Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

If Crulge is doing a shtick he's certainly consistent about it

.@crulge explaining how we're going to win Medicare for All to like 300 @DemSocialists members. pic.twitter.com/CYeh97B5Up

— Micah Uetricht 🌹 (@micahuetricht) September 28, 2017

He just seems like a really hyped-up but endearing nerd to me - he could be telling you about his favorite Dischord bands but instead it's single-payer healthcare.

Haha, his new podcast is exactly this, only they go on about metal.

http://www.blubrry.com/heavyxmedical/

I don't understand the release schedule anymore -- is it Sundays and Thursdays?

it's "sometime between Tuesday and Thursday" and "on Sunday, most of the time"

new premium is up. can't believe they got Hillary Clinton. impressive

He just seems like a really hyped-up but endearing nerd to me - he could be telling you about his favorite Dischord bands but instead it's single-payer healthcare.

― louise ck (milo z), Tuesday, September 26, 2017 11:33 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

will be interesting to see these dudes grow up in the public eye

I'd never really looked at this thread, which, along with the Innocent Smoothies thread, seemed pretty active yet completely foreign to me. I just assumed they were about some British comedy troupe or something. But lo, it turns out to be about a popular political podcast! Who knew. I don't listen to many (any?) podcasts beside what my wife plays on car trips, but I think I'll give this a shot. I like political yammering.

Hah I had the same experience until a friend of a friend I respect mentioned he listened to the show and it forced me to check it out.

Josh in Chi, I usually recommend people start with one of the Ross Douthat episodes. It's not Pod Save America, you have to kind of get acclimated to their sensibility and their mythical pundit world.

Cool, thanks. It's always tough when you find you're 150 episodes behind.

(That said, I think I've heard maybe part of an ep of Pod Save America and I don't remember it being radically different, mostly less prone to crazy reference-strewn digressions?)

the recent Naomi Klein episode was a good overview of their politics and a bit of their humor, maybe skip the cold open though (virtually all of their scripted stuff, of which there is thankfully little, is bad)

Mostly agree. I still love the "Woke Morning Zoo" bit from one of the early eps though.

And obviously the Adornian Gorka bits are classic but I assume he comes up with those.

Re: Adomian—This is the kinda thing that drives me up the wall, especially because it keeps happening:

I must now confess: we once taped an intro with Adomian where he was Kurt, right after the hentai, and it was so funny but my laptop ate it

— The Dying Pundit (@deep_beige) September 27, 2017

Theyre a year into an extremely successful independent revenue model and nobody has ever updated the gear from just recording directly into Brendan’s MacBook.

Even Nick Mullen uses a Zoom recorder now.

nick is too, uh... "obsessive" to ever let anything like that happen. i hope he actually releases a 7.1 mix of the show, so we can hear him "wrap around the room like a goddamn Comanche helicopter."

Baffler/dirtbag fave Brandy Jensen shows up on The Dig today

https://www.blubrry.com/thedig/27559795/marisol-lebrn-brandy-jensen-puerto-rico-austerian-disaster-roy-moore-perfect-republican/

the Marisol Lebron segment in there on PR is also good

has mullen ever come on CTH?

no but he's been in the room/made off mic remarks in a couple episodes, sorta like Amber on his show.

amazing that they are so close with the head of DSA

and the clown prince of the alt-right

BTW Adam Johnson's last Citations Needed podcast was really good -- covered deficits and MMT with Stephanie Kelton.

If this is podcast-related, shit's just embarassing

trying to resolve this error is absolute geohell pic.twitter.com/wlWLo3dB8q

— Virgil Texas (@virgiltexas) October 2, 2017

I gotta say the work Amber and Tim are taking part in sounds very cool

Yeah, to continue the upthread discussion about whether this is just lefty Daily Show or something more, hearing how the show is only a degree separated from real organizing kind of points to "something more."

that's still tricky to argue imo since Amber is only on about 1/4 of the time on average and is also the only active organizer

hey now, the rally to restore sanity was totally radical organizing

not sure how far removed them doing a mocking reading series is from jon stewart playing a clip of a republican saying a thing and going 'BUHHHH??' and making silly faces at the camera

it's slightly more substantive because they have more time to deconstruct what makes the pieces awful and what makes their subjects' logic & ideology bad, but yeah, it does veer into Daily Show territory at times, especially when they're continually dunking on imo relatively boring people like Douthat. Megan McArdle is I think bizarre & dumb enough to warrant multiple dissections.

I find the cold open fake "interviews" the only truly Daily Show-level obvious stuff

I'm kind of gratified that they do Megan McArdle readings - she was always my hate read of choice

OK, I heard the episode a couple of weeks ago, and the Naomi Klein episode, and ... it's ok? I really don't hear it that anything radically different from the aforementioned Pod Save America. Outrage, profanity, the occasional perceptive point. I guess Chapo goes on a lot more digressions and has more esoteric references or more micro-targeted nemeses? Is that what makes it what it is? Anyway, not going to give up, I'll try a few more episodes as they're released. It's not bad or inferior or anything, just trying to pin down what sets it apart.

Perspective, I guess? Pod Save America is a Dem party podcast with guests like Obama, Hillary, Tom Perez and Chuck Schumer. I doubt those guys will be booking Chapo appearances.

Yeah it's a pretty significant ideological gulf there, maybe not as obvious in that ep

So the Chapo guys are anti-neoliberal types, right? To my ear most of their yammering didn't seem that off from the yammering of Pod Save America, and I'm not sure how or why it necessarily would be. Like, I assume they'll respond to the Vegas shooting. What would or could they say about it any different from what Pod Save said? They seem to have more in common than they have differences but like I said, I'll have to give them more time.

They've never really tackled gun laws and there's some dispute over such things on the left so I'm interested to hear their take as well. I'd say the biggest areas of discrepancy btwn the left and neoliberals is whether capitalism can be reformed or not (or even whether it has to be) and the left's hatred of US foreign policy orthodoxy.

i'd be interested in hearing their take on gun control - there's a lot of gun-nuts over on the chapo reddit who are convinced they need to be armed to the teeth for teh communist revolution

Yeah, I find the "marginalized ppl need guns to defend themselves from the nazis" argument some leftists are making less than persuasive - surely that doesn't work when the nazis get guns, too?

Like I know this line of reasoning has precedent with the Black Panthers and etc but in the end it helps the oppressor far more than the oppressed, imo.

from my side of the atlantic, pretty much any kind of pro-gun stance seems indefensible, regardless of the political leanings of those who express them, but gun-nuttery has bipartisan appeal in the usa i guess

Not quite through the whole thing but they're pretty boring and predictable on guns. I mean there's no good take really. The "woke troop" bit was all they really had to add to the discussion. But I wish they didn't always feel obligated to devote significant time to these kinds of headline grabbers. Similar with Trump doing dumb stuff. It's so hard not talk about though and that's why the Trump era is bad for the show.

Yeah I'm not enthralled with the Trump stuff either but they do less of it than most would

OK, I gave the latest episode a shot and ... yeah, I couldn't stick with it. In fact, it was making me kind of mad. I recognize the idealism (I guess?) at work, but at the same time, these Chapo cats are just so smug and self-righteous about their viewpoint. And not nearly as funny as they think they are. Though that may be a general podcast problem.

yeah I don't think "idealism" is the word you want to use there

They're really at their best when savaging b-list pundits of the "center right" and "center left"

I meant idealism in the sense that yeah, why wouldn't people want Medicaid for all? That sort of thing. Like, these things are achievable. They haven't given up, they are fighting, they are fighting for an ideal. I'm not sure I agree, and I'm not sure I find their position effective.

but sure, I can imagine totally getting into them ripping on pundits.

I don't see medicare for all as an "ideal," just a policy that was, until recently, considered outside the mainstream of political discussion (and was really only outside it for a couple decades anyway).

Yeah, the ideal is the decommodification of all health care, isn’t it? This is a step on the way there

https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-148-lost-in-the-sauce-feat-patton-oswalt-10917

...huh