamma Joe all our history a mental and tell it again, telling one all the time. My mind tells our story of mental be in her bone